Page 78 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

Joe shot a glare at Ronnie. “If I try, will you leave me alone?”

“Yep. Just give it a shot, and we can call it a day.”

Ronnie’s “oops-you-caught-me” flirt technique involved Joe acting like he got caught looking at the muscle-ginger, quickly looking down shyly, then slowly looking back up, but with a huge sexy grin on his face. Joe followed through, but just as he wasforcing a smile at the muscle-ginger, Fergal (the only man wearing a shirt on the beach) walked right between them, seeing everything. Joe quickly dropped his smile, but it only made it worse. Fergal, barely masking his disgust at Joe, began stacking crates of Absolut in the bar tent.

“Fuck,” Joe whispered to Ronnie. “Why did he have to see that?”

“Just ignore him,” Ronnie said.

“Maybe I should skip the party.”

“Don’t you dare. It’s your last chance to achieve what I’ve been visualizing for you all summer.”

“Really, Ronnie.” Joe shook his head. “Even you admitted your visualizing got us a big goose egg.”

“Not at all. I was just down the day I said that. In fact, I’d say my visualizing has an eighty percent success rate.”

“How?” Joe pressed. “You’re not marrying anyone rich and you’re still cleaning toilets. As for me, I got two heartbreaks to deal with, no real job, no plans to take the MCAT, and still haven’t had sex. I don’t know even where I’ll be living in September. How do you call that eighty percent?”

“Well …” Ronnie thought about it. “For one thing, Scotty Black is finally giving me a chance at bartending Sunday night at the Promethean after-party.”

“With only two weeks left until we leave?”

“Better late than never.” Ronnie scrunched his face. “Also maybe Vince isn’t rich now, but I bet he will be. And better yet, I don’t have to pretend to be in love with him. As far as you go …” He shook his head. “Okay, fine, fuck it. So, it’s not eighty percent, but I’m really happy for once.” His eyes filled with a swoony glint. “I’m nuts about Vince. That’s something. And look at it this way, you still have this weekend and Labor Day weekend to get laid, right? And at least now we know your heart still works well enough to get broke. That’s kinda sorta a success, right?”

Ronnie wasn’t wrong. Joe’s heart did work. Maybe too well. He couldn’t stop thinking about Fergal. But going back was impossible—Joe was neither strong nor brave enough to be with someone as good and sensitive as Fergal. He’d make Fergal’s life as miserable ashe’d made Elliot’s, to the point where Fergal would rather die alone than have Joe in his life.

When he looked over at Fergal, he felt that iron knot of pain wad up in his stomach again. When was this going to stop? Would it take as long as it was taking to get over the pain of Elliot? Just then, Fergal looked over in Joe’s direction. Joe, hoping even a brief connection might put a dent in the awkwardness, waved and smiled. Fergal’s face froze before he rolled his eyes and turned away.

“Did you see that?” Joe’s voice cracked as he placed his hand on his stomach, where an invisible knife had been plunged. “That does it. I’m going to make him talk to me.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, bud,” Ronnie warned, grabbing his arm. “He’s just not ready. You hurt him pretty bad. Give the poor guy some space. How about you focus on the man buffet this weekend instead. Maybe that Gladiator Man will be there …”

“It’s not fair,” Joe said, even though he wasn’t sure he believed it. “I know I didn’t handle it well, but he doesn’t need to treat me like I don’t even exist.”

“Come on, Joey—”

“Hey, Fergal!” Joe shouted, still holding onto the tent pole. “Can you come here for a minute? I want to talk to you!”

Fergal didn’t respond but walked over to the muscle-ginger and started flirting himself. The muscle-ginger reached into the collar of Fergal’s shirt to tousle his little patch of chest hair.

“Fuck that!” Joe released the tent pole he was holding, causing the entire structure to collapse. He furiously trudged over to where Fergal was standing. All eyes watched, anticipating either tears or fists between the hot ex-lovers—potentially more thrilling than the finales ofDynasty,Dallas, andM*A*S*Hcombined.

“Is it so hard for you just to say hi?” Joe’s voice wavered, despite trying to sound controlled. He wanted to say so much, but he mostly just stammered, knowing that there really was nothing to say, yet somehow hoping saying something would change the course of the heartbreaking awfulness. “You … you know … so, we broke up and.… well, it sucked and … well … you don’t need to be a dick!”

Fergal’s neutral expression vanished as his blue-blue eyes swirled with what looked like hatred. For a split second Joe thought Fergal might strike him—and he wished he would. At least the physical pain might briefly distract from the emotional agony. But a moment later, any threat of violence evaporated as Fergal’s face turned sad.

Without responding, he picked up his backpack and left the party area, leaving Joe standing there on the hot beach, his entire body numb with despair, the last hope of repair set adrift forever on an arctic sea.

40.Confessions, Part 1

“Sing your deepest darkest secrets loudly to the universe. If you keep them hidden, they will devour you with their teeth.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #33

On the day of the Morning Party, Howie awoke with an even darker feeling than all the other dark feelings he had already awoken to that summer. With Max on the brink of death, Lenny having spotted the egregore in the Meat Rack, the blood moon ready to reach its totality at the end of an already cosmically complex weekend, and still no confirmation of who might be the chosen one, the dark event his guts had been prophesying all summer had to be imminent.

Then again,he thought,it could end up being just a big old bag of bupkis.The Great Goddess Mother could be unpredictable in her dance with the Great Darkness. Why would she suddenly give Lenny—the schlub who had been doubting their old magic—the individuated power to see the egregore when there wasn’t even a quorum on the island? So, even though Howie’s gut swarmed with the wasps of ill omen, he knew he and Lenny were capable of getting things laughably wrong. He ruminated on his own misguided prediction of 1969, when his prescient nightmare (in retrospect brought on by eating beef too close to bedtime) caused the entirecoven to undergo emergency herbal colonics. And there were other gaffes of magical insight over the years as well, especially when the Disco Witches were far apart from one another.

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