I put an arm around him. “Okay.”
He lays his head on my shoulder, and I’m bewildered and kind of shocked.
“So, that’s why you’re here,” I say. “You can’t stay with your old man?”
He nods against my neck.
I put my cigarette out and rub his shoulder. There’s so much I want to ask, but I decide to save it. But at least I know now, sort of, why he’s staying at his aunt’s.
A vague, half-formed thought enters my mind. One about how much longer he’ll stay there. And what will happen when he leaves. I don’t let that thought become fully formed.
“Well, for the record, I’m glad you came here.” I place a kiss on the top of his head.
He looks up at me, his eyes so dreamy and adoring, I can’t stand it. “For the record, I am too.” He places a kiss, softly, on my lips.
CHAPTER FIVE
Paul
I REMEMBER RIDINGwith 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 toget 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.”
