It Feels So Good When I Stop by Joe Pernice Read Free Book Online

puke right now, but I’m so hungry, there’s nothing in my stomach to puke.” I faked a retch.
    “You love distraction. Maybe more than anybody I’ve ever met.”
    “I told you I was different.”
    “You might be.” She kissed me first. It took about five seconds before we were officially mashing in public. If I had been a mere witness to it, I would have hurled at our feet.

    PAMELA’S SUBURBAN—with winterized boat still in tow—was parked in front of the house. I could see the back of James’s head behind the wheel. I coasted to a stop on the driver’s side. His window was open a crack, and he was talking on the phone, smoking. When he saw me, he rolled the window down to halfway, and smoke poured over the outside of it like water over a falls.
    “Just the prick I want to see,” he said. “No, not you—my brother-in-law. You, Teddy, are the prick I never want to see.” James would probably always call me his brother-in-law, like he was divorcing only my sister and not me. “I’ll be there in a few. Yeah, we’re all set. Yes. Yes. Yes, Teddy,” he said, agitated. “No. No, I have two full rolls in my truck as we speak. No, twenty-fives. It’s plenty. Trust me. Because I’ve been doing this job since I was seventeen’s how I know.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at me in disbelief. “How about if it isn’t enough, I drive back to Orleans and get another roll and finish up alone?” The last proviso seemed to satisfy Teddy. James listened.
    I sat there on the bike—on hold. I looked in the back of the Suburban to catch a glimpse of whatever kind of rolls James was sure would be enough for whatever job they were talking about. Roy was falling in and out of sleep, strapped into a car seat directly behind the front passenger seat. His head kept drooping forward, and he’d snap it upright, doze back to sleep, and so on.
    “I just have to drop my kid off,” James said. “I don’t know, fifteen minutes.” Then he hung up. “Fuck me,” he said to the gods.
    “What’s up?” I said.
    “The fucking guy—” He stopped himself when he saw me and the bike. “How you holding up?”
    “Eh, you know.”
    “That’s a nice ride you got there. Reminds me of my buddy Dogshit.” James had a friend who actually answered to the name Dogshit. When Dogshit was a teenager he passed out at the wheel and cracked his two upper incisors. He never got them fixed, and they turned brown, like stubborn leaves that refused to fall. “You know Dogshit,” James said, pulling at the outer corners of his eyes because Dogshit’s mother was Korean.
    I’d met him a few times. I called him David at first, and he looked at me like I had two heads, both filled with teeth more fucked up than his own.
    “They busted him for DUI, and he wasn’t even driving. He was parked.” James found his recollection of the story entertaining. “He had to get back and forth to the boatyard on a friggin’ ten-speed. You know, with the handlebars?” He traced the outlines of ram’s horns. “Funny as all fuck, Dogshit pulling up all out of breath and he’s pissed off, bitching to himself.” James tapped his front tooth. “Nobody would give him a lift—I swear to Christ—just so we could watch him ride up in the mornings . . .” James trailed off, quieted by his own take on nostalgia. “He’s a good shit, though, Dogshit.”
    “At least it’s exercise.” I pulled the front end of Sweet Thunder up into a stationary wheelie position. The tire knocked the driver’s-side mirror out of whack.
    “Hey, easy, easy.” James readjusted the mirror. “Yo, what’s this coming up behind us?” I turned around a lot more conspicuously than I would have had I known he was talking about Marie and not an El Camino or a Har ley. She was wearing the same Kelly green track jacket. I was embarrassed because she had to think we were gawking at her. She turned her eyes to the ground. I spun back around and leaned forward