The Painting of Porcupine City (30 page)

And then he left.

I watched the plaster dust

settle. Clouds of it turned the bright carpet gray.

“Did you guys just break up?” Alex said.

“I don’t know. No. Maybe.”

Jimmy: “So I take it he said no?”

“Are you sure he’s even
gay?
” said Alex.

I walked to the door and pressed my cheek against it to look through the peephole, expecting to see him standing against the opposite wall, but there was just a distorted expanse of floral wallpaper. I put my fingers against the hole where the popped screw had been.

Jimmy again: “So that must mean
you
said
yes?
”

And then Alex: “What do they do if they don’t color eggs?”

I knelt, felt around on the carpet for the screw, found it and stood up to press it back in the hole.

“I don’t know what they do,” I said. Then I took my suit jacket off, stood twisting it slowly. I was stalling. Not thinking about going after Mateo, but wondering how to get this started. They were sitting on the bed, side by side, looking at me. I felt out of my element, and although I really wanted to do this, I was afraid. Promiscuity is, ironically, a refuge for the sexually vanilla. A new person is all the novelty and spice one needs. Rarely on the first date did I ever need to go beyond the basics.

I looked around. Why were there no drugs here? Pot wouldn’t help me but why not some ecstasy or at least a little alcohol? Something to loosen me up. Jimmy was some kind of health nut, but Alex— On the other hand, maybe I wanted to be sober for this, to capture all the details.

“So are you staying?” Jimmy said, and because it was Jimmy I said yes.

“I don’t know if he’ll come back,” I added, and to buy myself a few more seconds I went back to the door and had another look through the peephole. I felt lightheaded. I was even shivering. Tingly.

When I turned around again Jimmy and Alex were gone and the white bedspread was now a large, ill-defined, wobbling hump.

“Fletcher,” said the hump in a muffled voice, “come see our cave of solace.”

That’s how it started. Imagine. Such a kiddy thing to initiate something so adult. I stepped out of my shoes and went around to the side of the bed, wondering if I should be getting undressed yet. I lifted the edge of the bedspread and stole underneath, a runaway slipping into a circus tent.

“There you are,” Jimmy said. “Welcome. Nice suit.”

“Thanks.”

They were sitting Indian style with their heads bent under the weight of the bedspread. It was totally uncomfortable but it was serving its purpose. Alex had his hand on Jimmy’s crotch, rubbing lightly. I sat facing them, my knees touching one of each of theirs. I tugged closed the flap of the tent. Light came in pink through the blanket.

The closeness and the humidity from our breath beneath the polyester paralleled the touch Alex had delivered the night we slept together. What started warm got hot quickly, and buttons were fumbled with, t-shirts abandoned, and when they were, lips fell onto shoulders and clavicles, and fingers wormed through chest hair and unzippered flies.

The tent got pushed off—like a metamorphosis we’d gone in separately and come out entwined. At first the air was cold on my skin. And then warm when they were against me. And then hot. Sweat and spit made it moist.

It was clumsy, awkward, but if they noticed they didn’t seem to care. Neither did I. I was so glad to have my hands and my everything on Jimmy Perino, the one who until now had gotten away. He became the center, with Alex and me orbiting—kissing, licking, sucking—like desperate satellites. The bed creaked, sheets came unfitted and snapped away from corners. We switched places and wore serious expressions and after a minute I found myself on my back. Jimmy was straddling my chest—his bent knees seemed to grow out of my armpits like we were one pale, hairy creature. Alex was blowing me, reaching around with one hand to tug Jimmy’s dick; he thumped it against my nostrils.

“X said you’ve been a fan of this,” Jimmy said, taking his dick from Alex and touching it to my lips.

I had been—what I’d imagined of it. A fan, I mean. It was big, as big as Alex had said. Bigger. And now that it was here I felt only intimidated where I should’ve been aroused. Instead of giving the blowjob he was angling for, I skirted my lips across the cock and dipped against the balls, fanning my tongue across them. I don’t know why I thought this would be better, but it was—perhaps because it was a thing much more difficult to critique. Also because I knew Alex was pretty anti this. The hair was thick and the smell was of sweat and soap. I nudged Jimmy forward and shimmied myself down, my head sliding off the pillow. I zigzagged my tongue along the taint (t’ain’t the balls, t’ain’t the ass), back and back until it was the latter indeed. The cheeks closed off my nostrils and I gasped through my mouth and gagged, and then tipped my head back some more, made a couple quick and tentative touches of my tongue to the wrinkled place, and with an increasing and increasing urgency and devotion went, as they say, to town. It was a feeling that alternated, quick as a tick-tock, between being the greatest and worst thing I’d ever done. I felt a cold flash on my own dick and then a crushing pressure as Alex mounted me. The bed shuddered. My stomach turned. Jimmy thumped his hand flat against the wall again and again, vibrating the framed landscape above the headboard. He moved his leg to let me go deeper, and through the open slider window I caught a glimpse of the dark, bright city and I wondered where in all that Mateo had gone.

And so the night passed.

I awoke with the light

alone on the couch, shivering, a pillow against me as though I’d been trying to use it as a blanket. I was naked and my ribs on the left side hurt. My face was hot and scratched from their stubble. My lips felt big, and the taste. When I imagined the taste my stomach curdled.

In the bed Alex and Jimmy were under the covers sleeping, spooning, in a way that looked innocent, in a way that might even be called domestic. I hated them because they had come out of the night together and Mateo and I hadn’t.

I turned over and rested my head on my bicep and looked out the big glass sliding doors. The curtains were pushed open all the way—we’d fucked against the Boston cityscape—and I stared for a long time at the orange sky. On a tall building a light pulsed blue. Mateo was probably still out there somewhere, writing his Facts, his simple Izzies, across the city. Things seemed so clear for him, so black-and-white, even as they burst with color.

I started to sit up and the couch squeaked and I stopped. I knew if they woke up, regardless of whatever I felt and thought at this moment, one inviting look from Jimmy and I’d be in their bed again. Yet again. I rolled over, careful not to squeak the couch any more, and dropped to the floor on hands and knees. I crawled over to the bed, finding my outfit on the carpet piecemeal, a sock here, t-shirt there, mixed in with theirs. I found a complete set but couldn’t be sure it all was mine, and when I crept into the bathroom to get dressed I found that one of the socks wasn’t mine. I put it on anyway. The pants were mine, and that was the important thing. I looked at myself in the mirror, smoothed my hair, was slightly surprised to find my lips clean. Jimmy had been clean—had been, probably, prepared. That helped my stomach a little. I tip-toed out and grabbed my suit jacket off the back of the armchair, checked to make sure it contained phone, wallet and keys (and thought of the key-touching guy, still, with a stab). On the way out I grabbed my shoes.

The hallway was long

and bright and quiet, the narrow runner carpet piled here and there with half-eaten room-service meals. My walk of shame. I noticed something on my hand, white powder—plaster dust from the doorknob, remnants of Mateo’s exit.

I was waiting for the elevator when my clothes started singing.

I slipped my plastery fingers into a pocket and withdrew my phone. I hoped it was Mateo and was glad about that, was relieved by the clarity of my gladness:
Teo is who I want
. But in fact it was Jamar, and that was even better. If Jamar was calling me at this hour—it wasn’t yet 6:00 a.m.—he was about to provide a bonanza of distraction. I pressed the green button and said hello.

“Bradford— I’m sorry to wake you up.”

“S’OK. I was up. What’s up?”

“Fatherhood is imminent.”

“Baby’s coming?”

“Very imminent.”

“She’s not due for two weeks.”

“Tell that to the baby! I called my family. I wanted you to know. Diane and Wayne are on their way. I’m about to go in. They’re trying to find a johnnie-gown thing that’s tall enough for me.”

I was smiling and absently dropped the phone away from my ear. The morning had bloomed and the night and the taste and the hurt in my ribs seemed part of some other life. I returned the phone to my ear. “Brigham’s?”

“Yeah, you know how to get here?”

“I’ll cab it.”

“Hey, where are you, anyway?”

I considered. “With Teo.”

“The tao of Mateo! Bring him. I’m having a baby!”

The revolving hotel door released

me into the freezing dawn. I took a breath, stuffed my hands in my pockets. Beside me was a Stonehenge of yellow caution signs arranged on the sidewalk. Sudsy water tinted blue streaked through the circle in numerous streams, icy at their edges, across the concrete, pooling near the base of a parking meter and flowing over the curb into the gutter. I turned around, faced the front of the hotel. Two men in maintenance coveralls, big brushes in their hands and a hose on the ground between them, were frantically scrubbing an expanse of brick. The brushes flicked blue foam against their shirts, against the surrounding brick, out into the air. Foam ran down the brick in glistening streams like that fake spray-on snow people put on windows. I couldn’t tell what was under the foam, what was getting scrubbed, but I recognized the shape, the height, the size—and I knew it was for me. I took a deep breath, crossed my arms over my chest to try to warm myself, stepped to the edge of the sidewalk to pretend to watch for a cab.

I heard one of the guys say, “I don’t think this is gonna come off.”

“I bet it was that faggy guy came through in the suit,” the second guy said.

“The one was crying?”

The second guy nodded. “OK, let’s give it another rinse.”

I turned casually and saw them step back, foam like pompoms on their boots. One grabbed the hose, aimed, released a blast of water at the wall while the other raised his arm to shield his face. I could feel the mist on my own face. The air grayed-up, ice crystals freezing, and then, when the guy shut off the hose, it cleared.

“Awh Christ,” the first guy said. The soap was all on the sidewalk and the letters were mostly still on the wall. The guy looked at his brush in defeat, shook soap and water off the bristles. “When will they catch this motherfucker already?”

I turned to face the street again. Sudsy blue water flowed around my shoes until a cab saw my shivering finger and stopped.

“Brigham and Women’s,” I said as I got in.

“You sick?” The cabbie was peering at me in the rearview and then turned around for a better look. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

When I caught the first

glimpse of Jamar I skidded to a halt on the baby-blue line on the tile I was following. He was there in the waiting room, which was odd. That was the first thing.

The second thing was that he didn’t look the way I imagined a new father should look. He was sitting on the edge of one of the beige vinyl chairs, legs stretched out in front of him. Over one leg hung a folded blue johnnie. He was leaning forward, hands clasped between knees. He looked like he was praying. A maternity ward was a place for hopping hallelujahs, not silent, tense praying like this, especially from someone I’d never seen pray.

In the seats beside Jamar were his parents. They were angled toward each other, knees touching, but weren’t talking. Robbie stood by the big windows wearing flip-flops and baggy Spider-Man sweats. Their expressions stood in sharp contrast to a scene of Norman Rockwell contentment going on on the other side of the waiting room: a father rocking a drowsy preschooler on his knee, every so often leaning forward to whisper in the girl’s ear.

A woman I didn’t immediately recognize spoke to me, and I realized it was Cara’s friend Jenna, and with her another friend whose name I couldn’t recall. Good friends of Cara’s—they’d been to the apartment, they were at the wedding. Coworkers, I thought. And I found it strange that I knew so little about them—how I so often remembered so little about women. If they were men I’d have remembered their birthdays and what they were wearing last I saw them. If they were gay or bi or curious men I would likely remember them wearing nothing at all.

“Jenna. Hi. Is something wrong? I expected a—less somber mood.”

“Us too.”

The other girl, perhaps sensing she wasn’t remembered, extended her hand. “I’m Shelly.” When we shook I realized she hadn’t merely been introducing herself, she’d been looking for camaraderie—someone to get through this with. It sent a chill up my spine.

“Fletcher.”

“I know. Cara talks about you all the time.”

I smiled and excused myself and went over and slid into the chair beside Jamar.

“Hey Papa,” I said, choosing to ignore the scene.

“Bradford. You’re here.” He sat up and leaned back in the chair, dragged his legs in under it.

“I came right over. It’s a bad time for cabs—took me a while to get one. Why’s everyone look so mopey? Is the baby as ugly as you or something?” He showed the smallest of smiles. “I thought you were going in with her?”

“They were bringing me in and then someone came out of the room and they turned me around and I’ve been here.”

“Oh. Have you heard anything?”

“A nurse came out once. It’s going difficult. They’re going to do a C-section. But we’re not supposed to worry or anything. So, you know, since they told me not to worry, I’m not worrying at all. Easy as pie.”