This One Time With Julia (12 page)

“You were our leader and passer.”

“That’s right.”

“The short kid was also our scapegoat.”

“Correct.”

“And the redhead was also our soul.”

“No, you were our soul.”

“But I was the scorer.”

“You were our scorer, and you were our soul. Whatever team you play on, you’re going to be the soul.”

It was pretty normal for Houston to tell me things about myself that I couldn’t understand. I liked them because they sounded like compliments, even if I was never sure exactly what they meant.

“Do you really think I have a chance with her?” I asked.

“I know you do.”

That was the first day I could really imagine a whole future for myself in that hotel. Once Houston taught me everything I needed to learn, he and I would drive around together and solve important problems. Someday we’d even have an office together. A few times a week we’d both report to Mr. Manning, and he would congratulate me, and everyone would see they’d underestimated me, and every night I’d read in bed aloud to Julia as she curled against my chest. I remember all this very well. Sometimes the easiest things to remember are the things you hoped would happen, even if they never did.

“That was a hell of a game today,” said Houston, when we pulled up to the hotel.

“I loved it.” I opened the door. “Goodnight.”

“We’ll play again soon.”

“Houston?”

“Yes?”

“Would you teach me how to read?”

“Really?” He wanted to laugh for a couple of seconds, but then he saw that I was serious, and became very interested and serious. “That’s fascinating,” he said. “Never had an employee who couldn’t read.”

“Do you think it’s too late?”

“You really are amazing, Joe. You really are.”

“Is it?”

“Too late? Absolutely not. It won’t be easy, though.”

“I don’t care. I’d study all the time. Would you really teach me?”

“I really would,” said Houston. “In fact, it would be my pleasure. Nothing’s more enjoyable than teaching a student who wants to learn.”

“I’m going to be good,” I promised. “One of the best.”

“Then we can start tomorrow after swimming practice. Good-bye, Joe.”

Sometimes when I look back at everything I did while I was in Tennessee, it almost feels like someone else was doing it. I spent all day in a beautiful suit I never would have worn before, with probably the shortest hair I’d had since I was born, and I spent all my free time practicing new skills. Eating turned out to be a lot harder than swimming, and it took me more than a week to move past McDonald’s chicken sandwiches, but I felt like I made progress every day. Reading was a thousand times harder than eating; but I still must have picked up something in school—no matter how much Alvin tried to make sure that I didn’t—because I always got this really familiar feeling when I tried to do it. It’s not like I could read the newspaper or anything, but after a few weeks I had the basic letters down, and the first word I honestly read was the beautiful signature I’d been practicing so long.

Over those two months I got to know Houston pretty well. I kept looking everywhere for signs that he was Cherokee. I thought he might have a special way of eating, or a very peaceful stare, but I never saw anything like that. This one time we were all having lunch on the patio, when Julia dropped her fork, and Houston caught it before it hit the ground. I have no idea if a Cherokee would even do that, but it’s the only thing I ever noticed in all the time I lived there.

He gave me lessons every time he came to visit our hotel, and we also played basketball as much as we could. To cool down we sometimes jogged a couple of times around the park. I’ve never gone jogging before, but with Houston it seemed like a normal thing to do. I could feel that slowly I was turning into somebody else, and Julia obviously noticed it too. She brought it up one night while we were lying on her bed playing poker, using lima beans for chips.

“There’s something different about you, Joe, but I can’t tell what it is. Did you lose weight or something?”

“Maybe. We’ve been playing almost every day, and sometimes jogging too.”

“Since when do you go jogging?”

“Houston says it helps to clear the mind.”

“Seems like you guys have really hit it off.”

“We’re getting to be friends.”

“He’s taken quite a shine to you,” she said.

“I hope so.”

“Why do you think that is?”

I tried to think it over. Questions like this didn’t make me as nervous as they used to.

“He says he feels like he can trust me.”

“That’s a nice thing to say. Are you going to deal?”

After the poker game we turned on the TV and started watching this movie about some ex-cops hunting for gold in the jungle. About halfway through I put my hand on Julia’s waist, and a little while after that we started kissing. We kissed through the whole movie before she made us stop. This was a lot longer than usual, but finally she turned away and punched the bed a couple of times.

“I can’t take this anymore,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m really frustrated. I know we can’t keep going. But I also don’t want to stop. I’m so tired of it.”

“But we’re not doing anything wrong,” I said. “Alvin doesn’t care.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m his brother. I just know.”

“Why do you suddenly have all this confidence?”

“You don’t like it?”

“That’s not what I said. I’m just not used to it.”

“I think it’s really good for me to have a job.”

“Close your eyes for a second.”

I closed my eyes and lay still on the bed while she started touching my forehead, my cheekbones, my lips, all the most important parts of my face, like she wanted to make sure they were real. When I opened my eyes I found her staring at me very carefully and almost smiling—but not quite. But the minute she realized that I could see her, she giggled and buried her face in my chest.

“Why can’t you ever look at me?” I asked.

“I just was.”

“But not when my eyes are open. You always have to look away. You’re doing it right now.”

“I am not. Watch.”

She looked me straight in the eyes for about ten seconds, which was by far the longest that she’d ever done it. I can remember that she held her breath for almost all of it. Then she hugged me again.

“Are you going to stay over?”

“If you want me to.”

“But I want to take a shower. You can get under the covers if you want.”

Julia jumped off the bed and ran into the bathroom, and soon I heard the shower running. She was probably in there for about twenty minutes. I got under the covers while I waited. I had never slept in her room before when the hotel wasn’t full. I already had a feeling about what was about to happen. I guess I had tried to imagine this moment before, based on movies I’d seen or stories I’d heard; but the people that I pictured were always a little different, not exactly me, and not exactly Julia. They looked like us, and acted like us in some ways, but somehow they had more experience, and knew exactly what to do.

When she came out her hair was all wet, and she had changed into this yellow nightgown that hung down over her knees. This is usually how I picture Julia when I think about her, coming out in that nightgown, with the bathroom still all full of steam behind her. I’d seen this look on her face before, when she tiptoed down the stairs into a cold swimming pool. She smelled the same, but stronger, as she got under the covers and put her arms around me.

“I’m cold,” she said. “Warm me up.”

I rubbed her back and warmed her up as well as I could. “Is that better?”

“Better. Now just hug me as tight as you can.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m stronger than I look. Hug me tighter.”

“I am.”

“Just a little tighter. One more second.”

I hugged her as tight as I could, and when I finally let her go, she was still sort of clinging to me.

“Are you going to take off my nightgown?”

“Okay.”

“You don’t make a lot of moves, do you, Joe?”

“Nobody ever showed me how.”

“You know there are a million reasons why we shouldn’t do this.”

“I know,” I said. “But I can’t think of anything at all.”

“Should we turn off the lights?”

I got up and flipped off the switch by the door, and the lamp by the bed, and the bathroom lights too. Coming back to the bed, I looked out the window and saw the swimming pool out there, all lit up from below. The deck chairs looked so clean, and they were in a perfect square around the beautiful bright rippling pool, and I knew that there were fifteen lights under the pool because I swam down there and cleaned them every week. I was in charge of the whole thing. And I remember noticing how strange it was to be thinking about those fifteen lights even as I was climbing into bed, and slowly taking off Julia’s nightgown, while she started to take off my clothes, too.

Everything from then on happened to me for the very first time. I can remember all her skin, how soft and smooth and delicate it was, but my strongest memory of that first time with Julia is actually the feeling I had afterward, when we were lying on the bed together, staring up at these yellow glowing stars she had stuck to the ceiling. She was lying draped over my chest, and I felt so tired and relaxed and safe. There was nowhere else I wanted to be.

“I love you,” I said.

Julia didn’t answer, and I noticed she was shaking a little bit.

“Are you crying?”

“I knew I might cry,” she said between these soft little sobs. “It’s just too much.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, I just cry a little bit sometimes. Do you think that’s strange?”

“This is my first time.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It is.”

“I sort of wish you’d told me that before.”

Julia got up wiping her eyes and went off into the bathroom. I rolled over onto my stomach and lay there with my arm on my forehead, trying to calm down.
I love you.
It had felt so exciting to say it, and I tried it out again, just mouthing the words in the dark.
I love you.
She came back with a big glass of water and tilted it into my mouth until I wasn’t thirsty anymore, and then she climbed back into bed.

“Why did you leave?” I asked.

“Can we build a blanket fort?”

“Why?”

“Please? I’ll help you.”

I didn’t feel like it, but we got together all the pillows and blankets in the room, and built a pretty good fort. Then we crawled inside and cuddled for a while in the dark.

“You already know the answer,” she said finally.

“How could I possibly know?”

“You know I couldn’t let you love me if I didn’t love you too.”

“I can’t understand that.”

“When I’m with you I don’t think about yesterday and I don’t think about tomorrow.” She gave me a little kiss on the side of the mouth. “I love you too, Joe.”

“You do?” Hearing it felt even better than saying it. “I love you,” I told her again.

She laughed. “I love you too, Joe.”

“I love you. I love you. I love you!”

That was the best night I’d had so far. We cuddled and kissed and said “I love you” to each other all night long, and when I finally fell asleep I dreamed about kissing her also. It was pretty incredible to dream about the same thing I’d been actually doing, and in the morning we were still in love, and Julia could look at me straight in the face all of Wednesday, and we were in love on Thursday, and on Friday. And on Saturday we took a trip downtown to see a movie about a bunch of rock stars trying to go to high school, and we were in love all Sunday by the pool and that whole night watching basketball and tennis. Monday I can’t even remember what we did. I could spend all day in Julia’s bed and never want to leave. Her blankets and quilts were always so soft and smelled so good, because she dried them outside in the sun. Sometimes I’d hold them up to my face and breathe through them like an oxygen mask.

Cecily knew right away that something was going on. She didn’t mention anything, but she definitely started acting differently. She wasn’t quite as violent with me, and whenever Julia walked by the pool, all Cecily’s friends would start giggling like crazy.

With Houston there wasn’t too much to say because we had basically already talked about it. I already knew he was rooting for me. He did congratulate me at our reading lesson later that week. And our practice text that day turned out to be a gift certificate for Julia and me: dinner for two at a restaurant in the city. Houston said it was a great place for a date. And he said we should all go out sometime together, when his girlfriend came to visit from Chicago.

Julia’s mother started acting differently towards me. Cecily told her or she figured it out on her own, because she came right up to me one day at the pool, wearing this tiny bright red leather coat. “So tell me, Joe,” she said. “What are your intentions with my daughter?”