It Feels So Good When I Stop (27 page)

“For serious? ”

“Hell yeah.”

“Whoa.” He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to imagine what it would feel like shampooed with Tide. “I never heard of anybody doing that before.”

“Sure you have. Everybody knows All-Tempa-Cheer is gentlest on your scalp.”

“It is? ”

“Yeah, but you guys are out. This will do me fine.” I started peeling dollar bills from a roll.

“You sure? ” He craned his neck to see into the right aisle. “I thought we had that kind.”

“Forget it. It’s no biggie.”

“If you watch the register, I’ll go out back and see if we have some.”

“No, don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother. I want to.”

“Don’t.” I started to feel like an asshole. I didn’t think he was going to swallow the hook so completely and feel bad about disappointing me.

He came around the counter. “It’s no bother, honest. It’s my job.”

“Really, Ricky,” I grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t.” I think I scared him.

“Why? ”

I loosened my grip. “Just don’t, okay? ”

 

EVEN AFTER WORKING in a restaurant for nearly three years, I knew just enough about wine to fuck up an eighty-dollar piece of meat. So I brought a fifth of Jack Daniel’s to Marie’s. Bourbon and beef. That’s how they did it on
The Big Valley
and
The High Chaparral
.

Marie answered the back door wearing a white apron over her clothes. It was a cartoonish map of Italy with,
Sì, sono della Calabria!
splashed across it. Marie had eye shadow on. She kissed me on the cheek. Roy wasn’t with me this time.

“Huh, Jack Daniel’s.” She examined the label. “I approve.”

“It’s downright upright,” I said, quoting Frank Gifford from the Harveys Bristol Cream ad.

She was impressed. “You remember that commercial? ”

“Please.”

“What about this one? ” She started singing, “ ‘Martini and Rossi on the rocks. Say yeh-eh-ess.’ ”

I finished the jingle in a sultry voice: “Yeeehhhsss.”

 

LALO SCHIFRIN’S made-for-TV music jiggled from a boom box on her kitchen counter.

“I love Lalo Schifrin,” I said.

“Same here.” She poured us both a glass of dark red wine. “Him and Ennio Morricone.”

“Do not even get me started on how good Morricone is. We could be here all night.”

I felt pretty comfortable, sitting at the table and watching the back of her as she prepped the steak at the stove. I always thought those gaucho pants made grown women look silly, but the jury was still out on whether Marie was pulling them off. As she shifted her weight, I could see the musculature of her peasant calves at work beneath her animated skin. More inky pinks and greens popped in contrast to her white, plunging-back angora sweater.

The grill pan objected with a prolonged hiss when the meat came into contact with it.

“What about the scene in
Raging Bull
,” I asked. “Where whosie-whatsie there—La Motta’s wife—is cooking him the steak? ”

She turned a cheek to me. “You know, I actually started to hate De Niro in that scene—not as an actor, as a person.”

“Really? ”

“It’s like, he was such a phenomenally good abusive asshole of a husband, there’s no way he could have been acting.”

“Then you must love it when he asks Joe Pesci if he fucked his wife? ”

Marie came at me. I was startled. She raised a long, two-tined fork to my throat. “Did you fuck my wife? Why did you fuck my wife? ”

 

THE STEAK WAS divided into two slabs, and Marie put the slightly more imposing one my plate. The blood rushed around my scalloped potatoes and stained their edges pink. Both of us were starving. We ate like marooned sailors.

“You were right,” I said, talking around a tobacco plug of meat tucked into my cheek.

“Mmm.” Marie was consumed by the pleasure of consuming.

“If I ever had an aged sirloin before, I would have known it.”

“Mmm,” she agreed.

“How do they get it so tender? ”

She took a cleansing gulp of wine. “Decomposition.”

“Oh, man, that’s sick.” I set my utensils down loudly.

Marie was amused, like the tribal elder who tells the Western traveler he’s eating jellied goat testicles. “Don’t think about it.”

“Oh, okay,” I sulked. “I’ll try.” I poached a piece of meat from her plate.

“Hey,” she protested. “You purloined my loin.”

“I did no such thing, Your Honor.”

She looked at my plate. I hadn’t touched my asparagus. “What, my vegetables aren’t good enough for you? ”

I selectively ate asparagus after Jocelyn said it made more than just my piss smell funny. “I just didn’t want to fill up on it. Look.” I took a bite.

“Well, I love it.” Marie held a lemon-zested stalk in her fingers and powered through it like a gopher. The theme to
The Streets of San Francisco
came on. Marie pointed to the boom box. “Mmm,” she said as she chewed. “Karl Malden. Criminally overlooked actor.”

 

I SAT WAY BACK in my chair and put my hands on my stomach. “Good thing I didn’t wear a belt.”

“You and me both.” She stood up so I could see. “I popped my top button as a precaution.” I caught a small shimmering triangle of electric blue before she sealed her pants up and sat back down. I pretended not to notice by raising a hand to my heart like I felt a massive coronary coming on. I was going to be funny and ask Marie if she knew CPR, but luckily I didn’t. I had a flash of her screaming while paramedics tried to save her son. “But,” she said, “I’m not too stuffed to sip some bourbon.”

“You read my mind.”

I watched as she reached up into the cabinet for two glasses.

“You a fan of car racing? ” I asked.

“No,” she said, intrigued by the question. “Why? ”

“The checkered flag on your shoulder blade.” I could just make out a leading corner of it poking out from under her sweater.

“That’s not a flag. It’s a kerchief.” She got in front of my chair with her back to me. “Look.” Like a wife whose dress is about to be zipped by her husband, she bent her neck forward and lifted her hair out of the way. I drew back the fuzzy neckline of her sweater.

“Whoa. That’s definitely not a checkered flag.”

“No,” she laughed. “It isn’t. You like it? ”

“Is it wrong if I say I do? ”

“I think it would be wrong if you said you didn’t.”

“Then I like it.”

It was a full-body profile of a kneeling, naked pinup girl. Something slightly more X-rated than what you might see painted on a World War II fighter plane. The checkerboard kerchief in her blond hair gave the impression that she was a good all-American girl who enjoyed a good all-American screwing after a secluded picnic lunch.

“I have her twin on the other side.” Marie reached over her opposite shoulder and guided me to the spot. She left her hand on mine. My heart started pounding. She pulled my hand around her and parked it on her right breast. “Is this okay? ” she asked. We were both stone-cold sober.

“I think so.” My left hand found her other breast. I automatically handled her the way Jocelyn liked to be handled. I kissed her exposed back. She started to laugh. “Should I stop? ” I asked.

“No, please don’t. Just do everything a bit harder.”

I did. She started grinding her ass against me. I grabbed her by the hip bones and pulled.

“Tell me one thing,” she said between breaths.

“Mmm,” I said with my mouth against her back.

“And I want the truth.”

“Mmm.”

“Did you really not fuck me last time? ”

“No,” I said.

“I think this time you should.”

 

AFTERWARD WE LAY on our backs in the dark without talking. I felt surprisingly okay about the whole thing, except for not knowing what Marie was thinking. I cleared my throat just to let her know I was still there. I tapped a galloping, four-fingered beat on the mattress that would have driven Jocelyn nuts. Marie didn’t make a peep. Her silence grew too uncomfortably big to ignore.

“Are you freaked out?” I finally asked. She didn’t answer. “You are, aren’t you? ”

“Hmm? ”

I sat up. “Are you asleep?” I asked at louder-than-bedroom volume.

“Was.”

“Jesus.”

“Sorry.”

I laughed. “Don’t be sorry.”

“So tired.”

“Do you always zonk out after sex . . . like a guy? ”

She let out a short, closemouthed laugh. “You offended? ” She would rather have been sleeping. I knew that feeling.

“God, no.” My tone was unmistakably revelatory.

She stroked my shin once with her foot, then shifted into the fetal position. Her knees were touching my thigh.

“You weren’t talking,” I said. “I figured . . .”

“You, either.”

I thought about that for a bit. “I wasn’t, was I? ”

She didn’t answer. I let her go. Within seconds, her breathing was even and automatic.

I WOKE UP in the middle of the night without the terrifying sensation of not knowing where I was. Woke without lying perfectly still for fear of falling from the Empire State Building; without the anxiety of having strolled into a classroom after months of truancy, only to learn the final exam was that day; without thinking all of my teeth had just mysteriously fallen out.

I did wake with the very real sensation of having to take a massive shit. I could tell it was going to be an embarrassing, conspicuous, and hostile parting. Marie was still curled up, but facing the other way. I decided to get dressed and split back to my sister’s. Then I thought that would be a ridiculous thing to do. Marie’s Eleanor Roosevelt quote went through my head.

Fuck it. I tiptoed naked to the kitchen, found my cigarettes, then—as quietly as I could—destroyed her bathroom.

On my way back to the bedroom, I stopped at Sidney’s open door. My eyes skipped over the dark, kaleidoscopic clutter of his room, and rested on two moons beyond the sliding glass doors: One glowed still. The other was indiscriminately pulled apart and put back together by the undulating surface of Opal Cove.

I took a few steps into the room, but stopped abruptly when I kicked a small toy that lit up in flashing red and played that tune about the kids on the bus going up and down all through the town. I managed to shut the fucking thing off by the third or fourth refrain. I carefully put the toy down and got out of Sidney’s room.

I sneaked back into Marie’s bed. She’d slept through it all, including the multiple flushes. She only partially woke when I started laughing softly.

“’t’s so funny? ”

“Shhh
.
”
I patted her ass. “Keep sleeping.”

 

I WAS DREAMING about James and Roy and me at Spunt’s. James had just finished filling Roy’s sippy cup—which was about five times as big as it is in real life—with hot coffee.

“Everybody knows coffee’s good for kids,” James said.

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“Sure you have,” James said. “Plus, he loves it.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“No I’m not. Watch.”

“Dude, he’s going to fucking scald himself.” I tried to swat the cup away, but James grabbed my arm and stopped me. I woke up before Roy took a sip.

Marie wasn’t in bed. Sunlight broke into the room between the partially drawn curtains. An otherwise welcoming aroma of coffee was burned around the edges, like the Mr. Coffee had been on for some time. The kitchen faucet went on, then off. I got up and put my clothes on. If Marie heard me, she didn’t say anything.

Her elbows were on the kitchen table. She was enveloped by the pink terry-cloth bathrobe. Her face was in her hands. I wishful-thought that maybe she was just tired, but I knew nobody
that
tired gets out of bed unless they absolutely have to. I put my hand on her shoulder. She wasn’t startled. She dropped her hands to her lap.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” She didn’t try to hide the fact that she’d been crying.

“What is it? ”

She just shook her head and said, “I can’t.”

“Can’t what? ”

“I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

I fell into one of the chairs. Her dirty utensils and napkin from the night before were in front of me. “You can’t? ”

“No.”

I lit a cigarette and listened to the elliptical hum of the refrigerator’s compressor motor. “What about—”

“Don’t,” she said.

I threw a nod in the direction of her bedroom. “And all that was just—”

“Please, don’t. I’m asking you, please.” She looked like she was begging me to spare her life. Maybe she was.

I pretended to shrug the whole thing off. “It’s no big deal.”

She could tell I was stung pretty bad, but she also knew how to accept a gift. “Thank you.”