by Raziel Reid
“A lot of people are afraid to say what they want,” I said, “so they don’t get it.”
Angela just rolled her eyes as Keefer came up and started playing with his Transformer on the edge of the table. Brooke refilled our waters, and when she walked away, Keefer turned to me and asked, “She’s a one, right, Jude?”
I turned to give Brooke a look-over behind the counter. “At first glance you might think so,” I said, “since she does have varicose veins in her cankles, a pancake ass, and dollar-store nail polish. But when you take into account not only the mole on her chin but the hair sticking out of it, you come to the only logical conclusion: this is a rare case, meriting a rating in negative numbers. But, hey, God bless the ugly bitch. Every movie needs a character actor.”
When Keefer and I got back from the Day-n-Nite, I was disappointed that there wasn’t a Cops camera crew in my front yard.
My mom and Ray were still fighting. I lost track of how long it’d been. It was so bad, I couldn’t even make it make-believe.
I went down to my room and stared at Luke’s grade one picture, which I’d tucked under the frame of my mirror. He looked adorable—a kid with big blue eyes and blond hair. He was missing a tooth and was still tan from summer. I thought how, if we had kids, I’d like them to look just like him. But then I realized how stupid that was, so I tried not to think it. Sometimes, though, I couldn’t help myself; I thought about stupid things, crazy stupid things that I knew would never actually happen, but which I thought about anyway because they filled me with hope—or delusion. But is that so bad? Sometimes you just have to keep fooling yourself or you’ll never survive.
Keefer came downstairs crying. I wanted to tell him to cut it out—crying doesn’t do anything but make you look like an even cheaper whore. But he was so helpless; I moved over so he could crawl into my bed with me and Stoned.
The fighting used to scare me too, but eventually, it became like TV background noise, always on way too loud, and the drama was so clichéd.
“Want to listen?” I asked Keefer, putting one of my earbuds in his ear.
“Why are Mom and Dad fighting?”
“Who knows,” I shrugged, even though I heard her accuse him of stealing her tips to buy drugs. I almost had enough for a bus ticket. Soon I’d be on a Greyhound with no rear window, just a stinky toilet, so I couldn’t look back even if I wanted to. Not that I would want to. No one looks back when they’re going to heaven … And L.A. wasn’t called the city of angels for nothing.
They got so loud that we could hear them over the music playing on my computer, and Keefer asked me if they were going to kill each other. I laughed, but I was kind of choked because he meant it. And the worst part was, I couldn’t give him an answer.
“You bitch!” Ray screamed, followed by a shatter. I heard something smash against the wall, and I was scared it was my mom. “I’ll fucking kill you!” Ray yelled, and my mom started screaming. But she wasn’t screaming at him. She was just screaming.
“He’s going to kill her,” Keefer cried.
“Stay,” I said, jumping out of bed. “Don’t move.”
I ran up to the living room. Ray had my mom pinned against the wall. His hands were wrapped around her neck and she was trying to push him away. When I think about it, it’s like it happened to someone else. Everything was in fast forward. My head was spinning, and then I lost it.
I went for his hair. I pulled his head back so hard that his neck cracked. He spun around, sweat dripping from his eyebrows and down his stubble. Behind him, I saw my mom slide down the wall.
“Fucking faggot,” he said, swinging his arm but stopping before he hit my face. I still sank to my knees, though, like it had been rehearsed.
He turned and walked out the door, slamming it so hard that what was left on the walls fell to the floor.
I looked across the room at my mom, who was surrounded by dirt and the broken pieces of a smashed flower pot. Keef’s fish bowl was knocked over. In the middle of the living room floor, his goldfish was flopping on its side. He loved that thing. My mom saw it at the same time as me, and we both watched its last twitch. We couldn’t save it; we couldn’t do anything but watch it die.
My mom looked over at me, rubbing her neck. “What do we tell Keefer?” she asked.
I didn’t answer her, but she didn’t expect me to.
Eventually she got up and went to the bathroom, running herself a bath. I heard the cork pop on the wine bottle. When she started crying into her bubbles, I told myself to get up off the floor and tidy up—to hang the pictures back on the wall even if the frames were broken—but I couldn’t move. I just stared at Keef’s dead fish.
At least Keefer had listened to me and stayed down in the basement. I don’t know if it was because he was obedient or afraid, but either way, it protected him. And he needed protecting from Ray. We all did.
One night, when I’d first moved down to the basement, I was having trouble sleeping. Everything was quiet except for occasional creaking floorboards. Ray was still up. My mom was at work. I got out of bed, hopping on dirty laundry to avoid the cold cement floor.
I climbed upstairs and peeked into Keefer’s room. There were as many toys on his floor as there were clothes on mine. His eyes were closed, and his thumb was in his mouth, but when the hallway light streaked across his face, his eyes opened, and he pulled his hand away.
“Jude!” he smiled, but I could barely hear him over the hacking coming from the kitchen and that familiar smell.
“Goodnight,” I said. “I just wanted to say goodnight. Stay in bed.”
“Will you read to me?” he asked.
“No. Go to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He was disappointed, but he nodded.
“Close your eyes,” I told him, “and dream.”
I walked silently to the kitchen. I knew what I was going to find, but I was still taken aback.
Ray was standing next to the sink in his dirty underwear. They had once been white but were now grey and torn at the elastic waist. He was skinnier than the last time I saw him naked—that time I walked in on him in the shower and he accused me of doing it on purpose.
He didn’t see me as he dropped the pipe onto the kitchen floor. Smoke streamed out of his chapped lips and wrapped around his neck like a noose.
15
9021-Opiates
“Is it dead or alive?” Abel asked.
“Um … ” I took a puff of the joint he passed me as we sat in the park. “I don’t know. Did any whatsits decay?”
“It’s dead and alive, dude,” he said, laughing. He looked cute because his nose was so red and shiny and there were snowflakes in his cherubic curls.
“You cannot get me stoned and then start talking about this shit. My brain is imploding.”
“It’s quantum superposition.”
“Could you imagine if your last name was Schrödinger? I guess you’d have to be a scientist. It’s not like you could be a movie star.”
“It’s like, is that tree really there if we aren’t looking at it?” he asked.
“Either you need to smoke less weed, or I need to smoke more.”
“Just giving you some food for thought.”
“Well, now I have the munchies.”
“Day-n-Nite?”
“I can’t. I’m saving. Did I tell you I almost have enough for a ticket?”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Then what are you going to do? What’s your plan once you actually get there?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Plans are for pussies.”
“You can’t just run away to Hollywood.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t a movie.”
“Says who?”
“People don’t do things like that in real life.”
“This,” I sighed, “is not real.”
“Have you told Angela?”
“Yeah. She’s actin
g like I’m already gone.”
“You know how she is. She doesn’t want you to go.”
“And neither do you,” I smiled, poking his cheek with my frozen finger.
“I just don’t think you realize what it’s like out there,” he said.
“And I don’t think you realize what it’s like here.”
He thought about that for a while, looking at the frozen river.
“You’re serious?” he asked, and I don’t think I was imagining the sadness in his voice.
“I’m a big star, Abel. Just nobody knows it yet.”
“But where are you going to live?”
“Oh, who cares where I live so long as I’m living?”
“Are you scared?”
“To go? No. But I’m scared to stay.”
I waited for him to reach for my hand.
“What about you?” I asked. “Are you scared?”
“For you?”
“No, for yourself.”
He shook some of the snow off his head.
“Not all of us can rock a busted nose quite like you, Jude.”
I nodded, almost giving in and taking his hand, but I didn’t have to. He reached for mine, and I was happy because I thought he never would.
“There’s no stars tonight,” he said.
I looked up at the black sky.
“So does that mean they don’t exist?”
We didn’t say much as we walked home, down the middle of the deserted street. I lit a cigarette, and he said, “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“Only when I want to feel like Bette Davis,” I said.
His house was closest, so we stopped at the driveway. All the snow had been shovelled to the side. It was as high as the trash cans. I was going to walk the rest of the way home, but I didn’t really want to go home, so I thought I might just keep walking.
“Well, goodnight,” I said, but I didn’t budge.
“If you’re cold, you can come in and warm up,” he offered, kicking ice with his foot. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I mean, if you want.”
“I am cold,” I said, even though I wasn’t. Sometimes you get so cold you stop feeling. He tried to hide his smile as I followed him to the front door. The censor light turned on like paparazzi hiding in the bushes. The spotlight could be so relentless.
We went to his room where he closed the door, keeping the lights off. I tried not to breathe because even that seemed too loud. When he whispered my name, I jumped and then couldn’t stop giggling. He muffled my giggles with his tongue. He pulled off my shirt, and I unbuttoned his jeans, which were wet from sitting on the snowy park bench. Our breathing got heavier when we touched because our hands were so cold. He kissed me again, and when he pulled away I wondered if he was actually there if I couldn’t see him. We tripped over our clothes on the floor and landed on the bed. He pulled the covers over our heads and everything became even darker. If my asshole hadn’t been brimming with his spit, I wouldn’t have believed it.
It didn’t hurt as much as Angela said it would. When I wanted to gasp, moan, scream, he covered my mouth with his hand, so it echoed in my head. His breathing got heavier and then he trembled, and it was over. I felt him go soft inside of me as I held onto him. We were stuck together with sweat. His whole body shook. He cried without making a sound, but I felt a tear roll off his cheek and land on my face. He passed out in my arms. I don’t know how long we stayed like that with my hands tangled in his knotted hair like I was trying to pray. I couldn’t tell if I was sleeping; it was so dark, I thought my eyes were closed even when they were open.
When I woke up there was some light coming through the window, but the sky was mostly cloudy. The bed had shifted so there was a space between it and the wall, which half of Abel’s body was falling into.
I got out of bed quietly, trying not to wake him. I knew it would be awkward. I wanted to touch his hair but didn’t let myself. I kept thinking how he was sort of like Schrödinger’s cat. He was gay and straight, depending on how you looked at it. I didn’t really know if the cat was dead or alive, or if Abel was gay or straight. But I thought either way, it must be so terrible for both of them, trapped in that box.
I couldn’t find my shirt, and I wanted to get out of there, so I picked up one of Abel’s from the floor. It was wrinkled, had a grease stain near the collar, and it smelled like his sweat. I was never going to give it back.
I forgot to listen at the door before I opened it, and ran into Mrs Adams coming out of the bathroom. She was wearing a pink housecoat and her peroxide hair was dishevelled, her roots a mix of brown and grey.
“Oh, good morning, Jude,” she yawned, rubbing her eyes as I closed Abel’s door. “Did you and Angela have a nice sleep-over?”
“Yes,” I nodded.
“Abel has a shirt just like that,” she said, giving me a lopsided smile.
“Weird,” I shrugged, walking down the hall. “Well, have a nice day, Mrs Adams.”
“Yes, it is getting late isn’t it?” she said, stumbling back to her room.
I let myself out the front door, grateful for, and craving, Mrs Adams’ private pharmacy.
I listened to music off my phone, dancing by myself down the middle of the dead street because the sidewalks still needed to be shovelled. When I was a block from my house, I saw his truck and froze, almost dropping my phone.
Soap stars never die.
16
Typecast
T he last time I’d seen him was during the summer. Only I didn’t really see him. I was in the hospital, and it was the middle of the night, but I was awake. I didn’t want to fall asleep; when I closed my eyes, the snuff films played.
I still hadn’t looked in the mirror. I could tell by the way Keefer looked at me when he came to visit that I didn’t want to. He brought me a card he made in art class with a big red heart on the front, and he hadn’t learned how to draw in the lines yet. Or maybe he had and just didn’t give a shit.
I heard footsteps coming into the room and closed my eyes. Whoever it was walked in and stopped, then took a few more steps and pulled back the curtain. At first I thought it was a doctor, and I was glad that my eyes were closed. But then I smelled stale cigarette smoke.
I could feel my dad watching me, and my heart sped up—I knew it was him. I felt his breath as he leaned over, as he touched my bandaged forehead. I told myself to open my eyes, but I couldn’t; I didn’t think that he’d understand.
“I love you, kid,” he said.
Then I heard shoes clicking on the linoleum floor down the hallway. I sensed him stand up and back away from me as the footsteps got closer until they reached the room. I heard a nurse say, “Sir, what are you doing in here?” He mumbled something, but I couldn’t make it out. “It’s way past visiting hours,” she said, and he muttered some more. I heard him walk past her, out of the room.
I kept telling myself to open my eyes and stop him before he was gone, but it was like my lids were stuck together, like that time I used too much of my mom’s eyelash glue. Then it was too late: he and the nurse had left my room, their voices waning.
When everything was silent again, I thought I might have imagined it. I kept sniffing, but there was no trace of cigarette smoke.
It really haunted me, lying there, thinking about how that was the first time my dad had ever told me that he loved me, and I might’ve made it up.
I stood on the street and watched as my dad came out of the house. Mom stood in the doorway. He was wearing a baseball cap, which shaded his eyes. Sometimes, my parents would stop being Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and be civil to each other. It always freaked me out. He slowly walked toward me, and I held my breath.
“How’s it going, kid?” he asked, and I think I shrugged before he asked if I wanted to get some breakfast. I must’ve nodded and walked to his truck and put on my seat belt and maybe even listened to the radio as he drove us to the Day-n-Nite. That’s where we ended
up. It was like I blinked my eyes and we were sitting at a front booth. I didn’t realize I was there until I looked up and saw Brooke flirtatiously pouring his coffee.
I excused myself and went to the bathroom where I leaned against the sink, looking at myself in the mirror. I had dark circles under my eyes and messy hair. My bottom lip was chapped, and it looked like the grease stain on Abel’s shirt had gotten even bigger. I don’t know how that happened—probably just from walking through the air in the Day-n-Nite. My hands were shaking so hard that I thought I might pull the sink from the wall.
I went into a stall that was darker than the rest of the bathroom because the light above it was busted. It was too dark to see, but it smelled like I was standing in a puddle of piss. I leaned over and puked.
When I came out of the bathroom, Brooke was standing at our table, refilling my dad’s coffee. She asked me if I wanted any, and I nodded.
“Gonna stunt your growth,” my dad said as Brooke walked away, her big feet squeaking in a pair of clogs. But then he looked out the window like he knew it was a lame thing to say. As he looked away, I picked up a butter knife and held it under the table. I glanced at him. He looked about the same as the last time we shot a scene together. Maybe a little more dried up.
“You hungry?” he asked, his voice gruff.
“Sure,” I shrugged. He looked out the window again, and I pressed the butter knife harder against my wrist.
“So,” he turned back to me, “where’d you sleep?”
“I had a night shoot,” I said.
He spun his coffee cup on the table top. I looked down at my arm. I’d broken the scab on a cut, and there was a bit of blood trickling down my wrist. Brooke came back, and my dad ordered toast and, even though I was starving, I ordered the same because I wanted to get breakfast over with.
“I thought you were hungry,” he said, like he was offended.
“I think I’m just tired.”
“The coffee tastes like dirt in this place,” he sighed. “I had a rough night, too, driving,” he said, sipping his dirt. “I’ve been driving for sixteen hours.” He paused like he was waiting for me to ask him from where, but I didn’t want to know. Just another place on the map. He tapped his fingers on the table. His nails were short and jagged like mine. We had the same hands. I always thought of him when I looked at my hands. Especially when they were around my dick. He always popped into my mind at the more absurd moments. My hands were the only manly thing about me. I’d put on one of my mom’s dresses and almost get away with it, except for the hands; they always gave me away. They were never elegant, no matter what colour I painted my nails.
