Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  Or The Wizard of Oz when it goes from black and white to color.

  Magic.

  Billie’s hand was around my arm, and she was shaking my arm. We’d walked two blocks down East First Street and were standing on the sidewalk across the street from two old buildings. We were in the dark, next to a big, square, metal dumpster painted dark blue. Behind us, weeds growing up, the cyclone fence, pieces of garbage and tumbleweeds stuck in the fence. Beyond the fence, the wide, empty, dark expanse of shiny railroad tracks that went through the middle of town.

  Rig, Billie said. You are so stoned. Are you all right?

  There was something like San Francisco about the old buildings. The long, sad windows with the paint peeling off. The rusted, broken-down cast-iron fence. The garbage overflowing in the two garbage cans. The two sets of cast-iron stairs up to the first floors.

  Slumming, I said. Just thought we’d see how the other half lives.

  Rig? Billie said.

  The neon blue moon in the cracked window. WORKING MAN’S CLUB. Right next to the WORKING MAN’S CLUB, another set of stairs that led up to a door. Above the door, the painted red sign with fancy gold letters, a sign like you’d see in the train station, PORTERS AND WAITERS.

  Slow, sinful saxophone jazz playing out from somewhere inside in there.

  Then and now. Enormous and deep. In my body, a gust of Idaho wind got inside and was blowing me around.

  None of this made sense. Everything made sense.

  I put my hand on the dumpster, leaned my body against it. The dumpster smelled of new paint. When I spoke, my voice sounded like a faraway train.

  What’s that thing that happens to you, I said, when you feel like something’s already happened to you?

  Billie was right there on my arm, ready to hold me up.

  Déjà vu? Billie said. Is that happening to you? I love it when that happens.

  A skinny yellow dog ran along the street. Right in front of Billie and me, he stopped, raised his leg. Peed on a dead bush.

  Billie nudged in close to me against the dumpster. She wanted to déjà vu too.

  I put my fingers to my lips.

  Sshh!

  I stuck my head around the dumpster, and so did Billie. The lamppost was a spotlight down onto the stairs and the sidewalk. My eyes went right to the top of the stairs, at the dark door of the Working Man’s Club. I knew what was coming next.

  The Princess Theater.

  The slow turn of the handle, the low screech of the door. Black and white turned to color. Out of the door stepped a pair of strapped red high heels and a long yellow dress. The woman was dark-skinned, tall. A strapless, yellow, shiny dress, the slit in her yellow dress all the way up to her thigh. Long, straight black hair to her shoulders. Red, red lips. She was holding a purse like Billie’s, a red satin purse. She walked sideways down the steps, placing each high red heel exactly on the step. Slow and red and yellow in the neon light of the blue neon moon, the woman stepped down, each step careful, each step the sound of the red high heel against the cast-iron step. At the second-to-the-bottom step, in the middle of the lamppost spotlight, the woman in the yellow dress reached down, pulled her dress up a bit with her fingers, bent her knees, and sat down. The wind, a big gust, blew her hair. From out of her purse, she pulled a green bottle. She unscrewed the cap of the green bottle, tipped the bottle up, and swallowed. The strong muscles of her neck. The woman set the bottle on the step next to her. It was a bottle of Thunderbird. She screwed the lid back on. Out of her red satin purse, her large hands with dark fingernails pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She lit the cigarette, inhaled. The best French inhale you ever saw.

  Billie whispered: Smoking is praying.

  A long, warm wind blew slow waves through the yellow dress.

  The brown, broad shoulders, the cut of the chin, her thick lips, her deep-set eyes that looked like Jesus. The thick black hair on her chest. The hair on her legs, hair on up to her thigh. Italian hair.

  Buckskin and flint on the back of my throat.

  As fate would have it, George Serano.

  Differnt happens when you least expect it.

  Billie’s shoulder under my arm moved in closer. She squeezed my hand.

  Wow, Billie whispered. He is such a beautiful woman.

  The neon blue moon on George’s hair made his hair black-blue. George crossed his legs, pulled the skirt of the dress up over his knees. In the spotlight, his one red strapped high heel bouncing.

  Scintillatingly gorgeous.

  A pain down in my pants I wanted more of.

  Billie kissed me on the cheek, her breath.

  Billie whispered: What do you think he’s doing?

  The slow, sinful saxophone jazz was playing a Judy Garland song.

  George took another long drag on his Camel. His French inhale was perfect. He leaned back, his elbows on the second step up. Another drag. George lowered his head, looked down at the top of the yellow dress. With his thumb and index, George pulled at the top of the dress, adjusted himself.

  Billie’s whisper: He’s smoking. And I think he’s waiting for someone.

  Billie was still raring to go. The beer, the marijuana, the warm night wind, she was flying. I was flying too, but not like Billie. The loud, fast everything making sense, everything so much fun, had turned into something else. A huge headache between my eyes and a chest full of sour smoke.

  Billie grabbed my arm and started to pull me away from the painted blue dumpster. She was headed across the street to the man in the yellow dress.

  Come on! Billie said. Let’s ask him where he got his shoes!

  There was no way I was going to move one step closer to George Serano.

  There was nothing else to do but close my eyes and let my body fall. In nothing flat, I was sprawled out on the sidewalk, my head and shoulder up against the blue dumpster. I was holding onto my chest.

  And there you have it. I couldn’t blame it on fate, or blame it on the universe.

  Only me. I’d rather pretend to faint than face the truth.

  Billie fell for it. She knelt down and put her arm around me. Her cool hand on my forehead.

  Rig! Billie said. Are you OK?

  I waited a while to speak.

  I said: I think I’m going to puke, I said. I don’t feel so good.

  Oh, Billie said, I know just how you feel.

  Billie drove. Both the windows rolled down, the wing windows open, the night air was a dark wind that blew our hair and was warm against our skin. I leaned against the pickup door, slouched down, my face right in the window in the wind. I didn’t talk. Couldn’t. My insides had disappeared. All I could do was stare out at the passing streetlamps and the stars way off, out and beyond. After a while, I closed my eyes. The wind against my closed eyes.

  I figured Billie was taking herself home, so I was surprised that when she shut off the pickup, when I opened my eyes, we weren’t at her house. We weren’t at Mount Moriah either.

  The big round neon sign yellow and orange with red neon blinking. THE SUNSET MOTEL.

  What are we doing here? I said.

  Happy birthday, Rig, Billie said. I’ve rented us a room.

  The headache between my eyes went through my head to the exact center of my brain.

  In a motel? I said. What are we going to do in a motel?

  The loud metal-to-metal pop of the pickup door. Billie got out of the pickup, slammed the door, walked around the front of the pickup, opened my door. I just sat there on the seat. I couldn’t move.

  Come on, Rig, Billie said. Her best Simone Signoret.

  It’s twelve-thirty, I said. It’s late, I said. I got to get on home.

  My voice was high.

  Billie’s eyes opened wider, and she seemed to take in all of me for a moment, and in that moment while she was taking me all in, she was thinking of just the right way to say what she had to say.

  Billie put her hand on my hand that was on my leg. I tried not to jump, but in her hand it
was like lightning.

  Rig, Billie said. It was a joke. Cheryl and Karen got the room for us. For your birthday. I told them they were crazy, that a motel room wasn’t for us. I told them I loved you and that we were friends, but a motel room just wasn’t for us. Not yet. But some things have happened, and I do, Rig. I need to be close to you. Tonight at the Blind Lemon when you took off your shirt is when I knew. I needed to be naked with you and lie down and be held by you. And there it was in my purse, the Sunset Motel key, room fifty-eight.

  Billie opened her pink satin purse, reached in, held up the key between us. The green tag of the key with the white numbers, 58. The tag spun around in the wind and shined with the neon sunset.

  Then Billie leaned in the door, her head against my belly. She was crying hard. Big, deep sobs and snot. Her deep breaths through my T-shirt.

  Up the twelve cement steps, along the cement walkway, I walked on the outside. When you walk, the man is always supposed to walk on the outside.

  Room 58 was a green door. Billie unlocked the door, pushed the door, and the door swung open. Inside, it was darkness. Billie reached up, put her hand into the darkness, and flipped the switch.

  Bright ceiling light was the headache between my eyes, where God the Father lives.

  Everything in the room had down-low shadows.

  Behind me, when the door latch clicked in the door, there was no breath.

  The lamp next to the bed, the light through the lampshade was a softer light. I turned off the overhead.

  The bedspread was red with raised ribs of red. The carpet orange and red shag carpet. The smell of Pine-Sol. A smell underneath the Pine-Sol, mold, diarrhea, puke.

  I’ve got to pee, Billie said. I’ll be right back.

  Freezing in there inside the air conditioning. Across the room, the window was a red curtain. Behind the red curtain, an aluminum window. The only way to open the aluminum window was to break the window.

  The toilet flushed. When Billie stepped out of the bathroom, she was rubbing cream on her hands.

  Fuck, Billie said. It’s freezing in here.

  Fuck.

  Billie took my hand. Her hand was slick.

  We sat on the edge of the bed. It was warmer on the bed by the light. Billie and I both tried to get close to the warm light. We laughed a little. It was funny trying to get warm in Idaho when it was July.

  In Billie’s blue eyes, I looked in her eyes so close right then. I found what I wanted to find.

  Midnight in Helsinki. I was the only boy she’d ever loved.

  I pulled my T-shirt up over my head. The cold air on my naked chest, my nipples, my arms. Billie let her blue eyes rest on my skin. Goose flesh. My skin was pretty clear. The tan line of my T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

  Billie’s eyes were red, dark mascara teardrops out the corner of her eyes. She unbuttoned the chambray shirt, took it off, let the shirt drop on top of my T-shirt on the floor on the red and orange carpet. Then Billie was unbuttoning her pink sweater with the beads on it. Her white skin such a differnt white from her bra.

  I put the heel of my right boot against the toe of my left and pried my boot off. Then the other boot. My white socks saggy and stretched out and strange white. Billie unbuckled her white strapped sandals. Her tiny toenails. A smell in the room like earth.

  My hands around my Levi’s tops. I unbuttoned one button at a time. One pant leg, then the other, and my Levi’s were in the pile.

  My shorts like my socks. Low-hanging sags and washed so many times they were transparent.

  In the room, all around us, forced cold air.

  Billie’s hip-huggers were so tight, I had to help her pull them off.

  We had to laugh. Really, it was so absurd when I was pulling at the cuffs of her pants and my balls were bouncing in my huge elongated transparent shorts.

  When I laughed, my aching head.

  Billie reached around behind and unclasped her bra.

  My God, the surprising weight of her breasts, their full white flesh. The way they moved, large, glowing fish underwater. The nipples, not pink like mine, but soft brown.

  Then my socks were off, then my shorts. Then Billie’s pink bikini underpants.

  Canal water, moss, mud, horse piss, lemon grass.

  Buck-naked.

  The dark brown hair in Billie’s crotch.

  That cock of mine, lying on top of my balls.

  I was trying to have a very good parade, but it wasn’t working.

  Billie made a little scream, and between the thin yellow sheets Billie dived in first. Then me. For a moment, we lay there frozen, the both of us, not touching, looking up at the flat white ceiling, one long crack, the covers pulled up around our necks.

  I reached over to shut off the light.

  Billie said: Leave the light on, Rig.

  I turned my head, let my eyes open.

  There she was, Billie Cody.

  I don’t want to lose you in the dark, she said.

  Warm and naked in a cold bed, how two bodies fit. All around us, cold, cold and weird, things slipping in and out of the dark. Shivers in my body like I was standing next to death.

  Billie’s warm, smooth hand along my arm, on my ribs, across my chest.

  Two lips against two lips soft with a kind of suck, tobacco, and the taste of pink. There I was with Billie, Billie Cody, my girlfriend, the girl I could kiss and kiss and kiss, and we’d become a dream.

  I pulled the covers down. Billie’s nipples were goose flesh and sticking up and hard. My hand touched her nipples, and although my hand touched her nipples, I wasn’t there in my hand.

  Kiss me there, Billie said.

  Heartbeat all through my head. Sour smoke in my chest. My heart, sore, deep in mucus. In my mouth, Billie’s hard tit lolled around my tongue.

  The long arch of my hand that landed on the hair of her crotch. How smooth her hair was down there, smooth and slick.

  As soon as my hand landed, Billie jumped a foot off the bed.

  My hand was cold. Everything was cold. Fucking freezing.

  Billie opened her legs.

  My hand slipped down through hair, down and down into endless folds of dark, wet flesh.

  In my mind, fuck and cunt and pussy and hard-on and put out and going all the way and queer.

  Something awful.

  The something awful that had been trying to get into me since George Serano on the steps in a yellow dress.

  Fear can wear just about anybody’s face.

  Billie Cody, my best friend, in the Sunset Motel in a frozen room 58, turned into something awful.

  It’s only now, looking back, I can even talk about it.

  The something awful was all over Billie on her skin, on her big poking-up nipples, on the C that stood not for Cody but for cunt.

  Billie smelled funny and she had cigarette breath and mascara drips and her tiny fingernails and her stupid hippie earrings and her ratted hair all smashed against the pillow stupid.

  Billie was someone who wanted me to do stuff I didn’t want to do.

  But I did.

  I wanted to.

  It’s just that I couldn’t.

  Then I couldn’t stand it that I wanted to get away from her.

  I got up fast, put my feet on the orange and red shag carpet. My skin was blue, it was so cold.

  My elbows on my knees, my back to Billie, the muscles in my back spazzing, I put my sore head in my hands.

  Billie, I said, Billie, I’m sorry, but I just can’t do this.

  Sunday morning, I got out of bed too fast. The room was at a slant and wouldn’t stay still. I made it to the bedroom wall and up the stairs and into the bathroom. I pulled the door closed behind me and leaned up against the door. Locked it.

  I clenched my hands around the bathroom sink.

  No way I was going to look in that fucking mirror.

  The worst thing was in the mirror.

  Fuck.

  The night before, I’d got in late, two-th
irty-in-the-morning late, and Mom and Dad knew it. Mom’s almond-shaped hazel eyes looked everywhere but at me. The wrinkles around her lips had multiplied. Dad was milking it for all it was worth. Cussing under his breath and honking the horn of the Buick. It was Sunday morning and time for church.

  Inside the Buick, Dad smelled of too much Old Spice. Mom in one of her goofy hats. As ever, Dad drove, Mom sat in the passenger seat. I sat in the back.

  The headache of George in a yellow dress and red high heels, the headache of not being able to fuck Billie in room 58 of the Sunset Motel, the headache of my tight-assed Catholic sex-hating mother and father that Sunday morning was a God the Father headache so bad I could barely open my eyes. Any minute I was going to barf.

  In the church, morning sun shafts of God light through the yellow gold, the verdant green, the my-blue-heaven stained glass of the windows. At the holy water font, I put my fingers in the water, made the sign of the cross. Past the choir stairs, on the left, the confessional. Dad’s black Roosky eyes, Mom’s almond-shaped hazel eyes, her little wrinkles around her mouth. By the looks on their faces, I’d better get in the confessional fast before I went to hell.

  The little red light bulb above the door was on.

  The Monsignor is in.

  My cock a tiny burning piece of shame.

  The confessional door closed behind me. When I knelt down, I heard the red light bulb outside my door click on. Hot inside the dark. Sweat drips going down the insides of my arms. My headache, the drunk hangover, my tortured soul.

  Out of the dark, on the other side of the screen, the outline of Monsignor’s hooked nose.

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, I said. My last confession was two months ago. These are my sins.

  Slow, sinful saxophone jazz playing out from somewhere inside in there, enormous and dark. Mortal sinful. The wave of warm wind through the yellow dress. Red strapped high heels carefully placed on each step down and down. Black hair up his leg all the way to the thigh. Black hair on his chest. Like Dad’s black hair. George’s cigarette, his achingly perfect French inhale. Smoking is praying, smoking is praying is waiting. The taste of buckskin and flint on the back of my throat. My stiff cock.

  Two lips against two lips soft with a kind of suck, tobacco, and the taste of pink. Billie, my beloved Billie, the girl I could kiss and kiss and kiss, and we’d become a dream. Kissing venial sin, hugging venial sin, everything else is mortal sin. Stuck on Billie’s body these mortal sinful parts, mother’s parts, sister’s parts, soft, wet parts, parts that are hellfire and damnation and contamination to touch. My limp cock.