The Painting of Porcupine City (22 page)

Jamar came dragging a suitcase. Cara had a pair of small backpacks. Mateo stood up to help with the luggage and got shooed away again.

“We’ve got it, Mateo. Bradford—do you have the rings?”

“I have the rings.”

“You’re sure? Because they’re kind of key.”

“Right here in my pocket.” I patted my thigh.

“Fletcher that’s your wiener,” Cara said.

“Oh. Well they’re around here somewhere.” I grinned. “Are we ready? Can we go? You know there’s always that weird traffic past Worcester. You don’t want to miss your own wedding.”

“You know, I think I should change,” Mateo said. He asked me if I had a shirt he could borrow.

“Let’s go look.” I grabbed his hand and yanked him into my room.

I closed the door with my foot and slid my hands inside his yellow button-down. His chest was fuzzy against my palms. He laughed, his teeth on my neck.

“Let’s,” he said. “Real quick.”

“Teo.” I laughed. “We don’t have time. You’re supposed to be the responsible one.”

“It’ll be a long day otherwise. A three-hour drive....”

I laughed, pushed my lips against his grinning mouth. “Don’t tempt me any more. I can’t take it. Tonight.”

“All right. Tonight. It’ll be worth the wait.”

I dug through my dresser while he got out of his shirt. He laid it carefully over the back of my chair.

“How about this?” I held up a white v-neck t-shirt with a subtle argyle print. “The wrinkles will come out.”

“That’s fine.” He grabbed it and pulled it over his head. The short sleeves showed off his tattoos. He looked in my mirror and swooped his hands through his hair. “Ready.”

One last time before leaving

the apartment I touched my pocket to check for the black velour bag containing the wedding rings. It was there. As I did this I thought of how the key-touching guy had checked for his keys.

“Wait, what about their gift?” Mateo said.

“We’ll leave it here. I don’t want to bring it there just to bring it back.”

“Oh. OK.”

“They can open it when they get back.”

We descended the narrow, brown-carpeted stairs, Mateo a few steps in front of me. I looked down on the loopy dark curls of his hair that my fingers knew so well now.

“I like this shirt,” he said.

We emerged from the house and found Cara and Jamar leaning against my car with their luggage lined up on the sidewalk.

“You want me to drive?” I said.

“We remembered you kind of
have
to,” Cara said, “since we’re not coming back with you afterward.”

“Oh, man. Yeah. That’s right.”

Jamar, Cara and I traded blank stares. I could tell we all were wondering, in light of the fact that we’d totally overlooked this pretty significant detail, what else we’d forgotten.

“You have the rings, right?” Jamar said.

“Relax, future husband. Yes. I have the rings.” I reached up and grabbed his shoulders and pretended I was going to jump on his back. “It’s fine. I’ll drive. It’s not a problem.”

“Won’t you guys need a car to get back?” Mateo said.

“Nope. We’re flying out of Albany and flying back into Boston,” Cara told him. “Very convenient!”

“This is a day you two should be chauffeured anyway,” Mateo said, and added, “You have that shirt from the coat rack, right?”

“Right here,” Cara said.

The luggage was loaded into my trunk, so bland and empty compared to the trunk of Mateo’s car.

Cara patted the backseat after hanging her shirt from the hook above the window. “Are you going to fit in here, Jammies?”

“Jammies,” Mateo snickered from the front.

“I’ll fit just fine, thank you very much,” Jamar said, sounding a little embarrassed as he put one leg in, then tugged the rest of his height through the door. “Now drive, Bradford, before I sneeze and break open your car.”

I looked back and Jamar’s knees were not quite but almost up by his ears. I moved my seat forward as much as I could. “Better?”

“You can sit up front, Jamar,” said Mateo, twisting back. “Want to switch?”

“Nah. S’OK.”

Cara asked me, “Do you know where you’re going?”

“Pittsfield, Massachusetts, lady. I’m good until we get off the Pike. After that you have to navigate.”

With that, I put the pedal to the metal. The little car protested a bit, and we were off.

The a.c. was too weak

for four bodies so we kept our windows open. Cara leaned against hers, smiling into the highway air that was whooshing through her hair. Her eyes were closed and her teeth showing through her grin were as white as the white cotton shirt billowing behind her head.

I looked at her in the rearview. Another girl on her wedding day would’ve been freaking out about her hair getting messed. Here Cara was, not only enjoying it but looking more beautiful for every minute the breeze kissed her.

She opened her eyes and saw me looking and I smiled and she smiled.

We’d been on the road

for maybe two hours when Cara leaned into the front seat.

“So Mr. Amaral,” she said, draping her arms across the headrests. She had that tone middle-school girls use when they’re undertaking the business of finding out who you like.

“Yes?” he replied, very cautiously. He may have gone to middle school in São Paulo but some tones are universal.

“Do you
like
my friend Fletcher?”

He smirked and caught my eye. “Guilty.”

Jamar swatted her knee. “Leave the homos alone, Car.”

“Shush.” She swatted back without turning. “Are you guys in
love?
”

Mateo thought for a moment. “The only love that’s important today is yours and Jamar’s.”

I laughed. “Well played.”

“Harrumph,” Cara said, and slumped back into her seat.

Cara’s step-father—short, slim,

and bald with heavy sideburns a leprechaun red that grayed at the bottoms—was affixing a pair of balloons to the mailbox when we pulled into the driveway. One black balloon, one white one.

I turned the car off (not a minute too soon for the radiator) and Cara got out first.

“Hey Wayne.”

“You made it!” he said.

“We made it.”

“Happy wedding day, Cara.”

“The yard looks lovely.”

“Let’s hope the weather holds.” He looked up at the sky before giving her a quick hug. “Where’s the groom?”

The groom was unfolding himself from my backseat.

“Can you get out?” I said to Jamar.

“My legs are asleep. Thrombosis!”

He hobbled over to Wayne with the crumpled posture of an orc. It put them at eye level.

Wayne shook Jamar’s hand in both of his. “Happy wedding day, Mr. Andrews!”

“Very happy,” Jamar said. “Thank you for putting so much work into everything. The yard looks really nice.”

I pointed at the two balloons and said to Wayne, “Is the black one Jamar?”

Cara rolled her eyes but Wayne’s face turned to glass. “The groom—” he stammered. “Black is always for the—”

“He’s kidding with you, Wayne,” Jamar said. “It looks fantastic. Thank you.”

“Oh. Well. Thank
you
,” Wayne said, re-gathering himself, but looking more comfortable than before. He’d definitely been thinking about the colors himself and now it was out in the open, a joke.

“Looks like my parents are here already?” Jamar said, noting their car further up the driveway.

“Your parents and your brother. Yes. They got here, oh, a little while ago.”

“How’s my mom?” Cara said. “She freaking out?”

“Freaking out?
Your
mom?” Wayne chuckled. “That’s one way to say it. But so far everything’s going according to plan. I think she’s pulled herself together since the Andrews—Andrewses?—got here.” He turned to me, gestured at the driveway. “You’re going to want to pull in all the way, Fletcher. It’s going to fill up.”

The house, an old colonial,

was big with blue siding and a porch that wrapped around the front. The backyard was big too and was bordered with pine trees. This city boy wondered what anyone could possibly do with all this land. It’d been a long time since I’d had any grass at all, so it was ironic that I was assigned to the last-minute yard work. The ceremony was to be done on the front lawn, in front of a tall bush bursting with little pink flowers. I was handed a pair of pruning scissors and told to edit out the expired flowers.

Mateo came out with a dishtowel over his shoulder and sat down in the grass near where I was working. He stretched out his legs, pulled the towel off his shoulder and whirled it around.

“Jamar’s mom is hilarious,” he said.

“What’s she doing?” I dropped a cut flower to the ground.

“Blessing the cake.” He paused and I like to think he was admiring my ass when I bent over to rake the clippings into a pile. “It’s a giant cake. Thought there weren’t too many people coming?”

“I think you’re supposed to have leftovers. And then eat a little piece every year or something.”

“Every year?”

“Or maybe just the first anniversary? I’m not too up on the minutiae of wedding tradition.”

“Ever want to be? Up on it, I mean?”

“Do you mean do I want to get married?”

“Yeah.”

I was silent a moment, the kind of silence that’s never more pregnant than the one that follows that question. I made a few snips and stepped back to survey the flowers.

“Well, if the person I am now were to continue unchanging into the future, then no. I’d never get married. But I do plan on evolving. No one wants to be static. And some small part of me does hope I evolve in that direction, yes.”

“In the direction of marriage?”

“Theoretically.”

He laughed. “You’re such a politician, Arrowman. You should run for office. Don’t worry, I’m not proposing or anything.”

I smiled and made a few more snips. “Do you see any more dead ones?”

He pointed, the towel hanging from his colored fingers (he’d used a lot of lime green last night, which had gone well with the yellow shirt he’d chosen earlier but it was too busy with the argyle he wore now). “A couple there. Near the bottom. That you missed.”

“I see.” I bent down and clipped a flower and sprang back up and heard myself whisper: “
Ow
.” I looked, almost absentmindedly, in the direction of the sudden pain down by my heel, before grabbing my elbow and jumping, dropping the scissors, running. “Fuck! Bees!”

There was still one in my pant-leg. And now more were swarming and Mateo was running alongside me thrashing me with the dish towel.

The guy was
laughing
.

As I ran I flailed down and pounded my shin with my fist. I felt a pinch and a poppy crunch that took care of the one in my pants.

On the porch fifty feet away we stopped and looked, bent over with our hands on our knees.

“Only twice?” Mateo said.

“I think so.”

“Could’ve been worse.”

“Could’ve.”

“You’re not allergic?”

“No.”

He stood up, tossed the towel back over his shoulder. “I hope Cara and Jamar weren’t too set on that spot by the bush.”

“Yeah.” I twisted my arm and pulled the skin around to look at the angry red bump on my tricep.

Jamar’s sixteen-year-old brother,

Robbie (a.k.a. Robot), wanted to pour gasoline down the bee-hole and torch it.

“Let’s nuke them,” he said. He looked like a shorter, nerdier version of Jamar at that age. He had big glasses that made his eyes grow to saucers over the idea of blowing something up.

“Um, no,” Jamar said.

Robbie frowned.

“We’ll just move the ceremony,” Cara said. “It’s not a big deal.”

“But that was such a pretty spot,” her mother said. She looked a lot like Cara, had the same bright hair and slight build. The only difference was that Diane’s face had an anxiety that rarely touched Cara’s.

“Well Mom, maybe if you go ask the bees nicely, they’ll leave us alone.”

“Fine, do what you want. We’ll move it.” Diane turned to the sink and started filling a vase. “We’ll do whatever you want.”

“—I’m telling you, a little gasoline....”

“Robot, give it up.”

“Diane,” I said, touching Cara’s mom’s arm to get her attention, “is there something I can get to put on these?”

“Fletcher, of course.” She dumped some water out of the vase, shifted the flowers around. “Upstairs,” she said, setting the vase on the window sill, “in the bathroom, under the sink, there’s a Tupperware box. Inside that box—a clear Tupperware box—I think there’s some insect-bite cream stuff.”

“Thanks.” I turned to Mateo. “Come?”

We went up the stairs. The wall was decorated with family photos that spanned a hundred years. Cara was a baby halfway up. Jamar started appearing near the landing and had a healthy presence at the top.

“He was cute, huh?” Mateo said.

“He was. He’s a good-looking guy.”

“Were you totally in love with him in college?”

“I’ve never spent much time pining for straightboys. Always had plenty of other dicks in the fire.”

“You thought I was straight.”

“I was unsure.”

“And yet you pined for me.”

“I sensed the truth. Where’s this bathroom?”

All the doors of the rooms upstairs were closed, but we found the bathroom after one wrong try that revealed Cara’s old room, full now with dusty exercise equipment and piles of winter clothes. Under the bathroom sink, just as Diane said, was the insect-bite stuff, only it was a spray, not a cream. I sat on the edge of the tub and rolled up my pant-leg.

“Gimme the stuff,” Mateo said. He sat down on the toilet and took my foot in his lap.

“Oh woe is me!” I threw my forearm across my brow.

“Are you ready?” he said. “I am about to apply the medicine. It will hurt. I should find something for you to bite down upon.”

“Just hurry and spray me with your magic serum, doctor.”

“Oh god. OK.”
Skwwsht.
“There. Let it dry. Now give me that arm of yours.”
Skwwsht.
“OK. You’re done.”