Kings of B'more, page 20
Harrison picked up a sequined tuxedo jacket with short sleeves and held it against his chest.
“Try it on,” Linus called over a pile of jeans labeled “Stonewashed butch blues.” Linus had found a cowboy hat and placed it on his head. He was twirling a feather boa around in the air. Harrison briefly entertained the fantasy of wearing the jacket to the pool, giving Aquatic Game Show Host realness. But he put it out of his mind. He would never. “Try it on!” Linus implored.
Fine. Harrison put his tote bag down and slid into the jacket. It was snug but not too tight, and the short sleeves cupped his arms perfectly.
“Baby boy,” Linus called with a hoot, “that is you!”
“I have never worn anything that was less me,” Harrison replied.
“You don’t know,” Linus said. “I think you should get it. My treat.”
Harrison rolled his eyes.
Linus called over his shoulder. “Yo, Mazz, come look.” Oh, good. An audience.
Mazz Reber poked their head around a rack labeled “Taking the bus to Chromatica.” They had a low fade with lines shaved into it on the sides. It looked like they’d put some colored temporary dye in to accentuate some of the lines, and Harrison was immediately obsessed with the look. There was a surety to Mazz, like they were drawn in ink. They wore a white tank top that stood in both contrast and concert with their dark ebony skin tone. The tank top had a picture of a brick on it and the words happy pride.
“Oh, wow,” Mazz said. “People sleep on that jacket, but it is a real find. Harrison, you need to get it.”
“Oh, he’s getting it,” Linus said. “Don’t you worry.”
Mazz looked at Harrison again; it felt like they were sizing him up, and Harrison looked away, uncomfortable. Suddenly he was aware again of being in the presence of someone who was around Linus all day long. Maybe they knew a different side of him. Maybe they were his best friend also.
“You look comfortable,” Mazz said. “That’s it. I pass by that jacket all the time, and I keep thinking, ‘What’s the context? What’s it for?’ I’m really obsessed with it. I have no idea why. But maybe it’s not about where you’d wear it, but just how you feel. You should buy it.”
Harrison briefly entertained the fantasy of coming down to next week’s movie night in a sequined short-sleeved dinner jacket and gym shorts. Announcing to his family, “I’m comfortable!” This shop was dangerous.
Mazz tugged at Linus’s sleeve. “You’re wearing my shirt. You look great.”
“Yeah, I thought I’d do you a favor.”
“Oh, this is a favor for me?” Mazz laughed.
Fab slid through a cluster of barrels. “Mazz, we need towels. Do you have any towels? We’re going to the pool.”
“Sort of,” Mazz replied. They disappeared into the back of the store. Harrison wondered what a “sort-of towel” was. He put the jacket back down on a pile and walked to the front of the store. He rummaged through a bin of T-shirts labeled “Sorry, not sorry—I kept these after the breakup.” Some shirts had band names, others had political slogans, others illustrations. He found one that had the poster art for Little Shop of Horrors on it and let out a delighted little gasp. It wasn’t his size, but . . . he held it against himself: Was this a good crop-top candidate? Or did shirts have to be made as crop tops? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out the hard way. Harrison decided he was not ready for the crop-top aesthetic, whatever that meant. He put it back down.
The problem was that, in general, he didn’t know what he was trying to communicate with a message tee, if anything. Maybe he was just like his father—a person wearing person clothes, never broadcasting a message. He noticed a cluster of mannequins positioned by one of the portholes in the front window. They were all dressed up in different Pride-themed outfits: a drag-queen mannequin, a mannequin in the trans-flag colors—pink, blue, and white—a shirtless mannequin in a harness and a leather jacket, and in the corner, a mannequin in a simple T-shirt with a familiar face on it. The text on the T-shirt said bayard. It was the man whose picture he saw in the museum—the Black, gay Civil Rights leader. This felt like something. It felt like a sign at the very least. The shirt looked like it was his size. He stepped up to the platform and started taking the shirt off the mannequin before realizing what he was doing. Was this even allowed? From the looks of the store, basically anything was allowed, but he wasn’t sure. He stopped, the shirt bunched over one of the mannequin’s shoulders. He searched in the back for a sight of Mazz but didn’t see them. Over in the corner, Fab and Phil were testing out enormous sun hats. Linus caught his eye and trotted over.
“You find something?” Linus asked.
“Do you think Mazz will let me try this on?”
Linus hopped up on the platform next to Harrison and wrangled the shirt off the mannequin. He inspected it.
“You know who this is?” Harrison asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“I read about him at the museum today.”
“Look at you, reading at a museum.”
“I wanted to tell you about it,” Harrison said. He paused before adding, “I’m sorry it was weird. I wanted you to have a good time.”
“I had an amazing time. For real. I just . . . I don’t know. I freaked out because the past seemed so big all of a sudden. It wasn’t about you. But I’m glad you found out about Bayard Rustin.”
“I wanted to know more. When we get our phones back, he’s the first thing I’m going to google.”
Linus laughed. “You know, it is so rude that I’m standing right here, the center of all information, and you’re talking about ‘I’m gonna google him.’ ”
“You’re so salty all the time,” Harrison said. “Fine, you want to tell me about him, feel free.”
“You don’t never listen, though.”
“I’m listening now.”
“Mm-hmm.” Linus said. He jumped down off the platform. “I’ll tell you about him at the pool. Come on, we gotta get some trunks or shorts or something.”
Linus headed over to meet Fab and Phil. Harrison lingered on the platform among the mannequins. He examined the shirt. Maybe he would buy it. Maybe this did feel like him.
A movement by the window caught his eye. The sun-drenched outline of a familiar twist out passing by one of the portholes. Corrine! Why did he have the worst luck? Why was she everywhere? He froze, trying to blend in with his other mannequin siblings and waiting until she passed.
“That was close,” he said to the mannequin in the harness.
Harrison hopped off the platform and went to retrieve his tote bag from the pile. Linus screamed suddenly. Harrison hitched himself up to see Linus and then followed his gaze to the window. Corrine had doubled back and was peering in another porthole. She rapped on the glass.
“GO HOME,” she said to Linus. Harrison crawled behind a bin labeled “But what would your Mothra say?!” and snuck around the back to watch. Fab, Phil, and Mazz crowded around Linus and stared back at Corrine.
“Who is that person?” Mazz said.
“Harrison’s sister. Don’t act suspicious.”
Fab and Mazz froze with the garments they had in their hands. Phil removed her sun hat solemnly. Corrine pulled out her cell phone and held it up to the window. Linus waved his hands and said “No!” loudly. Corrine pointed at Linus and mouthed home. He nodded quickly.
“And tell Harrison!” Corrine shouted. “I know he’s hiding in there!” Corrine’s head dropped out of the porthole, and the group watched her shadow pass by the mural window. Nobody moved.
“I love her,” Phil said.
“Do you think she’s going to tell?” Linus asked Harrison, who was still cowering in the section marked “dadcore.” He had found the source of all his ire.
“I think she’s just being annoying,” Harrison said.
“Are you not supposed to be out?” Mazz asked.
“We’re free people who can do what we want,” Linus said. “And also, technically, no. But we’re going to the pool cuz it’s my last day and what’s she or anybody else going to do about it?”
Bold words from the boy who once told Harrison, “I think I’m more afraid of pissing off your sister than I am of pissing off my own father.” Then again, Corrine didn’t have the power to take him to South Carolina, so maybe he was just realizing the truth of the world. Harrison watched Linus and Mazz playfully folding shirts at a table called “Straight drag for your uncle’s third wedding.” Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with Corrine, he thought. Maybe it also didn’t have anything to do with it being Linus’s last day, despite what he had said. These were their last hours together, and Harrison was still discovering new parts of his friend.
Phil handed Harrison a pair of swimming trunks.
“These will work. I can go shorter. Just let me know.”
Harrison held them up to his waist. They were bright red with a white stripe down each side. They went to the middle of his thigh, it looked like. Not too short. Not quite Pop-level. Linus was holding a pair that was green with palm trees all over. They were longer and cheerfully ugly. Dad status secured.
“Whatever. Let’s go,” Linus said. He turned to Mazz. “You approve?”
“Absolutely not,” Mazz said.
“Are you coming with us?” Harrison asked.
“I told my manager I’d ring you all up first, but then, yes. I’m off.”
“Let’s go!” Linus cried, whipping his trunks around his head.
After paying, Harrison stuffed his trunks and the Bayard shirt and Linus’s trunks and Linus’s book and something that purported to be a towel but looked more like a quilt into his tote bag. It was bulging, a huge pillow bouncing against his thigh as they walked (twenty more minutes!), up the street, through a playground, and over a footbridge into Druid Hill Park en route to the pool.
* * *
Stuffed at the bottom of the tote, under a tangle of fabric, was the kitchen iPad. As the group, now ballooned to five people, walked into the pool, the vibrations of a series of texts coming into the iPad were too muffled for Harrison to hear or feel. If he had noticed them, he would have discovered they were all from Aparna.
Aparna: Hi. Don’t worry. Small problem, though.
Aparna: Actually, a medium problem.
Aparna: Do you have a school directory at your house, and if so, where is it? I need to let myself in to get it.
Aparna: Never mind. I’m going to my house to get mine.
Aparna: I’m just going to come meet you. You have to call me. Big problem.
2:30 p.m.
“This?” Phil said. “Amusement park.”
They’d arrived at the pool, which was not just “the” pool, singular, but a whole complex of water features that took up a plot of land the size of a city block. It was every pool. If it had a label from the thrift store it would have been “H2Oh My God.” There was a kiddie pool, a lap pool, a pool with jets of water shooting out of it, a spot for aqua basketball, and then a huge central pool with a nest of slides in the middle. There was a DJ playing at the back of a field off to the side and a dance floor set up in front. Two people were selling sodas, ice cream, and hot dogs at a folding table. You could, if you wanted, never leave this place for the entire day. This is a public pool, free for all, but also, Harrison thought as he took it all in, this is like a mini Six Flags Over Baltimore.
Phil and Harrison set out to find a place to lay their stuff down as Linus, Fab, and Mazz went to change. The place was jumping. People on the dance floor, people on the decks, kids and adults and families and teens in each of the pools. And everywhere, the raucous white noise of delighted squeals and splashes and distant music. They chose a spot at the base of a hill, next to the main pool. Harrison began tugging on the tote bag to get the towel/blanket out.
“You know what I don’t get,” Phil said, not waiting for an answer. “You gotta put your entire life on your back when you go to the pool. It’s like you’re packing for the Oregon Trail. Look at this. Look at your life. Think about this concept, Harrison: We go to the one place where you’re allowed to wear as little as legally possible; we need nothing! And in response, what do we do? Load ourselves up like we’re fleeing the apocalypse.” She had nestled in the grass, leaning back on her elbows. Harrison continued to wrestle with his tote bag. Phil persisted, “Look at this bag! You’ve got shirts and blankets and a flashlight and road flares and six cans of tuna.” A child shrieked as he cannonballed into the pool. “I’m just kidding,” Phil said.
Harrison gave the bag one more tug, and the blanket came spilling out. He fell backward. Phil picked up Linus’s book from the spent bag.
“The beach is even worse,” she said. “My parents pack a small library and an entire set of patio furniture just so they can fall asleep. Why are we doing this? All you need is your body.”
With one arm, she whipped off her jersey, and with it her hat and sunglasses, like she was doing a quick change in a production of Cinderella. She had a sports bra on underneath. She stuck her sunglasses back on her face.
She stood up. She dropped a wallet and a phone attached to a chain on the blanket.
“All right,” Phil said.
She strode toward the lap pool, still in her shorts, sat on the edge, and slid in.
* * *
Mazz lay on the blanket, flipping through Linus’s poetry book and giving impromptu readings aloud. Their voice was gravelly but bright, and it made the simple poems seem, to Harrison, even more curious. Like at the heart of each one about rivers and crabs and angels was wonder. Harrison wasn’t really into poems if they weren’t accompanied by music, riffing, and a chorus, but something about Mazz’s reading made him want to listen for as long as they wanted to read. The Six Flags Over Baltimore experience apparently also included a live show.
Phil strolled over from the lap pool, dripping water. She snuck up behind Fab and shook the water out of her hair, dousing Fab like a human sprinkler. Fab shrieked, turned, and grabbed Phil around the knees, taking her down.
“You brute!” Fab cried.
“I’m helping,” Phil said. She looked up, beyond the group. “Harrison, what would you think about introducing me to your sister?”
Harrison would not think of it at all. “Uh, I guess,” he said.
“Stupendous,” Phil said. “Shall we call her and invite her?”
Harrison looked at Linus. What’s going on with your friend?
Linus responded, You’re the crazy person who said you’d introduce her.
“Uh, no. I don’t think that’s a great idea. She’s a jerk—”
“Love it,” said Phil.
“And also, I’m not technically supposed to be here.”
“Ooh, are you doing a caper?” Mazz asked. Harrison looked over and discovered that Mazz had shifted and now had their head resting on Linus’s thigh as they flipped through the book of poems. That was new. Were they interested in smooching each other? It was exactly what Harrison had hoped to facilitate, and he knew in his mind that this was a good thing. But there was another part of him, let’s say his heart, that felt some other kind of emotion. Let’s say jealousy. But jealous of whom?
Mazz had gone back to reading when Harrison tuned back in, this time a poem that started out being about moths. “ ‘If you notice anything,’ ” Mazz read aloud, “ ‘It leads you to notice/more/and more.’ ”
* * *
“A city doesn’t care if you have fun,” Phil was saying. The group had migrated to the largest pool, standing off to the side a bit to avoid the intermittent splashes from people coming down the slide. The water was up to Harrison’s waist and the edges of his shirt, which he’d opted to keep on when he changed into his red trunks. The shirt floated up around him like a lily pad. Linus sat on the edge, dangling his feet. Harrison tapped him on the leg.
“You having a good time?”
“So good,” Linus said. He grinned and flicked water at him with his toe.
Phil was still talking. “Do I wake up in the morning going, ‘Oh, I wonder how the city will please me today’? No.”
“You don’t think a city has a responsibility to the people who live in it?” Mazz asked.
Fab sank low in the water until only her eyes remained.
“A responsibility? Sure, sure. Who said anything about that? Look, this amusement park? The city isn’t required to do it. I’m saying, should they have to?”
“Are you against public pools?” Mazz asked incredulously.
Fab rose just enough to reveal her mouth. “Oh, no, she loves this.”
“I love this! Can you believe this? For free? Incredible. Do they have these things in New York? Of course, yeah, bigger. But this is great.”
“I’m saying you sound like you hate it,” Mazz said.
“Well, that’s my whole thing. What can you do? The point is”—she slapped the surface of the water—“at the end of the day, this is a hole in the ground filled with water. But they had to have meetings or whatever to get it done. Permits. I don’t know how it works. Money. I guess. And they did it. And they put a slide in the middle of it. And we get to stand here and have a real human experience. We get to have fun. In the hole in the ground that the city made for us.”
“I mean, yes, this is for us,” said Mazz. “But I think the idea is to think of everything that way. Everything in a city, anywhere, is the product of some large decision-making process. Curation. And what we need, you and me, nobody actually cares about. But I think—well, this is what my aunt says, but I agree—is that the only thing that makes an impact is the humans inside of the creation.”
