"Not to defend myself, but I'm pretty sure you dumped me the last time."
"You know very well that it was preemptive. My final effort at retaining some dignity. When I still thought I had some."
"You've still got plenty," I tell her, noticing that she's un-screwing the top from an orange prescription bottle. It's a slim, small bottle, definitely not the kind they give you vitamins in.
She shakes out some pills and pops them into her mouth, chasing them with a long straw-sip from a massive Big Gulp, her signature drink. Though it's silly to say, the only thing about Kelly that really bothered me was her use of the 7-Eleven and the like as grocery stores, the result being her drive-thru diet of chili dogs and Hot Pockets and Doritos and aspartame-sweet-ened anything; nothing in the least natural ever entering her body. Really the opposite of Rita, who even made her own corn tortillas. This shouldn't have been the reason Kelly Stearns and I couldn't be together forever, and I never brought it up to her even though I understood so from the beginning, but it was.
"What's that you're taking, Kel?"
"Jimbo gives them to me," she says, shaking the bottle.
"OxyContin. They say they're good for pain."
"I'm sure they are. Listen, why don't I come out there right now and sit with you. I'll tell Chuck you called in sick. It's real slow anyway, and I can take you back to my place and you can talk things out. We'll have an early dinner on the patio."
"I'm at my limit, Jerry. My outer limit. I know you don't feel that way because you've got it all together."
"You know that's not true."
"It is from where I'm sitting. You have your whole life accrued to you, and it's only getting better. You're a good-looking man who's going to be sixty but hardly looks a day over fifty.
You have all your hair. You have your family nearby and enough money and you have Parade to pass the time with and you have your plane to go up in whenever you want to split. You can have all the girlfriends like me that you'd ever want."
"Kel."
"I'm not criticizing. I'm a fairly nice girl but I'm not so special or unique and more times than not I get passed over. It's the truth and you know it. It turns out the only guy who wants to keep me forever is limbo."
"That's a load of bull."
"It's not. He makes love to me. Not very well, but he tries.
He's not superbright or interesting or exceptionally kind. But he wants me. He needs me. It's as simple as that. Did you ever wonder about those women who get hitched to guys in jail?
Why they would ever do that? Now I know. I'm forty-five years old today and…"
"Today?" I checked the desk blotter calendar, but I'd written nothing on it, today or any day.
"Yes, but I'm not giving you shit about that. I'm forty-five years old and never been married and I won't ever have children and I'm the only child of dead parents. I've got no pension fund to speak of. My furniture is rent-to-own. I color my own hair. I haven't done anything really terrible or wrong in my life but look, I've got next to nothing. All you have to worry about is keeping your health and not getting bored. I'm not criticizing.
I'm happy for you. You're missing Rita, is all, but she's going to come back to you sometime, I'm sure of it. I talked to her yesterday. She asked how you were."
I'm not thinking much of anything for a moment, my heart clogging my throat. "You spoke to Rita?"
"I told her you were fine, but lonely, which is definitely the truth."
"How is she?" Kelly would know, as she and Rita have been friendly since the end of Kelly/Jerry II, meeting for Happy Hour at Chi-Chi's once a month or so, apparently jabbering about everything but me. I spied on them once, from the corner of the bar, tipping their waitress $20 to eavesdrop, which was not a good use of money, as the only thing she related was how they were joking about penis sizes.
"Same as you, Jerry, only not so lonely. She's still seeing Richard, on and off."
"Yeah." Richard as in Richie Coniglio, coniglio in Italian being the word for rabbit. Which he is — short, thin guy, kind who lives forever, fluffy in the hair, with prominent teeth, probably false. I've known him since middle school, when he followed me around the halls, as I was one of the few kids who didn't beat up on him daily. He was always smart, and he's become sort of a bigwig around here, with the charities and such. That's how he met Rita, at a hospital gala, where she was a volunteer hostess. He's divorced, exactly my age, though admittedly looks at least five years younger than me, Kelly's previous comment notwithstanding. He's a partner at a white-shoe New York law firm, collects Ferraris, and lives alone in a mansion in Mutton-town. He takes Rita out east on the weekends, to his "cottage"
in Southampton. I've actually spotted him out in public wearing jodhpurs, at the Bagel Bin with the Sunday Times tucked under his arm, his boots stuccoed with horse dung.
"I bet she's happy with him," I say.
"Don't beat yourself up, Romeo. Richard can be a peach but I think we all know where you and Rita are headed. I can hear it in your voices, and all around you. The tarantella has already started up."
"I wish."
"You better not just wish, Jerry Battle. You had better do. But why I'm bothering to tell you this right now astounds me."
"Because you're the sweetheart of Huntington Village," I tell her, already heartened immeasurably, though realizing that this has somehow become all about Me again, our chronic modality. So I say, "You should have told me it was your birthday. I'm going to hang up now and tell Chuck you called in sick and I'm going to take you out tonight. We'll go to the city. I'll get us a table at Smith & Wollensky. We'll get the double porterhouse."
"Don't you dare!" she shouts, the squawk almost hurting my ear. "Don't you even budge. I don't want to go to the city for dinner and I don't want you coming out here. I only stopped by to tell you I'm going away."
"What do you mean? Where?"
"I really don't know yet," she says, sounding high and tight like she's going to cry. "But I wouldn't tell you if I did. I'm not telling anyone. If you hear from me after today, it'll be from someplace far away."
"I don't like this word 'if,' Kel."
"Tough shit, Jerry!" she says, her emphasis more on my name than the expletive. But she gathers herself. "Listen. I don't want to yell at you. Just tell Chuck I'm taking a leave of absence. If he doesn't like it, tell him I quit. And don't you worry about me. I'm going to be fine. I'm going on a trip all by myself. I'm superhappy about it. Don't worry"
But I'm deeply worried, this spiky scare rappelling down my spine, especially with her mentioning how happy she'll be, the image of her splayed out on a motel bed with a hand mirror snowy with crushed pills, a plastic garbage bag, a straight razor.
"I'm coming out now," I tell her firmly, "whether you want me to or not."
But just as I put down the phone and stand up I see Kelly wave, wave, and not really to me, like she's on the top deck of the Queen Mary, embarking on an around-the-world. Her blond hair spilling out of the scarf (Why there is a glamour in all departures, I don't know.) Before I can even get outside she's speeding away, her dusty little car clattering down the main street of the village, being nearly broadsided as she drifts through a red light. There's another clamor of protesting horns, and then, momentarily veiled by a white puff of oil-burning acceleration, she's gone. I try her cell over and over but all I get is her outgoing message, whose molasses lilt always manages to upend me: "Hi y'all, Kelly here. I ain't home right now. But do say something nice."