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