The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (6 page)

“Hold on,” I told him. I felt a stab of guilt when he turned
expectantly—I’d only meant to turn on the security system. I punched the
numbers. When I said OK he opened the door. I grabbed the keys off the counter
and on my way out spotted Griff’s phone on the floor where we’d been reading
the comics. I detoured to get it and followed Zane out.

“Where’d they go?” I locked up with Zane’s keys.

“I bet Jeremy took off,” he said without much regret,
looking toward the parking lot. In the floodlight his spiked black hair looked almost
blue. “Your boy’s in your car.”

“He’s not my boy.”

“Well whoeverthefuck.”

Our tracks were a beaten path now from all the late-night
back and forth. My Jeep was alone in the lot. I opened the door.

“That kid hit the road,” Griff reported from the passenger
seat. “He was pretty freaked out.”

“He was just a queerling anyway,” Zane said, and looked at
me. “And his head sucked.”

“Pun not intended, I assume,” Griff said. Zane grinned.
Griff leaned over the driver’s side and offered Zane his hand. “Griffin,” he
said. Zane took it; they shook.

“Zane.”

“Ah, the famous Zane of Golden Age Comics?”

“Formerly of Golden Age,” Zane said. I felt his eyes on me
again, heavy and dark.

“Get in,” I said, pulling the front seat forward. “I’ll
drive you home.”

I could tell Griff was glaring at me even though
his hat covered his eyebrows. “You really fired him?” he said.

I pulled the door shut and buckled my seatbelt. In the beams
of my headlights I watched Zane stomp his sneakers on his parents’ front steps
and go inside their blue-sided colonial.

“I took his keys.” I backed out of the driveway and pulled onto
the street. “Whether I fired him depends on whether he shows up for his next
shift, I guess.”

“Sounds a bit harsh.”

“Griff, he was in the store when he wasn’t supposed to be.
Oh and lest I forget, he was having a fucking suckfest.”

“C’mon, it’s a comic shop. It’s all about fantasy.”

“It’s a business.”

“It’s a business to your
boss
,
Vince. To you, it is a comic shop. Hell, it was almost
appropriate
. Do you know how many times I’ve spanked it to
Wonder Woman
comics?”

“Doesn’t matter.” But Griff had always had a knack for
silencing me with his bizarre logic, the kind that took the wind out of my
dramatic sails, and now there was nothing I could say back to him, nothing
besides—

“You’ve spanked to
Wonder
Woman
?”

He chuckled, remembering fondly the sweet secret fumblings
of an intense affair. “When you were in class, I’d peruse your
Justice League
books.”

“You spanked to
my
comic books?”

“Once or twice.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Why not? She’s hot!”

“She’s
Wonder Woman
,
for god’s sake. I can’t think about her that way. She’s like the mother-figure
of the entire DC Universe.”

“So then she’s a MILF,” he said, darting his tongue in and
out. “I’d let her tie me up with that magic lasso of hers.”

“You’re unbelievable, you know that?”

He leaned back against the headrest, smiling smugly at the
huff he’d gotten me into. “What time is it anyway?” he said, flicking the
broken clock on the dashboard with his thumb. A green eight lit up briefly.

I pushed up my sleeve and looked at my watch. “Almost midnight.”

“Late,” he said, resting his head against the window. And
then he added, making me smile, “Bring me home, Vinny.”

Using all my weight I pulled the squeaky garage
door down on its tracks. Above us the motion-detecting floodlight blinked off
and then turned back on when Griff waved his arms.

“I should be tireder,” he said. “It was that nap.”

“I never nap.”

“So you’ve basically put me up for two days so far,” he
said.

The last flakes of the storm had stopped falling and now the
sky was opening up, showing its first stars in days. They reminded me that
there was a wide world out there, one that would take Griff back.

“No problem,” I said, kicking my boots against the front
steps. “So do you know how long you plan on, like, staying?” As soon as I asked
I regretted it—I wasn’t sure I wanted to lose the mystery. “Or, if you
don’t know, that’s cool.”

He pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in his pocket. His
hair went up crazy when he pulled off his hat. “Is a few days OK? Definitely no
longer than a week, max.”

“Sure, that’s fine. It’s not like there’s a lot going on
here.”

It was exactly the amount of time I’d expected, even the
same as I’d hoped at first, but hearing it out loud really cut down on my
ability to imagine something more.

“Just until I can figure out the next stop on the Griff
Express and stuff,“ he said.

“Any ideas?” I went to the thermostat and turned the heat up
a few degrees. “You want some coffee or something? Tea?”

“Tea would be nice. Green?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I went to the kitchen to put the kettle on and he flopped
into one of the corduroy armchairs. My kitchen was separated from the living
room by a half-wall; above it I could only see the top of his head.

“I’ve been in touch with my cousin Dave,” he said. “He’s the
one in Phoenix. Close to Phoenix.”

“I thought Dave lived in Florida?”

“Oh—he moved to Arizona like three years ago.”

“Three years ago. Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Does he like it? I wouldn’t mind visiting Arizona someday.”

“Yeah, me neither,” he said. “So you know, I figure... He’s
putting in a pool. Or a hot-tub. Something—some kind of construction.
Said I could crash at his place for a while if I give him a hand.”

“You’re going to fly across the continent to help put in a
hot-tub? Doesn’t he have friends?”

He shrugged. “You don’t mind me staying until I can get
things together, do you? I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Nah. Once a roommate always a roommate, right? Stay as long
as you like.”

Around us the house grew warmer as we sipped our
tea.

“I like your house,” he said, gazing into the fireplace.

“Thanks.”

“How’s the whole
being
graduated
thing working out for you?”

“I don’t know. Hard to say.”

“I actually looked into going back,” he said, “if you can
believe that.”

“To Shuster?”

“Yeah.”

I laughed because I’d had that same idea many times. “To
study what? Or does that even matter?”

He smiled. “Didn’t matter. I just wanted to— I don’t
know. When I found out that grad students don’t live in the dorm...”

“It wouldn’t be the same,” I said.

“No.” He looked over again at the photos on the wall. “It’s
just so weird, you know?”

“Life after college?”

“Yeah.”

“No shit, Griff. It’s really weird.”

“Nobody ever told us what it was going to
feel
like,” he said. “Nobody fucking
warned
us.”

“Warned?”

“About how much it was going to hurt. There was no
preparation for that at all. All we got was the stuff about finding a career,
blah blah blah. As if that’s all there is to it. The actual day-to-day feeling
is a complete surprise no one even tries to prepare you for.”

“How do you mean?”

“Little huge things like measuring time.”

“No kidding. Yeah. Everything since graduation feels like
one long month.”

“For as long as we can remember,” he said, “I mean literally
our
whole conscious lives
, time has
been neatly divided into semesters and years. Each year completely
distinguishable and unique. First grade, third grade. We didn’t measure by age,
we measured by grade. Like I know I broke my arm in sixth grade but I’d have to
do the math to figure out what year that was, or how old I was. That was our
world view.”

“And now it’s gone.”

“Now there’s just this huge, unlabeled expanse. It’s so
empty and—I will admit this to you—it’s terrifying. You know?”

“It’s the void,” I said. “The post-college void.”

“That’s exactly what it is. Sometimes I feel like I’m just
floundering in it, Vin.” He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.
“Sometimes I wonder if the average person thinks about this stuff the way I do.
Major life things like this. If they have words like
post-college void
or even know what one is.”

“No, I don’t think most people do,” I said. “I do.”

“I know you do.” He blew a wave of hair away from his mouth.
“Is it good or bad, to be this way? So introspective.”

“I don’t know. Bad probably, but I wouldn’t want to be any
other way.”

“My Vince,” he said, and the tone of his voice made me want
to go to him. He thumped his head back against the chair and pushed the wave of
hair behind his ear. “I feel like green with tiny flecks of brown.”

He had synesthesia, a mixing of senses. Some people with it taste
shapes or hear music in letters or numbers. Griff experienced emotions as colors.
I thought of it as a super power. In college I’d drawn and taped to our door a
serial comic strip about Mood Ring, Griff’s secret superhero identity. The
character wore a tie-dyed jumpsuit with a glistening stone on his chest. There
wasn’t a lot we could do with Mood Ring because, admittedly, shooting emotions
out of a ring was kind of lame.

“Is green with flecks of brown good?” I asked.

“It’s a quiet feeling,” he said. “Cozy. It means bed time.”

It was almost 2:00 a.m.
now and I was falling asleep myself, but my feet were warm beneath me
and I was reluctant to put them on the chilly floor, and equally as reluctant
to tackle the upcoming hurdle of awkwardness: I had no couch. “OK,” I said
finally, dragging myself off the warm corduroy. “I need to sleep too. I barely
slept at all last night because of the storm.”

“I was just going to ask for a couple blankets or
something,” he said, “but do you think it’d be OK if I stole half your bed? I
mean just for tonight?”

“I guess that would—”

“I mean, tomorrow we can find a Wal-Mart and I’ll grab a
camping mattress or something.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure, no biggie.” I said it with as much
confidence and nonchalance as I could muster, but in my head it still sounded
rife with insinuation. I thought I might vomit from nerves. “Why not just
furnish my spare bedroom for me? I know you can afford it.”

He laughed. “I’ve never bunked with a dude before but I’m
too tired to pretend I’d be more comfortable sleeping sitting up.”

“It’s cool.” Oh my god. “Yeah, tomorrow we’ll go buy an air
mattress,” I said, my mouth just running now. God forbid I give the impression
that I think he would enjoy sleeping with me...

“Just so you know, though,” he said, “I sleep in the nude.”

I froze.

“Kidding!” he said with a smirk.

I went in the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and with every
stroke of the brush my outlook seemed to change, bristling sudsily back and
forth between
this is a dream come true
and
this is a fucking nightmare
.

In the bedroom the blankets were still askew from his
afternoon nap. I started to straighten them but thought it would be better to
already be in bed when he came in, so that symbolically
he
would be getting into bed with
me
, something that would make me feel less like I was trying to
seduce him or something. But I’d have to hurry. I wondered what I should wear,
considered sweatpants, a t-shirt. Finally I decided it was best to just wear my
boxers. We’d lived together once upon a time, after all—he knew that’s
what I wore to bed sure as I knew he didn’t sleep naked.

My pillow smelled like him and that made this all seem
suddenly very real. What if I got a boner? What if I couldn’t stop myself, and
kissed him?

He appeared at the door, silhouetted against the amber light
from the hall.

“Is there a place I can hang my shit?” he asked, leaning in
with his hands against the jambs.

“Closet in the other bedroom.”

“Thanks.”

He pulled the door almost all the way shut behind him. For a
while I listened to him unzipping pockets in his backpack, jingling wire coat
hangers, rinsing dishes, moving around the house with the familiarity of
someone who belonged there. The sound of someone else in my house was new again
and as comforting as a lullaby.

Something woke me a short time later. I squinted at
the glowing green clock on the bedside table—3:12—and was startled
by the man lying next to me. After a second I remembered it was Griff. Griff
and not some random stranger. Griff and not Melanie. Griff—and not Zane.

I lay still, afraid of waking him, afraid of what fumbled
conversation we might force into the six inches of space separating us. He was
facing away from me, hugging his pillow against his chest. Between us he had
placed another pillow, apparently to serve as a boundary line running down the
middle of the bed and to prevent any direct contact, accidental or otherwise,
during the night. His head lay on the mattress. The joshua tree tattoo on his
shoulder was visible above the hem of the sheet. I stared at it, at his neck
and the back of his head. Two coils of hair twisted together and formed an
upside-down heart. I separated them gently with my finger.

There’d been days upon days when all I wanted out of my life
was to share a bed with Griff. Sometimes I thought about sleeping
with
him, about making love, about what
that would feel like, but more often, when I was loneliest, I thought about
sleeping
beside
him, exactly as was
happening now: him drooling beside me, me trying to make sense of the things he
sleep-mumbled into his pillow and being enveloped in the nighttime smell of his
skin. Now here he was. Out of the blue. Out of the
white
. And I didn’t know what to make of it. Tears filled my eyes
but I wasn’t crying, not exactly.