The Death of Romance

by Jill Glass

Adam walks behind her, steering her from room to room. He is giving her a tour of the house. She listens as he narrates the highlight reel.

It’s a sweet house with good bones. What it lacks in square footage, it makes up in charm. The front hidden from the street by massive avocado trees. A nice backyard with a canyon view. Converted garage where he will set up his recording studio. Bath and a half. Bedroom on the second floor. They can sleep with the windows open.

He’ll be five miles closer than his last place. He can be at her house in ten minutes—to fulfill her needs, for kisses or killing wasps. She can escape when his black moods descend. “I don’t want you to get sick of me,” he says.

He’s excited about running cables and cords from the garage to all parts of the house. Put his guitar in the kitchen, the singer in the bathroom, the drummer upstairs in the tiny, paneled den. He is finally feeling creative, ready to work for the first time in a year, half the time they’ve been together.

His every statement drips with logic. He’s so careful with his words. He handles her like a butterfly.

“You do like it?” he asks. “I really want you to like it.”

This is how they live, together but in separate houses. It’s all part of his plan. He wants to live above cliché. He wants to know if she’s up to the task.

There’d been a shaky moment last month, when he’d found a house way out in Topanga and told her about the mandatory two-year lease. He was upsetting her natural order of things. Flirtation, courtship, cohabitation, marriage. How else do you know if you’re doing it right? But the deal fell through anyway, when the owner learned he was a musician.

“This lease is month-to-month,” he says.

“Do whatever makes you happy,” she says in a voice so placid, so measured, she almost sounds like she means it.


Adam spends the first night in his new house alone.

“I just want to get the vibe.”


The second night, he calls from the backyard. He’s recording cricket noise, which he’ll loop into a rhythm track. He’s onto something. “I think I’m going to like it here,” he says.

She feels jealous of the house. Then dumb. Then jealous. Then mad at him. Then dumb.

She wishes she’d been the one to find it. She had been nothing if not useful. They’d scoured the canyons, looked at dozens of listings. Something was wrong with all of them. She cataloged their flaws in a little notebook. Street noise. Wet-dog smell. Frou-frou-in-extremis.

Even a house that belongs to a friend of Ann. Ann is the woman he’ll divorce someday, when Ann can handle it, when she is stronger. Like you, he said.

The third night, Adam invites her to stay. She feels good on the ride over. Good as she grabs her overnight bag and walks up the path. Good until an avocado breaks free and hits her on the head. She trips when she walks through the front door....

Jill Glass lives in Studio City. A former senior v-p at A-M Records, she recently took her M.F.A from Vermont College. This is her second story in print. E-mail: JillGlass@aol.com