by Garth Stein
She left and he closed his eyes. He had a pounding headache. He felt so sick he didn’t know someone could feel that sick and still be alive. Maybe he was dead. It was quite possible he was already dead.
He half-woke at some point. Later on? What time? He saw a figure standing at the end of his bed. Was he dead now? Someone had come for him. Could he give his body back now?
The figure stood there for what seemed like a long time. It was his father, a dark, silent figure. Evan tried to say something to him, tried to acknowledge him. He struggled hard against his sleep. But he was too tired, too many floors down, he couldn’t make it to the surface. He wanted to see his father’s face, he wanted to talk to him, but the fight was too great. He couldn’t overcome it.
He gave up.
He opened his eyes again, later still, and his father was gone.
THEY MEET, AS planned, on the rim of the musical fountain.
“Hey, strangers, ” Mica says with a smile. She’s wearing a celadon baby tee and faded jeans.“Where do we begin?”
They begin by watching young children run toward the center of the fountain to touch the base—which is studded with a hundred or so giant water cannons—and then gleefully retreat before being soaked by one of the jets, all while Stravinsky blasts throughout the plaza.
“Aren’t kids cool?” she asks, an effectively rhetorical question since neither Dean nor Evan are sure how to answer.“But you like roller coasters, ” she adds, sensing their loss.
“Roller coasters, ” Dean echoes, and that’s where they go.
They spend the better part of the afternoon spinning their brains out on the brain-spinning rides, just as Evan had planned. Teetering on the brink of nausea, they take a break and go into the Center House, where the food court offers a surprising diversity of foods, such that even Evan can find himself something to eat. It’s the perfect day. And it isn’t over.
“I have a surprise, ” Mica says.“Come on.”
Off they go. Outside to a grassy bank that overlooks an outdoor stage. On the stage, a band.
“They haven’t started yet, ”Mica says.
“Who?” Evan asks.
“Airto. Surprise!”
Airto Moreira, the famous percussionist, is giving a free concert in the park. Evan, Mica, and Dean lay back on the lawn and stare into space as Airto tinkles his chimes and plays his maracas, the ethereal music floating off into the afternoon sky.
When the concert is over, they switch into high gear and it’s a track meet. They rush over to the Science Center where they watch the random ball-dropping machine line up its balls in a perfect parabola. (Evan remembers spending hours as a child standing in front of this same massive Plexiglas window, watching the balls fall, just as his son is doing now, discovering that randomness actually has a shape.) They rush to the roller coaster for another go, then to the top of the Space Needle, then a quick round-trip on the monorail, then back to the food court for dinner because they’re so hungry and the day is almost already used up.
Evan is exhausted from all the rushing.
“How about a movie?” Mica asks.
“Great!” Dean yells. And off they rush.
They hop a cab to the Cinerama—Mica tells the driver to make it snappy—and barge into the middle of the latest James Bond movie. Mica buys Dean the largest size popcorn and soda and smaller ones for her to share with Evan. The giant theater is almost full, so they sit in the fifth row, leaning back against the seats and peering up Pierce Brosnan’s nose.
After the movie, they cab it back to the Center to get their cars. It’s ten o’clock. Evan and Dean are wasted. You have to be in good shape to keep up with Mica. She looks perky and up.
“I work out a lot, ” she explains.“Kickboxing. Plus, I’m used to working late.”
“I bet she could kick your ass, ” Dean tells Evan.
“I’m sure, ” Evan agrees.
“No, I’m sure.”
Dean climbs into Evan’s car, slips on his seat belt and falls asleep with his head propped against the window. Evan turns to Mica, her face sallow in the sodium vapor lights of the parking lot.
“What’s next?” he asks.
As if it’s a question he deserves an answer to.
But he doesn’t deserve an answer. Who is he to deserve an answer? Nobody. In front of him is a somebody. Mica. A girl. No make-up, casual clothes, her hair a mess. But eyes full of life, full of vigor. She’s ready to go, she is. She looks up at Evan with her eyes that seem to reach out toward him. She’s a girl worth keeping. A girl worth holding on to. A girl worth taking home to meet Mom.
“Dunno, ” Mica shrugs.“You tell me.”
Evan doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know why. It’s a mistake. He wants to gush out at her, to cover her with kisses, to hold her tight. But he says nothing.
“Do we still need to set a good example?” she asks.
“You know, kids these days . . . they grow up so fast.”
“Yeah.”
Evan leans toward her and kisses her cheek.
“Did you just give me a peck?” Mica asks.
“I guess so.”
“You gave me a peck?”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes.”
He tries again. This time it’s a full-fledged kiss.
“That’s better, ” Mica says. She fans herself with her hand. “I’m going home. I need a shower very badly.”
“See you later?” Evan asks tentatively.
“Do you really want to?”
“Yeah. I really do.”
“Okay, then, ” she says.
She walks off into the thick yellow air to search for her car. At one point she turns around, looks at Evan, and yells, “Go home.”Then she disappears. Soon after, he hears the whoop of her car alarm; and then, satisfied that she is safe, he drives Dean home and puts him to bed.
THE BUZZER SHOOTS through his brain like a dart. He bolts upright. Buzzer.
Buzzer, again, there it goes. Someone buzzing.
He looks at his clock. Midnight. He’s still dressed, on his bed; his TV is on.
He stumbles through the living room. Dean is sleeping soundly on the couch. Evan picks up the intercom.
“Hello?” he asks.
“Open up.”
Mica? Is it her? Evan presses the button that unlocks the downstairs door. What’s going on? He waits.
Knock, knock, knock.
He opens his door.
Ah. It’s her. Hair pulled back into a low ponytail, she wears a long peach-colored dress with so many little buttons on the front, the top five unbuttoned to reveal the heave of her breasts, the bottom twenty opened to create a provocative slit that exposes just enough-thigh per stride. She’s holding a satchel. She has a big smile on her face.
“You’re back, ” he says.
“You said, ‘See you later.’”
“How did you find me?”
“It’s called a phonebook. You should try it sometime. It gives you addresses, and it doesn’t even need batteries.”
He smiles so hard he thinks his ears might fall off. She’s back. His heart is racing. He holds his finger to his lips, points to Dean.
He locks the door behind her, carries her bag as they tiptoe to his room and close the bedroom door behind them. They stand in the flickering darkness grinning at each other.
“I like your dress, ” Evan says.
“You do?”
“I didn’t expect you.”
“I know.”
She moves toward him and kisses him, pushing him back with her body until he’s fallen backward onto his bed and she’s fallen on top of him.
“You smell clean, ” he whispers.
“I took a shower.”
“I didn’t. I must smell.”
“You smell good, ” she says.
They kiss each other and the kissing quickly becomes passionate. They feel around; grope. She squeezes parts of his body like she’s checking for ripeness
, it’s a squeeze that reads, “Am I gonna buy it or toss it back.” It’s firm and possessive. Her hand reaches for his crotch, squeezes.
“Hello!” he squeals.
“Do you like that?”
Like it? He loves it. He loves it because his dick is actually hard. It’s alive! She has a magic touch. She unzips his jeans, slips her cool hand inside his underwear and takes hold of his—
“Wow!”
“Am I moving too fast?” she asks.
Moving too fast? No way. He’s afraid if she doesn’t move fast enough someone will take the air out of his erection and that will be it.
“No, no. It feels good.”
She pulls her hand out and sits up.
“What?” he asks.
“Uncomfortable pause, ” she says.
He is confused.
“I thought about pre-doing this, but I figured that would be tacky. I didn’t want to assume . . . you know . . . this would happen.”
“I don’t get—”
“Unless you’ve had your tubes tied . . . because I haven’t.”
“Ahh . . .”
“I’ll be back in a minute, ” she says.
She climbs off and looks for her bag. When she finds it, she grabs it, goes into the bathroom and closes the door.
Jesus Christ. He’s about to get laid. Holy shit! What should he do? In the movies the guy always takes off his clothes at this point. Is that what Evan’s supposed to do? Strip down and get under the covers? He has no idea. Because, honestly, he hasn’t had sex in a while.
Sometimes, Evan likes to think of his half-decade of abstinence as an aesthetic choice. Having felt the power of sex at such an early age, having experienced the truth about sex, that it is an activity specifically designed to create new human beings, it was only right for him to avert his eyes.
But that’s just the façade. The real reason is that the anti-epileptic medication he’d been taking for most of his life stopped working five years ago, and suddenly Evan was having seizures all the time. The doctors scrambled to contain his brainstorm, and they tried dozens of drug cocktails until they found just the right mix. But the new medication, while effective at suppressing his seizures, also suppresses his libido. What a choice.
No doctor will admit the medication causes Evan’s impotence, though they do agree that it may diminish his sexual desire to below “functional standards.” Still, the onus of his impotence is placed squarely on his shoulders: he just doesn’t want it enough. And, under these circumstances, they’re right. He doesn’t want it at all. It only takes a few failed tries at sexual encounters before you get a little gun-shy. Nothing quite as humiliating as having a naked girl pulling on your dick trying to make it come to life for you.
But that’s neither here nor there. The fact is, right now he does feel aroused. And maybe if he and Mica work quickly enough, they can pull this thing off. As long as he doesn’t focus on it too much. He should focus on something else. Like music.
Like what kind of music should he put on? Classical? Jazz? Maybe jazz. Or maybe not. He looks into the CD compartment of his boom box. Early Elvis Costello. Classical in his own way, but too dated for a date. He’s so nervous. What if he goes limp in the middle of it? What if he stays hard but prematurely ejaculates? Christ, he doesn’t have any condoms. She may ask to see an AIDS test, but he was never tested. What a disaster.
The bathroom door opens slowly. The light is off inside. Out comes a body, a figure, a long series of curves and bends, hips and ankles, a belly and breasts. It is completely, one hundred-percent naked. It is Mica, as she was meant to be seen.
She makes her way to Evan, taking her time. He is standing next to the boom box. She sidles up to him, kisses his neck, then bites his ear. He curls, but not away.
“You like that.”
“Yes.”
She rubs against him.
“We have a little problem, ” she says.
“What’s that?”
“I’m naked and you’re not.”
She helps him off with his clothes. They work their way to the bed. Her flesh is cool and soft and resilient. They climb onto the bed; this time he’s on top.
“How are you doing?” she asks.
“I’m so hot, ” he says, and immediately feels like an idiot. What a moronic thing to say. Jesus. I’m so hot. What he meant to say was: you’re so hot, you’re making me hot. But he didn’t say that. He said something totally embarrassing. It just came out. Sex talk is the most absurd thing ever. That people say things and announce things that they never would under normal circumstances. Sex is a drug. It makes you goofy. They might as well be doing whippets. He’s mortified. She can see right through him now. She knows all. She’s about to leave him.
But instead of leaving, she says, “I’m hot, too, ” and he realizes they both have the goofy sex disease.
He positions himself between her legs.
“Gentle, baby, ” she says.
She reaches down to help him in, and Evan could have died, right there, died a thousand times, ready to do it, make love to Mica, and she’s holding onto his lifeless dick.
He slumps on top of her, buries his head in her hair.
“What’s the matter, baby?” she asks.
“I’m sorry, ” he mumbles.
“About what? About that? Don’t worry about it.”
“I was hoping it would hold out.”
“I’ll get it up for you, ” she offers.
“It’s my medication, ” Evan says. “It has an unfortunate side effect.”
“Your epilepsy medication?”
“Yes.”
“So . . . it won’t go back up?”
“No.”
“That’s unfortunate, ” she says.
“Yeah.” He shrugs. But that’s life in the fast lane. You want to dance? You have to pay the piper.
He lifts himself off of her and rolls onto his back. He stares at the ceiling.
“Aren’t there other medications?” she asks.“I mean, it’s not permanent, is it?”
There are other medications. And they’re all poisons. They will all kill him. He has been made effectively sterile by the giant pharmaceutical corporations. He is defective, and he should not procreate. Not even recreational sex. It could lead to more idiots who would run in front of cars and get hit and smash their skulls against the pavement and get epilepsy. Dumbshits. They should all be rounded up and killed.
“So, tell me about it, ” she says after a minute.
“What?”
“Your epilepsy.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t tell you about it right now.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
She sighs, but accepts it for what it is, apparently, because she is Mica and she is enlightened. He is convinced of that. She is the Enlightened One.
“You remind me of my father, ” she says.
Evan raises his eyebrows, still looking at the ceiling, surprised by her comment.
“That’s very Freudian.”
“I didn’t say you were substituting for my father. I said you reminded me of him.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, when I was little and I would watch him play—”
“What did he play?”
“Alto sax—well, he played everything, but the sax was his instrument. When I would watch him play, he would get this faraway look on his face, like he’d left his body or something, like his soul was in a different place, where the music comes from, but his body was still there playing the instrument.”
Evan glances at her.
“I look like that when I play?”
“It’s hard to explain, ” she says.“A lot of people get faraway looks on their faces when they make music. But with my father, it was different. Maybe ‘faraway’ isn’t the word.” She struggles. “Apart. Separate. It’s like he would break through to a different dimension to where—I d
on’t know. . . . When he was dying he played all the time, all day long. I would watch him. I think it gave him some kind of comfort to be someplace where he existed without his body, you know? A place where only souls and music exist. It was his way of coping with the cancer.”
“Epilepsy isn’t fatal, ” Evan says with a quick, hard laugh.
“Oh, I wasn’t—”
“You know, I’m not sure I’m into this thing about my being your father.”
“Evan—”
“I don’t have cancer and I’m not dying.”
“Evan!” Mica says sharply.“Listen to what I’m saying. Listen. I’m not saying you’re my father, or even anything like him. I don’t want you to be. I’m saying that when I first saw you play, I saw something in your eyes that I used to see in his, and I realized that I already knew you—that we already knew each other—and then in the restaurant you asked me to marry you and I thought you felt the same way—”
“I thought you’d figure I was joking.”
“I know it was a joke, Evan. I know.” She sighs and closes up. God. He’s screwed up another relationship.
“I’m sorry, ” he says.
“No. You’ve got a lot to deal with.”
She gathers herself, gets to her hands and knees, slips her hand down, cups his balls.
“You may not be a rock, but I can still get you off, ” she says, moving down.
“No.”
No? She hesitates. He hooks his elbow under her arm and flips her over on her back. Reversal: two points.
“I can get you off, ” he says.
He kisses her belly, moves down.
“Evan—”
“Shh, ” he quiets her.
“Evan—”
“Shh. Shh.”
“Oh, Evan.”
HE WAKES TO a tickle on his throat. The first sign of gray morning light is waiting outside his window. Mica is awake, propped on her elbow, watching over him, tracing his scar with her fingertip.
“Tell me, ” she whispers.
He shakes his head.
“I’ll torture you.”
“I’ll never talk, ” he says. And he means it. She may be good at a lot of things, but he knows already that she’s no match for him in the art of concealment. He’ll wait for her to get desperate, and at just the right moment, he’ll lie to her. And she’ll believe it. And that will be that. Mica’s a tough girl, but she wears her emotions on her sleeve. Evan wears his under many layers of scar tissue.