The Painting of Porcupine City (3 page)

“So where’s that map go?” I said, and I left the room before receiving an answer.

Alex insisted on walking.

He offered as reasons (a) the “relaxing breeze” that had sprung up and (b) his need for exercise, but I suspected it was because he wanted to use the giant map he’d printed. For all the time I’d known him Alex had a weird fixation with maps and cartography that ran counter to everything else I knew about him. His favorite website (after Manhunt) was Google Earth. “If you use a map,” he once told me, “everything is a treasure hunt.” It was sort of endearing. Until today.

The map he’d printed took us, after an hour of twists and turns down vaguely suburban streets, along a flat, straight highway that gave the impression of rural Nebraska. Every so often a car or truck would blow a wake of hot sand against our legs. I could barely believe this was happening to me. The dust was on my face, was salty when I licked my lips, was gritty when I wiped sweat off my forehead. I needed another shower and I was barely dry from the last one.

“I guess I’m not clear on why we’re going all the way out here. There
must
be some place you can mail the film.”

He patted the messenger bag thumping at his hip. “They could get lost in the mail. I don’t want to take any
risks
.”

“And amazingly we’re back to the part where I ask you what’s in the pictures.”

“Heh. Soon.” He gave the map a look after shuffling some pages. “We go under this bridge,” he said, pointing, as if there were any other way to go.

“You need a pith helmet,” I told him.

I was grateful for the shade under the graffiti-covered overpass and slowed down to make it last. On the concrete among the typical tags and spraypainted anarchy (someone wanted to FUCK THE POLICE) was another Fact, as I’d come to think of them. The Facts were all over Boston—on bridges, in alleys, sometimes on the sides of post office trucks. Affirmations of obvious things, and almost always grammatical nightmares. This one said THIS IS WAY in tall colorful letters on a street that receded into a fictional distance; as the street receded and narrowed it became the shoes of a portly yellow man in a too-small blue business suit, wiping his stylized brow.

“What do you make of these?”

“The pictures?” Alex said. “Ugly. All those yellow people with their creepy eyes. And they’re
every
where. They need to find that guy and lock him up.”

“I think I like them.”

“Let’s push on. We’re almost there.”

“
Push on?
You definitely need a pith helmet.”

As we walked I dragged a finger along the white and blue word WAY. Despite the grammar I did like them, though I often imagined going around with a red marker and filling in the missing words. THIS IS
THE
WAY.

We came out the other side of the overpass and our heads bent under the slamming sun, as though the rays had weight. Far in the distance, much like the Fact, the highway tapered to street. A switching traffic light wobbled there like a mirage. That was a long way away, though—if it was even real.

I was browsing the Canons

and I thought I heard the clerk tell Alex “tomorrow.” Then I definitely heard Alex say it back.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I mumbled. After that walk,
tomorrow
was the last word I wanted to hear. My balls were rubbed raw, my shirt was soaked, my feet probably had cherry-sized blisters. I wanted this errand done. I put down the camera.

“We can just wait for those,” I told the clerk.

But the clerk said that the photo guy was out sick, that tomorrow was the earliest they could do.

“You only have one photo guy? This is a camera store.”

The clerk shrugged. “Everything’s digital now.”

“Tomorrow’s OK,” Alex said. He didn’t seem nearly annoyed enough for my taste, so I glared, and he said, “Well, Fletch, what
else
do we have to
do?
” Then he guffawed—ha!—and started fumbling with his bag.

We left the disposable camera

with the clerk—though when the moment came Alex seemed weirdly reluctant to hand it over; just what was on that fucking film anyway?—and stepped into the dreary glow of the Watertown Mall. Muzak wafted from the walls. People milled around carrying bags. A cluster of tween girls giggled over something on a phone.

“Why do you even need pictures developed?” I said. “Don’t you have a digital camera?”

“It was a party favor. From that wedding I went to. We were supposed to take pictures and leave it but I snatched it.”

“Oh. Can we at least take a cab back? Now that we know it’s like 600 miles. I’ll pay for it.”

“We can do that.” He smiled. “And tomorrow too.” In a goofy burst of camaraderie he attempted to thread his fingers through mine, but I kept mine stiff and it didn’t take.

On the ride back to his place I thought about the key-touching guy. I wondered what his name was. I wondered whether his mohawk was really overgrown, and if he would Bic down the sides again—or whether his hair was cut that way in a Newbury Street salon to mimic a style without committing to its full effect. If the latter, was he some kind of poser or did he have a straight-laced job and was trying to get away with as much as he could?

What bothered me more than anything was that I’d never know. It was highly likely that I’d never see him again, that the moment we shared when he touched his keys was a single, isolated event.

The cab stopped in front of Alex’s sublet and my daydreams poofed into clouds of hot air.

Outside it grew dark

and inside lights were turned on sparingly to avoid adding to the heat. We played Scrabble in the living room in the quiet and the dim light waiting until it was late enough to go out.

When I asked if we should try to round up some people Alex said, “Let’s just go out dancing ourselves. It’ll be like a date—ha!”

We took a cab downtown

and dropped in on one of our usual places. The lights and the
oomp oomp oomp
were welcoming enough, familiar enough, but the last dozen or two-dozen or hundred times we’d come here I’d been feeling bored. I danced with Alex for a while and then suddenly Alex was dancing with someone else, a tall shirtless beanpole with bangs like a sheepdog. I took that opportunity to slip outside, which over the last hundred times had become my territory.

Once upon a time I was all about the bump-and-grind, the sparkling shirtlessness, because it was a sure-fire way to get a dance-floor make-out session, and usually to meet someone to spend the night with. Eventually I learned the stories were better outside. Outside is where the characters were. The lonely guys who’d gotten separated from (or ditched by) their friends. The guys who were getting burned by other guys inside. The guys who came outside for a smoke. Inside the guys were sweaty and delirious but outside they were angsty and ready to leave. And they might as well leave with me.

I breathed in humid night air tinged with exhaust. Street lamps and neon signs covered the street in a fetid, hazy light. The music faded as the door closed behind me. I checked that my phone was on for Alex, slid it back in my pocket, and looked up to check things out.

There were a few options but most of them were already having intimate relations with their phones. One guy was alone, fiddling with the sleeve buckle of a leather jacket it was way too hot to be wearing; I didn’t like the look of him. I walked over toward the only other non-chatting guy, a guy leaning with his hip against a
Phoenix
box. Cute, nice arms, t-shirt that wasn’t trying too hard. He was smoking and staring intently at something across the street. I sat down on the curb four or five feet away from him.

“I was hoping it’d be cooler out here,” I said, “but man, this weather.” Say what you will, but the weather is a good start on anybody.

“Yeah.” He looked down at me when I looked up. There was a twitch across his brow that might’ve signaled recognition, but since he didn’t look familiar to me I was pretty sure he was deciding I was cute. “It’s murder.”

“Is it supposed to be this hot in May?” I plucked at my shirt. “I don’t think it is. Maybe that’s why our friend over there still has his jacket on.”

“Global warming, man. The world’s on fire.” He flicked his cigarette butt into the gutter, gave a little tug on the thighs of his jeans before sitting down—he was wearing those slip-on Vans and (I noticed) no socks. I’m not one of those guys who’s into feet but I am, like a Victorian-era gawker, a sucker for ankles. “Fletcher, right?”

OK, I wasn’t expecting him to know my name. I deflected with stagecraft. “Doth my reputation precede me?”

He laughed, a nice laugh. If he lived nearby we could go to his place and get jiggy and I could be back before Alex was done dancing with the beanpole.

“Not exactly,” he said. “I guess you don’t remember?” He gave me a moment to remember and then filled me in when I clearly didn’t. “We hooked up a year or so ago. Not here, at the other place.” He gestured vaguely down the street and then knocked another cigarette out of the pack, put it to his lips. “Smoke?”

“Nah, thanks, I quit. Sorry, I guess I don’t remember.”

“S’OK. I wore glasses then.”

“Ah.”

“We went to your place. Third floor? Little red-haired chick for a roommate? Typewriter in your bedroom.” The details—he wasn’t making this up—made me feel like a total fuckhead.

“Yeah. Hmm. That’s me.”

Cupping his hand, he transferred the glow from a match to the end of his cigarette. “I waited to see if you’d call. Then I mentioned you to my buddy and found out you didn’t call him either.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” He was quiet a minute. “You here with friends?”

“One,” I said, happy to change the subject. “You?”

“Me and the ex are trying to do the let’s-hang-out-as-friends thing. Totally awkward. I needed a smoke or five.”

“I hear friendships with exes are tricky waters to navigate.”

“Only hear?”

“Well. Let’s just say you and your buddy aren’t the only guys I’ve never called back. —Excuse me a second.” My phone was buzzing. A text. Alex, with multiple question marks, wanted to know where I was. Before I finished typing a reply, he came strutting up the sidewalk.

“There you are,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Found me.”

“Can we leave?”

“Already? I was talking to—my friend here.” The one whose name I still could not remember.

Alex nodded to the guy and said to me, “If it’s OK I’d really like to leave.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you in the cab, OK?” He turned to the guy. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Can you give him your number or something and you guys can pick this up later?”

The guy gave a little shrug. “It’s probably already in his phone.”

Alex looked at me and raised his eyebrows and went to grab a cab.

“So. Have a nice night,” I said to the guy. “I hope things smooth out with your ex.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey,” I said, turning back, “how was it last year? With me. Fond memories?”

“I’m not plucking flower petals for you or anything.” He breathed out some smoke. “Fond enough.”

To the cabbie I gave

my own address, and then Alex corrected me by providing the address of his sublet.

“Oh,” I said, “yeah, that’s right.” Only then did I realize how flustered my encounter with the Forgotten Trick had left me.

“Sorry I cock-blocked you,” Alex told me quietly. “I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t in the middle of a nightmare.”

“You didn’t. It was
my
nightmare. He says I slept with him a year ago but I don’t even remember him.”

“Maybe he’s lying.”

“No. He described my bedroom.”

“Oh. Well that’s embarrassing. For him, I mean. He must’ve been totally forgettable in bed.”

“Yeah. Maybe. So what was your nightmare?”

“I saw this guy Jimmy in there and bolted.”

“That’s all? Who’s Jimmy?”

“Oh it’s this whole big thing. Remember that wedding I went to a couple of weeks ago?”

“The wedding with the camera?”

“Mm. There was this guy there, we were at the same table. Hit it off.”

“Jimmy.”

He nodded. “Gorgeous. Funny.”

“You didn’t tell me about this.”

“We spent the night together. Me and Wedding Jimmy. The night and the whole next day. Largely in his bed. He was so good and it felt so good and he was
nice
too. I was like in shock.”

“Wow. So what happened?”

“Nothing. At the end when we had to go home I was like,
When can I see you again?
and he was all,
Actually, I kind of have a boyfriend.
Can you believe it? So tragically cliché.” He knocked his head against the window and sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? Are
you
his boyfriend?”

“Hah.”

“But thanks.”

“So then what’s with the photos?”

“I don’t know. Mementos.”

“Of you and him?”

He shrugged.

“X-rated?”

“No. PG-13. Well, we’re gay, so R.”

“You waited a month to have them developed?”

“I guess I wasn’t ready. Or I wanted an audience. I probably shouldn’t even pick them up.”

“No, you should see them. They’ve gained a mythic quality in your mind. You’ll see them and you’ll see he’s just a dude, you know? Like all the others.”

I put my elbows on

the window sill and looked down at the shadowy street.
Fond enough.
The words still stung. I thought of the key-touching guy and searched my mind to make sure I’d never been with
him
before. I was sure I hadn’t, but there must’ve been a reason I was still thinking about him. No way should I be harping on a random guy over some three-second quote-unquote
moment
. He touched his keys. Big whoop. As if that meant anything. It felt like it did, though. It felt like I knew him, more than guys I’d actually been with. I lay back down on the couch and adjusted the pillow and fixed the sheet—it kept sliding off the leather.