by Jason Starr
“When did you get home?” I said, sitting up. “I didn’t even hear you come in.”
“A few minutes ago. Go ahead, sleep. I want to get out of these clothes anyway.”
“What time is it?” I said.
“Six, six-thirty. Did you go to the emergency room today?”
“The emergency room?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t go!”
“I went,” I said. “Of course I went.”
“Where are your stitches?”
“They said stitches weren’t necessary.”
“Not necessary! You look terrible. That cut’s going to leave an ugly scar if you don’t do something. If it’s not too late already.”
“I’m telling you what the doctor said. I went to the emergency room – New York Hospital. A doctor saw me and he said I didn’t need stitches. I was surprised too, but that’s what he said. He said the wound’s a lot less serious than it looks.”
“I don’t believe it,” Julie said. “Are you sure this man knew what he was talking about?”
“He was a doctor. He was wearing a white jacket and he had a stethoscope around his neck. I guess he knew what he was saying.”
“I don’t know,” Julie said skeptically.
I walked by Julie and went into the bathroom. After I splashed water on my face, I looked at myself in the mirror. The wound still looked pretty nasty. A purple scab had formed over it, but there were still areas in the middle and around the edges where it was bright red.
When I came out of the bathroom Julie was waiting near the stove.
“I don’t care what you say,” she said, “I’m going to make an appointment tomorrow for you to go see Dr. Goldman, the plastic surgeon who gave me my nosejob.”
“A plastic surgeon? What the hell for?”
“With a wound on the face like that, you want to make sure they put the stitches in right. I still can’t believe they sent you home like that.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, walking into the living room. “It probably just needs a few days to heal.”
“In a few days you’ll have a permanent scar. Please go see the plastic surgeon, just to see what he says. The worst thing that can happen is he’ll say nothing’s wrong with you.”
“Yeah, and I’ll have a five hundred-dollar bill to pay.”
“Won’t your insurance pay for it?”
“I don’t have any insurance. Remember? I let it run out a few months ago because I couldn’t afford the payments anymore.”
“Then how did you pay for the emergency room?”
“I paid cash – a hundred and fifty bucks. If I have to shell out any more money, there’s no way I’ll be able to pay rent next month.”
“I’ll pay for the doctor.”
“No way. I told you, I’m not going to take any money from you.”
“Well, you have to go to the doctor. What if I lend you the money? You can pay me back whenever you want, I don’t care. Just go, Bill. You have to go.”
I didn’t answer her until about a minute later, after I’d put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
“All right,” I finally said. “But it’s just a loan. I’m going to pay you back in full as soon as I have the money.”
She came over and kissed me. Then she started hugging me tighter.
“I’m a little hungry,” I said, trying to put her off. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
“I missed you today.”
“I missed you too.”
“I was feeling bad about the way I acted last night. I know you didn’t mean to push me and I shouldn’t’ve locked you out of the bedroom like that.”
“It was my fault,” I said. “I was a real asshole.”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe I forgot to ask you,” Julie said, “did you get your job back today?”
“Yeah,” I said, walking into the bedroom, “but I really had to humiliate myself to do it. I sent out a new batch of applications today and something better come through.”
“Don’t worry, it will,” Julie said. “I read your horoscope today at work. It’s supposed to be a good week for Scorpios.”
“Horoscopes are bullshit.”
“It doesn’t matter if you believe in it or not. You’re still going to get a job.”
She came up behind me and put her arms gently around my waist. She kissed the back of my neck, then turned my head slowly and started kissing my cheek. I felt her warm tongue making circles as it moved closer toward my lips. Her breasts bulged against my chest as, with a free hand, she squeezed my buttocks. When she started to slide her other hand below my belt, I said:
“Hey, I have an idea. When was the last time we went out drinking together? Come on, let’s go to a bar or a club.”
“Tonight?”
“Why not? Maybe we can grab some dinner first, try out that Italian place on Second Avenue.”
“We can’t tonight,” Julie said. “Don’t you remember? We’re meeting David and Sharon for dinner.”
I’d completely forgotten about the plans until that moment. I didn’t like Julie’s friends from college, but I especially disliked David and Sharon. The idea of having dinner with them was about as appealing as spending a night in prison.
“Oh come on, just call up and make some excuse,” I said. “Tell them I’m sick or I died or something.”
“I can’t, Bill. Me and Sharon have been planning this for weeks. Besides, she can’t get in touch with David. He’s working in New Jersey today and he’s coming right to the restaurant to meet us.”
I complained for a while longer, then I finally gave in.
“I don’t understand what’s so painful about this,” Julie said. “You like David and Sharon, don’t you?”
“Of course I like them.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Nothing. Really, nothing. I’d love to go out with them, on any night but tonight. Tonight I was just looking forward to spending some quiet time together alone. Then I thought we’d come back and, you know, get a little romantic together.”
“Oh, Bill, that’s so sweet,” Julie said. “I wish we could get out of it too, but we have no choice. We have to meet them.”
I heard the prison gates clanging shut. Julie took a shower while I finished getting dressed. After she put on her makeup, did her hair and put on a tight T-shirt and jeans, she was as good looking as any woman in New York. I had flashbacks of being in the peep-show booth hours earlier, watching the Puerto Rican woman dance naked. I couldn’t believe I’d enjoyed looking at that pear-shaped drug addict when I was living with such a beautiful lady.
As soon as we went outside, it started to pour. Then the thunder and the lightening and the wind came and we had to run to Second Avenue to hail a cab. We met Sharon and David at Blue Moon, a Mexican restaurant on First Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street. The place was dark and noisy and the food was no better or worse than a hundred other Mexican places in New York. But Sharon and David always said it was their “favorite restaurant in New York,” and it seemed like we wound up eating there every time the four of us got together. It was one of the many trendy Upper East Side restaurants where people loved to sit at the tables on the sidewalk, not because they enjoyed sitting outside where it was hot and a constant stream of homeless people harassed them, but because they wanted to be seen by as many anonymous passersby as possible. Because of the rain, the crowd had moved inside, and we could barely fit through the vestibule.
“I feel like I’m on the subway,” I said.
“Stop complaining,” Julie said. “There they are – at the bar.”
As we weaved through the crowd, I noticed how everyone seemed to be exactly the same – twenty-two years old, Jewish or Italian, born and raised in the suburbs, went to a State University of New York school, wearing conservative, fashionable clothing. The guys and girls were wearing backwards baseball caps, and every woman wore the same shade of chocolate brown lipstick. The lipstick must be in Vogue this mont
h, I thought. I remembered what Lisa had said about how all the guys on the Upper East Side were alike and I realized how true this was – I honestly couldn’t tell any two people apart.
Julie kissed Sharon and David hello. I kissed Sharon lightly on the cheek, then shook hands with David. Even his handshake annoyed me. It was ultra firm, as if he was doing a grip-strengthening exercise, and while he did it he put on a fake smile that reminded me of a campaigning politician. Wearing a backwards Florida Marlins cap, he looked like any of the other guys in the bar, except that he was about nine years older than most of them. He was the type of guy who insisted on living and acting like he had just graduated from college even though he was thirty-one years old.
Sharon had short black hair, parted down the middle. She had an MBA from Columbia and she worked as a Senior Analyst for a Wall Street securities firm. I used to wonder how she wound up marrying a loser like David. Then Julie told me a story about how David and Sharon had broken up after graduating from college, and Sharon had immediately gone into a deep depression. She lost about forty pounds and had to be hospitalized for anorexia. When she got out of the hospital, she started going out with David again and a few months later they got engaged. Obviously, Sharon was a very manipulative woman and she liked David because he was easy for her to control. David liked Sharon because, outside of work, he was unable to make a simple decision on his own, and he liked being controlled by a dominant woman. Julie once told me that Sharon sometimes tied David up during sex, and it wasn’t hard to imagine David strapped to a bed, and Sharon squatting over him in a Brooks Brothers suit, wielding an enormous leather whip.
I don’t remember exactly what David and I started talking about. I think he asked me about my forehead and I told him the story about how I was mugged at Grand Central. He told me that he had stopped taking subways “years ago” and then he told me about his work as a corporate lawyer for Ernst & Young. Besides the fact that I was completely bored by David’s conversation, it was very noisy in the restaurant, what with the crowd and the loud music, and I hardly heard a word he said. But then I thought he asked me something about myself.
“What was that?” I said, cupping my ear. “I can’t hear you.”
“The job hunt,” he said, leaning toward my ear. “How’s the job hunt going?”
“Fine, fine,” I screamed back. “Hanging in there!”
“You’re not still telemarketing, are you?”
“What’s that?” I said, although I’d heard him loud and clear.
“Telemarketing!” he screamed. “Are you still doing that?!”
“For the time being,” I said. “I mean I have to pay the bills somehow, right?”
“I gotta hand it to you. I don’t know if I’d be able to do what you’re doing – working beneath myself. I think I’d commit suicide first.”
“Suicide?”
“What’s that?!”
“I said – suicide?”
“Yes. It must get very depressing to be out of work as long as you have. You must start wondering what your purpose in life is.”
“What’s anybody’s purpose in life? I’m just out of work, that’s all. I’m not dying.”
“But you know what they say, a man’s life is his work. A woman can have kids and still be happy, but all a man has is his work.”
“So you must be the happiest guy in the world,” I said, trying to change the subject. But it didn’t matter because the hostess came over and said our table was ready. We sat at a table in the back of the restaurant – Julie and I on one side, David and Sharon on the other. After the waiter took our drink orders, Sharon said to me:
“So Julie told me how you got mugged. That’s terrible. Did you call the police?”
“The police don’t care about this sort of thing,” I said.
“It’s so terrible. There’re so many animals out there, it’s terrible – just terrible.”
“What can you do?” Julie said. “It’s the whole world these days.”
“It’s not the world, it’s the city. That’s why David and I are looking for a house in Scarsdale.”
“Really?” Julie said. I knew she was jealous. “I didn’t know that.”
“We’ve had it with the city,” David said. “We’re sick of the dirt and the drugs and the homeless. You can’t go anywhere these days without seeing those people somewhere. And now that my salary’s up in the six figures and Sharon’s making over eighty, we don’t see why we have to torture ourselves anymore.”
“You two should move to Scarsdale too,” Sharon said to me and Julie. “That would be so cool if we all lived up there together.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” Julie said uncomfortably.
“Why not?” Sharon said. “I’m telling you, the city’s not all it’s made up to be. And it’s only a half hour commute on Metro North.”
“It’s very expensive to live up there,” David said.
“Oh, I know,” Sharon said. “I didn’t mean now. I meant after Bill gets a job. I just think it would be nice if eventually we all lived up there together. I know they can’t afford it now.”
Sharon started telling a story about a wedding she’d recently gone to and I opened my menu, trying to pay as little attention to the conversation as possible. My beer arrived and I started drinking it. A few times they tried to get me involved in the conversation, but each time I’d either smile tensely or give an obligatory one word reply. I grew increasingly restless. I was thinking about what David had said before and I decided it was true – a man’s life is his work, which meant that I had not had a life for two years. Our meals arrived, but I didn’t eat anything. I just sat there, poking my enchilada with my fork, trying to keep my anger inside, but knowing that it was impossible – too much had been building up inside me for too long.
That’s when I did something that nearly ended my relationship with Julie. David was in the middle of telling a story about a ski trip he’d taken the year before when I interrupted and said:
“The hell with skiing, let’s talk about something more interesting, like bondage. Tell me David, when was the last time Sharon tied you up and whipped you?”
Sharon and Julie’s cheeks turned bright pink. My face was hot too – I couldn’t believe that I had actually said what I was thinking. It was as if I had crossed a forbidden line – the line that separates thoughts and action.
David tried to play it cool, as if he thought I’d been trying to make a joke.
“She hasn’t tied me up in years,” he said sarcastically. “Not since our first date anyway.”
“That’s not what I hear,” I said. “I hear she ties you up a lot, and you ask for it too. I bet it’s the only way you can get it up.”
Sharon glared at Julie, but Julie was glaring at me. Her eyes were so wide and motionless I could see the whites above and below the pupils.
“Hey, what the hell’s wrong with you?” David said. “Why are you trying to start something?”
“I’m just trying to have some pleasant conversation,” I said. “You guys have been talking all night about things you’re interested in, well this is something that interests me. I always wanted to get into the head of a real-life sadomasochist, and I just thought I’d get it from the horse’s mouth. Pardon the expression.”
David grabbed a fistful of my shirt.
“Stop it!” Julie yelled. “Just stop it! We’re in a restaurant for Christ’s sake!”
“You better apologize right now,” David said.
“I can’t take this anymore,” Sharon said. She stood up and hurried toward the bathroom. A few people near the bar were looking in our direction, but the place was too loud for anyone to hear what was going on.
“You don’t have the balls to hit me,” I said. “As soon as we start fighting, the bouncer’s gonna come over and then the police might come and who knows? Word of the fight might somehow reach your office. And you know that if you get the reputation as a drinker or a brawler it mi
ght affect your next raise or even your job. Your life’s too meaningful to risk your hundred-and-five a year salary.”
David held my shirt for a few more seconds, then he let go, realizing that what I’d said was probably true. I didn’t know what else to do so I left the table and pushed through the crowd. It seemed like a second later I was outside, walking up First Avenue. I heard Julie’s voice behind me.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Home,” I said.
She was walking next to me now, swinging her arms furiously back and forth.
“I can’t believe what you just did to me in there. Those are my friends and you embarrassed me so much in front of them. You better go back in there and apologize right now.”
“I’m going home,” I said.
“I’m not going to forget about this, Bill. This is too much. This time you went too far.”
I kept walking at the same steady pace. After I crossed the next street I looked behind me and saw Julie standing on the sidewalk, her hands on her hips. I was starting to feel guilty, but not guilty enough to go back and apologize to Sharon and David. I was proud of what I’d done, even if it was irrational and thoughtless.
The storm had cooled things off, but it was still about eighty degrees and muggy. I walked along the dark, wet streets, enjoying my aloneness in the city. When I got home I lay in bed naked with the window open, the damp breeze against my chest, replaying the episode in the restaurant again and again. I still thought I had done the right thing. I’d been home about fifteen minutes when I heard Julie come home and slam the door. A moment later she was in the bedroom.
“I’ve had it with you, I’ve absolutely had it. I don’t know what’s wrong with you or why you somehow have the need to hurt me, but I’m not taking it anymore. This weekend I’m leaving. I mean it too. Unless you explain why you did that to me, I’m leaving.”
“I told you, I’m not apologizing,” I said.
“You think I’m kidding, don’t you? I’ll go and I’ll never see you again. I don’t want to do that, but I’ll do it if I have to. You can’t believe how upset I am. And Sharon, forget about it. I’m lucky if she ever talks to me again. They left the restaurant without even saying goodbye to me. She was crying hysterically. How could you do something like that to me and my friend?”
