32aa by Michelle Cunnah Page A

the nerve to ask you to marry him.
    He’s building up the courage to leave you.
    He’s got the five-month itch.
    The signs have all been there. In retrospect, it’s easy to spot them. Like the fact that for the last three weeks he’s been late home too many times with the lame excuse, “Business dinner. You know what it’s like in the cutthroat world of advertising.”
    Well, if I didn’t before, I sure as hell do now.
    Another sign—his total lack of interest in sex. Well, obviously, if he’s off for a furtive weekend with Stella then he is interested in sex. Just not with me. I mean, the sex was great in the beginning. But I have to say it. Adam is no longer the Sixty Minute Man. More like the Six Minute Man. Or at least he used to be. Three weeks ago. When he was still having sex with me.
    But let’s face it, even mediocre, short-lived sex is better than no sex at all, isn’t it?
    Oh God, I may never have sex again!
    But back to the main point, before the threatened panic attack can seize control and I crumble into a boneless heap, only to be discovered Monday morning by an unsuspecting, innocent cleaning lady.
    Questions: Why did he cheat on me? Why didn’t I suspect?
    Answer: I don’t bloody know!
    I rummage in my purse for my cell phone and speed dial Rachel.
    “Rachel,” I croak down the telephone line. “It’s me.”
    And after she wishes me a happy thirtieth birthday, and tells me that thirty is no age at all, that life begins at forty for women on account of reaching their sexual peak, I burst into tears and spill all.
    Rachel is my best friend from high school—brilliant, beautiful, but single, on account of all men being seriously intimidated by her MENSA intellect. Rachel doesn’t exactly hate men, she just thinks they’re mainly idiots and uses them for sex.
    “Emma, sweetie, the basic problem is not you. It’s Adam. He’s a bastard ionic bonder,” she rants, and I wish I’d paid more attention to sophomore chemistry.
    “He is your classic alkali metal,” she tells me, and I sigh down the telephone line with confusion.
    Rachel has an intellect the size of Texas and it’s not always easy for us lesser mortals to follow her meaning.
    “Look, sweetie, let me put it in simple terms.”
    Thank God. Simple works for me every time.
    “Adam is an atom with an extra electron,” she enunciates slowly, as if speaking to a three-year-old. “He bonded temporarily with another atom, i.e., you. He’s given you his electron, i.e., had sex with you. And he’s generally used you to enhance his own career by ruthlessly stealing all your great ideas and passing them off as his own. And now he’s leaving fully charged, and he’s found another atom to bond with.”
    At this point I hold the receiver a little way from my ear because Rachel is now ranting full steam ahead.
    “Bastard! God, I knew I should have warned you abouthim. I mean, he’s successful, attractive, never been married. That’s not normal for a thirty-six-year-old guy!” she says, and I hear the angry clank of test tubes from her laboratory.
    I hope I haven’t just ruined years of painstaking research in the quest for the cure to some terrible disease.
    “So you don’t think it has anything to do with my breasts, then?” I mumble, seeking reassurance.
    Yes, I know this is pathetic. But I am worried that my lack of mammary glands might have something to do with Adam’s defection (the older woman in question is, as I said, fully loaded). You see, Adam is a self-confessed “breast man” and has occasionally (at least once a week) urged me to take up my plastic-surgeon father’s offer to get his partner to surgically enhance what Mother Nature failed to provide.
    “For God’s sake, Emma,” Rachel lectures me. “That’s a fucking pathetic male-excuse crock. How many times have we gone through this? A mature, mutually fulfilling relationship has nothing to do with breast size.”
    More angry clanking of test tubes down the