Into the Great Wide Open (17 page)

Boy glanced significantly at the cops in the opposite booth, who were laughing loudly; probably over a really
decent
beating they had given somebody, Kenny thought.

“I don’t know,” Boy said elaborately.

“Nod, nod, wink, wink, say no more,” Kenny said. “Drop me at Wentworth’s house, OK?”

Now Boy was pissed. He wanted Kenny to provide a social cover for him at Ellen Hunnicutt’s, that was Kenny’s guess. Or something, or something else. A spy, Kenny thought, avoiding the eyes of the beautiful drag queen: I’m not what I appear to be. I’m on your side. The eagle flies at midnight. They paid the check and went out into the cold night again and drove around aimlessly.
Time:
looking back, the most different thing is how much time he used to have: expanses, vistas of unbroken time … They drove back to Wentworth’s house by way of anywhere else, driving by the party again where things were now quiet, stopping off so Wentworth could buy a quart of beer with his beautiful fake ID. No hurry, as much time as anyone wanted, more; time to kill in two-day parties, three-day marathons of Risk, that Kenny passed, stoned, holed up in Sumatra, waiting to finally lose. Time to spend the afternoon at Junie’s house, looking at art books off her mother’s bookshelves and talking about nothing. He could piss off Wentworth, or Boy, and not really worry about it; because there was always enough time to patch things up, sooner or later they’d be all right again, because there was really nobody else worth hanging around with. It was only later on that these days seemed golden; and only then because he had run out of them.

F
rustration: a game they used to play with each other, with lips and tongues and fingers, or more than a game. Kenny didn’t have a name for what it was. The rules were simple: to bring the other to the point of coming but not quite, and then just stay there, holding it off. Both of them played at the same time; if one of them flagged, or got too far away, the other one brought them back with lips and fingers and tongue. His whole body would ache. He couldn’t decide if this was cruelty or kindness. It didn’t seem to matter; didn’t seem like there was any difference. After an hour or two—their record, in February, was three and a half hours—Kenny’s blood would be pumping hard through his whole body,
engorged
. No part of him she couldn’t touch and get him going, get him started. After an hour or two they had to ration their touches, even their looks. That was the beautiful part: when she would touch him with the tip of her breast, just the tip, the nipple barely brushing his chest, and Kenny felt it with his whole body, and shuddered at the feeling … The game was Junie’s idea, at first, and he wondered where she learned it. And then he didn’t care, not just out of his own pleasure but out of finding hers, where she would bend to him: the inside of her wrists, always, and sometimes her breasts but not always. Her neck, especially the little hollow at the base, the peaceful valley sleeping there, and if she was lying with her back to him he could kiss the soft small hairs at the back of her neck with amazing results. This was new to Kenny: he had always been a visitor to girls’ bodies before, quick to come and quick to go. Now he owned one girl’s body, for as long as they played. She didn’t mind if he looked, not after a while; didn’t mind if he traced the lines with the tip of his finger, if he kissed her and held on. Kenny learned how far to go, and how to take it farther. Cruelty
was never far away; teasing, aching. He woke up sore himself, in Wentworth’s sister’s bedroom, pink and frilly; pink and frilly.
Frustration
. He tried not to end up inside her but sometimes he couldn’t help it.

The same night he went out with Boy and Wentworth, Kenny saw something else. They let him off and he went around into Wentworth’s backyard and rolled one last cigarette for himself and lit it, sitting at the picnic table. It was too cold, really, but he wasn’t allowed to smoke in Wentworth’s house. He sat there breathing smoke and vapor into the air and feeling his hands freeze, watching the sky.

Then something happened. One minute he was sitting there watching the sky, where a heavy layer of clouds was breaking up into scraps with the moon behind it. The moon was almost full and the clouds were edged with moonlight as they broke up; scraps and tatters, cities and continents of clouds. Then he was driving out toward Junie’s house.

It was almost two and he didn’t expect to see her. He just wanted to see her house, for reasons unknown. He analyzed himself as he drove along but came up blank. He rolled another cigarette and lit it as he drove along, no small feat. When he got to her street he cut off the engine and the lights and sat there in what was left of the heat, smoking. Her house was dark, shuttered. Junie’s car was in the driveway. Kenny didn’t even know what he was looking for. The house just sat there.

He was ready to leave when he saw the headlights coming toward him down the street, a cul-de-sac. He slouched down in the seat. Suddenly Kenny didn’t want to be seen. The car—anonymous American junk—slid up into Junie’s driveway, behind the line of bushes; but they were bare, no protection at all. The door opened and he saw the two of them, Kim and Junie, in the interior light. Junie’s head ducked over—he saw it clearly—and she kissed Kim on the lips,
quickly, and then got out of the door and shut it and the car went dark. She went up her own steps quickly, fumbled with her key, let herself in and shut the door, all in a rush, as if she were upset. Kim Nichols waited a decent minute after the door shut, then heaved the giant car into drive (Kenny saw the backup lights flash on as she shifted) and down the driveway and out into the street. As she passed Kenny she waved hello, like it was noon or something. Kenny waved back, because he couldn’t think of what else to do.

Then she was gone and the street was dark and empty again, the bare branches making witchy shadows in the streetlights. A kiss; but what kind of kiss? Good friends, good-bye, regrets, passion.
Spent
passion. Kenny felt like the one who had been caught. Maybe it was meant for him, to teach him a lesson. Maybe it would have been worse if they hadn’t seen him,
worse
or better, he didn’t have a useful definition. He sat there, anyway, while his car cooled toward freezing, making little ticking sounds. A kiss. Two girls could kiss, but not these two. It wasn’t safe, it was illegitimate. Maybe they didn’t care about gossip but still. Then Kenny took himself down off his high horse. Really he was jealous.

Jealous of what, though? It wasn’t Kim, not exactly or at least not only. It was more like whatever person, man or woman, that was going to take Junie away from him. He knew it would be somebody, sometime. She was his for a while. Maybe it would be better if it
was
Kim; she would be loved, anyway. That was the feeling that he had for Junie: he wanted her to be loved, tended, taken care of; he wanted husbandry.
Marry me
, he thought.

He wasn’t surprised to see her come outside again, already in her nightgown. She wore a heavy sweater over it, black sneakers. She came over to the passenger side of the car. Kenny unlocked it, and she sat down with her arms crossed in front of her. “What are you doing here, Kenny?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Are you spying on me?”

“No.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Marry me
, he thought again. What if he had said it? (Nothing: but in memory these things stick and grow, epiphytic tendrils of regret,
sentimental …
)

“I didn’t expect to see you,” Kenny said. “I wish I could tell you that I knew exactly what I was doing.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” He buried his hands under his arms and slumped down behind the wheel, mummified. Looking at the visor as he spoke. “I guess, I don’t know. I just wanted to see if you were still here.”

“It’s complicated,” Junie said.

Their breath hung in vapor in the air of the car, along with her words:
it’s complicated
. The words concealed some other reality that Kenny didn’t want to think about. Kenny wanted it simple, I need you, I love you, I can’t live without you, like the words to the songs that his father loved.

“I don’t know what you mean, still here,” she said.

Kenny tried to think of a way to explain himself. “I just drove all the way out here to look at your house,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t own me,” Junie said.

“I never thought I did.”

“Where I go, or what I do, or who I do it with, OK?”

“OK,” Kenny said; but full of misgivings. So
typical
. She was shrinking on him again, a teenager in love, or not.

“I love you,” Junie said. It caught him crossways, with his heart leaning away from her, he wasn’t ready. At first they were just words, more words in the cold air. Then he heard what she meant and a big wave of plain happiness went through him. Goddamn, he thought. Look what I got.

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to use that word,” he said.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said, and Kenny saw that she was
crying; didn’t know why, they didn’t seem exactly like tears of joy. Put his arm around her but she shied away, stiffshouldered and bony. “I went out with Kimmy tonight, I went out just to tell her,” she said, snuffling. She still wasn’t talking to him. “I came back and you’re in the driveway spying on me, Kenny, keeping an eye on me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I don’t want to live like that,” she said. “I don’t want to be under anyone.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Kenny said. “I didn’t mean that at all. I just, I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep. I love you.”

“Ssshhh,” she said, and pressed a finger to his lips.

“I thought …”

“I get to say so,” Junie said. “You don’t.”

She laughed; that same giggly loss-of-blood laughter, not quite sane, and Kenny joined her.

Kenny said, “How about a hearty ‘me, too’—is that permissible?”

“That’s disgusting,” she said, and leaned over and kissed him. “Don’t be cute, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Kenny said.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Don’t start apologizing or we’ll never stop.” She kissed him again. “Now go,” she said. “I’ll see you.”

He watched her up the stairs, the door closing, the wind in the branches. He watched the closed face of the door for a minute, two minutes. Nothing else was going to happen. He couldn’t feel his hands much anymore. With clumsy fingers he started the car, turned the heater up to high, started off slowly toward Wentworth’s house,
happy
.

Kenny went to see his father after school, the day they let out for Christmas vacation, or maybe another day, or, another. The days won’t sort themselves out for him. It was always afternoon, or night;
maybe because he got up late. This one was indeterminate gray, a bucket for the day to empty itself into. It was threatening to snow in an offhand way; maybe a few light flakes already drifting down, between the Kool billboards and the fortified-wine groceries. Down and dirty, Kenny thought. I’d die here, probably. Realistically.

“I’ssa news,” his father said. “I’m a nome.”

I’m going home:
he didn’t seem to care one way or the other as he said it but Kenny felt a shock. He saw himself lashed to the wreckage, sinking. His father had settled into his new manner, passive, indifferent, gray; he could speak—though it was only Kenny’s hours of practice that let him decipher it; his father spoke with thick lips and his tongue swollen to fill his mouth. He didn’t care. His eyes were elsewhere, thinking or not thinking, Kenny could never finally tell. Just then he was nodding to himself, silently agreeing, with something or somebody that Kenny couldn’t see.

His father said, “Negst ee,”

“What?”

“Next
week
,” he said.

“That’s great,” Kenny said; though he didn’t see how it was possible. He hadn’t seen his father out of bed yet, and his father’s hands—once enormous, fearful instruments—wouldn’t work to hold a knife and fork. But who will help me bake the bread? Not I, said the little red hen. Who will wipe the spilled egg yolk from his face?

You will, you will.

Trapped: he looked around the tiny, orderly hospital room as if there were a hidden door there, some means of escape.

The devils: One for the wheelchair, and one for the tank; one for insurance, and one for the bank; one lived in the TV, bitching and whining; one slept in the hall light, constantly shining; one for the alcohol, one for the rag; one for the sag-sprung hole in the sofa where Dad sat gaping at Peter Jennings.

Kenny can’t remember who built the wheelchair ramp; who wrote the checks, for rent, etc., when his father was in the hospital; whether Junie or his father came first. One minute he was ten feet tall and bulletproof with love, and then his father was home again. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that his father’s homecoming came first, and Junie’s declaration came after—except for the clouds, the fat dark clouds breaking up in the moonlight that he watched from Wentworth’s backyard; and there was no reason for him to be in Wentworth’s backyard, not if his father was already home.