Lawnboy (25 page)

I trekked across the grassy slope. I imagined him nameless, a worn silver surface where his features had been. He wasn’t himself anymore. He was emptied, a phantom. And all at once I knew what he was becoming for me. He was everything that stood between me and what I’d longed for, everything I’d ever lost and never had. He was my relationship with William—
failure.
He was my relationship with my parents—
failure.
He was my fear of the future—
failure
—my shame, the absence of love and trust—all of them tied up together in one sticky knot. But I wasn’t about to start fussing with it now. I might have been a whirling hate machine, hot wind blowing through my blades, spinning me around so fast I could have lifted off the ground, and then what?

***

A little after midnight I spotted Hector within the illuminated rectangle of the pool. He drifted around on a red rubber raft, turning imperceptibly like the hand of a clock, nudging himself from the sides with the ball of his foot. I couldn’t stop watching him. I eyed him from the darkness of my room through the torn fronds of the travelers trees, murmuring his name.

I walked to the pool in my green swimsuit. I stood on the ledge for a moment. The water bubbled, teeming, alive, a container of light.

I’d waited long enough.

I dove in. I swam all the way down to the pool lamps, kicking forward, then up, up, water
whooshing,
churning inside my nostrils, ears. My eyes burned. I moved beneath the raft—a submarine!—and knocked him off. “What the fuck,” he cried. His arms thrashed. His drinking glass sank—dream-like, slow-motion—to the bottom. I grabbed for his swimsuit, pulled it down, as he fought me off, pounding my back, laughing, bewildered. We faced each other. I reached for his dick and looked in his face. “What?” he said, shier, more vulnerable than I’d expected.
“What?”
I squeezed him tighter. A tingle in my groin. “Give up,” I said. “Give it up. Let go. This isn’t any surprise. You know exactly what you want.” He sighed all at once, eyes closed, a little smile on his lips, shoulders letting go, dropping forward. He laughed softly. I pulled him toward the shallow end. I had him now. My moment: I wasn’t going to waste it. I knelt, water sloshing around my neck, and took him inside my mouth. I sucked in a breath through my nose, throat full. Good, so good: I raised my chin. I rubbed his stomach, squeezed the tough pink nub of his nipple. Skin, musk, hair, the moist rich darkness—everything focusing, everything centering in us. He bit into his lip, winced. “Yes,” he said, and swayed above me. “Ah, yes.” My head knocking his belly. His palms pressing harder to my ears, blocking out the sound.

A rushing inside my head: a downpour.

How long did it last? An hour? Fifteen minutes? Five? Time dilating, opening up like an aperture.

The backs of his legs clenched. Something scalded my shoulder. When we finished, we both started laughing, soft at first, then louder, more raucous. We shook the water from our hair. “Jesus,” he said.

“Oh God.” I backed up to the rungs of the ladder and fought for my breath. What had I done? I couldn’t believe what I’d done.

“It’s all right,” he said. He kept blinking, rubbing his temples with his fingers.

I exhaled through my mouth. The windows around us were dark, curtained, everyone sleeping soundly in their rooms. The fans of the air conditioners rattled in unison. I heard voices in their drones, scraps of songs, harmonies. Stars blazed, rotating above our heads. “So I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Good night, you.”

“Good night.” I swam to the opposite wall—heart banging, triumphant. I pulled myself out of the pool, and ran, shivering, all the way back to my room.

***

I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my humble bed, sheets kicked to the floor. Floodlights poured through the curtains. The room felt hot, sealed off. My mouth tasted like a bandage. A thousand thoughts stampeded through my head. I pulled on some shorts, hooked my flashlight to my belt loop, and left.

I walked down the Trail. I walked to the west, through the vast, vacant city until the sky blued, until my feet hurt in my shoes. Branches bearded with moss. Ghosts crashing in the trees. Shapes, souls. Something was ringing inside my head, a fire alarm:
You can change your life, you can.

***

The van lurked behind the office. We swung onto the backseat, leather scorching our legs. Two p.m. Roasting, a sauna inside, the floor cluttered with coupons, wrappers. Our sunglasses steamed up. I crouched, facing him on the seat, palms pressed to his jaws. Air stifling, too thick to breathe. I pushed my tongue between his lips, tracing the ridges on the roof of his mouth, the softness, his teeth.

I cradled the pouch of his jockey shorts.

“Here?” He laughed, bewildered, as if afraid of me. “You’ve got to be crazy.”

“Yeah, here,” I said.

He cleared his throat, swallowed. He shook his head. Then he unzipped his own pants, lifting me inches above his lap.

A stab. I yelped, clenching, breathing, then balancing myself, grabbing onto his shoulders. His skin whitened beneath my fingers. I coughed. Little by little, we started moving. Wet, sloppy inside. Sweat rivering down my torso.

“Like
that?
” he said.

“Like that.”

The axles flexed. We kept moving the van that way, squeaking, working it, almost laughing at our audacity.

***

“Are you all right?” said Peter one day.

“What do you mean?”

“You look a little strange,” he said, tilting his head, considering. “Around the eyes. Have you been getting enough sleep?” His breath felt warm, like the heat off a candle, on my cheeks. He stepped closer, so close that I almost fell backward.

***

Hector and I floated in the pool one night. No talk. My suit floated off on the surface, an empty bag. Our mouths fastened. We were circling, hands pushing at each other, muscles tensing. I wanted him closer. I studied his face: that scar beneath his ear, those fleshy pink lips. How to get him closer? How to get deeper inside the body?
Our
bodies. I tried hard as I could to inhabit it,
us,
closing my eyes, frenetic. A fluttering in my gut.
Deeper,
I thought, concentrating.
Deeper.
A well: the water inside the well. Icy, burning.
Down, down, down the dark ladder.
His stubbled jaw rubbed against the grain of my chin. Shuddering, my eyes opened. I pictured something rising off Hector, a dark violet cloth, the size of a handkerchief, floating upwards.

It occurred to me we were most likely causing someone pain.

We were up to our shoulders in water, chlorine burning in our nostrils. I pressed my mouth to his shoulder. I might have bitten right through to the bone, hurting him, leaving a mark like a tiny animal trap.

I glanced toward the nearest wing. There were rustlings from the rooms, vague murmurings and the occasional cough. A jalousie window cranked closed.

“Did you hear something?”

His brows drew together.

“I’m serious. I think someone might have been watching.” I looked off toward the buttonwoods, the acacia, the loquat. Peter? “Hey, somebody there? Who’s out there?”

His eyes were solemn, dignified. Garbage trucks lumbered down the Trail. And, if only for an instant, looking at the smudgings of his cheeks, the slight sag beneath his eyes, I imagined him older, sixty. “Everyone’s been in bed for hours. Stop worrying.”

“I’m not worried,” I said.

He hefted himself up onto the raft, belly scuffing against rubber, hands scooping, paddling away from me.

Day 21. Agitators, vandals; we did it anywhere, in the most outlandish places: the utility passage, the floor of the conference room, the hood of a guest’s sedan within full view of the pool. Always testing our nerve. Always amazed by ourselves. My body authoritative and deft, my thoughts fluid. I was beside myself with—what? Bliss? Joy?

***

My head buzzed. I imagined him standing behind me, arms around my chest, chin wedged between my shoulder blades, wiggling it, telling me to trust him; yes, of course, he felt just like I did, of course. He was crazy about me. I meant the world to him. His breath heated my spine. I curled back into him, eyes closed, purring like a cat. But why so many fragments, scraps in my head? Why this persistent, gummy absorption: the almondy taste of his fingers, the smell of his scalp already growing fainter and fainter?

***

Hector crooked his elbow over his face, feet wide apart, in imitation of a vampire. Together we stood outside the laundry room. The dryers rushed and spun inside, throwing out their heat.

“Dracula?” I said.

He made biting motions toward my neck. He raised his upper lip: fangs, plastic Halloween fangs.

“This is supposed to be funny?” I said.

“I’m used to seeing you only at night, that’s all.”

It occurred to me that I’d been avoiding him outside of our “dates,” for lack of a better word for them. Just the merest sight of him had started jostling my demeanor. “Shhhh—” I pointed to Peter’s hunching back through the office window. He leaned forward over the desk, talking on the phone, taking notes furiously upon a legal pad.

Thumb pressed to the roof of his mouth, he pulled out the fangs with a quick suck. “I thought you were through with being afraid.”

My voice stopped in my throat. Instantly I saw it: he wasn’t anxious about me at all. His stance, his wry, ironic gaze—it was as if nothing substantial had changed between us.

“I’ve got rooms to finish,” I mumbled, then hurried down the walk.

“Evan, wait,
wait.
”

I sighed hugely. I didn’t turn.

“Do you want to drive into Fort Myers this afternoon?”

The glibness. How could things be so easy for some people? Whoever said life was supposed to be so flippant, so casual? My eyes fixed upon a sea-almond pod in the dirt. “Some other time.”

Nights later, I came in from the pool, hair wet, shivering. I lay facedown on my bed with my clothes off. The air conditioner ebbed, droned. I couldn’t catch my breath. I had every reason to be ecstatic, energized, relaxed: didn’t I finally have what I’d been longing for? Didn’t I finally know the elusive pleasures of the body? How far away those days with William seemed. How far away those days of loneliness, panic, yearning. Yet even the most fundamental tasks required a terrific will. No energy. I couldn’t even finish my sentences. They stalled on my lips, dissolving in my mouth like sugar cubes, while my listener waited for me, puzzled, impatient. My room was a mess, my floor strewn with T-shirts and towels. I hadn’t gotten my hair cut in weeks. No books, no tending trees. I’d become so lax in my duties that I was surprised that Peter hadn’t let me go by now.

I cleaned the first-floor rooms one day. One of the guests had left behind a pack of Lucky Strikes, and I started smoking them, one after the next, as I vacuumed the worn carpet. I left my cigarette on the air conditioner. Not three seconds later the curtain above it started smoking. I tore it off the rod, stomping it, swiping it with my sneakers until I was certain the fire was out. The flames had chewed and charred it, eaten off its edge. It seared my palms as I tucked it the closet. I sprayed a half-can of Glade around the room, and still I smelled the smoke, gloomy and acrid, stinging the membranes of my nose.

***

The old sample house glowed. We’d brought with us four orange flashlights, and I’d propped them together on the warped floor: a centerpiece. They cast their warm glow onto the rotting studs, the unfinished ceiling. Fat sacks of Dursban hulked beneath the windows. We’d just finished, and we lay there on the floor, lingering, listening to the ospreys in the swamp—a departure from our routine.

I was lying on my side, running my thumb along his jawline. His face looked unusually pensive, aquiline.

He turned on his side. “Well, you’re affectionate this evening.”

The tips of my ears blazed. A judgment? I felt foolish, as if I’d violated some invisible code.

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t very nice. It’s just—you care about me?”

“
No,
like—” I sat up. Blood rushed from my head, blackness falling before my eyes.

“We have to talk.”

I looked at the ceiling, willing any reaction out of my face. I was motionless now, a puppet, a cartoon, a stick figure. I steeled myself.

“I’m worried about you,” he said finally.

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“It’s like this means too much to you.” He shook his head, faltering. He dragged his tongue across lower lip. “You’re a very sweet boy, a very good friend to me. But you need to get harder, tougher.”

His voice was impossibly quiet, almost tender. One of the flashlights toppled on its side, beam swinging across the ceiling, down the wall, to the floor.

“I don’t understand.”

His eyes darkened, burning now. “We’re having sex, all right?” His voice got louder, tinged with a warning. “It’s just sex. I’m not your boyfriend, I’m not your lover.”

A welling, a heat gathering in my throat. “I see,” I said finally.

He nodded.

“And you’re making this decision for the both of us?”

“I just want to make sure we know what’s what.”

I couldn’t hide it any longer. I flexed my toes until they popped inside my shoes. At once, a door yawned open beneath me. My stomach fell. Bright lights flashed above, taking my picture. I felt astonished and exposed, to him, to myself.

I wanted to pummel his back until he wept.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“Have a good night, pal.”

My back teeth might have cracked apart.
Sweet boy,
I thought.
Good friend.
I shook my head, left the emptied house without another word.

***

Hope: a pop, a lightbulb blowing out.

***

I woke at three one morning. A party was in full swing across the courtyard. The door was off its hinges; inside sat a boom box on the bathroom counter, bass line thudding. The proceedings spilled out onto the grass. The kids stomped, throwing back their heads, flailing their arms. An occasional scream lashed the gusty, gelid air. A girl ran out the door followed by a guy with the widest shoulders I’d ever seen. He tackled her to the grass, and amidst her protests, poured beer foam down her impossibly white back.