It’s that simple, Rainn. Shelby isn’t such a moron after all.
Chapter Five
Three days of nothing, and then, “Rainn, you got a phone call.” The heavy back door of the Chapel closes. I slowly emerge from my blankets. I’ve wrapped myself up so tightly inside it’s a task to peel myself out. I finally stumble sleepily inside. Benny is standing behind the bar, receiver in hand, waiting for me.
“It’s her,” he mouths it even though he’s carefully air locked the speaker off with his palm. I roll my eyes at him and hold out my hand for it.
“Hello?”
“So I guess this is how I get a hold of you, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so. What’s up?” I ask. Benny starts waving his hand at me like that was the wrong thing to say. He’s swatting at me. I’m swatting at him. I miss what Jaselle says.
“What? Hang on.” I smack Benny’s arm as hard as I can. “Sorry,” I say into the phone.
“Um, it’s okay. So, can you come?”
“Yeah. Where?”
“Over here. I need inspiration.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.” I give Benny the phone back and try to avoid his stare.
“You gave out the bar number?” he asks.
“Nope. She must have looked it up or something.”
Benny’s smile stretches. “You’re lucky she’s persistent.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most girls would have never set foot in this bar again after you snuck out. Now she’s going through the trouble to look up your number because you were too chicken to get hers? You worked some magic on this one.”
I just shrug. “I have to go.”
“You coming back tonight?”
“I don’t know, Dad, we’ll see.” Benny hands me a few dollars I haven’t asked for. He hates it when I walk a long way, or at all in the dark, really. I take the money guiltily and give him a man hug.
It takes more than my estimated hour to get there. The whole time I’m sitting there, bouncing up and down on the cracks in the road, leaning imperceptibly away from the gray homeless guy that smells like his own defecation, I’m focusing on one thing. Friends. You can be friends.
“The return of the brute.” That’s Noah’s greeting when Jaselle lets me in.
“Actually, it was savage, if you don’t mind,” I say.
“More and more of one every day. Now you like to fuck and run?”
“Noah!” Jaselle’s shocked protest sounds far away even though she’s right there. He doesn’t even look at her, just keeps staring at me. My skin is hot, battery acid, rippling under sound. My ears are pulsing. His ice blue eyes are hard, lacking that sense of depth that usually comes with light irises. I take a deep breath.
“So, this is your house, huh?” I finally say. I don’t know where it comes from. It just comes out.
“That’s right, Savage. This is my house.” The intensity thickens the air between us. He doesn’t have to say anything else. This house is mine. Jaselle is mine. I don’t want you here. So far you have proved yourself to be exactly as worthless as I said when you first walked in. The animosity is suffocating. Because he’s right. I left.
Jaselle is still standing there, watching, paralyzed. I wish she’d leave the room all of a sudden, but I’m still glued to Noah’s judging eyes. I stop crumbling under them and straighten up.
“I will never do that again.” I say it with a sincerity I know he can feel, no matter how he hates me. “Ever.”
“We’ll see.”
I turn away and catch Jaselle and Noah making an animated silent exchange out of the corner of my eye. Then she’s by my side going to her bedroom with me. She closes her door slowly like she doesn’t want to make any noise. She turns and softly pads to the bed and sits down on the corner.
It takes me a while to notice she’s staring at me. Once again, I’m lost in her paintings. I’m fighting embarrassment when I turn and see her. I put my hands sheepishly in my pockets.
“I want to paint you,” she finally says.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“There’s something about you I’d like to capture.”
“Poverty?” I laugh a little.
“No. Humility maybe. Timidity. Understated passion.”
I mull over the words. I have a hard time identifying the quality. Most people think I’m exactly the opposite. I tell her so.
“Well, I’ve never been any good at explaining. That’s why I need to paint it. Is that okay?”
“I guess. What do I have to do?” The Titanic scene boldly seizes my mind, the couch, the diamond, Leonardo and his pencils.
“Nothing. Just sit where I tell you to and be patient.”
I nod. She smiles and grabs my hand, then guides me out of the room. “Oh God, we’re not going outside or anything are we?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer, just turns the corner. I figure out we’re going to the piano. Now there’s something worth painting. I don’t know why I have to be involved, but I don’t say that. No one likes a self-deprecating model.
“Sit like you’re about to play something,” she commands. I do. The next several minutes she’s on a nonstop round trip to and from her bedroom getting all her stuff. She sets up the canvas right behind the curve of the piano, so she’s looking over the keys, facing me.
Then she goes to work on me, pushing my shoulder just a little to get the angle she wants, making my hair fall where she wants it, giving my shirt a little tug.
“Okay, now put your hands over the keys. Be natural.”
I chuckle a little. “You’ve just arranged everything about me, what do you mean be natural?”
“Put your hands on the keys like you’re playing, not like you’re pretending to play.”
“But I am pretending to play.”
“You said you were going to cooperate.”
I smile and put my hands where I’d put them were I starting to play Michael’s song. She doesn’t know it, but I’m taking a brick from my wall.
“Breathe,” she says. “You look stiff.”
“I’m supposed to.” Mom used to make me practice with a board attached to my back with a belt to keep my posture right. Now I’m stiff, says the artist. Mom would be satisfied. Elbows slightly higher than the keys, back straight, wrists soft but not sagging. “Have you ever seen a hunchback pianist?”
“Just breathe.” Jaselle’s eyes are so warm they force me to obey. Breathe. At first, it’s awkward, watching her take those first few strokes. My stomach flutters every time I catch her eyes wandering over me. I wait and wait. It takes forever. What does she see when she looks at me?
“You ready?” She’s still looking at her work while she says it.
“Really?”
It takes her another thirty seconds to finally look up. “Yep.” I get up and walk over. She backs away from it to look from a distance. When I see it, my brain goes quiet. It’s a hundred times better than I expected. My Nirvana shirt is exact, down to the tear in my sleeve. The scratches on my knuckles give the impression of healing. The ivory keys are exquisite, spaced perfectly like she used a ruler. The propped-up lid of the piano frames me.
And my face. It’s me. There’s something gentle and thoughtful to my eyebrows, something churning in my eyes. I’m not sure it’s accurate; I’ve never seen that in the mirror before. But it is deep, and probably the quality she was after.
I don’t notice her standing over my shoulder at first. “Do you like it?”
I turn and face her. “Of course, I do. I don’t know how you did this.” I feel my heart in my chest. I want to touch her face, pull her to my lips, taste her burning kiss. She lifts her hand. I turn back to the painting abruptly. I see her drop her hand back to her side. I shiver sickly.
I hear a couple girls talking, in the house. I look to Jaselle.
“Noah has company.” She nudges her head toward the door and we go out. From the hall I have a pretty good shot of the coffee table, Noa
h, and one girl’s back. A tidal wave of marijuana smell blasts me. There’s at least a pound of it sitting casually on the table. I want to examine the situation more, but Jaselle dips into the bedroom, so I figure I’d better follow.
“Good Lord,” I say. “He’s a dealer?”
“How do you think he pays for this place? He certainly can’t hold down a real job.”
“Nice. Bet you get all the weed you ever want then, huh?” I wish it didn’t come out the instant I say it. I don’t want her to think I’m after free weed.
“Yeah, most of the time.” She doesn’t miss a beat. “I wish he’d step his game up though, sell some coke or meth or something.”
I blink a couple times while I catch up with that. I try to cover the surprise. “You into that stuff?”
“Oh, you know, every now and then. But I meant so he can make more money. He has to scrape by with the weed ’cause he smokes so damn much of it.”
“Oh.” I blush at the misunderstanding.
“You like anything other than mushrooms?” She smiles at me like she finds my discomfort entertaining.
“I don’t know. I like weed. Acid was okay. I only did coke once. I wasn’t really into it.”
“Well, hell, let’s smoke some weed then.” She gets up and leaves the room. I hear a muffled scuffle between her and Noah, but she returns like nothing happened with a respectable nug of weed between her fingers.
It’s strong. Only two hits out of Jaselle’s swirling blue and purple pipe and my temples are tingling. We settle in on the bed. She has a small TV on the dresser but informs me it doesn’t get cable. She has DVDs of South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons, she says because it makes her feel like she’s watching TV even though she’s not.
The conversation is slow and awkward. I’m pretty sure that’s my fault, since I’m more focused on her bare legs than what she’s saying. Does wearing shorts qualify as flirting? Stop it.
“Where’d you go?” she asks.
“Hmm?”
“You’re somewhere else.”
“I’m nowhere,” I say.
She smiles. “You need alcohol.” Like magic, glasses, vodka, and cranberry juice appear from the side of her bed. I chuckle past the knot in my stomach and take the ice-less drink.
She watches me take a sip and waits for a while, like she’s considering whether or not to say anything. Finally, “I’d like to put the painting in my next show, if you’re okay with that.” I imagine the canvas still set up in the piano room, paint drying.
“It’s your painting. You can do whatever you want with it.” Damn it, Rainn, why is it so difficult not to constantly be salivating over her or cold with her? Friends. I look over and her eyes are waiting, pulling, dragging me out of this shell I cower in.
“Once, when I was little I thought I’d be able to fly on Halloween night,” she says. I blink a couple times, trying to digest the subject change. “Because my costume had wings,” she explains.
I can’t help but smile. “What was your costume?”
“An angel.” She smirks. I can see her falling back through the years. “All white, obviously, with tons of glitter, a halo, and wings.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I’d been going around talking about how excited I was that I’d be able to fly soon. So, Halloween evening, right before I was going to get dressed my mom sat me down and told me I wasn’t going to be able to fly.” She stops for a second, grabs the pipe, and takes a long, steady toke. She starts talking again, choked as she holds the inhale. “I guess she just didn’t want me trying to jump off a roof or anything.” She lets it go. I watch the smoke hang in the air between us.
“How’d you take it?”
“I told her I already knew that. I really sold it, told her I was just pretending.” She looks up at me again, storms raging in those eyes. “It pissed me off though. What was I getting all dressed up like an idiot for if not to fly? To transform?”
“Candy?” I smirk.
“You have to know sparkles were not my thing, either. I did it for the wings. I could have gotten candy in the evil jester costume I wanted.”
“A clown?” I ask. “That doesn’t sound like you either.”
“No, a jester. Like a joker out of a deck of cards. Pointy hat with bells…”
I start to laugh. “I can’t see you in a pointy hat with bells, sorry. I figured you for more of a grim reaper type.”
She sighs, quieting my laughter, then pulls up her sleeve, revealing a tattoo of a jester on the inside of her left bicep, juggling a flame, a four leaf clover, and a dove, presumably, but the dove is at the height of the juggle and is flying away. I stare at it for a long time, wanting to understand it all without being told. She knows I can’t and explains.
“A clown is a victim. He’s usually stupid and weak, existing to be mocked. A clown is the joke.”
“And a jester?”
“To a jester, you are the joke. The world is the joke. He says what others won’t, sees through all the show to the core, the simple underlying truth. He plays the part of the fool, but really he’s the only one who sees things clearly.”
“I wanted to be a vampire because the teeth were cool,” I say, feeling inadequate next to her. We both start laughing.
“Yeah, I don’t think I cared about all that at the time. That sort of developed later,” she confesses. “I’m just saying, I wouldn’t have been an angel.”
We just stare at each other for a few minutes, trying to make a moment, or resist one, I’m not sure which.
“Your turn,” she finally says.
“For what?”
“To tell me something.”
“What do you want to know?”
She leans forward a little, staring intensely, like she’s looking for something. Family Guy voices in the background suddenly are driving me crazy. I keep realizing how high I am, then it fades from my consciousness. My head feels heavy. It wants to collapse onto Jaselle’s shoulder.
“Why do I have to ask something? You didn’t ask me about my worst Halloween, I just told you,” she says.
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Hopes? Dreams? Fears? Regrets?”
My mind naturally lingers on regrets. I think for a half second on playing Michael’s song for her.
Jaselle’s phone buzzes to life with the lyrics of Nirvana’s “Dumb.” She looks at me, then finally grabs it as the ring tone is about to repeat.
“Hey,” she answers it. I hear a female voice coming through the speaker loudly but I can’t distinguish the words.
“It’s in two weeks,” Jaselle says.
“I am.”
“I know.”
I listen to Jaselle’s half of the conversation.
“Sins had nothing to do with it, Mom. Please just stop.”
I sit up a little with interest. Her tan shoulders are tensed. I instinctively want to massage them, but catch myself before I move.
“No, I’m not,” she says.
“No, I’m not!” She raises her voice a little. I wonder what this scene would look like if I wasn’t here. Is she holding back for me? I’ve seen plenty of family drama; she certainly doesn’t have to.
“Look, come if you want to, don’t if you don’t.” She clicks the phone shut without waiting for an answer.
I sit quietly, waiting, watching. Jaselle reaches for her glass, which is nearly empty. I take it and mix a new one for her. Things keep popping in my head to say, but none of them seem right. So I sit, probably the dumbest thing of all. I zone out on the floor for a minute, searching, and when I look back, Jaselle’s cheek has a shimmer to it.
“Hey,” I say, finally in the soft voice I’ve been searching for. I gather her up in my arms instantly, effortlessly. Other people’s tears usually freak me out, but hers don’t bother me. I wrap one arm securely around her, holding her to me. The other is caressing her, touching her face, wiping away the tears, smoothing her wild dreads.
&n
bsp; I can feel her trembling, shaking under the sobs she’s trying to control.
“Parents are great, huh?” I say.
She laughs despite herself, then straightens up out of my embrace. It ends too soon. “My last art show didn’t go very well.”
“Because of your sins?” I put it together easily.
She looks a little surprised that I do. “Yeah.” I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. She just stares, blankly. My eyes keep wandering to her lips. I feel guilty. She’s sad, eyes are the appropriate thing to focus on when someone’s sad.
“Real Jesus freak, huh?” I finally say.
“Definitely. Every bad thing that ever happens to me is because of my lifestyle. It’s all my own fault.”
“You mean because you’re gay?” That’s where my mind automatically goes with the word “lifestyle.”
“Well, yeah, definitely that. And because I get high, and drink. That’s what she kept saying. ‘You’re high again, Jaselle.’” She mimics her mom’s nasally voice.
“But you are high,” I timidly point out, sneaking a sly smile in there.
She beams back brightly. I breathe in relief. “Of course, I am,” she says. “And I’m about to get higher now that I talked to her.” She reaches for the pipe with a grin. She takes a huge rip and passes it my way. I take another too and physically feel myself getting higher, my blood vessels expanding in my skull as I take in the burning smoke. The rawness in my chest reminds me of something. Too far away to know.
“And anyway,” Jaselle continues, “she thinks I’m not painting because I get high. I painted tonight, motherfucker.”
With that taken care of, we both down the rest of our drinks. My head is swimming.
Time is changing. It’s usually sequential, maddeningly precise, unforgiving, inflexible. It ticks past you one second at a time. There goes your life. Tick. Tock. Imagine if life were counting down to your death, instead of up. No one would wear a watch. We’re all just walking time bombs. Tick. Tock. Here comes your death.
Shadows of a Dream Page 5
