need some space to figure shit out? ”
“I did,” I said, exasperated.
“And? ”
I pointed to the phone. “She’s not fucking giving me space, obviously.”
“Well, fuck it. If she won’t give it to you, take it.” He traced the phone cord back to the wall and disconnected it from the jack. “Until further notice, this phone only makes outgoing calls.” To him it was that simple.
“I can’t do that to her.”
“Why? You’re already screening your calls, so what the fuck’s the difference? ” He was right. Just what I needed: more contradiction, guilt, and confusion. Richie wagged the end of the cord. “It’s no skin off my ass. I hate the telephone anyway.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Fuck,” I yelled. Kev or Bri in the downstairs apartment turned their stereo down. “I feel like a fucking asshole.”
“Why? ”
“Because she’s a good person. She’s a great person. If she wasn’t so intense . . .”
“No one’s saying she isn’t a good person. But you’re a good person, too.”
“I feel like a bleached shit.”
“You shouldn’t. Look, you guys had some amazing times, but the thing’s fatally flawed. Whose fault is that? Nobody’s fault.”
His words bounced right off me. “You know what’s really fucked up? I’m doing the exact shit she predicted I’d do all along.”
“How do you mean? ”
“Correction, not everything she predicted. I never cheated on her. Honest to God, I’d tell you if I did. But as far as me abandoning her—”
Richie cut me off. “Abandon? ” he asked incredulously. “Abandon’s what you do to babies and three-legged dogs.”
IT WAS ALMOST nine at night when I woke up. I was starving. I biked down to the Crow’s Nest. The autumn night air was seasoned with smoke from wood-burning stoves. It reminded me of playing street hockey as a kid with my friends. The bald tennis ball would grow more invisible as the evening wore on. We’d play until our mothers were nearly irate from unsuccessfully calling us to dinner. I loved it.
The restaurant was dead. They ran a dinner special anyway, perhaps out of pride. I stood just inside the doorway and read the board. Baked haddock, rice pilaf, and a cup of corn chowder. Seven ninety-five. As a rule, I steer clear of all meal specials. Once you work in a restaurant, you order differently. At Esposito’s, Lello ran specials when the outermost veal cutlet in the package was freezer-burned just beyond use.
The cook got up from a table when he saw I was staying for dinner. He took his coffee and smoke with him into the kitchen. He let out a series of increasingly productive coughs. My waiter was a little red fire hydrant. His forearms were smudged with illegible tattoos. He called me Captain.
I watched the cook preparing my chicken Parmesan over egg noodles through the food pickup window. I was hoping to catch him picking his nose or his teeth. At least that way I’d be sure.
A large oval dish nested in an insulating cloth napkin slid from the waiter’s hands onto my table like a foal from its mother’s birth canal.
“Makes me think I’ll never feel hungry again,” I said. He was no audience whatsoever. I poked at the food like I was examining a pet’s stool for an ingested coin. I had two beers with my meal, and nursed a healthy Jameson’s on the rocks afterward. I wasn’t eager to go back to the empty house.
“Anything else before we close up, Captain? ” He slid the bill under my drink coaster and waited for me to pay up.
“Would it be okay if I just sat here for a little bit? ” I showed him the remainder of my cocktail.
“For a little bit, sure.”
He went back by the register. I lit a smoke. Todd Rundgren came over the stereo, singing, “Hello It’s Me.” It fucking figured. I used to like Todd Rundgren a lot until he got contaminated. I started going out with Jennifer, my first serious girlfriend, in the fall of our senior year of high school. After we made out for the first time, she iced me down by saying she was years away from having sex. I told her I was willing to wait. Months later, on the fourteenth fairway of the Presidents Golf Course in Quincy, I managed to finger her through a tear in her jeans that was all the way down at her knee. I tried—with little success—to get into her pants via the conventional routes. And then