by Steve Berman
Sean admired him for a full moment—the curve of his neck, the deft movement of his fingers, even his long legs under jean shorts. The puppies were unnaturally quiet, their heads tilted as if the fishing pole were the most fascinating thing on the planet.
“So I hear this is the place for tarot cards,” Sean finally said, when it seemed likely Rob wouldn’t notice him anytime soon.
That brought Rob’s head up. His somber expression brightened at the sight of Sean. Or maybe that was the puppies that cheered him up, because now they were yapping on their leashes, eager to make a new friend. Rob didn’t move off the table, though. He seemed to be deliberately holding himself back.
“I don’t read the cards,” he said. “Just get them read to me.”
Sean asked, “Did they tell you to go fishing?”
“If I can find a good spot. Know any, oh wise deity?”
Sean never fished, but he knew that Denny and his brother Steven liked a place near Jeffers Bridge. “I can show you one, sure. Where’s Andrew?”
Rob slid off the table and grabbed a fishing box. “He said he was running away to join the circus, but I think he’s at the bookstore.”
“Oh,” Sean said, and his heart jumped at the idea that Andrew was over there right now, leaving him a note. That Andrew, with his big smile and hearty sense of humor, was interested in Sean in the same way that Louanne’s friend John Love was interested in her. Even if it was just a temporary thing, even if Andrew and Rob’s mother loaded them up and drove off at the end of the week, any romantic development at all in Sean’s life was an improvement over the current gaping void of nothingness.
Rob added, “He’s probably shoplifting manga.”
“What?” Sean asked, jolted from his happy thoughts. People really did shoplift from the store, and it drove Mrs. Anderson nuts. “Would he really?”
“Nah, not really,” Rob said. “Probably not.”
And then Rob smiled, a little secret smile, the first that Sean had seen out of him. All thoughts of Andrew flew away. Sean fervently wished it was Rob leaving him the notes. Rob, with his deep green eyes and ridiculously short hair and the patient way he’d been fixing the fishing line. The mark on his face had faded but there were new bruises on his right arm, just a few inches above his wrist. Some of them looked like fingerprints.
“Never wrestle your brother over the last of the Lucky Charms,” Rob said when he saw Sean’s focus. His smile faded. “Come on. Show me this lucky spot.”
Sitting in the shadow of Jeffers Bridge with his knees pulled up in the tall grass, Sean watched as Rob cast his line into the slow-moving creek. Rob didn’t seem inclined to talk. Sean’s natural tendency was to fill the silence any way possible, so he chattered on about the first days of school and how he already had a week’s worth of homework and how it sucked that summer was over. The puppies dozed in the sunlight, piled on each other like a stack of brown potato bags.
“Summer’s not over until the equinox in September,” Rob pointed out, once Sean had stopped for breath.
“It feels over,” Sean said, trying not to sound too morose. “Everyone’s hooking up and pairing off and next thing you know, I’m everybody’s third wheel.”
Rob reeled in his line. Hooked on the end was a plastic bag. He got it loose and put it aside. “You’re not dating anyone?”
Sean hesitated. It was always kind of risky, saying stuff aloud to people you didn’t really know yet. “I’m the only gay kid in the school. Well, the only gay kid who will admit it.”
Rob cast his line again. He didn’t seem surprised or upset. “There are others who won’t say it?”
Thinking of Denny Anderson, Sean said, “Maybe.”
“It’s lonely being unique,” Rob said. It could have sounded mocking but it didn’t. It might also have referred to Rob himself, but Sean wasn’t quite sure.
“What about you?” Sean was glad his voice didn’t squeak with nervousness. “Dating anyone?”
“We’re always moving around,” Rob reminded him. “I think in a past life my mother must have grown up and lived in the same small town all her life. Maybe she was trapped there by marriage. Because in this life, ever since she and my dad divorced, all she wants to do is wander from town to town.”
In the puppy pile, Louis whined from an unhappy dream. Dewey shifted a paw, stilling him. Huey snorted and started to snore.
“You believe in past lives?” Sean asked. He’d never given it much thought, really, though if you got to pick your future lives, he’d opt for something with a mansion and a cabana boy.
Rob shrugged one shoulder. “I believe in karma. You get what you earn, in this life or the next one.”
“So what does this life hold for you? College somewhere, after you pass the GED?”
“College sounds kind of boring.” Rob’s line jerked. He jiggled it and stepped back on the bank, keeping the tension. “I was thinking of going to a Buddhist monastery one day.”
Sean cringed. “Like where they shave your head and make you be celibate?”
“Or maybe an Indian ashram.” Rob started to reel in his catch. “Or I could do a Sufi khalwa. You lock yourself away for forty days and only come out once in a while to talk to your teacher.”
“No TV or Internet? I’d go crazy.”
“I think it would be fun,” Rob replied. “Spirituality is cool.”
Denny Anderson in his closet and Rob locked in a monastery. It was a shame and maybe a crime and just Sean’s rotten luck that the cute boys he knew were determined to avoid the pleasures of the world.
Or run away from it, maybe. Denny certainly was. But what was Rob fleeing from, if he was fleeing at all?
“I think you can be spiritual wherever you are,” Sean said, and Rob shrugged.
When the sun started to go down they walked back to the campground, two small fish slung over Rob’s shoulder. Sean was worried that Rob was going to gut and fry them right away. Fish blood always made Sean barf. But when they reached Sunset Harbor, Andrew was riding his bike in dusty circles in front of their trailer. He gave Rob a silent look and Rob turned to Sean.
“You should go home and do that report for Western Civ due next week,” Rob said.
Sean was surprised that Rob even remembered that part. He was also taken aback at what sounded like a pretty firm dismissal. Andrew rode his bike in another circle, pedaling with unnecessary force, and the noise of it made Sean pause. He didn’t understand exactly what was going on, but it wasn’t about homework. Even the puppies seemed uneasy. Louis whined and rubbed up against Rob’s leg.
“Is everything okay?” Sean asked.
“Perfectly fine,” Andrew bit out.
Rob reached down and petted Louis for the first and only time that day. “It’s okay. Go on home.”
The door to their trailer opened. Sean couldn’t see clearly because of the darkness, but a woman in a long nightgown appeared in the doorway. She was thin and unsteady, her voice as shrill as he remembered.
“What are you boys doing out so damn early?” she demanded. “It’s not even dawn!”
Andrew stopped his bike. “It’s eight o’clock at night, Mom.”
Their mother’s voice rose. “It is not. Stop lying.”
“I brought fish for dinner.” Rob moved to her and took her arm. “Come on, aren’t you hungry?”
“I’m not!” she snapped, pulling away. “Stop pushing me around!”
She slapped him, then. Hard and fast, across the face, with a crack like sudden thunder. Sean cringed and took a half step forward in outrage, but Andrew blocked him.
“Mom, stop,” Andrew pleaded. “We’ve got company.”
Three heads all turned to Sean. He didn’t know what to say: Hello, stop hitting your son seemed inadequate. He wanted to protect Rob, but that was ridiculous. Rob was taller than his mother, and stronger, too. Sean wished he hadn’t seen this, and that Rob and Andrew didn’t have to live it.
“Who are you?” their mother
asked. He couldn’t clearly see her face, but he imagined her expression all twisted up and ugly.
“He’s just a friend,” Rob said, but he didn’t sound friendly at all now. He sounded wrecked and ashamed. “Good-bye, Sean.”
Andrew echoed, “Yeah. Good-bye.”
Sean walked home as fast as he could, resisting the urge to call Robin and tell her what he’d seen. The bruise across Rob’s face made sense now. The fingerprints on his arms. How he didn’t want to go away to college. Sean would have run like mad, but then Andrew would be all alone. He wondered if Rob’s mother was really any kind of travel writer at all, or if she just carted her sons around the country in chase of the next bottle of booze, the next place where she could hit her son.
At home, Louanne and John Love were making out on the sofa.
“Why so sad looking?” Louanne asked, making a half-hearted effort at disentangling herself.
“Nothing,” Sean said. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”
John Love kissed the side of Louanne’s neck. She squirmed and giggled and said, “Out to dinner. They said there’s pizza in the freezer and do your homework.”
Louanne didn’t have the curse of homework. She’d graduated two years ago to embark on her spectacular career as a waitress. Sean threw the French loaf pizza in the toaster oven and collapsed on his bed. He should call Denny. His father was the local sheriff. Would getting the police involved help or hurt Rob? Even now, his mom might be trying to pack them all up, get them on the road to somewhere new.
He didn’t even know their last names. Didn’t have a picture of Andrew or Rob on his cell phone, or have any way to reach them if they left.
Louanne yelled out from the living room. “Your pizza’s burning!” And then she shrieked with laughter in response to John Love’s hands or mouth or who knew what else.
Sean pulled the pillow over his head. He didn’t care if the whole house burned down. He wished he really was a teenage movie star, with the power and money to send Rob’s mother to rehab and get Rob and Andrew a home without wheels on it. If he were any kind of deity at all, he’d wave his hands and make all their problems go away. Rob would never have a bruise again, and Andrew would never have to stand by helplessly.
Being a powerless normal kid really, truly sucked.
The next morning he made it all the way through second period but couldn’t wait any longer. He rode his bike to the Bookmine. Mrs. Anderson was surprised to see him.
“Are you skipping school already?” she asked. “It’s only the first week!”
He tapped impatiently on the counter. “Kind of, but for a good reason. There’s a travel writer in an RV at Sunset Harbor. I’m trying to find out her name, find her books.”
“Oh, sure. Susan Turner. Her sons come in here every day.” Mrs. Anderson gave him a conspiratorial smile. “I think one of them might be your secret pen pal. There’s a new note up.”
Sean went and checked. The green sticky said:
“Dogs are better than human beings, because they know but do not tell.”—E. Dickinson.
“Do you know which one left this note?” Sean asked Mrs. Anderson. “Rob or Andrew?”
“I’m not sure. You can’t really tell them apart, unless they’re standing together. But one of them is back in the dog section right now—”
Sean hurried back to aisle seven before she could finish. It was empty. He scoured the nearby aisles as well, suddenly hating the maze of stacks that offered up a hundred different hiding places. Finally, in aisle seventeen, he found Rob sitting cross-legged on the floor. He was skimming a coffee table book about Sufism. More books were piled beside him.
“Hi,” Sean said, trying not to sound out of breath or too eager or too worried.
Rob didn’t look up. “There’s a Sufi center for learning in Charlottesville. We drove all over Virginia last summer, and I never even heard of it.”
“I don’t know what Sufism is,” Sean admitted.
“You ever see videos of guys in white dresses swirling around and around? They call them whirling dervishes.” Rob closed the book in his lap and picked up another. “That’s kind of like me, spinning in circles.”
Sean sat down beside him. He rarely got the chance to sit while working. It was odd, this new perspective, with shelves towering all around them. Billions of words waiting to be read. All those stories ready to be told and mysteries hoping to be solved.
“I thought maybe you’d be gone this morning,” he admitted.
“We’re paid up until tomorrow.” Rob raised his face. His cheek had a tiny cut on it, up high, where his mother’s ring had cut into the skin. “Then we’re driving up to Key Largo.”
Sean touched Rob’s knee. It was a bold move, unprecedented, and he was glad that Rob didn’t jerk away. “She’s not going to stop. It’s not right.”
“I know,” Rob said softly. “But I can live with it as long as she leaves Andrew alone.”
“What does Andrew say?”
Rob snorted. “He says we should run away. I told him maybe Mom will get better. She’ll wake up one day and realize that everything’s gone wrong. But if she doesn’t, we’ll both leave when he turns eighteen. They can’t make you come back if you’re eighteen.”
“Come back here,” Sean urged. He leaned forward, both hands on Rob’s legs now. He tried to sound calm and sincere, not like a crazy person, but everything was so damn unfair. “When you’re both eighteen. You can come here and get an apartment and get a dog or two or three. Don’t tell me you don’t want a dog.”
“And where will you be then?” Rob asked skeptically. “Are you going to live on Fisher Key forever? Because no one knows where they’ll be next month, or next year, or whenever, even when you think the future is set in stone.”
“I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon,” Sean replied. “And if I do, that’s what cell phones are for.”
Rob’s mouth quirked. Sean desperately wanted to taste his soft-looking lips. It occurred to him for the very first time that instead of waiting, he could actually make the first move. If he dared. If he wanted to risk everything. But what if he mashed noses, and how far should he tilt his head, and what if he was totally wrong and Rob punched him in the face?
He moved his head forward slowly. Instead of pulling back or running away, Rob met him halfway. His hands gripped Sean’s shoulders to pull him closer. The touches of his fingers were tiny sizzles of pleasure. Tiny sizzles turned to bigger joy as their mouths came together, the warm sweetness of shared breath, and maybe Sean made a faint noise of relief and happiness.
His first kiss. Right there on the floor of aisle seventeen, surrounded by books.
Tomorrow Rob would be leaving. That would suck. Summer was slowly ending, and that would suck, too. And there was no end to the suckiness that would come when he had to give up Huey, Dewey, and Louis to new owners. But this first kiss was better than being a jet-setting movie star, better than being a god among dogs.
Rob eased back first, his eyes wide and happy. “I’m glad you did that.”
“I’m glad I did that, too,” Sean answered. He couldn’t stop grinning. “I think we should do it again. And then some more. Maybe somewhere else besides this floor, though. Or where my boss won’t find us.”
Rob stood up. “Don’t you have to go back to school?”
“I’m officially skipping the rest of the day,” Sean said, getting to his feet. “Do you have to go home?”
“Not until tonight,” Rob said. “I say we do everything possible to make this the absolute best day ever.”
“It already is,” Sean said, and kissed him again to prove it.
Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy
Alex Jeffers
When Luke wakes with the dawn, he’s pretty well sure where he is. Not his house in Berkeley, California—his bed at home doesn’t rock except during earthquakes. He’s aboard a big sailboat, the Esin, a Turkish gulet, which his dad chartered for a two-week
cruise along the Aegean coast. But he’s not in the bunk of his cramped little cabin that smells faintly bad, mouldy, musty—sour, as if some earlier passenger had given in to seasickness before reaching the head and residue still festers between the planks of the floor. He opens his eyes. The gulet’s two masts go up and up into a cloudless sky blanching toward blue. He fell asleep on the foredeck, on one of the sunbeds. Somebody, Perla or his dad, threw a blanket over him before going below. The blanket and the bits of the sunbed that weren’t covered—and his hair!—are damp with dew. The air smells so good, so salty and crisp. He inhales thirstily, pushes the blanket off, sits up.
Freezes.
Somebody lies sleeping on the other sunbed.
Not somebody. Levent. The deckhand. The beautiful, beautiful deckhand. Luke swallows hard. When he saw Levent the first time, boarding the Esin two days ago, he hadn’t been able to think for a full thirty seconds. The thought that finally bubbled up was Damn! Then, I’m going to kiss you if it’s the last thing I do. Levent was still wearing a shirt then.
Not now. Now he’s pretty close to stark naked, no blanket or sheet, just the little scarlet swim trunks he wore all day yesterday grappling the sails and whatever incomprehensible sailory duties as the Esin skipped down the coast, stretching and flexing so Luke hardly dared look at him or he’d start drooling.
He wants to look now—gaze, ogle, devour Levent with his eyes—but the sun coming up over the mainland hills puts Levent in shade. He’s lying on his side so the light plates his upper shoulder, cocked hip, the length of one thigh in liquid gold, makes a brilliant halo of the dew clinging to his curly black hair. Shadow and his crooked arm hide the amazing belly and spectacular chest and Luke can’t really make out his face. That face.
Luke’s dreaming, soppy romantic dreams, swimming together through languid warm waters to a deserted beach where they recline in the shallows kissing and hugging and…when he realizes one of Levent’s eyes is open. That Levent is staring at him. Him, sitting hunched over on the very edge of the sunbed with elbows on his knees and one fist covering his mouth as if to stifle a moan: him staring at Levent. Who’s staring at Luke.