Bleeder (20 page)

We go inside for the fridge and then return to the porch where it is quieter and where it seems as good a place as any to talk. We sit close. We kiss when few are looking.

“You should show me this place. Why don’t you give a little tour?” she requests.

So, we go through all the rooms, each filled with partygoers here and there, and then she asks to see the outside. We go out front, and when turning the corner to the side yard, we grab ourselves together in a bundle of lust. Our figures sway in the moonlight. I press her close to me, and if not for her dark eyes being closed, she would see my hungry eyes. Her little mouth and pale cheeks and hair the color of bourbon are beautiful, and for a moment she yields them to me. They are as little glowing treasures in the stiff and dark night, and I feel as some brute thing thieving them.

She breaks our embrace, stills us, and rights herself by brushing down her shirt and adjusting her undone hair.

“I can’t stay much longer,” she says.

“So you’re leaving?”

“Yes. You didn’t think I was going to stay the night, did you? You know I have a curfew.”

“You do?”

“No, silly. I have to work early in the morning. That’s all. Besides, you should hang out with your friends some.”

It crosses my mind that we have pushed things too far, that I have somehow overpowered her. Perhaps my boiling passion has, without my knowing
it, become brutish, but Charlotte throws her arms around my neck, lays her soft cheek against me, and in a warm hug whispers, “I do need to go, and I didn’t want to start what we couldn’t finish. Not here. Not tonight with a party raging around us.”

“Well how about dinner? Tomorrow night? I could cook for you.”

“Tomorrow’s no good. I have plans.”

“Plans? What . . . a date?” I tease.

“Perhaps. He’s a friend . . . like you.” My heart slips a bit. She flattens her palm against my cheek and gazes at me. “Oh, don’t look so glum. It’s nothing to be sad over. He asked me out and I said yes. It’s hard to pass up a free meal and having something to do. Besides, we aren’t exclusive are we?”

“No. I suppose we aren’t.”

“At least I didn’t think we were. So, what about the next night? Then I’ll be all yours, darling.” She gives me a smile and a grin that brightens me up a bit.

And as our lips press together again and again, I realize that there is no way to pry the lock to her young heart, that it is her beauty to which I fasten myself; it is a cataract upon my reason and makes a lustful creature of me.

Charlotte gone, I close the door to rejoin the party, which is now nearly passed out and gasping for life.

“Let’s go for a swim,” I yell out, and the party revives itself as we fill William’s Honda with six people, and I drive us out to Mercer’s Pier.

When we arrive, we run toward the sea, Sean tripping and falling spread eagle in the sand. We shed our shoes, and the beach cools my feet as the water shines black in the moon night. I kick sand with my bare feet and shout as I dive into the water. I tuck my body and plunge into a wave, and then the world is suddenly thick with quiet. When I surface, William paddles over on his back, sprays water from his mouth like a whale, and it showers us.

“That the new girl that came by tonight?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Well, sounds like things are going well, so why are you keeping her such a secret? You never introduced us.”

“No reason.”

He spits water again, laughs, then speeds away.

I dip back into the black sea and pretend I’m like the fishes. I listen to the gentle sound of the ocean’s sway, the water sloshing me suspended in this strange world. Underwater, my unanchored body floats in quiet blackness. I feel no weight here. I feel nothing but the tug of the current and the swish of my hair. Nearby, muffled laughter reverberates and warbles through the black water I hover in. I listen to the sounds of this other world, the night sea. I am restful. I am happy. I am at peace.

My held breath unable to sustain me any longer, I surface to let my strained lungs breathe again. I gulp in the night air, wipe salt from my eyes, and stare up to a star sky.

Charlotte and I lie on her couch, lazing the afternoon away. I pass her another mint julep. Having bought fresh mint at the downtown market, we have been drinking these for most of the afternoon. Her mother is away and won’t be back until tomorrow.

“Be wise and taste,” I say as I give her the drink.

We kiss. The tang of alcohol on our lips is like sweet sugar spun from a mouth of mint and cotton candy. We kiss again as a sad, slow song plays in the background.

“Tell me something,” she says suddenly. “Tell me something smart from one of those books you’ve read.”

“Well,” I say. “What about something from Milton. What if I told you that we shouldn’t let time slip away like a neglected rose. That we shouldn’t let it wither on the stalk.”

She smiles. I slip my hand along her soft arms, follow around her shoulder and slide a tentative grip to her breast. She removes her shirt, her bra, and leans into the chaise lounge and lets out a pleasured sigh of air that is as intoxicating as our juleps. When we move to her room, we slowly unpeel our clothes in the glow of late afternoon.

“Are you sure?” I say breathlessly. “It does seem a little quick.”

“Yes,” Charlotte says. “I want this.”

She passes me a condom and in the humid Wilmington night, we are safe, are quiet, and are together as man and woman were made. Eventually, our passion cooled, our rasping breath tired out, we lie beside one another,
returned to the whir of her ceiling fan and the rustling of a warm wind in the trees outside her open window. We are limp with passion, and for a moment happiness seems unassailable, but Charlotte suddenly calls out in pain.

“Are you okay?” I ask, leveling a concerned hand on her back. She draws her knees to her breasts and breathes heavy into her pillow.

“It’s some kind of stomach pain,” she says. “I suppose I’m just tense,” she adds through clenched jaw, stilted breath. She gets up to go to her bathroom and is gone for a short time before returning, still clutching her ailing stomach. “This is bad,” she says, breathing timidly.

When she lies back down beside me, I stroke her hair as I would a cat and stare far off to her ceiling tiles, and I wonder what I’ve done. A tense stillness hovers in the stagnant air between us.

I stay through twilight and into the late hours when night shrouds around us and morning grows closer. We are mostly quiet and do not say much as we eat and then later listen to music. She plays the piano for me, but it is not the same. When she folds down the piano keys’ cover, she comes to me, kisses me, and turns her head down to hide her sorrow.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t do this.”

She puts a soft and beautiful hand to my face. Apologizes until, tears streaming from her eyes, she disappears into the safety of her bedroom.

Her door closes and I sit there for a while, finishing my drink, and then I let myself out and drive home through night’s ashen haze while the world around dozes in sleep. I make a desultory loop of the downtown before finally curving around the Oak Cemetery, where a thin mist envelops the marble slabs marking ancient graves. My hope seems interred there, too.

When I arrive home, I shower, and decide sleep is not for me this night, so I drive out again. I pass the estuary that smokes in the coming morning, and I arrive at the ocean pier just as the sky begins to lighten. I lie against the sand, face east, and wait for the day to happen. Soon, the sun peeks over the oceanline and tinges everything blood orange. And then heavy sadness comes. I curl my body on the sand, and, head between my knees as an unborn child, I goddamn it all. I cry out and hurl handfuls of sand into an ocean wind that flicks the grains back into my face. I spread myself out along the beach and sleep as the dawn wind gusts wildly and as the savage sun rises and burns the night away.

CHASE MANHATTAN OWNS ME

O
CTOBER 1995
. A
COOL DAY, SLOW DRIZZLE OUTSIDE
. A
S
I
SIT GOING
over my bills, I realize my summer expenses have sacked me. With each passing month, my debt spirals further in the red to the point that now I am virtually insolvent. I charge everything: gas; food; toiletries; household supplies; and, necessarily, my medical bills not covered by insurance. When the bills come in the mail, I line them up in order of their due dates, and when the date nears and my bank account is underfunded, I withdraw cash on my credit card to cover the shortage. And then when the charge card requests their payment, I forward the minimum amount.

For several months I have done this, and for several months I get on the American way; I live in debt. But now Chase Manhattan wants to talk to me. They call daily. They leave messages. I am late on my payment, they say. I am over my limit, they add. And now, they are putting a hold on my account.

In college, a Chase Manhattan employee encouraged me to apply for a card (and receive a free pizza!), and as he slipped the sheet of paper for me to sign, he ran a clean hand through his mat of thick black hair. “Now you won’t be tied to Mom and Dad’s purse strings,” he said. “And you can start to work on your credit history, something that will be very important after college when you go to buy a car, a house.” In two weeks, the card
came. I went into town and bought a guitar, an amp, a distortion pedal, some cords, and threw in a few picks just for good measure. This was happiness. And when I got my college work study paychecks, I signed it over to Chase, and I felt then that I understood economics and how the world of money worked. Now, however, I am shackled to debt, to Chase Manhattan.

“William,” I say one night after an evening of endless calculations, “I can’t afford living here anymore. I’ve been going over the bills and the money I owe and I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’m broke. I can hardly afford these grilled cheese sandwiches I’ve been living on. I think it’s time I moved.”

William nods his head knowingly. “It’s been a good ride,” he says. “But I’m broke, too. It’s coming to an end.” He flips a cigarette from his pack and lights it as he leans back into the sofa. I shift the ice pack on my ankle and stare at the silent television, it reflecting the unpaid cable bill.

“I’m just tired,” I offer as way of further explanation.

“Well, you look tired, and a little thin, too.” He puffs again. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m thinking of resigning from the high school at Christmastime and moving home for a while. I need a way out of this. I have too much debt and my ankles also need a break.”

“That’s too bad. Nobody really wants to move home. But perhaps it’s for the best.” He stretches his legs along the couch. “Oh, but it’s been a good summer here.”

“It has.”

William and I have another time out on the town, but it’s not the same. We run underneath the clouded moon as the night sky ladles an early winter rain upon us. It freezes my hair as we hurry from Lula’s to a late-night dance club. Inside and drying out, I sip a beer and watch the crowd and soon become fascinated with a girl who whips her long blonde hair around and twirls her slender body upon the strobe-lit floor. She is beautiful and I pause to wonder where in the tiny town of New London I’m going to chance upon a girl like this, in a club like this. The girl dances on. The thump of the bass is the beat of my pining heart.

As the last leaves are torn loose by the winter gusts, leaving the trees a husk of naked bark, I pack my belongings and head home. The whole trip it pours rain. White-sharp lightning peals across the dark sky as I drive through Lumberton, Wadesboro, Albemarle, and then into New London.

Mom launches out the front door with an umbrella and rushes me. She scans my truck bed and the blue tarp that bulges with my things. “What’s all this?” she asks.

“I’m coming home.”

“You are?” She hugs me in a strict and loving squeeze. “I know you don’t want to move here,” she says. “But I think it is for the best. If you’re in as much debt as you say you are, you can save money. Plus your ankles really need time to heal and they can’t do that if you keep running yourself into the ground. I think it’s a smart move,” she says, beginning to grab things from my truck bed. “Besides, I’m sure it’s only temporary. It’ll give me a little time to fatten you up. You’re looking pretty thin these days.”

I hoist a suitcase of clothes and carry this inside, tossing it on the floor, and, with Mom’s help, I return again and again with armloads of my possessions until, the last box unloaded, I collapse onto my bed. Yet I am not done. Today I must take my monthly dose of Pentamidine. Luckily it is a thing I can now do at home.

I unbox the nebulizer and plug it in and prop it at my bedside. Then I go through the steps of preparing the Pentamidine, which, like my factor, is stored in separate vials of dry powder and saline. I mix the two, draw the medicine into a tiny syringe, dispense it in the aerosol canister, and bring the mouthpiece to my lips. I breathe in the drug, breathe out. And when the medicine is spent—the mouthpiece no longer puffing white smoke—I realize that I need to factor. My ankle throbs and gives when I stand. The move has worn my body down.