The Hand That Feeds You

12

That night I went to the Turkey’s Nest on Bedford, picked up a guy, and went home with him. This wasn’t a plan, it’s just what I did. The Turkey’s Nest has the least hip jukebox in Williamsburg and caters to the last of the blue-collar crowd. In a moment of splendid irony I put my quarters in the jukebox and selected Patsy Cline singing “Crazy.” As the song ended, a good-looking guy asked me why I’d chosen that song. I had two whiskeys in me already and said, “See who’s crazy enough to ask me to dance to it.”

He reached into the pocket of his tight jeans and produced several quarters, which he fed to the jukebox. “Crazy” started up again and he pulled me to him. “Are you crazy?”

“You don’t want to know,” I said.

“Try me.” He guided me onto the dance floor, a narrow space between the bar and the pool table.

“It’s hard to know where to begin.”

“I always start with my ex-wife,” he said.

“What about her?”

“She cut the right sleeve off all of my shirts.”

“What did your right arm do?”

“Nothing my left arm didn’t. Your turn.”

“My fiancé was engaged to two women at the same time. He gave us each an identical ring.”

“I see your fiancé and I raise you my ex-wife: she painted the word asshole across the firehouse doors. I’m a firefighter.”

“I see your ex-wife and I raise you my fiancé: he murdered the other fiancée.”

“Whoa.” The guy stopped dancing. “For real?”

“Looks that way. But I came here to not think about that.”

“Is he in jail?”

“He’s dead.”

The guy took my hand and pulled me back to the bar. “What are you drinking?”

I had two more of what I was drinking, and he kept up with me. He lived in Greenpoint near Transmitter Park with two roommates, both firefighters. Neither was home when we got there. His room was a mess and it suited me. So did his kisses. I hadn’t kissed anyone since Bennett. And that thought wouldn’t leave me alone.

Would I rather have been kissing Bennett?

I knew him as well as I knew this firefighter.

I was stuck in my head again and my body just went through the motions. He stopped while we were both still dressed and said, “You’re not here, are you?” He wasn’t angry.

“I wish I were.”

“Why don’t I get you a cab,” he said, no trace of irritation in his voice.

He put me in the cab and gave the driver a twenty.

“Your ex-wife is wrong about you,” I said.

• • •

I was back in the dreaded apartment. Maybe Cilla was right and I should consider moving, but I wasn’t ready, nor could I afford to. She’d had her walk on the wild side, but what steadiness I had now I owed to her. I sat by the living-room window, which looked out onto my neighbors’ backyards — the one with topiary, the one strewn with drying laundry, the one with stones arranged in a Zen garden. There was a half moon and I sat with my untouched cup of tea until dawn.