The Painting of Porcupine City: A Novel Page 2

  “Believe me, I realize.” His flip-flops were driving me fucking nuts. “The squishing sound— It took me like an hour before I could bring myself to even look out the window.”

  “And how long were the owners gone when incident number one struck?”

  “Like barely a few hours.” He stifled a giggle. “Oh god, they’ll kill me. Gah, they’ll murder me!”

  “Best house-sitter ever. How many incidents have there been?”

  “Two.”

  “What was the second one?”

  “Kitchen fire. Minor. Really more like one-point-five.”

  The stairs ended. Alex pushed open the door and the apartment revealed itself in a steamy yawn that smelled of hotdogs and cologne.

  “Nice?” he said, stepping inside and twirling around, a princess in his turret.

  “It’ll do.” I dropped my backpack, walked across the parquet floor and the living room’s white rug. Big bright windows leaked in sun like toxic radiation. I drew the vertical blinds, giving the room a sepia tint. “Whew.” I sank into the cushions of a sticky leather couch. “No a.c., this is gonna be tricky.” I kicked off my sneakers, peeled off my socks and rolled up the legs of my jeans. I put my feet up on the glass coffee table; gray misty spots spread out from my heels. “Maybe we should get a hotel.”

  Alex was still standing near the door, watching me. Finally he stepped out of his flip-flops and glided into the living room.

  “Oh it’s not that bad, for god’s sake, Fletch.” He crashed next to me on the couch in a puff of hot breeze. “And won’t be, once we get you out of those clothes. Ha!” He looked away.

  “Alex, Alex, Alex.”

  The flirting was 20 percent titillating and 80 percent boring. But this was how it had always been between us. My job was to supply the aloof innuendo: the casual removal of clothing, spontaneous references to my dick, hugs that lingered just enough. Alex provided the steady stream of double entendres he could never bring himself to commit to, always adding a goofy laugh to lend plausible deniability.

  I yawned, reached down and scratched an itch and smoothed the hair on my shin.

  “Well thank you for coming to keep me company,” he said. “More so because I can tell you’re already miserable.”

  I put my hand on his leg. “I’m not miserable. I’m sorry. I’m just hot. You know how I get.”

  He was looking at my hand. “It’s OK.” After a second he said, “So Cara and Jamar are going to be screwing all weekend, huh?”

  “Their anniversary.”

  “Steamy weather for it.”

  “Yeah, well. How about us, Alex? What do you have planned for us to do this weekend?” I set it up for him, knowing he’d bite.

  “Do?” he said, getting it ready. “You mean besides each other? Ha!”

  There it was. I patted his knee and stood up. “Yes, honey, besides each other. Got anything to drink?” I stepped over him and looked for the kitchen. It was all black and white tile and stainless steel appliances. “Where’d you find these people, anyway?”

  “An ad,” he said, padding into the kitchen. Our bare feet were leaving footprints on the tile. “Drinks— You mean like booze-wise?”

  “In due time.” I opened the fridge, looked around, pulled out a Brita pitcher. There were glasses drying in a rack by the sink. I filled one with water.

  Alex grabbed a glass. “Fill me up? Heh.”

  We stood sipping, looking at each other over the rims of the glasses. I thought, OK, this is us drinking water, which made me think of a movie my neighbor and I made in her backyard when we were seven, said movie consisting solely of us standing in front of the camera eating slice after slice of Wonder bread. (Small evidence that although I’m not the best writer in the world my skills at narrative have improved over time.)

  “So what do you really have planned for us?” I asked. “Anything on the agenda?”

  “I do need to get some photos developed.”

  “Oh.” Wow, this was going to be an exciting weekend! “There’s a CVS right down the street.”

  “I tried there. Would you believe they don’t develop film there anymore? We need to go to a specialty store. Which is fine. These are important.”

  “What are they of?” I put down the glass and wiped my lips with the back of my hand.

  “Nuh-uh,” he said, shaking his head, mouth full of water. He swallowed. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  The Wonder bread movie had ended when we ran out of bread. Here the water was gone and no one was saying cut. I felt a bead of sweat go down my ribs and I twitched.

  It rained briefly and then

  the sun came out again and made the sidewalks steam. Gray air moved in through the apartment’s open windows and I retreated to the bathroom for a shower, more for sanity than sanitation.

  I set the water cool and got naked. Then I fished in a bag of my toiletries and pulled out my toothbrush. This whole situation was kind of lame and I sighed at myself in the mirror, watching my lips grow foamy with toothpaste. I spat.

  Being in a strange bathroom was making me horny, though, too—I’d been in tons of strange bathrooms, usually for a quick clean-up before I split—but the water was cold and that cooled it. When it didn’t feel as cold anymore I turned the knob colder. When I was used to that I turned it even colder. And when I was numb, I got out.

  “My nipples are like drill-bits,” I announced upon stepping out of the bathroom, dressed in shorts and a fresh yellow t-shirt. “If you need any cavities filled, now’s the time.” I laughed. Feeling was coming back into my toes. In a moment I’d be sweating again but for now I felt OK. “Alex? Hello?”

  The apartment was quiet save for the humming thump of an inkjet sloughing pages. I dropped my towel over the doorknob and went over to the printer. Was it a ransom note? A suicide letter? I examined a page. None of the above—it was a map. An awfully big one.

  I put the pages back in the tray and stood with my hands in my pockets in front of the living room window, looking past the rattling blinds. I could see a strip of sidewalk, along which a woman was pushing a baby stroller, one of those rich ones with the three big wheels. A corgi tethered to the stroller by a red leash was trying to go in another direction. I watched them and wondered where the key-touching guy lived. Had he been heading home or somewhere else when he got off the T? A boyfriend’s house, a girlfriend’s house, a job, a hook-up? Finally I turned and called, “Alex!”

  After a little searching I found him on his hands and knees in the bedroom, waist-deep in a closet, butt wagging around like a gopher’s.

  “So!” I shouted from the doorway, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed. “Where are we headed?” His ass lurched and he backed out of the closet.

  “God, Fletch, don’t sneak up on me like that!” He crawled over to a cream-colored rug and sat down hard, looking like he was recovering from a case of the vapors, like a chick out of Dickens.

  “What are you looking for in there, anyway?”

  “Walking shoes. I’m shopping.” He fanned his face.

  “You’re wearing their clothes? That’s gross.”

  “Why’s it gross? Both these guys wear my size. Why would I not?”

  “A gay couple lives here?”

  “Fletcher!” His eyes bugged and his jaw fell slack. The forced drama annoyed me even more. Plunk plunk, these drops of annoyance were like water torture. “Do you think I’d sleep in a breeder bed?”

  The word made me cringe, was one of my least favorites. This was like being in battle. “Well did you find any shoes?”

  He stood up shoeless, his task forgotten, and put his hand on the bed in a way that can only be called a caress. “They get in this bed—they’re both gorgeous, of course—naked—and they do beautiful things to each other. Oh god. Oooh god.” He fanned his face some more and rolled up his eyeballs.

  I rolled my own to keep from giving him the satisfaction of turning me on. But maybe he was, a little.

&nbs
p; He flung himself face-first onto the bed amidst a billow of sheets and waved his arms like he was making a snow angel.

  For no reason I was aware of I jumped barefoot onto the bed and started hopping around him, holding out my elbow in position to jackhammer him.

  “Eeny meeny miney—” I began.

  He rolled onto his back. “Fletcher, what’re you—? Hey!” He flung one hand over his face and the other over his stomach.

  “Homo!” And I dropped—

  But I landed harmlessly beside him, elbow bashing only mattress, and bounced off the bed to my feet. On my way to the hall I stopped at a bureau and picked up a framed photo for a better look. They were both hot. I put it down.

  “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 everywhere. 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.”