Chapter Three - Paul #2
Her expression is all over the place, but mostly puzzled. She closes her eyes for a second. Opens them. “Um. All right. I suppose I should ask why, but you’ve been through a lot the past couple months. Just don’t do it again.” She leans forward for emphasis. “He could have called the police.”
I swallow. I nod my understanding. I hadn’t thought of that.
She picks up the needlepoint once more as if it’s this new chore. “And I’d never make you leave, Paul.” Her voice softens. “I want you to know that.”
The teapot whistles and she gets up to tend to it. I get up, too, suddenly anxious and unable to keep still. A wild dart of energy shoots through me, and I can’t wait anymore.
“I’ll try to be back before Lawrence Welk ,” I call to her and rush out the back door.
I just spilled the beans, and I can’t handle myself.
I wonder if someone else can.
I walk in as soon as he opens the door.
The sitting room is dim like it was yesterday, and I see he’s cleaned up the ashes I spilled.
“I’m sorry, if I’m, like, early,” I say, just inviting myself right on in. “But you said if I ever got bored, and I was bored, so…”
And then my eyes adjust, and I finally get a good look at him, standing there. With no shirt. Just his denim and… no shirt .
“Oh.” It comes out of me in a short breath.
The air in his apartment is moist and warm, the scent of Lifebuoy soap surrounds him. His skin looks damp, and his hair is smoothed back from his face.
“Come on in,” he says sardonically, wrapping a butter-colored towel around his neck.
And I have to look away, at anything, everything, but him.
I can’t look at the dusting of hair on his chest, the soft lines of his biceps, or the scruff across his jaw.
Because I swear to God, I swear to God , every ounce of blood I have will flow to my dick and that’ll be the end of it all right here.
My eyes will roll back, and I’ll be face-down, splat, on his floor.
I look down and my glasses slip and I push them back up. “I didn’t mean to —” I look out the window behind the sofa. “I know you said later, or we agreed, later. Sorry.”
“You okay?”
I chance a glance at him and he’s pulling a T-shirt down over another soft thatch of hair around his navel. I feel incredibly disappointed, but it’s for the best. For now.
“Mhm. Fine.”
His eyes narrow. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You look like you could use a drink,” he says, moving past me to the kitchen.
I follow him with my gaze and see that’s where the balcony doors lead out from. This itty-bitty kitchen. Just an icebox, a stove, and a couple cabinets.
He hands me a bottle of Ballantine, and I make a show like I know what I’m doing, opening it with the opener he hands me.
But the top flies and rolls under his easy chair, and I mutter an apology.
I brace myself for the first sip because I know it’s going to taste bad, but I don’t want him to know I’ve only had, like, one in my life, and I couldn’t even finish it.
I swallow the bitter, yeasty liquid and distract my way through a gag by sitting on his sofa. He takes the easy chair and lights up a cigarette. I look around and notice he doesn’t have a television, but there’s a radio on his kitchen table.
“So, what do you do all day?” I ask, then immediately wince.
He gives me a funny look. “On the weekends? Just whatever. Take my laundry down. Listen to some records. Sometimes ride into town and pick up a few things. During the week, I work. You’re well aware of what my evenings are like.
” He rests an elbow on the back of the chair, displaying himself.
It lets me get a good look without trying too hard.
“What do you do all day? Besides, you know, stare at people.”
I feel my cheeks burn a little, but his tone is playful. “I don’t know. Read. Watch TV. I find things to do, I guess.”
“And you don’t have a job or school or anything?”
“No.”
“And so this is like…a vacation?”
I shrug at that and take another acrid sip.
Aunt Amy doesn’t even know the whole thing.
Just what she saw, what I had to tell the police, and I suppose she put two-and-two together.
When Javert finally confronted Valjean, it was clear who the aggressor was.
It was clear why Valjean had to defend himself.
How else could he have escaped? How else could he have kept his promise to Fantine?
“It’s cool if you don’t want to say,” Asher says. “I was just wondering.”
I half nod, half shrug. Take another drink.
“And you don’t have to drink the beer if you don’t want it,” he says with a knowing look in his eyes.
“I want it,” I say, clutching it to me. “I like beer.” I take another drink and try to hide the shudder.
He laughs. “You ever seen Lucy Ricardo and that Vitameatavegamin bit? That’s exactly what you look like, pal.”
“No, I don’t.” I clear my throat. “I mean, I don’t drink a lot. My aunt doesn’t drink anything but wine, and I don’t like wine. So.”
He nods, chuckles; sits back and surveys me. “What do you read?”
“Old stuff. Books nobody cares about.” I pause and get a good gulp of alcohol. I look down at the sneakers I hardly wear, push my glasses up. “My favorite is Les Misérables .” Then I hold my breath and look over at him.
I don’t expect him to love it too. Or even know it. I just don’t want him to make fun of me. It’s not like I dislike the writers of my generation, but sometimes some long-dead revolutionary going on and on and on about a bunch of cloistered nuns is exactly what I need.
Asher just nods and looks around his sitting room. “I don’t read much. As you can see.” There’s some disappointment in his tone. “I guess it’s just not my thing.”
I feel the tingle of relief. “What is your thing?”
“Cars, I guess. My bike. Anything that rides.”
I like the way his expression changes when he says it. The look of self-assurance, of knowing. “So who do you work for?”
He shrugs. “Me.” He takes a long pull on his Ballantine.
“I had to save up. Took me…” He tilts his head as he thinks about it.
“About a year and a couple of months. I live cheap so I can pay the rent on the garage. The guy that runs the shop next door owns it. Lets me lease it for my own work. Sometimes he’ll throw a customer or two my way. ”
“Why don’t you just work for him?”
He gives me that smirk that has become so familiar to me now. I’ve captured it in my mind like a photo and framed it.
“I don’t want to work for anyone,” he replies. “It’s a drag to make some other square rich, while I run around on a wheel. No thanks.”
A lock of hair slips down over his forehead.
What I wouldn’t do to be the one that brushes it away.
And the way he’s laying back like that, all displayed, what I wouldn’t do to please him.
I’d get on my knees, I’d swallow him down, he could come on my bare skin and all he’d have to do is ask.
Not even that. It’s merciful, to allow me to, it’s just the kind of recompense I need, and I can’t stop wondering what he tastes like, and next thing I know I have to lean over, I have to set the beer down and cross my arms over my lap.
And please, please, please don’t let him see.
But he’s rolling the bottle of beer in between his hands now, looking faraway into a distance only he can see. “I got plans. Stuff I’m gonna do. Later.”
“Like what?”
“Just stuff.” He takes a drink.
“I’ve got plans too.”
“Yeah?” He looks at me curiously. “Like what?”
“I’m going to move to the Rockies and live on the side of a mountain,” I blurt out as if it’s always been my dream.
“I’ll have a library of rare books, and then a library of books I hate.
I’m going to keep a diary of everything I think about and everything I do.
Then I’m going to drink a lot of brandy and die young.
But first, I’m going to leave my diary somewhere where a mountain climber might find it.
I’ll be famous after I’m dead. Like Anne Frank. ”
If he thinks any of this is strange, his face doesn’t show it. “You don’t say?”
I shrug. Swallow more beer. “Sure. Why not?”
He laughs, but it isn’t at me, and because his laugh is infectious, it makes me do the same.
“I’ll drink to that,” he says, holding up his beer.
I grab mine and clink mine against his, and we both drink.
There now. Isn’t this easy? I’m here in his sitting room with him, talking like we’re best pals, and I could’ve been doing this all along. Just what in the hell was my problem? It feels so easy-breezy that I consider asking him for a cigarette.
And I’m really starting to like beer.
“Hey, hey, hey …why do they call them flying saucers? Why not, like, flying lamps…cause, cause all they are is…just lights.” I look up at Asher’s face to see if he’s as concerned about this as me, but he just shakes his head.
“In Texas,” I say. “They’re a-aall over Texas. I guess Martians like Texas, eh?” I giggle at this, imagining Marvin Martian in a ten-gallon hat. “Do they really hold ten gallons?”
“What?”
“The hats…”
“Come on, pal.” He nudges my foot with his. “You need to go to bed.”
I’m not exactly sure how I ended up on the floor, but I’m lying partially under his coffee table while he stands over me. It seems like I’ve been here for days or just a few minutes. I want to sing about bottles of beer on walls, but I stop myself.
“I don’t wanna go home,” I mumble instead, my head swimming, and he looks so glowy in the lamplight, like an angel. “Where’re your wings at, pal?”
He shakes his head again, puts out his cigarette. “What’s your aunt’s number?”
I thrust a fist into the air. “24601!”
He grabs it. “Come on.”
“Aw, you wanna hold my hand.”
He pulls me up, and I feel so damn heavy, like I’m made of stone.
And somewhere in my swimming thoughts, bouncing around on a sea of booze, I seem to recall there was a fairytale about some Prince or Princess, or something like that, where they were going to turn into stone unless someone kissed them.
Or maybe it was just a frog or a…duck?
I don’t care, and I don’t want to turn into stone, so once I’m on my feet, I stumble into him, put both my hands around his face, and I look into those deep blue pools of sky, and it just tumbles out of my mouth, completely unbidden. “Kiss me.”
I feel heat between my palms and the heat of his breath.
There’s the scent of his cigarettes and something with an orangey spice underneath.
I resist the urge to bury my face in his neck and breathe him in fully.
I want to unfold him like a map, trace all his beginnings and endings, then wrap myself up in him, tight.
It’s an urge that overcomes, that inches through my heartbeats so delicately that tears are in my eyes.
The blue sky flickers for a second. I feel one of his arms curl around me like a vine.
I’m held and steadied on my stumbling feet, and the skin of his face is so warm and prickly from his scruff, and so my thumbs start to move, almost as if they had their own little thumb-minds, little circles, little circles, smooth skin, and prickly scruff.
And then the hand of his other arm slowly comes up to my face and his fingers gently push my glasses up my nose that I hadn’t even noticed had slipped.
A stray finger trails down my cheek in a haphazard path to my neck. I sigh and move in closer, closer.
But he pulls back and gently pries my hands away. “Come on, pal.” His voice is soft but firm. “Let’s get you home.”
“Kiss me first…before the flying saucer gets here…and takes me to Texas.”
“Let’s go.”
“Sure thing…pal.”
“Come on. You’re okay.”
I feel like I’m walking, but I’m not. There’s an arm around me, and I feel half-lifted. “I don’t wanna go to Texas.”
“You won’t.”
And then everything is kind of dark, and I hear bugs and knocking. And then there’s someone else’s voice. A woman’s voice.
“Don’t wanna go to Texas…”
“Okay, pal. You sleep it off, okay?”
And then I feel big arms around me, hands holding me up, and they’re big like a man’s but I know they’re not his. And then I fall face-down onto something soft, and I feel a blanket being pulled over me.
“Kiss me…” I whisper. “In the flying saucer…”
“It’s all right, Paul.”
“Texas…”
“It’s all right. Sleep it off.”
“Mmkay…”
And somewhere in my boozed-up mind, I know I’ve done something. I know I’ve turned a corner I can’t unturn. And now I’ve revealed it, I’ve shown him. It’s like he’s seen my underpants hanging on the clothesline.
But I sink deeper and deeper into a warm sleep, dreamy and dark, deciding I’ll just worry about it tomorrow. Because tomorrow is an unmade bed, and in my dreams, he waits for me there, with warm skin and heated breaths.