It Feels So Good When I Stop - By Joe Pernice Page 0,2

to lighten up for once. She slammed some money on the counter and told me to go fuck myself. I told her I’d do just that. She was wearing a white German Air Force tank top and a denim miniskirt with no stockings. As she got up to leave, I could hear the back of her thighs peel off the revolving vinyl seat like a Colorform separating from its glossed cardboard tableau. I finished my bowl of mushroom barley soup, trolling for comradeship in the droopy faces of two old guys speaking Polish.

I mumbled all the way to Port Authority and caught the next bus back to Amherst. I renewed my often-broken vow to remain broken up. When I got home there were eight messages on my machine from Jocelyn. They ran the gamut, from viciously accusatory to weepy and contrite. She even went as far as confessing to having “hooked up” with a coworker named Geoff; he pronounced it “Joff.” She said it was after the Freedy Johnston gig at Fez. Geoff told her he knew she was spoken for, but he could let himself fall in love with her, no problem. Just say the word. I knew she was probably lying, but I couldn’t help imagining the worst. In her final good-bye, she begged me to make the shrinking remainder of my life remarkable because I deserved no less. She asked me not to call her because I had to let her get beyond me.

The fuck I did.

I caught the next bus back to Port Authority and showed up exhausted and crazy at her apartment in Park Slope. She was a beautiful mess. She’d just dyed her hair the bloodiest red she’d worn to date. She looked like a Breathless-era Jean Seberg with a mortal head wound. She asked me what I was doing there. I said I wanted to tell her in person that I knew it wouldn’t make her happy, but if it did, she and Geoff could fuck each other deep into their twilight years. She slapped my face. My glasses came to rest beneath a small red stepladder used for holding potted plants. She broke down. She threw herself into my arms and begged me not to cut her loose. She said she could be good. Just give her a chance. I told her she was good. I am? You’re the greatest. No, you are. I rubbed the back of her neck, twisting the fine under-hairs into forgetful knots. Within two minutes, we were fantastically make-up-fucking each other back into our ever-deepening mess.

I COULD SEE by the discomfort on James’s face that he could see the discomfort on my own face.

“I sure as fuck don’t want to live here anymore,” he said. “But you’re welcome to crash until the place sells.”

I started to feel guilty for thinking he was anything but bighearted.

Seagulls passing overhead blitzed the partially covered boat. James reached up to strangle any one of them floating high above the spindly treetops. “Friggin’ sky rats.” He wiped the bird shit with the sleeve of his Dress Gordon flannel shirt. “So, Pamela tells me you and Jocelyn got hitched Friday, and you’re already splitting up?”

“Pretty messed up, huh?”

He pulled firmly on the nylon cord to test the integrity of his knot. “I don’t know. Marriage and divorce are two of the best things a man can do for himself.”

IT WAS DARK by seven o’clock. Two months earlier East Falmouth had been a madhouse of vacationers who couldn’t afford to buy or rent farther out on the island. Now the town was nearly deserted.

Before heading back to his furnished separation pad in Orleans, James slipped out and bought me a case of Miller High Lifes, a pack of Marlboro reds, and an orange lighter.

“You can’t smoke ’em if you can’t friggin’ light ’em, right?”

“Thanks, man, but I don’t think I have enough cash to cover all this.”

“Eh, don’t sweat it. It’s not like I gave you one of my livers.” He swung the case of beer to me like we were members of the bucket brigade. “Welcome aboard.”

I SAT ON the screen porch in the crisp autumn night and watched a few random lights reflected on Opal Cove just beyond a row of ranch houses and summer cottages opposite my sister’s.

When I’d bolted from our honeymoon suite at the Gramercy Park Hotel, I left a note on the floor where Jocelyn would see it. It said, “I’m sorry.”

I drained a beer and swallowed back