I Am Having So Much Fun Without You by Courtney Maum

have this ‘thing,’ but really, we’ll just go across the street to another bar so that we don’t have to continue talking to someone we don’t know.”
    Oh, she was a tough one! But I was too far gone already, starboard to the wind. In my mind, she was already straddling me with her creamy, French thighs and I had my hand under the silk thong riding up between her ass and her ridiculous Tiffany bean necklace was slapping against my chest hair and I didn’t give a fuck about her friend, I wanted Anne for mine.
    â€œÃ€ l’aurore, armés d’une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes.”
    Now, I’m not one for spoken poetry, and my memorization skills have been compromised by a casual interest in pot, but it just so happened that I’d recently done a shadow-box piece for my mixed-media class in which I’d cut pyramid pictures out of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet , filled the bottom of the box withsand, and Krazy Glued plastic G.I. Joe soldiers into place so that they were facing the pyramids, against which I’d silk-screened a line from the French poet Rimbaud: In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.
    It’s an unparalleled feeling, the moment when you know without any doubt that you are going to come inside of a woman whom you haven’t touched yet. Summoning up five years of advanced French into the delivery of a verse that was well timed felt impressive, but even better was the expression on Anne’s face while she absorbed it, that irresistible mixture of befuddlement and desire that comes over a certain type of woman when she realizes she is in the process of being won over by a less attractive man. The energy was so electric, it was a miracle that we managed not to betray her cousin’s earlier request and hightail it out of there, leaving Esther’s bag untended.
    When Esther did return, she found Anne drinking a martini that I had proudly purchased. Introductions were made, and Esther conveyed her dissatisfaction with my presence by rifling through her handbag with exaggerated exhales and muttered curses purportedly leveled at the hide-and-seek skills of her wallet.
    â€œIt’s okay,” said Anne, stilling her friend’s flailing elbow with her hand. “I’ll take care of it.”
    A classy way to say piss off, if you ask me. Esther looked up, reddened, and glowered at me.
    â€œI see,” she said. “Well, thank you. You’ll make it to Pilates?”
    â€œOf course .”
    â€œOkay, well . . .” Esther buttoned up her coat, picked some lint off her collar, and generally indulged in the kind of busywork that signifies a girl’s last chance.
    â€œYou’ll call me if you need me?” she attempted.
    Anne smiled. “Sure.”
    And the little dumpling left us to our stew. Anne wouldn’t kiss me that night and she sure as hell made it clear she wasn’t going to fuck me, even though she mentioned that she was staying in a hotel because she couldn’t stand the alcoholic thicknecks running naked around Esther’s dorm. This seemed particularly cruel of her, acknowledging that she was in possession of a prepaid, neutral space, but I had proclaimed myself in the possession of a “burning patience,” and now needed to prove it.
    Resigned to the fact that my evening was going to end with a slice of pizza and a solo wank, I asked Anne what she was doing the next day, and she said that she was leaving. She mentioned that she planned to return to Providence in three weeks’ time to see Esther in some play. To my Glenfiddich-soaked mind, three weeks felt unfathomable, so I asked her if she was certain about not having me back to her room. She was. I suggested breakfast, and was impressed when she said she liked her mornings private. Out of options, I offered to drive her to the train the next day.
    She replied that