“Even the shape of the earth,” he said. “It’s like it’s changing.”
Maybe the shape of the heart changed along with the shape of the earth. I didn’t know anything about physics or geometry or geography or the shape of things and why that somehow mattered so much.
“Gravity,” he said.
“Gravity?”
“You’re gravity,” he said.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
We fell silent again.
We had traveled away from a city built around a desert mountain, and moved to walking on white sand dunes in our bare feet—and now as I slowly drove my dad’s pickup and climbed up the curving road, I realized my truck would never have been able to take this trip. I was glad I’d listened to my dad. It occurred to me that Dante was always asking me what I was thinking and I hardly ever asked him that question, so I just asked, “What are you thinking?”
“I was thinking that people are very complicated. And people don’t have logical conversations. Well, because people aren’t logical. I mean, people aren’t all that consistent, if you think about it. They jump around from here to there to there because, well, like I said, people don’t think in straight lines, and that’s okay, it’s what makes people interesting, and maybe it’s what makes the world go ’round. And ’round and ’round and ’round—going nowhere, getting nowhere—and a lot of people don’t know how to think at all—they just know how to feel—”
“Like you.”
“That’s not where I was going. Yeah, but… so, yeah, I feel. Maybe I feel too much. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I also know how to think.”
“Ever the intellectual.”
“You’re one too, Ari—so shut the fuck up.”
“I never claimed to be one,” I said.
“You read. And you think. And you don’t buy everybody’s bullshit.”
“Well, except for yours.”
“I’m going to ignore that.”
I had to grin.
“It’s not such a good thing to feel if you don’t know how to think. So, my question is why do so many White people hate Black people when they’re the ones that brought them here in chains?”
“Because, well, because they feel guilty, I guess.”
“Exactly. And that doesn’t have anything to do with thinking. See, they don’t let themselves feel guilty, but they do feel guilty because they should feel guilty. They just bury all that crap inside, but they bury it alive and it’s all running around in there—and it gets all screwed up in their emotions and it comes out as hate. And that’s fucking crazy.”
“You come up with that theory all by yourself?”
“Nope. Wish I could take the credit. That’s my mother’s theory.”
I smiled. “Ah, the therapist.”
“Yup. She’s brilliant.”
“I think so too.”
“She’s a big fan of yours.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because…” I stopped myself from saying it. I don’t even know why that thought entered my mind.
“That’s because you saved my life.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
Dante was quiet for a long time. “You jumped in front of a car so that car wouldn’t run me over—and because you did that, you saved my life. That. Is. A. Fact. And, Ari, that fucking fact isn’t ever going to go away.”
I didn’t say anything. Then I just said, “Is that why you love me?”
“Is that what you think?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, that doesn’t happen to be true. Ari, I loved you from the first time I saw you floating on the water.”
* * *
“The desert disappeared,” Dante said. “Or maybe it’s us who disappeared.”
Sometimes I wondered what it was about him that made me want to get close to him and stay close. Not that he was ever far away anymore, because when I wasn’t with him, I carried him around, and I wondered if that was a normal thing. I didn’t really know what love was supposed to be like. I only knew what it was like for me. And when he said things like that, I knew why.
“Things that disappear always reappear again,” I said, “like Susie and Gina.”
Dante gave me this look. He had a question that was hovering over his eyes. “Why do they bug you so much? They’re nice.”
“I’ve known them since kindergarten. Maybe I take them for granted. But they try too hard. They’ve been gone most of the summer. Otherwise they would have been badgering me. And they’d have talked you into being their friend. And I never said they weren’t nice. They’re good girls who think they want to be bad girls, but they don’t have it in them to be bad girls.”
“What’s so bad about that? And what’s wrong with them wanting to be my friend? I think that’s awesome. And they’re both really pretty,”
“What’s that got to do with it?” I smiled. I knew why I was smiling. “I have a suspicion that I like pretty boys more than I like pretty girls. I can’t believe I just said that.”
“I’m glad you said that. Because it means you’re beginning to understand who you are.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand who I am.”
“Well, if you ever want to know more, just ask me.”
I shook my head and kept driving through mountain roads with pine trees crowding and bumping into one another on the slopes. I laughed to myself as I remembered the day when my dad drove us through this same road on my first camping trip.
“What’s so funny?” Dante, he was always studying me as if it was somehow possible to learn everything about me. Unknowable me.
Three
WE STOPPED OFF IN CLOUDCROFT, a small town that was crowded with shops and a few galleries and a couple of saloons. Dante began wandering around as I put gas in the truck.
He waved at me, signaling for me to follow him into one of the galleries. There wasn’t anyone in the gallery except a woman who had a calm, friendly, and sophisticated look about her. Dante liked the word “sophisticated.” I took the word to mean a rich person who knew how to be nice to people who weren’t as rich as they were. Maybe I was wrong about that. But she did seem like a rich woman who also happened to be nice.
I was standing next to Dante as he stared at a painting, and I wanted to touch him, put my hand on his shoulder. But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.
The woman smiled at us. “Nice-looking young men,” she said softly.
Dante smiled at her. “Are you flirting with us?”
She had a soft laugh, and the wrinkles around her eyes somehow made her seem a little bit sad. I liked her black eyes, which looked even blacker against her pale white skin.
I realized I’d been staring at her. And when our eyes met, I felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong. I looked away.
“I like this one,” Dante said. The painting was nothing but a wash of blue, and it was hard to tell if it was the sky or a body of water. Maybe the ocean. And there was one eye that was peering out with something that resembled tears falling from it, only the tears weren’t tears, but a straight line of little arrows falling downward. And on the edges of the painting there was some kind of writing, though the words were almost impossible to make out. “It’s incredible.”