Jack’s volatile temper was little known to anyone except Renata. Though she was the one of Italian origin between the two of them, it was he who seemed to relish the unwarranted claim of being “hot-blooded.” Using it as an excuse for the varied and unexpected ways he might go off on a tirade specifically against her. Always saved just for Renata. As though there was something about her in particular that so severely rubbed him the wrong way. Even though she was almost daily rubbing him, quite literally, in what any man would objectively call “the right way.”

But that wasn’t enough for Jack, apparently. In fact, he seemed to embody one of those men who only hated a woman all the more whenever she tried to please him. By the same token, he would also be dissatisfied if Renata didn’t suck him off regularly. Didn’t keep the house clean. Didn’t do everything in her power to make him feel like the center of attention. So it was that Renata was perennially damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t. She kept opting for “did.” As in: did love him, did forgive him all of his verbally abusive outbursts toward her—which were getting successively worse.

He spewed such venom at her in a blind fit of rage—things that he really couldn’t take back. Things that would have made a less resilient woman—or maybe just a smarter one—leave long ago. But she didn’t, couldn’t. And the longer she stayed with Jack, tolerating his behavior, the more he seemed to despise her for it. As though all of these rages were orchestrated solely to make her leave. The latest one, as usual, came out of left field for Renata. And, of course, she was in high spirits just before it happened. This was because Renata was leaving for an overdue visit back to Italy, where her five brothers and sisters (three fratelli and two sorelle) still lived. Perhaps she had been the only one foolish enough to leave. A fool in love, as it were—packing up as much as she could to move to Manhattan, where Jack lived and worked.

The two had met in Milan, where Jack had been traveling “on business.” That terminally vague phrase that never really let you know what a person’s job was. In Jack’s case, it had something to do with being a high-level executive at a company that had bought out many haute couture brands in the style of Kering (formerly Pinault Printemps Redoute) with Gucci. In any event, Jack had decided to go to Fondazione Prada during one of his hours of “down time,” and it was there that he encountered Renata at Bar Luce, the museum’s version of a café. It was also there that Jack exhibited the old school male gall of actually chatting Renata up—simply because he “liked the look of her,” as he told Renata later that night, after the two had fucked for the first time in his hotel room (naturally, he was staying at the Four Seasons, and yes, Renata felt a bit sacrilegious about boning in a former convent). Such was the intensity of their connection that she couldn’t resist his pull, the offer for her to “come back with me for a drink.”

She knew that she shouldn’t. At least, that’s what her instincts told her. Looking back on it later, Renata could understand why, realizing that something deep inside of her had screamed to run the other way, warning her of danger ahead. But it proved impossible for her to be bothered with looking for red flags when Jack was so charming. After that first night together, he told her the next morning that he only had two days left in Milan before he would return to New York. He said that he wanted to spend every available second with her until that departure. And when the time did come for him to leave, Jack begged her to accompany him, confessing that he had never felt so strongly for anyone in his life, and that he would be heartbroken if he couldn’t keep seeing her. As he laid all this on her, she mused that he was shockingly romantic for a businessman. But maybe his work being adjacent to the fashion industry allowed for a certain “artistic” bent. Hence, his romantic nature. At the outset, anyway.

Renata knew she was no longer young enough, at thirty-two, to buy so easily into romance or any whims spurred by it. She had been burned badly enough in previous relationships to know that initial romance is nothing but a smokescreen. Still, she couldn’t help but give in to the picturesque portrait he painted—of how she could live with him in his penthouse apartment on Madison Avenue (overlooking Central Park, of course), of how he would take care of her while she pursued her dreams of artistic greatness. (She had confessed to him at the Fondazione Prada that she was the last of the aspiring painters.) He made it all sound so easy. So “doable.” What really was her reason for staying in Milan? You know, apart from her family and friends… It’s not as though she had some “big-time” job keeping her around. In fact, she had just quit her thankless cashier position at Eataly after barely four months of working there. Maybe it was time to make some sort of drastic change. Maybe that was the only thing, in the end, that would “shake her” onto the right path (whatever that meant). Even if it involved so heavily relying on someone else.

And yet, maybe, Renata reasoned, she oughtn’t be so afraid to do that anymore. Hadn’t she spent enough of her life worrying about and being afraid of needing help? Maybe it was time to take the leap she thought she never could until now. So it was that Renata found herself, just weeks later, “following” after Jack, posting up in his massive apartment right next to the park. Unfortunately, he left out the detail about how it was right next to the Manhattan Church of Christ. Renata had been hoping to escape the glut of religion that surrounded her on most every corner of Milan, but no, here it was in “secular” New York, too.

However, for the most part, if it seemed too good to be true, she wouldn’t let herself leave a state of denial long enough to ask why. Mainly because she was busy lapping up the honeymoon phase before it all dissipated. Before she began to notice some sizable cracks in his veneer (not the ones he actually had for teeth, but the metaphorical one). The first time he went off on her, it was because she “dared” to wipe something up on the floor in front of him. She just happened to notice a cluster of fuzz pieces on the ground and decided to wet a paper towel so that she could rub them away and then throw it in the trash. She did this absent-mindedly, having no idea that it would incite Jack so inordinately. The second he saw her on the ground, he pulled her up by the nape like a dog and demanded, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Stunned, Renata yelped in reply. She thought it was fairly obvious what she was doing, but, nonetheless, she meekly explained, “Just cleaning up a dirty patch on the floor that I noticed…”

“Why the fuck would you do that? Do you have any idea how much that disgusts me?! I feel like I’m watching a peasant in action.”

He let go of her neck, causing her to crumple like a heap back onto the floor. He then continued, “Is that what you want to be, Renata? A peasant? Because I could have just left you in Italy if that was the case.”

Renata couldn’t believe what she was hearing. And that was part of the reason she struggled to find any words to respond, allowing Jack to keep berating, “I swear to God when I see a woman cleaning, it drives me crazy. Makes me think of my fuckin’ mom on her hands and knees all day scrubbing the floor. Not because she had to, but because she had nothing better to do. She was a dumb woman—a woman with no depth. When I see a woman cleaning, it makes me think she’s not intelligent. Because if she was, she’d have stacks of dusty books all around her, not caring about whether shit is clean or not because she’s too busy improving her mind.”

It wouldn’t be the last time that something Renata did was somehow a trigger because it reminded Jack of his now deceased mother. And when he concluded the tirade, Renata truly couldn’t believe her ears. The madness that had just spewed forth from his mouth. Could he actually be serious? That she now wasn’t “allowed” to clean anything (at least not in front of him) because it somehow meant she was “dumb”? A “frivolous woman”? It was unfathomable. But, as Renata soon found out, this was to be the first of countless arbitrary vituperations—infinite instances during which she would be forced to withstand a river of shit. Because trying to argue or defend herself in any way would only make the harsh, over-the-top condemnations last all the longer.

Initially, most of his verbal canings were too shocking for her to process. She treated his invective as though it were happening to someone else. But gradually, she began to absorb all the vitriol, started to genuinely believe that these horrible things Jack said to and about her were true. About what “kind of woman” she was: “hopeless,” “needy,” “pitiful.” He actually told her one day that the only reason he didn’t kick her out was because he pitied her, because he knew she was incapable of getting a real job and supporting herself. That her overall ineptitude had made him “responsible” for her, even though it wasn’t what he “signed up for.”

This was about two months before she had planned on retreating to Italy for a “vacation.” But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered why she should even bother coming back to this highly volatile man after three years of withstanding his palpable contempt. What was the point, really? Unless, of course, she was a pure and unabashed masochist. The thought had crossed her mind many times before, considering the density of bad relationships she had found herself in. But she usually just told herself that was the nature of men in general—that no woman could ever really be happy with them because they were so fucking psychotic, moody and practically impossible to please behind all that posturing about how “uncomplicated” they were. Maybe she had been telling herself this only as a balm, a means to assure herself that she was “doing the right thing” by “staying the course” in love. That every relationship was bound to have its rough patches; no relationship could endure without its fair share of fights. Except that these weren’t “fights.” They were one-sided, caustic yellings triggered by something utterly superfluous. Because Renata didn’t care how “vexed” Jack was by something. There was no justifiable reason to ever go off on someone the way he did with her. And he provided yet another example of this in the midst of supposedly trying to give her a “lovely sendoff” to Milan.

She should have never agreed to let him say goodbye to her before she left. If she hadn’t, she would probably be getting on the return flight he had already paid for. Maybe it was all her fault (the way he always said everything was). Alas, their afternoon goodbye was coordinated only because Renata still believed in taking public transportation to the airport rather than making Jack spend the exorbitant sum for a cab. Thus, Renata’s plan was to take the 4 train to Grand Central and stop off to meet Jack for a coffee before she continued on to transfer to the A at Fulton Street.

The two had arranged to meet at, only too appropriately, Café Grumpy during Jack’s lunch break. The time set had been noon. But Renata arrived earlier than she thought she would, texting him at 11:45 to say she had just gotten to the café and was about to order a coffee. She didn’t think much of it, even though Jack was always going on about how much he loved the lunches served at work—that it was a highlight of his day. Renata had to resist every urge to tell him that such a declaration made him the pathetic one, and she always did. After all, not “contributing” to the relationship monetarily meant that he could pull the rug out from under her at any second in response to a perceived slight or offense on her part.

On the plane later, she chided herself for trying to place the blame squarely on her own shoulders, as Jack did. Chided herself because that’s how much he had fucked with her head—to the point where Renata genuinely believed him when he told her that she should have considered how much he loved the lunches at work before coming along to ruin it for him by showing up to Grand Central early. As though he couldn’t have just told her to wait, or even told her that he changed his mind about saying goodbye. Instead, he entered the café about seven minutes later, his top visibly boiling (his entire face was red with rage).

“Hi,” Renata was naïve enough to say in a nonchalant manner, having no idea that she was about to get a signature tirade from Jack about something that shouldn’t have been given a second thought.

“Would you mind telling me why the hell you’re here so early when we specifically said noon?” he seethed, not caring if anyone in the café heard him. It was New York—verbal abuse in public was a dime a dozen.

Renata shrugged, “Things are fluid, they can change.”

He looked like he might actually strangle her. “Yeah, for people like you with no fucking life. No fucking schedule. And who do you think gave you that luxury?”

Renata looked into her cup of coffee, imagining herself diving into it and coming out of the bottom already in Milan, never having to see this constantly angry asshole ever again.

When she didn’t respond, Jack snapped his fingers in her face and demanded, “Do you even have a fucking brain?”

She looked up from the coffee and stared at him with complete stoicism as she said, “I need to leave. Why don’t you go back to the office? You can still make it for lunch.”

With that, she set the cup down, grabbed her suitcase and walked out the door. Jack chased after her, still livid, but realizing he would need to calm down in order to keep her from leaving like this.

“You bring out the worst in me!” he shouted once outside. Which was hardly an effective method to get her to stay. And besides, this is what he would constantly tell her by way of an “excuse” every time he stopped seeing red (and calmed down long enough to faintly understand what a dick he had been). As though Renata alone was responsible for every bad mood, every visceral reaction. But no, she was just the punching bag willing to take it. But not anymore.

She only paused and flinched ever so slightly when he said that usual go-to line, embarrassing her in front of myriad strangers (as was also his modus operandi) when he did so. This time, though, she couldn’t give in to her love for Jack. And it was love—she knew that. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be so heart-wrenching to walk away. Which she kept doing, all the way to the 4 train entrance…even though she knew that he was watching her—boring holes into the back of her head—and fully expected her to turn around, to come crawling back begging for his forgiveness (when it so patently should have been the other way around). Unlike Orpheus, however, no one was going to catch Renata turning around, or ever looking back. In that sense, she supposed, it was a lovely sendoff…because it gave her the push she needed to never return.