Boys of Life (21 page)

Still, I didn't feel too great, so I took a walk uptown—which you may be saying, Tony, that's what you always do when things don't go Your way, and I guess that's true, but that's the way I am. It helps me to get out and look around and see what's what, to use Seth's phrase. So I went uptown to the library. I wanted to look at that picture I used to look at, the one of the guy my age feeding his little sister some soup in the ghetto. I hadn't gone back there since we'd made the movie, and it was really strange to see it again. It made me remember those times I spent in the winter talking with Sammy, which seemed like a dream now that the movie was made. Like making the movie emptied all that out oi me the way you'd drain pus out of a sore. It made me sad to look at the picture and think that kid from Lodz was still dead whether I looked at his picture or we made that movie or not. He was still dead and I was still going on, and looking at him now was like looking at some old picture of me a long time after I'd stopped being that person anymore.

Though I guess you never completely lose it, that person you used to he, and so I hadn't lost him either. He was going to be with me a long time to come.

I put the book back on the shelf wondering it I'd ever come look ar it again. Then I went on the few blocks to Central Park, where in the summer we played soccer hut we didn't anymore because Carlos was always away during the day again and even though it was different now because I knew the city and got out and about B lor more, still it was sort of the same as it was back in the winter.

There were a few guys playing soccer, and even though they signaled me to join if I wanted, I didn't. With Carlos not there I didn't

□ PAUL RUSSELL

feel like I was parr of it, even though it was great to watch those guvs stampeding up and down and guiding the ball in between each other's legs, and the dust and sweat and you could hear their heavy breathing when they stopped for a time out. I sat down on this little hill where the grass was worn away and there were candy wrappers and I almost sat down on a used condom till I moved a ways away and sat down again—and I watched them play for maybe an hour, feeling sad and tar away from everything, and just watching like it was a movie, and I remember thinking to myself how, number one, I wasn't angry with Carlos, and how, number two, I wasn't going to let him fuck with me anymore or fuck me either for that matter, and how, number three, it I was thinking that, then what Seth told me that afternoon must really hurt a lot inside and I thought I was taking it pretty well, but 1 guess 1 wasn't.

It's one more of those times when I should've just walked away from everything but I didn't. I was never very good at doing that, 1 guess—except maybe that time hearing Ted dry-humping his mattress put a move on me. Otherwise, with me it's sort of like those little animals that get hypnotized by looking into the eves of bigger animals: they can't move, they just have to keep looking no matter what happens. I guess I was always one of the little animals. And Carlos—well, Carlos was Carlos.

Rv the rune 1 got back to the apartment mv throat was tull up

with looking at those soccer players. I was drunk with seeing them play the way they did, in and out oi each other like they knew exactly what they wer< ill the time^-which they didn't: I'd played out there

before so I knew. And I also remember this, vividly even though it's

nearly ten years since then by the tune 1 got back to tin- apartment 1 i letely calm, and 1 knew what I was going to <\^-When (..ulos came m that night I was already in bed but 1 wasn't nist lying there in the dark, peaceful, ready foi whatevet

( arlos didn't turn on the lieju he un

iid slipped into the bed next to me He didn't touch m< like Ik- usually did. lb just lay there next to me We up .u the < eili

th had a little dish fest this aftenv like it ^.is |ust i i i «sip that didn't have anythin

irh him.

I felt str rng '"W I said

BOYSOFLIFE D

Carlos reached over and turned on the light. At the same time, he ^

It wasn't exactly what I expected him to Bay, and it made my heart go cold. He smiled that tight smile o( his, and his Cherokee cheekbones rode up higher than ever, and it was like he was saying, Go on, fight me about it.

"Which one of them?" I said it as coolly as I could manage.

Carlos looked at me. I think I surprised him, matching him one for one like that.

Of course, I couldn't match him very long.

"Do you want to meet him?" he asked.

I felt the floor give way under me. I couldn't think of anything else but to risk it and say, "Sure, I'll meet him. Anytime you want me •

Carlos grabbed me by the hair. "I knew I liked you," he said. "I knew there was something about you, and I wasn't wrong."

I started to get really mad.

"So all that stuff back in Owen, about the movie script and everything—you just made it up."

"I had to think fast," he said. "Otherwise I was going to lose you."

"Which maybe would've been better," I told him, "for the both of us."

"Definitely not," he said. "Absolutely definitely not."

"I can't believe it," I said. "You're fucking around with little kids."

I wanted it to sound like I was furious, though I knew I couldn't, exactly.

"You're not a very good actor sometimes," Carlos said.

Which made me sort of punch him in the shoulder, and he punched me back. It didn't go any further than that. We just lay there for another minute or so.

"But you're a very good person," he went on to say. "You're always a very good person, which means life is hard for you."

"And you're not a very good person?" I asked.

"Are you kidding? Anybody who thinks fucking is a way of life's not going to be a very good person."

I told him I thought fucking was a pretty good way of life. "It's sure gotten us some times, now hasn't it?"

"Oh, anything can get you by for a while," Carlos said.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

He looked sadder than I'd ever seen him.

Sometimes it was pretty hard to talk to Carlos. You felt like he was lying on the bottom of some deep river and you were in a boat fishing tor him with a long line and no bait. I told him, "It 1 learned anything from The Company, it is—you take things but you also have to give them back. Okay? Lots of people probably say they believe that, but I think I really do, Carlos. I think it was you and Sammy who taught me that, even though at the time I didn't know that's what I was learning." Which was a kind of surprising thing tor me to say—but as soon as I said it, I knew I meant it completely.

"I think I have faith in you," Carlos said. "I think that's the only way to put it."

"What do you mean, faith?" As usual, Carlos was about ten steps ahead of me. He was an incredibly reckless person in a lot of ways, but I think he also had this incredible sense of what he could do and what he couldn't do—and the whole time he was with somebody, he was letting the rope out, and tightening it up, and always playing right on the edge of things. When you think about it, it's amazing he didn't blow it more times than he did.

"I'm talking about having taith in how you see things. How things can be bigger than you or me, and how that doesn't seem to bother you the way it would bother most people. How I think maybe you know how to stand aside and watch yourself, and see what's what with your* self. Which is what makes you a such a terntie actOT when you're not taking it."

Carlos must've been wondering it this time he'd let the rope out

• tr. I'm pretfj sun- In was scrambling tor it, though that's looking

ii because he was always able to cover his tracks. But 1 wondei

it he got Scared .it times like that, wondering what would happen 01 whether it it all t.uue apart he- w.is |ust ieady t0 ihrUg everything "It

He w.is definitely some kind of survivor, hut also I think sometimes be

iboui all the things he survived along the way. People he OTMe

knew hut then made some kmd «>t mistake with Nett.i. foi instance,

I'd heard tell about, people who wouldn't I

lo with i arlos anymore be< aute one da) i. larlos took t\

far, and then thai w.is \\ \ didn't knon ai the

time whit ti though eventually I found out too but 1

aIi.u happened I rt iwn, thai the wtj he \w^-d his life

r with ei

B O Y S O F L I F E D

body he ever liked. Knowing that made him sad, but he'd decided that was the way he Had to be: he was going to try to hang on with people

as long as he could, and then when it was tunc to pay the price, he'd pay the price.

But I don't think I knew that then, which is why I completely launched into him with hoth my fists. I took him by surprise—I think up to that point he thought he was winning and he was relieved, and then all of a sudden my punches knocked him completely off the bed onto the tloor.

"Hey," he said, but before he could do anything I was on top of him, straddling him there on the floor next to the bed and slamming my fists into his face. It was a complete surprise to me too, since I'd never really beaten anybody up in my life before—but that's what you could say I was doing to Carlos right there, even though he was about fifty pounds heavier than me and worked out in a gym and if he wanted to, it would've been like that time back in the winter when he just grabbed my wrists together and there was nothing I could do. But he didn't do a single thing to fight back—he let me pummel him for a while, like he knew he deserved it and he was just going to lie there and take it. It made me even madder that he wasn't fighting back, because I think if I'm going to be honest I have to say—all I really wanted him to do was slam me once or twice and let that be that.

But he wouldn't do it, even though by now his nose was gushing blood and I had blood all over my fists and even on my chest. Under me I could feel his dick getting stiff, like he was loving all this. I hit him even harder, but that only made my dick start to get hard too, which was even worse because he could see it sticking up there in his face. It made him grin, and I was furious with my dick for getting hard, and even though I tried to make it go soft, I couldn't. The more I hit him, the harder I got—I was almost relieved when finally he must've decided enough was enough. He gathered me up in his arms and tossed me off him, and that was that. Which was fine with me because I was exhausted. I knew he wasn't going to hit me back or anything— whatever point we both needed to prove had jusr gotten proved and now there wasn't any need to prove anything more.

He got up off the floor and went into the kitchen, where I could hear him running the faucet. I sat on the tloor tor a while waiting, and then got back in bed like nothing happened. I was glad my hard-on was completely gone when he came back to the bed. I was relieved when I saw his was too.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

"Nothing like a facial massage," he said when he lay down next to me.

"Did I hurt you?"

He laughed. Then he said, "Ouch."

"You deserved it," I told him. I wasn't mad at him anymore. I guess I got that out of my system.

"Go to sleep," he said. "First thing tomorrow we're goinu to Brooklyn."

That was news to me. "Why're we going to Brooklyn?" I asked.

"We've got things to do," he said in this completely matter-of-fact voice, like nothing had happened between us. "You and me. I've got some things to show you. I need your help."

"You need my help?" I couldn't really imagine what kind of help Carlos would be needing from me, especially right now.

"I'm making a new movie," he said, just like that. "I need youi help."

So there it was. I guess maybe I should've known, at least been able to guess—but I didn't. I would've thought he would've told me.

"You're making a movie," I said. "You're making a movie and you didn't tell me."

"I was waiting for the time to be ri^ht," he said, and he even sounded like he believed it, though I wasn't sure I did.

I had to laugh. "You're crazy," I told him, leaning on nn elbow to look at him where he was lying there with his taee Starting to putt up where I hit him. "You're totally era:\."

"It's been said. Look, do you want to be In this movie? I reall)

you to be in this movie." "What's it about?' 1 hike that was the question tO ask about (

::. .

different," he said. "You'll see tomorrow." "And this kid you're nicking up the ass?" I said. "Is he in the I

t thousands," Carlos said. "It's biblical, it's an

;

"A-

■ wt lay d i while, him noi making any move to touch

me like he usually I inr not making anj move eithei \\v didn't

a hat it telt like, this horrible t old clamim feeling starting soi ind m\ he.in and , "in

BOYSOFLIFE □

into my arms and my legs. Even the night which used to be summer,

or the end of summer, didn't seem that warm anymore.

I had one more question. I waited a little while before I asked it, maybe hecause I was hoping he'd go to sleep and then I wouldn't have to ask it. But finally I did have to ask it anyway.

"Carlos," I said, "you're not going to fuck me anymore, are you.'" It made my throat really dry to say that, hut I had to.

He didn't say anything tor .1 minute, like he was thinking—then he said, "No, I'm not."

"That's amazing," I said. "That's just amazing."

"That's what they say," Carlos said. "That's what they say about lite. It wouldn't he a good idea, would it?"

Oi course he was completely right, even it it was what I thought before when I was walking in the park.

"It wouldn't be a good idea," I said. "No."

I hadn't thought I was going to say that when the time came. I was used to deciding things and then having to undecide them as soon as I was around Carlos, but this time was different. Something had changed. I couldn't put my finger on it but there it was. I remember once I was walking down Main Street in Owen and suddenly the temperature got ten degrees colder. Some kind of front moving through, I guess, but it was spooky—one minute it was seventy and the next instant it was sixty and if you took a step backward to step hack into the seventy-degree air you couldn't do it, you couldn't find where that old weather went to. And that's what it was like—some sudden dip in the temperature between us that happened just like that. Or we both suddenly urew up in some way, and things couldn't he the same as they used to he anymore. I felt a lot older lying there next to Carlos, not touching him—sad about what was all of a sudden put behind us, hut also 1 wafl feeling this kind of respect. Respect for both ot us in some strange way.

I guess all oi it was just one more thing he set me up tor. Rut it you spend your lite uoing around looking for traps, you're going to miss a thing else.

BOYSOFLIFE D

beings but we're really not.' But also we really are, because then rbat's all a human being is—something made by aliens in their underground factory. The instant I think that, I know I'll never be able to know even when I wake up. Because if I was actually down in that underground factory, the aliens did something to my memory to make me think it was only a dream. That's their way of protecting themselves. I'll remember it and then I'll remember it was just a dream I had, so it can't be real and not to worry. So even if I catch on, like I'm catching on now, still I'll never know for sure and that's when I wake up.

I bolted up in bed completely covered in sweat, with this prickling all up and down my arms and legs. They know I know. That's what I immediately thought. They know I've figured it out and they're out to rind me, they're going to take me down into the factory and re-make me so I won't remember them.

I lay there completely still for a while. All there was was the hum you hear all the time here at night, I guess it's the Eddy's heating system—this humming sound that's almost regular but not quite. If you listen to it like I do at night, you notice it keeps going in and out of phase with itself. After a while the dream started to fade, so I wasn't scared anymore—and now today it's just another dream. But I want to hold onto it. I have this feeling I figured out something in that dream— I stumbled across something nobody else had caught onto. Not about the underground factory exactly, but something else—the way you aren't in control, but just act like it because you see everybody else is doin^ the same only they don't know it.