I haven’t spoken to him in nearly three years when he comes into the small café
where I work as a cook, across town from the university. Only this afternoon I’m
also waiting tables, covering for an absent server. I greet him to take his order.
He’s with a friend. They laugh and joke. I push at the bandanna that holds back
my hair and tug at my cut-off shorts, feeling sweaty and unattractive.
I tell him I thought he’d left town, graduated. He says he’s visiting before he leaves
for Paris.
Even though fall classes have started, the steamy southern Indiana air lulls me
into believing it is still summer, and I have all the time in the world. Three years
collapse into three days. We joke and laugh and say nothing about the years of
silence between us. I bring them German beer in brown bottles and bratwurst I
spear from a pot of boiling beer and wedge into steamed seeded buns. I am a
vegetarian, yet bratwurst envy seizes me as they take huge bites from their
sausages and guzzle beer from the chilled mugs I chiseled from the freezer.
The friend is watchful of me when I return with more beers, and again with the
check. It’s late afternoon, and few people are around except the café owner, who is
preparing to roast a whole pig on the patio, part of a special weekend event that
includes belly dancers and a band. I feel the friend’s eyes staring at me, at my Ball
U t-shirt that I first bought back in high school but still wear when I don’t really
care how I look. Those eyes are dark and wolf-like, and in hindsight, a little scary. I
look past his eyes at the pig on the spit, the owner cursing as he struggles to
mount it on the barbeque rack, readying it for the fire to come.
He asks me to go to a party tonight. I touch the loose tendrils of hair reaching out
from under my red bandanna. I feel the tug of my t-shirt across bare nipples
underneath, the rub of my cut-offs in the crease of my thighs. Those wolf eyes are
devouring me. I turn back to him, whose eyes are light and whose red lips remind
me of a beautiful girl’s.
Can you pick me up? I ask him. The wolf eyes look away, out of shyness, or envy,
or simply lured by some other sight, I can only guess. But after that they stop
watching me and turn to him alone.
*
The first time we made love, he picked me up and brought me to his apartment
on a side of town I’d not yet been to, too far from my dorm to easily walk. It
was a two-story place, with doors on the outside like a cheap motel. By the
calendar, it was still summer, but I shivered uncontrollably while sitting on his
sofa. I didn’t think of our meeting as a date, as in pizza and a movie, or a party
with friends. We were both new to town, and so still had time to kill. I think he
cooked dinner, but I don’t remember what we ate. I tucked my hands into my
armpits, and my stocking feet between the sofa cushions for warmth. We
smoked a joint, and I shivered even more.
“I’m freezing,” I said, in hopes of drawing him closer. But instead of covering
me with himself like a blanket, he touched me lightly, kissed me delicately,
feeling his way. I buried my hands in his hair, rubbed my feet against his.
Eventually he must have noticed my shaking because he took me by the hand
and to his bed, where a plush satin comforter folded me into its softness, and
finally, I could relax and feel my warmth return.
Later, he asked me gently if this was my first time. “No,” I replied, somewhat
defiantly. I did not want him to think I had been shivering out of fear. The
apartment was dark and cold, and I was sensitive to the lack of heat. I
wanted, needed more. But when it finally arrived, I was too exhausted and
stressed to feel much more than relief that my shivering was over.
*
The party, as it turns out, is him and his friend, and two six-packs of cheap beer.
They have both been getting high, but when they offer me a joint, I shake my
head. I will be the sober one on this wild ride. He steers his Pinto tight around fast
curves hugging the reservoir, serious as a race car driver yet laughing all the way. I
sit in back, minding the beer, gripping the top of the bucket seats for balance while
he and his wolf friend pass the joint back and forth. He starts to drive off a ledge
then stops at the very last minute, laughing, his friend laughing, me unable to
crack even a lame smile. If I bail out now, I’ll be stuck out in the woods, on a road
few drive, with no sense of direction and only Chinese velvet flip flops on my feet to
get me home.
He parks at the edge of another bank high over the water, and they are both
running down, flinging off shirts, pausing at the shore to push down jeans and
shorts, then diving headlong into moonlit water. At first, I am determined to wait
in the car, keep myself apart, but the heat, and the light, and the sound of the
water pull me down the rocks and onto the narrow beach, testing the temperature
of the reservoir with my bare toes.
I know they are watching even though I can’t see them. I can feel their eyes on
my skin, the color of the moon, and just as light. Between their laughter, I feel
them ripple through the dark water as I enter, slowly, carefully, deliberately. I am
apart and distant, yet intimate as moonlight.
next page
where I work as a cook, across town from the university. Only this afternoon I’m
also waiting tables, covering for an absent server. I greet him to take his order.
He’s with a friend. They laugh and joke. I push at the bandanna that holds back
my hair and tug at my cut-off shorts, feeling sweaty and unattractive.
I tell him I thought he’d left town, graduated. He says he’s visiting before he leaves
for Paris.
Even though fall classes have started, the steamy southern Indiana air lulls me
into believing it is still summer, and I have all the time in the world. Three years
collapse into three days. We joke and laugh and say nothing about the years of
silence between us. I bring them German beer in brown bottles and bratwurst I
spear from a pot of boiling beer and wedge into steamed seeded buns. I am a
vegetarian, yet bratwurst envy seizes me as they take huge bites from their
sausages and guzzle beer from the chilled mugs I chiseled from the freezer.
The friend is watchful of me when I return with more beers, and again with the
check. It’s late afternoon, and few people are around except the café owner, who is
preparing to roast a whole pig on the patio, part of a special weekend event that
includes belly dancers and a band. I feel the friend’s eyes staring at me, at my Ball
U t-shirt that I first bought back in high school but still wear when I don’t really
care how I look. Those eyes are dark and wolf-like, and in hindsight, a little scary. I
look past his eyes at the pig on the spit, the owner cursing as he struggles to
mount it on the barbeque rack, readying it for the fire to come.
He asks me to go to a party tonight. I touch the loose tendrils of hair reaching out
from under my red bandanna. I feel the tug of my t-shirt across bare nipples
underneath, the rub of my cut-offs in the crease of my thighs. Those wolf eyes are
devouring me. I turn back to him, whose eyes are light and whose red lips remind
me of a beautiful girl’s.
Can you pick me up? I ask him. The wolf eyes look away, out of shyness, or envy,
or simply lured by some other sight, I can only guess. But after that they stop
watching me and turn to him alone.
*
The first time we made love, he picked me up and brought me to his apartment
on a side of town I’d not yet been to, too far from my dorm to easily walk. It
was a two-story place, with doors on the outside like a cheap motel. By the
calendar, it was still summer, but I shivered uncontrollably while sitting on his
sofa. I didn’t think of our meeting as a date, as in pizza and a movie, or a party
with friends. We were both new to town, and so still had time to kill. I think he
cooked dinner, but I don’t remember what we ate. I tucked my hands into my
armpits, and my stocking feet between the sofa cushions for warmth. We
smoked a joint, and I shivered even more.
“I’m freezing,” I said, in hopes of drawing him closer. But instead of covering
me with himself like a blanket, he touched me lightly, kissed me delicately,
feeling his way. I buried my hands in his hair, rubbed my feet against his.
Eventually he must have noticed my shaking because he took me by the hand
and to his bed, where a plush satin comforter folded me into its softness, and
finally, I could relax and feel my warmth return.
Later, he asked me gently if this was my first time. “No,” I replied, somewhat
defiantly. I did not want him to think I had been shivering out of fear. The
apartment was dark and cold, and I was sensitive to the lack of heat. I
wanted, needed more. But when it finally arrived, I was too exhausted and
stressed to feel much more than relief that my shivering was over.
*
The party, as it turns out, is him and his friend, and two six-packs of cheap beer.
They have both been getting high, but when they offer me a joint, I shake my
head. I will be the sober one on this wild ride. He steers his Pinto tight around fast
curves hugging the reservoir, serious as a race car driver yet laughing all the way. I
sit in back, minding the beer, gripping the top of the bucket seats for balance while
he and his wolf friend pass the joint back and forth. He starts to drive off a ledge
then stops at the very last minute, laughing, his friend laughing, me unable to
crack even a lame smile. If I bail out now, I’ll be stuck out in the woods, on a road
few drive, with no sense of direction and only Chinese velvet flip flops on my feet to
get me home.
He parks at the edge of another bank high over the water, and they are both
running down, flinging off shirts, pausing at the shore to push down jeans and
shorts, then diving headlong into moonlit water. At first, I am determined to wait
in the car, keep myself apart, but the heat, and the light, and the sound of the
water pull me down the rocks and onto the narrow beach, testing the temperature
of the reservoir with my bare toes.
I know they are watching even though I can’t see them. I can feel their eyes on
my skin, the color of the moon, and just as light. Between their laughter, I feel
them ripple through the dark water as I enter, slowly, carefully, deliberately. I am
apart and distant, yet intimate as moonlight.
next page
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
winter 2008 literary non-fiction
out of the blue by mary ann cain
page two
winter 2008 literary non-fiction
out of the blue by mary ann cain
page two