Pins: A Novel (34 page)

“I couldn’t help but notice your little problem in there.”

“Yeah, well, whatever.”

“Would you like some of mine?”

“What?”

The guy held up his paper bag.

“Lemme see.”

The guy looked around. Darkness crept in, but they were still visible.

“Come on.” He clicked the alarm on his key ring. The car blurted an electronic fart. The guy opened his car door, sat inside. Joe went around to the passenger side, heard the bing, bing as he sat down, the guy clicking his ignition key on to play some music, some geeky Lite FM.

“Take your pick.”

The magazines he’d wanted fell onto his lap.

“Um, thanks.”

“Anything for you, Adonis.”

“Who?”

The guy wasn’t bad-looking. His face was nice enough, not really handsome, but harmless.
 
His jeans were loose. He didn’t seem to have a great body, not that his body would be a part of it.

 
Wild with thoughts, his breath growing shallow as he heard his heartbeat thump in his ears, felt his blood race down to his cock as the guy put a hand on his thigh. Then the man leaned over, kissed him. He tasted like toothpaste, like he’d expected to kiss someone.

“You are so beautiful,” he muttered as his fingers trailed up Joseph’s chest, pawing him lightly, tugging up his jacket and T-shirt. His heart punched at his ribs, then the guy’s mouth was on his belly, his wet tongue, mustache bristles tickling. He cringed, his stomach muscles contracting. He worried the guy would stop, but he kept on, catching the little ripples, thrusts.

The guy’s hand fumbled with his pants. He tried to pull them down, but Joseph wanted to keep his pants up in case he wanted to run, but he knew he wouldn’t run, knew he wanted to see his own dick in somebody’s mouth again. He unzipped his pants, letting the guy feel the hard ridge under his shorts, then released his cock, which bapped up against his belly.

His mouth swallowed him.
 
He heard the guy gasp, as if coming up from swimming. He whispered, “Beautiful. Uncut. I love that.”

“Whatever.”

The guy remained in his lap, licking around it, stretching it with his tongue. As much as he loved Dink, this guy was a lot better at it.

After only a few minutes, the guy pulled his head back, yanked it with his fist. A pearl of it flew up onto the dashboard, another glop stretched out on Joseph’s jeans, on his thigh, like an arrow, saying, This Way Out. He quivered, closed his eyes, shot again, felt it all, thought, how nice that something so gross could feel so good.

Then the guy fished out his own cock, touching it, pumping it, as if he was late for something, said, “You wanna?”

“Um. . .”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, um, lemme. Just once.”

The guy’s cock was reddish, like his face, somewhat gross, but at the same time he wanted it, wanted to see if it fit. He opened his mouth, the guy shoved his pants down. The smell was clean, a soap smell caught in the hairs tickling his nose. The guy started shoving his hips up into his face.

Joseph choked, but held onto it, more to use his hands to keep the guy from banging his cock too far up, since his head kept hitting the steering wheel. Then he had to swat the guy’s hand away, which was creeping down toward his butt.

He heard slick sounds as the guy grabbed his own cock, pumping. He kept rubbing the back of his neck. It was nice, but then he knew the guy wanted him to do more. He wanted to, but only because he closed his eyes, pretending it was Dink, Fiasole, Cleshun, Bennie, Hunter, Marky Mark, anybody else, that he would do this again someday, but not in a car, not ever in a car.

He pulled back. Like those few times with girls, where he kissed them, pretended, he leaned in, kissed his mustache, yanked it with him. He closed his eyes again, suddenly enjoyed it more, twirled his tongue around inside the guy’s mouth, how he would have kissed Max Fiasole if he’d had the chance.

He moaned a little into the guy’s mouth, then he felt wetness burst into his hand. He pulled harder, faster, until the guy grabbed his wrist, instinctively yanked his hand away, throbbed, relaxed.

A wrist hold. Could have wrapped him like a pretzel.

“Wow,” the guy said, looking at a glob of sperm dangling from the dashboard like wet tinsel. “I’ll never wash my car again.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Not really.”

Adjusting pants, zipping up, the guy said, “So, I could give you a ride home.”

“That’s okay.”

“Can I buy you a soda?”

“Naw.”

“Right.”

His throat was all gooey. He asked to roll down the window, then spat.
 

The overpass hummed a ways off, the skimming tops of cars and trucks gliding on a cement river in the sky.

21

SHOPPING, the note on the fridge said, which explained the whereabouts of his mother and possibly Sophia so early in the afternoon. His father? At work. Mike? Who knew? Dissecting roadkill, probably.

Joseph downed five cookies with a glass of milk, sat silent at the dining room table, his books sprawled out in the convincing illusion of study. No tube. No music. Not until everybody was home and he needed something to block them out. Just be silent.

He took out his drawing, his first B-minus after years of art class A’s. They were supposed to draw their families for a display to go in the lobby at school. Some PTA thing.
 
“Where are you?” Mrs. Bridges had asked. Joseph immediately made a joke about him sitting on a hill painting his family on a picnic. That satisfied her. It wasn’t until later that Joseph realized he’d put himself out of the picture.

He was supposed to give it to his mother. As if. She looked horrible in the drawing, her neck gangly, her hair wrong, her eyes too dark. Forget it. His dad had been enlarged to more muscular proportions, looking more like a bad sketch of a skinny Wolverine. Mike held his toad in one hand like a prize watch. He’d probably think Joseph was making some kind of “comment.” Joseph had Sophie with one toe extended, smiling, sprite-like. She’d like that.

He slipped the drawing inside his book, then took it out, nearly ripping it into little pieces, but he thought he heard another creepy sound, was ready to hide under the coffee table again, but it was the middle of the afternoon.

He heard steps retreating from the porch, cautiously got up, went to the door.

A manila envelope lay in the ghost square where the welcome mat used to be. He saw the photographer kid across the street, walking briskly.

“Hey!”

The photographer turned, caught.

Joseph waved him back.

He turned away, then turned back, walked all the way up the driveway, to the door. Joseph stood in his sweats and a sweatshirt, felt suddenly self-conscious that the kid would see his belly. Tom, that was his name.

“Sorry,” Tom sputtered. “I didn’t know if anybody was home.” He stood at the bottom of the porch steps.

“What are you doin’ around here?”

“I just wanted to stop by and give you that.” Tom pointed to the manila envelope. “If you read the note, um, we were clearing out files for the yearbook, and I just thought you might want these.”

Joseph crossed his arms, not retrieving it. “You the one that’s been snoopin’ around my house?”

“No. They’re those wrestling pictures. I never got a chance to…What, somebody’s following you?”

“Never mind.”

“I just–well, you never talk in school. It’s like you’re trying to be invisible.”

Joseph shrugged. “Yeah, tryin’.”

Tom said nothing. He looked out to the clean lawns across the street to see if any neighbors were watching. “Come on up,” Joseph said. Tom cautiously walked up the stairs, picked up the envelope.

They stood for a moment, not saying anything, until Joseph blurted out, “You know what pisses me off, more than him dying? It’s like everybody’s back the way it was, just like it never happened. And we’re like. . .”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You know?”

“He was my friend, too. You’re not the only one that hurts.”

“I never saw you with him.”

“Well, neither did anybody else.”

Joseph blushed, trying to take it in. Anthony and Tom.
 
“No way.”

“Way.”

They both tried to laugh.

He wanted to say anything that would make Tom feel better. “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry for you.”

“He was always talking about you. He liked you so much.”

Joseph choked off a sob, reached out to hug Tom, but only touched his arm slightly, hesitant.

A car glinted down the street. He heard the garage door rumble itself open.

“Oh shit.” He grabbed Tom, pulled him down behind the porch. The two boys lay low. Joseph muttered, “You gotta go. You gotta go.”

“What, is that your–”

“Please. I’ll talk to you in school. I promise.” They heard his mother’s car pass the porch, disappear into the garage. If she had groceries, he had about twenty seconds to hightail it out of hearing range.

“Well, um, we can talk in school, okay?” Tom sort of begged.

“Sure.”

“Oh, here, here.” Tom pushed the manila envelope at Joey.

Like he needed pictures of himself, who he used to be. Joseph clutched it as he backed inside. “Thanks. See ya on Monday, okay?”

“Okay.” Tom walked down the stairs slowly, too slowly. Joseph half-waved before closing the door just as he heard the kitchen door. He flew up the stairs in four leaps, closed his bedroom door, opened the envelope, took a quick scan, breathed.

Him and Dink. Anthony, Hunter, Bennie. The whole happy fucked up family twisting around on the mat. The team picture. Everybody smiling, proud. Bip. Bip. Bip; the sound of his tears falling on photographs.

“Joey? Come and get groceries.”

Be a man now. Deal with this.

“Joey?”

“Be down in a second.” He wiped his face with the belly of his T-shirt, hid the pictures in the secret place with the magazines, trotted slowly down the stairs, pretending his heart wasn’t racing.

“Where were you?” His mother stood behind two brown bags.

“Sleeping.”

“You’re sleeping too much. Why don’t you go out, get some exercise?”

“Yeah.”

“Get the other bags.” His mother looked around herself for a moment. “Oh, and my purse.”

His socked feet left sweat prints on the garage floor. The trunk lay open, with two bags full of food; English muffins, Flavorpops, Cheese Doodles, Honeynut Cheerios.

He remembered the commercial where, in response to “What’s for breakfast?” a cowboy says. “Nut’n, honey!” The other cowboys draw their guns to the guy’s head.

Even cereal commercials told him to die.

He went to the front seat, figuring he’d strap his mother’s purse on his shoulder, like he used to do with his wrestling bag.

But first he looked inside.

Money, pictures of the family, credit cards, a Little Mermaid doll head, tissues, half a pack of Dentyne, two Tampax, a tiny phone book, a little bottle half-full of pills.

Go tonight, Joey. Anthony wants to wrestle.

He put the less-full bottle back in her purse, brought in groceries.