The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (24 page)

“Not the way you love him. And you know what? He never will.
Straight
means he never will. So deal
with it.”

“Fuck you.”

He flinched, and in that same moment seemed to realize he
was naked. He looked down at his belly, at his penis. He turned around and
left.

I started to follow him but the doorway felt barred with
some kind of force-field. After a minute I heard the front door open, close,
and then the grinding engine of his car fading away.

***

“Get my keys,” I said, thrusting my hip toward
Andy. “Front pocket.” Griff’s left arm was around my shoulder; his body hung
between Beth and me like a scarecrow.

“Oh, he’s drooling,” Beth said.

A strand of spit hung from Griff’s lips, clear and fine like
fishing line. I let go of his arm and wiped the back of my hand across his
lips.

“That’s gross,” said Andy. He yanked the loop of keys from
my pocket and unlocked the door of room 907.

It was 3:00 a.m. on the first Saturday since our return from
winter break. We’d gone with Beth to a welcome-back party in Kenny Grimshaw’s
room on Seven. Kenny’s room was half-empty—his roommate had
transferred—and he crammed the empty space full of people, alcohol,
music—full of college.

Andy pushed open the door and Beth and I hauled Griff into
the room, his feet dragging over the splintering threshold. I noticed he was
only wearing his socks.

“Fuck. I forgot his shoes.”

“No shoes?” Griff gurgled.

“I’ll go get them,” Beth said, her teeth clenched under
Griff’s weight.

We got Griff over to his bed and let him collapse into it. I
lifted his legs the rest of the way onto the mattress. He put his arm around
his pillow, buried his face in the jersey sheets.

“Jeez, he’s heavier than he looks,” Beth said, massaging her
shoulder.

“Hey, I offered to carry him,” Andy said, holding up his
hands.

“I know. Now what kind of shoes does he have?”

“Those black Converse ones,” I said.

“OK. I’ll be back.” She glanced at Griff before leaving.

“He’s not going to roll off, is he?” I said, sitting down on
my bed.

“He’s not going to roll off.” Andy sat down beside me. He
had a Veryfine container full of Jack Daniels in his hand. “So what was going
on with the Architect tonight? He’s not usually a big drinker, is he?”

“Who knows.” Normally I was protective of Griff but I’d
emptied a juice bottle more than once too and what did it matter, anyway?
Everything about Griff was hanging out tonight, for everyone to see.

“He get his heart broken again?” Andy said.

“He spent the entire break online chatting with Tricia
Johnson from the second floor. Couldn’t wait to get back to school so he could
hang out with her in person.” I pressed my cheek against Andy’s shoulder. He
offered me the Veryfine container and I shook my head. “It was all he talked
about.
Vince, I think she and I are
really gonna hit it off—this could be the big one.
Tonight he just
kept knocking them back every time she sucked face with that guy Steve.”

“Poor Griffin,” he said. “The perpetually broken-hearted
Architect. Will he ever find his soulmate?” He put the container on the floor and
laid back on the bed, overshooting the edge so his head knocked against the
wall. He laughed and rubbed his skull. “Ow. I had too many too. —What if
you’re his soulmate?”

It was like a spark. “Me? Griffin isn’t into guys.”

“No, you’re right. But guess what?” He sat up and pressed
his lips against my neck. “
I
am.”

“Are you?”

“One in particular, in fact. Hey—” His voice turned
sneaky, conspiratorial, sexy. “Want to do it with him in the room?”

“What?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’ll be hot. Let’s do it while we watch him
sleep.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“You’re drunker than I thought.”

“It’ll be so hot, Vince.”

“No.”

“You know you want to.”

“Come on.”

“Then let’s go to my room.”

“I can’t, Andy. I need to keep an eye on him.”

He put his lips on my ear and whispered and whined, sad and
deprived like a horny Oliver Twist. “But I
need
sex
.”

“You
need
to go to
bed
.” I pinched his shoulder. “Come
on, get up. Can you make it back to your dorm?”

“I’m not that drunk, Vince, for fuck’s sake.”

I stood up and opened the door, left my hand on the brass
knob. “I’ll IM you tomorrow,” I told him, and I kissed his bristly black hair
as he went through.

“I’m going to go jerk off to you,” he said.

I closed the door and rested my head against the molding,
listening for the sound of the suite door closing behind him.

I’d wanted to—what Andy had suggested first. And I
would’ve, too, if not for Beth’s imminent return. I was sure I would’ve,
because I knew it was the closest I would ever get. I could’ve closed one eye
and done the trick with the forced perspective...

The suite door thumped again and there was a knock on mine.
I opened it and Beth held out Griff’s shoes.

“Andy leaving?” she said.

“Yeah, he’s drunk.”

“How’s our patient doing?” She peeked in.

“He’ll be fine.” I took the shoes and tossed them on the
floor beside the little fridge. “Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. He’s such a romantic, isn’t he? It was like he
was in a movie or something, watching Tricia making out with Steve. Almost cute
in a screwed-up way.” She smiled and the light from the common area reflected
in her different-colored eyes. “Anyway, if you need anything, you know where I
live.”

I nodded, told her goodnight, closed the door.

I sat down at my desk and put my face in my hands. I read
people’s away messages for a while and clicked random icons, highlighting,
unhighlighting. After a while Griff groaned and sat up.

“What time is it?”

“After four.”

“Fuck, really?”

He ran his hand through his hair and then panic flashed
across his face and he sprang off the bed, pushing past me as he made for the
door. He whipped it open and it smacked the wall. He barged through the common
area into the bathroom. Luckily it was empty. I followed him there. Griff was
the kind of guy who would clean up some random girl’s puke at a party; I didn’t
think he should have to throw up alone. He lifted the toilet seat and fell to
his knees in front of it, just in time.

“Come on, man,” I told him. “In the toilet, not on the
floor. There you go. OK.”

When he was done he sat staring into the bowl. Then he
rocked back on his knees, raised his face to the ceiling, his eyes full of
regret.

“Better?”

He nodded and smiled weakly and leaned forward to throw up
again. He clutched the rim of the toilet, speckled with pubic hairs and
splotches of yellow grime, clutched it with both hands, his head disappearing
into the bowl. Gags and whimpers echoed off the porcelain.

“Dude, don’t drown, come on.” I put my hand on his back,
rubbed fast in circles.

He leaned back on his heels again. He looked pissed off. He
would’ve called it orange. Puking was like getting violated by your own body.

“Let’s see if we can find you something.” I dug around in
the medicine cabinet, through curled-up tubes of toothpaste and two gnarly
toothbrushes and found a bottle of blue Listerine with an eighth of an inch
left in the bottom. I unscrewed the cap and handed it to him. He took it,
swished half-heartedly, spat in the toilet, flushed.

“Thanks,” he said, squinting now. He closed the lid and put
his hands on it to stand up, and only then noticed the yellow-olive puddle on
the floor where he’d missed the toilet.

Instead of reaching for toilet paper he rubbed his knee into
it, smearing it around with his jeans until it was all but gone and the floor
merely glistened in the ugly fluorescent light.

He stood up and looked at his open hands, rinsed them under
the tap. He threw a palmful of water at his face. Then he loped back to our
room, dragging a wet hand along the wall, leaving a shiny trail on the eggshell
paint.

While I closed and locked our door he unbuttoned his jeans
and pulled them down and off, not seeming to notice or care that his boxers
went down with his pants. I felt a moment of embarrassed surprise and looked
away, but his t-shirt, as usual, was far too big for him and covered everything.
He got into his bed and yanked up the covers.

I turned off the light and kicked off my shoes. With my back
against the wall I sat on my bed and watched him sleep. Minutes multiplied into
an hour, at least. When the smell of his vomit-soaked jeans finally got to me I
got up to pick them up. But here, hanging out from beneath his plaid comforter,
was Griff’s socked foot; here was his calf and the soft, hairless nook at the
back of his knee; past these, his arm and his long thin architect’s fingers. He
was lying on his side, facing the wall. His skin glowed blue in the light that
came off the street.

I stood beside his bed for a long time and then bent down.
From his jeans I pulled his boxers, untwisted them, opened them, held them to
my face, felt the cotton against my lips. I unzipped my jeans, pushed them and
my underwear down to my knees and knelt on the floor beside his bed. I lifted
the covers and could see the small of his back, his ass, blue in the light,
fine hairs sprinkled across it.

I leaned forward, carefully, carefully, pressed my lips to
the small of his back where his spine met his pelvis, held them against his
skin, shivering, my eyes closed. My breath came in quick gasps, like crying. I
laid my cheek on the mattress, opened my lips, breathed his skin, smelled warm
musk. I was caught in a raging tug-of-war between being drawn to him, between
wanting to lay my face there, the curve of his ass matching perfectly the shape
of my throat, and fall asleep with my head on his back. At last I was against
him and it was everything, everything I could do to keep away.

I came into his boxers.

My whole body throbbing, I pulled my head away from his
back, aware now that this was as sexy as a hot stove. Details of things flooded
me as I opened my eyes and wiped my penis with his boxers. A zit on his hip,
the smell of vomit, sirens on the street below. I sat staring at his back, at
the soft ridges of his spine, in disbelief. My eyes welled up.

I pulled up my pants, wrapped his wet boxers into his jeans
and then opened his armoire door, careful not to let it squeak, and stuffed his
soiled clothes into his laundry bag, all the way to the bottom. My hands were
shaking. I sat down on my bed and then got up and went in the bathroom. I sat
on the edge of the tub in the place where I cut his hair. I put my elbows on my
knees and my wet face in my hands, and in the space between my fingers I looked
at my feet and measured them against the square white tiles of the floor.

*

I sat in my underwear on the edge of the bed I’d
been sharing with Griff. His pillow was bunched against the headboard, more
like some kind of hat than a pillow, and his head lay on the mattress.

I inhaled a quivering gasp, the kind that precedes a sob. He
groaned and opened his eyes.

“S’the matter?”

I made some kind of gesture at the wall.

“Where’d Zane go?”

Some tears fell out of my eyes. I closed them and pressed
them with my thumbs.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m in love with him.” It felt funny to say, but
was familiar too, like saying my own full name out loud.
Vince Joshua Dandro. I love Zane.

Griff rubbed his eyes and sat up, the blankets gathering at
his waist. “Isn’t that a good thing?” he said gently. “Does he not feel the
same? I could’ve sworn he liked you.”

“He does.” I wiped my face.

“...?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

He slid over and tried to put his arm around me but I
blocked it with my elbow, pushed him back by the shoulder, got out of bed.

***

One random Tuesday six weeks after the welcome back
party, I was at my computer chatting with Andy when Griff burst into our room
waving an envelope. He tossed his backpack onto his bed and sat on my desk.
Pens and pencils clinked in a Shuster mug. He pulled a folded sheet of paper
through a jagged tear in the envelope.

“Oh, what’s this?” he said, grinning. “It seems to be a
housing lottery letter.” The paper was folded in thirds; he opened it slowly
flap by flap and took a moment to examine it as if for the first time. “Well my
goodness me. It says here that yours truly has drawn...,” he turned into a game
show host now, “lucky number thirteen, baby!” Jumping off the desk, he took off
his U2 baseball cap and zinged it across the room. “Can you fucking
believe
it, Vince? How many thousands of
people at Shuster, and I get to pick thirteenth for room selection for next
year! Thirteenth!”

I didn’t know where to look; I watched his hat slip down
between his armoire and the wall. “Congratulations,” I said. Andy sent an
instant message asking if I was still there. I ignored it.

“Did you get your letter? There wasn’t one for you in the
mailbox.”

“I got it.” It was tucked beneath a stack of books on my
desk.

“Well?”

“Nine forty-seven.”

He raised his letter like a winning Megabucks ticket. “Beat you!
We get to use my lucky thirteen. We can get any room we want, Vinny boy. Well
practically.” He flopped onto his bed. “Which one should we get? How about one
that has its own bathroom? Then when I have to wallow in my own puke I can do
it in private.”

“I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about—rooms.”

“Do you know a good one?” He sat up.

“I’m, uh,” I started quietly, and then continued more
quietly, “I’m gonna try for a single for next year, I think.”