The Painting of Porcupine City (7 page)

“Hand me your keys,” I said, “I’ll pop the hood.”

He fished in his pocket and extended his hand. In addition to two car keys, his office key, and what looked like a house key, there was a blue Swiss Army knife and a tiny LED flashlight. All these things rode together on an orange carabiner. Sadly the keychain offered no clues about his identity. No hooks. I unlocked the car door, hoping the inside would be more interesting, would yield more clues, would feature a pride sticker or an
Out
magazine. But there was nothing of note except for a phone charger in the dash, the CD of a band with a Portuguese name wedged between the seats, and an open can of Red Bull in one of the cupholders. A few empty coat hangers hanging from the ceiling handle in the back clicked against the window. The only interesting thing about the inside was that all the backseat seatbelts were tucked out of sight. That was weird. Didn’t he ever drive friends around? I pulled the hood release and shut the door.

He’d lifted the hood and was extending the pole. I picked up the old battery from the back of my car and went around to the back of his Civic. I put the key in the lock, and turned it, and his trunk sprang up, and like a big amazed fish I was snagged on the mother of all hooks.

“Wow.”

Built into his trunk were four plywood shelves, cut through with maybe two-dozen holes and padded at the bottom with egg-crate foam. Almost every hole was home to a can of spraypaint, one of every color in the rainbow and then some. A black backpack sat in the middle. A hooded sweatshirt, black with a sparkling coating of the surrounding colors, hung over one of the shelves; another was balled up farther back. An open box for a three-pack of Polaroid film was lodged at the side.

And then there was a sharp elbow in my ribs and I was pushed and the old battery clattered to the ground, barely missing my toes.

“Don’t look in there!” he yelled, and he slammed shut the trunk hard enough to make the antenna on the hood swish to and fro like the tail of a nervous cat.

I held up my hands. “I’m sorry! Jesus! I was just putting the batt—”

“It’s none of your fucking business!”

I saw a fist forming at his side and for a second I thought he was going to slug me. Instead he raised it and pushed it against my sternum, like a very slow-motion punch, dimpling the vertical stripes of my button-down shirt. He left it there for two or three seconds while he glared at me with almost iridescent green eyes that made my brain hit the Moon. When he took his hand away there was a smear of black grease shaped like knuckles. The shirt was ruined. I understood that was the point.

He pulled the keys from the lock and went around to the front of the car. With his forearm he brushed his hair away from his face but it flopped right back into his eyes. He stood looking at the engine. I watched, heart pounding. My back ran with sweat but my mouth felt dry. Though I’d been searching for clues, I still had no reason to believe this guy was gay, but I felt certain that if I was never able to be with him, even for a moment, in some way more significant than this, that my life would always have a hole in it. That I would die incomplete.

“So you’re a graffiti painter, then,” I said, bending down to pick up the old battery. There were yellow shards of plastic casing on the asphalt. “It’s not exactly a mobile meth lab, you know.”

“A painter,” he said, as though the word were an insult. “I’m a
writer
.”

“You’re a writer?
I’m
a writer.”

“What do you write?”

“Stories. Books. A book. Fiction.”

“Fiction.
Pfft.
That’s not writing.”

“What do you write?”

“I write the truth.”

“Fiction is true. It doesn’t have to factual to be true.”

“Says you. Have you been published?”

“As a matter of fact I have. My novel sold over 65,000 copies.”

“All to your mom.”

“My mom didn’t even know about it. The question is, have
you
been published?”

“I’m published everywhere.” He waved his arms. “Find me a bridge I haven’t published on.”

“The Zakim.” Boston’s most glamorous landmark bridge.

He frowned and squinted, sharpening his green-eyed glare into knives that seemed to want to slice and dice me. Clearly I’d hit a nerve. He returned his attention to the car and said, “Never mind.”

I imagined myself grabbing a fistful of his carefully-ironed shirt, yanking him close and kissing him hard enough to split his lips against my teeth. “One week,” I told him instead, holding up a finger. “I give you one week to paint on the Zakim Bridge.” I started walking around to my car.

He looked up. “Or
what?
”

“Or—I don’t know—I’m a better writer than you.” I sighed. “Can you handle the rest here?”

He glanced over at the battery and looked like he wasn’t sure he could handle it, but he said yes, and he added a terse thank-you.

“I’m sorry I looked in your trunk.”

“Do me a favor and pretend you didn’t.”

I got in my car and started it up, reached over and unrolled the passenger window. “For what it’s worth, I don’t have a problem with it. I think it’s kind of pretty.”

“Right.”

“And by the way, you ruined my fucking shirt!”

A graffiti artist!

A graffiti artist ruined my shirt! I drove home with all the windows down despite the heat, the wind in my mouth carrying the taste of elation, wearing the knuckle-smear on my chest like some kind of superhero emblem.

Thak thak thak thak thak.

My typewriter keys slammed laboriously over a sheet of paper, making it inky but only inky. They seemed to be doing it independently of anything my fingers were making them do. I was too distracted. My mind kept playing back Mateo’s weird, awesome request for me to show him how to
put it in
, and the way he’d clumsily re-phrased. Clearly he was aware of the double entendre. The nerves in my skin couldn’t stop recalling the angry, wonderful push of his knuckles.
Oh, why the hell not
, I thought, popping open my belt. I started beating off with the shirt spread out on my bed, knuckles of my left hand pressed against the greasy smear Mateo left beside the buttons.

And in my head a stream of images: his hair eyes accent
slacks
arms shoulders
Will you show me how to put it in?
mouse mice 3-2-1 contact. Oh yes. A graffiti artist. Oh.
Yes.

A few minutes later and a few ounces lighter, I sat back down at my desk.
Thak thak thak.
Relieved (for the moment) of my little obsession, I felt every boring keystroke. Lately I knew it was time to quit when I’d slid so far down in my chair that my head was practically on the seat. Writing was gut-wrenching but I couldn’t stop, not even when my mind was elsewhere, not even when I had nothing to write. Sometimes it made me feel like a cutter.

Thak thak thak.

I sat up when I heard the front door open and close and the swish of a grocery bag, and soon the nose of Cara nudged into the space of my cracked-open door.

“Smello,” she said.

I laughed. “You may enter.”

She pushed open the door. “I’m home.”

“I see. Was that groceries?”

“I went to the farmer’s market in Copley.”

“Nice. Cukes?”

“Several. Have some.”

“Yum. Where’s Jamar tonight?”

“Working now. He’ll be here. Hey, I’m disappointed your broken-mouse encounter with Sexy New Guy wasn’t more interesting. How could he not resist
ravishing
you?”

“No. After work it got a
lot
more interesting.”

“Oh? Another encounter?”

“Such that he was in my car.”

“You screwed him in your
car?
Fletcher!”

“No. I wish. No. But lo, he layeth his hand upon my breast.” I reached for the shirt, held it up.

“What happened to your
shirt?
” She came closer to inspect it. “Are those—knuckles?”

“I’ll tell in vivid detail. Would you cut me up a cucumber?”

“In exchange for the story, yes. Let me change my clothes first.”

We sat on the couch in the living room with a plate of raw veggies, passing the salt shaker back and forth while I regaled her with the tale of The New Guy & The Old Battery, followed by an ecstatic episode of What Was In His Trunk. Her face registered appropriate shades of intrigue and surprise—but I think most of it was for show; she was playing along. Usually my stories had more, shall we say,
simmer
than this. I’m sure she wondered what all the fuss was about when the story had its two main characters parting ways in a parking lot. I hadn’t even kissed him. Maybe I was wondering the same thing.

“So he’s a graffiti painter.” She salted a cucumber slice.

“Apparently.”

“That explains the fingers.”

“Yup.”

“Mysterious.”

“I mean obviously he was some kind of artist, but he’s not exactly watching Bob Ross episodes and painting happy little trees in his bedroom, knowI’msayin’?”

“He’s a criminal,” she said.

And I repeated it, loving the word. “Yeah. He’s a criminal.”

At a little after 11:00

the following morning I received an email from one [email protected]. The subject line said
Lunch?
but there was nothing in the body of the message except for his default office signature.

Mateo Amaral / I.T. Assistant / Cook Medical Publishing, Inc.

I leaned back in my chair and said, “Hm.” If
he
was contacting
me
I could afford to take my time responding.
I suppose, you gorgeous shirt-wrecker, I could be bothered to have lunch with you.
I opened an email window and fired off the gossip to Cara. We analyzed his intentions over a dozen email back-and-forths.

Cara: “So do you think this lunch is a
date?
”

Me: “I don’t know. His invitation was literally one word.”

Cara: “To me the single word implies a nervousness or a bashfulness that shows you have rendered him speechless... which clearly hints that his intentions are romantic. Thus: date.”

Me: “That’s one way to look at it.”

Cara: “Do you even remember how to have a date?”

Me: “I think I can figure it out, biatch.”

Cara: “So he hasn’t responded back to you?”

My mouth dropped open. I’d been so busy analyzing that I’d forgotten to actually reply. The original message was now an hour old.

Sorry to keep you waiting
, I slammed out, breathless, afraid the invitation had expired.
Lunch would be cool. How about 12:30?

I sent it and scrambled to the restroom to check my hair.

A few minutes past 12:30

there was a knock on the wall of my cube and Mateo said, “Hey.”

“Oh. Hi.” I closed a few windows—one containing some final words of encouragement from Cara, who was acting like I’d really never done this before—and spun around to face him.

“How’s the new mouse working out for you?” he said.

“Clicks like a champ. Thanks.”

“Staying connected OK this time?”

“Yeah. Guess you put it in there pretty tight.” I watched his face. Nothing.

“Yeah. Hey, want to eat outside?”

“Sure, I just need to grab my sandwich from the fridge.”

We detoured silently to the break room and I smelled his smell, and then we emerged into the sunny outside and I couldn’t smell it anymore. He looked awesome in the sun, which went against my original instinct that he’d look best at night amid shadows.

I followed him to the curb at the edge of the parking lot and we sat down there in the shade with our sandwiches. His pant legs went up enough to reveal a few inches of blue-and-white argyle socks and a half-inch of fuzzy, olive-skinned shin.

“Busy today?” I said.

“A little.”

“Me too.”

We ate for a while in what would’ve been silence if not for a pair of birds squawking on the roof, and I was starting to wonder why he bothered asking me to lunch.

“How’s the car?” I said. “Get the battery in OK?”

“Yeah. Started right up. So I guess that’s what it was.”

“I guess so.”

He finished half of his sandwich and started in on the other half. “That’s kind of why I asked you to lunch, actually, because—”

“—Oh?”

“—Because I wanted you to know I feel— Well, it wasn’t cool. What happened yesterday.”

I paused mid-chew. Peanut butter gathered in my cheek. “What wasn’t cool?”

He crossed his arms over his knees, his sandwich dangling from fingers that today were orange. He looked off into the corner of the parking lot. “When you saw what you saw in my car. That just wasn’t cool.”

I forced the glob down my throat. “I told you I was sorry.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“What more do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. Just know that I’m pissed off about it.”

I laughed—not the appropriate thing to do, given how serious he looked, but I couldn’t help it. “Did we stumble into a therapy session or something? Would you like me to air my grievances too?”

“If you want.” He took a big bite of sandwich, tilted a water bottle to his lips, looked at me expectantly.

“Never mind.”

“See, you still have whatever secrets you have, Fletcher. Me, I don’t have mine anymore. Because of what happened. And I don’t like how that feels. Understand?”

I looked at his hand and then down at the sand on the pavement between my shoes. “I guess so.”

He gave his shirt collar a tug. “This is my secret identity, right? It’s for show. It’s not who I am. When I’ve got a can in my hand, that’s who I am. That’s the real Mateo. It’s not your fault that you figured me out. I know you weren’t snooping. It wasn’t on purpose. Accidents happen. But all the same I’ve lost something and I wanted you to know it.”

“Maybe you should look at it not as losing something, but as sharing something,” I said. OK, it was a direct quote from my novel, and maybe that’s tacky, but it totally applied.