Читать книгу Tart - Jody Gehrman - Страница 14

Clay Parker lives in a yurt. Before tonight, I’ve never heard of such a thing. It’s round and wooden and is shaped like a circus tent. It’s more homey than I’d imagined. In fact, it has solid wooden floors, glass windows, running water and electricity. It’s the sort of place a hobbit might live in, if he was born and raised in Northern California.

You’re wondering what I’m doing here. So am I. But things are much more innocent than they sound—really—in fact, Clay’s insisted he’s going to lend me his bed while he spends the night at the smallish cottage down the road, where Friend lives. So far, the gender of Friend is a mystery my gentle probing has failed to pierce. Here’s the paltry sum of clues I’ve managed to procure:

1) Cottage has a couch, which he’s indicated he occasionally sleeps on.

2) Friend is “an old friend.” Assuming this refers to years of acquaintance, rather than somewhat comforting possibility that Friend, regardless of gender, is ninety and incontinent.

3) Friend will not mind the late hour (is now 1:00 a.m.), lack of prior notice or burden of making extra coffee come morning.

4) Friend makes great coffee.

Nancy Drew I am not. Even after nine hours of drinking, gorging and drinking again with this man, I am steadfastly incapable of asking about his romantic or (God forbid) marital status. It’s one of those sick dances we do: tell ourselves if we don’t ask, magically no obstacles will interfere. Equally sick is the assumption that, because sleeping-with candidate has not asked our status, said candidate wants what we want.

Ugh. Cannot believe I’m embroiling myself in this brand of mess yet again. But Clay Parker is absolutely bristling with sex appeal. His eyes are wise and knowing, his face all the more appealing for its minor irregularities. He’s got that endearing tiny half-moon scar near his left ear and a bicuspid with a minuscule chip missing. His left eye squints just a little more than the right, especially when he’s smiling. And then there’s the nose: that swerve toward the top, so subtle it makes you think you’ve imagined it, until you see it from a new angle and notice it again. Somewhere between the oysters and the peaches, I asked him about it. He blushed crimson.

“Whoa,” I said. “Don’t tell me—does it involve bondage and thigh-high boots?” He chuckled, but there was something wrong, and I instantly regretted asking. “You know what? It’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s fine. You can ask me anything.” Except, I thought, are you currently doing anyone? “It’s just—my dad. He was a little rough on me when I was a kid.”

“Oh. I see.” There was an awkward silence, followed by me blurting out, “He hit you?”

“A couple times.” We watched a tiny slip of a woman struggling to control her Great Dane as they crossed the street. He shrugged. “I guess nobody’s perfect.”

“Where is he now?”

“Dead.” He swallowed and held my gaze. I felt that weird surge of maternal warmth that always freaks me out—the impulse to stroke the stray wisp of hair back from a man’s forehead.

“What about your mother?”

He laughed, and though I was relieved to see him smiling again, there was something a touch hardened in the sound he made. “Oh, she’s still kicking. That old girl will outlive me, no doubt.”

“Do you like her?” Pop psychy as it is, I cling to my theory that boys who like their mothers are more satisfying in every way.

He thought about it a couple of seconds, which seemed like a bad sign, but when he answered I could tell it was just because he took the question seriously. “I do like her. I mean, we’d never hang out if she wasn’t my mother, but she’s feisty and she loves me more than anyone. That’s always irresistible.”

I just smiled, wondering if there’s anyone who loves me more than anyone.

Now that we’re here in his yurt, I’m a little daunted by the intimacy of it. I find myself standing in one big round room, lit by several candles and a brass lamp. I look around at the kitchen sink and the rustic, homemade-looking armoire and the (oh, God) king-size, quilt-covered bed all right there in plain view. We’ve been wandering for hours from one indulgence to the next, the ocean breeze messing with our hair, and now suddenly we’re encased by his bookshelves and his record player and his barbells on a thick wool rug. His dog, an old mutt the color of caramel that answers to Sandy, pants and wags her tail in a frenzy of joy as her master runs his hands all over her paunchy body.

“You surf?” I ask, noticing a large surfboard, yellowed like a smoker’s teeth, propped up next to the armoire and another, bright turquoise, near the door.

“Yeah.”

I nod. Usually, I find surfers to be a bit of a turn-off; California clichés generally make me want to heave. In this case, I can’t even work up to a sarcastic remark. Even surfing seems cool on him. “It’s a sweet place,” I say, stuffing my hands into my pockets.

“Oh, yeah? You sound surprised.”

“Well…” I shrug. “I’d never heard of a yurt. The way you described it—I mean, its Mongolian origins and all—I was picturing some yak skins stretched across a driftwood frame.”

He laughs. I like his laugh very much. It’s throaty and resonant, sexy as hell. Is it my imagination, or is it tinged now with just a shade of nerves?

“Here.” He hands me Medea, who is back in her box, probably puffed up again and pissed off. At least we did her the favor of leaving the motorcycle at Nick’s and getting him to drive us out here. She couldn’t reasonably be asked to put up with another death-defying ride, especially after all the drinks we’ve had. It was ten miles, easily, and though they were spouting off names at me—“Empire Grade” and “Bonny Doon”—I’ve no idea where we are. You’d think I might be wary, given my habitual fixation on mass murderers, but nine hours of continual conversation have allayed those fears. If Clay Parker is in any way homicidal or rape-inclined, then my instincts are so terrible I deserve to be strangled and cannibalized.

“I’ll put Sandy out so we can let Medea get her bearings.”

“Are you sure? It’s her—” I struggle to remember its name “—yurt, after all.”

“Oh, she’s dying to get out. It’s no problem.” He slips out the door with her. The yurt walls are canvas-thin, so I can hear him saying soft, reassuring doggy things to her as they crunch around in the grass.

I coax Medea out of her big-haired, frantic state again, though she can’t stop smashing her nose against all the canine-scented furniture with a mad, panicked expression. “Yes,” I murmur, trying to make my voice as warm and reassuring as Clay’s. “We’re in dog territory, babe. Don’t worry—they don’t all bite.”

The weird thing—I mean the really weird thing—is that this afternoon-into-night-into-wee-hours with Clay has got me pursuing lines of logic I’ve never dared pursue before. Not even with Jonathan. Studying Clay’s face in the dim, reddish glow of the Saturn Café, I found myself wondering what a baby would look like with his eyes and my mouth. God, is this my baby clock talking? I spent a whole semester of Fem. Theory my sophomore year writing papers on the topic: how the patriarchy created the baby clock mythology to con women into surrendering to mommyism. At the time I was twenty-one, giddy with the right to get drunk in seedy bars and swivel my hips against this boy and that to frantic techno rhythms. What did I know about biology, except that beer gets you drunk and sex makes you—momentarily at least—something like happy? Now, eight years later, I find myself contemplating how a stranger’s eyes would look in my theoretical baby’s face over a plate of Chocolate Madness.

What do we know about each other? Hardly anything. I know he’s an atheist, owns a record store, graduated from Berkeley and was a drummer in a punk-rock band called Poe when he was fifteen. He knows I love theater, directing more than acting, that I grew up in Calistoga and went to Austin in search of cowboys. Hardly enough résumé fodder has been revealed to warrant the swapping of spit, let alone genetic material. So how can I explain these freakishly domestic fantasies streaking though my psyche like shooting stars?

“You two okay?” Both Medea and I spin round at the sound of his voice. “Still a little skittish, huh?”

“Who, her or me?”

“Both.” He’s standing in the doorway, keeping Sandy from entering by gently nudging her away now and then with one leg. “Come out here, will you? I want you to see something.”

For a fraction of a second I hesitate—Dismembered Arm and Paw Found in Remote Woods—but then I remember Clay’s story about adopting a baby raccoon when he was eight. He named it Zorro and fed it with a bottle, for Christ’s sake. Would a guy like that dismember a girl like me? I extricate Medea from my lap carefully and follow him outside.

He leads me down a short path in the dark, mumbling, “Watch your step.” When we get to the middle of a broad, grassy meadow that smells of yarrow and pine, he looks up and I follow his gaze. Oh, my God. Above us, the stars stretch out in luxurious multitudes, crowding the sky with a million pinpricks of light. I feel suddenly minuscule and happy. I think briefly of Jonathan’s bus packed with all my belongings, reduced now to a charred pile of ash sweeping off on the night breeze. Out here, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. I’ll figure it out. Dwarfed by the enormous carpet of stars, I take a deep breath for the first time in days.

“Smells so good out here,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think it’s the stars, myself.”

I squint at him in the dark, wanting my eyes to adjust so I can study his eyes. “The stars have a smell?”

“Yeah, I think so. Don’t you?”

I look back up at the layers and layers of them, so vast they surprise me all over again. “Never occurred to me.”

“I think everything’s different in the presence of stars. Food tastes different—”

“Different, how?”

“Saltier, I guess. And sweeter. Music’s different, too—more dreamy, and lonelier. More—” he pauses, and I can see his silhouette clearly now; his face is tilted upward “—more longing in it. And everything takes on this particular scent. You smell it, don’t you?”

“Mmm-hmm,” I say, thinking he’d make a damn fine Romeo if he were ten years younger—he’s got that dreamy-melancholy thing going.

“Wait a second,” he says, and sprints back the way we came. In a minute I hear music floating on the warm September air: acoustic guitar and a melody I’ve never heard, but it’s like I already know it and love it. Some things are like that; sushi tasted totally familiar the first time I put it in my mouth. My parents were choking on the wasabi and I just went on chewing with the gentle smile of someone coming home.

The man singing has one of those resonant, ragged, sexy voices that comes from someplace deep and cavernous in his smoke-filled lungs.

With your measured abandon and your farmer’s walk, with your “let’s go” smile and your bawdy talk.

Clay returns, and he stands so close to me that our arms touch.

“You see? Sounds different under the stars, right?” he asks.

“I haven’t heard it any other way,” I say. “How can I be sure?”

“You’re not a Greg Brown fan?”

With your mother’s burden and your father’s stare, with your pretty dresses and your ragged underwear…

“I could be converted,” I say, smiling. “I’ve just never heard him before.”

“Never heard of—my God. Talk about deprived.”

The skin of his arm feels very warm against mine. Hot, in fact. I lean slightly toward him so that more of my skin touches more of his.

“It’s good you’re not set in your ways,” he says. “If there’s one thing I’m evangelical about, it’s music.” It’s a good thing I refuse to analyze this; if I did, I’d hear the whispered implication that he plans to evangelize me.

“This song’s been haunting me all day,” he says. “I think it might be about you. Tell me the truth, Greg Brown’s in love with you, right?”

“Can’t get anything past you,” I say, but now I want to shut up so I can hear the song and find out what Clay thinks of me. I can only catch certain lines now and then, though, between the crickets and the breeze playfully tousling the pines.

With your pledge of allegiance and your ringless hand, with your young woman’s terror and your old woman’s plans…

“Uh-oh. I just realized,” Clay says. “I’m doing it again.”

“Hmm?” I’m still straining to hear the song. Will your children look at you and wonder, about this woman made of lightning bugs and thunder…take in what you can’t help but show with your name that is half yes, half no.

“I’m being a DJ.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I do this when I’m nervous—try to talk through music. Not even my music. Pathetic.”

“I don’t think it’s pathetic,” I say. “I think it’s sweet.”

He turns slightly, and so do I, and our arm contact becomes my breasts fitting warmly against his chest, and now the sound of his breathing is so close it blends with everything else: the shimmery pine needles and the cricket-frog chorus and the lyrics I can’t quite follow anymore.

He bends down slightly, the shadow of his face moving toward mine, but instead of the expected searching lips, I feel his teeth biting down gently on my lower lip. I suck in my breath.

“I wanted to do that for hours,” he says, his voice thick in his throat.

“Bite me?”

“Mmm. Taste you.”

This guy’s not normal, I think, and a montage of our day unfurls inside my brain with the frenetic pace of time-lapse photography: the bus exploding into ribbons of orange and yellow, the kaleidoscope of the pool balls at the Owl Club, Nick and his jelly-smudged Ramones shirt, Clay feeding me calamari with his fingers. His mouth closes on mine now, and I can taste the day there, the effervescent weirdness of it, the unshakable sensation that I’m being marked by every minute.

You won’t remember the half-open door, or the train that won’t even stop there anymore, for you.