The Coming Storm

by Paul Russell

  What had happened this very afternoon, here in the apartment, struck Noah again full force. Was he consciously trying to anger his dad by flirting, however tentatively, with the unthinkable? Because if his dad ever knew…The clearest image came into his head: just as he had once done when a car had crippled a deer in front of their house in Connecticut, his dad stood calmly and loaded a bullet into a pistol, ready to put out of its misery the wounded animal that was his son.

  He forced himself to go straight to where Gunila stood, elegant in black, her blond hair falling to her shoulders, the same color as the champagne in the flute she held in one hand and contemplated rather than sipped. If he talked to her he could avoid—or at least postpone—A. J., whose predations he could already feel broadcast around the room. Whether he liked Gunila or not wasn’t anything he felt he had to make up his mind about. Clearly she’d been made to understand that if he was part of the baggage that came along with marriage to his dad, he wasn’t a very big part, nothing she’d have to trouble herself over. She seemed grateful for that, as if she owed her recusal from stepmotherhood to his own delicate renunciation rather than his dad’s intention—and he’d been perfectly explicit about this—to start a new family after the false hopes that had been raised and then dashed by the disappointingly infertile Kendra.

  “Noah,” she said. She held out her free hand to him, and he took it, relieved that she didn’t want a hug or kiss, happy to maintain this cool, adult formality. “But you’ve grown.” She looked him up and down. “Do you hate it when people say that?”

  “I don’t know,” he told her. “I don’t think I’m growing anymore.” At six feet, Gunila was four inches taller than he. Only twenty-five, she’d come to New York from Stockholm as a model with the Ford Agency, but now, for reasons he was more or less completely incurious about, she was a spokesperson for Stolichnaya vodka. What that meant, exactly, he had no idea. He imagined her jetting around to different cities and giving speeches that began, “On behalf of Stolichnaya vodka, I wish to take this opportunity to address a matter of great concern to all of us here: the parking situation downtown. Stolichnaya’s position is that there should be adequate parking for everyone. And furthermore, all children should be forced to attend summer reeducation camps. And their parents should drink vodka with every meal. Not any vodka, but Stolichnaya vodka.” A few months back he’d written a story: “The Adventures of Gunila, Stolichnaya Spokesperson to the World.”

  Meanwhile the Stolichnaya Spokesperson to the World was asking him exactly the same question about school his dad had asked, and he was telling her exactly the same thing: “Fine. School’s fine.” Relieved that he’d mastered the art of cocktail conversation with such ease, he was blissfully unprepared for what came next. In that slightly accented way that she had, Gunila asked, “And are you dating?” She peered expressively into his face, as if to ferret out some truth.

  “Um, well,” he said defensively. “There’s just guys at the school.” The antique Buddhas lined up against the wall seemed to watch him, even the haunted Buddha on the left, the one he sometimes caught eyeing him, as if to say, We know your secrets, Little One. Should he be dating? Sometimes he’d tag along with Tim and his gang to the mall to hit on girls, but that wasn’t exactly dating, and besides, it never came to anything. Though Gary Marks claimed, through smirks and innuendos, to be seeing a girl he’d met at the mall, whatever “seeing” her meant. “The Forge isn’t co-ed or anything,” he added, realizing his face and ears had flushed with embarrassment.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean you had to be dating your schoolfellows,” she said humorously. “Surely there are ways to meet girls.”

  “We have mixers,” he explained. “There’s this other school, Partridge Academy, it’s in Middle Forge, where my school is. It’s a girls’ school. There’s a sort of tea in the afternoon once every couple weeks. Either at our school or theirs.” What was the point of mentioning that the couple of times he’d trailed along with Tim and his crowd it had seemed pretty farcical, the boys in their red ties and blue blazers, the girls in whatever, everybody sitting around sipping tea and stuffing their faces with cookies and not having much of anything to say in such an artificial situation. Then afterwards, back at the dorm room, hanging out with Tim and Gary and everybody going, “Yeah, that Heather Christianfeld, oh man, I could really get into doing her. And did you see the hooters on that redhead by the window? Yow!”

  “And there’re these volunteer clubs too,” Noah went on, aware how inexplicably hectic he was sounding. “They work with Partridge Academy on projects, like, they visit old-age homes, that kind of stuff.” The sort of activities he might actually consider doing if he were a really good person who could get off his ass.

  “So yes,” he concluded, a bit breathless, having satisfied himself that what he asserted was in fact true, “there’s always ways to meet girls.” And if he managed to inject a certain knowing slyness into his voice, what was the harm in that?

  The Buddhas smiled serenely, mysteriously, unmoved by any of this. “See?” Gunila smiled back at him with her own knowing slyness. “I thought so. Ah, A. J.,” she said more loudly, beckoning him over. He held a heaping plate of food in one hand, a glass of iced tea in the other. He’d put his napkin and silverware in his shirt pocket.

  “I need more hands,” he said.

  “Noah and I have been having a wonderful chat. It seems he’s become quite the ladies’ man at his school up there.” She said it as if the Forge were somewhere past the Arctic Circle.

  “Like father, like son,” A. J. quipped. Did he have any memory at all of that night in South Carolina? Noah was afraid to scrutinize him too closely, lest he reawaken anything better left forgotten. A. J. had, by his own admission, been very drunk.

  Suddenly claustrophobic, and focusing on A. J.’s laden plate, Noah said, “Food. That looks like a good idea,” and fled for the buffet table the caterers had set up in the dining room. Shiny metal bins held spicy-smelling Indian food: yellow rice, mercurochrome chicken pieces, unidentifiable lumps in mustardy brown sauce, cheese cubes in spinach. Too many of the dishes looked like one kind of shit or another, and he thought back queasily to the dark matter on himself when he’d pulled out of Chris Tyler’s butt. Hot, acrid nausea rose in his throat. He hugely, hugely regretted the afternoon. The Fatwa: in his mind, he spit that word out like a chewed-over husk from which everything had been extracted.

  About one thing, though, Chris had been exactly right: they’d used each other. They’d used each other the way you might use a coffee grinder or a washing machine—to get the job done. But what job had that been, exactly? What had needed to get done besides releasing some spunk, a job your own hand could manage just fine? He didn’t feel any different now than he had before, though the tip of his penis stung, as if it had been dipped in something it wasn’t too happy about. He’d sat in the Jacuzzi’s scalding heat for nearly an hour, trying to soak away all traces of their encounter, but his flesh wasn’t a sheet of paper from which could be erased back to nothing the black marks of words, sentences, paragraphs. Scrub and soak as he might, something awful and obscene remained barely legible.

  It had been a momentous event, no doubt about it, nearly as momentous as that evening at Tracy Parker’s a week ago when he’d felt so paralyzed, so hemmed in by their polite back-and-forth that he’d had to do something, anything, to change the way things were. Not that it had been for the better—just as this afternoon had not necessarily been for the better—since, despite Tracy’s perfunctory protestation to the contrary, Noah had clearly freaked his teacher out. Tracy had gone out of his way to be scrupulously, ridiculously correct with him in the days since, never once looking his way during class, feigning urgent business elsewhere once the hour was over. No more “Drop by for dinner if you feel like it” or “Do you want to house-sit Betsy?”

  Perhaps I don’t like you so much anymore, he thought bitterly, hesitating before the trays of food and the dark-faced wai
ter in an ill fitting suit who stood awkwardly behind the table, ready to be helpful, asking himself, with as much irony as he could muster, Had he really fantasized—idly, perversely—about sucking Tracy Parker’s dick? Or worse, had he really made a point of imagining, so vividly it made him shiver, the words Tracy would say to him, low-voiced, dusky with desire, their faces so close he could feel the warm, sweetly sour breath in his mouth, “Noah, I think I want to fuck you. Do you want me to? Is that what you want me to do to you?” Even now he felt a swoony rush in his chest; the horny beast stirred, took on a life of its own down there in the lair of his pants. Well, he mused, trying to back away from those thoughts as best he could. That was very disturbing. So much for testing the waters.

  “The chicken is very good. Tandoori,” said the waiter. Noah barely nodded. He did not want to get fucked by Tracy Parker or anybody else. And yet the dark lure dangled before him, those bleating sounds of pleasure he’d wrested from the Fatwa, that joyful yelp of pain hinting at some inner mystery he thought, with acute desperation, he couldn’t live without knowing.

  “Sir?” the waiter asked politely. With his hands he indicated the tandoori chicken. In a fog, Noah reached for the tongs and poked around in the pile of red-dyed animal parts. But who was he fooling? Getting fucked by Tracy Parker was about as likely as waking up one morning on the moon. The guy had drawn the lines very clearly, and when Noah had tested them, even just a little, he’d found himself promptly and in no uncertain terms rebuffed. Probably he’d never go over to that house again. It’s just as well that it’s finished, he thought. Good riddance. It had been a stupid thing even to think about. But all at once he felt completely hollow inside, done in by a misery reminding him, stridently, that the only reason he could even stand the Forge was Tracy Parker, simple things like walking over to his house, knowing he’d be invited in; cooking dinner together; sitting around in that living room and feeling no pressure to be anybody except who he was. Feeling nervous and safe at the same time. And he’d gone and ruined it. Burned it down in one thoughtlessly premeditated moment.

  “Well, Noah,” said a voice that lengthened out the second syllable luxuriously. Back for second helpings at the buffet table, A. J. had found him. Noah stood, empty plate in one hand, tongs in the other, stalled at the unappetizing alternatives before him.

  “Now I don’t usually like real spicy Indian food, but this is mild,” A. J. extolled. With great enthusiasm he ladled yellowish rice onto his plate, heaped it with bright red chicken legs and dark cubes of lamb. “I’ve never been to India. Never had the desire. But your daddy’s been. He told me the most marvelous story having to do with six women and a busted steamroller, but for the life of me I can’t exactly recollect any more than that at the moment. He ever tell that story to you?”

  Noah shook his head. A. J.’s gaze seemed friendly, uncomplicated. He’d never know, would he, what the old lech remembered or didn’t remember about that night on the pier. Maybe he’d only been joking and Noah hadn’t gotten the joke. Or maybe he’d been testing him. Maybe his dad had put A. J. up to it: “Say, A. J., why don’t you find out if my son’s the little faggot I think he is. Would you do that for me?” Because of course A. J. was married, he had three daughters, why on earth, drunk or sober, would his roving hand end up on Noah? Tonight, fortunately, the old drunk seemed to be sticking to iced tea. With a fine disgust Noah watched his father’s friend make short work of a skinny chicken leg, sliding his lips along the naked bone to suck it dry.

  “The young gentleman is having a bit of trouble deciding,” the waiter said sympathetically. Noah found himself yearning as never before for one of those cool green salads Tracy Parker would never make for him again. “Excuse me,” he said to A. J., and to the helpful waiter as well. He laid his unused plate carefully back on the stack. “I feel a little ill. I’m going to get some fresh air.” And turning his back on his erstwhile admirer, he walked over to the sliding glass door, pulled it open a crack, and stepped out onto the balcony.

  The chill air made him realize he hadn’t lied: he really had been feeling ill in there. Like a big blank canvas, like merciful sleep itself, the park gaped, a dark hole in the middle of the teeming city, though hardly empty itself, rampant in fact with whatever reckless creatures, human or animal, ventured forth only under cover of darkness. It would happen at night, he thought, the leafy heart of the forest, embattled, shrunk to a few acres surrounded on all sides by the encroaching enemy, suddenly bursting forth, vibrant, unstoppable, filling the streets with strong saplings overnight, vines climbing the skyscrapers thirty, forty feet a minute, flowering bushes sprouting from the cracks in the walls of apartment buildings whose occupants lay scattered about, felled by a swift silent plague a hundred times more deadly than AIDS. Excited by the prospect in his head, he leaned forward against the balustrade as if to view from above the work of vengeance begin in the streets below. Someone had left a half-full glass on the ledge; inadvertently he almost knocked it off. Beside the glass lay another object which, at first, in the darkness, he couldn’t identify, not till he picked it up, held it in his palm. The Fatwa’s dope pipe. His half-drunk glass of orange juice. Both forgotten in the recklessness that had ensued; neither retrieved afterward.

  What was inside him would never go away. What had happened would never not have happened. He moaned in distress, thinking for a moment to fling the dope pipe off the balcony, into the darkness, perhaps even land it in the ground zero of the park if he put enough shoulder into it—where, perhaps, it would spark the revolution. But instead he slipped it into his pocket, neither an ill-gotten souvenir nor a sober reminder; an excuse, perhaps, to do that scariest of things: actually talk to the Fatwa once he got back to the Forge. Look him in the eye and say: Here, this is yours. Say: I’m not a bad person, no matter what you might think.

  He didn’t know how long he’d stood there. It was late. Traffic on Fifth Avenue started, stopped, started again. In the park, beneath the orange-gray sky, men went looking for sex with other men. He knew about that. He didn’t want strangers; he wanted one specific person. Behind him he heard the sliding glass door open. Expecting A. J.—it would have to be A. J.—he didn’t bother to turn around. Life was full of A. J.s and Fatwas and never enough Tracy Parker.

  “So here’s where you’ve been hiding yourself.” He felt a large hand on his shoulder, smelled the bracing reek of gin. “Fuck Ashkhabad. What a joy to be back in New York.”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” he said defensively. “I just needed some air.”

  “For your headache,” his dad said without sarcasm.

  “Yeah. That. How’s the party?”

  “Over. Done with. I threw the bastards out. No, actually, I’m just zonked. I must be getting old. I spent three weeks in that fucking cesspit shitting myself raw. Hey, you remember that time in London.” He laughed. “Now it’s my turn. Man was not meant to live on cucumbers and melons and week-old lamb. So what do I do? I drag my sorry ass back here with a big fat contract in my back pocket and I find out my associates, in my absence, have been shitting me as well. Fine. Everybody shits everybody in this world. Money is shit. Power is shit. Love is shit. Women are shit. No, actually,” he revised thoughtfully, “women aren’t shit. Women are cunts.”

  Martini glass in hand, he sat down on one of the chaise longues. Noah hardly knew what to say. It was his dad after cocaine. His words might be angry, but he spoke in that calm, indifferent voice Noah had heard earlier. That was what made the things he said all the more horrifying: that they weren’t said in anger. They were just his observations, rendered with the same scientific objectivity Noah occasionally prided himself on achieving. “It’s true,” his father went on. “Gunila is a cunt. Kendra was a cunt.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Your mother, Noah, was a cunt. It’s really not their fault. They were born that way. But you want some advice from your dad? Put your dick in them all you want, but if you think you can do anything more than that, if you think you can trus
t them or believe in them, you’re just fucked. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Noah was glad for the darkness. “Yeah,” he said wearily. “I hear you.” It was as if his dad’s drunkenness or wrath, his cocaine blood rush, had spread contagiously to him as well. He looked at his dad and thought, A faggot gave your son a blow job right there where you’re sitting. And your son let it happen, he wanted it to happen, because your son is a little faggot who thinks way too much about what it would be like to have a cock up his ass, who’s fascinated by that thought and just as scared of it happening as you would be. Who’s really pretty freaked out right about now, he’s so curious as to what it would be like to get his tight little virgin ass fucked by Mr. Tracy Parker he fucking can’t stand it.

  “Well,” his dad said. He struggled to rise from the chaise longue, and for an instant Noah thought of extending his hand to help. But then his dad was on his feet, albeit a little unsteadily. The miles had caught up with him. The melon and week-old lamb. The shits and cunts of the world. “I’m calling it a night,” he said. “I’m fucking done in. But it was good to see you, buddy. You certainly put the charm on our Stolichnaya spokesperson. That’s good. For better or worse, she’s going to be your stepmother.”

  “Dad,” Noah said tentatively. He rubbed his neck, tender where the Fatwa had voraciously sucked on him. In his pocket he felt the dope pipe. The Fatwa’s glass sat inches from his dad’s own martini glass.