miss it. Still.
“Where’s Angela?” I ask when I turn around to find her missing. “Where’d she go?”
Crispy looks around. “Who knows?” he says.
Just then, Angela appears at the top of the stairs, and she’s looking about as freaked out as a cat trapped on top of a moving vehicle. She flies down the stairs, taking two at a time, and then makes a mad dash across the living room, her black hair flying behind her like the tail of a sideways exclamation point.
“Angela?” I offer tentatively.
“Out!” she cries, and to prove that she means business, she doesn’t even bother to explain. She just keeps pointing toward the back door and moving through the kitchen like she’s on fire.
We follow her instinctually, like rats diving blind off a sinking ship. We don’t even need to know what’s causing her to panic.We just run. And we keep running until we are out of sight and out of breath.
“What? What?”
we ask her all at once. We whoop air into our lungs; we hold on to our kneecaps; we wipe the sweat away. “What happened? What was it?”
“Oh. My. God,” she replies, covering her eyes and wildly shaking her head in what seems like a violent attempt to un-see whatever she’s just seen. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You’re never going to believe it. None of you.”
“What?”
we all yell at her in unison.
“What?”
“Okay. I heard something, some noise, so I slowly—very slowly and quietly—opened the bedroom door. And there they were. Two people. A man and a woman. Naked. Both of them. And they were having sex.”
Doug has been seeing Mary Jo Kowalski for about six months. I’ve known about her since day one because I heard him talking on the phone to her. He was saying her name over and over and speaking to her as though she were a Boeing 737 that he was trying to land at the local bar. Why did he think it was a good idea to keep her a secret from me, I want to know. Naturally, he sidesteps the question by asking if it was me who barged in on them this afternoon. He wants to know if that’s how I found out about Mary Jo.
“Don’t change the subject,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He then explains that Mary Jo lives in nearby Tequesta and works for a company that designs and sells software to turbine engine manufacturers. She’s a specialist in the field of non-intrusive stress-management systems (whatever that is), and she works with some pretty high-level clients, like the U.S. Navy. She offers them stuff like data acquisition electronics, as well as optical and eddy current probes. Sounds gruesome. Apparently, her job is very demanding, and though she’s often needed in the office, she also has responsibilities that take her out into the field. Sometimes, he tells me, she has to travel as far as Daytona Beach to lunch with clients or to meet with manufacturers.
Doug confesses all this while he and I are eating dinner (Chinese takeout), and as he pushes the piles of moo shu into his mouth with his chopsticks, I imagine Mary Jo driving her Honda Civic the length of Florida with no one breathing down her neck. “She calls her own shots on the job,” Doug declares, as if I ought to be impressed by this bit of news. I’m guessing this means that Mary Jo can sometimes manage a little detour and stop by to see Doug in the middle of the afternoon and then hop into the sack with him.
“Anyway,” he says, wiping his chin with a paper napkin, “you want to meet her?”
“Sure,” I tell him. “Someday.”
Doug has left the house now, and I’ve popped in a Bob Dylan CD. Songs like “Positively 4th Street,” “Lay, Lady, Lay,” or “Meet Me in the Morning” can bring me back to a time when someone like Mary Jo wasn’t even a possibility. In my mind, I can see my mom doing dishes over the sink in our old loft on Warren Street. It’s a small moment, but the sound of Dylan can still conjure it up in its entirety for me after only two bars of music. These are the
“Where’s Angela?” I ask when I turn around to find her missing. “Where’d she go?”
Crispy looks around. “Who knows?” he says.
Just then, Angela appears at the top of the stairs, and she’s looking about as freaked out as a cat trapped on top of a moving vehicle. She flies down the stairs, taking two at a time, and then makes a mad dash across the living room, her black hair flying behind her like the tail of a sideways exclamation point.
“Angela?” I offer tentatively.
“Out!” she cries, and to prove that she means business, she doesn’t even bother to explain. She just keeps pointing toward the back door and moving through the kitchen like she’s on fire.
We follow her instinctually, like rats diving blind off a sinking ship. We don’t even need to know what’s causing her to panic.We just run. And we keep running until we are out of sight and out of breath.
“What? What?”
we ask her all at once. We whoop air into our lungs; we hold on to our kneecaps; we wipe the sweat away. “What happened? What was it?”
“Oh. My. God,” she replies, covering her eyes and wildly shaking her head in what seems like a violent attempt to un-see whatever she’s just seen. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You’re never going to believe it. None of you.”
“What?”
we all yell at her in unison.
“What?”
“Okay. I heard something, some noise, so I slowly—very slowly and quietly—opened the bedroom door. And there they were. Two people. A man and a woman. Naked. Both of them. And they were having sex.”
Doug has been seeing Mary Jo Kowalski for about six months. I’ve known about her since day one because I heard him talking on the phone to her. He was saying her name over and over and speaking to her as though she were a Boeing 737 that he was trying to land at the local bar. Why did he think it was a good idea to keep her a secret from me, I want to know. Naturally, he sidesteps the question by asking if it was me who barged in on them this afternoon. He wants to know if that’s how I found out about Mary Jo.
“Don’t change the subject,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He then explains that Mary Jo lives in nearby Tequesta and works for a company that designs and sells software to turbine engine manufacturers. She’s a specialist in the field of non-intrusive stress-management systems (whatever that is), and she works with some pretty high-level clients, like the U.S. Navy. She offers them stuff like data acquisition electronics, as well as optical and eddy current probes. Sounds gruesome. Apparently, her job is very demanding, and though she’s often needed in the office, she also has responsibilities that take her out into the field. Sometimes, he tells me, she has to travel as far as Daytona Beach to lunch with clients or to meet with manufacturers.
Doug confesses all this while he and I are eating dinner (Chinese takeout), and as he pushes the piles of moo shu into his mouth with his chopsticks, I imagine Mary Jo driving her Honda Civic the length of Florida with no one breathing down her neck. “She calls her own shots on the job,” Doug declares, as if I ought to be impressed by this bit of news. I’m guessing this means that Mary Jo can sometimes manage a little detour and stop by to see Doug in the middle of the afternoon and then hop into the sack with him.
“Anyway,” he says, wiping his chin with a paper napkin, “you want to meet her?”
“Sure,” I tell him. “Someday.”
Doug has left the house now, and I’ve popped in a Bob Dylan CD. Songs like “Positively 4th Street,” “Lay, Lady, Lay,” or “Meet Me in the Morning” can bring me back to a time when someone like Mary Jo wasn’t even a possibility. In my mind, I can see my mom doing dishes over the sink in our old loft on Warren Street. It’s a small moment, but the sound of Dylan can still conjure it up in its entirety for me after only two bars of music. These are the
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