Джонатан Троппер - This Is Where I Leave You

“I’m feeling much too sorry for me these days to worry about anyone else.”

“Your wife left you, Judd. It happens every day.”

“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 five left.”

“You’re really doing all seven days? That’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.”

“That’s good.”

“That was a joke, Judd.”

“I know.”

“You used to laugh at my jokes.”

“You used to be funnier.”

She laughs at that. “They all can’t be gems.” Penny looks at me for a 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 corner 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. They’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 sympathetic shoulder, Penny 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. The last time at all that we’re even here.”

“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 shuddered 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.

WHEN I STEP out of the store, Horry is sitting in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, trembling. His hand is suspended out the window, 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 sideways, 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 trembles 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 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 descend 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.