JASON STARR - Panic Attack

“I think she hates me,” Johnny had said to Marissa. “No, that’s just the way she’s been with all my boyfriends,” Marissa said. “It’s because you’re a shagetz.”

“A what?”

“Because you’re not Jewish. My grandmother has always had this stupid thing in her head about me having to marry a Jewish guy someday even though we’re not at all religious.”

“How does she know I’m not Jewish?”

“She knows,” Marissa said, and that was exactly what Johnny was worried about. If the old lady could tell he wasn’t Jewish, what else could she tell? Johnny didn’t want to take any chances, especially when everything was going so well.

With her grandma staying in the guest room next door, Marissa didn’t seem as worried about being in the same house with her father, so Johnny came up with a good excuse to go back to his apartment- he needed to get his suit for the funeral. Marissa wanted to go with him but decided she should probably stay and be with her family.

When Johnny left, the reporters, who’d been camped out there all day, swarmed him, shouting questions. Johnny told them he was just “a friend of the family,” and he didn’t stop to talk to them. At the subway station, he bought the Post and News. Marissa had already told him that Tony had an alibi for the murder and might be off the hook and that Adam was the main suspect now, but even the papers that had come out early this morning were slamming Adam. Each paper had about two or three pages on the story, focusing on how Adam Bloom, the crazed vigilante who had shot and killed an intruder in his house less than two weeks ago, was now a suspect in his wife’s murder. While the articles focused on Tony as a suspect, the Post called the Blooms “the philandering couple” and said that the Blooms’ marriage had been “in crisis” since the break- in and that Adam Bloom might have “snapped again” and killed his wife. And Johnny loved that Clements had called Adam “a person of interest” in the case. Reading this on the subway to Brooklyn, he couldn’t help laughing out loud. For years, Johnny had been running away from the cops, and now, in a weird way, a cop was actually helping him get the biggest score of his life. He almost felt like Clements deserved a cut of the action.

Later on during the subway ride, Johnny spotted the couple with the engagement ring. He wouldn’t need the ring for a while, but he’d learned a long time ago that when an opportunity comes along to get what you want, go for it, because you don’t know when you’ll get that chance again.

At his apartment, he was checking out the ring- it didn’t have any noticeable flaws; maybe it was worth more than he’d thought- when he got a text from Marissa:

I miss you so so much!!

Man, Johnny loved his life. In the morning, Johnny met Marissa outside the funeral home in Forest Hills. She was already a mess- dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, streaks of mascara on her cheeks- so he had to shift right into supportive boyfriend mode. This might’ve been hard to pull off for some guys, but not for Johnny. He even managed to squeeze out some tears.

The funeral seemed to take forever, the rabbi going on about what a wonderful, caring person Dana had been and how much she’d be missed. At one point the rabbi called her “a loving wife.” And Johnny- probably like everybody else in the chapel- was thinking, Yeah, but loving to who?

Everyone was sobbing, especially Marissa and Adam. But Adam was almost crying too much. It seemed to Johnny that a lot of Adam’s crying was for show, not because he was faking it- he was probably actually upset- but because he knew other people, including Marissa and any reporters who’d gotten into the chapel, were watching him to make sure he was crying as much as a grieving husband should be. A couple of times Johnny saw Marissa look over at her father, and Adam would immediately start crying or blow his nose extra loud or do something to prove how upset he was.

Johnny rode with Adam, Marissa, and Marissa’s grandmother- Grandma Ann- to the cemetery. Johnny was doing a great job with the whole grieving act, but, man, it took a lot of work. In the back of the limo, the old biddy kept looking over at him, giving him the evil eye, glaring through her Coke- bottle glasses. He knew it wasn’t just because he wasn’t Jewish; there was more to it than that.

At the grave, Johnny actually felt sad for the first time all day. It was a shame that Dana had died before Johnny had a chance to screw her, before she had a chance to experience the orgasms that you could only experience with Johnny Long. Talk about tragedy.

Johnny had to continue to console Marissa, and he was running out of bullshit to say to make her feel better. How many times could he tell her “I know” and “She’s in a better place” and “It’s gonna be okay?” Meanwhile, Adam was still overdoing it. When they lowered the coffin into the ground he collapsed, crying, but then he started beating the ground with his fists, like a baby having a fit. Johnny was thinking, Fists? Come on, gimme a break. At one point, Johnny even saw Marissa look over at her father and roll her eyes slightly.

During the ride back to the Blooms’ house, Marissa looked away the whole time, staring blankly out the window. Johnny left her alone, giving her her space.

Marissa didn’t say a word until they got back to the house. She took him up to her room, shut the door, and said, “I think you were right- he definitely did it.”

“I never said I thought he actually did it,” Johnny said.

“But that’s what you thought, that was your first instinct, and first instincts are usually right.”

Johnny wasn’t going to argue with this. He blinked once, very slowly, to show her how concerned he was, and squeezed her hand tightly.

She continued, “Everything about him today was so fucking fake. Did you see the way he was punching the ground? He thinks he’s gonna get away with it, but he won’t because I’m not gonna let him. If he did this he’s gonna pay for it. He’s not just gonna go on with his life while my mother’s rotting away underground.”

Johnny loved how she was ready to turn on her father, to, well, bury him.

The Blooms were having some Jewish thing called a shiver sitting, something like that, where all their friends and relatives were going to come over with food and drinks and sit around and mourn with the whole family. It sounded like hell; Even worse, it was going to last a whole week. What was it with Jews anyway? Did they want to drag out their misery for as long as they possibly could?

Maybe people were staying away because of the “rumors” about Adam in the news, because only about ten people showed up at the house all day even though there had been at least a hundred people at the funeral. Adam seemed out of it, wandering in and out of the living room, occasionally checking his BlackBerry, shaking his head and mumbling to himself. Grandma Ann continued to give Johnny dirty looks. Johnny tried to start a couple of conversations with her, asking her about Florida, but the old lady wouldn’t even make eye contact with him. Later, Johnny saw her go over and whisper something to Adam; then Adam looked over at Johnny, trying to be casual about it. Johnny didn’t care what Marissa said; he knew that the old lady wasn’t only treating him like this because he wasn’t Jewish.

Marissa wanted Johnny to spend the night with her, and he couldn’t turn her down, could he? In bed, she told him that she loved him, and he said he loved her, too, “more than anything in the world.” He knew it was way too early to ask her to marry him, but he thought the timing was right to test the waters, to see if she was as primed as he thought she was, so he asked, “Do you want kids someday?”