Bathwater Blues: A Novel

by Abe Moss

  Joanna sat next to Bud with Meatball in her lap. She fed him small chunks of her hotdog. It made Bud nauseous, the way the small dog licked at her fingers and greedily peered up at her for more. He felt sick in general. He had little appetite. He turned his hotdog over and over in the fire until it started to burn and Nuala gave him a kind warning to remove it. His body ached. No amount of rolling his neck or shrugging his shoulders would remove the tension there.

  “How are you feeling?” Nuala whispered next to him, leaning close.

  “I’m feeling okay.”

  “Are you?”

  He nodded.

  She leaned in again and he felt her breath against his ear.

  “You don’t seem okay to me. You seem distracted.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  She gave a gentle touch on his shoulder and didn’t bother him again.

  ✽✽✽

  Bud managed to fall asleep rather quickly that night, which would have seemed to him a blessing had he been able to hold onto it. He awoke at the soft shaking of his shoulder.

  “Hmmm?”

  He opened his eyes. A figure bent over him in the dark. They bent closer and their cheek brushed against his as they spoke quietly in his ear.

  “I need to show you something.”

  It was Lyle.

  “What?”

  “Come with me.”

  Bud sat up in bed.

  “What is it?”

  “Come on.”

  “Just tell me what it is. I’m not getting out of bed.”

  Lyle paused. “Look, I’m sorry about how I’ve been lately. I haven’t been feeling right. But there’s something I want you to see. It’s important.”

  After a moment of drowsy consideration, Bud climbed out of bed.

  “What is it?”

  “Follow me.”

  Lyle moved ahead in the dark and Bud reluctantly followed him into the hallway. When they came to the doorway to the foyer, Bud peered down the other half of the hall to see Joanna’s and Addie’s doors were shut. He stopped.

  “What are you showing me?”

  Lyle turned, very close, nearly chest to chest, and suddenly his hand slipped into Bud’s.

  “Trust me.”

  He led him through the foyer by the hand, his fingers cold against Bud’s, until they came to the front door. He opened it and pale moonlight streaked inside like white paint through the shadows, and Lyle’s face glowed as he looked over his shoulder, an odd smile on his lips. Nevertheless, Bud followed him outside onto the porch. From there they traced the house’s edge, around its corner, and into its shadow on the other side.

  “Seriously, what—”

  Lyle pushed Bud up against the side of the house very quietly and suddenly they were chest to chest. His hands pressed into Bud’s sides, and his mouth breathed warmth against his neck.

  “Lyle… what are you doing…”

  “Sshhhh…”

  He felt his teeth against his ear. His hands moved over Bud’s stomach, past his waist, over his crotch. He groped him. Caught in a stasis of confusion, Bud’s hands hung at his sides, touching nothing, and his rigid body rippled with shivers. All he could think about was Addie, sleeping inside.

  This can’t be happening. He’s gone insane.

  “Lyle, stop.”

  Lyle groped a little harder.

  “Don’t you want this?”

  Bud gave a gasp as Lyle slipped his hand down the front of his shorts and took hold of him.

  “Clearly you do…”

  For reasons Bud couldn’t fathom, tears sprung to his eyes and turned the night into a watercolor wash of silver and black. He wanted to push Lyle away but he felt frozen in place. His thoughts were a whirl of nothing and everything, ideas flying by as though through a hurricane and he couldn’t reach out and catch a single one. Lyle continued to grope and press against him, breathing into the crook of his jaw.

  “I don’t…” Bud said.

  “It’s okay. I know you do…”

  All at once it seemed he gained back control of himself, reclaiming the moment rather than being claimed by it, and he grabbed Lyle by the forearm and tried to remove his hand from his shorts. But Lyle only shoved his hand back in. Bud made a funny sound, a sharp intake of breath, as Lyle painfully squeezed him by the testicles.

  “This is what you want, isn’t it?” he asked, and suddenly the low breathiness was gone from his voice. He pressed himself harder against Bud, pinning him tighter against the side of the guesthouse. “This is what you’re so jealous of, isn’t it?”

  “What? Ah…” Bud winced, continued fumbling his hands over Lyle’s wrist. “I don’t know what you’re… talking about…”

  “Huh? You don’t?” He squeezed harder still, drove his hand against Bud’s pelvis, nearly lifting him onto his toes. “I think this is what you’re after. You want what Addie has, right? Isn’t that it?”

  His fingers clamped, and there was a white-hot pain that caused Bud’s eyes to roll back and his teeth to grit.

  “…no…please stop…”

  “Sure you do.” His grip was crushing. Bud yelped out. “And if you can’t have it…” All in one fluid motion Lyle removed his hand from Bud’s shorts and shoved him hard against wall. Bud fell to his hands and knees, coughing. “Then you want to make sure no one does.”

  More than anything Bud didn’t want to cry, didn’t want Lyle to have that satisfaction. But his throat was so choked he couldn’t hide his emotion regardless. He fought to speak.

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Addie told me about your little conversation, you prick.”

  Bud couldn’t say anything. He concentrated on catching his breath.

  “You don’t know me,” Lyle said. “Not the first thing about me.”

  Carefully, Bud got one foot under himself, then another, and like a corpse rising from the dead he stood back up, cringing from the pain still simmering in his abdomen. Finally he stood straight—head tilted back, lungs hungry for the cool night air—just in time to catch a brick of knuckles to the side of his face. He fell back, turned to catch himself on his side with a thud. He clambered again to his hands and knees, the ground wobbling beneath him.

  “Stay away from her,” Lyle said. “She doesn’t need you to tell her what to think. She’s not your friend.”

  Like a giant pendulum Lyle swung his foot into Bud’s ribs and Bud let out a sharp wheeze. He rolled onto his back, gulped for air. Lyle hovered over him.

  “Ungh… please…” Lyle took a step closer. He raised his foot so that Bud could see its callused underside, browned with earth. “Don’t don’t don’t—”

  With as much force as his teetering one-footed balance could muster, Lyle stomped upon Bud’s crotch. The sky blackened. A short, whiny scream escaped him. He rolled onto his stomach, rolled back to his side, curled into a fetal position. A sick, acidic cramp seized his guts and he held himself.

  He lay like that for what felt like an eternity, forgetting Lyle was even there, forgetting the attack could continue, feeling only the throbbing and rushes of nausea up and down his body, centering between his legs and radiating up into his belly. After several minutes, when it finally subsided enough that he could think of anything else, he turned over and found himself alone. Lyle had gone. He rolled onto his back and breathed heavily despite the knifing he felt in his ribs.

  At the wind’s stirring, the grass rustled all through the field around the guesthouse, and the breeze clung to his sweaty face and soothed him to a silent stupor.

  He lay there for another twenty minutes.

  Then he got to his feet. The stabbing in his side was excruciating. His rib felt as though it might be broken, though he didn’t know what a broken rib really felt like, or if he had broken multiple or any at all. He felt the side of his face where he’d been hit and winced. There would be a bruise, surely.

  He staggered around the side of the guesthouse into the
yard, scraping the packed dirt with his tired feet, an arm around his middle. The front door, alight in the night’s harsh pallor, caused his heart to quicken twofold. He didn’t think he could face them. Not any of them…

  He peered across the lot toward the doctor’s house, searching for a pair of white buzzing eyes in the shadows or a figure leaning hidden against the house’s contour. There was no one.

  However, just as he was about to look away, a soft golden light illuminated the upstairs window. He squinted to make sure it was real, as real as a light in the dark could be. It appeared so.

  Full of hurt and longing, he silently shuffled toward it.

  Chapter Twenty

  “He what?”

  They were sitting on Addie’s bed, the warm sunrise outside slanting through the window.

  “I know how it sounds, but it’s true. He came into my room last night when I was sleeping.”

  “It doesn’t make sense after—”

  “I know, it caught me off guard, too.”

  “He came on to you?”

  She couldn’t wrap her head around it. It was such a turnaround, it didn’t seem plausible…

  “I asked him what he was doing in my room,” Lyle said, holding Addie’s hand between his own, “…and before I knew it he was on top of me.”

  “He didn’t say anything?”

  “Only when I tried to get him off me the first time. He said something like ‘calm down, I know what you want’ or something like that. I don’t remember exactly already. I told him to get off and he just started trying to take my clothes off so I fucking hit him. It was my first reaction, I couldn’t help it.”

  Addie laughed humorlessly, flipping the image end over end in her mind’s eye trying to believe it.

  “You don’t think he was… sleepwalking?”

  “Positive.”

  “What happened after you hit him?”

  “He took off. I sat in bed for a while, not knowing what to do. I went to the doorway and looked out in the hall and after I didn’t hear or see anything, I went back to bed.”

  “Huh… wow…”

  “I guess I wasn’t so far off about what I said before, was I.”

  “Hmmm? What?” Addie could hardly hear him over her own thoughts.

  “I said I guess I wasn’t so far off about what I said before.”

  “What did you say before?”

  “That he was jealous.”

  Lyle grinned from ear to ear at that, but Addie found it much harder to share in his amusement.

  ✽✽✽

  Nuala hurried into the guesthouse that morning in such a frenzy that she left the front door wide open behind her. Addie, Lyle, and Joanna sat together in the foyer, the latter apart from the other two, lying on her back with her dog on her chest.

  “Does anyone want to tell me what happened last night?” she asked. Her concern sparked a growing one in Addie. “Hmmm?”

  “You mean…” Lyle started, paused, “about Bud?”

  “Yes, I mean about Bud. He’s at the doctor’s right now. He won’t tell us anything. What did you do?”

  Lyle looked appalled. “I didn’t do anything. It was him.”

  Nuala’s expression promised a stormy forecast, hands on her waist, waiting for an elaboration. Lyle gave it to her. He recounted everything he told Addie earlier that morning. Nuala looked as disbelieving as Addie had.

  “That doesn’t seem like him.”

  “I was just as surprised.”

  Nuala tapped her foot for a minute. “Even if it’s true, it doesn’t excuse what you did.”

  “What?”

  “You thought attacking him was the answer?”

  “I didn’t attack him…”

  “You’re saying a bruised face, two broken ribs, and… hitting below the belt… was called for?”

  “What!?” Addie exclaimed. Lyle looked at her helplessly.

  “It wasn’t how it sounds. He wouldn’t take a hint!”

  “That’s not like what you told me at all…”

  “I got carried away, I know. But it wasn’t… I didn’t…”

  “Can I see him?” Addie asked.

  Lyle drooped in despair. “What would you want that for? I told you what he did last night!”

  Addie didn’t pay him any attention. “Nuala, can I see him?”

  Nuala looked reproachful, eyeing Addie from head to toe. After a moment she visibly relaxed and nodded.

  “I think that might be a good idea. He could use you right now, I think.”

  Addie followed Nuala out into the yard. Lyle, visibly panic-stricken, kept after them but stopped in the doorway. Up the creaky front porch, Nuala opened the door into the doctor’s house. It was dim and hot inside.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s upstairs resting in the guest bed.”

  The guest bedroom was next to the doctor’s. Bud lay on his side facing the wall, but he turned over when he heard them enter. At the sight of Addie his expression turned glum.

  “I’ll leave you two alone for now,” Nuala said, and left downstairs.

  Addie sat on the foot of the cot.

  “Bud, are you okay?”

  He made to sit up, cringed, and sat up anyway.

  “Do I look okay?”

  “What happened?”

  He took a deep breath and lay back flat on the bed. “Your boyfriend happened.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “I don’t care…”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “You don’t care…”

  Frustrated, Addie stood and grabbed a chair from the corner and dragged it across the room directly next to where Bud laid his head and sat in front of him.

  “Yes I do. He says you came into his room and threw yourself at him. I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Of course not.”

  Bud took yet another deep breath. “It hurts to breathe…”

  “Just tell me.”

  “He came into my room. He told me to follow him outside and I did, like an idiot, and he did this to me.” He motioned to the purple bruise around his cheekbone beneath his eye. “All because you had to tell him about what I said.”

  “What?”

  “You told him what I said to you. When I told you I thought he wasn’t right.”

  Addie shifted in her seat. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  Bud turned back onto his side facing the wall. He was angry with her and she thought he had every right to be. Thinking back on it, she couldn’t believe she’d told Lyle. And why the hell had she been so offended by Bud’s looking out for her anyway?

  Choosing to let him cool off, she left the room and returned downstairs. The curtains were now open and Nuala sat on the couch.

  “Well?”

  “He’s upset. Nothing Lyle said is true.”

  Nuala nodded.

  “What happens to Lyle now?” Addie asked.

  “I don’t know. That’ll be up to the doctor.”

  “Will he be punished?”

  “It’ll be up to the doctor, I said.”

  Addie left. At the bottom of the porch steps she stopped and stood in the sunlight, hands on her hips. Thinking, she looked over her shoulder up at the doctor’s window, and then she peered across the yard to the guesthouse, biting the inside of her cheek as an odd mixture of sorrow and vexation formed inside.

  She entered the guesthouse. Joanna was on the couch, dog still curled in her lap. Lyle was gone. She proceeded into the hall, turned left, stood curiously in Lyle’s doorway. Not there either. Finally she went to her room at the other end of the hall and found him sitting on her bed. When she entered he jumped up.

  “Addie, I can explain.”

  “I was wrong about you,” she said.

  He stepped toward her, tried to put his hands in hers. She shook him off.

  “Let me explain myself.”

  “I do
n’t want you to.”

  “Please—”

  “I know making assumptions about people is never right, but I should have trusted my first feelings about you.”

  “That’s not who I am.”

  “To be fair, you never pretended to be anything else until now. I don’t know why I tried convincing myself otherwise.”

  “Because there is more to me than that. You’re the only person who’s ever bothered trying to learn it. Please hear me out. I know what I did was wrong, it’s just—”

  “You are ugly.”

  The room was silent and Addie didn’t fill it. She watched as every tiny muscle in his face tightened or relaxed to form an expression that could only be described as outright devastation.

  “Just… listen…”

  “Inside and out.”

  “Addie, stop…”

  “The only person I’ve ever known as hideous as you is dead now and I don’t miss them at all.”

  Sweat glistened on Lyle’s brow, cheeks reddening, and his eyes quickly turned into something less than kind.

  “You’re acting this way over Bud?” His voice cracked on the edge of hysteria. “He’s more a stranger to you than I am.”

  “He would never do what you did.”

  “You don’t know anything about him, or me. You believed me until he told you a different story.”

  “No I didn’t. And it doesn’t matter. You lied to me. What you did was… I don’t even know what to call it. Insane.”

  “Great… So you hate me now?”

  They stared at each other for a while, Lyle waiting for a response, Addie trying to think of an adequate one.

  “I think I’m scared of you.”

  “What?”

  “There’s something very wrong with you. I don’t trust you anymore. I don’t want to speak to you anymore, either.”

  “No problem.”

  Lyle left without another word and Addie closed her door after him. She stood with her head against the door, listening to his receding footsteps, and then once he was gone she fell into her bed and wept.