Hard Feelings by Jason Starr

down next to me, resting a hand on my knee. I knew she would have been acting very differently if she knew my crying had very little to do with her.
    Finally, I stopped sobbing. Paula said, “I want to forgive you—I really do. I mean, I hurt you once and I know how important it was for me when you gave me a second chance. I want to do the same thing for you, but I want to tell you right now it’s going to be very hard. What you did last night was so awful—it was the worst thing you could’ve done. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
    “I’ve been having a problem,” I said.
    “A problem? What kind of problem?”
    I almost told her about Michael Rudnick. My lips started to move and a faint sound came out of my mouth, but I caught myself just in time.
    “There’s just been a lot going on with me lately,” I said.
    “What do you mean?” she said. “You mean with your job? You’ve had problems at work before, but you’ve never acted like this.”
    “It’s different now.”
    “Why?”
    “It just is. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a midlife crisis—”
    “At thirty-four?”
    “—or maybe it’s just stress. Look, I know there’s no excuse for what I did, all right? Maybe you’re right—maybe I do have a drinking problem. I’ll go to A.A.—I’ll go into counseling with you if that’s what you want. I’ll do anything to get things back to normal with us.”
    I tried to hold her hand but she wriggled it free.
    “Is there anything I can do for you?” I said. “Can I get you some more ice or something?”
    “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It looked a lot worse this morning.”
    “What did people at work say?”
    “I made up a story. I said I slipped coming out of the shower and fell against a towel rack. I think they believed me.”
    “You sure I can’t get you something? Even something to eat?”
    “I’ll be okay—really. I’d just like to be alone for a while.”
    I changed out of my work clothes, then went into the kitchen. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I decided I was probably starving and just didn’t realize it. I took out the leftover sushi from the fridge and picked at it in the living room while I watched TV.
    About a half-hour went by, then Paula came out of the bedroom. She took her sushi out of the fridge and sat on the chair adjacent to me and we watched TV together. We barely spoke. Several times, I tried to initiate conversation, but each time she had a curt, one-word response, and I realized that it was probably best to leave her alone—not push her. She would start talking to me again when she was ready.
    Paula said she’d rather sleep alone, but at least this time she didn’t lock me out of the bedroom. She let me take a spare blanket and pillow out of the closet to sleep with on the couch.
    At around eleven o’clock, I walked Otis. When I returned to the building, I got onto an elevator with a young boy. He was about thirteen years old and he had curly red hair. I had seen him many times over the past few years, in and around the building. Usually, he was with his mother or father, but now he was alone, holding a basketball. I remembered how I had been bouncing a basketball on the sidewalk in front of my old house in Brooklyn, the first time Michael Rudnick invited me to his basement.
    The boy’s name was Jonathan. I didn’t know why I knew this. I must have overheard his mother talking to him once.
    “Have a good game?” I asked.
    I had never spoken to the boy before and he double-taked before he said, “Yeah.”
    “Where did you play?”
    “A schoolyard,” he said shyly, and he looked up toward the illuminated floor numbers above the doors.
    Staring at the boy, I imagined inviting him over to my apartment one day when Paula wasn’t home to watch a basketball game on TV. We would make a bet—he would choose one team, and I would take the other. If his team won, I would give him five dollars. If my team won, I would give him a wedgie. Then, if