Blind hearts - 2. The Graces of the Universe

"We are going to Vegas," Charles had demanded majestically, and before Dimov could waffle about the cost and inconvenience, Charles booked the Premier Aurora room with double queen beds (What nonsense about separate rooms). However, their roommate, Glenda, hovered sulkily around them, lamenting the Universe’s bad graces in denying her a chorus part at the LA Opera. Charles, grunting of his good graces much grander than the Universe’s, demanded she come along. And there remained the perplexing problem of two beds, three people (Goodness, who will sleep with whom?). That was easily solved. The Universe be praised. One king-sized bed, three people, and a lovely old time.

Dimov spent day one of the Vegas outing indoors on the poker floor. Now he was alone in the hotel room, unbuttoning his shirt, slugging across the grainy carpet. The bold linked motifs on the floor, he thought and would never say to Charles, repellant, as well as the bold green and cream swathes over the walls. The bed, admittedly, looked kingly and promised dreamy sleep among the starry sheets, but with three to a bed and Glenda’s guttural snoring, dreamy sleep felt like drunken boxing in a sleeping bag.

The air conditioning kicked up a gear of lethargic activity. Dimov fell into the bed, into the grey shimmery sheets, and thought it better to claim the good hours of lonely sleep rather than return sheepishly to Charles. He might have to apologize about his grouchiness earlier. But why should he? He put his weekend on hold and—something itched in his throat; stray cords splintered in his chest—and Charles was leaving for Phila-fucking-delphia.

In his heart opened the creaky door to a stairwell descending into the dank, musty dark. It jarred and shocked him to bounding to bedtime plans. But there was a knock, a strong double knock that augured unrest.

“You lied about the wife,” Alex announced himself.

Dimov’s hands hardened over the door handle. Alex leaned in, returned Dimov’s narrow grizzly glare with a pawky grin. The elevators dinged, murmurs surfaced from the beyond the hallway, and then their silence of apprehensive stares. As if to concede, Alex straightened back but his hand brushed lazily over his fly and up the excruciating roughness of his baseball jacket to his wet lips.

“I overheard you and … Charley,” he said.

“It’s poker. Everyone lies. Everyone makes false promises.”

“I don’t make false promises.” Alex looked over Dimov’s thinning lips and down the island of his chest peeking from the half-unbuttoned shirt, and then ruminated on the belt and its tight looking buckle. He glided back to Dimov’s eyes, still hard, still blank.

Alex defaulted to easiness. “Let me buy you a drink.”

“I don’t drink.”

“You lying again?”

“Dimi!” Dimov saw Charles calling all way from the elevators, and the full-bodied Glenda in a velvet tracksuit shuffled heavily from behind him.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” she said, smiling like she was onto a secret stash of bonbons.

Charles’ eyes flicked between Alex’s red hair and Dimov’s tightening face.

Dimov blurted, “He was about to le—”

Alex leaned forward and extended his arm to Glenda. “Alex. Nice to meet you. Dimov invited me over for a drink.”

“A drink?” Charles dialed his hazel eyes onto Alex’s reddening face, but before he could say anything, Glenda corralled Alex’s arm and pulled him inside the room.

“You, my dear, are really special. Dimov’s a bad, bad Russian. Drinks only on special occasions.”

“Ukrainian,” Dimov emphasized and then settled himself on an armchair and began buttoning up his shirt with particular sourness.

Unmindful of Dimov’s cloudiness, Charles dropped himself by Dimov’s and inserted himself rather jerkily on the Dimov’s armrest. Dimov kept by his stoniness while Charles had warm but worried look in his eyes as he stroked the short tufts of Dimov’s hair. “The bulky manly Ukrainian who burnt his suit.” He was cutting.

Dimov colored and suppressed the bead of a memory of his first meeting with Charles, the room service boy. Then he had been, as Charles would say, a twenty-one year old with a frowning problem. If he must, he could dredge up the sepia aura of the hotel room, or the image of the carbon-hard gauze embossed on the suit breast pocket, or the alienating New York skyline, dark and discomforting, or that he had an eight AM interview at a finance firm the next day.

If Dimov must remember, he would remember; but these days, the exuberant can-do Charles with hair of stiff peaks was all he could conjure of that night. The man had saved him, and now the man was leaving him. Dimov cradled his head and the hurt simmering in it.

Charles moved his head about like cat playing with a spool of yarn. He caught Dimov’s eye and motioned slyly to Alex feeling the softness of the bed, “You managed a cute one.” Dimov sank back in his chair, tense with hurt. But Charles, still unmindful, gave a final ruffle of Dimov’s hair before moving off the chair for his suitcase on the bed.

Unengaged on the bed, Alex began rubbing his knuckle against his lips like he would rather be stroking something else. The wall mirror beside him was reflecting a single bed and its ruffles and folds of ruined sheets, Charles, prancing about the bed, undecided over the glimmering grey shirt or the glimmering black shirt and Glenda laying out her makeup case from her suitcase.

“The universe is so good and amazing today,” she frittered with glee then flurried into the bathroom to change. With the door bang still ringing, Dimov looked over to Charles to explain what good news of no significance he had missed.

Charles cooed, “She got herself a opera audition for the Orange County opera.”

“Orange County?” Alex bristled with an urge to divulge his personal details.

But before Charles could answer, Glenda emerged again, the frills of her blouse generous over her bosom, a lipstick like a baton in her left hand. The moment became pregnant with compliments that should be said.

“Oh dear, please take a seat. We’ll be out of you boys’ way in no time.” She towed Alex away from the mirror and sat him at the corner of the bed closest to Dimov.

While Charles disappeared into the bathroom, her woody flowery scent blossomed in the space between them. Dimov kept his eye on Charles still indecisive over shirts. Alex crossed his legs, smiling and whittling away under the spectacles of Glenda’s twinkling eyes.

“So,” she began, applying lipstick while watching herself in the mirror, “Where you from, Sunshine?”

“Los Angeles,” Alex said.

“Really? Amazing how the Universe is good and amazing today. We all live in a West Hollywood. Dimov’s our kind and benevolent landlord.”

“Kind … I need proof of that.” Alex gave Dimov a daring smirk.

“Posh! Dimov’s a squeeze.” She rubbed her lips to smear tamarind-red lipstick. “Just talk about poker and pot odds and see him squee like a girl.”

“Dimov squeeing like a girl, that’s something to see.” Alex nodded knowingly.

With Glenda’s face to the mirror, Alex was amused with Dimov persevering in his flinty air, rolling his lips at the closed bathroom door. Then Charles came out of the bathroom looking quite squat in a sequined green shirt.

“What exactly is that?” Dimov asked coldly.

“It makes a statement.”

“I like it,” Glenda chirped.

Charles shifted onto Alex, eyes swimmingly curious. It was not quite clear if he was waiting for his approval, but he threw his head back to Dimov. “What happened to being tired and hated a four-way?”

Dimov’s mouth hardened at the corners. “We are not—”

“Glenda,” Alex interrupted, “I live in Irvine, actually. Going to graduate from UCI in a few months.”

“Irvine?” Charles settled on the glimmering gray shirt on the bed and just before he entered bathroom to change, he said, “Cars are more important than people over there.”

“It’s not that bad. Good Chinese food nearby. Lots and lots of parking space … Not bad.”

“Parking space, the one good thing about Irvine.” Charles had changed into the grey shirt but looked vaguely satisfied over his slightly plump belly. “I liked the green shirt.”

“And you may wear what you want,” Dimov growled tiredly. “Would you all of you get going? I’m going to bed.”

“Oh not yet,” Alex quipped.

Charles pushed forward excitedly, like an ever-grateful grandmother, took hold of Alex hand and shook it gleefully. “Yes, please punish him for me.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Dimov tsk-ed. He persevered his stares straight ahead at the tiled shine emanating from the open bathroom. The room felt damp and hot even with the low groan of the air conditioning. Perhaps it was the hot air about the good graces of the Universe to blame, Dimov did not deign to ask. It was enough trouble finding the right label for the intruder.

Money did strange things to people. Cry when they meant to laugh. Laugh when they meant to frown, curse, cheat, praise. Money didn’t bring Alex in here? Alex looked unpolished, relaxed enough in his baseball jacket; nothing seemed artificial about him, except perhaps his forwardness, which Dimov, now scrutinizing the face that was in desperate need of a shave, decided he did not care for.

Glenda chirped, “Alex make him come dancing.”

“All of you, just go already.” With that Dimov admitted to himself that he was tense, and about nothing important either. Worrying if your opponent had just made a flush draw was a more important and a better reason to feel nervous.

Alex, again with the honest eyes, headed him the tight smile known to neer-do-wells. Dimov looked away too quickly, quite liked to see Glenda calmly strapping on her pumps but the tension rilling his pores, tunneling through his veins was still unpleasant. There was just one way to deal with it: buckling the winner punk underneath him and doing what he alone wanted.

“Lady, you take too long.” Charles pulled Glenda off the bed, hooked his arm into hers, and dragged her to the door. The door shut quietly but firmly, and then the room and its walls enclosing wood-stained hues swelled wide and wobbled in Dimov’s eyes, enforcing a tight sense of pressure.

Back straight, hands in his jacket pockets, Alex grinned valiantly. “Your tenants look like fun to control.”

“They pay the rent eventually.” Dimov calculated the precise cut the intruder needed. “Alex, you are—”

Alex jumped up from the bed and gathered his bag pack. “It’s getting late.”

Folding a knee to himself, Dimov loosened, a little relieved, a little grateful. But Alex sidled up to his armrest, causing his pulse to flare, but upon seeing the sleeved arm extend to him for handshake, Dimov perspired coldly under his arms.

“It was fun meeting up close in person,” Alex said.

The handshake was secure and firm, like what Dimov thought of Charles on their first meeting, secure, firm, like Alex’s smile unzipping a ledge of yellowed whites. Alex made for the door. The incandescent light filtered over the cropped curls like truncated snail shells of auburn hair. His baseball jacket puffed at the waist, giving an unflattering short impression of his height. Dimov estimated perhaps he could be one head shorter than him. And in thinking about it blandly, he had not been accurately aware of Alex all along. The boy was ebullient, forthright, but nothing physical of him piqued in his awareness.

“I should offer you a drink …” Dimov shifted in his chair and surveyed the disorder of opened suitcases on the bed. “Charley has vodka around here somewhere to annoy me.”

Alex refrained from opening the door, but Dimov did not expect the face, again, like at the poker table, assured of its seventy three hundred windfall, or the pounding strides across the room and back to his feet. Eyes cool and insistent, Alex knelt before him; Dimov was instantly drained of all feeling. Kick away, move into the eyes? Alex reached for his waist, and suddenly, Dimov held back the hand strongly, catching Alex with a sneer. Alex strove against the brace, driving Dimov to grip him by his nape and pull back his face.

“You’re cocky, you know that?”

Dimov wanted to end it and say “and that’s why I don’t like you,” but the upward profile of the neck glistening with sweat, open view of the tongue soft and steaming and the eyes glaring even in surrender … the kiss was a collision, long anticipated, yet unstoppable. Teeth hit against teeth, tongue lanced against tongue. His vehemence, his contempt at losing against him twice now, Dimov forced it down his throat. Alex’s hands were palming his tightening hardness, and he let go and let him taste his victory.

It was strange, frightening, exhilarating. The room had become a shattered mirror of images, the dark-stained headboard, the glazed blankness of the television, the all-too-white sheen from the bathroom door ajar. It was his luck, perhaps his bad luck because Charles and Glenda would gibber about it ceaselessly; and luck that could not be managed with money, luck all the same that gifted him the hands impatiently zipping his fly. Space seeped into a blur, but the door handle shone like a beacon in the gathering mist of the room. His fingers tingled brightly as a wet warmth slipped over him. The whorls of auburn hair on Alex’s head sliding in and out, in and out. Dimov held back a smile at Alex’s mouth full of him, thick with him, lovely, efficient, desperately efficient. To stop from buckling, he gripped the armrests, and still the hungry slurping noises encouraging him to rock away.

An ache grew wild down the edge of his tailbone. Dimov clasped the damp head, ground his teeth down the floor of his mouth. Then it came on a flood and drowned him beneath the lake of his own undoing.

Alex looked back at him, rabid, a pearl dotting the corner of lips; and Dimov was overcome with need. Without hesitation, he shifted down onto the floor and pulled Alex to himself. Alex was furious with his erection, Dimov furious with kisses down the line of his neck. He buried his nose into the nook of his ear, the salty sweat, the cheap soap, the smells cascading. With an airy grunt, Alex convulsed back into the nook of his shoulder and then lacteal trail seeping into jeans fabric of his lap.

A moment rested with waning breaths and heartbeats. Alex turned dreamily into his cold damp cheek. “Thanks, Baby. But you really didn’t have to.”

Baby? Dimov inwardly bristled, reminding himself that this was a one-time only happenstance.

“Shit.” Alex forced his vibrating cellphone from his pocket and answered quickly. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there, I’ll be there … we’re still leaving tonight.”

Cellphone held in between ear and shoulder, Alex hopped about madly to zip up his fly then picked up Glenda’s lipstick on the bed and scribbled his number on the mirror hanging. The great red “Call me! Got to go,” rattled with the eventual door bang.

The soft lamp light bathing his perspiring cheek, Dimov was left with the overwhelming sense of having seen a whirlwind uproot trees, collide vehicles, and yet leaving him unscathed. He still did not like Alex, and even so chaos tore within. Chaos and need.