Lovesick (27 page)

Her body stiffened in a hard spasm and Sandra gnawed her tongue, filling her mouth with blood. Her eyes rolled back into her head as if in a spell. As sound and sight ceased for her, Sandra thought of Carson and the music the water made splattering on the tiles when he would shower in the morning, the smell of the breakfast as she cooked bacon for them, the way his calloused hands grew tender in the night when he touched her. She saw her home, before all this had happened to her, restored to her now forever with the dogwoods and agapanthus in bloom at the end of the driveway stretching before her like eternity. Shep stood there waving to her, shining brightly, his wounds all healed from the gunshots. The snake was there, too, had always been there, she realized, and as she took it all in she could feel her heart explode in the wonder and the joy that comes from understanding. She felt herself escape through the two pinpricks above her heart, flowing out into the grass, the water, the air.

She became light.

Claude looked down to where Sandra lay, the snake curled at her feet like a servant. He took the sack and gathered up a half dozen or so snakes from the ones remaining on the rock. He needed to dispose of her as quickly as possible. No telling when someone would come snooping around for her. He would turn the snakes loose in the car with her as he rolled it over the edge. Then if there was an investigation, the authorities would assume that they had gotten in and bitten her after the crash. It could work. It had the ring of truth to it. After all, stranger things have been known to happen.

M.R. Vale

1

After,
when the police ask Lonnie about the time he and I first met, what they will really want to know is about the first time we had sex. That's okay because it would be the time Lonnie would remember as being when we met. It's not the truth, but it is what he would recall. Sex is like that for most men. It has a way of holding events in place in their memory like a thumbtack.

I also understand that Lonnie would know if he told them about that time, it could cast me in a bad light. Possibly portray me as a predator even. I want to believe he would not intentionally paint me with the broad brush of guilt, but he would want to make absolutely sure he, himself, wasn't smeared with it—and if that meant slopping some suspicion onto my shoulders, then so be it.

So he would tell them how I invited him—he may even say I lured him if he was thinking quickly—to the back of the store when he came to drop my van off after servicing it and then ever so matter-of-factly offered him money to show me his private parts. Which is true. I did offer him five dollars to show me his dick. Ten if he made it get hard. Which he did. He is proud of his pecker, as he likes to call it, and he likes to show it off. I've seen the way he looks when he takes it out, cupping it gently in his hand. He admires it. He expects others to do the same. I don't blame him. I've seen plenty of dicks in my day up close and personal, and his is one of the finest. Fat and plump like a sausage even when it is hanging limp. But if that is what you're waiting for, sordid tales of me in bathroom stalls, waiting for whomever to stick his whatever through a glory hole in the partition, then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. My purpose is to dispel just those notions—that I am some perverse perverted pervert straight out of Edgar Allan Poe with a dash of John Rechy thrown in for good measure. Just take my word for it when I say I know what I am talking about when it comes to men and their Don Johnsons.

Then Lonnie would tell them how I gave him another ten to let me touch it. We're up to twenty-five dollars, in case you are keeping count. I doubt he would add that I didn't have to pay him extra to jerk him off. Once I had it in my hand, it wasn't too difficult to finish the task. A little spit and a few firm pulls. But I knew not to try any more than that. I knew he wouldn't have let me. Still, he didn't object at that point. In fact, I would describe him as a willing accomplice, but I doubt if the authorities would see it like that or that Lonnie would tell it that way.

I can imagine how Sheriff Plummer would respond to that salacious tidbit. Me holding Lonnie's hard, thick pecker in my hand in the back of my shop three short blocks from Main Street where anyone could have walked in at any time. Plummer would press for details, would love hearing about Lonnie's dick, how big it gets, would have asked to see it if he could have gotten away with it in the pursuit of evidence. But Plummer's interest in cock is not necessarily because he is homosexual—I wouldn't know about that. I've had my suspicions, mind you, but until I get the “mother may I” go-ahead, I don't take that giant step. I once had a good ole boy chase me halfway around the woods at Pine Grove Lake with a tire iron because I offered to finish him off when he was sitting in his truck playing with himself. But that's another story. My feeling is that Plummer's curiosity would stem from the fact I doubt the good sheriff has seen his own prick in the last dozen years with that huge corn-fed gut of his hanging down like it does. Besides, big, fat men inevitably have no dick. Like I said, I've seen enough to know.

There is even a rumor afoot that I sucked Lonnie off in an empty baptismal pool of one of the Baptist churches. That salacious chitchat is especially hurtful since there are three Baptist churches in town, and a blow job in the sanctuary would make me seem both degenerate and unrepentant at the very least. However, it does make me smile to myself to imagine Joanne Jackson leading all the good Baptist women of the town and organizing committees to get down on their knees to Clorox those pools clean of the stench of sacrilegious man-on-man sex.

But the time in the back of the shop wasn't the first time I met Lonnie. No, the first time was late one Friday afternoon toward the beginning of last spring when the afternoon breeze still carried the promise of a cool evening. I remember I was driving by JB's garage, having just delivered all the flowers to the Presbyterian church for a wedding there the next day. If I am to be thorough in my accounting of this, I should add, as a footnote, that while deemed acceptable to choose the flowers with the mother of the bride, arrange them, deliver them to the church, I am never asked to the church for the wedding or the funeral or the baptism, never asked to the reception or the receiving for a slice of cake or a glass of fruit punch. That is the way here and I accept it. Once in a great while they might send a picture of the “lovely arrangement” enclosed with the check to let me know I helped to “make their special day truly special.” But like I said, that's the way it is and I always accepted it—happy to stay on my side of the fence. Solitary confinement, so to speak. Until I met Lonnie.

The afternoon I met him I was on the way home from the Presbyterian church. Lonnie was changing the gas prices on the metal sign out front of the garage, fumbling with the numbers. He had the prices turned back to front, so that hi-test was two dollars and eighty-three cents instead of thirty-eight. He looked befuddled, innocent like a child putting together an alphabet puzzle where there were too many letters. To be totally truthful (which is my aim here), his T-shirt was torn under his left arm so that when he reached up there was a good glimpse of his armpit, the matted hair on his chest, his nipple, but that is not what struck me. It was not merely carnal lust that drew me to him. There are plenty of men who would have welcomed me and my soft, luscious mouth, anytime, anywhere. So don't think of me as desperate. What drew me to him was that confusion, that childlike innocence, that helplessness.

That is the image I would ask that you keep, for it is the image I hold even after all that has happened. It is the one of the Lonnie who existed in some faraway time and place. The ideal Lonnie.

Do you believe in love at first sight? In fate? In destiny? No, then you will pass all of this off as some ranting of a giddy queen eager for a one-off with a grimy mechanic in a torn T-shirt. But I swear to you when I saw Lonnie, I knew that he was my future. I don't believe there was any way I could have resisted it—him. Even if I had wanted to. I knew at that instant that he and I were linked in some special, inevitable way.

I pulled into the garage and saw Joe Boggs, the owner, told him I needed to have a service on the delivery van. This was nothing unusual, though I usually had my mechanical work done midweek since weekends were busy with deliveries. To cover myself, I told him that I thought something was wrong with the fuel line or the carburetor. I told him I heard a dreadful sort of
ping-ping
when I got to around thirty miles per hour, and I was afraid the engine was just going to blow up and leave me stranded by the side of the road with a van full of flowers. This was, of course, a lie, but I knew Joe wouldn't test it, would only change the oil, squirt some grease onto the springs and axle as he always did. My experience has shown mechanics hold homosexuals in general contempt, tolerate them even less than they do women in a garage. He would figure I was just being flighty, not knowing a carburetor from a candy bar. But business was business. And Joe Boggs is as greedy as they come.

I told him I would leave the van in the morning, but had a very busy day at the shop and didn't think I would get back before he closed. Which posed a real dilemma since I had to deliver the flowers for Sunday service to First Methodist, St. John of God Episcopal, and the Church of God of Prophecy where he was a member. Could he have someone drop it off for me when they closed at two on Saturday afternoon? Joe didn't want to, didn't want to be seen as too comfy cozy with me. But in a small town, it is almost impossible to say no to such a request—even a bigot like Joe Boggs would not want to be perceived as rude. So I knew he would say yes, even if he didn't want to, especially since if he didn't comply, there would be no flowers for his church on Sunday morning. How would he explain the lack of a mixed bouquet to his wife and fellow church members, not to mention the God of Prophecy. I knew it was a slight he wouldn't be willing to risk. I also knew he would pawn the task off to someone else.

“I guess I can have Lon run it over when we close. He's staying out your way.”

“That would be so helpful.” I smiled. By this time Lon—Lonnie—had walked back in the small, cluttered office of the garage. His smell—no, not smell, his scent—sweat, mixed with dirt and grease—almost overwhelmed me. But I refused to look at him. Knew that if I did, I would give myself away by some involuntary, trembling glance or smile—that he and Joe Boggs would know the truth about what I felt.

“Lon, I'm going to have you take Mr. Vale's van over to him tomorrow when we get done.”

Lon shrugged a consent as he sized me up. At 5'6”, and a svelte 135 pounds, I am sure he considered me nothing more than a puny runt. And if he noticed them at all, the highlights in my nutmeg-tinted hair, my gold dangle belt, my teal Ralph Lauren Polo shirt would have been similarly dismissed with a single thought—fag. But I didn't care. I am a butterfly. I am a work of art. I make beauty wherever I am. A flaming scarlet silk purse can never become a sow's ear, my dears, and I for one have never seen any good reason to try; besides, the stage was set. Lon was coming to my shop.

The next afternoon, instead of just zipping up and walking out like so many other men would do (and have done!), Lon walked back into the main part of the shop, checking out the lay of the land. Perhaps he felt the connection as well, I told myself. As he strolled casually among my displays I thought how Roman women would pour their tears into tiny urns as their husbands left for battle, to commemorate their love, their loss, their yearning, their suffering. Looking back now, I should have preserved that moment, used a vial to immortalize his milky spunk, his essence—and my love, my loss, my desire, my pain. Instead, I swabbed my hands with a Wet and Wipe, and tossed it into the trash can.

“This where you stay?” he asked.

I have learned you can always tell someone's breeding by the questions they ask—or more to the point, the way they ask questions. Rednecks and white trash always refer to their home as
where they're stayin',
as if we are all a part of a communal caravan.

“Yes,” I told him. “I have lived here since I was a boy.”

“And this is yourn?”

“You mean the house—yes, I own it.”

“Who-ea,” he said. “I don't think I ever met nobody who owned a house outright. You must be a right rich little fella.”

“I have no complaints.”

“And all this from putting flowers together in a jar.”

“A vase. Or an arrangement. But floral design is a highly respected trade. And I have been nationally certified.”

If he was impressed by this, he didn't show it.

“Where's your mamma and diddy?”

“Mother died when I was twenty-seven—my father was never around. What about you?”

“Ain't got no kin . . . at least none that will claim me.” His face darkened, and I knew there was more here.

“Would you like a beer?” I asked. I had stocked my refrigerator with longnecks.

“Sure. I guess. Whatever's going.”

When I brought the beer, I found him out on the back porch, sitting on the steps in the long shadows of the afternoon sun, leaning back against the rail. Male models work frantically to affect the effortlessness of that pose, that off-handed, casual, relaxed masculinity.

I'll buy you things,
I wanted to tell him.
If you will only come and stay here and let me look at you in this light, let me touch your face, your skin. I will worship you like the god that you are. And I will do whatever you ask me to.

But I didn't say that—I didn't have to. Lonnie already knew that I belonged to him.

If my life is ever made into a movie—and yes, I do imagine that it will be now since the word on the street is producers are already clamoring for the rights—the next few months would be a montage, the part of the movie shot in a golden glow where lovers skip playfully through fields of flowers, pausing only to sip wine from each other's lips or loll playfully in front of the fire. A conversation that begins on the beach at sunrise in spring dissolves into a candlelit discussion over dinner in autumn. A touch on the hand across the breakfast table concludes with a final caress before the sheets billow in the breeze as a background for their lovemaking. I hope that is the way it is shot. It is the way it should be shot.

In reality, Lon would come by once every three or four days after he got off from work at the garage. He would appear without warning at my back door, like he stumbled upon my house by accident. Or had been sleepwalking in a dream. We both knew why he was there, of course, even though we always pretended that the sex just happened. It was like when I used to buy weed from Drexel Smith before he burned up his trailer cooking methamphetamine and got sent to prison. I would only see Drexel a few times each year like the change of season, and when I would go to see him, I would always have an excuse for showing up, like we were friends or something. That he was more than just a dope peddler. We would pretend to have a conversation—the drugs would be an afterthought. “Oh, by the way, do you have an ounce you could sell me? Thanks so much. Sorry, I have to run.” If I am to tell it all, I would have to say that Lonnie was like that with me. There were no golden sunsets or claret-filled goblets—and very little talk.