Gyrations
Keywords: Gyrations,
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"This really sucks." I lay next to my friend James, touching him at hip, knee and ankle. It was three a.m. and three hours away from him leaving.
"It's only a week," he said.
A week. Might as well be a year. Ten years, a millennium. "Six months I wait for this moment and now you're gone."
"Whose fault is that?" he asked.
"Oh, shut up."
The truth was--if there can be any truth in a situation like this--the fault was equally shared. I had liked him from the first and hadn't done much about it. He, on the other hand, had actively put me off.
It went like this: It was lunchtime on a warm day in June. I usually go to McDonald's, just to get off the property, but that day I didn't. Instead I ate at the food court. Tray in hand, I spotted him sitting alone a table, chin propped on his palm. I walked over for no particular reason and said, "Hey! Books-A-Million, right?"
He looked up from his hardback copy of "Wolves of the Calla" and squinted through his wire-frame spectacles. He was eating a salad. He smiled rather shyly. "The Coming Global Superstorm," he said in a soft, oddly husky voice. "How are you?"
I grinned, feeling comically pleased. "Great. I can't believe you remembered. It's been what, a month ago?"
He was tall and lean and had a mop of blonde hair reminiscent of Dennis the Menace. His glasses and the spray of freckles across his nose and cheeks didn't help. He wore a crisp gray-striped cotton shirt and and khaki Dockers. "I never forget a purchase," he said. "But I'm terrible with names."
"Martin," I said.
"James."
I sat down uninvited and commented on his book. I had read the first three volumes of "The Gunslinger" series, but had soured on it reading volume four. I didn't like the back story on Susan Delgado.
"I kept him in cocaine before the accident," he said. "Now I keep him in morphine."
I peeled the skin off my Subway sandwich and salted my French-fries. I was conscious of being attracted to James, and that felt very weird. My attraction to members of my fellow sex (no pun intended) was usually limited to the arc of their exposed erections--and then only in pictures. I had never felt attraction for a guy before.
"You like Martin Cruz Smith?" I asked.
"Arkady Renko. He's the coolest."
I thought so too. "Any idea when a new book's due? And if there is one?" After "Havana Bay", I had serious doubts about my old friend Arkady.
He shook his head. "I'll try to find out," he said. "Working at Books-A-Million doesn't make me any smarter than the average bear about due dates; it just lets me hear the rumors first. And so far, no rumors."
"That's too bad," I said.
He stabbed a cherry tomato with a plastic fork clasped by long slender fingers, and nodded.
The next time we met was a week later, out in the parking lot. He stood in front of an old brown Toyota with the hood up.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
He pushed hair out of his face and grinned. I noticed, not for the first time, how straight, white and even his teeth were. Today he wore a stiff white shirt and baggy gray slacks with string-loafers. "It thinks it's female," he said. "It has periods of temperament." I was struck again by the softness of his voice. When he bent over to inspect the engine, I looked at his ass.
"Stop that! Stop it right now", I berated myself. I had "never" looked at a male's hindquarters before.
"Battery?" I guessed.
"Battery's new," he said. Off to the west, lightning exploded in the clouds and thunder roared angrily. We both jumped and looked at the sky. "No," he said, looking at the sudden splatters of rain. He slammed the hood closed just as huge splats began peppering the asphalt.
"Get in!" I flung open the car door.
He hesitated a moment, then hunched his shoulders against the rain and ducked around to the other side of my car. "Slash-Boom" went a lightning bolt not a second later. Rain lashed the parking lot ad car.
"Jesus! I don't believe it." He smeared his glasses on a wet shirt front. "Where did that come from, anyway?" he asked.
I directed him to my glove compartment and its cache of McDonald's napkins. He dried his glasses, then wiped his rain-soaked face and his hair. My windows were turning into impenetrable fog banks by then, so I turned on the defroster.
"Need a ride home?"
He looked from the pouring sky to his car. "No," he said slowly. "I'd only have to find a way back out again. My roomie's a real asshole, so I don't want to ask him. Besides, it always starts in the rain. It's something electrical, I guess. Thanks for asking though."
"Sure." I wanted to sit and chat, but the cloudburst suddenly let up. Thanking me again, he jumped out and ran back to his car. I prayed to whatever god placed hexes on automobile engines but the damned thing started right away. Somebodyup there hates me, I thought.
Our next encounter occurred three months later. By then I was resigned to seeing him only on my weekly excursions into the book store. He had become impersonal now, answering my questions in one or two word sentences, seldom meeting my eye. I never saw him anywhere but the book store, so he was obviously avoiding me. It's one thing to have a girl purposely avoid you; have a guy do it to you sometime.
It was a rainy October evening when I unexpectedly ran into him at a party . . . with another guy.
"Martin," he said, looking almost panicked.
"Well, fancy meeting you here."
The apartment was on the third floor of an off-campus housing unit on Adelphi Road. The University of Maryland, where I attended occasional classes, was just across the road. The apartment belonged to a friend of a friend of a friend, which meant I was barely invited. I was in the company of, of all people, my sister Kierney. I expected her to come bounding up to this decidedly good looking fellow, taking a liking to him, and steal his friendship. It had happened before, though not under these particular circumstances. But then Michael walked up.
"Introduce me to your friend, James." He spoke with a blatantly bad British accent.
James's face darkened. "This is Marty. I work with him at the mall."
Michael looked me up and down and I was suddenly enlightened--and chagrined. He wore a black satin shirt and black leather pants, had slicked back hair flaring into a duck-tail above his collar, and looked just like a cast member from "Grease".
"You do books?" he asked.
"No," I said, casting a glance at James. "I do computer games and software."
"You do, do you? That's very interesting. Ever play, Singles: Flirt up you Life?"
"I've sold it," I said.
"Cool game. James and I have a sim running on our computer with two guys. We named them Michael One and Michael Two. Isn't that cute?"
"Cute," I agreed. I every bit expected him to pinch James on the cheek.
"You here with anyone special," he asked.
"My sister," I said. Maybe he was thinking of a foursome.
He laughed. Then Kierney walked up and had the last laugh on him.
Two months later, I looked up from a game I was discussing with some kid, and saw James. He stood ten feet away, hands in his pockets, and looking very embarrassed. He nodded and I suddenly remembered that rainy day out in the parking lot.
"Need a ride home?" I had asked.
He had looked out the window at the pounding rain. Sounding terribly unhappy, he had replied, "No. I'd only have to find a way back out again. My roomie's a real asshole, so I don't want to ask him."
I wanted to kick myself. I said, "Be with you in a moment, James."
He nodded again.
I took lunch early and drifted down to the food court with him. On the way he said, "I wanted to explain about that night."
"No explanation necessary."
"My roommate's an asshole."
"Most roommates are," I agreed. Mine certainly was.
He shrugged and cleared his throat quietly. "I, uh, I'm not like Michael, Martin. I wanted you to know that."
"I didn't think you were," I said. In fact, I didn't know what to think about him. If he was gay, he did a good job disguising it because he didn't act girly. On the other hand, he had that soft voice and winsome manner. Certainly, he had an effect on me.
"I liked it back in June when we struck up a friendship. I've never had friends before and once I had gotten to like you, I began to worry Michael'd step in and ruin it. He has that effect on people."
"I noticed," I said. I also noticed that his face was a fine pink color and he might as well have been wringing his hands.
"I guess what I'm saying is that because I didn't want it ruined, I stepped back before it could happen. I do that a lot. Easier than dealing with the hurt I guess. That's why I have no friends." He laughed, blushing even deeper. "Listen to me. I sound like a Soap Opera or something. Or exactly what I'm trying to tell you I'm not." He looked around, making sure we couldn't be overheard. "Would you--" He hesitated. "--maybe like to go out to a movie, or something like that?"
I was stuck. I liked him, of course, but I wasn't ready for a boy-boy date. At least not yet. "Only if you dress up like a girl," I joked unwisely.
Rather than take offense, he smiled pensively and said: "If it would get you out with me, or in bed with me, I would."
If food or drink were in my mouth, I would have spit it out. As it was, I coughed explosively and looked around in a panic. Then I stared at him.
"What?" he said. Then, "Stop it! You're embarrassing me." His face was beet red and his freckles shown out like beacons. "I wouldn't make a cute girl?"
Taking in the fullness of his mouth, the high cast of his cheekbones and the finely dimpled point of his chin, he might actually "be" a girl. A little blush, some mascara and lipstick--
"You're staring at me," he complained, looking away. His face was crimson and he stood stoop-shoulder and fidgeting, hands in his pockets. I wanted to kiss him.
"Have you--" I said, and then stopped. "Never mind. Let's eat."
We chose Sbarro's because that was closest. I got a roast beef sandwich and James a salad.
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Keywords: Gyrations,