by Wade Lake
The showerhead.
It’s leaking.
It’s dripping fat drops of water and long “S” sounds.
He sighs and shakes his head self-consciously.
A leaky showerhead. Nothing he can’t fix. Tomorrow. Or the day after that maybe.
It really does sound like a voice, though. Sort of. Less so now that the light is on. Plumbing. He loves plumbing. Pipes speak same as people do. Mack considers himself an interpreter for the language of pipes. Listen, and they’ll tell you what’s wrong. This sound, though, it’s … unique. A new one to add to his vocabulary.
***
An hour later, face-up, naked on the top sheet, Mack realizes he's wet on both sides: sweaty on the top side, damp on the underneath. The mattress really does feel like a wet sponge.
He tries counting the day's accomplishments. Tries planning his chores for tomorrow. Finally, he concedes Chase was right. The mattress is too wet for sleeping. He decides to fetch his sleeping bag from his truck.
Once again, he climbs out of bed. This time, he searches the floor in the dark for his blue jeans … fishes his truck keys out of the pocket.
Naked and barefooted, quiet as an intruder, he steps gently across the living room floor, careful not to wake Chase. The A/C above the couch is on full blast, but the breeze it creates feels … swampy … and smells like Chase. The whole room smells like Chase: a distinctive scent of cedarwood deodorant and day-old underwear.
Mack continues to the front door. Opening inward, it screeches briefly. He slips outside.
The rain has stopped. The moon is three-quarters full. It's cooler out here than it is indoors. A little. From the stoop, he gazes upward through the enormous canopy of the live oak. The trinkets dangling from its arms look like costume jewelry: long strands of plastic beads, spinning bangle bracelets, cocktail rings, teardrops, cat’s eyes, and bubble shapes with glints of silver and green.
He should focus on his task. It's past midnight, unlikely any of the neighbors are peering out their windows. Just in case, he covers himself with one hand as best as he can. Doesn't want to give anyone a free show.
He descends the steps.
Cuts across the tiny yard.
The thick, wet grass beneath his feet feels like feathers.
His truck is already unlocked. He makes a mental note not make a habit of that. Not in this neighborhood. He opens the door and leans into the cab, reaches behind the driver's seat, and grabs his sleeping bag. He always keeps a sleeping bag, toolbox, and a milk jug filled with water behind the driver's seat. He's done that since his first vehicle.
Directly overhead, Mack hears a noise.
A metallic whisper.
Sleeping bag tucked under one arm, he gazes up, through the web of dark branches. There it is. Some twenty feet up. The previous homeowners must have placed a wind chime up in the branches. Or … from the position and the tangle, it looks more likely that someone threw the chime up there. The long, hollow tubes are splayed at odd angles. As Mack stares upward, a breeze stirs: a warm, rolling breeze that smells like stale laundry.
"He's going to leave you."
Startled, Mack swings around. He squints into the shadows surrounding the oak's massive trunk. "Who's there?" he says. He expects the outline of a burglar to appear. After a moment, his focus sharpens. He can distinguish the pattern of the bark.
But no burglar.
Nobody.
He glances back up at the wind chime: two of its captive hollow tubes are rubbing together like legs going back and forth at the shin.
5
When Mack steps cautiously back into the house, Chase is still asleep. Still snoring. Sounds like a dog growling. An aggressive, rhythmical growling. Mack used to be concerned that Chase's violent snoring was unhealthy. Chase was never concerned. "Real men snore," he would say.
Mack doesn't disagree. Not anymore. Chase tends to take disagreement as criticism. He says this is because he feels life too deeply. He feels beneath the surface. He claims he's an empath, and Mack has no reason to disbelieve him beyond a general disbelief in empaths. Chase says his emotions are so finely tuned, so tightly strung for reception that a heated conversation between strangers on the other side of the street can give him a headache. That's what he says. Mack is skeptical. Chase says that’s why he has to start his mornings off with a drink. Usually just a shot of whisky in his coffee.
Chase says emotions travel through him the way light moves through a prism. They enter his body, separate into their basic components, then move back out into the world. It's not easy on him. Keeps him in an introspective mood. Keeps him serious. Uncomfortably serious. He's so serious, he grinds his teeth when he cums. Sometimes he yells out at the top of his lungs and punches the mattress with one or both fists. Sometimes he cries. It used to frighten Mack. Now he just rolls over and ignores it.
Mack sets his rolled-up sleeping bag on the floor beside the couch. He stares at Chase's sleeping body. He wants to climb onto the couch and spoon with him.
Would Chase make room?
Mack decides to give it a try—he goes as far as to lift one leg off the floor before he stops himself. Wouldn't be fair to wake Chase. Nobody likes to be woken up.
Mack sets his foot back down. He can sleep on the floor tonight.
He fetches his pillow from the bedroom, unrolls his sleeping bag. Before settling in, he crosses the living room to the tall window beside the front door. He flips the sash lock with his thumb and, using both hands—gingerly, inch-by-inch—raises the window, opening the living room to the outdoors. A warm breeze falls through. Feels like water. Warm water up to his elbows.
He makes a mental note to remember to close the window in the morning before Chase wakes up. Won’t be a problem. Mack is always up before Chase.
Climbing onto his sleeping bag, Mack pauses for another look at Chase's sleeping body. On several occasions, Chase has woken up and caught Mack staring. He doesn't like it. "You're being creepy again," he told Mack last time. Mack can’t help it. Chase is the kind of handsome that has to be studied to be fully appreciated. Every measure of him is classically male. Everything exaggerated: muscled forearms, long nose, thick neck, big chest, heavy balls that fall down the left leg of his boxers.
Chase sleeps in his boxers, and the sheet has fallen away.
Even in the dark, his balls are prominent: wrinkled, white eggs stuck to his thigh. Jumbo-sized. Mack imagines popping one into his mouth … imagines fitting both in at the same time.
The temptation is too great.
Before he can talk himself out of it, Mack reaches through the dark … gently cups Chase's warm, damp scrotum and lifts … balances the over-sized balls on his palm. More than anything, he wants to lean in and scoop them into this mouth.
Chase is a heavy sleeper, but that might wake him.
Too risky.
A couple months ago, Chase woke up with Mack's mouth around his balls. Annoyed, Chase called him a freak. Mack said it was an accident … not really a convincing explanation.
Chase is uptight that way. More so when he’s sober. Sober, he's the kind of lover who will ask you to cum on his face then squeeze his eyes shut and grimace in anticipation. After a few drinks, he’ll jizz in a shot glass and toast your good health.
With an audible sigh, Mack lowers Chase's balls back onto his hairy thigh and slips his hand out from underneath.
Chase continues snoring.
Mack lies back on his sleeping bag. Stretching out, he tries to get comfortable. He folds his hands over his chest. Closes his eyes. Draws in deep breaths … attempts to match the rhythm of his breaths to Chase's.
The floor is too hard.
The air is too thick.
His scalp is sweating.
A bead of sweat rolls down the back of his left ear and tickles its way down the back of his neck. He's used to taking melatonin and CBD oil to help him sleep. There's no chance of finding those within the pyramid of boxes. Not tonight. Not without waking Chase.
After ten minutes, he pulls his knees to his chest and rocks himself up to a sitting position. Time to try a shower. He should have done it earlier. That's the only thing that's going to help. A cold shower—that way, it won't steam the place up. He’ll just jump in long enough to rinse away the sweat and cool the surface of his skin.
6
Mack turns the cold-water knob counterclockwise and steps into the tub. He faces the spray, expecting a sharp, icy blast, but the water is room temperature. Feels like a wet version of the air blowing out of the broken A/C unit.
He turns his back to the showerhead.
His shoulders and back are sore from lifting boxes all day.
He bends over to see if he can touch his toes.
He can't.
Holding the position, he imagines a never-ending tongue moving between his buttocks, forking, continuing down the backs of his thighs.
His back begins to lengthen. His fingertips reach a little closer to his toes.
Something hums near his left ear—
A flapping noise bookended by S sounds.
It can’t be the drip he’d investigated earlier. The showerhead is going full blast now, and this sound is closer, right up by his head.
Probably a moth. Two windows are open in the house now, and neither has a screen. Moths love open windows. It must have flown into the bathroom behind him. The shower spray must have dampened its powdery wings, making it difficult to fly and causing it to alight on his ear. If he were to touch it now with wet hands, he might end its ability to fly forever ... so he just shakes his head. Calmly. Now a little more briskly.
The hum is still there.
Feels like a slippery whisper riding the channel into his ear.
Straightening quickly, Mack swats at his ear. Digs into it with his pinky. He ducks underneath the shower and aims his ear into the spray, allowing the fleshy canal to fill with water … tilts his head sideways and lets the water pour out. His whole skull is humming, but he's confident now, the noise isn't coming from inside his ear.
It's coming from the showerhead.
He takes a quick step backward, retreating from the spray.
A tickling sensation tightens the muscles in his back. The moment feels weird … dreamlike. The hum sounds … unnatural. Not just a quirky drip like the dripping S sounds he’d heard earlier. This noise sounds … otherworldly. Like something that doesn’t belong. Not here, not anywhere. His instinct is to step out of the tub and retreat from the room.
But … he’s a plumber.
Noisy pipes are his specialty. His passion. And this is a strange noise, indeed. He’s never heard anything quite like it before. An intense surge of professional curiosity bypasses the sense that tells him to walk away.
Cautiously, as if approaching some unrecognizable foreign object, knees slightly bent, ready to jump, he leans in toward the showerhead. It takes a few seconds to separate the sound of the spray from the eerie metallic vibration. Now the rubbing noise twists, elongates, and takes on the shape of words: the same phrase over and over: "He's going to leave you."
The spray from the showerhead turns icy cold.
Mack leaps backward to the rear end of the tub—
Almost loses his balance—
Grabs the shower curtain to prevent a fall.
His heart speeds up to match the pace of his imagination. Both are going too fast. Feels like the room is shaking. He's sweating—literally sweating—while standing in a cold shower.
He orders himself to calm down. He wills his fists to let go of the shower curtain … one hand goes to the top of his head, the other goes to his balls. Reflexively, both begin massaging himself. He forces slower, deeper, intentional breaths. Tells himself to think this through.
Sometimes the hum of a motor can sound like someone is speaking in the next room. Mack has experienced that phenomenon many times. Everybody has. The fan on a computer, the rumble of an air conditioner, the repeating wobble of a ceiling fan … if you focus on any of them long enough, they sound like voices. Same way if you stare at a pattern on wallpaper, any pattern, any wallpaper, eventually you see faces. The senses are easily tricked, he reminds himself.
"He's going to leave you."
These words—sounds, not words, he tells himself—they're just the metallic ring of water rushing through the S-shaped shower arm, through the chrome head. Pressure. Temperature. Pipes. Brackets. Loose fittings. Obstructions. Vibrations. Same way a voice is constructed, so, yes, it sounds similar, but … it's just noise. It’s just a hum.
He reaches for the showerhead and grips the metal neck where it projects from the wall.
"He's going to leave you."
Mack felt it that time. The words vibrated beneath his fingers.
He lets go of the showerhead ... but doesn't back away.
"He's going to leave you. He's going to—"
"I know," Mack says.
The voice stops mid-sentence as if it merely had been waiting for Mack's agreement. The spray continues uninterrupted from the showerhead. No harder, no softer. The water temperature returns to a luke-warm.
For a full minute, Mack stares at the showerhead's broad, round face. He's hoping to hear the voice again—hoping to prove to himself that this is a mechanical issue, not a … not something else.
Nothing but the sound of water striking his chest.
Cautiously, Mack moves in even closer. Now, as if speaking into the mouthpiece of an old-timey phone, he speaks into the showerhead. "Why … why doesn't he love me anymore?"
No answer.
"I don't know either," Mack says and turns off the water. His heart is still racing but he barely notices now. He pushes back the shower curtain and steps out of the tub onto the faded, yellow linoleum floor—that will have to be replaced with tile, he tells himself. In fact, the whole bathroom should be tile. The old, plastic tub-shower combo needs replaced, too. Mack could do that in a weekend. He just needs Chase's agreement on a tile color. He's trying to forget what just happened. It's late enough, it's possible he could forget it by morning. If the shower helps him fall asleep. If he dreams dreams that, by comparison, make a whispering showerhead seems tame. If … if only it hadn't spoken the truth.
Mack opens the slender linen closet. It's empty, of course. Towels are still in a box in the living room. Under the sink, he finds a roll of paper towels left behind by the previous residents. Very considerate of them. He winds a four or five full sheets around his right hand and dabs himself more or less dry. He starts to toss the paper towels into the garbage can—but there's no garbage can … so he lays the wet paper towels on the vanity, one atop another, and smooths them out with his palms. They'll be dry by morning … and he likes the idea of Chase drying his hands and face with the same paper towels that touched Mack all over.
7
The next morning, Mack is up first, of course. He closes the windows before he wakes Chase. Mack is smiling again. He loves mornings. He loves the opportunity of a new day.
Chase locates the box with their skillets and cooking pots. Mack locates the box with their plates, bowls, and silverware. They'd be ready for breakfast if they had groceries. But they don't. There’s a box with dry cereal and dry oatmeal somewhere. But its whereabouts have them both stumped. After a carefully avoided argument, they agree to go out for breakfast as long as they keep it cheap. Now that they have a mortgage, they can't afford to eat out more than twice per month. Chase says breakfast shouldn’t count, but he concedes they’re on a budget now and agrees to try to follow it. They begin searching for their shoes and wallets.
The doorbell rings.
One shoe on his foot, the other in his hand, Mack answers the door.
Two men—one is a decade older than Mack, one a decade younger, both taller—stand in the doorway. The younger man holds out a small straw basket. It's filled with electric-green plastic grass and heaped with brown eggs.
"Good morning, neighbor," The older man says.
Eyes sliding between the strangers, Mack accepts the basket with his one free hand. He's trying to remember if there's any way Easter could fall in July this year.
"Thank you,” Mack says. He attempts his best smile. “So, you're our new neighbors?”
“We’re not new, you’re new,” the older man corrects him. His voice is smooth. And deep. It’s the kind of voice employed by advertising agencies to read disclaimers.
“But … we’re neighbors?” Mack asks.
"Indeed, we are," the older man affirms. Gray whiskers stipple his sideburns, but the hair atop his head is a luxurious chocolate brown with toffee highlights. Clearly dyed, but a professional job, not a box kit. The younger man is a muscular ginger with big eyes, broad shoulders, and a huge, athough unnerving, grin. Both are classically handsome, like models from a romance novel cover—one featuring daddy kink, perhaps.
His face is classically handsome, but his hair looks delicious. Mack must be hungry.
Chase arrives at the door. "Who we talking to, Mack?"
"Our neighbors."
"Cool. Which house?"
The younger neighbor speaks up: "We live over the fence!" he says and points.
This catches Mack off-guard—not the younger man's words, but his childlike enthusiasm. A full second passes before Mack realizes the younger neighbor is ... in some manner, mentally challenged.
"Nice!" Chase says, his voice louder than necessary.
"Yes!" Mack agrees, matching Chase's volume and wondering why they're both suddenly yelling at the neighbors.
"Nicest house in the neighborhood!" Chase says, pointing over the fence.
"It is now," the older neighbor agrees.
The gravity of his deep voice pulls Chase in closer.
"Six years ago," the neighbor continues, "when I bought the place, it was a shithole. Worse than this place. I spent more money remodeling than most houses around here are worth. Probably a poor investment, but that's the only way to get more gays into the neighborhood, am I right? My name's Jim, by the way." He thrusts his hand toward Chase.
Chase introduces himself, and their clasped hands pump up and down longer than necessary. Mack has to drop his shoe before he can extend his hand. Once he does, he has to hold it in the air for several awkward seconds before Jim releases Chase's hand and reaches for Mack's.