Authors: Unknown Author
“I need a beer.”
She tossed a pair of her Gucci boots out behind her. They landed at Kathryn’s feet.
“April?”
April rose, shoving the curtain aside on its rod. “Did you know there was a black national anthem?” She tore several hangers from the rack before depositing the pile of shirts onto her extra-long twin.
“No, I didn’t,” Kathryn answered. April had gone to a meeting of the African American Student Alliance, and from the tone of her voice, it was clear that her worst fears had been confirmed.
“It was like the first day of high school. I walked into the center and the only person that would even talk to me was Marcel. And you want to know what he told me after the meeting? It doesn’t matter that his mother’s Irish and his father’s black. But with me, see, being biracial is a problem because all the
real
black women there think I’m going to steal all the good men. Good black men who would take a half-white woman over them any day. How’s that for unity?”
Kathryn gently curved an arm around April’s back, and rested her chin on April’s shoulder. “So I guess you didn’t tell them you were a dyke.”
April’s laugh was strained. In their first week of being roommates, Kathryn had gone from calling April a “lipstick lesbian” to a “Neiman Marcus lesbian.” “Screw them, April,” Kathryn said. “You want some reinforcement? Give the GLA a try. Trust me. I went with Randall once. They’re hurting for patent leather and side-zip jeans.”
“No thanks,” April responded. “I don’t feel like having a bunch of bull dykes hold me down so they can pierce my nose. It doesn’t matter. Politics isn’t my calling anyway.” April dug into her jacket pocket and handed Kathryn a crumpled pink flyer. Andy Warhol’s face stared up at her, superimposed on a wobbly, spiral top that looked like it had been sketched by a third grader.
“Frat parties are your calling?”
“It’s Burton House. They don’t card. And we’re going. So get dressed.”
“The literary frat? The losers that march a pledge naked on the green and make him do tequila shots while they dance around in llama costumes, right?”
“Hey, at least they get out of the room! You’ve been napping since we got here.”
Kathryn tossed the invite aside and fell back onto her mattress with a groan. “I’ve got work.”
“Waiting for Randall is not work!” April shot back. “Besides, I think he’s going.”
“No he isn’t,” Kathryn responded, sitting up suddenly.
April squinted at her. “Why? Because he didn’t clear it with you first?”
Kathryn rolled her eyes, even though she had to admit she didn’t know where Randall was going that evening. And she hated the nights he slipped away and left her on her own unsure of how to negotiate Atherton without her partner in crime. She had dropped by his room earlier, daring to knock even though it might result in a face-to-face encounter with Randall’s roommate, Jesse, and whatever completely naive freshman female he had bagged for the evening. But both Randall and the walking penis he lived with had been out, and their closed door bore an inane sign announcing the names of the room’s occupants in bright letters cut out of yellow, neon-colored construction paper. The resident advisor had taped one to the door of every room on the first day of Orientation, to propagate the homey notions that no nervous freshman would be anonymous at Atherton, but most students had removed or disfigured them. Randall and Jesse’s sign remained intact, as if to highlight the odd pairing that lived on the other side, the gay Prada fashion plate who went on long walks with his finger in a novel and his Discman pumping synthesized dance music into his ears, and the aloof stud who rarely left his room because he was usually fucking someone in it.
She realized April had been talking for the last minute.
“. . . guy looked like Paul Bunyan on crack, but we both took a flyer and Randall said he might be going if they didn’t charge for shitty beer.” April turned to face her suddenly. Kathryn hoped she didn’t look caught, but April must have seen something in her eyes, because she crossed to Kathryn’s bed and sank down next to her. “If you don’t snap out of this, I’m going to buy those special light bulbs I read about. The ones that simulate sunlight for little West Coast girls like you who turn suicidal during winter.”
“I’m from San Francisco. But nice try.”
April smiled slightly, pleased that Kathryn was sparring with her again. “April, don’t you remember my rule about frat parties?”
“Oh please. It’s a
literary
frat, Kathryn!”
“A literary frat—yeah, right. What’s next? A triathlon for smokers?” April rose, shaking her head. Her gaze landed on Kathryn’s desk. She picked up Randall’s story. “What’s this?” she asked. Feeling a strange stab of panic, Kathryn got up from the bed too. “I didn’t know Randall wrote stories,” April said distantly, scanning the first page. No sooner had she flipped the page than Kathryn tugged the story out of her hands gently. April looked to her with a surprised, slightly offended smirk.
“Sorry. I just don’t know how many people he wants reading it.”
“So he’s a writer now? In addition to being the prince of Park Avenue?” Kathryn met the sound of her disapproval with an icy stare. April softened. “Can you tell me what it’s about?” She could sense Kathryn’s protectiveness of Randall’s short story.
Kathryn managed a slight laugh. The story was so peculiar it defied easy description. “It’s about this kid who grows up in this small town in Texas — ”
“And Randall’s from New York.”
“That’s why it’s a story. Should I finish?”
April rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t care less.
“When he’s a little kid, his mom gets killed in this car accident. Her car stalls out at this railroad crossing and she gets hit and dies instantly. Then the county finally decides to put up gates and warning lights because she’s like the ninth person to get killed in that spot. So then . . .” April was holding up a collared shirt that looked like it was made out of aluminum to her chest and examining herself in the full-length mirror. “April, are you listening?”
“Uh-huh.”
“All right, so when the boy turns fifteen he finds out that this entire town he grew up in exists only because the county put up the gates and people finally thought it was safe to live near the tracks. Basically, his mother had to get killed before anyone would build his hometown. So the kid just... snaps. And one night, he derails the train.”
Startled, April turned. “How?” she asked, her sense of logic offended.
“He saws through some of the railroad ties.”
April’s eyebrows arched. “If it was that easy to derail a train, wouldn’t more fifteen-year-olds be doing it?”
“It’s a story, April. And I don’t think you’re supposed to believe the boy really means to do it.”
But even Kathryn wasn’t sure. The descriptions of propane tanks lying in the smoldering cavities of tract homes and overturned trailers had been too emphatic, demonstrating a love of fire even as it consumed humans, and more than that a kind of rage she had never seen Randall exhibit in daily life. Or had she just missed it? Was there something darker lurking behind his warm-but-knowing smiles and his dreamy silences? In the retelling, the five-page story now had a dizzying effect, and she slid open her desk drawer and deposited it inside. When she turned, April was studying her, as if she understood the strange spell the story had cast over her.
“What’s a Warhol party, anyway?” Kathryn asked.
“I don’t know.” April brightened at Kathryn’s first sign of surrender. “Drugs?”
Kathryn winced. “One condition.”
“Here we go!”
“If Jesse Lowry shows up, then I’m out of there.”
April lifted both hands in a gesture of defeat. “Fine.”
Dr. Eric Eberman wasn’t sure what had awakened him, the mournful wail of the siren carried by the wind buffeting the walls of the house, or the feel of Randall Stone’s teeth gently closing around one of his nipples. The bedroom window was rattling in its frame, and outside, the tree branches jerked in the streetlight's wan halo, their shadows latticing Randall’s face, hiding and then revealing his pale blue eyes and slight, electric smile.
“I have to go,” Randall whispered.
He bent down as if to give Eric a formal kiss on the cheek, and in response Eric curved an arm around his shoulders and brought the young man’s body on top of his. Randall let out a gentle, almost placating laugh before his head came to rest on Eric’s chest. As if he had needed only Eric’s reticence to release him to reignite their passion, Randall slid one bent knee up between Eric’s thighs, applying gentle pressure with his kneecap to Eric’s crotch while his tongue traced a path up Eric’s sternum, and then up one side of his neck before he withdrew, face level with Eric’s. Eric allowed his lids to roll shut, giving Randall silent permission to lean in for a genuine good-bye kiss.
As their mouths met, Eric allowed his eyes to wander down Randall’s naked back, fingers traveling leisurely over taut muscle beneath boyishly smooth skin, wondering how long before the first stab of guilt would come, that sudden weight that yanked him down from the delirious high of touching what had previously been prohibited to him.
Randall withdrew, lips lingering slightly, before he cupped Eric’s face in his hands, gazing down at him with a sudden, penetrating stare. Randall’s full lips and baby fat-padded cheeks could transform from a pout to a smile in a second, but a rigid jawline added years to his face when it tensed in anger, as Eric had seen whenever he came close to denying Randall what he wanted. Which, to Eric's silent delight, was usually himself.
As Randall rested his head against his chest, Eric’s fingers touched the first puckered scar on the back of Randall’s thigh, and he felt the young man tense, and then think twice, before letting himself go lax.
“Do they hurt?”
“Never,” Randall answered.
“They must’ve at the time.”
Randall grunted slightly as if to say he couldn’t remember.
“Remind me how...”
“My mother was preparing for this big dinner party. I was three and she put me up on the counter so I could watch her cook. Or not get out of her sight. I barely remember. . .Randall paused, as if trying to summon the recollection. “I just remember this entire pan going up in flames. It was like this big curtain of fire. I fell and just started running. My mom caught me and put me out before I set the whole apartment on fire.”
The first time Eric had asked about the burns covering Randall’s legs, his description had been more vivid. The pan had tipped. His mother had screamed when she knocked it over. Three-year-old Randall had fainted the moment he saw his legs on fire.
“I thought you blacked out the second it happened.”
Randall lifted himself off Eric’s chest.
“I must have.” He kissed Eric’s forehead firmly. “Because I don’t remember any pain. Maybe when you’re that young the mind protects you from pain more than it does later in life.”
Outside, the first siren
was
joined
by a
second.
Randall slid out from Eric’s arms and swung his legs to the floor. He reached for his pack of Dunhill Lights on the nightstand and extended one to Eric. Eric didn’t need to shake his head. Randall knew he wouldn’t smoke. They shared their silent joke—that the man who had just cheated on his wife with one of his male students wouldn’t be caught dead with a cigarette in his mouth. Randall lit it and crossed to the bedroom window. Eric saw the snow for the first time, framing Randall as he stood naked in front of the glass, one arm braced against the panes over his head, where a curl of smoke crept from his fingers through the streetlight’s frail glow.
It was ironic, Eric thought, the way Randall’s sudden departure from the bed constricted his breath, while the young man’s pressure on top of him seemed to push blood and oxygen at a vital clip through his veins. Only several feet away, Randall seemed strangely and quickly withdrawn.
“Where are you going?” Eric asked, suddenly aware that the idea of Randall leaving him alone again twisted something tight in his stomach.
“A party.”
“So I was just a pit stop?”
Randall turned from the window. “Are you asking me to spend the night?”
“She’s not coming back.”
“I know.” Randall returned his attention to the flakes falling with determined force past the window.
“Sometimes I think she might never come back,” Eric added, unnerved by Randall’s silence.
“That would be easy, wouldn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it would be easier than leaving her.”
A bolt of silence struck. Eric fought the urge to ask Randall if that was what he truly wanted—for Eric to leave his wife of almost twenty years. But that question brought on a cascade of others and Randall wouldn’t be able to tolerate the answers, despite his adult composure. The result would be the destruction of the private world they had created in this darkened bedroom, a world that allowed Eric to satisfy a thirst that had gone unquenched for two decades.
“You made the rule yourself, Eric. Can’t spend the night, remember?”
“We have rules?”
Randall’s amused exhalation of breath couldn’t qualify as a laugh. “Rules are good,” he said. “Rules make me think that this is more real than what it is.’’
“What do you mean?” Eric asked.
“Something that both of us are too afraid to give a name. A bunch of stolen moments lined up in a row. When this ends, whatever
this
is, both of us will spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out the kindest way to call it a mistake. It’s not fair to me, when you think about it.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’ll live longer than you.”
“What makes you think that?”