The Youth & Young Loves of Oliver Wade: Stories (23 page)

“So you’re moving to Boston?” he said, though of course he
knew I was.

I was balancing a spoon on my knuckles. “Yup. Time to see if
I have what it takes to make my way in the big city.”

“You should move to Texas,” he said, matter-of-factly but
looking away across the restaurant, as if not to meet my eyes.

“
You’re
moving to
Texas,” I teased, but I was taking it as, I don’t know, a fun coincidence and somehow
failing to appreciate what, just maybe, he’d been insinuating.

“Yup,” he said.

“Is that everything you’re bringing? Out there in your
duffel bag, I mean?”

“For now. The Army is moving the rest of my stuff.”

“They do it for you?”

“I could’ve arranged it and they would’ve paid me back, but
I didn’t want to, so they’re handling the arrangements.”

“Sounds fancy.”

He shrugged. “It’s just how it works.”

“Did they do your flight, too?”

“I did the flight. They gave me a time to appear, and I need
to get myself there.” He ripped his silverware out of its napkin sleeve. “I don’t
have to report until next week but I wanted to give myself a few days to settle
in.”

“So I guess we both have big life changes ahead of us.”

“You leaving anything behind?” he said. “Anyone?”

I looked at him, at his pretty eyes, and all at once I felt,
for a bunch of reasons, a really overwhelming loneliness that felt deeply
rooted in my life. It was probably silly, certainly premature, but I was
starting to feel like I belonged with Angel, and yet I didn’t; I didn’t even
belong where I belonged.

“Not really,” I said. “I, uh— I haven’t really been
able to carve out much of anything there for myself, to be honest. I’ve never
even really had a boyfriend. I was with a guy for three weeks once.”

He nodded, leaned back in the booth. “I’m getting pretty
hungry,” he said.

His feet came up from under the table and rested on the booth
near my thigh. He had on black Nikes with a strip of bright white around the
soles. He wore no socks or those invisible socks, and his leg hair was glossy
black and looked soft. I wanted to touch his ankles, wedge my thumb into the
notch where they met.

Our food came and he pulled them back and sat up.

“Oh man oh man,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Look at
this
.”

“This is embarrassing,” I said, surveying the vastness of
our meals, the running syrup, the oozing butter. Barrels of iced coffee sweated
on the table. “I’m completely embarrassed.”

While he was eating he got a blob of butter on his lip and I
thought I might have to wipe it for him, like in a movie. But it was only there
for a second before he licked it away.

At that moment he started laughing, I assumed about the
butter. I could see chewed-up food in his mouth but it wasn’t gross, it was
cute. “Oh my god,” he said, “look at that kid’s shirt. Behind you.”

I turned around in the booth and spotted, a few booths back,
a boy of about eleven wearing a t-shirt that said
No. 1 Grandpa
.

“That kid is awesome,” Angel said, catching his breath. “That
kid is my new hero. That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.” He didn’t seem
to be exaggerating.

“That
is
pretty
funny,” I said, but I was laughing more because Angel was laughing; it was hard
not to.

When we were finishing lunch I got up to run to the bathroom
and he said, “While you’re gone I’m going to spike your drink—roofie your
drink.” He nodded to my tub of iced coffee. I laughed and thought, but didn’t
say, that he wouldn’t even have to, that I would go willingly wherever he
wanted. But his tone hadn’t been flirty or coy, it had that same steadiness it
always had, that same matter-of-factness, both reassuring and confusing, so I
didn’t know if he was being flirty or just teasing me.

At the checkout counter Angel debated about buying a Denny’s-branded
travel mug, and haggled with the cashier, an attractive, squinty-eyed
surfer-type guy who looked imported from Southern California, to give him the
mug free as a gift. Surfer Guy said he couldn’t do it,
brah
,
and Angel asked if he could have one of those Denny’s tote-bags free as a gift
if he paid for a mug.

“
Brah
, that doesn’t even make any
sense,
brah
, the tote-bag costs more than the mug!”
said Surfer Guy.

Angel was being playful and I’m sure Surfer Guy didn’t even
realize he was being flirted with, that this hulking guy in front of him was a
boy who liked boys. But the exchange fascinated me because up to then I hadn’t
seen Angel interact with any guy other than me. Only because Surfer Guy was so
objectively cute did I know Angel must be flirting.
So this is how Angel flirts
, I thought. In light of this I replayed
the day in my head and realized there were a number of times Angel had talked
to me with the same tone he was using on Surfer Guy.

As we left the restaurant I teased him about it. “You liked
that Denny’s guy, huh?”

“He was OK.”

I asked him if he got hit on by a lot of soldier-fetish type
guys, and if he minded it, and he said yes he did get hit on by those guys, and
that it depended on the particular person whether he minded it or not. He
wouldn’t, for example, have minded it from the Denny’s guy.

I thought I’d asked because I was curious, but after he
answered I knew I’d asked because I was protective. I guess I didn’t like the
idea of someone only seeing the uniform, and not knowing that Angel was the
kind of guy who reminded you to take notes, who got car-sick, who complimented
your kid, who laughed at funny t-shirts, who haggled for tote-bags.

The Cambridge apartment on Shelley’s list was near Harvard
Square and MIT. Not only were the two guys still living there, they were home,
playing video games in their dirty apartment, and they watched warily as the
landlord led us around. The bedrooms smelled like pot and dirty sheets and the
bathroom mirror was spattered with toothpaste. Clearly the photos in the ad
Shelley printed had been taken before these guys moved in. We slunk through the
place without asking questions and I felt slightly grimy leaving the building.

“Sorry about that one,” I said to Angel as the sunlight hit
and refreshed us. The Jeep was parked down the street. “That was so awkward.”

“It could be good if they weren’t still living in it.”

“Yeah, but, just.... No.”

He said, “It was like being at a yard sale where you don’t
want to buy anything but you feel like you have to because they’re all looking
at you.”

“But I feel like they aren’t leaving voluntarily. I smell
eviction.”

“If you moved in, one day they’d show up again, back!”

As we walked to the car, side by side on the sidewalk, our
knuckles brushed together and I felt, clear as anything, but with sudden
wondrous surprise, that I would be comfortable holding his hand. Even on this
busy street, even among all these people walking by. I had never held a guy’s
hand in public before. Never with Johnny, not even in Northampton where there
are so many gays—it just wasn’t something I could do. But I knew I would’ve
done it with Angel. I couldn’t have explained it and I didn’t know what to make
of it. I felt safe with him. Nothing could touch me with him. With Angel I
imagined a time when—I don’t know—lines would never get crooked,
where all my ticks would be muscled away. It was silly. I had known him seven
hours.

When we got back to the car and I saw his duffel bag in the
back I wondered what he had in there and I wondered if I would ever be alone
with it long enough to reach inside and pull something out, whatever I could
get, and keep it to remind me of him. Because more and more I wanted something
to remember him by.

We were still near Harvard Square when my phone rang. It
was Shelley. She wanted to know how the day was going.

“Good places and bad places,” I told her. “I’ve been keeping
notes.” At this Angel smirked thoughtfully. “But there’s a couple good
candidates, so we’re doing OK. I’ll give you the full report tonight.”

“What time is she getting off work?” Angel said. “I need a
nap now.”

“What time are you getting out of work?” I asked.

She told me probably not until 6:00 or 7:00, she was really
sorry, and if we couldn’t kill the time, we were welcome to stop by her office
and get her apartment key so we could go back to her place.

“We might do that,” I told her. “Your cousin is getting
cranky. He’s been up many hours and needs to sleep.”

Angel scrunched his face at me.

“How many places do you still have to see?” Shelley asked.

“Just two,” I said. “After that, we’ll be in touch.”

We were driving to the first of the last two apartments.
Somerville, 3:15. Being driven around in my own car was making me happy. Maybe
because Angel was driving. I felt like a superhero sidekick in my own car. I
held my hand out the window, cupping the hot wind with my palm. I didn’t want
the day to end, and it was so close to ending.

“Do you have any cowlicks in your beard?” Angel said.

I turned. “Cowlicks?”

“Like little cowlicks in your beard hairs.”

“Weird. I don’t know, I’ve never grown out my beard. I don’t
think so. Why?”

“But you can tell from the stubble, how the hairs go. I have
beard-hair cowlicks.” He leaned toward me and pressed his finger to his cheek. “See?”

“Oh,” I said awkwardly, not knowing quite what to do with
having my attention called to his skin. To his body. “I see them.” He had a few
days’ worth of black stubble and on his cheek by his jaw was clearly visible a
circular pattern of hairs. “They’re like little hurricane swirls.”

“Yeah, my hurricane swirls. They’re hard to shave.” He said
it as matter-of-factly as he said everything, and although I now knew this was
how he flirted I still couldn’t tell whether he was flirting or whether, this
many hours into the day, he was really reaching for small-talk topics.

The Somerville apartment would’ve been a contender but
although it was empty and broom-swept clean it reeked of cigarette smoke. Angel
didn’t ask any questions. Rather than writing any notes on Shelley’s printout I
drew a cigarette and circled it.

“Next one’s the last one,” I said to Angel.

“Already?” He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. “But
we’re just starting to get good at this, Ollie the trolley.”

When we met this morning I would not have guessed that he’d
be playing with my name by the end of the day. I was looking at him now, I
knew, the way you look at someone you’ve already been given the privilege of
touching. His eyes being closed made it easier to imagine I had been given it.
But I stopped my hand when it was halfway between us, though my fingertips
seemed pulled as if by magnets to his brown arm. Before he opened his eyes I
leaned back against the headrest and closed mine, too. We had both been up
since before dawn.

“All right,” he said, and I heard him start the Jeep, “let’s
do this.”

The landlord of the last apartment, a fourth-floor walkup
in the South End near where we’d started, made the wheezing landlord at the
Brighton brownstone look like an athlete by comparison. Clearly he had no
intention of climbing the stairs.

After rummaging in his baggy pockets he handed Angel a key. “Go
up, have a look, kick the tires, take your time, I’ll be here.” He coughed.

Nervous with what felt like freedom and responsibility, I
started up the carpeted stairs. I looked back past Angel and saw the rotund
landlord pull a magazine out of his pants pocket.

When we got up to the apartment I could think of little
except the fact that Angel and I were in it alone together. It was the first
time all day that we’d been alone and unobserved. Would something ignite here
between us? Would I kiss him? Would he slip his hand down my pants and whisper
in my ear? Would he hold my hand?

No. We would look at the bare rooms, we would test the water
pressure, we would observe that the garbage disposal was broken. The aloneness
made me more reserved. And the emptiness of the apartment was a reminder of
what Angel wanted right now: no strings, a clean slate, a new life.

I was turning to leave, and I knew that leaving would mean
leaving him and our day and everything, and I couldn’t do that so easily. I
thought,
Oh fuck it
. Who cared what
Angel Cantos thought he wanted? He wanted to start a new life but there’s no
such thing as a new life, there’s only life, and that can be good or bad but it’s
true either way. Life had been going on when he was in Brattleboro and I was in
Amherst and we were a half-hour drive from one another and never knew it, and life
would go on when I was here in Boston and he was at Fort Hood. In between those
two things, and part of those two things, was today. And the only thing that
makes today special is that it’s the only part of life you have control over.
The rest is memories or imagination. The rest is
could’ves
or
shoulds
.

“Angel?”

He was near the living-room window pulling at the blinds,
trying to get them to hang straight.

“Sorry,” he said, “they were crooked, it was annoying me.”

I looked at him and smiled and liked him all over again.

“Angel. So I know you’re leaving, and this is a bad time,
and you don’t date. And— But I would really like to go on a date with
you. Tonight. Now, I guess. If you wanted.”

I thought I would’ve been shivering with nervous energy but
I wasn’t. I felt good. It was because of him.

“Ollie....” He still had the cord from the blinds wrapped
around his fist and when he lowered his hand absentmindedly the blinds leapt
up. Neither of us looked at them, though.