by Russell Moon
So I am just this. Neither outside nor in. Just here, in a nether place. My natural place, and this suits me fine. I put a hand to my brow, and it is like my forehead is a melting Fudgesicle. I grab a napkin, walk to the circular Heineken mirror by the bar.
There he is again. Damn.
My green eye catches his green one, my gray his gray. The hand with the napkin sticks, welded to the cheek. My backbone trills, as I hang suspended in just that awful clammy moment between heating up and cooling down.
Okay, it’s me, my reflection, but not me, not mine. It’s off, it’s altered, and it’s changing, like it has been for the past months, since seventeen. It shakes me up anew, every time.
But it’s better-looking than I thought I was, I’ll say that. It has a certain something I never had before, undoubtedly.
This better not be puberty again, or I’ll kill myself.
I am slapped on the back. I turn.
“Hey, ahhh…,” Doone says, pointing at me and snapping his fingers repeatedly.
“Marcus,” I say.
“Sorry. Marcus, you having a good time? Can I get you something? A beer.” He peers down into my paper cup, then runs off as if he has seen some atrocity down there. Then he is back with a new, frosty frothy one. Doone is a good host, a happy host.
“Thank you,” I say. “And yes, I am having—”
“Cool, Mark. You keep it up,” he says, then dashes off. He has a lot of people to be nice to.
I get a few hellos, a few heys, a few yos. The conversations don’t go anywhere, and neither do I, for about an hour. I lean against the wall, listening to the music. I shuffle off to get the occasional beer, a glimpse out the doors over the sparkly river, a vain stretch to catch a breeze that’s just not coming. Then I return to my spot, to wait.
Where is Jules? My Jules. My only. I would not be here if it were not for Jules, and I won’t be much longer if she does not show. I would be just as happy, Jules aside, to be curled up in front of a good Brainwave right about now, Chuck at my feet and Eleanor on the other side of the wall, all of us coiling up and storing energy for what we have to do tomorrow.
“Dude,” somebody says, slapping me across the stomach and passing along on his way.
I wish I had brought Chuck.
It’s almost like the pull of a tide, the way a portion of the crowd is suddenly drawn to the front door as Jules makes her way through. Jules. What is she doing with me? That’s me saying that now, but if you looked closely I am sure you could read it on every other pair of lips. It is loyalty, I think with great fear as I watch Jules’s slender hands push outward through a sea of shoulders to make her way. She is loyal to me because of our time together, time when we were little amoebas splashing in our own little puddle, even now that one of us has evolved into a higher life form and one has remained me.
She is wearing a floor-length sarong thing of some gauzy turquoise flowered material, and an almost-see-through cottony white top. There is a hippie aspect to her, not in the haphazard way but the serious way they give you in the style section of the Sunday newspaper where it has taken a team of hundreds to get it that way. Only that isn’t necessary here. She needs no help. She needs nothing. She is her own team.
But everyone wants to play for her.
The entire room swishes and sways with the wave of that skirt. Though the beer may be part of the swaying because the tables and striped wallpaper are doing it too. She made that skirt. My mother bought me my chinos and baby-blue T-shirt with a pocket.
“Hello, good-bye,” she says right into my sorry, sorry ear. She kisses me on the neck.
I shudder, like a million tiny clawed hands are pulling at me, from my neck to my knees. Not good-bye. Not yet. I’m not steadied for good-bye yet.
“Whoa.” Jules grabs both my arms. “Are you okay?”
I am not sure. I blacked out for an instant, and the blackness then broke as if it were a lacquered sheet of glass.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I slipped.”
“You didn’t slip. You weren’t even walking. Have you had, like, a ton to drink?”
“No,” I say. I take a breath. “Love you, Jules.”
“See,” she says. “That’s drink right there.”
“Where were you? I’ve been waiting a long time. Missed you.”
“You could mingle, you know, Marcus. It is a party. You could make friends, and then tell them you’re leaving tomorrow.”
Doone comes by, gives Jules a warm, knowing smile, which she returns. He hands me a beer, which she takes away.
“What was that?” I ask.
“What was what?” she asks before taking a sip of what should be my beer.
“That, with him? That was like, really familiar there, Jules.”
She sighs loudly. “It’s what people do, Marcus. It’s called being friendly. It’s called socializing. And you listen to me, you better start learning right now. I mean it, Marcus, I’m worried about you. You know, when I’m not…when we’re not…”
All I can do is shake my head at her. I raise my hand to cover her mouth with two fingers resting as lightly on her lips as a butterfly on honeysuckle. Jules’s scent is honeysuckle. But she was already done talking. She didn’t want to finish the thought any more than I wanted her to, I know, and I only touched her lips for the touching.
I drop my hand, lean forward, and press my forehead to hers, closing my eyes.
“You’ll do a lot more socializing when I’m gone,” I say sadly, eyes closing ever tighter. “It’ll be good for you, my leaving. It’ll set you free.”
Her turn. This is why we can never resolve anything. “Shhh,” she says, and puts her hand to my lips. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s go upstairs. There’s an available private space. In the attic.”
My eyes spring open like window shades. “How do you know that?”
She giggles. Jules tends not to take serious matters seriously enough. Altogether too in control is her problem. If she could be more flustered, if she could be more fractured and scattered…then maybe I could permit myself to love her full on, guilt free. “I was invited,” she says.
“You were?” I start scanning the crowd for suspects. They are all suspects.
She takes my face in her hands, refocuses me on her. “It doesn’t matter, Marcus. We agreed to go. So let’s.”
Ouch. That is it. That is what I do not want to do, despite the inevitability of it. “I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can let you go.”
“You’re not letting me go. I’m letting you go, remember?”
It has become like having a twisted back, and no matter how you sit or stand or lie down, you can’t escape the pain. The fact of tomorrow won’t let go, no matter what Jules and I do tonight.
“It was Doone, right?” I say.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says.
“DooneDooneDoone,” I intone, like a mad thing, like an angry toddler.
Just then there is a crash, an extended rumble, a scream that exceeds even the boom of the music. I turn to catch the end of a spectacular fall, our host coming to a raucous banging halt at the foot of the stairs.
He jumps to his feet, bellowing. “Who put the freakin’ telephone table at the top of the stairs? Huh? Who’s the funny guy who put the telephone table…”
I’m calmer all of a sudden.
“Let’s take a walk,” I say in Jules’s ear.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she says.
I shake my head.
She growls. “Our last night. Is this it, Marcus? Is it not to be?”
I take her hand and start for the sliding doors. “It is to be. But it is not to be in here. It is to be out there.” I point as we head out past the party folk, toward the river, to the woods beyond.
I pause at the keg and pull two beers on the way out.
“Love ya, Jules,” I say, handing her her cup.
“We’ll see,” she says.
We have left the party house behind, then th
e party outdoors, then the river with high-school heroes splashing and drinking and dancing and smoking magically all at once. The music stays with us, the silly squeals and shouts and animal groans that sound, from a distance, almost nice.
“I have something I want to show you, Jules,” I say, putting my arm around her shoulder and making an effort to fall into her step.
“Well,” she says, “that is a romantic way of putting it.” She shakes my arm off.
“No,” I moan, “I don’t mean that. I mean, I do want to show you that, too…but, no, I don’t want you to look at it….”
She smiles her toothy Jules smile. Too toothy actually, like she could be laughing at you all the time if you didn’t know better.
I put my arm back over her and squeeze hard and serious, like I want to morph us into one shared body strolling the edge of the whispering river.
I feel a shock. It runs up that arm, the Jules arm, and comes to a stop with a bang in my rib cage. I stop walking.
“What?” she asks.
“I got, like, a shock,” I say.
“Static electricity,” she suggests.
I shake my head. “It felt like…I was painting the garage once and contacted an ungrounded floodlight. Buzzed my whole arm and gave me a chest pain. It was like that.”
Jules looks concerned. I can feel her slightly withdrawing from my hold. This makes my heart hurt worse.
“My uncle describes his heart attack like that, Marcus,” she says.
I pull her to me as tight as I can, and start us walking again. “Don’t be crazy,” I say. “It was just a little thing. It’s gone now.”
I’m not lying exactly. It was gone. But now it is back. Then gone again. Then back. For as long as I hold on to Jules this sensation pulsates, like someone is stalking me with a cattle prod.
To hell with them. I am not letting go.
“No heart attack then?” she asks gently.
“No,” I say. “Love.”
She nods. “Nerves,” she corrects.
This is where I would normally let the matter go. This is where I can’t anymore.
“No, Jules,” I say. “This was my mistake, the letting-go thing. This is what changed, when I didn’t notice. I don’t love you like, the playground, you’ll be a nice memory, thanks for being my friend, see you around, how’s about a charity bonk for the road type of thing. I love you. As it turns out.”
She stops short. I’ve really done it now. She won’t even walk with me.
She turns to face me. Then she scowls.
“Well, as it turns out…,” she says, and gently head-butts me.
We remain stuck, our foreheads pressed together as if pasted that way.
“This wasn’t supposed to be it,” she says.
“I know. It wasn’t it. It changed.”
“Yes, it did.”
“When did it change, Jules?”
“I don’t know. A few months ago.”
Bingo. I know now how real it is, because she is dead right. It changed in the last few months. Along with everything else.
But what does it matter?
“I’m not in your league, Jules. We both know it. You’ll do better.”
She takes a step back, then stamps on my toes. Her old attention-getter.
“I don’t…”
“Would you wake up, Marcus? Have you even looked in the mirror lately?
“You’re not the weedy little guy anymore. You’ve really—”
“Weedy?”
Actually I am not as surprised as I sound.
“Marcus,” she says warmly, more warm than warmly even, as she pulls me by the hand, “you may not have noticed, but you have arrived. I always loved you, but lately I crave you.”
Holy smokes, is all I can say. And I think I say it. “Holy smokes, Jules.” Yes, there. Jules craves me. We’re craving each other.
“What do we do about this now?” she asks.
“Now? I think now is pretty self-explanatory. We have now covered.”
“So what about after now?” She even manages, for once, to sound unsure, to sound hopeful and nervous. If it’s a gift, it’s a lovely gift. If it’s authentic, it’s even better.
“I hadn’t planned on an after now. I’d planned on good-bye.”
“Think maybe we should dump that plan and try a new one?”
“Want to, Jules?”
“Want to, Marcus.”
Holy smokes. Anything’s possible. I now know anything’s possible.
We walk along, getting closer, hugging all the way, through waves of confusion and joy and crippling jolts of real, physical pain. At least that’s what I’m walking through. The sounds behind us shrink, the woods ahead grow. I have never taken Jules to my woods, even though they are practically my backyard. Amazing, even to me, but true. Why should I have never taken my one true only to my one true place? I don’t know. Why didn’t we ever have sex? Why didn’t I ever ask her the simple and easy “will you be mine” kind of a thing rather than assuming she would never be? I don’t know. Nobody knows what that barrier has been between me and Jules, between me and me, but I guess those barriers are falling, right now.
Now we’re better, we’re righted, and we’re not going to let us ever slip away again, because I have my head on straight, finally.
For about a minute.
“We have to stop at my house,” I blurt out.
“What?”
“My house. Come on, it’s only a minute out of the way.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Condoms! I have to get condoms.”
“I have them,” she says calmly. “You don’t think I was going to leave it up to—”
“Sleeping bag. I need to get my sleeping bag. You know, pine needles. And snakes. You know how I hate snakes. I’ll be petrified the whole time, you know that.”
Jules sighs. “Yes, Marcus, I know all about your snake problem.”
“And you know the woods here. Teeming. Even says it on the city limits sign, Port Caledonia, Snake Capital of the—”
“Promise me this is your last diversion,” she says.
“My last, I swear.” I lean forward and kiss Jules madly, and as I do, a thunderbolt cracks in my skull. I see a look of fright in her eyes as they catch mine.
“What?” she asks, disengaging.
“Love, again,” I say, and lead her by the hand toward my house.
I don’t know why I have to have him with me, but I know I do. I’m no kinkster or anything, like I want to do sexual stuff in front of my dog, but…I don’t even know what. If I tried to explain it to Jules, I fear, I would seriously test our newly proclaimed bond.
Have I ever gone into the woods without him?
I scurry into the house, leaving Jules sitting on the steps, basking in thick misty moonlight.
“Hey, Ben; hey, Eleanor,” I say as I pass their door.
“What are you doing home so soon?” she asks.
I am answering too quickly, too directly. “Party was boring. Too hot. Going for a walk with Jules instead.”
By the time I have gone into my room, into the closet, into the packed box of my stuff and pulled out the sleeping bag, Eleanor and Chuck are standing in my doorway, faces demanding a little more elaboration.
“Going for a walk, Mom,” I say, with a helpless shrug.
“Don’t call me Mom at a time like this.”
Chuck passes a loud blast of gas. Go, Chuck.
“It’s just a walk, Eleanor.”
“With your sleeping bag?”
I look at the roll under my arm.
“Just for sitting under the stars,” I say, and with every word I am curling inward, wanting to hide in the bag. “For protection. Pine needles. And you know about all the snakes—”
“I should…I should stop you, Marcus. I want to say you cannot go.”
It may sound like I am supposed to supply a response of some kind in there. Not so. Eleanor offers me her face. I stand readi
ng my mother’s face. Reading the small flickers that register dead fathers and quirky anthropologist mothers and decisions made and not made because the origins of humankind are one thing but the here and now and sinew and heartbeat is another entirely. Forehead creases replay a scabby boy making six hundred lonely circuits of the rotary, and a face behind the glass watching, remote and loving, proud and powerless. She knows exactly how many friends and lovers I have had, as I know all of hers. A bountiful harvest it has not been.
We do not take things away from one another. She wants me to make the decision. I half want her to make it.
“You are smart, aren’t you, Marcus? You don’t make foolish decisions, do you?”
They are not questions really, but statements. Reassurances.
“I will be careful,” I say.
She turns her back to me, pauses, then starts her retreat to her computer.
“Be careful,” she says, as if it were her idea.
“I will be careful,” I promise.
Eleanor is typing about three hundred words per minute as I pass her door. Eleanor is not a fast typist.
I step out onto the porch, and Jules is standing there, trying to be patient. “I was afraid you crawled up to hide in the attic or something,” she says, slapping me on the arm playfully. Then she spies Chuck, popping out from behind my legs. He has that goofy breathy face on, like dogs do when they are hanging their head out the car window.
She slaps my arm again. Not playfully.
“He is not coming with us. Marcus—”
“Oh, come on, what harm could he—”
“Marcus,” she snaps, with finality.
I stand rigid. There will be no Jules. There will be no proper good-bye, no fitting conclusion to our love story that deserves this and so much more, if I do not do the right thing here. I am terrified to go without him, though I know how insane that is.
“Come on, Chuck,” Eleanor calls from behind the screen door.
Jules has a rare moment of bashfulness. “Hello, Eleanor,” she says, taking my hand.
“Hello, Jules,” Eleanor says warmly, quietly.
Chuck has taken advantage of the break to start slinking toward me again. Eleanor pushes the screen door open, sniffs. “Chucky,” she says firmly. He hates that name.