Beautiful Blemish (11 page)

    
I guessed at
Matey’s
favorite and ordered a cinnamon bagel smeared with
chived
cream cheese and a slushy coffee drink, though I’d heard you weren’t supposed to give old men coffee too often. I figured it might help if he was having a hangover.

  
  
When I got back in the car I saw that he had thrown up in the litter bag. You think I’d want to come back here ever again, he complained.

    
I’m sorry, I said. I wasn’t thinking. We’ll go home now.

    
Damn straight, he shot back.

SUNDAY NIGHT

Things were tense tonight. He didn’t want to go for his walk and he never changed into his pajamas. He barely watched TV with me.

    
Somebody was looking for you, I said.
Some young dude.

    
Lance, said the old man. He’s a bastard.

    
Yeah?

    
Yeah.

 
   
Like, what do you mean? He didn’t have a father, or he was really mean?

    
Matey
looked at me
coldy
. He crossed his arms in front of him. He made me do things, he said with a crack in his voice.

    
What kind of things? I pushed.

    
He trained me to do things.

    
What things, I nearly shouted.

    
I sensed something terrible about to be spoken. Something that would make me
want
to hunt down this Lance and exact revenge on him. My fingers folded into a fist.

    
He trained me to kill, he said after a pause. I would have to fight other old men and kill them.

MONDAY

I found out that I was going out of town for three days to attend some meetings. I asked my friend Sarah to come over and tend to
Matey
while I was away. He likes tuna, I told her, and walks in the parking lot. Things were not good between him and
I
when I left that afternoon. He’d taken my
New York Times
and tore it up all over the front room.

FRIDAY

Upon returning from my trip, I found Sarah distraught in my front room. It looked cleaned up but there was still a rank odor in the air. Perhaps this was the old man smell that she had noticed the week before.
Being gone for a few days made it more apparent to my own senses.
I had taken her advice and bought an old man collar for him but maybe the brand wasn’t very good.

    
Where’s
Matey
? I asked.

    
He’s run away, she said.
Last night, from the parking lot.
I didn’t think he could run so fast.

    
What were you doing, I almost yelled, where were you?

    
I was here, she said. I was watching him from the window. Then I went to answer your phone. When I came back I saw him down the street, getting on a bus.

    
You should have used the leash, I said. I told you he hasn’t been happy lately.

    
I’m sorry, she said. I put up these signs. She pointed at some
Zeroxed
fliers that said in handwritten block letters: LOST OLD MAN. There was a photo of
Matey
that I had taken shortly after I had found him. He was happy at the time, smiling through his white beard, a drip of ice cream stuck in the whiskers. Under the photo it said, in smaller letters: $100 Reward. I’ll pay the reward money, she said, it’s my fault anyway.

SATURDAY

Sarah and I spent the whole morning and afternoon looking for
Matey
. We showed strangers his photo and asked other vagrants and old people if they had seen him. Some of the people acted concerned but a few of the vagrants said bitter things about my old man. It seems that his story about being trained to kill other old men was not an exaggeration. I hope you find him in a ditch, said one toothless widow. If
I
find him, I’m going to blind his other eye with my cock, said one testy skinhead man.

    
But I didn’t want to think of
Matey
in this way. In our brief time together I felt like I had gained so much, namely the ability to love and care for another living creature, even if it was just an old man. There was one time when I wanted him to watch a movie with me even though he was tired and ready for bed. It was a late movie on cable and one I really liked and I wanted to share it with him. He graciously agreed to stay up with me and I made popcorn for both of us. Midway through the movie I looked over and saw he was already asleep. I covered him with a blanket and let him sleep on the couch. I thought about how nice it was for him to be around and I wondered if he would be sleeping outside somewhere, in some shallow doorway, if I hadn’t found him.

    
It was starting to get dark when Sarah spotted him through the window of a barbershop. Look, said Sarah, he’s getting a haircut.

    
We watched from outside. I don’t think he could see us where we stood. He had his beard shaved and his head looked odd because of it. Different shaped. I saw him talking to the barber. Suddenly, the barber grabbed a long pair of scissors and stormed out of the shop to accost us.

    
He doesn’t want to be with you anymore, he said directly at me. You were not sensitive to his needs. He’s mine now. Take down your posters and go home.

The scissors were gripped tightly at his waist, ready for a swipe.

    
I tried to calm him down. I asked if I could just speak with
Matey
for a moment but I wasn’t allowed. Sarah stood back from us, in case she had to run to the corner phone to call the police. The barber stepped back inside, flipped the Open sign, and turned the blinds in the window.

    
I’m sorry, said Sarah from behind me.

    
I pressed my face up to the window and could still see them inside,
Matey
talking and the barber snipping away. I wondered how the barber had found him. I wondered what kind of home he had and if he was a better cook than I. As the barber finished up, I think
Matey
saw me through the slit in the blinds. He aimed his one good eye at me with a deadly glare and held his stare for a moment. Then I think he saw a look in my eyes that he hadn’t seen before. His face softened and his tense brow smoothed out. He seemed to sigh. The barber tried to get
Matey
to look down so he could shave the back of his neck but
Matey
held his hand up to halt him. The barber froze and saw where he was looking. He grimaced to the window, as if he was ready to charge out again, but
Matey
shook his stop sign hand again for emphasis. The barber noticed my eyes there, through the blinds. But he didn’t move. He just looked at
Matey
and tried to read his face. I locked my gaze on
Matey
, trying to read his feelings. I think he was trying to do the same thing to me. The darkness set in around me. The barber just stood there, waiting for
Matey
to lower his hand.

The Birthday Present

I think I get to have sex with Jin
Soo
for my birthday. At least that’s what John said. He got the same thing last year. He was her boyfriend at the time.

That’s probably her favorite gift to give, John said.

I’ve had two dates with Jin so far. There hasn’t been much of a spark. Not yet anyway.
Maybe not until my birthday.
Then hopefully she’ll start acting excited to see me. Sometimes it just takes a really intimate moment to make those other moments get smoother.
Two more bumpy days to go.

Jin’s reward for her long day of work at Noah’s
Ark
is a trip to
Victoria
’s Secret. Noah’s
Ark
is the pet store on the other side of the mall, by the daycare and the baseball card place. But the mood in this other part of the mall is all about indulgence. The girls who work at
Victoria
’s Secret don’t even pretend they’re working. They just blend in with all the pretty and desirable things on display. Fabric so soft and see-through it almost isn’t there.
A dream fading out.
Even the mannequins are a lofty fantasy. Their nipples are always hard and teasing. Jin can’t wait to see what she’ll look like when she puts one of those
nighties
to use. It doesn’t bother her that she can buy almost the same things at JC Penny for less. If she bought something at JC Penny, she doubted her nipples would get hard in it.

When she brings her indulgences up to the cashier she notices a man watching her from outside. A man she knows but wishes she didn’t. He stands there in the middle of the crowd, the noise deflecting off his solid stance.

I’ve never put pressure on Jin to have sex. She tells me it takes her a while to get comfortable and I’m fine with that.

It’s not like I have to have sex to make me happy. I’ve only slept with two other women before. The first girl I had sex with was just as inexperienced as I was. We were both twenty. In fact, for a long time we weren’t really sure if we were doing it right at all. That’s the reason we broke up after ten months. We thought we should find other people to teach us what to do. Then maybe we’d get back together and see how it went. We never got back together.

My second girlfriend was a quiet sort of sex fiend. She would never talk about it overtly, but her body language would beg me to do stuff to her. She was like a mute masochist. She’d force one hand there. She’d grab the fingers on my other hand and space them out and press them somewhere else. She’d hold me in place and move me just so. I would try to talk to her and see if I was doing it right and she only responded with sharp grunts. She seemed more assured than the first girlfriend, but she would start crying if we didn’t have sex for a few days. She’d finally ask,
What’s
wrong with me? And then she’d start taking my clothes off. The first day she told me that she loved me was also the day she said we were through. We were together for five months.

Jin and I met at the Red Lion hotel. They have an all-age dance there on weekends. John works at the front desk after school. He used to get a room for him and Jin on those nights when there were dances. Free drinks too. All of us usually dance a few songs and then sit at the bar for a long time and drink. We’re good dancers and we make fun of the others. We point at people doing what we called “The Soup Stir” or “The Lazy Jogger” and crack up loudly. We have nicknames for some of the regulars like “The Erotic Chubby” (an overweight man with a suave and confident attitude) and “
Snagglepuss
” (a young gal with crooked teeth and a habit of leaving early with any of the Hispanics). I love going to the Red Lion. I look forward to it all week. The dance floor is a big and beautiful hardwood space that glows orange under the lights. It’s a little slick but easy to navigate. The DJ plays all the popular songs and hardly ever uses his microphone to talk. I’m never unhappy there.

Who’s the underwear for, the man asks Jin.

It’s a birthday present, she says.

Like I said, who’s the underwear for? He snorts and rubs his nose. They sit in the food court. It’s loud and smells like taco meat.

I’m with someone new, she says.

Who is this Mr. I’m-with-someone-new?

She looks around, hoping she doesn’t see anyone she knows. Her hands are getting sweaty on the plastic bag handles. Look, she says, Richard, why do you even want to talk to me?

Because I never got the birthday present and I want to know why.

We only had that one night. We can’t even go out on dates. I can’t have sex with you. My dad even told—

Who said anything about sex, he interrupts. I just wish I could have looked at you, you know. It was so dark. I think you would like me but you never gave me a chance. He leans forward and lets his eyes soften. His pupils lower to her mouth, her neck. I just want to look at you, he says. His eyes lower more.

Is that why you’re following me around? She moves her arms in front of her to block his eyes there. She touches her chin with one of her hands.

Yes, says Richard. That’s why I’m following you around, I guess. It sounds like he might say something else, maybe apologize, but he looks away.

John’s always been a super nice guy.
Super cool and lax.
I thought he was going to freak out when Jin said she wanted to go out with me. I thought I’d have to stop going to the Red Lion. I wasn’t even sure why she wanted to go out with me. Like I said, she never seems too excited to see me. But she said something to John about how she thought I might be a better long-term partner for her, and she knew I had an interest in Korean culture. I guess she still has grandparents over there. It would be fun to go there with her and stay with them. I wouldn’t even have to know how to speak the language because Jin could communicate with everyone. But I do want to learn some of the phrases. I want to learn “Can I kiss you?” and “You’re beautiful” and some romantic things like that. But my college doesn’t offer a Korean class.

She always thought I was going to leave, go off to a big city without her, John tells me. He and I are at a deli, not far from campus. We’ve just ordered bagels with turkey and cream cheese. She thought I was just fleeting, he says.

Well, were you? I ask.

I don’t know, he says. I guess I felt
fake
because I couldn’t really picture myself with a Korean girl.

Korean woman, I correct him. She told me she doesn’t like to be called a girl. She’s 21, almost 22.

Yeah, that bugs me, he says. She changed a lot on me. Started setting up rules and stuff. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not ready to grow up or something.

We get our bagels and sit down. John scrapes half the cream cheese off of his. He lets me take his excess and pile it on mine. My fingers are a mess.

My birthday’s tomorrow, I tell him.

Yeah, well, I already kind of gave you a present, he says, trying to laugh. It doesn’t work though; he coughs instead, and we sit there feeling uncomfortable. We’re both thinking about Jin.

Richard says something to Jin in Korean. He is holding his car door open for her. It’s a brand new model, low to the ground, altered to look like a hot rod, like a Hot Wheel, something from a movie or a toy store. He says it’s a Mustang but it doesn’t look like one. Jin gets in the front and tucks the bag under her legs. My mom and dad better not see us, she says.

He starts the car. Its engine is unbelievably quiet. The air freshener smells like incense. They wind down the ramps of the parking garage. The windows are tinted but the sun oozes in when they hit the street. She almost feels sick.

I held out longer than most of my friends because I was in this dumb church group called First Time Matters that I was forced to join in tenth grade by my
fudgy
, simpleton parents. There were about fifteen people in FTM and we always met on Friday or Saturday nights during my high school years. The idea was that we were proud to be virgins and we were going to save ourselves for marriage. The young pastor who founded the group was a divorced twenty-six year old deadbeat dad named Mark
Farrah
. Everyone knew he wasn’t a virgin. In fact, my Uncle
Corliss
said Mark was a scammer and a stoner when he went to high school not too far from us. He said Mark was a stud who broke a lot of hearts. Then he got a girl pregnant and had to get married. A couple years later, his wife left him for a bigger, taller, better-looking stud.

Mark has told us a condensed version of this story a few times. He says that’s when he got philosophical. That’s when he fell in love with Christ. After a couple months of this group being together and meeting at his place, things started to slip for him. Here he was, in the middle of all these young and happy and unbroken girls, in a position of authority and admiration and still at an age where he could feel the strain of his libido practically rupturing his groin. He realized that Jesus didn’t put out.

It was
Doree
Tucker who needed the most counseling, and it was she who first made FTM look like a sham. By the time I was a senior, everyone in the club except me was having long, sweaty, grind-a-thons with each other. On top of that, they started skipping church and acting like assholes. It was like the constant focus on not having sex made them want it so much more.

The summer after I graduated I decided to give myself a vacation from church. About a year later, I was going to go back, get serious about God,
maybe
learn how to write Christian songs. But I didn’t go back. Instead, I met my first girlfriend and that’s when we started trying to have sex. But I never fell in love with her.
Or the second girlfriend.
I didn’t even really equate sex with love at the time. I was just finding my way, and I guess I just started hating everything.
Until I discovered dance nights at the Red Lion.

Now things seem different. Now, maybe with Jin, sex will turn into love.

Richard and Jin are parked near a playground. There is the shadow of a giant play structure glowing under the early moon and only the humming sounds of a freeway off in the distance.

It wasn’t meant to be, says Jin. I made a mistake. You’re still my cousin.

Richard holds his head for a second, covering his ears.
Then lets his fingers slide down the front of his face.
The skin of his face stretches down.
His black eyes flat and shiny.
When we all came to
America
, he says, we were still learning the language. I was already twelve and you were seven. Remember? We came over the same year.