Читать книгу Yield - Lee Houck - Страница 10

When I get back to my apartment my friend Louis is playing Nintendo and he offers me the second controller. “I challenge you to an all-night tournament of endurance,” he says.

I make a joke about whether he means playing Mario Kart or having sex. His eyebrows rumple into a dark V, and he pushes the controller into my open hand. I kick off my shoes and take off my shirt. “One game,” I say. Without looking at each other, only watching the screen, we start talking. “How long have you been here?”

“Most of the day,” he says. “I thought you would be home. I played Nintendo mostly.”

“You’re at a disadvantage then, already worn out.”

“Nope. I’m in the zone. Plus, I got past the Water Fortress. You steal the flute, play the Song of the Wind, and then the door explodes.”

“Cool,” I say. “I could never figure it out.”

“A fairy in the Dark Lands tells you how to do it.”

“Which level should we play?”

“Surprise me.”

“I think there’s something wrong with the Flower Cup. It gets fuzzy and blinking somewhere around the fourth heat. But I’ve been playing all day, so I don’t know.”

“Star Cup it is.”

“Let’s not argue over who gets to be the Princess.”

“You’re always the Princess.”

“She has the best acceleration of all the cars in her class.”

“Her cornering sucks.”

The little cartoon carts line up on the screen, the balloons fly, the crowd roars, and the little Nintendo traffic light begins its countdown to go. “Louis, my dear, prepare to die.”

We tear through the mud, slinging banana peels and turtle shells at each other, sliding off the track, through tunnels and over secret ramps. I eat a mushroom, which hits me with a burst of speed, and I dash across the screen. Sound effects explode into the room.

“I found a box of Jell-O in your cabinet, so I made that,” Louis says. “And then I thought what if they could engineer Jell-O to include all the necessary vitamins and minerals. So that a person could live solely on Jell-O. Forever and ever.”

I met Louis five years ago when a basically good-looking white-collar guy from Cleveland hired us to fuck while he watched. We cabbed up to the W Hotel and waited in the blue-haloed lobby, talking about whatever—the weather, a new restaurant, other small talk I’ve forgotten. Mr. Cleveland arrived only a few minutes late (not uncommon) and we fucked and he got off and it was very vanilla, only what he asked for. Then he paid us an extra hundred bucks to sit around with him and talk about ourselves. Mostly when they pay you to sit around and talk what they really want is for you to sit around and pretend to be interested in their boring-as-shit lives while they fondle your nipple or smell your hair over and over. Pretty icky.

Louis and I exchanged numbers, figuring if we ever have to fuck while somebody watches, we’d be glad to fuck each other. And it happened a few more times, but not too many. And then, almost invisibly, instantaneously, Louis graduated to legit model status, signed an exclusive contract with Calvin Klein, and started to get paid buckets of money for doing what he used to do for a lot less—stand around in his underwear. All of a sudden, he was plastered all over bus stations and subway cars. He stopped hustling and moved into a loft in Tribeca.

Louis zaps me with a lightning bolt and I shrink to the size of a pea, puttering across the grass where I’ve skidded off the road.

“Take that, Princess!” he shouts, and zooms across the finish line.