What Belongs to You (9 page)

moment of quiet I interrupted when I told him that K. was sick, that he needed to go home. Could he drive us, I asked, and then I added as I always did with my father a kind of apology, so that even before he answered I had apologized for asking. All right, he said, and though he didn’t move from the window or turn around I understood that I should hurry to get us ready, that having disturbed my father I shouldn’t also make him wait. I went back downstairs to K., who was calmer now; he had risen from his knees to the edge of the bed, where he was bracing himself with his hands. He thought he would be all right on the ride, he said, he just wanted to be home, he would feel better there. I took towels from the bathroom and began to clean up his mess, which shamed me somehow, I didn’t want my father to see it. When K. moved as if to help me I motioned him back, though I could see that he was ashamed too, that he was mortified to have me clean up after him. Please, he said, but I motioned him back, I couldn’t say exactly why, I told him to get his things together instead. My father had gone up to his bedroom to get dressed and now he was coming back down, we could hear his bulk on the upper stairs. K. was thrusting his few things into his bag when the door opened and my father appeared at the top of the hall, rattling his keys. Hurriedly I dropped a towel over the vomit I had yet to mop up, thinking that if I could do nothing about the smell I could at least hide the sight of it away. As he opened the door to the garage (the same door we had left through a few hours before), my father said I’m sorry you’re not well, or something like it, something neighborly, the sort of thing one says, and K. thanked him as we got into the car, my father alone in front and K. and I together in the back. As if by instinct we sat well apart, and though I couldn’t help glancing at him we said nothing to each other. Shortly into the ride I realized I could still smell him, not only his vomit but his body, too, his sweat, which was bitter and strong; I was embarrassed for my father to smell it. I lowered the window a little and laid my head against the glass. The air was cool as it flooded in but the foulness still remained, and though K. had always before filled me with joy he seemed part of my shame now and of the foulness in the air, not just a bodily foulness but something stranger and heavier. My father glanced at us often in the mirror, a quick flick of the eyes. K. sat with his face to the window but I thought he must feel it too, that watchfulness and the weight it added to the air. It was the watchfulness that made it foul, I realized, not with its own foulness but with a foulness it found in us. K. turned away from the window but didn’t look at me, and when I asked him if he was all right he didn’t answer, though when my father asked him the same question, the very same, as though he hadn’t heard me ask it or as though it were a different question from his lips, K. spoke, he said Yes, sir, and I felt him turn from me, in that foul air I felt him identify me as foulness. It was as though he felt my father was health and I contagion, and I was at once bewildered by this and unsurprised. Those were the only words they shared; for the rest of the drive we were silent, and it wasn’t until we arrived at K.’s house that he glanced my way and nodded, and then he thanked my father and got out of the car and hurried inside the door his mother held open. My father waved at her, leaning across to the passenger-side window, and then he reversed the car and slid out of the driveway as I turned to look at the door that closed behind K. When the car stopped for a light at the end of the street, I looked again at the mirror where I could see my father’s face. He was watching me, not with the flickering surveillance of moments before but steadily, and when my eyes met his he grimaced, as if he could still smell K., though there wasn’t any smell in the air anymore. I stared back at him. For a moment I thought he was going to speak and I steeled myself, I saw his face harden with what he would say; but instead he saw that the light had changed and began driving again, and I let my head fall back against the window, watching the streets as they passed. I had been ready to accuse my father of what he had done, the disgust he had shared with K., and I felt my anger again as I walked through the grass in that undeveloped space I hadn’t known was there. The wastes of Mladost, I had often said about the whole blighted district, but this was a genuine wasteland; people threw their trash down the hill, not just bottles and cans but tires and bricks and, in one spot, a mound of broken concrete that a truck must have poured out from above. Everywhere else I had walked had been dry, the ground beside the pavement parched and hard, but here my shoes sank into the soil. I was thick in the grasses that from a distance had looked like waters, the grasses like a bay and the
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like land, and still I walked without any destination in mind. K. and I remained friends for a while after that day, but we never had another night like that first; we were more reserved with each other, we didn’t speak for hours on end anymore, or with the same freedom. Over the next weeks he called me less often, and when I called him he was almost never home. He had met a girl, he said, and when we did speak he spoke about her, he told me every word they said to each other, every gesture they made. As he cataloged his feelings I tried to meet him as I always had in his words, but I couldn’t now, they were like a territory he receded into and that excluded me. He told me about every victory and frustration, the teasing games she played, how she made him wait for everything he wanted, and how even her delays delighted him, so long as he was sure that they would end. But increasingly as the weeks passed K. was frustrated by a delay beyond their control, by his mother’s vigilance, her denial of the privacy they craved. She was always watching them, K. said, she insisted his door remain open, they could be interrupted at any time; and they couldn’t go to her house, either, her father was even more strict, there they couldn’t even kiss; and it was winter now, even if they could find a suitable place outside, secluded, romantic, it was impossible, it was bitterly cold. If they had cars it would be different, he said, when you have a car you always have privacy, but we didn’t have cars, we were still too young to drive. It was after this inventory of impossibilities that he told me he thought I could help him, if I didn’t mind, as of course I didn’t; I was grateful he would ask me for help, it would bring us closer again, I thought. I would do anything for him, I said, and what he asked was nothing, just that I come to his house and be present, simply be there with him and his girlfriend in his room. His mother wouldn’t be so vigilant then, they would have some uninterrupted time, and if they weren’t quite alone it would be the next best thing. I was his best friend, he said. And she wouldn’t mind either, the girl he said now that he loved; he had told her everything about me and she wanted to meet me, he said, she understood why I had to be there, she wanted it as much as he did. Please, he said again, though I had already agreed, the repetition a kind of courtesy; of course I would help him, I said, in this as in everything. And so the following weekend I met K.’s girlfriend, about whom I had heard so much I felt I already knew her, though we were still awkward and reserved with each other when we met in the kitchen of K.’s house. His mother handed us our drinks and made a general fuss of welcome, while of course all we wanted was to be left alone, to claim our privacy, which I anticipated with eager dread and for which K. I knew was simply eager. He fidgeted in his seat, glancing first at me and then at her, holding my gaze though he didn’t hold hers, as though he couldn’t bear to look at her for long. I was safer, he could share with me what he felt, and if this wasn’t the intimacy we had known or that I craved it was still a kind of intimacy, which I could be part of even if it wasn’t exactly mine. He drummed his fingers on the table, he shuffled his feet beneath it. We had already introduced ourselves, K.’s girlfriend and I; she was slight and blond and unremarkably pretty, smiling at me with her big teeth. I had resisted liking her but I did like her, she was kind and wanted my friendship, she had heard so much, she said, she had been waiting so long to meet me. Her name was K., which was something they joked about, their sharing of the initial: K. and K., they said, laughing, making a kind of music of their names, K. and K. They already had jokes of their own, which made them laugh even in front of K.’s mother, who laughed at them too. Even in her presence it was clear what they felt for each other, their feelings were bright and open, sure of their place; if there were certain obstacles to be overcome they were just for show, scenery for a drama everyone would applaud. Even their parents would applaud it, they only pretended to disapprove, when what they really felt was indulgence and pride and the sweetness of youth, their own youth that they could remember and relive and sanction. K.’s mother finally allowed us upstairs, though she admonished us as well, telling me to keep an eye on things, to make them behave; she was trusting me, she said, pointing her finger at me jokingly, though she wasn’t joking, I thought, and I said Yes, ma’am, as though I too were part of the rightness of the world. We walked up the narrow corridor of the stairs in single file, K.’s girlfriend first and then K. and then I, and once we were out of sight their hands reached out for each other. As I walked behind them I felt an excitement that was deep and unsettling and, alongside this, a dread that increased as we neared K.’s room. I paused, as if to weigh what I felt, but when K.’s voice called out for me I hurried up the final stairs, turning the corner to see him at the door looking for me quizzically. Come on, he said, still eager, more eager now, and then his face broke into a grin and I forgot my dread. I moved past him into the small room where K. already sat on the bed, crossing and recrossing her legs. I moved toward the only other seat, the wooden chair at K.’s desk, but he stopped me, asking me to wait a minute as he closed the door, or didn’t close it, exactly, which his mother had forbidden, but left it as little ajar as he dared. Then he asked me to sit in front of it, if I didn’t mind; since the door opened into the room I could make sure they wouldn’t be surprised, I might hear his mother coming and I could take my time getting up, delaying her while they composed themselves. Again he apologized, he knew it was an imposition, I would have to sit on the floor; but of course I didn’t object, I welcomed it, it was a service I could provide. And also it meant that I could watch them, since with my back to the door I would face his bed. I had never been in his room before, which was unremarkable, any teenager’s room, with books and his boxy computer and posters of soccer stars on the walls. The only object in it of any interest at all was the bed on which they sat, the two K.s, which was unmade, the sheets tangled at its foot where he had kicked them off, and I remembered with sudden sharpness the heat of his body beside me as we slept. We talked for a while, K. wanted to get to know me, she said, and she drew me out, but as she and I talked K. was silent. He was frustrated, I realized, he didn’t want us to talk; but K. insisted, when I fell silent she drew me out again, asking about my family and my school, about stories she had heard, things she had learned from K. I was stung that he had told her so much, that he had used my stories as a way to strengthen his bond with her: they were secrets we had shared, and now they were secrets he shared with her. She kept talking, making K. wait, which was the point of her questions; it was a way to hold him off, one of the games they played. Finally K. got up from the bed, he went to the stereo on a shelf above the desk and turned on some music, not loud, not with the intention of covering noise but to cover the absence of noise, the absence of talk, which he put a stop to when he sat back down on his bed and placed his hand on K.’s thigh, leaning in and pressing his mouth to hers. She didn’t resist him, anything but; she relaxed and allowed him to lean her back against the wall. As they kissed each other I felt something twist in me, something that made me look quickly away to the posters pinned inert to the walls, but I couldn’t look away for long, again and again I was drawn back to the sight of them on the bed. I didn’t want them to catch me looking but there was no need to worry, their eyes were closed, they were entirely engrossed in each other. I was surprised to see that though K. had toyed and delayed she was leading the action now; it was her hand that dropped into his lap and as I saw it my excitement deepened, my excitement and my dread both. They were still kissing each other, their lips hadn’t parted though now K.’s hand was at his belt; all her nervousness was gone, replaced with expertise, or what looked like expertise as she worked to undo it with a single hand. She knew how to please him, I thought as her hand slipped into his jeans, where I could see it moving as she touched him, and could see his erection as well, the shape of it against the cloth. I couldn’t stand it suddenly, being in that room with their bodies and the passion joining them at the mouths, I wanted to be anywhere else, though I still couldn’t look away. I don’t think I had let myself realize until then what I wanted or how much I wanted it. Finally they stopped kissing, K. pulled her mouth away and whispered something in his ear and then lowered her head to his crotch, using both her hands to unbutton his jeans before she placed her mouth where her hand had been. I pulled my knees up and hugged them against my chest. I couldn’t see anything, she had turned her head so that her hair hung down like a veil, but I watched frozen as K. put one of his hands on her head and then dropped it to her shoulder, gripping her there. I looked at K.’s face then and saw that he was watching me, that he had seen me watching them and was waiting for me to look up. He caught me and held my gaze without welcome or warmth or any hint of what we had shared, and my sense of having violated something, of having looked where I shouldn’t have faded, as I understood that this was what he wanted me to see all along, that I was there not as guard but as audience. I was there to see how different from me he was, how free of the foulness my father had shown him; and now that I had seen it, I knew our friendship had run its course. He closed his eyes then, he gave himself over and with a quick breath sucked between his teeth let his head fall back against the wall. He knew I was watching and he let me watch. It was like a parting gift, I thought as I kept watching his face and the movements it made, it looked almost as if he were in pain. I was in pain too, and almost without thinking I let my hand drop between my legs and gripped myself hard. I’ve sought it ever since, I think, the combination of exclusion and desire I felt in his room, beneath the pain of exclusion the satisfaction of desire; sometimes I think it’s the only thing I’ve sought. I had been walking away from the base of the hill, into that declivity or bay where all the runoff from the surrounding districts must have run, so that despite the dryness everywhere else the ground here was a morass, I was mired in roots and mud. I couldn’t get across, I realized, I was ankle-deep in it already, I had ruined my shoes. I turned back to the base of the hill I had climbed down and continued to walk there, skirting the mud as best I could. It was still hot though the height of the day had passed, the sun beat down but less insistently now. There was no pavement where I walked, no concrete or steel, and it was quiet, there was no human noise at all. I had been thinking for a long time of K. and it wasn’t anger I felt for him; if he had been cruel I could understand it, he had been a child, he had reached for what he needed. There was a copse of trees ahead and I aimed for it, quickening my pace, wanting to be out of the sun; I felt the tightness and warmth of my skin now where it had burned, and even the weaker late-afternoon light was painful. As I drew nearer I became aware of a sound, of movement first and then of water, of water flowing swiftly, and soon I could see it too, a light among the trees, a broad low stream sliding shallow over rock. I was surprised to find it here, so close to the