The Removed(22)

“There’s a lot to be said about owls,” I told him as I waited for him to unlock the door, but he didn’t respond.

We went through the back door into the kitchen, and I followed him into the living room, which was modestly decorated, with a TV and stereo in the corner of the room, pictures of abstract art on the walls and above the fireplace mantel. A red couch, a recliner, a coffee table. Old hardwood floors with Legos, action figures, and various toys. I sat on the sofa while Vin went into another room and returned with a baggie of weed. I watched him roll a joint on the coffee table carefully, sprinkling the weed into the paper and then sealing it. He lit it with his lighter and passed it to me, and we smoked it down. He had two shelves entirely filled with record albums, organized by genre and alphabetized by band name. He was interested in eighties music, bands I had no interest in: Split Enz, Bow Wow Wow, Bowie.

“Why don’t you listen to real rock?” I said to him.

“I do,” he said. “But I like New Wave bands, too. You like Morrissey?”

“You’re kind of a pussy,” I said, and he seemed annoyed. I watched him go through his album sleeves and tell me about them. There was a different story attached to each album, to each song. He told me about his first dance with a girl in sixth grade, about a series of firsts: first kiss, first fuck. First drunk, first acid trip, first party in college. Each album held a special memory. His whole life was contained in the sleeves of those albums. I found his obsession amusing and a little endearing.

Around seven in the evening we stepped out the back door onto the porch and sat on his patio. We drank wine as he talked about his own music. He didn’t ask many questions about me but seemed more interested in himself, his band, and letting me know he was serious about it. I yawned into my wineglass, stoned but invested enough in him that I wanted to take him upstairs to his bed. We fell silent, and I studied his face, long and stolid, unshaven. His nose was thin and his eyes were gleaming and dark. He stared back at me, and because I was stoned, the look felt long and important. Then, abruptly, he stopped looking at me and stared toward the kitchen.

Luka was there, in the light of the house, watching us through the screen door. I’d assumed he was with his mom, especially since we’d been at Vin’s house for what felt like hours, and Vin had made no mention of him. I lit a cigarette and turned in my chair so I could see him better. He was holding a toy in his hand that he kept tapping against his leg as he watched me. For a moment that’s all we did: stare at each other, though it was hard to tell for how long because of the weed. His hair was unkempt, but in a way that looked boyish and cute. He lifted his toy to his face, and I realized it was actually a pair of binoculars. He held them there, staring.

“I see you,” I said.

He opened the door and stepped outside, approaching us slowly, cautious. His mouth was open as he held the binoculars to his eyes, and I could see his little white teeth, his small chin. His skin was olive-colored, his elbows dry and white. Then he lowered the binoculars and looked at me, and I saw something mysterious in his striking eyes, more than sadness, more than loneliness, probing for affection. In this fragile way he searched my own face, curious, looking as gentle and innocent as any boy I had ever seen. Vin introduced me as Colette, his new friend, and I asked Luka what his favorite thing to eat was, and he said ice cream, so I suggested we all go out for ice cream, my treat. With this, I won a smile from him.

As we all went back inside, the living room was flooded with light, though I was still a little stoned. Vin put on his sunglasses and drove us to the ice cream parlor downtown, observing the speed limit. We pulled up to the drive-thru window, and he ordered our ice cream cones from a boy in black-framed glasses, his hair gelled in a very fifties way. His glasses magnified his eyes as he leaned forward out of the window to take our order. On the drive back Vin kept talking about how the boy held an uncanny resemblance to Buddy Holly, but I was turned around in my seat, watching Luka eat his ice cream with a spoon. “I’ve never seen anyone eat an ice cream cone like that,” I told him, and he responded without looking at me: “I like it this way.”

Vin’s weed was really good, better than anything I had smoked in a long time, and it took me a while to come down from my high. After Luka went upstairs to his room, we listened to music in the living room, and Vin began to ramble on again about the bands he had played in. I found much of this boring and asked him to be quiet so I could listen to the music. “Goddamn, that’s sexy,” I said. “Who is this?”

“Sam Cooke.”

He kissed my neck a little, and I closed my eyes, listening to Sam Cooke sing about bringing it on home to me and feeling Vin’s warm breath, his hands. Soon we were kissing.

He said he wanted me to keep hanging out with him. He would make spaghetti for dinner and open another bottle of wine. “So you’ll stay with me,” he said.

“Oh really?” I said.

We went into the kitchen, and he backed me against the counter and kissed me, running his hands over my body. He asked me whether I wanted him, and I said I did. “After Luka’s in bed we’ll go upstairs,” he said. He was handsome, but not a great conversationalist. As he made dinner, he talked about how he wasn’t registered to vote because politics wasn’t his thing. I wondered whether he even knew how he felt on certain issues or if he was a person who simply didn’t care. “I don’t watch the news or pay much attention to what’s going on in the world,” he said. “I get bored so easily with anything political. It’s all shit. Watching the news is all about fear and violence anyway.” He preferred music and movies. He preferred not thinking about the world too much, things like mass shootings, poverty.