Sara sat at her desk this time, back straight against the blue chair and fingers drumming against the dark wood of the desk. She’d dragged Patrick’s record player into her office the day prior and, much to his delight, had been listening to his Neil Young album for the last twenty minutes, and they both sang along to “Cinnamon Girl.”
He stood behind her, hips not quite touching the chair. This was going to work; he could feel it. Today was different. He crossed his arms over his chest and glanced outside, remembering the coat he’d been wearing that day, when he suddenly heard Sara’s fingers tapping away at the keys. He refused to look at what she wrote , instead thinking about how the shed behind which he’d kissed the girl that had been rusted.
It certainly hadn’t been the best kiss he’d ever had, but it was certainly the most memorable. It blew the doors off most of the other firsts in his life. Well, except the first time he died. He had a feeling he wouldn’t get a second chance at that.
Sara laughed, the sound of it carrying over another song, and he caved, leaning over to sneak a peek at the words she’d written.
“Oh, I love this,” she said, her voice hardly more than a breathy murmur. “Where did this come from?”
She read it over again, and Patrick grinned, eyes skimming over the words too.
I grabbed her hand after the first bell, walking her down the sidewalk. She was pretty, always turning pink when someone embarrassed her , and it made me want to kiss her. My heart raced, but kissing was something I’d never done with a girl. Well, I ’d kissed my mother, of course, but this wasn’t the same. Not at all.
Puddles dotted the sidewalk, and our arms stretched but stayed connected at the fingers as we walked around them. Where could I go? It seemed wrong to kiss her in the middle of the neighborhood , particula rly if I stank at it. She might laugh at me, and then I’d be humiliated where everyone could see.
My friend Chris had told me he’d made out with Karen Lisken behind the shed next to his house last week, and that was on the next block. Maybe that would be a good spot. Private. No one would see me deliver the worst kiss in the world… you know, if I did, and I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t.
“Where are we going?” Brenda asked, toying with one long braid. Was some sort of signal, a sig n she wanted me to kiss her too?
“I don’t know,” I answered, trying to pretend I wasn’t nervous about it inside. “Do you want to go hang out somewhere?”
“Uh, okay. But I need to get home.”
“Well, can I, um, walk you?” She only lived a couple blocks away. If I could get her alone and kiss her, I could have her back to her house pretty quick.
The shed was just off the alley that ran to the rear of Chris’ house, situated in a section of long, yellowing grass. My sneakers stuck in the mud, the sound of my soles getting sucked down squeaking with each step. Brenda leaned against the thin, rusted metal, hair shockingly bright against the dull, white shed behind her head.
“So, uh…” she said, twisting the toe of her sneaker against the grass and sliding the pull of her coat zipper up and down.
I shoved my hands in the pockets of my pants and glanced down, trying to ignore the churning in my guts. Before I could chicken out, I leaned forward and put my lips on hers, just like I’d seen Paul Varjak do to Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffa n y’s –not that I’d ever admit to seeing such a girly movie. Her lips parted slightly, and our teeth clinked together.
Everything stopped. My stomach turned over, and I thought I might puke for a second, but Brenda’s hands touched my shoulders, pulling me out of my nervousness long enough to enjoy the feel of her mouth. Still, it was weird. I wondered about the germs in her spit –I could feel it on my lips, and as I pulled back, a thin string of saliva connected us.
Patrick couldn’t believe it worked. He didn’t know what he’d done differently or what about this moment made it so special, but he was overwhelmed by the sheer bizarreness of it. For the first time in forty years, he’d managed to actually communicate with someone intentionally. It was so heavy. His mind sped in circles, wondering if he could do it with anyone or if it was just Sara.
“That is… wow, that’s so sweet.” Sara’s voice was surprised, and Patrick could tell she was rereading it, her hands still on the arms of her desk chair.
“Sara, will you invite someone over? Maybe Megan or Mrs. Stout… oh, but neither of them are writers. How would I know if they could hear me or feel me or whatever the Hell I’m doing? Shit.”
“My imagination is better than I think – my first kiss was nothing like this.”
Patrick stopped brooding and stood next to the desk, watching her smile gro w fond. “No?”
“I was much older – sixteen.”
“Damn, you make me sound like a playboy.” For the first time in a while, Patrick’s invisibility worked to his advantage – there was no way he wanted to tell Sara he hadn’t kissed another girl after that for a while. He’d rather she think of him as some sort of stud.
Sara slumped back and pulled her knees up, resting her feet on the edge of the seat. “Jimmy Becks,” she said, sighing and glancing out the window. “A much different situation too –my neighbor from across the street asked me to a movie. My parents wouldn’t let me date until I was sixteen … and for being a big town, they seemed to know everyone.”
“You couldn’t date until… wow, my parents didn’t really have a rule for that.”
“Anyway, Jimmy asked me out,” she recounted, fingers twisting the hem of her jeans, “and of course I said yes. I wasn’t that into him, but no one else was dying to date me.”
There were no pictures of Sara in the house as a teenager – well, as far as he could tell, anyway –so Patrick tried to imagine what she looked like. If she was as foxy as she was now, he couldn’t imagine that she really hadn’t had a lot of dates. Then again, he’d been kind of a nerd when he was fifteen or sixteen … braces, skinny as Hell , big into comic books. Maybe she’d been too.
“It was summer, and Mom’s jasmine that she’d been babying had bloomed. I remember the smell, you know? Jimmy walked me up to my porch after the movie and just sort of stood there, and I didn’t know what to do. I mean, did he expect me to kiss him? Or, I mean, we were kids –what if he expected something more than that?”
Patrick snorted and tapped at the desk, disappointed when his hand sunk through. He wished his own desk was here; he felt like he needed to make noise of some sort to let her know how amused he was . Now that he’d somehow gotten his thoughts through to her, he wanted it to be easy. He wanted to talk to her, get her to laugh at a joke or something.
“Knock knock,” he murmured. For a brief second, he hoped everything he knew was wrong. He wanted Sara to answer him back with a “Who’s there?” He just wanted her to see him.
“It just got really awkward. The two of us were standing there staring at each other, so finally I just plopped down on our front step. Jimmy sat next to me and sort of blew in my ear. I, of course, started to giggle because it tickled, but Jimmy thought I was really into it, so he stuck his tongue in there.” Sara screwed up her face and shivered. “It was so gross.”
“Don’t knock the ear-tongue thing. That’s one of my standard moves.” Patrick raised his eyebrows, trying not to imagine his hands on Sara in the back seat of his Chevelle. He and Ginny had groped each other in that car more than a few times –after the Tastee Freeze closed, there was a parking lot in the back that was black as coal… a good spot for making out and going all the way. Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t like he knew for sure she’d liked him licking at her ear like that, but she seemed to.
“I turned my head to get his slimy tongue out of my earhole, and he planted this giant sloppy kiss on me. It felt like he was trying to suck my face off… it was just all big, overly soft tongue lying in my mouth, like he was too lazy to move it around, and it just… oh God, it felt so nasty. And that was when my dad chose to open the front door.”
> Patrick’s hoot of surprise filled the space, but Sara didn’t even flinch – she obviously hadn’t heard his outburst. “Ginny’s dad caught us once. I mean, we weren’t doing anything… not really. But if he’d walked in just five minutes earlier, he would have caught her with her hands down my pants.”
“Dad was so pissed off. He had this constipated look he got when he was about to start yelling. Jimmy took one look at him and zoomed off across the street like there was a fire under his ass. Why do guys do that?”
“Do what?”
“I mean, I didn’t even know how to kiss, and even I knew that was bad. You’d have thought he’d have learned… I heard he kissed half my graduating class.”
He could listen to her talk for hours, and sometimes she did. The more he learned about her, the more he liked her. Not that Patrick had many choices when it came to people he could be friends with, but if he’d known her before he’d taken a header down the stairs, he’d have hung out with her. Hell , he’d have chased after her and probably made a total ass out of himself trying to convince her to go out with him.
Her telephone rang, interrupting Sara’s story.
“Hello?” She smiled – what Patrick thought of as her sisterly smile; it was the same look he’d always gotten when talking to his annoying aunt –and let her feet slip off the seat. “Oh, hey, Jules… yeah, everything is good. How about you?” She laughed, face transforming as her smile widened into something more genuine yet almost cautious . “Yeah? Well, good luck with that… no, no, I’m just sitting here with my laptop… yeah, I’m writing… nah, it’s fun writing. It’s d oing okay. Well, better than –what? I have. I don’t know. I mean, sometimes it’s hard , and sometimes it’s not… er, well, I’m picturing someone as I write. The guy in the photo I found.”
A loud roaring filled Patrick’s ears as Sara continued talking. No way. There was no way she could mean that. I mean, it’s weird enough she’s able to pick up on my thoughts , he thought. How was she putting this all together? It was as if Sara had a better fix on all this ghost crap than he did, and he’d been living with it for decades… not that it had helped him figure out all that much.
“… know, but it’s, well, I don’t think I need to head back to the funny farm, but I’m half in love with him.”
What? Patrick’s eyes bulged, staring at Sara while her fingers pull ed at the hair at the back of her neck.
“Oh, Jesus, Jules, relax. It’s not like I’m sitting around here pining for the guy. He’s got to be, like, around sixty by now. I may be hard up and lonely, but I’m not going to head out and find a sugar daddy… oh, please, like you’ve never fantasized about someone you didn’t know. Okay, fine, you haven’t… you’re a perfect Christian.” She stuck her tongue at the phone as she pulled it away from her ear for a moment. “I’m just saying I make up stories about the guy in the photo. That’s all.”
She was fantasizing about him now? This was too weird… not that he didn’t look at her that way, but he’d been very intentionally trying not to give into the temptation of watching her get naked or take showers because he figured it was a stupid and useless exercise, even after he discovered he could get a hard-on several weeks prior . He tried to jerk off once after that, but it had been a total let down. Nothing happened. It’s not that it felt bad –having his dick in his hand still felt pretty good, even if there was no, er, pay off. The sensations just never went anywhere. No building of tension, nothing. It just figured into his theory that he’d done something really horrible before he died he was being punished for, although he had no idea what that might be. He’d once egged the Jenkins house with Andy and a bunch of other guys, but there was no way that explained being denied Heaven or whatever else should happen to people when they died.
“… up. Yeah, I’m going to join a writer’s group. I met some woman at the bookstore the other day who’s in it… no, I mean, they rotate houses for meetings and sit around and talk about characterization and dialogue and stuff, I guess. I need all the help I can get… no, yeah. Anyway, I volunteered to have a meeting here next week.”
Even though Patrick really didn’t want to share Sara with anyone, he thought it was probably a good idea for her to meet more people. He loved that she talked out loud, and even though she’d explained to Jules she did it to deal with whatever had gone down with her ex-husband, it probably wasn’t the healthiest thing she could do. She had put on a few pounds, though, and he took that as a good sign. She’d lost some of the sharpness from her face, her hips rounding slightly.
“Yeah, I will. Love you too.” She put her telephone down and stared at the screen again. “And I kinda love you too.”
Patrick groaned, the smell of chocolate cupcakes making him wish – not for the first time –he could move on to Heaven or his next life or the Kingdom of the Dead because he was sure he’d get to eat. He missed the act of it. He could almost feel the crumbly cake against his lips. His mother used to make black-bottom cupcakes, and he remembered sneaking them while they were just warm out of the oven, the cream cheese filling oozing out the top as he bit into one.
Maybe Islam had it right. Maybe Judgment Day simply hadn’t gone down yet, and he was condemned to hang out until that happened. Despite the egging incident and premarital sex with Ginny, he really had lived a fairly good life. His book on world religions noted that everyone who died would be resurrected on Judgment Day, and that would be that. He hoped the fact that he’d been Catholic wouldn’t be counted against him if that was the case.
Sara scuttled through the kitchen when the buzzer went off and pulled the cupcakes from the oven. She was preparing for the meeting of her writer’s group tonight; so far she’d baked chocolate cupcakes and some kind of cinnamon cake. Would she make deviled eggs? That was what his mother always made for a party.
She talked about the writer’s group meeting she went to this past weekend. She liked that she wasn’t the only one just starting out as a fiction writer.
“Okay, so I vacuumed and dusted,” she muttered, slipping the cupcakes onto a wire rack. “I cleaned the bathroom. I picked up my shit. Extra chairs are out,” she ticked off. “Cupcakes are made. I’ve got extra ice.” She seemed tense, clenching her jaw as she turned the oven off and pursing her lips.
“Relax, Sara. It’s a couple of people, not the President.” Patrick slouched against the doorway and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops.
“I need music,” she said decisively, taking a deep sigh. “I’m the worst hostess on the planet.” She dug a little white rectangle out of a drawer in the kitchen and put it into something that looked like a small speaker on the counter. Patrick had absolutely no idea what it was, but he’d seen it th at morning when she dug it out of an unpacked box in the basement. Loud music sounded through the room moments later, and Sara swiveled her hips while sponging off the counter.
The beats were fast with wailing guitars. It was a lot different than what he was used to. Sara had mostly played his records since she’d moved in, something he appreciated considering how much he missed listening to music . This was… okay. It wasn’t terrible, but Sara liked it. She sang along, straightening the kitchen before she moved to the living room. Patrick trailed after her, admiring the curves of her butt in the jeans she wore. The second Sara had admitted to having feelings for him –or, Patrick supposed, her idea of him –he allowed himself to look more , admire what he wanted. At perpetually nineteen, old habits came back in an instant. No guy under the age of twenty found it easy to resist a nice-looking ass, and Patrick was tired of fighting it.
Still, at the same time there was some guilt about it. Sara didn’t know he was here, and he felt dirty about checking her out when she couldn’t tell him to go to Hell .
She pushed a button on her telephone and muttered something about having an hour. Still singing, she sat in the rocking ch air and opened her typewriter. If s he was going to write for a bit, it gave Patrick another chance to feed her a memory. He wasn’t
sure what to concentrate on until a new song played - “Lay Lady Lay.” It had been on when he broke up with Ginny, and that had been a pretty horrible moment… not because he regretted ending things with her, but because he had liked her. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings, but he didn’t want to go out with her anymore either.
Patrick concentrated on the smell of Ginny’s parents’ car – cigar smoke and tire rubber –and thought about the knobs on the eight-track player mounted in the dash; he’d helped install it. Sara began tapping on the keys, and he grinned, wondering if she wrote about him and Gin. He paced the living room, stepping around the coffee table and the extra chairs… he still hated the feeling of walking through stuff. Stopping himself from crowding in behind her to scan what she typed was next to impossible, so he kept tracing a path through the furniture, willing himself to keep remembering the details. She wrote ri ght up until the doorbell rang.
“Crap,” he blurted, watching Sara close her… well, she had called it a laptop, so he supposed he should use the right word for it. “Laptop.” The word felt weird in his mouth.
A young blonde woman and a short guy with a balding head like Patrick’s dad’s waited at the door.
“Hi, come on it. Oh, Jon, you didn’t have to bring wine,” Sara said, smiling as the guy handed her a bottle. She stepped back to allow them in and started to close the door when a hand from outside grabbed at it.
“Might as well leave your door open, Sara. It’ll be a steady stream.” Another man grinned and stepped inside, a bowl of something in his hands. “Where can I put this?”
Between Seasons Page 7
