Cad : Ryan Chapman
MAXWELL COULD HAVE kissed Evan for the second time upon a bed of leaves underneath the meshed lining of a giant trampoline. The moon, through the dark threading of the 16 inch Mega-Bounce, illuminated Evan’s inert body – his thin arms outstretched at 90 degree angles, palms facing upward: Christ-like.
Maxwell, partially visible – cut in moonlight sections from an overhanging maple branch – leaned against a trampoline leg, observing Evan’s body.
It had only taken twenty minutes for the Verset to take affect. Evan had been speaking of A.E. Housman – ‘You know it’s funny, Maxy. He never actually lived in Shropshire’ – when first his khakied knees, then his ashen face careened to the garden floor; his forehead crushing a New England Aster.
The two young men had found their way to the flower garden via the path from the gazebo. It was a short walk, some two hundred meters along a narrow cedar chip-laden pathway. Evan, manning the lead, carried a large auburn leaf in his right hand, which he used to knock down the wispy remains of overhanging spider webs.
Maxwell, several paces behind, stared at Evan’s cowlick – watching it sway to the rhythm of his friend’s gait. Mosquitoes, tantalized – no doubt – by Evan’s cologne, created a thin fog. One landed upon his midsection, another clung to the back of his neck – feeding.
“Goddamn it, Maxy. Mosquito party,” Evan muttered, awkwardly backhanding his starched collar.
In the flower garden, Evan gestured towards the Oriental Lilies. “To think it’s early November. Celia’s pride, I bet.” He tugged a finger. “Could I bum a smoke?”
“None,” Maxwell had replied, opening his trouser pockets to emphasize honesty. “Sorry.”
“No no, Max. Should’ve brought my own.” He rubbed his right ass cheek with delicate fingers. Began talking of Housman.
The first time Maxwell had imagined kissing Evan took place outside of a twenty-four hour diner after an orchestra performance. It had been a night filled with the subtle strings of Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony and Maxwell could hear the macabre opening passage in his head. Dracula strings, he thought to himself.
Evan leaned against the diner’s front window, talking with Stacy, an ex-girlfriend. The red neon from the insignia of Jake’s Restaurant shrouded him like a heavenly device. He sucked on an unlit cigarette, rubbed his chin stubble, touched Stacy’s shoulder mid-laugh. He was, in that angelic neon, a bullshit artist, a charlatan – Stacy ate it up like so many chocolate truffles.
Maxwell did as well. He stared, enamored, as Evan – this Evan of camel-hair and cashmere – leaned in, eyes shut, to kiss the ex-girlfriend’s mouth. Maxwell, the explosive Shostakovich finale rumbling through him like a tremor, followed Evan’s lips like a hawk would a shrew. He wanted them.
The real first kiss came at the Milford train station.
“Goodbye for now,” Evan had playfully said, saluting Maxwell with two fingers against his brow.
Maxwell had worn a dark suit jacket to the station, had slicked back his hair to appear more European – more Evan-esque.
“I hope college doesn’t make old men of us, Maxy. Don’t forget to send a letter or…”
Two. ‘Two’ was the word he would have said had Maxwell not found his lips, or, simply, ‘two’ was the word released into the thin space of air between both their lips, the pocket formed from the force of one boy’s touch and the other’s go – Evan’s lips stumbling backwards, dismissing themselves from the fray: enablers of heartache.
The train whistled what trains whistle: the cliché of departure.
“Max, I’m sorry. I don’t…” And Evan, wide-eyed under silver-framed sunglasses, turned with an exaggerated swivel, shook the boarder’s hand, and was gone.
Maxwell, crimson, clenched and unclenched his fists until the train was a speck of dirt in the distance.
After Evan’s collapse amongst the asters, Maxwell hoisted the drugged youth into the gardener’s red wheelbarrow and transported him – limbs akimbo – to the trampoline. It was there, underneath the dark threading of the 16-inch Mega-Bounce, that Maxwell carefully undressed Evan, placing his discarded button-up and tan khakis beneath newly-polished wing-tips, before positioning the body – thin arms outstretched at 90 degree angles, palms facing upward.
Maxwell stared at Evan, then; moonlight through the meshed surface of the trampoline illuminating a caterpillar of an appendix scar, a tattoo of Asian calligraphy on the right quadricep, a thin flaccid penis. Maxwell studied Evan’s body without the minutest trace of sexuality; he studied it like a coroner. He touched an ear lobe, ran his hand across a taut shoulder. Pressed the tip of his tongue against a cold cheek that tasted of nothing, not even water. Maxwell, frowning, thought, “What did I expect?” He rose to his feet – spat.
Several hours later, Evan woke up alone, naked. The trampoline cover was a sky of confusion. He did not remember Maxwell’s touch, the garden – did not remember Housman having never lived in Shropshire. He touched his limp penis with clammy hands. Had he made love to a woman? Had he drunk himself into a tizzy? His head hurt, that was certain. He touched his right temple with two unsteady fingers.
In front of the bathroom sink, Maxwell pointed a bright orange water-gun at his own temple, pretending his mirrored image was Evan. “Love me or die,” he spat. “Love me or else.” The words were trite. He knew it – changed them: “Be my Verlaine. My Socrates. Teach me, touch me.”
Maxwell replied as he imagined Evan would: “How pretentious of you, Maxy. Dropping names like a coffee shop aficionado. I’ll take a double expresso with that fervor.”
“Fuck you, Evan! Fuck you, ya fucking cad! You goddamn cad! You fuck!”
Evan staggered upward from underneath the trampoline, dragging his khakis with him. As he slipped them over his right foot, then his left, he heard through the trees, through an open window, what he thought to be Maxwell’s voice.
“Fuck you, Evan!” the voice said. “Fuck you, ya fuckin’ cad!”
Evan scowled, questioned the words. He thought back to the Milford train station. Tugged a finger.
Ryan Chapman is currently a fiction student at Washington University. He has previously published work in Flashquake, Saga and Bayou. At present, he lives in a synagogue in midtown St. Louis with his girlfriend, four cats and Kaya, a golden retriever.