The World of Normal Boys Page 13

  Robin turns around and glares at him. “I like other music, too.” “Like what?”

  “I like disco.”

  The girl tugs on the sleeve of his shimmery shirt. “I could have guessed that,” she says.

  Scott is still laughing. Robin adds, “And I like some rock, too.”

  Scott puts his face in his hands. “Man, no one likes rock and disco.”

  “And show tunes,” the girl says. “You like it all, huh?”

  Robin squints his eyes at Scott. “I have a lot of interests. The problem with you is you haven’t seen enough of the world to have an open mind.” He hears his mother’s voice in his words but he’s glad it’s there. He doesn’t need this hassle from Scott.

  “What do you know about my mind? You don’t even know me,” Scott says.

  “Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want to,” Robin says. “You don’t know me either.”

  “That’s what you think,” Scott mumbles.

  “What’d you say?”

  “I know more about you than you think.” Scott closes his eyes and leans his head back against the vinyl upholstery.

  Robin waits for more, wondering if Scott is bluffing or getting at something. Robin pulls the cigarette Todd gave him out of his shirt pocket and fingers it like a talisman. Scott remains silent, his silence like a little punishment. The problem with taking risks, Robin realizes, is that you don’t know what you’re getting into.

  “I would have thought you two were bosom buddies,” the girl says. She presses in the cigarette lighter. With a glance at her purse lying on the seat, she says to Robin, “Pull one out for me.”

  He finds a pack marked Eve in scripted letters; the cigarettes are longer and skinnier than the one he got from Todd. “These are neat,” he says.

  Scott speaks up again. “Bosom buddies. Yeah, right. We’re just two rejects from gym class.”

  “Yeah,” Robin says. “Broadway Baby and Baby Burnout.” The lighter pops out and he brings it to the cigarette, which is hanging from his lips in as close an imitation of Todd Spicer as he can pull off. He coughs at the puff and turns around to pass it to Scott.

  Scott leans forward and takes it from him. “Yeah, a couple of rejects,” he repeats, smoke disappearing from his mouth into the wind racing past. He hands the cigarette back. “Man, don’t pay any attention to me, OK? I’m just goofin’ on ya.”

  Robin studies Scott’s face. The apology seems real enough, but how can he be sure? He sighs and takes another drag. Each one gets easier. He feels Scott’s knees pushing into the seat under his back and leans back into it. Maybe Scott is just some closed-minded kid he can never be friends with. But maybe not. :

  He watches the blur of trees at the side of road. His hair flies back. He feels exposed in this convertible, his decision to ditch announced to all of Greenlawn. He closes his eyes. I’m leaving Greenlawn, he thinks. I’m on a magic carpet, and I don’t know where I’m going.

  “I think I’m stoned,” Robin says.

  Scott laughs.

  “No, I really think I’m stoned.” Every time he turns his head, his thoughts need another moment to follow, as if his mind is having trouble keeping up. They are sitting on a concrete loft in the abandoned aviary at The Bird; Robin imagines that they’re hiding in a spooky outlying building on a big estate, something in one of those British novels from a hundred years ago. The room is damp and shadowy. Metal bars line the walls below them, and all around lay stacks of cages, their sides bent and smashed by years of vandalism. The roof above them slants to a peak twenty feet above the floor. All of the windows are boarded up except for the one they climbed through after Scott bought the joint from a kid in the parking lot. The place is big enough to echo their conversation, but the air is thick with a dank, animal odor and the marijuana smoke they’ve been exhaling for the past ten minutes. Their feet dangle off the edge of the loft. He looks down past his feet at white birdshit splotches. The more of Scott’s pot that he smokes, the more Robin considers moving back into the safety of a corner.

  “How do you know when you’re stoned?” Robin asks. “Is it when the way you usually think isn’t the way you’re thinking right now?”

  Scott narrows his eyes at Robin, ruminating. Robin waits, expecting Scott to say something authoritative, and when what seems like ten minutes pass and still no sound comes out of him, they both bust out laughing. “That’s so funny,” Robin says. “How you didn’t give me an answer, and I was waiting for one. That’s the way everyone in the whole world always seems to me—I ask a question and I don’t get an answer.”

  “You can’t be stoned,” Scott says. “No one gets stoned the first time they smoke.”

  “Did you?” Robin asks.

  “Yes,” Scott says, and breaks into laughter again.

  They lie on their backs and stare at the rotting wood beams stretched across the ceiling. Robin is talking. He has been telling Scott everything about the accident, from Jackson baiting him into climbing up the slide, to his father’s explosive anger in the hospital room, to Victoria’s gossipy questions in the car. Scott is tapping his fingers on his stomach—his shirt pulled up from his waist—and the delicate patter of flesh against flesh, repeating itself throughout the story, provides a hypnotic beat beneath Robin’s words. Scott interrupts every now and then to ask a question that only needs a yes or no answer but which sends Robin off into a fresh rush of revelation. When Scott asks, “So Jackson is younger than Ruby?” Robin tells him how Jackson is the only one of the three of them born in New Jersey, how Jackson stopped playing with him and Ruby when they were little, how he still likes Ruby better than Jackson even though she’s been acting so religious lately. When Scott says, “You mean your father never hits you?” Robin explains how his father lets him go off with his mother to the city and never seems to care though Robin knows—he just knows—that his father doesn’t like it. When Scott asks him who Uncle Stan is, Robin tells him about the World Series party, and how he thinks Stan drove his mother to drunkenness, and how Robin was stuck with Larry that night. He takes another hit off the joint and tells Scott about Larry running around naked and wagging his dick at him and how that bothered him because Larry was the one who was perverted but he wound up making Robin feel that way.

  And then he gets quiet, having reached the stifling moment when he realizes that he’s revealed more than he ever planned. Scott stops his tapping. The skylight on the other side of the roof is darker than when they got here, and it occurs to Robin that he’s ditched more than just gym class. The hours he has spent with Scott lay themselves out like a chain, one link after the other, stretched long against the sky. “I should probably shut up for a while,” he says, worried now that Scott has heard too much, that he could not possibly want to spend any more time with him.

  “No, man, it’s cool. I been listening.”

  “I probably sound like a big crybaby—”

  “Nah.”

  “—or worse.”

  “I can tell you’re pretty smart,” Scott says. “I knew you were a brain. But I mean you have a way of thinking of things that’s pretty fucking heavy.” He rolls over on his stomach and reaches across Robin, who tenses up from the nearness. “Where’s the roach, man? I want to get my money’s worth.” His hand brushes the ground at Robin’s side.

  The roach is still pressed between Robin’s fingers; he lifts it into the air with a flourish. “Ta-da.”

  Scott lights a match and holds the flame near his face, waiting. Robin understands after a moment what to do: he lifts the roach to Scott’s lips, surprised how steady he holds it, watching the concentration as Scott pulls in the smoke. The end of the joint is a tiny star burning orange, and Scott’s face glows softly behind it.

  Robin thinks Scott will move away from him, but he doesn’t. In the closeness, Robin wonders what it would be like to kiss Scott, and then he hears himself wondering this and stamps out the thought. “You said something before, in the car—” His memories of the morning
race to catch up with his words. “You said you knew things about me.”

  “I hung out in your neighborhood before.”

  “With who?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ve never seen you in my neighborhood. Only in gym,” Robin says. “You’re like the only other kid who isn’t into it. I mean, I didn’t know you were a burnout but I knew there was something about you, different.”

  “That’s right,” Scott says. “I told you, I’m a lone wolf.” He takes another puff.

  “So how come I get all the shit from guys like Danniman and you don’t?” Robin asks him. “Is it because of your face?”

  “What the fuck’s wrong with my face?”

  “Nothing,” Robin says quickly. “I mean, there’s this expression you have.”

  “You are high, man. Danniman and those other guys won’t fuck with me ’cause I sell them joints.”

  Robin stares in amazement. “You do? You deal?”

  Scott smiles, almost with pride. “Sure. I buy it from upperclassmen at school for like fifty cents, or at The Bird—like that guy Socks I just scored from in the parking lot? Then I sell it back to Danniman or whoever for seventy-five cents or a dollar.”

  “Wow. Don’t you worry about—”

  “What? You’re too uptight about that stuff.”

  “It could happen,” Robin says defensively.

  “Even if I got caught, what would happen? The state could take me away from my father for him being a bad parent, which would not fucking bother me one bit. I’d get set up with some rich family. Like yours.”

  Robin rolls his head to the side. “Yeah, right, we’re just dripping with money. ”

  “You got two cars in your driveway.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You gotta have some household cash to have two. There’s a gas shortage going on, man.”

  “You hung out in my neighborhood?” Robin tries to concentrate on the notion of Scott on Bergen Avenue, close enough to know how many cars his family has. He weaves his fingers into his hair, lifting, then letting it drop back against his ears. In the swimming-through-water of the high, words feel increasingly clumsy, but his gestures leave him fluttery, feeling almost graceful.

  When he turns his head back to Scott, he sees that Scott has been watching him intently.

  “You know, I don’t need anybody anyway.” Scott has lowered his voice, narrowed his eyes. “A lone wolf doesn’t travel with the pack.” He bends his head back and howls into the room. The sound collects in the eaves and returns to them, vibrating. Scott keeps his head back and Robin’s skin shivers. He thinks it again: I want to kiss Scott, right there on the neck. There’s a gauzy dreaminess to the wish that offers a split second of peace before giving way to pure, immobilizing panic.

  “Yeah, it’s true,” Scott says. “I’ve been spying on you.” He growls, then whips his head forward. Robin falls back to the concrete, trying to make the roof stop spinning, certain that Scott knows what he’s thinking.

  Without warning, Scott lifts one leg and throws it across him. Robin stifles a gasp as Scott sits down on his thighs, just below his crotch. “I’m the stoned lone wolf and I’m stalking through the jungle.” He lowers his head again, his hair sways across Robin’s chest. “The lone wolf spots a robin in the birdhouse and gets ideas.”

  Robin’s dick is like a finger pushing almost painfully against his hip. He thinks maybe Scott can feel it, too. He thinks maybe Scott doesn’t mind but he can’t believe that, even with Scott’s legs clamped against his, Scott’s head bobbing dreamily in front of him, Scott’s breath giving off heat against his shirt.

  Scott growls again. He grabs Robin’s arms and extends them over Robin’s head. “The stoned wolf,” he whispers. Robin stiffens from his head to his heels. The tremor of Scott’s growling voice moves along Robin’s body, into his shoulder, up against his neck—Scott’s lips are on his neck, then off again, the growl moving against Robin’s jawbone, his ear. Scott has caught him by surprise; a shaking has started in his legs and is moving up through his chest, into his throat, his lips. His body trills against the concrete. And then Scott is pushing against him, Scott’s legs on top of his legs, Scott’s crotch pressing his, Scott’s boner prodding through his jeans into Robin. Scott’s hair falls across Robin’s lips. Robin lifts his head, opens his mouth to protest, and then Scott’s lips are right there against his, and it all becomes clear to Robin: what he’d been wanting just moments ago is actually happening.

  Robin raises his face and then, unsure what to do, bites Scott’s lower lip. Scott’s lips part, his mouth is a puddle of spit, their mouths are pressing wet into each other, tongues moving, circling, slippery, sloppy. Robin rushes the slick end of his tongue across Scott’s, can feel the roughness of taste buds. Their breathing mixes up together, puffs of effort, Robin unable to tell what noise is his and what is Scott’s. A chorus of Oh my God oh my God bellows in his skull. He hears a warning—Someone will see us—then he hears Todd’s voice from that morning saying, Get laid. He pushes up and tastes Scott’s smoky spit and he wants to tell Scott each of these thoughts, he wants Scott to say something back.

  Scott pulls out of the kiss and slams harder into his crotch. Robin thrusts back and Scott pounds at him again, it’s almost painful to Robin but he pushes back over and over until he is just counting the beats of this rhythm like a crude children’s song—bum-bah-bum-bah-bum—for-getting about the voices in his head and what he wants to say, just trying to do whatever Scott is doing—for how long they do this, he doesn’t know. The whole world is just the press of Scott against him and him trying to keep up. And then without warning the sound from Scott’s mouth is not a growl but a gasp and his teeth clamp down on his lower lip. He stretches out, flat as an iron. Everything freezes.

  Robin sucks in his breath as all of the tension from Scott’s body disappears.

  Scott collapses, then rolls off him. A slice of air hits Robin’s knees, crotch, stomach, chest, neck—everywhere Scott was and now isn’t.

  In and out, quick, shallow, Robin’s breath is all stunned gasping. He opens his eyes to a vast room deep in shadow and stinking like sour breath. His body is still shaking.

  “I shot,” Scott says.

  “What?” Robin leans toward him, sees Scott lying on his back with his arm across his eyes.

  “Did you?” Scott asks.

  “Did I what?”

  Scott peeks out from under his arm. He reaches his other hand out and pokes it into Robin’s crotch as if he’s testing a loaf of bread. “Did you come, man?”

  Robin sticks his hand down his pants. The tip of his dick is sticky with goo but it’s not the whole thing. He looks at Scott’s lap, at the dark stain there. “No.”

  “Shit. I sure fucking did.”

  Robin doesn’t know what to do. Is it over? He wants to kiss Scott again but Scott is sitting up now, unzipping his fly. His half-swollen dick flops out like a few inches of garden hose, hairs tangled in the glop. No underwear. He wipes himself with the hem of his T-shirt.

  Robin presses his hand on his dick. He watches Scott trying to clean up. “Wow,” Scott says, looking at him with a wide grin. “I really shot.”

  “Yeah,” is all Robin can say. Is there something wrong with him for not shooting yet? Should he jerk it off right now or would Scott think that’s too weird?

  Scott looks around the room, then back at Robin’s crotch. “Hurry up, man. We could get snagged or something.”

  Robin keeps pulling on it but each stroke feels less effective, not quite right, and not all like the feeling of a few minutes ago when he could feel Scott’s breath on him. He tries to read Scott’s face, tries to figure out what Scott thinks of him here with his unfinished business.

  “Put out your hand,” Scott says.

  “What?”

  “Give me your hand.” Robin takes his hand off his dick and holds it toward Scott. Scott flips it over and spits into his palm. He raises his eye
brows. “Use that,” he says. “I’ll meet you outside. I don’t want to get busted in here.” And then he’s scurrying over the edge of the loft, lowering himself from sight.

  With Scott gone, the spell is broken, the plug pulled. A final silent shudder travels across his skin, and he shakes himself to be rid of it. A bead of sweat runs from his temple. His dick is going soft. He rubs his hand on the concrete, smearing Scott’s spit. In the webby part between each finger, the smell is like lemon juice or spinach, like Scott’s breath and his own spit and the herby trace of what they smoked. He listens as Scott’s footsteps fade away. They were not caught. No one knows but him and Scott. He looks around for some evidence of what they did; nothing remains except a mucusy drop of Scott’s goop on the floor.

  The night air is cold, the sky silver. Scott stands, hands in pockets, at the edge of the creek running past the picnic tables. Robin approaches cautiously.

  Scott looks at him, then away. “I got really fucked up on that weed,” he says.

  The water trickles quietly by. Scott picks up a rock and tosses it in. Plink. Robin leans back against an oak tree, rubs his sticky hand on the bark, which breaks apart like chalk. He shakes his hair, lets the faint breeze soothe him. His lips tingle. “I never did that before,” he says quietly.

  “That’s cool,” Scott says, still not looking at him.

  He studies Scott’s back, his untucked T-shirt, the hair hanging across his shoulders. He knows he can’t touch him, though that’s what he wants to do; if he could feel the temperature of Scott again, he could believe the two of them actually did what they just did. Already the noise of the world is intruding: an automobile skids to a stop in the parking lot, grinding loose dirt under the tires. In the distance the sound of end-of-the-day traffic at Five Corners collects into a whoosh.

  “Don’t make a big deal of it,” Scott says, then turns and walks past him toward the parking lot, toward the entry road that leads back to town. Robin follows. The dark concrete of the aviary looms at their side.