Stone Angels

by Michael Hartigan

  We also bought a bag of gummy bears to take into the theater.

  Once in the theater she settled into her seat and immediately dug into the gummy bears we bought at the music store.

  “You know, I like the yellow ones,” she said with a handful of candy. She opened her palm and moved the red and green ones away with a slender finger. “I sort of feel bad for the yellow one. Nobody likes yellow. I think because candy makers can never decide on whether it should be lemon or banana. So they give it some horrible mutated flavor. But I sort of like it.”

  She didn’t wait for my response and snatched up a red one, bit the head off and licked the glossy remains. Before I knew what she was doing, she whipped the confection at the screen and to my surprise, it stuck. She burst out into uncontrollable laughter without acknowledging the quiver of shushes zipping our way. She did see the horrified look on my face, which only elicited more laughter.

  The movie began and the headless bear stuck high up out of the reach of the usher—a pock-marked teenager who swiped at it with an old straw broom about ten feet too short. Defeated, he huffed up the aisle looking for the culprit.

  “They’ll never get it down,” Lily said, still laughing. “It’s like a zit stuck to those perfect million-dollar faces. All the Proactiv in the world couldn’t clean that up.”

  The usher reached our row and soon we were bathed in flashlight.

  “Hey, you two,” he squeaked. “What’s your problem?”

  Lily playfully stuck her tongue out in his direction, grabbed my hand and dragged me out the other side of the aisle. Thankfully most of the theater was empty, making for easy escape. As we rushed past the screen she fired a few more headless gummy bears at some overpaid actor; one stuck but most of them just ricocheted into the front row sparking cries of annoyance and a few giddy chuckles.

  We ran holding hands all the way out to the parking garage.

  “I didn’t really want to see that movie anyway,” she said in between giggles.

  “What was that?” I gasped, catching my breath for the first time. I fumbled with the keys, rushing to get into the car. Mall Security had to be mere steps behind us. Any second, they would pounce.

  She spun me around and leaned in her hips to mine, forcing me back against the car door. She threw her arms around my neck and lightly tussled my hair.

  “Relax,” she said with that perfect mix of sweetness and sarcasm I would ultimately fall in love with. “I think we’re safe.”

  She smiled and leaned in. Right before she kissed me, her lips trembling a mere whisper from my own, she said, “Shaw, before this is over, I’m going to lighten you up. I’m going to make you come alive.”

  A few weeks later I tried again to have a quiet, sane date night. I thought it was something Lily wanted.

  So I splurged on an expensive dinner at a restaurant she suggested. I ordered the filet mignon, medium rare and smothered in a white pepper sauce. Lily ordered a broiled ossobuco over spinach risotto; something I never even knew was an option for the human palette. We shared a twice-baked potato and several bottles of wine. For dessert we skipped the cakes and tarts and went right for espresso martinis, thick with chocolate and liquor.

  Towards the end of the meal we both got up to go the bathroom located at the back of the restaurant near the emergency exit. In the tucked away hallway outside the restrooms, instead of entering the ladies room, Lily pushed me against the wall and slipped her tongue in my mouth. She tasted sweet, like the sugary martinis fogging her inhibitions. As always, I fell immediately and totally under her control. And as always, she knew it.

  In the instant I closed my eyes to enjoy the moment, she slapped open the emergency fire door, grabbed my wrist and dragged me through, breaking into a full sprint once we hit the night air. She laughed hysterically. I panted and waited for the wailing fire alarm, which never came. When I looked back the fire door had quietly shut and no one was pursuing.

  “We have to go back in. We left a huge bill in there,” I panted when we got back to the car. “We screwed that waiter.”

  Lily never stopped laughing. Her eyes teared up from the hysterics.

  “You are adorable,” she finally said, still giggling.

  “What?”

  “You, you’re cute, all worried about the wait staff at my uncle’s restaurant.”

  Her laughter grew with the revelation spreading across my face.

  “Your uncle’s restaurant? You didn’t tell me . . .”

  “Yup, he bought it a few months ago. Our meal was always going to be free. And the waiter is his son, my cousin. Why do you think we got such good seats and service? This place takes reservations months ahead of time.”

  My jaw must have been on the floor because she reached over a slender finger and stroked up my cheek.

  “You should have seen your face when I pulled you out that door,” she said. “Priceless isn’t a strong enough a description. You looked liked we just killed someone.”

  She had set up the whole thing for a prank. The strange part was that it excited me. I started laughing with her until she reached across the car and pulled me into a deep kiss.

  When our lips broke I said, “Let’s go get some drinks.”

  “That’s the best idea you’ve had all night,” she said.

  “And this time, let’s pay for them.”

  We joked about the meal all the way to the bar and inside thereafter. We drank watered down beer—a lot of watered down beer.

  “Shaw, you don’t have to try so hard with me,” she said as she finished her second plastic cup.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m not an expensive dinner kind of girl. I love our take out dinners and rented movies. I won’t lie though; I do have fun when we go out. But just don’t feel like you have to.”

  “Alright. I just want to keep up with you. Stay on pace, not slip behind and watch you outlast me in this relationship.”

  “Slow and steady wins the race, Shaw. Didn’t you learn anything in kindergarten?”

  She winked and kissed the air between us.

  “I’m having a lot of fun this summer,” I said. “I’ve never really had this much fun with anybody.”

  “Somebody had to do it,” she said. She reached out and laid a hand on my knee. “I’m glad it’s me.”

  From then on, as much as we engrossed each other, we never defined what we were doing. We didn’t call it anything. The word “couple” never arose and we were both happier repressing the urge to identify our relationship. I was afraid the label would scare her off and might create a rift within our group of friends. I assumed she had similar reservations.

  There were obviously feelings between us, as carnal as they might have been. But the dinners, the jokes, the nicknames (she still called me Hero) and the conversations spoke to something on a higher plane. I knew everything about her that she let me know and intuited the rest.

  We didn’t tell anyone else. By August, Shoddy had figured it out. He came to visit me and found Lily’s clothes strewn around my apartment. But he kept quiet. He even toasted my success.

  Eventually Lindsey and Emily figured it out too. It wasn’t hard. They both said it was simple infatuation rather than love. Lindsey admitted to me later, during one of our own squabbles, that she was jealous.

  If Lily ever said she loved me, she never said it to me. I was content assuming it. If she wanted to confess it to me, I would gladly and hungrily accept it. But for that summer, I was content with just her.

  The outside world was nonexistent to us. Providence was our desert island, our hidden glade, our far, far away.

  Lindsey and Emily were right, I was infatuated with Lily—I was infatuated with loving her.

  Chapter 6

  September arrived and with it, thousands of students. While campus burgeoned, the intensity with Lily diminished.

  That fall we saw each other less, which was to be expected with schoolwork and other commitments. As junior
s in college, schoolwork mushroomed and on top of that, we suddenly had to recognize the finality of college life. The future must be acknowledged. Within the next year tests had to be taken, graduates schools applied for and resumes polished. Like most, I wanted to postpone the real world. Remaining in my fairytale land with Lily was the top priority.

  The fairytale didn’t last long. The time Lily and I did spend together was different. Of course we still slept together, but in public she was colder, more distant. We argued a few times over inane things, something we had never done before. I got the feeling she was pushing me away for reasons she refused to reveal. I blamed stress.

  “Lily, did I do something wrong?” I asked her one night. We were in my bed, naked and basking in a post-sex tranquility. But something nagged me. I felt a tension in her muscles, which made me have trouble relaxing.

  She came to my apartment that night for dinner but instead we argued about where to eat. We debated location in the past but that night Lily got philosophical.

  “I want to go to the same pub where you and Shoddy always go to watch football games,” she said. “Why do you take Lindsey there and not me?”

  “What are you talking about,” I said, aggravated.

  “Forget it, let’s try something different.”

  “I thought you said you wanted the pub? And correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t you say you weren’t an expensive dinner kind of girl? Didn’t you say your favorite meals with me were of the take out persuasion?”

  “Yeah, whatever, not tonight. Let’s go somewhere you like to go. Somewhere different that you’ve never taken me.” Her voice elevated.

  “So somewhere old and somewhere new? Got it,” I said with a little too much sarcasm.

  Lily huffed and shook her head. She was all over the map, picking a fight at all four corners.

  In the midst of the yelling, I asked her if I pissed her off somehow. She didn’t answer then, either. Instead, the argument fizzled out and she pushed me into my bedroom.

  The sex was usually good, but that sex was unexpectedly passionate. She was more vigorous. Her hips thrusted harder, she moaned louder and her eyes clenched tighter. She had added energy, like arguing with me untamed her already wild side.

  When it ended she pretended to fall asleep. I nudged. “Hey, I know you aren’t sleeping.” She pulled the blanket close to her chin. “You’ve been acting weird. What’s bothering you?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t move.

  “Alright, fine, but all I said was I wanted to order in Thai food and you flipped out about a pub and football and God knows what else. Then you called me an idiot and jumped on top of me. Not that I’m complaining, but what the Hell is up with you?”

  She rolled over to face me, tears welling in her eyes. Unexpected.

  “Shaw, do you love me, like really love me?”

  Really unexpected.

  She didn’t let me answer.

  “No, wait don’t answer that. I need to tell you something. Something you probably aren’t going to like,” she whimpered.

  Lily propped herself against the headboard, wrapped my white sheets tight around her smooth, bare skin. She took down her wall and finally accepted vulnerability.

  She proceeded to tell me a detailed account of duplicity. In the midst of explaining why her trust in men was shot, the levies broke and her jade pools spilled. She cried and I held her while she finished telling me the story.

  There was a man she dated at the college down South. He never hit her, but at times she thought he had it in him to. His cruelty was mental, in the form of insults and degrading comments due to, what I gathered to be his own insecurities. She fell into a pattern of loving him and hating him, until it became so blurred that she couldn’t tell the difference. They went on for months. She was miserable, she told him so and he exploded. He refused to leave her alone and refused to let her go. He would get drunk and call her to say disgusting insults, so she got a new cell phone. He cornered her in bars and pulled a Jekyll and Hyde, at one moment beg for forgiveness and suddenly snap into a jealous rant. The last time they spoke was a few nights before I had met her, right when Lily moved to Providence. One of her friend’s fathers passed away unexpectedly and Lily was consoling her via.

  The guy called persistently, leaving voicemails saying he knew Lily was, “fucking her way up the East Coast.” He threatened her physically from a thousand miles away. When those threats went unanswered he found other means of assault.

  Unless Lily called him back, he promised, he would call her friend’s widowed mother and tell her what a whore her daughter was. He left another message saying the girl’s father died because he was ashamed his daughter and her friends were sluts. Lily’s friend left Providence a few weeks later. Instead of telling the school or the police, Lily changed her phone number again, cut ties with anyone at her former college and tried to forget about the betrayal and heartbreak. Ultimately, she said, she found a refuge in Providence. She found new friends—Lindsey and Emily lived on the same dorm building floor as Lily and her friend. They were there the night this all went down. They comforted Lily even while she tried to console her friend. When the friend left, Lindsey and Emily invited Lily into their world. Finally, Lily said, she found some people she could rely on. I was the one she trusted most.

  The cuts the guy left on her heart were deep and still inexplicably fresh. As she lay there telling me the story, I couldn’t help but think her nickname for me was more than just because I prevented her from smacking her head on the concrete a year before.

  I should have been happy she confided this all in me. I thought I would be ecstatic hearing Lily tell me that she had real feelings for me, that she trusted me.

  But instead, as I stared at her naked body, defenseless and fragile, uneasiness melted through my stomach. Was she projecting onto me a man that I doubted I could live up to? In comparison, I was Superman to this guy’s Lex Luther. But was I? I couldn’t fly.

  Maybe I got queasy because instead of having dinner we had wild sex, or maybe it was because I suddenly realized I might never be who Lily expected me to be.

  The wall in my head grew brick by brick that night. A mental construction team erected it slowly but with craft and strength.

  We never talked about the guy down south again. But our roles switched in the following weeks. I avoided her. I started to feel like I wasn’t good enough for her, like she needed a real hero to carry her and erase the scars of her past.

  It didn’t help that Duncan heard of my relationship with Lily and whether through boredom or pure envy he decided to try and exacerbate my insecurities. He wanted another shot at killing my love life. But a rumor wouldn’t work on a close-knit college campus. Everyone already knew everyone else’s business.

  No, he’d have to try other tactics. A different poison to kill this new flower.

  A few times he threw barbs at us if he saw us walking together. Meaningless insults. He convinced a few of his buddies to hit on Lily at a party to incite jealousy. I laughed when she rejected, and then loudly insulted the size of their manhood in front of a large gathering of college girls.

  But on Halloween he hit a chink.

  He approached me at a costume party. He was wearing a Prohibition-era gangster suit and perspiring profusely.

  “Hey, look at Superman over there hittin’ on your girl,” he slurred and pointed a short, stubby finger across the room at guy in a blue suit and red cape who was leaning over Lily. She wore a skimpy Bo Peep outfit.

  It didn’t bother me. I ignored Duncan.

  “I bet she could handle him,” he said.

  “I suggest you walk away, Duncan.”

  “Or what, you gonna ask Superman to save you from me? It’d show your girl what kind of pussy you are.”

  He stood up on his tiptoes and got uncomfortably close to my face. I tried again to ignore him.

  “Hah, you know she’s too good for you, right?” he whispered. “Not to mention sh
e’s getting it good everywhere else.”

  My eyebrows raised and gave me away. He peaked my attention and he noticed it.

  “Yea, you didn’t know? About the hockey team in high school, or that guy she used to fuck for fun down at her redneck college? It’s amazing what you learn from banging Lily’s drunk friends.”

  I should have hit him then. Or head butted him; it was the right setting and position.

  Instead I pushed him out of my way and left the party. I knew he was full of shit but a queasy feeling reinforced my preexisting inadequacies. Lily didn’t come back to my room that night.

  After Halloween, Lily and I didn’t sleep together for about a month. I adored her but I put her back up on, what I thought, was an almost unattainable pedestal. Duncan’s slights to her character and chastity only built her up more in my eyes. She became more angelic. But it still had the effect he was going for: it created a small, nagging tear between Lily and me.

  Chapter 7

  I wrestled with the idea of not talking to Lily anymore. Duncan would have been the cause of its execution, and that idea enraged me. When I told Shoddy what I was mulling, he punched me square on the shoulder. That’s when I knew Duncan had something right: I was being a pussy.

  At the end of November the college always threw a formal ball for the junior class to celebrate the distribution of the class rings. They called it Junior Ring Weekend or JRW. Fundraiser money was used to rent out the nicest hotel downtown and provide dinner and dancing for the entire junior class. It was a college prom. It was meant to be a happy memory.

  It took me a few weeks to ask Lily to be my date but eventually I realized I was not the only person interested in her. With Shoddy’s physical abuse and my own desire for romantic connection, I repressed the inadequacies bubbling underneath.

  Lily and I both hinted at the JRW thing on several occasions in the weeks prior to the event. Neither one would come out and ask the other; it was all a juvenile and coy game of politicking. Other parties got involved, lobbying occurred on both sides. I almost expected Shoddy to start erecting lawn signs with, “Shaw/Lily for JRW” splashed in red, white and blue.