A Certain Slant of Light (13 page)

  
I felt quite the sinner, but I couldn't help myself. I had to
watch him step into a pair of pants and pull a sweater over his
head. Was it actually the shape of his chest or the muscle of his
arm that attracted me, or was it just James? He started to pick up
his shoes from the floor but changed his mind. As he left the
room, I moved back through the wall and found him in the living room, dropping into the couch there, picking up the tiny box that
controlled the television.

  
"Do we have any food?" James called loudly. "Maybe I should
go to the store."

  
Mitch came into the kitchen doorway. "There's half a pizza
left. You don't go anywhere. Clean this place up, if you want
something to do."

  
The other gentleman came from the hall, tucking his shirt
into his stained trousers. "Stop bitching," he laughed at James.
"We have to go to work. You get to sit around here and jack off to
MTV."

  
There was a slight pause before James spoke, as if he were al
ways translating from one language to the other. "Screw you."
James turned on the television to a movie with cars chasing each
other and muted the sound. He slid down on the couch until he was almost reclined. Mitch and his friend picked up keys and denim jackets, and the friend took a half-empty bottle of beer
from the small table in front of James.

  
"Have fun," he said.

  
"I'll be thinking of you, Benny," said James without looking
at him.

  
Benny stopped with the beer almost to his lips. "What did you
say?"

  
Mitch shoved a tattered cap into Benny's hands. "Ignore him."

  
James waited until the two men had closed the front door be
hind them, then he sat up and turned the television off. He
watched the door until he heard the sound of a car engine mov
ing away down the driveway. Then he looked around the room
and found me loitering in the corner.

  
"He'll be gone for hours," said James. "Wait for me." I watched him rush from room to room, gathering trash to the
garbage can, dishes to the machine in the kitchen, clothes and
towels to the machine on the back porch.

 
 
"If I do any more than that in one day," he said, "Mitch will
think I'm losing my mind."

  
I watched him put on shoes and take an apple from a drawer in
the icebox. "It's a drawback to the flesh," he said, "having to eat."

  
A drawback? I hadn't tasted an apple in 130 years. Truthfully,
until that moment, I hadn't missed it. But now I listened to
the crunch as James bit into one and saw the juice spray in a
momentary mist. It was then that I noticed a rose-colored bruise
on his cheekbone from his brother's hand. And a fainter gray one on his jaw that I hadn't noticed.

  
Before I could reach over and touch the place, James turned.
"We should get away from here." He locked the house and I fol
lowed him across the lawn and down the pavement under a dark
sky with one odd shaft of gold that slanted down to some unseen
place in the distance. He took a leisurely pace, eating his apple.

  
We passed the tiny park with the statue of the deer where the
swings were decked with shouting children, and chatting women
surrounded the picnic table. James turned left at the corner and
crossed the street. He tossed his apple core into a pile of raked
leaves and looked at me.

  
"How fast can you travel?"

  
It had never occurred to me to wonder. "How fast could you
travel when you were Light?" I asked.

  
"Race," he smiled, and suddenly he was running. He was laughing so hard when he saw me on the end of the block up
ahead that he had to stop and rest with his hands on his knees.
He walked the rest of the way to me and said, "Double or noth
ing." He pointed to the baseball field a block farther and panted,
"Top row of the bleachers, west end."

  
The park was nothing more than a baseball field, but it was
alive with activity—the bottom two rows of bleachers were full of parents, grandparents, young siblings, watching twenty little
children in uniform play ball.

  
James was sprinting toward them. I was so taken with the
sight of his lean form as his clothes were pressed to him by the
wind that I waited until the last moment to arrive before him. He scrambled to the top bleacher seat beside me, gasping for breath,
his hair in his eyes.

  
"You win," he said. I could tell that he delighted in the power
of the human form. I tried to remember the feeling of running
with my own legs under me but could feel only envy. He sat tak
ing in the scene. The crowd on the lower benches took no notice of him. On the field, two men coached a tiny boy who struggled
to lift a wooden bat that outweighed him.

  
"Helen," he said, without turning to me. The sound of my
name startled me. "I can't explain how it feels to be able to ask
you questions no one would understand but us."

  
"I know."

  
"The trouble is," he said, and a wave of pain came over me,
turning my heart to wood. He was ending our connection, I could
feel it, the sound of tragedy. "The trouble is," he said, choosing words carefully, "I find that my feelings for you are changing."
Although the people sitting below could not hear him, he low
ered his voice. "It's hard to have you with me but not be able to
take your hand or kiss you."

  
This froze me, not just my voice but all thoughts.

  
He looked down, his expression dark. "I would never turn you away, since I was the one who invited you, but I might have been
wrong. I don't know
..."

  
It was bewildering, the thrill that he loved me together with
the fear of his saying goodbye. I fought to recapture my voice.

  
"This probably seems absurd to you," he said. "I'm sure your feelings for me are not of this nature."

  
"I can't lie to you," I said. "I do care for you. But I'm older
than you."

  
"You forget, I'm not a boy," he told me. "I'm only in a boy's
body."

  
This was difficult to remember—James was so young at
heart. Now he looked me in the eyes.

  
"I would court you with a passion, if things were different.
You'd never get me off your porch swing."

  
I laughed at this, but I was still feeling hurt. I sensed that he
was preparing to leave me. I remembered this feeling from be
fore I was Light. A man says something meant to be flattering to balance his real message. He'd court me if he could, but the trou
ble
is...?

  
"I'm a coward, though," James sighed, looking back at the
field. Another small boy was trying to dislodge a white ball from
a red plastic stand, with no luck, as his fans called out words of
encouragement.

  
"I don't have the courage to be without you, now that I've
been with you," said James.

  
"Do you mean to say that if you had more character, you'd
leave me?" I thought he might laugh, but he was very serious.

  
"Please tell me what you want," he said. "I'll do whatever you
want me to do. If you find any comfort in being with me, then
please forget what I've said. You deserve to be happy. What can I
do?"

  
Don't send me away,
I thought.

  
He looked at me again. "What do you want?"

  
"I want to taste an apple," I said.
And your lips,
I thought.

  
There was a sudden surge of cheers as the white ball hopped
and bounced across the grass, and the small boy at home plate turned, surprised, to his parents' calls before scrambling into a
run toward first base. James was looking over the field, his face
gone pale, the pink bruise standing out like a rouged kiss.

  
"Did I say something wrong?" I said.

  
"Do you believe I stole this body?" he asked me.

  
"You told me you saved him," I said. "You didn't chase him
out."

  
"Do you want to save someone?" he asked. His voice was even.
He put no emotion into the words. He waited, not looking at me.

  
Not even when I longed to turn the pages of Mr. Brown's book
or bite into James's apple did I conceive of this. It seemed to make no sense. It would be like a knight saying to a scullery
maid, "Would
you
like to slay a dragon, as well?"

  
"I couldn't," I said.

  
"What if you could?" he asked.

  
My fears were strong, but the idea of actually being able to
touch his hand, flesh to flesh...

  
"But I'm not like you."

  
He laughed and gave me a side glance. "Not like me?"

  
"I
want
to be brave."

  
"I'll help you," he said.

  
I was trembling again, the way I had when he had first spoken to me. "Tell me what it was like," I asked him. He studied
me, gently. "Saving Billy's body, I mean."

  
The cheers and laughter rose as the children pulled off their
hats and went to greet their parents on the grass below.

  
"How
did you go inside him?" I wanted to know. Something in my voice surprised and aroused James. I saw the pulse at his
throat quicken.