Fiction

"You're still smiling," he said.

"Why shouldn't I be?" Kate asked, assuming her question was rhetorical.

Scott turned onto his stomach and raised up on an elbow. He told Kate about a girl who, waking from their first night together, insisted to know if he were serious about her.

"I felt awful," he said, "trying to figure out whether I might be, if she gave me a chance to know her for a few more days, or weeks. I honestly couldn't answer the question, put on the spot like that."

"So," he concluded, "she never saw me again. A pity, she seemed a nice person."

"The girl's request wasn't fair," Kate observed. She lay back, her dark eyes scanning the high ceiling of Scott's bedroom. Kate was privately impressed that in the retelling Scott's reaction to the girl showed no anger or impatience. The natural upturn of her mouth etched, instead, a horizontal crease as she contemplated what he had said.

"If you asked me, I wouldn't have an answer, not after one night," said Kate. "Ask me in six months whether or not I'm serious about you, if we still know each another," she shrugged.

Kate turned her face against the cool white pillow and looked toward the window. She couldn't see outside, Scott's mattress lay on the floor, but sounds of the street glided past the glass panes Scott had closed against the chill. On the other side of a heavy blanket, hung vertically to convert one small bedroom into two shoe-box sleep spaces, Kate could also hear Tom stirring, the roommate. Such living quarters, or anything remotely affordable in the city, obliged unwritten rules of decorum; blindness, deafness or disinterest until habit almost became reality.

The three of them got up and took turns washing up. For breakfast, they grilled cheese omelets in the intimacy of a kitchen strung out along the narrow space that doubled as sitting room. Scott and Tom's apartment was at the edge of an up-and-coming niche of the Bowery. Compared with similar city dwellings, it gained in space, though marginally, what it lacked in finishing. Tom soon left, heading out to meet friends en route to his part-time job in mid-town.

Alone, Kate and Scott resumed getting to know one another; that stage of flirtation so oddly engrossing, regardless of how commonplace the finer details. The newness of it took on an understood tone of verbal foreplay.

Kate, a would-be investment analyst, still nurtured a creative streak of her youth. Writing won't pay bills, she deduced when choosing a major from the glossy brochures for grad schools. Within days of arriving in New York, she landed a four-month sublet in the Village. To call it antique would be accurate – a bathtub occupied the kitchen. To call it minimalist would be kind. She could almost touch the opposing walls with arms outstretched. Nearing thirty, Kate hoped to find a job on Wall Street before the sublet expired. Meanwhile, writing poems to hold apprehension in check, she chewed the end of a pen as she watched the all-night green grocer at the corner below her window spray particles of dust off his vegetables with a garden hose.

Scott was recently graduated and consummately suspended in a state between college and the remainder of life. Satisfied for the moment to form and dissolve rock bands, romances, and other aspirations more vague in his mind, he was younger than Kate. Career was something only lightly penciled somewhere in the back of his mind. He rode a bicycle to work, a habit both frugal and foolhardy. On two wheels, Scott discovered that dodging thick sprays of yellow cabs and the swing-out doors of city busses was trivial compared with the hazard of turning his head at the sight of a pretty girl.

A month later, to their mutual surprise and consent, Kate and Scott still met in their spare moments. They shared work, where they'd met, in an office with four other people holding down an expedient part-time job buried deep within a glass office tower. One night in June, after joining workmates for tapas in Soho, they headed back to Scott's apartment.

They entered, kicked off their shoes and Kate flopped into a hollow of thread-bare couch against the wall. Scott opened a cupboard and retrieved two stubby wine glasses, his favorite among their flea market fare. Setting the glasses on the counter, he pulled a bottle of wine from the vegetable bin where he'd stashed it in the fridge.

"Rosé!" chimed Kate as Scott fed the bottle into glasses that welled a coral color up to their rounded middles. "Nice idea, thanks."

"I have something else for you," said Scott.

"What is it? Tell me," said Kate. She enveloped her bare feet under herself on the cushions.

"A surprise," said Scott taking off his tee-shirt and tossing it on the arm of the couch. He disappeared into the bathroom and, Kate noticed, pulled the over-painted door shut with a curious resolve. When Scott re-emerged he held the door partly ajar and motioned Kate to come.

"What about the wine?" Kate asked looking over at the twin goblets.

"Let it breathe a while, dahling" he said and chuckled at his feeble attempt at pretense. "Come on."

Unscrambling her legs, Kate got up from the couch. She raised an eyebrow in a frown of the kind with amusement at the edges. As Scott let go of the knob, Kate pushed the door slowly open.

Flickering lights lent an amber glow to the usually stark, white ceramic tiles. Thick red candles perched on every available porcelain surface and round, white water candles floated swan-like in the sink. Scott pulled the door shut behind them, stripped off his jeans and stepped over the tub wall. He turned on the water and beckoned to her.

"A candlelight shower! My first candlelight shower," Kate teased.

Kate pulled her shirt up over her head, slid out of her jeans and climbed in after him. As a cascade of water surged against their shoulders, Kate shut her eyes and felt Scott's hands close in around her waist .

"Happy birthday," he explained between drenched kisses and fingers. "I couldn't manage a candlelight dinner at a fancy restaurant."

"Oh, this is far better," she whispered and wrapped his neck in her arms.

Their wavering shadow cast the twin-handled form of an ancient clay vase, like those filled with wine set to ship across the Mediterranean. The water struck a refrain, lush and uneven, against the smooth tiles.

A few weeks later, taking refuge from steamy July streets, Kate and Scott languished in his apartment trading stories of not so long ago college days. Kate recalled the time she had worked at a bookshop and came to the scandalous realization that just one of the new releases she was eager to read cost an entire day's salary. "Talk about high finance!" she laughed. Scott joked about having gotten a portfolio done. Did it on an impulse, he said, in the off chance that he might make pocket change with modeling work.

"I have got to see this!" Kate said, half amused, half intrigued. "Do you still have it?"

"It was an absurd idea," replied Scott, with a self-conscious grimace. He shuffled in the depths of a chaos of papers, books and clothes on the floor and produced a large white album from the bottom of the pile.

As she leafed through the glossy pages, Kate conceded that Scott came closer to having classic looks than anyone she had dated. The photos accented a movie smile and lanky frame that called to mind Nicolas Cage; hefty enough for masculine appeal but not overwrought. She lingered on the close-ups. Grey-blue eyes, sturdy jaw, and a spate of translucent blond hair. How silky it felt in her fingers, Kate thought. She hadn't considered his looks, often. Her black hair, a fierce cluster of renaissance curls, and long charcoal lashes usually bent her toward the dark-and-handsome side of things. It had been Scott's habit of kindness, rather than blue eyes, that had drawn her to accept his first invitation for drinks a bar on the lower east side.

Scott had apparently not followed through on the portfolio, she jotted on a mental page reserved exclusively to him, despite how polished and promising it looked. Kate had also noted that Scott considered his roommate to be brighter, more creative than he, and keenly felt the comparison. Tom, and a couple of former classmates had fixed on a potential calling in life – filmmaking. They often scoured the streets together, video equipment in tow, for inspiration and raw material.

"Basically, almost everyone I know in New York is smarter than I am," Scott had said, somehow pulling it off as a statement of fact, rather than self-pity. Kate wondered at this. She expansively thought of it as modesty, but was it more likely a crisis of self-esteem? A casualty of innocence, perhaps, it seemed out of place among the jaded sarcasm that New Yorkers so proudly wore and newcomers so readily assumed.

One day toward the end of August, Scott arrived at work more energized than usual. As he swung a bike pack over the edge of his cubicle, he told Kate that he and Tom had gotten a gig. The nightclub, called FoKay's, was on the outer limits of what could still reasonably be considered the Village. He said they'd play backup on their guitars for a friend who was an aspiring comic. Like a rock opera, but with punch lines, he explained. It sounded to Kate like a permutation that only in New York passes as part of some natural order of things.

That night after they arrived back at his place, with somewhat less enthusiasm, Scott volunteered more details. They stood in Scott's living room, near the stretch of kitchen. A pot of water set out for pasta had started to bubble.

"By the way," he said, "my mother will be at the gig. She's never seen us perform and wants to drive down from upstate."

"Great. I'd love to meet her," said Kate, casting a sidelong glance at the boiling pot. Scott smiled, but the corners of his mouth twisted at wrong angles to the rest.

"I'm serious," Kate confirmed, not sure what brought on the mood shift. She looked at him blankly and added, "What's the matter, Scott. Don't want her to meet me? Don't think we are serious enough for parental showings?"

"It's not that," Scott replied, "don't get me wrong."

"She'll have her boyfriend with her," he continued, facing Kate as she turned from the stove, his voice still echoed a sizeable doubt.

"Fine," said Kate. She whipped a corkscrew of hair behind her ear defiantly and added, "I will, too." Scott's eyes sparked at the oblique admission, nearly unleashed a genuine smile. They hadn't talked of Love, in the capital sense. It wasn't necessary. It wasn't common currency in New York where transiency was another unwritten norm. Nevertheless, a frown creased further into Scott's chin. Reaching out, he braced Kate's forearm with one hand and inched her closer.

"Kate," Scott said earnestly, "It's not you, it's me. I never know how to gauge people's reaction, what they'll make of her."

"Mothers are mothers," said Kate. "Everyone's got issues."

She's got to have at least some redeeming qualities, Kate thought as she paused to snap the threads of spaghetti and stash them into the pot. Maybe he's not sure what she'll make of me. Maybe she's the possessive type, jealous to hell of the girlfriends. In an interlocked thread, Kate debated with herself, do I give a damn? Well, that's not the point, is it? What is the point? What's wrong with me, am I serious about this guy?

"I'll be pleased to meet your mother under whatever circumstances," Kate finally concluded out loud, "but if you really think I can't handle it, just let me know. I'll stay home and do some writing, or go out with some other male model."

Scott grabbed Kate around the waist and tried to kiss her but she brushed him away, with a motion like flicking lint.

As they ate, Kate twirled the pesto-coated spaghetti strands on her fork and mulled over another thing she had learned in the intervening weeks. Scott's father bolted at some point when he was barely in his teens. His mother was left in shreds and ceded him a role more akin to a father. At an age when most boys are awash with angst over parental existence, Scott looked after a mother who utterly relied on him to keep her face from crumbling into shards of anguish whenever she passed her reflection in the dining room mirror. Scott had briefly recounted this time in his life at some point when it fit into a strand of conversation about their separate histories. He mentioned them as if they were simple facts, as if recalling what he had eaten for breakfast. He hadn't brought it up again. Was he hiding something more?

Scott stood by his invitation and on Saturday night it was late when they entered the inky interior at FoKay's. The club, though not as small as Kate had expected, had few seats left. The comic must have a large extended family, Kate suspected. Scott waved a greeting to his mother and her sweetheart, who had arrived early and gotten a table half way to the stage. Kate and a couple of Tom's friends found seats at a back corner table. They ordered soda's to start, while Scott and Tom disappeared backstage with their gear.

Sipping distractedly at her cola, Kate surveyed the room. The bright backlight emanating from the stage gave the scene an aura of bas relief. Kate took a closer glimpse at Scott's mother. Thin wisps of blond hair, darker than Scott's, curled around her neck and wound down just past her shoulders. It was pulled back at the forehead with a clip in the style of a young girl. Even seated, she appeared to be tall and slender like her son. An Indian gauze dress draped her waiflike shoulders. Were it not for a nearly imperceptible shade of weariness in her skin, Kate might have mistaken Scott's mother for an older sibling. And, the boyfriend. His adoration of her, was manifest. Like the needle of a compass, his torso leaned into the table and angled itself toward where she sat. With a sweet grin fixed on his face, he gazed at her even when they weren't speaking to one another.

Kate saw boyfriend wave one arm loosely over his head in a gesture to attract the server. The dark outline of the waitress approached, her back to the stage. He signaled his empty tumbler of draft and the nearly empty glass of wine in front of Scott's mother. Something in his ease, the tilt of his head, hinted that is was more than their second round.

When the show commenced Scott and Tom flanked the comedian with their guitars. Every now and then the fledgling comic broke into song on his microphone – a harebrained song, a built-in part of the act. Scott and Tom strummed enthusiastically and sang chorus with theatrical, toothful smiles. It was pure silly, nothing to stake a career on, but fun. The crowd responded in kind, laughing in all the right places, letting down their guard in the spirit of the spectacle.

After the show, Scott and Tom came from backstage to pull their brood together. The club had thinned out and Scott found his Mother and boyfriend a free table large enough for the lot of them. Kate and Tom's friends got up to join the new arrangement. At the edge of the table, they stood by as Scott began introductions.

"Kate, this is my mother, Amanda," Scott said, resting his hand on his mother's shoulder. "And her friend, Jake," he said motioning in Jake's direction. "Mom, Jake. Meet Kate." As he said this, Scott lifted the hand from his mother's shoulder and lightly thrust his arm out behind Kate, across her back, as if presenting a gift. Kate smiled inwardly at the gesture.

"Very pleased," Kate nodded, her voice elevated to compete with the din. The room had filled with the shadowy motions of a tropical fish tank. Conversations, laughter, and recorded music flitted at angles from the walls and the ceiling. Tom introduced his friends and they all sat down while Scott pulled a chair in between his mother and Kate.

"That's my boy! That's my baby!" cried Amanda, emphatically drawing out the "a" of "baby". She flailed her reedy arm in the air, more or less in Scott's direction.

"I'm so proud of him," she crooned. Her thin, high voice wavered from an abundance of white wine. Amanda turned to place both of her hands on Scott's forearm and squeezed affectionately with her slender fingers.

Jake, sitting on the other side of Amanda, chanted a refrain.

"Yes! Yes, Sir-ee!" he agreed, rapping his knuckles, too loudly, on the table. His wide grin had become even sweeter, and much slacker, than before. Jake lifted his fist from the table and grabbed the tumbler, resurrecting it to his lips. Finishing it off, he raised his arm for the server, again.

Turning to Kate, Amanda chirped plaintively, "Wasn't he wonderful?".

Scott broke into the wet-eyed grin of someone trying his best to ward off embarrassment and put an arm lightly around his mother's shoulders.

"That's great, Mom, thanks," he said and somehow Amanda managed to tip what remained of her glass of wine into her lap. Passing his mother a napkin, Scott glanced over at Kate with that still frozen grin and caressed her knee.

Unfazed, having met Scott's mother before, Tom offered a welcome diversion by engaging the table in the particulars of their next round of drinks. This may be a long night, Kate thought as she asked for rum with her coke, this time.

Outside the club, their small exit party negotiated night clumps of black trash bags on the sidewalk toward Jake's car. Jake turned, flattened his palm against a wall and bent over. His stomach emptied onto the sidewalk, soundlessly or, at least, that's the way Kate remembered it.

Scott turned, guitar case swinging pendulum-like from one arm, to glance back at the man. Kate saw Amanda, up ahead of them, sway fairy-like, floating, overturning slow-motion toward a shiny black mass of bag. Kate reached out to break her fall, grabbed her firmly by the waist. Amanda's back, now cradled in Kate's arm, felt thin and yielding like a child's. The bag smelled of limp apple peel and the ammonia of flesh on the bones of fish.

When Jake straightened up, Scott slapped him on the back, professing man-to-man. Side-by-side, they finished the stretch of night to the car.

Kate walked with Scott's mother arm in arm, like old friends, to forestall the still wavering sidewalk from rising up into Amanda's chin.

Late that night, Kate and Scott made love by candlelight with fluid, slow moves. Yet, something timid crept among them, as if touching one another for the first time.

"She loves you" said Kate and "I know" replied Scott "me too".

"They love each other, it's serious, so I'm happy for her" Scott said. "But I'm not sure how good they are for each other. They drink like that every night. I can hear it in her voice when she calls."

"She needs him, or someone like him," offered Kate.

"Maybe so, maybe not" said Scott.

Hearing in Scott's tone an intent to close the subject, Kate laid her hand on his chest. "You feel delicious, she murmured into his neck.

"You, too," said Scott.

"You smell like fresh lemons," said Kate, "is that aftershave?"

"Dunno," said Scott. "Why do you smell like rotten apples and fish?"

Laughing as Kate tried to shove him away, he rolled Kate onto him and locked his arms around her back.

Before sleep, Scott rolled over, blew out the candle and settled his finger tips in the soft curve at the base of Kate's spine. He buried his nose in the angled cradle between her chin and throat. Like silk on silk, their skin fused until daylight filtered in at the rough edges of the blind on the watchful window above their heads.

Kate got her job before the lease on the sublet expired. She moved to Washington for a generous offer from the Federal Reserve. Scott congratulated Kate on her good fortune, said he was genuinely pleased for her.

Scott moved on and almost broke up with a girl named Cindy who clung too fast to his arm in the street. A couple weeks later, she was thrown from the seat of a hurtling yellow cab when it bashed headlong into a fire hydrant. Scott welcomed her back into his arms and his apartment, watching over her, waiting on her, while her broken limbs healed. Then, he married the girl and moved upstate to be near his mother.

"They need me," explained Scott when he told Kate his plans on the phone.

Variegated images of the summer rifled through Kate's mind-filled notebook as she contemplated Scott's future. Some people desperately need caring for and others are care-givers. In spite of deficiencies in some of the more basic nutrients for growth, like sunlight, gentle showers and a father of his own, Scott had come to bud and fruition as someone naturally at home giving. This, not modeling, not music, not filmmaking, this was his personal arena of competence.

Cindy, short for Cinderella maybe, Kate reflected, holding her hand over the pinholes of the mouthpiece lest her thoughts be overheard. Funny, how we never seriously know what we feel about people until we fully understand how much there is to respect in them. Maybe I'll write a poem about it, someday, she said to herself, smiling, as she hung up the phone.