Wild Awake

by Hilary T. Smith

  He goes in first, and I follow. As I step inside, I forget all about my need to pee. My senses reel.

  Skunk’s room is one of the most bizarre and beautiful places I’ve ever seen.

  The entire room is filled with old radios. It reminds me of nothing so much as an aviary, each radio a different bird, some with gleaming wooden coats like sparrows and some with green plastic shoulders like parrots. They perch on ledges and shelves, peeking down from windowsills and peering out from in between stacks of old books, their antennas perked at quirky angles, their dials glowing faintly in the dim golden light of an antique lamp. Some of them look ancient, with curved wooden cases and glass-plated dials, and some are squat and cheerful. I even think I can hear birds in here, a faint hooting and scratching, until I realize one of the radios is turned on with its volume low.

  There’s an unmade bed loosely covered by a black-and-green quilt. A row of red Chinese lanterns hangs above the bed, their bellies glowing. The ashtray on the bedside table is littered with the stubs of incense sticks. I glimpse the soft curves of an ornate velvet armchair piled with clothes. Behind the armchair hangs a painting of the Hindu goddess Kali, her four arms held at right angles, tongue stuck out. The room smells like something I’ve only smelled one time before. It takes me a moment to place it: myrrh.

  Skunk plants his hand on the wall and slides off his wet shoes.

  “Bathroom’s through there.” He indicates a little hallway with his chin. “The light switch is sort of hard to find. It’s on the wall under the mirror.”

  His face is turned toward the floor, concentrating on his shoes. Rainwater slips off his hair and the back of his neck and drops to the floor, making little wet polka dots on the hardwood.

  I’m not listening to his instructions about the light switch. Something in the corner of the room has caught my eye. “My grandma had that radio.”

  Skunk looks up, smiling. He’s peeled off his wet socks and balled them up inside his shoes. His bare feet are surprisingly pale and hairless.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “The blue one with the clock on the front. She kept it tuned to this crazy Christian station where they were always telling you to put your hands on the radio and pray for healing.”

  “The blue one’s my second favorite,” he says.

  “Which one’s your first favorite?”

  “See that little red one on the top ledge?”

  I scan the wall until I see it.

  “The plastic one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s cute. Where’d you get it?”

  “I found it sitting next to a fire hydrant. I was walking past and thought I heard something, and it was this radio sitting on the sidewalk, running on batteries. It was like it had wandered out into the world and gotten lost and it was calling out, hoping someone would find it.”

  “Aww. That’s sweet. What was it playing?”

  Skunk grins.

  “Marilyn Manson.”

  I go to the bathroom, and when I come back the rain is slapping horizontally against the glass door. Skunk is sitting on the floor, putting on dry socks. I put my hand on the door. I know this is supposed to be the part where I go home.

  But what would happen if I didn’t?

  “Well, it was nice riding with you,” I say, reaching up to brush the wet hair out of my eyes. “Next time we race, I get a head start.”

  I realize, to my simultaneous horror and exhilaration, that I’m flirting with him.

  Skunk pulls on a wool sock, his face carefully composed, as if he’s trying to figure out how far into his private universe he should let me intrude, and for how long.

  Stop it, Kiri! says the part of me that’s shocked by my boldness.

  The other part says, Why?

  I smile at him and cast a mischievous glance at my wet tank top, knowing Skunk’s eyes will follow.

  “I wish it wasn’t raining. But I guess it doesn’t matter, since I’m already soaked. Anyway. See you later.”

  I turn around to slide the door open before he sees the half-mortified, half-triumphant expression on my face. My heart is beating like a castanet. All right, flirt-monster. That’s enough for one night. He obviously doesn’t like you. My fingers find the plastic handle.

  “Wait,” says Skunk.

  chapter twenty-four

  The rain doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.

  So I stay.

  Skunk tiptoes upstairs, and when he comes back down he’s carrying a small clay teapot and two tiny cups without handles. We sit cross-legged on the rug in the middle of the floor, drink our tea, and talk in whispers so his aunt and uncle won’t hear. I can’t stop looking around the room, stealing glances at the radios, the lanterns, the junk-store painting of Kali, the quilt on Skunk’s bed. I still can’t quite believe I’m in here. Part of me’s on my wet bicycle, making her disciplined, hard-working, and responsible way home. It takes all my self-control not to chicken out and follow her.

  Between thimblefuls of smoky, earthy tea, I make Skunk tell me the story of every radio in the room.

  The boxy green one he found on top of someone’s trash.

  The antique one in the walnut cabinet someone left at the bottom of their driveway with a FREE sign the morning after a garage sale.

  The digital clock radio he stole from a hospital room.

  The vintage 1960s transistor radio his dad gave him a week before he committed suicide in his apartment.

  I tell myself I’ll only stay until we’re finished our tea, but the teapot never seems to run out. Every time Skunk lifts it to fill our cups, more tea trickles out. He asks me about the Imperial, and I tell him everything I’ve found out since the night we met.

  “Are you sure you want to hear this?” I ask, remembering Lukas’s reaction, but in the cozy lamplight, it feels like there’s no secret too terrible to say. Skunk gives me a sweater to wear, a big brown woolen one that drapes over my whole body like a warm, fuzzy tent. I feel self-conscious wearing it, like I’m taking a nap in his bed. But it also makes my chest tingle. Get real, Kiri, I tell myself. This isn’t going anywhere.

  Every few minutes my eyes flit to the clock on the little red radio. It’s four thirty a.m., I should go home. It’s five a.m., I should go home. It’s five fifteen, I should go home. At six a.m. there’s noise upstairs, and we can hear Skunk’s aunt and uncle taking showers and making breakfast.

  “I should probably leave too,” I whisper. “I really need to practice.”

  “At six in the morning?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s still raining.”

  “I’ll get wet.”

  “At least finish your tea.”

  “That teapot is enchanted. It never runs out.”

  “I know.”

  “So you’re saying you’re trying to enchant me?”

  Skunk presses his lips together. “Wait and see.”

  I sip my tea, trying to play it cool. But I can’t help it. I spring to my feet. “I really need to go.”

  Skunk waves his arms. “Oh no! She’s fiending!”

  “I am not fiending.”

  “How many hours has it been since your last hit?”

  I count. “Nine and a half.”

  “Fiending,” says Skunk.

  “I swear I’m not a junkie,” I say. “It’s just that my piano will explode if I don’t practice for long enough each day. It’s sort of like a bomb in that respect.”

  Skunk goes to the wall and turns on a radio. He tunes it to a classical station, and the slow first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata comes pouring out.

  “I’m playing that piece in the Showcase,” I blurt.

  Skunk kneels on the floor and pours me more tea.

  “Tell me all about it,” he says.

  In the afternoon we go upstairs to make breakfast before Skunk’s aunt and uncle come home from work. Their house is a mysterious planet of vitamin bottles and piled-up mail, as different as could
be from the warm, cluttered radio temple below. There’s a stack of cookbooks on the counter with titles like Lo-Carb Italian Cooking and, disturbingly, The Zero-Calorie Solution. I page through them while Skunk puts on a kettle of water for coffee and gets out the ingredients for an omelet. Between reading recipes for celery salad and low-carb meat-balls, I pace around the kitchen, taking in the stacks of clean dishes and bowls, matching white mugs with square handles, sets of espresso cups and saucers. There’s some sort of work schedule taped to a cupboard door.

  “What does your aunt do?”

  Skunk puts a carton of eggs on the counter and turns back to the fridge to rummage around in the vegetable drawer.

  “She’s a nurse,” he says over his shoulder.

  “What about your uncle?”

  “Auto parts manager.”

  “When do they get home from work?”

  “Six.”

  “I should probably go before then. I really do need to practice.”

  Skunk snorts. I plant my hands on my hips. “What are you laughing at?”

  “You sound just like my aunt.”

  “Why? Does she play piano?”

  “No, she’s on a diet. I’m going to lose sixteen pounds. No, twenty pounds.”

  “You’re such a jerk! I only have to do eight hours if I leave right now. I can do them before bed.”

  “Is piano your job or something? Are you going to get fired if you miss a day?”

  “It’s called discipline, fool. I’ll have you know I’ve been playing piano since I was a kid, and I take it very seriously.”

  “What about your band?” says Skunk. “I bet you don’t play synth for eight hours a day.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Why?”

  “Nobody needs me to be in a band.”

  “And they need you to play piano?”

  I scowl at Skunk, piqued. “This had better be the best freaking omelet I’ve ever had.”

  He drops his hands on my shoulders and steers me to a chair at the kitchen table. “Consider this an intervention.”

  He pours me a big mug of coffee to drink, then goes back to the fridge and takes out arugula, goat cheese, wild mushrooms, and fresh herbs. While he’s cooking, a fat orange cat comes out of the living room and slinks around my legs, meowing plaintively.

  “That’s Gingerly,” says Skunk. “Don’t feed her, she’s a mooch.”

  Skunk reaches into a cupboard, takes out sea salt, and shakes some into the omelet. I’m so hungry I squirm in my chair. “Is that food almost ready?”

  “Good things take time.”

  “The smell’s driving me crazy.”

  “You’re already crazy.”

  “Oh no, I’m not. Not yet. Okay, now I am.”

  And for the last three minutes before the omelet’s ready I’m fluttering around the kitchen in my socks, light as a moth and practically translucent with hunger, saying, “When-when-when-when-when?” and spinning around with the affronted cat in my arms. Skunk lifts the cast-iron pan off the stove with an oven mitt, and when he puts it down on a hot pad on the kitchen table, I rush up with the cat in my arms and almost kiss him I’m so hungry, but stop just short and stand there, panting slightly, my head dizzy from spinning, our faces just inches apart.

  I’m conscious of Skunk’s height, of his bigness. He’s like a brontosaurus or a bison or a bulldozer, some strong, solid word. He still smells like something that’s been out grazing in the sun, even though it’s been raining since last night. There’s a fleck of rosemary stuck to his forehead. A smudge of bicycle grease on his wrist. I feel a flutter of fear, then a wingbeat of certainty.

  “I want to kiss you,” I say, “but I seem to be holding this cat.”

  Skunk lifts his hand and touches it to the side of my face. His fingers are warm from carrying the hot skillet to the table. He regards me very seriously, and for a moment I wonder if he’s about to tell me we should Focus on Bicycle Repair. Instead he just looks at me for a very long time.

  “You’re beautiful,” says Skunk, “and completely batshit.”

  Then, cat be damned, I do kiss him. I’m either swooning or having a hypoglycemic meltdown, take your pick, because I’m starving and in love with Skunk and because nobody’s ever said anything like that to me before. Halfway through the kiss, the cat twists out of my arms, drops to its feet on the floor, and streaks away. I step in and close the space between our bodies and we kiss, Skunk and I, like all the bicycles in the world are gliding down a long, steep, swooping, tree-mad hill.

  Somehow we eat our afternoon breakfast and get the dishes done and put away. We wipe down the counters, push in our chairs, and turn off the lights. Every time a car passes, we shoot each other panicked looks and bolt toward the stairs. Suddenly, it’s a game: How long can I stay until we get caught? How much of this can we get away with?

  We scamper downstairs and kiss until our lips are swollen and our cheeks are pink and Skunk’s shape, his vast lovely architecture, has become as familiar to me as the rooms of my own house. We drag the black-and-green quilt off Skunk’s bed, lay it on the floor, and roll in it like snow, hands tangled up in one another’s hair. Bicycle Boy, my brontosaurus of love, my love-bison. I cling to his sweater like a cat, pawing at his heart with my little hooked claws, mewling, memorizing his scent. Every so often my mind flits back to my house, the piano, the thirsty azaleas and the mailbox stuffed with flyers. I finally open my fist and let go of these worries, and like a bunch of helium balloons they float up and up and up until they’re tiny specks in the corner of the big blue sky.

  At six o’clock, we hear Skunk’s aunt coming home from work. We freeze on the rug, listening to her footsteps on the kitchen floor. A few minutes later, Skunk’s uncle gets home too. They talk—a low rumbly voice and a sharp medium-high one—and there’s the beep of a microwave and the sudden bright loudness of a TV commercial. I snuggle into Skunk.

  “I should go home now, right? Right?”

  Before I can say anything else, the door at the top of the stairs squeaks open, letting in a bar of yellow light.

  “Philippe?” calls Skunk’s aunt. “T’es en bas?”

  Our bodies go rigid like lizards playing dead. I’m sure she sees us, but Skunk motions for me to stay where I am. He jumps up and rummages noisily through his dresser.

  “Ouai, tante Martine. J’viens. Un moment, j’suis en train de me changer.”

  “D’accord.”

  She shuts the door. My body goes limp, but Skunk is quaking with silent laughter.

  “I told her I was changing. I have to go upstairs for a while,” he whispers. “Don’t worry.”

  He climbs the stairs. Before he opens the door, he looks over his shoulder to cast me a mischievous grin.

  “Hey, Aunt Martine. What’s for dinner?” he says more loudly than he needs to. I have to bury my head under the quilt before I laugh so hard I give our secret away.

  When Skunk comes back down, he lights big beeswax candles and tunes one of the radios to this station that plays detective shows from the 1940s. We lie on the floor and listen, the quilt wrapped around us. I lift his hand and very gently bite the tender perfect acorn of his finger. He murmurs and pulls me in close, and we spoon while the radio detective comforts a hysterical woman whose husband has just been found poisoned in bed.

  “It was the butler,” I whisper.

  “No way,” murmurs Skunk. “It was definitely the wife.”

  “No way.”

  “She’s having an affair with the butler.”

  “You’re smoking crack.”

  “Just wait.”

  I sigh and nest my body more snugly into Skunk’s. The show goes on. It turns out it was the hysterical wife. Skunk was right.

  We listen to another one starring the same detective, and this time Skunk predicts the killer again. “You’ve listened to way too many of these,” I say.

  “You always think it’s the obvious suspect. It’s never the obvious s
uspect.”

  “Thanks, Inspector Gadget.”

  “It’s always the last person you’d ever guess.”

  “I still don’t get why the groundskeeper killed Dr. Knight.”

  “He’d falsified his brother’s will so Harry wouldn’t inherit Birch Pond anymore. The only way to get it back was to kill Dr. Knight.”

  “You have listened to way too many of these.”

  “Let’s listen to one more.”

  I prop my head up on my elbows and look down at him. “Aren’t you getting tired? Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “We’ll sleep,” whispers Skunk. “But let’s listen to another one first.”

  I start to protest. Skunk reaches up and touches my hair, and before I know it I’m kissing him again. Soon neither of us is paying enough attention to the show to figure out who killed who.

  All night we drift in and out of sleep, waking up just long enough to kiss and tangle and fall asleep again with our limbs in a knot. It feels like we’re living in a dream, like there’s no way what we’re doing is possible. But it is. And we are. And I don’t ever want it to end. I think back to Lukas and the disaster with the wine, and it seems hilarious now, like I’ve traded in a jar full of pennies for a bar of gold. It’s amazing how quickly the things you thought would make you happy seem small once you stumble on something true.

  Beautiful, I think to myself as I float back into sleep, my whole body thrumming with a tender, exhausted state of exhilaration. Beside me, Skunk’s body is warm under his T-shirt. The last thing I see before falling asleep is the Kali painting on Skunk’s wall. Her blue-gold body is draped in equal parts flowers and severed heads—as if beauty and horror were interchangeable and what matters most is trusting in the dance. I gaze at her until I can almost hear the clink of bells, the thud of drums. My eyes droop shut, and then I’m gone.

  Sometime around noon on Saturday we both take showers in the tiny downstairs bathroom. Skunk gives me a soft old T-shirt to wear and a pair of his aunt’s sweatpants he finds in the dryer. They’re big in the butt and they make me look like an orangutan, but at least they’re clean. Oh, Skunk! Oh, Bicycle Boy! This afternoon’s omelet features Asiago and leeks. When did Lukas ever feed me? When did Lukas peel off my borrowed socks and do a weird and vaguely pleasant shiatsu thing to my feet?