Juliet Was a Surprise (10 page)

A faint snap of plastic on plastic had both men turn their faces to it. The female noise had travelled far, down corridors, through closed doors. Peter found it such an of-a-sort apartment. Probably luxurious back when, expensive in any case, the three-bedroom felt if anything too spacious, all in that yellowbeige whose fade suggests dirt despite being clean. Its sprawl of walls needed tightening, and more pictures wouldn't do it. Though two storeys up a reasonable brownstone, it reminded Peter, impossibly, of the word
rancher
. The only thing missing was a wet bar fronted by thick grout bearing multicoloured riverstones.

Or maybe it was just that Lily was off down that dim hall and too far away.

Uncle Ray's body still angled at him for conversation but his head pointed directly away at football and was holding
there, a man twisted in duty. A shoulder was also up as a kind of barrier. One team was yellow and black while the other was a dark cat-grey that flashed to mallard. Up ahead lay Super Bowl Sunday, when one of these teams would be alive and the other golfing, said the commentator.

LILY HAD ONCE CALLED HIM
“a throwback,” careful to laugh and squeeze his biceps when she said it. Peter loved her for that. In his sparse social life, he felt he was little more than a repository for signals, most of them bad: he was old-fashioned, awkward, he was some arrogant curio. Rarely were the signals … affectionate squeezes.

Once, on the bus, after his knowing quip about Nicole Kidman's height, wherein he used the terms “emasculation” and “kindly camera angle,” she called him “suave.” She said it with cheerful amazement, as if identifying a force no longer in vogue. Peter smiled simply and lifted an eyebrow for her.

And the best signal of all came in the café near the movie theatre. Her latte done, she'd interrupted him as he pressed biscotti crumbs from his plate while wondering aloud about Chomsky and how the word “cranky,” meaning whiny, likely had its origins in “crank,” meaning genius-nobody-listened-to, or maybe it was the other way around, but wasn't it telling that linguistics could lead to concerns of global— She grabbed both his hands in hers, found his eyes and wouldn't let them go as she said, “You are
so
decent-looking for a duck.” She had called him an “odd duck” enough times to trim it down for humour, and for intimacy.

Decent-looking. Holding his hands. The main difference between Lily and every other girl he'd ever spoken to was that most of her signals were good.

“SO YOU TWO OFF
to your movie?” Uncle Ray didn't meet his eye in the asking, but he seemed to have healed because his near-smirk was back.

“We're—not sure.” It felt almost risqué, saying this. Yes, it was Sunday and Sundays they went to a movie, but no, they weren't
sure
. Ray? If you're talking about Lily and Peter, anything might happen.

Ray stood quickly, as if he hadn't believed Peter's boast of not being sure and was going to have it out with him right now.

“Well, I'm off. To do some things. You can just”—Ray flicked a finger at the kitchen, then the remote control, and then, sadly it seemed, at the TV—“make yourself at
you
know.”

Peter stood to shake the uncle's hand. “Okay, Ray,” he said, pumping a surprisingly obedient limb twice, then letting it go. Ray glanced back once more at the game.

It was more or less always this way. Though their time together was civilized, they mutually dismissed each other with signals that were clear.

“LILY AND PETER”
was better than “Peter and Lily.” He explained to her that “Lily and Peter” began and ended with soft vowels and rose like a mountain on the two hard
e
's of the middle. “Peter and Lily” was just a bumpy rural road. Lily confessed
to not liking her name. Peter asked if this was because her tongue bumped her palette twice so quickly. She said she didn't know; maybe it was that she couldn't live up to a flower, flowers being perfect and never smelling bad—she shot him a look and he wondered if she was acknowledging her apartment. Her father's nickname for her had been Tiger-Lily, then just Tiger. She told Peter he died when she was eight, and Peter could see in her eyes the memories that were now burnished false. In any case, he then snorted at his own name, which he announced he detested. Why? asked Lily. Because, he answered, he was an idiot Principle. He was robbed to pay Paul, and he was mocked for being a Pumpkin Eater. Also, he didn't have a longer, more elegant name for sanctuary, like Richard could help a Rick, or Robert saved a Bob. Even as a child he'd wished he had a Petterand or Petterick to ascend to, like rising into a regal posture that was his birthright.

Lily smiled here and looked over her glasses to say, “Hello, Petterick.”

Yes, and worst—he'd continued, but only in his mind— like all Peters everywhere he had to deal with the life absurdity of a given name that had also been given to the penis. Imagine: whenever a male suitor named Peter came to sit and wait and stare down a dark hallway and picture her beside that tautly made bed, smoothing on a cream, eyeing the flirt of a curl, spraying something lovely onto something lovelier, how could she hear his name and not see a
peter
perched too alertly on the edge of the couch, panting like a coyote?
RAY LEFT IN A FLURRY
of keys, elbows, sleeves, and finally door, then there was a silence so complete it couldn't contain a mother; it simply couldn't.

Peter didn't know what to do. He'd already flicked off the TV as a kind of rebuke when Ray had turned in search of shoes, and it would be a defeat to flick it back on. The magazines he could see through the coffee-table glass were identical to those he disdained while waiting to have a molar steadied or testicle checked. He was too wound up to read anyway. If he looked inside himself, he saw all nerves roaring. If he looked deeper, he could see that this nervousness was but a small part of something far bigger; nervousness was just the face, or maybe even the hair, of a monstrous hunger. And he was tired of it. This long string of Sundays was about one thing: the hope of one day being invited to her bed. Others used dancing or walks or dinners, pick your ritual. Theirs had been Sunday movies, most of them in and of themselves meaningless, cinematic rehashes of the blindingly familiar, as if only childish verbs were used in the storyline, so that in the aftermath bus ride, no adult words were worth wasting on them. But if this string of Sundays hadn't been a long bus route to sex, what had it been? If Darwin was even half right, every breath he'd ever taken was sexy respiration meant to keep him alive for—this afternoon.

The smell had somehow grown worse. He peered through it down her hallway. She had so much power, and he had none. He was more than tired of this. He stood.

Because wasn't this the ultimate signal? The kind that knowing girls sent to awkward boys all over the globe? A boy perched and ready, a girl ear-cocked and waiting. Would any
leading man in any movie not heed this signal? Not stand and go to her? Even Forrest Gump would have read this one. Woody Allen would have gone three times by now.

Maybe she saw it differently. Maybe she thought she had no power. Waiting for him in her room, maybe she saw the power to be all his, this power of advance, which did indeed seem to belong to the man. A power to
take her yet again.
Good God.

Peter found himself padding softly, entering the hallway's shadow. His plan was to knock on the mother's door when he came to it, and if she appeared he would claim a search for the bathroom—a known door he had already passed, but no matter, since she was the kind of matron whose smile grew when correcting stupid boys. And now he stood at the mother's door. The smell grew more vile here, but he didn't want to consider this. He rapped a single knuckle on the wood, deftly casual. His body had steeled itself for mother-rage, an explosion that would blow off his clothes then attack him for the nakedness.

No one. No uncle, no mother. Standing in the way, no one but himself.

Confidence
, Peter said to his legs, getting them to move again,
is charming
.

He manoeuvred the hallway, trying not to wonder about that bed, or how this might go. He stopped at and pretended to be interested in a painting, in folk-art mode, of a red boat and white dock and two coils of very yellow rope. He pretended to care that such a bright painting had been relegated to shadow. Then, taking three side steps, he stopped, for here was her
door—which was also in a frame, a coffin-shaped trap set for hall-walking men. Maybe she would guide him. He knew that for all their show of innocence, women were connected to earth in the deep ways. They were the bowl and the man but the spoon. Or the spigot. Maybe the bent faucet. One of Peter's knees buckled. Maybe, maybe she would help him. If he was confident enough to let her.

The smell had grown again. Peter lost his mind and knocked.

“Yes?” It was a sound of surprise. But they are actors.

“I've come … to see your room again.”

Lily opened her door just as he finished speaking and said, “Oh,” giving away nothing. Light streamed from behind her, darkening her hair and making her head look smaller. But what he could see of her face was beautiful. She added, “Aren't you worried about the movie?” They toss out diversionary signals in counterpoint to the main one.

“No.”

“I was hurrying but I couldn't get off the phone. We were having a bit of— Okay, come on in, I guess.”

Peter had not exactly pushed past her but he'd entered confidently, a blood-pounding feeling of incandescence. He stood in the room's centre, surveying it, hands on hips, incandescence fading. He nodded once, but that felt foolish. He didn't look at the bed.

Now Lily was acting at nervousness. “But you really like this director. What's his—?”

Because he was in socks he felt too short. Though she was in socks too. The smell was even worse in here.

“Who were you talking with?”

“I've been wanting to tell you about Michael, but—”

“
Everybody
has a Michael.”

“Sorry?”

“Everybody has a
Michael
. Every
Mike
has a Michael to—”

“Peter? This one is what you'd call a boyfriend. Maybe. I'm not sure. But, Peter? You never seemed to show much interest in, I don't know, ‘me,' so Michael was a kind of— What are you …?”

He was lying on her bed, not sure how he'd got there or what he was doing. A sob almost came out, but it would have been fake. A moan sounded right, one suggesting he was on this bed against his will. Then an “um” in the English accent. Then a short, soft whistle. Nothing he did could be trusted.

“Peter?”

He was on the bed
. He'd landed. It was a kind of big bang, because here he was void of thought, at the still point, at ground zero, with his atoms flying away in all directions. He coughed, and then he was sort of laughing, and in a wobbly voice it all came out of him, as he jerked with laughter, then a sob that was possibly not fake. He couldn't tell how she took any of it: the apology, the declaration of love, his hunt for sex today,
I had designs on you
confessed while shaking his head, him an absurd virgin at twenty-nine, an awkward idiot, he probably had a syndrome, unique and undiagnosable, he had
Petterick
, he was frozen and doltish at what everyone else on earth could do well and easily. At some point during this outburst he'd flipped to nose into her pillow, smelling it deeply. It smelled wonderful, almost a talc. And now Lily was on the bed too.

She sat beside him, fingers on his neck. She told him not to get her pillow wet, but she said it affectionately and with humour, a signal that she at least considered him the kind of buddy who'd also see the humour.

“I don't know what to do,” she said.

“Frame it,” he said, tapping the pillowcase, being that buddy. She had several times joked that his used napkin or ticket stub should be framed because he would be famous someday, though for what she never said. He had never written a poem, never tweaked software.

“No,” she said. “It's— Well, Peter? I thought you were gay. Or, you know, I ‘wondered.' The movies, always on Sunday. You never, ever—”

“So Sunday's the gay day?”

“No, but
you
know.”

After a pause, just long enough to deepen her voice, Lily added, “The thing is, I've always found you, actually, very good-looking.” The fingers on his neck grew warmer, more silken, their multi-digit signal somehow hinting at rhythm. Then the fingers were removed.

The sudden removal was bad. It felt possibly terminal. Though her hip was an inch from his, though they were on a bed, this gap was— He needed to decide something, say something and say it now. And what he said had to be—

But it was Lily who spoke.

“So let's take a shower.”

Her fingers landed back on his neck. Playful now. Sporting.

“A shower?”

“That thing where water sprays magically out of the wall?”

“Now?”

She nodded.

“At the same time?” he said.

“It is written. Nobody's here.”

Lily led him up by the hand. She jerked him comically across the dark hallway when he hesitated. Not knowing what to say he said nothing as clothes fell around their feet and Lily reached in to turn on taps. They stood quietly naked for a weird span of time before she sent a hand in to test the temperature. Weirder, neither of them dropped their eyes below chin level. Peter aimed blindly and placed his hand on her naked hip, and Lily let him. He was about to step in for their first hug, which would be naked, but she led him into the spray.

And then they were hugging, they were hugging and moving, and she brought soap into the mix, and he was quickly almost delirious. There, a squat white tile bench was built into the wall, and upon it glorious things were going to happen.