We weren’t inside for more than five seconds before Mindy had the bottle to her lips. Five seconds after that, she was undressing. I don’t mean prim and properly either. She was tearing at her clothes as if they were on fire. When she was done removing hers, she started at mine. I grabbed her hands, tried holding her wrists, but she was determined, much more determined to push ahead than I was to stop her.
“What’s going on, Min?” I asked as she unbuckled my belt. “What’s the matter?”
She said, “Just shut up and fuck me.”
I shut up and fucked her and continued doing so for another two hours. I wasn’t the most experienced lover in the world, but even I recognized the signs that the sex Mindy and I had that night wasn’t about sex at all. It was about hunger and anger and escape. Escape from what, I couldn’t say. It was mind blowing because it was both great and terrible, intimate and empty. Every one of her moans, her sighs, her orgasms was like an urgent prayer. But it really got trippy after the fact, when she curled herself up into my arms and cried. And this wasn’t gentle sobbing I’m talking about. At first, as the tears rolled onto my chest and down past my ribs onto the mattress of the foldout couch, I held her tight and stroked her hair. Mindy wasn’t generally given to tears. I’m not saying she was hard. She just wasn’t a crier.
“I know I’m not Don Juan, but I’ve never driven a girl to tears before.”
“You’re an idiot, Moe.”
“Is this about Samantha again?” I whispered.
“Sort of.”
“Huh?”
Then she choked out, “Bobby was my first. Did you know that?”
I felt more than a little pang of jealousy. I’d suspected there was a deeper connection between Bobby and Mindy than hand holding at sleep-away camp, though I never asked. I don’t think I really wanted to know. Bobby wasn’t the best-looking guy in Brooklyn, but girls loved him. I knew Mindy wasn’t a virgin and I never really cared about stuff like that. Besides, my experience as a virgin and being with them wasn’t very magical. It was always awkward. The only good thing about those moments was that they didn’t last very long. For some reason it really got under my skin about Mindy and Bobby, and it must have showed. Mindy could feel me clench.
As she wiped her tears with the back of her hands, she asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “I thought you were upset about Sam. Now all of a sudden you’re talking about screwing Bobby. What’s this got to do with Bobby?”
“Nothing. Nothing. That was stupid. I shouldn’t have said it. Forget it. I think I’m still a little drunk.”
She was out of my arms, off the couch, naked and tiptoeing across the cold, gritty linoleum to the bathroom. The light went on and I heard the shower running. I should have warned her to leave the light off. Bobby liked to joke that the place was so filthy, cockroaches would have wanted it fumigated before agreeing to infest.
I must have drifted off to sleep there for a bit because when I opened my eyes, Mindy was pulling her damp hair over the collar of her coat.
“Where you going, babe? I thought we could go get some pizza or something and — ”
“Not tonight,” she whispered. “I couldn’t, not tonight, not with …” Then she leaned over and kissed me hard on the mouth, a desperate kind of kiss.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, pulling her down next to me. Her coat still reeked of bourbon. “You’re acting kinda freaked out.”
Her expression was pained, her lips pressed tightly together. She seemed to want to say something, needed to say something.
“Moe, I need you to do a favor for me.”
I wriggled my eyebrows. “Anything, babe. Gimme a second. I think I got another round in me.”
She slapped me lightly on the chin. “No, this is serious. I need you to listen to me carefully and do as I ask, but no questions. Say you’ll do it for me.”
I said, “Sure, whatever you want.”
“Promise me you won’t question me, and that you’ll keep your word.”
I sat up, my back against the rear cushions of the couch. “Now you’re freaking me out.”
“Promise me!”
“Okay, Min, sure. I promise. What is it?”
“Just stay away from Bobby for the next couple of days. Stay away from him, Moe. Far away.”
“Are you putting me on? You sound like that stupid robot on Lost in Space.” I pressed my elbows to my ribs and moved my forearms up and down. “Danger, Moe Prager! Danger! Stay far away from Bobby Friedman. What’s with that? It does not compute.”
Her face was deadly serious. “I’m not putting you on, lover. Keep away from Bobby.”
Before I could say another word, Mindy was out the door. I wasn’t exactly dressed to go chasing after her. Even if I had been, she wouldn’t have talked to me. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew my girlfriend well enough. It was a struggle for her to say what she had and she wasn’t going to say another word. Trouble was, I could be as curious as a litter of Siamese kittens. In the face of curiosity, promises be damned.
CHAPTER THREE
What had changed? That was the question on my mind when my head hit the pillow on my old familiar bed, and it was still the question when I opened my eyes in the morning. I just couldn’t get over how strange Mindy had been the night before. The drinking, the cigarettes, and the angry sex were the least of it. I guess I could make some sense of that. We all do some stupid shit sometimes. But the stuff about her and Bobby … it just didn’t hang together. Why would she tell me about sleeping with Bobby right after we had screwed ourselves raw? I didn’t think she was trying to hurt me. Or maybe she was, I didn’t know. And that warning about keeping away from Bobby; what was that about? All I knew was that we had had this really pleasant phone conversation just before I left to bail Bobby out of the Tombs. Then two hours later, Mindy was like a different person. What had happened in those two hours? What had changed?
As I lay there still half asleep, something else, something obvious that hadn’t quite registered in my sex-drunk brain the previous evening, occurred to me: Bobby Friedman was in some kind of trouble. What kind of trouble, I couldn’t say, but it must’ve been serious. I couldn’t get the pained look on Mindy’s face out of my head. It was identical to the look on my mom’s face when I was little and she used to warn me about polio. Never put on another kid’s jacket or share food or drinks. She never used the word polio, but I understood what her warnings meant. She would always try to be really calm when she talked about it. Of course the irony was that the false calmness — that pinched look of hers, her struggling not to use the word polio — was precisely the thing that scared the shit out of me.
“Moe. Get up!” It was my big brother Aaron. “You got class in an hour.”
“Eat shit and die.”
“Nice thing to say to the man who’s gonna make you rich someday.”
“Capitalist dog!”
“Woof. Woof.”
“You’re funny, Aaron. Remind me to laugh.”
“I’m serious, Moe. Someday …”
“Yeah, my brother the salesman is gonna make me rich, huh? What you gonna do, Willy Loman, rob a bank? Take out a big insurance policy, name me as beneficiary, and jump in front of a train?”
“Listen, little brother, why do you think I’m living at home? You think I wanna still be sleeping in the same room as you, smelling your farts, fighting for who gets to piss first in the morning? I wanna be outta here as much as you, but I’m saving money this way. If you don’t get some idea of where you’re going, you’re gonna be waking up in this room, in the same bed for the rest of your life. The money I’m saving now, we’re gonna need someday.”