Between Men

by Richard Canning

  Then again, she and Barry might cross paths, and it would be just them. Alone together in the hall after school let out, reduced to black flickers in the consuming glare from the overwaxed floor, like shadowy wisps of soot rising in a candle flame. Jane reminded him severely, “Barry, I have total confidence in you.” The way he nodded looked so manly. His smile, just too faint to be cruel, struck her as an impossible combination of love and wisdom. Washed out in the glare, his blue T-shirt, collar deformed and blond hair and his glinting brown eyes—he looked more apparition than real, and it was easy for Jane to think her way into her dreamworld. “I don’t know if you feel like biking over later, we could watch something on TV.” Appalled, rapturous, she assumed he could see her heart kettle-drumming through her blouse, and she didn’t care.

  That spring Jane took a cruise of the Chilean fjords by herself. Life-vested, she was shuttled by Zodiac to a briny crag colonized by seals. She ignored the Iowa retirees in the boat with her, even the handsome guide. She ignored them and studied the seals. What animals animals were! This wasn’t a virtuous nature show. The seals stank. They bleated. They farted. They fought. They bled. Long yellow “fingernails” twisted over their flippers. But all around, the crushing sublimity of the fjord remained somehow unaffected by their uncleanness and their crimes against each other. Since this lonely trip was mostly a trip away from Barry, Jane couldn’t help holding up her own crime in comparison. Strange to say, seeing how it, too, had no impact at all on the sublime inattention of nature and time made her crime seem less pardonable to her than ever before.

  When she got back, Jane moved a pot of basil to the left side of her front door. That was her and Barry’s signal. Jane never had to phone the Paul home, leaving pesky records. A day later she heard Barry rustling in the lilacs outside. Hiding his bike from the Malcolms. She sat him down, and his knees fell apart in the cocky way he had. Though he could tell it wasn’t going to be that kind of a visit. And if it had been, oddly, a breath of shyness would have come over him.

  Jane brought up something they’d never mentioned before. “Our ... friendship, Barry. You know, people don’t think it’s OK. They really don’t.”

  He asked how dumb did she think he was. Of course he knew that.

  “No, Barry, just let me . . . if this happened in . . . I don’t know—in China—and someone found out . . . they might . . . whatever they do—execute us, cut off our heads. I don’t mean to be terrifying, but

  ... On the other hand, of course, if we were in a different time and place, like Rome, maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal at all. But we are where we are, right?”

  He gave her a shrug. He looked off. She had a horrible reminiscence of justifying an F to some kid.

  “We know we have to stop. Absolutely stop. Don’t we?” Jane collapsed in a chair with a sigh of regret and unpleasant clarity. Barry crossed the room. She sat up. He stood over her, chin bunched up. For a second she thought he was going to hit her. Then she smiled at such a ridiculous fear. She’d relaxed completely and expected a caress when his arm floated toward her slowly, involuntarily almost. He pinched her biceps. His nails felt like needle-nose pliers. She shrank into the cushion, so shocked she couldn’t not laugh and frown. She rubbed the sore spot. She looked at him, “Barry! What’s gotten into you?”

  “Oh.” He gave her a twitchy version of Bond’s raised chin. His eyes—Jane stared with incomprehension—had watered up. “You’re done with your toys, so you just throw ’em away.”

  Jane couldn’t speak. The idea that he had feelings, strong feelings, anyway, had never occurred to her. He was a kid. A pang of guilt made her heartbeat stumble and start kettle-drumming painfully. Would he tell? But this grief of his was sure to blow off in an afternoon. He was a kid. Besides, he was the one who cheerfully teased her, got under her skin, in the Lawrence halls. She was the one with a full set of adult emotions.

  His eyes narrowed. Tears bulged like glass matchsticks. He was a child. Wildly, Jane imagined him laughing in a week. She even felt an iota of anger about it. She was so confused she could barely read his expression or hear what he was saying. What was he saying? “—but him at least—and I know you think he’s a spoiled brat and a faggot—him at least I could take seriously something he said. If he said—you know ...” The tears flickered to his cheeks. “With him, it was never like you and me being ‘friends,’” he spat the word out bitterly. Jane almost didn’t grasp that when he shook his fists in the air, he was also trying to make meaty, violent quotation marks with his fingers. So she’d know he thought that word was a complete joke, not a funny one. The gesture wasn’t like him at all.

  Crayons

  Alistair McCartney

  In the detective story, a park-keeper has discovered a corpse in the Bois de Boulogne. The good-natured park-keeper was off to collaborate with the Nazis when he heard little hissing noises. Following the strange sound, he happened to stumble upon the corpse. The park-keeper was so stunned that he dropped the gifts he was carrying: a link of sausages and a brightly colored toy boat.

  The corpse belongs (or no longer belongs, having been confiscated by death) to a well-known Viennese doctor. The Viennese people were known for their charm and their ability to hate Jews. Most of the doctor’s patients were nervous boys. When people asked the doctor what he did, he said, I work with nerves.

  Bees are gently buzzing around the doctor’s corpse. Pieces of a broken hive lie nearby. His corpse (or the corpse) is covered in bright red crayon dust; the crayon dust is so bright the policemen must place their polka-dot handkerchiefs over their red mouths.

  This job is especially hard on the younger ones. One of them has been stung in his lips, which were already full.

  Even the more experienced ones, who thought they had seen everything, are horrified by the sheer violence of so much red crayon.

  This will surely be a job for the Inspector, who specializes in crayon forensics.

  The bees get red on their wings. The policemen do not have wings (they only have shoulder blades, which are like the sawn-off stubs of wings) but they are also coated in red crayon. When the policemen go home they immediately jump in the shower to wash the red and waxy muck off. But as they lie in bed they are unable to sleep. They are haunted by the image of red crayons.

  Because I am nervous, and was sent to the doctor to be cured of my nervousness, and due to the fact that I am a mediocre artist who works primarily in red crayon, it is natural that I am a prime suspect.

  The Inspector is in hot pursuit of me. This displeases Madame Inspector, who is wearing a black crepe dress and folds of pink flesh. Five strings of fake pearls. She has taken a lot of trouble over dinner. She has spent the afternoon polishing her husband’s magnifying glasses and cleaning his fingerprinting kits. She is sick of her husband shadowing young men and taking their pictures for purely official (sexual) purposes with his miniature camera. She is sick of him taking boys’ fingerprints.

  She remembers when he used to take her fingerprints. The thought of him taking someone else’s fingerprints drives her insane with jealousy.

  Every night the Inspector comes home stinking of crayons.

  Madame is very angry. As she leans against the mantelpiece. To get back at her husband she is going to collaborate (make love) with the Nazis.

  Let them shave my head so the world can see my skull, she thinks.

  I am wearing a gray felt overcoat and a gray hat. It is a ready-made coat. There is a big yellow star on the left pocket. The star has been sewn from felt. As I try to figure out what to do next, I suck on the soft tips of the star.

  My hat is also made from felt. Felt is my preferred fabric. I find it to be very flattering. I think if the ugliest boy in the world wears a garment sewn from felt, he may not become the most beautiful boy in the world, but he will surely rise a few places on the scale of ugliness.

  Felt is derived from the fur of rabbits and muskrats. I would like to think that their souls continue to reside in my
felt coat, my felt hat, even my felt star. I would like to think that their soft little souls are intensified during the lengthy felt-making process, particularly during the extended period of time the fur must spend in the slowly revolving cone of the forming machine.

  Yet somehow my felt star is causing me to like felt a little less; I am beginning to think I need to find another fabric.

  On my coat and my hat and my star, red crayon stains here and there. These implicate me, like saliva, like the fingerprints on my fingers, like my footsteps in new snow. I go to a movie theater with worn red velvet curtains. The theater has a buttery stink to it. I’m unsure if this is the odor of popcorn or boys. Perhaps it is a delicate combination of both.

  I watch a newsreel of Hitler invading Vienna. All the Viennese (who are known for their charm) are crying and laughing so hard that their noses are running. None of them seem to have discovered handkerchiefs. It’s difficult to tell if they are happy or sad about this new arrival to their city. But the voice-over says: The good people of Vienna are extremely happy. They are so happy they will never know sadness again.

  In one scene, a fat little boy offers Hitler strudel. Hitler bends down and takes a bite, getting flecks of pastry caught in his mustache. The little boy licks the crumbs from Hitler’s mustache. The other people in the movie theater all go Ooh, how adorable. But I can’t help thinking that the fat little boy really shouldn’t be eating strudel, not even the crumbs of strudel.

  In another scene, standing very close to Hitler (so close they are almost touching, but not quite) is a man who looks exactly like the Viennese doctor. He is sobbing. His tears are falling on the sleeve of Hitler’s coat. Again a voice-over says: The good people of Vienna are extremely happy.

  Yet somehow I sense that the tears of this man (who must surely be the doctor) originate in a sadness so huge he will never know happiness again.

  Up on the screen Hitler moves a little to the left, probably because he is sick of being wept upon.

  The doctor continues to weep. To weep and to shake. As I watch the doctor weeping, I begin to question whether this man is really the doctor. Perhaps he simply appears to be the doctor, just as a crayon that is shaped like a pencil may from a distance appear to be a pencil, but is not a pencil, just as the so-called French chalk used by tailors to measure the inner legs of boys bears no relation whatsoever to actual chalk, with its tiny seashells, but is a form of talc, just as the substance popularly known as chalk, those crayons children use to solve (or to not solve) mathematical formulas on blackboards, has nothing to do with the limestone scraped and gathered from the bottom of ancient seas, but is (like this man’s tears) of an entirely different nature.

  And I begin to wonder, which is saltier: tears of grief or tears of joy? Is there an instrument that can compare the level of salt?

  The man in the newsreel who simply appears to be the doctor is now talking to a boy who is wearing what appear to be brand-new lederhosen. The lederhosen are green, with a border of appliquéd apples. A price tag dangles from one of the straps.

  The boy seems very nervous. He keeps fiddling with his yellow star. He must be one of the doctor’s patients. The boy starts to fiddle with the doctor’s star, but the doctor slaps his hand away. The boy’s lederhosen are tight around the thighs.

  Perhaps the boy is nervous because he believes the lederhosen don’t suit him. Perhaps the boy has not yet cut off the price tag (with a pair of big scissors) because, despite the many sincere compliments he has already received, and in spite of all the wolf whistles from the anti-Semitic construction workers, the boy is still not convinced that the lederhosen are flattering.

  That is, maybe the boy is still uncertain in regard to the absolute nature of the lederhosen.

  The boy is handing the man who merely appears to be the doctor a pink cardboard box. Surely it is not appropriate for a doctor to accept gifts from his patients. The man opens the box. His mouth pops open like a trapdoor. Inside the box, at least fifty red crayons rest on white tissue paper. The crayons are obviously expensive. I would kill to own those crayons. The man is gasping with pleasure—understandable, considering the quality of the crayons.

  As I watch the newsreel, a mysterious boy sits down in the seat next to me. He offers me some popcorn. I politely decline his offer. We begin to kiss. His lips are full and cold. They make me think of rivers frozen over and animal traps set in the snow, waiting patiently for animals.

  The boy is wearing a blue fox fur coat. As my hand gropes beneath his coat, I wonder if the fur was produced as a result of selective breeding. I almost ask the boy if he knows, but my shyness gets the better of me. I can sense already that the fur is not wearing very well, but I do not have the heart to tell this to the boy. Besides, if I point this out, he may recoil from my advances. So instead, I whisper in the boy’s ear: This fur is wearing very well.

  I realize (or my hands realize) that beneath his coat, the boy is wearing skin-tight lederhosen. In the dark of the movie theater, my boy looks very much like the boy in the newsreel. The boy sitting beside me is similarly nervous, which of course arouses me even further. I carefully unbutton the straps on his lederhosen. Big buttons. My fingers trace over what is without a doubt a border of appliquéd apples. My hands caress the boy’s hips, which bring back fond memories of riding on the handlebars of a bicycle. The boy’s skin is covered in scratches and little jewel-like scabs.

  Finally, at midnight, I decide to go to a hotel. I want to take the mysterious boy with me, to draw a nude portrait of him in red crayon on a sheet of butcher’s paper. But the mysterious boy has dissolved, leaving nothing but a sweet little feeling.

  As I walk the streets in search of a suitable hotel, I find myself wishing the boy was walking beside me. I would have liked to spend more time with the boy. Actually, I would have liked to spend my life with him. But then again, he wasn’t really my type. Generally I am not attracted to boys who wear lederhosen.

  I go alone to a dirty hotel. It is a second- or even third-class hotel. There is only one bellboy; his uniform is frayed at the edges. I can’t register under my own name so I register under the name Alistair McCartney. It’s a preposterous name I know, obviously false, but it’s the first one that enters my head. The proprietor, who has a pencil mustache (Nazi), clearly despises me.

  I go to my room, number 7. I pass by boys of the night and banisters.

  The boys of the night are dressed in pale yellow cross-fox coats. Although the hotel is bleak, it makes me happy to think that today, because of modern methods of collecting animal pelts, almost everyone can afford fur coats.

  I try to flush my crayons down the toilet, to get rid of evidence I suppose, but the toilet is broken.

  The red crayons float in the bowl menacingly.

  I fall asleep and dream that the Inspector is looking at me through a huge magnifying glass. Watching everything I do. Then I dream of a room in which there is nothing but a huge heap of red crayons, going up to the ceiling.

  The next morning I wake up full of hope, and with a positive attitude, until I notice that the bedsheets are covered in red crayon stains. The maids (boys in frilly caps and aprons) will be annoyed. The thought of this makes me anxious, because I am profoundly attracted to all maids.

  I get out of bed and go over to the chair where my felt coat is. I put on my coat and begin to suck on the points of my felt star.

  The last thing in the world I would want to do is displease a maid. But then I remind myself that such an establishment as this probably doesn’t have a maid, and if it does, it would most likely have one exceedingly unattractive maid, a maid so plain even I could not desire him.

  I go to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. That will be refreshing. The mysterious boy I made love to in the movie theater is lying in the bathtub, dead. He is naked. His skin is waxy. His body is plump and more shapeless than I remember; last night he gave me the impression that he was quite athletic.

  Though of course n
othing is shapeless: everything has a shape. This does not, however, automatically place the boy within the category of shapely.

  The boy’s lederhosen hang on the shower railing. They are soaking wet. I stop for a moment and listen to the dripping. While I am listening, I tell myself that now there is no possibility of spending the rest of my life with the boy, watching him grow old in his lederhosen.

  It’s then I notice the boy has a big red bruise, in the shape of an apple, on the inside of his left thigh. I have never liked apples, but suddenly I feel as if I could grow to like them.

  Red crayon lines have been drawn neatly on each of the boy’s wrists. The water in the bathtub is red from the violence of so much crushed red crayon. The boy appears to be comfortable.

  I leave the hotel in a hurry and go to a library. I grab the first book from the shelf; it is a book by someone called Sappho. I seat myself at a reading desk and switch on the little lamp. It makes a pleasing click.

  For a second I remember the clasp on my mother’s penny purse, the way it would click when I opened her purse to steal money, to buy crayons.

  I open the book to page eleven:

  My heart broken[

  [ ]

  Bright crayons[

  Leave even brighter[

  [ ]

  Stains In the snow

  By now it is evening, and the library must close—the librarians must reorganize the Dewey decimal system. According to the head librarian, this is an overwhelming task—one they have been putting off for ages—but they can put it off no longer.