Dismantle the Sun - 5. Chapter 5

Up until that moment on the couch, I'd known that I liked Alec. I'd be the world's densest bloke not to. But while kissing him and feeling my whole body singing with hot sparks, my feelings definitely moved up a notch. I can sort of imagine it: a yellow sticky with the word "NICK" detaching from a shelf with the word "LIKE," and fluttering up to a higher shelf, emblazoned with the words: "IN LOVE."

I wasn't really aware of it then, of course. I wasn't aware of anything at all, except that I was completely happy as I'd never been before.

We must've been making out for half an hour or so before I felt Alec kind of nudge me off. "What time is it?" he asked.

It might've been noon for all I cared. I'd dropped my watch at about the same time that our trousers came off, and it took a bit of rooting to find it. "Ten thirty."

"Ten thirty," Alec repeated.

"D'you need to go back now?"

He nodded.

I kissed him. "Okay." Really, it'd have taken only ten minutes at most to drive him home, but somehow, I didn't mind. In fact, it was probably a good thing, as it gave us twenty minutes of lingering kisses, interspersed with some brief crotch-grinding.

It was, in fact, almost ten fifty when we stepped out of the garage and into the hallway. "Well," I said, tugging at my shirt, "That was..." I trailed off and glanced at Alec. He was smiling and kind of looking down shyly when he spoke.

"That was great."

My heart could've stopped right then. The air outside was cool and the stars drowned by the street lights, and I wanted to sing. We didn't say a word in the car. I mean, what more could you say? A bouncy Simon and Garfunkel song was running through my head: Cecilia! She loves me again! I'm down on the floor and I'm laughing! Wrong gender and all, I thought, but who gives?

It was when we'd passed the first stop sign and the elementary school that I thought of something to say.

"You walk to school, right? Do you want a ride in the mornings?"

Alec hesitated. "Don't you live on the other side from where I live?"

"Yeah." I shrugged. "So?"

He smiled, I think, but I couldn't really tell in the shifting lights of the street lights. In any case, he was quiet as we passed another block. Maybe he doesn't want me to hang around so much, I thought. Maybe... Ah, of course. He's afraid that, if anyone were watching, they might think it was weird that Alec was suddenly taking rides from Nick Raimondi. I'd learned that most people usually don't jump to the right conclusion, but if you're afraid of it, it's what you think everyone else is thinking.

"If you don't feel like it, it's fine," I said.

"Yeah," he said. And then: "It's not that I mind, it's just... I mean..." He was looking at me.

"Yeah, I understand," I said quickly.

I pulled up the driveway and killed the engine. I was glad that Alec hadn't started unbuckling while we were still moving. Still, neither of us said anything, and we just sat there, looking at the drawn curtains and wood paneling of Alec's house.

"I've got stuff to do tomorrow, but I'm free on Monday," Alec said, at last.

"Cool," I said, grinning. "Me too." It wasn't true, technically -- I had to work at Pinnochio's in the afternoon, but I could do it on Sunday instead. Giuletta was cool like that.

"See you, then," Alec said.

"See you."

For a moment, after he'd unbuckled his seatbelt, I was wondering if he was going to lean over and kiss me. But he didn't. He opened the door, shut it, turned with a smile, and went up the path to his door. I started the engine and pulled out, wishing that he'd at least touched my leg or something before he left, but still too happy to care.

Melina was going to get an earful tonight.

--

As it turned out, Melina didn't pick up when I called her that night. She didn't pick up Sunday morning either -- she had church, I remembered -- so it was one in the afternoon when she finally did.

"Did you call me twice today?"

"Once this morning, and once last night," I corrected.

"Is everything all right?"

I laughed. "Why do you ask?"

"I mean, you hardly ever call me, I figure something enormous must've happened..."

I laughed again.

"Well, I guess nobody died," Melina said dryly.

"No, nobody died."

"And I suppose nobody got diagnosed with cancer."

"God, Melina, you're so morbid!" I laughed again -- I couldn't help it. I was in a very good mood. Even my mom, who'd come home late last night, had noticed, and asked in a careful voice, as though she were afraid of my answer.

"Well, what is it?"

"Guess."

"Nick!"

"I'll give you a hint. It has to do with Alec."

There was a pause. "You didn't!" she squealed. "Wait, wait, wait. Did you... you did...!"

It was a good thing I was alone in my room with the door shut, because anyone seeing me then would've called up the nearest mental institute. She loves me again! I'm down on the floor and I'm laughing! Well, maybe not the floor, but the bed, certainly.

"All right, Nick Raimondi, I want details," Melina said in a stern voice. "Come on! So what'd you do?"

"What do you think we did? Wait, never mind. I don't think I want to know that."

"Nick!"

I laughed again. In the end, I told her everything. Well, not everything, but it sure felt like everything, what with her asking me just how I made the omelet ("Did you do the flip-thingie?" "Flip-thingie?") to the movie we watched ("What's Kung Fu Hustle?" "Never mind"). She was delicate enough to not ask about what exactly we did on my dad's ugly green sofa, but she basically made me recite our conversation afterwards -- not that it had been extensive.

"So Monday, hmm?"

"Yes, Monday."

"Don't forget the performance Monday night."

I snorted. "Would you let me forget?"

"No."

"There we go."

--

Giuletta gave me such a withering look when I told her I was moving Monday's shift to today that I almost felt guilty. Actually I did, and resolved to work till half past seven, thirty minutes after my shift usually ended; she deserved that much.

I spent most of my shift thinking of yesterday. In fact, I'd been thinking about it pretty much constantly since last night: while lying in bed, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, watching the milk arc from its carton into my bowl of cereal. I'd never felt this way before. If I had to describe it, it'd say it was a sense of completeness. It was as though there was nothing I couldn't do, nothing I couldn't tackle. I was finally, in the strange way that comes with love, a man.

Plus, there was the undeniable heat that leapt from the pit of my guts to my throat every time I remembered how fucking good it felt to grind myself against him.

Yup, I thought. I was definitely, happily, head-over-heels in love with Alec.

I was grinning, too; grinning like a loon that had just wriggled out of the madhouse and was as pleased as punch to be free. I was grinning even after I looked up and noticed Kate Landauer standing outside the window, tossing her hair as if she were in a Superbowl ad. The grin finally died when she came in.

"Hello, Nick!"

I gave her a magnanimous nod. "Hi," I said, with about a twentienth of her enthusiasm.

She giggled. It was annoying, but I was in far too good a mood to get upset. I glanced at the time. It was twenty past seven. I sighed. Karma had a special way of biting you in the ass.

"So," Landauer crooned, leaning against the counter with her arms bunched under her breasts. I supposed she was either trying to shove her cleavage into my face or the ceiling lights. She was probably doing a better job of the latter than the former, given that I was looking out the window and praying for an actual customer. "What's up?"

"Nothing, really," I said. "Feel like some pizza?"

She giggled -- again. "No," she said coyly, "but I might feel like some other things."

I lifted an eyebrow. "Really?" Then I stepped to the side, because a real customer had just come in.

"She's done with her order," I said, when the guy who'd just stepped in seemed to think Landauer was there for an actual reason.

"That's not very nice, assuming that I was done with my order," Landauer pouted, after I'd put a slice of Sicilian into the oven.

I gave her an expressionless glance, still in too good of a mood to be annoyed. "Do you want something, then?"

"Not a pizza, no. But..." She hesitated and leaned forward again. Her voice dropped, too, until it sounded like a mothball was caught in her throat. "There is something behind the counter that I want."

"Ah, the cash register. I see. Sorry, not up for grabs." Ten more minutes, I thought. Then I'm out of here, guilt or no guilt.

It took Landauer a full moment to process what I said. She responded with a shriek of laughter, as though that were the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "No! Silly. It's you."

"Sorry," I said. "Also not up for grabs."

"Ooh," Landauer drawled. "So, tell me about her."

"There is no her," I said flatly, and added, before she could open her fat, lipsticked mouth again, "What about Wigglesworth? Aren't you his boyfriend?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, puh-lease. Give me a break! Darius?" She made a scoffing noise that was so scornful I almost felt sorry for Wigglesworth. But not quite.

"Why, is he double-timing on you?"

Her eyes got big. "Him? No, of course not."

"He seems like a nice guy. Rich." I tried to think up a few more adjective, but I didn't bother trying very hard. Not bad looking, I thought, but didn't really want to say it.

"He bores me," Landauer said with another roll of her eyes, another squish of her arms. "I want a guy who doesn't wear ties to school."

I laughed -- involuntarily, of course, and felt strangely irritated at myself. Maybe it was because Landauer started smiling as though she'd just made a small triumph.

"I want someone a bit more interesting," she cooed. "Someone... like you."

I snorted. "Sorry," I said. "Not interested."

Either Landauer was deaf, or had a hard time understanding English, because it was seven twenty-five, and she was still standing at my counter, grinning with a maddeningly smug look on her face.

"Oh come on," she said. "I mean, you can totally do better than the people you're hanging out with."

The good mood was slipping away. "Look, I don't know what more you want, and I think I've been pretty clear in telling you that I'm not interested." I paused, reminding myself to keep cool. "So I don't know why you're still here."

Landauer rolled her eyes. "Would it really kill you to go on a date with me?" She lowered her voice. "I'll make it worth your while."

I was really getting irritated now. "I'm not interested, okay?"

"What'd you rather do? Hang out with Melina or Alec?"

The way she pronounced Melina's name made me tense, but it was the way she pasted a sneer over Alec's that made me clench my fists.

Relax, I thought, relax. Don't let this stupid bitch bother you. Think of Alec. I forced my fists to unclench and thought of kissing him on the couch, of grinding into him... That heat shot up through my chest again, and suddenly the anger was gone, as if it'd been consumed in a blast of fire. I love him, and I'm going to see him tomorrow, I thought. Landauer was still gazing at him with half-lidded eyes and squashed cleavage. How pathetic, I thought abruptly, feeling suddenly no ill-will at all -- just pity, and some amusement, because the situation was kind of funny: one of the school's most desirable girls, pushing her breasts into the face of someone who didn't appreciate it at all.

"I'm sorry," I said, in a more generous tone. "I'm just not interested."

"You know, you really shouldn't hang out with those two."

"Look, if all you're going to do is hang around and insult my friends, you'd better leave. You are obstructing this place of business."

"That Melina girl's always doing drama shit, and everyone knows that the drama department is stuffed full of gays. And Alec..."

I froze. The calm I'd gained a moment earlier was smashed. I finally got my mouth working after a moment. "Look, I don't want to hear this, you can just go..."

"Ah," Landauer cut in with a twist of victory, "so you don't know."

"And I don't want to. You can -- "

"There was that thing back in ninth grade -- only a few people know about it, it was very hushed up -- "

"Look -- "

"There was something about a kid getting beaten up, and something about Alec setting it up with his father, about the kid being a fag -- "

"Shut the fuck up," I hissed. "Do you think I care about the shit that's fucking coming out of your mouth? Fuck! Go stick your breasts in some homeless guy's face if you want to get fucked!"

There was a silence. From the corner of my eye, I could see the sole customer in the room look away. Behind me, I heard something that sounded like a plate being dropped. Giuletta. I wonder if I was going to get fired.

Landauer leaned back. "I was just saying," she said coldly. "I don't see why you want to hang around a person like Alecander, unless you're... abnormal."

It was as though someone had a hand clamped around my throat. My mouth must've opened, but it was like the useless flapping of a bird that'd been shot to the ground. I could have come out and said it -- there was nothing I was afraid of. None of the stupid social cliques mattered to me, and if someone wanted to pick a fight, I was more than willing to smash his head in.

But the words couldn't come. Instead, I swallowed and growled in a choked voice, "Get. Out."

This time, without pausing to flip her hair or waggle her butt, Landauer obeyed. I should've felt happy to see her go. But I only felt tired, as though I'd just come out of a fight. A fight that I hadn't won. Someone made a throat-clearing sound behind me, and I turned to face the full battery of Giuletta's stare.

This was going to take a while, I thought, heart sinking.

--

Monday did not begin well, but I wasn't sure if it was because I was expecting something to be changed, or if things had, indeed, changed. In any case, if anything had shifted, it had to have been the little things, because nothing big happened. No fights, no insults, not even taunts. Just the shadow of a glance here, a greeting that was a shade colder than normal, a catch of gazes that didn't quite happen...

In short: nothing. But it was enough to make me blunt my appetite by lunch. It didn't help that Melina was sitting with Greg.

"Hello," I said.

Both Melina and Greg lit up like jack-o-lanterns. "Soo," Greg whispered, leaning annoyingly close, "Melina here says you've some good news."

I grunted.

"Well? Spill!"

I turned pointedly to Melina. "Kate Landauer came after me yesterday."

"Oh."

"Wait, what's that got to do with Alec...?"

Magnanimously, I refrained from giving Greg a nasty look.

"So what happened?"

I shrugged. "She kept trying to get me to go out with her. Then she started getting insulting. And then I called her a few things, and..." I took a deep breath. "I think she's outed me."

"What!"

"I don't know, but it's just a feeling..." I trailed off, partially because I had nothing left to say, and partially because Melina reached forward and applied her standard response to emotional problems: a hug.

"Did anyone...?"

"No, but -- " I shrugged. "I dunno, maybe it's nothing."

"Wow," Greg whispered.

"I can't believe she did that," Melina muttered. "She's such a -- "

"Bitch," I finished for her.

"Well, look on the bright side," Greg said, smiling. "It's great to be out!"

This time, I didn't bother refraining from the nasty look. I don't know if Greg even noticed, but I kind of wished he did. I also kind of wished that I could tell him it was only great for him because he was such a stereotypical gay. I didn't want to be gay -- not in the sense that Greg was, with coy phrasings and those idiotic glasses with thick black frames. I wanted to be a guy, a normal guy who happened to be in love with another guy. The kind of guy Alec would like.

"Have you seen Alec?"

I swallowed. "No," I said. "But I don't usually see him at school."

Melina made more clucking noises and reassurances. I didn't really hear them, because, at that moment, Darius Wigglesworth was crossing the courtyard. Our eyes met, and I went rigid, waiting for his face to twist with disgust. It never happened. Kate Landauer's words suddenly flashed through my head -- I want a guy who doesn't wear ties to school. Then the contact ended, and I frowned. In that instant, I had felt contemptuous, even condescending, of Wigglesworth. Even knowing that I owed him nothing, the feeling made me uncomfortable, almost dirty. It made me feel almost sorry for him. Damn Landauer, I thought.

"Nick?"

"Huh?"

"You'll be at the performance tonight, right?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure."

--

I lingered in the parking lot for a while longer than I usually did, just in case Alec was going to pass this way. He didn't. He didn't normally come this way either, so it wasn't as though I was concerned or anything.

I waited a couple of minutes after I got home before calling. Just so he'd have time to get home as well, and everything. It was exactly 2:46 when I called. It's funny, being in love: I'd have thought I'd get all impatient and stupid. Instead, things felt spaced out and calmer, and it was as though I'd grown an extra set of eyes that let me see things more clearly.

Maybe that's how I got the feeling when the first call went unanswered. The bad feeling.

He might still be walking, I told myself. Or taking a shower. Or taking a shit. Lots of reasons why he wouldn't answer the phone.

I made myself a sandwich, ate it with milk, turned on and off the television, and took a piss before calling again. It was 3:10. I waited through the first ring, the second, third...

"Hello?"

"Hey, Alec?"

I could hear him breathing: once, twice.

"Alec?"

Then he hung up.

I stared at the receiver for a good moment before I slowly put it into its cradle. Stared, and looked at the clock. 3:11.

I wasn't angry -- not yet. I was simply determined. There was a song running through my head, pushing out all thoughts: Cecilia! She loves me again! I'm down on the floor and I'm laughing... Within five minutes, I'd already pulled into Alec's street, with its center island of olive trees, the pavement pressed black with fallen olives. A few seconds later, I'd parked in his empty driveway, and I was staring at the same house I'd come to just two night ago.

I hesitated only a moment before getting out of the car and going up to his door. I rang and waited. No response. I glanced at my watch. 3:25. I rang again, stepped back, waited; when nothing happened, I jogged back to the bottom o the driveway and looked at the windows, each one covered with lowered blinds. Nothing, nothing, nothing. It was as though the house itself was against me.

I went back into my car and sat there. I wondered if Alec was at one of the windows, like leftmost one upstairs. Watching me. Or was he somewhere else entirely -- on his bed, waiting for me to be gone?

I had to plan, I thought. He couldn't stay in there forever. Of course, I couldn't stay on his driveway forever, either... But he'd get over the rumor sooner or later. It was, after all, just a stupid rumor that'd been spread by the queen of stupidity herself.

I gritted my teeth, wishing all sorts of horrible things to happen to Landauer, and pulled out of the driveway. I quickly phased into a sort of numb anger. It was useful for honing my movements until they were normal and precise, as though I hadn't just gone from the top of the world to the trenches of Mariana in the space of twenty-four hours. It was also useful for keeping my mind blank, blank as the walls of my house -- a house that had no father, no mother. Nothing.

It was half past six when I got another call. I jumped at the phone, and I must've sounded pathetically breathless on the first hello.

"Nick?" Melina said, sounding annoyed. "Are you coming?"

"Coming?" Then, I remembered. "Fuck. Yeah, I'll be there in ten minutes."

"The show starts in fifteen."

"I know -- I know. Sorry." I swallowed. "See you soon."

--

Maybe it was the mood I was in, or maybe the performers were just less committed on Monday nights. But, I was antsy and annoyed rather than moved when the same melodies kept drilling themselves into my brain. Like that idiot tune that kept playing when they marched about, singing about hearing "the people sing." I kept wanting to tell them, We get it already -- put some fucking variation to it, will you? But I didn't, and manned the audio in brooding silence.

"Thanks so much, Nick," Melina said, after the thing had ended. "There's no party tonight, but look." She handed me a package of aluminum foil. "I baked a few brownies for you."

"They're still warm," I said, surprised.

"Don't tell, but there's a kitchen in the back." She smiled and took me in a hug. I returned it awkwardly, as I still had a bulky stash of brownies in one hand, but it felt good to be hugged. I deserve one now, I thought, a bit petulantly.

"What're you doing tonight?"

"Dunno," I said. "Probably homework."

Melina's eyes got annoyingly wide. "You haven't finished it yet? But don't you usually do it first thing?"

"Couldn't concentrate," I said, and moved aside when I noticed Greg approaching. That was the last thing I needed now -- except maybe another dose of Landauer, though more because that'd probably end up in some sort of violence. "See you tomorrow!"

My mom still wasn't back when I pulled into the driveway. Geez, I thought; that latest boyfriend of hers, Steve, must be really engrossing. I killed the engine with an angry twist of my wrist. Even my mom was getting laid. This was ridiculous.

The silence had never bothered me this much before. It was like a flock of birds, dive-bombing me with thoughts. One moment it was Landauer's sneer, the sweaty-palmed fear I'd felt as she'd walked out of the shop. Another it was the front of Alec's house, as tightly sealed as the face of a sarcophagus, overlooking the street of crushed olives. Then it was the silence itself, bearing down on me with the faint buzz of electric lights. And finally it was the remembrance of the night itself, the heat of it, my body on his, the weightless happiness...

I groaned and put my head in my hands. This wasn't supposed to happen, was it? Or at least, not this fast. Not this confusingly...

The phone rang. I stared at it for a moment before reaching over and picking it up.

"Hello?"

"Nick?"

I let a pause slip through. "Nelson."

"Yo, what's up, man?"

I snorted. "Nothing, really."

"Cool, dude..."

The silence trickled in again, and I let it. It wasn't hostile. I was letting it be still, be almost congenial, as though we were merely old friends who hadn't talked in a long while.

"So, uh, wanna hang out tonight?"

"It's nearly midnight," I pointed out. "And it's Monday."

"So? You never want to hang out with me anymore. Too goody-goody for me, aren't you, Raimondi?"

"It's not like that."

"Fuck you. Where'd my best friend go, huh? Best friends forever, remember?"

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to tell him that he was stoned or drunk -- or both -- and that I had class tomorrow, that I really wasn't in a mood to go out and get smashed. But the truth was, I was. For the first time in a long while, I was. And part of the vision that'd opened to me with the happiness I no longer felt also let me see the truth in Nelson's words, the truth that I had managed to hide from myself since I'd decided I needed to "take a break" from him. I was no better than my father, who'd decided to take a very extended "break" from his family.

I swallowed. "I can hang out tonight."

"What?"

"I said, I can hang out tonight."

"You're fucking joking."

"I'm not."

"Dude." He paused, and repeated. "Dude, that's fucking awesome. So is it all right if I pick you up?"

"Maybe I'd better drive myself, you sound a little -- "

"Nah-ah. You just sit tight. Nelson's coming over."

He hung up, and it was very slowly that I put the receiver back in its cradle. The moon hung in the sky. I flicked the switch, and the light went out.