Whitechurch (20 page)

For nothing, and from nowhere, it comes out.

“Pauly?” I say into the cold air.

“Ah, Oakley,” she says sadly. She gets a wrinkled-up look, like she’s trying hard to come up with a better answer than the truth. She shakes her head.

I suppose I’m not really surprised. But I can’t suppress an involuntary heavy sigh. “Ah, Pauly.”

Lilly veers.

“What are you doing?” I ask from the sidewalk as she comes up to the large natural oak door of the church. “Suddenly you got an urge to pray?”

Lilly pulls keys out of her pocket. You can hear the bang of the tumblers of the biggest lock in town clear to the other end of the town. Lilly has the run of the place. She does this and that, polishing and sweeping and the like, and so the church is at her disposal. I find something cool and powerful and sexy about this, and love to visit her there, especially when the church is empty and she is sweeping and the hard bristle broom makes a loud, echo-y scratching sound that could just as easily be a steam locomotive if you close your eyes.

“Suddenly I do got an urge to pray,” Lilly says. “That okay with you?” She evanesces.

“Can’t mess with a person’s religion, I guess,” I say, following into the church.

I close the door behind me to find myself in near-total darkness. I listen, know Lilly is in there, but the feathery sound she makes could just as easily be a mouse crossing the floor.

“You are a daring young man, Oakley-doakley,” she calls out from the creepy dark.

“Am I?”

“Yes you are. He gets jealous enough when you’re just dating me, but now you’re in the church, in the middle of the night … that’s like, his big fantasy. He’s gonna see red. And he’s gonna kick your ass.”

This is an old joke, Pauly being jealous of me and Lilly. The oldest joke we have. There was a time when it was true followed by a time when it wasn’t, then a time when it was. We have all said it and denied it so many times, the thing has grown all serpentine and swirled in on itself to where nobody even knows anymore. So it works best as a joke.

“Where are you?” I ask.

She doesn’t say anything.

“You could turn on a light. I don’t know this place like you do. You want me to hurt myself?”

One small light snaps to life halfway up to the altar. “No,” Lilly says easily, “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

It’s not even a light that is actually inside the main body of the church. It is spilling through the glass door of the small private worship room used for baptisms, small funerals, and when it’s too cold to heat the cavernous church for a congregation of twelve on a February morning. But the pinkish light spilling out of it is enough, reaching everywhere and attaching itself to the white granite of the walls so that they all have a low incandescence of their own. Quiet, everywhere light. The visual equivalent of a hum.

Lilly crosses the width of the church, turns at the center aisle and walks toward the back, toward frozen me who can’t help but just have a long look at the grace of her.

Who is she? I’ve known her forever, but not really, really.

Who is she? I’ve known all this, you know, for a long time.

Who is she? I don’t know a damn thing.

When she finally finally reaches me, I’m shaking, with fear and other fine things.

“Remember when you were in here the other day, and I told you you could really let loose in here when the meter wasn’t running?”

I nod. Good job, Oak.

“Remember then you couldn’t think of anything?”

I nod. True, I couldn’t think of a thing then.

“Well
I
did.”

I have kissed Lilly before.

But not this. No.

Lilly’s top lip is against my top lip, and her bottom lip is against my bottom lip, and our mouths are open possibly an inch. Our hands are hanging at our sides until I take hers and squeeze them as hard as I can. Breath, we are exchanging, rather than tongues or motion. I close my eyes even though that is the absolute last thing I want to do. She begins to move her head from side to side as if she’s saying no but no is not what she’s saying. She’s creating small perfect frictions with her two separated lips rubbing so lightly my two separated lips.

“I use my imagination quite a bit,” she says thoughtfully, into me.

There is a pause, as if I should be adding my thoughts on the subject. I don’t believe I can.

“Anyway,” Lilly says, “I think you almost have to, growing up in a place like this. You need to use your imagination fully. And I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

“I worry,” I say, and the words take me by surprise.

Lilly kisses me. “Don’t.”

“About imagination. It makes trouble.”

I kiss Lilly.

“You don’t believe that, Oakley.”

“Well, as much as I believe anything …”

“Really? Well believe this. As hard as I push, and wherever my mind goes, you know what I cannot imagine, Oakley?”

“I can’t imagine, Lil.”

“I can’t imagine you ever not being my friend, no matter what happens.”

I try to think of one more evasive, glib thing to say. One more is all I’ll need.

I haven’t got one more.

Lilly takes off her coat, then, seeing me somewhat paralyzed, helps me off with mine. “Okay, Lilly” is what I say, maybe to what she’s doing, maybe to the words, certainly to the truth of the whole situation. As she sort of tugs down the jacket, pulling it from the sleeves and letting it drop to the floor behind me, I lean into her, burrowing into her neck.

“Should we be doing this here, Lilly? Should we be doing it
anywhere
?”

“You know what I think, Oak? I think it is very very much time that what you should do should be decided by
you.
And I’m going to do likewise.”

Pauly now tries to climb into my mind. Still one creepy unit, the three of us. I should be guilty here. I want to be guilty. It will make me feel better, to be guilty.

I grab Lilly’s face very firmly in my hands, turn it toward me. She kisses me on the corner of my worried, downturned mouth. I reach up and touch her hair, looking at it, as if I’ve never felt hair before, because hers looks and feels totally foreign now.

“I should go, maybe,” I say. “I should walk you home. How many guys is it gonna take to get you walked home tonight anyway?”

“I’ve spent a lot of hours in here, Oak, and I’ve thought about this as much as anyone who ever sat in these pews.”

“I’ve sat in these pews. I don’t know what was I thinking about.”

“And I’ve seen the church in its underwear if you know what I mean. I have respect, y’know, and I appreciate what it means to worship, if you know how, and I think that most people don’t really know how.”

“I don’t think I ever knew how, Lil.”

“And I know what ‘sacred’ means.”

“And I really wish I did. Pauly, he was always
trying
, at least, but I never knew what I was doing….”

We sit down on the red carpeted floor, hip-to-hip and facing opposite directions. A small tilt of the head puts us once more face-in-face.

“Pauly hasn’t got a clue what ‘sacred’ means,” Lilly says. “But you do.”

“I do?” I ask, closing one eye on her.

A quick small breath comes out of her.

“You look like Pauly right now,” she says.

“I was just about to tell you the same thing.”

I do the leaning, then press my mouth against hers just as I finish speaking. I adore this feeling, more than anything I have ever felt, the sensation of talking right up against Lilly’s mouth, of talking into Lilly. I don’t need anything else. This is
it
for me, and all other parts of this may be great, but I know they will not be greater than this. They will not need to be.

G
OTTA GET UP
,

PAULY
says right into my ear.

Right now,

gotta get up,

gotta show ya something.

Damn, Pauly, I say,

rolling away from him,

propping myself up

and staring,

like a thing cornered,

eyes wide but blurred.

Pauly’s eyes no better.

Hasn’t been to bed, and

wet red rims

halo dilated pupils.

The rank of all the muck that’s inside him, the peculiar chemical hormonal stew,

that always comes with him

when things are happening,

what he likes to call

desperation perspiration

fills my apartment,

overpowers even the coffee scent.

You don’t have to show me nothing right now,

Pauly.

Pauly snatches the bed covers and tears them

away.

Yes I do,

right now.

It might not be there later.

Maybe, I say tentatively,

pulling my blankets back up over me,

you don’t have to show me at all.

Maybe you could just tell me about it,

or maybe even not.

Pauly goes all calm.

I could just dress you myself,

but that would be kind of undignified

for both of us,

don’t you think?

Pass me my pants over there.

Pauly talks, sitting on the end of the bed, while

I dress.

Tell me about last night, he says.

You look like you had a good

last night.

I snap up, zip up, pull on my boots without

socks.

What does a look like that look like?

Tell me all, says Paul.

Come on, Oak.

Pauly is no longer

grim and cryptic.

C’mon, c’mon,

guys tell.

Friends tell.

Decent folks don’t.

Decent folks don’t, he repeats,

and is big-time amused

by the sound.

As I reach the bottom

of the stairs,

Pauly comes up behind me,

grabs me in a hug

that carries us

right out onto the frosted sidewalk.

Pauly’s chin is resting on my shoulder,

as if we were one

two-headed beast.

Thank you. He says.

But why don’t you tell me anyway.

I tell
you
everything.

If I even have a thought,

I tell you about it.

Whether I want you to or not.

Exactly.

No secrets between us,

ever.

I’m taking you to see my surprise right now, am I not?

Which I have a strong feeling I don’t want to

see.

I pull away, banging Paul hard in the chin with

my shoulder.

Paul lays a hand on his chin.

Which way are we going,

and how the hell did you get in my house

anyway?

We’re going that way,

toward the train station,

and your place is the easiest building

in all of Whitechurch

to get into.

Sometimes I let myself in

when you’re sleeping,

I come in,

don’t even wake you up,

stare at you a bit,

then I go out again.

Just to do it.

Lie.

No lie.

We walk down Main,

into the crux of the town,

cut up Station Street to the north.

Up the hills again,

the famed seven hills of Whitechurch.

Up one of them anyway.

Until we have reached

over the north lip of the bowl

and down again,

where the land flattens

and the Victorian station rises

with its rusted iron lamps

still lit,

its bleached wooden platform

empty and exposed.

We stand there, freezing.

I’m freezing anyway,

Pauly shows no sign.

As we look all around

the dead-Sunday-morning depot,

looking like we’ve seen it look

a billion other times.

This isn’t what you wanted to show me, Paul.

Paul shakes his head,

pulls me by the jacket.

We walk out onto the platform,

jump down onto the tracks.

We cross the tracks,

enter the immediate, dense woods

of maple and fir,

shocks of white birch and

blurs of blue spruce.

We travel on

for another hundred yards or so

until Pauly stops dead,

and starts growling

like a dog.

What? I say, as this is strange stuff

even for Paul,

and rush up beside him to look.

I look while Pauly growls.

Ah … no, Paul …

The words barely get airborne

as the life

drains from my belly.

The Stranger is lying,

in a spot

where campfires often burn.

There is a broad circle of round white stones ringing him entirely,

and another

leaning against his cheek.

There is one visible injury on him

but one

seems to be plenty.

It is impossible to see

a left eye,

in the socket

pressed against the rock.

I drop to a seat on a large stone,

grabbing two handfuls

of my own hair

for, I don’t know,

support,

grounding.

Lilly didn’t come home last night,

Paul says,

flatly informational.

I hung by her house till four thirty this morning.

I cannot let go of the tight grip of the hair, or the head and hands

will both shake

insanely.

You knew, Paul.

Never once asked her

not to.

I was just testing, he says, again, sounding almost rational,

as if he’s surprised

there is any confusion

over this.

Maybe you should stop

testing

people

Pauly.

Maybe it’s fucking time

you stopped.

He shakes his head.

That’s how you find things out.

The only way to really know

anything.

He gestures,

with an upturned open hand,

at the Red-Headed Stranger.

A guy doesn’t do

that kind of a thing.

This guy here,

he’s got no damn respect.

You just don’t come along …