BooksBarbecue
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Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Cast of Characters
  7. Part One
  8. One
  9. Two
  10. Three
  11. Four
  12. Five
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. Thirteen
  21. Fourteen
  22. Fifteen
  23. Sixteen
  24. Seventeen
  25. Eighteen
  26. Nineteen
  27. Part Two
  28. Twenty
  29. Twenty-one
  30. Twenty-two
  31. Twenty-three
  32. Twenty-four
  33. Twenty-five
  34. Twenty-six
  35. Twenty-seven
  36. Twenty-eight
  37. Twenty-nine
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-one
  40. Thirty-two
  41. Thirty-three
  42. Thirty-four
  43. Thirty-five
  44. Thirty-six
  45. Thirty-seven
  46. Thirty-eight
  47. Thirty-nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-one
  50. Forty-two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-four
  53. Forty-five
  54. Forty-six
  55. A note on the Author

But I had started something that she seemed to think was a terribly good idea, because now she wouldn’t let me stop. The more she kissed me, the less I wanted it. I realized too late that I want to admire and even touch beauty, but not to taste it. Because, as I should have known, from everything I already knew about her, beauty tastes filthy. When she slid down my body and, with the disinterest of someone who had done it a hundred times before, began to unhook my underwear with her thumbs, I had to push her head away.

“As you like it,” she snapped, and, turning her back on me again, pulled herself back under the covers and, within seconds, feigned loud snores, all the more discourteous for their voluminous fakery. If I slept with someone with fake tits I think I would just find it rude. Like, do they think I’m that dumb? Big spherical balloons jutting from their rib cage? Cyrinda’s snores sounded like fake tits.

Thirty

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I invented Russell Crowe

The next morning she was up and out uncharacteristically early. She had no office to go to, so she occupied her “business hours” pounding the streets, cafés, flea markets, and boutiques of the city, venturing out to Brooklyn and Queens to work the charity stores there if she was feeling particularly productive. Discovering a batch of boy-sized Bowie T-shirts gave her a warm feeling of achievement that provided her with a week of well-being and self-worth. All her business was done over her cell phone and she had a knack of taking stunningly personal calls during business meetings and long business calls during evenings in front of the video.

She was not a stupid woman and yet there was absolutely no point in lending her your favorite book or inviting her to watch your favorite video with you, since she would talk all the way through either. In a pure party environment she passed for charming, chatty, and vibrant. In daylight-hours scenarios where she was required to be still in her own body, she came off as absolutely crazy because she couldn’t even read a magazine article, let alone a novel, without having someone to talk to while she did it.

She didn’t come home that night, nor the next. Within days I noticed that, little by little, her clothes were being moved out. I feel so depressed by gradual falling-outs, where the person and their life float away from you piece by piece like luggage from a shipwreck. I would much prefer the friendship to go down with the boat than to float with the luggage, washing up eventually on a remote island where no one would find it but where it would still exist.