It Feels So Good When I Stop (25 page)

“ THAT’S A horrible expression,” Jocelyn said. “I find it upsetting.” She had her hands cupped around a full rocks glass. She was waiting for the ice in her Wild Turkey to melt to just the right size before drinking. It was after eight o’clock, but the front room at Nursing Holmes was orange with natural light. Some guys in a band were hauling their gear through the bar and into the bigger room.

“Can you just let the expression slide for the sake of the story? ” Richie asked.

“It’s not just the expression,” Jocelyn said. “It’s the whole story.”

The other person at the table with us was a pretty Mexican kitchen worker named Milagro. The other Mex icans at Esposito’s called her Flaca because they thought she was skinny. Flaca’s English was broken. She backed Richie up. “What’s wrong with saying ‘piece of ass’? ”

“You know what? ” Jocelyn said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a fine expression. Succinct, and not wholly without texture. Use it liberally.” She didn’t feel like teaching Flaca both the English language and Feminism 101. She gave me a dirty look, which I shrugged off. Someone at a pool table in the next room executed an explosive break. Jocelyn flinched.

Richie continued where he left off. “For me it’s a toss-up. I’ve had a few amazing ‘wedding pieces.’ ”

I had drunk two beers and a shot. I was feeling all of them. “Hang on,” I said. “For it to qualify as a wedding piece, do you have to fuck during the actual reception, or is it just someone you hook up with at a wedding and end up fucking? ” I was a stickler for details.

Jocelyn blew smoke in all our faces.

“Either one,” Richie said. “But let me go on record: It’s way better if you screw during the festivities. It heightens it.”

Flaca laughed, then said something in Spanish.

Richie continued. “I screwed a bridesmaid at my cousin Eleni’s wedding. We were in a supply closet in the basement of the reception hall. I swear to God, Eleni and my uncle Nick were doing their father-daughter dance to ‘All the Way’ right above our heads. It was pretty priceless.”

“Sounds classy,” Jocelyn said.

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea.”

“Oh, in that case, sounds classy.”

“What was her name? ” I asked.

“Honestly? I could not tell you.”

Jocelyn stood up. She frisbeed a Sam Adams beer coaster at the tabletop, and it skipped onto the battered red wool carpet. “In case you’re all wondering,” she said, “I’m going to the bathroom now to take a dump.”

“Thanks for sharing,” Richie said. We watched Jocelyn vanish, then Richie drew Flaca and me closer toward him. He smelled of Murray’s pomade and Salems. He lowered his voice. “You ever get a wake piece? ”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“What’s a wake piece? ” Flaca asked.

“You’re telling me you got laid at a fucking wake? ”

“Not at the wake. Right after. And it was someone I sort of knew back in high school.”

“That’s insane.”

“Amy Dellorto,” he reminisced. “You have to love a girl with the same last name as a carburetor.”

“When the fuck was this? ”

“I don’t know. Couple years ago.”

“Who died? Don’t tell me it was her mother.”

“No, our American history teacher, Mr. Savage. The only good teacher anyone in East Longmeadow ever had.” Richie raised his glass, and we toasted this Mr. Savage.

“How in the fuck do you engineer something like that? What did you do, whisper in her ear while you were kneeling at the corpse? ”

“A bunch of us met up for drinks afterward. She and I were catching up, and she says out of nowhere that she always liked me back then, but was too shy. We start making out in the bar. One thing led to another, blah, blah, blah, and you know that Budgetel on Route Five in Holyoke? ”

“Wow.”

“First floor. Third window from the right. I still look at it whenever I drive by.”

“That’s hilarious.”

“The best part is, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my Filene’s Basement el cheapo suit pants pulled down to my ankles, and she’s kneeling there, glazing my vase—”

“You just make that up, ‘glazing my vase’? ”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Anyway, so she’s glazing my vase, and the TV’s on, and the
Happy Days
theme song starts playing. Not ‘Rock Around the Clock,’ the other one. I can’t stop reading the names going by: Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Donny Most, Anson Williams, blah, blah, blah. It was distracting, so I look down at my feet, and I’m wearing one brown sock and one blue sock.”

“That is rich.”

“A good time was had by all.” He turned to Flaca.
“Tu comprendo? ”

Flaca nodded. Jocelyn was lingering at the jukebox. The Dream Syndicate’s “Tell Me When It’s Over” started playing. Richie leaned closer to Flacca and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.

MARIE THOUGHT THE raw source material we’d taped so far seemed really good. And what wasn’t could probably be fixed in editing. She said that’s where the magic happened anyway. She mentioned something about the film
Burden of Dreams
. I was proud of myself for telling her I’d never seen it.

“You have to. It’s a classic.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll sniff it out when I have time.”

“No you won’t. I can tell.” She popped the lens cap back onto the camera. “We’re watching it now.” She went to her room.

“What about work? ” I called after her.

“This is work.”

I followed her. “Okay, but you don’t have to pay me for sitting around watching movies. I feel like I should be paying you.”

She was getting the VCR ready. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

I sat in the armchair. Marie raced back to her bed and was lying down before the film’s opening sequence. She patted the place next to her.

“You’ll be able to see better from right here,” she said.

“Okay.” I was nervous. It didn’t seem like she was coming on to me, but I could have counted on half a hand the number of times a girl inviting me to sit on her bed wasn’t a come-on. I lay down next to her. I made sure there was a good foot of space between us.

“Are you okay with this? ” she asked.

“Fine, why? ”

“Just making sure.”

Marie said
Burden of Dreams
was one of her favorite films. She’d seen it at least fifty times. She wasn’t kidding. She deconstructed and reassembled it as it went by. Usually that kind of running commentary would have driven me fucking crazy. But hers was insightful without making me feel like a fucking dope.

She grabbed my arm. “This part coming up is horrible.”

“What happens? ”

“Just watch.” Ten seconds later some native day labor ers hired to work on the film set were feared to have been crushed beneath an enormous portaged boat.

I groaned. “Do they die? ”

“Watch.”

I heard Marie start to sniffle as the scene played out on the screen. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “Are you okay? ”

“I will be. It’s still really hard for me to watch anything where people die.”

“We don’t have to watch it.” I started to get up to turn off the VCR.

She stopped me. “No. I want to watch it.”

“Why, if it makes you feel like shit? ”

“Because a lot of things make me feel that way.” She hit Pause on the remote. We faced each other. “If I want to keep living, I can’t avoid feeling the pain.”

“Jesus, that’s pretty heavy.”

“Well, what do you want me to say? ”

“No. It’s just—honest to God—the only time I’ve ever heard someone say something like that and mean it was in the movies.” Like Debra Winger in
Terms of Endearment
or the guy in
Brian’s Song
.

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I’ve never been through anything as heavy as you have.”

“No one close to you has ever died? ”

“No.”

“Well, they will.”

“Unless I die first.”

“That’s your plan for dealing with grief? ”

“No, but sometimes I think about certain people dying—like my parents or my sister—I can’t imagine it. I’d definitely rather die first.”

“You don’t strike me as a selfish person, but that’s pretty selfish.”

“I know.”

“You wouldn’t want to die first. Trust me. You wouldn’t want to put your mother through that. If the grief didn’t kill her, the guilt might.”

“Guilt? I’m not saying I’d want her to feel responsible for me dying.”

“It’s the guilt she’d feel for wanting to go on living after you.”

“I never thought of that.”

“I mean, I’m not distraught every fraction of every second of every minute, right? ”

“And that makes you feel guilty? ”

“Yes.” She shifted on her elbow. “I’m not an idiot. I know that’s why I drink as much as I do.”

“Guilt? ”

She nodded.

“That fucking sucks.”

“Things aren’t the way I planned, but what can you do, right? ”

“How do you do it? ”

“I just do.”

“Man.”

“You know that Eleanor Roosevelt quote?” Marie asked.

“No.”

“The end of it is, ‘You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’ I say it to myself a lot.” She repeated the quote.

“I mean—and I swear, I’m not trying to be an asshole—what’s the payoff? ”

“I don’t think you’re an asshole. Payoff for what, doing the things I think I can’t? ”

“Mmm.”

“I get to live with some hope.”

“That what, you’ll be happy again? ”

“No. I don’t think that’s an option. More like there’ll be some kind of tolerable balance between the glimpses of happy moments and the rest of them.”

“Right.” I nodded. “And you’ll get back to zero.”

She nodded and smiled weakly. “That’s the idea.”

“It’s kind of like that joke,” I said. “The one with the guy who keeps whacking himself over the head with a hammer.”

“And? ”

“And his friend asks him why he’s doing that, and he says, ‘Because it feels so good when I stop.’ ”

She liked the joke. “It’s sort of like that. I’m not the only one doing the hitting, but I’d take the relief just the same.”

“Sometimes I think I’m the guy in the joke.”

“Which? The inquisitive friend? ”

“I wish.”

“You ask me some pretty okay questions.”

“Thanks, but I wasn’t trying to.”

She liked that. “You weren’t trying to. That’s really good. Thanks.”

“Thanks for what, saying something funny? ”

“Yes.”

 

I WALKED HOME with another bag of Sidney’s clothes. If Marie was thanking me for inadvertently saying something funny and cheering her up, I wondered how she’d react if I actually tried to do something nice for her. I got an idea. When I got home, I went through the bag of clothes and laid out Roy’s outfit for the next day: a pair of cherry-red jeans and a mostly green hand-knit Icelandic sweater.

I hoped Marie liked it.

I got into bed. I started to jerk off, imagining what the rest of the night with Marie could have been like if
Burden of Dreams
hadn’t brought her down so hard. I couldn’t pull it off. It felt wrong. It had nothing to do with Jocelyn or exhaustion. I just couldn’t get beyond the real image of Marie bummed out when those people in the movie got crushed by the boat.

 

I WAS WAITING on the front porch for them when James drove up with Roy.

“You’re up early,” James said.

“I have a big day ahead of me.”

“You and me both.” He thought about it. “What the fuck do you have to do? ”

“Just the usual. Hang out with my best-buddy pal, Roy.” He ran right at me.

“Jesus Christ,” James said. “Did you shave? ”

“Kind of. The razor was like a butter knife.”

“Interesting.” James was looking down his nose at my work.

I self-consciously stroked my cheeks. “You like it? ”

“Yes,” he said. “Very much. Now come on over here and suck my dick.” He threw a playful backhand that I avoided.

“As much as I’d like to, I really can’t.” I tossed Roy up into the air and caught him. He started coughing.

“Hey, go easy on him. He’s still not a hundred percent.”

“You still feeling crummy, kid? ” I held him with one arm, like he was a full grocery bag. “You’re looking pretty pink.”

James watched us. “I guess it would be okay if you dropped me off and took the rig for the day.”

“Nah, I figured we’d just poke around the neighborhood and entertain ourselves with the local flora and fauna.”

“Flora and fauna? What the fuck’s got into you? ”

“How do you mean? ”

“You’re up early. You shaved. I swear to God, if your hair was combed, I’d shit blood right here on the lawn.”

“Nothing has got into me. This is me feeling reasonably okay.”