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of either prison or the mental ward.
    (6) Simply disappear . Pull a Judge Crater. Somehow that seemed the most cowardly way out of all. And more than likely, they’d end up back together.
    It was a single word which made up her mind for her. One morning she awoke, turned her head on the pillow, looked at him sleeping so blissfully beside her with one arm wrapped around her naked body and even a sleeping hand cupping her breast, and she thought: I am his guru . GURU. That was the end. To be anyone’s “guru” was more than she could bear, whatever the consequences. It was funny how life worked. Nothing had changed. Just one word. But that word made all the difference in the world. For her it was like “Hitler” or “nigger” or any of those other buzzwords that set alarms raging in the human heart. She would murder a busload of schoolchildren in cold blood before she would be even one single human’s “guru.” Just looking at him there on the pillow, she wanted to vomit.
    But what to do? Stealthily she crept out of bed, padded into the kitchen, and over a cup of coffee plotted. Out of six possible escape hatches, no single one of which was satisfactory, perhaps she could contrive a combination kiss-off that might work. Yes. She dressed, making sure to keep as quiet as before so he’d sleep on while she plotted, then drove the car to the liquor store, where she bought a half gallon of Johnnie Walker Black. Arriving back home, she began to mix it with the coffee, fifty-fifty. Drank it down pretty fast. By the third cup she had hatched fifteen more schemes, each more outlandishly unworkable than its predecessor. By the time he awoke, she was drunker than she’d been in years, plotzed, zonked, a mess. She checked the bathroom mirror: yep, it’d done the trick. She looked fifty years old if she looked a day. Keep this up for a week and she’d be a hundred. How could he possibly want to fuck that, much less idolize it?
    He walked into the kitchen and blinked, still half asleep but palpably shocked: “What are you doing? ”
    “Whaddaya mean, waddami doin’? I’m having a li’l fun , thaz wad I’m doin’. Wat the fugh’s it to ya, anyway?”
    She knew this wouldn’t be enough. He commenced to grill her: “Is anything wrong? ”
    “YA DAMN RIGHT SUMTHINZ WRONG. LIFE STINKS, TAZ WAT. I TRIED TO ENJOY IT, BUT IT WUZZA LIE I’M GONNA DRINK UNTIL I CROAK.”
    Jeez, was this corny. But he was buying it. Was there no depth to which her respect for him could not sink?
    “But … but … everything was going so well …”
    “YEAH-SO YOU THOUGHT. I HATED EVERY SECOND OF IT.” Well, there was certainly enough truth in this. “I’M JUST TOO SET IN MY WAYS. NOT YOUNG LIKE YOU. GWAN AN’ LIVE. I WAN’ DIE.”
    “But WHY? You’ve got ME, we’ve got EACH OTHER.”
    “BIG DEAL .” Better soften the payload a bit. “All we are is MIRRORS of each other. We used to be two IN … INN … N-DIVVIJAWLS … NOW WE’RE JUST ONE LUMP … not even hardly HUMAN….”
    He began to cry. Well, tough shit. “But we’ve shared so much —so many ideas , made so much good love , enriched each other in SO MANY WAYS …
    “YEAH, THAT’S WHY I WANNA DIE, JERKOFF … ain’t no YOU or I anymore … just WE … face it: WE ARE BORING AS SHIT. Wanna drink?”
    “NO. I want … God, all of a sudden I don’t know….”
    Time to up the ante with a little gross-out: “I DO. YER RIGHT ABOUT THE LAV MAKING AT LEAST”—yanking her dress up and panties down, ripping the latter in the process, spreading her legs as crudely as she could—“HOW ’BOUT A LI’L POO-ZEE? C’MON, BUSTER BROWN—LESSEE YA LAP THAT CUNNY UP … or”—in the world’s absolute worst Mae West impression—“PIPE ME YER WAGSTAFF, BIG BOY, I WANNA FRESH LOADA A.M. JIZM RIGHT HERE….”
    He was getting physically ill. On the other hand, so was she. This project obviously called for more extreme measures. She ran out and jumped into the car, drove it