The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg Page A

shoving his tongue into my mouth. Then he took his tongue back out and let me go. “God, I’m sorry, Laurel,” he said.
    I didn’t really care what he did with his tongue. I thought how his body, under his clothes, was just sort of an outline, like a kid’s drawing, and I thought of the long zipper on Chris’s leather jacket, and a little rip I noticed once in his jeans, and the weave of the shirt that I’d cried on.
     
     
    I carried Chris’s phone number around with me everywhere, and finally I asked my mother if I could go into the city after school on Thursday and then meet her at Penelope’s class.
    “No,” Mother said.
    “Why not?” I said.
    “We needn’t discuss this, Laurel,” my mother said.
    “You let me go in to see Dr. Wald,” I said.
    “Don’t,” Mother said. “Anyhow, you can’t just…wander around in New York.”
    “I have to do some shopping,” I said idiotically.
    Mother started to say something, but then she stopped, and she looked at me as if she couldn’t quite remember who I was. “Oh, who cares?” she said, not especially to me.
    There was a permanent little line between Mother’s eyebrows, I noticed, and suddenly I felt I was seeing her through a window. I went up to my room and cried and cried, but later I couldn’t get to sleep, thinking about Chris.
    I called him Thursday.
    “What time is it?” he said with his blistery laugh. “I just woke up.” He told me he had gone to a party the night before and when he came out his car had been stolen. He was stoned, and he thought the sensible thing was to walk over to Mark’s place, which is miles from his, but on the way he found his car parked out on the street. “I should’ve reported it, but I figured, hey, what a great opportunity, so I just stole it back.”
    Chris didn’t mention anything about our seeing each other.
    “I’ve got to come into the city today to do some stuff,” I said.
    “Yeah,” Chris said. “I’ve got a lot to do today myself.”
    Well, that was that, obviously, unless I did something drastic. “I thought I’d stop in and say hi, if you’re going to be around,” I said. My heart was jumping so much it almost knocked me down.
    “Great,” Chris said. “That’s really sweet.” But his voice sounded muted, and I wasn’t at all surprised when I got to Jake’s and he wasn’t there. I was on my third Coke when Chris walked in, but a girl wearing lots of bracelets waylaid him at the bar, and he sat down with her.
    I didn’t dare finish my Coke or ask for my check. All I could do was stay put and do whatever Chris made me do. Finally the girl at the bar left, giving Chris a big, meaty kiss, and he wandered over and sat down with me.
    “God. Did you see that girl who was sitting with me?” he said. “That girl is so crazy. There’s nothing she won’t put in her mouth. I was at some party a few weeks ago, and I walk in through this door, ’cause I’m looking for the john, and there’s Beverly, lying on the floor stark naked. So you know what she does?”
    “No,” I said.
    “She says, ‘Excuse me,’ and instead of putting something on she reaches up and turns out the light. Now, that’s thinkin’, huh?” He laughed. “Have you finished all those things you had to do?” he asked me.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “That’s great,” Chris said. “I’m really running around like a chicken today. Honey,” he said to a waitress, “put that on my tab, will you?” He pointed at my watery Coke.
    “Sandra was looking for you,” the waitress said. “Did she find you?”
    “Yeah, thanks,” Chris said. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, which was the first time he had kissed me at all, except at Joel’s, and he left.
    I knew I had made some kind of mistake, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I would only be able to figure it out from Chris, but it would be two weeks until I saw him again. Every night, I looked out the window at the red glow of the city beyond all the quiet