Читать книгу Yield - Lee Houck - Страница 14

I sleep about four hours. I try to sleep some when I do these middle-of-the-night appointments—if I know beforehand that they’ll be awful. I’ll sleep, do the deal, then come home and sleep some more. This way, I can slip the sex into an indiscernible time slot between drifting and consciousness. In other words, I won’t remember it as clearly. The whole mess will be blurred. The stupid shit will forget itself.

I think this guy lives in Florida, or at least I gather that from his talking about it nonstop over the phone. Gainesville? Tampa? One of those cities you forget exists. Coral-colored suburbs, alligator farms, and lime-green monkey grass. Shrimp on ice and suntan oil.

He stays in an apartment out in Jackson Heights. There’s a whole clan of thirty-something closet cases living down there who collectively rent this apartment, vacationing in it every so often, like a time-share. I’ve fucked there about a million times. I wonder if they sit around clambakes in St. Petersburg comparing notes. There was a bald man from Orlando who only licked my nuts over and over. He was there to paint the place as well—turquoise latex drips all over his arms and chest. The doorbell is broken, so there is a little plastic loop connected to a long cord that goes to the top of the stairs, and when you pull on it, the string tugs on a tiny brass bell. Of course, if the radio happens to be on, or the television, forget it. The first time I went there, Louis and I were doing it together. Louis thought it was real cute and smart, and he rang it a few times on our way out.

Mr. Orlando stopped calling after Louis refused to come with me to a fourth appointment. We’d done him together for a couple of nights in a row, and then Louis decided he’d had enough of his ball licking. Mr. Orlando was furious when I showed up without him. He got all Looney Tunes and bug-eyed, spouting things about ethics in business.

So I ring the damn bell, diddling the loop and watching the thin string jiggle all the way up into the building. I figure it’s near three, close enough to whenever I’m supposed to be here. He tells me to show up in the middle of the night. Says something about “Come when it’s no longer today, and not yet tomorrow.” And then he giggles.

I considered canceling this one, not wanting to leave Louis alone right away, but this guy didn’t answer his phone, and not showing at all could mean the end of the Florida Fuckers requesting some time spent with me, and I can’t afford to do that.

The guy comes down to let me in and I can tell right away that he’s off. His eyes are glossy and look like all different colors at once, like he’s rubbed them with Vaseline, like an oily parking lot slick with rain. And he looks sweaty, plastic, saccharine. He immediately starts kissing my neck and rubbing his hands in my crotch. Fucking door isn’t even closed yet.

He’s all misty and glistening, holding up a bag of little pills. Green triangle ones, blue capsules, yellow and white tablets. There’s a brown glass bottle with a dropper cap, something else wrapped in foil. Red dot pills that look like candy. He holds the bag out to me, pooches it open, and shakes the contents around. “Pick what you like,” he says. And, of course, I don’t. So he helps himself, and I mean really helps himself. Not even picking through them, swallowing a handful.

He’s rubbing his face all over my chest and stomach and he should be kissing me the way he’s moving his mouth up and down, but instead he’s dragging his limp mouth across my skin. Leaving slime wherever he stops. And he coughs and coughs and coughs. This goes on for about half an hour. Maybe more.

I start lowering myself into the flat place, where the only sound is a cavernous hush of wind, and everywhere it smells like burning sugar, teasing my nose. I count to four, focusing on the noise, on the distant horizon, which grows no closer no matter how far you walk, and I sink into the grayness.

Then this guy gets sick. Pukes all over the floor.

He collects himself, breathing hard, and wipes his face with a towel. He sits back, resting on his heels. “Why are your fingers so cut up?” he says.

Louis is sitting in the chair, which he moved to be near the window (and the TV), with his lap full of magazines. He set a floor lamp next to him too, and the whole thing makes for a little private space that looks quite calming. The sun hurls light down at the hardwood floor, and it feels good against my bare feet.

“I’m home,” I say.

“Like it?” He doesn’t look up.

“Architectural Digest, here we come.”

“Good Housekeeping,” I say, walking into the bathroom. I lift the toilet lid and unzip. I piss hard, emptying out my insides. My body shakes, that weird pee-shiver thing.

“Careful, I just cleaned that.”

“You shouldn’t be cleaning anything. Or moving furniture.” He has been staying here since he was attacked. He came here because he needed help doing little things, and he has yet to leave.

“I’m feeling okay today, actually. I won’t overdo it. Remember, it’s good for me to move around a bit.” He’s breathing heavily, conscious of the air moving in and out of his chest. “You know what,” he says, “the worst part of this whole ordeal is that I can’t work out. I haven’t been to the gym in over a week. Everything has atrophied.”

His side is painted in all shades of blue, brown, even green, and the whole thing is shiny from the greasy white cream he keeps rubbing on it. He lifts his arm to examine the soft, bruised skin, wincing slightly, squeezing his eyes shut. “Make me a salad, will you? I had some groceries delivered.”

In the fridge I find some red leaf lettuce, two plum tomatoes, and two-thirds of a carrot, which at first I think is a hunk of orange plastic wrapped in cellophane.

I say, “Do I have a salad spinner?”

“You do not,” Louis says. He flips through the pages of the autumn Williams-Sonoma catalog, dog-earing pages, tearing out the recipes. I toss all the stuff in a bowl, the torn lettuce pieces, wedges of bleeding tomato, and thin, almost transparent carrot slices. Looking at it all mucked up together, I’m thinking that salad is such a stupid food.

“Why do I know your kitchen better than you do?” he says.

“Because I don’t use it. And you buy all this stuff for me.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I don’t even know what half of this stuff is.” I open a drawer and rifle through the clunky metal tools inside. “What is this?”

Louis eyes the gadget in my hand. He turns back to the magazine and, ripping out a page near the front, reaches for his cigarettes. “It’s a nutmeg grater.”

“I don’t have any nutmeg.”

“And this is my problem?”

“Louis, you can’t smoke in my house.”

“Since when?”

“Since always. And what’s the deal with all these cigarettes? Why are there cartons all over the house?” On the kitchen table alone there are seven cartons; more wait in stacks in the bathroom, some on the bedside table.

“What’s your problem?”

“Are you planning on going home?” He turns to look at me and his eyebrows become a dark V. “I don’t mind if you stay here for a while. But I need to go out, or sometimes people will want to come over here. I need to make appointments. What will Mr. Bartlett do if I don’t show up?”

“Does he think he’s the only faggot in Manhattan that you pee on?”

“Yes, I’m sure he does.”

“He’s a freak. All that glass-of-water business.”

“What can I say, I have precious piss.”

“You should bottle that shit. You could be a millionaire.” The word lifts out of his mouth like a crystal balloon. “Anyway,” he says, “I can’t go home now. Farmer called. I invited him and Jaron over for lunch.”

“Today?”

“Around one.”

“Was this your idea?”

“No, actually, it was Jaron’s. He said he couldn’t remember the last time all of us were in the same room together. Especially you.”

“What are you cooking?”

“I am cooking a quiche,” he says.

“Since when do you cook quiche?”