The Book of Joe

tears continue to come, blurring my vision, and I have to quickly pull over onto the anorexic shoulder of the highway, choking back an astonished sob as I throw the car into park.
    Sammy. It takes just that one image of him for me to realize that I’ve been cheating my memory up until now, relating to him strictly within the confines of a literary character, unwilling to connect with him on a personal level. I thought I’d exorcised my demons by writing the book, but I now see that I’ve merely appeased them temporarily. And now I’m heading back to the Falls, where his ghost and others await me, and I’ll have to deal with him and everything that had happened all over again, this time without the structured buffer of my pages and chapters to hold them in check. I shudder, wiping away the warm dampness on my cheeks as I wrestle my breathing back under control. Cars hurtle past me on the Merritt like missiles, their force gently buffeting my car as it idles on the shoulder.
    There was a time when I wasn’t like this, when I had friends and I cared. Sammy, Wayne, and me, three misfits who somehow managed to fit. And then things got all fucked up and we didn’t anymore, but for a while there we had something. And beyond that, even, I had Carly.
    Time doesn’t heal as much as it buries things in the under-growth of your brain, where they lie in wait to ambush you when you least expect it. And so, as the years passed, Sammy became little more than an exhibit in the museum of my memory, and Wayne was reduced to an enigmatic hologram fading in and out of perception. Only Carly persevered as a living fixture in my consciousness, stubbornly eluding any and all efforts to retire her behind the glass wall of memory, maybe because I had loved her as an adult or maybe because that was just Carly, whose sheer force of personality would never allow such diminishment. Whatever the reason, my every feeling and experience is still colored by a dim awareness of her, and wherever I go, she floats, ever present, in the background. She’s still such a part of my life, the pain is still so fresh, that it’s unbelievable to me that we haven’t spoken in close to ten years. Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it’s true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn’t fade and the scars don’t heal, and it’s too damned late.
    The tears threaten to return, so I willfully banish all thoughts from my head and take a few more deep breaths.
    I’m suddenly dizzy from the panic attack I’ve just suffered, and I close my eyes, resting my head against the warm leather of my steering wheel. Loneliness doesn’t exist on any single plane of consciousness. It’s generally a low throb, barely audible, like the hum of a Mercedes engine in park, but every so often the demands of the highway call for a burst of acceleration, and the hum becomes a thunderous, elemental roar, and once again you’re reminded of what this baby’s carrying under the hood.

Five
    Sammy Haber moved into Bush Falls the summer before our senior year, a baby-faced skinny kid, with sandy blond hair gelled to an audacious height, tortoiseshell glasses, and an unfortunate affinity for pleated slacks and penny loafers.
    He and his mother had moved up from Manhattan, where, it was whispered, they’d been forced to leave in the wake of some kind of scandal. The lack of concrete details didn’t hinder the powerful gossip engine of the Falls, was actually preferable, since it left the field wide open for sordid speculation.
    Lucy Haber, Sammy’s mother, did nothing to dampen the gossip. She was wildly beautiful, with thick auburn hair worn long and free, wide, uncomplicated eyes, and stark white skin that offered a perfect contrast to both her hair and her impossibly full lips, which came together in a thoughtless pout.
    In her platform sandals, long, flowing skirts, and clinging tops with plunging necklines, she exuded a casual, bohemian sexuality as she ambled distractedly past the stores on Stratfield Road, humming to herself as she went. Connecticut mothers, for the most part, weren’t big on cleavage when they grocery shopped. The Bush Falls aesthetic tended more toward Banana Republic blouses tucked neatly into Ann Taylor slacks. Cleavage, like the good china, was reserved for special occasions, and even then was displayed sparingly. But Lucy Haber seemed oblivious to the catty looks she received from the women she passed, or the