Punk and Zen

by JD Glass

  “Seize the night—what, is that like your motto or something? Are you going to melt in the sun?” she joked.

  “Hey, it’s just because I work ABC nights.” I laughed. “It’s the only time I’ve got.”

  “Oh, so that’s it,” Fran said. She dropped her arm from mine and stopped to look at me directly. “I thought maybe, you know, the black clothes, pale face, disappearing for a couple of years and then reappearing as this gorgeous—”

  I stopped her right there. “Okay, okay, enough,” I shushed, and placed two gentle fingers on her lips. My breath puffed out in the chill air, and her eyes locked into mine.

  That’s funny, I thought. The last time we’d seen each other, she’d been taller than me. Not by much though, true, but now, I was taller. Okay, so it wasn’t a huge height difference, but still…

  The caramel of her eyes seemed to warm, glowing under the streetlight with a honey-clear intensity, and I enjoyed the fact that she was examining me with the same emotion in her eyes.

  I brought my hands down to rest by my sides as the air seemed to mass and warm around us, and the tiny smile I could feel playing around the edge of my lips was mirrored by the one that bordered the corner of hers.

  “You don’t know how good it is to see you,” Fran said softly, “or how unbelievable.” She shook her head lightly as if to wave away the disbelief.

  The air thickened around us, and the night took on a red glow, the one that always means…

  “Snow,” I said quietly as I carefully wiped a few flakes from her hair. Still she stared at me with that look of wonder.

  “Huh?” she asked softly, breath misting in front of what could only be described as perfectly kissable lips.

  I sighed softly with a feeling I recognized as regret. Of course, it figured that I had made that vow of celibacy, including the whole I-love-youthing, before even kissing someone, because I’d always had a crush on her anyway. We’d even kinda sorta quasi-dated in high school, although we’d called it “wanna hang out” with a lot of unresolved tension. But still I’d made that promise, because otherwise I would have already—

  Well, if you ask her, Fran will plead the fifth—she is a lawyer, after all—(and she always smiles when she does). I don’t know exactly who started it, but I can say for certain that her ever-perfect smile, matching teeth, and gorgeous lips were just a hint of the promise that her kiss held—soft, warm, and full of sweet affection. I have to admit there was something infinitely soothing in the press of her lips on mine, and just as my hands began to come up of their own accord to bring her even closer, I realized two things: I wasn’t supposed to do that, and Fran and Samantha had actually, officially, dated in high school.

  The realization was like coming to ABC after being doused with cold water, and perhaps she had thought along the same lines, because we broke apart mutually.

  I stared at her—dazed, shocked, a little embarrassed. “I…um, I’m…” I tried, lamely. I settled for one of my crooked grins.

  This time Fran placed shushing fingers against my lips. “I always wanted to do that.” She smiled impishly at me.

  I could feel my eyes widen in surprise as I thought about her words. It took me absolutely no time at all to process them and realize, yeah, me too.

  “You know what?” I grinned back at her.

  “What?” she asked, as the snow lay like crystals in her hair.

  “Me, too.”

  Fran tossed her head back and laughed, a light, pure sound in a world rapidly turning white, and I joined her.

  “So,” I asked as I took off my scarf, “did it fulfill your expectations?” I gave it a good shake and brought it over her head and around her shoulders.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked as I brushed her hair lightly with my fingertips under the cloth.

  “Keeping you warm. It’s snowing,” I explained, then tucked the ends into the V of her peacoat, taking a moment to button an anchor-engraved button.

  “There. So…” I paused and stepped back to admire my handiwork.

  “So…what?” Her gaze was frankly evaluating.

  “Did it fulfill your expectations?” Uh-oh, I thought as I watched her face; I was going to stop being quite so cavalier with my questions. That smile became slightly shy, and unless it was a shadow from the scarf, a faint blush rose in her cheeks.

  “Well, let’s just say,” she began, as she watched the flakes hit the sidewalk, “that I’m glad it happened.” She glanced up at me as those last few words emerged, and there was only one way to describe the look in her eyes: smokin’.

  “C’mon,” she said, brushing the flakes from my head and breaking us from the strange envelope we seemed to be caught up in, “let’s get going.”

  I ran a quick hand through my hair—hey, snow or no, it’s got to look good—and allowed her to take my arm.

  “What’s your plan?” I asked as we waited at an intersection for the light to change.

  “Well,” Fran paused a moment for breath, “we grab a cab back to my place. I’ll make something quick, you take a nap, and I’ll send you back to the island later today in a car, whattaya say?” she concluded as we reached the next corner.

  I considered. “How about,” I counteroffered, “we walk and try to catch a cab on the way.” I glanced at the obviously taxi-empty streets. Don’t ask why, but it’s the unwritten Manhattan rule: when the first drop of moisture hits the ground, all forms of public transportation—especially taxicabs—disappear. Come to think of it, that rule applies to the rest of the city, too. Damn.

  “Okay…and?” she prompted.

  “We pick something up on the way.”

  “Okay—”

  “And I’ll leave after that,” I concluded.

  Fran stopped suddenly and whirled to face me.

  “Nina, no way.”

  I let my expression ask why.

  “It’s late, it’s snowing like hell, and you’ve got to be exhausted.”

  I opened my mouth to protest—I didn’t want to impose on her hospitality—and I certainly didn’t want to give her the wrong idea after that kiss. Not that I didn’t, I mean, not that there wasn’t—ah, never mind. I didn’t know what was in her head, and I didn’t want to find out that Fran was like everyone else—all about the fuck. It was a kiss, just a kiss, and as nice and as warm and as sweet as it was (okay, and sensual too, she absolutely knew how to kiss well), it wasn’t “I love you.” I might have made a misstep, but I wasn’t going to make another, I hoped.

  I began to explain about not imposing or some such, but Fran waved my words away, sending eddies of snow clouds around her.

  “I haven’t seen you in four years, thought you were dead, and now that I know you’re alive and well, how do you think I’d feel if I let you leave to freeze to death or get into some sort of accident during a blizzard?” she cajoled with a smile.

  I laughed and looked up, blinking away the flakes that fell into my eyes. She was right, though, and if it wasn’t exactly a blizzard yet, it was snowing hard enough to be its younger sibling.

  I let my breath out in a huff. “Fair enough,” I gave in with a smile of ABC my own, “you win.”

  Fran slipped her arm into mine. “Well, of course I do.” She laughed as she rubbed my forearm briskly.

  We found a bodega (that’s Spanish for “deli”) somewhere on Avenue A and bought the same stuff everyone buys when it snows: milk, bread, and eggs. I don’t know why. I mean, what’s everyone doing, making French toast? I took the bag in one hand and her hand in the other.

  We didn’t really speak as we walked; we just kicked up the snow and pointed out different items that looked surreal and magical in the falling white.

  As we approached her block, I grew uneasy. I mean, I knew this block, I knew the building we were approaching. Nah, couldn’t be, I thought. What are the odds, right? But that funky sense persisted, and judging from how cool it suddenly got, I think the blood had drained out of my face and was rapidly de
scending into my feet.

  We stopped by the steps that led to her apartment, and I let go of her hand so she could dig for her keys.

  “Hey, Fran?” I asked as the snow blew around us. It was really starting to come down.

  “Yeah?” she responded distractedly. “I can’t believe I can’t find them!” she complained, mostly to herself, her focus on searching her pockets.

  “You wouldn’t, um, happen to have had a neighbor named Candace, would you?” I asked as casually as I could.

  “Ah, got you!” she exclaimed triumphantly, holding her keys out so I could see them. “I’m sorry—what did you say?”

  I put the bag down to give my hands a break and tried my best to nonchalantly shove them into my coat pockets. “I was just, uh…you have a neighbor named Candace?”

  Fran whirled so quickly to face me I only had a moment to see the shock in her eyes before it changed to alarm as she lost her footing in the fresh snow.

  Her arms flew up, the keys went wide, and I rushed forward to catch her before gravity did. It got us both, and she landed on top of me with a solid, breathless “whump” as her body pushed my ribs one way and the slippery sidewalk another.

  I lay there a moment and took a deep breath, then wiggled my fingers and toes. Everything was operational; therefore, I was fine. I blinked the snow out of my eyes and opened them to first find her curls sliding over my cheeks, and as I gazed past her chin, I found her lips, grinning widely. I smiled back ruefully. So much for my rescue attempt.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  ABC

  “You’re welcome.”

  We studied each other as the snow continued to fall, thick and heavy, and Fran wiped some off my face, her thumb lingering against my chin.

  “Are you okay?” I asked finally. She’d fallen, after all, and even if we seemed to be sitting rather comfortably, it was still possible that she could have injured something.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. In fact I—oh shit!” she exclaimed, and sat up with a panicked expression, looking about her wildly. The movement put her solidly and squarely on my groin, sending a bolt from my buddy to my brain, which made me jump in return. I swallowed the sensation and sat up on my elbows.

  “Problem?” I asked mildly, arching a brow.

  “My keys! I dropped my keys!”

  “I’ll help you find them. I think I know where they fell,” I offered. I did have an idea, really. I’d seen them fly, and if I wasn’t mistaken, they were probably behind the bushes that lined the front of the building.

  “Sure, thanks,” Fran agreed. All of a sudden, she seemed to realize exactly the way we were sitting.

  She looked down to see just how we were joined and bit her lip. “Uh, sorry,” she said finally, giving me a sheepish look. “Are you okay?”

  I let it go for a heartbeat, then gave her back a slow grin. “Never better,” I drawled. “Do you think you’ll need a hand getting up?”

  “Oh. Ah, no, I’m fine.” She scrambled a moment in the snow before she stood, but, finally, she regained her feet.

  “Let me help you,” she offered when she was steady, and extended a hand.

  As soon as I was on my feet, I brushed the snow off. But, man, was it cold to do barehanded!

  “Let’s find your keys,” I suggested, and we moved in the direction I indicated. We searched through the dried brush together—Fran got the front, I got the back.

  “So…did you say Candace?” she asked casually as we searched.

  I was so sure I’d seen her keys fly over to this exact spot—between the dead brush and the wall where the snow didn’t reach, but neither did the light. I felt my way along carefully—I didn’t want to cut myself on a stray piece of glass or get bitten by whatever passed for local fauna and die of ABC rabies. Yuck.

  “Yeah,” I answered Fran, who hovered somewhere behind me, “is she a neighbor of yours?”

  Just scant inches beyond my fingertips some streetlight broke through the bracken, and I thought I saw a gleam. That had to be it!

  “British?”

  “Huh?” I asked back, not certain of what she’d said as I inspected what I’d found. A pull tab from a can—damn. I discarded it and followed that gleam before me. That just had to be it.

  “Was she a Brit, you know, from the UK?” she repeated and clarified.

  Almost, almost, just another…there. I snagged the loop with my fingertip, hauled back, and was rewarded with a jingle that could mean only one thing.

  “Got ’em!” I announced triumphantly, and passed the keys behind me to her. Still bent double, I tried to carefully back out; I didn’t want to rip my coat or my face on a branch.

  “Yeah, she’s English,” I said as I crawled. “I take it you know her?” I was almost out, just a little farther now and…

  “Know her?” Fran echoed. “She sublet my apartment this summer. She’s Sam’s girlfriend.”

  Holy shit! Shocked, alarmed, and otherwise totally taken aback, I stood straight up, slammed my head into the brick window ledge above me, and went straight back down. I saw stars, I saw God, I think I spoke a foreign language as adrenaline beat up through me and the pain in my head floored me.

  “Ow,” I muttered, scowling and rubbing my head. That fucking hurt.

  “Are you all right? Are you okay?” Fran scrambled through the branches to ask.

  I leaned my back against the building and rubbed my head some more. “I’m fine, I’ll live,” I told her, still scowling.

  “Are you sure you didn’t hurt anything?” she asked again, and reached down to help me up.

  “My ego,” I answered with a self-deprecating smile as I took her hand. “I think I broke it.” This time I stood and managed not to injure myself.

  “Looks fine from here, Raze,” she smiled at me broadly, using my old nickname from swim team—Razor. “And besides,” she continued, “you’re safe with me.”

  “I think I knew that.” I smiled back genuinely and brushed myself off as best I could as I squeezed out of the space between the steps and the damn dead twig collection. I stopped a moment to pick up the snow-covered bag and cautiously walked up the steps.

  The snow had picked up volume and momentum, coming down hard and fast enough to have already covered the area we’d fallen onto in a fresh coating of white and fill up Fran’s original footsteps.

  Fran unlocked the door, and as it swung open into that very familiar corridor, my brain cleared enough to ask, “Did you say Candace was Samantha’s girlfriend?” My mouth was dry as those words came out.

  “Well, you know,” she explained as she went to her mailbox, “it’s one of those on-again, off-again sort of things. How do you know Candace?” she asked, giving me a quick and curious look, before she went back to sorting through her envelopes.

  My guts froze. I was going to hell, I knew it. I was absolutely, positively going to hell, because I had committed the worst sin I could possibly think of—I’d slept with my best friend’s girlfriend. Dammit, dammit, double damn. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen each other in years, didn’t matter that I hadn’t known because Candace had told me her ex was named Annie—and definitely an ex.

  The facts remained the facts—did I sleep with her? Okay, all right, we didn’t sleep. So did I have sex with her? Forget all those who-touches-who equivocations, because I knew how she liked her nipples sucked and how she loved me in leather. I had not only a mental picture, but a visceral one of the taste, the touch, the scent, and the gorgeous fit of her pussy and how she loved it best when I fucked her slowly and very deeply until I wanted and she needed to come, so I’d bury myself inside her tightening cunt until she was screaming my name and her pussy flooding my hand, and we’d relax a few moments while her cunt pulsed slowly around my buried fingers—Candace called them thankyou kisses—until I gently withdrew. And we’d start again.

  How did I know Candace? Cunt thump surrender, to borrow a phrase; that’s how I knew her.

  “Oh, uh
, we hung out over the summer a bit,” I answered instead. It’s not that I wanted to lie; it’s just that, well, I’d really liked Candace, and it’s just not my thing to kiss and tell—ever.

  “The only place Candace really mentioned going to was Staten Island,” Fran said conversationally as we walked down the hall toward her apartment. Snow dripped in gray and muddy bunches off the bag and my coat. “She said she wanted to know about Samantha’s hometown.”

  I swallowed nervously as she keyed the lock. God, I knew that door and how strong it was—I’d fucked Candace mercilessly against it.

  “That’s cool,” I answered noncommittally.

  Fran swung the door open and flicked the light switch. “Yeah, I guess,” she responded with a shrug. “The only thing,” she said as she reached down to unlace her boots, “is that she met someone,” she placed the first boot on a nearby mat and reached for the next, “and I know she and Sam have an arrangement, their understanding, but,” and she got the other one off, “it made me a bit uncomfortable, you know?”

  “Hmph,” I responded blankly. This had the potential to get Mama-don’t-know-ya ugly, and I didn’t have the first clue as to what to do about it.

  “Boots here, give me your coat,” Fran indicated with a sweep of her arms.

  Wordlessly, I took off my coat and handed it to her, then began to carefully slide off one boot.

  “Yeah,” she continued as I eased my foot out, “she said it was the DJ at the Red Spot—you go there?” She moved into the kitchen with our coats.

  “I used to work there,” I called back as I eased off the other boot.

  “Oh, hey, then you must know who it is,” Fran called back from the kitchen. “Is she as hot and wild as Candace said? You know, her hair up in a sort of half Mohawk and with what Candace called her Elvis smile?”

  My hair was no longer sopping wet, and though I hadn’t worn it like that in a while, I maintained the cut, and there was still some gel left in my hair from earlier. Even though it had been some time, I’d done it so often for so long that I set it with one hand as I walked to the kitchen and carried the shopping bag in the other. I could feel that wave settle perfectly into place.