The Painting of Porcupine City (2 page)

I stretched up the bottom of my t-shirt and smeared it across my face, conscious that I was revealing what I considered a decent stomach and hoping the BU jocks would notice. I’d accept from them either appreciation or desire.

I smoothed out my shirt, leaving it like a Shroud of Turin in sweat. Looking up again, I noticed a guy on the other side of the T car, sitting and looking out the graffiti-streaked window. Soon I would notice his hair, which looked as though a few months ago it’d been a short mohawk, and how the divot between his pecs was a darker gray than the rest of his t-shirt. But what I noticed before all of that was his hand creep across the thigh of his holey jeans, just past the pocket, and press against the spiky outline of keys beneath the thin denim. It was only a touch—then he withdrew his hand and crossed his arms against his chest. He did all this without taking his eyes from the window.

To the fat lady beside me I almost said,
Did you see...?
I exhaled a mix of laughter and exhilaration. The guy had been checking for his keys, I was sure of it. Checking to make sure that in the hubbub of the train they hadn’t fallen through a hole in his pocket or been stealthily stolen. I licked my lips and felt a smile there. The
keys
. I even knew what the guy had been thinking immediately before and after he touched them—
Are they still there? Whew, yes, they’re still there
—and that felt overwhelming and good, as though he were a character bursting fully formed into my mind, as though I’d known him forever. Funny I couldn’t place his name.

The guy rubbed his finger under his nose and turned away from the window, leaned forward, clasped his hands between his knees.

I gathered up the straps of my backpack; at the next stop I planned to go say hi. I would say “Crowded today, huh?” and the rest would be history.

The train was jerking to a stop now. People began shifting around and a girl wearing headphones stepped between me and the key-touching guy. There was a whine of brakes and the
ding-ding
of the doors, and just as the doors folded open, the oldster’s soup can fully penetrated the brown paper bag and fell—not soup at all but
canned spinach
—onto the exposed toe of the young mom holding the heat-rashed infant. Mom screeched, and then baby was screeching, and the BU jocks jumped up to save the day, and when I looked back from all this the key-touching guy was gone.

I spotted him through the window. The guy I’d seen touch his keys was already half a block out of my life. I stood up to chase after him, but when I realized I’d literally have to climb over the woman beside me, I sat back down. Before the train pulled away I saw him touch his back pocket—feeling now, I knew, for his wallet. Just to make sure. My lungs felt heavy with wonder and loss and I slid lower into my seat.

Ironic that the stainless steel

button on Alex’s intercom should look like a funhouse mirror and I should be so miserable to press it. I did, finally, and said, “I’m here. You there?”

Thirty seconds passed and then a static crackle and “—ey stud.”

“Buzz me in, will you? I need some a.c. ASAP.” Extreme heat tended to make me abbreviate.

“Hold,” said the voice on the other end, snippily; but that was Alex, in all his Alexy snippiness. “—uzzer’s broken.”

I sighed and dropped my backpack on the step beside a terra cotta flower pot sprouting a few withered carnations from cracked dirt. I hopped from foot to foot, repulsed by the squish of my socks, but kind of liking it too. A hot breeze swooshed down the street and cooked the trees, scorched the grass. I gasped.

The door opened.

“Welcome,” said Alex, “to my humble abode.”

“Thanks.” I picked up my bag. “You wish it was yours.”

“A boy can dream,” he said demurely. He was wearing cargo shorts and a white beater that clung translucently to his freckled skin.

I reached out and pinched the shoulder strip between my finger and thumb. “I don’t like the look of this,” I said, letting it snap back.

His eyes betrayed a zing of hurt. And then: “Oh—you mean I’m sweaty. Yes! It’s hot, Fletch. In case you haven’t
no
ticed.”

“Hot out here, OK. But why is it hot in
there?
Alex?”

“Don’t you worry, there are fans.”

“Fans? Come on. You told me air conditioning. It’s almost 100.”

“There
was
air conditioning. That was incident number one.” His yellow hair clung wet to his forehead and ears and framed his shiny pink cheeks. “Coming in?”

“I guess.”

We climbed the circular stairs to the third floor slowly, the railing slick under my palm. Gross gross gross, and it only got hotter as we went up. Alex’s flip-flops banged against the green carpet. I watched his ankles and his calves and the backs of his legs and felt inclined to reach out and grab one—either to feel him up or bring him crashing down. I wasn’t sure which. We had a weird history.

While we were climbing Alex told me the story of two days earlier, when, in facilitating the removal of a “creepy spider web”—his words—from the outside of the bedroom window, the air conditioner, all 12,000 BTUs of it, tumbled three stories and landed in a child’s vegetable garden, sending a chum of zucchini and watermelon spurting onto the sidewalk.

I wiped my forehead and plucked my shirt. In a.c. I might’ve laughed. “You’re lucky no one was killed, Alex.”

“Believe me, I realize.” His flip-flops were driving me fucking nuts. “The squishing sound— It took me like an hour before I could bring myself to even look out the window.”

“And how long were the owners gone when incident number one struck?”

“Like barely a few hours.” He stifled a giggle. “Oh god, they’ll kill me. Gah, they’ll
murder
me!”

“Best house-sitter ever. How many incidents have there been?”

“Two.”

“What was the second one?”

“Kitchen fire. Minor. Really more like one-point-five.”

The stairs ended. Alex pushed open the door and the apartment revealed itself in a steamy yawn that smelled of hotdogs and cologne.

“Nice?” he said, stepping inside and twirling around, a princess in his turret.

“It’ll do.” I dropped my backpack, walked across the parquet floor and the living room’s white rug. Big bright windows leaked in sun like toxic radiation. I drew the vertical blinds, giving the room a sepia tint. “Whew.” I sank into the cushions of a sticky leather couch. “No a.c., this is gonna be tricky.” I kicked off my sneakers, peeled off my socks and rolled up the legs of my jeans. I put my feet up on the glass coffee table; gray misty spots spread out from my heels. “Maybe we should get a hotel.”

Alex was still standing near the door, watching me. Finally he stepped out of his flip-flops and glided into the living room.

“Oh it’s not that bad, for god’s sake, Fletch.” He crashed next to me on the couch in a puff of hot breeze. “And won’t be, once we get you out of those clothes. Ha!” He looked away.

“Alex, Alex, Alex.”

The flirting was 20 percent titillating and 80 percent boring. But this was how it had always been between us. My job was to supply the aloof innuendo: the casual removal of clothing, spontaneous references to my dick, hugs that lingered just enough. Alex provided the steady stream of double entendres he could never bring himself to commit to, always adding a goofy laugh to lend plausible deniability.

I yawned, reached down and scratched an itch and smoothed the hair on my shin.

“Well thank you for coming to keep me company,” he said. “More so because I can tell you’re already
mis
erable.”

I put my hand on his leg. “I’m not miserable. I’m sorry. I’m just hot. You know how I get.”

He was looking at my hand. “It’s OK.” After a second he said, “So Cara and Jamar are going to be screwing all weekend, huh?”

“Their anniversary.”

“Steamy weather for it.”

“Yeah, well. How about us, Alex? What do you have planned for us to do this weekend?” I set it up for him, knowing he’d bite.

“Do?” he said, getting it ready. “You mean besides each other? Ha!”

There it was. I patted his knee and stood up. “Yes, honey, besides each other. Got anything to drink?” I stepped over him and looked for the kitchen. It was all black and white tile and stainless steel appliances. “Where’d you find these people, anyway?”

“An ad,” he said, padding into the kitchen. Our bare feet were leaving footprints on the tile. “Drinks— You mean like booze-wise?”

“In due time.” I opened the fridge, looked around, pulled out a Brita pitcher. There were glasses drying in a rack by the sink. I filled one with water.

Alex grabbed a glass. “Fill me up? Heh.”

We stood sipping, looking at each other over the rims of the glasses. I thought,
OK, this is us drinking water
, which made me think of a movie my neighbor and I made in her backyard when we were seven, said movie consisting solely of us standing in front of the camera eating slice after slice of Wonder bread. (Small evidence that although I’m not the best writer in the world my skills at narrative have improved over time.)

“So what do you really have planned for us?” I asked. “Anything on the agenda?”

“I do need to get some photos developed.”

“Oh.” Wow, this was going to be an exciting weekend! “There’s a CVS right down the street.”

“I tried there. Would you believe they don’t develop film there anymore? We need to go to a specialty store. Which is fine. These are important.”

“What are they of?” I put down the glass and wiped my lips with the back of my hand.

“Nuh-uh,” he said, shaking his head, mouth full of water. He swallowed. “You’ll see soon enough.”

The Wonder bread movie had ended when we ran out of bread. Here the water was gone and no one was saying
cut
. I felt a bead of sweat go down my ribs and I twitched.

It rained briefly and then

the sun came out again and made the sidewalks steam. Gray air moved in through the apartment’s open windows and I retreated to the bathroom for a shower, more for sanity than sanitation.

I set the water cool and got naked. Then I fished in a bag of my toiletries and pulled out my toothbrush. This whole situation was kind of lame and I sighed at myself in the mirror, watching my lips grow foamy with toothpaste. I spat.

Being in a strange bathroom was making me horny, though, too—I’d been in tons of strange bathrooms, usually for a quick clean-up before I split—but the water was cold and that cooled it. When it didn’t feel as cold anymore I turned the knob colder. When I was used to that I turned it even colder. And when I was numb, I got out.

“My nipples are like drill-bits,” I announced upon stepping out of the bathroom, dressed in shorts and a fresh yellow t-shirt. “If you need any cavities filled, now’s the time.” I laughed. Feeling was coming back into my toes. In a moment I’d be sweating again but for now I felt OK. “Alex? Hello?”

The apartment was quiet save for the humming thump of an inkjet sloughing pages. I dropped my towel over the doorknob and went over to the printer. Was it a ransom note? A suicide letter? I examined a page. None of the above—it was a map. An awfully big one.

I put the pages back in the tray and stood with my hands in my pockets in front of the living room window, looking past the rattling blinds. I could see a strip of sidewalk, along which a woman was pushing a baby stroller, one of those rich ones with the three big wheels. A corgi tethered to the stroller by a red leash was trying to go in another direction. I watched them and wondered where the key-touching guy lived. Had he been heading home or somewhere else when he got off the T? A boyfriend’s house, a girlfriend’s house, a job, a hook-up? Finally I turned and called, “Alex!”

After a little searching I found him on his hands and knees in the bedroom, waist-deep in a closet, butt wagging around like a gopher’s.

“So!” I shouted from the doorway, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed. “Where are we headed?” His ass lurched and he backed out of the closet.

“God, Fletch, don’t sneak
up
on me like that!” He crawled over to a cream-colored rug and sat down hard, looking like he was recovering from a case of the vapors, like a chick out of Dickens.

“What are you looking for in there, anyway?”

“Walking shoes. I’m
shopping
.” He fanned his face.

“You’re wearing their clothes? That’s gross.”

“Why’s it gross? Both these guys wear my size. Why would I
not?
”

“A gay couple lives here?”

“Fletcher!” His eyes bugged and his jaw fell slack. The forced drama annoyed me even more.
Plunk
plunk
, these drops of annoyance were like water torture. “Do you think I’d sleep in a
breeder
bed?”

The word made me cringe, was one of my least favorites. This was like being in battle. “Well did you find any shoes?”

He stood up shoeless, his task forgotten, and put his hand on the bed in a way that can only be called a caress. “They get in this bed—they’re both gorgeous, of course—
naked
—and they do beautiful things to each other. Oh god.
Oooh
god.” He fanned his face some more and rolled up his eyeballs.

I rolled my own to keep from giving him the satisfaction of turning me on. But maybe he was, a little.

He flung himself face-first onto the bed amidst a billow of sheets and waved his arms like he was making a snow angel.

For no reason I was aware of I jumped barefoot onto the bed and started hopping around him, holding out my elbow in position to jackhammer him.

“Eeny meeny miney—” I began.

He rolled onto his back “Fletcher, what’re you—?
Hey!
” He flung one hand over his face and the other over his stomach.

“Homo!” And I dropped—

But I landed harmlessly beside him, elbow bashing only mattress, and bounced off the bed to my feet. On my way to the hall I stopped at a bureau and picked up a framed photo for a better look. They
were
both hot. I put it down.