A couple guys were moving into the apartment below ours. One was named Bri, the other Kev. They hadn’t seen each other all summer. I could tell they were students, and this was their first off-campus place, because moving apartments is like putting your fucking life on trial. Bri and Kev sounded too happy.
“Kev, check out this sweet lamp I scored.” Bri couldn’t wait. He dug into a box right there in the driveway.
“Awesome,” Kev said. “ ‘My goodness, my Guinness.’ ”
The telephone finally rang.
“Hello.”
“How’s your hemorrhoid?” Richie asked.
“Fucking swell.”
“That’s great news, but it’s not why I called.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“What’s the rush?”
“I’m expecting a call.”
Richie made the sound of a whip cracking.
“Nice,” I said. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I was just calling to tell you, asshole, that the Grifters and Shelby Foote are on
Letterman
tonight.”
“No shit?”
“Yes shit. But the wop says he’s going to seat people until the bitter fucking end. There’s no way I’ll be able to get to the Wacky Paki Packie before eleven.” (The liquor store around the corner from our place was called Ravi’s Package Store. Ravi himself once inquired of Jocelyn while she was buying smokes if she’d “care to accompany” him to see
Pulp Fiction
.)
“So you want me to go?”
“I know, it’s a ten-fucking-foot death march from our door, and you’ll only have two hours for your phone call instead of the usual, but can you help a buddy out?”
“Sorry, shit smear, I can’t promise anything.” (Translation: Consider it done.)
“Don’t be a dick hole.” (Translation: Thanks.)
The song “Unbelievable” by EMF rose through the porch floor. A body ascending the stairs divided the mothy yellow porch light. It was Kev. He saw that I was on the phone and stopped before completing the flight. I got rid of Richie. Kev was chubby, with a red crew cut and a freckled baby face. He was wearing flip-flops, green droopy basketball shorts, and a white UMASS CO-ED NAKED HOOPS shirt. He was probably about nineteen. Just looking at him made me feel ancient. We introduced ourselves. He seemed too pleased to meet me.
“We’re moving in downstairs.”
I had no desire to learn any more about him. “Oh, very cool.”
“Seems like an awesome old house.” He patted the clapboards like they were the hindquarters of a trusty steed.
“It’s not bad.”
Kev cut to the chase. “I don’t mean to be a mooch neighbor, but you think you could give us a hand for like—no kidding—two seconds?”
Fuck me, I thought. Another fucking favor. I should have hidden inside with the lights out, like I do on Halloween.
“We got this L-shaped sofa, and it would be awesome if we can get it in without taking it apart in the dark.”
“I’d help you out, man, but I’m expecting a call I can’t miss.”
“Two seconds, I swear. Then it’s nothing but social calls for the rest of the lease.” I said nothing. “Two seconds. Seriously. It would really save us a lot of time.”
“Okay,” I groaned. A comet tail of orange embers trailed my cigarette as it sailed over the porch railing.
“Thanks, bro. Seriously.” He slapped me on the arm.
“Let’s just do it.”
Bri was waiting for us in the back of a U-Haul trailer. He shined a flashlight in my face. “Howdy, neighbor,” he said.
Kev added a
y
to my name when he introduced us. I let it go. “He’s expecting a call, so let’s get this bad boy inside.” He suggested Bri push from the inside, he pull the heavy end, and I support the middle as it came off the trailer.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, like J Mascis from his tune “Green Mind.” It went over their heads.
“And lift with your legs, bro.”
We were just getting into position when the phone rang. I was already three steps in the other direction when Kev or Brian said, “I think that’s your call.”
ON FRIDAY MORNING I took the ten-mile bus trip from Amherst to Northampton. I’d seen a fountain pen I wanted to buy for Jocelyn in an antique store on Market Street. The store smelled like the inside of a canvas bag my dead grandmother stored her retired shoes and hats in. The pen was a 1930s stainless-steel job. I figured if Jocelyn was going to work in the ink industry she ought to have a decent pen. The guy wanted fifty bucks for it. I entered the shop prepared. I’d strategically planted a hodgepodge of bills equaling forty-one dollars in my front pocket. It didn’t make a fuck of a bit of difference how much money I had.
“Oooh, I’m sorry, but that pen sold.” The guy looked like Richard Burton’s homelier older brother.
“You’re joking.”
“Oh, no. A Parker like that doesn’t stay put long in my shop.”
“Damn. It was going to be a gift.”
“What a shame. That would have been a lovely gift.” At first I thought he was trying to break my stones, but he wasn’t. He simply couldn’t contain his feelings when it came to things of quality. “You know, that was not the only lovely pen I have.” He laid out four others on the glass counter. Two of them were horrible. They looked like they were made out of what’s swept up after someone shatters a Fabergé egg.
I pointed at the other two. “The simpler ones are more her style.”
“Of course they are.” He moved the gaudy offenders out of the spotlight. He started to give me the rundown.
I interrupted him. “How much?”
“Okay, then, the black Waterman is seventy-five, and the turquoise Parker is one hundred twenty-five.”
“That’s a little more than I wanted to spend.”
“I see.”
“How much are the other ones?”
“Those would be a good deal more, wouldn’t they.” He didn’t even try to up-sell me. I picked up the Waterman and looked it over.
“This one is seventy-five?”
He nodded.
I removed the cap and touched the tip. “What do I have to do to put you behind the wheel of this pen?” I said like a southern used-car salesman.
“Nothing. A pen like this sells itself. It really does.”
“Seventy-five bucks, huh?”
“Plus tax.”
“Is there any wiggle room there?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Would you take less than seventy-five?”
“I’m sorry. It’s a consignment piece. I’m not authorized to go any lower.” He took off his reading glasses and let them hang from their chain. “I could contact the owner and ask if that’s his absolute lowest price.”
“That would be fantastic.”
“If he wasn’t in Europe on a buying trip. Can you wait until next week?”
“I can’t. It’s for my girlfriend. She’s only here for the weekend.”
“I see. I see.”
“Seventy-five dollars, huh?”
“Mmm.”
I stroked the glossy black Waterman. “It is a beautiful pen.”
“If I may?”He took the pen from me. “The giver of such a wonderful gift as this is never far from the heart of the receiver. I like to believe that words written with this lovely piece once bound two people together, just as they will again. That’s what beautiful things do.”
Give me a fucking break. “Do you take Visa?”
He smiled.
I took the bus back to Amherst and looked at the pen a few times along the way. Jocelyn was going to freak—in a good way—when I gave it to her. It was the most expensive gift I’d given to a girlfriend. I got off in Amherst Center and walked to Stop & Shop. I bought her a quart of fruit salad, some soymilk, and a few Golden Delicious apples that I lovingly shined to a glossy French finish. The day had already cost me close to a hundred dollars I didn’t have, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait to see her.
I went home, cranked the Pogues’
Rum, Sodomy & the Lash,
and proceeded to scour the bathroom from top to bottom. The record started skipping during the final chorus of “A Pair of Brown Eyes.” I didn’t feel like walking to the kitchen, so I stomped on the floor a bunch of times until the stylus hopped over the album’s problem spot. I kneeled back down in front of the toilet, and resumed scrubbing. So help me God, there was a small, thin-stalked toadstool growing behind the porcelain base. It looked like the umbrella in a moldy mai tai. I picked it and saved it in a mug. Richie was crashing somewhere else for the weekend so that Jocelyn and I could be alone. I didn’t even ask him. I put the mug on his dresser with a note that said, “Two guesses where this came from?”
JOCELYN STEPPED OFF the bus like Princess Grace. She always looked good, but since she had moved to New York she’d hit a new stride. She was wearing a matching khaki skirt and blazer and a pair of chocolate brown suede gloves. Her hair had a postflight Amelia Ear-hart thing going on. Her eyes were the same shade as David Bowie’s green one. They looked happy and tired. I couldn’t believe that within minutes she’d be telling me I was the thing her life had always been missing. We kissed on the sidewalk. I stepped back and looked at her.
“Jesus, you look amazing.”
“So do you.”
“No, you really look mint.”
“Thanks.” She threw out a hip, supermodel style. “That’s what working for the big boys will do to you.”
I rubbed her shoulders. “Then I’m all for it.”
She stopped smiling. “Please, don’t hate me for what I’m about to tell you.”
My heart sunk. “What?”
“If I could have helped it, I would have.”
“What?”
“I have to do a few hours of work while I’m here.” She bit her lip. She looked like she was bracing herself for punishment.
“Jesus H. Christ, don’t do that to me. I thought it was something bad.”
She smiled. She liked that I was generous when it came to exploiting the entertainment value in my neuroses. “Something really bad? Like what, I want to break up with you?”
“No, that would be plain-old bad. I thought you meant really bad.” I collapsed onto a bench, taking her with me. She put her head on my shoulder. “Something really bad like, ‘Oh, by the way I have stage-six chlamydia.’ ”
“Eww.”
“I know. That would be really bad.”
“I haven’t been with anyone else since I last got tested, so I must have contracted it from you.”
“Well, I haven’t been with anyone else, either.” We continued with the tease, buzzing from the roundabout admissions that our monogamous relationship had so far survived the separation. “So who gave you chlamydia?”
“Miraculous Contraction?”
“I think not,” I said. “Why would God pick a half-Jew instead of a thoroughbred?”
“Good point.”
“Dirty toilet?”
“Highly unlikely,” she said. “I only go at home. And you know how anal I am about cleaning.”
“Anal?” I asked like she was offering. She elbowed me in the ribs. I thought some more. “You get hit with full-blown chlamydia, and I’m clean as a whistle? It just doesn’t add up.”
“How do you know you don’t have it? You could be an asymptomatic carrier.” She could joust with the best of me.
I took her face in my hands. “You”—I kissed her—“are”—I kissed her again—“a fucking genius.”
She turned and spoke to a nonexistent third party. “Finally, somebody notices.”
We picked up some Chinese food, went to my apartment, and fucked. I told her Richie was gone for the weekend. She put her clothes back on afterward, anyway. We then went into the living room and watched Richie’s copy of
Lawrence of Arabia
. I was a little nervous because who knew what he’d taped over. I had asked him in advance.
“Dude,” he said, “it was a brand-new tape when I taped it.” He wouldn’t fuck with me—not like that. But he might forget. I didn’t want Jocelyn and me to be sitting there watching Omar Sharif galloping off to Aqaba and all of a sudden the scene cuts to three enormous Sing Sing prison guards power-banging a tiny, restrained Asian woman begging for more, only harder.
Jocelyn ate her fruit salad for dessert. I ate an entire pint of double chocolate ice cream.
“Great movie,” I said, and killed the power on the VCR just as the end credits started rolling. Jocelyn agreed but didn’t feel like discussing it any further. She kissed me and told me to wait there on the couch. She disappeared into my bedroom. I could hear her unzipping her suitcase. “What’s going on in there?”
“It’s a surprise,” she said.
“I have one for you, too.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s sweet.”
“I hope you like it,” I said.
“I hope you do, too.” I squeegeed the inside of the ice cream container with my finger. “Okay,” she called. “You can come in now.”
She was standing in the middle of my cesspool room, wearing a cream-colored, spaghetti-strap nightie. She looked like a silk purse sticking out of a sow’s ass.
“Well?” she asked.
“Holy shit.”
“Is that good?”
“Yes.”
“Want to feel it? It’s nice on the skin.” She pulled the string hanging from the ceiling light. The room went navy blue. I slid my hands all over her. She was instantly into it. She pulled me down to the mattress.
“Wait,” I said, “I want to give you your present.”
“Uh-uh. Yours isn’t through yet.”
I knew that, unless a lightning bolt or his-and-her fatal heart attacks befell us, I’d be coming in, on, or near her within minutes. That’s the best kind of knowledge there is.
THE NEXT MORNING I woke to Jocelyn kissing my face. I rolled away because my breath stunk.
“Get back here,” she said.
“Let me go brush my teeth first. My mouth’s gross.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“I kind of like it,” she said.
“That’s sick.” I streaked to the bathroom. When I got back, Jocelyn was sitting up in bed, admiring her pen.
“That was so nice of you. I love it.”