across
new short story, fiddling around the format and stuff, would love some feedback on this.
“Will you miss me?” I ask, smoke passing over my lips. I leave for training in the morning, to be picked up early at the bus station down the road.
In bed I lean back, against the chest of my lover, dark-haired, eccentric, an artist. Fingers that are always stained with charcoal, eyes that constantly move and search for more than what is really there.
“Of course,” Jeremiah answers and places an arm across my chest, giving it a tight squeeze, anchoring me down. I put my free hand on his wrist.
1970 and the war in Vietnam rages on. On TV we watched the jungles burn, soldiers die. It terrifies me and I start to shake.
“Hey, calm down,” he kisses my temple. “You’ll do just fine. Let’s get some sleep, yeah?”
I nod and extinguish the cigarette, pressing the butt on the edge of the nightstand. We settle under the thin sheet, pressed back to front. I stare out the window. There is lightening in the distance, a soft roll of thunder. I wonder if I’ll see any buildings while I’m over there.
Jeremiah slips an arm around my waist, its heavy, warm. He kisses my shoulder. The world takes me tomorrow, to engulf me in darkness.
*
I lived in a shabby two bedroom apartment with my cousin Kitty. For five cents a word, I punched out short articles for the local paper, occasionally wiped up some ads for local restaurants. Kitty waitressed at a café called beats. She hated it; the loud music at night, the drunk patrons who grabbed her ass. “The tips aren’t worth it,” she grumbled to me every night while stuffing the piles of cash into a mason jar under her bed.
Some nights we stayed late, after closing. We sat a table with the owner, Wendy and her drummer boyfriend Zeus. Kitty smoked a black cigarette, I scribbled in my notebook about the curves of Wendy’s waist, the long curls of her hair. I didn’t notice tapping at the door and I didn’t look up when she got up to answer.
“Sorry, babe,” she said, leaning against the wooden frame, folding her arms. “We’re closed for the night.”
“I’m here about the ad,” an accented voice responded. He held up a crumpled newspaper with words LOOKING FOR BARTENDER circled in red ink. Wendy looked him up and down. The lanky frame, the mop of dark hair.
She moved aside, dropping her arms. “Come on in.” She led him to the table and pulled out a chair. “During the day we’re more of a café atmosphere, the beatniks come in, read their poems, beat their little drums. Night time we have music, that’s when we’d need the bar covered. Well have a seat.” She gestured and sat down herself. “You now how to pour drinks?”
“Wouldn’t be here if a didn’t.” he grinned and leaned back.
“Well this is Zeus. Kitty here is our waitress and that’s Jules.”
“What does he do?” he asked with a grin.
I looked up, put down my pen. “Oh Jules is our little writer. Gonna be a reporter when you grow up, right sweetheart?” Wendy said while gently running her fingers through my hair.
“That’s the plan.” I answered dryly. My articles for the paper were all stock, I used flash words that caught attention, sentences that were far too long. It’s not what I wanted, but it paid the bills, put food on the table.
“Show me what you’ve got and bring us a round.” Wendy said. She pointed to the bar. “Pitchers under the table, glasses in the cupboard.”
I watched the newcomer move behind the bar. Kitty leaned close. “He’s cute. Do you think he’d be interested in me?”
“What’s there not to like?” he answered, giving her a nudge against the shoulder.
“You got a name sweetheart?” Wendy asked, twisted her body around to see him.
“Jeremiah,” he said. He nodded at me before ducking below the bar.
*
The morning is gray, as if a paintbrush has been dragged across the world. It is cold out and yet I wait at the station without a coat. I know that where I’m going will be hot and I may never feel coolness again. I want it against my skin, the chill to run up my spine. Kitty stands wrapped in a thick wool coat, her hands stuffed in her pockets. She cries silently.
Jeremiah leans against a lamp post smoking, shaking. We keep our eyes on each other.
“Be careful,” Wendy says and gives me a hug. She runs her fingers through my hair at the back of my neck. Warm, loving. “Just remember how much we love you.”
I nod. Kitty is next. She throws herself into my arms and holds on as tight as her tiny arms can. “We’re all we’ve got left,” she sobs into my neck. “Please, please be careful.”
There is a smile on my lips, but it droops, sad. “I’ll do my best.” I kiss her cheek. When she pulls away I have to wipe tears from my own face. “I’ll wire money when I can.” What will I be needing it for?
“I love you,” she tells me.
“I love you too.”
Jeremiah is last. We stand awkwardly and shake hands. “Be careful, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The bus pulls up and opens it doors. The driver glances down at me, heavy eyes, a sour expression. I see Jeremiah’s face change slightly, a quick inhale, a wavering of the eyes. He pulls me close to him, a fierce hug. He holds me tighter than Kitty, as if maybe his own will could stop time or the war. Tears sting my eyes. The bus driver honks his horn. “I’m sorry.” I push away. “I have to go.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “Yeah.”
On the bus I find a seat by a window. The man next to me offers me a smoke, I decline. I watch out, pressing my fingers to the glass as the bus pulls away from the station. I keep my eyes on Jeremiah trying hard to make sure I’ve mesmerized all his features. Eyes are dark as his hair, a crooked smile, tall. Long fingers, the accent. I have to remember the feel of his teeth, the smell of his hair. I have to remember it all.
*
Jeremiah made friends fast. The girls liked his accent, the way he touched their hair when he talked to them, the black stains on his fingertips. I sat at the bar and wrote while he served drinks and flirted.
“You got a girlfriend?” he asked me.
“Had.” I closed my book. “She ran away with her professor.”
“Best not to get tied down anyway.” He took a sip from my mug.
“Maybe.” I missed Cindy. The red hair, the glint in her eyes. We made spontaneous love, she clawed at my back. I’d written poems about her, sonnets of her long legs and haikus of her passion and scent, she always smelt of flowers.
“Ah, cheer up, mate,” Jeremiah put a hand on my shoulder. “Thousands of other lovely fish in the sea.”
*
It was two weeks that Jeremiah lived in the back room of beats before Kitty took notice and insisted that he stay with us. She helped him pack up the few things he had, folded up the cot that Wendy left out for emergencies and they walked to our apartment, four blocks away from work.
I heard them from the bathroom.
“It’s not much,” she explained, kicking the door open.
She wasn’t lying. The living room was small, like a box. A couch in the center, a small television sitting on a wobbly box against the wall, a coffee table with a full ashtray.
I flushed, washed my hands came out, zipping my pants.
“Hello, hello,” Jeremiah greeted, dropping his bags.
“Bringing home strays again?” I asked with a smirk.
“Oh ignore him,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “He’s in one of his moods.” I wasn’t writing.
I continued on to the kitchen, got a beer from the fridge then went into my room. Jeremiah followed and knocked.
“I wouldn’t,” Kitty warned. “He’ll bite your head off.”
“Oy.” Jeremiah knocked harder and opened the door himself. The bedroom was even smaller than the living area, practically a closet. A double sized mattress, a desk with a typewriter shoved in the corner, me, shirtless, leaning over, typing away while a cigarette hung loosely from my lips. He stepped in.
With the interruption, I paused, turned half-way to look at the Scot lingering in my door way.
“Aren’t you even gonna offer your mate somethin’ to drink?” I handed him the bottle, he took a swig, gave it back. “You got a lovely view from here.” He peered out the window, onto the street. There was a park across the street, tall trees, flowers sprouting along the sidewalk.
*
As expected here in Vietnam, the air is thick, it is hot and humid. At times I find it hard to breathe, as we walk miles around the jungle, the air itself is what seems to be clogging me up. I walk next to a man younger than me, high spirited and ready to fight. Someone who willingly enlisted. His name is Rodney.
Rodney chews on a stick of bamboo as they walk, gun ready at the aim. I fiddle with my own stick, something thin and light, reminding me of one of Jeremiah’s charcoal that was constantly all over the place. Stuck in the couch, under the carpet, chunks loose in bed. At night when I was on watch, I held the stick in my palm, trying to remember.
It has been two months in this tropical hell. I have seen men blow up, the fine jungles burn easily as paper like I saw on television. In my breast pocket is a stack of letters and drawings from Jeremiah, bound together with a thin piece of string. The other letters, from Kitty, from Wendy I keep in my pack. While they bring me some comfort and make me smile, the do not touch me the way Jeremiah’s do.
He draws things he sees at the bar, the way Wendy looks when she decides to get on stage and sing, Kitty in her waitress uniform. He draws the park, birds in trees, children playing ball. Things I no longer have the pleasure of seeing. He doesn’t write much, a few lines about his day, some funny thing he saw on television. He talks about the empty bed, how cold it is. Those few words, unpoetic, sporadic thoughts scribbled down are closer to me than Kitty’s long descriptions of school and how worried she is.
“Pay attention, Denver.” Rodney nudges me in the shoulder. “Gotta be ready, never know when those sneaky bastards are waiting.”
It starts raining. I make sure there is extra paper in my pocket to protect the letters. I sling my gun around to my back, keep my eyes on the ground. In my left hand I grip the stick tightly.
*
A girl named Morgan that Jeremiah had been fucking came over one night with tablets of acid to share. Kitty was out studying, a perfect opportunity. She didn’t like the hippy, bohemian lifestyle. She hated the drugs, the music she didn’t quite understand. But she stayed, determined to finish college, move away.
“This will make you see the fucking stars man.” Morgan placed a small pink square on our tongues. It took fifteen minutes before I saw the walls rippling, and Jeremiah saw colors floating in from the open window.
Morgan lay on the couch and laughed the sound of her voice echoing off the walls like bells, bouncing along with the sounds from outside. I stood and stumbled to my bedroom, Jeremiah followed. We laughed together, flopping down on the bed, our backs pressing into the mattress which felt like a cloud.
“I gotta write this down,” I said, attempting to get up. An unknown force kept me in place, preventing further movement. “Ah fuck it,” I giggled.
Jeremiah rolled to his side, propping himself up on his elbow, resting his head on his dirty palm. He stared at me the way he stared at a blank canvas. He reached forward and brushed hair away from my forehead.
“What are you doing?” I laughed and pushed the hand away. The fingers were warm, pulsing.
We watched the ceiling a bit, the floating sounds, the vibrating walls. “You believe in love at first sight?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I leaned up and closed the gap between us. Without the acid I don’t think these thoughts would’ve crossed my mind. I brushed my lips against Jeremiah’s, dry and cracked. He did the same, but pressed back harder.
Our bodies meshed together, legs became knotted, hair being pulled, lips crashing and teeth scraping. We fell asleep tangled together. I woke up around six when Kitty came home and dropped her back loudly at the door.
Morgan snorted and rolled over, burying her face in the couch. “Where are the boys?” Kitty asked. She received no answer.
My door was partially opened and I knew she saw us, our bodies on the small bed wrapped around one another. She stopped, I heard heavy breathing before she went on to her room, locking the door.
I looked down at my arms, charcoal smudges all over my skin. I swallowed and touched his shoulder. He didn’t move. I shifted moving closer and closed my eyes, savoring the morning. The taste of it, the weight of his body in bed.
*
“You got anyone back home?” Rodney asks me as we walk. All we do here is walk. We walk through a swamp, stop to shoot, send the wounded off, walk some more.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“She pretty?”
I shrug. “I guess.” I’ve heard the guys talk about their women. Some of them married and fondly chatting about the wife and a kid. Younger men who just wanted to fuck, their crude stories. I always sat silent, nodded along, laughed.
“What’s she like?”
“She draws,” I said, the word she foreign in my mouth. “Charcoal and stuff.”
He nods as I speak, lighting up a cigarette as if he’s trying to picture my lover, what she could possibly look like. An artist who walks around the apartment in my shirt while carrying a sketch book. Long fingernails and dark eyelashes, red lipstick. “I dated a painter once.” He muses. “Best sex I ever had man.” He laughs and puffs. “They’re open to anything.” I can only imagine.
Jeremiah and I don’t have sex, not the way men and women do, not the way the gays do. We’re naked, our cocks touch, we get each other off.
“What’s her name?” he asks me.
“Mia,” I answer. It’s the way he signs his letters. We know better than to reveal ourselves, though it is more for my benefit than his. Who knows what could be done to me.
Tonight I sit under a tree. There is a break from the rain, the clouds part and I see stars, clearer than I’ve ever seen before, and the moon bright and round, glowing silver down on me and the others. I move away from the group, not too far. Of course I don’t want to be ambushed, to be shot in the head and die before I realize what happened. But I’m just far away as not to be heard.
I pull out the latest letter. There is now drawing this time, only unfinished sketches in the margins of the paper. It’s only three lines long.
Looked for you all the while. I almost…but I couldn’t.
Fuck just come home, okay?
Thinking of buying a small heater for the place, yeah?
Mia.
I don’t know what he almost did, probably another girl. But right now I don’t care. I hold the letter to my nose, inhaling, trying to detect the scent of the bedroom, of charcoal and sweat. I’ve brushed my lips against these letters, pretending they were fingers. A tear trails down my cheek. I shut off my flashlight, dropping it in my pocket. I clutch the paper so tightly the edges crumble, I smudge the drawings.
Come home
“Will you miss me?” I ask, smoke passing over my lips. I leave for training in the morning, to be picked up early at the bus station down the road.
In bed I lean back, against the chest of my lover, dark-haired, eccentric, an artist. Fingers that are always stained with charcoal, eyes that constantly move and search for more than what is really there.
“Of course,” Jeremiah answers and places an arm across my chest, giving it a tight squeeze, anchoring me down. I put my free hand on his wrist.
1970 and the war in Vietnam rages on. On TV we watched the jungles burn, soldiers die. It terrifies me and I start to shake.
“Hey, calm down,” he kisses my temple. “You’ll do just fine. Let’s get some sleep, yeah?”
I nod and extinguish the cigarette, pressing the butt on the edge of the nightstand. We settle under the thin sheet, pressed back to front. I stare out the window. There is lightening in the distance, a soft roll of thunder. I wonder if I’ll see any buildings while I’m over there.
Jeremiah slips an arm around my waist, its heavy, warm. He kisses my shoulder. The world takes me tomorrow, to engulf me in darkness.
*
I lived in a shabby two bedroom apartment with my cousin Kitty. For five cents a word, I punched out short articles for the local paper, occasionally wiped up some ads for local restaurants. Kitty waitressed at a café called beats. She hated it; the loud music at night, the drunk patrons who grabbed her ass. “The tips aren’t worth it,” she grumbled to me every night while stuffing the piles of cash into a mason jar under her bed.
Some nights we stayed late, after closing. We sat a table with the owner, Wendy and her drummer boyfriend Zeus. Kitty smoked a black cigarette, I scribbled in my notebook about the curves of Wendy’s waist, the long curls of her hair. I didn’t notice tapping at the door and I didn’t look up when she got up to answer.
“Sorry, babe,” she said, leaning against the wooden frame, folding her arms. “We’re closed for the night.”
“I’m here about the ad,” an accented voice responded. He held up a crumpled newspaper with words LOOKING FOR BARTENDER circled in red ink. Wendy looked him up and down. The lanky frame, the mop of dark hair.
She moved aside, dropping her arms. “Come on in.” She led him to the table and pulled out a chair. “During the day we’re more of a café atmosphere, the beatniks come in, read their poems, beat their little drums. Night time we have music, that’s when we’d need the bar covered. Well have a seat.” She gestured and sat down herself. “You now how to pour drinks?”
“Wouldn’t be here if a didn’t.” he grinned and leaned back.
“Well this is Zeus. Kitty here is our waitress and that’s Jules.”
“What does he do?” he asked with a grin.
I looked up, put down my pen. “Oh Jules is our little writer. Gonna be a reporter when you grow up, right sweetheart?” Wendy said while gently running her fingers through my hair.
“That’s the plan.” I answered dryly. My articles for the paper were all stock, I used flash words that caught attention, sentences that were far too long. It’s not what I wanted, but it paid the bills, put food on the table.
“Show me what you’ve got and bring us a round.” Wendy said. She pointed to the bar. “Pitchers under the table, glasses in the cupboard.”
I watched the newcomer move behind the bar. Kitty leaned close. “He’s cute. Do you think he’d be interested in me?”
“What’s there not to like?” he answered, giving her a nudge against the shoulder.
“You got a name sweetheart?” Wendy asked, twisted her body around to see him.
“Jeremiah,” he said. He nodded at me before ducking below the bar.
*
The morning is gray, as if a paintbrush has been dragged across the world. It is cold out and yet I wait at the station without a coat. I know that where I’m going will be hot and I may never feel coolness again. I want it against my skin, the chill to run up my spine. Kitty stands wrapped in a thick wool coat, her hands stuffed in her pockets. She cries silently.
Jeremiah leans against a lamp post smoking, shaking. We keep our eyes on each other.
“Be careful,” Wendy says and gives me a hug. She runs her fingers through my hair at the back of my neck. Warm, loving. “Just remember how much we love you.”
I nod. Kitty is next. She throws herself into my arms and holds on as tight as her tiny arms can. “We’re all we’ve got left,” she sobs into my neck. “Please, please be careful.”
There is a smile on my lips, but it droops, sad. “I’ll do my best.” I kiss her cheek. When she pulls away I have to wipe tears from my own face. “I’ll wire money when I can.” What will I be needing it for?
“I love you,” she tells me.
“I love you too.”
Jeremiah is last. We stand awkwardly and shake hands. “Be careful, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The bus pulls up and opens it doors. The driver glances down at me, heavy eyes, a sour expression. I see Jeremiah’s face change slightly, a quick inhale, a wavering of the eyes. He pulls me close to him, a fierce hug. He holds me tighter than Kitty, as if maybe his own will could stop time or the war. Tears sting my eyes. The bus driver honks his horn. “I’m sorry.” I push away. “I have to go.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “Yeah.”
On the bus I find a seat by a window. The man next to me offers me a smoke, I decline. I watch out, pressing my fingers to the glass as the bus pulls away from the station. I keep my eyes on Jeremiah trying hard to make sure I’ve mesmerized all his features. Eyes are dark as his hair, a crooked smile, tall. Long fingers, the accent. I have to remember the feel of his teeth, the smell of his hair. I have to remember it all.
*
Jeremiah made friends fast. The girls liked his accent, the way he touched their hair when he talked to them, the black stains on his fingertips. I sat at the bar and wrote while he served drinks and flirted.
“You got a girlfriend?” he asked me.
“Had.” I closed my book. “She ran away with her professor.”
“Best not to get tied down anyway.” He took a sip from my mug.
“Maybe.” I missed Cindy. The red hair, the glint in her eyes. We made spontaneous love, she clawed at my back. I’d written poems about her, sonnets of her long legs and haikus of her passion and scent, she always smelt of flowers.
“Ah, cheer up, mate,” Jeremiah put a hand on my shoulder. “Thousands of other lovely fish in the sea.”
*
It was two weeks that Jeremiah lived in the back room of beats before Kitty took notice and insisted that he stay with us. She helped him pack up the few things he had, folded up the cot that Wendy left out for emergencies and they walked to our apartment, four blocks away from work.
I heard them from the bathroom.
“It’s not much,” she explained, kicking the door open.
She wasn’t lying. The living room was small, like a box. A couch in the center, a small television sitting on a wobbly box against the wall, a coffee table with a full ashtray.
I flushed, washed my hands came out, zipping my pants.
“Hello, hello,” Jeremiah greeted, dropping his bags.
“Bringing home strays again?” I asked with a smirk.
“Oh ignore him,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “He’s in one of his moods.” I wasn’t writing.
I continued on to the kitchen, got a beer from the fridge then went into my room. Jeremiah followed and knocked.
“I wouldn’t,” Kitty warned. “He’ll bite your head off.”
“Oy.” Jeremiah knocked harder and opened the door himself. The bedroom was even smaller than the living area, practically a closet. A double sized mattress, a desk with a typewriter shoved in the corner, me, shirtless, leaning over, typing away while a cigarette hung loosely from my lips. He stepped in.
With the interruption, I paused, turned half-way to look at the Scot lingering in my door way.
“Aren’t you even gonna offer your mate somethin’ to drink?” I handed him the bottle, he took a swig, gave it back. “You got a lovely view from here.” He peered out the window, onto the street. There was a park across the street, tall trees, flowers sprouting along the sidewalk.
*
As expected here in Vietnam, the air is thick, it is hot and humid. At times I find it hard to breathe, as we walk miles around the jungle, the air itself is what seems to be clogging me up. I walk next to a man younger than me, high spirited and ready to fight. Someone who willingly enlisted. His name is Rodney.
Rodney chews on a stick of bamboo as they walk, gun ready at the aim. I fiddle with my own stick, something thin and light, reminding me of one of Jeremiah’s charcoal that was constantly all over the place. Stuck in the couch, under the carpet, chunks loose in bed. At night when I was on watch, I held the stick in my palm, trying to remember.
It has been two months in this tropical hell. I have seen men blow up, the fine jungles burn easily as paper like I saw on television. In my breast pocket is a stack of letters and drawings from Jeremiah, bound together with a thin piece of string. The other letters, from Kitty, from Wendy I keep in my pack. While they bring me some comfort and make me smile, the do not touch me the way Jeremiah’s do.
He draws things he sees at the bar, the way Wendy looks when she decides to get on stage and sing, Kitty in her waitress uniform. He draws the park, birds in trees, children playing ball. Things I no longer have the pleasure of seeing. He doesn’t write much, a few lines about his day, some funny thing he saw on television. He talks about the empty bed, how cold it is. Those few words, unpoetic, sporadic thoughts scribbled down are closer to me than Kitty’s long descriptions of school and how worried she is.
“Pay attention, Denver.” Rodney nudges me in the shoulder. “Gotta be ready, never know when those sneaky bastards are waiting.”
It starts raining. I make sure there is extra paper in my pocket to protect the letters. I sling my gun around to my back, keep my eyes on the ground. In my left hand I grip the stick tightly.
*
A girl named Morgan that Jeremiah had been fucking came over one night with tablets of acid to share. Kitty was out studying, a perfect opportunity. She didn’t like the hippy, bohemian lifestyle. She hated the drugs, the music she didn’t quite understand. But she stayed, determined to finish college, move away.
“This will make you see the fucking stars man.” Morgan placed a small pink square on our tongues. It took fifteen minutes before I saw the walls rippling, and Jeremiah saw colors floating in from the open window.
Morgan lay on the couch and laughed the sound of her voice echoing off the walls like bells, bouncing along with the sounds from outside. I stood and stumbled to my bedroom, Jeremiah followed. We laughed together, flopping down on the bed, our backs pressing into the mattress which felt like a cloud.
“I gotta write this down,” I said, attempting to get up. An unknown force kept me in place, preventing further movement. “Ah fuck it,” I giggled.
Jeremiah rolled to his side, propping himself up on his elbow, resting his head on his dirty palm. He stared at me the way he stared at a blank canvas. He reached forward and brushed hair away from my forehead.
“What are you doing?” I laughed and pushed the hand away. The fingers were warm, pulsing.
We watched the ceiling a bit, the floating sounds, the vibrating walls. “You believe in love at first sight?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I leaned up and closed the gap between us. Without the acid I don’t think these thoughts would’ve crossed my mind. I brushed my lips against Jeremiah’s, dry and cracked. He did the same, but pressed back harder.
Our bodies meshed together, legs became knotted, hair being pulled, lips crashing and teeth scraping. We fell asleep tangled together. I woke up around six when Kitty came home and dropped her back loudly at the door.
Morgan snorted and rolled over, burying her face in the couch. “Where are the boys?” Kitty asked. She received no answer.
My door was partially opened and I knew she saw us, our bodies on the small bed wrapped around one another. She stopped, I heard heavy breathing before she went on to her room, locking the door.
I looked down at my arms, charcoal smudges all over my skin. I swallowed and touched his shoulder. He didn’t move. I shifted moving closer and closed my eyes, savoring the morning. The taste of it, the weight of his body in bed.
*
“You got anyone back home?” Rodney asks me as we walk. All we do here is walk. We walk through a swamp, stop to shoot, send the wounded off, walk some more.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“She pretty?”
I shrug. “I guess.” I’ve heard the guys talk about their women. Some of them married and fondly chatting about the wife and a kid. Younger men who just wanted to fuck, their crude stories. I always sat silent, nodded along, laughed.
“What’s she like?”
“She draws,” I said, the word she foreign in my mouth. “Charcoal and stuff.”
He nods as I speak, lighting up a cigarette as if he’s trying to picture my lover, what she could possibly look like. An artist who walks around the apartment in my shirt while carrying a sketch book. Long fingernails and dark eyelashes, red lipstick. “I dated a painter once.” He muses. “Best sex I ever had man.” He laughs and puffs. “They’re open to anything.” I can only imagine.
Jeremiah and I don’t have sex, not the way men and women do, not the way the gays do. We’re naked, our cocks touch, we get each other off.
“What’s her name?” he asks me.
“Mia,” I answer. It’s the way he signs his letters. We know better than to reveal ourselves, though it is more for my benefit than his. Who knows what could be done to me.
Tonight I sit under a tree. There is a break from the rain, the clouds part and I see stars, clearer than I’ve ever seen before, and the moon bright and round, glowing silver down on me and the others. I move away from the group, not too far. Of course I don’t want to be ambushed, to be shot in the head and die before I realize what happened. But I’m just far away as not to be heard.
I pull out the latest letter. There is now drawing this time, only unfinished sketches in the margins of the paper. It’s only three lines long.
Looked for you all the while. I almost…but I couldn’t.
Fuck just come home, okay?
Thinking of buying a small heater for the place, yeah?
Mia.
I don’t know what he almost did, probably another girl. But right now I don’t care. I hold the letter to my nose, inhaling, trying to detect the scent of the bedroom, of charcoal and sweat. I’ve brushed my lips against these letters, pretending they were fingers. A tear trails down my cheek. I shut off my flashlight, dropping it in my pocket. I clutch the paper so tightly the edges crumble, I smudge the drawings.
Come home