Saints of Augustine (13 page)

“You can be a really great guy, Charlie. But you've got to focus right now. The last thing you need is a girlfriend who's getting upset because you didn't call. And the last thing
I
need is a boyfriend who's high.”

It upset him even more to see that her eyes were dry now. She looked so resolved, so adult. “Did—did your mom put you up to this?”

“Please, Charlie! Don't insult me.”

“Well, maybe you don't know,” he said desperately. “Maybe you're not the expert on what we need. I mean, you're not a shrink
yet
.”

She looked at him, focused on his bruised eye, and almost smiled. Then she leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I'll talk to you in a few days,” she said softly, and stood up.

His face and neck were burning. He stared forward at the houses across the street, his entire body rocking slightly. When he turned around, she had already reached the porch and the front door was closing behind her.

 

Hell of a day it had turned out to be. Hell of a week. His father had nearly bled to death over a pizza, he'd had to pawn what few electronics he owned to pay a fraction of his dope debt, and his girlfriend had dumped him.
And
he'd run into Sam, and had actually been glad to see him, as awkward as it was—until Sam had blown him off. He might as well have said “screw you.” And what had Charlie ever done to him?

He was tired of thinking about it.
All
of it. He just wanted to get away from everyone.
No man is an island? Ha! Eat my dust, world. And once I do get my island, you can all stay the hell away from it
.

When he came into the house, his dad was sitting at the kitchen table doing the crossword puzzle. There was no glass—or bottle—in sight. Charlie pulled the orange juice from the refrigerator and swigged from it.

“Not from the carton, son,” his father said. “Use a glass.”

Charlie stared at him over the top of the orange juice carton. His father was actually dressed. He was still wearing his bedroom slippers, but he had on pants and an untucked button-down shirt—the furthest he'd gotten from pajamas in weeks. He'd even combed his hair. On his thumb was a single, clean-looking Band-Aid.

Charlie was in such a bad mood that it irked him, seeing his father suddenly in better shape. He didn't want to see anybody in better shape.

“You know, I'll drink from the damn carton if I feel like it. I'm the one who went to the store and bought it.”

His father stopped in the middle of a word he was writing in the crossword puzzle. He laid down the pen and sat back in his chair. “That's uncalled for,
Charlie. You need to check that tone of voice. And the language.”

“Maybe it
is
called for. I don't know where you've been for the past six months…for the past
year
…but you don't get to suddenly step back in and tell me what to do.
I'm
the one who takes care of
you
.”

“Now just cool it, Charlie.”

“
You
cool it! I can't remember the last time you said anything as a…as a…
father
to me. You hardly
see
me because you're drunk half the time! You didn't even notice I had a black eye!”

His father looked over at him, focusing. “When did you get that?”

“Two days ago!”

“How did it happen?”

“Oh—go to hell!”

“Charlie!”

He slammed the orange juice down on the counter, launching some of it through the spout. His father was getting up from his chair. Charlie stepped around him and stomped through the living room, down the hall to his bedroom. He slammed the door behind him.

Instinctively he went straight to his stereo and his headphones. But, of course, the stereo was gone. The headphones lay uncoiled like a dead snake on the floor, in the square indentation of carpet where one of the speakers used to be. “Damn it!” he hollered, throwing himself down on his bed.

A few minutes later, he heard his father tapping a knuckle on his door. “Charlie?”

Charlie lay staring up at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling heavily, as if he'd just been running line drills. “Please leave me alone.”

There was a long stretch of silence. Then his father's voice came through the door again. “I will, Charlie. I'm going to let you calm down. But we can't have that kind of behavior. It's not healthy.”

What do you know about healthy behavior?
Charlie thought. “Fine,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“You just calm down now.”

“I'm
calm
.”

Another pause. “All right, son. I'm going to bed. I'll see you in the morning.”

“Good night.”

Charlie didn't move from the bed. He couldn't.
He hated himself. When had he become such a grouch? When had he turned into the guy who let everybody down? He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he only lay there wishing he could sink down into the bedspread and vanish, or at least wake up in the morning as a different person.

The first sound of breaking glass was faint, as if someone had brushed a hand against a wind chime.

The second was louder: a shatter that opened his eyes and made him sit up on the bed, wondering if he'd fallen asleep and had dreamed it.

He scrambled to his feet and went over to the window. When he drew back the curtain, he saw the silver Eclipse idling in front of the house. Two figures were standing on either side of the Volkswagen. Both were holding baseball bats.

“No,” Charlie said softly, his heart pounding. He watched one of them walk around to the back of his car and swing the bat against a taillight. The other one—Derrick, he saw, recognizing the fishing hat—was poised directly in front of the VW, raising the bat over the hood. “No!” Charlie said, letting go of the curtain.

He shoved his feet into his sneakers as he heard a dull thud, like a kettle drum being struck. His father's bedroom door was closed. Charlie ran down the hall to the front of the house. He yanked open the front door and all but spilled out onto the porch.

Derrick and Wade were climbing back into the Eclipse. He started running toward them, but he wasn't halfway there before the Eclipse started to move. And it moved fast. Seconds later, it was squealing around the corner and out of sight.

He ran over to the Volkswagen. In the blue light of the street lamps he saw that both the taillights had been smashed out. There was a long scrape—made with a key, no doubt—along the driver's side, an uneven line that went all the way from the back fender to the side mirror. One of the headlights had been pulverized so that it was just an empty silver ring. And right in the middle of the hood was an angry-looking dent, deep enough to be a birdbath.

He unlocked the driver's door and sank behind the wheel. But what was he going to do? Chase them? He had no hope of catching up with them; the VW just wasn't fast enough. And what would
happen if he did? There were two of them, and they had bats. The only other thing he could think to do was drive over to Derrick's apartment complex after Derrick got home and inflict some damage on the Eclipse. But where would that lead? He'd wake up a couple of mornings from now, at most, and find his car in ruins. It was a wonder they hadn't smashed out the windshield.

He sat there fuming, his hands squeezing the steering wheel. Then he spotted the piece of paper stuck beneath one of the windshield wipers.

On one side was the note he'd folded around the money he'd left for Derrick. On the other, the words
So much for friendship, Perrin.

Sam and Justin stood
in the sun-baked courtyard of the Castillo de San Marcos fort, gazing into a narrow room with a single, tiny window cut into the far wall, high up near the ceiling. The room had been used as a prison cell, the pamphlet told them. Prisoners had escaped once by starving themselves until they were thin enough to fit through the window. “It's like the Count of Monte Cristo meets the South Beach diet,” Justin said, making Sam laugh.

They walked the lower level of the fort, then climbed to the upper level and looked out over St.
Augustine and the Atlantic from each of the four bastions. The entire fort, they read, was made from a rock called
coquina
. It was nothing but tiny shells and lime, and when the British fired their cannons in 1702, the walls didn't shatter but just sucked up the cannonballs “like chips in a chocolate chip cookie,” Sam read aloud.

Justin hung his head over the wall, looking for cannonballs. “I love it when they illustrate history with dessert metaphors. Does it say anything in there about the cannon smoke swirling like frozen yogurt?”

“Please don't mention yogurt. It's my day off.”

“That's right. You're the cone-head hat guy.”

Sam grimaced. “Oh, no. You
saw
me in that stupid thing?”

“Who could miss it? But don't worry. I thought it was cute, in a twisted kind of way.”

“Cute as in ‘look at that cute little dork'?”

Justin shrugged, grinning. “More like cute as in ‘look at that cute guy wearing the goofy hat.' But I've always had a thing for men in uniform.”

It was the first really
gay
thing Justin had said all
day. They'd been having so much fun that for whole minutes at a time Sam had stopped wondering if what they were on was a date, or if Justin thought Sam was gay, or if Justin even cared. As for Sam, he'd reached a surprisingly comfortable place in his mind where he was admitting—to himself, anyway—that
he
cared. He liked Justin. And not just in a you're-cool-let's-hang-out kind of way. He liked Justin
a lot.
And, most surprisingly, he found himself not caring whether or not anyone looking at them saw them as a “couple.”

When Sam had opened the front door at noon, he'd immediately started laughing, because there was Justin, come to do the cheesy tourist thing and dressed
exactly
like a cheesy tourist. He wore Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt that said
FLORIDA NUT
(next to a little picture of a walnut on a beach towel), a sun visor, and a pair of cheap-looking, bright-yellow sunglasses. He even had a swipe of sunblock on the bridge of his nose. “I thought I'd dress the part,” he'd said. Then he'd peered at Sam over the top of the sunglasses. “If anyone asks, we're from Hackensack.”

Sam had worn a plain T-shirt and jeans, along with his running shoes (he wanted Justin to know he was a runner; the journalist/jock thing seemed like it might be an impressive combo). But now his outfit felt boring. To make up for it, he ducked into a souvenir shop after they left the fort and bought a ridiculous orange hat that was shaped like a thimble. He put it on and pulled it halfway down his nose, until he was looking through two circles of clear green plastic that had been cut into the brim.

“That's so sick!” Justin said, grinning. “It's perfect!”

“Where to next?”

“Lunch. I'm starving.”

They climbed back into Justin's car—a dinged-up white Mustang he called the Chalkmobile—and drove to a fish place in the heart of Old Town that had a walk-up window and cement tables outside.

“I've never eaten a soft-shell crab,” Sam said, squinting at the menu board through the hat's green eyeholes. “Isn't that crazy? I've lived here all my life and I've never had one.”

“Don't! I watched my dad make them once, and it was horrible.”

“Why?”

“Because do you know what you have to do to prepare them? You have to cut their faces off. Then you roll them in flour. Then you throw them into a pan of scalding oil, and when they start to cook, all covered in flour, they're
still moving
,” Justin said, scrunching up his face.

“Eeww.”

“I couldn't eat them. I probably wouldn't eat anything but vegetables if I had to watch the slaughter.”

“Melissa told me plants cry when they're pulled out of the ground, but the human ear can't hear it,” Sam said.

“Shut up!”

“I swear! She's always looking for new things to be depressed about, and she found this article and read it to me over the phone.”

“I really didn't need to know that. And don't you wonder how long it takes for a raw oyster to die in your stomach?”

“What are you talking about? They're dead when you eat them.”

“Sorry, grasshopper. They're alive. They only die
when you chew them, or when you swallow them and your stomach acid starts churning.”

“No way! That
can't
be true! They're not moving around when they get to your table.”

“Because they're
oysters
,” Justin said. “What are they supposed to do, walk down San Marco Avenue?” He slipped into a pantomime of an oyster, walking in place and waving his right hand, then his left, a worried expression on his face. Sam tipped his hat back on his head and started laughing.

The woman behind the counter said, “If you're gonna order, order. People are waiting.”

They both turned around and saw a man and a woman staring at them, unamused. Justin pushed his yellow sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “Oh, hi!” he said. And then, “Sorry—we're from Hackensack.”

Sam burst out laughing all over again.

They ate fish sandwiches at one of the concrete tables, beneath the shade of a canvas umbrella.

“So,” Sam said, feeling suddenly brave, “tell me about Tommy.”

“Tommy? I mentioned him, didn't I? When we were online?”

Sam nodded.

“His name's like a burp after a bad meal.”

“Oh, well, we don't have to talk about him. I was just…curious.”

“No, it's fine. Be curious. Tommy Tattenbaum. Quite a name, huh? I used to think it was cute. And to be honest,
he
was cute. Probably still is. He gave me this.” Justin pointed to the thin black rope bracelet around his wrist.

Sam felt a faint stab of jealousy; he was already sorry he'd brought up the subject.

“But he wasn't a nice guy,” Justin clarified. “He
seemed
nice, for a while. We were boyfriends for about a year.”

“A year. Wow.”

“Yeah. It's the longest I've ever dated anyone. We scandalized the high school.”

“You were…out?”

“Well,” Justin said, and took a sip of soda, “if out means showing up hand in hand at the junior prom, then yeah, we were out. He was a year older than me; I was only a sophomore. We had matching tuxes and we slow danced right alongside the class president
and her date. Tommy really took a lot of flack for that, too. And I was dumb enough to think that if he took me to the prom, he must really love me. What a stupid deduction
that
was.”

Sam was astounded. He felt like he'd just been born two seconds ago. Like he didn't know anything at all about the world. He said, “Wow” again, around a bite of sandwich.

“He actually looked me right in the eye during a football game one night and told me he'd realized he liked girls, not guys. Can you believe that? I just wanted to say, okay, so explain what's been going on in your room after school every Wednesday when we're supposed to be studying algebra.”

“Did you say that?”

“No. I wimped out. It immediately became one of those moments I started replaying in my head, thinking of all the things I should have said. But then I thought, you know? Follow your bliss, Tommy. See where it leads you. Ten years from now, you'll be sitting there with a wife and a baby and you'll be saying to yourself, I wonder where that guy Justin is? Anyway, if you look up
whatever
in an
online dictionary and click on the link, it'll take you to a picture of me and Tommy, standing in the bleachers at that football game.”

Sam wanted to move on from the topic of Tommy. “Do you have other exes?”

Justin smiled. “In the words of Hannibal Lecter,
quid pro quo
.”

Sam had almost half his sandwich left. He stared at it, stalling, then wolfed it down in two bites. After he'd chewed and swallowed, he said, “I haven't really…dated…anyone. Yet.”

“Really? Not even a girl?”

And there it was, tossed out onto the concrete table between them.
Make-or-break time
, Sam thought.
This is the moment when you clarify what you are—and you've brought it on yourself, so don't even pretend that you didn't want it to happen—or the moment when, once again, you lie through your teeth
. He'd been getting pretty good at that, lately.

“Not even a girl,” he said, staring down at the napkin he'd wadded up in his hands.

Justin was somehow right there with him, as if he were reading Sam's thoughts. “And if you could have?”

“Could have what?”

“Dated either one, which would it have been?”

“Oh. You mean…”

The silence was loud. It was deafening. It contained the rustling of his napkin. The car noises. The shriek of a seagull overhead, probably hoping one of them would toss a piece of fish sandwich out from under the umbrella.

“Yeah,” Justin said gently. “That's what I meant—but we don't have to go there. Quid pro nothing, okay? This is a zero-stress day.” He reached out and tapped Sam's hat so that it dropped over his eyes. “Let's go to the Ripley Museum.”

It was crowded. They had to park at the far end of the parking lot and then wait in line to get inside the castle. But it was worth it. Justin said, “Oh, my god!” in a voice that sounded genuinely surprised when they saw the floating water spigot, which made everyone in the immediate vicinity laugh. Then Justin and Sam started playing off each other like a comedy duo, feigning amazement when they saw Beauregard the six-legged cow, the miniature replica of Big Ben made out of matchsticks, the
statue of the man who'd turned his body into a candlestick holder. By the time they teetered through the revolving tunnel, the people around them were sick of their act, but they still made each other laugh.

They went from there to the Fountain of Youth. Then they drove back downtown and walked around the City Gate and the Spanish Quarter. They rode the trolley. They toured the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse and Potter's Wax Museum.

It was getting dark and they were both out of money by the time they reached Gatorland, but Justin wanted to at least go inside and see the gift shop. With his sunglasses still perched over his nose and his visor pulled down low over his forehead, he said to the man who sold the tickets, “We're from Hackensack. We love parrots. Do you have parrots in your show—the kind that ride little motorcycles around and wear helmets?”

“No,” the man said. “We don't.”

“You
don't
?” He turned to Sam. “They don't have the parrots.”

“I, for one, am shocked,” Sam said, looking through the green plastic disks of his hat.

“‘I, for one,'” Justin repeated when they were back in the Mustang. “That was hysterical.” He started the car and slid a CD into the stereo.

“What's this?” Sam asked when the music started.

“Scissor Sisters. Do you know them?”

“No.”

“They're great,” Justin said. “They're Elton John meets the Bee Gees meets…Little Richard.” He reached over and took hold of Sam's hand, twisting it playfully as he sang, “
Take your ma-ma out all night!”
A full verse of the song played before he let go of Sam's hand. They drove onto A1A and headed back toward Old Town.

 

As they turned into Sam's neighborhood, a pair of headlights splashed across the Mustang's windshield, and the oncoming car sped around them in a blur of silver, its tires squealing against the road. “Stop sign much?” Justin asked, frowning into his rearview mirror.

He reached Sam's house and pulled into the driveway. They idled for a moment. Then Justin killed the lights and shut off the engine.

“So,” he said, “that was a lot of fun.”

“Yeah, it was great.”

“Do you want to do this again sometime? Not the tourist thing—I think I've had my fill of the Old World for a while—but, you know, just hang out or something?”

“Definitely,” Sam said.

Justin had already taken off his sunglasses. He reached up now and removed his visor. Sam pulled the thimble-shaped cap off his head and held it in his lap. “Good,” Justin said. “I'm glad to hear it.” He fell quiet for a few moments. He stared forward at the steering wheel. “So, this is the kind of thing that used to get me into trouble back in Dayton, but I can't help it, I'm a forward guy.”

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“Well, today has sort of felt like a…date.” He glanced quickly at Sam. “And I know you haven't really committed to going to my church or anything, but—”

“What church do you go to?”

“Never mind. It's an expression. What I mean is, I'd kind of like to kiss you right now. Like, a good-night kiss. Would that be okay?”

Sam felt his heart thumping hard. He glanced toward the house. Teddy's car wasn't in the driveway, thankfully (though, as Sam had learned, that didn't necessarily mean Teddy wasn't there), and all the windows were dark. “Sure,” he said, his voice trembling around this one syllable.

There would be more talk at this point, he thought.
You're really sure? Yeah, I'm sure. Because if you're not
—but Justin was already leaning across the gap between the bucket seats, his eyes focused on Sam's mouth. Sam hesitated, then eased his head forward.