Broken and Beautiful

by Ryan, Kendall

  “Oh, right.”

  “If that’s not enough reason for a party, some of the art students are celebrating portfolio review.”

  “Art students?”

  I pointed to the Priya and Keesha in the corner. Cam and his girlfriend were in the kitchen, feeding meatballs to Petey.

  Luka whistled between his teeth, and Petey’s head snapped up and he came trotting over with his tongue out. Luka gave him a good ear rub and then pointed to the dog bed in the corner and Petey obliged.

  “They seem so young. Those kids.” Luka said. Those blue eyes met mine and then glanced away as if eye contact was too personal.

  “Because they are.”

  For all I knew Luka, Keesha and Priya were the same age. Hell, I wasn’t much older than the girls. But Luka was old as snow. As ice.

  “Anyway, it’s a party.” I lifted my wineglass in a cheers. He paused for a moment in one of those socially awkward moments he had, as if he wasn’t familiar with holidays or the act of toasting. But finally, he lifted his glass toward me and took a sip.

  And then he shocked me by draining the glass dry in one long swallow.

  “Luka?”

  “Yes. Happy New Year.” His glance struck mine again, and there…right there in those clear blue depths was this new thing he could not hide.

  It was carnal. And real. And very very hot.

  Lust. His own that he didn’t know what to do with.

  That night on the fire escape. He couldn’t forget it either.

  And then it was gone, his gaze moving over the party. I watched him to see if maybe he looked at other women like that, unsure if I wanted him to be spreading that look around indiscriminately or if I wanted to hoard it all for myself.

  Priya and Keesha were out on the dance floor, covered in a fine sheen of sweat, giggling happily into each other’s arms, exuding a kind of easygoing sexiness. They were young and nubile, but Luka looked right through them.

  He looked right through everybody on his way back to me.

  It was for me, that look. Only for me. And I tried—I did, because it felt slightly wrong wanting him like I did and knowing what I knew about him at the same time and never talking about it—but that look of his…fuck.

  I mean…fuck.

  It went right to my head.

  “I haven’t seen you around lately,” I yelled over the music.

  “Busy,” he said. “Brucellosis outbreak at a reindeer farm.”

  I must have looked at him blankly. “Foot rot,” he clarified.

  “Lovely,” I said and wrinkled my nose.

  He smiled, sadly, and looked down at his glass. “Yeah, I’m not very good at parties.”

  “You’re fine,” I said. “You just need more booze.”

  “In that case, can I have some more of this?” He lifted his empty glass and I found an open bottle of red stuck inside a tuba someone had been in the process of dismantling. Art students, I’m not kidding.

  “Here.” I refilled his glass.

  He took a deep breath, his chest lifting under his canvas coat. He was a giant man. Tall and wide. Everything about him seemed made for some other world. Some other time.

  I’d spent my fair share of time with my hands between my legs imagining him in the role of Viking marauder.

  But today there was a shadow over his bright eyes. His shoulders were curled in the manner of the world-weary, the nearly defeated.

  Swear to God, he was a walking heartbreak.

  And he drank the second glass of wine nearly as fast as the first.

  “You all right?” I asked, because I couldn’t not.

  “I am…the same as I always am,” he said with a sigh.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “It is…not sustainable.”

  “Luka—”

  I stepped forward, through our bubble. Past my boundary and past his. I put my hand on his arm. The muscle beneath his shirt was tight and hard. He turned his face aside.

  “Please, Rennie,” he breathed. “Don’t.”

  Okay. All right. I stepped back again, but the bubble was broken. Our boundaries a mess.

  “There’s some food.” I pointed toward the small kitchen in the corner. The countertop was full of pizza and meatballs and mostly ignored veggie trays. The weed brownies and some fudge Keesha had made. Chili in a big pot on the back of the stove. “You should eat.”

  “You mothering me?” He even grinned when he said it, but he didn’t mean it kindly. The words were sharp. Prickly. Mind your own business, that was what his tone said. Leave me the fuck alone. And that too was surprising. He was telling me to fuck off, largely, but I liked it.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. “But the brownies have drugs—”

  “This is you not mothering me?”

  “You want to puke red wine everywhere that’s your prerogative.”

  I walked away. Because I wanted to fuck him and I wanted to take care of him and I wanted to hear his secrets. And I kind of wanted to tell him mine. My pain was attracted to his pain. And maybe some part of me wanted to heal him with my magic vagina or the power of a blow job or some shit.

  And he knew it. And it was very clear at this moment – he wanted no part of it.

  Minutes later, out of the corner of my eye I watched Luka go upstairs with a bottle of wine and some of my joy in New Year’s Eve went with him. Midnight came and went. Kissing all around. I gave Paulo some tongue and let him cup my ass, trying to cheer myself up, but it didn’t work. John tried but I shut him down so he left. Paulo did too, once he realized nothing more was going to happen between us. Priya and Keesha left with one of the microbrew guys, which frankly was a surprise to me and to the gearheads. All of whom, after the show was over, hugged me and left.

  I woke up one of my models who’d passed out on the couch and got her bundled up for home.

  I called a cab for everyone, because no one could drive and this part of town wasn’t entirely safe in this part of Minneapolis this time of night. And winter was here, a bright cold wind blowing through the city.

  I shut the door behind everyone and switched the stereo back over to my music. Neko Case filled the empty spaces of my studio, surrounded my welding equipment and my scrap. The wings on the ceiling, a half-finished reminder of everything I was trying to forget tonight.

  I tried not to imagine Luka up in that tiny bedroom.

  Really, I tried not to think of him at all.

  I imagined all the women in his life lining up to try to ease his pain. Girls on the bus unable to look away from the despair he couldn’t begin to hide.

  Stop, Rennie, just stop.

  I gathered up an armful of beer bottles and kicked a balloon out of the way. I considered the wisdom of another weed brownie. I wished I’d just taken Paulo home, because my head was a mess tonight.

  That’s when the screaming started.

  I took the metal steps up to the second floor, two at a time. My heart in my throat.

  It was a woman screaming. In my loft.

  Outside the bathroom, Luka had one of the grad students—Cam—pushed against the wall, his hand around Cam’s neck. Cam was screeching and thrashing against the wall.

  “Luka!” I cried, charging across the small hallway to pull on his arm, trying to get him to let go of Cam.

  “Rennie!” The door to the bathroom was open and inside was Cam’s sometime girlfriend Daphne, pulling up her leggings.

  I glanced over at Cam and saw his pants were undone.

  Shit.

  “Luka,” I said again, in a quieter voice. Luka wasn’t looking at Daphne, or at Cam, but instead his eyes were locked on a small square of scoffed wood halfway between his feet and the bathroom. His aloofness now was just scary, his bland quiet face as he slowly strangled Cam was eerie. “Let him go.”

  “He was hurting her. She was screaming.”

  “He wasn’t hurting me,” Daphne came forward like Luka was a lion with a taste for blood. “I swear.”<
br />
  Luka did nothing.

  “We were fooling around,” Daphne said to me. “Just fooling around. Cam…didn’t lock the door, which is so fucking typical—”

  Cam made a garbled sound in his throat.

  “Right.” She closed her dark eyes. “And this guy came in, took one look at us and grabbed Cam by the neck.”

  I walked over and stood in the place where Luka was staring.

  “You have to let him go,” I said. “Now. He wasn’t hurting her.”

  Luke blinked, his gaze lifted to mine. “He wasn’t,” he said. Again. Not quite a question, not quite a statement.

  “No. He wasn’t.”

  “She was screaming.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Daphne asked. “You can’t tell—”

  I lifted my hand, shutting Daphne up.

  “He wasn’t hurting her,” I repeated.

  Luka stepped back, his hand dropping from Cam’s throat. Cam fell forward, braced on his knees, sucking in air.

  “I’m sorry,” Luka said.

  “Fuck you!” Cam took a wild swing at Luka. Unbelievably it connected, snapping Luka’s head back. I took a deep breath, ready to throw myself between them but Luka just took another step away.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said to Daphne, his cheek now florid.

  “It’s…okay,” she stammered.

  “The fuck it is!” Cam cried.

  “You want to hit me again?” Luka asked Cam.

  “Sort of.”

  Luka smiled.

  “I wasn’t hurting her.” Cam said. “You can’t…you can’t tell people I’m like some kind of rapist—”

  “I wouldn’t. I won’t.” Luka stepped back again and then again, as if repelled by the word rapist, until he hit the wall.

  “You’re the one who fucking assaulted me.” Cam finally tucked his junk back in his pants. His color was coming down and his skewed glasses slipped off his nose but he caught them in his shaking hands.

  “You’re right. You can tell anyone you want about that,” Luka said. I didn’t know if he was joking or not.

  But that really would be a disaster. I doubted Cam knew who Luka was. Grad students tended to live in a self-absorbed bubble of delayed adulthood. And if Luka got arrested for assaulting Cam, combined with the interview with Anna on Sunday—the whole nightmare from four years ago would get pulled out of its grave.

  “Cam,” I stepped into the mix with my phone pulled out. “I’ll call you and Daphne an Uber. Everyone has had too much to drink and he only thought he was helping.”

  Cam was not quite ready to calm down, but Daphne pulled him away.

  “You did forget to lock the door,” she muttered, which got her a glare from Cam.

  Luka turned and went into his small room. The door closed behind him with a quiet little snick that managed to seem so loud.

  I watched over the landing as Cam took the weed brownies. Like he was owed something and getting away with taking it.

  Fucking grad students.

  I sighed, waiting until they bundled up and left. I ran down the stairs and locked the door behind them.

  Now. What to do.

  I didn’t want to be “mothering” him. Pushing care or worry on him when he so clearly didn’t want it. But that had been a serious scene and if he were a woman, I wouldn’t think twice about just making sure he was okay.

  It was silent behind his door, so I knocked quietly.

  “Luka?” I said. Deciding I would let him tell me if it wasn’t my business.

  “Come in.”

  I pushed open the door to find him standing at the one window in the room. The lights from the Holiday Gas Station across the street fell through the window and bathed him in red and blue. Giant flakes of snow hit the pane of glass and as they melted they appeared as spots running down his face.

  Like tears. Like he was crying.

  I bit back the words “are you all right” because they were lame. Useless.

  A sleeping bag was stretched out in the corner, next to it a lantern and a stack of books. There were small things on the desk. A bunch of rocks. A tripod looking thing made out of wood.

  On the back wall hung his rifle.

  He sleeps on the floor, was somehow all I could think. I’d put a futon couch in the room but he chose to sleep on the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not looking at me.

  “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

  “I ruined your party.”

  “It was over. You didn’t ruin anything.”

  “You’ve been really good to me. Most people who recognize me…they’re not as nice.”

  He knows. He knows I know. And we’re going to talk about it.

  And I could imagine how people treated him once they knew who he was. Even though he was innocent, the story was so ugly most people couldn’t get past that.

  I could barely breathe.

  He looked up at the ceiling, the corner of the room. Anywhere but at me. “I’ve liked it here. I’ve liked this place, with your art and equipment. I like the way it smells different if you’ve had a good day or a bad day.”

  “I’m not asking you to leave,” I said. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Luka, if you want to talk. I’m here. I’ll listen.”

  He glanced my way. “I’ve never had a friend, so I don’t know if that’s… I mean…is that we are?”

  “Yes.”

  “That night…last summer? On the fire escape?”

  I nodded because apparently we were talking about ALL the things and I didn’t have any words.

  “I think about it,” he whispered. “I think about how you felt in my arms, so hot and so sweaty and so strong all at once. And how you kissed me. I think about it all the time.”

  “So do I.”

  He turned to look at me and those ice-blue eyes of his were far from inscrutable. They burned. I was surprised my clothes didn’t smoke, my skin didn’t sizzle under the heat of those eyes. I could read everything in them, how badly he wanted me and how badly he wanted to not want me.

  “And then tonight…”

  “I know,” I said, stupidly. Inanely.

  “Do you know what I thought?”

  I nodded, still in the doorway, still holding the cold beer I’d thought he could press against his cheek. But he didn’t look like he needed first aid. He needed something else entirely.

  I ached to touch him. To hug him.

  My throat was suddenly dry and small. The force of this man’s repressed pain sliced right through me. To the bone.

  “You thought he was hurting her,” I whispered. Whispering seemed in order.

  “She was screaming.”

  “It was…” Did he really not know? “It was a good scream.”

  “Good scream.” He lips twisted into something rueful and angry. “That’s a thing. That’s a thing other people have. Other people get that. Good screams.”

  “Luka—”

  “You know what I get?”

  Me, I almost said.

  “I get to think normal sex is rape. I get to choke a guy who was giving his girlfriend a good time in a bathroom at a party. I get to relive—”

  He cut himself off, ruthlessly.

  Helpless—really and truly helpless I lifted the beer. “Would you like this?”

  Lame. So lame.

  Our gazes met again, tangled.

  “Would I like what?” His face was wide open. He…was wide open.

  Me. Would you like me? Because I would like you.

  “The beer.”

  I lifted it toward him and he took the bottle. Our fingers brushed and if he were any other man, I’d say he did it on purpose. A high school come-on. But his entire neck turned red.

  “I thought you could press it against your—”

  He twisted off the top and took one long swallow.

  “—eye.”

  Or not.

 
“I’ve never seen that,” he said, still looking out the window. “I mean…not like that.”

  “Sex?”

  He shook his head.

  “Luka? Are you…” Jesus. Was this really happening? “Have you ever had sex?”

  He laughed. Lifted the bottle but then lowered it. He was nearly crawling out of his skin, I could see that. “You know…about me. I know you know.”

  All I could do was nod. I blew a thin stream of air out my lips, waiting. It was the two of us. Just the two of us. And the winter. And nothing else.

  The tips of his ears were bright red.

  “What did you see?” I asked. “In the bathroom, what was Cam doing?”

  “She was up against the sink. Her hands braced—” He put out his hands just for a moment, as if to show me. “--and he was behind her. He had one hand between her legs and the other was holding onto her hip. She was holding the sink and their…knuckles were white, they were holding on so hard. I swear…I only saw them for a half second but I saw their bones under the skin of their hands. She had her head tipped back, resting against his shoulder, and she was screaming.”

  “It was…it was an orgasm.”

  “That’s normal? I mean…the screaming?” He took another deep drink from the beer. So flushed. So embarrassed.

  “If it’s good, yes. Some women scream.”

  “Women scream when it’s bad too,” he said.

  Oh, God, that was the brutal truth. My heart cracked open. And I saw how narrow and terrible his experience with sex was. So terrible he kept himself locked inside it, in fear of spreading it around. In fear of being wrong. In fear of hurting someone else.

  He just lived alone with his rotten knowledge.

  “How?” he asked. “How does someone make someone else feel so good, they scream? How does a man do that to a woman? How is that possible?”

  I stepped inside the room.

  He watched me. Like I was shifting the balance of the earth, he watched me. Like I was a wild animal he tracked me with his eyes. His body coiled for…something.

  Tomorrow I could blame this on the tequila, if I had to. The wine. The weed brownies. If he rejected me I’d grab the rest of the tequila and leave. I’d get blind drunk and convince myself this never happened. I’d go back to being a landlord and Luka would go back to being Luka.