“What are you, then?”
“Friends,” I said, although that didn’t feel quite right to me either.
“Social revolutionaries,” Griff mumbled, and pulled the pillow that was between us up over his head.
“Whatever,” Zane said. “Anyway, I need my keys. I have to open the store.”
There was no question in his voice, not even the sound of a tip-toe around one. I knew now that I hadn’t fired him because he hadn’t gone along with being fired. Zane, while maybe not naturally as confident as he came across (he’d likely been up all night rehearsing this conversation), had an amazing ability to project it. I found this talent more attractive than if it had been natural and not a disguise. It meant there was hope for the shy.
“It’s Saturday,” I said, but was suddenly not quite sure of the day. It felt like a week since Griff showed up. “Right?”
“Yeah.”
“So Marissa is supposed to open.”
“Marissa’s neighborhood has no electricity and she hasn’t been able to shower. She called me yesterday and asked if I’d cover.”
Griff pulled the pillow off his head and leaned close to eavesdrop—a snooping spoon. His skin wasn’t quite touching mine, though his chin was hovering right near my shoulder.
“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?” I said, hyperaware of the knee that just bumped my thigh.
“You would’ve just covered it yourself,” Zane said, “and I needed you to need me to not be fired.” I could picture him working through the accuracy of that sentence in the pause that followed it. “Yeah.”
“Tricky,” Griff said, laughing right into the phone. “He knows how to work you.”
“Where are you now?” I said.
“In front of the store,” Zane said. “I just finished shoveling the walk. The whole walk.”
“Awwh,” Griff cooed.
“And I sprinkled sand,” Zane added.
“You sprinkled sand?”
“Yeah. I salted.”
“All right. Come get your keys.” I hung up the phone and looked at Griff. “Happy now?”
“Yeah.”
Fifteen minutes later there was a knock on my front door, which meant Zane drove way too fast.
“Coming!” I pushed down the covers and sat up.
“God!” Griff groaned, yanking them back up. He’d dozed off again while waiting for Zane. “No exclamation points before noon. Wasn’t that in our original roommate agreement?”
“This is my house now, pal.”
I got out of bed and went out to the living room, rummaged in my coat pocket for the keys. I opened the door just a few inches against the cold. Zane was standing on the stoop, his hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans. He wore a floppy blue hat with an orange pompom. His cheeks were rosy.
“Thank you for covering for Marissa,” I said. “And for shoveling.” It was my apology. I held out his keys.
“Thanks for not firing me and stuff.”
I shrugged and told him I overreacted—but I added quickly, “Not that it should ever happen again.”
“It won’t.” He slid the keys onto his carabiner and went back down the steps. “Hey Vince,” he said, turning around as I was about to shut the door. “Whatever you guys are, he’s cute.” He smiled a chapped, kind, maybe resigned smile that caught me off guard, waved once, and walked back to his car.
I closed the door and moved the curtain aside to watch him through the big picture window. Most of it was covered in frost but I could see him get into his beat-up Mustang and back out of the driveway.
I stood there with my forehead touching the glass for a minute after he’d gone, then I realized I was freezing. I adjusted the thermostat and walked on curled toes back to the bedroom, eager to get back under the covers. I could almost see my breath. Griff was facing away from me again, the way he’d slept all night.
I laid back down thinking, I just got into bed with Griff. The feelings that came along with that hovered in a weird space between sad and exciting. Heat crackled off him and, like a backyard mosquito light, zapped my goosebumps one by one.
“He get his keys?” he said. It startled me. He rolled over onto his back, folded his hands on his chest. A patch of curly brown hair filled the shallow groove between where his pectorals would’ve been if he weren’t so thin. His ribs showed beneath his skin like the ripply sand at the edge of the ocean; the sheet lapped his belly like waves. If only a riptide would just pull me in and take me deeper into the bed with him, I’d never have to come out again.
“Yeah,” I said. “He thinks you’re cute.”
He sighed. “If only girls were as into me as guys seem to be...”
I smelled the faint bitterness of his breath and felt suddenly self-conscious of my own. “You don’t seem to have any trouble,” I said, trying not to exhale. My voice came out monotone.
“C’mon, I have nothing but trouble,” he said. “Anyway, he thinks you’re cute too.”
“What?”
“It’s obvious.” He rubbed his exposed forearms, pulled them under the covers and yanked the blanket up to his chin. “Is the heat off?”
“How’s it obvious?”
“Well, last night when he acted all aloof about that guy, and then how he looked at you to see if you were jealous. It’s obvious to me.”
“He didn’t care if I was jealous, though.”
“He did, though, definitely.”
He rolled over again and jerked the covers away from me. I pulled them back and we lay still. I watched the branches of his joshua tree sway with the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. Sunlight came through the edge of the blue checkered curtains and cast a warm yellow beam across our legs.
“You must’ve seen the naked guy at graduation,” I said, glancing over at Griff and then looking again at the street in front of us, “the one who pulled up his robe when he was getting his diploma?”
“Shit, I forgot about that!” he said, letting go of the steering wheel long enough to clap his hands. “Yeah, I saw him. More than I wanted to!”
I laughed. “That took some balls to do that, though,” I said, “to streak at graduation.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it a streak,” he said. “But yes it did take some balls—I saw them very clearly.” He stopped us at a red light and I realized I liked him driving my Jeep. “Man, Vin, it feels good to talk about this stuff with you. No one’s as good at nostalgia as you are.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll reminisce more when you’re done work.”
He turned into the Golden Age lot, which looked like the surface of one of the moons in his sci-fi—full of ruts and piles, unnavigable in anything other than a moon buggy. The Jeep bounced around in the ruts and he parked us alongside a pick-up with its bed full of snow.
“Thanks for the wheels,” he said.
“Sure. No problem. I trust you.”
“Awh. Really?”
“I don’t trust other drivers though. Be careful. People like totally forget how to drive when there’s snow on the ground.”
“That’s true. So do you think it’s going to be weird?”
“What?”
“With Zane. At work.”
“It’s been weirder. No. It’ll be fine.”
“All right. Hey,” he said, “what time do I pick you up?”
I told him 8:15 but I’d call if anything changed. He told me he’d be there.
For an absent-minded moment I felt like leaning over to kiss him goodbye. That’s what happened at this point in these exchanges, right? We shared a bed last night. We had cereal together this morning. It’s what I did with Melanie. But Griff was drumming his fingers on the wheel and I pushed the door shut. He waved with a lift of his chin, backed away and rejoined the creeping traffic.
The walk was shoveled with sharp sides and crisp angles, the pavement sprinkled evenly with sand—the very model of perfect shoveling. Zane must’ve thought of each scoop as an apology.
I walked to the door hoping, maybe, to find the sign turned to CLOSED, as Zane had a habit of forgetting to flip it. But it said OPEN in bubbly yellow letters. Everything was as it should be.
The bell jingled above me. There was one customer that I could see, browsing the Vertigo trades. Zane was at the counter hunched over a crossword.
“Nice job on the walk.”
“Hi, thanks,” he said. “Franny’s brother. Five letters.”
“Um. Zooey.” I stood in front of the counter with my hands in my pockets.
“Doesn’t fit.”
“E-y?”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s right.” He scrunched his nose and filled in the blocks. “You’re smart.”
“Slow today?”
“Not bad.” He twiddled the pen between his fingers like that magic trick that makes it look like the pencil is bending. “Two people came in to pick up their pulls. A handful of browsers.”
“I thought it would be slower,” I said. “All the snow.”
“Don’t underestimate the dedication of the fanboys and fangirls.”
“Haha. True. So.”
“So. Where’s your shirt?”
“My—?” I looked down. I was missing my Golden Age uniform. “Oh.”
“Griff wearing it?” Smirking.
“No.”
In the back room I took off my coat and grabbed my coat-hangered spare at the back of the closet. The t-shirt was black; on the front was the golden O word balloon logo from the sign, overlaid with the store’s name in white hand-lettered text. I rubbed my hair in a mirror push-pinned to the wall and went back out front.
The lone customer’s eyes were wandering, a sure sign he wanted some help. I obliged and he left a few minutes later with a half-dozen issues of Simon’s least-favorite title.
“Majestic is selling well, huh?” I leaned with my back against the checkout counter; Zane was behind it. I crossed my arms and looked out at the street.
“He’s a better Superman than Superman lately,” he said. “As far as writing goes.”
“Don’t let Simon hear you talk like that. He’d do more than take your keys for that kind of blasphemy.”
“Probably,” Zane said, “but that would mean he’d have to be here. And you know how likely that is lately.”
“Come on, I like Patti.”
“She like runs his life.”
“She’s good for him.”
Simon got married the spring before, and his wife, a local real estate kingpin we didn’t know how he reeled in, seemed to be weaning him off of Golden Age. His schedule kept shrinking. Supposedly he was writing a book, a definitive history of comic books, and Patti was being very encouraging, but Zane and Marissa felt like she was stealing him away. But that meant more of Simon’s responsibilities were falling to me.
“She’s good for you,” Zane said.
“You’re off ten minutes ago,” I reminded him.
“I’ll just chill for a while,” he said. “If that’s OK.”
“You must have more exciting places to be.”
“Just doing homework.”
“Hanging out with Jeremy.”
“That’s over,” he said. “Thanks to you.”
The bell jingled and a boy walked in, five or six with red mittens tethered to his sleeves, an old man trailing behind him. The boy reached immediately for the Spawn figures.
“Those are ugly,” the man said. He looked at Zane and me and shrugged, smiled. “He says, Let’s go for a walk, and when I’ve got my hat on he says, Don’t forget your money.”
“Kids are sneaky,” Zane said.
“But he shoveled all the steps, so a deal’s a deal.”
Zane gestured to the plastic demon in the boy’s hands. “If you’re in the market for something less satanic,” he said to the grandfather, who nodded, “we have some new Spider-Man figures in.” He looked at the boy. “Want to see?”
The boy clutched his grandfather’s leg and mumbled yes into the old man’s coat. Zane came out from behind the counter and took a figure down off the hooks.
“This guy’s a nasty villain,” he said to the kid, describing the figure. He didn’t change his voice the way most people do when they talk to kids—he spoke to the kid, not to the nearby adults, haha, via the kid. “He’s got these tentacles you can wrap people up in and stuff. And he comes with slime, which is pretty cool.”
The kid scrunched his face and shook his head.
“Is that... what’s his name?” The grandfather was pointing to the line of figures on the top row. “I remember him...” The figure wore a metal helmet and had wings on his shoes. A blue cloud covered the front of his bright yellow shirt.
“Matt Morrow,” I said. “Protector of the future.”
“Ah, not Tom Morrow?”
“Tom was a few Morrows ago now. He got killed off in, I think, 1983.”
“Ha! Shame. I used to read that magazine. I sold newspapers in Boston when I was a boy back in the forties.” It sounded like fotties. “The first thing I’d do with my pay was I’d go to the drugstore and buy it. They were a dime back then—if I remember right. Which is less and less likely to be the case.”
The boy had selected an action figure and he stood on his toes to push it onto the counter. The grandfather pulled out his wallet and then, as an afterthought, reached up and took the Matt Morrow figure off the hook.
“I’ll get a man too so they can battle,” the grandfather said, putting his down on the counter. The boy looked up at him and laughed, laughed without really opening his mouth. A spit bubble formed on his lip, popped.
“All these heroes and villains, and the kid picks Peter Parker,” Zane whispered to me as they were leaving the store. He stretched his arms across the counter. “In his street clothes. I don’t get it. He doesn’t even come with weapons.”
“Characters can be cool even when they’re not wearing tights, you know.”
“Whatever you say.” He rolled his eyes. “Actually, speaking of—” He straightened up suddenly and I turned to look out the window. “Jesus,” he said, “the old guy almost just fell.”
“Did he?”
“So much for my sand sprinkling.”
“It looked fine to me. Um. Man the counter, I’ll go put some more down.”
I got a container of salt from the back and brought it outside, sowing it across the slick sidewalk down to the Copy Cop, then I ran back inside shivering. Zane was checking out a customer.
When the customer left we stood at the counter looking out.
“Cold out there huh?” he said.
“Really.”
He was quiet a minute and then he said, “At least you’ve got someone to keep you warm at night.” Then he sighed.
“Zane, I don’t need you picking at this. Griff and I aren’t together. Come on.”
“Tell me about him.”
“No.”
“Tell me and I’ll stop harassing you.”
“He’s just a friend.”
“Where’d you find him? Probably online, right?”
“Not online,” I said, ruminating on Zane’s use of the word find as opposed to meet, and how in this case it was actually kind of appropriate. “I don’t even own a computer. In college. I met him in college. Freshman year. We roomed together our sophomore year.”
“So he’s rooming with you again?”
“For a week.”
“You just being casual?”
“I keep telling you. He is straight.”
“That’s what they all say.” He sighed. “That guy Jeremy from last night? He’s straight, too.” He placed air quotes around straight.
I felt a flare of anger at his insinuation that Griff was a closet case. There were days when I wondered about that myself (extreme tolerance, like extreme intolerance, always made a person seem a little suspect), but I didn’t like anyone else thinking it. It was like how I could make fun of Superman for wearing his underwear on the outside, but when someone else who didn�
��t love him like I loved him said the same thing, watch out. They had no right. Zane had no right.
“I don’t know about Jeremy,” I said, “but Griff really is straight.”
“Straight and he sleeps in your bed with you?”
“I don’t have a couch,” I countered. “You’ve been to my house. What would be your suggestion? Should he have slept on the floor?”
He shrugged. “I’ve just never heard of a straightboy sharing a bed with a bi dude.”
“If Griff was gay he’d be out. He’s just that way. Sometimes I think he wishes he was.”
It made me remember Griff sitting on his bed one night in our dorm room, telling me he’d seen an attractive guy in the dining hall while he was eating lunch.
“How attractive?” I said, trying to keep in check a rising thrill.
“I don’t know,” Griff said. “Attractive. Nice to look at. Do you think that means I might be bi?” He seemed almost excited, as though he were on the verge of discovering a new part of himself, one that would allow him to tap into unlimited potential for romance.
“Did you want to kiss him? Touch him and stuff?”
His smile faded a little. “Kiss him? Not really, no. But his skin was really clear and he had a cool haircut.”
“Did he make you nervous?”
“Nervous how?”
“Like did he make you feel like you wanted to go talk to him but were afraid?”
“No...”
“Did you get a boner?”
“... No, no boner.” Now he looked disappointed and I felt the same way.
Zane was eyeballing me. “Do you wish he was?”
“Gay?”
“Gay, bi, biologically available.”
“He’s my friend. I don’t care what he is.”
“Sure.”
The bell jingled. Two high school girls came in and browsed the Indie section, giggling over Cavalcade of Boys, the homo version of Archie. One of them said to the other, “I told you.” They left without buying anything.
“So who was that Jeremy guy last night?” I said. “Quid pro quo.”
“OK. He’s on my brother’s basketball team.”
The Cranberry Hush: A Novel Page 8
