TWO

TWO

#

July 2011

     Someone was a lazy bastard.  He'd always been a bastard.  The laziness, however, was either newly acquired or newly realized.  He wasn't sure which, but he was in a state of conscious opposition to it.  That's okay, though –- the laziness; he looked good and he could always talk his way out.  He skipped, rolled, plotted, tripped, danced his way from one city, one situation, one relationship to another.  He never stopped, really.  He knew what he had become and was not content trying to make peace with himself.  He wanted change.

     He could not escape the cold, even in July with record-breaking highs for weeks.  He shaved his head and it turned a golden brown in the sun.  His ears became pink, then red, and then the color of bread crust, and still he could not create any distance whatsoever between himself and the cold.  He rolled up his sleeves and sweated into his shirt.  He took off his shirt and tied the sleeves around his forehead so that the shirt's body hung down the back and stuck to his damp, terracotta-colored neck.  He worked so that the sun was always on his skin, broiling him alive, and still, even still, the cold swirled around his frame, tied itself to his bones, and rattled them like castanets.  He began work each summer's day just before noon, when the sun was at its highest and most fierce, and avoided the shade of an old, enormous oak or the shadow of the splintery, two-story garage like he was tiptoeing around a hornets' nest made from poison ivy.  He took his breaks in a lawn chair, in the middle of the sundrenched backyard, reading The Enchantress of Florence.  He dripped sweat onto his book there like a coffee-maker brewing saltwater instead of coffee.  It didn't matter; James Freeman simply could not shake away the cold.

     He began the next day the same way he had the former, the same way he would the following, the same way he would begin each day over and over until the cycle broke.  The cycle always broke.  He rose from the floor, from his pillow-bed there, and stretched as high as he could with his elbows; his hands would have shot right through the low ceiling of the dark and tiny house on 2nd Street had he not bent his arms.  He listened to his ankles pop and snap themselves awake.  He allowed his eyeballs to roll, swim, drift, fall until they found their proper position in his skull and could focus accurately.  His throat was dry, scratchy, on fire, but his disposition soared.  He drifted up, like an apparition might, on a beam of sunlight that stabbed through the dirty window and revealed the dust particles floating on the air like single-cell organisms in a petri dish.  His breathing was solid and even and deep.  The blood began to fill his veins and arteries, began to pump through his thighs and calves, down to his feet and toes, pushed through his sleepy biceps and triceps and forearms into his fingers.  He rolled his neck, massaged his temple, flicked his tongue.  The day was new, was his, and he would at last get warm.

     Beginning with his scalp, staring at himself in the mirror, he pressed and rolled the peeling skin until it began to come off in large patches.  Down his neck, around his ears, off his shoulders, his chest, his knees, his ankles: the dead, yellow skin hulled away.  His feet were striped.  Two, pale stripes crossed the top of each foot where his sandal straps had provided protection from his darling, last-hope sun.  His toes were coarse, brown leather; his toenails were thick like talons.  Then, just above them: a white stripe of flesh.  Across the top of his feet in the middle: smooth like chocolate milk.  Above: white stripe of flesh.  Dry, cracked ankles, browner where the skin was thickest.  Tiny, red bumps all over –- perhaps poison oak?  Sumac?  Mosquitoes?  Whatever -– it was ugly, but didn't itch much.  He removed his cotton shorts and stepped into the shower.  The hot spray loosened the rest of the flakes and the loofa sponge scrubbed his skin clean.  He was ready to once again spread, work, sweat, toil, purify himself before the sun.  He took five shots of whiskey and a double-dose of antidepressants.  He was out the door in no time.

#

     Emma was pregnant with her third child, though it would be months before she began to show.  She was pregnant with optimism, too.  Her demeanor set the stage for a thousand comedies –- no tragedy could remain; it would be transformed before the first tear slipped.  Her lips were red and puffy; one would swear she pressed them to a hot iron each morning.  Her eyes were kind, nonjudgmental.  Her skin like white soap.  Her hair: black silk pulled away from her face and neck in a bun or ponytail, or fastened with a hairpin to the sides.  Her hands: delicate, giving, open to all.  She wore a thick, red bathrobe tied at the waist.  She brought James pitchers of lemonade, iced tea, cold water.  She offered him sandwiches and apples and bananas and potato chips.  She told him, “Make yourself at home.”  James no longer had any idea what that particular phrase meant.

     He sanded the rough, wooden deck.  Scraped away all the debris and loose paint.  Swept it.  Applied the first coat.  Watched it dry a few shades darker than his skin in the sun, sanded it again, swept.  The spindles leading up to the handrails took days.  The fence took weeks more.  He sanded, dusted, painted, watched it dry, sanded again.  Second coat, high parts first: drip, drip.  Next, the deck itself: applied, spread, smoothed even, leveled off, repeated farther down each board until the whole thing looked clean and oven-baked.

     “What are you doing out here in these insane temperatures all day?  Are you crazy?” Emma said, allowing the storm door to bang shut behind her as she stepped gingerly onto the dry, hot porch.

     “Don't have much else to do,” James smiled.

     “You know, you could come back when this heat wave is over.  We don't need this to be done immediately.”

     “Oh, I don't mind.  I like the sunshine.”

     “Well, you've got a nice tan going.”

     “Hmph,” he chuckled.  “Where are the kids?”

     “Oh, they're spending the weekend at my brother's.  And Gregg's up north for work.  Has he paid you yet?”

     “No, I told you I don't want any money.  I'm better off broke,” he joked, not joking.

     “Well, we're going to have to pay you something eventually.”

     “Ah, let me finish first.  You've got another kid on the way now.  You might change your mind.”

     Emma looked at him amiably for a moment, then said, “Why don't you have a girlfriend, James?”

     “Ha,” he looked down, “I'm too nice for that.”

     “'Too nice?'”

     “You know me, Em.  I don't want to trick someone else into dealing with my bullshit anymore.  I can barely trick myself these days.”

     “Good lord, James!  What the–- You are one of the sweetest guys I've ever known.”

     “Sorry, I tried not to trick you, either,” he replied with an honest grin.

     The day was hot to everyone but James, it seemed.  The mail carrier made his delivery looking miserable.  The neighbor pulled into his driveway, stepped out of his car, complained that the sun would soon kill his new grass, advised James to drink lots of water, retreated into the darkness of his home.  Emma and her porcelain skin and her changing hormones could not take it either; the three-minute conversation alone had made her dizzy.  She suggested that James take a break with her in the air-conditioned house.  He agreed reluctantly, not wanting to waste a single beam of daylight, not wishing to miss out on any of its light, its heat.  But he was feeling a bit lightheaded, too; perhaps a break, a drink, some fruit was in order.  He took a towel from his gym bag, wiped the sweat from his face, head, neck, chest.  He draped it over his bare shoulders.

     “Okay.”

     He followed her into the large, Victorian home, removed his paint-spattered sandals at the door, walked barefoot into the kitchen.  She poured him a glass of water, offered to make him a ham and cheese sandwich.  Her thick, red robe hung loose around the neck, leaving little to the imagination and coming to a close just above her belly button.  She was unaware of this, distracted, attending to her guest.  James draped the towel over the back of the chair so as not to sweat all over the furniture.  The condensation from his water glass dripped onto his chest, rolled down, got lost in the hair below his navel, and disappeared beneath his waistband.  Emma's bare feet slapped and smacked the cool, hardwood floors as she worked her way around the kitchen preparing the sandwich.  She spread mustard on the bread, apologized, “Should've asked if you like mustard first.”  She giggled, sucked a glob of the yellow condiment from the tip of her finger, made love to the whole room with her big, olive eyes.  He watched her when he thought she wasn't looking, his bald head glistening with salty sweat.  The veins of his arms and hands bulged beneath his copper skin; one could almost see the steam escaping his pores.  Her movements: swaying, pivoting, reaching: feminine and elegant.  Her fragrance: natural, clean.  Her cherry lips, soft skin, half-open robe.  Her nonchalance, confidence, her otherness.  Her exposed neck, her delicacy, her sex.  She leaned forward and around her seated guest.  She placed the plate on the table and it rang out with a clang against the solid surface.  She looked down, smiled, her face and his face close enough to whisper dirty secrets.  Close enough to take in one another's scent.  Without warning, a euphoric waterfall fell over both, reached into their lungs and heartbeats.  Blood rushed to their extremities, engorged and warmed them.  Heat came from behind their eyes and reddened their lips and cheeks and earlobes.  A sudden, easy seriousness descended and disintegrated all polite formalities.  Emma shifted her weight, stepped back, and, with a simple tug, allowed her red robe to fall completely open, exposing her naked chest, stomach, and thighs.  James took a long drink from his ice water, examining her from top to tootsies, replaced the glass on the table.  He stood tall, looking down at Emma.  She placed her right hand on his bare chest and moonwalked her fingers clumsily down his stomach to his belt line.  He inhaled a long, shaky breath.  She pulled the drawstring of his gym shorts and reached in.  He exhaled, trembled a little.  She craned her neck, relaxed her face, drew his lips to hers with an imperceivable magnetism.  He reached around her waist and pulled her hips to his thighs, felt her breasts smash against his stomach, pinning her arm between them while leaving her hand and fingers room to work.

     At last, then, finally, about time, no one more deserving for Pete's sake: James freeman was warming up.