called: “Do not fucking stand there and tell me you didn’t tell me that.”
Jocelyn squeezed my arm. “My God,” she whispered, “look at the receiver.” The cord leading to it was frayed and completely severed from the rest of the telephone.
“Do not humiliate me here,” Leia said to her imaginary friend.
“Humiliate her somewhere else,” I whispered.
Jocelyn nibbled my ear and told me I was a terrible person.
We walked toward my house along Pleasant Street. It was late June. Trustafarians with names like Zephyr, Flake, and Winnebago were reenacting scenes from Billy Jack, Burning Man, and Bread and Puppet on Amherst Common. They had established a tiny Hoover ville of high-end pop tents, a small circular trampoline, and some anti-whatever signs. Someone was blowing a spastic tune on a flute. Two dudes were squeezing those long African drums Paul Simon had a total hard-on for around the time of the Graceland album. Birds from deep within the majestic, centuries-old elm trees were screaming like their throats were being cut.
“Fucking hippies,” Jocelyn said, tapping into her mean streak. “Free Leonard Peltier, my fucking ass. These are the same assholes with No Blood for Oil bumper stickers.”
“So?” I didn’t particularly like hippies, but I didn’t particularly hate them, either. Mostly they were invisible to me.
“So? So doesn’t the bumper of a fucking Volvo seem like an odd place for that sentiment?”
“It’s not like they’re actually hurting anybody.”
“What do you mean? That’s exactly what they’re doing. It makes me sick.” She was getting heated up. I knew how little it would take for her to turn that heat directly on me.
“Hey,” I said. “Guess who bought new sheets?”
“WHAT KIND OF film are we talking about?” I asked Marie.
“A documentary.”
“Oh.”
She laughed. “You seem disappointed. What did you think I meant, porn?”
“No.”
Marie was loosening up. How loose remained to be seen. The waiter took his time placing two fresh drinks near the hub of the table. He was eavesdropping. I waited until he was gone before I spoke.
“I don’t know if I have the head for any kind of work right now,” I said. “I’m in the middle of some heavy personal stuff.”
“Who isn’t? ”
“I don’t know. Lots of people?”
“I’ve never met any of them.” Marie got to work on the new drink. “I’m not going to try too hard to convince you of what you’re up for. You know better than anyone.”
“What’s the movie about? Cape Cod surf culture and tattoos? Shit like that?”
Marie’s eyes were the color of a drunk-friendly Jack and Coke. Two lovely crow’s-feet appeared at their corners when she smiled. “It’s about my son. He drowned four years ago.”
JOCELYN WAS IN the bathroom, caulking the edges around her diaphragm with spermicidal jelly. We had an understanding that her inserting it in front of me would have had the opposite effect of a good Degas painting of a peasant woman washing herself. Nothing like a lot of real-life bending, reaching, and determined lower-lip biting to empty the sails of all wind.
“What a pain in the fucking balls,” she said, climbing into bed. “I should go back on the pill.”
“Why don’t you? Seems like it would be a lot easier.”
She got annoyed with me, like going back on the pill was my callous and uninformed idea. “Because the pill fucks up your body. That’s why. They don’t even know what it does to you long-term. I might never be able to get pregnant.”
“So?”
She gave me a dirty look.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s keep doing what we’re doing.”
Jocelyn rolled onto her back in a huff and slapped the comforter with both hands. “Because I don’t want to get pregnant now.”
I went cold. “Did something go wrong in there?”
“No. Not any more than usual. It’s not like I can stick my head up my twat to check the fit.”
“I can go back to wearing a rubber, too, if that makes you feel any better.”
She pooh-poohed that idea like I was, for the umpteenth time, overlooking the obvious. “I can’t feel anything with a condom. I have to be able to feel you. You, not an inner tube—or it doesn’t work for me.”
I could have put on three rubbers after a dip in hot paraffin and still would have been able to bust a quality nut. I moved into the fetal position and faced her side. “I know,” I said. “It’s a drag for me, too, if I can’t feel you.”
“GOD, THAT’S really horrible,” I said.
“The worst,” Marie said.
“How old was he?”
“Almost three.”
“What was his name?” I