Waterways (7 page)

“Hey, you two. Say hi to Kory.”

“Hi.” “Hi, Kory.”

“Hi,” Kory said. “You guys are…”

“Ajani,” said the older one.

“I’m Kasim,” the younger said, and tilted his head. “Are you gonna be Samaki’s boyfriend?”

In the silence that followed this remark, Samaki’s ears folded back, and Kasim said, “Ow!” as Ajani elbowed him and said, “Shut up, dipwad!”

“What?” Kasim said.

“No, he’s not,” Samaki said. “Why don’t you both sit down now?”

They grumbled, but did so. The black fox turned to Kory. “Little brothers,” he said with a grin that looked just a little forced.

“I know how it is,” Kory said. “Wait ’til you meet Nick.”

“Yeah.” Samaki reached back and scratched his ear. He looked into the car, lowering his voice so they couldn’t hear. “I love ’em, though.”

Kory looked in, too, at the four shining eyes looking out at them. “They’re cute. Are you the oldest?”

“Now I am. My sister, Kande, she’s off at college.”

“Where’s she going?” Kory itched to ask him about his brother’s remark, his heart speeding up a bit, but if Samaki didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t going to bring it up.

“State. Main campus, though, not Hilltown campus.”

“That’s cool.”

“You looked at colleges yet?”

Kory shrugged a bit. “Mom sent me some links.”

“I was thinking about—”

The door opened before the fox could finish his sentence. His mother and Mariatu walked out, with Kory’s mother behind them. Mrs. Roden’s words floated down to them. “Thank you so much, and thank you for having Samaki over.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Kory’s mother said, remaining at the door as the vixen waved and then walked down the driveway.

“I get to sit in front,” Ajani said from inside the car, scrambling through the two front seats and getting halfway before his brother grabbed his tail. Ajani yelped.

Samaki reached in to hold Kasim. “Hey,” he said, “Mom said Ajani could sit in front.”

“I don’t wanna be in back alone with her,” Kasim said sulkily.

“She’s your sister,” Samaki said, and ruffled his ears.

Mrs. Roden reached them and opened the door. “Scoot over, Kasim, and help your sister in.” Kasim slid across the seat and didn’t otherwise move at first, then grudgingly reached out a paw, which Mariatu took. She kept looking at Kory with wide eyes, and then smiled and waved her other paw and said, “Bye bye.”

“Bye,” Kory said. “It was really nice to meet you.”

She giggled as she climbed into the back seat, where she sat and watched him.

“Bye, Sammy,” Mrs. Roden said, and kissed him on the muzzle. “Mrs. Hedley’s going to drive you back home. That way I don’t have to wait for your father to come home to come pick you up. I know you know the way, Kory, but I wrote down directions for her anyway.”

“Okay,” Kory said. “Thanks for letting Samaki come to dinner.”

The vixen laughed, and her eyes sparkled as she put a paw on Kory’s arm. “Oh, bless you, Kory, but I couldn’t have kept him away. I think he’d have snuck out and taken the bus if he had to.”

“Mom!” Samaki protested.

“Sorry, dear,” Mrs. Roden said, but she gave Kory a quick wink and he grinned back widely. “I told your mother we want to have you over for dinner too, maybe next week or the week after.”

“Thanks.” The wink made Kory feel warm and confident. “I’d love to.”

“All right then. Be good!” She waved to them and got in the car.

They waited until she’d rounded the corner and then went inside, where the smell of salmon was already pervading the house.

Nick showed up, dressed but still damp, right as the rest of them were sitting down at the table. When his mother had finished serving the salmon, she started on Samaki, asking him about his school and his family before she’d even gotten all the food on the table.

“And what does your father do?” she asked as soon as they’d said the “Amen,” in which Kory saw Samaki join.

“He works at the Ford factory outside town,” Samaki said, “and over at the Hilltown campus of the state U. at night.”

“Oh? What does he do at the University?” Kory saw his mother’s interest perk up a little.

“He’s a Facilities Maintenance Technician,” Samaki said. “He started there so he could get benefits for my sister to go to State.”

“That’s great.” They ate in silence a little longer. “What’s your sister studying?”

“Sociology,” Samaki responded promptly.

“Do you know what you want to study?”

“Not yet.” He smiled. “I’m interested in lots of things. Journalism maybe.”

“Are you going to go to State too?”

“Probably.” He gulped down a bite of fish. “This fish is terrific, Mrs. Hedley.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, but Kory saw her muzzle purse slightly. State was not one of the colleges she’d sent him to look at.

Over the rest of the meal, she asked about his church, his neighborhood, his family, and his school. Kory and Samaki told her how much overlap there was in their subjects, and Samaki said he was taking some advanced work in school, which she praised him for.

He remained poised, polite, and proper throughout the meal, and actually seemed to be enjoying talking to Kory’s mother. Nick stayed quiet for the entire meal, except to ask to be excused, and Kory didn’t say much more. He felt a strong relief when his mother finally said, “Well, you boys probably don’t want to sit here talking to me all night. Go on. I’ll clean up, Kory.”

“Want me to send Nick in?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll be all right.”

“Thanks for dinner, Mrs. Hedley,” Samaki said. “It was delicious.”

“Thank you, Samaki,” she said. “Go on, go play.”

“I think it is
so
cool that you have a pool inside your house,” Samaki said as they walked back through the living room. He crouched by the edge and trailed his paw in the water, his tail resting on the living room carpet. “Why would you ever go out to a pool?”

“To get away,” Kory said, trying not to remember Samaki crouching in his swimsuit at the side of the municipal pool. “This pool’s small, too. Even the municipal is bigger.”

“Caspian’s pretty big, eh?” Samaki stood up. “I love this bridge, too. It’s like a little Japanese garden.”

Kory grinned. “Watch your footing. It’s always wet.”

“A railing would be nice,” the fox said.

“Then we couldn’t jump up onto the bridge from the water. I used to put my brother in jail under the bridge.”

Samaki laughed, stepping safely onto the far side between Kory’s and Nick’s doors. “I used to make my brothers be chickens and put them in the ‘coop.’

Kory felt a flutter of worry, opening the door to his room. He watched Samaki’s muzzle as the fox stepped in and looked around, watched the violet eyes take in the posters, the computer desk, the bed, and the pool.

“This is awesome,” Samaki said. “The pool comes in here, too. So you can just slip in and out through the water. It’s like having a secret base!”

“Everyone else can get in, too,” Kory pointed out.

Samaki grinned at him, padding from one side of the room to the other, looking at everything, his tail wagging. “I think it’s really cool.”

Kory saw only the room he’d grown up in. Then he looked again at Samaki’s expression and looked around and saw the pool, the posters, the computer, and slowly, he smiled.

Samaki ran his fingers along the posters on the wall. “Cool dragon,” he said with a grin, his tail wagging. “ELO…  haven’t heard them. Good?”

“I thought everyone knew them.” Kory turned around to put on ELO’s Greatest Hits, and when he turned back, Samaki was at his computer desk, looking at a scrap of paper. “Hey, uh…”

The fox read slowly, “Water spills from the morning / coating the grass to start the day / the night is washed away …” He looked up. “That’s good. You wouldn’t let me read any of your poems before.”

“Now you know why,” Kory took the paper from him. “That’s not good, really. Just some stuff I was scribbling.”

“It is good.” Samaki looked around. “You have anything else?”

Kory weighed the question. “I’ve got a couple things.”

“I’ll show you some of the stuff I wrote, if you show me more poems.” The black fox leaned against Kory’s desk and swished his tail.

“The articles you were talking about for the yearbook?”

Samaki nodded. “And some stuff from the school paper.” He flicked an ear. “This is ELO? I like this song. I never knew who it was.”

Kory nodded, and sat down at the computer. He stalled, pretending to decide which files to open, really wondering what he should show the fox. He badly wanted to show him
the
poem, but the fox might misinterpret it. After all, he hadn’t even shown it to Jenny.

Of course, he hadn’t wanted to.

No, he would start with some earlier ones, about dragons and swimming. Those weren’t too bad. He pulled them up and let Samaki sit down.

While the fox leaned forward, eyes scanning the screen, Kory paced behind him.
If he doesn’t like them,
he told himself,
it’s okay, a lot of people don’t like poetry.
He found himself pressing his paws together, and sat down on his bed, trying not to look anxiously at the fox and failing.

Samaki turned his head and saw Kory on the bed. He smiled, warm eyes setting Kory at ease before he even spoke. “They’re good. I like them.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! Why would I lie?” The fox chuckled. “You could enter a poetry contest or something. This is as good as anything I’ve seen in our school.”

At the mention of a contest, Kory stiffened. “I, uh… I don’t think I’m good enough to win a contest,” he said.

“Sure you are,” Samaki said. “I’ll make it my mission to make you believe in yourself enough to win a poetry contest. I hate seeing talent go to waste.”

“No, really, I…”

The fox slid from the chair and was sitting next to Kory on the bed in a moment. “I told you, I think if you’re good at something, you shouldn’t be embarrassed about it.”

The proximity of the fox brought his musky scent back to Kory, full force. The otter tried to ignore it, but couldn’t help jumping a little when the fluffy black tail brushed his long brown tail on the bed. His whiskers twitched, the dream returning to his mind until he forced it out.
Don’t think about that now, are you insane??
But he had to keep his paws held firmly in his lap to keep them from wandering over to the soft black fur.

“It’s just not…” He struggled for words, forcing his other thoughts down. “You’re the first person who’s really liked them.”

“Your mom doesn’t?” Samaki spoke softly.

Talking about his mom helped. “Oh, mom doesn’t count. I could write ‘the cat sat on the fat mat’ and she’d think it was Milton. I mean, my friends… you know, maybe if I wrote poems about sports, or boobs…”

The fox laughed, and patted his knee. “You have to write about things you’re interested in.”

The warm paw on his knee, the scent, the brush of the tail, and the residue of his dream were making Kory’s jeans tight. “Strange Magic” was playing on his stereo. “I’m interested in boobs,” he blurted out. “Uh… I mean…” He looked at Samaki’s expression as the fox withdrew his paw. The vulpine muzzle was smiling, but the smile seemed forced and a little sad.

“Look, Kory,” he said. “Uh… I didn’t want to bring it up, but I don’t want you thinking and wondering about what Kasim said…”

“It’s okay,” Kory said. His heart was pounding.

Samaki was quiet for a bit. “I’m not interested in boobs,” he said. Only then did Kory register the stiffness in his posture and the way his paws were clenched together tightly. He realized how hard it must be for the fox to tell him that, harder than it had been for Kory to show the poems to him. He reached out and rested a paw on the black-furred wrist closest to him. He could feel the fox’s quick pulse beneath the warm fur.

“I was wondering,” he said. “It’s okay. I don’t care.”

Samaki’s shoulders sagged, his smile brightened. “Really?” And then he chuckled. “You mean you can tell?”

Kory grinned. “You were kinda hitting on me at the pool.”

The fox’s large ears flicked and violet eyes smiled. “I tried to be subtle. I figured if you were interested, you’d pick up on it, and if not, you wouldn’t notice. Most straight guys couldn’t even imagine another guy hitting on them.”

“I had to ask,” Kory admitted. “I wasn’t sure.”

Samaki laughed. “You asked someone? Who? Someone online?”

“No,” and Kory now found himself embarrassed to admit that he’d asked Sal.

“Your mom?”

“Oh, no.” Kory looked at the bedroom door and his smile faltered. “She’d freak.”

“So who?” Samaki poked his side. “Come on.”

“Hey!” Kory giggled. “My friend Sal.”

“Sal?”

“He is an expert in flirting. I kind of pretended you were me and I was a girl…  he said I was getting a lot better at flirting.”

“I guess that’s a compliment.” The fox swished his tail against Kory’s again, and the otter felt that shiver. His tail was sensitive, that was all. Jenny used to like to stroke it, too.

“If you want to take a compliment from a guy who goes to college bars to get laid…”

“I’ll take whatever I can get.” Samaki smiled. “Hey. I appreciate you being cool. I know it could be awkward and all. But really, I won’t hit on you any more.”

“Okay.” For some reason, Kory’s heart was still racing. His paw still rested on the fox’s wrist, warm black fur under his pads. He was remembering the fox taking his paw down that dark street.

“Too bad,” he thought he heard Samaki murmur, and the fox certainly had a coy smile on his muzzle as if he’d said something like that. But Kory couldn’t be sure, and the next thing Samaki said was about
Foundation
, which he’d picked up and started to read. “It’s interesting,” he said, “This whole theory about predicting large group behavior.”

Kory’s heart slowly returned to a normal pace. “Cool to think about.”

“What I want to know,” Samaki said, “is what if you want to predict what just one person is gonna do? Or two?”

“Individuals are unpredictable,” Kory said. “That was part of his point.”

“Are they? Or is this Seldon guy just too full of himself to bother with them?” The violet eyes sparkled.