Chapter 48 Samson
I walk to the park.
She’ll show up this time.
The air feels warm against my skin. We’re turning the corner into a brand-new season. There are droves of bright daffodils uplighting trees, and a wood pigeon coos peacefully in the near distance.
I’m on time.
She’s not here.
There are other kids drinking from large plastic bottles. One group wrestling on the short grass, forcing one another to concede defeat.
She’s not here yet.
I’m wearing Dad’s beanie hat. Mom insisted.
The confidence drains from me like water through a sieve.
But, she kissed me.
A dog barks by the old bandstand.
The smell of weed in the air.
She walks toward me. I see her smile and my heart doubles in size. Triples. She glides rather than walks. Hovers, really. The way her shoulders move. Her backpack low and loose. She heads straight to me.
I try to act relaxed like it is totally normal for a girl like Jennifer Adamu to walk toward someone like me, looking at me, gazing at me, ignoring all the other boys in the park, all the commotion. Straight to me.
A cruiser drives past with its sirens blaring and she keeps walking toward me.
I’m cold and hot. Nervous and strangely calm.
“Nice hat,” she says.
“It’s my dad’s.”
“Figures.”
“How was your day?”
Every time our eyes meet there is a flash of light, of heat.
“Average,” she says. “Medium, I guess.”
My day is far from medium. As far as it is possible to be. The polar opposite of all things medium.
“Same,” I say.
She smiles.
“What?” I say.
“I missed you.”
I try to act relaxed. I aim for nonchalance and experience. I fail. A partial shrug.
“Come,” she says.
We close the gap between us and she cups my face with her hands.
Orange nail polish flashes in my peripheral vision.
Can she feel I haven’t started shaving yet?
She doesn’t seem to notice. She moves closer and I place my hands on her hips and this moment is sublime.
She lets me keep my hands there. The shape of her under her clothes.
A wolf whistle in the distance. For us? My smile opens up even broader than before.
She closes her eyes, gradually. Time slows.
Stops. Ceases to exist at all. I move my face to hers and I cannot believe I am permitted to do this.
She likes me. How did this happen? I am with her, truly with her.
I push my lips close to hers, softly, gently, and there is a small electric shock as we connect.
“Feel that?” she whispers.
I kiss her properly and she wraps her arms around my neck.
I hold her tight. The taste of her. Familiar yet unfamiliar.
Soft. I grow into myself. Time passes in irregular waves.
A minute or an hour. No consequence. People come and go around us and all of my focus, every unit of my attention, is concentrated on Jennifer.
The only person in the world. She kisses my cheek.
Three kisses on each and then she looks at me and tilts her head and she kisses my lips again.
Her eyes are clear and her chest is pressed into mine.
We’re both wearing winter jackets, but I know her body now.
I know it better than my own. We stay locked together for a long time.
She suggests we go sit on a bench.
“This one OK?” I ask.
She laughs and sits on my lap. It is not very comfortable, but I never want her to leave. I make every effort for her to think that girls often sit on my lap sideways like this, it’s something I have grown accustomed to, I hardly even notice it.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
“I can hardly feel you.”
I can feel her. The exquisite weight of her pushing down into me. There are many others in this park and I could not be more proud to have Jennifer Adamu on my knee. The two of us, here, crushed together. Undeniable.
She tells me about how she thinks she wants to do a liberal arts prelaw major but she also likes painting and drawing.
How can she know all this stuff already?
She says her parents are divorced but it all happened when she was a baby and they still get on well.
They even celebrate Thanksgiving together.
She tells me she has a cat named Percy and he only trusts her mom.
“I want to know your thoughts,” she says, rubbing my collar between her finger and thumb.
“What?”
“What you’re thinking. Your dreams. You know, the things you want.”
I cough. “I don’t know yet, really.”
“You do know.”
“My thoughts?”
“Who you are on the inside.”
She doesn’t want to know. I cannot tell her. I can hardly tell myself.
“When I’m older I want to live someplace else,” I say. “A city. Austin or Denver. London, maybe. Somewhere with nightclubs that stay open until the next morning, until breakfast. Where I can go to see a rock band one night and a ballet the next.”
“Ballet?” she says. “You serious?”
“Or another rock band. Whatever. Just, you know, things happening. All sorts of people mixed together speaking different languages and stuff. Lots of people everywhere so nobody ever knows who you are, what your business is.”
“What is your business, Samson?”
“Me? You’re asking real scary questions, you know that?”
She smiles. “I just like you, is all. I want to know about you.”
“You do know about me. You know my school, my name, my age, the fact I live on a long British boat.”
“I want to know it all. See it all.”
I look at her.
She kisses me and we squeeze tight together on the bench. A knot. Another glance of her tongue. I melt into her. Dizzy.
“I like you too,” I say.
“I know.”
“What do you mean?”
We kiss again and I run my fingertip across her upper lip. It has a shape. A perfect bow. A ridgeline.
“What happens now?”
“You walk me to the bus is what happens now. Come on.”
It takes us decades to walk there. Minutes, maybe.
Entire centuries. We stop in alleyways to kiss.
She smells like all of the best things that might ever happen to me.
All the sweetest possibilities. We talk about music and the time she went to Florida with her grandpa and mom.
I pull her into a private doorway. We kiss in an instant photo booth and she pinches my butt outside Smith’s.
A whole lifetime of joy in one evening. She catches her bus and I watch her face through the window.
Mom’s already at our bus stop when I arrive.
“Am I late?” I ask, glowing, floating just above the pavement.
“No, Sam. I just got here. You all right?”
I cannot stop my smile from breaking free.
“What’s with you?”
“Nothing.”
She’s got a Greyhound timetable in her hands.
She puts it into her bag.
We climb aboard the bus and it is completely empty except for the driver and an old man in an Army jacket right at the front. He’s chewing tobacco. We walk to the back. This is where the older kids usually hang out. Mom and I spread out like we’re limousine passengers in a movie.
She starts to scratch her wrists and her forehead.
“What are you worried about, Mom?”
“What?”
“You’re scratching. I know you’re troubled about something. What is it?”
She holds my hand and smiles an unsteady smile.
“You know in the past we’ve talked about leaving one day.”
This again.
“Leaving town?”
“Going away for a while. To the city or somewhere.”
“So?”
“I think it might be time quite soon. You and me. Some nice mother-son time, you know?”
Not yet.
Not now I have Jennifer.
“With Dad?”
“Just you and me for a time, I thought.”
I remove my hand. “I think we should give Dad the option, Mom. He doesn’t do well on his own, even for a weekend. I saw how he lives. He gets too obsessed with his work. Doesn’t look after himself properly. He forgets to eat, even. Goes kind of feral. We could do a day trip?”
She smiles but her eyes are so impossibly sad I cannot hold her gaze.
“Yeah.” Her voice is hoarse. “A day trip might work.”
“When I’m older we could do it, though.”
“What would you think if we found a little apartment someplace, you and me?”
“Where? I’m confused, Mom. What do you mean? You and Dad haven’t had another fight, have you?”
The bell rings and the old man steps off the bus and we’re left completely alone.
“It’s just an idea, love.”
I remove my beanie. “Thing is, I’m kind of, you know, with Jennifer now. School’s better and I need to maintain my grade average. I think I can go away with you for a trip after all that’s done with.”
“Right.”
“You look worried, Mom.”
“I’m just tired. Sammy?”
“Yeah.”
“When you work with your father. Train with him. Does he ever talk about what happened to his mom and dad?”
“Grandma and Grandpa?”
She nods.
“Why, what happened?”
“Nothing. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Dad says if you start talking in riddles, saying weird things, accusing other people, bringing up things that happened years ago, saying you’re in danger, we’re to call the hospital right away.”
She sits bolt upright. “Don’t do that, Samson. All right. Listen to me, it’s very important. Do not call them. Never call them.”
“He told me you’d say that. Those exact words.”
She holds both my hands now, holds them too tight. “You trust me, don’t you?”
I nod. “Of course I do. You’re hurting my hands, Mom.”
She lets go.
“Forget I said anything, all right?” She’s breathing fast. “I’m happy you’ve found a nice girl, Sammy.” She smiles. “You deserve that happiness. Look after her well. Be nice to her.”
I move my hand over my smooth scalp. “I will.”
An acute pain, suddenly, deep inside my belly.
Maybe this is a warning, or a punishment.
For hiding her jewelry.