Falling Under (18 page)

We are at his place, which turns out to be the second floor of a beautifully preserved Victorian house in Cabbagetown. On the way there, I stood on the middle of a subway grate and counted to five hundred. Three trains passed and the hot dog vendor started hitting on me, and by that time I was hardly dizzy at all.

My legs are still shaking, but I am at Hugo’s, alive and sitting with cranberry juice in my hand and I will be fine.

I am fine already. Really.

“If I could write my own obituary... Hmm . . .” he says, and leans sideways on the red suede couch to face me.

“People get some weird stuff written about them,” I say. “The only way to prevent that is to write your own.”

“I don’t think I’d want to write mine,” he says. “I’d rather believe someone who loved me would do it, and write nice things of their own accord. I’d be happy with the standard ‘beloved of so-and-so’ and a few details about my life. Nothing fancy.”

He gets up and walks across the tiny living area to the kitchen, motioning me to stay where I am. Little Pollock, who has been eyeing me with suspicion since I walked in, gets up from his spot under the coffee table, takes a couple of waddles toward me and woofs.

“Hello,” I say. He wags his tail and goes back to his post. “He woofed and wagged,” I say to Hugo. “Does that

mean he likes me?”

“Of course he likes you,” he says, opening the oven and checking on whatever he’s got cooking inside. “He’s just shy.”

“Okay.”

“So, have you written one yet?”

“An obituary? No, but I’ve been thinking about it. Mostly though, I’ve been thinking about what I wouldn’t want it to say.”

“For example?” he asks and comes back to join me on the couch.

“Lived a lonely life, failed to fulfill her potential... That kind of thing.”

“I don’t think that’s what anyone would write about you,” he says.

“You know what would be interesting? To have both. I’d love to see the difference between what people would write about themselves versus what others would write about them.”

“It’d be a great reality show,” Hugo says with a nod.

“Or a play, a movie,” I say. “I think it’s fascinating, trying to find the truth behind what people say, behind their perceptions of themselves and others.”

Hugo gets up again to check on dinner. He’s nervous.

How cute.

“Here’s mine if my dad wrote it,” he says. “ ‘Hugo War- ren, beloved son of Bob and Vera Warren. Not a bad hockey player, good with numbers, shoulda been a real doctor.’ ”

“A real doctor?”

Hugo smiles with one side of his mouth and says, “He had a brain surgeon fantasy for me.”

“Ah ha.”

“And he’s allergic to almost everything, so he’s not an animal lover.”

“You know, it’s odd . . .” I say. “What?”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard your last name.” He laughs. “That’s true.”

Pollock trots over to Hugo and fixes his gaze on the kitchen countertop.

“No chance, buddy,” Hugo says, but Pollock sits up straighter and gives a little whine. “I swear, I never feed him from here.”

“Wroof.”

“Buddy, you’re making me look bad.”

I get up and walk over. “How’s the, um, separation anxiety?”

Hugo sighs and shakes his head.

“I’m working on a complicated system of bribery,” he confesses. “He’ll stay calm as long as I give him something decadent to eat while I’m gone.”

“Ah ha.”

“The only trouble is it has to be difficult enough to eat that it lasts, but not so difficult that he gives up, and there has to be lots of it.”

“Gotcha.”

“So basically he’s going to get really fat,” Hugo says ruefully. “I’m going to look like an incompetent vet.”

He goes to the fridge and pulls out a bowl.

“Ever tried bacon-wrapped peanut butter served in crevice-of-petrified-cow-bone?”

“Hunh?”

He grins and waggles his eyebrows. “It’s my specialty.”

I never considered the possibility of Hugo being that ad- venturous a cook... or of my having to partake.

I gesture toward the bowl, clear my throat and say, “I’m sure it’ll be... tasty.”

Is it too late to pretend I’m vegetarian? Yes. With all the other things that could go wrong, I’m not going to screw up this relationship by being a culinary coward.

“It sounds like a... creative infusion of flavor,” I add. “I can’t wait!”

Hugo gives me a weird look.

Then he bursts out laughing. He holds the bowl up and inside it I see a salad.

“What’s so funny?”

“Sorry,” he chokes out, “I didn’t mean...I meant... for the dog.. .”

For the dog? Oh...

OH!

Death by embarrassment isn’t one of my usual fears, but it’s suddenly become a possibility. Either that or I could laugh. If I’m going to die, I might as well do it laughing, right?

I start chuckling and then Pollock starts howling and soon we’re laughing so hard we have tears streaming down our faces.

Over dinner, which turns out to be a delicious homemade macaroni casserole and the aforementioned salad, Hugo and I make up funny obituaries for each other and revisit the petrified bone joke quite a few times. Over dessert we talk about dreams.

“Until you asked me just now, I didn’t think I had dreams anymore,” I say.

“You find them dangerous?”

“I guess so. But I still have them.”

He takes my hands and his eyes make me hope for tomorrow.

“Mara Lindsey Foster,” Hugo says, “one hundred and twenty years, fully lived. Courageous taster of dog food, activist, groundbreaking artist, wise soul, loyal friend... brave and beloved of Hugo.”

Beloved of Hugo... The word
love
is in there, and by the look in his eyes, he meant it.

Oh boy. Oh God.

Whoosh goes the air in my lungs.

Everything in me wants to rush up and out, to leap from me to him and chain us together forever, heart and soul and body.

“You’ve only known me a few weeks,” I say.

“Which is nothing compared to how long I’m going to know you,” he says.

This should lead to caresses and kisses and a long, slow night of love.

I burst into tears, which could still lead to a long slow night of love...

Except the kisses don’t stop the tears and soon I have a snotty nose and have to pee and lock myself in the bathroom for fifteen minutes while the dog yips and scratches at the door and Hugo’s neighbor bangs on the wall because of the racket.

I look at my blotchy face in the mirror. Way to go.

6

“I’m giving you an assignment,” Caleb says.

Until this morning, those words would have thrilled you, but now all you want is to drag him back to the bedroom.

“Assignment?”

He points to the exposed brick wall of the studio. “Draw that.”

“The wall?”

He gives a quick nod and turns to his work. “You seriously want me to—”

“Don’t bug me when I’m working, Sixteen,” he says. “You want lessons? Give me a great wall.”

Fine. He’s probably fucking with you, but you’ll draw the damned wall—no doubt the sadistic bastard’ll count the bricks.

You begin with the center row.

Bricks. And all you want is to be back in bed with Caleb’s hand up your—

Whew! Brick wall, brick wall. It’s a long morning.

In the afternoon, you remember that you are essentially homeless.

“I have to go,” you tell Caleb, who still hasn’t come near you. “Can I ... ?”

“I’ll be here later,” he says. “Okay, bye.”

Nothing. Maybe a hint of a smile at the door. Men suck. You go to check on Dad, but his girlfriend meets you out-

side to tell you he’s been lying about going to work—he was fired three months ago—and doesn’t seem able to get off the couch. She begs you to help him find a therapist and a job, in that order, and you wonder how, as a sixteen-year-old, you are supposed to do either of these things.

You get back on the subway and find yourself heading north.

Outside Mom’s house, you stand staring.

The leaves of the maple tree make skittering shadows across the siding. The house looks funny, smaller. You are not the same person, not the same girl who lived here. You are less and more, sadder, wiser... darker. Will Mom even know you, when you see her again? She’ll probably assume

she knows you and never notice for a second that she doesn’t. That will be the saddest of all.

So... even if you can go back, you can’t go back. There is no safe place.

Somehow you will have to cope with that.

You sit in a doughnut shop for the rest of the afternoon looking at the want ads. Dad probably just needs motivation, a little help. You circle the jobs he might like, and might be able to get. All he has ever done is work in restaurants, so the options are limited. And depressing, since you know how he comes home with smoky, greasy-smelling clothes and sore knees and stories of bad tips, bad people. The last couple of months those stories must have been recycled, made up.

You wonder where he spent his evenings to get that exact same smell every night.

6

Caleb does it again—makes you want him so much you think you’ll die, and then stops. He smiles when you reach for him and try to pull him into you, but he steps away and offers you a nightcap instead.

You’re going to need a few nightcaps if this keeps up.

He walks around his apartment naked even though there are no curtains on the windows and most of the lights are on. You can’t stop looking at him and you can’t believe you ever wanted to get away from him. Now you crave him, need him, are desperate for him . . . and he knows it.

You start to talk to him about Dad, and he listens closely. But you see something like pity in his eyes and you don’t want that.

“Actually, it’s no big deal,” you say, cutting the story short with a shrug. “I can go to my mom’s. Besides, I’m thinking of getting my own place.”

“Really?” he says. “Where?” He doesn’t believe you.

You take another sip of Scotch.

“Downtown somewhere,” you say, feeling the burn spread in your chest. “Why won’t you have sex with me?”

“You changing the subject?” “Yep. Why won’t you?”

“I did. That first night, if I recall.” “You know what I mean.”

He drinks.

“You can stay with me for a while,” he says. “If that’s what you need.”

“Hunh?”

“And I’m wondering if that’s why you fucked me last night.”

“You think I’d fuck you for a place to stay?”

“It’s okay,” he says. “That kind of stuff... parents... it can fuck you up.”

“That’s not why I wanted to—”

“Fine. Regardless, you can stay here. But maybe we should keep it platonic,” he says. “Just in case.”

“This is a strange conversation,” you say, and start to laugh. “Especially since you’re sitting there naked.”

“True.” And he laughs too and you see him getting hard and you take too big a sip of the Scotch and nearly choke and then cough and then you both laugh more as he whacks you on the back.

You drag him down on the couch.

“I don’t want to be platonic,” you say.

“I don’t want you to think you have to—oh!”

You close your lips around him and then you swirl your tongue and he groans and says he’s changed his mind.

The couch is old, with patches of the red velvet rubbed off and springs that poke into you if you lie the wrong way. Caleb doesn’t care, even though he must have a spring jabbing at his lower back right now. He pulls your hair away from your face and tells you to slow down. He says girls like you didn’t exist when he was your age, and he wishes they had. You wonder if “girls like you” means sluts, but it doesn’t matter. You take him deep in your throat until he’s about to lose control and then stop and stand up. You’re tempted to leave him on the couch with his panting and his raging hard-on to get him, but you want him too much.

You rip the condom open yourself, put it on him and then slide yourself down until he is so deep it hurts. You like the hurt, you pull the hurt into you, hold it close, and let it shim- mer and ache up and down your spine and into that place where your soul must be.

You let out a long, low whine and he asks if you are okay. You nod and start to move, slowly at first. His hands reach out to stroke you, and in your mind you see him with the brush in his hand—focused, passionate, determined to render his imagination onto canvas.

Now determined to render you helpless. And you want to be.

He pulls your chest to his, wraps your arms around his neck and says, “Hold on.”

With your legs around his waist, he pushes himself up to a sitting position and then gets up off the couch, holding you tightly to him. He walks to the bedroom and lays you down, all the while moving inside you.

You want to, need to move faster, take more, but he puts his weight on you and holds you so you can’t. You shut your eyes and hear yourself moaning. For a long time he moves in slow, deep circles. When you go to touch him he takes both your wrists in one of his hands and holds them above your head. He puts his mouth on your breast and sucks hard and a new thread of sore heat licks up under your skin.

When he pulls back and slides his hand down between your thighs, you move against his fingers and lift your hips to bring him back in deep. You will die, you will lose control of... everything... forever.

Caleb is staring at you, his eyes wide open. His penis, his fingers and the smell of his sweat take you further, far from the self you know, to a place where you could leap off the edge and fall forever and love the falling and not care for a second about who you were or where you’d been.

6

He wants you to keep working as he strokes the soft skin in the crook of your elbow and breathes hot breath on the back of your neck.

It’s probably not the most normal apprenticeship.

Passion and discipline, equally employed, he says, are the keys to being an artist.

He has a funny way of mixing the two.

“You can study whatever you want, but all you have is what’s in you. Figure out how to get it from your head into the work,” he says.

“But.. .”

“Shut up, Sixteen, I’m working.”