Celibacy

From my short story collection Novelty: and other stories

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“What if I got a car? We could have some privacy. I know a place we could go.”

Aaron looked at Louise like he had to pin her down with his eyes or she would slip away.

“You don’t have a job. How you gonna get a car?”

“I’ll borrow some money from my old man.”

They stood on the sidewalk outside the post office. Louise looked at him with flat and lightless eyes. Her dress billowed in the breeze.

A fat man in a wrinkled suit walked toward them and Aaron stepped onto the road. Louise watched the fat man shuffle by.

Doves called. The day eased into evening and the sun dulled behind clouds that spread through the sky like splotches of water.

“What do you think of that?” Aaron asked.

“I don’t know. You think your dad’ll give you money for a car?”

“I know he will. I got about half of what I need.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I need to go.”

He tried to smirk but his lip trembled. White-hot butterflies in his belly, his chemicals coming to a boil.

“You going to see Rodney, aren’t you?”

“No”

“Him and that damn car. Just because he works at the bank and has a car. Thinks he can drive up and down these streets like he owns the whole town.”

“I don’t know what you think I’m out doing but it’s not like that.”

“Bullshit. You lying whore. Goddamnit what is with your kind? Just because he has a car and I don’t. I’m gonna get me a car and then you’ll see. Once I do I won’t give you the time of day, it’ll be too late for you. Just think about that,” said Aaron.

She turned away from him and walked. His face burned and he started to run after her but then he stopped and watched her disappear into the bleary horizon. He went into a diner. Meat sizzled on the griddle and men grumbled at the counter.

“Hey, Aaron. Got a stool right here next to the register. Have a seat.”

Dave the owner stood behind the register in a white T-shirt stained with sweat and grease.

“You hungry?”

“Yeah I could go for a burger.”

“What’s the matter? Your face is all red.”

“It’s nothing.”

Aaron watched cooks press burger patties on the range. Crack open eggs and spread hash browns. The diner buzzed with talk and plates smacking on counters and the dinging bell of an order up.

A burger sat before him; by its side on the plate lay the top bun with two pickles and a ring of onions. A mound of bronzed french fries. When he slid the plate closer a few fries tumbled onto the counter and made a dry sound like rustling twigs.

“Hey, Aaron, whatever it is, don’t let it get to you, eh?”

Hoarse laughter.

Aaron nodded and then put the burger together and ate. He stared at the wall. Men in aprons passed in and out of his careless cone of vision and all he felt or knew was the juicy meat in his mouth, the sharpness of the onions and pickles and his throat grabbing and dragging the mash down like a scaleless snake inside him.

Alternating burger and fry, leaning over the plate. Elbows on the counter, the world he saw without seeing and the sounds he heard without listening. When he finished he sat up and leaned back and looked over his kingdom of crumbs. Wiped his face with his forearm and got a few bills out of his wallet and tossed them on the counter.

“Hey Dave, you keep the change.”

“We’ll see you around.”

He passed through the door and stood on the sidewalk, breathed deeply and felt the food in his belly. A car rumbled along. His anger came back like an imp had dialed in a piercing radio frequency and he thought of Louise. He thought of Rodney and that new car at the curb and her getting in with a look in her eye, a look she would never give him.

Her pupils spreading and shining. Not for him. Never for him. He had no car and no job and what money he had he spent on burgers and fries and now he wanted to get a soda.

Instead he walked with knotted muscles down the street to the edge of town. He breathed out of his mouth and smelled onion and every now and then someone on the sidewalk stepped out of his way.

Aaron walked for miles and then turned left onto gravel where the town met the woods. The sun went under the amber skyline. Gnarled branches blackened in the dusk. The cool air pulsed with hoots and chittering insects. He thought in painful pictures. A hot iron brand in his brain. Louise on her back, put there by passion unknown to him.

Down the gravel until it was dirt. Darkness filling the gaps between the trees. The sounds of restless night.

He saw her teeth in her bottom lip, her hair in the style of rough roving hands. Neck turned up like a sacrifice, her body an instrument of someone else’s pleasure.

Aaron’s knees and feet hurt. Someone else seemed to think within him, a sadistic stranger. He came out of the woods into a field that ended in a ridge overlooking a plain. The night sky curved up and showed halfhearted stars. The moon a faint sliver, the lost claw of a cat.

He saw a car to his left, down a ways. His blood froze and then surged. His ears rang. He tottered to the edge of the cliff and looked over the gentle slopes and scattered trees and then he stepped back and lay down in the wet grass.

The dark world throbbed around him. He waited and waited and then he got up and walked toward the car and supposed he would see it moving or hear it squeaking. Readied himself for steamed glass and hands on the pane or the sound of breathing or calls to god or calls to a name not his but nothing happened. He got closer.

The car loomed cold and cryptic. Aaron rubbed his hands on his pants and stood until the sun should’ve come up or the car should’ve started but the night stood still with him as if in solidarity with his shame. Then his legs took him farther on and he got up against the back window and he made out flitting shapes and heard low voices. Nocturnal birds called out with urgency as if to warn him away.

He lunged and pounded on the trunk. Before he could bring his hand back the door opened with a sound like bones breaking and he saw a blur of pink muscle moving toward him.

Rodney was naked and panting. A woman’s voice called from the car. Aaron tried to kick Rodney in the dick but Rodney batted his leg away and punched Aaron in the face.

“Goddamnit you little asshole, you fucking stay away. If I ever catch you following us again I will fucking kill you.”

Aaron fell, his face stinging and his head swimming. On his back looking up at the sky and wanting it to crush him. The stars to rain down on him like broken glass. The door shut like a shout and the engine started. Rodney backed up the car and peeled out and slung dirt on Aaron’s face.

The car drove off fast, bouncing and swerving with Rodney slapping the side in a gesture of frustration or warning or triumph. Aaron didn’t clear the dirt from his face for a long while. He waited for anything and nothing, for coyotes to set themselves upon him or great birds to pick him up and carry him over the ridge and drop him to his death. Tasting blood, he rolled over and pushed himself up.

“I’ll get that son of a bitch,” he thought.

“He thinks he can just drive around with that new car and do whatever he wants. Just because he has a car and works at the bank and his dad sits on the town council.”

Aaron walked down the gravel road through the lingering night between black leaves hanging like tattered cloth. Bugs like roaring laughter. When he got to town the first threads of light twirled up out of the horizon.

“I could really go for a cream soda,” he thought.