The Shape of the Earth, page 7
* * *
I’m nodding off for an afternoon nap on the couch, the Sunday paper open on my phone lying on my sweater-clad chest. A hardback mystery nests facedown on the floor in a spine-breaking position. The book was a months-late birthday present from Sandy. Dave and I had dinner with her last night.
I’m startled awake by Dave carrying his briefcase from his den. “I’ll be back in plenty of time for supper.”
I blink up at him. He couldn’t look more guilty if he were on his way to fuck all the boys in the freshmen class. I wonder if he’ll have the balls to leave the house.
He walks into the kitchen, and I hear the back door open and close.
“You motherfucker,” I mutter.
Sitting up on the couch, I fling my book against the wall with all my might. It thuds and bounces to the floor. I stare at a bent corner of the cover and think of Sandy hugging me good night and whispering, “Hang in there, babe.”
I close the living room drapes, strip off my clothes, and fondle myself as I walk into the bedroom. Sifting through a junk drawer in our nightstand, I find an ancient little brown bottle of amyl nitrate. In Dave’s den, sitting at his desk as I sniff from the bottle, I picture his big naked body on top of Ian. I see Ian stroke his own cock while Dave’s slides in and out of Ian’s ass. The amyl nitrate makes me so hard, I feel like I’m nothing but one giant dick. Dave and Ian kiss as they’re about to come in my fantasy. I inhale more from the small bottle and gush all the way up to my chin, a real geyser.
Falling back in Dave’s chair, I shut my eyes and take deep breaths to slow my racing heart. I should have thrown out the amyl nitrate when Dave and I agreed we wouldn’t use it anymore. Motionless, one hand frozen around my waning instrument, I gaze at an Auto Club map of California thumbtacked above Dave’s desk. On a corner of his desktop, a color photo of a coral snake catches my eye. I pick it up. Below it lies a newsletter page of job ads, one for an assistant biology professor at the University of Baltimore. Scanning the page, I notice another ad for a visiting zoology professor at George Washington University, an hour from Baltimore.
I carry the amyl nitrate bottle to the kitchen trash and drop it into an empty milk carton, so Dave won’t see it. I swallow an old Valium and consider calling Sandy, but I don’t want to hear myself telling her I’m afraid Dave’s going to leave me.
* * *
Warming up on a stationary bicycle at the gym, I spot a guy named Tony doing leg presses among the usual lunch-hour crowd. Tony’s my size and build, a little younger than I am, and handsome, with a Roman soldier’s curly dark hair. He and his wife are trying to have a baby. Tony sees me but pretends he doesn’t.
I work through my routine—stretches, weights, crunches, and stair climber. With my tank shirt glued to my torso in sweat, I head into the locker room, where Tony’s stripping next to my locker, his jock strap and trunks pushed to his knees. Seeing me, he nearly trips grabbing a towel to wrap around his waist. I spin the dial on my combination lock.
“It’s not my fault locker rooms aren’t unisex, Tony.”
“Huh?”
I stop on a wrong number but close enough that my lock opens anyhow.
“Because I ogle women?” he asks.
I strip, grab my towel, and slam my locker door. Giving Tony a disgusted look, I step past him into the shower room, where three showers run behind closed curtains. Tony follows on my heels.
“You’re an asshole, Tony,” I say over my shoulder.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Hanging my towel on a hook, I step into a shower, pull the translucent curtain, and start the water, standing out of its cold spray while it warms up. I see Tony’s shape through the plastic. “I thought we were friends!” I holler.
He moves away, and I hear another shower start.
I admit I’ve glanced at Tony’s uncut meat while he towels his face dry, and I find his tattooed calves and buttocks sexy as hell. Dave once asked me if he should get tattooed, and I said I liked him free and clear, which I do. Still, Tony’s tattoos make me want to raise my legs for him. Why should it matter to Tony?
I caught him ogling the backsides of women on treadmills, and we laughed about that. We talked about how much willpower being faithful takes. Then one afternoon, Tony said we should get together for dinner with our other halves, and I told him my other half wasn’t a wife. Since then I’ve gotten the same cold shoulder I sometimes get from Ian, only Tony’s reason isn’t duplicitous. He’s just homophobic.
No showers are running when I step out onto the puddled gray tile. The room is warm and smells of ammonia. I dry in solitude, staring at flakes of electric yellow paint peeling off walls powder blue beneath.
As I pad out of the shower room, a man in suit trousers and tasseled loafers rolls deodorant under an arm at a counter of sinks with mirror above it. He looks my way and smiles. I don’t recognize him at first.
“Cleve—what are you doing here?”
“Working out.”
“I’ve never seen you here before.”
“I’ve been here a few times, when I was calling on accounts nearby.”
“It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise.”
I unwrap the towel from around my waist and toss it in a tub.
“So how have you been?” I say as his hazel eyes make a quick tour of my body.
“All right. How about you?”
“Same. Nothing new.”
A couple of fully clothed guys walk between us on their way out. I step into the aisle by my locker, where Tony tucks a striped, button-down shirt into blue trousers. Cleve steps into the next aisle. He and I can still see each other in the mirror.
Tony slams his locker and squeezes past me as I open mine.
Cleve, knotting a tie, steps to the sinks to be closer to the mirror. Naked, I join him and comb my hair. “I didn’t see you upstairs, Cleve.”
“I saw you.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“You were working hard. It was enough of a pleasure just to watch you.” He pulls off the tie he just put on. “I don’t need a tie. I’m through calling on accounts today.”
He goes back to his locker. I watch him pick up his gym bag from the bench.
“Give me a minute, Cleve. I’ll walk out with you.”
I stuff away my workout clothes, pull on my underpants, trousers, socks, and shoes. Carrying my shirt over one shoulder, rather than wearing it, I follow him from the locker room and past the reception desk. As we step outdoors, the white walls of a Moorish medical building glare from the front of the parking lot. Cleve pulls sunglasses from his shirt pocket. I lower mine from atop my head. “How about a cup of coffee, Cleve?”
“If you want.”
“Maybe my place? It’s only ten minutes from here if we jump on the freeway. I won’t disappoint you this time.”
He stares at the medical building a moment. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m sure.” I motion to my car. “The silver hatchback’s mine. Follow me.”
“I remember where you live, but…”
“But nothing. See you in a few minutes.”
Pulling onto the freeway, I watch in my rearview mirror as Cleve follows.
Near the house, I stop at a drugstore. Cleve rolls into the parking space next to mine. “I’ll be right back,” I shout.
Shirtless at the pharmacy counter, I buy a package of condoms and wink at the unsettled pharmacist.
At home, I call the bookstore and tell Honey my car overheated and I’m waiting for a gas station mechanic to look at it.
Unbuttoning and untucking Cleve’s shirt, I rub my fingers in the black hair funneling down his chest and hard belly. He smells like towels fresh from the dryer at the gym. I reach to unbuckle his belt, but he stops me. “Is there any chance what’s-his-name could come home?”
“He teaches on Monday afternoons.” I unzip Cleve’s fly. “Fuck Dave anyhow. You have the balls to hang a pair of horns on him, don’t you, Cleve?” I cup Cleve’s testicles in my hand.
He smiles. “I have the balls.”
I lead him by the head of his cock to the high double bed. We strip and climb into it. I blow him till he’s almost ready to come, and then I sheathe him in a rubber and ask whether he wants me on my stomach or back. He shoves me down face up, and I raise my legs. His thrusts are firm, his cock nudging my prostate until I writhe. Every muscle in his face strains as he holds off his orgasm. “Here I come, Lenny.” I feel his cock flex, his whole body shudder. I squirt into his chest hair, and with my fingertips spread my cum throughout that tangled jungle.
We lie kissing.
I mention I should get back to the bookstore eventually, and he gets up and crosses the hall to the bathroom. “I probably shouldn’t flush this condom,” he calls, “but you might not want it in the trash.”
“Leave it on the toilet tank. I’ll take care of it.”
I listen as he pisses. Sitting on the side of the bed, I try not to panic about what I’ve done.
As Cleve steps from the bathroom into the hall, I hear our back door open. Cleve freezes. Dave’s briefcase thumps on the kitchen floor. “Shit!” Dave shouts, and the back door slams.
From the hall, Cleve stares into the bedroom at the closed, sun-drenched drapes. We hear Dave’s car idle and drive away.
“Did you plan this?” Cleve says.
I shake my head. “Dave saw you?”
“If he did, I didn’t see him. I don’t care if you did plan it.” Cleve crosses the room and kisses me and pulls me from the side of the bed into its middle. His cock juts out so hard it could be carved from stone. “Let him come back and see me taking you.”
I whisper, “Fuck my mouth, Cleve,” as he climbs in bed. I prop my head against a pillow, and he straddles my torso. I watch his chest swell and show all its muscle, and then I taste his semen. His body doubles in two, his biceps and pecs envelop my face. He recovers enough to scoot down on the bed and wrap a hand around my bone. I stop him. “I’m all right.”
He looks at the bathroom.
“Jump in the shower if you like, Cleve.”
We kiss, and he climbs off the bed.
While the shower runs, I stroke myself off picturing his swollen chest as he came in my mouth. In my private aftermath, I lie marveling at the effect rising to orgasm has on a man’s chest. I imagine lining up all the well-built men in the world and staring up at their bare chests while I suck them off man after man.
I’m pissing when Cleve opens the shower curtain. “How about a sandwich?” I say. Neither of us ate lunch. I don’t want to appear anxious for Cleve to go, although I am.
He leans against the stove in his boxer shorts and watches me, naked, take cold cuts out of the refrigerator and set up coffee. I try to ignore Dave’s gym bag, which sits just inside the back door.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to leave before he comes home again?” Cleve says, following my eye.
“Have a sandwich.” I attempt nonchalance. I’m impressed with Cleve’s nerve. He doesn’t seem the least bit afraid of Dave walking in the door.
“Dave is screwing a grad student,” I say. “This isn’t one-sided. I don’t know what’ll happen between us.”
Cleve and I eat at the dining table, a battered, round-legged relic Dave and I bought and haven’t got around to refinishing. Cleve tells me about a trip to California with his parents during the summer after college, about seeing the boys on the beach and deciding he would move to LA from Iowa.
He rises from his chair and goes into the bedroom, reappears in pants, shoes, and unbuttoned shirt. “Are you all right, handsome?”
“I’m fine.”
“No regrets, I hope?”
“No regrets.”
“I’ll call you at the bookstore tomorrow. I’ll be in Phoenix—it’s part of my sales territory.”
He’s a pharmaceutical salesman, I remember after a moment.
“I should be home Thursday night,” he says.
At the door I kiss him. He pulls my naked body inside his open shirt. I start to get aroused again and shove him away. I watch from behind the door as he walks to his car buttoning his shirt, climbs in, and drives off.
I find the knotted condom on the toilet tank and seal it in a letter-sized envelope I shove deep into the kitchen trash. After putting the sheets in the washer, I tuck clean sheets on the bed, shower, pull on jeans and a sweatshirt, and pace from room to room while fading daylight drains all color from the furniture and walls. In my mind, Dave’s wrecked his car and is waiting for me to find him in a hospital somewhere. Ridiculous, I know.
Sitting in the dark on the living room couch, I hear the back door open. “I’m home,” Dave calls. “You’ll never guess what I did today.” He walks into the living room swinging his briefcase and stands twirling it from one long arm. “I left half my intro biology exams on a chair in the dining commons. Drove all the way home before I knew it.”
I stare up at him.
“As I opened the kitchen door, I realized my briefcase was too light and thought Oh, shit! I hauled ass back to campus and was so fucking relieved to see those exams still there! Can you believe it? I would have been in such deep shit! I don’t think I’ll give paper exams anymore.”
He falls on the couch beside me, thuds his briefcase on the floor, and stretches out his legs.
I don’t know whether to believe him or not.
“Are you half asleep, Len? Why are you sitting in the dark?” He reaches up and switches on the black standing lamp.
“Don’t you teach on Monday afternoons?”
“Duh?” he says. “It’s spring break, remember? I went to work out and thought maybe I’d get more grading done in my office than at home. I ran into Brian from engineering. He’s fielding a ball team for this summer and wants me to play. I said I’d think about it.”
“I forgot you’re on spring break.”
He glances at the kitchen. “What do you want to do about dinner?” When I don’t answer, he pokes me in the ribs. “Wake up. Were you napping?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?” He laughs. “You don’t know whether you were napping?”
“I was reading. I fell asleep.”
“Get your shoes. Let’s walk down to the corner. I’m hungry.”
All I can do is stare at him.
“Len, did you smoke a joint? You’re out of it! Go splash water on your face—that’ll wake you up. I’ve only eaten a yogurt since noon.”
* * *
As I turn down the bed, Dave wanders from the bathroom in his underwear, his toothbrush frothing his mouth. He glances at rose-colored sheets under our green comforter. “Clean sheets—nice.” He turns and wanders back to the bathroom. I’m calm enough by now to realize Dave could have fucked Ian in his office this afternoon. But he didn’t, I can tell. Even if he had, what I did feels worse because it was vengeful. I wanted Cleve, but I also wanted to cheat on Dave behind his back, a willful act. Dave fucks Ian because Dave can’t help himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t jeopardize his career by screwing a student.
In bed, Dave falls asleep but I can’t. I think of Cleve’s cream in a condom sealed in an envelope in our kitchen trash. I slip from under the covers, pull on my jeans, and tiptoe to the kitchen. I tighten a twist tie around the plastic bag and carry it out to the cans beside the garage. A dog barks, shrill in the night, as I walk back to the house. Stopping along the cement path, I look up at the gray sky, look around at treetops jutting above the low house roofs—palm trees, pines, Italian spruce, jacarandas, acacias, a maple, an oak. I remember my first day in California, staring out from Dave’s second-floor apartment wondering why California looked so different from anywhere else I’d been. Then I realized I’d never been anywhere with so many types of trees.
* * *
Cleve calls the bookstore while I’m doing the morning coffee run. I gave him my store number and explained Jane insists everyone turn off their cells while at work. I didn’t tell him we ignore Jane’s rule when she’s not here. He calls again while I’m with Jane at her accountant’s office.
When Cleve and I talk, he invites me to spend the weekend at Big Bear Lake with him and some friends. “My housemate, Don, owns a place he rents to skiers most weekends. We could drive up before traffic gets bad Friday, if you can get off early.”
“I can’t go away for a weekend.”
“Why? Dave does whatever he wants, doesn’t he?”
“He hasn’t gone away for a weekend.”
“From what you’ve told me, he’s not in a position to make up the rules.”
I watch Ian walk behind the counter. He trades places with Rosie on the stool by the register.
“I have a conference call coming in, Lenny. Think about Big Bear, will you? I’ll try to reach you tomorrow, but I have a wild day over here. I always plan too much when I’m in Phoenix.” I forgot he was out of town. “If we don’t talk, I’ll call as soon as I’m back.”
“All right.”
“You have no idea how much you mean to me,” he says, and he hangs up.
* * *
I half listen to unflattering stories Jane’s told me several times about her daughters-in-law. I’m curious how far she’ll go in denigrating them. As she works her way around to telling me for the thousandth time that her younger son, Randall, is my age and makes a six-figure salary, I force an exaggerated yawn. She’s unfazed.
“I just wish Ran hadn’t married beneath himself,” she says, “or that his poor Becky were better equipped to rise to her good fortune. I’m so anxious to see Ran’s time-share in Aspen. Which reminds me, I need to ask Ian to stay at my place while I’m away. It’s so inconvenient with him never here during the day. I don’t know if you thought of that when you switched his hours?”
“Leave a note on his time card. I’m going to lunch.”
I hope she’ll be gone when I come back from my workout.
