I called Philip before I moved away to school and he told me to meet him at the hotdog stand, the one that served breakfast late. Even though it was August, the trees had already started to turn. I thought at first that I was getting sick because I couldn’t place the difference, but then I realized the trees were doing what they always did, got yellow, just really early this year for some reason.
Philip had already ordered his food by the time I got there, burger and fries on a scallop-rimmed paper plate, a napkin beside it, plastic knife and fork on the napkin. He had set the utensils the perfect distance apart, leaving the perfect amount of napkin around them, the paper edges of the napkin, in turn, set evenly with the plate and running parallel to the edges of the tray, so there was a perfect amount of tray around the napkin, forming a red border between it and the plate and the tray’s raised rim. He must have taken a lot of Adderall that morning. He was sitting up very straight, individually salting each bite, his wrist flicking just so as he shook the shaker, a tiny bit gay, and extremely angry.
I don’t really remember how that first conversation went. Not well.
But later that night, it got better. We were lying in the dark on his bedroom floor. His parents had gone to bed a long time ago, and it felt good to talk in the dark—we had found a bottle of vodka and drank all of it, patching things over while we drank, and now we said whatever came to mind, really softly, smacking our lips because our mouths were dry.
“It’s funny that it falls on me,” he said. “To stay here and answer for everything bad that we did.”
“Who’s been bad?” I asked. “When did we do a bad thing?”
“It’s funny that it falls on me,” he said. “To stay here and answer for everything bad that we did.”
“Any night,” he said. “Any night. I don’t know. It comes back to me when I drink a Diet Coke in the morning. Something stupid and mean that I had said the night before that had seemed well put and funny at the time. Like drunk texting your brother on your phone. Deranged. Something I need to apologize for.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like sometimes when I’m hungover somewhere off alone. I feel the need to sit on my bed and make myself sad.”
“Right! Exactly!”
“I thought we were going to whisper?”
“I get excited,” he said, whispering. “OK. I know what you mean.”
“I do,” I said. “I really do. I sit on the floor. I dump all my dirty clothes on the floor, and then I get naked and I sit on them.”
“Your bare ass on the clothes?”
“Nothing better,” I said. “And I look up at the bed and imagine a boy there. Maybe you. I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining you up on my bed, pretending to sleep up there, and it’s me on the pile of dirty clothes. Boner on my belly. The room’s hot from the air vent. The room smells like hot air vent and dirty clothes. You’re awake with your eyes closed, breathing.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about at all,” he said.
He rolled into my arms, very warm and very drunk. Oh my gosh, he was saying.
“You get to go,” he said. “You go to college. I stay and get nothing.”
There was no point denying that, so I didn’t answer.
Instead I said, “they say it’s like a window to your heart.”
“What is?”
“You know.”
He nodded. He knew.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes. I don’t know.”
“It’s like a bad cough all the time,” I said, reaching.
“So don’t smoke.”
“It’s like a bad cough all the time,” I said, reaching.
“So don’t smoke.”
“Or it’s like getting naked, removing your skin, neatly folding your skin over the chair. Having someone join you on the chair.”
He didn’t answer at first.
Then he said, “Time to sleep,”
“One more analogy,” I said.
“No. Goodnight.”
“OK?”
“Goodnight.”
“OK. Goodnight.”
************************
