Ethan, Who Loved Carter (2 page)

He was beautiful. That was obvious even in the dim light. Pale, dark-haired. Carter couldn’t tell from this angle, but he bet the guy was tall. Another man approached. The new arrival put his arm around the first man’s shoulders, who pointed at the sky. They looked up together. Carter tried to follow the swirling patterns the first man made in the sky. He was still looking when he noticed the two men returning to the house. The second man kept his arm around the other one as his hands flew in animated gestures.

Carter stayed beside the window until the light went out in the yard. He waited a minute longer to see if they would come back. Maybe they were a gay couple. If they were, it would make Carter’s settling in easier. His one worry about moving was that he’d be the only gay person in his new neighborhood. When a light went on upstairs in the neighboring house, he pulled the blinds down, set the now-soaking towel with half-melted ice into a bucket left behind from cleaning earlier, and crawled into bed. He felt the urge to twitch building up. He channeled it into his foot to save his hand from hitting the headboard. It exhausted his control and he fell asleep hoping he wouldn’t wake up having hurt himself any worse.

T
HE
stars arranged themselves into symphonies for him. Ethan told his dad how they burst and shone, how he could hear them in his head, sometimes so loud he needed to cover his ears, but that was wrong because the music was in him and if he covered his ears, he trapped it. Dad tried to understand and Mom did too, but they didn’t hear the music, didn’t see it no matter how often Ethan traced it in the sky. Elliot used to see it when he was little, but now Elliot only saw girls, and Ethan had never given much thought to girls—not in the same way as Elliot—even Before.

He didn’t think much about Before. Nobody close to him liked to. He’d learned that when he saw the hurt on Mom’s face and how Dad looked angry sometimes. Dad was more careful about that since he’d made Ethan upset with his angry face. Ethan had cried even though Dad had kissed and hugged him and told him it wasn’t his fault—that he was a good boy.

Twenty-seven was too old to be called a boy. Elliot was fifteen and he didn’t even like being called a boy. When Ethan told Dad not to call him that, Dad said he’d try. He’d been pretty good about it so far.

There was a new neighbor next door. Ethan had watched movers carrying boxes into the house all day. Eventually they left and a man and woman stayed. They were both short like Elliot, but Elliot wasn’t done growing yet and Ethan thought these people were. The woman left and didn’t come back, so Ethan figured out it was only the man living there. The man went into his backyard to pick up some tools the last owners had left out. He took his shirt off when it got hot. It made Ethan’s private place warm, so he pushed on it to make it feel good. He was in his bedroom, so it was all right. He was allowed to touch his penis in his bedroom and in the bathroom, but anywhere else was off limits. That was what Mom said. He made the white stuff come out.
Semen
. He remembered that from Before. He’d lost some words, but not that one.

Tomorrow maybe he would meet the new neighbor after work, but he’d have to be careful not to tell him that he’d made semen though. People didn’t like to be told that.

Ethan had learned that the hard way. Elliot was still angry with him for blurting it out to Elliot’s girlfriend’s brother while they were at her house. Elliot had called Ethan a retard. Ethan had tried not to cry, but he couldn’t ever control his feelings, and Elliot’s girlfriend took him into the bathroom to wash his face. Ethan wanted it to be her brother to help him, because maybe they could have sex, but her brother sat like a lump.

After Eve washed his face, she told Ethan to sit down on the edge of the tub and wait for her to come back. He heard shouting between her and Elliot, and then Elliot came to get him. He still looked angry and he didn’t apologize. He didn’t hold Ethan’s hand when they walked home either, but Ethan didn’t care. He didn’t need to hold Elliot’s stupid hand to get home anyway. He could get home without letting the music distract him. It beckoned him with the whir-thump of tires on asphalt, the wind over the grass, a dog pawing the ground. That was outside music though, different than the music that came from the sky, the music that lived in his head. He could put his hands over his ears and shut that out. He followed Elliot home, one step behind. When Mom asked what happened, Elliot said that he and Eve broke up. He didn’t say it was Ethan’s fault, so Ethan didn’t tell what Elliot had called him. He went to his room and lay on his bed. Dad came in and rubbed Ethan’s back the way Ethan liked and asked if he wanted to talk. Ethan hid his face in the pillow. Elliot didn’t talk to him until he met another girl. It was only one day, but it felt like forever.

That was why he shouldn’t tell people they made him make semen, and why he wasn’t going to tell his new neighbor about it.

“C
UH
cuh cuh-ca—” Carter stopped. He took a breath and lowered his eyes from the barista’s wince. She was a diminutive twenty-something with a logic-defying hairstyle framed by her visor that involved two chopsticks and a few hundred dark brown cornrowed braids twisted on top of her head into a loose bun that had no business staying in place. She had better things to do than listen to Carter make an idiot of himself, but apart from the wince, she didn’t rush him despite the line behind him. Carter tried again.
Café au lait
. The air was hot around him; his throat strangled the consonants and didn’t give the vowels a chance.

“Maybe you could just point,” came a woman’s not unkind voice from behind him. He squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn’t dared a glance behind himself, but he could hear as the rumblings got louder and knew that the line had increased while he’d stood there. The barista drummed her nails against the side of the register. They were three inches long and each painted with a different immaculate flower. He recorded the absent rhythm.
Tap scrape tap tap scrape
and twitched, neck and shoulder, to it.

“Just give him a coffee,” a guy said. “Come
on
.”

Carter shook his head. Caffeine, no, bad. That would tighten him up even more, make it impossible to unwind, make the tics worse. “Duh duh de deca—”

“Decaf?” The barista asked.

Carter nodded. He hated having his sentences finished; it reminded him even more that he was the one slowing everything down. Getting stuck on sounds was one of his tics, and also his mind was too fast for his mouth, but no one saw that part of it. They simply thought he was stupid or, if he was lucky, shy, which was another reason for his stuttering.

She held up different sized cups. Humiliated, Carter pointed at the smaller one.

“What are you, a moron?” A different voice this time, the angriest one yet. Carter folded in on himself, shoulders scrunched and head down.
Get your money out. Get ready to go
. He had it in hand already: a five dollar bill clutched from the start of this debacle. The barista emerged from behind the counter and stormed past him.

“N-no, p-puh please.” He didn’t think he could ever come back here as it was; if she came to his defense—oh God, was there anything more humiliating?—he wouldn’t be able to talk himself into leaving his
house
. She was five foot tall at a generous guess. What was she going to do? Head-butt the guy in the stomach? He turned around, using the motion to hide a tic that started from his side and jerked up to his shoulder, to watch the carnage.

Carter froze as he took in the tableau. The man who had yelled stood red-faced and arguing with his hands; the barista faced him, pissed off and waving back, and off to the side, Carter’s new neighbor held a dripping towel. His hair wasn’t dark as Carter had concluded the previous night. Rather, it was a deep orange-ish red. It stuck up from his head in thick tousled points that went every which way. Carter was right about him being tall. He was a comfortable six feet at least. He wore an apron that matched the barista’s over a white long-sleeved shirt. Carter followed the trail of drips from his towel to the table that the customer stood beside. The relief he felt when he realized the man’s outburst hadn’t been directed at him ended the moment Carter saw his neighbor’s fragile expression.

“I’m sorry,” Carter’s neighbor said.

“Ethan, do not apologize for someone else being a jackass,” the barista said.

“He knocks my coffee over and
I’m
the jackass? You get what you pay for when you hire re—”

The barista stepped into the man’s space. “You finish that word, Ned, and I’ll ban you for life.”

Ned closed his mouth.

“For now, you’re banned for today. Get out.”

Ned looked at the overturned cup on the table as if he were considering taking it with him. Glancing at Ethan, who stood squeezing the towel and staring at the floor, he left. For a moment, no one spoke, although everyone pretended not to be looking. The barista had a quiet conversation with Ethan. When they finished, Ethan stepped over to the table and wiped up the mess. People resumed talking.

The barista returned to the counter. She sighed at Carter, as if settling in for another challenge. “You want milk?” she asked.

“Yes,” Carter said. He was too shaken by the distraction of what had happened to notice he hadn’t stuttered until the transaction was over. He started for the door, coffee in hand and change in his pocket, when he switched his course and headed for Ethan.

“Hi.”

Ethan looked up. He’d polished the table to a shine. Now he held the towel in front of him like a shield.

“I’m Carter. I just moved in next door to you.”

“I know,” Ethan said. “I saw you. You have a lot of stuff.” Ethan talked faster than Carter, but each sound seemed selected with care. Instead of making him sound robotic, the effect was musical. He had a warm voice, softer than Carter had expected from his size (and he was big: not only in height but broad-shouldered as well).

Carter laughed in agreement. He’d wanted to leave a portion of his things behind, but Alice and John had frightened him into taking everything. They’d said, “You never know when you’ll need a….” and dropped in the name of the item he wanted to toss. “I saw you too,” Carter said. “You were in the yard with another man. Was that your—?” He hesitated, not wanting to say “boyfriend” in case Ethan was in the closet.

“My dad,” Ethan said. “I was showing him the music in the clouds. But he doesn’t always understand it.”

“Oh.” Carter wasn’t sure what to say. He’d never met anyone who heard music in the sky. “Your name’s Ethan? I heard her—” he pointed at the barista “—call you that.”

“Yes. She’s Vera.” Ethan peered at him. “You’re talking better.”

“I… guess I’m more comfortable with other freaks.” Carter grinned; he felt good and safe talking to Ethan, but Ethan’s smile
disappeared. Too late, Carter realized what he’d done. “I didn’t mean—”

“I’m not a freak,” Ethan said.

“No, no, no, I’m sorry.” Carter flailed his hands, trying to catch the words before he tensed up too much to say them.

“You’d better go.” Carter turned to see Vera standing beside him and, again, the line of people oriented toward them. This time, her sharp glare burned into
him
.

“Yes, I’m sorry, I… Ethan, I didn’t mean….”

But Ethan had already shut down. His face flooded with hurt that Carter couldn’t bear to see.

“Now,” Vera said.

Silent and shamed, Carter retreated. In his car, he took his first sip of coffee. He winced at the sharp taste and stuck it into the cup holder to sit as a bitter reminder of his stupidity.

C
ARTER
was a symphony. He tapped his feet when he stood still and drummed his fingers on his leg. His eyebrows rose above his dark glasses in undulating movements and Ethan bet if he could see behind them his eyes would have rhythm too. He wanted to tell Carter he could see his music, but then Carter called him a freak.

“You all right, honey?” Vera asked.

“I’m not a freak,” he said.

“That’s right; you aren’t.”

He liked that she agreed about that. He tried to keep working, but his stomach hurt. He didn’t want to show it, but he couldn’t help rubbing it and moaning, which made the customers look at him funny. A few asked him if he was okay and tried to get him to sit down, but it was against the rules to sit when he was working. He’d have to go into the back for that. After a few more minutes Vera took a break and put Andy in front of the register, which meant now there was no one to deliver food to the tables.

“Do you want me to take you home?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Now Andy would have to do Ethan’s work too.

“It’s okay,” Vera said. She rubbed Ethan’s back and helped him untie his apron. He didn’t need help, but he let her do it anyway. Lifting it over his bowed head, she handed it to him. “Go hang this up and meet me at my car.”

“Okay.” Taking it, he stumbled toward the back room and hung his apron on his hook. He changed out of his work shirt and put his T-shirt on before finding his time card and punching out. Elliot had given him the T-shirt for his birthday. It was yellow and said “Likes Boys” on the front in pastel colors. Ethan had loved it. Mom and Dad hadn’t wanted him to wear it outside the house, but Ethan asked and asked until they said he could wear it to and from work as long as he was getting a ride from someone.