by Kate Wisel
STOP IT
THE WORSE THE SNOW fell, the faster Seamus drove. He was drinking Cuddy’s from the glove compartment, darting between lanes, the tires drawing up slush when he swerved.
“You’re making me late,” Seamus said as he revved onto the exit. I kept my backpack between my knees and was hoping we would crash. We didn’t, but a week later, my rib would be so broken that I wasn’t able to breathe without tearing up. It had me wondering about luck, if we’d have been better off crashing. To have walked along the silver straight of the guardrails, chilly and scratched, until I saw something I recognized.
I was trying not to look at my green eyes in the passenger mirror. Or his cheek, the purple shiner from his blackout. Seamus worked ten hours a day, six days a week changing oil. He thrusted open hoods covered in frost and barked orders to his ex-con employees, who called him boss. In his blue Dickies, his knees came up to the wheel, even with the seat cranked back. It was impossible for him to look injured.
I couldn’t reach him the night before, and had shown up at his place with a peach in my hand. He lifted me to the counter and bit in, the juice running freely down his chin as Gerry hurled a bottle at the trash can beside us and missed.
Safe outside school, I draped my arm over Seamus’s two-door and said, “Can we go to the movies?”
I wanted to see this one that was out about Micky Ward called The Fighter. I thought Seamus would like it. We’d never been on a date alone. We’d only gotten slices of pizza on double paper plates, or breakfast sandwiches with drip coffee on the mornings after, Gerry nodding out between us in the booth. Or at the dive betting Keno, Gerry strewn across the back seat in Seamus’s car, the waffle of dirt from his boot on the window.
“Maybe New Year’s Day,” Seamus said, spitting dip into his foam cup.
“We’ll be too hungover.”
English High looked like a legal building. You only knew it was a high school because outside there was a smokers bench, where kids with blue hair and pale skin huddled together, their jeans torn at the crotch.
My counselor up on the second floor was waiting, stroking his tie. I was in BRIGHT for skipping class, so every time he saw me, which was mandatory, he played up the drama.
“Welcome,” he said. “Have a seat.”
He wore sneakers with khakis. He liked to mispronounce my name. He called me Natalie. He said, “Natalie, this could very well be your last chance.”
The patterned tie he wore was an arrow to his crotch. He asked me if I knew my grades before this year combined with my SAT score were good enough to get into BU. I asked if he wanted to pay for it. He tipped his head back, cradling it with his palms, the wings of his elbows suggesting the expectation for a blowjob. I knew men like this, who wanted me to be afraid. I wasn’t. It was senior year, right before I dropped out, and at the time I thought there were always more chances. I just sat there in his office, smiling.
Up by the lab, it was warm with the heat piping through the dusty vents. I passed the corkboard before my classroom where our teacher let us tack up our most interesting photos once a week. Most were cliché black-and-whites of the Boston skyline. In mine, concrete came in rocky like a close-up of Saturn. It was just a walkway littered with electronics. You had to squint to see the busted-up TV in the background, tilted and out of focus.
There was no one in the darkroom. I was alone with that vinegar smell pooling out of the basins. I clicked film out of my 35mm and wound it up in the total darkness of the canister. I waited for the reel to dry on a clip, holding the negatives up to see all those translucent moments like X-rays going one by one. Under the enlarger, I already knew which one I’d like.
Beneath the fixer, Seamus appeared, his scally cap, the chaos of yellow backscatter on the bottles behind him, the hooked impression of his dimples, his foot tipped on the barstool.
The next week was another chance to go to the movies alone. We woke up hungover on Seamus’s pilled mattress. Facedown in his pillow, his hair was mashed against his head like a field of grass that’d been paraded on. I was in his Celtics jersey and nothing else.
He flipped over, said, “Ow,” to the ceiling fan.
“Homemade water,” I said, stepping on Seamus’s car keys on my way to the bathroom. I sprayed the mirror till my reflection dripped. With toilet paper, I wiped in perfect circles, watching as my face reappeared. Seamus was tossing on a beater when I handed him water.
“Today is movie day,” I said, on the mattress to be as tall. A stupid spin lifted my shirt. Free show. I jumped, my throat between the blades of the fan.
Seamus said, “Jump again,” then threatened to flick on the switch.
I went limp, measuring his glance.
“Calm your liver,” he said. He went to kiss me, his tongue flicking mine like a snake tasting the air.
“I’m making you eggs,” I said.
Seamus went, “Don’t forget coffee,” then swiped the back of my legs to break my balance.
Out in the living room, Gerard was where we left him on the recliner, his feet kicked up and his mouth wide open like a scrawny security guard who dozed off during a robbery. A blanket with Cape Cod and the outline of a lighthouse crocheted across it covered him from the neck down. Gerry used to work at Best Buy till he got fired for drinking on the job. Then he got a job bartending at the Draft but was fired there, too. He got bagged on a DIP, lost his license, and had a Breathalyzer in his beat-up Buick. Seamus got him a job at Jiffy. When I asked him why, he tossed his cigarette in a snowbank and told me there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Gerry, that hopeless fucking Mick. That skid.
I kept my eye on Gerry as I whacked a dozen eggs into a bowl. I remembered him stumbling the night before like a sleepwalker down Mass Ave. His cartoon, the one knocking into walls with his neon bracelet lit up in the downstairs of the Middle East. Mobb Deep was rapping with that eerie piano, and Seamus had his arm chained around my neck as Gerry parted through the crowd, grinning at us like he’d just smoked meth. Seamus shoved him back into the swarm.
Later, Seamus drove us to this dive close to home as we chugged road sodas. Seamus and I got in, even with my fake. We left Gerry to get booted out front. He was saying, “Wait, wait, wait,” to the bouncer.
The first couple photos I ever took were these ones of Gerard, back when Seamus and I first started, in the fall when my Intrepid kicked it and Seamus fixed it at his shop free of charge. I sat on the foldout chair holding a cup of grainy black coffee as he wiped oil from his hands with a rag and fucked me with his eyes.
Gerry was parked in the garage, passed out in the back seat of his Buick, his construction boots chalked with dirt. I tacked it on the corkboard but got better at printing. Seamy smiling at me, six foot five and dimpled, a pool cue resting in his fist, the billiards lamp throwing a circular glare around his crotch.
“Didn’t know orbs could give dome,” Seamus said when I showed him. Then he cracked a beer, drained it, and crushed the can in his fist. I wanted him to see the tone, this swampy green that I didn’t have to explain in class because I never handed it in. In the photo, Seamy’s chin is up, he’s saying something as I snapped, Gerry draped across his shoulder. Gerry’s eyes are closed and it looked like he was sleeping, but I knew he wasn’t. He was listening to Seamus’s every word.
Seamus went for a smoke and left the door wide open. Gerry flipped over as the cold rushed in and said, “Aiy! I’m not leaving,” in his sleep.
I zipped up one of Seamus’s hoodies, then reached my hand down the drain, past piled-up dishes in the shallow gray water. I pulled up a soggy pizza crust and half a chicken bone. I looked up to see him in the kitchen window. He unzipped the hoodie and slid his hand up the jersey to flick my nipple. The coffee stopped sputtering and I unscrewed a bottle of Baileys.
“It’s a holiday, baby!” Seamus said, digging for Coronas in the fridge.
Gerry joined us in consciousness. He’d transformed the Cape Cod blanket into a shawl and slumped ove
r the table. The deep shadows under his eyes looked like party-store makeup.
“How long you been dead?” Seamus said.
“I’m trying to f-fackin wake up.” Gerry had a stoner’s stutter, a statie’s severe buzz, and very bad breath, like gunk flicked from floss.
“Gerry,” I said. “The fuckin’ F-word is not a comma.”
“Do you see this kid?” Seamus said. “He’s not a ghost?”
“I said fack you,” Gerry said, Boston ingrained and gravelly in his throat. The caps of cans when they spin on bar tops.
“You need some hand sanitizer, kid. What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s w-wicked freezing,” Gerry said, then stared into his mug with this stricken look.
“Then why don’t you go home?” I said.
“Shut the fuck up, Nat. W-why aren’t you in school?”
“We’re seeing a movie tonight,” I said. Gerry nodded. “The last showing’s at nine forty-five.”
I looked at Seamus. He looked at Gerry.
To Seamus by way of Gerry, I said, “You got plans?”
He forked eggs into his face. “Yeah, I plan on s-stopping it,” he said.
Seamus leaned across the table and whipped the blanket off Gerry. Gerry curled, that spaz, his skinny limbs pimpled in the freeze. The burn on his chest gleamed from beneath his throat. Hot coffee when he was a little boy. The burn was the size of a beer can, smooth and pink as bubble gum.
Seamus and Gerard grew up on the same street in Lynn. Lynn, Lynn, city of sin. You don’t come out the way you came in. They rode bikes to their first job packing groceries at Shaw’s. Got jobs sliding under cars at Valvoline. At least that’s what Seamus told me on our first date. Huge hands darkened from oil. Scally cap making a shadow down his throat, where a cross hung gold and delicate. He had me up on a barstool, a pitcher between us because it was a school night. Then Gerry between us with the outline of a fifth in his pocket, trying to fish a cooler beer from over the counter.
We were a threesome. It felt like that, or if Gerry and I completed each other we’d be everything Seamus ever needed. Us cruising into Jerry Remy’s late night on either side of Seamus. Gerry snorting salt and squeezing lime juice in his eye before ripping shots of Cuervo. Seamus and I taking over the dance floor. Dripping off Seamus as he swung me, bent my body back so my ponytail dusted the floor, lifted my hips so our lips met.
In the kitchen, Seamus tilted back on the chair, then pulled his hoodie up over his eyes. I let out this brassy sigh, then picked the blanket off the floor. I halved it, went to drape it over the back of the couch but got this edge. I pulled it tight between my fists then lashed it at Gerry’s head so it thwacked against his cheek. He jerked back, held his hands in front of his face like a blind man.
In October, the three of us drove out to Salem. I skipped school. We drank Cuddy’s on Seamus’s stoop, watching the sun light up the leaves on the walk. Seamus raced the length of the pike with a wrist on the wheel and I rode shotgun, Gerard like our kid in the back seat.
We parked crooked and walked toward the shore, passing the last of the liter. The sun off the water scorched through my hair. Maybe I was drunk, but I thought I could feel the dead all around me, that I could connect with them. I half read The Crucible for English and fancied us characters. The ones stumbling on the cobblestone, heading towards the wilderness.
I had a list in my jeans of all these places I wanted to see: the Witch Trials Memorial, Pickering Wharf, some walking tour. But we couldn’t walk. Next thing we were in a tourists’ bar with a gold-plated ceiling, stone walls, and candles. We sat and drank for hours, my hair twisted into dreads from the wind and salt. Gerry wrote incoherent diatribes to me with his eyes.
“Y-ya know who you look like,” Gerry said, slugging his bottle by the neck. “Medusa.”
“Take another shot,” I said.
“B-bartender,” Gerry said to nobody. The cold focus in his eyes drained pink and sensitive.
“Take another shot, Gerry,” I said.
His eyes mutated, turning to something skittering and silvery as beetles. Gerry pounded his fist on the table, and it was enough to slosh over my beer.
“Burn her at the stake!” he shouted.
I jumped off my stool to blot the beer from my chest.
“B-burn her at the stake,” he said as the stool shot from between his legs and he crashed to the floor with it, grasping the stool like a lover.
I swung to look at Seamus, but he was laughing so hard he was noiseless. Gerry tossed the stool at the bar and it split in one crack. He wound his legs across the floor like a broken clock in a nightmare. Seamus had these slits in his eyes like it was the best thing he’d ever seen. I don’t remember the rest. Seamus said we went on a Ferris wheel and I guess I remember the view. It was spectacular, colors upon colors, neon splitting the sun above the century-old buildings. Seamus said I dropped my purse at the top to measure the fall. I tried to jump out and when Seamus held me down, I cried like a child.
By the afternoon, I’d given up on the movie. I was back to the dishes, scraping crust from a pan and rinsing our plates. Seamus and Gerry were kicked back in the living room, laughing maniacally at the way the officer in Beverly Hills Cop said “banana.” Gerry flicked a bottle cap at Seamus. Seamus flicked one back, harder, Gerry with his elbows up by his face.
I was in a rare state of peace, and went at the rust around the faucets. Grease came up easy on the countertops, but the floor was my favorite. Something about being on hands and knees, getting all around the edges, between the tiles and the grout. Puffy paper towels coming back torn and black. I threw them away and the trash built up, cheeseburger wrappers and empty bottles stuffed into thirty racks. I made it go on forever, the whole kitchen smelling like black licorice, using my nail to scratch away a single spot on the linoleum, a violin solo going by my ear.
By the time it got dark, I was spent. I straightened out unpaid bills on the counter, sipped my beer, and emptied the silverware drawer.
“Get over here,” Seamus said, swinging his arm lazily off the back of the couch.
“First of all,” I said.
“Second of all,” Seamus said.
I slid next to him on the ash-stained couch. MTV Jams was on and he got up to blare it. He held out the remote, squinting with his beer to his heart. The last of the sun spilled onto the carpet from the sliding doors where Seamus once pitched a propane tank off the balcony. Beyond it, the sun flattened over the rooftops of the triple-deckers. I leaned forward, cracked another beer. Seamus swung back as it hissed, looked at me like I said something.
“Shhhhh,” he said, holding his finger to his lips. “You just gotta shut up.”
I stared at him as I tilted my can. Warm beer dripped down the sides of my chin. Before I could set it down, he was throwing me over his shoulder, slapping my butt.
“Idiots,” Gerry muttered.
I held on to his neck as Seamus spun me, all the blood gushing to my scalp, straining my face. I hung on but he dropped me back onto the couch, flipped me to slap my ass once more. A car rushed by and the headlights swept over the ceiling. Gerry and I watched Seamus step back to comb his fingers through his hair. He took his arms over his head to pull off his shirt.
I stood and held up my palms. Seamus held up his, the tips of his fingers beating mine by an inch. We laced up. Seamus tightened his grip and wound me onto the carpet like I was being arrested in slow motion. He locked my wrists against the floor. I took in the sharp scent of rubber, my cheek next to Gerry’s construction boots. More cars rushed past. The light made the ceiling ripple like the waves oil makes in a puddle.
The music from the TV slowed. R&B hour and “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” started playing. Seamus let go of my wrists. I flipped him over and nailed his chest to the floor. I straddled his waist, bent to kiss him, but he jerked up his hips to lift mine with his till we were suspended like two ice-skaters.
Gerry stayed relaxed on the couc
h with an arm up under his head as we held the pose. Then, like a spark from an outlet, Seamus flipped me under him. We wrestled like brothers in a struggle, pinning each other and grunting. Gerry sipped his beer, his eyes trained on me from above. I heard my head thwack back onto the coffee table. Seamus propped my neck up.
I took advantage and punched at his chest, but there was no point.
He tugged off my shirt in a flourish. I held up my arms as my back glided over the carpet, my spine a string of fire as he dragged me. His chest an apparition of sweat. Gold cross swinging across his chest, naked Jesus small enough to swallow. When Seamus stood still above me, Jesus glowed bronze, his ankles restrained and crossed.
“You’re a loser,” I said, watching for a twitch in the corner of Seamus’s lip, a spasm from the purple vein in his shoulder.
Seamus spat into his palm, then slapped me and pushed my cheek down against the carpet. He yanked down my jeans, then pulled up my hips so my ass grazed his crotch. I glanced up at Gerry. Gerry was part of this. Seamus shoved my head down again and I flooded with heat, same way as when we came home late and Seamus left the bedroom door open. Gerry standing there in the doorway with his beer as Seamus grabbed at my tits from behind.
Once in a while I felt bad for Gerard. A couple months back he was sweet on this girl. He invited her to the bar to watch the Pats play on a Sunday. He showed up all suave, his hair gelled in a fresh lineup, though his dandruff dried in clumps. He was decked out in a collared shirt, sitting with his knee shaking on the stool, clearing his throat between slow sips of Guinness. He ordered another, tried, but couldn’t pace it as he had with the first.
And the equation multiplied. The chick never showed. Seamus told him to fuck her, she probably sucked cock for quarters. But Gerard wouldn’t say anything about her, not a word. I placed my hand on his shoulder on instinct, rubbed his back a little, but couldn’t breathe when his head dropped onto my neck. It shocked me, but I kept his head there. Seamus screamed at the screen, then accused us of being gay for each other during commercials. Gerry stayed mum through the win, then stuck the wrong end of a cigarette between his lips. He limped to the door, rammed his shoulder into it, then stumbled back. The bartender shot me a death stare, so I got up.
