Cycler

by Lauren McLaughlin

  Having no idea what he meant by this eyeball semaphore, Jill turned her attention back to the TV screen.

  But something stuck.

  I replay it again. I go back to the moment just after Dad’s eyes darted downward. It was such a sudden move. Dad never makes sudden moves. He moves as if he’s in water, everything slow and methodical.

  Jill followed his eyes downward to the carpet and back up, past the magazine cover to Dad’s face. His eyes flashed wide for just a second before he resumed reading.

  But there was nothing on the carpet and nothing on the coffee table between them, except for a cinnamon-scented candle and an empty water glass.

  Stop, rewind.

  What else was on that coffee table? A coaster with blue and green ducks on it, a nail file and a crumpled paper towel bunched around an apple core.

  So?

  Dad was signaling something to Jill. Something he didn’t want Mom to see.

  Stop, rewind.

  Back to the floor. But there was nothing on the floor. The carpet was spotless, a blank beige slate. Mom doesn’t let anything accumulate in any room of the house.

  I replay Jill’s memory of glancing up from the coffee table, across the cover of Yoga Journal, where a skinny blond chick held a perfect Warrior One pose on a rocky beach with the surf crashing behind her. Big yellow letters against the blue of the sky announced “Sex and Yoga.” At the bottom right-hand corner was the address label in print too small to read. Above that were some numbers Dad had scribbled in his jagged penmanship—a phone number, probably.

  I follow Jill’s gaze upward to Dad’s face.

  Wait a minute.

  A phone number has ten digits.

  Stop, rewind.

  Back to the magazine cover, to the numbers above the address label. They were in red ink against the blue of the ocean. Seven, nine, three.

  My pulse races.

  There were more numbers than that. Breathing deeply, I sharpen the image.

  Two.

  Seven, nine, three, something, two.

  A number is missing. A number that looks like a letter.

  The letter S.

  Five!

  That’s it. Seven, nine, three, five, two!

  Dad wrote seven, nine, three, five, two on the cover of Yoga Journal and led Jill’s eyes to it. Why?

  My eyes pop open and I sit upright in bed. Then I throw the covers off and stumble to the door.

  I’m about to enter the code when I stop myself. What time is it? Is anyone watching me? I turn off the light so that I am plunged in darkness. Then I press my ear to the door. I don’t hear anything. But then, I haven’t heard anything since I woke up. Do I act now or wait? I’ve lost track of time. I don’t know how much remains of my phase.

  And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is a trick. Maybe Dad was playing the lottery with those numbers. Why would he do it? Why would he tell Jill the code?

  Screw it. I punch in the numbers one at a time and wait. A high-pitched beep slices the quiet, followed by the sound of metal on metal. Reaching up with a sweaty palm, I turn the doorknob.

  It gives!

  Pulling slowly, I open the door to the pitch-black hallway.

  It’s nighttime. And I’m still naked. I throw on some underwear and a T-shirt, then pull on Jill’s orange sweatpants. They’re low riding and way too short. They make me look like a jailhouse mime, but it’s either that or Captain Underpants, so I decide to go with it. Shoeless, I creep out into the hallway and close the door with maximum gentleness. I toe-heel down the hallway, then the stairs, freezing at every creak. When I get downstairs, I stare at Mom’s closed bedroom door. Part of me wants to sneak in and smother the bitch with her own pillow. The other part—the sensible part—wants to get the hell out of here before anyone knows what I’m up to.

  On the kitchen wall by the sink is a clock that reads 2:37. That gives me a good four hours before Mom wakes up and realizes what’s happened.

  I creep into the vestibule, my bare feet sticking to the cold tiles. The door to Dad’s basement yoga hole is closed. I want to go down there and thank him for freeing me. I want to ask him why he did it. And why he did it in such a cryptic, backhanded way. But the clock is ticking. I tug the screen door open, flip the lock on the front door and slip outside.

  And once again, ladies and gentleman, the Jackmonster is free.

  In my mime gear and bare feet, I run to the shed out back and disentangle Jill’s ten-speed from between the two broken lawn mowers. The metal-toothed pedals dig into my bare feet, but I don’t care. Leaving the shed door open, I mount the bike and hightail it to Main Street.

  The road speeds by beneath my wheels as I race through sleepy Winterhead. Without slowing down, I veer left onto Cherry Street and sprint beneath the giant oak trees to Ramie’s house.

  I ride right up the gravel driveway and dump the bike in some bushes around the side of the porch. Then I shinny up the tree and pull myself to the porch roof. I’m about to knock on her window when I stop.

  What do I tell her?

  She thinks I’m a Peeping Tom. I am a Peeping Tom. Plus I haven’t called or visited in two months and now I’m lurking outside her window in Jill’s sweatpants. Will she recognize them? Is there a lie in the universe that can smooth over this bag of triangles?

  I press my forehead to the window. Ramie sleeps curled on her side, facing me, with her mouth open.

  I shiver in the cool night air as goose bumps break out over my exposed skin. Maybe the time for lying is over. Lying is what got me into this mess in the first place. Lying, scheming, plotting. All of it in service of Jill’s conformist delusions.

  Ramie’s body rises and falls with her breathing. We’ve been lying to her for too long. Whatever rationalizations we’ve manufactured about the cruel world and its presumed inability to accept us, in the end, we’ve been lying to our best friend, the one person who would accept us. It’s time to tell her the truth. All of it.

  Hmm. I guess that’s what they call a moment of clarity.

  I bring my knuckles to the window and tap.

  Ramie opens her eyes with a start. She breathes in sharply and looks confused and scared; then slowly, recognition dawns.

  I wave meekly and mouth the word “hi.”

  Sitting up, she pulls the comforter around her bare shoulders, exposing the rest of her body. She’s wearing old green gym shorts and a white tank top. I know that tank top. You can see her nipples through it. Not now, though. It’s too dark. Her bare feet dangle from the bed as she perches on the edge, regarding me with skepticism. I try an apologetic smile, then press my palm against her window.

  She twists her head over her shoulder to look at the doorway, then gets up and comes to the window, dragging the thick comforter like a wedding train. But she doesn’t open the window.

  I mouth the words “I’m sorry.”

  This makes her brow furrow and the skin just above her nose wrinkle. Ramie’s not one of those girls who looks cute when she’s mad. When she’s mad, she looks mad. Fierce, even. When Jill once accused her of flirting with Emerson Bilmont, on whom Jill had a ferocious and thoroughly ignored crush, Ramie launched an expression missile of such menace that the UN would have classified it as a weapon of mass destruction.

  This look is different. She’s trying to be angry, but in her eyes, her true feeling is plain. She wants me. She’s going to open the window. She just wants me to suffer first. I’m suffering plenty. As I press my palm against the glass and allow her dark brown eyes to swallow me, I am suffering against the ticktock of the clock of doom. Plus I’m on the verge of bursting through my underwear and Jill’s sweatpants.

  Just as I think this, Ramie’s eyes wander downward and register surprise at my unusual dress.

  I open my hands and form a nervous smile.

  Ramie takes a visible deep breath just to show me how on the fence she is about letting me in. Then she places her long fingers in the notches and lifts the window. She steps as
ide and I slide in.

  She stands stiffly by the bed, keeping the window open, as if to imply that my invitation is provisional.

  “Your hair,” she says.

  How I’ve longed to hear that voice again with my own ears.

  “You cut it,” she says.

  I shrug. “It was bugging me.”

  Her eyes wander downward to the orange sweatpants again. “What are you wearing?” She looks up at me. “Are those—”

  “My sister’s,” I say.

  The comforter slips from her left shoulder and she shrugs back into it.

  I take a step toward her and she pulls her head back.

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” I say. “I can never go back.”

  “Back where?”

  “Home.”

  Suspicion melts to concern. “Why?” she says.

  I sit on the edge of her bed, which is still warm. “Ramie,” I say. “I have to tell you something.”

  “First,” she says, “tell me your name.”

  “It’s Jack.”

  “Jack what?”

  I look at her, silhouetted against the window. How I’ve longed to see her without the veil of memory between us.

  “Will you sit next to me?” I say.

  She shakes her head.

  “Ramie, listen, I know Jill told you I was probably a delinquent, but—”

  “How do you know Jill?”

  I look at the floor in search of the courage to continue. “Ramie, I’m not a delinquent. I’m—”

  “What?” She steps forward, nudging my kneecaps with the edges of the comforter. “What are you?” She holds the comforter clasped in one slender hand, but its opening spreads to a wide V at her stomach, revealing her hip bones through the dark green gym shorts. “And how do you know Jill?”

  I bring my hands to the V and grip the edges of the comforter. A deep breath rises from her diaphragm as I spread the comforter open and crest it over her shoulders. Pulling it taut against the small of her back, I spread my legs and pull her toward me. “Don’t you know?” I say.

  Our legs lock together like LEGOs. She leans back to look down at me, her eyes searching my face, my head, my neck. She touches the uneven outcroppings of hair, then runs her long fingers down my cheek. When her finger finds the scar under my chin, she stops breathing.

  “I can never go back,” I say. “I’m—”

  She falls to me, her soft lips finding mine. The comforter falls in a heap to the floor and I wrap my arms around her waist. Lifting her up, I slide backward onto the bed. The hot skin of her stomach through the flimsy tank top presses against me, and I inch back further until we are lengthened across the bed, every possible inch of my arms, torso and thighs pressed against every inch of hers.

  With a gentle tug, she pulls her lips from mine and draws them across my cheek, then downward to my neck. “Jack,” she says.

  That’s when I know that the truth, in all of its grotesque scientific detail, will have to wait. Her lips wander to my shoulder as she slides her body downward. There is another, more essential truth that requires its airing tonight. A truth that resides in the body. The truth of Ramie’s warm skin. The way it smells. The truth of her legs wrapped around mine, the shocking revelation of her gym shorts in my grip, sliding downward over the taut skin between her hip bones. The smooth white truth of her breasts as I peel off her tank top. The sound of her startled breath as she frees me from my underwear.

  It is more truth than words could ever hold. A truth that requires not one, not two, but three full airings before it has had its say. And when it is freed, it hovers moist and warm in the close, dark air of Ramie’s bedroom while its human agents entwine.

  And that other truth? What a small thing it is. What a trifle. Good night, ladies and gentlemen. Good night.

  If ever there was a morning I wanted to last forever, it was that morning. Waking up with Ramie’s big nest of black hair piled on my shoulder, her long arm thrown across my chest, her warm thigh on top of my own and the thrilling scratch of her—

  There is a knock at the door.

  “Ramie?” someone says. “Wake up, honey.”

  It’s Ramie’s mother.

  “Jill’s mom’s here,” she says.

  In the frantic pause between those words and the turn of the doorknob, I slide from under Ramie’s breathtaking weight. She moans softly but doesn’t rouse. The door cracks open, revealing the shape of Ramie’s mother as I drop to the floor in a crouch. Flattening myself against the cold wood floor, I peer out between the brass feet of Ramie’s bed as her mother opens the door all the way and steps inside.

  Above me, Ramie stirs in a whisper of sheets.

  Mrs. Boulieaux’s legs move toward the bed but stay mercifully on the other side of it, a mere three feet from me. All she’d have to do is glance over the other side to see me in all my naked glory. “Wake up, honey,” she says.

  Sheets rustle as Ramie scrambles to cover herself with the comforter. My underwear and orange sweatpants sit in a ball at the foot of the bed.

  “Mrs. McTeague is downstairs,” Mrs. Boulieaux says. “She says Jill is missing.”

  “What?” Ramie says.

  The mattress sags with Mrs. Boulieaux’s weight. “Honey,” she says. “Where are your pajamas? Did you sleep naked last night?”

  “Huh?” Ramie says. “Um, yeah. I got hot. Did you say Jill’s missing?”

  Mrs. Boulieaux gets up from the bed and her feet and legs move to the door. “Get dressed and come downstairs,” she says. “Mrs. McTeague is waiting. She looks worried.”

  Mrs. Boulieaux leaves and shuts the door behind her. I see Ramie’s naked legs and feet hit the floor on the other side of the bed. “Jack?” she whispers.

  “I’m under the bed.”

  Her naked body drops into a crouch as she peers under the bed.

  “She didn’t see me,” I say. “I made it in time. I think.”

  She stares at me through the dark, dusty space under the bed, her breasts crushed against her bent legs. I want to crawl across the dust bunnies and make love to her again.

  Ramie brings her knees together protectively and covers her breasts with her arms. “I have to . . . um . . . Jill’s . . . I have to—”

  “Go downstairs,” I say. “I heard. I’ll sneak out the window.”

  I get to my feet and grab my underwear, painfully aware of her averted gaze. I slide into them and pull on the orange sweatpants and my T-shirt.

  Dragging the thick comforter with her for protection, Ramie finds her gym shorts and slides into them, but our eyes meet before she can locate her tank top. Her arm twitches, but she resists covering her breasts. I turn away to give her some privacy as she hunts for the shirt. Through the window, I spot Mom’s beige Saab in the driveway.

  Ramie finds her tank top under a pillow and I struggle for something else to look at while she slides it down over her smooth vanilla torso. My eye catches on something pink and black dangling from the rack next to the vintage trench coats. “Is that a prom dress?” Next to it is a white tuxedo. “Are you going to the prom?”

  Mrs. Boulieaux’s voice calls up, “Ramie!” Then her footsteps climb the stairs.

  I go to the window and open it. “Who’s the tux for?”

  “Ramie!” Mrs. Boulieaux calls, her footsteps approaching.

  I lift the window and slide out into the cold. Pressing my body against the slim fringe of wood next to the window, I watch Ramie’s mother open the door and urge Ramie out. Ramie looks back once in search of me, then follows her mother out the door.

  I shinny down the maple tree and run barefoot across the stick-strewn lawn. I can only guess at the nightmare visions with which Mom is filling Ramie’s head. Undoubtedly she is telling Ramie that a mutant swamp creature named Jack has swallowed Jill alive or that a top-secret military experiment has gone awry, unloosing a maniacal masturbator/girlkiller on Winterhead and its environs.

  Digging my bike out of the bushe
s, I mount it and race across her lawn to Cherry Street.

  I don’t know what day it is or how much time I have left. Nor do I have any idea where to go. Turning the pedals as fast as I can, I head to Main Street.

  I’m speeding past the Brownsteins’ big yellow house when all of a sudden, my legs give out on me. Pulling over into the sandy shoulder, I drop the bike onto its side.

  Holy crap! I had sex with Ramie last night!

  I have to squat over my bike as the magnitude of this washes through me.

  Ramie.

  Me.

  Naked.

  A white SUV cruises down Cherry Street and slows as it nears me. A middle-aged guy in a nylon tracksuit brings it to a stop, lowers the window and leans across the passenger seat. “You all right there?” he says.

  Classic rock plays quietly on his radio.

  “Huh?” I say.

  “Are you hurt?” he says. “You fall off your bike?”

  “Oh.” I pick the bike up, but my knees are still wobbly. “No, I’m fine.” I’ve just deflowered your neighbor is what I think but don’t say out loud.

  “You sure?”

  “Yup.” I straddle the bike. “Thanks for asking, though.”

  He waits as I mount the bike and wobble forward. Then he passes me slowly with a little wave. We both arrive at the intersection to Main Street at the same time and stare awkwardly as we wait for traffic to let us cross.

  Did I mention that I had sex with Ramie Boulieaux last night? Have you told all of your friends? Go ahead. I can wait.

  Traffic clears and we both cross Main Street and head toward Winterhead’s town center. Why? I don’t know. I have no idea where I’m going. I can barely see straight. There’s a sidewalk to my right and cars are passing me on the left. I’m struggling to keep my bike within the eight-inch space between the white line and the sidewalk’s curb while sweet and dirty memories course through my body like schools of frantic fish.

  Behind me, a car beeps angrily. Looking down, I realize I’ve veered way out into traffic. Pulling back to the right side of the white line, I stop the bike and pull it up onto the sidewalk. Nobody walks on these sidewalks, anyway. The car, a spotless silver BMW, speeds off with an impressive squeal.