You (You #1)(97)

She shakes her head, no. “I hunt thrift stores and buy random college shirts,” she says, proud. “It’s sort of an ongoing social experiment. You know, I see how the world treats me based on what school I’m representing.”

I tear off the slip and she signs, fast, messy. I’ve never bagged books so slowly in my life and I blurt, “I’m Joe.”

She swallows. “I’m, um, I’m Amy Adam.”

“Amy Adams.”

“No s!” She grabs the bag and flies. “Thanks, Joe. Have a good one!”

I want to run outside and take her home to you. I want you to know that she came onto me, that she talked to me about God. I run to the door but she’s gone. The phone rings. I answer. Is it her? No. It’s a bank. They want to know about a recent transaction. The card she used was stolen, apparently. I don’t rat her out but the phone call kills my buzz; that’s what I get for flirting. I check my phone; still no response from you. And somehow the absence of a response from you is a signed permission slip to be bad. I search the Internet for Amy Adam, almost as a dare for you to get back to me.

It’s virtually impossible to find anything because of the actress, Amy Adams, and Ethan texts me a photo of him and Blythe on Coney Island. I don’t respond. I take my time getting home and I don’t need to check my phone for a response from you, because if you were responding to me, your response would interrupt one of my fruitless searches: “Amy Adam New York”

“Amy Adam not an actress”

“Amy Adam sweatshirt”

“Amy Adam Facebook”

“Amy Adam SUNY Purchase” (You never know. . . .) I walk home and plod up the stairs and I check my phone; still no response. I hear something from inside my apartment; you’re here. I smell pumpkin wafting from my apartment; you’ve been baking. I hear singing come from my apartment and I smile. You’re no Amy Adam. I love you for being off-key. I was wrong to doubt you and I knock twice on the door. There is a response, you cry out for me to wait.

You open the door and wow. This must be your second home because you brought the robes. You’re in yours (naked underneath) and you baked a pie (pumpkin underneath). You tell me I have twenty-five seconds to get naked or get into my robe. I pick you up, my impish little wonder, and you kiss me; you respond. You are so proud of your spontaneous surprise. You admit that your building was off-limits because of roaches and resultant exterminators. You decided to turn a bad thing into a good thing, a surprise. I eat your pie and I eat your pussy and when I get up in the middle of the night to brush my teeth, my toothbrush is wet with your saliva.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. And I am.





45


I don’t know what you put in that pumpkin pie and you laugh that it was right out of a can. But the pie and the robes did something to us, for us. The next morning, I wake you up with a kiss and you embrace me. You beam. “Remember when I baked you a pie?”

“I remember when I baked you a pie,” I say and you love it when I mimic you. You kiss me and we take our time with each other and you are full of new ideas for my hands. I love how you’re not shy. I love how you tell me what you want. Your imagination should be bottled and stored and studied and I’ve never had you like this. You’re so upright and your legs are intertwined with mine. Good God, what a fit, what a fuck and we collapse. “Wow,” I say.

“Yeah,” you say and you roll over to me and ask me if I want leftover pie and I ask you where you learned to fuck like that. You blush. You are shy, perfect. You pull a T-shirt over your head and when you’re halfway out the bedroom door you run back to me and smother me with kisses and touches.

I am the luckiest man in the world and while you’re putting pie in the microwave I’m erasing my search history in my phone. You’d never snoop in my phone; you respect my privacy and you trust me. But I don’t want my phone tarnished with Amy Adam or Amy Adams or any other girl in the world. You sing out from the kitchen, “I keep forgetting. I started one of those stories in A River Runs Through It.”

And you’re reading my books after all and I like the sound of you in my kitchen so much that I can’t wait for you to come back. I get out of bed, naked. I walk into the kitchen and pick you up and set you on the counter and spread your legs and nothing stops you from extolling the virtues of my tongue, my lips, not the noise from the street, not the hum of the microwave, not the fighting upstairs, not the beep from the microwave. When I have you in my mouth, you are mine and mine alone. You have never cum this hard in your life; I know it, I feel it. Something ferocious and far away inside of you has let me in at last. You stroke my ears with your fingers and thank me and I pull you off the counter and we settle onto the couch with our pie and A River Runs Through It. You read me a sentence you like and I interrupt you.

“You want to stay here again tonight?”

You hesitate, but only for a second. And then you smile. “Sure!”

We shower together behind the yellow police tape and I wash your hair and you kiss my chest. We get dressed together and the future is now, here.

“Hey, Beck.”

“Hey, Joe.”

“What do you think about moving in here?”

You smile at me. You stop buttoning your silk blouse and you walk across the room and the sun follows you because all plants lean toward the sun, you. You gaze up at me and I kiss you and you whisper, “It’s only my first year, Joe. Let me get my MFA, you know? I need that to be my focus.”