“Let’s go to that Japanese restaurant you like,” Amy said on my birthday.

“Later, grams,” I said to my mom as she watched the kids.

It was one of the first heavy snows this month.  The downtown lights made the kind of lonely neon Christmas I like.  The sushi restaurant was empty in an eerie post-apocalyptical way except for staff and a couple of chefs at attention, waiting for purpose.

“We’re the last ones left.”

“The students must be on vacation?”

“Yeah,” our waittress with the maroon hair and lip ring smiled, “Where would you like to sit?”

We squeezed into a booth and Amy’s scent made me happy to be there.  Her hair always smells good.  It’s flowery and perfumey when it’s washed.  Sweet and sultry when it’s not.  If she was a cartoon, even her stink lines would smell good.

“The sushi chef is staring at you,” I whispered to my wife, “Just like at that other sushi restaurant.”

“That’s because we’re the only ones here!”

“Right.  He’s probably having fantasies about the Corean occupation days as we speak.”

“Pfft.”

“Hahaha!”  I like how I can be as politically-incorrect as possible around my Amy.  Half the time I say things just to see if it will surprise her.

“I asked one of the girls at work how she lost so much weight.  She said she’s going through a divorce,” Amy said.

“That’ll do it.”

“Her husband’s dating someone already.  She thinks he was seeing her all along.”

“Probably,” I added more wasabi.

Cancer and emotional devastation.  Two of the most effective weight loss clubs that no one wants to join.

“I went to see my friend from out of town today,” Amy said.

“Which friend?”

“My old middle-school one.  We used to hang out all the time, until high school.”

“You’re still friends?  How’d it go?”

“She looks older than me now.  She was sued last year by an employee she fired and went bankrupt.”

“That’s gotta add a few years.”

I looked up to see the sushi chef across the restaurant still looking at us.  Just funny.  Good sushi though.

“She’s in the middle of a divorce too.”

“Why’s she getting a divorce?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t ask.”

“You’re not curious?”

“No.”

“How is everything here?” our attentive waittress asked again.

“Great.  Great,” we answered.

I caught Amy’s glance as I admired her heroic cheekbones and jawline.  It took me a few years to realize that specifically.  It wasn’t until I saw Kim Deal of The Breeders and then Jessica Biel’s face that I realized what similarities struck a rare but familar chord in me.

“You ever notice how so many of your friends and colleagues are getting a divorce, or should be?” I asked.

“What do you mean, should be?”

“Like your friend Nicky.  If your toddlers are going around saying FUCK YOU in the store all the time because their parents say it so much, that’s a sign.  Or like your friend Barb–”

“So?”

“That’s why I always want to know why.  Because that’s gotta suck.”

I calculated the tip and left enough to make the waittress’ time in the empty restaurant worth it.

If love is a battlefield, I thought, then marriage is a minefield, because you have to be careful where you step.  Sure there are obvious things like not cheating on your spouse or leaving her in the wet spot, but what about the little things, the hidden mines and tripwires around the heart.  If I know what they truly are, maybe I can navigate away from them.  This is why I want to know why relationships fail.  Plus, like a minefield, you’re likely to lose a lot more than just your heart.

“Watch your step.  It’s icy,” I said as our coat sleeves brushed together.

“I remember that library,” I commented as we drove past my old freshman dorm.

“Yeah, that’s where you made out with your Indian girlfriend,” Amy teased me right on cue.

“No, that was under the stairs.  The library was where my friend told me she was making out with another guy at a Diwali party,” I said without the slightest twinge of regret.  I was reading The Watchmen at the time, circa 1990.

Good book.  Bad girlfriend.

“It all worked out though.  If I stayed with her, I’d probably be one of those divorce stories now,” I smiled, satisfied at my good fortune as if I had reverse time-travelled into this path myself, stopping to admire the stoplight’s red glow on my wife’s skin and pillowy lips.

When we got home, there was ice cream cake and kids.  Thirty-nine, not so bad.