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It’s not a long walk home for Ed from Marine Park to where he lives, south and east and close to the water. Along the way he thought about many things—people on welfare, stealing his money. Having kids at seventeen. Popping them out on the rest of us. He thought of his no-good girlfriend, Margie, and what little use she was to him. Just four days ago she’d spent the night, woke up with her naked body beside him, her hips touching his. But he slept with his jeans on. She woke up and took them off.
Ed unlocked the door to his house, locked it behind him. He had many locks, many latches, and he latched them all up. In his sink were the plates from his TV dinner the night before. He left them. He went into his bedroom and opened his phone.
Four rings. Margie didn’t answer. He hung up before it could go to voice mail, sat down on the bed and called again. Four rings. She didn’t pick up. Her recorded message came on, and Ed listened to her voice. He lay back on the bed, and let his boner rise against his jeans. He called her again, and listened to her voice. He rolled over on his side, reached for his bedside nightstand. He took out a condom and his daddy’s gun.
Jeans off, he felt freer. His bedroom door was open, as if company might arrive. He eased the condom on, felt his back straighten in pleasure as it went all the way down. He held the gun in his left hand, his penis in his right. The gun was heavy, in his bad hand. He was, of course, right-handed. Sharp three-point shooter that he was, even the great Ed Monahan couldn’t masturbate lefty.
There came a time when he fell back full against the bed. His right hand continued doing its business. The gun, in his other hand, lay flat against the mattress. He felt heavy, in a way he hadn’t all day. He arched his back, searching for the space above him. When he came, he watched it happen, watched the condom’s inside get painted white, watched it shrink and collapse. Vindicated, he let the gun slide to the floor. There was a low, warm light through the window. He didn’t need Margie. He knew that now. It was silly of him to think otherwise. He didn’t need anyone. He was enough. He could make a new world, just out of him, right here.
WE WERE SUPPOSED
We were supposed to go see a movie, get coffee, return calls, kiss, be alone, share a meal together, sleep on the same side of the bed, date, turn the radiator lower, find a studio, get two keys, move out for a while, get coffee, talk, see other people, get drunk, take a cab back to your place at two in the morning, fuck, return calls, date our friends, be angry, run six miles on the sidewalk, take a vacation, try again; get sunburned, sleep on the same side of the bed, reminisce, copyedit, get fired, find new jobs, move to San Francisco, eat only in Italian restaurants, get engaged, wear rings, wear black and console your mother, move back to Brooklyn, find an apartment, have your mother move in, be unhappy—paint the windowsills, drag your fingernails across the floorboard, over the socket with a dusting rag—be parents, buy diapers, find preschools with appropriate learning philosophies, read science books, play classical music, hire babysitters, write Christmas letters, go on family vacation (hate Disneyland, ride It’s a Small World twice, because the kid loves it), go home, drive to rock concerts with your college friend Stanley, lock the bedroom door, go to Little League, scratch blood on our chests when the kid gets a concussion, play three-way catch, kick soccer balls, gain weight, go to funerals, move to Boston with the office, tell the kid he’ll like the new school, buy a basketball hoop, be pulled from your mother in assisted living, drink two glasses of red wine at dinner, watch you drink no wine at dinner, stew, be bored in Boston—me walking alongside graveyards, discovering poetry cafés, coming home alone at four in the morning—drive the kid to school, take online classes, go on family vacation, have sex, write longer Christmas letters, watch a De Niro movie that hasn’t been on in a while, buy a leather jacket and walk along the water, standing one foot leaned behind the other, watching people, watching men, tell the kid it’s not about him; make money, go on family vacation, argue on the balcony while the kid texts, come back, reminisce, edit applications, share a meal, bring your mother home, take prom pictures, shake the kid’s hand, bring the girlfriend on a weekend trip, feel the kid cry, explain love, put the kid’s head on our chests like we used to put ours, unpack the car on a college campus, walk around with college sweatshirts, watch the kid not turn around, wait for the kid to call first: buy books we don’t need any longer, pick grass stems by the river, press our names into each other’s backs with our fingers sitting on a park bench, stand at a gas station and let the gas drip, go see a movie, get coffee, return, kiss, be alone.