It Feels So Good When I Stop (13 page)

I put my change in the plastic bag with my stuff. “Take it easy,” I said, and bolted out across the flooded parking lot into a phone booth.

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.”

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.