Every Time I Think of You

by Jim Provenzano

  He raised the volume, searched back and forth, half-heartedly fumbling the lyrics to a few hits, until a new mutual favorite’s tinkling piano intro played, The Babys’ “Every Time I Think of You.”

  Everett’s singing was so open-throated, so honest, unlike his somewhat rehearsed demeanor with my parents. He turned the volume up high, coaxing me to sing the back-up vocals, albeit a few octaves lower, as he belted out each high note with fervor, occasionally marred by a cracked note, which only endeared him to me more.

  “People say a love like ours, will surely pass…”

  Hearing him so close to me, the pure mutual joy we shared, must have been what led me to realize I was falling in love with him.

  “And every time I think of you…”

  “Every time…”

  “Every time I think of you…”

  “Every single time…”

  “It always turns out goo-ood!”

  Our eyes met for brief moments mid-song. Somewhere in my heart, deep down in my gut, in that moment, in the middle of our hurtling drive through that tunnel, shedding my forgettable previous existence, I became determined for the first time in my small life –and not again, it would turn out, for a long time afterward – to learn how to have and to be a boyfriend.

  Chapter 7

  Holly’s apartment was less than stately. My assumptions, based on her family’s home and apparent wealth, had misled me. When we arrived, I at first mistook the looming Victorian as entirely hers. Snow lay thinly on lawns and roofs of other homes along the tree-lined block.

  As Everett led me into the large foyer of the house, I realized my mistake. The front hallway had a row of half a dozen mailboxes inserted into a wall opposite the stairs. Along the hallway, what had been rooms in an expansive home had been divided into several apartments. Everett led me up the stairs and to one of several other doors that had numbers placed on each one.

  It felt both odd and comforting to enter the home of someone I had yet to meet. A few casually placed French Impressionist posters shared wall space with a series of framed photographs of Paris street scenes and costume sketches which were presumably Holly’s work. Plants sat on tables and a few standees by the large curtained windows. Late afternoon sun gave the room a bright warm feeling.

  I heard the clink of Everett tossing his keys onto the kitchen table. His “Ah-ha,” drew my attention through the doorway as he pulled a note from a magnet on the refrigerator.

  “‘Singing animals may keep me late,’” Everett read, slightly confused. “‘Make yourselves at home.’ Huh. I guess the opera she’s working on has a zoo.”

  He turned to me, peeled off his coat, tossing it casually over one of the kitchen table’s chairs. “So.” That flirtatious leer again. “Let’s get comfy.”

  With that, he was on me, wrapping me in his arms before I’d removed my coat or dropped my own duffel bag. His mouth tasted of the burgers and fries we’d eaten at a drive-through burger place along the highway. That didn’t stop me from returning his kiss.

  Still connected, Everett lightly shoved me backwards to the living room. After bumping into a table, prone on the couch, he burrowed under my sweatshirt to hover and press his lips along a route that went up to my chest. I was about to pull off my clothes, the excitement softened by a feeling of relaxation, what with no housekeepers or woodland creatures to interrupt us.

  But then Everett pulled himself from me, peeled off his own clothes down to his underwear and socks, and to my surprise and disappointment, began digging into his duffel bag.

  “Where are we…?”

  “Sleeping? Right there.” He nodded toward me and the couch, then extracted some other clothes from his bag.

  “Oh.”

  “We could get a hotel room, but I doubt they offer credit to minors.”

  “Right.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  “No, I’m not. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s fine.” I patted the couch. It would do, except of course for any moment that his sister would walk out the nearby door of what I assumed was her bedroom.

  Seeing my glance, he added, “It’s cool. She zones out with music and headphones before falling asleep. I used to sneak up on her at home all the time.”

  For what, I wondered.

  “It folds out,” Everett explained, nodding again toward the couch.

  “Oh,” I tried to relax, but sitting in the home of someone I had yet to meet, whom I assumed knew of our imminent intimacy, left me confused. Almost everything I did with Everett left me confused, at first.

  While Everett was in the bathroom, I tried to ignore the slightly erotic sound of him pissing, and set my eyes on the largest of the French painting posters. In it, mustached men in top hats and women in long skirts inhabited the rainy city along a wide cobblestone street where a horse-drawn carriage seemed to have just casually passed. What struck me was that there was nothing exactly in the center except the open street and a narrow building angled to fit a V-shaped intersection. It all appeared so calm, yet I sensed some kind of underlying tension, the bustle of an ordinary day hiding under the umbrellas of the painting’s inhabitants.

  I felt Everett’s arms wrapping around me from behind. He said softly into my ear, “Kai boat.”

  “What?”

  “Gustave Caillebotte. French Impressionist; actually, sort of a Realist. Big benefactor for Monet and some other impoverished painters.”

  “Your sister likes French art.”

  “She spent a year abroad before dropping out of college altogether. Came back with lots of trendy clothes, tubes full of posters, and a fetus.”

  “What?”

  “The parents were scandalized, of course. They didn’t want a bastard frog ruining her chances of a real marriage, and she didn’t want the little tadpole either.”

  “I don’t really think I need to–”

  “Abortion, le scandale de la famille,” he hissed with a bad accent. “She’d already refused a debutante ball, and the hairy hands of local boys who probably wanted to inherit Forrestville’s wealth more than her hand in marriage. Ever since then, she’s been the bad kid, leaving me plenty of room to misbehave.”

  “Dude, I don’t think this is any of my–”

  “Oh, don’t worry. She’ll tell her own version of it all before breakfast. Just pretend it’s new gossip.”

  “Okay.”

  “We should go,” he said.

  “Go where?”

  Everett sort of rolled his eyes. “Acquisition? Mary-joo-wanna?”

  “I thought your sister was gonna–”

  “She left the address. It’ll be cool.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  Having changed into different clothes, a hooded sweatshirt, jeans and boots that disguised any trace of the dashing appearance he’d previously maintained, he appeared to be any average young man, not the shivering horny wood elf or prep school suck-up I’d come to know in those few days. I wasn’t aware of any dress code for making drug deals.

  Why couldn’t we just stay in, knowing his sister wouldn’t be back for hours? What was he trying to prove?

  “Am I okay?” I asked, barely masking my confusion.

  “You’re perfect.” He approached me, offered a light kiss. “Shall we?”

  The apartment of the mysterious pot dealer was on a small cramped side street in Lawrenceville, the working-class section on the north side of town. Row houses were stacked along a steep hill like playing cards. For some reason he didn’t explain, Everett suggested I park the Plymouth down the street, and not in the empty driveway of the building which he’d pointed out as our destination.

  “Just stay cool,” Everett said.

  “I am,” I said. I wasn’t.

  “He’ll probably offer to smoke some after we buy. It’s kind of a fake social courtesy.”

  “Is it?” I snapped, silently vowing to refuse any offers before driving again.


  “Testy.” He left the car, closing the door quietly. I followed as he climbed up the porch stairs and knocked on the door. We heard the new Cheap Trick album playing inside. Everett knocked again… and again.

  The inside door opened. Behind the screen door, a very tall man eyed us, wearing a T-shirt and denim vest, and what could only be described as a Yosemite Sam mustache. He could not have more fittingly played the role of the prison-worn drug dealer.

  “And you are?”

  “Holly’s brother? Everett? She called earlier?”

  Yosemite Sam hollered inside, “Holly’s brother?”

  Someone inside shouted consent. Without turning back to look at us, he opened the door.

  The small front room was oddly empty. In what had apparently been a dining room converted into a living room, two rumpled sofas were arranged at angles, with a large circular coffee table in the middle. Various mismatched chairs were lined up along the other wall like some hastily furnished frat house.

  In one of the cushier of chairs, a young woman with long hair sat, intently weaving some kind of macramé plant holder. She gave us both a glance, but didn’t greet us.

  Rising from the opposite sofa, a young man greeted us. With his conservative haircut, an Izod shirt, tan pants and loafers, he appeared to have just arrived from a Young Republicans meeting. Everett’s change of clothes had been unnecessary.

  He shook hands, and half-attempted some sort of soul hand slap with Everett. “Holly’s little brother, huh?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “Oh, she had to work late.”

  “And this is?” Mr. Young Republican appraised me with a suspicious glance.

  “Reid. He’s cool.”

  Momentarily surprised that Everett hadn’t invented a fake name for me, I waved and stood still, worried that I might fumble the pseudo-ethnic handshake.

  “So, what can I do ya for?”

  “Um, Holly said, a half ounce?”

  “What kind?”

  “Oh.”

  In another room, a phone rang.

  “Hold on. Have a seat.”

  We sat close together on the other sofa. Young left the room.

  For the first time, I saw Everett become uneasy. He leaned toward me, quietly singing the lyrics of the song blasting through the stereo as a sort of instruction. “Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away, ay.”

  Macramé girl smiled at us, but said nothing.

  The Young Republican (I never heard his name) returned, pulled a drawer from under the coffee table and casually tossed out four medium-sized bags stuffed with pot. “We got … some shitty local, Mexican Gold, Mexican Red, and Hawaiian. That stuff has the biggest kick.”

  “Oh. Same price?”

  “No.”

  Some financial discussion ensued. I remained calm, outwardly, and by that I mean I was stock-still.

  Negotiations settled, and the Gold was chosen. Everett handed over some cash. Mr. Young withdrew a large cluster of pot and placed it in a smaller plastic bag, then measured its weight on a tiny scale and handed it over. Just as Everett pocketed it, a series of loud knocks rattled the front door.

  Yosemite Sam jumped to action, stomping toward the door. At the same moment, Mr. Young abruptly reached into the drawer and withdrew a large black pistol.

  I visibly tensed. Everett clutched my knee, his white knuckles betraying his otherwise outward calm. Macramé girl sighed, annoyed, and retreated into a back room.

  “Easy,” Young soothed, hovering his palm over the gun.

  Whoever Yosemite Sam met at the door was in an audibly argumentative mood.

  Mommy’s all right, Daddy’s all right. They just seem a little weird…

  “How old are you boys?”

  “Nineteen,” Everett blurted unconvincingly.

  “How about,” Young glared toward the increasingly loud discussion out front, “you boys go out the back door.”

  “Now?” Everett asked.

  “Now. Slowly. Where are you parked?”

  “Across the street,” I said.

  Everett glared at me.

  “Go out through the yard. There’s a fence with a door. Walk around the block and, well, good night.”

  We did, passing macramé girl in the kitchen, who was inspecting a jar of pickles.

  Once in the dark back yard, our pace quickened. After closing the rusty back fence door, we ran down an alley, momentarily confused.

  “Shit!” Everett hissed.

  “This way.”

  “Wait! Just wait.”

  Everett checked his pockets, more concerned about the whereabouts of his purchase.

  “What are you–”

  “I might have to ditch it.”

  “We are not going back in there.”

  “I know. I just–”

  “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “To the car. We are done.” I jangled the car keys as a taunt.

  Surprised, then near chuckling, Everett held his hands up in surrender. “Okay.”

  He followed as I instinctively figured out our passage from the back alley, past garbage cans, around the block. Cautiously, back onto the street, I peered nervously around the corner and saw my mother’s car.

  The argument on the porch continued. I remained resolute in our escape. Everett followed as we crossed the street, slowing our pace until we reached the car.

  Yosemite Sam’s glance past his irate customers led the attention of the two other men, one of them the loud one, to us.

  “Start the car,” Everett muttered.

  “Is that them?” One of the men jumped from the porch steps in a bound. I scrambled to unlock my door, got in, started the car, then leaned over and pulled the other door lock up.

  Everett darted inside as my limited parallel un-parking skills were further hampered by a skinny angry man who thought we were someone else. He pounded the hood. On the porch, the other man and Yosemite Sam began a sort of shoving match.

  A soft metal crunch assured me that backing up any more would be prevented by the car I’d just hit. Suddenly searing with adrenaline, I abruptly veered the car out into the street, as the confused hoodlum gave the car another fist pound.

  Several blocks and two run stoplights later, I glared at the rear-view mirror, then to Everett. Despite the temperature outside, his face was coated in a sheen of sweat.

  “You happy?” I snapped.

  “What! I didn’t know–”

  “You wanted an adventure. You got it.”

  “Just … It wasn’t our fault.”

  “Fault? I’m not talking about fault. You–”

  “I just wanted to–”

  “Show off?”

  “Well–”

  “Just shut up.”

  He did, surprisingly, for a few blocks, before muttering, “I’m sorry.”

  I silently shrugged off his apology and kept driving.

  “I gotta check the fender,” I said, to break the tension.

  “Let’s just get back to Holly’s first.”

  “Fine.”

  “…which is the other way.”

  Having approached a wide and empty intersection, I screeched to a halt, pulled a U-turn, spinning on a patch of ice, and raced the car in the other direction.

  Everett whistled. “Well, fuck me, Starsky.”

  “I will.”

  Gripping the steering wheel, I held onto my anger for a few more blocks, finally slowing the car down to a reasonable pace.

  “What?” I snapped.

  Everett had been staring at me, but all along with an amused grin.

  “‘I will!’” he repeated, imitating my growled anger. And then he laughed, and eventually, so did I.