It Feels So Good When I Stop Page 9
“Okay.”
“I don’t care how you get yourself back to East Falmouth. But what you’re not going to do is bike or walk or roller-skate or anything on Route Twenty-eight. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Because if I let you go, and you get picked up by someone else further up the road . . . you don’t want that.”
“I won’t.”
“Or if, God forbid, I pick you up again . . .”
“You won’t.”
“Good.” It took two normal tries, then a more serious one to close the Crown Vic’s trunk. “You’re going to have to sit in back. All my radar’s up front.” I got in the cage. The sound of him auto-locking the doors had an opposite effect on my sense of security. “Seat belt on,” he said.
As we were merging back onto 28, another cruiser pulled up and blocked our path. This cop was older. He looked like Boris Yeltsin. A large chief’s badge was painted in gold on his door.
“What he do?” asked Captain Kickass.
“Just biking in the wrong place. He didn’t know.”
“Biking?”
“That’s what I said to him.” They shared a quick laugh about it.
“He’s not Colombian, is he?”
My cop looked back at me, wordlessly passing along the question.
“Irish,” I said. “American Irish.”
“He’s Irish.”
“I’m looking for a Colombian—about his age—who likes to beat up on his pregnant wife. Knocked her to the floor and kicked her across the room.”
“Scumbag.”
“Real scumbag. This guy married?”
I leaned forward, right up against the cage and spoke directly to Captain Kickass. I wanted to eliminate the possibility of any miscommunication that might land me in the tank. “Separated, sir.”
“Where’s your wife?”
“She lives in New York.”
“You ever hit her?”
“I’ve never hit anyone in my life.”
“Nobody?”
“No, sir.”
“Never been in a fistfight? Not a single time?”
“Never, sir.”
He spent about a month looking through that cage, into my eyes. “Yeah, well I have.” He smiled. “Plenty of times.” Without lifting his foot off the brake, he shifted the cruiser into drive. It made a false start. “Let’s keep the bikes on the back roads.”
“I will, sir.”
“And if you see any Colombians . . .” He winked and peeled out of the dirt road. We stayed put until the rooster tail of dust settled.
The cop turned to me. “That’s not really true about never hitting anyone before, is it? ”
“It is.”
“Wow.”
THE COP HIT the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through before letting me out.
“You want anything? Guys on the force don’t pay.”
“No, thanks.”
The drive-through girl’s spiel came through the tiny speaker.
“Who’s that? Brenda? ” the cop asked into the menu board.
“Tommy? ” she answered.
“Ten-four.”
“No, it’s me, Georgette.”
“Chripesakes,” Tommy said. “You sound more like each other every day.”
“Looking like her, too,” Georgette said, not too pleased about it.
“Hey, hey, enough of that,” Tommy said. “You could do worse. A lot worse.”
“I don’t know about that,” Georgette said. She yelped when an offended hand—presumably Brenda’s—slapped a naked, fleshy part of her. “See what I have to put up with, Tom? ”
Brenda overrode her: “You mean see what I have to put up with? ”
“You could both do a lot worse,” Tommy said.
“We’ll see about that,” Georgette said. “Large with milk and two Sweet’N Lows? ”
Tommy turned to me. “You sure you don’t want anything? ”
“I’m sure.”
“That’ll do it. Large with milk and two Sweet’N Lows.” He drove around to the pickup window. Georgette had his coffee waiting. Her mother stood behind her. Both women were overweight and at different points of the same free fall. They saw me in the back.
“Who’s that? ” the daughter asked.
Tommy reached out for the coffee. “Nobody.”
“What he do? ” the mother asked.
“Nothing.”
“Why’s he in the back? ”
“Is he dangerous? ”
“No, he broke down. I’m just giving him a hand.”
Both women shifted their eyes to him. “That’s good of you, Tom,” the daughter said. “You guys”—she shook her head in admiration of all cops—“you’re always sticking your necks out for other people.”
“People who don’t even appreciate it,” the mother added. “Boy, Tom, I tell you, I sure do.”
“Me, too,” the daughter said.
“That’s nice to hear.” He started to dig some money out of his pants pocket. “It makes this job—”
The daughter waved him off. “No, no, no, no, Tom. I couldn’t charge you.”
Tommy stopped himself before completely saying the word but. It was one of the weakest “No, let me pay” protests I’d ever seen.
“It’s just a cup of coffee, Tom,” the mother chimed in. “What’s it, two cents to them? ” She said it as if the moneygrubbing Dunkin’ Donuts head honchos were just out of earshot.
“Not even,” the daughter added.
“You guys.” Tommy stopped digging for money. He turned to me. “Can you believe these two? ”
I couldn’t.
“Call it one of those what-do-you-call-its,” the mother said.
TOMMY LET ME off at a brown fiberglass picnic table next to the pay phone. Before he drove away, he asked me if I was sure I was feeling okay. He seemed like a decent guy for a cop.
I sat on the picnic table with my feet up on the bench. It was a beautiful day. The kind you expect it to be when you get the phone call notifying you that someone close to you has died unexpectedly. I lit a smoke, then took the wineskin out from under my coat. I took a healthy pull of Jameson’s.
“What the fuck am I going to do? ”
Georgette and her mother were eyeballing me through the plate glass. I turned my back to them. There was the Bourne Bridge, dizzying, spiritual, and off-limits. There’d be no epiphany on it for me today. I called James and asked him for a lift. He asked me how I ended up way the fuck up there. I told him I got lost.
IT WAS PISSING RAIN when I woke up. I was thinking about the woman who lost her shit and faked being pregnant after James cheated on her with my sister. I felt horrible. I decided to call Jocelyn’s answering machine and let her know that I didn’t walk out on her for someone else. I biked over to Spunt’s Gas and Grocery to use the pay phone. I didn’t even bother trying to stay dry.
“Can I have three of that in quarters? ” I interrupted the kid behind the counter. His head was the size of a large pomegranate. He couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work so that my change would include three dollars in quarters. I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I just hung back and let him struggle through it.
“I have to do it all over,” he said, frustrated and apologetic.
“It’s okay.” He gave me back my twenty, put the rest of the money in the register, and started over.
“You want gas? ” he asked for the second time.
I shook my head again. I started thinking about that film clip of the Vietnam War protester who doused himself and his baby daughter with gasoline on the Pentagon lawn. The cops managed to talk the guy into letting the baby go unharmed before he torched himself. I wondered if the whisked-away baby was found by the fiery fuse that yoked her to her father.
“Eleven dollars and nine cents.” The kid looked at me over his water-spotted glasses. I paid him again. The drops beating against the windows made the outside look like the inside of an aquarium.
Automobiles hydroplaned along Plymouth Street merely a few feet away. They shrieked by like bomber jets flying to and from a common objective. I lit a smoke and snaked through the curves of my conundrum. I wanted to talk to Jocelyn, but I didn’t want to talk to her. I told myself if she answered, I’d hang up. It was answering machine or nothing.
I bent down to pick up the cellophane from my cigarette pack. The corners of the phone booth floor were grouted with a cured bead of grime. It reminded me of the shitty places I’d lived, and all the shitty ones to come. Jocelyn was the cleanest person I’d ever met. I loved her towels. They were luxurious and always thirsty. She bought expensive microbrew shampoos from Sweden. She was twenty-four and she had tablecloths. She said she liked what she liked. God, I fucking envied her for knowing that.
“I’M A BIG FAN of circumcision,” Jocelyn said as she washed my back with a chunk of sea sponge harvested from someplace in the Indian Ocean.
“Lucky for me.” I held on to the towel bar at the back of her shower.
“It’s sleeker.”
Jocelyn’s father was Catholic, but technically, since her mother was Jewish, so was she. I grew up Catholic. My circumcision was motivated by who knows what. Vanity or a cutthroat, lose-the-deadweight mentality. The human appendix isn’t pulling its weight, either, but no one has it removed until it’s practically gangrenous.
“If you ever try to convert,” Jocelyn said, “a rabbi is going to have to sign off on the surgeon’s work. Could have left it too long.” She said it like she was talking about a haircut I could just pop in and have Lamont tidy up.
“Why would I ever convert? ”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying if you ever did.”
“Jesus Christ, can you imagine getting recircumcised at my age? ”
“People do it.”
“Fucking barbaric.”
“You’d think they’d have developed a nonsurgical method, you know, like a chemical peel or something.”
I saw an opportunity. I reached back and pulled her arms around me. I assumed the position like I was about to be frisked by a cop. She started soaping me up. Our minds headed down the same path but quickly veered in different directions.
“You know what? ” she asked.
“Mmm.”
“The word blowjob is a total misnomer.”
“Huh? ”
“Think about it. There isn’t a lot of blowing going on. That can be confusing when you’re just starting out.” She drifted as she continued working me up into a good lather. “He was almost six years older than me, so I was nervous enough as it was, you know? ”
“Who? ”
“Todd.”
“Right,” I said. “Todd.”
Todd was a numskull pizza jockey and Jocelyn’s first real boyfriend. She started working—as a toppings prep—and became sexually active when she was fourteen. When I was fourteen, I was still bumming occasional Pop Rocks money off my parents and dreaming of whisking Victoria Principal away with me on my personal spacecraft.
“I could feel him getting softer, so I kept blowing faster and faster. I didn’t know.” She huffed like she was in childbirth. “Then he pulled me really hard by the hair.” Jocelyn loosely grabbed a handful of my hair like my head was a bunch of carrots. “And I could feel him get hard again.” She tightened her grip.
“That really hurts.”
JOCELYN WAS a three-ringer, tops. If she didn’t pick before the fourth ring, she was either not picking up or not home. Her answering machine was set to kick in two rings after that.
I went over my script as my index finger swung like a divining rod drawn to the Brooklyn area code. I felt something like a serial dieter who flirts with failure by nibbling on the first frosting rose. I dialed the rest of her number. The receiver felt cold and oily against my ear. A recording dared me to deposit an additional $1.75 for the first three minutes. I choked the coin slot with quarters.
During the first three rings I was scared she’d pick up. After the fourth I was relieved. After the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth rings I was wondering what the fuck was going on. Probably dialed the wrong number. I did it all again more carefully. Same thing.
“What the fuck? ” No answering machine was a new development. I went over the possible explanations: (1) The machine had—after fuck knows how many years of functioning perfectly—finally broken down. (2a) The machine had become disconnected by accident. (2b) The machine had become disconnected on purpose.
I watched the last of the rain ooze down the length of the phone booth. With zero hesitation, I dialed Jocelyn’s work number. There was no answer at her extension. I was rerouted to the receptionist. I told her I was an old friend. She said Jocelyn was—if I could believe it—on her honeymoon.
“Really? Do you have any idea where she went? ”
“Somewhere warm. Other than that, she wouldn’t say.”
“You talked to her? ”
“Just this morning. Très mysterious. Très romantique.”
“How did she sound? ”
“How did she sound? She just got married, for goodness’ sake.”
I CALLED JOCELYN’S apartment again. This time I wanted her to answer. Nothing. I went back into Spunt’s and bought a postcard of the Bourne Bridge.
“We only have the other kind of stamps,” the kid said.
“Fine.”
“And you have to buy a book of them.”
“Whatever.” I took a pen from beside the register and went back to the counter where the coffeepots were. I addressed the postcard to Jocelyn. I chose the rest of my words carefully: “There’s no one else, by the way.” I dropped the postcard in the first mailbox I saw. I regretted it immediately because I felt like I was giving her the upper hand by being the first to crack. I mean, I knew that even if Jocelyn was under someone else, there was no way she was already over me.
RICHIE ANSWERED THE PHONE. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and mouthed, “Jocelyn again.” It was the third call in less than an hour. “No,” he said to her. “He’s still not back yet.” He listened. “I’ve got it written down right here.” He tapped a notepad on the kitchen table with the point of a pen. “As soon as he gets in. You got it.” He hung up and sighed, “Dude, not good, dude.”
“Fuck me.” I threw my head back and stared at the ceiling.
Richie got up and headed to the fridge. He liked being on the sidelines of other people’s dramas. It gave him a chance to offer a sympathetic beer. “Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to break up for good, but you need some space to figure shit out? ”
“I did,” I said, exasperated.
“And? ”
I pointed to the phone. “She’s not fucking giving me space, obviously.”
“Well, fuck it. If she won’t give it to you, take it.” He traced the phone cord back to the wall and disconnected it from the jack. “Until further notice, this phone only makes outgoing calls.” To him it was that simple.
“I can’t do that to her.”
“Why? You’re already screening your calls, so what the fuck’s the difference? ” He was right. Just what I needed: more contradiction, guilt, and confusion. Richie wagged the end of the cord. “It’s no skin off my ass. I hate the telephone anyway.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Fuck,” I yelled. Kev or Bri in the downstairs apartment turned their stereo down. “I feel like a fucking asshole.”
“Why? ”
“Because she’s a good person. She’s a great person. If she wasn’t so intense . . .”
“No one’s saying she isn’t a good person. But you’re a good person, too.”
“I feel like a bleached shit.”
“You shouldn’t. Look, you guys had some amazing times, but the thing’s fatally flawed. Whose fault is that? Nobody’s fault.”<
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His words bounced right off me. “You know what’s really fucked up? I’m doing the exact shit she predicted I’d do all along.”
“How do you mean? ”
“Correction, not everything she predicted. I never cheated on her. Honest to God, I’d tell you if I did. But as far as me abandoning her—”
Richie cut me off. “Abandon? ” he asked incredulously. “Abandon’s what you do to babies and three-legged dogs.”
IT WAS ALMOST nine at night when I woke up. I was starving. I biked down to the Crow’s Nest. The autumn night air was seasoned with smoke from wood-burning stoves. It reminded me of playing street hockey as a kid with my friends. The bald tennis ball would grow more invisible as the evening wore on. We’d play until our mothers were nearly irate from unsuccessfully calling us to dinner. I loved it.
The restaurant was dead. They ran a dinner special anyway, perhaps out of pride. I stood just inside the doorway and read the board. Baked haddock, rice pilaf, and a cup of corn chowder. Seven ninety-five. As a rule, I steer clear of all meal specials. Once you work in a restaurant, you order differently. At Esposito’s, Lello ran specials when the outermost veal cutlet in the package was freezer-burned just beyond use.
The cook got up from a table when he saw I was staying for dinner. He took his coffee and smoke with him into the kitchen. He let out a series of increasingly productive coughs. My waiter was a little red fire hydrant. His forearms were smudged with illegible tattoos. He called me Captain.
I watched the cook preparing my chicken Parmesan over egg noodles through the food pickup window. I was hoping to catch him picking his nose or his teeth. At least that way I’d be sure.
A large oval dish nested in an insulating cloth napkin slid from the waiter’s hands onto my table like a foal from its mother’s birth canal.
“Makes me think I’ll never feel hungry again,” I said. He was no audience whatsoever. I poked at the food like I was examining a pet’s stool for an ingested coin. I had two beers with my meal, and nursed a healthy Jameson’s on the rocks afterward. I wasn’t eager to go back to the empty house.