What's Important Is Feeling: Stories Read Free Page A

dug into us: seat belts, soda straws, empty cigarette packs. I tried to kiss her again, and this time she sort of let me. Her lips were dry. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
    “We don’t have to,” I said. “Are you sure?”
    “Shut up,” Kendra said. She raised her body, lowered herself onto me. I didn’t last long. My penis went flaccid. Kendra bounced up and down with increasing vigor.
    “I’m soft,” I whispered.
    “Just shut up,” she said, and kept on going.
     
    The band was getting better. I’d written a song, not the meerkat one. It was a minor-key ballad called “Car”—the refrain: “I don’t want to arrive . ”
    Kendra liked it. The others were indifferent, but her vote counted more than theirs. We’d secured a gig for the following weekend, playing Wyatt’s July Fourth bash. The band needed a name.
    “It sounds like a fart,” Sam said, and tried to twirl a stick. The stick slipped from his grip and fell. “A womanly fart.”
    “It doesn’t,” I said. The name was my idea.
    “Well, not like an actual fart,” Sam said. “But a description of one. Like if someone asked, ‘What did that fart sound like?’ one might reply, ‘Oh, soft thunder.’ ”
    Roland shrugged, plucked an E string. His amp produced a low and reverbed note. I took this as a vote on my behalf.
    “I like it,” Kendra said. “It’s retro, kind of seventies. Kind of Fleetwood Mac.”
    “Exactly,” Sam said. “A shitty decade and a shitty band—just what we want to be!”
    “I like it,” Kendra said, which settled the matter.
    “No dizzout,” Alex said.
    “Fine,” Sam said. “Whatever.” He picked up his drumstick, played a snare fill, silently fumed.
    After practice I drove Kendra to the Bickford’s out on Route 1. To get there, you had to pass this big oak where some kids were killed a few years back. They’d been speeding and lost control of the car. For a while the tree was decorated, surrounded by framed photos, drawings, flowers, notes tacked to the trunk. Now there was no memorial. Weeds grew back in around it. It was hard to remember which tree was the right one.
    “Some kids died there,” I said. Kendra paused a moment before responding. She inhaled deeply. I thought she was being dramatic. It’s not like she knew them.
    “I’m gonna die,” she said.
    “We all are,” I said. “Everyone in the world. Everyone we’ve ever loved.” It was something I’d heard someone say in a movie. What I wanted to say was that I’d never loved anyone, not yet, but maybe if she’d let me I would fall in love with her. I could lie on top, blanket her body.
    Bickford’s had that unbearably cold air-conditioning that comes from the ground and freezes your flip-flopped feet. Everyone in there was old—waitresses and patrons—life’s cooling leftovers. There was a nursing home across the street, the Star of David, an unkempt drop box for Jewish seniles. Trish was always threatening to put our parents there.
    Kendra and I ate in almost silence. Well, I did. She ordered chocolate-chip pancakes but didn’t take a single bite.
    “Not hungry?” I said, sneaking my fork into her food.
    “Go ahead,” she said. “I don’t eat.” She said it like it was supposed to be funny.
    “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
    “It does sound like a fart,” she said.
     
    Later, entwined on my futon, after many minutes of unexplained crying, Kendra told me that as a girl growing up in Hungary, she would sneak into the living room at three in the morning to watch a show that played American music videos. She said that her whole life all she’d ever wanted was to be in a rock band, to have sex and get high and wear outrageous outfits, and that she was glad she was getting to do that now. She said she was happy. I wasn’t sure what to do—what the appropriate response was—so I reached for her hand and held it. I said, “That’s good.”
      
    “Drinky-pinky time!” said Wyatt, brandishing a waiter’s profuse