The Intruder

“I don’t kiss.” He turned his face away from mine.

I had gotten close enough to smell his minted breath. I faltered back, dragged my eyes away from his mouth, looked around the loft. All was decorated in the muted earth tones of interchangeable, catchall, some-assembly-required modern home décor: couch, coffee table, lamp, computer desk. Ikea, Target, Pottery Barn, Ikea, I checked off in my head. There were holes in the arrangement though: spaces where a chair should have been or a plant, no computer on the computer desk. The only exception to the uniformity was a bookcase that took up one whole wall. It was as tall as the windows from which sunlight poured and bounced off its greasy coffee bean surface. So tall its top shelves would take an expedition to reach. So imposing it dwarfed the rest of the room. The case was only one-eighth full; as if its owner had ambitions of making a literary world tour and then only made it to the first town.

I looked over at the guy. He looked to be about one-eighth literate. Oh well, I didn’t come here to read. Other than that, and the kissing thing, he was perfect. His hair was ___, his body ___, and his face___. You fill in the blanks. One of those guys you see at the bar, the coffee shop or the gym that never sees you.

“Nice bookcase.” I nodded to the wall.

“Yeah.” He backed up a bit. “I usually like to take care of business first.”

“Oh…Oh yeah…well sure, of course.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “It was two-fifty, right?” I dredged wadded bills out of my cargo pants: a couple of fifties, some twenties, tens.

I didn’t usually do this. That’s what they all say, right? But my alimony, oh sorry, spousal maintenance, payments had finished after five years. (Can you believe it? Five years of marriage and five more years paying for the mistake.) So, I had extra money, a reason to celebrate and a…need to celebrate with someone.

“Yes. Two-fifty.” With practiced nonchalance, his hand reached up under his snug, grey t-shirt to scratch his chest, exposing a slash of toned stomach. “That’s what the ad said.” He took the money from my outstretched hand and, not seeming to count it, but counting it still, folded it and slipped it in the back pocket of his low-rise jeans. The transaction completed, he looked up at me with an actor’s glint in his eye and a half smile parting his forbidden lips. He came up to me and put his hands on my chest and then moved them under my jacket, massaging my shoulders.

My head lolled back. Shit! I thought. I forgot to take the Levitra. Not that I’m that old, thirty-two isn’t old, but sometimes when I get nervous I need a little… reassurance. And when I’m paying I want to be reassured.

His hands were still working under my jacket. I eased it off my shoulders and dropped it to the waxed, distressed concrete floor.

“I guess I’m not going anywhere too soon.” I chuckled lamely. At least not for an hour.

The same crooked smile in response. He was two inches shorter than me. Funny he looked taller before. I lifted my hands to his arms as he rubbed my shoulders. My fingers traced the stubbly roughness of his shaven triceps. I brought my hands to his waist and pulled him to me. He pushed back.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he muttered. I tried to look him in the eye but he was staring over my shoulder at a spot on the wall. I turned to see where his eyes were fixed. There was an empty picture hanger on the tan brick wall. Cobwebs hung below it moving silently in a breeze I didn’t feel. When I turned back he had already picked up my jacket, draped it on the couch and was moving up the concrete steps next to the bookcase. I hurried to catch up.

“I’m Edward by the way.” I said to his ass as we climbed the stairs.

“Yeah, that’s what you said on the phone.” He didn’t turn his head.

“What…what’s your name?” No answer.

At the top of the stairs he turned and looked me in the eye. “You can call me Mike.”

Predictably, there was a bedroom at the top of the stairs. Or rather, the top of the stairs was a bedroom. Mike turned from me again and picked up a backpack lying next to the bed. From it he took out and threw on the bed a handful of condoms, a small bottle of what I assumed was lube. His actions were businesslike and excluded me. Funny, considering where those condoms and lube would be in a few minutes. I looked over my shoulder down at the rest of the unit. It was one of those lofts that were so popular at the time: a brand-new building made to look like it used to be a factory: a fulfillment of the present desire for new-old things.

The tops of the windows were even with my eyes now. I now saw dust-free patches on the bookcase – spots that objects recently occupied. There was a pile of five or six cardboard boxes next to the computer desk that I hadn’t seen when I entered the living room.

The bedroom itself was mostly queen size bed. A lace dust ruffle skirted the bottom of the bed and a fluffy duvet was thrown on top. The whole bedroom was a study in white. My brow crinkled. The dust ruffle and duvet did not match the macho image Mike seemed to portray. There was one grungy speck in the otherwise pristine environment: a battered steamer trunk shoved up against the wall next to the bed. What must have been a bathroom was in the corner, separated from the rest of the room by a wall of translucent glass bricks.

I cleared my throat. “I like how the bed is right there in the middle. Can’t be avoided.” I smiled biting my lip.

“Yeah.” Ever the conversationalist. Mike faced me and pulled his t-shirt over his head and tossed it next to the condoms on the bed. I held my breath as I stared at his torso. Sun from the skylight above sparked off of dust particles and cut an impressive swath across his chest and abs. He stood as if he knew the effect this illumination would have on me.

He reached out and pulled me into the light with him. His fingers unbuttoned my cotton short sleeve shirt and slipped it from my shoulders. I tried not to but I couldn’t stop myself: I sucked in my gut. His hand went to the back of my head and pulled my face to the nape of his neck. I nuzzled his smooth skin, waiting to be told at any second that his collarbone was off limits, too. But he didn’t say anything. He just stood with his arms at his sides and allowed me to run my hands up and down his muscled back. My tongue tasted the salt on his shoulder and my lips grazed the mole next to his left nipple. I brought my fingers to the button on his jeans. He grabbed my wrists with both hands. It almost hurt.

“That’s not your job.”

He kicked off his tennis shoes, slowly crawled up on the bed and knelt on the white duvet facing me. Sitting back on his heels, he seemed to sway to some unheard melody. Or maybe it was just the blood pounding in my temples. With both hands he yanked his fly open, popping all of the buttons on his jeans. My God! Did he shave everywhere? I almost giggled; the move was so stripper-like.

Then a door opened and closed downstairs.

I looked over my shoulder and saw a shadow move in the kitchen below.

“Shit!” Mike whispered. He jumped off the bed, put his shirt on and began throwing things back in his backpack.

“Who…?” A glare from him silenced me.

Picking up my shirt and his shoes, he grabbed my arm and dragged me into the bathroom in the corner. Once inside, he pushed the door closed behind me, reached in his back pocket and handed me back my cash.

“We’ll have to do this another time,” he said with low urgency. There was sweat on his forehead as he sat on the toilet putting on his shoes.

“What’s going on? Is that your roommate?” I knew from his example to keep my voice down.

“Listen. I need you to do me a favor. You’re my friend, OK? A friend that came over to help me out.”

“What? Why? I’m sure he wouldn’t be shocked.” I glanced at the door to my left. “Maybe he’d join us.”

He stood and looked in the mirror next to the commode. “That’s not my roommate” he whispered harshly. “It’s my fiancée.”

“Fiancée?” I looked at his eyes in the mirror. He looked down.

“Ex-fiancée” He mumbled, turning around. He leaned back against the sink and exhaled. “And this is her place…now.”

There was silence between us as I stared at him. His eyes danced back and forth between my face and the door next to me.

“She kick you out?” I couldn’t suppress a smile. There were ants crawling on the sidewalk and I was getting out my magnifying glass.

“Put your shirt on.” His nostrils flared at me.

“Why should I?” I leaned back on the glossy tiled wall next to the door. “Put my shirt on? Help you?”

His mouth opened and closed twice. “What do you want?”

His hands gripped the porcelain of the sink behind him, his index fingers tapping repeatedly. I crossed my arms and let my stomach relax to its full glory. “Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I just gave you that.”

“That was my money. I want yours.”

“I don’t have it. Not here.”

“That’s OK. Maybe your fiancée does.” My hand went to the knob.

“Wait!” He crossed up to me. “Wait,” he said more quietly. “Downstairs…” His eyes were flashing back and forth as if searching for something in the recesses of his mind. “Downstairs I have a first edition of Faulkner. It’s worth at least that.” He held out my shirt to me.

I had spent a lot of time on eBay. I knew what he was offering. I blinked at his unblinking eyes. “Yeah, it probably is.” I took the shirt from his hand.

A woman’s muffled voice came up the stairs and through the door. “Is there someone here?”

Mike continued to look at me as he opened the door. I stared right back. A smile was trying to break out on my lips again. A smile that revealed a part of me that I thought I had buried. He jerked the door open and stepped past me.

“It’s just me Deb!” As I turned he was leaning over the buffed aluminum railing.

“Christ, you scared the shit outta me! I was just about to dial 911!”

The voice coming up from below was a pinched alto - a voice that under other circumstances I could imagine humming a torch song or whispering in a child’s ear.

“Sorry. I just came over to get a few things. I brought a friend over,” he glanced back at me where I was buttoning my shirt. I nodded slowly. “He’s gonna help me carry the trunk.”

The voice floated up, caressed by uncertainty. “Oh…oh…that’s why. I saw that jacket on the couch…It got me worried.”

“We’ll be out of here right away.” He pushed off the railing, turned and nodded to the side of the bed. “It’s right over here,” he said softly.

I joined him at the side of the bed. He grabbed one of the leather handles on the end of the steamer trunk and jerked. It came free with a snap! and took a bit of the floor varnish with it.

“Damn!” he muttered, looking at the damage, then up at me. “Can you…can you take the other end?”

I picked it up. It was heavy but not heavy enough for two people, especially when one of those people was Mike. He went first as we started down the stairs, lifting his end high so that I wouldn’t have to bend. His biceps bulged – those biceps that I had been caressing moments before. As we came down into the living room I saw her. Pretty, I thought, and…and something I couldn’t pinpoint. Her arms crossed in front of her 32 D’s, she was leaning against the breakfast bar near the door where I had first entered the unit. She looked at me, looked away. Her raven hair swept over forehead and was pulled into a ponytail. She wore no makeup that I could see. As a couple, they looked like they had been pulled from the pages of Modern Living magazine. In better times I pictured them laughing under a volleyball net or lounging on a hammock. There was no possibility of laughter now.

When we were several feet from her, Mike nodded at me to set the trunk down. “I’ll get that book you wanted to borrow.”

I nodded to him. “OK.”

I threw a half smile at The Fiancée (that’s what I called her in my head: The Fiancée.) One of those smiles that said, “I don’t know you. I’m being polite.” She looked back at me, squinting in appraisal.

I turned to watch Mike, thankful for an excuse to avert my eyes from her. I could still feel her gaze on me though. No, I was really probably just imagining it. But, I mean, if I had been in her position, I would have been looking at me. Mike opened one of the boxes by the computer desk, took out books and began piling them on the floor. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he opened a second box and removed more books, all hard-cover. I glanced from the growing pile up to the bookcase and back. Finally he pulled out a leather-bound book covered in one of those Mylar protectors. He came back and handed it to me without a word. I glanced at the cover. Intruder in the Dust. Its yellowed pages gave off the musty odor of library stacks.

“You must be a really good friend.” We both turned our heads to her. “Michael never let me touch that book. He always kept it hidden…like so many things.”

“Deb, this is Edward.” Mike looked back and forth between the two of us.

Her darting eyes rested on me for a moment. Watching Mike shift back and forth from one foot to the other there, in the same spot where he had pushed me away earlier, I felt that alien smile start to bubble up from my chest again. I stepped forward with my hand extended. I had never felt so powerful.

“You can call me Ed.”