What time is it, anyway?”
“Well then I should buy you a drink,” says K.
K. and I wander into the restaurant next door.
Just a month ago, it was the birthplace of our relationship; now it will host our postmortem. “What happened to you?” she asks as the drinks arrive.
“I went to Korea to see you.”
Her blue eyes play emotional hopscotch, starting on confusion, then bouncing through guilt, remorse, and sadness before returning to the starting point.
“You came to Korea? Why didn’t you …”
“Nate.”
She looks back at the floor. “I swear to you I had no idea he was going to be there. He just, you know, showed up.”
“With a lot of flowers, I’m told. And jewelry.” My eyes dart toward a string of diamonds sparkling around her neck.
“This is my fault,” she says. “I think I might have given you the impression that Nate and I … that things were a lot more settled than they were.”
“You think?”
“I know. I feel horrible. We were … You were great. You are great and you deserve so much—” I hold up a hand to stop her. “First of all, spare me the breakup speech. I’ve delivered enough of them to know how you’re feeling.”
“You don’t know how I’m feeling. …”
“Second, I have to say, I kind of got what I deserved.”
She pauses before continuing. “I was just so confused. And then when I got back, you were gone. No note, no phone call.”
“It’s been a little crazy.”
“Your mom?” she asks. I nod and leave it at that.
K. looks at me sympathetically. “You must hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I reply, mostly meaning it. “So how about Nate? Rolling Stone? He’s the real deal.”
“Maybe. For now. Who knows what the future might bring?” I can see she’s opening the door for me. Offering me a glimmer of hope.
“Who knows?”
We hug good-bye. I struggle with the bag and the type-writer for a block before setting both down in an alleyway. I walk to the station empty-handed and catch the first train back to Levittown.
I COMMUTE TO WORK FROM THE ISLAND for a couple of weeks, until I’m summoned by the Pontiff to the apartment on the Lower East Side. He tells me that it’s a downturn in the economic climate, maybe just seasonal, and that business is dropping for all of the Faces. But he’s got a copy of the Post open next to him, a lurid story detailing the first day of the State of New York v. Daniel Carr, and I know the real reason why I’m being fired. I love the Motorola too much to smash it against the stairwell, so I hand it to Billy on the way out.
My father and I turn out to be pretty good housemates, in that we stay out of each other’s way and keep the place relatively clean. We’re too sad or superstitious to smoke inside anymore, so instead we fill coffee cans with butts outside, near the part of the house that remains scorched from Daphne’s adventure with fire.
I visit her a few days later. She’s finally trimmed the dye out of her hair, which has grown down to her shoulders. Her eyes, which moisten with tears when I tell her about my mother, have regained their sparkle. When my own eyes burst like a dam, she holds me and whispers in my ear, “It’s all going to be okay.”
When I finally pull myself together, she escorts me to the front entrance. “They think I’m getting better,” she says. “Do I have them fooled or what?”
“Does that mean the institutional phase of your life is coming to a conclusion?”
“This week’s episode, anyway.” Her sense of humor is back: It’s the same old Daphne. I remember what it was like to fall in love with her.
How the few years’ difference in age had seemed like a great mystery to be unraveled. She introduced me to the Ramones and Jonathan Richman and to parties that lasted for three days.
To sex in semipublic places. To the idea that love and pain often go hand-inhand. I’d been naïve when I met her, an eighteen-year-old kid cocksure and maybe a little happier for it. I’d never be that person again. But now, looking at Daphne, I can see that kid reflected in her eyes.
“I might get out by the end of the month,” she says. I hug her good-bye and tell her to call me at home as soon as she knows.
A few days later, my dad moves out of the house. “It’s Janine,” he says. “She won’t sleep in your mother’s bed. Like she’s going to catch cancer from a bed. Dizzy broad, that one.”
“The best ones always are.”
“Anyway, she finally left that drip she’s married to, and we were thinking about getting an apartment together. Actually, we did get an apartment together.”
“Congratulations.”
“You can stay here as long as you want. I’m not planning on selling — not now, anyway, with real estate in the tank. Maybe you can contribute a little when you start working again.”
“Thanks, Dad. I know it’s weird, but I honestly hope you and Janine are happy together.”
“Happy,” he says with a snort. “No one ever said it was about being happy.”
FOR THE FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS after she returns to college, Tana and I speak on the phone almost every night. But after a couple of weeks, the calls evolve into something shorter, less frequent, and decidedly more upbeat — a side effect, I suspect, of a guy named Todd she’s started seeing.
“Gay?” I venture, during one of the times we are actually able to connect.
“He’s really into the Waterboys,” Tana admits.
“But I’m happy to say that he otherwise seems to display all the necessary characteristics associated with a red-blooded man.”
“You little vixen,” I say. “You’re getting laid.”
I can’t see her, but I know she’s blushing. “So tell me about your new job,” she says.
With no job and no girlfriend, I’d poured my focus into the house, specifically the walls and carpets still charred by Daphne’s attempted arson. It was during one of my trips to the hardware store that I ran into Zach Shuman, my former boss at the Hempstead Golf and Country Club, who’d been fired for my misdeeds. Surprisingly, he looked at me without anger.
“Heard about your mom,” said Zach. “Fucked up.”
“I know. Thanks.”
“You know I’m managing Beefsteak Charlie’s over in Garden City,” he said. “I could use a waiter.”