The Painting of Porcupine City: A Novel Page 7

  “Yo,” I said, shutting the door behind me. It was sticky in the jamb and a practiced bump with my shoulder closed it. I turned the lock. I was in a tiny kitchen that opened into the main part of the studio. I left my shoes near the door.

  “Hey Fletcher,” Mike said from around the corner. “Just give me a sec here.”

  I noted the mac and cheese clinging to a pan on the stove and I noted the dishes in the sink. I walked barefoot into the main room. It was long and narrow and if not for the fancy old marble fireplace (nonworking, I presumed, and in which Agamemnon’s twenty-gallon tank was wedged) and the ornate crown molding, the studio would’ve looked like a boxcar. If I spread my arms I could almost touch both walls at once. Jamar could easily have touched both walls at once. The rear of the studio was a loft, raised up like a deck, and beneath it, with his desk pushed against the back of the loft ladder, was Mike’s computer and Mike, happy together, two peas in a studio.

  He looked over the top of one of the monitors and smiled. His hair was pretty long but he’d clearly taken my advice and splurged on a good haircut. “What can I do you for?” he said.

  “For free. Hey, your hair looks smokin’.”

  “Thanks. I tried that place on Newbury.” He gave me a little smile before lowering his eyes to a monitor. “Find good parking?”

  “Decent.” I leaned against the ladder.

  “We haven’t done this like this in a while.”

  “I know. I kind of need it. Stressed.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Nothing major. Writer’s block. The heat. Deadly combination.”

  “Ah.” He looked at one screen, then the other, then back at me. “Sorry I have to rush it.”

  “No worries. Shall I go up?”

  He looked at the other screen intently for a moment, typed something, and then looked up again, flicking his hair in a way that made my dick stir. “Yes. I’ll be up in two shakes of a troll’s horn.”

  I climbed the creaking ladder. I could feel on my toes the heat rising off the computer. Against the top rung I scraped the soles of my feet to rid them of the sand and tiny pebbles tracked in on shoes. Mike’s futon mattress lay on the floor up here—there wasn’t the clearance for an actual bed.

  “Whew, hotter up here,” I said, balling up my t-shirt.

  “I know, sorry.” He was coming up the ladder now, more and more of the body I’d come for staggering into view. “Heat rises.”

  “Must be a bitch to sleep in.”

  “Lucky we don’t plan on sleeping.” He said it sultry and we laughed and got undressed in a tangle.

  Mike hadn’t been with very

  many guys before me but I wouldn’t ever have guessed. He could’ve authored a series of instructional textbooks about the things he could do with his mouth. I lifted my head off his pillow and looked at the top of his head bobbing near my belly and fell back again and said, “Insane.”

  When we were done I

  scooted to the edge of the mattress and reached for my shorts. Mike wiped at the jersey sheet with a hand-towel in quick little wax-on wax-off circles.

  For the same reason I kept fish—to give a guy something to talk about while he was putting his pants back on—I sometimes wished Mike would hoist Agamemnon’s tank up into the loft, to quietly scritch around on his rocks while we shagged and then be a post-coital conversation topic.

  “Hey,” Mike said after moments of silence, “thank you for the birthday card.”

  “No problem.”

  “It was funny.” He balled up the towel and tossed it over the edge of the loft. It hit the floor with a thump.

  “I saw in my news feed it was coming up. Do anything fun?”

  “Went for dinner and a movie with my friend Jen. Came home and leveled some of my alts.” He dropped onto his belly and reached across the mattress to grab his glasses off the loft floor. “Pleasant evening.”

  “No boys?”

  “No boys, alas.”

  “Heh.” I lifted myself up as far as space allowed before I would bonk my head on the ceiling, and zipped my fly. “OK, I’m gonna bounce.”

  “Thanks for coming, it was fun. Heh, thanks for coming.”

  I reached across the mattress and gave a tug on his foot. “Later. Have fun with your raid.”

  I went down the ladder.

  Winding down the staircase—less than ten minutes after ejaculation—it was clear the hook-up, while good, was a failure. Because even while Mike was showing off I’d been imagining splotches of paint on his fingers. Only when I paused on the second floor to check for keys and wallet and phone, and the key-touching guy burst like a newsflash into my imagination, did Mateo leave my mind.

  I wanted a shower but Cara was in the bathroom—I could tell by the water sounds that she was shaving her legs. I went to my room. Opened my closet door and had a look at the unwearable but hardly ruined shirt. Switched on my typewriter, started to roll in a clean sheet of paper, stopped, switched it off. Swiveled around in my chair. Climbed into bed. Slept.

  At a time indeterminate

  the ceiling turned blue and my desk started humming. I slapped my hand at the phone, held it some distance away from my face, squinting.

  Im in bed, said a text from Alex.

  Well I’m sleeping, I replied, ignoring his implied dot-dot-dot.

  With jimmy, came the reply.

  That sure woke me up the rest of the way. I wanted to ask how-how-how but seeming in any way interested would give Alex a win. You’re texting me while you’re in bed with someone? Isn’t that rude of you?

  Hes out now hes doing pushups naked, his muscles making me religious.

  I remembered telling Cara that if they ever got back together I’d die, and it felt like that, like an ice-pick in my gut. I leaned up on my elbow and that wasn’t comfortable so I sat up and that wasn’t comfortable either.

  I typed out Congrats! and threw the phone on my bed. It slid under the covers and made the sheet glow with the next line of Alex’s gloating. But the light only illuminated how empty my own bed was.

  My Perino angst kept me

  up most of the night but withered at Cook when I saw Mateo and his colorful fingers. They were yellow today, a mustardy yellow that betrayed a muted rainbow of underlying colors. It looked as though he’d been messy with the sandwich he was now holding up to his mouth.

  Just as I was heading to the lunchroom to make waffles I’d received another email from mateo_amaral@cookmed.com, this time with the subject line Re: Re: Lunch? and once again with nothing in the body of the message except my earlier frantic reply. That meant he saved our original correspondence in his inbox. Maybe he just didn’t delete it. But maybe he saved it. A shiver of excitement rattled through me, an excitement that felt depressingly novel.

  I sent an unpunctuated OK without offering details, and went to make my waffles. Then, with steaming plate in hand, I detoured to meet him at the I.T. cubes—an experiment in just showing up.

  “Brunch again?” he said. He was fiddling inside an open computer but he left it and gathered up his sandwich and a bottle of water.

  “Why not? I like brunch.”

  “Want to go outside?”

  “OK.”

  The sun was blinding but he looked cute with his eyes squinted. He had on light gray pants and a pale blue button-down sheer enough to show the sleeves of his undershirt.

  He started to sit down on the curb in the same place as before, but a picnic table was open and I started walking toward that instead. I was tired of looking at the side of his face; I wanted to sit across from him for once.

  “How’s your day going?” I said, rubbing a plastic knife back and forth across my waffles.

  “OK.” He took a bite of sandwich. “Kind of slow actually. Everything’s running smoothly today.”

  “I’ve been pretty busy. I bet when it’s busy for us it’s slow for you. Like I bet people spend their idle time bitching about dead pixels and stuff.”

 
; “Haha. Yeah, probably.”

  “What do you do when it’s slow?”

  “Just sit at my desk.” He hunched forward, positioning his hand on the table as though it were guiding a mouse. He closed his eyes and let his jaw hang slack. I was happy to have my attention called to his lips.

  “You sleep?” I said, amused.

  “No no no. Doze.”

  “I think I’ve seen you dozing, actually.”

  “Uh-oh. Have you?”

  “You need those glasses with the painted-on eyeballs,” I said.

  He wiped a blob of mustard off his lip and I absentmindedly touched my own lip. We both seemed to notice.

  “Haha, yeah, I do need those,” he said. “Then I’ll get a blanket with a shirt and pants painted on it, so I can hold it up to me like so.”

  “Randy needs that. I caught him looking at porn once.”

  “You wouldn’t believe the X-rated shit I’ve seen on people’s computers.”

  “This was pretty X-rated. Well, a very heavy R.”

  “Which one’s Randy?”

  “Reddish hair. Fancies sweater vests. Sits a few cubes down from me. Across from the mailboxes.”

  “Doesn’t that guy Bob sit there?”

  “No, the other one. In the corner. Last I knew he had a picture of Russian nesting dolls for his desktop wallpaper.”

  “OK, yeah yeah. Seriously? You caught him—you know?” He made a quick motion with his fist, the image of which my brain immediately archived into permanent file for lots of later recollection.

  “God no. No no no. I had to ask him something and when I turned into his cube I got a faceful of this—uh.”

  “What was it?”

  “This naked chick in a cowboy hat squatting over the head of a bear-skin rug.”

  “Oh god. And at work. So wrong.” He shook his head, smiling.

  “He saw me and he starts clicking exasperatedly to minimize the window. Notice I say minimize, not close. He wanted to come back to it later.”

  “Haha. So he saw you?”

  “Yes. Then I had to ask my question and interact with him for like three minutes.”

  “Raunchy.”

  “Randy.”

  “Haha.”

  A breeze whiffed my sandwich bag across the table and he grabbed it and I put my water bottle on it to hold it.

  “Thanks for asking me to lunch,” I said.

  “Yup.”

  “I was afraid you were going to yell at me again.”

  “I didn’t yell at you!”

  “I know.”

  In the parking lot Bassett eased himself into his rusty Geo Metro and drove away. Mateo looked around. Outside the main entrance, Babette and Megan were sharing a smoke, but they were safely out of earshot.

  He leaned forward the way a person does at a small table on a good date and whispered, “I’m going to paint on the Zakim tonight.”

  I leaned forward too. Until now there’d been no discussion at all of his extracurricular activities—I’d sort of assumed they were off limits. “You are?”

  “You said you’d give me a week, right? Clock’s ticking.”

  “Well I wouldn’t want you to get arrested or anything. It’s pretty visible, isn’t it?” In fact, Boston’s famous cable-stayed bridge (a) had about a million lights shining on it, (b) was a ten-lane highway, and (c) was featured regularly as the live video backdrop on at least two local channels’ nightly news.

  “That’s why I need a lookout,” he said.

  Part of me wanted to take that as a joke. The rest prayed he was serious.

  “What do you think? Interested?” Slowly he raised his arm and blew a ladybug off his sleeve.

  I knew from the first moment I saw him that I’d never turn down anything this guy asked of me. Still, I took my time answering. After a slow sip of water I said, “I guess I could be up for an adventure.”

  He laughed.

  “What would I have to do?”

  “All you have to do,” he said, leaning forward again, green eyes twinkling, “is just be a lookout. Right? And tell me if anyone’s coming.”

  “It’s a highway. Aren’t there going to be tons of people coming?”

  “Not cars. I’m talking about people who can Taser us.”

  Taser us? “I can do lookout, sure. Do you think we’ll have to run? Have you ever been chased?”

  “I get chased all the time.” He took a bite of sandwich. “But never been caught.” He knocked his fist on the wood tabletop and concealed a modest grin with chewing.

  “What would happen if you were? What happens for writing graffiti? Do you get a ticket?”

  “A ticket? No. I wish. It’s the slammer.”

  “The slammer?”

  “Jail.”

  “I know what the slammer is.”

  “Few weeks ago this writer, Melissa Something, I forget—she goes by Pell Mel— Have you seen her stuff?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You have. Anyway, Pell Mel got put away for six months for tagging a wall near the Back Bay T.”

  “Six months?”

  “Six months in jail for tagging Back Bay Station.” He shook his head.

  “Yikes.”

  “She’s good, it’s a big loss for the city.”

  “I bet she won’t be doing graffiti anymore.”

  He laughed. “She will. Bet she tags something on her way home from jail. Once a writer always a writer.”

  “Is that why you go out?”

  “I guess. I do what I can to minimize the risk. Try to keep my face covered, watch out for security cameras. That kind of stuff.”

  “So that’s why you need a lookout to paint on the Zakim.”

  “Yup. Still interested?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hold on.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and spent a minute poking at it while I wondered what he was doing. Then he handed it to me. “Full disclosure,” he said. “Go ahead and read that.”

  “Massachusetts General Laws,” I read off the little screen, “Chapter 266, Section 126A: Whoever intentionally, willfully and maliciously or wantonly, paints the real or personal property of another including but not limited to a wall—”

  “Check.”

  “Fence—”

  “Check.”

  “Building—”

  “Check.” He was smiling.

  “Sign—”

  “Check.”

  “Rock—”

  “Check.”

  “Monument—”

  “Check.”

  “Or tablet— What’s a tablet?”

  “Don’t know. Whatever it is, I’ve probably painted on it.”

  “So you’ve really been around the block, then?”

  “I get around. Keep reading. Best part’s coming.”

  I continued: “...Shall be punished by imprisonment in a state prison for a term of not more than three years or by imprisonment in a house of correction for not more than two years or by a fine of not more than $1,500 or both imprisonment and fine, and shall also be required to pay for the removal or obliteration of such painting.... Mateo, they really don’t like graffiti artists, do they?”

  “Admittedly it’s an acquired taste.” He smiled, taking back his phone. “So with that out of the way, are you coming?”

  “The other day you were all pissed off that I knew. Now you want me to come with you. What changed your mind?”

  He shrugged. “You know, so you might as well see. Are you coming?”

  “Of course.”

  “OK.” Screwing the cap on his water bottle he added, “Then I’ll see you tonight.”

  Cara and Jamar were spilled

  across the couch watching some or other crime procedural when I came out of my bedroom. After looking around for my keys in the kitchen I paused beside the couch. Jamar offered up a bag of popcorn.

  “No thanks. I’m heading out.”

  Cara rolled her eyes.

  “Date?”
Jamar said.

  “Something like that.” Really I had no idea what it was and had no idea how to prepare for it. So I was wearing my hook-up underwear and my comfortable sneakers. “Don’t wait up.”

  “We never do.”

  “You’re not getting any younger, you know, Bradford,” Jamar warned.

  I took the Green Line inbound. The subway map on the wall of the T was for me like notches on a bedpost. Practically every stop on this line (and plenty of stops on the other lines) represented a hook-up. One for Steve, one for John, one for Johnny, one for Jon (I’d been with more variations of the name John than I could remember). It was like having my sex-life flash before my eyes.

  I got off at Copley (Mike’s stop), walked to Back Bay and caught the Orange Line to Forest Hills. Forest Hills was a blank spot. I met a guy at nearby Green Street once, and I really worked Ruggles, near Northeastern University, for a while, but nothing at Forest Hills yet. Would that change tonight?

  The fact that Mateo asked me to meet him at Forest Hills was a decent indication that it was going to change. The Zakim was at the opposite end of the city. To get there I would’ve continued inbound on the Green Line and not transferred. But he told me to meet him at Forest Hills. Maybe we were going to drive there.

  Or maybe he had other plans.

  The T pulled into the station and the operator announced that this was the last and final stop; mentally I dragged a red line through half of that phrase. The escalator was out of service so I took the stairs to the aboveground part of the station and looked around. It was surprisingly busy at this hour—a cop stood drumming his fingers against the side of the information kiosk, people bustled around, some loitered. I looked around. The shops—a donut place and a florist—were closed, metal gates rolled down over their fronts. Leaning against the florist shop gate was Mateo. He was playing with his phone. My breath caught in my throat. He was wearing a black sleeveless hoodie—his arms were bare and his inner forearms, both of them, were tattooed with blocks of some kind. The sweatshirt’s open zipper revealed a white beater underneath. His jeans and sneakers were paint-misted. A backpack lay on the floor by his feet. His hair was pushed up away from his face with a black plastic hair band of the type worn by ten-year-old girls and South American soccer stars. He looked like the second coming.