The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (18 page)

“Congratulations.”

“Do you?”

“Go to sleep.”

***

He turned his Mustang onto Old Colony Road. Marissa
was in the passenger seat dressed as a zombie stewardess—her hair, dyed
red, was tied up to look like a geyser of blood, and her torn black blazer
sported a bloody wings pin.

“I wish I was a kid again,” Zane said. “Not the suckfest
that was my teens. But like seven would be good.”

“Just so you can go trick-or-treating?” she said, reaching
over to lower the
Fugue In D Minor
.

Zane nodded. “Yeah.”

She looked back at me and shook her head. “I told you boys
you’d feel more Halloweeny if you got dressed up. But nooo, you’d rather
blubber over lost youth instead.”

Zane’s headlights sliced the fog that floated across the
street and wrapped up houses full of sugar-high kids. We’d gone to a showing of
the original
King Kong
that started
at ten; now it was almost one.

“You need to drop me off soon,” said Marissa. “I have to
open tomorrow.” She looked back at me again. “Unless I can get there around
noon?”

“Alas,” I said, “we can’t disappoint the fanboys.”

“God forbid,” she grunted. “Well you guys feel free to
continue carousing without me.”

Zane pulled up in front of Marissa’s house, an unassuming
ranch with its porch light on and a plump scarecrow tied to the front banister.
She and I got out, me to take her place in the front.

“Don’t you want your CD?” I said.

“I’ll get it later. There’s a few more tracks on there for
you to enjoy,” she said. “Now don’t get into any trouble.” She stuffed a half a
bag of peanut M&Ms into her pocket. “Oh, what the hell, it’s Halloween.
Just don’t get arrested.” She beat her fists against her chest like Kong and
started walking up the leaf-strewn driveway.

I got in the car and buckled my seatbelt, watching as she
waved and went in the house. Her porch lights went dark and the goofy scarecrow
turned sinister in the headlights.

I pushed eject on the stereo and Marissa’s mix-CD came
sliding out.

“Sorry, dude,” I said. “I can’t take any more
Monster Mash
.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Zane said. “I love Marissa,
but damn, she’s got lousy taste in holiday music.”

“It’s just that holiday music itself is in bad taste.”

“Touché.” He flicked off his high beams when a car passed.
“So where are we headed?”

“I don’t care. It just seems too early to go home. We could
always go throw eggs at something.”

“I have no eggs, but I do have a crate of toilet paper in
the trunk.”

“That works.”

He chuckled. “I wouldn’t mind some food, actually,” he said.
“McDonald’s?”

“Anywhere else. I had a traumatic experience in the drive thru
last week.”

“Oh, that’s right. Your girlfriend left you for the
Hamburgler.”

“Worse. Someone named Bernie.”

“I don’t think it’s open this late, anyway. Wendy’s?”

“OK.”

We bought a few square burgers at the window and sat in the
car at the edge of the parking lot. On the property next door a building was going
up. Steel girders and bricks caught the moonlight like bones. Zane’s window was
open a few inches and the night air whistled through. It was warm for the first
day of November.

“How many trick-or-treaters did you get?” Zane said. He was
scraping the pickles off his second cheeseburger with a burnt fry. He had eaten
the ones on the first.

“Zero. I kept the lights off.”

“No, really? Isn’t that pretty of Scroogey of you?”

“What are you, the Ghost of Halloween Past?”

“That’s my cousin. I’m the Ghost of Halloween Future.”

“Oh you are, are you? Fine. Next year I’ll take out a loan
and buy those six-inch Hershey bars.”

“You’ll find me at your door, you do that.”

“... As a trick or a treat?”

“Both, if you want.”

I felt my cheeks grow warm and I took a quick bite of my
burger. “What are they building here anyway?”

“Dunno,” he said. “I was telling Simon we should do some
kind of Halloween promotion at the store. Have people dressed as superheroes
give out candy or whatever.”

“You just want an excuse to wear spandex.”

“So?”

“Haha. And he didn’t go for it?”

“Are you surprised?”

“I guess not.”

“
Comic books are not
toys
,
Vince
,” he said. Simon’s
mantra. Simon’s
voice
.

“That’s really creepy. You sound just like him.”

“I spend enough time with him,” he said. “Though not as much
since he married his woman. I miss him.”

“He’s growing up. What is he now, forty-five? Are you going
to eat those pickles?”

“No, take them.” He dragged the foil wrapper off his lap
just enough so that I wouldn’t have to pick the pickles right off his penis. I
slid the pickle slices under my bread. “Probably a Blockbuster,” he said,
looking at the construction.

We finished our food and rolled the wrappers into balls,
stuffed wrappers into empty fries boxes, stuffed boxes into paper bags. Zane went
out to trash them.

He got back in the car and put the key in the ignition but
didn’t turn it all the way, just enough to make his cheeks glow speedometer green.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“You looked like you were going to say something.”

“I was, but fast food’s bad.”

“For what?”

“Your health, Vincent,” he said. “Want to go to the beach?”

We drove across town and parked and stood on the
wall of concrete that divided the beach from the street, looking out at the
sea. A quarter-mile down, people were dancing around a campfire built on the
sand; aside from that the beach was empty. The bright moon illuminated nothing
but the sand and the blue-black waves of Nantucket Sound.

“Let’s go down,” Zane said, nudging my arm. He squatted down
and dropped off the wall, hitting the sand hard and falling back on his butt. “
Ooof
.”

“Are you all right?” I asked dryly, looking down.

“No.”

“Did you break something?”

With a blank expression he touched his butt. “Uh oh.”

“What?”

“There’s a crack in my ass.” He starting hobbling around
like an old man and made me laugh.

I swung my legs over the edge and hopped down. The breeze
blowing off the ocean had a bite, a reminder that this was November and not
summertime.

We walked down to where the waves lapped the ridge of
seaweed at the top of the tide’s reach. I put my hands in the pocket of my
hooded sweatshirt and flicked at a hangnail on my thumb.

“Do you like the beach in the summer?” he said.

“Yeah. It’s a good place to people-watch.”

“I think it’s funny how people stake out their little
squares of sand. They get all territorial.”

“Like
Lord of the
Flies
down there,” I said.

“They’re roasting Piggy, I bet,” he said and I laughed again.
He looked down at his feet and smoothed a half-circle in the sand with his
sneaker. Shells turned up in it, bits of purple clam shell like the kind my
driveway was made of. Waves rolled in, breaking at our feet in a steady thrum
that made me feel like falling asleep standing up—or maybe lying down,
watching for UFOs with Zane. “I always have fun with you, Vince.”

“Me too.”

“I was wondering.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask
if you would want to—go out some time. With me.”

My heart started to pound but I felt like laughing, too,
because now everything was just a formality, a ritual, a simple dance around a
fire. The topic had been broached; the hard part was done.

“We go out all the time,” I said with a smirk.

“Bastard, you know what I mean.”

“So what you have in mind would be like... a date, then?”

“Yes, that’s what I have in mind, yes. You’re a dope. I’m
going to smack you. Come here.”

“Can you catch me?” I slipped away from him and ran a few
yards over crackling seaweed.

“Come here!”

He chased me and grabbed my arm and we stopped, neither of
us sure what to do with this contact. He let go and we stood side by side, our
hands in our pockets.

“Where should we go on our date?” I said. “Maybe to the
beach?”

He laughed. “I guess we could go to the beach.” He looked
around. “Oh wow, here we are.”

“You did say you were the Ghost of Halloween Future.”

“That’s true.”

I could tell he felt relieved. How long had he been planning
this? How long had I wanted it myself? And yet—and yet—maybe I was
wrong about the hard part being over. Something felt off, in a way that made me
realize I was trying to trick myself into believing I was going to roll with
this. My mind felt full; it churned with too many other faces. But his was
smiling.

“Can I...”

“What?” I said. Now he was laughing. “Why are you laughing?”

“Can I kiss you?” God, he was so cute. It made my chest
hurt.

“Only if you tell me why you’re laughing first.”

“Because I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. There. Can
I now?”

“Yeah.”

His tongue ran over his lips, subconsciously wetting them in
preparation. He stepped closer and his lips parted in a grin right before they
met mine; I could feel his smile with my lips. His mouth was soft, his chin
like the skin of a peach—kind of like Melanie’s. He pulled his hand from
his sweatshirt pocket and put it inside mine; his warm fingers closed around my
hand. His thumb found my hangnail and tried to smooth it down.

“Wait,” I said. “Hold on.” I took a step back. My heels
knocked against a driftwood log half-buried in the sand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, a reflex, his eyes confused. “What’s
wrong? Is it too soon?”

“It’s not about Melanie,” I said, “I don’t think.”

“Do you— Should I— Should I not have done that?”

“I don’t know.” I felt suddenly feverish with the cold ocean
air rolling across my forehead and my embarrassed-red cheeks.

“Do I have mustard breath?”

“Zane...”

“...?” He was waiting.

“I don’t know, we
work
together.” I said it because I had to say something and it was the first thing
I thought of. “I just— It’s probably not a good idea, you know?”

“Do you really think Simon would care, though? Even if he
did, it’s not like Golden Age is some big important career we’re going to
jeopardize.”

He’d had salt on his lips. “It’s how I feel,” I told him.
“I’m sorry.”

I stepped on one end of the driftwood and the other end
sprang up, kicking sand and broken shells high into the air.

*

A reflection from something on the street caught
one of the prisms in Beth’s window and three purple dots appeared on the wall
and slid down to the floor.

“I’m not tired,” Zane said. “And anyway, you didn’t answer
me. Do you wish I hadn’t kissed you?”

“Whether I regret it or not doesn’t matter,” I said. “I
think it’s best for everyone if it just gets written out of our continuity.”

“You can only ret-con comic books, Vince. You can’t ret-con
real life.” For a long time we lay quiet. The voices in the bedroom droned and
in a while they stopped too. After a few minutes of what I perceived as almost
total silence, Zane whispered, “Here, give me your hand.”

I allowed it to be lifted off my chest; he brought my arm
across the gap between us and laid my hand palm-up on his belly. He traced his
finger like a fortune teller over the lines of my palm. I didn’t pull away or
feel uncomfortable. It was remarkably without insinuation—gentle, like
what a mother might do to a little kid during a thunder storm, to quiet him.
After a few minutes I felt my eyelids get heavier and I started to believe for
the first time all evening that I might actually fall asleep. I half expected
Zane to start in on a lullaby. It was like he was trying to comfort me, or
distract me. After a minute I realized that’s exactly what he was doing.

In the other room, Griff and Beth were making love.

“Oh god.” I yanked my hand back and sat up.

“Don’t be upset, dude,” Zane said. The way he said
dude
reminded me of Griff, and he was
not Griff. Definitely not Griff. Because Griff was in the other room. With
Beth. Fucking. “It’s a
good
thing,
right?”

“No, it’s not.”

“He would probably disagree with you on that.”

He leaned up on his elbow and looked first out the window
and then down at me. “It’s snowing,” he whispered.

“Zane, enough!”

I kicked aside the blanket and got off the mattress,
dragging the blanket behind me, tripping, throwing it on the floor. I
straightened my pants.

“Where are you going?”

“Bathroom.”

When I was passing through the kitchen I heard Beth say,
muffled, through the door, “You
what
?”

And then the bedroom door swung open and Griff nearly
collided with me. He wore only boxers and they were hiked up way past his
belly-button.

“Is it sex if you don’t come?” he said. He squinted, a look
that wanted to be accompanied by a forehead slap.

“Yes,” I said as though I’d spent all evening pondering the
question and finally received it from the swirls in the ceiling plaster. “She
kick you out?”

“I’m kicking myself out. Sorry, but— Get your stuff.”
He went into the living room gasping like a person on the verge of
hyperventilating.

Beth appeared at the bedroom door, tying the belt of a pale
yellow robe around her waist. Behind her Nosebag jumped onto the bed, where
white papers were scattered like trampled confetti.

“Vince,” she said curtly to silence me before I said
anything. She pushed a balled-up wad of fabric against my chest and I realized
it was Griff’s shirt. She relaxed noticeably as soon as I had it in my hands.