In the Middle of Somewhere (31 page)

“Would everyone stop it with the damn
Karate Kid
references!” I say. Rex and Will exchange a look.

“So,
who
is Leo?” Rex asks again.

I tell them about coming across Leo in the park and about the kids who were picking on him.

“But he’s a kid,” Rex says. “Like, a child?”

“He’s eighteen, I think,” I say.

“Oh my god,” Will laughs, looking at Rex. Will points a finger at him. “You’re jealous! Rexroth Vale, you are totally jealous of a teenager.” Then he stops laughing and pouts. “Hey! You were never jealous over me.”

Rex rolls his eyes and turns to me.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I never get any trick-or-treaters out that far anyway.”

“Trick-or… oh, that’s what Leo was talking about. Are you sure it’s okay? If you have plans or—”

“No, no. It’s fine. I don’t.”

“Thanks,” I say, and rest my shoulder against Rex’s. “So, do people go all out for Halloween here?”

“Not really,” Will says. “Well, maybe some of your students will; I don’t know. They do an early trick-or-treat thing for the kids so everyone’s home before dark. No fun if you ask me. But, then, I prefer tricks to treats anyway.” He winks at me.

“Did you go trick-or-treating as a kid?” I ask Rex.

“Naw, too shy,” he says. “My mom would usually bring home one of those plastic pumpkins from whatever bar or diner she was working in, and some candy. You?” he asks me.

“Oh hell no. Ring a stranger’s doorbell in my neighborhood and you would’ve gotten shot.” I wait for Will to chime in about whether or not he went trick-or-treating as a kid, but he doesn’t say anything. He gets up and gets another round, Rex waving no to a third beer.

“There are these ghost tours in Philly,” I tell Rex. “You know, like haunted history stuff. And one year, Ginger and I followed the tour to see the route, then on Halloween, we dressed in all white and Ginger did this makeup so we looked dead—she’s really good at makeup—and we hid in this one old graveyard in Old City that the tour went past. And when the tour guide started talking about the ghost of some elder statesman who supposedly haunted the graveyard, we jumped up and ran at the tour group. They all screamed and everything. It was perfect. But then, this old guy came running after us dressed in, like, a rotted potato sack with this long, bloody hair, and
we
screamed and ran. I guess he was
supposed
to be there to scare the tour group and we totally fucked it up.”

Will has slid another drink into my hand while I’m talking and I sip it absently. I scoot a little closer to Rex, staring at Will. He’s not so intimidating.

“Daniel,” Rex is saying. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“Um, at your house?”

He shakes his head. “That was a piece of toast. I think you need to eat something. Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” I say, as my stomach gives a loud growl. “Do you guys want?”

“Fries,” Will says. Rex shakes his head. I order at the bar and stop at the bathroom. When I get back it’s clear they’ve been talking about me—or, Will has been—because he stops midsentence.

I slide back into the booth and lean my head against Rex’s shoulder just a little bit because I’m so tired all of a sudden. He puts his arm around me.

“So all it takes are a few shots of whiskey to turn the porcupine into a kitten, huh?” Will says. Is he talking to me? Rex’s arm tightens around my shoulder.

“I don’t like you at all,” I say to Will, who grins at me. It seems to break the ice, though, because by the time the food comes we’re all chatting about different places we’ve lived and Will asks me about teaching.

It’s funny: Will is kind of a messy eater. He crams fries in his mouth like the kids I used to hang out with in diners, and it looks odd with his refined face and expensive clothes. I only notice it because I used to eat that way too. I grew up guarding my plate against my brothers and eating as fast as I could. It’s one of the things I worked hard to fix when I noticed the other grad students at Penn didn’t eat like me.

I eat about half my BLT and fries and push the plate over to Rex, who started eyeing it as soon as the smell of bacon hit his nose. He squeezes my thigh.

“You don’t want any more?” he asks, like he always does, and I say “I’m done,” just like I always do, and I have this weird picture in my head of that exchange happening a thousand more times. I shake my head, which is all fuzzy, though I feel better now that I’ve eaten.

Will is watching us, his greasy fingers leaving prints on his martini glass.

“You want to get out of here?” Rex asks me when he finishes the food. His eyes are warm and his stubble is a little longer than usual because he worked from home today. It looks soft, and in the light of the pub, I can see the red in it and a few strands of silver at his temples. I nod.

Outside, it smells bright and cold and Rex puts his arm around me again.

“I’ll walk you home,” Rex says, though you can almost see my apartment from here.

“Go to bed, old men,” Will calls, waving behind him as he walks in the other direction without looking back.

Rex and I amble toward my house.

“Wait, how old is Will?” I ask, registering the old man comment.

“Twenty-six.”

“Wow, so you dated when he was only, what, twenty-two?”

“Yeah, he’d just finished college.”

I unlock the door and for once my apartment doesn’t feel too oppressive. I left the window open a crack, so the ramen smell has dissipated, anyway. Kicking my shoes off and dropping my bag on the quasi-fixed kitchen table, I walk into the bathroom and brush my teeth twice. Nothing makes the day feel distant like the taste of toothpaste. I wander back outside and Rex has locked the front door.

“Do you want to stay?” I ask him. “I don’t know if you can leave Marilyn alone, but….” I stand near the bed and pull my shirt off. I’m definitely a bit tipsy because all I can concentrate on are the lines of Rex’s body and the way he’s looking at me—like I’m some kind of treat he lets himself have sometimes. He walks closer and I can smell the spicy pine scent from his woodshop. He runs his hands down my arms and pulls me into a hug.

“Thank you for coming tonight,” he says. “I know you weren’t crazy about the idea. And I know Will acts like a child sometimes. But he’s just defensive with new people, you know? Never wants to show his hand first.”

I like how Rex explains things, like he sees the truth in why people do things. Even shitty things. He rubs my back softly.

“You’re welcome.”

“I can stay,” he says, “if you want.” I nod against his shoulder and pull his shirt off, breathing in the smell of his skin.

“You’re so tired, baby,” he says. “And maybe a little tipsy?”

“Maybe a little,” I allow. “Sorry it’s so cold.”

“Isn’t the heat on yet?”

“Um. No.”

“Did you call Carl?”

I groan. I can’t believe I gave him that opening.

“Daniel!” he says. “It’s going to be really cold soon. You need to—”

I put my hand over his mouth.

“Do you need anything?” I ask, removing my hand.

“Can I use your toothpaste?”

I kiss him on the mouth.

“Mmm,” he says. “Can I use it from the tube?”

I nod, and pull my pants and socks off before getting into bed. This bed is shitty; I feel a little bad making Rex sleep on it, though I’ve definitely slept on worse. His bed is so comfortable. My mind is drifting, picturing us on a bed the size of a room, when Rex slides in beside me, and pulls me to him, nestling my head in his neck.

“Sorry my bed’s so uncomfortable,” I murmur.

“It’s worth it,” he says.

I swallow a lump in my throat and turn my face farther into him.

“I just like you so much,” I say. “How do you do that?”

And I think he answers, but I’m already sliding toward sleep.

October

W
HEN
I
get to Rex’s, he’s in his workshop, using a belt-sander on the surface of a tabletop, sawdust all over his chest and stomach and sticking to his sweaty arms.

“Damn,” I mutter, and he looks up, lifting the sander from the wood and pushing up his safety goggles.

“Hi,” he says, reaching for me, but pulling back when he realizes he’s all sweaty. I pull him down for a kiss and brush the sawdust off my chest. He looks fucking sexy.

In some ways, he’s the type of guy I’ve always been secretly attracted to: guys who could crush me as easily as the beer cans they swig from, wiping their hard mouths with the backs of dirty hands. But Rex is inclined less toward crushing and more toward putting back together. If only he could tinker me into shape as easily as one of his busted clocks.

“So, Leo should be here in a few minutes. We’ll just hang out in the yard, okay? Just ignore us and keep doing what you’re doing. It looks nice,” I add, looking down at the satiny wood of the tabletop.

“Thanks,” Rex says, running his hand over the grain. “Needs another pass.”

“Do you like Halloween?” I ask.

Rex cocks his head and shrugs.

“I really like old monster movies.” Of course he does. “Hey, I invited Will over for a beer while you guys are… training, okay?”

I nod. Will’s irritating, with his power plays and innuendos, but he’s not as bad as I thought. And he’s Rex’s friend. The only friend Rex seems to have. Of course, I didn’t know about him until recently, so who knows who else could come out of the woodwork.

“Hello?” Leo calls from outside. “Oh, hey,” he says. “Thought maybe I had the wrong house.” He’s wearing a battered army jacket and standing in the driveway with his skateboard propped on his foot.

“You can’t skateboard on these roads,” I say, confused. Leo blushes.

“Yeah, well, when you gave me the address I didn’t realize it was in the middle of the woods. It’s cool.”

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “Should we get started?”

Leo’s face goes slack as he looks over my shoulder. Rex has come out of his workshop looking like exactly the kind of hot carpenter fantasy that Leo was spinning the other day. His muscles are bulging under the worn T-shirt and jeans, his hair is messy, and he’s sweaty and covered in sawdust and curls of wood. Leo’s mouth falls open.

“Hi, Leo, I’m Rex.” He puts out his hand and it swallows Leo’s up. “Can I get you something?” he offers, gesturing toward the house, and I feel like a bad host.

“No thanks,” Leo says, having apparently managed to pick his jaw up off the floor. He’s smiling and his big brown eyes shine as he looks at Rex with naked admiration. “I wish
you
would teach me a thing or two,” he adds flirtatiously, sidling closer to Rex. Then he sneezes at the sawdust smell and I snort. Rex doesn’t even seem to notice.

“I don’t like fighting,” is all he says. He squeezes the back of my neck, then goes inside.

I try to get a baseline on where Leo’s at. He can’t throw a punch, can’t block without losing his balance, and can barely seem to distinguish left from right.

“It’s hopeless,” Leo moans after about half an hour, his face red with embarrassment and exertion.

I eye his skateboard.

“Can you actually skateboard?” I ask, realizing I’ve never seen Leo on it, only holding it.

“Yes!” he fires back.

I put the skateboard on the grass in front of me.

“Stand on it like you usually would.”

He hops onto the skateboard and bends his knees a little to get his balance. I swing at him and he throws his hand up to block, but this time he stays upright. I do it a few more times and Leo stays balanced. He grins at me.

“Better,” I say.

“Yeah, now all he has to do is ask the person who’s about to punch him if it’s okay if he sets his skateboard down and stands on it first,” says Will through his car window as he parks. Leo’s face burns and his smile is gone.

“Fuck off, Will,” I say. “We’re just building his basic skills first.”

“Ooh, skill-building. Guess you really are a teacher, huh.”

Leo is looking at the ground, his eyes darting up every few seconds to look at Will.

“Leo, this total asshole is Will; Will, Leo,” I say.

Will walks up to Leo and looks him over. Leo falls off his skateboard. Jesus Christ.

“Hit me,” Will says to Leo once he’s picked himself up.

“Um,” Leo says unsurely, looking to me.

“If you’d spent any more time around him you’d already have taken him up on that offer,” I tell Leo.

“Are you su—?”

“Hit me!”

Leo arranges his hand into a fist the way I taught him and throws a weak punch from the shoulder, which would have landed somewhere around Will’s nipple if it had connected. Will brushes him aside.

“No, no, no,” Will says, “pick your heel up. No, your other heel. Bend your knees. Lean back. No.”

“Will, we hadn’t gotten there yet.” I shoulder Will aside and stand next to Leo.

“Okay,” I say. “You have to get the weight of your body behind the punch because you’re skinny, okay? So, widen your stance a little and, yeah, get your back heel up. Now you can lean backward to get some momentum, right?” Leo does it and nods. “Good. Bend your knees like you do when you skateboard. Duck your chin a little. Not so much that you can’t see. There you go. Okay, now lean back. This is like in baseball, how you start with the bat back to get more power, right? Good. Now relax your arm a little. Now try.”

Leo throws the punch and almost falls forward.

“Better,” I say.

“You’ve got to let him see how it feels to connect with something, Daniel,” Will says. “Fucking hurts. Here, Leo, hit me.”

“Yeah, end his modeling career, Leo,” I say. “Please.”

“You’re a model?” Leo asks, his head jerking up. Will rolls his eyes and flips me off.

“No, I am not a model. Now fucking hit me.”

Leo tries to replicate the stance, but somehow gets his feet all tangled up when he punches.

“Do it again,” Will says.

Leo repeats the maneuver a few times, finally landing a punch near Will’s chin. At the last moment, Will puts his fist up, so Leo hits that instead, and Leo drops to the ground holding his hand. Will shakes his hand out, not even flinching.