He’s a good thing for me. I don’t want to lose him.
August 13—Hasty says he loves me. He gave me a real pearl necklace for our one month anniversary (since we first did it).
August 24—We had our first fight. Hasty doesn’t want me dating any other guys and I say to him
“what about you. You got a wife. Maybe you should stop fucking her, you want me to stop.” Hasty says they Only do it twice a month, but he can’t stop because she’d be suspicious. And I tell him he stops fucking her, I’ll stop dating other guys.
I told him everybody knew his wife was fucking other people.
And he said he didn’t like that kind of talk, like if he didn’t talk about it it wasn’t happening. At the end he cried and said he loved me and we did it twice and he gave me a nice gold ankle bracelet.
August 31mHasty heard about me dating Joe Hudson.
He wanted to know what we did, and I told him none of your business and he got real mad and said he was going to break Up with me if I kept going out with Joe. I told him you do what you want Mister nosy. I go out with anybody I want, unless you want to divorce the old lady and marry me. Well you should have seen his face. But then we did it and he cried while we were doing it and said he could never lose me and after he gave me a really nice set of pearl earrings to match the necklace.
September 7—I told Hasty I thought it was sick, him asking all that stuff about Joe Hudson and if we had sex and what we did. He said he loved me so much he needed to know everything, and nothing would be as bad as what he imagined. Divorce your wife I told him and marry me, and then we can talk about whatever you want.
September 8—Poor Hasty is so agitated about me and Hudson, and me wanting him to get divorced. I didn’l mean I’d tell him about me and Joe. That would Ix weird!!!!!!
But if it gets him, it’s just a little white lie don’t really get it anyway. I do the same thing with Jo Hasty. What’s so different about it???
September 1 l—I told Hasty I was going to go publi me and him. I got all his letters. I said it was tim for him to either go or get off the pot.
September 15—Hasty says give him a week. He said h would make it right. I said okay, but I wouldn’t see him until he decided.
September 17inGot some new jeans at Marshall’s an one of those great midriff sweaters. Going to take mysel out for a few drinks tonight at the 86.
September 17 was the last entry. Jesse read his cut-and paste narrative sitting alone on the little balcony over looking the harbor.
It was too cold to sit out there, eve with his jacket on. But somehow it made the reading les painful to be out there, as if the openness of the settinl compensated for the hermetic quality of the small life live, so briefly in the excerpted pages. When he was finished h sat for a long time looking across the harbor at the light from the Yacht Club.
you in whatever decision you make about Lo B’rket.?‘
Jesse nodded without comment. They were sitting at the counter in the Village Room. Jesse had coffee. Hasty had coffee and a large cinnamon roll with white icing on it.
“We ‘both know it’s not a
popular decision,” Hasty said.
“But you’re the professional. You run the department your way.”
Jesse nodded again. He poured some half-andrhalf into his coffee.
“When I hire a man I back him until he proves I shouldn’t,” Hasty said.
He took a bite out of his cinnamon bun. Jesse stirred two sugars into his coffee.
“I just hope to God you know what you’re doing.”
“Me too,” Jesse said.
“You do, don’t you?” Hasty said.
He was talking around his mouthful of cinnamon bun.
There were crumbs on his tie.
“I mean you better have some solid evidence, everybody Lou in town.”
Jesse nodded and drank some of his coffee.
“You do, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
/.“i ”It ,,would help me support you if I knew what you !“know, Hasty said.
Jesse shOOk his head.
“Why not,” Hasty said. “For
God’s sake, Jesse, I’m the c ,h ialrm, an of the Board of Selectmen.”
“I we never gotten in trouble,” Jesse
said, “being W quiet.”
“Jesse, damn it, I’m your boss.”
Jesse smiled at him and said nothing. Hasty started to speak again, and caught himself. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
