Jernigan by David Gates

said. Hands went out. As I do with women, I clasped firmly but did not shake. (With men I pump up and down.)
    “Clarissa’s in her room,” she said to Danny, and he started upstairs. It hurt me that this house was so obviously familiar to him. “I think my daughter is part vampire,” said Martha Peretsky. “It’s like if sunlight touches her …” Cracking rubber letters on her t-shirt read DAMN I’M GOOD .
    From upstairs came a quick blast of rackety music that was not “My Guy” by Mary Wells, then a door slammed and you heard “My Guy” by Mary Wells again. Martha Peretsky shrugged. “I don’t even want to know what they do up there. At least they’re not glued to the tv. Clarissa and I are at a little impasse these days—I won’t buy a color tv and she won’t watch black-and-white.”
    “What do they do up there?” I said.
    “Oh,” she said. She seemed to remember that I was an interested party. “Not drugs or anything, I don’t think. Danny’s been very goodfor Clarissa in that respect. You knew that she—I mean, we both did, but Clarissa in particular went through a very hard time when her father left.” First I’d heard, of course, about any of this.
    “Now when was that?” I said. I meant it to sound like a keep-it-rolling kind of thing. I could hear that I sounded like a cop grilling somebody. (That cop. Grilling me . One year ago today.)
    “Was it two years ago?” she asked herself. “I was—Clarissa was twelve. So it’ll be three years in October.”
    “This coming October,” I said, getting it absolutely nailed down. I mean, who gave a shit.
    “Right,” she said. “Time flies when you’re having fun. Listen, would you like a beer? Soda?”
    “Beer’d be good,” I said.
    She smiled, a nice combination of open and sly. “Follow me,” she said, and kitchy-kooed with her index finger. I didn’t mind. I wondered what her breasts would look like. I mean, decent-sized, obviously. But specifically. Except for one throwaway fuck about two months after Judith died—a woman client I’d gotten drunk with; I never called her afterwards and the sale never went through—I’d seen no breasts in a year.
    Back outside, I plunged my hand into the icewater and came up with a can of Old Milwaukee. Made my hand ache to hold it. I ripped open the top and was brought over and introduced to the friends. There was a Jerry with a j and a y; another, unattached to him, was a Gerri with a g and an i . Much merriment over this. Also a Dave and a David: the two beards. And a Tim who didn’t look timid, with rimless glasses. So it was Rimless Tim. See, I’m bad at names; shit like that is how I try to keep them straight. This Tim had the Gerri and another woman laughing and laughing. He was one of those men with a pointed nose and a wolfish grin. So you could think of a timber wolf. I sat down in a lawn chair whose seat and back were made of crosshatched wire about the gauge of a coathanger. I’d seen these chairs on sale at Caldor’s; this Martha Peretsky had actually bought them.
    She went over and said something to the Tim person. He said something back, and they both laughed. Then she came and sat on the grass beside my chair, gave her knees a hug and looked up. “Youreally are nice,” she said. Based on what? On my saying that a beer would be good? “Danny said you would be. We’ve become great friends, Danny and I.”
    “Well,” I said, “always nice to hear. That your kids, you know, think you’re nice.”
    “God, I always say the wrong thing,” she said. “Say what you mean , Martha. What I mean is, I am a nice person too, and I think the nice people in this world should stick together. Because bro-ther.”
    “To the nice people,” I said, raising my beer can from collarbone level to chin level. But not actually drinking. To have taken a belt right then would have been crude, wouldn’t it? Suggesting this world was so awful that we should all immediately get drunk. So