Cyril in the Flesh

by Ramsey Hootman

  This is the test, right?

  Has being locked in a cage taught this asshole to control his animal impulses, or is he still the same gluttonous fuck he’s always been? As if she doesn’t know. He snatches the burger, rips off the paper. More than happy to settle that question immediately.

  She ate; he inhales.

  “You... look all right.” She glances at him as she reaches for her soda. “You know, not fantastic, but—all right. Considering.”

  Considering that when he went to prison, he looked like an overinflated blimp, and now resembles merely a partially melted tub of lard. So much better.

  The burger is gone. He wads the paper into a ball and flings it out the window.

  “Hey! Don’t—”

  “Fuck off.”

  Robin pulls into a cookie-cutter strip mall at dusk, parking out beyond the crush of cars. She sets the brake and sits back, fingers drumming softly on the wheel. “If we go in there,” she says, nodding to the big-box anchor store, “are you gonna freak out?”

  She’d noticed. At the drive-through. If self-loathing were a liquid, he would drown. Fortunately, he’s used to being short of breath. “Dunno. But I’m pretty much guaranteed to be an asshole.”

  “Good point. Here.” She grabs the back of his collar, flipping the tag out.

  He shoves her, hard. “Keep your—fucking—shit.” The watery remainder of her soda sloshes over his pants and the floor of the cab. He fumbles for the handle; the door pops open against the press of his bulk, and he spills out into the lot.

  Fucking—fuck.

  Fuck.

  He hears her, at his back, doing something in the cab. Scrambling to clean up his mess, likely. Then her door opens, and her booted footsteps—

  “You know what you don’t do in prison?” He spits the words like darts, shaking sticky liquid off his hands. “That.” He hasn’t experienced skin-to-skin contact in well over a year. Nobody has dared. The hair on the back of his neck prickles where her thumb brushed his flesh.

  She holds her hands up in surrender. “Look, it’s—” She gestures at the vehicle. “The kids do worse than that on the daily. I’ll hose it out when we get home. Okay?”

  Like he’s offered an apology.

  She waits, but when it’s clear all he’s going to give her is silence she shrugs and turns, hoisting herself into the passenger side of the cab. With one knee planted on the seat, she rummages through the detritus on the dash—providing him, incidentally, with a prime view of her ass. “I’d say just wait and order something,” she says over one shoulder, “but honestly you’re pretty rank. Oh. Found it.” When she steps back down to the ground, she’s holding a tape measure. Her eyes drop to his middle as her thumb flicks out a few inches of yellow blade.

  He realizes what she means to do. “That’s not—”

  “Relax. We’ll make it work.” She gestures with the end of the tape. “Arms up.”

  He doesn’t move. “Odds of them having my size—”

  “Let me worry about that. Arms up. Come on.”

  “I’m not your fucking toddler.”

  “Obviously. She’s got better manners.”

  “I never asked you to—”

  “Oh my God, Cyril.” She rolls her eyes skyward. “I’ve known you long enough not to expect anything so banal as thank you, but this is the longest I’ve been away from the kids since quarantine began, and mom-mode is a little hard to turn off. So maybe cut me some slack?” She yanks out a couple feet of tape. “Look, just hold it—” She stops just shy of touching his side. “There.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He does it, though. He presses the end of the tape measure into the tire of flesh somewhere above his right hip.

  While she has never been above commenting on his size—often with scathing bluntness—he is always caught off balance by her apparent lack of disgust. She hums a low note to herself as she wraps the strip of yellow around the back of him, numbers facing inward so the tape bends. Then, not looking at his face: “Over or under?”

  His belly, she means. “I don’t give a shit.” He knows as well as she does that any attempt to make him more presentable is pointless. It’s all lipstick on a pig.

  She whips the tape around, stretching it across his sagging belly. Loss of mass has not improved its shape. “Got it.” She pinches the end of the tape and flips it over, nodding as she notes the number. Then she holds the tape out vertically, standing tiptoe to eyeball his shoulder width and bending, quickly, to measure his inseam. “That should do it.” She lets the tape retract and tosses the case into the cab. “I’d ask if you had any preferences, but I think you’re gonna have to take whatever you can get.”

  Chapter 2.5

  Twelve years ago

  Tavis had returned to the campus study hall only long enough to pick up his canvas sea bag. “I’m gonna ask her out.”

  He, Cyril, could have spoken up, then. Claimed her for his own. He had, in the most literal sense, seen her first. But they had both witnessed her reaction to him. He was nothing to her. Nobody. Tavis, ever the optimist, might have said her utter lack of recognition was all in Cyril’s head, but she never did remember, in all the intervening years, that they’d shared a class together.

  He offered a snort of derisive laughter instead. “You’re only here—what, two days? And then you ship out. How’s that going to work?”

  “I have to try. I have to.” Of course he did. That’s just how Tavis was: no agonizing, no worrying, no second guessing. Just desire, translated directly into action.

  This asshole had already combed through enough of Robin’s email history to know she’d never fall for an approach like that. She’d spent her teenage years on a naval base in Italy, where an entire fleet of young sailors had vied for the opportunity of throwing themselves at the feet of the commander’s daughter. “Chill,” he told Tavis. “I know where she’ll be tonight. But if you’re gonna do it, for fuck’s sake, make it unique.” To demonstrate, he had torn a page out of his notebook a tossed off a quick monologue. Or so it must have seemed to Tavis. In truth, Cyril had been plotting the perfect approach for weeks. Maybe he had hoped Tavis would recognize the truth and encourage his friend to take a chance. Or maybe not. “I mean, it only works if you climb the tree,” Cyril added, postscript. Which was idiotic. Nobody would do that.

  Tavis had.

  Cyril celebrated with him, laughing in his dry, half-mocking way when she agreed to dinner and a movie. (“Take her to The Palm,” he’d suggested, San Luis Obispo’s quirky foreign-film theater house.)

  “Your words, dude!” Tavis crowed, cuffing Cyril’s shoulder with his soda.

  “Your face,” Cyril answered, with a clink of his can.

  Tavis was not half so happy when he returned.

  “What,” Cyril joked, “she wouldn’t fuck you on a first date? Is it possible she has standards?”

  “She wants more,” Tavis said. And held up the paper. “Of you.”

  Chapter 3

  Now

  It’s two minutes to midnight when she pulls up in front of the ramshackle Victorian. Moonlight streaks through the bones of the second floor, stripped clean to the studs. “Keep to the right,” she says, when the front porch steps groan. “Wood’s half rotten.”

  Inside, she circles around a boarded-up flight of stairs, kicking a path through toys cluttering the living room floor without regard for the noise. No surprise she’s arranged for the kids to be elsewhere; once, he was a securities specialist and a hacker. (A hacktivist, to put it generously, which Tavis usually had.) But now he’s a criminal. A felon. Chelsea Manning without the righteous cause.

  Through an open-plan dining room and into a kitchen, she flicks on the light and grabs a half-thawed bottle of frozen tap water from the fridge. She extends it toward him—he shakes his head—before cranking off the top. The floor beneath their feet is unfinished plywood; the cabinets are old, topped with cracked tile, and the doors have been removed. A nail gun rests next to
a compressor in the corner, orange extension cord snaking out via the laundry room. She tilts her head back and chugs. “I think—” she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand—“You can sleep in Seth’s bed tonight. Assuming a twin’s okay.”

  Though they have spent hours in the truck together, it is this familiar image of her—feet planted, head thrown back—which, finally, catches him off guard. Five years he has horded these small moments like precious gems, never imagining he would bear witness to her casual radiance again. And yet here she is, drinking a bottle of water as he blinks back the sudden sting of tears. He struggles to summon an appropriately acerbic response: “If you saw what I’ve been sleeping on—”

  “Figured.” She screws the cap back on before tossing the bottle onto the counter. It lands neatly upright. “I bet you have to pee, but not as bad as I do. This way.”

  A corridor off the dining room leads to three doors. She ducks inside the second—a bathroom fan spins up—while he loiters in the hall.

  She has never been one for artfully arranged photos, but she’s strung a haphazard collection of snapshots along a length of copper wire and alligator clips, more half-assed than Pinterest-worthy. At the far left he recognizes her mother, a waifish white woman, half-eclipsed by the embrace of the beloved father who had clearly gifted Robin her smile. Next comes Tavis, changeless as ever in his formal Navy blues, milk-white skin, and fiery hair peeking out from under his cap. This coward tries to avoid his gaze, but he hears the echo of Tav's warm, easy laughter all the same. He always will.

  “He’s nine.”

  Cyril blinks. He is staring now at the awkwardly posed school photo of Tavis Matheson’s son. The boy’s freckled face is leaner, now, than the four-year-old Cyril remembers, made more adult by teeth too large even for his broad, gap-toothed smile. His hair, an unbridled explosion of copper red, remains the same.

  “I know.” This asshole has had ample time to count every milestone missed.

  She holds out a freshly laundered towel, folded around a toothbrush, razor, and an unused bar of soap. “Shampoo’s in the shower. Oh—and I'll run out to the truck and grab your clothes.”

  The bathroom is pristine, newly renovated in glass and granite. The mat on the floor in front of the toilet is, like the towel, large and plush and green. Scented lotion. A box of tissues. Two-ply paper. Mouthwash. Fucking hand towels. And a mirror.

  A real mirror, not the shot-to-shit scrap of stainless steel so deeply etched with gang symbols and profanity that his reflection had been reduced to a round white blur. He sees, now, running a hand over his flaccid jowls, what Robin saw: he looks old. Not because of the gray flecks in his dark stubble or the looseness in his cheeks and second chin. He looks old because, like war, prison makes you old. While this is no tragedy—he was never handsome to begin with—it is startling. But for his size, he is not sure he could have picked himself out of a lineup.

  He reaches over one shoulder to grab a handful of his shirt, turning away from the mirror as he pulls it off over his head. He doesn’t want to see that shit any more than she does.

  The glass shower stall is spacious enough to have accommodated him at his heaviest. When the water runs hot, he sits on the wide granite bench built along the edge, letting the flow run down over his head. If, here, he were to cry, not even he would ever know.

  This is where he is when she knocks, and then cracks the door open just far enough to hook the plastic shopping bag over the inside knob. “Everything all right?”

  “Dandy,” he says, knowing they both know it’s a lie.

  He cannot stay. He’ll get what he needs—contact with his lawyer, access to his finances, a car—and then he’ll disappear. Before she has time to regret offering him this wholly undeserved shred of mercy.

  That’s what he ought to do. If he were good.

  He’s not. And he won’t. She has driven him home, and he will make her drive him away.

  She gives him a frank once-over when he emerges. “Not bad.”

  “Oh, was a clean shirt and a shave all I needed to complete my transformation into Alpha Hero?” He’d half-expected her to buy him a button-up shirt and slacks, but she’d purchased only his standard cotton tee and elastic-waisted sweatpants. They feel alien on his skin.

  She rolls her eyes: a gesture so deeply etched into his memory that for a moment he forgets to breathe. “You underestimate the value of not smelling like a flophouse.” She leans a shoulder against the door to the right of the bathroom, shoving back a rising tide of toys.

  He follows her in, tugging at the shirt which is, in various places, starting to work its way between rolls. “About three sizes too fucking small.” This bloated asshole could barely squeeze himself into the sweatpants, even with the waistband tucked under his belly.

  “It fits. You think nobody’s gonna see you if you hide under a tent?”

  As if he gives a fuck about anyone’s comfort but his own.

  “Also, it’s the biggest they had. Watch your step, the floor’s a Lego minefield.” The bedroom is octagonal, with faded floral wallpaper and a bay window looking onto the street. A den, in some other decade. Robin bends over Seth’s bed, plucking out stuffed animals and tossing them toward a crib-sized mattress on the floor in the corner. Pretending she has not noticed him noticing the obvious.

  Two photocopied pictures, taped to the wall above the boy’s bed. One is a portrait, a facsimile of the one in the hall: his father, Tavis, in full Navy blues. The other is a shot from Seth’s fourth birthday. The boy sits in front of a giant bowl of ice cream, upturned face radiating adoration for the asshole sitting next to him. Cyril.

  She straightens. Seems about to say something, then shrugs. “He remembers you.”

  Chapter 3.5

  Nine years ago

  At first, it was a thrill. Even if he wasn’t in the driver’s seat, scripting his best friend’s relationship with Robin was the farthest this asshole had ever gotten with a woman. And he was good at it—between Tav’s face and Cyril’s hastily scrawled missives, Tavis and Robin went from zero to sixty in one weekend flat. She was funny and charming and, thanks to her unique upbringing, by turns both worldly and naïve. Tavis balked when Cyril proposed extending the ruse into his deployment, but what could it hurt? Robin was smart; she’d connect the dots and whip aside the wizard’s curtain soon enough. Then she’d either dump Tavis or decide she liked him even if his wit wasn’t quite as sharp as advertised. At least Cyril had bought Tavis the chance she’d never have given him. Right?

  Lies.

  The truth was far more desperate. Every time Cyril wrote, he resolved to eat right, get in shape, and get serious about landing an industry job before he failed out of college. So that when she snatched away the mask—and she would; she had to—he would be standing there, ready to be the man she already loved. Then his letters would not be lies, but simply a placeholder. A bookmark slipped between pages in their love story.

  Sometimes, he succeeded for days at a time. But then the indignity of attending classes to “learn” skills he already possessed for the privilege of obtaining a piece of paper that said he was worth hiring would overpower him, and he’d say something stupid and get himself kicked out of class and put back on academic probation and then he’d go back to his dorm and spend all night eating Hot Pockets and hijacking some Wall Street asshole’s website or bank account or whatever because at least out in the digital wastelands his worth was indisputable.

  And then he’d wake up in the morning (or afternoon or whenever) to find another soulful, enchanting note from Robin in his inbox and realize what a fucking moron he’d been, but instead of trying to get his shit together he’d toss another Hot Pocket in the microwave and plunge right back into that hole he’d dug, deeper and farther than before—because he’d failed her again. And again. And again. He wasn’t worthy of her, and never would be. Why bother trying? He deserved to fail.

  Even so, he never failed to write.

  As the w
eeks and then months of Tav’s deployment wore on, it was a relief, in a way, that Robin never suspected Tavis was anything other than what he appeared to be. It meant she was too stupid to be anyone Cyril truly desired. He didn’t have to feel guilty when three letters became thirty. Sixty. Two hundred seventy-four. Like his increasingly risky exploits with the Anonymous collective, he could tell himself it was just for kicks. That he was doing it as a favor. Life in Afghanistan was rough, and Tavis needed something to live for, back home.

  More lies.

  Then Tav’s deployment ended, and he returned to the base at Port Hueneme, which meant he could drive up to see her every weekend, once he got a car. He listened with half an ear to Cyril’s hastily delivered CliffsNotes on his correspondence with Robin, and then slipped back into her life as effortlessly as if he’d never gone. Whenever Robin strayed into unfamiliar territory, all he needed to do was dash off a text, and good old Cyril would fill in the details. Robin suspected nothing; if anything, Tav’s enduring loyalty to the childhood friend who grew more caustic and reclusive with each passing year only made her love him more.

  Cyril should have called it quits, then (and a thousand times before and after). But he would have lost her, and he couldn’t. He was the one who had needed something to live for, and Robin had become his life. Even if only online.

  One deployment became two. Months turned into years. And then one day—on an impulse, as he did everything—Tavis proposed.

  Cyril panicked. Dating was one thing, but marriage? He and Robin had discussed it, though only in the vaguest terms, via email. It was no small matter for her, and she felt the pressure to live up to her parents’ abiding romance, the afterglow of which continued to sustain her mother long after her father’s passing. He couldn’t stand by and let her commit her life to a lie. But he couldn’t just tell her the truth, either. After having finally given up on college, he was living in the granny unit behind what had been his mother’s house, existing on what he made renting the place out and eBaying the free shit companies sent him to eviscerate on his increasingly popular tech blog.