Lake Overturn (46 page)

To take that man’s penis in his hand would have been something like this. Even though Enrique had already masturbated four times in his room today and he was sore, he again felt a stirring.

What would Jay’s penis look like if it grew, right now, under that robe? Enrique watched the spot, but there was no movement.

An animated diagram on the TV screen showed the path of the Viking Lander from Earth to Mars. Then pictures appeared of the desolate red landscape, a desert without end, with no life. Gene was probably watching this show next door.

Enrique jumped. Weren’t they supposed to feed Gene dinner? For a moment, Enrique considered letting it pass, but then the guilt won out. Gene would never be able to get a meal on by himself, and, besides, Enrique was bored.

Barefoot, he walked across the empty lot to Gene’s trailer. None of the lights were on. He knocked on the screen door and, after a moment, Gene appeared. Behind him in the darkened living room, the TV blared. PBS, just as Enrique had predicted.

“Weren’t you supposed to come over for dinner?” Enrique asked. He allowed himself an abusive tone. In the months since they had spoken, he had grown an inch and become independent (Enrique’s mom could have left for as long as she wanted, and he’d be fine) while Gene had stayed the same, except for adding wisps to his beard and pearly-headed pimples to his cheek.

“I ate,” said Gene.

“What did you eat?”

“Peanut butter–banana,” he said with neither pride nor hesitation. Still, the simple presentation of information.

“That’s not dinner. Come on.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Fine. I don’t care.” Enrique turned and hopped off the porch.

“I’m waiting for my mom to call,” Gene said.

Enrique turned on him a condescending smile. “Have fun,” he said.

Back in front of the TV, Enrique squirmed with boredom. Jay still hadn’t moved one muscle. If Gene knew what he was missing—the chance to gaze at Jay uninterrupted—he’d give up waiting for his mom to call. Gene had always had a crush on Jay. Enrique had been too ashamed to articulate this, even to himself, when they were friends. It had been gross, and Enrique had wished Gene would just cut it out. But now he didn’t care.

It had been a long time since Enrique had done one of his experiments; bike-riding had overtaken research as his favorite hobby. But stuck here with no entertainment, he became curious.

After a few minutes, Enrique stood and opened the blinds over the couch. This window looked out over the weedy area between their house and the chain-link fence, and its blinds were always kept closed. Then he went next door again.

“Gene,” Enrique said when he answered the door, “I know you’re waiting for your mom to call, but could you do me a huge favor? Jay got beaten up really bad last night. He’s in the living room, and I’m supposed to be watching him. But I gotta go somewhere. Could you watch him for me just for, like, a half-hour?”

“Is he all right?”

“Yeah, he’s gonna be fine. They’re just keeping him unconscious, you know, for the pain.”

Gene twisted his mouth and looked up at Enrique. “Okay,” he said, and he followed Enrique back home.

“Thanks a lot, Gene. Like I said, I’ll be gone for a while. Just make yourself at home. There’s meatballs in the kitchen.” But from the moment Gene saw the long body laid out in the recliner, his attention was lost.

W
ANDA SAT ON
the curb, under the night sky where bright stars vibrated in their lodgings. Across the street, the lights still glowed in her windows, her apartment, which was occupied by the enemy. Time seemed to be folding and unfolding since she took the drug; it was hard for her to tell how long she had been sitting here, as every moment that passed brought with it a new reality that required her reaction. With every breath the universe was born anew; every moment splashed against her like water. And she controlled it—the deeper she breathed, the more vivid the world her breath brought about. She giggled, thinking how she would look from the outside, reacting with welcome to the new worlds she encountered.

He
felt it, too—her baby. What she felt, he felt. That was being a pregnant mother.

What had Wanda been worried about? She didn’t need that apartment. There was only one thing inside it that mattered: the mobile.
His
mobile, her baby’s.

She leaped up and started searching Darrell’s lawn. She found a rusted metal pipe about two feet long. Attached to its end was a knobby elbow joint, which gave the pipe a satisfying heft and swing, like a baseball bat.

The look that had appeared on that girl Misty’s face yesterday—fear—was the opposite of what Wanda felt now. Fear was the encountering of a new world that was awful, not brilliant. Wanda felt especially able to inspire fear in this state. She would throw off worlds that Misty would swallow, like it or not. But she shouldn’t become distracted; this mission was not for Wanda but for her baby. She threw a few practice swings. Fantastic. Her breath controlled her arm like a pump, and this pipe was her arm’s extension.

Wanda charged across the street and up the walk to the porch. She swung the pipe hard. It met the wall next to the door and left a gray slash. That was disappointing. The impact jarred her shoulder a bit and stopped her from carrying the stroke through, so the cut wasn’t deep. She swung at the door. That was better: not only did it punch a round hole and send a splintered crack up the door’s center, but it caused a scream to come from inside—the scream of her enemy. Fear was Wanda’s best tool. And surprise. If she surprised them, she could rush into the bedroom and seize her prize with no resistance. She swung at the door handle. It popped off and the door swung slowly open.

“Hank!” screamed Misty. She was backing up, climbing the couch backward while holding her belly with one hand. Wanda half-expected her to go on and climb right up the wall like a spider.

Wanda swung blindly and punched a wide, triangular hole in the wall, from which dusty bits of plaster then dangled. She hadn’t fully recovered the pipe when a figure flew in from the hallway. Hank tackled her from the side, and they both fell to the floor. Barely shaken, Wanda kept hold of the pipe. She gave Hank a sound kick to the shoulder that sent him rolling away. She sat up enough to gain leverage for another swing. Hank lifted his forearm to shield his head. Wanda met the arm with an ax-chop that made him bellow in pain and curl into a ball.

Misty used this opportunity to dash down the hall. Wanda scrambled after her, fearing she’d blockade the bedroom. But Misty ran into the bathroom instead and slammed the door. Wanda swung at it—an extra blow, just to hear Misty’s mule-bray and keep her hiding inside. Wanda pushed the bedroom door open. The floor was covered in clothes, boxes, and scattered papers. Around the bed there was a great mound of belongings. Wanda ran up this bank onto the bed, and took her prize. She didn’t want to ruin the ring from which it hung, so she slowed herself and used the pipe to prod it from its hook. This caused all the clowns to dance an epileptic jig, their elbows and knees swinging backward, then they fell into her arms.

“Better git the fuck outta here, you crazy bitch!” Hank hollered from the kitchen. “I called the police!”

What luck! Lucy’s drawing still hung in its place. Wanda snatched it from the wall and folded it into her pocket.

Now Wanda had only one hand with which to brandish the pipe; she had to be careful. She crept down the hallway. Hank was cowering in the kitchen, the phone in one hand and a knife in the other. Wanda rushed through the living room and out the door. Hank dropped the phone and pursued.

Out front, some neighbors from the other units had come shyly out onto the lawn, keeping their bathrobes closed with folded arms. They all retreated several steps when they saw Wanda.

“Stop her!” Hank cried. “She wrecked my house!” Wanda turned, and Hank slowed, still brandishing the knife. He took a few careful steps toward her and said, “What’s that you got? Whud you steal?”

“It’s mine,” Wanda said.

“Put it down,” Hank said, giving the air a little stab.

“You leave her be!” a neighbor’s voice called from behind Wanda.

Taking good aim, Wanda lifted the pipe and pitched it toward Hank’s head. It spun marvelously in the air, like a baton, but missed and skidded up the walkway with a surprisingly weak tinkle. Wanda turned and ran.

G
ENE’S CALCULATOR-WATCH TOLD
him it was 11:08 p.m. In the ten minutes that he had been observing Jay, neither had moved a muscle.

“Jay,”
Gene whispered. Speaking to him brought on a big bubble—which was the name Gene gave the feeling that started in his belly and rose to his heart and up his throat, shortening his breath. Some bubbles he liked; this one he didn’t, but he was moved anyway to speak again, louder. “Jay!” he said. Again, no response.

At 11:13, Gene rose, crossed the room, and tapped Jay’s hand. Then he shook Jay by the shoulder, gently. Jay did nothing but breathe a shallow, hissing breath through his nose. Something white showed between Jay’s parted lips. Gene bent down to look. Was it fabric? Some sort of gag? At 11:18, Gene put the tip of his index finger, which was trembling, to Jay’s bottom lip, pushed, and revealed the white stuff to be a corner of a wad of gauze, which filled one side of Jay’s mouth. He must have had an injury—a pulled tooth or a cut on his tongue. They had put gauze in Gene’s mouth when he had an extra molar extracted when he was eleven, and he had hated its rough texture, even when it was softened by saliva. Gene released the lip, and it came back up. The lip grew softer, he noticed, as he released it. Now he stroked the lip, out at its rim where it was brown and firm, then inside where it was red and soft and where a slight wetness facilitated his stroking.

It took twelve minutes to build up the required strength of hand and steadiness of heart (these things added up to courage, but that was a name he had learned, rather than a quality he felt), and in that time, Gene stood rigid as a tin soldier. When he had a task to do, he acted like a robot who would conserve energy in one quadrant of its body to use in another. At 11:31, he took the fluffy fabric of the robe from where it opened against Jay’s leg, and lifted it. It was dark underneath, but Gene could make out Jay’s penis, lying there on its side under a mass of tightly curled pubic hair. Gene knelt to see better. He folded the robe over Jay’s leg so the light from the kitchen would shine on what he had found.

Of the millions of minutes Gene would live, the two that followed were the only ones that, he would come to feel, mattered.

Naturally, no one understood Gene. Enrique had come the closest, having become able, over the years, to point out to others the details of Gene’s limitations so they wouldn’t ask too much of him and to warn them of his quirks so they wouldn’t find offense in them. But even Enrique never could see what Gene saw or feel what he felt; the wall was too thick, and what lay behind, too weird. Enrique had, at last, dropped him. Contrary to everyone’s belief, Gene perceived beauty, perhaps more than they did. He felt it, and was at certain moments submerged in it, owned by it, unable to feel anything else.

At this moment there was nothing on earth but what he had found. This ash-colored pucker of flesh that he took in his fingers, darker than the rest of Jay’s skin (foreskin was its name—he knew from a medical textbook he had read at the library), was the softest thing he had ever felt, softer than any earlobe or flower petal. He held it for ten seconds. Then he pressed it back (he knew, from the textbook, that he could do so without damaging it) and revealed a bulb of flesh whose color was balanced perfectly between brown and pink. It was not like his own; it was wet, and glistened in the light like the stamen of a flower. His memories of every penis he had ever seen—his own, Enrique’s, those of the Boy Scouts and the men in the dressing room at the pool—were shuffled and relabeled. He knew them now as the altered, desiccated stamens of the flowers women dried in their Bibles. This was the only living one he had ever seen. When the scent reached him a second later, it made him draw back, then freeze to savor it. It was a dirty smell, like old socks—worse, putrid—but the moment his senses recoiled, the scent was rounded out by something else, something lovely—milk, warmed on the stove, scalded to a skin on the pan’s edges.

In the future, when Gene would imagine his life as a
story
, like one told in a science fiction novel or constructed in a role-playing game, it would end here. As far as life is made of moments that stick, be they burrs or diamonds, rather than those innumerable moments that don’t, that have no weight and are carried off on the wind, this was it. Gene didn’t perceive nuance, but he understood laws. There were express laws in the world that must be obeyed, and one of them said that all this—what he was doing here, the beauty he had found and that now owned him—was forbidden, absolutely forbidden with no loopholes or exceptions. He would obey this law and never come here again. He would never enter the holy of holies again lest he be struck dead. As Gene would tell it, what led up to this moment was preparation; what followed was recollection.

He closed the foreskin back over the head or, rather, allowed it to close; he released it and it swallowed the stamen and hung slightly shorter than before—at about 80 percent. Gene hunkered down lower and was able to see up the wrinkled sheath to the tip, notched with a slit that had tiny red lips of its own. The intimacy of peeking at this mouth—cheating, when he had already allowed the stamen to return to its protective bell—gave Gene another bubble.

Then there was an awful rapping sound that made Gene want to cover his ears with his hands (he didn’t, though, having learned years ago the law that said you should endure noise without closing your ears and hiding from it), and Gene turned to see Enrique in the window, pointing to the hallway. Gene dropped the robe over Jay and stood straight. Lina emerged from the hallway, her breasts swinging under her lacy nightgown. Upon seeing Gene, she drew back. “What are you doing here?” she said.