Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Aristotle and Dante #2)(29)

We washed up and brushed our teeth and combed our hair using the side mirrors on the truck. Dante spent a lot of time combing his hair with his fingers even though it looked like he never combed it. It was like the breeze was always dancing in his hair.

I sometimes felt like I’d been asleep for a long time—and when I met Dante, I began to wake up, and I began seeing not only him but the mean and terrible and awesome world I lived in. The world was a scary place to live in, and it would always be scary—but you could learn not to be afraid. I guess I had to decide what was more real, the scary things or—or Dante. Dante, he was the most real thing in my world.



* * *



I was leaning against the truck, and Dante was waving his hand in front of my eyes. “Hey, Ari, where are you?”

His question was soft and kind and I pressed my head to his. “In my head.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I was actually thinking about your parents.”

“Wow. That’s kinda nice.”

“Well, your mom and dad are kinda nice.”

He smiled, and he seemed so alive and bright in the sun. I thought of one of Dante’s vinyl albums and I didn’t remember the name of the song and I could hear her clear voice that was full of melancholy and there was some line about the flowers and how they were leaning out for love and how they’d lean that way forever. That was Dante. He was leaning out for love. And I was leaning out for him. But I didn’t know about that forever thing.

What was forever?

Dante took my hand and we walked along a path, and everything was quiet and we could hear a stream in the distance. “I like it here,” Dante said. “It’s so people-less.”

“I don’t think that’s a word.”

“I don’t think so either. But you get the message.”

“Yeah,” I said.

I don’t think we were really looking at the landscape, and I don’t think either of us cared where we were going, and it didn’t matter. We were just walking down a quiet, lonely path that we had never walked before, and even though it was lonely, it didn’t seem lonely—and it didn’t seem to matter that there was nothing familiar about the path because I wasn’t afraid. Maybe I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. But I was thinking that Dante just might be afraid, so I asked him, “Are you afraid of getting lost?”

“No,” he said.

“I don’t know where the hell we’re headed.”

“Do you care?”

“Not really.”

“I don’t really care either. And besides, it’s impossible to be lost when I’m with you.”

“No. It just means that if I’m lost, you’re lost too.”

“So, if I’m lost with you, I don’t feel lost—so I’m not lost.” He laughed. His laugh, just then, reminded me of the sound of the leaves as the wind blew right past them. “See, we shouldn’t be afraid of getting lost because it isn’t possible to be lost because: We. Are. Holding. Hands.”

I just grinned. Yeah, we were holding hands, and he was discovering hands, my hands, and he was discovering a country that was named Ari, and I was discovering a country that was Dante. And everything seemed so serene. That was the word.

I remembered Dante on his bed, and me sitting on his big chair as he read the definition for that word from his well-worn dictionary: Calm, peaceful, untroubled, tranquil. “We’re done for, Ari,” he’d said. “Neither one of us are any of those things.”

He was right. Neither he nor I was serene by nature. Me, my head was always cluttered with too many things, and Dante, his head was always creating some kind of art. His eyes were like cameras that took pictures and remembered everything.



* * *



We followed the stream, which formed a small pond, and we both looked at each other and then we laughed. And it was as if we were having a contest to see who could strip their clothes off first. Dante jumped in and yelled, “Fuck! It’s cold.”

I came in after. And it was cold. But I didn’t scream anything. “Ah,” I said. “You call this cold?”

We started splashing each other, and then I found myself holding him as he shivered. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” he said. He leaned into me.

The sun was shining through the small clearing, and I pointed to a big stone at the side of the pond. “Let’s dry off over there.”

We lay on the warm stone until we were dry. And Dante stopped shivering. I lay there, my eyes closed. And then I heard Dante laughing. “Well, here we are, two naked boys. I wonder what my mother would say.”

I opened my eyes and looked over at him. I took him in my arms, and I kissed him. “You’re thinking about your mother? That wasn’t what I was thinking.” And then I kissed him again.

And I kissed him and kissed him. And kissed him.



* * *



We didn’t say a word as we found our way back to our campground. I found myself wondering what he was thinking. And I think he was wondering what I was thinking. But sometimes, you just didn’t have to know these things.

I think Dante wanted to know everything about me. I was glad that today, he didn’t want to know everything.