Hard Feelings by Jason Starr Read Free Book Online Page B

had long, curly brown hair; the other one had short red hair. They looked bored and very single. They had probably come up here for the weekend from Boston or New York, hoping to meet guys. The dark-haired girl looked over at me. I imagined starting a conversation with her, secretly sliding my wedding ring off and putting it in my pocket, then going back to her room.
    Making sure my hand with my wedding band was concealed, I smiled at the dark-haired girl. She seemed surprised, maybe slightly disgusted, and turned back to her friend. A few seconds later, they got up and left.
    In the morning Paula and I pretended our fight last night had never happened. We had a nice breakfast at the inn and then we spent the day together, driving around the nearby towns, without arguing at all.
    In the afternoon, we headed back to the city, along the winding upstate New York roads. Paula fell asleep, leaning against the door, and I was relaxing, listening to The Prairie Home Companion on National Public Radio, when I saw myself standing outside my old house in Brooklyn, bouncing a basketball. Michael Rudnick came over from across the street and said, “Hey, Richie, wanna play some Ping-Pong?”
    “Sure!” I said.
    I put my basketball down on the lawn and followed Rudnick to his house.
    “So you think you can beat me this time?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “We’ll see about that,” he said.
    We went up the driveway and entered the house through the back door. It was dark and very quiet. Rudnick told me to go down to the basement ahead of him and I heard the door close behind us.
    We were playing Ping-Pong. The score was 20–14, Rudnick leading. Rudnick served and my return hit the net. Rudnick put down his paddle and started chasing me from behind.
    “You’re gonna feel it! You’re gonna feel it!”
    I was running away, laughing. Rudnick grabbed me from behind and started yanking on my underwear.
    “You’re gonna feel it! You’re gonna feel it!”
    I was lying facedown on the couch and Rudnick was on top of me, grunting and sweating. I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was trying to get away, but he was too strong for me.
    “Please stop,” I begged him. “Please stop.”
    I tried to break away, using my arm for leverage, when I realized I wasn’t in the basement anymore, I was in the car, yanking on the steering wheel. The car had swerved off the shoulder, onto a grassy area, and there was a tree straight ahead. I braked and turned the steering wheel far to the left. Paula woke up screaming. The car missed the tree by a few yards as we skidded back onto the highway. Luckily, there wasn’t another car coming or we would have been in a serious accident.
    “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said, feeling light-headed and slightly in shock. “Don’t worry—it’s okay, it’s okay.”
    “What happened?”
    “I don’t know. I think a raccoon ran onto the road.”
    “A raccoon?”
    “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
    We drove on. Paula stayed wide awake and neither of us said a word.

5
     
    MONDAY MORNING PAULA and I shared a cab downtown. I got out at Forty-eighth Street, kissing her goodbye quickly, and then she continued to Wall Street.
    As always after spending an entire weekend together, it felt strange to be alone. I also felt guilty about the way I’d been treating Paula lately. Not only was she my wife, she was my best friend, maybe my only friend, and I realized how empty my life would be without her.
    I used to have a lot of friends, but over the years most of them had gotten married or moved away and I hardly saw them anymore. At my jobs, I’d always had acquaintances, but no one I wanted to get together with outside the office. My two roommates from college still lived in the city—Joe on the West Side and Stu in the Village. But Joe was married now and he and his wife were high school teachers and I didn’t have a lot in common with them. Stu was a web designer and we always had a lot to talk about, but