Читать книгу Iris Has Free Time - Iris Smyles - Страница 13

We had sex for the first time in a suite at the Sands Casino, then ordered cheeseburgers from room service and went down to the floor to gamble.

After, things cooled down almost immediately. I was disappointed, but found a broken heart was not so hard to bear, provided you didn’t know it was broken until after it had been fixed. Lex let me down easy by skillfully not bothering to let me down at all. Instead, he simply began referring to the fact of our friendship, as if from the start there had been nothing more. Since nothing was changing, nothing need change, was the message—no need to stop sleeping together. And because he was older, because he knew everything, I figured he must know about this, too. Not wanting to appear foolish, I didn’t ask any questions but just rushed to adjust my perspective to his.

And I was happy to be his friend finally. That I was the one he talked to about girls made me feel special. More special than if we’d been dating, because if we’d been dating, I’d be his adversary, not his confidante. When you’re dating, we agreed, during one of our marathon phone calls, you’re basically just strangers trying to trick each other, opponents trying to win. Dating, we decided, is more about what you don’t share than what you do. Lex and I, on the other hand, that summer, shared everything.

Including our secret. Because Lex had a reputation for seducing young girls—a habit I teased him for, as if identifying the others proved I was not one of them—I made him promise not to tell anyone about us. “Wouldn’t it be fun to keep you and me a secret?” I whispered feverishly, after our first kiss. With nothing to gain from publicizing our relationship, Lex pulled me close, agreeing it would make for a terrific time.

Because of all this then, because I really liked Lex and was afraid of anyone finding out, I made jokes about him, told my friend Caroline that his close-cut hair made his head look like it was made of felt, told her that I wanted to stick felt animals on it and felt continents, called him “felt-head.”

And catching sight of him scowling at karaoke one night, annoyed as usual, this time because his song hadn’t come up yet, I tapped Caroline on the shoulder and pointed. “Look, the denim gargoyle!” And when I spied him flirting with yet another young girl at the bar, I’d say, look how old and sad Lex is, how pathetic his chasing girls half his age. I’d remark how he was getting older but not growing up, how ten years from now he’d be wearing the same Converse sneakers and Eddie Grant T-shirt and whispering the same words he was whispering just then to someone else.