you are all under cardiac arrest.

Dominic stomps his way across the breakroom. A boyish early 20s only reinforced by the baseball shirt and toe cap sneakers.



"I'm just so angry."



I look up from week five's healthy meal selections. "At least you had a choice."



"It was my decision, and somehow I'm still angry, and I don't even know why."



Back down to the plate, I'm confronted by my pile of raw nuts. "What angers you is the futility of it all. All the time, investment of self, and when it should and still doesn't satisfy, it pisses you off."



"Guillermo, you're completely right."



"Of course I am." I am the goddamned cheerleader of broken hearts.



A week ago Abram's live-in lady Sarah kicks him to the curb. Not for the first time Abram reflects: "Think I'm going to be one of those guys who starts cross-dressing in his late 30s and figures out he's gay." I bring him empty boxes for his extensive wardrobe after work. He takes them resignedly in his overly ringed fingers, thanks me, and trudges back inside.



After years of unrequited forests of pining in FriendZonia, Donny's object of obsession Sofi, a svelte 20-year-old dance instructor from Mexico, finally decides to learn him a horizontal mambo. It is two weeks of golden bliss for Donny before she crushes it out as a "mistake".



"I can't stop thinking about it. She even moaned my name with that accent."



"Look at it this way: Most guys never get to have sex with their dream girl. You win."



Chris is given an ultimatum to read New Age books and change by month's end. Mira still uses him for sex, but then throws him out of their apartment come August 1st. He breaks down live on KXCI during his guest set that night, but soldiers on until the end.



By all accounts Mira was on wheels.



"Now you can go find someone who's actually nice."



"But she was the one!" he insists. "And now it's too late."



I sigh for him, but know he'll feel differently when he finds out she was cheating on him by August 25th.





"G, are you married?"



"Why Rose? You asking?" Her boyfriend Paul has the most inexcusable hair. It's like the mange, really. Last week she confessed to planning on leaving him.



She laughs and links hands with me, palm to palm. "No, but I thought you were."



"48 hours ago I just got my walking papers from a two-year relationship."



"Relationships suck."



We smile at each other, pushing away, hands parting.

[Tarjeta de Lotería #27: El Corazón.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.