Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [57]
“All right,” Huddie said, patting the hand on his shoulder, keeping his face turned away, to not see her tears, to not have her see his.
When he rose to leave, after three false starts, there was no afternoon light left, just the chill blue-grey of winter dusk and the white Hollywood-style bathroom lights buzzing through it.
“You’re leaving,” she said.
“Leaving you?” One of her hairs would not come loose from his tongue, her earrings had left twin, intimate gouges on his cheeks, and these awkward things gave him as much pleasure as all the official great moments of his life put together.
“No. It only looks that way. I am right here.” He put his hand between her breasts, and felt his palm sink by quarter inches, lodging far beneath the surface of her skin. “Here.”
Beneath Wings of Love Abide
Huddie knew it would be a disaster.
“Max will be at physical therapy. I know his schedule, I’m taking him there and picking him up. Don’t worry, just meet me on your break.”
They were both tired of the motel. At first, when he couldn’t have even five minutes of his hand on Elizabeth’s naked stomach, an hour on a bed, any private bed, was all he would ever ask for in life. He knew that it would be no time at all before even two hours on the bed wasn’t enough; it made his chest hurt, it made the motel impossibly sterile, a disgusting black hole that took in conversation and sentiment and memory and left sex between two people in a hurry, trying to act as though an afternoon was a life. He liked comfort, a glass of juice, a bathrobe, real pillows. He liked decency. Huddie didn’t want to raise the issue of the motel’s shortcomings. He couldn’t afford an apartment, and when he talked about leaving June, he and Elizabeth both burst into tears.
“All right. You sure?”
“Huddie, of course I’m sure. I’m the one who drives him. I’ll drop him off at around one, run a few errands, and meet you at two. I’ll go pick him up at three-thirty. Okay?”
Huddie listened closely at the door and heard nothing from inside. Elizabeth wasn’t back yet. The apartment was as he imagined, like his dad’s place, more or less. Old-man smell, bathroom nastiness, a little lingering cigarette smoke and Old Grand-Dad, which made it very much like his father’s house. Huddie was standing next to a musty, overloaded coat tree, one of Max’s hats falling toward him, when he heard a gluey, rumbling cough that was not Elizabeth’s.
“Sweetheart? Could you come here?”
Between his impulse to laugh aloud at the farce his life was turning into and his jacket’s entanglement with the coat tree, Huddie froze in the middle of the front hall.
“Liz? I don’t—”
Max leaned through the bedroom doorway, losing his grip on his unzipped pants. Huddie remembered a stronger and bearded face from junior high school and looked away from the shining white ball of Mr. Stone’s belly.
“Mr. Stone? Max? I’m a friend of Elizabeth’s. She invited me over for a cup of coffee …”
“And gave you the key?”
“She thought she might be a little late, from taking you to the uh.” Huddie couldn’t remember, for the life of him, where Elizabeth had been taking Max.
Max slid down to the floor.
“Could you get me the blue pillbox, from my nightstand? And the water?”
Huddie brought Max his nitroglycerine and pressed Max’s hand to the glass.
“Okay now. Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure. I had this pain before.” Max put his fist to the middle of his chest, a gesture that would ensure him immediate examination in the emergency room. “And I took a nitro and it was better. And now it’s back. And a few minutes ago my jaw and my elbows ached. But they’re not hurting now, so that’s good.”
“That is good. Did you eat something spicy? You know, heartburn?”
“Chinese food.” Max was embarrassed to talk about eating with his belly resting on his thighs, in front of this well-built boy.
“Golden Chopsticks?” It was the place nearest Max’s apartment, the place Huddie would go for Empress Chicken, given his choice.
“Yeah. Ahh. It’s not better.”
“Let me call your doctor.”
“If it’s an infarction,