Rides of the Midway

by Lee Durkee

  Noel nodded.

  Jay said, “I’m doing the right thing.”

  The sun came out for a moment and flattened the river and for that instant Noel saw the Pearl as a thick vein of topsoil—something fertile and waiting for seed, something he could get out of this truck and stride across.

  “You a better man than me,” he allowed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IF IN FACT he had not lost his virginity that afternoon he might well have convinced himself he had . . . but, as it was, he bumped and grinded his way toward some pocketed ejaculation until finally Cecilia reached down and guided him into the depths of warmth and wetness in which there lies no doubt as to what you are doing. You are fucking.

  Then, after they had finished, Cecilia climbed onto his back and whispered over his shoulder and into his ear, “Promise you won’t show them to anybody else—ever?”

  On Tuesday Lily met him at the door in a red-dragoned kimono breathing fire across black silk. Her hair was wet and dark from the shower, her eyes wrinkled with inquisitiveness, as if trying to detect anything, however minute, different about Noel. He cut short the inspection by holding up a black plastic container. Lily took the container from him and carried it like a ring bearer into the living room and centerpieced it on the magazine table. The two of them sat on the blue couch, thighs touching, and together they regarded the roll of undeveloped film.

  “Let me guess. She took off her top but not her bra?”

  Noel shook his head.

  “Don’t tell me you got her to shed her little training bra.”

  “Hey, she’s got nice titties.”

  Lily slapped him. Not loud but hard.

  “How dare you defend her titties to me. Haven’t I taught you anything? A cocksman’s loyalty is always fiercely directed toward the woman in his immediate proximity. That would be me. At the moment. Now please continue.”

  Noel sat there rubbing his cheek and probing the inside of the cheek with his tongue.

  “And don’t you be coy with me either. Remember, I created you.” Then, suddenly childlike, she added, “Can you develop these?”

  “Maybe. I could try turning my room into a darkroom, I guess. But I don’t want to take any chances, not with these.”

  “To say the least.”

  “And Eckerd’s won’t develop them, that’s for sure.”

  “Oh my gosh, I’m all ears. I’m one huge ear. Wait!” She hurried to the kitchen for a bottle of red wine, a corkscrew, and two glasses. She handed the bottle to Noel. He opened it then poured both glasses full and tasted his.

  “And?” Lily asked.

  He shrugged. “Some kind of cabernet maybe.”

  “Where from?”

  “How the hell am I suppose to know where from just by tasting it?”

  “You aren’t. But you’re supposed to make an elegant guess.”

  “Damn France.”

  “Correct. But inelegant. Now”—and she raised her glass—“believe me when I tell you that you have my undivided attention.”

  •••

  The monitor at White Hall, Cecilia’s dorm, did not work weekends. Except for Noel, the whole campus was abandoned then. Usually he used these ghost-town weekends to catch up on his reading, but on this Saturday Cecilia had returned to campus early so that the two of them could share some time alone in her dorm room.

  “How romantic. And what was she wearing?”

  Cecilia was wearing a red tweed skirt and a white shirt with a Scotch collar.

  “Field-hockeyish. Very kinky. And let me guess—startlingly white bobby socks?”

  They drank white wine, which made Cecilia look different, older. Cecilia never looked the same way twice. She was always taller, curlier, tanner . . . something. Her makeup varied drastically, but on this Saturday afternoon she had simply spiked her lashes with mascara.

  “And what had you chosen for the occasion?”

  Noel had chosen his green button-down shirt with faded jeans and tube socks.

  “Charming.”

  Nevertheless they had gotten in an argument. This was happening more and more. Noel hated these arguments because Cecilia was so deft at them that he suspected her of choreographing them in advance. This particular fight started when Noel refused to escort her to another nondenom meeting. He told her all that speaking-in-tongues stuff gave him the creeps, and he even performed a quick impersonation of it, all of which caused Cecilia to start crying.

  “Satisfied now?” Cecilia demanded after finger painting the mascara down her cheeks. “Don’t look at me! Noel, don’t you dare. Put that thing down, I mean it. Don’t. I am not going to smile.”

  Then, instead of smiling, she had shot Noel the bird.

  “No! She didn’t!”

  “I swear she did. But I missed it. I had to ask her to do it again.”

  “O sweet Cecilia.” Lily patted the film cartridge. She seemed relieved. “So that’s what we have here, Cecilia giving us the finger?”

  Noel smirked, billed his lips, shook his head no no no . . .

  “What, then? Noel, don’t make me beg.”

  He sipped his wine.

  “Noel!”

  “When I asked her to shoot me the bird again, she lost it and went crazy and started screaming that all I cared about was taking her picture. Then she started tearing her clothes off. It was weird. She was crying, screaming shit like, Are you satisfied now? Buttons bouncing off walls, her throwing clothes everywhere, until finally there she was. It was the first time I’d ever seen her . . . step-back naked.” He stared deadpanned at Lily and rubbed the cheek she had scorched. “She was real beautiful. Even with that makeup streaking down her face like Alice Cooper, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t help being beautiful. And she knew it too. She just stood there with her arms on her hips, like the only thing stopping her from murdering me was me taking her picture. Then she said—I couldn’t believe it—she said, Now what do you want me to do?”

  “She didn’t!”

  “Hell yes she did. And I didn’t even blink twice, I just grabbed up the nearest batons and handed them to her. I think that surprised her, but not for long, because boom, next thing I knew she was at it, twirling the hell out of those things. She was still pissed, but it was like she was taking it out on those batons. I couldn’t even see them they were going so fast, like damn airplane propellers, like she was about to fly away. That girl can spin.”

  Lily was already refilling her wineglass. Noel noticed this and drank his off and held out the glass.

  “First off.” Lily set down the bottle and moved her hand away from it slowly, as if it were balanced there. “She wasn’t angry, she was only pretending to be angry. It’s like the girl who wants to get laid so badly that she pretends to be incredibly drunk. It gives her an alibi. Cecilia wanted you to take her picture, but she had to devise a way to do it that was . . . congenial.”

  “You didn’t see her. She looked like that statue of yours back there. She was like the damn baton twirler from hell.”

  Hearing that pleased Lily. Another sip and she asked what happened next.

  Noel raised both arms straight overhead.

  “No,” Lily said. It sounded like an order.

  He nodded vigorously, arms still raised.

  “You used a condom, of course?”

  He lowered his arms, shook his head, then blew downward like a flutist before admitting, “I had one in my wallet, but I never even thought about using it.”

  “You carry a condom in your wallet?”

  “Just in case.”

  “Just in case what? You didn’t even use it. Did you at least pull out in time?”

  “I don’t even think that’s possible.”

  “Was she ovulating?”


  “Ovu-what?”

  “Oh, never mind.” She returned her attention to the black film container, as if it were the more reliable source. “And how did she stand up to our onslaught?”

  Noel grinned. “She was like a house on fire.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you remember that night she spoke in tongues? Did she sound anything like she did that night?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Kinda. Now that you mention it.”

  “I figured as much. That means she was faking.”

  “Faking?”

  “Oh, don’t look so crestfallen. It’s not our fault.”

  “She wasn’t faking.”

  “Have it your way then.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “Okay, then. Fine. She wasn’t.”

  “You know what I think?”

  “What do you think, Noel?”

  “I think you’re jealous.”

  “Fine. Wonderful. I’m jealous.”

  “This whole thing was your idea. You oughta be thrilled.”

  Lily began massaging her eyelids. While doing this she said congratulations very dryly, her mouth hidden by her hands. “It’s just that . . . oh, it doesn’t even matter. It all happened so fast. The little tramp . . . she seemed so, so . . . impenetrable. Noel, you do realize what this means, don’t you?”

  She stood and walked around the couch and then slumped against the couch back. He stood too, and turned around so that he was facing the fire-breathing dragon on the back of her kimono. From there he could see out a window into the front yard. The wooden nativity figures were still there, though a few of the life-size cutouts had fallen over.

  “It’s almost Easter,” he said. “How come you still got Christmas stuff in your yard?

  “Do you understand what this means, Noel?”

  “What what means?”

  “This,” she said, spreading her hands in front of her. She spread them wider. “This!”

  “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It means you can’t come over here anymore.”

  He walked around the couch to see her face better.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “You can’t visit here anymore, Noel, not ever again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Can’t you figure that out by yourself?”

  He told her no, he couldn’t.

  “Because I can’t compete anymore, that’s why. Isn’t that glaringly obvious?”

  Noel had to force himself to speak rationally. Very deliberately he explained that he would break up with Cecilia, that she didn’t mean anything to him. But this announcement only made Lily shake her head more resolutely and ask what possible difference that would make. After saying this, she smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile, it was more like a wince.

  “So tell me how it feels. I don’t even remember, it’s been so long.”

  “How what feels?”

  “How it feels to suddenly not be a virgin anymore?”

  “A virgin!” he shouted, then made straight for the front door, but when he reached it he only leaned his forehead against the frame.

  “It’s not so easy, is it? Walking out on somebody forever?”

  Without turning around, he said, “I love you, not her. I don’t care if you are a devil worshiper. I love you.”

  Lily was still standing against the couch back. Her eyes were shut. Noel saw none of this; he was staring down at the doorknob with the top of his head propped against the door. After a deep breath, Lily opened her eyes. She said, “Noel, that is the sweetest thing anybody’s ever said to me. Thank you.”

  He turned around and then raised his head to face her. He said, “I’m breaking up with Cecilia.”

  “Fine. But it won’t matter if you do.”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “I know you do. But you can’t.” Then her sympathy seemed to vanish and she crossed her arms and stood there regarding Noel as if he were a difficult math problem. “If I told you that my husband knows about us, would that make it easier for you not to come back here?”

  “He found out?”

  “Maybe he knew all along.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Are you positive? Marriages are dreadfully complicated things. Nothing but trapdoors and laundry chutes, one after another after another. And adultery—”

  “Shut up. You’re lying.”

  “Am I? Try checking the class roster. You might find that Kevin doesn’t even teach on Thursdays.”

  “Doesn’t teach—”

  “Ask me where he goes on Thursdays, Noel.”

  But Noel did not have to ask. His throat constricted around Cecilia’s name, though he couldn’t make himself say it out loud. He wondered if he was in love with Cecilia too. It felt that way suddenly. This realization shocked him, and he backed away from Lily until the doorknob hit him in the spine.

  Lily said, “I want to give you something before you leave. Wait here. Please don’t leave while I’m gone.”

  As soon as she left for the bedroom, Noel walked to the magazine table and pocketed the black film container. Then he returned to the door and stood surveying the den, recalling vestiges there, moments shared on the carpet. Ten minutes passed that way before Lily returned. First she handed Noel a sheet of folded yellow stationery, then she handed him a gray film container.

  “Put the note aside for later. I couldn’t find the exact quote I wanted anyway, so I had to write it from memory. Read it when you don’t hate me anymore.”

  “I’ll never hate you.”

  “Don’t be so certain about everything.”

  “He really knows about us?”

  “Worse, he approves.”

  “He goes to Cecilia, doesn’t he, on Thursdays?”

  “Cecilia?” This surprised her, but then her face grew sad and she said, “No, not there, Noel.”

  “Where does he go then?”

  She took five steps across the den and pulled open the hinged blue-shuttered folding door to the French closet. The closet was empty inside except for a row of coat hangers pushed to one side.

  “He goes in here.”

  •••

  Noel exploded into the nativity. The turbaned Ethiopian folded into a karate kick. The gray-bearded wizard was first coldcocked, then neck-stomped, the gold-maned Sufi spun around and vaulted onto the garage roof between the two Rudolphs. Noel floundered through the manger, soccer-styling sheep pig gold myrrh frankincense, leg-sweeping Joseph Mary ducks hens, sending divots of straw into the blue air, showing no quarter until he approached the hay-filled cradle. A long moment passed before he lowered his leg and started to back away from the yard. He continued walking backward for one full block, past houses mailboxes trash cans neighbors dogs telephone poles . . . staring forward backward, walking backward forward.

  By the time he had wheeled around and aimed himself at campus, the trajectory of his life made perfect sense to him. It made sense to him in that it had all been one long migration toward this moment and the murder he was about to commit.

  He entered the small liberal arts building and began rooting the hallways until he found the right classroom, then he spied through the diamond-cut window, its shatterproof web dividing the front of the class into a graph. Inside the graph, Kevin paced along the green chalkboard, his mouth railing silently. As Noel’s face filled the diamond, Kevin removed a piece of yellow chalk from a box and in looping cursive wrote Maslov onto the board, underlined it, then kept adding exclamation points until the chalk snapped. He exchanged the chalk for a textbook, found his place, and began to read aloud, only to clap the book shut midway through and recite the rest from memory. He was wearing a pink oxford shirt and a yellow knit tie and faggish brand-new jeans
. Finishing, he bared his perfect teeth and pressed his fingernails into the top of the chalkboard, as if threatening to scrape down its breadth. A few minutes later, after listening too intently to a question, he clasped his heart and staggered backward as if shot. Right before class ended he lobbed an eraser at a napping student.

  When the electric bell sounded, Noel stepped away from the door. His hands were pressed against his sternum. A loud colorful river of students began to pass around him. He waited. There seemed no hurry. The hallway had all but emptied of students again by the time Kevin emerged from the classroom inside a flock of devotees, all girls, four or five of them. His twinkling blue eyes—even this blueness seemed an affectation—snagged on Noel, then slitted, as if the real Kevin were inside spying out of the fake one. Noel stepped forward, calmer than ever. If there was any emotion in him at all as he raised his hands, it was simply relief. Kevin made a feeble attempt to block Noel’s hands away and then tried to protect his neck. Then Noel was strangling Kevin’s hands and Kevin’s hands were in turn strangling his own neck. This hit Noel as funny and he smiled as they stared at each other, Kevin’s face reddening and growing larger.

  The voice Noel heard inside his mind was distinct yet lisped, and he heard it a half second after he realized he was not capable of murder. The voice said to him, You ain’t no killer, you juth a puthycat. Then Noel found himself standing in the hallway feeling greatly alone, like an actor who cannot recall his lines. There was a whirlwind of screaming all around him, there were shouts, and Kevin’s mouth was forming some plea of desperation. Staring into the darkness of Kevin’s mouth and feeling awkward and trapped and increasingly embarrassed, Noel wanted to release Kevin but did not know how until he was suddenly rescued by Cecilia, who stepped forward out of the classroom, books clasped to her gray sweater, static electricity luring threads of brown hair onto the gray fabric. Cecilia, taller than ever, more perfect than pretty.

  She stopped in the doorway, her mouth a perfect O, and dropped her books. Noel watched them scatter, then knelt down and began to gather them up. Released, Kevin sank to his knees, his own hands still wrapped around his neck. Noel handed the books to Cecilia.