Robin and Ruby (8 page)

Remembering this, his heart races. His throat goes dry. The idea of Jackson’s birthday looming tomorrow dredges up pain from deep inside, not the pain of grief or loss but the pain of blame, of responsibility. He was there when it happened, the accident that started everything. They were fighting on the playground slide, Robin and Ruby and Larry and Jackson, a confusing scuffle that ended with Jackson tumbling to the pavement and landing on his head.

He says, “It’s like I was some other person.” George reaches over and ruffles the back of Robin’s hair, rubs his neck, grips the tendons.

Robin breathes into the force, banishing the image of Jackson’s fall, as he always eventually does. “I’m sorry you had to see that. With Peter.”

George allows himself a smile. “I’m glad I did.”

Robin sees admiration on George’s face, and there’s more to it than just George’s loathing of Peter. It’s like yesterday at the restaurant, George smiling while Robin opened that wine bottle on the floor. It’s a little bit dangerous, being appreciated for being wild, for the ways you break the rules. With a start, Robin realizes how far they’ve come from their early days of talking current events in study hall and riding the subway to Grandma Lincoln’s. Nor is George’s reaction here some methodical, unemotional response, like after Robin first came out to him. He’s changed; they’ve changed each other. Peter is back there somewhere, turning into the past, and George is right here at his side, as he’s been all along.

Robin realizes he needs to say something more. “Hey, I’m sorry for before, when you came back from your date? You were feeling bad, and I tried to make a joke. And then I tricked you into bringing me to that club.”

George nods, and Robin can see him taking this in. Then he seems to get an idea, and a faint smile appears at the corners of his mouth. “How about this: I take
you
for a ride, without telling you where we’re going.”

Robin laughs. “Should I be worried?”

“Just a little,” George says, and now he really seems amused. He says, “It’ll be a good distraction. For both of us.”

George drives them to the Schuylkill River, to an unlit stretch of city park wedged between the riverbank and a row of gloomy warehouses. Tonight, the full moon, so bright it looks blue, casts a glow on the water that shatters the liquid surface into a black-and-white checkerboard. On the far shore, tiny pairs of headlights whoosh along an elevated section of the Schuylkill Expressway.

They walk toward the river down a slope covered in trampled grass, but Robin stops before they get too far. “Where are we?”

“Well,” George says. “Have you ever heard of Judy Garland Park?”

Robin laughs nervously. “Judy Garland wouldn’t last a minute here.”

“Yeah, but you know the expression,
a friend of Dorothy
?”

Now Robin gets it, and as his eyes adjust he can see that, yes, there are men standing at intervals along the riverside fence going north toward the Walnut Street overpass, and figures moving around the perimeter, toward some railroad tracks that snake from one of the warehouses into a dark thicket of trees. A freight train sits like a monster waiting in the dark, silently watching them.

He’s been to the cruising grounds in Central Park, a series of overgrown trails called the Ramble. Once he even backed himself up against a tree trunk while an older guy, who looked like a father of three from Spanish Harlem, with flecks of gray in his mustache, sucked his dick; but Robin got nervous quickly and zipped up before it went very far. But that was in the daylight.

“Come on,” George says, and leads him down to the fence. Robin wonders how he should stand: facing the river with his back toward the park? That feels sort of vulnerable, like someone could sneak up on them from behind. But looking outward puts them on display, inviting action. Is that what George wants? Is he hoping to hook up tonight? Robin faces sideways, leaning on his hip.

“So you come here for sex?” Robin asks him.

George clears his throat. “Mostly, I watch.”

“I didn’t know you were a Peeping Tom.”

“I’m not creepy about it. I just like to be
around
it. I guess you could classify me as a bit of a voyeur. Everyone’s either a voyeur or an exhibitionist.” He adds, “
You
are an exhibitionist.”

“I’m a
thespian
,” Robin says, deliberately using a word he finds ridiculous. “It goes with the territory.”

George pulls his wallet from his pocket. From the billfold he fishes out a flattened joint. “Gimme your lighter.”

Robin’s never seen George with pot before. “You’re full of surprises tonight.”

“Blame it on the full moon.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the moon can influence our circulation, like it does with tides. Our bodies are mostly water.”

“I’m glad there’s a scientific explanation.”

“There almost always is.”

George leans forward, matching paper tip to flame; a moment later, he erupts into coughing, smoke swirling furiously around him. “I’m still new at this,” he says.

Robin takes one deep hit, and right away feels himself melting. He leans back into the fence for support, as a wave takes hold like a warm embrace. It’s so seductive:
Hey there, remember me? Remember this feeling?
Yeah, I remember, Robin thinks. He smoked so much of this stuff in high school, in New Jersey, when all you had to do was walk into the courtyard between classes and someone would get you high. George never did; he wasn’t part of that scene. Robin never buys it anymore; he doesn’t
hold,
as they used to say. He can’t get anything done when he’s stoned, though he can get into plenty of trouble.

“Since when do you buy pot?”

“Cesar
gave
it to me. He told me to share it with you.” A faint smile curls George’s lips; behind his glasses, his eyes are already glazed and goofy. He makes a stab at Cesar’s accent.
“Tell Blanco, he smoke a little of this, he be less uptight.”

“Uptight! Is that what they say about me?” Robin thinks of himself as friendly and talkative with the customers, eager to hang out at the bar with the waitstaff after closing, cool with being singled out as “Blanco.” But then of course he gets frazzled a lot, and walks on eggshells when Rosellen is near, and when he’s in the weeds he knows he can get bitchy with the busboys and dishwashers. He says, “I am not long for that job.”

George says, “He keeps talking about my ass.”

“He does that with me, too!”

“Me and you and Blanco, we should all party together.”

“Do you think,” Robin asks, “that he’s totally trying to engineer a three-way?”

He can’t quite make out George’s reaction, but Robin feels himself thrust into a pornographic dream: the two of them, himself and George, bent over, Cesar naked and erect behind them, taking turns and barking out dirty names in
Español
.

That’s the other thing he remembers about smoking pot. It’s the on switch to horniness.

“OK, George, admit it. You don’t come here just to watch.”

“Well, think of it like this. You go to a museum to look at paintings. You just want to be around the art. It doesn’t mean you wish you were a painter.”

Robin considers this. “The first time Dorothy took me to MoMA, and I saw
Starry Night
, I wanted to go home and throw paint all over a canvas.”

“Maybe I’m just waiting for the right inspiration. One time, this guy talked to me for a while. He was kind of a clone, a big Italian guy with moustache. He wanted me to follow him that way.” He points toward the railroad tracks. “Didn’t seem wise.”

Robin peers into the darkness. “I’ll say.”

“I walked with him to his pickup truck, but at the last minute I changed my mind. I’ve realized that I’m just not into doing it with strangers.” George takes another puff, smaller this time. He stares with almost comic intensity into Robin’s eyes and announces, “I better stop or I’m going to be too high to care.”

Robin doesn’t ask,
Care about what?
because the silence that follows is full of suggestion, and even with the moonlight on George’s glasses, Robin can see into his eyes, can see what might happen next, if they’ll let it.

From out of nowhere, there’s a swirl of red and blue light and the shrill of a siren. Back at the curb where they just parked, a car is slowing down. A police car. It comes to a full stop. The doors open. “Fuck,” Robin says, the warmth of the high shifting instantly to panic. He grabs George by the arm and says, “We’re outta here.” But the way out is where the cops are. He looks upriver, toward the overpass, where men are scattering like birds.

George says, “Come on,” and pulls him toward the train tracks.

Together they move into the shadows, stumbling alongside the freight cars. The ground is difficult to walk on; there’s garbage everywhere, and loose, sharp stones between the ties. He slips on a beer bottle and tumbles into George, who pulls him by the arm through some bushes into a tiny overgrown clearing at the river’s edge, a leafy, protected area you might call a “fort” if you were a kid playing in the woods.

George whispers, “I’ve never seen pigs here before. The guy with the truck, he told me they don’t bother with this place.”

“Maybe they want their dicks sucked.”

“You’ve got a dirty mind, Robin.”

“You’re the one who hangs out here.”

Through the bushes, beams of light flicker in the dark. He hears rustling; footsteps moving closer. Cops on foot, wielding flashlights, which means nightsticks and guns, too. Robin’s blood pounds in his ears, and he shivers from the damp river air, from the effect of the high, from nerves. Their pot smoke is probably still lingering in the air, back by the fence. He starts preparing a story:
Officer, we were going for a midnight stroll and got lost. We’re tourists trying to find our way back to our hotel. We were looking for a little lost dog, a hound dog that follows its nose everywhere.
His mind leaps to police dogs, big growling canines trained to sniff out dope smokers and cocksuckers. Is this really happening? Hiding from the cops in the bushes in the middle of the night, stoned? George is supposed to be the sensible half of their friendship, the responsible one. What was he thinking?

One of the flashlight beams swings in their direction, and Robin shrinks deeper into the darkness.

Then a burst of static slices the air. He gasps, then covers his mouth. Another loud burst. It’s a walkie-talkie. There’s a muffled communication, voices trading information, hard to make sense of. Robin picks up the word “suspects.”
Suspects?
Are they suspects? Did that little bitch Douglas actually call the cops on them? What if they have George’s license plate number? If the two of them are arrested, who will they call? Rosellen? His mother?

“Should we surrender?” Robin whispers.

George shushes him, softly but insistently. Then he takes Robin’s hand and squeezes and doesn’t let go. Robin suddenly realizes how much scarier this must be for George. Philly cops are not going to look kindly at a black kid, growing dreads, with the stink of pot on his clothes.

Out on the tracks there’s more static, more talk of suspects, and then a sudden rush of footsteps and crunching gravel. Miraculously, the sounds are traveling away. The flashlight beams disappear. Hand in hand, they continue to wait this out. A silent minute passes, maybe two, maybe five, who knows how long, but at last they hear a siren and a screech of tires. Robin breathes deep, in and out. George stays, “Stay here,” then lets go of his hand, steps out of the brush, and takes a look. The air seems to get colder when George’s body pulls away. It’s a moment of pure loneliness.

At last George returns and says, “All clear.”

After all the activity, the park is deadly quiet. They pass only two men, white guys wearing worn, tight jeans and black leather jackets. The men slow down to stare at them, and one of them lifts his chin and nods suggestively. Robin looks away, unsettled by how gaunt this guy seems. He used to fantasize about older men, who were experienced, who were strong, whose bodies had hair and muscle tone, so different than the pale awkward boys in high school. But older men now seem entirely dangerous. Not dangerous like cops. Dangerous like death. George picks up the pace, and Robin follows.

In the car, they rub their arms to warm up. In astonished, relieved voices they go back over everything that just happened; already, with their fear behind them, it has become a thrilling misadventure.

“Another night in the City of Brotherly Love,” George says.

“Never a dull moment.”

“So, Robin—”

“What?”

“Do you regret that you moved here?”

“No,” Robin says quickly, too quickly, really, because it masks the truth: he doesn’t yet know.

“Seems like you’re not that into it.”

“I’m getting used to it.”

“Philly can be pretty rough.”

Robin nods. Carefully, he adds, “Seems like it’s changed you.”

“To what?”

“I’m not really sure. One minute you’re George Africa. Then you’re George the Voyeur.”

“I’m just me. You gotta stop thinking of me as Little Georgie. I haven’t been that guy for years.”

“I know that.” And then it occurs to him that he has a similar question for George. “Do you regret inviting me to live with you?”

“It had to be done.”

“What does that mean?”

George does something surprising then: he sheds his glasses, folds them, tucks them on the dashboard. He shifts in his seat, drawing closer to Robin.

Blame it on the pot, on the full moon, on the adrenaline rush of their escape from the cops. It’s in the air. You might be misreading this, Robin tells himself. But there’s only one way to find out. He slides closer, too.

George’s mouth is floating toward his. The remaining gap between them closes. There’s a pinprick of static electricity when their lips make contact.

George’s mouth is warm and wet, his lips a little rough. He keeps his eyes closed. Robin’s eyes stay open, he wants to see this, it’s so new and unexpected, unexpected even though he was ready for it. They kiss shyly, a string of individual kisses. Maybe if he doesn’t think about the fact that this is
George,
his best friend, practically his brother, George whom he’s never kissed before, if he lets this be about the kiss and not the kissee, there will be nothing to worry about. His dick is pinched inside his briefs. He tugs at the fabric to free things up. His other hand is braced against the dashboard, as if to keep him from lifting off like a traveler in a hot-air balloon.