Amoré, Amoré: Short Story

AMORÉ,
AMORÉ
AMORÉ, AMORÉ 2
This is a self-contained short story. Its characters and action are part of
Happy Little Breakups, my new novel, for which I seek a hardworking
literary agent. www.happylittlebreakups.com
AMORÉ, AMORÉ
* * * * *
STEVE HERMANOS
Author’s Note: This story was first published in the Dirty Goat, No.14.
Copyright, Steve Hermanos

Contact the author at SteveHermanos@yahoo.com
AMORÉ, AMORÉ 3
In the minutes before my no-credit painting class I sat on a paint-spattered

bench, staring at a postcard of the Eiffel Tower sent from my sister
Katharine. We two sisters hadn’t seen each other in over a year. She pranced
the catwalks of Europe as a mid-to-high-level fashion model. I was a junior
at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, where I was immersed in
Archaeology.
“Paris,” a man behind me noted. I twisted around: the one and only
handsome, heterosexual guy in the class—tall, flat stomach behind his
starched white button-down shirt, straight blonde hair cut short, faint crinkles
around his dark eyes, nice jaw line. It was the third or fourth class; in each
one he had worn a white button-down shirt. Now I smelled his starch through
the room’s prevalent odor of oil paint.
“My sister,” I said up at him. “She lives in Paris.”
“Ever been?” he asked.
“No. I went to Guatemala over the summer. Studying the Mayans.”
“The Mayans? Cool.” He stuck out his hand. “My name’s Bill.”
The professor clapped loudly and brought our attention to the
arrangement of bananas, pineapples, and mangos overflowing a blue-and-
white porcelain bowl. It would be my last painting class.
* * *
So that was the beginning of Bill. After class we went for a drink, which
led to dinner and more drinks. He was studying for his M.B.A. at Wharton,
and was eager to get to Wall Street. I was an idealistic intellectual, so anyone
who was involved in life just for money was likely to rub me the wrong way.
He had taped advertisements of exotic cars and boats to the walls of his

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kitchen. But it was late at night on February the twelfth—Valentine’s Day in
all its pressure to not be single, to be romantic and lovey-dovey, was
looming. Bill booked a surprise dinner at La Cloche and I put on my best
dress, which had fit nicely the previous year but now highlighted an alarming
array of bulges; I covered it in a flower-print wrap. First, though, at his
house, he poured me a glass of wine, told me to close my eyes. Eyes closed, I
started freaking out that maybe he was secretly insane and was about to
present me with an engagement ring. The sex had been very good.
“Open your eyes.” A painting, the word “Amoré” written in oil paint, red
script on a thick, white background. A big red heart. “Don’t touch it!” he
warned. “It’s still super wet.”
“You did this?” I asked. “For me?
“Yes, Clare. For you.” No one had ever painted a painting for me. With
the back of my hand I wiped a tear. We went to dinner. He started a
discussion about radiomapping techniques that we were using in Guatemala.
“How do you know this?” I asked. He smiled, his teeth charmingly askew,
replying, “I’m a man for all seasons.” I realized that he had read through a
stack of articles I had left at his house. We talked about our families, and
though I didn’t exactly want to get into it, I wound up telling him all about
my sister Katharine.
In the summer after her sophomore year of high school, Father died trying
to land his plane in Tulsa just ahead of a huge storm; he should have stayed
up in the sky. Katharine stayed home crying, though Mother and I, and
Katharine’s friends, tried to get her out of our house—we lived in Colorado
Springs, up near the Broadmoor. Katharine wound up missing that semester
of school. I responded to the tragedy by getting stoned at a very young age,
and burying my head in books.
The night after Valentine’s Day, Bill took me to a Philadelphia 76ers
basketball game, and tried to impress me by spouting the answers to all the
moronic trivia and guess-the-attendance questions popping up on the
scoreboard. I told him, “You don’t have to show off,” but he kept doing it.
After the game, I went back to my room. I avoided his calls, I didn’t go to
painting class, and a week or so later I broke it off over the phone: “But let’s
stay friends, O.K.?” Over the next year-and-a-half, until he graduated, we
met a few times for coffee, and once for a performance of “Hedda Gabler”

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during which he dozed off and crashed into the old man on his other side.
The people around us giggled as I poked him with my elbow to wake him up.
The Amoré painting hung on the wall over my bed and kept watch, until, the
day I moved out, not knowing what to do with it, I set it on the sidewalk
against the bus shelter.
At Penn, I spent Christmas, Spring Break, and a part of summer digging
out a jungle in north-central Guatemala, exposing a Mayan village, or town,
or city—they still don’t know how big it is. And the Mayans weren’t even
far enough in the past for me, so for graduate school, I applied to the
Paleontology Department at Berkeley. I went from thousands of years in the
past, to millions of years in the past. We examined human origins. For ten
weeks every spring, our team flew to Ethiopia, and Land Rovered thirteen
hours to Olduvai Gorge. We dug for ten weeks, teasing fossilized bones out
of the ground. The bones ranged from one-million years old, to three-and-a-
half million.
My first season at Olduvai, I discovered two sets of footprint tracks. The
proto-humans who had made them had walked across muddy volcanic ash.
Soon after, Mount Vuterooto, 8.4 miles away, erupted again, setting down a
fresh layer of ash, preserving the footprints. And so, these two sets of tracks
had been undisturbed for 2.4 million years.
Two pairs of tracks, side by side, but with overlapping, undifferentiated,
and confusing prints halfway along the tracks. The middle part consisted
prints from other individuals, or prints from the same two, as if the pair had
stopped for some reason. Not including the muddled bunch, one track went
eighteen steps, and the other fifteen and a half; sixty-seven footprints.
Tracks had been discovered before, most notably by Mary Leakey, but
mine was a major find, and I had been extremely lucky. The following
seasons in Olduvai, I carefully measured the prints and made plaster molds
of them. At Berkeley, I was trying to figure out at what speed the two pre-
people had walked those steps, and to speculate on what that might tell me. I
won a grant, part of which I used to pay for a studio apartment in Hayes
Valley in San Francisco, to enjoy the nightlife of a cosmopolitan city. But I
worked as hard as ever.
In my laboratory, I mixed barrels and barrels of volcanic ash with water,
trying to replicate the density of the Olduvai mud. Rather than Olduvai mud,

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I made Mt. St. Helens mud, which was the result of three road trips in a
borrowed Winnebago, to harvest ash. I posted a job for Cal students with a
size 4 or 5 ½ foot. After weighing 109 small people, I hired two
undergraduate women, 88 pounds and 96 pounds, to walk barefoot in a series
of three-inch-deep, four-by-twenty-foot-long tracks of ash-mud mixed with
sizing. I was seeking foot and toe impressions that mimicked the 2.4 million-
year-old tracks, trying to determine how fast my pair of ancient ancestors
were walking across that mud, and what might have caused them to pause in
the middle. If possible I would try to determine if they were, in a modern
sense, a couple.
* * *
And then Bill arrived in San Francisco. Seeking to expand his business,
and to trade Asian bonds more actively, he set up a group of traders within
the fold of a large firm. He rented a modern house full of floor-to-ceiling
windows atop Telegraph Hill, bought a metallic-blue Beemer convertible,
and threw himself a series of parties. His arms had thickened, his hair had
thinned.
Some of his paintings—a hobby he had continued after our art class—
were now unpacked and displayed on the walls, tastefully placed in metal
frames, and glowing under the aim of spotlights. They were views of New
York, Paris, London, Venice, and the Egyptian Pyramids. They were—I
wouldn’t say crude—the technique wasn’t terrible. It was just that the subject
matter tended to be cliché: Notre Dame Cathedral with pigeons poking
crumbs in the foreground; St. Mark’s in Venice with pigeons poking crumbs
(the same pigeons and crumbs from Paris); the Empire State Building
looming above Manhattan; Big Ben at five past noon. At bit tipsy at his
second party, I told Bill, “I beg you, darling, don’t paint the Golden Gate
Bridge sitting in brilliant daylight like the million postcards on the racks all
over town.” He straightened, struck dumb by my brashness. I walked out of
his house carrying a flute of Champagne, wondering if I’d ever be invited
back.
And then Katharine touched down, having retired, at the wizened age of
29, from a model’s life. I was honored that she had chosen to tie herself to
San Francisco, especially over our hometown, Colorado Springs, where her
most logical and likely future would be as a suburban housewife amidst

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burgeoning born-again Christianity.
Accompanied by shutting car doors, I heard Katharine’s voice: “I really
appreciate it.” I rushed to my window overlooking Hayes Street and there
stood my sister next to the trunk of a limousine, talking with a tall fellow in a
suit, while a chauffeur hauled out a giant piece of luggage.
Outside, I jumped into her arms, while the fellow with whom she had
been talking chuckled. The chauffeur insisted on carrying her suitcases up
the steep flight of stairs. I helped with two antique hat bags. “Do these really
contain hats?” I asked, clanging up the staircase. “Cosmetics,” Katharine
replied.
Inside she looked as fantastic as anyone could after a haul across an ocean
and a continent. I handed her a glass of San Francisco water. “Who was the
guy?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. I laughed, which in a way, permitted her to
laugh. That type of thing—getting a door-to-door airport ride from a stranger
—had never happened to me. Katharine certainly looked like a model, or a
recent-ex model—curvy strawberry-blonde hair, peaches-and-cream skin, all
arranged classically. But the perfect face was showing faint wrinkles, and her
model’s figure had filled out incrementally.
I was almost glad to see that gravity was finally having its effect on
Katharine, after she had been defying it all these year. It had started making
me lumpy in eighth grade. She was taller, much thinner than I, had much
better skin, longer hair, didn’t bite her fingernails, and had a dazzling, perfect
smile—though my smile was O.K. I was a size 6 upper half plopped atop a
size 8 lower. Her proportions were exact. Katharine was three years older,
but most people thought she was my younger sister.
Katharine hadn’t started to date until she was off in Europe modeling.
Then she took relationships way too seriously in my opinion, especially
considering the silly males she chose, including the cocaine-addicted Italian
fashion photographer, the cocaine-addicted (and ugly) London painter, the
married Australian clothing manufacturer (Mother never knew he was
married), and the guy in Paris (I didn’t know what, if anything, he did) who
swindled her out of $23,000 by “borrowing” the money to start some
business that never existed beyond the realm of his sick head. For some
reason, people often pick idiots to complicate their lives. Or maybe some

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 8
people are simply self-destructive. I had always hoped this wasn’t so with
Katharine.
It took her one day to find a job—hostess at Fra Angelica, an upscale
Tuscan restaurant in Presidio Heights. I could imagine her as the beacon that
attracted passersby, through the fog, into the restaurant. After three nights on
my futon, she moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Pacific Heights.
About a week later, Bill threw a non-Halloween party. No costumes
allowed. As guests swirled around him, Bill stood at his limestone kitchen
island shooting the bull with two of his employees, the sleeves of his spendy
English shirt folded up to the elbows, the folds the width of a pack of playing
cards. His fingers caressed a flute of Champagne. He planted a friendly kiss
on my cheek, “Hello Clare,” then shook Katharine’s offered hand. “Yes, the
other Bulkley sister—” His eyes widened—his cool betrayed—and he leaned
back to take in more of Katharine’s presence.
I carried a vodka tonic to the other side of the living room, where I stood
against the window and examined Bill and Katharine, the Yuppie mating
ritual playing out between them. The Yuppies start off chit-chatting about
common friends, about their forms of exercise, about work, and meanwhile
they’re each going down a mental checklist:
 good-looking
 apparently makes lots of money
 appreciates fine restaurants
 likes expensive vacations
 seems nice enough
 is serious
 likes children
 OK I’ll go out with him/her
Bill and Katharine started dating. The relationship overwhelmed San
Francisco like a sun-blotting plague of locusts.
* * *
On Valentine’s Day, while Katharine did Pilates and swam at the Bay
Club, Bill tossed an heirloom-tomato salad, roasted squab, sautéed fresh
vegetables, unboxed a chocolate cake from Café du Sud and centered it on a
pewter tray, uncorked a bottle of Opus One, and levered open four ounces of

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beluga caviar. She arrived at his house looking great (as usual), having
saunaed and primped at the gym. After a long kiss, they had wine, and he
told her to check out the bathroom.
There sat her first present—a painting—redolent of drying acrylic paint. It
was a 2’x3’ canvas, a big heart in red and purple strokes floating in a
background of thick, creamy paint, with the word “Amoré” in large script
above the heart (An Amoré just like the Amoré he had painted me seven
years before.). He neglected to tell her about mine.
She loved the painting, the caviar, the wine, the squab, the cake, the after-
dinner sex. Returning to bed with two glasses of water, she found a fist-sized
San Francisco 49ers helmet sitting on her pillow.
“What is that?!” she asked.
Bill lay on his side, propped up on his elbow, smiling. She lifted the little
helmet and there was the black ring box. She shrieked. She opened the box,
and found what she wanted, a diamond (3.1 carats, round, platinum setting)
engagement ring. Then she started calling everyone. Mother was on a cruise,
and Katharine left the message. When she phoned me, I dashed right over to
Bill’s.
My sis sprang from the sofa. She turned the lights up all the way, held her
hand under the blazing chandelier, and wiggled her finger, making the
diamond sparkle. “Look at the size of that!” she screamed in delight. I
laughed, full of joy, so very happy for her. But beyond her, leaning against
the window, was the other gift. The painting: Amoré.
I stared at the painting as if it were a three-foot-tall space alien that had
just sauntered out of Bill’s bathroom. Katharine wrapped her arms around
me and squeezed. My eyes were glued to the painting. It looked very much
as I remembered mine, even with the unnecessary accent over the “e.”
Clouds of doubt about Bill and the future of their relationship were rolling in
faster than the summer fog.
“Thank you thank you thank you!” she hugged me.
“What did I do?” I asked.
“You broke him in perfectly.”
We laughed. I appreciated the joke. I hugged her and meanwhile I aimed
my stare at Bill, who was sitting on the floor, back to the sofa. I scowled and
pointed at the painting. He held a finger to his smiling lips, telling (or asking)

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 10
me to be quiet. Katharine had never visited me at Penn, and had never laid
eyes on my Amoré painting. And I never had a reason to tell her about it. But
I could have very easily told her at some point. What was Bill thinking?
Didn’t he understand that this stupid painting would bother me to no end?
I downed two glasses of Champagne and made excuses about the late
hour. Steaming, mumbling, fists clenched, I charged down Union Street, up
and over Russian Hill, and stomped all the way to my apartment. I couldn’t
sleep. Early morning, I sipped coffee and spoke with Mother, whose every
molecule was enthralled at the idea that (at last, finally) one of her daughters
was marrying—and to a man who raked in the cash, no less. I could almost
hear her thinking, “Maybe there will be more debutante cotillions, maybe
there will be more prep schools, with boys in little uniforms! and horses! and
ski houses! That’s what she really wanted. To be fair, though, when I
brought home Juán, a brilliant archaeologist from Mexico City, she was
welcoming—though her Salvadoran housemaid kept mumbling, knocking
furniture, and shooting furtive squints at me.
“And you introduced them!” Mother chortled through the cruise ship
phone. “It’s so romantic!”
“I dated Bill,” I reminded her. “I saw the mole on his testicles.”
“Clare!” she shrieked.
I knew that if I brought up the multiple Amoré situation, she would gloss
over it. I hadn’t heard her so happy in decades, and I didn’t think it was
worth wrecking the happiness this engagement was causing her.
* * *
“We’re thinking about an October wedding,” Bill said that afternoon at
Paris Latte on Union Street, just he and I at a little table, “we’re going to
check out the Cliff House. I like it there.” While all my fingers strangled my
espresso spoon, waiting for him to fess up about the Amoré paintings, he
beamed, telling me how he had researched diamonds on the Internet, then
went to 48th Street in Manhattan while on a business trip, and picked out the
ring. He talked about looking forward to meeting Mother. Throwing the
spoon, which clanged against the marble table and crashed to the tile floor, I
yelled, “How could you do that?!”
“How could I do what?” he recoiled.
“Don’t play dumb. The painting!”

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 11
He blinked twice. “She likes the painting.”
“Obviously she likes the painting! I liked my painting too! That’s not the
point! You’re engaged to her now!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Jealous?”
I laughed—it was a good joke. We both knew that he and I had grated as
a couple. We were decent friends, I guess. He and Katharine, though, in the
tradition of late-Capitalist marriage customs, were a very fine fit. Personally
my philosophy was that a more fluid arrangement of coupling and
decoupling would make the vast majority of people significantly happier.
“I’m happy for you two,” I said. “But I feel that I should tell her, or better
yet, you should tell her about the other Amoré painting.”
“I don’t see why,” he shrugged. “I mean a guy will give different women
jewelry at different times in his life.”
“Yes, but you don’t make the jewelry—you buy it—you made the Amoré
paintings!” He sat silent, jaw clenched, looking into space, and something
wasn’t right. I asked him, “How many other Amoré paintings are there in this
world?”
He wiggled his pinkie in his ear and made a face. “I don’t know.”
“How many?! Come on, you know the number.” I chomped my piece of
lemon peel in half. “You must know!”
“I don’t exactly—five or six, maybe.”
I reached across the table and slapped the side of his forehead—not too
hard, not too soft.
“Hey!” His hand rose to where I had whacked him and he looked at the
hand to see if I had drawn blood.
“You deserve that, you dipshit!” From all sides I was shot full of dirty
glances by Politically Correct San Franciscans.
Hands up in case I decided to launch another punch, he protested, “But
look how happy I’m making her!”
“Stop obsessing on your ego gratification! Five or six other Amoré
paintings! Besides mine and Katharine’s?!” He nodded. I continued, “Don’t
you get it?! Don’t you get that each woman thinks that you painted the
painting just for them?!”
“But I did paint each one just for them.”
“No, dingbat. They thought, or think, that you conceived the idea just for

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 12
them. That they’re the inspiration! That’s what I thought!”
He crossed his arms and sat back, squinting. “You think it really
matters?” He was either being an idiot or a dick, not that there’s much
difference.
“Yeah, it does matter. Let me tell you why. Because Katharine has a mind
of her own. This will matter to her. It matters to me. We’ve got the same
DNA! Don’t you realize how fragile she is?”
“Katharine? She’s tough.”
I reminded him about Katharine being incapacitated after Father’s death.
“Don’t you remember? I told you this story in Philadelphia.” He replied,
“Yeah, sure, I sort of remember. But people change. She’s not so weak.”
“This is also about respect, about lying.”
“I’m not lying about anything,” he replied.
“Go to hell!” I stood and stormed towards the door. He pleaded, “Wait a
minute!” but I didn’t turn around. I charged over to Marina Green where I
took off my sandals and stared down at my feet as I walked across the rough,
patchy grass.
I thought about those two proto-people walking side by side through the
volcanic ash-mud 2.4 million years ago. They most definitely did not have
spoken language. How much of a couple were they? And what were they
thinking?
* * *
People stuck to Katharine like flies mashing into flypaper. She didn’t say
much, knew how to look perfect, and was a welcome addition at de Young
Museum opening parties, hikes on Mount Tamalpais, and al fresco parties in
Napa. She was included in a network of tech and finance Yuppies who
gravitated around Pacific Heights. I endured two bridal showers with these
people, who were pushing out babies, and creating a culture ever-so-slightly-
mutated from the previous generation. I would find a comfy chair in a corner
and try to scrounge a book that would keep me and a cocktail company. The
sight of Bill rang a bell in my head, and I would debate myself whether I
wanted this paint-by-the-numbers-Romeo, and think-by-the-numbers Romeo
marrying my sister. Katharine hung her Amoré painting above Bill’s sofa.
Then Mother arrived, in time for the final bridal shower, and to meet Bill.
I sat in Mother’s room at the Campton Place Hotel. Mother poured tea. She

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 13
and I were to have dinner with the happy couple that evening. I couldn’t hold
it in any longer and I explained the multiple Amoré situation to her. She set
down her cup and crossed her hands on her lap. Her cobalt blue dress
matched her blue eyes, the same as Katharine’s (Mine are brown, like
Father’s were.). Her fine-lined skin rearranged into a well-practiced smile.
She replied, “So?”
“There are five or six other Amoré paintings in the world!” I repeated.
“He told me! He admitted it! He doesn’t even know if it’s five or six others,
making seven or eight total—he’s lost count!”
“Well, I suppose he’s a romantic man.”
“But Katharine is not going to like this at all!”
“You haven’t told her?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you for the past ten minutes!”
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything. They’re beyond that now.
Everything else is in the past.”
“But Katharine should know, shouldn’t she?”
“I don’t think that would be useful,” Mother said, remembering her pretty
daughter sobbing on our sofa for weeks on end after father’s plane crashed.
We four dined at Bix and the Amoré situation was not mentioned.
The next day, Bill arranged to have a drink with the three of us at his
house, prior to the absolute final wedding shower. I arrived at Bill’s before
mother. He placed a cool glass of Champagne in my hand and sat me under
Katharine’s Amoré. With a wide grin he said, “We have a surprise for you!”
Katharine walked it up from downstairs. She was radiant in a beaded
black dress as she held a painting, larger than the Amorés. It was another big
heart with “Love always from Katharine and Bill” written in purple and blue
oil paint along the bottom. “We painted it together!” she said.
“She is fantastique!” Bill flourished his hand and bowed, doing a silly
impersonation of a French painting instructor.
All the Champagne in the world couldn’t provide the relief I was feeling
right then. I said to Katharine, “Thank God, you know all about all the
Amoré paintings! You don’t mind?”
“All the what?” she asked.
“The Amoré paintings,” I said.

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 14
“You mean this?” She pointed at the one hanging on the wall above my
head.
Bill put his forehead on his hand.
“Didn’t you tell her yet?!” I asked him.
“I painted one for your sister.” Finally, the words escaped his mouth.
“What?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”
“A painting like the one above the couch. I painted one for Clare.”
“When?” she asked.
“A while ago.”
“For Valentine’s Day,” I said. “When we dated for that one week in
college. A long time ago.”
“What?” she asked.
I informed Katharine, “There are, like, twelve of them, at least. I still
don’t know the exact number. We should make him write out a list of the
women.”
“I don’t understand! What do you mean, Bill?”
He took her hands and knelt at her feet. “I painted them…you know, the
others were kind of a joke.”
“Oh that’s rich!” I said.
Katharine pulled away from him. “How many are there!?” Her head was
in her hands and she was crying and shaking on the sofa. I rushed over and
rubbed her shoulders.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Like six maybe.”
The doorbell rang. As I went to get it, I announced, “The number is eight
or nine! He doesn’t know!” I opened the door and there stood Mother. She
was holding a bunch of roses, a gift for Bill I suppose. She was dressed in a
red skirt and matching jacket, looking like a politician’s wife.
I started, “Remember that thing I told you?” She squinted at me like Clint
Eastwood trying to figure out what kind of trouble I was stirring up. I
continued, “I didn’t do anything! Your other daughter is in pieces on the
sofa. Second level.” Mother’s black Chanel shoes pounded up the stairs. I sat
on the front steps, Coit Tower looming up in all its white phallusness, the
lights of San Francisco at sunset. It was very romantic. I considered going
over to Julius’ Castle, the only restaurant atop Telegraph Hill, and buying
myself a drink.

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 15
Mother sat on a divan across from them, Katharine and Bill on opposite
sides of the white sofa. Mother heard the story of the painting, and paintings,
from Katharine’s point of view, as Katharine gulped for air, blew her nose,
wept. I sat on the arm of the sofa and hugged her and rubbed her shoulder.
Bill tried to interrupt, but Mother held up a finger, and told him, “You’ll
have your turn.” Bill’s explanation included a lot of shrugging and
apologizing. Mother squinted at him while she did some sort of arduous
mental calculation, and then her face took on its usual poised expression. I
went to the refrigerator and dug out pâté and smoked Gouda.
Bill started, “Well, I thought, you know, I thought it would be
romantic”—nervous laughter—“I mean, I love your daughter, and you know,
it’s the thought behind it, isn’t it? I mean, she likes the painting”—loud sob
from Katharine as he twisted around to look at the painting and show it to
Mother—“I guess, you know, it’s the last one I’ll ever paint”—more nervous
laughter. He looked down at the floor.
Mother said, “Well what have we learned?”
Katharine sobbed, “We learned he’s a liar!”
Bill shook his head, “That’s not true!”
“Well, Clare,” Mother shifted to me. “What do you think about all these
Amoré paintings?” This took me aback. It was sort of like being a spectator
in the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice points the gavel at you and asks
your opinion.
“Well, here’s the deal,” I lifted my Champagne for a sip. “He’s either a
poor manipulator, or a wimp—and a wimp with a very limited imagination.
Look at these paintings!” I pointed to the row of views of Paris, Venice,
London, and the Pyramids. “They look like copies of postcards! And I think
in terms of the Amoré paintings, he probably saw something very similar
hanging in a shop somewhere.” I aimed my chin at him. “Where was it?”
His hands wandering in space, he mumbled, “New York. A gallery.
Greenwich Village.”
I continued, “And that became his standard Valentine. Very romantic. It
worked for me and it worked for Katharine.” (Mother winced as if she had
accidentally channel surfed a sex scene.) “That’s my opinion. A wimpy guy
who can’t admit what he’s done. And definitely a limited imagination. Not
that a limited imagination is the worst thing in the world. Just don’t pretend

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 16
that you’re innocent.”
Bill looked up at me with raccoon eyes, both hands pressing a white
cushion atop his lap.
“There’s no accent over the ‘e’ in ‘Amore,’” Katharine said. Mother, Bill,
and I turned to her, as if startled that she had the ability to speak. “In Italian,
it’s ‘Amore’ with an ‘e’ and no accent. In Spanish it’s ‘Amor’ with no ‘e.’
Ignorant Americans put an accent over the ‘e’.” With a model’s poise, she
walked to the banister, where she lifted her faux-white-fur evening jacket.
The fingers of her left hand straightened as she pulled with her right.
“Sayonara.” With an overhand motion, she threw the ring. It flew across the
living room like a slow-motion bullet, shattered the huge window, and
clanked to the floor.
She walked down the steps, her shoes striking each firmly, and the front
door shut. Mother, Bill, and I stared at the window broken in a cobweb
pattern, at the chunky ring on the floor. Mother rose and said, her voice
urgent, shrill, “I am going after my daughter!”
I asked Mother, “What would you tell her?”
“I would tell her that this situation is not, in your words, ‘not the worst
thing in the world,’ and to get on with it!”
“That would be the worst thing you could do, Mother,” I said. “Let her
go. She’s either going to marry him, or not. Let her decide.” Bill stared at the
floor, shaking his head.
* * *
For my dissertation, after presenting all the statistics of the walking-
across-the-mud reenactment, I concluded that the two proto-people had
hesitated once, and stopped once. The hesitation came when they turned
toward each other—maybe it was a moment of reassuring touch, or an
exchange of a knowing look, or maybe they stopped to swat at a biting fly.
The thing that made them halt in their tracks, though, was something
more surprising. It was the sighting of a member from a rival clan, a
predator, or prey. They stopped and moved their feet sideways, shuffling,
adjusting, for some amount of time between five and ten seconds, as their
feet sank in the mud. Perhaps grunts, or knowing looks, or even a pre-
historic word or two were exchanged as they decided how to react. Then they
continued on their way.

AMORÉ, AMORÉ 17
* * *
But Bill regrouped, sent flowers, texts, emails, cards. They met for a
drink, went to the movies. The lavish October wedding was off. When Bill
suggested they go on the honeymoon anyway—Tokyo, Phuket—Katharine
said she’d think about it. She said, “O.K.” Back in San Francisco, they kept
their separate residences. The dating continued. A year later they were re-
engaged.
A week before the wedding, which was to be a small ceremony at City
Hall, Katharine and I sat at a table at Postrio, having a glass of wine. We
were waiting for Bill and my current boyfriend to show up. A group of
businessmen at a table about twenty feet away were covertly ogling
Katharine. She ignored it, or maybe she didn’t even notice it anymore.
Katharine straightened her fingers and gazed at her engagement ring, the
same one she had launched into Bill’s window. She set down her Pinot Gris,
and looked at me. “Want some advice from your older sister?” Over the
course of that year, her shoulders, elbows and face had sharpened slightly, as
if her body had lost fluid. Overall, she remained stunning. I had no doubt that
in thirty-five years she would be one of those incredibly beautiful older
women—fine wrinkles over perfect features. I would be dumpy Auntie
Clare, the scientist with wild gray hair. Katharine said, “A relationship is
about lots of things. You should figure out what those things are before you
get too far into it. Love is just one part.”
“That sounds unusually deep for you,” I commented.
She sipped her wine, and then smiled radiantly. There was nothing
artificial in any of her expressions, which is why she’d been such a good
model. She set down the glass and crossed her hands on the linen tablecloth.
“Bill’s loveable, that’s for sure. And it’s going to be a very good marriage.
But this relationship—at least from my side—it’s not about love.”
THE END


Amoré, Amoré: Short Story

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AMORÉ,

Copyright, Steve Hermanos

In the minutes before my no-credit painting class I sat on a paint-spattered

Copyright, Steve Hermanos

Copyright, Steve Hermanos

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