It Feels So Good When I Stop Page 4

  “Cash or credit?”

  “Credit.”

  Goulet merely glanced at the items going by and punched in what seemed to be arbitrary prices.

  “Ma’am? I was wondering. Can you recommend a decent restaurant nearby? Nothing fancy, just diner food; eggs, bacon.”

  “Open or closed?”

  “Open would be better.”

  “The Crow’s Nest, up the road.”

  “Thank you.” She charged me only a buck and a half for the toothpaste and brush. I was curious. “One other thing, if you don’t mind, ma’am. Do you know Opal Cove Road, just back a way?”

  “I live on Tide Pool.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “It’s one street over. Lived there my whole life.”

  “So if anyone could answer my question, it would be you. How far is Opal Cove Road from where we are right now?”

  “Six-tenths of a mile. On the nose.”

  Get the fuck out of here. I had biked only slightly more than half a mile. I felt like I’d just failed a cardiologist-sanctioned all-day stress test.

  My pathetic, defining possessions were having an orgy at the end of the moving conveyor. Goulet and I were the only people in the store. It didn’t matter. She fixed a fluorescent orange PAID sticker to each of the bicycle tires. Three days earlier, Jocelyn said she’d love me for the rest of my life if I let her.

  “Do you sell medicine cabinets? The ones with mirrors for doors?”

  “In kitchens and baths. Left at the commodes.”

  “What do those go for?”

  “Thirty-six ninety-nine or forty-two ninety-nine.”

  “Do you have one that’s thirty dollars?”

  Goulet shook her head.

  “Okay. Ring me up one of the thirty-six ninety-nine jobs.”

  A COUPLE OF days after the Richie and Josie incident, I saw Jocelyn buying a newspaper and cigarettes at Ozzie’s Tobacco Shop on Pleasant Street. She was wearing a pink tank top and olive-green painter’s pants. Her toenails matched her shirt. I stayed out of sight behind a divider of greeting cards. When she started for the register I came out of hiding and followed her. I was shaking. I didn’t know what I was going to say or what she’d think of me for living with Richie. That whole “The friend of the enemy of my friend is my enemy” thing can be powerful. I stood behind her in line. She turned when I coughed.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” I asked.

  “Fine. You?”

  I acted like a guy whose car is in the shop again. “Oh, you know.”

  “I hear you,” she said. She asked Ozzie for a pack of Marlboro Lights. He put the smokes on the counter. “Oh, I’m sorry. I meant soft pack, not box. Thank you,” she said sweetly.

  I went for it. “Isn’t it weird how you have to have the right kind of pack? I mean, are Marlboros in a soft pack better than Marlboros in a box?”

  “Not better,” Jocelyn said. “Better for you.”

  “Ah, so that’s it.”

  “Keep it low. It’s an industry secret.”

  “Huh. And to think all these years . . .”

  “Same thing with Coke. A bottle’s better than a can.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.” She pocketed her change and headed for the door.

  I threw a twenty at Ozzie. “Coke or Pepsi?” I called after Jocelyn.

  “Give me a break. Coke. Canada Dry or Schweppes?”

  “Canada Dry, hands down. Canada or America?”

  “Canada,” Jocelyn said. Ozzie didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

  “Canada? You must be out of your mind,” I said. “Canada’s practically communist.”

  “Oh, brother, you’re not one of those, are you?”

  “I don’t think so. How do you tell?”

  “You can never really tell, can you?”

  “I can sometimes.”

  “Well, lucky you.” She folded her paper under her arm. “Be good.” She stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  “Hang on a second. Aren’t you going to have one of those smokes?”

  “I plan on having all of them.” She was quick and she knew it. I loved both of those things about her.

  “I meant now, while they’re still fresh.”

  “I’m in a rush.”

  “Come on. What are you going to say on your death-bed: I should have rushed around more?” Ozzie took his time with my change. “What’s one little smoke?” Jocelyn smiled. I watched her as she waited for me on the sidewalk. A dark blue station wagon parked in front of Ozzie’s appeared greenish, tinted by a dusting of pollen. By noon the air would be oppressively hot and humid. I knew the next thing I had to do was throw my good friend Richie under the bus.

  “I still can’t believe what happened with my roommate and your friend.”

  Jocelyn rubbed her irritated eyes. “He’s a real winner. A keeper.”

  “I know. I feel bad about it.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I thought you’d think because I live with him that I—”

  “I don’t.” She rubbed her eyes more vigorously.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Allergies.” She sounded like she just got whacked with a wicked cold.

  “That sucks.”

  “It does. I cannot wait to get the fuck out of here.”

  “You going somewhere?”

  “New York.”

  “To visit?”

  “To live.”

  I felt a sting. “Cool,” I said. “When?”

  “Middle of August.”

  “That’s only a month away.”

  “Less. Three weeks and some change.”

  “You going for good?”

  “Who knows?” Her eyes were red-raw. She tried blinking some relief into them. “People are going to think you made me cry.”

  TWO NIGHTS LATER Jocelyn and I were sharing a smoke on the bench in front of the Amherst Post Office. I had less than a month to talk her out of moving.

  “How could you even think of moving? You just met me.”

  “Please. New York is crawling with guys singler than you.”

  “That’s not even a real word.”

  “Yes it is. So is wealthier. New York is crawling with men singler and wealthier than you.”

  “I knew it. A gold digger.”

  “That’s me: in it for the money. Like Gandhi.”

  “All the guys in New York are junkies,” I said. “I read in the Times the other day—”

  “The New York Times?”

  “That every year, thousands of people get hep C just from riding the New York subway.”

  “Oh, they do, do they? I mustn’t have read the paper that day.” She was entertained. She had a smile that even she couldn’t stop once it started. “What day was that?”

  “And the promise of hep C is what they use to attract tourists.”

  “I see.”

  “Hep C and the possibility of getting spermed on by homeless guys.”

  “Eww. Fun is fun, but now you’re just being sick.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Tell me with a straight face that you didn’t think that was funny.”

  “It wasn’t funny.”

  “Bullshit. You’re laughing.”

  “I’m laughing now, at the ridiculousness of this little . . . I don’t even know what to call it . . . this little dance.”

  “Don’t change the subject. I know you thought it was funny.”

  “Oh, so you can tell what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  I rubbed her temples. “You’re thinking, Moving to New York is a mistake. An el giganto mistake.”

  She slapped my hands from her head. “Have you ever been to New York?”

  “Come on. Have I ever been to New York.”

  “When?”

  “Recently.”

  “Recently, my fucking ass.” She laughed. “You know dick about New York.”

  �
��Hey, listen here, toilet mouth. I find your language patently offensive.”

  “You should talk.”

  “Yes, I should. And I will. If anyone knows New York, it’s me.”

  The last time I’d been to New York City was on a high school trip. I fucking hated it, not because New York blew per se, but it really brought out the more sophisticated urban asshole in some of the suburban assholes I went to school with.

  “Is that so?” Jocelyn asked. “Mr. Zagat’s. Mr. Hepatic. Mr. Homeless Spermer.”

  At that moment I definitely wanted to partake in frequent and varied sex acts with her. But way more than that, I just wanted to be around her. It’s corny as fuck but true: If someone had told me I could freeze any minute and spend the rest of my life in it, I would have picked Jocelyn and me sitting on that bench in front of the Amherst Post Office. But who the fuck has the power to grant that kind of perpetual happiness? And if they did have it, why would they wield it on my behalf?

  “I know there’s nothing for you in New York,” I said.

  “And Amherst is what, the world capital of culture and opportunity?”

  “It is.” I flung open my arms like Mary Tyler Moore at the end of the opening credits. “Everything you need—and I don’t mean some slick job or material shit, but the important stuff—is all right here.”

  “Really? Like what kind of important stuff?”

  “The important stuff. Hey, are you hungry? I’m fucking starving. Want to split a foo yung at Hunan the Barbarian’s?”

  “You know what I think?” she asked. “I think you love distraction.”

  “Did you say something?”

  She was free with her hands. She punched me in the stomach.

  “Someone help me, please!” I called out. She hit me again, but harder. “I’d puke right now, but I’m so hungry, there’s nothing in my stomach to puke.” I faked a retch.

  “You love distraction. Maybe more than anybody I’ve ever met.”

  “I told you I was different.”

  “You might be.” She kissed me first. It took about five seconds before we were officially mashing in public. If I had been a mere witness to it, I would have hurled at our feet.

  PAMELA’S SUBURBAN—with winterized boat still in tow—was parked in front of the house. I could see the back of James’s head behind the wheel. I coasted to a stop on the driver’s side. His window was open a crack, and he was talking on the phone, smoking. When he saw me, he rolled the window down to halfway, and smoke poured over the outside of it like water over a falls.

  “Just the prick I want to see,” he said. “No, not you—my brother-in-law. You, Teddy, are the prick I never want to see.” James would probably always call me his brother-in-law, like he was divorcing only my sister and not me. “I’ll be there in a few. Yeah, we’re all set. Yes. Yes. Yes, Teddy,” he said, agitated. “No. No, I have two full rolls in my truck as we speak. No, twenty-fives. It’s plenty. Trust me. Because I’ve been doing this job since I was seventeen’s how I know.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at me in disbelief. “How about if it isn’t enough, I drive back to Orleans and get another roll and finish up alone?” The last proviso seemed to satisfy Teddy. James listened.

  I sat there on the bike—on hold. I looked in the back of the Suburban to catch a glimpse of whatever kind of rolls James was sure would be enough for whatever job they were talking about. Roy was falling in and out of sleep, strapped into a car seat directly behind the front passenger seat. His head kept drooping forward, and he’d snap it upright, doze back to sleep, and so on.

  “I just have to drop my kid off,” James said. “I don’t know, fifteen minutes.” Then he hung up. “Fuck me,” he said to the gods.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “The fucking guy—” He stopped himself when he saw me and the bike. “How you holding up?”

  “Eh, you know.”

  “That’s a nice ride you got there. Reminds me of my buddy Dogshit.” James had a friend who actually answered to the name Dogshit. When Dogshit was a teenager he passed out at the wheel and cracked his two upper incisors. He never got them fixed, and they turned brown, like stubborn leaves that refused to fall. “You know Dogshit,” James said, pulling at the outer corners of his eyes because Dogshit’s mother was Korean.

  I’d met him a few times. I called him David at first, and he looked at me like I had two heads, both filled with teeth more fucked up than his own.

  “They busted him for DUI, and he wasn’t even driving. He was parked.” James found his recollection of the story entertaining. “He had to get back and forth to the boatyard on a friggin’ ten-speed. You know, with the handlebars?” He traced the outlines of ram’s horns. “Funny as all fuck, Dogshit pulling up all out of breath and he’s pissed off, bitching to himself.” James tapped his front tooth. “Nobody would give him a lift—I swear to Christ—just so we could watch him ride up in the mornings . . .” James trailed off, quieted by his own take on nostalgia. “He’s a good shit, though, Dogshit.”

  “At least it’s exercise.” I pulled the front end of Sweet Thunder up into a stationary wheelie position. The tire knocked the driver’s-side mirror out of whack.

  “Hey, easy, easy.” James readjusted the mirror. “Yo, what’s this coming up behind us?” I turned around a lot more conspicuously than I would have had I known he was talking about Marie and not an El Camino or a Har ley. She was wearing the same Kelly green track jacket. I was embarrassed because she had to think we were gawking at her. She turned her eyes to the ground. I spun back around and leaned forward with my forearms on the handlebars.

  “Jesus,” I said under my breath, “I thought you were talking about a car.”

  “Cars, women, whatever, they all like to be looked at.” James and I pretended not to notice her as she walked past the Suburban. She was carrying a brown paper bag large enough for a six-pack and maybe a fifth of something. She drew the package closer to her breast. “Weird,” I said when she was well out of earshot.

  “You got that right.”

  “No, she bummed a beer and a smoke off me the other night,” I whispered.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” James said.

  “I’m serious. I was sitting right there, and she was walking by, just like that.”

  “No shit.”

  I nodded.

  “What did you guys talk about?”

  “Nothing. She skulled the beer in like two seconds, and that was it.”

  “Interesting,” said James. “You must have made some first impression.”

  “Or she doesn’t remember.” I drank from my thumb. “Seems to me like she has a bit of a battle with a bottle, if you know what I’m talking about.”

  “It’s fucking Cape Cod for chrissake,” James said. “I’d still like to throw a fuck into that.” I didn’t second that emotion. James shot a look at me. “What, you wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Trust me, if you saw her in a bikini you’d know. Meat on her bones. Nice shitter. Tattoos everywhere. It’s hot.” He inhaled through his clenched teeth. “I’m into that Elvira thing. Not for anything serious, but a couple hours, no strings attached? Just tell me where to be.” James could talk a good game, but to be honest, I didn’t know how much of a follow-through guy he was. Then again, he must have followed through with enough of the wrong shit for my sister to want to divorce him. Pamela tried confiding in me when they were first having problems, but I told her I was too screwed up over Jocelyn to be of any use to her. After that, I’d ask her perfunctorily how things were going. She’d say “Same,” “Worse,” or “Better” if she said anything at all. “Okay,” I said to James. “If this woman asked you to go—right this minute—you would?”

  “And you’d watch Roy?”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  James consulted his watch and smiled. “In a New York minute.”

  “Not me. I couldn’t do that, especially now.”

&n
bsp; “Well, it’s a mute point, isn’t it? I don’t see her coming back for you anyway.” He thought I was judging him when in fact I was judging myself.

  “What I meant was, the less I know someone, the worse the whole thing is for me. You’re a free man—”

  “Almost.”

  “I don’t care who you fuck around with.” I really didn’t.

  James understood. He handed me the Suburban’s glowing cigarette lighter as a peace offering. He let his sensitive side show. “Do you have trouble hoisting?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “Don’t get worked up. I’m just asking.” He ticked my potential impotence off his checklist. He wiggled his pinkie. “Do you have a tiny pecker?”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s not your fault, either. It’s not like you chose it. You get the dick you’re born with.” He went on to paraphrase from his rickety cosmology. “Look, you’re a decent guy from what I know of you. And you’re not the ugliest motherfucker out there. A little shaggy-looking, maybe, but chicks might mistake that for your style. So if you think you have to lay a bunch of groundwork before you can lay pipe, you’ve got to have some kind of dick issue. Or—and this is a tougher nut to crack”—he pointed the pinkie at me—“you think you have a dick issue.”

  I watched Marie disappear. “I’m as average as the next guy.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Roy let out a single cry, then smiled when he saw his old man’s big face looking back at him.

  “Wook who woke up,” James said, his eyes wide with fake surprise. Adults—especially big, hairy men—talking like babies creeps me out. Roy was beaming.

  “God, he looks so much like Pamela,” I said.

  “Everybody says that. I don’t see it.”

  “He looks like you, too. But he looks a lot like her.”

  “He’s the spitting image of my old man,” James said. He was still admiring Roy when he shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, I need to ask you a favor.”