The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (25 page)

His smile flatlined. Doctors, nurses ran in with machines. “A
single?” His face looked pale. “Wow. I mean, I guess. You don’t want to live with
me again?”

“I think I want to try living by myself.” It felt like
kicking him in the teeth.
Bam.
It
felt like slipping on a pair of brass knuckles and beating the shit out of him.

“Oh.” For a moment he pulled at a piece of rubber on the
sole of his All-Stars. I opened my eyes wide and breathed in.
This will be the last of it
, I told
myself.
Do it quick like a Band-Aid.
If I could just get through this, this would be the last.

“Can you even
get
a single with 947?” he asked finally.

“I’m going to take my chances.”

“Because I’ll have already picked by then. I mean, we could
maybe work out something with Housing later if you need a back-up. Or maybe
before, some kind of safeguard. Just in case.”

“Griff. It’s OK.”

“Just in case.”

“I need to give it a shot.”

*

He scrambled out from under the covers and grabbed
my wrist, hard, when I was no more than a few steps away from the bed.

“No,” he said, teeth clenched. “You’re going to talk to me.
I’m not taking any fucking hints this time, Vince. Don’t give me the cold
shoulder. You’re good at it. You’ve done it before. You’re quick and you’re fucking
slippery and you’re doing it again with Zane, aren’t you?” I tried to yank
myself free of him but he had my arm with two hands now and dragged me
backward. The backs of my legs hit the side of the bed and he pulled me down
onto my back, and suddenly he was sitting on my stomach. His feet clamped down
on my thighs. His architect’s fingers clenched my wrists, one by my side, the
other up near my head. My hands felt prickly. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to
squirm and the flannel comforter burned against my ear. “But as hard as you
push, Vin, from now on, I’m going to fucking pull even harder.”

“Griff—! Get
off
me!”

He leaned down, bringing his face very close to mine. His
hair touched my cheeks and all I could see of anything was Griff’s face. Story
of my fucking life. “No,” he said. “No, Vince.”

“Griffin! Fuck!”

I yanked my left hand out from under his and got my arm
around his neck, had him in a headlock, spun him and flipped him off me. He hit
the mattress on his side and the whole bed lurched on its castors, opening up a
big space between the headboard and the wall. He wound up to come at me again
and in moving to block him I whacked his nose good with the side of my hand.

Instantly we stopped.

He put his fingers to his nose, looked at them, touched his
nose again, looked again.

“That was fucking unnecessary, Vince.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Save it. Just—just save it.” He was breathing heavy
and held his nose with one hand, rubbed his shoulder with the other. “Ow,
fuck
.” He laid down on his back; I laid
down beside him. “I was hoping to wrestle you metaphorically, but whatever.” He
put his disheveled hair behind his ears, stared up at the ceiling. “Tell me
what happened with Zane and I’ll forgive you.”

If he had let me go I would’ve felt very alone. I knew that.
There was a reason I’d come to my room in the first place. What I needed, what
I had always wanted in Griff, was someone who wouldn’t let me get away with my
own bullshit.

I sat up then and he did too; we sat Indian-style, facing
one another in the low light. I told him about the Halloween night on the
beach, about how Zane had rubbed aloe on me after the pine-branch thing, and
about what had just happened in the spare bedroom. All those things and
everything in between. It came out in long streaming sentences as though I’d
been rehearsing it for months.

“I feel like I fall in love with every fucking person I
meet,” I told him. “I can’t handle anyone else and I don’t want to deal with
anyone else. Especially when I know they’re all just going to end up ripping my
heart out. It’s too fucking overwhelming. I only want
one
.”

He didn’t say anything until I was finished, and when I was
finished he told me, “Come here.”

I could never describe what it felt like to hug Griff. Not
because I couldn’t find the words, but because I never remembered them. I could
describe the grooves on the surface of a record, the feel of a leather steering
wheel against my palms, the cold, grainy snow—all that was vivid. But the
density of his muscles, the shape of his shoulder blades, the smell of his
neck, the feel of his hair against my cheek all eluded the grasp of my memory.
Always as soon as it was over, after every hello and every goodbye and every
congratulations, it was like it never happened. I was left, blinking, a time
traveler with missing moments. Sometimes I thought it was better that way.
Certainly easier. In the morning I would not remember a thing.

W E D N E S D A Y

Like a beacon of guilt, the spot on my hand that
had clobbered Griff’s nose was sending out signals of awareness to my brain. It
didn’t hurt, but it pulsed just enough to remind me. I sat down in the brown
chair with a bowl of Cocoa Krispies to watch the news before work. The
weatherman forecasted—correctly, it would turn out—that the next
few days would be warmer and warned of flooding as snow melted into streets and
through roofs. The icicles hanging on the other side of my picture window
released crystal beads in a steady
plink
plink plink
timed to the sensation in my hand.

Griff walked into the kitchen pulling on a yellow t-shirt
with a Shuster shield on the front.

“’Morning,” he said, folding his arms across the half-wall
like a bartender ready to take my order or hear my troubles. “How ya doing?”

“Eh.” I rubbed the side of my hand against the cushion.

“Heard anything from Zane?”

“No.”

“Do you know where he went when he left?”

“No.”

“Mm.” He went to the fridge and took out the orange juice.
He pinched the carton shut and shook it. “You working today?”

“Yeah.” With my tongue I pushed a chewed mass of cereal into
my cheek and squeezed chocolatey milk through my teeth like tobacco juice.
“Looks like the weather’s warming up.”

He took a glass from the cupboard and filled it. “You should
call in sick.”

“To who, myself?” I changed the channel. I liked my news to
come from multiple sources.

“Whoever. We should go have an adventure.”

“We had an adventure a couple days ago, didn’t we?”

“That wasn’t an adventure,” he said, “that was a
predicament. Just the two of us this time. Get Clarissa to cover for you.”

“Marissa,” I corrected. “I would, but today’s new arrival
day. We have to put out the new stuff. It’s the biggest day.”

“Oh, OK.” He frowned. “Then maybe tonight after work we can
do something? Or tomorrow? I only have two more days on my reservation, you
know. We’ve had kind of a rough couple days and I was hoping we could have some
time to chill. You know, before I hit the road. Just the two of us.”

“I know.” Why did he have to remind me he was leaving? It
seemed cruel of him. Why did he even
have
to be leaving?

I put my bowl in the sink and went to brush my teeth. In the
spare bedroom the new bed lay empty and violated, a three-by-six–foot
crime scene. There should’ve been chalk outlines on the carpet, police tape
across the door; the unused condoms belonged in an evidence bag.

I closed the door.

Simon was at the counter perusing a binder of
spring solicitations. His Golden Age t-shirt was stretched over a belly grown
not from beer but from a seemingly endless intake of Sprite, a can of which sat
sweating by his elbow. He wore thick round glasses and his grayless brown hair
was slicked back. He was not an unattractive man, but years of being surrounded
by geekdom had left a lot of it imposed on him, adding traits—the
glasses, the gut—I suspected were not completely natural but rather just
part of the job. Like farmer’s tan or plumber’s butt.

“Hey Vince,” he said cheerfully when I came through the
door. He took a swig of Sprite. “
Ahhh.
”

“You’re here early,” I said.

“Wanted to get a jump on the day—Patti’s got something
up her sleeve for this afternoon.” He turned the page and jotted something with
pencil on a sheet of lined paper. “How was your Boston trip?”

“Dramatic,” I said, folding my coat over my arm. To most
other people I would’ve just said it was fine, but with Simon I could tell the
truth without fear of being pressed for more information. It wasn’t that Simon
wasn’t interested—he took in what you gave him—but he wasn’t the
prying type. Maybe comic-book cliffhangers had taught him to wait patiently for
future developments. “But my car’s fixed, so that’s good.”

“Good, good. Nice to see you and Zane hanging out too.
Seemed like you two hadn’t been clicking lately.”

“Really? Nah, we’re fine.”

He nodded. “Just my overactive imagination, then.”

“Deliveries come yet?”

He tapped his watch anxiously. “Not yet. Makes me nervous.”

“They’ll be here. You always get nervous.”

I went to hang up my coat and then turned on the computer
behind the counter. Standing beside Simon, I read over the order he’d written
out. “Might want to boost the
Majestic
by a dozen or so copies,” I told him gently. “We’ve been selling out.”

“Ugh.” He made a hole in the paper trying to erase it so he
just crossed it out. “He’s a Superman rip-off, you know.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Good point.” He laughed and took a swig of Sprite. “This
enough?”

“That should do. So what’s up Patti’s sleeve?”

“Nan
tuck
et,” he
said.

“She’s still on the Nantucket thing, huh?”

“She’s a firecracker,” he said, shaking his head. A rosy
glow came over his face, a glow of happiness and also relief—the relief
of a never-married forty-five–year-old comic shop–owner finally
making the catch of his life. “Her dream house is on the market, apparently.”

“You go look at it?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Probably today if the ferry times work
out.” He took another sip of Sprite. “She’s trying to get me to move there, you
know. I think she whispers it to me in my sleep.
Nantucket, Nantucket.
I’m not sure I’m an island man.”

“I’ll help you reverse the curse,” I said, and then
whispered, “Harwich, Harwich.”

He laughed. “Hey, I couldn’t find the pull lists. Do you
know if Marissa printed them out? Oh—deliveries are here!”

He went to let the man in.

Not long after I returned with our lunch and Simon
and I were chowing ham-and-cheese subs at the counter, Patti burst into the
store looking like she should have bubble-lettered exclamation points bouncing
over her head. Her hair was wild and brown and she wore a red leather jacket
that sat nicely against her wide hips.

“
Si
mon!” she
chirped. Her lips matched her jacket. Red red red. I found her intimidating in
the way a sixth-grade boy might feel about a voluptuous teacher who leaned close
to explain long division. Over her shoulder she held by a finger a
coat-hangered blue shirt in a clear plastic bag.

“Hi toots,” he said. He wiped mustard off the corner of his
mouth with a napkin and leaned over the counter to kiss her.

“Hi Vince,” she said. I smiled. “It’s like spring out there!
Wow!”

“What brings you to Golden Age, ma’am?” Simon said.

“The ferry is running and we have an appointment,” she said
with a wink.

“But Patti, you know it’s my day to work,” he said. It was
playful but I knew Simon well enough to know there were few places he’d rather
be than Golden Age. He looked at her sadly and pushed out his lips, which had a
silly sheen of red from the kiss. I hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to see
these two interact and I was enjoying every second of it. It was so strange, so
full of apparent conflicts, and yet I couldn’t imagine either of them with
anyone else.

“Pish posh,” she said, squeezing Simon’s pursed lips. “Vince
is a big boy. He can handle the store. —Can’t you, Vince?”

“Of course, yeah,” I said. Simon glared at me from behind
his thick glasses. “I mean, I guess I could. If I absolutely
have
to.”

Patti looked at Simon and drew a circle in the air with a
red-nailed finger. “Let me look at you.”

He came out from behind the counter and obediently rotated.
The black shirt stretched over his belly made him look like a moon orbiting
Patti.

“It’s just as I feared,” she said, smirking at me. “You
can’t wear your comic book t-shirt to a real estate showing.” Unlike the rest
of us, Simon wore his store shirt all the time. His closet must’ve been full of
them, a superhero’s wardrobe. “We need to look serious!”

After hanging the coat hanger on one of the arms of the
action figure display, she grabbed the waist of Simon’s t-shirt—he raised
his arms and—
swoop!
—she
yanked it up over his head and off. In my surprise I choked on a chunk of
cheese. It shot from my mouth and clung to the hair above Simon’s right nipple
for a second before tumbling down the face of his stomach and splatting on the
floor. Patti brushed his chest with her hand before pushing the dry-cleaned
shirt against him.

“Here you go, lover.”

Simon took the shirt from the bag and looked at me with an
expression that was—to my surprise—not embarrassment, not shame,
but total satisfaction. He put his arms through the sleeves and started doing
up the buttons.

Patti’s specialty in the real estate world was fixer-uppers.
I imagined her walking through a rundown house, hands clasped together in
practiced delight. “A fresh coat of paint and this place will be
darling
,” she would say. And I couldn’t
help but wonder whether she’d seen the same qualities in Simon that she might
praise about a house with an outdated kitchen or a leaky roof.

When Simon was dressed and tucked, Patti tugged at his sides
to straighten him and gave him a once-over. She nodded in approval.

“That’ll do. Now grab your jacket and I’ll bring the car
around. Nice seeing you, Vince!”

When she’d left Simon pulled the shirt out of his pants a
little—just a little—to give it some slack and took a last swig of
Sprite. He tossed the empty can over the counter and landed it squarely in the
trash.

“I love that woman, but this house better be amazing,” he
said. “Now, don’t forget to bring the empty boxes out back and finish the
pulls. Big-Ears McKenzie will probably be in on his lunch hour, so have his
ready first. And check to make sure we have enough blank subscriber forms. And
the new
Comic Shop News
—make
sure those are out.”

“I know, I’ve got it, Simon, don’t worry. Did you want the
rest of your sandwich?”

“Nah.” He stepped away and then turned back and grabbed it
off the wrapper.

“Don’t spill on your shirt.”

“Famous last words,” he said. He raised his hand in a wave
without turning around, and then he was gone.

I spent the rest of the afternoon setting aside
comics in white paper bags for the regular customers who only wanted to pop
into the store to pick them up. On each bag I wrote a customer’s name.

It was funny to look through the comics on the
shelves—they seemed frozen in time. Most of the issues at the top of each
stack were ones I’d put there myself a week ago, two weeks ago, before Griff
came, before any of this. That was how it was—there were some weeks, even
months, where nothing happened, where I was the same person doing the same
ordinary things. And then there were weeks that changed everything.

At around three I helped a kid who’d obviously come down
from upstairs pick out some comics to kill a post-Novocain afternoon with. His
mouth was stuffed with gauze with red tendrils of blood creeping to the edges.

“I know how you feel,” I told him, pointing to the scrape on
my chin. It made me think of Zane dabbling aloe into it. Apparently even Simon
had noticed the weirdness between Zane and me, and he almost never worked with us
together. Had it been that obvious? That strained? I decided to call Zane when
I got home. To apologize for last night. To ask him to go out for pizza, as
friends, as whatever. I would call him, I promised myself.

I promised myself a lot of things.

I closed the store and stuffed the keys in my
pocket. My stomach was rumbling—I hoped Griff was at home making
something for supper. But he wasn’t. He was in the Golden Age lot, leaning
against the side of his Jetta with his arms folded. Beneath his vest and hooded
sweatshirt he wore a gray t-shirt that said
Elsewhen
in blue letters. I remembered the night he got that shirt. It was the only one
he had that actually fit.

“Well hello,” I said.

He stood up straight and put his hands in his pockets. “I
was in the neighborhood.”

“You should’ve come in.”

“It’s OK, I haven’t been here long. Hey, I need you to
follow me in your car somewhere.”

“Why? Where to?”

He grinned and opened his door. “Just follow me?”

I did, and it didn’t take me long to figure out where we were
headed, given the general direction and Griff’s limited knowledge of town. I
thought of losing him down a side street or banging a U-turn after he’d gone
around a bend, but I couldn’t do that to him. Whatever was going to happen at
his not-so-secret destination, he was excited about it. I would have to suffer
through my own surprise party. I would have to trust him.

He pulled up in front of Zane’s house near where we went
through the hedge and I parked behind him, my heart racing.
Just leave, leave
, I told myself with
even more urgency now that we were here.
Just
step on the gas and lay down a mile of rubber behind you and leave.
I put
my hand on the stick to knock it back into drive, but just then he got out of
his car. He opened the back door and brought out a black plastic bag, a second
bag, and—my god—a big bundle of green rock-climbing rope.

“What is
that
for?” I said before I’d even rolled down my window enough for him to hear.

He walked up to the Jeep and pushed one of the bags through
the window. “Put this on.”

I opened the bag and saw blue and red spandex and the top
left corner of what I knew to be a very familiar
S
.

“Griff, what are you doing to me?”

“You were an ass to him last night.” From the other bag he
pulled a waist harness typically used for scaling mountains and repelling into
icy crevasses. He held it up, buckles clinking and glinting in the streetlight.
“It’ll take a superhero to get him back.”