Legs

by Ian Cooper

  Kim reached over and gave his other hand a squeeze.

  “Yeah, me too.” Kim’s oval eyes, deep blue in the middle, with the most impossibly clear whites, regarded him in a measuring fashion.

  For a girl, she wasn’t waiting to be pursued. It was a bit out of character.

  Kim’s friend was out on the dance floor. The girl’s purse was there on the table. She wasn’t bad looking either, a lot shorter than Kim, but blonde, with soft eyebrows and oddly brown eyes, which he rarely thought of. That was the trope, right? Blonde hair and blue eyes. He’d lusted after one or two himself. But it was her skin tones that got him thinking. She had that perpetually-tanned look, it’s not that he didn’t like bikini lines and pale white globular bottoms either. At least he thought he did—it’d been a long time.

  Her name was Maria, another odd thing.

  “Why don’t we go someplace quiet?” She had her own little clutch purse right there.

  Brandon’s mouth opened slightly, but luckily the right sounds came out.

  “Ah—seriously?”

  Kim grinned, biting at his or her lip.

  “See—I knew you were a nice guy.” Maria was just coming back to the table, she had some college kid in bloody white running shoes and jeans falling off his ass in tow on the end of her outstretched arm.

  His hockey jersey was about nine sizes too large for him, but other than that, he seemed quite all right for a nineteen year-old.

  Their eyes met. Maria and her purse would just have to take their chances, besides, she was busy necking, with the guy’s hands all over her.

  Brandon wondered how old either girl actually was, but asking such a question was strictly a no-no.

  If you had to ask, get the hell out of there—that was one of their little rules.

  Kim gave her friend an indulgent smile, saying goodbye to a distracted Maria when she looked up with glazed eye. They were on their way, with Brandon for one having no idea where they were going but just then the band started up and they might as well consult outside on the pavement.

  Act Two

  It was a different sort of quiet out there, but refreshing enough with the sounds of the city in the background.

  They ended up walking down the street, holding hands and talking about life, friends, and the whole scene, really.

  They put up with the music, as it turned out. Kim liked popular music, but a little jazz once in a while was okay.

  “If it’s slow and sexy.” Her strong grip gave a pull and they crossed the street.

  “Right.” Brandon smiled, relieved to be out of there.

  In some odd way, the pressure was off. He couldn’t quite account for it, the fact that he still couldn’t quite account for Kim’s gender might have had something to do with it. It’s like it didn’t matter as long as he wasn’t alone—and it wasn’t Slam, either. Brandon knew that while he did male work—traditional roles still prevailed in society, he really wasn’t much. He was six feet tall and a hundred and seventy pounds no matter how you looked at it, and youthful attempts to pack on the muscle had resulted in expensive equipment that was painful to use and a few pulled tendons…some back pain, neck and groin pulls. The list went on. He had never really doubted his manhood, far from it.

  But he wondered what people would say.

  He enjoyed the stares of other single male passersby, who apparently did not have his doubts. He, Brandon, was with a girl, or at least near enough to fool the eye.

  I never thought I’d hear myself say that.

  It was a curiously wonderful feeling. To hold hands, to look at each other, to look away, still smiling and to know that it was good. Kim wasn’t laughing at him. Kim just liked him for some reason.

  It was the only reasonable explanation.

  A couple of punks (or wannabes with credit cards) passed them going in the opposite direction and Kim was followed by a wolf-whistle. Turning his head, their eyes met and Kim’s step changed, more sensual, stronger and more self-assured now. She stood up a little straighter now too, he saw.

  “How about something to eat?”

  “Sure.” He cracked a wicked grin. “What did you have in mind?”

  Kim pointed at a sign up ahead, holding his eye oddly for a moment.

  “Coney Island Hot Dogs! You’re on.” The neon glare washed out onto wet sidewalks and it struck him that it was all kind of perfect.

  Taxis sped by, faces in the windows, as the city towered over this grubby little street corner in Brooklyn. Horns honked, lights washed every which way and the voices were everywhere.

  It could drive you mad, it could comfort you…it could enlighten and exalt you, if you let it.

  This was what he wanted.

  Brandon wanted someone…anyone.

  Shit. He’d been honest with himself, at least about that, for a very long time. But there was a long list of qualifications or something standing in the way. Must they fit through a template, as he had asked Slam one day.

  Slam, of course, had no idea of what he was talking about.

  He wanted all of it, not just one corner of it, not something tacky, demeaning and ever so fucking superficial, no matter how momentarily gratifying the conquest might be. Sure, everyone wanted to get laid.

  If only there was some way to put all of that into words, and say it to the right person.

  Brandon’s sadness felt like it would never leave him sometimes, as he felt Kim’s eye upon him.

  Try not to give off bad vibes.

  He nipped in front and held the door. They stepped into a heavenly aroma, to one who has had a few drinks.

  Kim studied the menu, but it was a foregone conclusion.

  Three chili dogs each is what they agreed on, and they would see what happened after that. It was less than twenty bucks, they had booths here, very kitsch, (or something) and Brandon was hungry as hell. The tiles were black and white and he gave a smile at the sight of the old zinc ceiling panels, all cut out in a floral scrollwork, and a trio of paddle-bladed fans going for effect.

  For a moment they were kids again, a kid with a new friend.

  The kitchen staff, lined up, about six of them along the grille, shouted back and forth, as the din and hum of human conversation in the busy place was considerable. There were only a couple of people ahead of them waiting for a table in this popular and low-budget eatery. They stood, holding hands and swinging their arms slightly to and fro. Brandon grinned slightly upwards at Kim.

  Life was a grand joke all of a sudden. No matter what happened, or no matter how it all turned out, Brandon was determined to be nice about it.

  He hadn’t lost anything by it. No, he had gained…immeasurably. No one owes me a damned thing and that’s for sure. But I don’t fucking owe them a damned thing either.

  And, he had learned that he might as least consider having sex with a man!

  But it had been two and a half years after all. People did it in jail all the time—he’d never seriously asked why, not until recently. This was the revelation. It was a kind of liberation, he supposed. He thrust the question aside.

  What’s really important here?

  This is fun. It really is.

  Why can’t I fucking find this, anywhere?

  The thought of Kim; whipping out a pecker, saying ‘oh, by the way,’ at some psychological moment, only made him grin harder.

  Kim looked over as if sensing his thoughts, saying nothing, but giving his hand another good squeeze.

  He bit his lip in pure suspense.

  Shit.

  Just my luck, eh.

  ***

  It was Monday morning and Brandon was just sipping his coffee and wrestling with the need to make some decisions. The term life-plan had always irritated him, but the fact was he needed something like it. He could either stay with his present employer, and be laid off four or five times a year. You never knew for how long. In which case, he’d better tighten his belt and just lay low, and not let that credit card balance climb too hig
h.

  Or, he could go downtown and look for a job. Then he could hang out in front of the drugstore.

  Or, he could really bite the bullet and confront some issues, not the least of which was that he was a grade-ten dropout with no relevant skills in the modern, digitized, electronic world. He was just some labourer, a guy with big arms and a strong back and an ability to hang in there when someone else would give up and look for something easier. That’s how he had always looked at it. They were the quitters, and he was the real working man.

  But then, he’d quit school.

  And he’d run into a guy, Terry Simpson. He was working for some accounting firm, and while the work sounded awful boring, and you had to wear a shirt and tie and everything, the money he quoted was downright astounding. He and Terry used to work on the same paving gang, back when he was with the labourers local.

  It wasn’t all that long ago, when Terry sort of disappeared off the jobsite, and then when he reappeared, he was already well into a whole new life.

  If he can do it, why can’t I do it?

  Such was his mood when the phone rang.

  “Hey! Slugger!”

  “Huh?” Slugger?

  Oh, Gawd.

  Please don’t repeat that anywhere.

  “Slam.”

  “How ya’ doing? Nice work, little buddy. How was she?”

  “Ah…”

  “God, I’ll bet she was something, eh? Toight. So, tell me all about it…” Slam’s breezy assurance was the last thing he needed.

  “Honestly, nothing really happened, Steve. How, ah, so, ah, how did your night go?”

  “She was all right. That one could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. But the rest was no great shakes. Big tits and everything. Let me tell you! I fucked her tits, old buddy. But she wouldn’t take it up the backside, which is unfortunate. I don’t know what it is with these people sometimes.”

  Brandon could either laugh or cry, and he decided to laugh because crying was messy and he already had his good shirt on.

  “So, what was her name, anyway? I’ve seen that one around town somewhere, I’ll think of it in a bit.”

  “Yeah. Her lucky night though. Ah…shit. Marianne. Or something like that.”

  Brandon wondered if it really did happen.

  “Put you off, did she?” Slam sounded pretty smug.

  Brandon bit back his thoughts. He really wasn’t sure Kim was a girl, but Slam was the wrong guy to confide in.

  “No, we went and had something to eat. Then we took a cab and I dropped Kim off.” It was odd how he so carefully picked his way around the gender issue, but Slam, oblivious to all but his own precious hedonistic-existentialism, never picked up on it.

  “Hmn. So, did you get her number?’

  Brandon looked up at the clock, justifying something.

  “Ah, yeah. Say, look, Slam-ster, ah, Buddy-old-pal, I gotta go.”

  “What? What do you mean, you got to go? You got her number? Really?” This last with a note of outright astonishment.

  Brandon actually snickered, he didn’t know he had it in him right now. There was a silence. The Weather Channel was turned down low and Brandon watched the scroll for details.

  Slam was at work. Brandon could hear the quiet murmur of voices in the store and an announcement that someone had left their lights on in the parking lot going out over the public address system.

  “Whoa, whoa, hey, Buddy—”

  Brandon grinned in spite of himself.

  “What?”

  There was a disbelieving silence.

  “Well, if you’re going to be that way…wait a minute, here comes that asshole Stanley. I got to go. I’ll catch you on the flip side.”

  “Sure. Yeah. Bye.”

  They both hung up on the same instant.

  The cheerful interlude was over.

  Am I really serious then?

  Some other line of work.

  If that was the case, it was time to hit the showers.

  ***

  The week went fast enough. Brandon went downtown several times, searching on the computers in the employment centre, and saw plenty of jobs that he didn’t want. He was already making more money than a lot of them paid, all entry-level jobs with some surprising skill requirements.

  He didn’t know how to operate a turret lathe or a plasma cutter, so that let a lot of the higher-paying jobs out. He also noted that not too many places wanted phone calls, and very few mentioned application forms. It’s not that he hadn’t always hated them anyways, but. Everyone wanted a resume, and after two and a half years, he didn’t even know where to look for a copy of his old one.

  Brandon fired up the old desktop he kept in the second bedroom. He lived on the third floor of a walk-up, and if the noise he got was any indication, especially paydays, cheque-days and weekends, he didn’t even want to know what it was like on the first and second floors. Any deep penetrating thud that occurred seemed to travel from one end of the building to the other in an instant. No one knew how to close a door around there. It must invariably be slammed. Kids roamed the halls and dogs barked for hours on end, when left on the balcony so they wouldn’t shit in the house when the owners were out drinking…an old and familiar story.

  It was a tenement in some sense of the word.

  Brandon went online, a monthly charge he could hardly justify by its actual use, and learned anew how to make up a resume. It was deflating because the only thing he really had to put on there was a job he was anxious to quit. What if an employer called his employer for a reference? Or was that an irrational fear. He’d once spent a lot more time on the computer, it seemed ages ago now.

  Prior to that job, he’d been on welfare for five months, prior to that, he’d been on unemployment insurance for six months; the short period of his previous work not qualifying him for full benefits.

  But the point was, what to put on it? Like, what resume?

  It had to have some kind of positive spin, and his job, while specialized, operating a metal shaping press-punch making brass and copper tubes and fittings for the auto industry, really didn’t correspond to too much of anything else that was going on in town.

  In a larger city, maybe, but Checker Brothers was a bit of an incongruity. It was the only automotive supplier left locally. This accounted also for the spotty work opportunities—suppliers in smaller centres were basically just kept on the dole by an industry that saw a turnaround just around the corner. They were merely maintaining that production capacity for better days.

  In other words, he had better get out before they closed the plant down for good.

  He was surprised by this revelation, but when he thought it over, it made a lot of sense.

  What the fuck do I know about the economy?

  Quite a lot, as it turns out!

  When his phone rang, early Thursday evening, he was hardly thinking of Kim, although he had been thinking of…he, she or it, off and on, all week long.

  The odd-ball grin was quickly wiped off his face when he realized who it was.

  The funny thing was, he had Kim’s number too. He wondered if he ever would have found the guts.

  Not that he didn’t want to…or did he?

  ***

  “Hi.”

  “Hi, Brandon?”

  “Yup. What’s up, Kim?” His mind went into overdrive.

  You could pop the question. It might be easier when you’re not eye-to-eye, the trouble was that he could see too many negatives implied there—no woman would be happy being asked if she was a girl, right? That’s not very flattering—and she seemed, if nothing else, kind of flat-chested. Surely this would be cause for some insecurities, for the world was what it was.

  Half the chicks in town seemed to have implants these days.

  Nor would a guy be pleased, intent on stalking some big hunk of man-flesh…that sounded stupid even to me.

  He’d give anything to know without hurting someone’s feelings.

  But K
im was very tall, too. Kim had those long, slightly-shamed silences, when Kim just looked at you, and seemed so vulnerable and shy. She was a big girl in a petite world. Surely that affected her vision of herself.

  He and Slam had both read the book on how to pick up chicks. One of the possibilities mentioned was that you might end up with a pretty good girlfriend—if you weren’t careful.

  That one always got him in the guts for some reason.

  Yeah, fuck, I’ll take the worst-case scenario. Don’t mind me, guys—just leave me here to a fucking fate worse than death. You guys go on without me…

  You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.

  The trouble was that he’d loved his last girlfriend a little too much. In some ways. Maybe he still did, he certainly missed her sometimes.

  He missed her a lot.

  But Kim was a possibility. He hadn’t even seen one of those in a very long time.

  It’s not something I can lightly dismiss.

  Brandon liked what he saw. Kim had some attractive qualities.

  He kept wanting to say her—her qualities.

  God, if only I knew for sure. Even then I would probably ruin it. He was in the process of doing that anyway, if he didn’t think of something to say very quickly.

  “Not too much. Just looking for a new job, at least I think I am.” Brandon listened, not going on too long.

  Try and draw them out…

  “Yeah. I hear you.” The voice was low, soft and sultry—and yet kind of generic when he over-analyzed.

  What made a woman’s voice any different from a man’s would be questions of frequency, timbre, tone, a certain non-smoker’s lack of vibrato…all of that was bullshit and he knew it, unfortunately. In some ways, it could be anybody on the other end.

  “So, Brandon. What are you doing on the weekend?”

  His heart pounded. They’d exchanged phone numbers after having what amounted to a wonderful time, at least for Brandon. Now he had a better idea of how Kim felt about it. But even so, under those circumstances, the question of gender wasn’t all that pressing.