Self-Esteem by Preston David Bailey

Crawford at once loved and hated. They even went well together. Warmth and confidence and spirit, armor against the forces of uncertainty. Like a womb with a disease. Quiet, smooth, safe, deadly.
    There was no use in trying to talk himself out of it for too long. It was there, waiting.
    Hmm, don’t pertain to a person in love .
    I could use that somewhere, Crawford thought.
    Just being inside Jenny’s apartment could be as gratifying as the forbidden fruit of their lovemaking. It reminded Crawford of his younger days as an undergrad sitting in comfortably messy rooms drinking cheap booze and reading Steinbeck and Faulkner. More bohemian than his college digs, Jenny’s place was strewn with an assortment of bric-a-brac she regarded as fine art — paintings from friends and former lovers, black and white photographs she had taken in college, and various figurines she had been collecting since childhood. Crawford jokingly called her place “Harper’s Bazaar,” a play on her last name.
    Crawford stepped into Jenny’s apartment still thinking about how he had accomplished something that morning — he had successfully told Lee he wanted a change (or rather, began the process of telling Lee he wanted a change), and for that reason he was feeling a weight off his shoulders. He also knew that since he was on a roll, he might as well cut this cancerous relationship with Jenny out of his life as well.
    “Would you like a drink?” she asked nervously. “You’re not on the wagon, are you?”
    “Not currently,” he said. “I’ll have one. Sure. Just one.”
    Jenny gave a slight look of disapproval — not for his drinking, but for his demeanor as he awkwardly sat in a lone chair that divided the kitchen from the living room.
    “Sit in the living room,” she said.
    He moved toward the couch. No, he thought. You’re not going to have power over me that easily . You’re not going to treat me like a child .
    As he was told, he walked to the living room and sat on the couch. He nervously moved his hands over his thighs, feeling a sense of dread about how this little get-together could develop once he revealed his new determination to end their affair.
    “So why did you act so mad on the phone?” she asked, sitting across from him on a seventies egg chair she’d found at a garage sale.
    Uh huh, passive aggression , Crawford thought. Always when she sits in that damn hippie chair.

    “Jim?” she said, raising her eyebrows.
    The couch was a large pillowy beast that made Crawford feel it was about to swallow him whole. “Sorry?” he asked, trying to retrieve one of the pillows from under one buttock, realizing she had made him sit on the couch for tactical reasons.
    “You yelled at me on the phone.”
    “I’m sorry,” he mumbled quickly.
    “You yelled ‘Who the hell is this?’ Why’d you say that?”
    “I don’t know. I just said it.”
    “You just said it?” she said skeptically.
    “I’ve been getting prank calls.” Crawford looked down at his drink. He knew he wouldn’t have just one. “Jenny, I got drunk last night in my study.”
    “You shouldn’t do that,” she said.
    Crawford put the drink to his lips, then stopped. “I know,” he said, putting it on the coffee table in front of him. “I know.” Jenny had an advantage when he was drinking, he knew. But she always had an advantage. He always drank with her.
    “So how’s the novel?” Jenny said, as if grasping for something to say.
    He looked at the ice cubes in the glass. We can’t do this .
    “We can’t do what?”
    Did I say that? “We can’t do this,” he said, mustering just enough courage to look at her directly.
    She swirled away from him in the egg chair, cocking her head back dramatically. “I thought we’d been through this, Jim.”
    “I’m trying to be nice about it.”
    “You’re trying to get rid of me,” she said, swirling back.
    “Listen to me.”
    Exterior, night, outside Jenny’s apartment. Crawford comes out