The closeness and the humidity from our breath beneath the polyester paralleled the touch Alex had delivered the night we slept together. What started warm got hot quickly, and buttons were fumbled with, t-shirts abandoned, and when they were, lips fell onto shoulders and clavicles, and fingers wormed through chest hair and unzippered flies.
The tent got pushed off—like a metamorphosis we’d gone in separately and come out entwined. At first the air was cold on my skin. And then warm when they were against me. And then hot. Sweat and spit made it moist.
It was clumsy, awkward, but if they noticed they didn’t seem to care. Neither did I. I was so glad to have my hands and my everything on Jimmy Perino, the one who until now had gotten away. He became the center, with Alex and me orbiting—kissing, licking, sucking—like desperate satellites. The bed creaked, sheets came unfitted and snapped away from corners. We switched places and wore serious expressions and after a minute I found myself on my back. Jimmy was straddling my chest—his bent knees seemed to grow out of my armpits like we were one pale, hairy creature. Alex was blowing me, reaching around with one hand to tug Jimmy’s dick; he thumped it against my nostrils.
“X said you’ve been a fan of this,” Jimmy said, taking his dick from Alex and touching it to my lips.
I had been—what I’d imagined of it. A fan, I mean. It was big, as big as Alex had said. Bigger. And now that it was here I felt only intimidated where I should’ve been aroused. Instead of giving the blowjob he was angling for, I skirted my lips across the cock and dipped against the balls, fanning my tongue across them. I don’t know why I thought this would be better, but it was—perhaps because it was a thing much more difficult to critique. Also because I knew Alex was pretty anti this. The hair was thick and the smell was of sweat and soap. I nudged Jimmy forward and shimmied myself down, my head sliding off the pillow. I zigzagged my tongue along the taint (t’ain’t the balls, t’ain’t the ass), back and back until it was the latter indeed. The cheeks closed off my nostrils and I gasped through my mouth and gagged, and then tipped my head back some more, made a couple quick and tentative touches of my tongue to the wrinkled place, and with an increasing and increasing urgency and devotion went, as they say, to town. It was a feeling that alternated, quick as a tick-tock, between being the greatest and worst thing I’d ever done. I felt a cold flash on my own dick and then a crushing pressure as Alex mounted me. The bed shuddered. My stomach turned. Jimmy thumped his hand flat against the wall again and again, vibrating the framed landscape above the headboard. He moved his leg to let me go deeper, and through the open slider window I caught a glimpse of the dark, bright city and I wondered where in all that Mateo had gone.
And so the night passed.
I awoke with the light
alone on the couch, shivering, a pillow against me as though I’d been trying to use it as a blanket. I was naked and my ribs on the left side hurt. My face was hot and scratched from their stubble. My lips felt big, and the taste. When I imagined the taste my stomach curdled.
In the bed Alex and Jimmy were under the covers sleeping, spooning, in a way that looked innocent, in a way that might even be called domestic. I hated them because they had come out of the night together and Mateo and I hadn’t.
I turned over and rested my head on my bicep and looked out the big glass sliding doors. The curtains were pushed open all the way—we’d fucked against the Boston cityscape—and I stared for a long time at the orange sky. On a tall building a light pulsed blue. Mateo was probably still out there somewhere, writing his Facts, his simple Izzies, across the city. Things seemed so clear for him, so black-and-white, even as they burst with color.
I started to sit up and the couch squeaked and I stopped. I knew if they woke up, regardless of whatever I felt and thought at this moment, one inviting look from Jimmy and I’d be in their bed again. Yet again. I rolled over, careful not to squeak the couch any more, and dropped to the floor on hands and knees. I crawled over to the bed, finding my outfit on the carpet piecemeal, a sock here, t-shirt there, mixed in with theirs. I found a complete set but couldn’t be sure it all was mine, and when I crept into the bathroom to get dressed I found that one of the socks wasn’t mine. I put it on anyway. The pants were mine, and that was the important thing. I looked at myself in the mirror, smoothed my hair, was slightly surprised to find my lips clean. Jimmy had been clean—had been, probably, prepared. That helped my stomach a little. I tip-toed out and grabbed my suit jacket off the back of the armchair, checked to make sure it contained phone, wallet and keys (and thought of the key-touching guy, still, with a stab). On the way out I grabbed my shoes.
The hallway was long
and bright and quiet, the narrow runner carpet piled here and there with half-eaten room-service meals. My walk of shame. I noticed something on my hand, white powder—plaster dust from the doorknob, remnants of Mateo’s exit.
I was waiting for the elevator when my clothes started singing.
I slipped my plastery fingers into a pocket and withdrew my phone. I hoped it was Mateo and was glad about that, was relieved by the clarity of my gladness: Teo is who I want. But in fact it was Jamar, and that was even better. If Jamar was calling me at this hour—it wasn’t yet 6:00 a.m.—he was about to provide a bonanza of distraction. I pressed the green button and said hello.
“Bradford— I’m sorry to wake you up.”
“S’OK. I was up. What’s up?”
“Fatherhood is imminent.”
“Baby’s coming?”
“Very imminent.”
“She’s not due for two weeks.”
“Tell that to the baby! I called my family. I wanted you to know. Diane and Wayne are on their way. I’m about to go in. They’re trying to find a johnnie-gown thing that’s tall enough for me.”
I was smiling and absently dropped the phone away from my ear. The morning had bloomed and the night and the taste and the hurt in my ribs seemed part of some other life. I returned the phone to my ear. “Brigham’s?”
“Yeah, you know how to get here?”
“I’ll cab it.”
“Hey, where are you, anyway?”
I considered. “With Teo.”
“The tao of Mateo! Bring him. I’m having a baby!”
The revolving hotel door released
me into the freezing dawn. I took a breath, stuffed my hands in my pockets. Beside me was a Stonehenge of yellow caution signs arranged on the sidewalk. Sudsy water tinted blue streaked through the circle in numerous streams, icy at their edges, across the concrete, pooling near the base of a parking meter and flowing over the curb into the gutter. I turned around, faced the front of the hotel. Two men in maintenance coveralls, big brushes in their hands and a hose on the ground between them, were frantically scrubbing an expanse of brick. The brushes flicked blue foam against their shirts, against the surrounding brick, out into the air. Foam ran down the brick in glistening streams like that fake spray-on snow people put on windows. I couldn’t tell what was under the foam, what was getting scrubbed, but I recognized the shape, the height, the size—and I knew it was for me. I took a deep breath, crossed my arms over my chest to try to warm myself, stepped to the edge of the sidewalk to pretend to watch for a cab.
I heard one of the guys say, “I don’t think this is gonna come off.”
“I bet it was that faggy guy came through in the suit,” the second guy said.
“The one was crying?”
The second guy nodded. “OK, let’s give it another rinse.”
I turned casually and saw them step back, foam like pompoms on their boots. One grabbed the hose, aimed, released a blast of water at the wall while the other raised his arm to shield his face. I could feel the mist on my own face. The air grayed-up, ice crystals freezing, and then, when the guy shut off the hose, it cleared.
“Awh Christ,” the first guy said. The soap was all on the sidewalk and the letters were mostly still on the wall. The guy looked at his brush in defeat, shook
soap and water off the bristles. “When will they catch this motherfucker already?”
I turned to face the street again. Sudsy blue water flowed around my shoes until a cab saw my shivering finger and stopped.
“Brigham and Women’s,” I said as I got in.
“You sick?” The cabbie was peering at me in the rearview and then turned around for a better look. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
When I caught the first
glimpse of Jamar I skidded to a halt on the baby-blue line on the tile I was following. He was there in the waiting room, which was odd. That was the first thing.
The second thing was that he didn’t look the way I imagined a new father should look. He was sitting on the edge of one of the beige vinyl chairs, legs stretched out in front of him. Over one leg hung a folded blue johnnie. He was leaning forward, hands clasped between knees. He looked like he was praying. A maternity ward was a place for hopping hallelujahs, not silent, tense praying like this, especially from someone I’d never seen pray.
In the seats beside Jamar were his parents. They were angled toward each other, knees touching, but weren’t talking. Robbie stood by the big windows wearing flip-flops and baggy Spider-Man sweats. Their expressions stood in sharp contrast to a scene of Norman Rockwell contentment going on on the other side of the waiting room: a father rocking a drowsy preschooler on his knee, every so often leaning forward to whisper in the girl’s ear.
A woman I didn’t immediately recognize spoke to me, and I realized it was Cara’s friend Jenna, and with her another friend whose name I couldn’t recall. Good friends of Cara’s—they’d been to the apartment, they were at the wedding. Coworkers, I thought. And I found it strange that I knew so little about them—how I so often remembered so little about women. If they were men I’d have remembered their birthdays and what they were wearing last I saw them. If they were gay or bi or curious men I would likely remember them wearing nothing at all.
“Jenna. Hi. Is something wrong? I expected a—less somber mood.”
“Us too.”
The other girl, perhaps sensing she wasn’t remembered, extended her hand. “I’m Shelly.” When we shook I realized she hadn’t merely been introducing herself, she’d been looking for camaraderie—someone to get through this with. It sent a chill up my spine.
“Fletcher.”
“I know. Cara talks about you all the time.”
I smiled and excused myself and went over and slid into the chair beside Jamar.
“Hey Papa,” I said, choosing to ignore the scene.
“Bradford. You’re here.” He sat up and leaned back in the chair, dragged his legs in under it.
“I came right over. It’s a bad time for cabs—took me a while to get one. Why’s everyone look so mopey? Is the baby as ugly as you or something?” He showed the smallest of smiles. “I thought you were going in with her?”
“They were bringing me in and then someone came out of the room and they turned me around and I’ve been here.”
“Oh. Have you heard anything?”
“A nurse came out once. It’s going difficult. They’re going to do a C-section. But we’re not supposed to worry or anything. So, you know, since they told me not to worry, I’m not worrying at all. Easy as pie.”
I smiled and put my arm around his shoulders. “I’m sure it’s going fine. I bet the kiddo’s as tall as his dad and he won’t fit out through little Cara. I’m sure everything’s fine.”
“Thanks.” He looked around. “Where’s Mateo?”
I started to explain and then just shrugged.
We waited. Robbie bought Jamar a Snapple and it sat on the floor unopened, sweating. After a few minutes I got up to stretch my legs, walked over to the window, looked out. There wasn’t much to see, just the building across the way, a FedEx truck parked on the street beside a mailbox someone—not Mateo—had tagged in silver marker. I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone to text him, and it made my boxers pull taught and sharp against my pubic hair—someone’s dried come still there. I realized I was still wearing last night all over me, hadn’t even brushed my teeth. God only knew how I looked, with my burned cheeks and tired eyes.
HEART IS BROKE. That’s what it said on the wall outside the hotel; that was the message the maintenance guys were scrubbing away. HEART IS BROKE. That’s what he’d written after leaving. I wondered, did he have to run before finishing it? Or was he purposely trying to offend my copyeditor sensibilities? Or did he mean exactly what he wrote? Not broken at all but literally broke: poor, destitute, bankrupt. And whose heart did he mean?
I looked at myself in the glass, at my burned cheeks and tired eyes. I knew he meant mine.
I was lowering my phone back to my pocket when I heard a shriek, something that can only be called a shriek, and it made a swallow of saliva catch in my throat and my balls pull up tight inside me.
It was Jamar and my first thought was just never to turn around. To stand here forever. I looked at the reflection in the window of the room behind me, trying to prepare myself at least a little before I turned. And when I did turn I saw a flash of white coat and the blur of Robbie leaping forward with his arms out, but mostly what I saw was Jamar, Jamar’s knees knocking together and Jamar melting down to the floor, the folded blue johnnie billowing out around him.
I took my arm back
from the girl called Shelly and put both hands over my face. Squeezed my eyes shut, tried to keep my breathing going, tried to keep from vibrating right through the chair, or melting, or exploding, or wailing, or dying. Stood up and my phone fell off my lap and went skittering across the tile, and through blurred vision chased after it after kicking it once by mistake and then stuffed it in my pocket and found once more the blue guideline on the tile and followed it around corners around gurneys to the lobby and spun through the wide revolving doors and the cold air steamed on my burning wet cheeks.
But I know her, I kept thinking over and over. But I know her.
I kept it together in
the cab but started crying again the moment it pulled up outside of our apartment. I realized that I absolutely didn’t want to go into our apartment. That was when I finally called Mateo, but there was no answer. I tried three more times. Then I called Mike, and I got him right away.
A hand touched my shoulder
tenderly. I didn’t turn my head but opened my eyes and saw purple fingers splayed against my collar bone. The purple fingers slid gently down my chest, met a clean hand on the other side. They entwined against my sternum in the same place they had once pressed a smear of motor grease. And then a scratch of stubble against my cheek as a chin settled on my shoulder. Hair tickled my ear.
“I heard. I’m sorry, Arrowman. I’m so very, very sorry.”
I briefly imagined my response and some kind of conversation following, but the words to say it were nowhere to be found—my language was gone. Instead I reached up with both hands and threaded my fingers through the ones against my chest, and in response to this welcome he moved in, hugged me harder. And my floodgates opened and I started to cry.
But this was a dream, except for the crying. I awoke with wet eyes in Mike’s loft, the ceiling a few feet from my face. I had all my clothes on, even my shoes, and Mike’s arm encircled me.
Marjorie pulled open the fridge
to get Phoebe a strawberry milk night-cap. When she turned she noticed Phoebe standing near the kitchen table, a creased sheet of paper in her hands, her mouth scrunched in concentration as she tried to decipher the writing.
“What do you have there?” Marjorie said.
“It was under the puzzle.”
“A note?”
“It’s from Mateo, I think,” Phoebe said.
Marjorie went over and held out her hand, trading Phoebe a glass of strawberry milk for the paper. It said:
Gone to SP. Tell Miss I’m sorry for missing the dancing show. M.
Across the street and across
the
T lines, across power lines, across phone lines, past train stations, gas stations, fire stations—on the other side of the city in an apartment on the third floor of a three-decker, I sat by myself.
In the apartment there were no sounds of babies laughing or crying. There were no sounds of Cara giggling. There were no beeps of camera or heavy footsteps of Jamar twisting to record every moment of this first day.
He had taken the infant—a horrible healthy boy—to his parents’ house in Waltham. The apartment was quiet. The only sound was the bubbling whir of the fish tank in my room. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and watched the colorful, translucent bodies flickering across the fish-tank light. I put my phone to my ear again to call Mateo, and again there was no answer. And suddenly in a flash of comfort it came to me: the idea that I could go out and fuck. That it would be just that easy—would fill my head, would occupy my mind, would kill the night. A few keystrokes on my laptop. A text message, maybe two. An email. And the night would be full.
I watched the fish swim around. And in the glow of the light, by the base of the tank stand, behind a shoebox of CDs, I saw two cans.
Thinking: I can fuck. Or—
I reached and picked up one of the cans. Popped the cap and, for no particular reason, smelled the valve. Put a finger on it and wobbled it back and forth, not enough to spray, but almost.
P A R T
F O U R
The Night Would Be Enough
São Paulo wind rushed over
him, washing him of the smell of the plane. São Paulo wind and the sour-sweet smell of the driver’s mahogany skin. Over his t-shirt the driver wore a flapping meshy smock, bearing like a soccer jersey a big yellow 24. Mateo, through his helmet, couldn’t hear the flapping over the rrmmm of the motorcycle.
The city streamed by in a blur as the motorcycle devoured the street. The familiar city: buildings, restaurants, little shops were the same. Push-cart vendors were the same too—some were even in the same places. The crippling morning traffic was letting up now and the traffic was only bad—the driver navigated it boldly, once driving a whole block on the sidewalk, shooting back a warning to Mateo to hold tight when they jumped the curb.
The Painting of Porcupine City: A Novel Page 24