How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,20

to it. “No, you didn't,” she says. “But let's at least all be honest about our motivations here, for a change.”

None of us says much of anything as we wait in the ER. I give them my credit card because Derek doesn't have any insurance and it seems we're pretty much responsible for his being here. I'm wondering if the guy who got shot at Tini's came through here. Across from us is a rail-thin country boy in a bloody NASCAR T-shirt, clutching a bloody towel to his neck, sitting beside his fat mother, who's wearing a voluminous pastel sweatsuit. “I done told you,” she says several times over the next ten minutes.

Finally, after they take Derek in to be stitched up, I turn to Susan. “You don't really believe what you said back there,” I say. “That our … little adventures … that I'm, what? Punishing you?”

“For Christ's sake, Dean. Wake up.”

Forty minutes later, I'm dropping Derek off at a bar on Sixth Street.

“Why'n cha come on with me?” he says to Susan.

To my amazement, she seems to be considering the offer. “I should.”

“Give old numbnuts here somethin' to think about.”

“I appreciate the offer.”

“You know where to find me,” he says, climbing out of the back and slamming the door.

I can't imagine what to say now. Neither, apparently, can Susan. We drive past the bright neon signs of one franchise after another in silence. It's a little past one. A gibbous harvest moon hangs over the interstate, leaking an orange glow into the surrounding sky. It's a beautiful sight, even now.

I look across at Susan. A shiny tear moves down her cheek. “What?” I say.

“I was just thinking of the first time.”

I almost ask the first time for what, but I don't. That would be hostile. Instead, I pull over in front of the Outback Steakhouse.

“You remember?”

“Of course I do.”

“We drove up to your uncle's place on the lake. In that terrible car of yours.”

I remember all right. It was a Friday night, the week before graduation. We drove up to Center Lake in my old Subaru, which had a hole in the muffler and smelled inside of gas. The mattress in the bunk bed at the shack smelled like mildew, but my new sleeping bag had a fresh, synthetic smell that was eventually canceled out by the heady, deeply organic funk of our mingled secretions—the first time I'd encountered the smell of sex. I remember the furious creaking of the rusty old bed and the lapping of waves on the shore outside and, eventually, afterward, Susan's muffled sniffles. I didn't know what to think except that somehow I'd failed. “What's the matter?” I'd finally asked. “I'm fine,” she'd said, wrapping herself around me in the sleeping bag, her cheek wet against my shoulder.

“You thought I was unhappy,” she says now, as if she's reading my mind.

“What was I supposed to think?”

“I was crying because it was perfect, and because it would never be the first time again.”

I shake my head and shrug.

“I was crying because I didn't want to ever lose you, but I knew that if we stayed together, sooner or later we would hurt each other.”

“You didn't lose me,” I say hopefully, reaching over and taking her hand.

“Yeah,” she says, wiping the tear from her face. “Actually, I think I did.”

“We can go back.”

Susan shakes her head and stares straight ahead out the windshield.

I look out, too, trying to remember what made it a harvest moon, and wondering if it was waxing or waning. Of course I remember when I found out about Cleve Thompson. I thought I'd lose my mind. I thought my heart would burst with rage and grief. I couldn't sleep for days. I imagined the two of them in every possible position, in every nuance of lust and carnality. I raged, wept, broke her entire collection of Staffordshire figurines, demanded an explanation. She sent the children to her mother's and I took three days off work. I couldn't eat, and when I did, I vomited. I asked if she still loved me and didn't believe her when she said she did. How could she fuck him if she loved me? I couldn't reconcile the two facts. I thought I would die of heartbreak. I'd always believed I would be her only.

So I made her tell me everything. I was tortured by visions of her treachery, by my own roiling, filthy imagination. The reality could hardly be worse, I figured. I demanded more