Thirty-Seven Read online

  I bring this up to Talley. It’s two days after we’d gone to see Derek’s band. We’re at work. She’s training me on how to close the store. The day has been good and our conversation jocular and I feel like our rolling has strengthened our relationship instead of made it weird. Talley complains about having nothing to do that night. She says Derek’s practicing with his band. She tells me it might be fun to head over there and listen. Then she says she just kind of wants to get a drink and go home.

  What she’s not saying is I want Derek to leave band practice and come over and spoon me on the couch, but this want is obvious.

  “What are you up to?” she says.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Nothing much. What is it that you do when you’re not here?”

  “Read.”

  “I’ll take that as a whole lot of dick pic Snapchatting.”

  We laugh.

  “Eat. Climb into bed. Read. Sleep.”

  “Sounds like a convict’s life,” Talley says.

  I’ve honestly never thought about this fact, but yes, it is.

  “Where do you live?” she asks.

  “Mile away.”

  “In your parents’ basement?”

  “Thankfully, no.”

  “Bullshit,” Talley says. “It makes so much sense. How did I never see it before? Weird Loner Boy lives at home. Eating your mom’s casserole—”

  “Sounds rather Oedipal.”

  “What? Gross.”

  “Your words.”

  “Watching their premium cable before retiring to your room still decorated in Star Wars figurines.”

  “My parents are dead.”

  Talley’s face flattens. She stares at me for a second before I drop my gaze. I’m not sure why I lied. I mean, it’s technically a lie, but functionally true. My parents have been dead to me for three years. They’ve been dead to me years before that. Talley is at my side. She touches my arm, and seeing I’m receptive to her physical contact, she embraces me. I know why I lie. Everyone knows why he lies. I think about being locked up and how the only thing I wanted, even above my freedom, was to be held. To be touched. To be validated as a physical specimen.

  “I’m sorry. I’m such a bitch. I didn’t—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “No, really, I’m sorry. Okay? I feel horrible.”

  One always said that apologies were inherently selfish because they were thinly veiled cries for pardon, validation, and esteem-building on the behalf of the one amending.

  “I never would’ve said anything…”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all good,” I say. I try to smile. Talley mirrors my efforts.

  “How’d they…”

  “Cancer.”

  “Fuck. Both of them?”

  “My mom. My dad…” I look out across the store. I feel like crying and like an actor and like I’m telling an emotional Truth. “He took his life.”

  “Fuck me,” Talley says

  “Good times,” I say.

  Talley frowns. She has her fingers clasped through the front belt loops of my jeans. She says, “You don’t have to do that.”

  “What?”

  “Pretend it doesn’t hurt.”

  Talley insists on walking me home. I suppose she feels bad for bringing up my parents, whom I’ve theoretically killed in order to gain sympathy. She walks with her arm through mine. She lights a cigarette and is careful to blow the smoke away from my face. A homeless man with legs stopping at his kneecaps begs for money. I point to the brick building behind him.

  “This is you?” Talley says.

  “This is me.”

  “It’s cute.”

  “It’s a shithole.”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me up?”

  “I don’t have…it’s kind of embarrassing.”

  “Please, I grew up with two brothers. I could care less about your semen-crusted socks. We’ll hang out. Order food. Watch TV.”

  “I don’t have TV.”

  “Right, you read. Then we’ll do that. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  I roll my eyes like I’m put out, but really I’m happy. We walk into the hallway. TVs blare through thin sheetrock. I lead her into the stairwell and she makes a comment about this being exactly the type of staircase women get raped in. We climb four sets. The temperature rises a good five degrees. The Vietnamese family at the end of the hall fills the muggy air with the smell of their cooking. I pause when I’m unlocking my door.

  “Don’t laugh.”

  “I’m not a bitch, Mason.”

  “And don’t give that pitying frown either.”

  She hits my chest. I open the door and step into the apartment. It feels different with her presence. What has been more than adequate suddenly feels pathetic. The walls are white, the cabinets, too. A twin mattress lies on the floor in the far corner. The sheets are immaculately made. The wooden floor is scratched, but it’s spotless, shining from my every-other-day waxing by hand.

  I turn around. Talley nods her head like she’s impressed. She says it’s cute.

  “The worst liar I’ve ever met,” I say.

  “No, I’m being for real. Sparse, clean lines. I like it.”

  “Do you remember nothing of our conversation about Honesty?”

  Talley laughs. “Not really. Only that you kept telling me Derek was going to cheat.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Did.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me,” Talley says. She pokes me in the ribs and walks the fifteen feet of my studio and sits down on the bed. She starts unclasping her shin-high boots.

  “Do your feet stink?”

  Talley looks insulted. “Oh my God, quit being such a…”

  “Queer?”

  “Pussy.”

  “Pretty sure straight people can have aversions to people’s stinky feet all over their beds.”

  “What, like this?” Talley peels off her socks, then lies back on my mattress, pushing her feet flat against the sheets, gliding them up and down. She laughs and I do too. I walk across the apartment and grab her knees and playfully push her legs off my bed. I sit down in their place.

  “Here,” Talley says. “Smell them. Like lavender on high noon on the Fourth of July.”

  “Get those barking dogs out of my face.”

  Talley waves her feet around my head and I’m laughing, trying to cover my nose as she presses her toes against my cheeks. I pretend to gag and we laugh and then her legs are in my lap, my arms over her shins.

  “Do you like have a maid or something?”

  “No, why?”

  “This place is spotless. There’s not a single speck of dirt or dust or anything.”

  “That’s what happens when you have no TV or computer.”

  “Very Spartan living. Very strange living.”

  “I’m kind of strange.”

  “Understatement of the century,” Talley says.

  “At least my feet don’t stink.”

  “Stop. Do they really smell?”

  I shrug. Talley brings her foot to her nose and tells me I’m a liar and then puts her legs back over mine. She tells me I’m going to give her a complex.

  “My gift to you.”

  “Speaking of gifts, being in this den of luxury sparks a few ideas.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “Nobody needs anything,” Talley says. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t give you a present or two.”

  “No, because I don’t have the money to get you anything right now,” I say.

  “You’re missing the point of a present,” Talley says.

  “Don’t.”

  “You, Mr. Mason Hues, are not the boss of me.”

  “Are you five years old?”

  “Maybe,” Talley says. She inches her bare feet back toward my face. We’re kids lau
ghing. I cup her foot. I feel her pulse along its arch. She tells me to never stop whatever I’m doing. I press with two fingers, slowly working in a clockwise circle around her pressure point. Five taught me this. She said it relieved nausea. She said you could do it to yourself, but it wasn’t the same because it lacked the energy of love.

  Talley puts her hands behind her head. She moans. I try to keep my thoughts platonic. Five had told me it was okay to become aroused. But I’d been a different person then—younger, immature, quicker to equate attention and physical contact with sex.

  Talley has quit with her fake moaning. She holds a thick black book. My body immediately seizes, even my fingers massaging Talley’s pressure point. She says ouch. She looks over the cover of Dr. Sick: The Survivors and The Day of Gifts.

  “So this is the light, breezy bedtime reading you were talking about.”

  I don’t know what to say. I need her to not open the book, not to see the copious notes I’ve taken over the course of its twenty-plus readings. But I can’t just grab it. I can’t tell her to put it down. I can’t draw more attention to its presence.

  “I think I should wash my hands after touching these things,” I say.

  “Dick.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Talley doesn’t answer. She turns the book around. She stares at what I know is a black-and-white photograph of Dr. James Shepard. “This dude’s creepy as fuck.” “Should we order food?” “Like Manson on steroids.” “Chinese?”

  “Can you imagine how fucked up you’d have to be to join this dude? Be like sure, I’d love to put myself through chemo and then slaughter a bunch of people? Like who does that?”

  “People with no other options.”

  Talley sets the book down at the foot of my mattress. She says, “I guess. But still?”

  “Crazy.”

  “Batshit crazy. I mean, chemo is supposed to be like the most mis…fuck, Jesus Christ, I did it again. I’m sorry.”

  It takes a split second to remember my alleged, cancer-devoured mother.

  I say, “At least you’ve proven that you’re flexible enough to put your foot in your mouth.”

  Talley laughs. She sits up. She rests her head on my shoulder. She puts her arm around my neck. She pulls me down next to her. She positions me so I face the wall. She slips her arm underneath my head and then wraps her left arm around my stomach.

  “You strike me as the little spoon type,” she says.

  “Fact,” I say.

  “Why does it feel so good?”

  “What?”

  “To be held?”

  “Because love is the only thing that stops our march toward death.”

  “You’re kind of a dark motherfucker, aren’t you?” We laugh because it’s True and her breasts rise and fall against my back.

  “Maybe you should mellow out on the reading and get a TV. Watch some trashy reality shows. See the world for what it actually is.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A complete clusterfuck. But a comical one.”

  “I like that,” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That makes me happy,” she says.

  “That I like what you said?”

  “Yeah, sort of. Like I had a thought deep enough for Captain Death McHonesty.”

  “Sorry we all can’t be Sexy Whimsical Girl.”

  “You’d be a pretty girl.”

  “I know.”

  “You think I’d be a handsome boy?”

  “Thought you were a boy when I saw you without your wig.”

  Talley play-pinches my nipple. “I would totally fuck you if I had a dick.”

  “And I would totally let you.”

  “Yeah? That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said,” Talley says. She laughs into my ear.

  “Sweeter than saying I liked your previous comment?”

  “Tied.”

  “That’s fair.”

  We are quiet. Talley nestles her nose in the nook of my neck. Things are prefect and things are rooted in falsity and every single one of my actions is a manifestation of selfish want.

  “You know what the weird thing is?” Talley says.

  “Huh?”

  “All I wanted to do tonight was spoon with Derek and talk.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “How?”

  “Because I know how people work.”

  “Okay, Dr. Freud.”

  “Fine, don’t believe me.”

  “Then what am I thinking right now?”

  I tell her I’m not a psychic. She says, “Exactly my point. You don’t know shit. Can’t claim superhero powers if you can’t even tell me what I’m thinking at this exact moment.”

  But I do know.

  I know she’s processing this experience through the machine of Self, my lifelike change through an old-fashioned sorter, my existence—past, present, future—only existing as an extension of Talley’s visions of her own future. I know she is thinking about my sexuality. She’s wondering if I’m sure, if I’m committed to a lifetime of men, if I’ve ever been with a girl. I know she’s mad at herself for wondering these things. I know she’s putting on the guilt of infidelity to see how it feels, if it’s something she could cope with. Now she’s thinking about Derek and his band and the small space they rent to practice and she’s thinking about the drugs they’re doing and the other bands hanging out in decrepit hallways and a girl, a rhythm guitarist who practices next door, who, more than likely, has made numerous drunken passes at Derek. Talley suddenly knows Derek has kissed this girl. Kissed her with tongue, maybe even flexed his hips against hers before stopping, telling her he has a girlfriend. I know that Talley knows this kiss didn’t stop there. But she won’t allow herself to go any further. She hates herself for this tendency, a replica of her mother’s willful ignorance at her husband’s late nights at the office.

  I know all of this—not because I can read minds—but because humans are all fundamentally the same. We are a desk of control switches in a recording studio. Our only differences are the volume levels and mixing effects. Our desires are the beating drums. Our choruses are the unshakable beliefs of our selves. The opening stanzas are our first loves. The second stanzas are our favorite memories. The bridges are an ode to our fears. The final stanzas are our biggest regrets.

  It’s sex, happiness, and the fear of not being able to atone for our wrongs.

  But I don’t say these things. Instead, I say, “You’re thinking that you want to order Chinese food?”

  Talley laughs. “Not quite, but I’m straight up starving.”

  10. SICK (II)

  The ache in my teeth was unbearable. It felt as if the insides of each tooth—the deep center of my molars, the thin inners of my canines—had been infused with sugar and hydrochloric acid. Every breath caused a spiking of pain. Drinking anything was paper cuts over exposed nerve endings. I asked for medicine, anything, Tylenol or Advil, just please give me something. My tongue felt swollen. Words were too hard to push past my dying teeth.

  11. GIFTS

  Talley buys me a laptop. She says she had it lying around, but it’s new. I tell her I can’t take it and she tells me to shut up. She pecks my lips. She gives me her Netflix account information so I can watch movies or shows. She gives me my first paycheck and it’s more than I should’ve gotten and I feel like a charity case and like I have a friend.

  Life begins to get easier.

  She increases my hours so I’m working four shifts a week. I know she doesn’t need me at the store, but I can also tell she likes my company.

  Sometimes women need a project. Sometimes women need to feel listened to. Maybe everyone needs these things.

  I meet with my probation officer for the second time. He makes me piss in a cup. I worry it’ll be dirty but he doesn’t say anything. His name is Thomas Mack. He’s black and has those blotches of darkened spotting on his cheeks. He doesn’t know who I am. My
record is sealed. I’m nothing but an appointment to him. He asks how I’m adjusting. I tell him I’m adjusting just fine. I show him my payment stub from Talley’s Tatters. He makes a copy for my file. He asks what I’m doing with my time. I tell him I got a computer and am watching Lost. He seems pleased with this. He tells me he’s jealous.

  “Why?”

  “To have years of shitty television to catch up on.”

  Talley buys me a lamp. It’s an antique or maybe just old, chipped white paint, a floral shade, effeminate. I tell her she needs to stop buying me things. She tells me to just say thanks.

  I eat rice and drink Mr. Pibb.

  I sort and hang and steam clothes.

  I see Talley’s bare chest when she changes in front of me.

  I play the role she needs me to play. I listen to the daily ups and downs of a twenty-something’s relationship with a guy who wants to be a rock star.

  I keep my money in my pillowcase.

  I’m not happy, but I’m not unhappy. Maybe that’s the most I can ask for.

  It’s morning, and Talley and I sit at work. She nurses a hangover while I dust the shoe display.

  “I know your secret,” Talley says.

  I spin around. Talley nods her head, her eyebrows raised. “Yup. Your little deep thoughts with Mason Hues. Know you’re kind of a phony.”

  “What?”

  Talley reaches into her leather purse. She pulls out a paperback version of Dr. Sick. She waves it like a piece of damning evidence. My mind is a series of panicked thoughts and there’s no way she’d have been able to peg me as Thirty-Seven, but maybe there is, like maybe she’s put two and two together—my highlighted copy of Dr. Sick, my age, my lack of possessions, my guarded history—and I make sure to keep my jaw relaxed so the skin connecting my ear doesn’t tighten.

  She opens the book. She says, “And I quote, ‘Dr. James Shepard’s mantra, if one is able to wade through the multitude of conflicting platitudes, would be sickness bears honesty, and honesty bears change.’ Sound familiar?”

  “So?”

  “So? Here I thought you were like some boy genius guru preaching all this shit. But it’s straight from the book.”