Chapter Five - Paul
CHAPTER FIVE
Paul
I REMEMBER RIDING with my parents on a highway somewhere.
We were in the old Chevrolet with the sticky seats when the weather got too hot. I’d roll the window down, let the wind blast me in the face. And my parents would be in the front, radio low and rumbling, exchanging the occasional word.
We were riding back from someplace when I was eight.
Some kind of family picnic with Mom’s side.
There were cousins I only saw once a year, all of them either too old to want anything to do with me or too little for me to deal with.
So I sat underneath the picnic table and picked at the grass.
I judged my relatives by their legs and shoes — pointy shoes and knobby knees = a secret wizard; round shoes and fat ankles = a pumpkin farmer — and I watched ants collect on lost hamburger buns and spilled bits of chicken aspic and lost the time, the minutes, the hours.
Then the sun was fading, it was time to go, and there were car doors slamming.
We rode home while the sun was setting. I turned to the window to look.
When I saw it, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
It quite possibly was since I was eight.
The sky and the clouds were lit with these pinks and yellows, the mountains in the background were rolling blue.
I couldn’t stop staring at it. Had it been a pool of water, I would have dunked my head in, full immersion.
I turned around in the seat and looked out the back, watching and watching and watching, afraid I’d never see anything like that ever again.
Afraid I’d never feel like it made me feel again.
And it made me feel this profound loss, this beautiful tragedy that is endings.
I knew with full force that the day was over. Well and truly over.
How could I have been so foolish earlier? I thought. How could I have tossed out all those minutes under that picnic table like coins? It’s all over now. This day. It will never come again.
Then, like sunsets are apt to do, it ended, and it was nighttime.
I mourned it. I mourned the loss in my little heart all the way home, feeling sure I’d seen something in a way no one else ever had.
But, I thought, at least I’d seared that image in my memory for all time.
I felt sure I would always be able to close my eyes and conjure it up, over and over again.
If only last night could’ve been like that sunset.
If only there was a way for me to watch it from outside of me, a way for me to become fully immersed, then I wouldn’t fear losing the feeling of it, the vision of it when I closed my eyes.
Whatever else happens, I don’t want to forget this. I can’t forget this.
My hand was in his hand. And his eyes, his lips, his hands were on me. I play it all over and over against the screen of my eyelids, setting up every detail, every sound, vivid Technicolor and Deluxe.
Even if it never happens again, even if it does, I want to remember it always. As the beautiful tragedy that is beginnings. And mourn the loss when twilight comes.
It takes him a minute to open the door.
I can tell what he was doing by the humid air and Lifebuoy scent.
A cigarette dangles from the side of his mouth.
I stick my thumbs in my belt loops and attempt to lean my shoulder against the door frame, but my shoulder slips, and I stand upright instead, taking him in on the evening after.
Taking him in after a long day of waiting and waiting and waiting for it to be evening already so I could see him.
But as he stands there in his unusually dim sitting room — despite it being sunny as shit outside — surveying me without a word, I begin to panic inwardly.
The thought of him turning me away, the thought of him telling me to get lost, kid, and having it all be over, eats away at my insides as the seconds tick by.
Then, thankfully, mercifully, he steps aside and gestures me in.
He goes and sits on his sofa. I go and sit next to him, our hips and knees touching. I wait for him to finish his cigarette, stub it out in the ashtray, then he turns to me. He looks at me for a long while, his gaze drifting. First my eyes, then my lips, then my eyes again.
“You really want to be here?”
I loop my arm through his and lay my chin on his shoulder.
He looks down at our touching knees, denim kissing denim. “You know, I was thinking. About what you said, your mom. Losing somebody the way you did, it can change you. Make you be and think how you ordinarily wouldn’t.”
He was thinking about me? I want to ask…was it all night? Just this morning? Just since I left last night? I can’t have all the fun, though. I can’t be so greedy this soon.
“But I’m already ordinary.” I inform him. “I can’t be anymore ordinary.”
His eyes meet mine. “I’m just saying.” And then a faint smile. “You’re more than ordinary, pal.”
I shrug my untouched shoulder.
He sighs and looks across the sparsely covered coffee table.
Aunt Amy’s coffee table is set with a vase of silk flowers, a stack of coasters, and two books she doesn’t like on the shelf.
She says they’re specially meant for the coffee table.
One is pictures of sculptures and the other is a sports almanac.
Neither one of us ever looks at the almanac.
I don’t think it’s been opened in years.
Asher’s coffee table is scuffed and scratched and has nothing on it but the ashtray. I decide I like it best.
“Look, I know how it is,” he says quietly.
“When somebody close to you dies. It can make you not the person you were. Or make you want to be a person you shouldn’t.
” He pauses, runs a thoughtful finger over the scruff on his cheek.
“I lost my brother. Older brother. When I was a kid. He was, um…trampled by a horse.”
My elbow tightens around his. I caress his hand with mine for comfort.
“At first, he was paralyzed. His spine. He could talk and see and everything. Then he kept getting these headaches…” He pauses for a few seconds. I feel his head turn to me. “That kind of stuff, it can change you, you know?”
I think I know what he’s getting at. I think. I slip my fingers through his. I can’t believe he’s just told me something so personal. It doesn’t match him on the outside.
I can’t believe what’s just happened in the last day. A day of firsts for me. Ferris wheel, kettle corn, and a kiss with tongue. I don’t know if he should know. It probably wasn’t hard to tell.
I lean forward to put my lips on the corner of his. I try to lean my head against his, but my glasses get in the way, bump his cheek, and I take them off.
His hand tightens against mine. “I don’t want you to think I expect things.”
I nuzzle my face in his neck, kiss him there.
For a few minutes, we stay that way. I feel the throb of his pulse against my nose, and there’s the faint scent of the orangey spice.
I get a second of disbelief. Like here he is alive and breathing, this evolved organism.
This man on the balcony. This specimen I watched from afar, and I can’t believe this is real.
I can’t believe I get to sit here this close to him.
I can’t believe he hasn’t told me to get lost yet, and so I pull my face away from his neck like a jolt.
I put my glasses back on and let go of his hand and scoot over a tad. I know what I should expect.
I lie back on his sofa and consider asking him for a beer. I might be pushing my luck, but he takes the hand I just took away, plays with my fingers. I realize it was the hand that held his last night. I touched him with it. His face. His neck.
“Did you like it?” I blurt out.
He nods.
“It was okay?”
He nods again. Looks me in my face. “Did you?”
I smile. Feel my cheeks get warm.
His expression is serious, though. He doesn’t smile back.
“I don’t have a brother,” I say gently. “I’ve never had one. But I can imagine it would hurt to lose one.”
He lies back on the sofa beside me. I lay my head against his, until he turns, his lips brushing mine, and I’m eager, opening my mouth to taste his kiss.
I didn’t think it would be any better than last night.
I didn’t think it would feel different, but it does.
The way he slows it, and it’s just his lips, kissing my top lip, my bottom lip, and I think I may never catch my breath.
And that’s fine. Fine.
Let me drown in him, in his very essence. Let me sink into the depths with him, pinned under his kiss, and what a way to go. Tell my family I’ll miss them. Except my father. Tell my aunt I love her.
And tell the world I died happy.
It’s almost dinner time, but I don’t want to go back to my aunt’s yet.
He stops kissing me, though, and it’s like someone has woken me from one of the best dreams of my life. He pulls me up from the sofa. He brushes his thumb across my cheek. “You hungry, pal?”
I sort of shrug and nod. “I guess so.”
“Wanna go somewhere?”
“Okay.” I try not to sound disappointed. Sometimes I don’t like sharing my treasures with the world.
We get on his bike and he takes us to a burger joint in town.
It’s not that busy and the waitress behind the counter smiles and winks at him each time she refills his soda, which doesn’t even get close to half-empty.
She breezes right on past me. A part of me is proud, another part of me is fascinated, but the part that envies is the loudest of all.
It’s because he’s smooth as silk. Attractive.
He’s the epitome of cool and don’t-give-a-damn as he sits there and eats.
He winks at the waitress back, and I understand the game he’s playing.
He glances over to me, brushing ketchup from his lip, as if he’s making sure, and I get it.
A fella like me can be overlooked. But him? No.
“You good, pal?” he says.
I blink. Not realizing I’d been staring. “Sure.” I take a bite of a french fry.