Blind hearts - 3. friends and lovers

Alex would say definitively that Frank was short—just to piss him off mostly—anything to get Frank’s auburn eyes to arc a hard and pretty left was always a win. In middle school, Alex tried to console Frank about his height with a tale of the little emperor Napoleon Bonaparte rampaging through Europe, to which Frank replied, “Who’s Napoleon?” And that was the start of a friendship.

Several times, Alex thought he would never get to see Frank’s horrid bowl haircut again, like on the last day of their sophomore year of high school when Alex blurted he was gay. He could still remember the sensation of pebbles rumbling in his throat as he floated away from the lobby and lost himself in the parking lot. He had thought the reveal would lead to a long exhausting summer, and hopefully in the fall, Frank would have gotten over hatred and settled into a cool disregard. But three weeks into the summer at Manhattan Beach, he ran into Frank, sporting a surfboard, a bronze hard torso, and a girl in a swimsuit made of strings.

Frank’s cheeks rounded into fleshy rumps, and his eyes sparked lively and exciting, as he crowed about his new girl, his new pecs, his surfboard. All the while, Alex was gulping down boulders. The girl skipped ahead into the waves, and there proceeded a distinct changed in Frank’s mien. A hand went to chin, setting up a stance for a serious pose—this Alex always found ridiculous from the wannabe Napoleon.

Frank had asked, “So, who’s looking hot this summer?”

Alex thought it was another Frank’s miserable jokes, but there was his eyes drilling him down. Frank complained, “Fuck, I tell you everything, and I know nothing about you.” Alex softened enough to give a list of jocks, to which Frank exclaimed. “God, you’re cliché. Is there guy you have a real chance of fucking?”

“You only want to nail porn stars and women who are too tall for you,” Alex retorted.

“Sandy,” Frank pointed the girl kneeling into the water, “Is shorter than me… Give me someone real here. Fuck, I even told you about the fat chick I wanted to nail in seventh grade. Why did I fucking tell you that again?” Why indeed?

Alex remembered his body buoyed lighter with every roar of the ocean waves, its rolling chariot of foam, and Sandy, askew in it, slanted into it, delighted with it, and then the half smile on Frank’s face and his realization that by the summer’s end, Frank was so not going to get to third base with Sandy. He knew Frank. His ridiculous goals, like how he wanted to ride every bus on the LA metro. The incessant preening on his bicep width and his perfect commanding look like Napoleon. And the refining and ruminating on the machine specs of a bottle rocket. He knew Frank. How his black hair would bunch up around his large ears. Or the triple of prominent pimples on his left cheek that never would never go away despite Frank’s concoction of potions.

Frank said, “Some guy came onto me the other day in the gym. Looked a little like you.”

“Great, all gay men looked like me now.”

“He was a red head, and all curly hair like yours,” His voice was balled up in defensive hurt. “But taller, bigger, and a smarmy greasy fuck.”

“So what if it had been me?” Alex blurted.

Alex remembered not waiting for a reply, perhaps walking away furiously, he couldn’t not recall. But he did remember feeling as if he were swimming on the sand, the sand itching his toes, his fingers grimy with the dusty sand, and he growling rabidly against the idea of a beach.

But Frank flagged him down, stopped in front him, his eyes quivering. “Wait, you don’t—”

“Of course not!”

Later, Alex begged his parents to spend the rest of summer with his grandparents in Phoenix. He claimed the 110 degree heat would be good for his moral fiber.

And now, they had just arrived from Vegas, parked in front of the black pole of Alex’s mailbox. It was twelve noon, exhaustingly and depressingly late for Alex, but Frank did not give a fuck. The radio was pouring verses about bitches and hoes. Alex stole a glance at Frank’s hair still black and limp over the ears and the veined forearm crowning the steering wheel. They were still together, at least for the next nine weeks. Straggling down again those worn steps of gloom, Alex proceeded to count the money to pay for his share of the travel expenses.

There was a tired groan from Frank. “I can’t believe you held us up for dick.”

A delightful look spread over Alex’s face, already a rose of warmth. Dimov, tall, hard and tense at his armchair came back to him, his mien, tight, stony, but with occasional twists of hurt. He had stolen the pot from him, unnerved him, felt him up, and left him panting. Alex was smiling rashly now. “I couldn’t pass up someone taller than you

Throwing his head back, Frank scoffed. “Was I the only one who didn’t get laid this weekend?”

“Pro’lly,” Alex said, still absentminded, “You and Janet.” There was a low sigh from Frank, and in it the languorous tones, the dramatic history of the on and off again Frank and Janet.

Frank snorted, grimaced. Fringes of hair covered messily over his eyes. “Fuck what did I do? How’s it still my fault after four months?” Frank hissed through clenched teeth. “I think she’s seeing someone anyway.”

Alex counted again the wad of a hundred dollar bills. “Don’t care. Don’t give a fuck. Just make up with her already.”

“Christ! You’re the manwhore, but I’m the bad guy.”

Alex raised cold eyes to him. “I’m not sleeping with your friends.”

“The fuck does it matter anyway?” Frank pumped on the steering wheel. “We are graduating. Janet says something about Korea … Korea, what the fuck is in Korea? And Tom and Pete are—”

“Really don’t want to hear about Tom and Pete.” The memory of Pete’s whiny drunken voice ruffled Alex so much he forgot how much money he had counted. “They don’t get to say shit about you because of me.”

Frank laughed, looking away from Alex. “I don’t give a shit. And so you shouldn’t.”

Alex’s stare roved over Frank’s chest, a solid slab in royal blue cotton, tall against his seat, and up to the eyes dimming, seeking his acquiescence. Sometimes, Alex thought, there was one last hidden lever to pull, one more knob to push before Frank would lean over and press his forehead against his. Maybe. There was an indistinct groan from him or Frank. Letting dreams go, Alex handed over the bills to Frank who promptly waved it back to him.

“I got this,” Frank said.

“Aww, if only I could flash my titties for you …”

“Think of it as my good luck to your interview tomorrow.”

“Ooh thanks. I’m gunning for this one.” Alex was gathering his bag pack now. “It’s ideal, close by in Santa Monica.”

“This the boutique trading firm in Santa Monica? What happened to Wall Street?”

Cascading down the flights of remonstrations, Alex wrestled with straps of his bag while his eyes were roaming from mailbox to mailbox in the cul de sac. His hands slackened when he noticed the sea blue trashcan behind a parked car in his garage. Guilt rushed in with the vague thought that his mother, Susan, may have stayed home all weekend. He brooded. “I prefer the sun, fake titties and fake pecs.”

“You have to get wake up at what? Three or four in the morning to trade on New York time?”

“This isn’t a finance job. That interview is in another few weeks. This one is some big data gig. Data mining, machine learning and shit.”

Frank drew back with a hum of puzzlement. “I don’t get it.”

Alex opened the door hurriedly, refusing to glean concern or worry from Frank’s tone. It could be mean anything, and everything, but an invisible line corralled their friendship and kept it alive, tense, fun, secure. To look for signs or something more would destroy the tender shoot of it. Alex waved him off, and soon the flashy red cocoon of the German import car was at the end of the street, and then panic, expanding and sweeping, wracked up his spine.

They would be graduating. Frank would be off to the land of dumb blondes and high rollers, and he would be stuck in Irvine. Frank, yeah Frank. Through sentiments of pathetic loss, Alex directed himself and found himself at his mailbox, hoping for an empty hull. His senses circled distressingly with the whorls of colorful junkmail packed tightly in the mailbox. Why had he been hopeful at all? Of course, Susan had not left home all weekend, possibly all week.

She had taken over a corner of the living room, limp upon a paisley-upholstered sofa, like an old decaying oak. Her eyes were pinched small behind narrow glasses as she struggled with a needle through a patchwork quilt. Alex dumped his bag pack on adjacent couch, and already his mind was tearing apart over things he shouldn’t have done. He shouldn’t have angrily agreed to go Vegas just because Frank’s phone call kept interrupting Steve blowing him. Definitely shouldn’t have insisted with Dimov if it meant returning home twelve hours too late.

Eventually in the barrage of shoulda’s, woulda’s, coulda’s, Alex’s cheeks and fingers relaxed, his pose straightened a little taller, but his eyes still looked bleary.

“You said, you’d be back last night,” she said, not looking up.

“Yeah. Things happened.” He could explain Dimov, but she would frown on his loose ways. Maybe explain roaming the nether regions of Nevada to buy for fireworks at one in the morning, and then roaming again for the whorehouse that would satisfy Pete’s particular specifications of ‘young but not too young looking. Cute, but good hips. No yellow teeth.’ And then the fight that ensued when Janet demanded Tom and Pete choose between hookers and fireworks, but not both. And Pete grumbling that Frank preferred to spend a couple hundred dollars on fireworks instead of hookers, and Tom insinuating that it was because Frank was faggy hot on Alex. Alex blowing up and calling him a deranged dickhead was unfortunate, as was Janet whining about too much testosterone for her poor nerves.

But Alex would dare explain that to Susan? There would be nothing for her to approve of, much less laugh at.

“How much money did you lose?” she asked.

“I won a bunch.”

“And then you go right and lose another bunch next time.” She fought with a needle into the quilt, her lips tightened. “You’d follow Frank right off the edge of a cliff.”

Alex held his breadth a moment and then sat on the coffee table across from her. “Mom, I’d follow a boy with dimples off a cliff, not Frank.” Alex raised a section of the quilt and could appreciate its intricateness even though he could not understand what would possess anyone to waste time poking holes and needling threads.

“While I was having fun winning money, what did you do?” Alex asked.

“Having fun not wasting money.”

Alex thought he should be more polite. “How was the art festival?”

“Got a blinding headache, had to pass”

Alex struggled to not to stir at her “headaches.” Something was definitely wrong with her. Perhaps lupus or fibromyalgia, but a thousand visits to doctors could not ascertain. And in the mean time, she was getting heavier, looking puffier, his fingers and toes looking more edematous, life slowly was squeezing out of her. Alex blamed the divorce four years ago, but it was hard to keep believing that.

Alex dropped the quilt and looked into the revolting sterility of the kitchen.

“Have you had breakfast yet? I’m feeling rich enough to get us brunch.”

“Thanks, but I have to finish this.” Red hair tinted with grey pasted her damp temple, lending her the look of a tired hen. “These finance jobs you’re interviewing for … can’t you find something more productive?” Her voice rose, leaving Alex low and ruffled.

“I could say the same thing to you being unproductive. Instead of sitting alone, cooped up in the dark, why don’t you go out and run soup kitchens?” Her eyes shriveled tight behind her spectacles. Already guilt was puckering at Alex. He went for a gentler tone. “We’ve gone through this about productivity. You won’t be having that nice pension if not for the liquidity that—”

“You wanted to apply to med school. What happened to do that?”

“I changed my mind. Can’t I change my mind?”

“Look here Frederick …”

Alex bent his head over his knees and prepared for the lecture that always followed his mother’s croons of ‘Frederick.”

“Frank’s family is old money. His grandfather was rich, his father is rich and he will be rich. You won’t be like him. You’ll be never like him. So why are you letting yourself get mixed up in his crazy ideas? He can afford to be careless and stupid about money and career choices. You can’t. You certainly can’t afford to be as debauched as he is.” Susan took a moment to rub her eyes. “You’re smart. You’re own person. You should do what brings value to you and to others.”

Alex remembered his father sitting right where his mother was sitting, giving another kind of lecture, the man lecture, the lecture about his responsibility to keep house safe and strong, how no amount of gay preening would change that, how he should listen to his mother because she understood more than he would ever know. He also remembered few months later judging his father a hypocrital twat who divorced his mother for a young, but admittedly lovely girl. Now his mother, he looked to the eyes that was his eyes, and the hair that was his hair … the woman who birthed him didn’t understand a bone in his body.

He straightened up and armed himself with a smile. “I hear you, Mom. This interview isn’t for a finance job. More computer sciency. And it’s based in Santa Monica too, so I don’t have to move. Commuting’s a bit of a stretch though.”

She looked adoringly at the trapezoidal shapes puckering the quilt, and a smile was curving her lips now. “Well then.”

Alex nodded. “I was going to make some eggs, you want some?”

“Wouldn’t mind a bite of yours.”

Alex palmed her knee affectionately. “Eggs coming up.”

The kitchen looked revoltingly sterile, the enamel white of the stove, the silvery shine of the sink and the tiles smoothly blue, and the floors cold and clean. Alex did not want to think that Susan may have not eaten for a couple days. He concentrated on milky froth of the eggs, the gritty gold of the butter clarifying in the frying pan then checked impatiently the messages on his cellphones. Some lovers, some study mates, Janet apologizing for being a bitch the other day. Dimov had not called. But of course Dimov would not call him back, and that was all right with him. He had got what he wanted out of the encounter: cost-free sex, the opportunity to see hard-seeming man fall flat and hard, and finally a sense of control, albeit fleeting, some control over the freewheeling cage of his life.