Her ponytail was loose and low and her shirt was wrinkled, the same stain on its collar. She walked from painting to painting until, in front of the fifth one, the turtle she didn’t give to me, she collapsed.
I carried her back to the couch. I stroked her face, pushed away the loose strands of her hair, and tucked them behind her ears. When she opened her eyes, she smiled at me. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ve been on my feet all day.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m really thirsty.”
A glass of water appeared in my left hand. I gave it to her. She drank the whole thing in one clean gulp.
“You’re wonderful,” Jenny said. “Do you believe me? You’re wonderful.”
She stared at me. I stared back.
“I believe you,” I said.
I came hard, grabbing Billy’s ears tight and pulling him into me. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried not to leave Jenny or the living room, but I couldn’t will myself back, only random spots and patterns of color would flash across the dark of my lids.
“Wow,” Billy said. He crawled out from between my legs and lay next to me, wrapped his arms around me. “That was incredible.”
“Yeah,” I said, patting his back. I wanted to get out of bed and run to Dad’s shed, turn the TV on mute, chug a beer, and spend the rest of the night masturbating with my eyes closed.
I didn’t get up, didn’t go to the shed, not until much later, and then only for twenty minutes, to sip half a beer and watch an infomercial about shower curtains that were also picture frames, Popsicles with tiny flecks of kale in them, other necessary vitamins. I continued patting Billy’s back. My room’s ceiling was blank and white with no cracks. It was a good backdrop for me to project my thoughts and feelings onto and attempt to sort them into something resembling order and sense. “Incredible,” I said.
6
WE WERE LEGALLY REQUIRED to log a break each shift. Luckily, we weren’t legally required to eat the pizza during our break. Eddie’s pizza wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. It was just hard to eat the same thing every day, no matter what it was.
There was a taco truck Darryl and I liked that sat in the gas station parking lot across the street. We’d go at least three times a week. The salsa and guac were a little watery, but free. We’d wrap up a few slices with various toppings and make a trade with the guy in the truck, whom we simply called Taco Man. He knew we called him that too. Once, in a show of goodwill, Darryl asked for his real name in bad middle-school Spanish, and he just smirked. “Taco Man is fine.” Five slices of pizza got us three tacos each. This total was decided on with zero discussion and no one ever complained.
Peter had hired a new guy the week before. His name was Willie and he was at least forty, had neon-green braces and an intense love of show tunes. A good worker and a genuinely nice person, he drove Darryl and me absolutely fucking nuts.
We wished we liked him more, we really did. However, some days, he was just too much. He’d be singing something from Guys and Dolls as he scraped gum off the bottoms of the tables, and Darryl would turn to me and clear his throat, twice. “So—how’s Granny Mavis doing?” My dad’s mom was dead and named Dorothy and my mom’s mom I’d never met and only knew by a string of Korean expletives. Granny Mavis was no one, a code for “Willie is fucking killing me, and if we don’t get the fuck out of here I’ll fucking kill him—I’m fucking hungry.” “Granny is good,” I would say. “Her diaper just needs to be changed a lot.”
Darryl would get different kinds of tacos each time. I only ever got the al pastor. Since I didn’t get it every day, each bite was always perfect. We’d lean against the gas pumps and scarf them down like starving rats.
“We should be nicer to Willie,” I said, sucking the grease off my thumb. “I hate how he looks whenever we go to lunch together. We at least have to bring him something back.”
“I know, I know.” Darryl pulled out a plastic water bottle of liquid I didn’t question. He took a long swig. “He just makes me think of high school.”
“What? You weren’t popular in high school?”
“I was a fat black faggot in band,” he snorted. “What do you think?”
I wiped my lips on a napkin. “I didn’t know you played an instrument.”
“Yup. Trumpet.”
I started pulling at the napkin’s edges. “So,” I said, “you knew you were gay back then.”
“Yeah, I tried not to think much about it. Looking back, though, it was obvious.”
“How was it obvious?”
“It’s hard to explain.” Darryl began crumpling his napkin, making it a tight round ball. “I found and still find girls attractive, but only boys can ruin my life.”
I wanted to ask him for a pull from his water bottle. I watched a loose drop move down the side and nearly leaned over and licked it up. “I had this girlfriend back then,” Darryl continued. “Sweet girl, Maggie Tyler. I mentioned once that apples were my favorite fruit, and the next day she showed up at my locker with a paper bag full of the biggest, juiciest McIntoshes I’d ever seen. And she didn’t work at the grocery store or nothing. She bought me those with her own money. My mom liked her too, especially that she was a tiny, pretty white girl.”
“But?”
He laughed. “But, the entire time she was bringing me bags of apples and charming my mom, I was filling notebooks with the name of the boy who sat next to me in woodshop.”
“What was his name?”
“Jeremy Durant. He had a chin dimple and the smoothest hands. Made these beautiful oak steps so that his little dog, a Frenchie named Beyoncé, could get onto his bed all by herself.”
“Wow, now I have a crush on him.”
“Don’t.” He sighed, threw the napkin on the ground. “Once I filled a couple notebooks, I convinced myself that he felt the same way and that I should tell him. Predictably, it went terribly, and he told the whole school that trumpets weren’t the only things that I blew. Maggie told my mom. I came home that day to them holding each other and sobbing. My main thought when I saw Maggie was ‘Damn, I’m going to have to buy my own apples now.’ ”
I picked up his napkin and threw it into the trash can. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He’s a fool and I still think he’s gay. Like, his dog’s name was Beyoncé.”
“But how did you know? Like, how did you even know Jeremy was someone you could like?”