This Is Where I Leave You

in me is duly noted.”
    I look out the window at a flock of geese flying by in a V formation, getting out while the getting’s good. “It’s not you, Phillip. It’s humanity in general.”
    “Well, cry me a river.”
    “Okay, drop me at Kelton’s.”
    “The ice rink?”
    “Yeah.”
    He gives me a quizzical look. “Going skating, are you?”
    “There’s something I want to see.”
    Phillip gives me a wry look. “Something or someone?”
    Then, without warning, he swerves across the double yellow line to pass the minivan in front of us, and for a second we are faced with oncoming traffic and our own mortality. A second later he yanks us back across and, without downshifting, turns left through the intersection on what feels like two wheels, the centrifugal force throwing me against the door. “Jesus Christ, Phillip!”
    The Porsche’s tires gain traction and we rocket down the street to a chorus of angry horns from all the motorists he almost killed, and Phillip sighs. “Driving a Porsche is like fucking a model,” he says, and he would know. “It will never feel as good as it looks.”
    12:20 p.m.
    Penny skates backward in circles to Huey Lewis and the News, her legs whipping and scissoring beneath her as she speeds across the ice, executing a leap and then a spin. She is wearing black leggings and a worn gray hoodie, her hair tucked into a black ski cap. She moves with grace and confidence, her face flushed from the cold, and she doesn’t see me, shivering in my polo shirt on the lowest bleacher, falling briefly in love with her again ...If this ain’t love, baby, just say so ...Huey Lewis and the News are done, and the Dream Academy comes on singing “Life in a Northern Town.” Why are all skating rinks trapped in the eighties? Penny picks up speed and then glides backward across the ice holding one leg up over her head with her hand. As she moves past, her eyes casually sweep up to the bleachers and she sees me. The surprise throws her balance off, and she goes down on her ass hard. I run through the opened door and out onto the ice, where she’s already back on her skates, dusting the ice flakes off her leggings.
    “You okay?” I say.
    “You scared me,” she says.
    “I didn’t mean to.”
    “You’re not allowed on the ice without skates.”
    “Right. Sorry.” I step back through the door onto the rubber matting. Penny skates over to the door and gives me a long, measured look. Then she reaches into one of the pockets of her sweatshirt and tosses me a key chain. “There are hockey skates in the rental shack. Go grab yourself a pair and come on out.”
    “I wasn’t planning on skating.”
    “And I wasn’t planning on falling on my ass in front of an old boyfriend. Things happen. Just roll with it.”
    “I was never your boyfriend.”
    Penny grins. “Fuck-buddy, then.”
    “We never actually had sex.”
    “And we never will if you keep parsing words with me.”
    The hockey skates smell like something curled up and died in them. I’m laced up and on the ice in under fi ve minutes. I haven’t skated in years, stopped playing pickup hockey around the time I got married, but it comes back fast. While I was putting on my skates, Penny dimmed the main lights and turned on the disco effects, so we are skating to “Time After Time” through a dusky universe of spinning blue stars. It’s like we’ve been transplanted into a romantic comedy, and all that’s left to do is say something meaningful and kiss Penny at center ice while the music swells, and the happy ending is guaranteed. If you’re lost you can look and you will find me, time after time. Penny was always recklessly attracted to grand romantic gestures, to jumping into fountains fully clothed, to long, deep kisses in the rain. She dreamed of Richard Gere in his navy dress whites carrying her out of the factory, of telling Tom Cruise that he had her at hello. But we are hardly free and clear for a happy ending. After all this time, we are little more than strangers to each other, each of us pretending otherwise for our own sad reasons. I don’t even know if I’m here because she’s someone I once loved, or because I’m just lonely and desperate and more than a little sexually frustrated and our past gives me something of a 154head start. And there’s something off about Penny, something not quite there. I shouldn’t be here. I should be back at home, mourning my father and adjusting to the reality of becoming