Of course the man I wanted very least to be viewed by was in front of me on the escalator as I made my droopy way to theater three. Sebastian had his arm around a statuesque Asian girl, but when he realized it was me, he quickly dropped his arm to his side, as though caught out. We reached the top of the stairs and the Asian statue stood dopey at his side, until he gave her a little shove in the direction of the popcorn stand. I kept turning my head to catch secret glances at us, glances that were about as subtle as my T-shirt. Steering me against a wall holding a poster of Angelina Jolie’s giant eye and mouth, he ignored the T-shirt. He’s a man so I knew he was thinking I had it on because it was something he had worn. He was right.

“How have you been?” asked Sebastian. “How are you?”

I considered the question. “I’d quite like to die,” I stated matter of factly as if picking fluff from a sweater.

“What’s wrong?”

No casual small talk with this ex-girlfriend, I made damn sure of that. “There was a cockroach in my bathroom. A big one.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the statue teeter toward us, popcorn and soda in hand.

“And you couldn’t catch it?” asked Sebastian, studiously ignoring her.

“No, I did catch it. It was caught, dead in the sticky trap at the base of the sink. I noticed when I went to brush my teeth.”

“So it was dead?”

“Yes.”

“And it was in a trap.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what was the problem?”

I sighed as if he were the stupidest man on earth, which is how I always treated him even at the very apex of our love affair. “The problem is that it was there.”

“And that makes you want to die because …?”

“Because I didn’t want it to be there.”

“Right. Um, we’re all going to see Gladiator, I guess.” He finally acknowledged the statue who, eyeing me quickly, smiled weak as a cup of chamomile tea. “Why don’t you sit with us?”

I thought about it for a moment, breathing through my nose as I imagined sitting on one side of Sebastian with his lady friend on the other. A tear trickled down my cheek, as expected yet unedifying as sweat on the back of a go-go dancer. I started to sob.

“I can’t watch this film. I can’t watch this film.”

A nice old lady on her way into the theater stopped to offer me a Kleenex.

“Fuck you! Fuck you! I loved him first. I loved him, you bunch of sheep motherfuckers! Have you seen Proof? Have you seen Romper Stomper? Hands up anyone here who has seen Virtuosity? I didn’t think so.”

There was spit flying out of my mouth as I screamed, “Fuck you all!”