Know Not Why: A Novel (29 page)

“Well, I’m sure he helped to fuck it up,” I say.
I’m pretty sure it’s because I’m feeling at least some level of
sympathy, which is kind of annoying. “That guy’s a douche.”

Arthur laughs. It’s just a short quasi-bitter
laugh, but it helps to break the ice a little. After a few seconds,
he slides the mug of tea back over to me.

“My tea privileges are reinstated?”

“For now. I’d tread carefully if I were
you.”

“Got it. You don’t need to worry about me. As
the world’s best grandma, I’ve got certified skills.”

He laughs again. This one’s a little less
bitter.

“You know why I hired you?” he says then.

“Because Kristy forced you to so she could
matchmake us to her heart’s content?”

“There were a few other applicants,” he says,
looking thoughtful. “All young women. All typical store material.
All much more qualified than you.
You
obviously didn’t like
me, and you were obviously full of shit.”

“So why’d you hire me?”

He pauses, like he’s figuring out how to say it.
Whatever it is. “I was quite frustrated with everything. I wanted
to do something different. And a little stupid.”

“You’re just lovely,” I say. “You know that,
right?”

“I believe I may have a lot of subconscious
bitterness toward the store. I think I wanted to inflict you upon
it.”

“Seriously. Lovely.” I take a sip of my tea,
which is finally cool enough to drink. It’s okay. It’s tea.

I look back up to see that Arthur’s staring at
me.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re funny and quick and interesting and
aggravating and attractive. It’s such a wonderful relief to be with
you.” He says it fast, like he’s not used to saying stuff he really
means. It sounds like reading off a grocery list, more than
anything, but I can’t help liking it.

“Yeah,” I say, “why’s that?”

A little wonderingly, he says, “You’re exactly
who I never would have picked out for myself.”

“Yeah, well.” I snort. “Right back atcha.”

“And it’s easy to tell you’re unhappy.”

“Really?” I ask, and this awkward laugh slips
out. “I always thought I hid it real well.”

“Did you?”

“That’s where most of the funny comes from.” It
feels a little uncomfortable saying that out loud. It’s not like
it’s a deeply hidden truth, or anything, but no one really
wants
to admit that the reason they make everything in their
existence a joke is that otherwise the bleakness of it all would
eat them alive.

“That makes sense,” Arthur says. “I’m not
exactly delirious with contentment myself.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I figured.”

“Believe it or not, I’m not precisely living the
dream. I didn’t go to Berklee with the intention of spending my
life running an overpriced, failing arts and crafts store.”

“You went to Berklee?” It strikes me as the sort
of thing I should have known.

“I went to Berklee,” he confirms, like it’s this
morbidly funny joke.

“Wow.” Lamely, I ask, “Why are you here?”

“My older sister was supposed to take over the
store. It’s what had always been intended. But then she got
married, and her husband didn’t want to stay here. My father’s
health got bad, and he wanted to retire, and, well. I had to come
home and help out.”

“Had to?”

“My family’s on the conservative side of
things,” he explains, meeting my eyes. “I don’t think it was
precisely a joy for them to find out they had a gay son. They’ve
always been accepting, but, well. It would take more delusion than
I can muster to pretend they’re truly happy with it.”

“So you’re, what, making it up to them?”

“I suppose so,” he says. He keeps his voice
unaffected, but something about his face changes a little.

I feel a flicker of – I don’t even know what.
Some variation of gratitude, but guiltier and heavier. It’s just,
my mom would never do that to me, and I know it. My dad might have
been another story, but it’s not like that matters now. My mom?
Never, never, never, plain and simple. I could probably be into
goats, sexy style, and she still wouldn’t use it against me. She’d
want me to achieve whatever goat-wooing dreams I set my mind to.
Bring Mrs. Goat home for the holidays.

It makes me feel worse, in a way, because that
doesn’t change the fact that I’m still as stuck as Arthur is.

“I got into USC,” I tell the tabletop. “In
California. I mostly just wanted to move somewhere without winter,
see what that was like. But my dad died in a car wreck. My mom was
driving and made it out with a broken arm and some scratches, and
she thinks she killed him, or whatever. She’s still not really
doing so well. I don’t think she’s ever really gonna– so I thought
I should maybe stay with her. So that’s why I … stayed with her.” I
look up at him. He looks sort of like he just got hit, even though
it’s a small town and there’s no way he didn’t know it already. I
guess it must be different, hearing it firsthand.

“Fuckin’ unhealthy dads, huh?” I throw in,
trying to lighten the mood. “Although I guess mine’s got yours
beat.”

“Howie,” Arthur says, sounding pained.

I shrug it off. I’m real good at shrugging it
off. They should give out medals. “It’s okay. Or. It’s not okay.
Whatever. But it is. It just … is. It’s how things are. No point in
getting upset over it.”

“I’m here if you ever need someone to talk to.”
It’s the standard line, but I believe him when he says it.

“Thanks,” I reply automatically. Then, because
somehow honesty’s become the theme of the evening, I add, “I never
talk to anyone.”

He gives me a wry smile. “Me either.”

+

Lindsay and I dated – hooked up, whatever – for
like six months, but when I think back to the time I spent with
her, I always remember it as summer. There was this one afternoon
where it was crazy hot, this muggy sticky heat that seems
impossible when you think about it in the wintertime. We went to
the movies so we could make out somewhere with air conditioning. I
can’t remember what the movie was, which either means it was pretty
crappy or the making out was pretty spectacular. To be honest, the
movie probably sucked.

Afterward, we walked around town, rocking that
useless teenage summer lethargy. We held hands, not because we were
so wild about each other we couldn’t stand not to be up in each
other’s metacarpal business, but just because … I dunno. We were
supposed to. Her hand was hot and sweaty and I’m sure mine wasn’t
exactly a cool, silky paradise either. I wasn’t over the moon or
anything. I wasn’t even happy, I guess. But I remember every time a
car would pass or someone would walk by us or whatever, I’d get
this lame, almost proud feeling. This sense of, ‘Yeah, that’s
right. Look at me. Check me out, not walking alone.’

We were in the middle of some uninteresting
conversation – she was never much with the wit or the wordplay,
Lindsay, and I figured out real fast not to bother with it around
her because it’d just make her confused – when all of a sudden, she
stopped. She took her hand out of mine, and she reached up and
rested her fingers really gently on my cheek. She looked up at me
with this deep concentration. And even though we didn’t have
anything in common, and we didn’t even really like each other that
much, in that second, I really think I loved her. Just for
bothering to look at me like that.

“You’ve got something on your face,” she said
then, wrinkling her nose. “Like, mustard. Did you eat a
hotdog?”

Then she started trying to wipe it off with her
thumb.

For some reason I tell Arthur about this. By the
time I do, we’ve been talking for a long time. Hours, maybe. Not
about anything that special or profound. Just random stuff. Life
stuff. He tells me about breaking his arm when he was nine, his
mom’s chocolate chip cookies, his family’s first dog, the time
Jesse Gould kissed him in the deserted chemistry lab in tenth grade
and then never looked him in the eyes again. (“No way,” I say,
“Jesse Gould? The Jesse Gould who dated Bridget Allen for like all
of high school?” “You,” Arthur says, “are the first person I’ve
ever spilled this information to. Use it well.” “Jesse fucking
Gould,” I say, shaking my head in wonder.) The time Dylan Faber
kissed him at a party during the first week of college and then
called him the next morning. How good that felt. How bad it felt to
move back here afterwards and run into Jesse at the grocery store.
He tells me he’s read
The Remains of the Day
thirteen times
since he came back to this town, and it always guts him because he
knows he’s wasting his life here. He confesses a great and
inexplicable love for Garbage, a band he discovered via yelling at
Cora for playing one of their albums constantly at work. There
isn’t much about “Sex Never Goes Out Of Fashion,” he says, that
matches the arts and crafts store atmosphere. He isn’t nearly as
serious as people think he is, but he put that mask on a long time
ago and doesn’t know how to take it off.

“I don’t think you’re so serious,” I tell him.
We’re sitting on the futon, leaning against each other.

“Yes, well,” he says, “most people haven’t been
fondled by me in a supply closet.”

“Sucks to be most people,” I declare, and he
laughs.

I tell him that Jurassic Park is my favorite
movie of all time but I have always told people it’s Scarface,
because I wanted to watch it when I was twelve and my parents
wouldn’t let me and this is my obscure and lasting revenge. I tell
him about the fact that whenever Dennis and I played Jurassic Park,
I had to be the dinosaur and he got to be Sam Neill, and he always,
always wound up killing me even though as a dinosaur, that was kind
of supposed to be my job. He never even let velociraptor-me win. I
tell him about my dad’s string of “So, Howard, got a girlfriend
yet?” jokes that weren’t jokes, how that started in seventh grade
and just kept going. I tell him about trying pot and hating it;
getting drunk and hating it; being glad that Amber was my best
friend, because having to prove myself to her didn’t mean doing a
bunch of dumb shit, it meant reading
Lord of the Flies
for
English class instead of watching the movie version. I tell him
about the girls I liked – liked with grand, futile, faraway passion
– and how I always wanted to back away on the rare occasion that
they got close. But him, I want him close. He’s the only person who
hasn’t made me feel like I’m off, or built wrong; meant only for
the futile and faraway. We’re both raspy-voiced now, spent on
talking. He looks at me like he wants to be kissing me; I beat him
to it and kiss him first.

We’re the greatest kind of mess, kissing and
laughing at nothing in particular, hands trying to be everywhere
all at once, hard and happy against each other. I remember, in the
dim corner of my brain that hasn’t been switched off yet by
Arthur’s touch, this poem I had to read for a class ages ago, one I
liked the concept of, something about liking your body with someone
else’s body because suddenly it’s so new a thing. I can’t believe
I’m thinking about poems right now. Then again, maybe these are the
moments that poems are for.

“There’s one last thing I should tell you,” I
say. “I got this job to get laid.”

He laughs.

“No,” I say, but I’m laughing too, because it’s
the world’s stupidest idea and because somehow, somehow, it looks
like it worked anyway, “seriously. That was my master plan. I don’t
really—ohh—” Hands in good places, “—I don’t really care so much
about arts and crafts supplies.”

“No,” he says in mock-disbelief, breathing the
word into my neck.

“Shocking but true!”

“That’s a horrible plan,” Arthur says, “on so
many levels.” He kisses me, his hands sneaking up my shirt. “But
well done. Congratulations.”

“I didn’t think it would be you,” I say, a
little Arthur-drunk, not pausing to wonder whether this is the best
of confessions.

He pulls back to look at me. “Disappointed?”

“Hell no,” I say, eloquent beyond measure. But
God, do I mean it. I put my hand on his face. He turns his head to
kiss my palm.

“Are you – are you ready for this?” he asks,
suddenly serious. It seems like the most unnecessary question in
the history of earth, especially from someone who’s lying on top of
me; I feel like my readiness is pretty fucking obvious. But the
fact that he bothers to ask, when I can tell that he’s not exactly
unready himself – the guy’s a prince. I’ll never get used to being
this lucky.

“Not at all,” I reply. Never has sarcasm been
quite
so
sarcastic. “And I’d really appreciate it if you’d
quit trying to steal my virtue.”

He looks so earnestly concerned. “Really?”

“No,” I say, kissing his jaw, “not really. Not
really, y’know,
at all
.”

“Well,” he says; a smile curves his mouth,
promising wonderful acts of misbehavior, “in that case—”

And, well.

I like my body when it’s with his body.

Chapter Twenty

I get woken up by a dim buzzing sound. After a
few seconds, I realize it’s my phone going off.

It buzzes again.

“Nuisance,” Arthur grumbles.

Trust him to get even fancier in his word choice
when he’s sleeping.

“On it, buddy,” I promise, kissing him on the
shoulder. He makes an inarticulate, happy little moaning noise that
I most definitely do not hate. I get up, then scan the room for my
boxers and get them on. There’s just some inherent wrongness to me
walking around Kristy’s living space naked. Then I set off on a
mighty search for my pants, which I eventually discover underneath
the futon. Sorry, pants. You serve me well, by and large, but when
you gotta go, you gotta go.

I dig my phone out of my back pocket to find a
text from Mitch. It’s a pleasant surprise, really. In that it’s not
from Amber, and it hasn’t found a way to work that character limit
into a creatively gruesome description of my imminent doom.