The Funnies (15 page)

“I borrowed a car from Ian.”

She sighed, and I did too, and I loosened my grip on her a little, as an offer to her, to let her do whatever she had come to do. Her arms slid off my back. She stepped back and dug into her pocket. “What's this all about, please?” She was holding the envelope I had sent, with the hundred-dollar bill inside.

“Oh,” I said.

“‘Oh'?”

“I sold the car for two hundred bucks.” I told her what had happened. “I'm sorry. I guess I should have called. I meant to.”

“At least to let me know what you were doing, Tim.”

“I know.”

She sighed again and turned toward the house. “Is there anyone in there?”

“No. Pierce is away.”

“I'm not going back to Philly tonight.”

“Of course not.”

“So,” she said.

“So let's.” I took her arm and pulled it, gently, and we walked together to my brother's house.

* * *

We made love in front of the television. An infomercial for a line of skin care products was on, and its spokesperson was Davy Jones, the former singer and tambourine player for the Monkees. His skin was no good, despite his endorsement. Amanda lay naked at the couch's end, and for the better part of an hour I touched her, kissed her in an effort to make myself desire her, and though she went through the motions of pleasure, even probably felt it in a base and detached way, she knew that this was what I was doing. When desire came to me, it was in the form of a removed fascination, as if I were seeing her for the first time, were seeing a woman's body for the first time, past curfew under a picnic table at the pavilion out behind the public pool, and this desire was ravenous and impossible to exhaust, even after we had done all we could for one another and were too sleepy to continue. We lay listening to Jones's shtick, our hearts fluttering against each other's skin. It had been like this once before, our first time, long before we fell in love. And we understood, but were too weary to say, that it was the same now: we were not in love. Sleep reached for me and I shivered, fumbled for the remote to switch off the set, pulled the rough blanket Pierce had draped over the back of the couch onto our bodies. Amanda curled against herself, like an insect desiccating on a windowsill. I tried to mold myself to her body but couldn't match its shape.

In the morning I found her munching cereal in my boxer shorts and T-shirt, watching me from the easy chair at the end of the sofa. I remembered the night before, and realized I would think of it often, for a long time, even when I had mostly forgotten the dynamic of our meager life together. I had to pee, and so stood and walked naked to the bathroom. I came back and wrapped myself in the blanket. It was early, not yet hot out. Amanda had finished the cereal and the bowl sat empty on the arm of the chair, the spoon sticking out of it like a tail.

“Good?” I asked.

She nodded. “Want some?”

“Sure.”

She got it for me and returned. I took it, spilling a little milk on myself, and ate. Amanda watched until I was done. I set the bowl on the floor.

“Am I right about this being it?” she asked.

“I think probably.”

“Can I ask why?”

I looked around me at the house, still grimy but now lived-in, almost alive itself. “I don't know if I can tell you.”

“Figures.”

“I'm assuming it's not just me,” I said.

“No.” She had been touching her fingers to her toes, like a child, but now stopped and looked at me. “I'm not seeing anybody else, or anything,” she said. “But there's no more reason for going on than there is for stopping, is there? That isn't good enough for me.”

“It shouldn't be.”

She laughed bitterly at this. “Thanks, Doc.”

“I'm sorry about the car.”

“No, I am. If we'd kept yours we might still have a car.” She smiled. “We might still be together.”

“Are we apart already?”

“We are. Maybe I should go.”

“You don't have to—”

“Don't be stupid,” she said. “What would I do here all day? Not be your girlfriend.” She stood, picked up both bowls and brought them to the kitchen, where she washed them. She came and knelt before the couch, picked up her clothes, changed into them, then leaned over to kiss me. “Goodbye.”

“I'll come and move out as soon as I have the car.”

She stood by the door, biting her lip. “I'll leave at eight Monday night and won't come back until morning. Come then.”

“Okay.”

She opened the door. I called out, too loud, “That's it?”

“That's it. Don't say you're sorry.” I held the words back. “I hope this works out for you,” she said, passing her eyes over the room. “I mean that sincerely, Tim. I won't say no hard feelings, because I have some, but I do mean that.”

“Thank you.”

Her chin creased, but instead of crying there, in the house, she pushed open the door with her foot and said goodbye. I said it too, but she was already gone.

All morning I sat under the blanket watching Saturday morning cartoons and letting regret choke me like a plastic trash bag over the head. First I regretted letting Amanda leave, then agreeing to draw the strip, then moving in with Amanda in the first place, until I had regretted my way back to my childhood and all its petty humiliations, like stealing a bong from the hippie neighbors' garage and kissing an unpopular girl on a dare. On the TV, animated characters became entangled in perilous adventures, then extricated themselves. Children ate sweets and enjoyed toys. I forgot about the time.

“What are you doing?” said Bitty from across the room. I jumped, and the blanket slid most of the way off me before I had the presence of mind to grab hold and pull it back.

“Ohmigod,” I said. “What time is it?”

“I'm a little early.” She looked at her watch. “Mike's cutting the grass. I couldn't hear myself think.”

“Right, okay. I was just…I lost myself.”

She dropped into the chair Amanda had watched me from. My sister was dressed as if for a summer date: a blue denim skirt, thin white cotton short-sleeved sweater, pumps. She sighed and hoisted her purse onto her lap, as if she was going to take something out of it. But she didn't.

“You're looking very New Jersey,” I said.

She looked down at herself, then at me. “Hmm. You look like you're on a bender.”

“I'm not. Not yet.”

She squinted. “What are we watching?”

“I have no idea.”

We stared at the set for a few minutes more. Bitty sighed again, so I got up and went to the bedroom to throw on some clothes. I was at the end of my T-shirt cycle and would have to launder soon. When I came out, she was gone. Through the windows I saw the door to the studio standing open.

I found her in front of the flat file, looking at drawings with her purse hanging weightlessly from her shoulder. Her frown was as miserable as a kicked dog's. “Are you actually working in here?”

“Yeah. I'm taking lessons.”

“Are these yours?”

“Those are Dad's.”

She looked up at me. “Really? Dad did these?” The drawings seemed to be ink sketches, the kind I knew he occasionally sent to fans who wrote him letters. Bitty herself was in one, holding an apple as big around as her head.

“Yep.”

For several seconds, she seemed in awe of the pictures, and I opened my mouth to tell her to take them. Then she dropped them back onto the others, as if to preempt me, and pushed shut the drawer. She composed herself and walked out of the studio. “Well, I'm famished,” she said over her shoulder. I followed.

* * *

Mike and Bitty's Toyota was the kind of rugged car that is often pictured atop mountains in television commercials, surrounded by dumbstruck goats. I didn't understand why. Our part of the state had no mountains in it, and Mike and Bitty were not the type, apparently, to leave it. They didn't ski, and had never vacationed together, as far as I knew. Bitty's driving was competent and slow, and at four-way stops she waited until all other cars were out of sight before she pulled away.

Close up, she looked charmingly seedy. Her hair was roughly cut, as if by hedge clippers, and her makeup, at one time a seamless and carefully applied mask, had been dashed on. The hem of her skirt was frayed, and as she drove she picked at the loose strands, pulling them farther away from the whole. Her sweater was loosely woven, and the bra underneath allowed her nipples to show clearly through. I anchored my gaze out the window and found us out on Route 518, heading toward Hopewell.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“AJ's.”

“In Princeton?”

“Mm-hmm.”

AJ's was a pancake and coffeehouse on Nassau Street, known for its enormous variety and high prices. Still, it was always packed. When I was in college in Philly, I had a group of friends I went to Princeton with to see rock-and-roll shows: the campus eating clubs frequently hosted huge parties at which many of our favorite bands—loosely musical ratfaced outfits with gratuitously improbable names—exerted themselves. Afterward, since there were no bars in town, we would go to AJ's to sober up. There was always a two o'clock rush there. I'd never been during the daytime.

As we passed through Hopewell, conversation inexorably turned to the Hopewell Head. Hopewell was notorious for a murder case that was cracked there in the 1980s. Apparently, a pimp from Atlantic City had killed one of his prostitutes; to cover up the crime, he cut her into pieces and scattered them around the state. The Head was discovered in a creek next to a Hopewell golf course, not far off the road.

“Remember the guy who found it?” Bitty said.

“He was a caddy or something.”

“I was on the debate team with him.”

I turned to her. She had produced a candy bar from somewhere and was eating it. “You were on the debate team?” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“What else did you do in high school that I don't know about?”

She chuckled. “Lots.” She folded the wrapper over the end of the candy and stowed it under the seat. “Remember when the Badenochs' old shed burned down?”

“Not really.”

“Pierce and I did that.”

“What!”

“We got drunk together and we went out trying to set things on fire. But it didn't work. We didn't have any kerosene or anything, and the matches kept going out. But that shed was like, it went up like a tinderbox.” She wiggled her fingers in the air, indicating flames.

I paused a moment to digest this. “Do you remember when Pierce set his flea circus on fire?”

Her jaw dropped, and she banged the steering wheel with both hands. “That
happened?!
Were you there?”

“So were you,” I said.

“All these years I thought I imagined that whole thing, it was so weird. Do you remember the tall guy with the hoop earrings?”

“Not the earrings.”

She shook her head. “Fuckin'-A,” she said, and from her tone I knew that it was a high school phrase she hadn't used in years.

* * *

AJ's was packed with bespectacled Asians, no doubt foreign students who couldn't afford to go home for the summer. Their food battled for table space with rambling mounds of books and papers. The menu had two panels; on the left was the pancake list. Apple, Banana, Buckwheat, Buckwheat Apple, Buckwheat Banana, Buckwheat Blueberry, Buckwheat Pear, fifty pancakes long. The coffee list, on the other half of the menu, was similar. I ordered a cup of cherry-flavored coffee and buckwheat pear pancakes. Bitty got decaf and buttermilk cakes. The waiter looked familiar. He had a gaunt face and a strange beard: muttonchops reaching for a meticulous black checker of hair on his chin.

“Do you know that guy?” I asked Bitty.

“Nope. He's cute, though.” I watched her eyes follow him across the room.

“So,” I said.

She smiled. “So.”

“How's married life?”

She shrugged. “Dull. I guess.”

“Tell me a little about Mike,” I said. “How'd you meet?”

“How'd we meet,” she repeated, as if it were a peculiar and probing question. “Okay, I guess it was at a picnic. My friend Sheila got married to a guy named Steve, and Steve works with Mike, and they had a picnic and introduced us. We fooled around in the pool.”

“Neat,” I said.

“I suppose. He's an odd one, that Mike.” I couldn't read between the lines of this comment, which sounded like it was said about a mutual acquaintance of ours whom neither of us had seen in some time. Her face went mildly dreamy, and her eyes took to a shaft of sunlight, following dust motes through the air.

“How so?”

She shrugged. “Mysterious. Occasionally explosive. Sexually devious. Not that you want to know that.”

“Not exactly.”

“Do I love him?” she asked the hanging lamp over our table, as if this question had been posed. “I suppose I do. He asked me to marry him. It was a surprise. I said yes.”

Our coffee came. Bitty began to sip hers without preamble. I set to adjusting mine, sprinkling in a carefully measured spoonful of sugar, dripping in the cream. It was real cream, too, not milk. The smell of cherries rose as I stirred. I took a sip. Combined with the lingering flavor of toothpaste, which had not long ago been in my mouth, the coffee tasted exactly like cough syrup. I could not conceal my disappointment.

“Why would you order that?” Bitty said. I looked at her unadulterated decaf with envy.

“I don't know.”

“I've got it,” she said suddenly.

“Why I ordered?”

“Who our waiter is.”

“Who?”

She waggled her finger at me. “Paul Crumb. That guy is Paul Crumb.”

I turned. Indeed, it was Paul Crumb. Paul was the valedictorian of my high school class, and had been roundly hated by almost everyone. He was generally considered a genius, and went to study particle physics at Caltech. Now, a dozen years later, he was pouring flavored coffee at AJ's. We had all hung out with Paul at one time or another; he had a nice car and his older brother bought people beer, something Bobby would not have done for me if I had paid him double. I remembered my betrayal of Paul with agonizing clarity. I was one of a small group who set him up with an imaginary date, then spied on him as he waited on the street for half an hour, by himself. We had all been the victims of similar jokes, and since he was the only guy we knew more gullible than we were, we jumped at the chance. It was curiously unsatisfying. I never spoke to him again.