Chapter Eight - Asher #4
And then we both hear it, just behind us. A bang and then a “Hello?”
We drop each other’s hands like hot potatoes, turning and scooting far apart.
There’s a man standing in the doorway of the old store in a gray hat that matches his tie.
For a full five seconds, I think he might be an angry ghost, livid that we piled up all his bottle caps and fixed his wooden squirrel.
And then he swipes his arm across the sweat on his forehead and takes one step out of the doorway, as real and living as me and Paul.
He looks from me to Paul and Paul to me, frowning. “Say there. This is private property, don’t you see?” He points to a sign on the outside that I am seeing for the first time. His voice is overly stern. “Go on now.” He waves us away. “Off you go.”
I get up first, brushing grass from my pants, and offer an apology.
I can’t look the man in the eye, though.
He’s staring at us strangely, shifting his eyes to Paul, then over to me, his eyes narrowing just slightly.
Paul apologizes too, but it’s mumbled. I don’t know if the guy even heard.
It doesn’t seem so. He has his hands on his hips now, waiting.
My stomach aches and my hands get clammy as the man watches us walk over to my bike and get on. He’s making sure we leave. And he’s making sure of something else.
When Paul gets on, he doesn’t sit so close to me.
He grasps the bar behind him instead of me and I take off.
Even down the street, I can feel that man’s narrowed gaze.
And it’s heavy, rock heavy, and I feel it in my stomach and on my shoulders, like a cross to bear.
I don’t feel Paul’s hands on my hips or his arms around me.
It’s like he’s gone, and I turn my head to the side, just briefly, to catch him in my periphery and make sure I didn’t lose him.
I pull up to my apartment building and Paul gets off. I get off. There are feet between us instead of inches. His jaw is working, teeth scraping his lower lip. I take a look around us, the quiet little street, and see what I usually see: cars, trees, houses, and the sun going down.
“We’re all right,” I say, even though I don’t believe it.
He nods.
“But maybe, um….” I look across the street and see some kids with hula hoops. “Maybe you should go home.”
He nods again.
I catch his eyes and the feet between us feel like miles.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I say to reassure him.
He looks left then right, and I’m afraid he’s going to do something far too risky right now, but he opens his mouth like he’s going to say something. He doesn’t, though. He turns away, mouth still open, and goes through his aunt’s gate and out of my sight.
I keep forgetting what I’m doing.
I go back over the engine again, and it’s like I’ve forgotten everything I’ve ever learned. I’ve changed a million spark plugs. Okay, maybe only a couple hundred. But still.
After fumbling my way around the engine of the Rolls Royce some more, I give up and attempt some body work, but even that fails.
Break time, it is.
I light a cigarette and stand just inside the garage door, squinting at the hot midday sun.
I can’t believe it’s this late in the day already.
I don’t feel as if I’ve done shit. I feel dazed.
Almost as if someone gave me a tonic. My thoughts are jumbled and almost all of them have a thread I can trace right back to Paul, back to everything, and so I just follow it until I’m useless, daydreaming and anxious, and before I know it, I’ve polished the same fucking hubcap seventeen times.
I scrub a hand over my face.
It’s not just Paul. It’s what did that man actually see, that’s the question. Sad part is, I know the answer. I was just hoping for a different one, for a few more seconds added into that scene that gave us time to make space between us before it was seen. Because that’s the thing, we were seen.
I’m startled when I see someone in my periphery. Nerves make me think it’s that man with a cop. Or a few of his friends…
But it’s just my landlord, Randy, approaching, wiping his greasy hands on a rag. My shoulders feel lighter.
“Hey, Holdren,” he says, “phone call.”
Then heavier. I stare at him. “What?”
“Telephone call.”
I keep staring and he gives me a look, nods to his office.
I don’t get phone calls here. My clients usually stop by, and I always know when. It’s sort of been my policy. No surprises.
It takes me a second to move. I put out my cigarette and follow him inside. I pick up the receiver from a pile of papers with coffee cup stains.
“Hello,” I say.
A male voice says: “Asher.”
My stomach turns inside out. My heart starts to race; it races backward, back into a time I thought I killed and buried.
“Asher?” That voice…deeper than I remember—a mix of my father’s and of Jimmy’s—but it’s…
“Yes?” I say.
“It’s me,” the voice says.
Glen was fourteen when I left home. His voice was still prepubescent, his limbs awkward and spindly. A boy. The voice I hear is deep and rich. The tones and heft of a man.
I look over at Randy sliding under a Cadillac, and I shut the office door. I rub at an ache in my head just beginning. “How did you find me?”
“I know a fella that knows a fella that knows a fella. Said they saw you riding through town.” Glen pauses for a second, clears his throat. “I put two-and-two together. Figured you’d be doing something with cars. Since you always liked them.” He adds the last part like an apology.
I try to think of how many places he could’ve called before he found me. It could’ve taken him days.
Before I can ask, he drops it on me like a boulder. “Dad’s gone.”
My racing heart slams into a wall. I press a hand to my chest as if to pull it back.
Glen says, “He passed the other night. Funeral is on Sunday.”
It’s not like I didn’t think my father would never die. Or my mother. Or even Glen. It’s just that I thought it would be something I’d never know. Something that would happen in the fading background of my past, a thing I could never really know for sure, but guess to be true.
And something I could always assure myself was not my fault.
“I just wanted to tell you,” he says. “Just…so you’d know.”
Already, I feel that weight on me. The heft of what I have to say next.
“I’ll be there,” I say. “I’ll leave tonight.”
A pause. “It’ll be good to see you, then.”
I hang up the phone. I stand there for a minute, not feeling anything other than my own blood pulsing through my veins.
I make for the door.
After packing my duffel, I go over.
There’s another evening thunderstorm coming, the breeze whipping up around me, and it’s just in the nick of time. A long journey and I’ll be soaked to the skin. Perfect.
I knock four times on the front door. I wait a beat and knock four more times. No one comes and there’s not a sound from inside. There’s no car in the driveway, and I can’t be sure if I’ve ever seen a car in the driveway. I never paid attention.
I look through the back door into a dim kitchen.
I knock on the glass, but it’s futile. I run back to my place and scribble out a note.
I run back over, half hoping wherever they’ve gone, they’ll return right that second, and I realize I feel a bit perturbed.
I’m annoyed that Paul would go somewhere without me.
Especially now. He’s always there, and it’s suddenly like a splinter stuck in my toe. He’s always there.
I start to put the note in the mailbox beside the front door, but then I stop.
My hand draws back.
I look at the front door.
This stupid thing that I’ve let happen…I’m going to get him into trouble.
I almost did just yesterday. Probably just hurt him, too, and it wouldn’t be intentional, but it’s going to happen.
It’s either I stop this now, or I hurt him later.
I stop this now, or he leaves his aunt’s for greener pastures.
Either or. And isn’t it just better this way?
Now, at least, I have some control. It’s better this way, I nod to myself, emphatically.
It was going to happen anyway. Sooner or later. Of course it was. I’m convinced.
And it isn’t so much that we were seen. It’s the fact that this has gotten so out of hand that we let that extra precaution slip. That’s when you know it’s gone too far.
Rip the Band-Aid. Drop the ax.
I crush the piece of paper in my palm.
Eventually, he’ll figure it out. Eventually, he’ll see this was for the best. He’ll think about it all, and put it all together, because he’s smart. The brainy type. He’ll get it. Eventually.
I back away.
And he’s too good for any kind of life he’d have with me anyway.
I get a vision of him in Paris, speaking sexy French words to other intellectuals, writing novels with philosophical meanings, reading in a lazy Parisian garden, curled up in the arms of a man that knows himself.
That would never fuck up his entire family’s lives, including his own.
And I’m about to face it all over again.
As I back away, ripping the paper, I feel the first rumblings of the avalanche in my heart. And then I turn my back, the decision made.
I get my duffel and get on my bike. I make a glance over at the fence, hoping to see Paul come racing over, to stop me, to tell me this is not the way to do this. There is no either and there is no or. There is just me and him. But there’s nothing there but sunshine, birdsong, and green trees.
I start up my bike.
And I go.