“Almost,” I called. “OK,” I said, turning to Zane, “any ideas on how we should do this?”
“It sure as hell isn’t going to be graceful.”
Griff was at the door of the Jeep waiting for my signal.
“I think if we sit on the window sill first...”
We each slung one leg over the sill, then the other. It was barely big enough for two people. Rope coiled across our laps and raised into the air as Griff backed up the Jeep.
“Get ready to push off,” I said.
“How are we going to close the window?”
“Oh. Good question,” I said, and then I and Zane after me slipped off the icy ledge into mid-air. We swung suspended, entwined, smacking the side of the house like a wrecking ball. Zane held his crotch and winced and then was laughing.
We lurched down a couple of inches and then began a steady descent. The Jeep inched back along the curb.
Suddenly the front lights blazed on like interrogation lamps.
“Shit,” Zane and I murmured in unison.
A moment later the door opened and Zane’s father stormed out in sweatpants and slippers. His eyes followed the rope stretching across the yard and landed, finally, on us.
“Um, hi Dad.”
“Oh dear god,” he groaned and put both hands over his face. “Irene, Ralph, stay in the house. Irene—”
“Why, what was that— Peter!” his mother yelled. “What are you doing? Get down from there!”
“Mom, I’m safe. Look who I’m with!” He wrapped his arms and legs around me and my cape.
“You’re such a homo, Zane,” Ralph said.
“Go close your brother’s window,” their father said, pushing Ralph back inside the house.
Zane’s mother looked after Ralph and she seemed to be deciding based on his language that this stunt was not only dangerous but had something to do with gay, as well.
“Peter, this— This is wrong, Peter!” she shouted. “What do you think you’re doing? You! Vince!” She pointed at me. “Are you a homosexual too?”
“No, um, I’m bi.”
She wandered off the steps with her hands spread stiffly at her side like an action figure. His dad sat down on the stoop and crossed his arms over his knees.
“Wh-what does that mean?” she said.
I didn’t know what kind of answer she was looking for—by the expression on her face it didn’t seem the question was rhetorical. How could I sum up myself while I was hanging with her son fifteen feet above the ground, the yard and house revolving around me? “It means I can fall in love with both men and women?”
“Love!” She looked down and shook her head as though she’d just been fed a spoonful of suspicious broth.
As soon as our feet touched the snow, Griff came running, in a more dramatic fashion than it probably warranted, through the hedge over to us, the hood of his sweatshirt flapping behind him like a cape. Zane’s eyes darted to the rope, to Griff, who was rapidly unbuckling us.
“Peter, you’re not going with them. If you go with them...” She looked speechless. When she finally found her voice again, it came out as a whisper. “I’m your mother. You’re not like those people.”
“What people? These people? A comic book nerd? An architect who’s not even gay?”
“You know who I mean, Peter.”
“Mom, I’m just trying to be happy. That’s all anyone ever does, isn’t it?”
Zane yanked the buckle on his harness and it dropped to his feet. Griff was unhooking mine, untying the rope with quick fingers.
“But this isn’t happiness,” she said, holding her open hands out in front of her, as though in them sat a crystal ball showing her Zane’s whole life. “This isn’t love.”
“You guys bounce out of here,” Griff said, handing Zane the keys to my Jeep. “I’ll take care of the props.”
“Thank you, Griffin,” said Zane, and he took off across the yard.
“Peter, don’t run away. You’re just confused,” his mother said, putting her hands on her knees as though she were going to lean forward and puke into the snow. “You’re not gay! They’ve brainwashed you!”
Zane stopped short a few feet from the hedge. “Brainwashed? Mom, come on. Do you really think I’m that weak? That easy to manipulate? That naïve? I’m stronger than you’d ever believe. I’m as strong as him.” He pointed at me and I didn’t know whether he meant me or the comic book character I was dressed as. And then, just when I thought he would explode, because I thought he had every right to, the anger fell off his face like a mask and he smiled, the kind of smile that sticks in your mind forever. “Someday you’ll see that and be proud of me, Mom,” he said, and then he disappeared through the hedge.
“Peter!” she called again.
“That’s enough, Irene,” his father said tiredly. He stood up, put his arm around her shoulders and steered her back inside the house.
I stood watching the door close behind them.
“Go,” Griff said, nudging my arm. “He’s waiting. Don’t forget to take the rope off the car, you’ll be dragging the whole neighborhood behind you.”
“How can I just—”
“Don’t worry about them. They’ll come around. Now go. I’ll drive around for a couple hours so you can have the house.” He winked.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s OK, I have some thinking to do anyway.”
I walked through the yard. The night was clear, and in the sky a billion witnesses to our escapades sparkled. I could hear the Jeep’s motor running. My cape snagged in the bushes and tore off as I went through. I immediately felt silly without it, and I went back for it, and then got in the car with Zane and drove home.
With the night he gave me we went to my bed and finished what we’d started the night before. It hurt a little but it was smooth and warm and he told me I was beautiful. Afterward we were sweaty and chilly. When I pulled the blankets back up over us, the air they brought with them smelled like Griff. I breathed it in and felt like crying so I rubbed my face against my pillow, to be silly. We lay face to face, sharing the pillow. A strip of hallway light came in from under the door and lit the room in an underwater glow.
Zane brushed his thumb across my forehead, as he might’ve if my hair had been long enough to fall into my eyes.
I laid my hand in the soft groove above his hip and let my fingers open and close on his bum. “I’m sorry about your parents,” I told him. “I don’t know why people have to be like that.”
“They’re just worried for me,” he said. “They think I’m destined for unhappiness. I’m not. Tonight made me happy.”
I kissed him. “Good.”
Below each of his collar bones was a row of three dark shapes, each about the size of a dime. They looked like a bit like pips on a military uniform.
“I like your tattoos,” I said.
“My superhero symbol tattoos.”
“They’re cool.”
He took my hand from where it lay on his hip and pressed my fingers against the tattoo closest to his right shoulder. “The S symbol,” he said. “You know about Superman. He’s very strong, but he’s lonely—but he loves everyone and belongs to everyone.” From there he moved my finger to the next tattoo. “Batman’s bat signal.” He moved it again. “Wonder Woman’s W.”
“And over here?”
“This is the Flash’s lightning bolt,” he said, putting his hand on mine again, moving it across his chest as though he were teaching me Braille. “And Green Lantern’s symbol. And the Martian Manhunter’s globe or whatever it is.”
“I always assumed it was a Trivial Pursuit piece. Or a pizza.”
He laughed. “Because those make more sense than a globe?”
“Well, he’s Martian, who knows what they value.”
He laughed again. “Well that’s the tour of my tattoos.”
“I like them.”
What they really reminded me of was Griff’s joshua tree.
Although Zane was naked and snuggled against me, the bed still smelled like Griff and it was hard to think of anything else.
I woke up later and my mouth was desert-dry, my lips raw from Zane’s stubble. (That was a drawback to sleeping with guys—girls were so much softer.) My stomach felt empty too and I realized I’d never gotten around to eating supper. I pulled back the covers and rooted around in the costume tangled on the floor until I found my boxers, and then pulled on the shirt part of the costume too. I started to tiptoe out of the room, but thought of something and stopped. From the bureau I grabbed a photo of me on a whale-watching boat and put it on my pillow in case Zane woke up, so he’d know I was coming back.
The kitchen light was on and Griff was sitting at the table with a beer, his interstate road atlas spread out in front of him. The sight of it stung me. He belonged at that table.
“Hey, Mr. Dandro,” he said, snickering. “Finally have to come up for air?”
“Screw you.” I could tell I was blushing under the yellow ceiling light. I grabbed a bag of Goldfish crackers and poured a glass of water and sat down with him. His t-shirt had a hole in the shoulder that suggestively revealed a patch of skin. Beside him was a legal pad scrawled with the names of cities and with numbers written small.
“This would be a lot easier if you had the Internet, you know,” he said, thumbing the eraser head. He slipped the legal pad between the pages of the atlas and closed it. “I guess the Internet doesn’t exist in your cranberry hush?”
“I avoid computers when possible.”
He smirked. “No more Truman angst, I hope.”
I shrugged.
“So did you have fun with Zane?”
“Yeah...”
He looked at me, pressing the pencil against his lower lip. “How much?”
“Home run.”
“So you mean you—?” Suppressing a smile, he formed two fingers into an O and pushed another one through it.
“Yeah.”
“Who was the—?” He held up the O.
“Me.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Sorry. What’s that like?”
“It’s just sex.”
“Must be pretty—um. Intense?”
“Yeah. It can be.” I wanted to show him. I wanted it to be him.
“Hmm. Well I’m not sure you look like a person who just rounded the bases with someone he cares about.”
I gulped some water and ran my finger around the lip of the glass. I felt so full of tension that the low oooo from the glass might’ve actually been coming from my vibrating skin.
“Should I not have put you up to it?” he added.
“You didn’t put me up to it, you just drove me there. I wanted to go up. I wanted to do everything I did. It’s just— I don’t know. I wish it was clicking better than it is. I feel like it can, but I don’t know what I have to do to make it— Or feel to make it.” I took a sip of water and dragged a finger through the wet ring on the table. “Just my typical shit.”
“Maybe it’s time to let that go.”
“What makes you so sure I want to be with him?”
“Um. Last night you told me you loved him. I’d say that was my main clue.”
“But beyond that. Is it something I show? What makes you know? How do you know for sure when someone’s in love with you?”
“Because I’m your lifebuddy, that’s how. I know everything about you.”
My lifebuddy.
He got up from the table and pulled a bag of chips from the cupboard. “And we still need to have our adventure,” he said. “Tomorrow’s my last day. I need some us time. A couple of hours. It’s important.”
I wondered what he had planned that would only take a couple of hours. A couple of hours seemed like a short time, or a long time. What I needed from him would only take a minute, a moment. We could do it right now. I could show him right now. And then he’d never want to leave.
“I can try to have Marissa cover my afternoon shift tomorrow,” I told him, and he nodded.
Let me kiss you, Griff. Just once. Let me touch you. Let me undress you and take you to bed and show you how it can be to be in it together, not just side by side but through and through. Let me do these things and I know you’ll realize this can work. I know you will.
“So,” he said, “you better be getting back to your man.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I got up, put the glass in the sink and the crackers away. “Oh— Hey Griff?”
“Hm?”
“How’d you know it would work? With Zane, I mean. The ropes and everything. The suit.”
“Oh. Well I figured you and Zane are a lot alike—and that’s what I would’ve done on you.”
“...”
“Sweet dreams, Vin.”
I turned and started up the hall, thunder clapping in my chest. I didn’t have to look back to know how he looked, what he was doing—tipping the beer bottle to his lips, brushing back the hair he used to hide behind but which now seemed more to frame his face, looking at his maps.
He’d be gone by the weekend. I didn’t have much time.
T H U R S D A Y
“Again,” Zane said, his lips against my shoulder. “Snooze it again.”
“I can’t.” I reached for the other button, the smaller one, pressed it. “I snoozed it three times already.” I unwound myself from Zane and got out of bed, yanked the covers back up to his chin. I rubbed him hard through the blankets, the way you rub someone who’s just fallen through the ice. He grumbled and rolled over.
The door of the spare bedroom was open and the floor was cluttered with piles of clothes and the boxes of Griff’s stuff. His backpack stood empty, waiting to be filled. I looked farther in. He was sleeping, his arm hanging over the bed as though he was making sure the floor was still there. He seemed so far away now. The existence of another bed made sharing one impossible.
Later, Griff rinsed the cereal bowl I’d left on the counter and filled it again with Cocoa Krispies. “...Just lounge around until you call me, I guess,” he said when I asked what he was up to this morning. “I need to finish figuring out my route, too.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
“To work?”
“Yeah, why not? We can hang out, I can show you the place in the daylight. Then I’ll get Marissa to take my afternoon.”
As he’d said, his week was nearly up and I wanted to pack more into it. The best way to make time slow down was to do a lot of things, be a lot of places, so at the buzzer you can look back and wonder how you managed to cram everything in. I wanted to have every second and all the possibilities they afforded.
“We need to leave soon, though,” I told him. “I have to get Zane home. He has a class at ten.”
Griff was about to pour milk on the cereal but stopped just as the first drops sloshed out. “Cool. I’ll skip breakfast.”
Zane, wearing a towel, emerged from the bathroom and walked down the hall to my room slowly, as though he knew my eyes were locked to the cotton stretched tight against his ass.
“My turn,” Griff said. “I’ll be quick.” He knocked back the last of his juice and slid the glass to the edge of the sink. It hit the stainless steel lip, teetered, did not fall in.
From the back seat of the Jetta I leaned forward into the front as we were driving Zane home. They were talking about classes and dorms, grades and professors, the trials and tribulations of college life.
“You’re so lucky you’re graduated and done with this crap,” Zane said.
Griff looked in the rearview mirror and caught my eye and delivered an expression of shocked bewilderment. “What are you talking about?” he said to Zane, stabbing his finger into Zane’s knee. “You’re so lucky you’re not.”
“Why? It sucks.”
Griff looked back at me again. “Sucks? Sucks? That’s blasphemy! Vince, what have you been telling this guy? College is a fucking paradise. It’s a fucking golden age. I’d giv
e up everything I have to go back.”
From behind the counter and through the window I could see Griff leave the Dunkin’ Donuts and cross the street. He came in—jingle—with a chocolate donut hanging from his lips and dropped a pink and orange bag on the counter.
“Breakfast,” he mumbled. “You call Marissa yet?”
I grabbed a chocolate-covered donut. “Doing it now.”
I rummaged in the drawers for the address book, found it and flipped to her info. “She’ll probably be glad to do it,” I told him as I dialed, “to make up for her snow day. But of course this is Marissa so she’ll need to put up a stink first, just for effect.”
She answered. “OK,” she said, groggily and with the expected dramatic reluctance after I’d made the offer, “but I can’t get there until like noon.”
I told her I’d see her then.
“We good?” Griff said when I hung up. His fingers crept into the bag and he looked away as he withdrew another donut.
“She’s coming but she needs three more hours of beauty rest.” I finished the last bite of donut and licked chocolate flakes off my lips.
“You don’t have an extra one of those GA shirts lying around, do you?” he said, pointing to the logo on my chest.
“Probably. Want one?”
“Eh, sure, why not.” He pushed the last bite of donut into his mouth.
I brought him into the back and found him a new shirt under a box of bags and boards. He ripped it out of the plastic and pulled it on over his hooded sweatshirt. It was creased and tight over the sweatshirt; the hood, trapped beneath, gave him a hunchback.
“Looking good?” he said, rubbing his hands down his chest and over his hips.
“It’s sort of Michelin Man chic.”
“Haha. Nice. I’ll just go stand on the street and let the poon roll in.”
I heard the bell jingle and went out front. When Griff joined me a minute later he was minus the sweatshirt. “So what do we do now?” he said. “Just wait?”
“I don’t know. Whatever. Straighten up the trades if you want. People paw through stuff and get it all out of order.”
The Cranberry Hush: A Novel Page 22
