“Th
anks.”
She takes off her reading glasses. “How does he seem to you?”
“Horry? I don’t know. Fine I guess.”
“He does not seem fine, Judd. Don’t be diplomatic with me.”
I nod and think about it. “He seems angry, maybe. Frustrated.”
“He hates me.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you. But he’s a thirty-six-year-old man liv
ing with his mother. That can’t be healthy.”
“He’s not healthy.”
“He seems fi ne.”
“He has seizures. He wets his bed. He forgets things, important things, like locking the door or turning off the oven or putting out his cigarette before he falls asleep, or, once in a while, putting on his pants before he goes out. Sometimes he goes into these trances where he just stands there staring at the wall. I can’t bear the thought of him living alone and staring at the walls for hours on end, with no one there to snap him out of it.”
“On the other hand, he might need some independence.”
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“What he needs is to get laid,” Linda says sharply. “That boy always had a girlfriend, remember? I lived in fear that he’d call me from college to tell me he’d knocked up some twit.” She leans forward and lowers her voice. “It’s never easy for him, seeing Wendy like this.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You think you’re lonely now, Judd, but you’ve got nothing on that boy.”
“No. I guess I don’t.”
“Which reminds me, you should go into the store when you pick him up and say hello to that Penelope Moore.”
I stare at her, nonplussed. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
She puts her glasses on and turns back to her puzzle, a small smile playing across her lips. “You have no idea,” she says. Chapter 16
8:42 p.m.
There was always something of a little girl about Penny Moore, with her pale skin and wide eyes, and that hasn’t changed in the years since I last saw her. When she sees me, her face lights up, and she leaps athletically over the counter to hug me. She’s dressed in jeans and a button-down oxford, her long dark hair tied loosely behind her head. From twenty feet away, she could pass for a college student. Only as she draws closer do you see the slightly looser flesh beneath her eyes, the soft commas at the corners of her mouth.
“Hey, Judd Foxman.” She feels thin in my arms, less substantial than I remember.
“Hi, Penny.”
She kisses my cheek and then steps back so we can look at each other. “I’m so sorry about Mort,” she says.
“Th
anks.”
“I saw you at the funeral.”
“Really? I didn’t see you.”
“I avoided you. I never know what to say at funerals.”
“Fair enough.”
Penny’s honesty has always been like nudity in an action movie: gra
tuitous, but no less welcome for it.
“So, how long has it been?” she says. “Seven, eight years?”
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“Something like that.”
She gives me the once-over. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks. You look great.”
“Don’t I, though?” she says, smiling.
What I’m thinking is that she looks fine, pretty even, but nothing like the ripe prom queen she was back in high school. I wanted her so badly then; everybody did. But she was out of my league so I settled for becoming her best friend, a form of masochism unique to underconfi
dent teenage boys, our time together spent with her telling me about all the assholes she chose to have sex with instead of me. Time and troubles have sharpened her softer edges, and now her face is a knife, her breasts like two clenched fists under her tight blouse. She’s a sexy street-fi ght of a woman, and I have been alone and untouched for a while now, and just watching her lips slide against her teeth as she smiles is enough to get me going.
“So, I heard about your wife,” she says. “Or lack thereof.”
“Good news travels fast.”
“Well, your brother is my boss.”
“And how’s that working out for you?”
She shrugs. “He flirts a little, but he keeps his hands to himself.”
Penny’s plan was to get married and move to Connecticut when she grew up, have four kids and a golden retriever, and write children’s books for a living. Now she’s thirty-fi ve, still living in Elmsbrook, and consid
ers the fact that she doesn’t get groped in the workplace a perk worth mentioning.
“You’re feeling sorry for me,” Penny says.
“No.”
“You never were any good at covering up.”
“I’m feeling much too sorry for me these days to worry about any
one else.”
“Your wife left you, Judd. It happens every day.”
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“Jesus, Penny.”
“I’m sorry. That was harsh, and totally uncalled for.”
“And what’s your story?”
She shrugs. “I don’t have one. No great traumatic event to blame my small life on. No catastrophes, no divorce. Plenty of bad men, but plenty of good ones too, that simply didn’t want me in the end. I tried to make something of myself and I failed. That happens every day too.”
“Horry says you’re still skating.”
She nods. “I teach over at Kelton’s.”
“I used to love watching you skate.”
“Yes, you did. Do you remember our pact?”
“I do.”
We look at each other and then away. An awkward silence descends between us, which Penny fills by saying, “Awkward silence.”
“Yeah.”
“So, you’re sitting shiva.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to make it over there one of these days.”
“You’ve got fi ve left.”
“You’re really doing all seven days? Th
at’s hard-core.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, I still skate every morning at eleven, if you want to come by.”
“They’re open that early?”
“They open at one, but the owner lets me have a key in exchange for sexual favors.”
“Th
at’s good.”
“That was a joke, Judd.”
“I know.”
“You used to laugh at my jokes.”
“You used to be funnier.”
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long moment, and I wonder what she sees. I was plain-looking back in high school, when we were best friends and the sexual tension was mine alone. I’m still plain-looking, only now I’m older, thicker, and sadder.
“Listen, Judd,” she says. “I think we’ve reached that point where this conversation runs the risk of devolving into small talk, and I don’t think either of us wants that. So I’m going to give you a kiss and send you on your way.” She leans forward and kisses my cheek, just grazing the cor
ner of my lips. “I did that on purpose,” she says with a grin. “Give you something other than your ex-wife to think about while you sit all day.”
I smile. “You were always so good at not covering up.”
Penny’s smile is sad and a little off. “It’s the antidepressants. Th ey’ve
obliterated whatever filters I have left.”
We made the pact when we were twenty. We were on summer break from our respective colleges. Her boyfriend was backpacking through Europe, and my girlfriend was as of yet nonexistent, and miraculously, after years of seeing me as nothing more than a friendly ear and a sym
pathetic shoulder, P
enny finally seemed ready to recognize other parts of my anatomy. I spent my days working in the flagship store and my nights coming up with places to almost but not quite have sex with Penny, who had arrived at a moral rationale concerning her boyfriend that grandfathered me in as long as there was no actual intercourse. One night, as we lay naked and sweaty in the darkness of my basement while my parents slept upstairs, she stopped her moaning and grinding against my erection to press her damp hands against the sides of my face. “You know you’re my best friend,” she said.
“I do.” It was infinitely less painful to hear it then, with the full length of her hot skin pressed wetly against mine.
“This could be the last summer we ever spend together. Th e last
time at all that we’re even here.”
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“Why do you say that?”
“Real life, Judd,” she said. “It’s coming for us. Who knows where the hell we’ll end up? So we should make a pact.”
“What kind of pact?” We were still moving lightly against each other, maintaining our rhythm, like joggers at an intersection.
“Two-pronged. First: We always speak on our birthdays, no matter where we are, no matter what’s happening. No exceptions.”
“Okay.”
“And second: If neither one of us has someone by the time we’re forty, we get married. We don’t date; we don’t have long, annoying talks about it. We just find each other and get married.”
“That’s a serious pact.”
“But it makes sense. We love each other, and we’re clearly attracted to each other.” She pressed her damp groin into mine for emphasis. And what I wanted to say right then was, If it makes so much sense, why do we have to wait until we’re forty? Why can’t we be together right now? But there were backpacking boyfriends and separate colleges to consider. This was summer fun, sweet and loving, but if Penny thought I was falling for her, she’d have put an end to it right then and there, and that was unthinkable to me.
“Come on, Judd,” she said with a grin, running two fingers down the groove of my slick spine. “Will you be my fail-safe?”
I smiled right back at her, like someone who totally got it. “Of course I will.”
And then, to seal the pact, she spit onto her fingers and reached down between us, and for a while there was nothing but the soft wet sounds of lubricated skin on skin and thrashing tongues, until I shud
dered and came violently across her soft, pale belly. She smiled at me as I finished, kissed my nose, and then grabbed my hand and pressed it between her spread thighs.
“Now you do me,” she said.
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8:50 p.m.
When I step out of the store, Horry is sitting in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, trembling. His hand is suspended out the win
dow, the cigarette in it long burned down to the butt.
“Hey, man,” I say.
He doesn’t answer. His head bobs up and down on his neck, and his lips tremble with exertion, like weights are holding his mouth closed.
“Unggh,” he says.
His arm is dead weight as I maneuver it back through the window and onto his lap. I drive slowly, but on the first right turn he falls side
ways, his head landing on my shoulder, so I pull over and we just sit there for a while, Horry’s head resting on my shoulder as his body trem
bles like there’s a small electrical current running through him. Gradually, the trembling subsides, and then, after a little bit, Horry grunts and sits up, wiping the drool off of his chin with the back of his hand. He looks over at me and nods. “You see Penny?”
“Yeah.”
He nods and clears his throat and I can hear the loose smoker’s phlegm rattling around in his chest.
“Can you hear me when you’re, you know, out of it like that?”
“Yeah. Usually. I just can’t talk. It’s like part of me blows a fuse, but the rest of me is there, waiting for the lights to go back on.”
I start the car. “You ready?”
He looks out the window. “This is the block, isn’t it? Where you and Paul got attacked.”
I hadn’t really been paying attention to the scenery, but now I can see we’re on Ludlow, just a few driveways down from Tony Rusco’s house. Paul and I ran for our lives down this sidewalk, the Christmas jingle of the rottweiler’s tags coming up fast behind us. I close my eyes
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against the sidewalk, but I can still hear his screams, still feel the cold terror crushing my bowels.
Horry leans back in his seat and lights up a cigarette. “I hit Wendy once.”
It takes me a minute to register what he’s said. “I remember.”
“I don’t know if I ever even said I’m sorry for that.”
“She forgave you.”
“I really clocked her good.”
Wendy had taken off a semester to help Linda and Mom care for Horry when he came home from the hospital. Back then they hadn’t yet found the right dose to take the edge off his anger, and he would de
scend into fits of rage where he tried to destroy anything he could get his hands on. Wendy, who had seen too many movies, decided the best thing to do would be to throw her arms around him and hold on until her love calmed him, but he hurled her across the room, and then when she came back he landed a solid punch, hard enough to break two of her teeth. Wendy didn’t hold it against him, but I think she became a little scared of him after that, and when Linda insisted she go back to school and get on with her life, she didn’t object. The next time Wendy came back to Elmsbrook, it was with Barry in tow.
“That was a long time ago, Horry. You weren’t yourself.”
He nods and blows his smoke out into the night, watching it dissi
pate in the amber glow of the streetlight. “I’m still not,” he says.
Friday
Chapter 17
2:00 a.m.
Iam having sex with Jen. She bucks and writhes under me, her hips rising up hard against mine. Her nails slice my back; her fi ngers grab my ass and then slide down my thigh to where my leg ends at midcalf in a hard, creased stump. But it’s not me, it’s Wade lying on top of Jen, and I’m sitting on the reading chair by the window, watching them go at it while I pull at the worn straps of my prosthesis, trying to strap it on so that I can get the hell out of there. And now it’s me again, lying in the smooth delta of Jen’s opened thighs, but it’s no longer Jen, it’s Penny Moore, and I’ve got both of my legs again, and Penny’s got her legs wrapped around me, and she’s biting down on my earlobe as she moans, and it’s actually feeling pretty good. Then, from behind me, a low guttural growl, and when I turn, I see the rottweiler, with the tat
tered threads of Paul’s red T-shirt still hanging from his teeth, along
side a thick chain of white drool. And when I turn back to Penny, she’s Chelsea, Phillip’s old girlfriend, and I’ve got one leg again, and the dog is crouching, getting ready to attack, and no matter how much I try to pull out of Chelsea, she just keeps rocking her hips and licking her lips. And then the rottweiler is upon us, and I can smell his feral scent and feel the crush of his jaws on the back of my neck, and I’m sand
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got one and a half legs and this is not any way to die. And just as I feel the searing pain of the dog’s teeth sinking into the skin of my neck, my shout fills the basement and I wake up shivering violently in my own sweat.
It’s like Stephen King is writing my dreams in to Penthouse Forum. Chapter 18
8:25 a.m.
The lights go out again while I’m in the shower. When I step out into the basement, Alice is at the electrical panel again in her bathrobe.
“We mu
st stop meeting like this,” she says.
“This house sucks,” I say.
Alice smiles. “Which one is it, again?”
“I think it was number fourteen.”
“I can’t see the numbers.”
I go over to her, holding my towel in place with one hand.
“You smell like a little boy.”
“They’ve only got baby shampoo down here.”
“I love that smell.” She leans back against me, breathing deeply. “Th e
smell of a clean baby.”
“Yes. Well . . .” Her own hair is freshly shampooed and has that clean, blow-dried smell, like baked honey, and that, combined with the sheer fabric of her bathrobe and my highly sensitized libido, makes for an awkward family moment. “I’ll have to find a new manly fragrance when I start dating again.”
“Oh, right,” she says, turning around to face me. “We haven’t really talked about that. How are you doing, Judd?”
“I’m fine.” I need to curtail this conversation for reasons both emo
tional and anatomical. “Here it is.” I lean past her to flip a breaker. Th e
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lights don’t go back on, but from upstairs, we can hear Paul yelling,
“Who’s dicking around with the damn lights?!”
Alice chuckles and turns around to flip it back. “Paul signs the pay
roll while he’s on the toilet.”
“Two turds with one stone.”
She laughs and flips another switch. The lights come back on. “Let there be light.”
“Amen.”
“Anyway, Judd,” she says, turning back to me. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, and your family . . . well, they’re not exactly fa
mous for their emotional wherewithal. So, if you ever want to talk, just remember, we were friends long before we were family.”
“Thanks, Alice. I’ll keep that in mind.”
She seems about to say something else, but after a moment she just nods and leans forward to kiss my cheek. I lean forward, not so much to accept the kiss, but to avoid any incidental lower-body contact. Th ings
are hard enough already.
So to speak.
9:37 a.m.
Breakfast is served. On platters, of course. The pastries and bagels continue to arrive every day, courtesy of my parents’ friends and set out by Linda, who quietly lets herself in every morning to see to things. Horry’s here too this morning, sipping thoughtfully at his coff ee, sneak
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