The Perils of Intimacy

by Rick R. Reed

  “You really believe that? That this was a coincidence?”

  He’s gnawing on his lower lip again. He says, “Nah.”

  I walk away. And this time I don’t look back.

  As I head down the hill, I hear the sound of a text come through. I pull my phone out and pause to look at the screen. I’m thinking maybe it’s Frasier already.

  But it’s not.

  It’s Miriam.

  You’re a good person. You’re worthy of love.

  I gasp, and the screen blurs as tears fill my eyes. I blink and see that, of course, the message is not from her. How could it be? Kevin texted:

  Ordering pizza for supper. You want in? I’ll get a large.

  I smile, suddenly famished.

  You bet. With extra cheese and pepperoni, please.

  I continue down the hill, grinning.

  Saturday

  Chapter 14

  MARC

  AH, THE weekend and all its promise!

  Once upon a time, I would have used this time for grocery shopping, the gym, laundry, and hooking up. Certainly not in that order! I might have even made time for other leisure activities, like reading, dining out, or watching movies, either at home or at one of my favorite cinemas around town.

  There’s something truly liberating about a Saturday, isn’t there? Friday, with its promise, is but a memory, and Sunday, with its winding down and its dour peek toward the workweek, hasn’t yet arrived. Saturday is the week’s best foot, put forward.

  I miss the freedom of Saturdays—especially today. Because today doesn’t contain any of the joy of my other Saturdays. This one is an anomaly, a dark shadow, the bizarro-world opposite of what a Saturday is supposed to be. This one is a buzz kill, a real Debbie Downer.

  I woke early but stayed in bed for hours after the dull, grayish sunlight seeping through my blinds ripped me from my slumber and my dreams. First, I simply contemplated those dreams and what they meant. I knew, from waking off and on all night, there had been many dreams, but the only one I remember when I wake fully is the last one, the one I interrupted with a snort and a sudden flipping up of my eyelids.

  I felt a little disoriented, like my bed wasn’t the place I was supposed to be, so I looked around myself suspiciously, heart beating hard, the back of my head damp with sweat. Everything was in its place, familiar—the David Hockney print in its black frame above my dresser, the silver-edged full-length mirror, propped against the wall opposite the bed, the black bookcase stuffed with the likes of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Neil Gaiman, and Clive Barker. My nightstand was still next to the bed, with its chrome desk lamp, its stack of DVDs, some from Treasure Island Media, and a bottle of Wet and, curiously, an ice cream scoop.

  But it wasn’t the catalog of surroundings that caused the uncomfortable tightness in my chest and the more rapid breathing.

  It was the dream.

  I’m there. Back to that damned night again. JD lies in bed next to me. His face is slick with sweat. His eyes can’t seem to settle on anything. He keeps grabbing my arms and arranging them around himself. “Hold me,” he whispers again and again, almost a litany, until the words themselves lose their meaning, until they’re just urgent and demanding noises—the whimper of a wounded creature. I pull my arms away, attempt to get up from the bed, yet he grabs me, pulling my arms back around him in an approximation of a hug.

  Shift.

  JD’s tying off his arm with one of my belts, eyeing me. In one hand he holds a syringe with a bright orange cap. “Vitamins,” he tells me. “I need this to stay alive.” But instead of plunging the needle into his arm, poking a vein, he removes the cap from the syringe with his mouth, spits it out, and jams the needle into his eye.

  I jump back, feeling his warm blood splatter my face.

  Shift.

  He’s at my front door, all dressed, the backpack bulging with all of my most treasured belongings—I know what’s inside somehow. “I’ll be back tonight to get everything else,” he says.

  Then he winks at me. “Including your heart.”

  The gesture would be sappy and romantic were it not punctuated by JD pulling a hunting knife from his pocket. He eyes me while giving its razor-sharp tip a quick lick, much as he had done to my cock when he first arrived hours ago.

  That’s when I wake. “Including your heart” echoes in my mind as I groggily sit up, taking stock, reassuring myself I’m not only in my own room, but in my own room alone.

  It’s the dream that keeps me in bed. Oh sure, I get up to answer the call of nature, always an early morning priority, but scurry back to the comfort of my flannel sheets, velour blanket, and quilt. It’s almost like I’m afraid to get out of bed.

  So I stay there, letting the hours tick by. I grab my iPad, check e-mail, look at Facebook, play a couple of games of Spider Solitaire. I grab the remote off the nightstand, wipe lube off it with the corner of the sheet, and turn the TV on. For an hour I watch, transfixed, an infomercial about an oven that will cook meat from its frozen state in record time.

  And finally, around noon, I face myself—not only in the mirror across from the bed, but the pathetic self lurking deep down inside. I can do this routine of self-denial and avoidance for only so long.

  My dream was reminder enough that someone is foremost in my thoughts, that someone needs to be reckoned with, one way or the other.

  Even as I tell myself this, I’m getting up and reminding myself I need to eat. I shut down the brain, go in my kitchen, brew coffee, and make soft-boiled eggs and whole-wheat toast. I sit in front of my living room TV, eating, but don’t look at its screen.

  I stare morosely, chewing, at the view outside my sliders—the Cascade Mountains across the gray mirror surface of Lake Union. The clouds above the mountains are whitish-gray, dirty cotton balls. They remind me I’ll get this day only once.

  At last, after washing the dishes by hand even though I have a dishwasher, showering, shaving, flossing, brushing, doing a facial mask, dressing in flannel jogging pants and my favorite T-shirt—a black number with an abstract image of Grace Jones on the front—do I sit down and pick up the one item I’ve been avoiding all morning.

  My phone.

  I tap the Home button, key in my security code, and bring up my texts.

  Nothing new, but the same one from Jimmy is still there.

  Please. Can I talk to you? Just talk is all I ask, Marc. I want to try and explain some things. And yeah, even though I know I don’t deserve even the courtesy of your attention for five minutes, I hope you’ll give them to me. I’m kind of an optimist that way.

  Anyway, if you want, come by the diner for breakfast soon. Your meal’s on me.

  I never did get that free breakfast, I think, a bitter smile turning up my lips at the corners. I shake my head and look at the clock on my DVR. It’s after one now, too late for breakfast anyway. Besides, I already ate.

  Hell, I think, it’s too late for lots of stuff. Reconciliation. Forgiveness. Finding a man whom I might love. Learning to tap dance….

  My head drops into my hands, almost like a cow lowering its head to graze. I can’t leave it like this. Just like, way back when, I couldn’t get JD and his thieving ways out of my head for at least a month after we met up, I know I won’t be able to get Jimmy out of my head now either, not unless I can find some kind of resolution.

  It dawns on me with stunning clarity that in my thoughts I refer to him as both JD and Jimmy, almost as though he’s two different people.

  And that’s a profound thought. Because he is.

  My mind, at the revelation, goes blank, like it simply shuts down for a few minutes. I close my eyes.

  What am I supposed to do with this?

  Oddly, Don’s voice creeps into my head. Why, sweetie, what you’re supposed to do with it is act. You need to see the guy again, whether it’s a first or last time or something in between, but you need to get things straight between you. You should pardon my use of the word! But really, honey, jus
t talk to the man. There’s something in the fact that you see him as two separate people.

  I shut Don up, much more easily than I could do if we were at work. I think that time and its simple passage will release me from my dreams and lack of closure surrounding JD/Jimmy. I can just let him go. Move on. Get under another man.

  This last thought proves to me how wrong I am.

  And without thinking about it, without allowing myself the time to censor, I snatch up my phone and reply to Jimmy’s text.

  Meet up? Tonight?

  I don’t want to be too nice, but I want to get this over with. Maybe then I can move on from this creature who has haunted my dreams for far longer than I want to admit, even to myself.

  I set the phone back down on the coffee table. I take up the TV remote and access my DVR recordings. There’s a House Hunters International on there, about a flight attendant buying herself a place in Sicily, I’ve been meaning to watch, and I sink into it.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t listening for the sound of a text message coming through, a brief flash of my smartphone screen.

  But I hear nothing back. I watch two more House Hunter International episodes, part of a movie with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy that fails to make me smile, let alone laugh, and two episodes of Law & Order.

  Finally, just as the sky is beginning to darken, my phone speaks up, nudging me and informing me I have a text message. It’s him.

  Where at?

  Do I dare invite him here? Uh, no. Remember how that worked out last time? Changed person or not, I’m not ready to invite him back to the scene of the crime.

  Your place?

  I wait, and within a couple of minutes:

  Okay. 7:30?

  I text him back a thumbs-up. I settle into the cushions of my couch, arms crossed over my chest, wondering what I’m letting myself in for.

  Don pipes up again in my head. A happy ending? Resolution? Disaster? Heartache?

  I whisper to myself, “Most likely—all of the above.”

  Chapter 15

  JIMMY

  “DON’T GET your hopes up, bud,” Kevin says to me as I sit, like a schoolgirl, with my hands folded in my lap on my twin bed.

  “Hey,” I caution him. “Marc’s giving me a second chance.”

  Kevin nods and sits down beside me. “You’re right about that. And that can be a good thing.” He draws in a breath. “But a very wise person once told me that second chances aren’t always about starting over. Sometimes they’re about getting the ending right.”

  “You get that pearl of wisdom from a greeting card?”

  He shakes his head slowly, looking deeply into my eyes. “Facebook.”

  We both crack up. But what he says is true. There was never any resolution between Marc and me about what happened a couple of years ago. Why would there have been? Who could have predicted we’d ever reach this juncture? When I left in the wee hours of that awful morning, as a person I look back at now and hate, I was certain I’d never see or hear from Marc again. In fact, I knew I’d ensure it.

  So whatever happens tonight, if Marc does indeed show up, which I won’t believe until I actually see him in front of me, is a crap shoot. I have to be ready for anything: anger, forgiveness, his never wanting to see me again—which I promise I will respect—reconciliation, disgust.

  Anything could happen.

  Which is why I’m sitting here right now, at a little past seven on a Saturday night, scared sick. And I mean that literally—my stomach is churning and gurgling. I haven’t eaten anything since the meager makings I’d called lunch, a handful of stale peanuts and a Coke. I almost feel as though I can’t move.

  I’m so afraid of what might happen or what might not that it’s left me in this no-man’s-land which is very much like paralysis.

  I wish he would just get here. I want the jitters to end. I need to know if there’s a future or not. And yes, I realize Kevin and Miriam would both tell me the future is guaranteed to no one. Still, I can’t stop myself from wishing the future would hurry up and get here.

  I can’t stand the suspense.

  And just as that thought fires in my brain, our buzzer sounds. Kevin stands. “You want me to get that?”

  I stand up too, although to be honest, I’m feeling a little weak in the knees. I give Kevin what I know is a very sick grin. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” I say suddenly, wondering almost how those words slipped from my lips. I plop back down on my bed. Ever since Marc left here the other night, I’ve been hoping and praying for this moment, so why would I say such a thing?

  Kevin waves me away. “You just have stage fright. This is a good thing. You’ll see.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  Kevin smiles, nears me. “Then we’ll deal with it. Together. Okay?”

  I nod. But once again I can’t seem to move, even though I press down on the mattress with my hands to hoist myself up. Oh, why bother? “Would you let him in?”

  Kevin chuckles. “Sure.” He starts to head out of my room.

  “Wait! Do I look okay?”

  Kevin multitasks by shaking his head and rolling his eyes at the same time. “You’re hopeless. This isn’t about how you look, stud.”

  “Oh,” I laugh nervously. “It’s always about how you look.”

  “It’s always about how you look.” He turns and heads toward the front door. The buzzer bleats a second time, ratcheting up my queasiness. I glance at the clock on my stack-of-books nightstand. It’s only ten after seven. Marc’s early, but that’s just like him. Kevin stops for just a moment and tosses over his shoulder, “You look amazing, by the way. Handsome. In fact, no man at no point in time in the history of the universe has ever looked better.”

  The buzzer sounds a third time. He hurries away.

  I glance at myself in the cheap Fred Meyer mirror hanging from the back of the door. I’m wearing a pair of my oldest jeans, faded, ripped at the knees, paired with a Huskies sweatshirt, also faded, with the sleeves cut off. My feet are bare. “You’re exaggerating!” I call after him. Then I whisper to myself, “But only a little.” In spite of the lack of refinement, I do look pretty good, if I do say so myself.

  I let out a shaky breath and try to laugh at myself as I hear Kevin open our front door and then, distantly, the squeak of the main entrance to the building. Muffled voices.

  I feel like I’m being pushed onstage by unseen hands. Pushed onstage to perform in a play I don’t know any of the lines to.

  “That’s life, Jimmy. We make it up as we go along. Just listen to your heart.”

  I swear the voice comes from out of nowhere. I close my eyes for a second, and an image of Miriam rises up. God, I loved that woman. She was my savior. Is my savior, my angel.

  The voices come closer, and before I have the chance to even think that one of the voices does not sound like Marc, they’re both standing in the entrance to my bedroom, peering in at me.

  I want to do one of those double takes people do in the movies—close my eyes, shake my head to clear it, then look again.

  It’s not Marc.

  “This guy says he knows you.” Kevin stands just behind Frasier, the guy I met only yesterday. The tweaker, I called him before I knew his name. And right now, he’s obviously tweaking. He can’t stand still. I can see from here he’s grinding his teeth, and even though our apartment is cool, probably no warmer than sixty-eight degrees, he wears a light sheen of sweat on his face.

  Over Frasier’s head, Kevin’s glaring at me. Like me, he knows a tweaker when he sees one, and he’s taking this all wrong. I subtly shake my head at Kevin, then look back to Frasier, who grins and says, “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

  I let out the breath I’ve been holding since he appeared in my bedroom doorway. I bite my lower lip because I want to say, “Buddy, you couldn’t have picked a worse time if you tried.” But I check myself with a quick reminder that I gave this kid my number and, yes, even my fuckin’ address s
o I could help him if he needed it.

  I just didn’t think he’d need help so soon. Or that he would just show up on my doorstep, minutes before a crucial meeting with someone I just might be falling in love with, to my detriment, maybe.

  My look to Kevin is a plea for understanding, which must have sunk in because he turns to leave Frasier and me alone. I hear the not-so-subtle closing of Kevin’s bedroom door, his TV starting up. Now I’m not so sure what he’s thinking. I suppose I have to give him some slack. I wouldn’t know what to think either. Except I do.

  In fact, if this kid had shown up for Kevin, my first thought would have been Kev’s about to score.

  “Can I come in?” Frasier sounds agitated. In fact, every word out of his mouth has sounded agitated. He takes a step into my bedroom.

  I shake my head. “Bro, don’t think you and me in the bedroom is a good idea. Not in your current state. Plus.” I take a breath and wait for a second because I want what I have to say next to really sink in. “Plus, I have company comin’ any minute now.”

  “Oh, sorry, man. I’ll leave.”

  “No, no.” I guide him by his shoulder to the living room. His hair’s greasy, and I wonder when was the last time he washed it. An odor wafts off him, like BO but worse. There’s a chemical note, harsh, underneath it all. I know the smell—crystal seeping out of the pores.

  We go to the living room and sit, him on the couch and me on the beanbag in the corner. He gets up again immediately and starts pacing the room. No surprises there.

  “You’re using again. Already? Seriously?”

  He holds up his hand and grins sheepishly. “C’mon, man. I had to finish up my stash, right?”

  I shake my head. “Really, dude? You gonna try to pull that shit with me? I threw your stash away yesterday.” I visualize flinging the pipe and the pink glassine bag over the railing at Kerry Park. “You’re not being cool. And I can’t ever help you if you’re gonna be dishonest with me.”