Blind hearts - 5. Unwelcome Guests

Lakes of translucent blue seeped over the cloudy landforms across the twilight sky. Movie night at the Hollywood Cemetery unfolded an affair of blankets, lawn chairs, coolers, and the occasional call and response of toddlers whining. Silent and stiff, Dimov, Winifred and her friends sat cross-legged on blankets, crooning their necks over grey heads in front of them. Charles was omnipresent to Dimov, tall with the palm trees pinheads against the sepia-toned air, rustling with the gritty-grey ghosts emblazoned on the wall screen, spread-eagled over the twin marble graves.

A cascade of hushes enveloped the audience, all the while his cellphone burdening in his trouser pocket. His hand sought the contours of the hard object as he estimated the time to be ten pm. Twelve hours ago Charles and Glenda had left Los Angeles, twelve hours of phone silence.

He turned to the right and glimpsed the bone-white of an alabaster mausoleum almost as commanding as death’s vise. Suddenly the fact of skulls and bones buried beneath his sore rump was incandescent. Winifred’s black head was nodding off beside him, a trapezoidal patch of light sweeping across her nose. He wanted to shake the nest of her weaves, shake those thin shoulders and demand she be more aware of the grave fact of Charles’s silence.

Outdoor speakers blared a wave of trumpet sounds, more heavy to his left. It seemed to work to relax him. He retreated into the silky leaves of his mind. There Pedro’s eyes was glimmering in needy softness. A warm hand on his lap. A boyish laughter squealing past his ears. But again, the cellphone was hotly radioactive in his pocket. He should just damn it and call him.

But … what would a phone call do? Would it avert disaster? Of course not. If something had indeed happened, the phone call would be useless. Therefore, this need to call Charles was just him being weaseling again, limping back to the habits of an idiot child desperate for attention. Dimov twisted under knifes of self-reproach, but could only feel his heartache expanding through his ribcage.

What a fool he was, the thought cramped him, worrying about someone who possibly at the very moment was getting his ass sweetly fucked, whose very idea of him had gypped him of a willing and wanting Pedro.

Idiot. Yes, an idiot as gigantic as those awful mausoleums.

Winifred nudging his elbow wakened him to the movie’s finish. He could see people, corralling their kith and kin, undressing from the sleepy forms of lethargy. They all sauntered in a great procession trampling over graves and grass. Amidst the red of brakelights beaming, they exchanged words on “good film, interesting film,” watched each other bundle drowsily into their cars, and at last with the slamming of the doors, the night was ended.

He was plodding up the stairs to his apartment when he halted abruptly and declared, “I’m free to do whatever I want. And right now I want …” His head twirled around, looking for a concrete idea to coalesce over the paneled ceiling. His mind soared to the cocky idiot who had stolen the pot from him. Laughing, he pictured Alex with his red hair like translucent seashells. He tasted the air smelling oddly of turpentine then fell headlong a reverie of Alex’s mouth silkily sucking his dick. The rush of steps passing knocked him to awareness, and uttering a primal grunt, he too sprinted up the stairs and wished hungrily for the private heaven of his home.

Then his phone rang, interrupting his sifting through keys.

“The stars you can really see them out here,” came Charles’ voice a lisped clangor of overpowering bells that would impound him and dump him to the sea.

Dimov took his time over the sliver glitter of his keys. “Sounds nice.”

“How was the movie?”

“Don’t remember much of it.”

“Shitty then?”

“Yes, yes, I wish I was there looking at stars while college boy sucks my dick.”

“Please, let’s not start.” It was painful to hear Charles grovel.

“Seriously, I was thinking about Alex.”

“Ha. Thank me. I did good.” There was giddy glee over the phone. “I put his number in your phone before I cleaned off the lipstick off the mirror. I didn’t want Glenda screaming about ten-dollar lipstick.”

In the shuffling interlude of wondering if Charles had been rudely forward or helpful, Dimov opened the door. The darkness sweeping with the oblong grey light over the ceiling, and with the shadows straggling the wall corners the dark lay, and the dark encamped with the toppled tower of books on the coffee table. He could see his little self again shaking in the dull clove of a hotel room, desperate over the fiasco of a burnt suit.

He slapped for the light on the adjacent wall, and there was light and gushing need to be whole again. It took a few moments to realize that Charles was still on the phone, and he laughed unsurely over the receiver.

“I can always count on you for certain things.” Rounding the dark bend to the bathroom, Dimov unbuttoned his collar to let more air in.

“Are you hating me again?”

There illuminated on the bathroom mirror was the artifice of himself, a grey damp discoloring the underarms. He blinked, deciding on a chiding tone. “You should be shooting cans with the others.”

“But these stars, the desert poppies … suddenly it seems like a bad idea to move to Philadelphia.”

The suggestion—was Charles being flighty again? But the suggestion sparkled with possibilities. Suddenly the air was rich with the yellow and the silver and the tawny. He had to claw his way up the near vertical slope of sanity.

“Philadelphia will be good for you,” Dimov hoped for a munificent grandness in his tone, “I’ve been thinking, we should be more independent of each other.”

“Independent—you’re hating me again.” Charles demurred. “Yeah, sorry, I should get back to shooting cans.”

After Charles hung up, Dimov grunted his annoyances with being the child who needed everything and understood nothing. What the hell was Charley getting at? The conversation tumbled through his mind, hitting off certain notes of relief. Charles had not been bleeding off the shoulder of highway in the middle of nowhere. He could be grateful to God—chuckling—to the Universe. Rather he was more brimful with pride now, for he had been composed. He had insisted on the rational way of things. He was finally attacking what he should have done three years ago. Good.

Now back to Alex and the way light highlighted orange ends of his hair. How cozy his dick was in his mouth, how it fit in the glove in his hand, and the smell of the hotel bathing soap with a tingling of lavender and coconut, the thick sweat and something uncertain, indefinable, exhilarating.

Dimov double-checked his phone contacts, and sure enough there was a contact under ‘College Boy’. He was much too giddy to feel stupid for not noticing it in the past month.

“Hello, I don’t know if you remember me, Di—”

“I remember that manly sexy accent, Dimov.”

Dimov bit his lip and began pacing tight ellipses around the coffee table. “You graduating right? You have a job lined up?”

“Still interviewing. I have another of those soon someplace in Santa Monica.”

Dimov was winded, too happy to have something to talk about. “Santa Monica? I work there. I have a window view of the beach. So you’re sticking around LA?”

“Yeah … I’ve lived with sun and beach all my life, still can’t enough of it.”

“God, when I was your age, I couldn’t stop thinking of running away. I bolted from Seattle to Chicago to New York then LA.”

“You aren’t going to run away before I get to test drive your dick, will you?”

Dimov stumbled over the coffee table. “You think you can handle it?

“Oh, baby, I want me some Russian deli right now.”

Dimov recalled the boy’s cockiness, and his heart skittered over xylophones. “That comes after a coffee date—”

“Darling, you want me, I want you. So what’s your fucking address?”

Open and shut. Dimov gave his address and paced the coffee table in an admixture of terror and anticipation.

Twenty minutes later, at the door, Alex, in jeans and a shirt polo with a flared-up collar, was looking rather pumped with the way he hooked his thumbs in his pockets. His lips bunched in a determined manner, and Dimov felt his belly vaporize, unhorsing him. Before he could straighten, Alex came upon him with overly enthusiastic hug. Tight, secure, the hug encompassed him with a cheap masculine soapy scent, and those freckles like sand up over his face. Already Alex’s hands were sliding down the grooves of his back, to which Dimov recoiled, pulling out of his arms.

“It’s a nice place.” The words were like accessories on Alex trailing loops and loops over Dimov’s belt buckle, his lower lip caught under a half ledge of teeth.

“Expensive mortgage. Tenants help.”

Alex’s hands were running over the cottony breadth of his chest now. “I remember your tenants. They looked like fun.”

“They’re having too much fun at Joshua Tree as we speak.”

“Convenient.” Slyly, Alex’s fingertips circled of his nipples through his cotton dress shirt.

“You should thank Charley. He’s the one who kept your number.” The fingers pinched him. “Aww.”

“Cold and mean,” Alex said.

“Must be my Ukrainian blood.”

Alex’s eyes glinted with a sudden fervor, hardening Dimov. Uncomfortable, he whisked his eyes to large screen television commanding central view on the wall.

“I remember Charley saying something about a burnt suit.”

Dimov hiccupped laughter, and those soft sly hands were working down his waist. “Oh that. It’s a story he likes to gloat about. I was just ignorant nerd out of Chicago on his first interview, put up in a four-star hotel. And he was the flaming room service guy… After trawling through Brooklyn at midnight, we found something, a tight fit, but it worked enough. I got the job. After all his trouble, it just seemed impolite to turn it down…. It was a hell of night. I was terrified. Charley was quite having the time of his life.” He could see his trembling face reflected of the black screen. He thought perhaps he had talked too much about Charles, but Alex seemed attuned, engaged, which sizzled him even more. “Obviously, it’s funnier when he tells it,” he murmured.

But Alex pulled in his waist, and Dimov firmed a smile for the parted lips just over his. “I like your version enough,” Alex whispered in his ear.

The heat of his breath shivered through Dimov so much so he lurched and fidgeted his gaze over to the basket of oranges on the kitchen counter.

“Allow me to get you some coffee,” Dimov said, pulling away.

“Sure, black.”

Dimov dived to the door-less ingress of the kitchen. He moored blankly over the digital dial on the coffeemaker, over which of the ten mugs in overhead cupboard to use. All the while he could hear Alex shuffling along the balcony door, riffling through a picture book of Ancient India, and then those kicking steps heaping up right behind him. “How do you like your coff—” Something determined and warm pawed his rear. He lurched to the side of earth and salt and took a hold of Alex’s nape, pulling the green shoulders and the barrel smile towards his thirsting mouth. Amidst mélange of tongue, teeth and the hint of sour lemon, Dimov knocked Alex against the nook of the counter. Bone against bone and groin frictionless against groin, and the white light swam in Dimov’s eyes, erasing the flutter of Alex’s eyes and the red of his hair to a sleeked black.

In between Alex whispering and licking and searching, a shard of memory wedged in, and suddenly the musty, gassy smell of his old Brooklyn kitchenette engulfed Dimov. Under a swinging bulb light, he and Charles had kissed for what seemed like an eternity until Charles pulled him off. Panting and crimson darting down his jaw, Charles had splurged the pathetic speech about misunderstood intentions, being friends, pleaded his inconstant nature that hurt lovers constantly. Dimov’s face went rigid, the floor shaking underneath his dress shoes. He thought the pillars were falling, and lo he was falling. As if saving a boy from a barreling truck, Charles pounced on him, gripped around him so tight, he could not breathe if he had been at all. The queen’s voice was high, hard, harsh upon his eardrums, “Please don’t hate me … I love you … Please don’t hate me …” And those desperate entreaties, the bootless apologies falling, falling with the skies around him. Four months later, Dimov fled New York to Los Angeles.

Alex was cooing, “I got you, I got you,” when Dimov found himself holding him tighter than a strong oak. Shuddering wildly, he came off Alex too roughly. The kitchen linoleum shimmered the familiar three-hares design. He avoided the sigmoid lips and held him off by the upper arms. Before Alex would discolor irritably, he let go, but then Alex ringed his arms round his waist, searching for the dazzling points in Dimov’s eyes.

Dimov stroked his warm cheek. “I prefer dinner with a side of platonic conversation.”

“After you gimme some of this.”

Alex tried to kiss his face again, but Dimov pulled away, sighing defeatedly. “Not in the kitchen… Come on, we’re off to my room.”

“It’s way hotter in the kitchen.”

“Not in my kitchen.”

“Shit, relax.”

Dimov’s lower eyelids twitching, Alex’s lips hardening, the two men stood back and mulled the sour prospect of the other being insubordinate. But Dimov acted suddenly, taking control Alex’s waist and in a swift move, slung him over his shoulder and trundled him off to his bedroom.

The bouncing in his ears alerted Alex to the not-so-soft impact onto the bed. And the door bang ringing through the frames of the room, pointed all of Alex’s inner arrows to the tightening in his scrotum. Dimov switched on the light, ordered, “On your knees,” to which he laughed, laughed some more, clambering out of his clothes and shoes and then bouncing on the bed in anxious delight.

Back at the door, Dimov had ossified a towering statue dripping an inner cold fury that shivered Alex higher a rung on the mercury. Evidently, he was hard, hard and frustrated. And there was only one deal with that: hard and fast.

And hard and fast was Dimov inside Alex pressed onto a wet slip of a pillow. And then Dimov’s cock flew, soaring inside his clenched walls, goading Alex to cry, “Dear God, you’re good.” Feeling knifed up Alex’s spine, firing all neurons on the leaf-thin edge of a sensation so precise, he was seeing auroras swirling behind his eyelids.

Alex fell over on his back to smooth out his shuddering. The tangible fact of his corporeality narrowed on him. His bones, the secret muscles in the tight places, the harsh panting that could not be abated, all contributed to the fabric of his being. He could see constellations on the stippled ceiling and amongst the spines of finance books stacked on the bedside, on the curves and depressions welted on the Dimov’s broad back turned to him. The sight of the light of beauty walking down curve of his spine pricked him to awareness again. Bending over his knees at the edge of the bed, Dimov seemed unforgivably distant. It prompted Alex to swoop over him from behind and hold the wide bars of his shoulders.

Dimov’s shoulders felt cold and clammy, but Alex said huskily, “That was good Russian deli.”

Dimov turned to him, a dark streak across his eyes. Alex could not decide if his reticence was annoying or endearing. Either way, he ignored it with a kissing trail behind his soft, still hot ears.

“You need to call me more often,” Alex said, drowsy with more kisses.

“How about you call me.”

“You sure? I’d tire you out everyday.”

“Don’t mind as long as I get dinner and conversation in somewhere.” Alex’s fervency dimmed then a smile creased Dimov’s face. “Besides, you underestimate the stamina of your big Ukrainian.” The accent, at once sleepy and guttural dithered Alex off to the rim of excitement and he slid around to straddle Dimov’s lap. But he glimpsed to the right, the beveled edge of a bedside table, and on it, a digital clock greenly illuminating 11:30. Foreboding thoughts flew to Susan withering at her sunken spot on the sofa and sticking needles into her quilt in time to the clock ticking. He shrank cold and just as soon shifted off Dimov’s slippery lap and rubbernecked over the ledge of the bed for his clothes.

“I have to go,” Alex said.

Dimov pulled him back by the shoulders. “It’s late. You shouldn’t have to drive all way back now to Irvine.”

Chuckling, Alex shrugged off playfully and began sweeping the bed for his boxers.

“Ok.” Dimov sounded dull and forlorn. “I’d like to get to know you better…”

The request melted in the air. Alex was kicking into his tennis shoes when he measured the sag in Dimov’s brow. He did not like what he saw. Dimov was supposed to be the unapproachable boulder that gave it good and hard and wanted nothing else but the good and hard, not a sallow sop. But that hard curve of seriousness in Dimov’s look was a loving grapnel on his dick. Grunting, Alex sat himself beside him.

“I think I’m easy to figure out. Young, dumb and full of cum.”

“Dumb shits don’t win poker consistently.”

“I lost a bunch today at the house game in Silverlake. Does that count in my favor? Ok maybe, not enough to make my mom go berserk. But enough to hurt.”

“How did you get into serious poker anyway?”

Alex slid a glance to the time again. Now was not the time to tell the stupid story of his freshman year when Frank called him out of blue after more than a year’s silence, “You and me have to learn to play poker. This chick I just met, plays mean brutal poker, and she’s haaawttt.” The voice had been like Jesus’s calling him back from the dead.

Dimov turned Alex’s chin to face him. “You’re sneaking around on a boyfriend?”

The question was grating in its inanity. “Fuck, no. Who’s got time for that?”

“Then humor me, at least, for the next half hour.”

The nakedness feathering the edges of Dimov’s voice was impossible to ignore. Alex’s eyes moved like a trembling needle over the rippling dunes of black hair over Dimov’s chest. The distant echo of thoughts were ringing: if he could barricade himself within himself the barrel of his own soul, he would hear his own voice, and it would feel just Dimov’s.

Alex blinked and clarity gripped him. Pathetic, spineless it was to wilt over something uncontrollable. With that he clawed himself to some composure as he smiled curtly at Dimov’s tightening eyes.

“I’ll see you around. Call me when you want hook up again.” Alex would run out, but he surprised himself, managing an unbending swaggering gait.