Briefly reveling in her new freedom to do such a wild thing, Annie made popcorn for dinner that night.  Just popcorn - no basic goddamned food groups, no plates on the table, no silverware.  Popcorn.  And lots of butter, which Michael eschewed.

Then she curled up on the couch in the fetal position with her old blanket and the remote control and watched 6 episodes of Andy of Mayberry, wishing she could go live with Andy and Aunt Bea.  She wanted to inhabit their quaint, black-and-white world where all the conflicts were cute and could be resolved in 30 minutes.  She might even marry Howard, the dorky but solid and even tempered city clerk.  She dozed off and dreamt of eating corn fritters in Aunt Bea's kitchen.

In the Saturday morning light, with a stiff neck and a hole in her chest, her life felt like a nightmare you wake up TO, instead of from.  She called in sick to ER - she couldn't imagine facing anyone asking her how she was, not this morning.  Then she called Phoebe, her first friend when she left the Bay Area.  

"Phoebe, it's Annie"

"What's wrong with your voice?  . . . Annie?"

"Michael left yesterday."

"Left for where?"

"Left ME."

Then she couldn't talk.

"I'll be right there," Phoebe said.

And she was - with champagne and chocolate croissants, Annie's favorite.  Phoebe had never been able to hide her distaste for Michael.  She called him a spineless worm when he'd vacillated about getting married.  She thought he was crushing Annie's spirit - called him "Stricken Man" for his tendency to suffer conspicuously any time Annie's attention was elsewhere for too long - if she took too long to come in from the garden when he came home, if she decided to go out with friends in the evening.   If she talked to her family too much at Thanksgiving.

Phoebe had a point, but Annie's ever-shrinking world had become familiar to her and somehow comfortable.  Michael was never abusive or mean, exactly.  He could be irresistable - articulate, deep, affectionate.  But tiptoeing through his moods was wearing - some days she was the center of his universe and he turned that powerful, irresistable beam on her, and others he would be hurt by some transgression she didn't understand.  On those days he'd stop making eye contact and look. . . well, stricken.  At night she felt lonely by his side, lying awake, wondering how she could fix things.

"Oh, Sweetie Pie", Phoebe said when Annie hugged her, sobbing.  "It hurts like hell, I know.  What happened?"  

And Annie told her the whole, shocking, mundane tale.

"Thank God," Phoebe said.   "That man was sucking the life out of you and you couldn't see it.  Everybody ELSE could, though." 

She poured champagne and they drank to Annie's freedom.  Annie tried to convince herself this freedom was cause for celebration.  This freedom she hadn't asked for.