CHAPTER ONE

She wore a blue and white sundress that I bought her at the Salvation Army. I didn't pick it out. I just paid for it because she said it was comfortable, and I figured for three bucks, if you wear it twice it's worth it.

"Billy, if we had a child what would we call her?" she said in her strawberry voice. Normally, her voice was deep and rough from Marlboro Lights. But now her voice was like a blond-haired four-year-old boy. He wears overalls and eats wild strawberries on an upstate New York farm. He just picks one and eats it. He picks another and eats it. Picks another. It isn't good. Picks another.

"I don't know," I said, trying to prolong the moment. "How about Magnolia?"

"Yeah, I like that."

But wait. Way before I started seeing her I got this Radio Shack his and hers alarm clock. It has two alarms, which I like because I can get up and turn off the alarm clock, go back to sleep, and wake up fresh ten minutes later. Ten minutes doesn't seem that long, but that's when I dream. Or, at least, that's when I have the dreams that I remember. The clock is digital; at night, it looks like two eyes staring at you. Her brown eyes highlight her face because she has orange hair. Her hair is like Mexican food: You start to really love it, but then you lose your sensitivity to less spicy stuff. My clock read 10:21 p.m. Where was she? She told me she'd call at 10:30. I stared at the white phone with the orange cord. My cord broke and the AT&T store was out of white, so I chose orange. I couldn't wait two weeks for a cord, and I didn't want to go to another phone store. Besides, who's going to kill me for having an orange cord?

Once, it was different. It was the smell. All the bad stuff was mosquito bites. I kissed her shoulder, I can't remember why. But the smell...when she came home from work she always smelled of fried food, like crisp well-done french fries made with three-day-old oil and grilled cheese sandwiches with extra American cheese and tons of butter to protect the bread from burning. When you pick up the tanned sandwich, your hands are covered with grease, but you just lick your fingers clean.

Her skin was like that. Like grape chapstick. It smells so good you want to eat it, but when you do, it tastes like chapstick.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was sexy in a childlike way. I rolled down the window.

"Hi," I answered, pretending I was Elvis Presley.

"Do you still love me?"

"I love you so much."

"Did you miss me, Billy?"

"Tons." I got out, kissed her upper lip gently, and opened the door for her. "You know, your voice sounds like a combination of Shirley Temple and Marilyn Monroe."

She laughed. I spun the tires. "You know your car sounds like Burt Reynolds'."

"Yeah, but my car doesn't have hair transplants." Her smile rose to a crescendo and then into a laugh, and so I admit it, I laughed at my own joke.

"What do you wanna do?" I asked. She took a deep breath as if the doctor had said, "Take a deep breath, Rosanna. Good Girl."

"Well." She took off her shoes and stiffened her back. "I have to call my sister."

"Don't you want to get something to eat?"

"I'm not hungry, but I'll go with you."

"Forget it." I made a mental note to cancel the reservation at Le Rendezvous. "I have popcorn at the apartment, anyway."

"Okay, Jellybean." We parked the car. While walking to the elevator, she put her hand behind her back. Then she flapped her hand opened and closed. I took her hand.

"I love you, Billy."

"You do?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"A lot."

"Yea!" It was as though the Mets had come through in the bottom of the ninth--not the World Series, but an important game.

My apartment had her pink Samsonite make-up box on the floor. Yellow Adidas sweat pants hung across the bookcase and her black fishnet stockings were folded neatly on my bedside lamp. I had replaced one of two light bulbs in it with a green bulb. There were white Beverly Hills Hotel towels on the floor. I use a new towel every morning, but only because I have so many. Now you know it: I'm a towel thief. My faded blue jean jacket, my white robe that we shared, and her red socks lay on the brown leather couch. There was a Buddy Guy record on. I always need sound from the second I walk in to the second I leave; it sets the mood, I think. Understandably, she hates it.

I picked up the robe to hang it up in the bathroom. I remembered a shower we had taken together. She washed my back with Dial. She started to wash her neck.

"Let me." I took the soap and washed her neck, her upper chest, then her breasts.

"Underneath is most important," she said. "That's where they sweat."

END CHAPTER ONE