Chapter Nine - Paul
CHAPTER NINE
Paul
TWO WEEKS LATER .
For dinner, Aunt Amy seared chicken in the pan and burned the edges.
She put some potatoes in the oven to bake, but mine isn’t baked all the way. I don’t say anything about it.
She takes a long sip of the Pinot Grigio she bought from Eckert’s yesterday, then glances over at me warily. “How’s your friend doing?”
I don’t like how she says it. Even though there’s no other way to ask one about one’s friend. I think it’s the word friend that bothers me. The word friend is indicative of a certain kind of relationship; one that has very specific boundaries.
Lines you are not supposed to cross when you’re merely someone’s pal .
“Paul?”
“He’s fine.” I push a piece of burned chicken around my plate. “Doing fine.”
She nods. “I haven’t heard that motorbike in a while. I was wondering.”
I make a cursory glance toward his balcony. “It’s broken. The engine. He’s having it fixed.”
“Oh, I see.” She cuts through the burned chicken like she hardly notices. “I have to say it’s been awfully quiet without the sound of that thing.”
I grunt and feel my chest tighten.
“How on earth is he getting around?”
I shift in the chair. “Gets rides. Walks. There’s the bus too.”
“Mhm.” Aunt Amy takes another long sip from her glass.
“It’s getting so no one walks much anymore.
When I was a girl, that was all we could do.
When we lived out in the country.” Her voice gets softer, tentative.
“One year, your father saved up all his money for a bicycle. I remember it. He bought it from a neighbor boy.” She looks at me hopefully. “Did he ever tell you about that?”
He might have. There was a time, years ago, when he used to tell me things. But I shake my head.
The hope fades. “Well, perhaps your friend can get himself a bicycle in the meantime. Much quieter.”
I make another glance to his window. I have little hope I’ll see his kitchen light on. Or that he’ll come out with his beer and smokes, but it could be everything that’s happened was only a dream anyway.
“I’ll be back late again,” I say.
I read a book about it once. You can almost die, and while you’re almost dying, you can dream an entire life.
It can even feel real, like it lasts forever, and you wake up after a “lifetime” only to find yourself in a hospital bed, paralyzed from the neck down.
Maybe that’s what has happened to me. Pops broke my neck, and I’m dreaming right now.
I’ll wake up in a hospital and my father will be in jail and Asher was just a figure my unconscious mind created to soothe me after something traumatic. It’s what all the head shrinks say.
And it’s truly a shame that I don’t know if I prefer that.
“All right.” Aunt Amy sets down her fork. “I’ll leave the light on.” She looks at me for a long moment, dabs at the corners of her mouth with the embroidered napkin. “Is he a good friend to you?”
I look over at his empty balcony and the empty wooden chair. It really isn’t so far-fetched that I dreamed him up. It really isn’t so ridiculous that I could be dying right now, just fading away, and I created him for one last bit of happiness.
“He is,” I say to her, breathless. “He’s the best.”
After dinner, I go across the yard, out the gate, and into the apartment building.
I sit against his door and listen to squabbling from his neighbors below and music that sounds like it would play in a speakeasy.
It smells like cigars and coffee out in the hallway, one step up from a dirty café.
One of the girls next door saw me sitting here a few days ago and looked at me worryingly.
I told her I was just waiting for a friend. She didn’t seem to buy it.
So, I just kept sitting here. Waiting.
At first, I thought there was some kind of emergency.
One of the cars he was working on needed something.
One of the squares came by and demanded, like, a whole new engine or something.
I don’t even know if you can build a whole new engine, but if anyone could, Asher could.
Or maybe the Rolls Royce guy needed everything done right then.
Maybe Asher was up all night, exhausted, and I was asleep when the Triumph came triumphantly home.
So I waited.
And waited.
Then I went over a couple times. I would see his bike gone, so I’d go home. I thought that I can’t expect much. Sooner or later, he was going to get tired of me, and I didn’t want to be right.
You see, mothers don’t ever warn their sons about boys like him. Why should I need to guard anything? I’m invincible. I’m a man.
But I was waiting.
And then, I got angry. I just pounded my fist on his door until the guy down below hollered up the stairs for me to cut it out.
I walked all the way to the garage in the middle of the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, and by the time I got there my shirt was sticking to me, my glasses slipping to the edge of my nose, only to find the garage door was closed and locked up.
I sat there for a few minutes, catching my breath and cooling off before I started back.
But on the way anger changed into worry, so I turned right around.
I thought that something had happened. Something terrible.
Awful. A true catastrophe. I went back to his garage, plodding along, I felt like I was in a desert.
I went into the place next door and the secretary at the desk said she didn’t know Asher.
She’d seen him a few times and, no, she’s sorry, but she doesn’t know where he is.
She gave me some water and fanned me when I collapsed into a chair.
By the time I was properly hydrated and rested, it was getting dark.
Aunt Amy pulled up next to me two blocks from her house.
We argued. I said things to her that were mean, unnecessarily cruel, and I had to apologize later.
None of this is her fault, but she’s the closest person to me, and I take it all out on her.
I knew this, and yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
This is something about me I have to change.
Because I knew, with him, this would happen eventually.
I’d have to wake up from my death dream.
Because that’s the only thing that makes sense.
I dreamed him up. I dreamed up the last couple of weeks, his kisses and his body and his orangey spice scent, and now he’s gone because this is a dream and I’m getting closer and closer to waking.
But in the morning, that very morning and the next, with sunlight through sheer curtains and birds singing on branches, my eyes will open to Aunt Amy’s guest room and my grandmother’s quilt.
And so this death dream is stubborn, I guess. A trickster.
And I was just the fool to fall for it.
I only sit in front of his apartment door long enough to be sure Aunt Amy is done with the supper dishes.
I don’t want to risk her seeing me walk out and down the road, alone. Then she’d figure it all out, even the most private parts, and she’d throw me out of her house for sure. At this point, it might be for the best.
I like to think about what we’d be doing while I wait. It’s a dangerous game, going on in my mind like nothing has happened. Going on like I’d be in his sitting room right now and we’d be touching, kissing, removing our clothes, and getting into his bed.
The last time we were together embarrasses me now, so I don’t think about that.
I ball it up like trash, like clay, and toss it away from me.
I’m sure there was something I did that evening that caused this.
Maybe it was something I said or everything I said.
Maybe it was the square that interrupted us.
Maybe it scared Asher. It scared me, too, but either way, I don’t want to think about that.
I think about us at the cabin. I think about him holding me after, except this time he says this is real.
This is love. I’m not dying and dreaming up things.
He’s as real as ever. This is as real as ever.
And for emphasis, he pulls my hand to his chest so I can feel his heart beating, blue eyes gazing into mine.
I can almost feel him in my arms, his breath in my ear, whispering this secret to me.
But now it’s time to go.
I stand up and leave the fantasy at his doorstep, where he can find it if he ever decides he needs it as much as me.
I walk into town and try to kill a few hours.
I walk past the pool hall and the bowling alley, neither of them busy in the summer. I come up with some stories to tell Aunt Amy if she asks.
What did you and your friend do last night, Paulie?
Well, my pal and I went bowling. He won. Then we played some pool. I got the eight ball in the corner pocket.
Sounds nice.
Of course.
I slip into Eckert’s down at the end of the block and make a beeline for the magazines.
It just so happens the magazines are right by the soda fountain.
Every stool is taken and the jerk behind the counter scrambles to make change, scoop ice cream, and pour a root beer float.
No one pays me the least bit of attention as I look for my favorite comics.
I think it might be okay, killing time with comics, as long as no one notices me.
Unfortunately, I notice everyone else.
And then we went to the soda fountain.
Oh?
We shared a root beer float.
I notice the giggling girls at the end, a couple of them openly flirting with the soda jerk.
In the middle, there’s a girl with a long ponytail taking a sip from a cream soda.
The fellow with her takes a sip from the other straw.
Their foreheads nearly touch and there’s something about the guy— the shape of his head, the broadness of his shoulders, that makes me think of the lake.
Asher holding me up in the water.
He held my hand.
Telling me he won’t let me go.
He kissed me.