by Fiona Zedde
“She’s just a little lonely,” Stephen said absently in response to Manny’s rude shout. “Nothing wrong with trying to make friends.”
The woman walked past the window, her smile a fierce flash of teeth as she gazed at the boy by her side. Stephen watched them until they disappeared over the rise and past the traffic light leading to the other side of the neighborhood.
“If you had to hang up a bike right now,” Manny said easily from Stephen’s side, looking out to see what he was staring at, “your dick and nuts would be gone.”
Stephen ignored him and turned back to the register.
Their day passed by in a pleasant blur of customers, idle conversation, and a hefty deposit at the end of the evening. Manny walked with Stephen to the bank’s night drop then they said their good-byes among the shifting threads of early evening partiers. It was barely nine thirty. Time for the last of the shop owners to go home. Now, the music in the streets pulsed louder and The Patio, the busiest pub on the strip, rumbled with its cornucopia of customers. Cars drove by slowly, their passengers taking in the short skirts and low-cut blouses giving well-toned bodies some air.
“Hey, Stephen,” someone called out.
He waved back to the dark haired boy slouched in the doorway of the punk bar with a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“What’s up, D?”
Normally, Stephen would have taken that as an invitation to linger in the neighborhood over a beer and conversation. But he’d been working all day and just wanted to chill. He waved at him and continued on his way.
“Hey, hot stuff.”
The high voice and cigarette breath hit him at the same time. A shoulder bumped him as he turned his head and looked down.
“I’m doing a set tonight at the Ten,” Poppy said. “You should come see me.”
He shook his head, but her long arms held him captive and her breasts pressed against his side, then his chest.
Poppy was tiny and beautiful with her rich earth skin and hair done in tiny braids that brushed her shoulders and back. And if it hadn’t been for the mistake he’d made by sleeping with her near the end of a particularly lonely day, Stephen would have still thought she was a nice girl. Her cigarette smell blended with the herb scent wrapped up in her braids, a scent that reminded him of their night together and why he wanted to avoid a repeat performance. Bondage games were usually fine with him, but when his bound partner also asked to be rammed with his fist, pissed on, then called his bitch, Stephen wanted to back out of the deal. Her needs repulsed him. They were too much like his.
“I’m heading home,” he said, shaking his head again.
But her long arms were also strong, and he soon found himself at the bar of the Ten-Spot ordering a veggie burger and water. Poppy asked for a vodka cranberry and told the bartender to put it on Stephen’s tab. As usual, he didn’t say no.
The smell of incense, cigarettes, and spilled liquor that had sunk over time into the bar’s wooden floors, powerfully reminded Stephen why he didn’t come to the Ten anymore. Lately, either his house or a bar with an outdoor patio and uncomplicated scents suited him better. A tickle in the back of his throat reminded him of his doctor’s warning about developing an allergy to cigarette smoke.
“So what’s going on with you?” she asked, leaning in, her pixie’s face even more arresting under the cool blue lights. On the stage behind them, a band played washed-out Bob Marley accompanied by a mystifying steel drum.
“Not much. The usual.” He shrugged.
Stephen didn’t tell her that since the last time they talked his parents had died and he got a settlement—blood money—from their car accident. Now he owned his condo outright and had no problems making the rent for Different Spokes even when things were slow. “Business is good. I think half of Atlanta is taking up riding as a hobby.”
“Hm. Yeah, I took up riding too when I walked past that big glass window and saw you in there. I’d ride every day if you let me.”
Unease surged in his belly, but he didn’t look away. She chuckled and sucked on the straw, inhaling most of the drink at one go. Poppy sat on the bar stool with her legs sprawled, the white skirt pulled up to show her long brown thighs. Before they’d ended up together in her bed sweating against each other under its winged canopy, he wondered how come a little thing like her had such a long body. He wondered what it would feel like to climb up its soft length and sink between her thighs. Now he knew. Stephen bit into his burger and began to chew.
“So you don’t have a new girl or anything?”
As far as she knew, there had been no old girl. “No. No new girl.”
Her smile grew wider and she sank even more into her sprawl. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked the last drop from the clear glass. “Buy me another?”
“No. That’s it for this free ride,” he said, only half meaning it.
She shook her head and waved at the bartender for a refill.
“I’m not doing anything after my set,” she said. “You feel like company tonight?”
Cigarettes and cranberry flavored vodka blew at his lips as her thighs clasped one of his.
“No. I’m good. Work tomorrow and all.”
“Oh, please. Your damn shop doesn’t even open until eleven.” The fact that she knew that should have worried him.
Stephen shook his head. “Maybe some other time.”
Behind him, the reggae band was winding down. The last notes of “Buffalo Soldier” tapered off in a flurry of steel drum notes.
“I’m on stage next,” Poppy said. “Stay so we can talk after.”
As soon as she disappeared through the narrow door leading backstage, Stephen dropped cash on the bar for the food and drinks then left. The three zigzag blocks between him and home passed quickly. With night pressing coolly at his back, he slid his key into the main door of his building and slipped inside. He didn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief as he stepped into the vestibule that was neither warm nor cold, but it was a close thing. The dark hardwoods slid under his sneakered feet.
Some days, he had really bad judgment. Tonight, he was actually making sense. He needed to sleep with Poppy like he needed a jellyfish to give him a blowjob. Stephen wrestled his mail from its tiny cage before jogging up the four flights of stairs to his top floor condo. Without turning on a light, he dropped his messenger bag and keys on the bookshelf by the door.
“I thought you’d be home earlier.”
He didn’t flinch at the voice that came at him from the dark. “I didn’t know I had a curfew.” Stephen pulled off his jacket, his shoulders loosening in automatic relaxation. No more pretense.
“You don’t, but I thought…” A sigh. “I don’t even know what I thought.”
“Let’s not go through anything now, okay?” Stephen murmured, pitching his voice low to match Lucas’s.
“Okay.”
Lucas’s reluctant agreement pulled Stephen deeper into the room. Closer, Lucas smelled like soap and toothpaste, like he’d had a recent shower after work, then come right over. His clean scent was the ideal antidote to the stale, smoky heat of the bar and Stephen found himself relaxing even more. After their breakup, Stephen had made it clear that he didn’t want Lucas to come over unannounced anymore. Didn’t even want him to shower here. But some habits were apparently hard to break. Now it was Stephen’s turn to sigh.
His parents’ money had paid for this condo when he graduated from Georgia Tech four years ago. He’d been paying them back in small installments from the money earned at the shop. Now he didn’t have to repay them. Now, he would be alone. In the dark, he felt Lucas watching him.
“I came by to see how you were doing.”
Although he couldn’t see him, Stephen imagined Lucas’s bulk in the darkness, thighs sprawled wide in the sofa, taking up the space like he owned it while his deceptively drowsy eyes missed nothing.
“I’m good.”
“No, you’re not.” Lucas paused. “Did you see your therapist
today?”
“Didn’t have time.”
“Right.” Lucas sniffed the air as Stephen came closer. “You went to a bar? The Ten?”
Stephen nodded although Lucas couldn’t see.
“Ran into one of your fuck friends, huh?”
Stephen sat on the burgundy sofa. Its suede fabric rubbed against the backs of his legs, touched him gently through his shirt and shorts. “Yeah.”
“Poor Stephen.” There was no mockery in Lucas’s voice.
He reached out, because Stephen wouldn’t, lightly touching a tense shoulder. Stephen shifted, dropped his head in Lucas’s lap and closed his eyes.
The warmth of Lucas under him was like a balm, radiating into his head, wrapping him in the familiar space of being desired but with an absence of pressure, no necessity, on his part, to act.
“You didn’t have to come over here. I don’t need saving.”
“But you need something.”
He couldn’t argue with that. The thing was he didn’t know what he needed. A friend? A lover? Space to feel again where the guilt wouldn’t crush him like deep water?
“I’m not ready to be with you again.”
“I know that.”
Still, Lucas hoped. They both knew that. It wasn’t as if their breakup had been bad. Though the question still lingered about whether they’d had a proper breakup.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Stephen said eight weeks ago.
“Okay.”
That had been the conversation. Lucas had walked out and found himself an apartment that same day. He called Stephen with his new address and phone number and that was that.
Lucas’s inability to give Stephen what he wanted—emotional strength, the freedom to be weak, and the delicate balance between the two—had led to their breakdown. The theory of their breakup. There had been no fights, no calls to the police station. No fag drama. Just a quiet “okay” and a withdrawal. Sometimes Stephen longed for confrontation. For a fight where there was a clear winner and loser. A fight that left bruises and a fleshly ache. Lucas couldn’t give him that.
“We all need something, Lucas. Just because I don’t know what makes my teeth ache doesn’t make me more of an emotional cripple than the next guy.”
Lucas chuckled. “If you say so.”
But the pain was naked behind the wry laugh. And Stephen just didn’t want to take responsibility for it anymore.
“You should go.” He sat up.
Lucas shifted on the sofa, waiting. But Stephen didn’t want to wait with him. He pushed himself off the sofa and stood. “Let yourself out.”
Stephen pulled off his shirt as he walked out of the living room and toward his bedroom. Behind him, Lucas released a small breath. Stephen turned. Faint light, he knew, illuminated his bare chest, rode over the firm hillocks of muscle that made up his pecs, the hairless expanse of belly, solid abs, and the smooth skin that disappeared into the loosely hanging shorts. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He dropped his hand to loosen the top button of his shorts then turned away, releasing the zipper as he went. It was time for him to take a shower. Poppy’s smell on his skin was beginning to make him queasy.
In the shower, his mind turned to nothing. The water rushed over his skin, hot and near scalding, making him feel something besides the pain of nothing while everything familiar to him disappeared. Lucas was…the past. He didn’t want to go back to him just because he was lost and fumbling in his own indecision, in his own emptiness. Lucas would always be there for him, would always come back to him if Stephen beckoned. He didn’t want that. Sometimes he didn’t know what to ask for. Stephen closed his eyes and let the nothingness claim him again.
*
“We need some change,” Manny said as soon as Stephen walked into the store.
At almost three in the afternoon on a Saturday, the store was nicely packed with customers who looked like they were buying not just browsing. But Manny apparently had no change to give them. Stephen frowned. He could have sworn that he’d got enough from the bank yesterday evening before he left. If he wasn’t losing his mind, business had been really good this morning.
“I’ll get some,” he said.
Stephen dropped his bag behind the register and grabbed the two hundred-dollar bills from Manny’s outstretched hand.
“Back in a sec.”
He jogged to the bank, dodging skateboarders and girls in high heels to make it to the credit union before it closed at three.
“You almost missed us,” the Mohawked man behind the counter said as Stephen slid inside the door.
There were five other people in the bank. Three at the counter being tended to while the others sat on the hard benches scattered throughout the small room and waited their turn.
Stephen grinned. “Almost.”
Walking into the credit union was like stepping back in time. Except for the computers sitting in front of each teller, and the teletype-looking sign that asked customers to turn off their cell phones while in the bank, they could have been out in the Wild West somewhere (or at least Stephen’s version of it). Low wooden chairs sat in front of each teller’s station, inviting the customers to take a load off while the friendly face on the other side of the counter—no glass partition—counted out their money and handed them carbon receipts of each transaction. Brian’s shock value hair was the only disconnect in this holdout from the past.
Brian shook his head and the ferociously gelled hair, colored blue this week, waved like a stiff fan in the air. As long as Stephen had owned his store and been coming to Little Five Points, Brian had worked at the credit union. He hadn’t always been the bank manager; instead, he worked his way up through the ranks with the same single-mindedness with which he pursued women. They hadn’t hung out in a while. But that was purely Stephen’s fault. He knew that Brian was always up for a beer and a dance, even a half hearted make-out session behind the bar when they both felt like something harder than their usual.
When it was his turn, Stephen sat on the chair and slid over the bills.
“Long time,” Brian said.
“You’re right about that.” No apologies. Neither of them wanted that. “We should get together sometime.”
“Yeah.” Brian counted out the small bills and handed them over. “I’ll call you. Or you call me.”
“Later.” Stephen pocketed the money and, with a tip of his imaginary hat, ambled out of the credit union.
He slipped on his sunglasses against the sun’s glare and left the safety of the bank’s doorway for the crowded sidewalk. Immediately, he was swallowed by the swimming crowd, ladies in designer thrift as well as Buckhead-bought couture, smelling like sunshine and perfume. Some days, walking in the neighborhood was like torture. So many beautiful sights and smells, so much to take in, only to slip inside the door of his shop and stay cooped up for way too long.
Cars streamed past him on the busiest part of Moreland Avenue and he walked down to the stoplight to wait for his chance to cross. A cream-colored Cadillac truck with its windows down shook to the beat of an old Outkast song. The driver and its passengers—one in the front and three in the back—watched the crowd with lazy interest as the red light brought the cars to a halt. One of the guys in the back, a bright skinned pretty with a bald head, acknowledged Stephen with an upward nod, and Stephen smiled—a quirk of lips—as the man’s eyes subtly checked out his body under loose fitting jeans and T-shirt. It felt good to be wanted by a stranger.
He crossed the road without incident and was about to open the door to his shop when he caught a familiar flash of light hair. If he were being honest with himself, Stephen would admit that he had been looking for her. Since his last sighting nearly three weeks ago, he’d searched the features of every blond, cocoa-skinned woman he saw. But none of them had been her.
His hand fell back to his side as he watched the woman amble up the sidewalk, alone this time, wearing a long white skirt that flew around her legs in the wind and a
tank top skimming her slim torso like a lover’s caress. Corkscrew curls of various shades of blond bounced around her shoulders. Unlike nearly everyone else on the street, she wasn’t wearing shades, so for the first time he saw that her eyes were a vicious shade of green, pale and sharp, against her skin.
“Hey,” he said when she was close enough to touch.
She kept walking. Her ass was slight, but it moved with a hypnotic rhythm against the material of the see-through skirt. Mesmerized by the shifting presence of her in air so close to him, Stephen nearly let her go.
“Excuse me,” he said, jogging up after her.
She looked up but kept walking, eyes floating over his body before coming to rest on his face. “Yes?”
A girl bumped his shoulder as she went past with her group of friends. They eyed him with irritation. But he paid them little mind, keeping his focus on what he suddenly wanted.
“I’ve seen you around here before.”
As soon as he said it, Stephen realized what a weak pick-up that was. He could have cartoonishly slapped his own forehead over the stupidity. Women like this didn’t respond to asinine remarks like that. Still walking, she shook her head to prove him right. But she smiled.
“I’m in the neighborhood quite a bit.”
He tried again. “You’re very beautiful. I think you deserve a man to tend to your needs instead of those boys I usually see you with.”
She stopped walking, turned, and adjusted her bag across her chest. Her mouth twitched. The wind whipped up, blowing her hair into her face and toward Stephen.
“I guess you have seen me around.”
She opened her mouth to say something else, but he shook his head, laughing ruefully. “I’m not a stalker, no matter how that just sounded. I’d like to get to know you better. Can I?”
