by Chris Fink
Timothy drives the darkened streets toward home. Reka’s been silent for a long time. Finally, she says, How could you do that? How could you just hit someone like that?
Timothy doesn’t answer. He’s still spinning. When they get out of the car at Rooms for Men, Timothy’s surprised to find he’s wearing Jerry’s coat. The suede has absorbed a lot of heat. It’s too hot, and it’s too fucking big on him.
IV
It’s August and the wrens are still at it. Timothy’s mother told him that the male makes the nest and then sits on his little perch singing his song while the females come to inspect his handiwork. If she likes his remodeling, she’ll move in; otherwise, she’ll move on. The male seems unfazed. He sings the same incessant tune, all morning long, day after day. The females come and go. Then in the afternoon the male makes some adjustments to the nest, hoping—in the small fretful way a bird must hope—these adjustments will lure a new tenant. One day, finally, the female goes in the hole and she doesn’t come out and there’s a blessed silence. The male bird finally gets to do something besides sing and remodel.
Timothy laces up for a run. Before he gets to Downer Avenue and the walkway down to Lake Park, a dark sedan pulls up beside him. A BMW. The sedan looks familiar. The tinted passenger window lowers to reveal a driver wearing dark sunglasses asking for directions to the art museum. Timothy takes a minute to orient himself, Downer being a one-way. Then he gives the simple directions. Stay on Downer until North Ave. Then head down the hill until you get to the water and come back south along Lake Shore about a mile. You can’t miss it.
Hey, thanks a lot, the man says. You make it sound easy.
No problem, Timothy says, and continues running. It feels good to have someone ask you for directions and then to produce the correct directions. It’s a simple, wholesome transaction. It means you have been taken for a local, an insider, and you’ve lived up to your billing.
Rather than pull away, the man in the BMW continues to drive slowly alongside Timothy. Excuse me, he says again, and Timothy comes near. I hate to bother you on your workout. He leans over the passenger seat and lowers his sunglasses. With his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and pressed white shirt and black trousers, he gives the impression of a restaurant waiter. You know, the man says, your build, you could be a model.
Surprised, Timothy feels his muscles tense, then relax. That line doesn’t even work on women, he says, backing away.
The man doesn’t give up easily. I work for a talent scout. I know it when I see it.
Now Timothy feels annoyed and even somewhat bullied. This is what women must feel like, he thinks, when they’re harassed by men.
Let me give you my card, the man says.
What’s the matter, Timothy says, is Chip busy tonight?
Caught out, the man pulls away, the wide tires of the BMW chirping as he pulls into traffic. Timothy continues his run. Just a month earlier such an altercation would have flustered him. Now it humors him. He feels a small boost actually, to receive the compliment, no matter its source, and he picks up his pace. He runs over the Lake Avenue Bridge and out onto the wide lawn of Lake Park. Everyone is out in the park today, enjoying the fine weather, riding bikes, flying kites, or picnicking. When he passes other runners, Timothy waves, like they belong to the same fraternity.
He runs down by the harbor and hears the seagulls arguing and the tinkling of the sailboat riggings in the wind. A few lone fishermen cast bright spoons out into the harbor for browns or chinooks, but not much action today. At Bradley Beach, a scum of dead alewives has washed up on the sand, hampering the swimmers and raising a stench.
Veering away from the water, Timothy hits his stride. On some runs you feel the effort of every step and you can’t get your mind off the end of the run. But today isn’t like that. Today is the rare day when Timothy feels like he could just keep running. He feels a kind of bottled energy inside that he can uncap as needed to run faster and longer.
Timothy thinks of the Old Gent running on the horse trails or around the country roads when he was a boy. Running wasn’t popular in the country and you never saw runners out on the roads. Kids on the school bus said, I saw your dad running down the road. Did his truck run out of gas?
Timothy used to think the Old Gent was so stupid, running up one country road and down the next. Even in winter, with big mittens on his hands and snot frozen in his whiskers, he ran. Then the Old Gent came indoors with his face and hands frozen, and Timothy’s mother said, Stay away from me with those hands! The Old Gent turned to the easier target, his cold hands finding Timothy’s neck, or sliding up Timothy’s shirt, sending him squealing from the room.
Now, inexplicably, Timothy has become one of those who runs to no purpose but the running. He’s on the homestretch now, feeling good. You’ve got to be rugged, the Old Gent would say, coming in from a run covered with hoarfrost.
Timothy sees the gleaming white wing of the new art museum puncture the blue sky, and there, parked along Lake Shore Drive, a black BMW sits idling while a leggy runner leans in the passenger window. Another potential model has just been identified.
Timothy runs back up the hill and now he’s cruising down Brady, carried by adrenaline, past the hip pub, the Nomad, and the trendy coffee shop painted lime green, Rochambo. Then past the old places, Brady Street Hardware and Listwan’s Tavern and Glorioso’s Italian Deli. In front of Peter Sciortino’s Bakery, with its colorful ceramic mosaic portraying an overflowing breadbasket, Timothy thinks about what he’ll have to eat when he gets home. There are eggs in the refrigerator and a good loaf of wheat bread, and he can have egg-in-the-nest and fry the little golden nest to a crisp, golden deliciousness.
The glass bakery door swings open suddenly onto the sidewalk and just about hits him, and who’s standing in the doorway but Reka, her armload of fresh bakery nearly sacrificed to the encounter. Both of them shocked still at this near collision. It has been a week since the incident at the Foundation. Timothy, out of breath, means to apologize, means to say, Let me carry that for you. But instead he sidesteps her and continues his dash toward home. Call me, he says over his shoulder, even as his feet carry him away.
Coasting in the last half mile, he thinks about Reka and how things will end. It’s easy to be in love when you’re saying good-bye or hello, Timothy decides. Now is the time for good-bye and he’s practically gushing with feelings for her. He tries to understand this feeling. No person is insignificant, after all, and when you welcome someone into your life, or usher her out of it, you do feel love. At least Timothy does. If not love, what is it? As he thinks about his dilemma with Reka, his mind is clouded by thoughts about sex with Reka. Stop it, he warns himself. But he doesn’t stop. He picks up the pace for the last two blocks so exhaustion will trump his lurid thoughts.
Back at Rooms for Men, he sidesteps Fred painting the front porch and heads straight up to his apartment. He guzzles a glass of water and then fondles the coveted after-run cigarette. Reclining in the easy chair by the window, he lights the cigarette and blows the first lungful of smoke out the window. This is dependably the best cigarette of the day. For some reason, it feels like the smoke can’t possibly do any harm after a good run. It’s like the final step of a purification.
On his knee, he holds the small brass slipper that he had slipped into his belongings when he left home two months ago. An ashtray. It was his mother’s, when she was a smoker. The ashtray holds only one cigarette, and it needs to be emptied each time. Not very practical. Yet it might be Timothy’s most unique possession.
Cigarette finished, snubbed into the brass slipper, Timothy feels a strange new appetite, some combination of hunger and desire and a vague cramping sickness. The cigarette didn’t satisfy him like it usually does. He wants another. But he knows that will make it worse. Maybe it’s the effect of the nicotine on his quickened metabolism. But it’s a new feeling. The full slipper rests on his knee, which is bouncing involuntarily. All these memories of home. Wh
ere were they coming from? Timothy understands then exactly what he would like to eat. Dirt. Good rich black earth from the Old Gent’s garden. He imagines putting his nose right into the freshly turned earth, then opening his mouth, eating a loamy, gritty mouthful, and breathing it into his nostrils at the same time.
His phone rings and it’s Reka.
You wouldn’t believe what I was just thinking, Timothy says.
I bet I would.
Not that. Well, that too. But I was thinking about dirt. Eating dirt from my dad’s garden. Just pushing my face right into it. Isn’t that fucking weird?
After a pause, Reka says, I think it’s cute.
Cute? God, I can almost taste it.
Baby’s homesick, she says. And before he has a chance to argue, it strikes him as the correct verdict.
Why don’t you come over tonight? Timothy says. Then, without censoring himself, he says, I want you right now. I couldn’t stop thinking about it on my run.
Reka doesn’t respond for a moment. Then she says, That’s a good idea. I come over to your place and we talk about breaking up for an hour, and then you fuck me until you come, and then we fall asleep. You first.
I didn’t know it was so bad, Timothy says.
You don’t know a lot of things, Reka says.
Like what don’t I know? He’s feeling playful and full of unspent energy from the good run and the week apart. It doesn’t matter what she says, as long as she comes over and satisfies this urge.
I shouldn’t tell you on the phone.
Oh, come on, when have we ever been so formal? He gets up and puts the full slipper on the counter by the sink and sits back down. He’ll empty it later.
Well. OK. You don’t know, for instance, that I’m moving to Chicago.
Oh? Timothy says. You’re moving to Chicago?
I’m moving to Chicago.
He recovers himself. I knew that, he says.
You knew that?
Yeah, I knew it, Timothy says, even though he didn’t know it. He feels a certain giddiness, though he knows he should express sadness. But there’s a little trickle of relief, some of the tension draining away. This might be easier than he thought. Tell me something I don’t know, he says.
Not on the phone.
You want to send me a smoke signal?
All right smartass, she says. I’m pregnant.
Don’t joke around about that.
I’m pregnant.
I said that’s not funny.
I said I’m pregnant.
Timothy ends the call. To keep her from saying it again, he tells himself. He paces the room. It couldn’t be possible. Of course it could be possible. How could it not be possible? He sits down at the table in the center of the room. Then he stands up and bangs his head on the gaslight. Fucking light. He hits it with his fist and one of the glass shades falls to the table and shatters.
He hears himself saying, That was bright. That will teach it. Then he calls Reka back. Can you come over, he says.
The bed is still unmade, and the rumpled covers invite him in. For a long time, he doesn’t move. The sweat dries on his body, and he wraps up like a mummy in the blankets. So, this is how life happens, he thinks. Timothy, his parents had admitted, was an accident. But Timothy’s parents were married. He’s known Reka for what, six weeks? He doesn’t have any money. But this isn’t the first surprise in the history of the world. And who has any money? Yes, this is how life happens. You’re confronted with an obstacle or an opportunity, and you react to it. The way you react to it says more about who you are than the opportunity or the obstacle. Right?
Timothy drifts off to sleep in the cozy sarcophagus of blankets. When Reka arrives, he’s still foggy from sleep, and he grapples with her at the door. He puts his hand over her mouth when she tries to speak. She presses her hand over his own, as if to shut herself up, and they stand like that for a while. Then she moves her hand up his arm, and that’s all it takes.
A long, loud, guttural, determined lovemaking begins, first in front of the little apartment-sized sink, then over the kitchen table, carefully with the shattered glass, and then finally over the sink again. Timothy’s always fantasized about doing it that way. No talking, no kissing, just tearing off clothes and getting to it. But not all clothes. Undressing only what needs undressing, pushing the rest to the side and entering unannounced before she’s had a chance to open her mouth to voice objection or invitation. But Reka does open her mouth then, with that surprise, and commences responding like she never has, bucking and writhing against him and almost knocking him off his feet. Taking everything and giving more back. Timothy feels a new sweat seeping through the crust of dry sweat, then a cauldron of lust and anger and confusion and revulsion and still that arcane hunger for good black garden earth in his mouth and nostrils. Homesickness, Reka called it. Whatever it is, it rises to a boil in him before he unleashes it finally into the naked body draped over his sink, finishing like that, his hand over her mouth again to keep her from yelling this time, and her taking the offering in her teeth and biting down hard.
And then the cauldron simmering. Reka rests her cheek flat on the dirty counter. This is a kitchen sink and a bathroom sink and also a toilet. Her blonde hair mingles with all the sink stuff. The broken wedge of bar soap, the rusted core of an apple, breakfast dishes scabbed with breadcrumbs and the mess of butter and jam. A noose of used floss girdles the hot water handle. The toothpaste rests uncapped, its lip a bulbous yellow crust. And there’s the red toothbrush itself resting in a cruddy puddle of shaved whiskers and soap scum. It’s a fairly new toothbrush, but already its bristles splay out as if it’s been used for months. Either Timothy has been using it too long, or they just don’t make toothbrushes like they used to.
Reka looks back, extracting her hair from the sink. That was amazing, she says, pushing back and standing up, wiping a wetness from her face. Where has that been all these weeks? I didn’t know you had that in you.
I’m sorry, Timothy says, feeling tenderness now. But also sadness and self-pity. He sits down on the unmade trundle bed and hangs his head.
Sorry? she says. You deserve a medal or something. But Timothy’s not cheered. He sits dejectedly on the bed. Oh, don’t act so guilty. I needed that too. More than you know. She sits down beside him, both of them naked.
What are we going to do? he says. I mean, I feel like we barely know each other.
Shhh, she says. She goes to the sink and returns with the brass slipper, its opening fit snugly with the single cigarette butt. She hands it to Timothy and he tips the slipper into the can by the bed. Then he lights a new cigarette and passes it to Reka.
You don’t understand, Timothy says. What are we supposed to do? I like you. I told you I loved you, and you told me I don’t love you. That’s just confusing. And I don’t know if you love me. I suppose I could love you if we just give it time.
Reka shushes him again. You talk too much. She lies back on the bed naked and Timothy wraps some of the blanket around her. They share the cigarette.
What happened anyway? I thought you were on the pill. I mean, I figured you must have been.
Well, I was. The pill wasn’t working out for me and I switched to an IUD. There was some time in between.
Here was the mistake. A mistake that wasn’t his own. Some time in between. You should have told me, he says. That wasn’t fair, keeping that from me. He feels his confidence rising. For one thing, he says, how do you know it’s even mine?
Do you have to sound like a fucking ass? God, why did I ever get into it with a kid? I broke Rule Number One: No dating little kids.
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
It means you’re too used to being pleased and not used to giving pleasure. You’re selfish, Lucky Boy. You think this is what I need in my life? I was supposed to be starting over. Now I have to start over from starting over. Reka begins to cry.
I’m sorry. Shit. I never should have said that, Timothy says. But
still he wonders. He supposes there are tests you can do, if it comes to that.
Reka is too strong to cry for long. Listen. You don’t have to worry. I’m going to have an abortion.
Those words he didn’t know he wanted to hear until he heard them. Those saving words. No taking them back. Now that those words were spoken, he can afford a new generosity.
Of course I’d support you either way, he says.
I know you would, Reka says. Look, I need to be going. I’m not staying here anymore.
I just feel like we never even got started.
There’s just one more thing I need from you. Reka stands and begins to dress, recovering her clothes from the floor in front of the sink. Can I count on you for one more thing?
Turns out the abortion clinic is right there on the east side, right next to Shank Hall, where Reka said they play some good blues. They can walk to it, and they do. A line of protesters guards the entrance. They’re standing across the street from the gauntlet waiting for the light to turn.
Timothy holds Reka’s hand tightly. She seems so brave and mature but also somehow younger. She’s wearing makeup today, which is unusual for her. Something about the heavy mascara and the loose-fitting clothes reminds him of the older girls in high school and how sophisticated they seemed to Timothy when he was an underclassman. He passed them in the halls with their exotic clothes and smells and curvaceous bodies and hoop earrings, and he felt like he didn’t belong in the same building with them. He couldn’t wait until the day he could exist on the same plane as those heavenly creatures, leaning against their lockers and speaking secretly with them while the unlucky ones trundled past in the hallway lugging their stupid books. One of the senior girls had an abortion when he was a freshman. Trina Miller. Trina was a rare beauty, slightly bow-legged, which seemed about the sexiest thing in the world. Timothy had doubted that she would let someone even touch her. She was gone from school for a few days. Word got around. Afterward, when she came back, she walked the same halls. Now she seemed to float even further above them. Nothing could touch her. Just being in her proximity was enough to sustain Timothy’s imagination for the entire school day. Timothy remembers that when he got to be the same age as Trina Miller and the other worldly girls, he never felt worldly himself. The plane on which the ones with the secret knowledge lived seemed always just two or three levels ahead, and Timothy was a perpetual underclassman.