An early excerpt from this month's novel. Screw the inner editor.
Making the left from Oregon onto Delaware Avenue, both hands on the wheel, her eyes straight ahead as she speaks, I can tell Kathleen wants to know if I'm in a rush to get home.
"C'mon Paul," she says, "let's go hit the dunkin donuts or something." It's rare for her to ever come right out and say what she wants, but I doubt a jelly donut is it. Maybe I'm wrong though, I've seen her scarf down enough of those at three in the morning the last few years. As I turn to look at her, the light-purple sky highlights her profile. Her makeup is still pretty much spot on, the black smudges of her eyes and the violet accents on her cheeks looking quite a bit creepier with the sun starting to come up. Her long, straight dark brown hair moves in the wind corridor created by the open windows of her Volkswagon Beetle and I can't help but think she's hot, even if those feelings of desire are long behind us. She's my best friend, but I'd still bend her over the hood if she wanted me to, even if she's slipped off those uncomfortable heels for the slippers she keeps in the back seat.
“Yeah, ok,” I tell her, surprised at myself. The afterglow of the night is receding and I cannot let go of being with her despite my weariness. I have always had issues letting go, especially with women. The hours spent celebrating her birthday bar hopping between the goth night clubs in olde city and outlasting all of her friends, save Joey, had won us the job of taking him to the impound lot to reclaim his forgotten and towed car – a job adding another hour to the commute home and an exploration of a part of Delaware Avenue, excuse me, Columbus Boulevard, that neither of us had ever needed or wanted to visit. Well, at least I didn't, but Kathleen was still a mystery to me about where she ever wanted to be.
“So his wife lives around here,” she says, glancing at me, “on one of these side streets.” She looks at me from the corner of her eyes and back, not shifting her head away from the road in front of her.
“Hannock, or something like that.” I know where this is going now, and turn my head to look out the window so she doesn't see my grin. I'm sure she knows it's there anyway.
“Let’s see if his car is there," she goes on, flooring it through a yellow light and I note the playful lift in her tone of voice.
“Ok, sure,” I say, nodding and wondering if she has any more clove cigarettes. I had forgotten how much I missed them, their flavor now embedded in my clothing and on my lips from her stash. I will ask her for one when we get out of the car. No one gets to smoke in her baby Irene.
The car moves down the relatively empty boulevard, shooting past a blue hooptie Buick whose ghetto-fabulous driver is drinking from a paper-bag covered bottle. The night sky slowly changing, the air smelling faintly of salt and fumes, we turn left at the wawa and begin cruising the quiet streets, looking for Hannock.
Her fingers are turning white as she grips the wheel and I know better than to try and talk to her now, or to tell her how this drive is reminding me of the first time I drove Elena back to her train after we had spent the night curled up under my desk at the office.
The sky was just lightening then, as it is now, and there was a smile on my face as the expectation of a new day loomed as the foreign girl had fallen asleep in my arms. The next morning, the windows closed, the air conditioning running full blast and the car smelling of her sex and the French perfume she loved, we fell through the streets of Princeton after the light came out, passing Nassau and it’s darkened stores and on our way to the first train of the morning to new york city; the train that would have her home a half-hour before her boyfriend’s third-shift let out.
