Tampa

by Alissa Nutting

  My concentration was momentarily broken when Ford emitted a low-frequency gurgle. The television’s light made him look like a blue corpse, the white film of drool around the corners of his mouth a frosted poison.

  The thought of Ford dead didn’t necessarily arouse me, but the idea of pert adolescent males singing around his corpse, removing their colorful jerseys and swinging them above their heads in celebration, as though his death was a victory of sport and a crucial step to their winning a divisional high school championship—there was something greater than comfort in that image. It had the feel of Greek myth. I began to fantasize that the boys on television had been tadpoles who grew in Ford’s stomach until the day they were strong and large enough to rip their way out in a violent mass birth. It was almost enough to make me feel a hypothetical sympathy for Ford. If his body, torn in half, were indeed a spent cocoon that had incubated four lovely young men, I would kiss him on the cheek and mean it. Thank you, Ford. But there wouldn’t be time to linger. These new adolescents, sticky from their residence inside him, would need me to give them a shower shortly after arrival. I’ve always had the suspicion that Ford’s entrails smell like industrial-grade carpet: a low chemical odor that wants to seem new but instead just announces itself as ubiquitous. A smell that says, I am not even a little bit rare. There are enough bolts of me at the warehouse to circle the planet.

  My orgasm came in the final verse as the four boys engaged together in a scripted play of contrived spontaneity: wading into the ocean, they began to flirtatiously splash at one another. One boy took a salty handful straight to the face and bared his teeth in mock outrage; he returned the assault with a baptism, pushing the offender backward onto his butt in the water. His other two friends helped him up, each grabbing an arm. His tiny, goose-bumped nipples pushed against his shirt’s drenched fabric. Every inch of him was soaked except his hair. I imagined walking to him, lifting his bangs once again to lick his forehead. It would likely taste like the sweat on his thighs, like the doughy tang inside his shorts after he’d run across the sunny beach for miles.

  chapter two

  Jack Patrick. Something in his chin-length blond hair, in the diminutive leanness of his chest, refined for me just what it was about the particular subset of this age group that I found entrancing. He was at the very last link of androgyny that puberty would permit him: undeniably male but not man. I loved the lanky-limbed smoothness, the plasticity of his limbs, the way his frame shunned both fat and muscle. It had not yet been wrestled into a fixed shape.

  The youth of Jefferson were definitely noticing me. “There’s lewd graffiti about you on the stalls of the boys’ bathroom,” Janet reported in a bored monotone. “The janitor’s painting over it as we speak but it’ll be up again in no time. Calls you a hot bitch. I don’t think they’ve broken out the p-word yet. But give them a few months.” Janet’s permanently half-open eyes had a way of looking past my face when she spoke; she appeared to be gazing out into the near future and seeing tomorrow’s disappointments.

  “Boys will be boys,” I declared, shaking my head in mock disapproval. Public displays of flattery didn’t appeal to me in the least—these students weren’t my target audience. Someone bold enough to deface school property certainly wouldn’t be able to keep any secrets, though he’d be fantastically easy to seduce. The opposite was also true. From student teaching, I’d learned that the very boys who likely wouldn’t kiss and tell were the hardest to kiss in the first place.

  My time as a student teacher had been a wake-up call for how complicated my needs actually were. Initially I’d hoped that just being around them would be enough—that like coral among anemones, I could glean all needed vitality through their swirling hordes moving past my body in the hallways. Within a week, I knew this to be a lie.

  In a matter of days at my first institution I’d developed a heady crush on a young man named Steven—an unfortunately moral boy. He was president of that school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes and wore a small gold cross upon a necklace; I couldn’t help but imagine him naked wearing only this sacred object against his thin flesh. When he’d raise his hand I’d make sure my fragrant hair fell down against his arm as I leaned over to address his question; I frequently gave his back and shoulders a reassuring touch when passing by his desk. After he missed a test I volunteered to stay after and proctor a makeup: finally, it was just the two of us alone in the classroom. When he finished I asked if I could give him a ride home and suggestively leaned across my desk.

  His eyes froze with appalled disbelief. Perhaps it was a rush to judgment, but my first inclination was to blame his faith. He was suddenly looking at me as though he’d seen a demon appear on my shoulder or watched hidden expletives carved into my forehead become visible. I wanted to remind him that desire was only human but figured that was probably just what he’d expect the devil to say. “M-Mrs. Price,” he’d stuttered, the tone of his porcelain voice shivering with eggshell cracks, “I think we should pray together.”

  “Yes!” I’d exclaimed, my enthusiasm surprising him. I’d jumped up from the desk and walked toward him, palms outstretched. “Let us join hands.” I smiled.

  He’d stepped backward with one foot, and then another. The incredulous look on his face told me I’d already lost him—somehow he’d seen through me, or perhaps he was skilled at foreshadowing. I’d imagine a pious avoidance of sin requires that. “When you play football, do you prefer offense?” I asked.

  “I should go,” he finally managed to say.

  “Before we pray?” I’d licked my lips and twirled a long stretch of blond hair around two of my fingers.

  He’d kept glancing back at the closed door, perhaps hoping someone else would enter. “I’ll pray at home.” He’d nodded solemnly. “For both of us.”

  “You’re such a good boy, Steven.” I began appealing to his sense of propriety. “I love that about you. You’re different, you know. From the others.” I’d stepped out of my high heels, placing my bare feet onto the tile so that the top of his head was level with my eyes. When I followed his eyes to the ground I realized that he was looking at my painted toenails. “So do I get a good-bye hug for staying late so you could make up your quiz?” Pretending that my request for permission had been granted, I’d leaned into his body before he’d answered, pressing myself hard against the length of him. Next I’d placed my hand over the back of his head, holding him close, then ran my lips against the hot skin of his neck when I pulled away. I didn’t look back at him, didn’t confirm or deny that anything had happened; I just walked back to the desk to pick up the papers, and when I turned around again he’d left.

  I knew he’d never let me be alone with him again. I’d immediately pushed a student desk up against the door, sat down and began to finger myself while my tongue ran a slow clockwork pattern around his faint taste on my top and bottom lip—he had an earthy scent: a little grass, a bit of unsweetened tea, some salt. After I came I cried in mourning; I’d fallen for the wrong boy, an inaccessible one, and my time at that school was drawing to a close. For the three remaining weeks, he sat near the back of the class with friends and never raised his hand. Only once did he look at me as he was leaving, a glance of pained confusion that I encouraged by not giving him a smile.

  On my last day, the froggish male mentor teacher I’d worked with had all the students sign a card for me. He’d included a bullshit note on ruled paper that tried too hard to play it cool and included his cell phone number, which I made a point of keeping in my purse until my next bowel movement. This happened to be at a midprice Chinese chain restaurant where Ford had insisted we meet for a celebratory dinner. “Excuse me for a moment,” I’d said, “while I go use the powder room.” Before grabbing any toilet paper, I made an initial swipe with the note, making sure the side bearing the teacher’s handwriting was facing upward. Then I looked again at the card. While most students had left mild phrases of encouragement peppered with misspellings, Steven had written
only his signature. I stood, feeling my underwear drop to my ankles, and tore down the card to his name, ripping it out in isolation, then stared at the tab of paper sitting on my finger like a square of acid. I let my head hit the side of the bathroom stall as I shoved his name as far up inside me as I could. This alone gave me the strength to walk back out to the table and greet Ford, who was drinking yet another blue cocktail overflowing with flora garnish.

  “Honey,” he’d called from a distance, seeing me headed back toward him. “They call this drink a Tall Blue Balls!” I’d given him an appreciative smile, as if to say, How appropriate; you are foul to me and I just wallpapered my cervix with the name of a teenage boy.

  Jack had already passed the test of not having any outward affinity to Christianity, so I began assigning personal essays and in-class writings designed to give me more personal details about him.

  “For today’s journal,” I announced, “I want you to take ten minutes and write about the celebrity you find most attractive. Harness the power of description—pretend I’ve never seen him or her before.”

  Most of the male responses revolved around a reality star’s ample buttocks, but Jack was noncommittal. I don’t really have a favorite celebrity, he wrote. Usually if there’s a good movie I like then I will also like the main woman in it, or if there’s a singer and I like the song and the video and she’s also pretty. Friday of the first week, I decided to keep him after class to ask about the lack of detail. I planned to go shopping over the weekend and cater to his proclivities.

  When I called him up, he waved good-bye to his friends—a nice gesture, I thought, making sure they wouldn’t wait outside for him. Then he slowly walked up to my desk. His hands were clutched to the straps of his backpack, holding it tightly as though it were a parachute.

  “I’d like to chat for a bit about your writing—do you mind missing a little of your lunch?”

  He looked at the ground, his sneaker tracing a line across the tile, and shook his head no. The puffy styling of his athletic shoes made his legs seem even thinner—there didn’t seem to be one ounce to his body that wasn’t essential. I loved the precarious way his cargo shorts drooped on the elongated hanger of his pelvic bones, the way they’d likely fall down at the slightest tug. His kneecaps, barely sticking out from the bottom of his shorts’ hem, would make perfect, nearly circular imprints if he knelt down in the sand.

  “So how’s your year going? What other classes do you have?” More important, I wanted to add, when did you last touch yourself?

  Shrugging, he finally looked up at me. “The usual I guess. Biology, World History …”

  “Mrs. Feinlog?” I laughed. “Dear God, I’m sorry.”

  He smiled. “Yeah.” He started scratching his arm, then began looking at me intently while he continued, as though he was vicariously relieving an itch on my body.

  “So I wanted to talk about this journal you wrote.” My oversized desk was a large gulf between us, so I rose from my chair and motioned for us to head out to the student desks. “Here, let’s have a chat for a minute.” When he sat, I scooted another desk directly next to his so we could each stare at his notebook at the same time.

  Suddenly I was closer to him than I’d ever been before. I could smell the faint sporty body wash and deodorant he used. It was nearly cruel, the apathetic way his cotton T-shirt fell on his body, not seeming to care where it clung and where it sat loose. His clothing in general had a very inconsequential feel to it, like an afterthought, as though he’d been walking out the door to go to school in his underwear but then his mother had said, Wait, get dressed first, and he’d shrugged and obeyed.

  “So I think you took the easy way out here,” I chided. “I don’t know that you used one single specific adjective.” I put my hand on top of his just for a moment, a reach of understanding and sympathy, then realized an opportunity to linger. “Look,” I said. “Hold out your hand. I think our hands are the same size.” He stretched out his palm and fingers, then gave a wide grin when mine, placed directly overtop, were indeed an exact match in length. It seemed like we’d just found a key that unlocked something.

  I smiled as our hands pressed against one another in midair, as though we were pretending to touch through invisible glass. We managed a long stare before Jack finally blushed, retracting his hands. “How old are you, Jack Patrick?”

  “I turned fourteen this summer,” he said. I gave an impressed nod, indicating this was no small accomplishment.

  “Well you’re certainly old enough to know what you like.” Principal Deegan’s first-day speech came back to mind; I had to bite my lip not to jokingly add in, Am I right? “Here, let me give you some examples. Do you like it when girls wear lipstick?”

  He blushed and nodded. “Yeah.” His voice had an embarrassed tone, like he’d just made a vile confession.

  “Good—do you like lighter lipstick? Darker lipstick? Red?” I wanted to grab his hand again. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to slide my fingers beneath the desk and touch the bare skin of his leg.

  “Um,” he said. His hand began to scratch at his scalp.

  “Wait,” I said. “I have an idea.” I walked up to my desk and grabbed my purse and a box of Kleenex. “So what I’m wearing now is called fuchsia. Kind of a bright pink.” I sat and wiped it off, then took the fuchsia tube of lipstick out of my purse along with two others. “Okay, ready?” He nodded with sudden animation—we were about to play a game.

  I locked eyes with him. “Watch my lips,” I instructed. I applied the red and rubbed my lips together. His hands left the desk and folded in his lap. “Do you like this more or less than the one I had on?”

  He smiled and gave a small shrug. “I like them both.”

  “Let’s try option three, then.” I winked at him and cleaned the red lipstick off with exaggerated strokes, using far more Kleenex than necessary, as though I’d just eaten a very sloppy meal. I loved having his full attention. “This last one is coral.” I applied it then rubbed my lips together and parted them with a playful smack. “Which one’s your favorite?”

  “They all look good.” His stare didn’t break from my mouth; he spoke in a hypnotized monotone.

  “Jack,” I said, leaning toward him, “you can’t go through life being shy with your opinion. Say that right now, you were making the decision as to whether I had to wear red lipstick every day of my life, or fuchsia, or coral. It’s your decision and you have to choose. Which one?”

  He swallowed. “The red is pretty.”

  “Perfect.” I smiled and grabbed the other two tubes of lipstick, then walked over to the trash and threw them in loudly, one at a time. “I value what you think.” I looked up and saw his lips parted, muted around the space of something unspeakable and subconscious lodged between his teeth. The lunch period bell rang in the distance. “Here,” I offered. “Let me write you a note for the cafeteria monitor.”

  I sat back down behind my desk and scribbled onto a piece of paper, then pursed my lips and blew on the paper while fanning it back and forth to dry the ink. “Here you are,” I said. As he walked up to get it, each step of his sneaker was a magnified sound in the quiet classroom. I looked at him in a shameless way as he approached, wondering if he would turn his eyes or look away. He didn’t.

  Before giving him the slip of paper, I held up my palm in the air again. “High-five, friend.” He placed his hand on top of mine once more. This time I pushed his fingers slightly apart with mine and slid them forward, entwined and clasping. His eyes wouldn’t stop questioning but he didn’t speak or pull away. “Have a good weekend,” I finally said. Then I gave a small squeeze and temporarily let him go.

  *

  Ford’s poker night provided a perfect cover for my first stakeout. Every Wednesday after work several of his fellow officers would come over to the house for cards. Even though this was now routine, returning home to the sight of eight squad cars parked in our driveway still caused me to feel an instant
and roiling vertigo; a few months ago I’d nearly swerved off the road and clipped a fire hydrant when I saw them all there. My immediate thought was always that my Internet search history had been discovered, or a latent report had been filed—perhaps about one of the indiscreet hallway gropes I’d tried to pass off as accidental clumsiness during my student-teaching days. There was even the illogical panic that the police had somehow managed to read my mind.

  The cigar smoke was reason enough to make myself scarce during the gathering. Through the sliding glass door, its grayish cloud nearly looked like a second mesh screen. Ford liked to joke that cigars keep away mosquitoes. I found the smell vulgar and fetid. It just made Ford seem even more ancient, as though he was smoking his very own future cremains. How opposite to the bouquet of smells on the mouths of adolescent boys, which is an honest mixture of good and bad: bubble gum, Red Hots, cola syrup, stale sleep, rubber bands for braces, the occasional cigarette that leaves a taste less like tobacco than something very damp and mossish.

  I slid the patio door open theatrically, dressed to the nines in exercise gear. The more I did for Ford’s ego publicly, I’d found, the less I had to do to satisfy him privately. “Hello, boys,” I called. They all looked up with too-large approving smiles, the alcohol having given their facial muscles an increased range of movement. “I’m gonna hit the gym for a bit, Fordsie.”

  “Take my wife with you, will ya?” Ford’s partner Bill called. At last year’s police fund-raiser he’d gotten blackout drunk and put his hand on my ass shortly before vomiting behind the DJ table. “Her idea of working out is putting new batteries in the remote control.” The men chuckled into their beers, the guns strapped around their waists and chests gleaming in the setting sun. “Get her working on that ab machine thing,” he specified. I shut the door and waved good-bye at Ford, who made a show of watching my ass as I walked away. This was the reason Ford married me, and why I could make the argument that I was a better wife for him than a woman who was actually smitten: love makes people feel accepted, and like Bill’s wife they then begin to break the rules. I had a far clearer picture of our marriage contract’s unspoken line items than most women: Ford wanted me to stay in shape, look good in front of his friends, and make him look good in return.