- •Visit jms-books.Com for more information.
- •Chapter 1
- •I decided to play along. Perhaps she wasn’t so much of a snob, or even straight for that matter.
- •Chapter 2
- •I fought off the cracking in my voice and said, “Well, I guess we’ll be going shopping first, before I make an attempt at showing you how much like those damn romantics I can be.”
- •I navigated southern Jersey easily; I’d been doing it all my life. When you’re from there, you’re entire youth and much or your teen years are absorbed by the draw of the Atlantic Ocean.
- •I weaved a tale I’d relived in my head over and over for several years.
- •Chapter 3
- •I did some quiet meditation and had a nice glass of scotch. Although tempted to have many more glasses, I took some Melatonin and went to bed. At 3:00 am my phone rang.
- •Chapter 4
- •I brushed her hair away from her eyes. She started to say, 57
- •I didn’t want to love Janine Jordan, but I did. My heart broke for her in the moment, with her hand in my lap, at her dining room table, on an October late afternoon.
- •Chapter 5
- •I had a few more rum and cokes and tried to get comfortable in my surroundings. Sheila stayed by me and kept bringing me into conversations I didn’t want to take part in.
- •I was awake now, sober in an instant. Reality will do that to you. I returned to the party, dazed. Sheila found me back in the kitchen, headlong into a bottle of scotch, glass optional.
- •Chapter 6
- •I thought we were; my page was no blackouts, no moronic or dramatic behavior, no problem. Besides, I doubted her 78
- •I ran down the hall to the ladies room and vomited. I washed off my face with cool water, sank down on the floor, and 83
- •Chapter 7
- •I met with Dan the next afternoon and, much to my disappointment, he thought taking a vacation was a terrible idea.
- •Chapter 8
- •I looked over at her, hair blowing in the breeze with Wayfarers on. So beautiful, my angel, my muse, my musician.
- •Chapter 9
- •I’m trying? That’s what I was expected to accept? She wasn’t my troubled teenager failing a class, and I wasn’t her fucking mother. I’m trying. I could not believe that was all she had to say.
- •I couldn’t recall the last, if any, Arnold Schwarzenegger film I’d seen, so my action hero self wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Stupidly I stood there with the front door hanging open and 113
- •Chapter 10
- •Acknowledgements
- •About angela kelly
- •Visit us at jms-books.Com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!
I fought off the cracking in my voice and said, “Well, I guess we’ll be going shopping first, before I make an attempt at showing you how much like those damn romantics I can be.”
We showered separately and dressed quickly, I guiltily in clean clothes, her in her garb from the night before. We did a few lines and took the rest with us. It was good; she must have dealt with the kid in the record store before. Or maybe she just had a lucky score. Or maybe I didn’t partake often enough to know what qualified as “good.”
Apparently, she did, because as I doubted my own faith in my ability to drive anytime soon, she said, “This is pretty low grade stuff, but I like it. Doesn’t get you all strung out, keeps you nice and mellow.” She giggled a little on the word ‘mellow’. At least I knew she was high and we were on the same ride.
We floated around the village until we wound up in a retro thrift shop, as if built there that very morning for her shopping needs. To my surprise, she picked out a few very non-outrageous pairs of jeans and a couple of tie-dyes. We were in and out with her in clean digs within minutes.
Just as well, I wanted to be underway before the New 24
Jersey residents returning from their weekend summer escapades in the Big Apple choked the New Jersey turnpike like a helpless animal until it barely breathed. For a minute, I lost my sense of direction, and couldn’t figure out where my parking garage was. Of course, given my state of mind, this struck me as hilarious and it was all I could do to refrain from doubling over in hysterics. Janine laughed along with me without knowing why, and then told me a story about the first time she’d ever dropped acid and actually boarded the wrong plane in an airport.
She’d been late to arrive at the gate and the door to the tunnel was already locked. She frantically flagged down an airline person, who unlocked the door and ushered her inside without ever checking her boarding pass. It wasn’t a full flight, so she just took the first seat she found that wasn’t too near anyone else. The whole flight she was mesmerized by the cover of a book another passenger was reading. The plane ride seemed shorter than she had expected but she had no real concept of time. She was in Phoenix, Arizona for nearly three hours before she realized it wasn’t her travel destination. She had a good laugh, checked into a hotel room, ordered a bottle of champagne from room service, drew a bath, and waited to come down. “That was probably the best time I’ve ever had with myself!”
We laughed like stupid stoned people do, and after a while she added, “I don’t often like to be alone.”
She turned to me then and kissed me in the middle of the street. “So, are you taking me somewhere you take all your girlfriends?”
I’d taken a few women where we were going, but none that counted.
“Hey, look! This is my garage. I guess they didn’t really move it in the middle of the night after all.”
We giggled all the way to my car. Once inside my Toyota, we sat with the engine running and the radio on and made out for a while. I felt a bliss I thought I vaguely recognized from high school. As I drove through the tunnel, she had one hand on my knee and sang along to Rod Stewart singing, “Tonight’s the Night”
on a classic rock station. There was that irony creeping in again.
25
* * * *
I showed off a little on the turnpike, weaving needlessly in and out of traffic. I felt normal, but knew better, so decided to do the speed limit and try not to draw attention to myself.
“Good idea,” said Janine. I couldn’t fathom how it was possible for a woman I’d just met to read my mind like that. I actually started to think about what I was going to think about, so that nothing incriminating slipped in. I wished desperately I had the same ability. I would have paid dearly to know what she was thinking as I exited the Garden State Parkway at Keyport. For all I knew Janine might have known Jersey like the back of her hand, she could’ve had some guido boyfriend with an IROC-Z
down in Asbury Park when she was younger. I hoped it wasn’t true, that she had never strolled the boardwalk at Seaside Heights holding hands, or stood by shyly as a lover won huge teddy bears for her. I wanted to be the one with whom she did things for the first time. There’s nothing more thrilling in a relationship than being a “first.” It reminds us how much of ourselves we are willing to give, long after we’ve decided there isn’t anyone worth giving to.