Calm and the Other One

With a final sweep of a paddle and a gentle heave over the last of the shoreline waves, the raft that is Billy Budd's dream existence drifts quietly and bumps into the edge of his consciousness, catches with a wooden creak, and settles into the earth.  His eyelids flutter, and all at once he feels like himself again.  He at first can only hear the world: the muffled rubbing and clicking of the washing machine, footfalls on the floor above, car horns, and the wheezing lungs just a foot away.  But the physical awareness of life soon blooms in his neck and arms.  He begins to consider the sluggishness and discomfort of late rising; how he would've sooner made coffee and crawled back into bed, like usual, to wait and smell it brew.  Billy Budd gathers his bedsheets to his chest sightlessly and tucks the whole mess to his left side, generously granting warmth to the huddling, exposed flesh of his bedmate. 
         Now he opens his eyes.  And he is revelling in the coldness, as well as all the soothing, focused aches and pains of autumn in Brooklyn.  After the feeling returns to his lower body, he swings his legs off the edge of the bed, thighs still stuck from early-morning sweat, and pulls his torso over his hips by way of fistfuls of bedding.  The heels of Billy Budd's feet pad onto the dirty fibers of a cheap rug.  He massages his face with damp, unwieldy hands, wipes sleep from the inside corners of his eyes, and rises to his feet.  As his legs pop and snap, he walks methodically to the foot of the bed and rubs the ankle of the still-sleeping Alex.  "'Tis the early showing today, hm?" he whispers up, up to where a head would be. 
         When a bleary-eyed, blonde face, with chapped lips and loose eyelids, emerges from the rumpled lip of bedsheet, Billy Budd grins.  He turns his body as if to walk away.  A ready pair of pressed trousers hangs off a nearby chair.  "God," Alex gargles with Ks in his throat.  "Bloody― . . . ―early."  He fumbles under the sheets for a second, tosses them to the side, and reaches to the floor for his clothes.  Billy Budd winces and pulls his right leg into the pants, leaning on the space where a person's legs once stretched. 
         He clenches his teeth and exhales with his head raised, searching for words.  "I told you last night of your show and how early we'd need to've gotten up," he wonders, buttoning, "and you promised you wouldn't swear."  Alex zips the fly of his jeans and nods. 
         "App―"  A breath.  "Eh―Sorry."  He looks up and sees Billy Budd still in the doorway, pulling on a wifebeater.  They finish their tasks and look at each other.  Billy Budd raises his eyebrows at Alex and rotates his feet in shuffling steps toward the doorway.

--

The summer the pair moved to the States from Brighton, nearly the hottest ever recorded, they couldn't help but feel dangerous and unsavory – for Alex, Billy Budd knows, danger was a shadow; for him it was a twinkle in the eye – pushing out the door marked "MAINTENANCE" and "DO NOT USE" straight into the golden hustle of Cypress Avenue.  He almost always smirked and brushed away Alex's collar to see his expression, but he either stared straight ahead or turned to Billy Budd and stared at him with a quizzical irritation.  Now, two years three months later, neither acknowledge the potential hazards, occupational and ephemeral though they may be, of disobeying the signs.  Bypassing the front door and the nearly unnecessary presence of Willoughby is still, for Alex, a mere convenience; for Billy Budd it has been significant, it's been a symbol.  Of what, he has never considered.  But, whether knowing the symbol or not, he has always been able to feel symbolism at work.    Emerging from the darkness of an apartment to the sunshine and sweetness of a wide, loud, and busy street: that act is primal and good.
         Alex pushes the door open savagely and holds it for Billy Budd in a tenuous way, as his legs keep moving forward and his fingers slip off the edge of the metal.  Alex feels the cold first, and Billy Budd, had he been perceptive enough to notice the speed and ferocity with which his boyfriend shoved his hands into the carmans of his hooded sweatshirt, might've turned back to get their coats.  But he is out, and the humble, nameless maintenance door bangs and clicks behind them.  It seems, to Alex, as if they're locked in now, rather than let out, as if the wind slithering through the streetside maple trees, the distant noise of 278, and the smell of the East River are all parts of some sadistic virtual reality.  Squinting, holding palms to eyebrows, they immediately gravitate toward the street, scanning for yellow.  The Cypress Avenue sidewalk is lonely at eight in the morning.  The bitterness of October weather matches the sick crunch of leaves under Alex's dress shoes and Billy Budd's boots.  There is nothing but parked cars and riderless bicycles out now, so they decide to keep walking north toward Flushing.  Sedans creep up and drive by at two seemingly different speeds.  Billy Budd walks between the edge of the curb and the pocked, abused holes where tree trunks are planted.  When a municipal trash can or a street sign gets in the way, he flounces and spins around the nearest parking meter or tree like Gene Kelly and inevitably looks to see whether anyone has noticed.  Alex finds an index card in his back pocket on which he has written "ChAOS; SuffeRiNG" and an arrow toward the word "ART" in ball point pen, a pen that he stole, albeit mistakenly, from an Irish hotel.
         "Why, there's one," Billy Budd observes excitedly.  And he moves in careful steps around a parked Nissan Altima to step into the street in front of the taxi.  Because of his height and the roaring vitality in the crease of his forehead, it is a rare driver that will not pull over.  Alex, also a healthy young man, though not the driver's object, follows and opens the car door when it stops.  The tires squeak and a hiss burns from the exhaust pipe.  He climbs in, leaves a weak rooker on the inside of the window till Billy Budd can make it inside, then bounces the message "Uh, take us to the Safe-T Gallery, please . . . on Front" off of the ceiling and toward the bald head behind the wheel, which nods jerkingly, almost as if the street name were condescending to his knowledge of the city.  It is the first time today, excluding their few minutes outside, that the two men find themselves so close together.  The radio is on – it's too early now for the cabdriver to annoy any fares, no doubt – and the cross traffic is loud.  As a certain long and fast wind audibly ruffles the fallen leaves, the taxi slips back into its lane, and the speedometer rolls up to normal.  Alex looks out the window at the gray and green of nature supplanted by city, as Billy Budd looks at the head rest in front of him.  The sides of their knees rub in the middle of the bench seat, and the splashes of light and shadow created and reshaped by the smears on the windows fall on both their laps.  The taxi approaches Flushing Avenue and drives through a yellow light.  Pedestrians and moving cars pop up suddenly after the driver turns left and moves into thicker, eastbound traffic.
         As they stop and go four or five miles down the length of the road and as the driver fidgets and mutters minced oaths at stragglers on the crosswalks, Alex's eyes don't drift from the window.  Still, he is inside the auto, and he knows where he'll end up.

--

Speaking to a stocky, rubbery woman with long eyelashes and with his back to his own artwork, having to point behind his body like a weatherman, Alex finds himself growing bored and angry and thirsty for something he can't drink.  "Aye, yes it was, in some respects."  The woman nods, satisfied by the affirmation of her queried statement.  She continues to look at it, following the drips of paint from finish to start, but her attention is obviously waning.  Seeing the attention span of a grown woman in this way, as Alex does, is very nearly pathetic.  It is as if, having exhausted a balloon, a clown must be observed holding the limp detritus in his hand.  An empty plaything.  He swivels patiently and folds his left arm behind his back like a tour guide or a lift operator.  It is now his turn to speak, but he must remain as polite as possible.  With his open right hand, he gestures vaguely at the four corners of the canvas.  "That is true, Ms. Kittredge, but I do believe each like quarter of the painting here represents a distinct aspect of that experience."  He is about to smack his lips and call out, like a bolshy talented salesman or people person, the words "For instance" and then govoreet about something else, but he sees the woman swivel her torso to another artwork.  He swallows the words gratefully and moves to take her hand.  "I am very pleased that you enjoy my work.  Thank you for coming today."  She smiles, accepts the handshake, and walks stiffly away.
         Touching Alex's shoulder in a gesture of encouragement, Billy Budd smiles warmly and looks to the painting his boyfriend stands in front of.  A beautiful thing; with an intense yellow background, like a crayon color called Mustard.  It has four parts, each a chaotic helix of dripped paint, orange, blue, gray, and white.  It is Alex's least favorite and his most.  A more curious sort of observer might ask why artists hate their best work, or why patrons love their worst.  A new customer circling the canvas in superfluous concentration and smiling expectantly at the artist stirs Billy Budd to walk away.  He's been moving to traverse the gallery – the lavatory is on the opposite side – for nearly three minutes, but between the way the paintings are set and the way clusters of people sprout up, the going has been slow.  On the white gallery space wall, there are huge, black Courier letters that read "DeLarge."
         Excusing himself again and again to the same comfortable fat men in business suits, Billy Budd finally meets the lavatory.  Automatic lights, controlled by motion sensor, flick on and begin to buzz as he shuffles around the tortuous painted brick entranceway.  Inside, a man is gurgling and banging the wall angrily.  The room is cold, but with a hotly sulfurous smell from the pipes.  The first stall, in a row on the right side, has legs inside it and a door that distorts and glints and squeaks its hinges after every third blow.  Billy Budd tiptoes cautiously, staring in macabre fascination at the man's legs, and stays close to the nearest wall of hand dryers.  The banging stops, and the man inside either uncrosses his legs or moves his arms in some frantic way.
         "Hooda fuck turned on the lights?" he asks, in a level-headed and calm way, but with a certain hint of childish excitement and precariousness.  His Ts and Ss came out wet, and there is a sound like an elbow drawn across a chin.
Billy Budd wipes his brow.  He is moving his legs and rubbing his hands nervously, and a cold air is filling his lungs.  "I'm sorry—"  Would one call a negro like this sir?  "I'm sorry, sir.  Are you all right?"
         There is a silence, a frightening one, the first moment each of them knows the other is there.  The man exhales.  "Is that you, Willy Harris, you son of a bitch."  The pitch and intonation of a question do not exist; at the end hangs either a period, a comma, or a colon.  This lack of direction frightens Billy Budd, and he makes no move to reply.  The man inside the stall raises himself off the ground somehow, and the seat of the toilet snaps down.  Billy Budd raises his arms awkwardly.  "Because I'm 'onna come out there and kick your ass.  And take back all my goddamned money."  The stall door clicks with an echo and rattles open.  A tall black man steps out and raises a finger to the shivering form leaning between the sink and the wall.  He hovers next to the door, out of balance, looking stupidly out.  "I didn't know—" he begins, "that you was a fag, Willy.  A fag."  The man pinches his nose absent-mindedly and looks at the mirror across the room, then over to what the mirror reflects.  He puts his finger down and swings his left leg out to protect himself from falling.
         "Y- you l- l- look," says Billy Budd, more as something one should say in a crisis than as any actual pre-emptive warning or order.  There is nothing else; he swallows and stands up a bit straighter. 
         For the next silent thirty seconds, he puts out a nervy hand whenever the negro wobbles, covers his mouth whenever the negro sneezes or coughs, and reels back in horror when the negro finally decides to charge.  As his jeans fall down and the wrapped tail of his flannel shirt emerges from his waist band, the man from the bathroom stall bawls out, "Willy, you look like white people.  Give me my money!"  And he hops forward on thin, sclerotic legs and heaves himself forward.  Billy Budd jerks his forearms up and bashes his attacker's face with his elbow.  On the ground, the puke-green linoleum where water and piss drip from the urinals, he straddles the negro's chest and fits his hands all the way around his neck, where an adam's apple bobs and sticky liquid beads under his chin. 
         Extending his back like a preening chick, he leans his full weight slowly – as if to savor the moment – into the man's jugular vein.  The negro spits up, first as an attack, then naturally, up straight into Billy Budd's eyes and onto his forehead.  Calmly waiting, letting the liquid drip back down, Billy Budd closes his eyes.  Veins wriggle out of the dying man's temples and pulse like cords pulled from stubbornly wet sand.  One of the faucets above is dripping.  All of the weight pulled from his hips and thighs and feet is being drawn up and pressed down into Billy Budd's massive hands; the face under him is stricken and violet.  He screams in his throat and curls his back, fetally, to fall down next to the dead man.