Pug Hill - Alison Pace [89]
“I’ll get it for you,” he says, and heads to the bar.
God, I think, look how fucking hot he is when he walks. He comes back and I thank him for the water. I’m careful not to drink it too quickly, lest there be unseemly vomiting. He’s telling me something about some new black light he used recently, and I can’t really listen. I’m looking at his eyes. They’re usually green but in this light they look so much more like purple. And I don’t think they’re ever going to light up for me the way they do when you tell him that Claire’s on the phone. I’m also thinking a little bit that it’s happened, that even though I didn’t want it to, that somewhere along the way I might really have become a stalker.
When the bar closes at three, even though I’ve been on water for the past half hour, I am still much drunker than I’d like to be. I also have a very, very bad taste in my mouth from all the beer.
But, also, I am blessed; I only have to dig in my bag for a second to find my gum.
“Can I have a piece?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say, and hand him the pack. As he takes it from me, a thought pops into my head. I think maybe he doesn’t just want the gum for the sake of the gum. He wants the gum so that he has fresh breath when he kisses me passionately, like he’s been waiting his whole life for me. Like he’s been waiting his whole life to kiss me. Really, it’s not simply because the eleven beers he just drank left him feeling like a small burrowing animal crawled into his mouth, lied down, and quietly died. No, he wants the gum because he and I, Elliot Death and Hope McNeill, are destined, just destined, to be together.
We walk, each chewing silently on our gum, cosmic symbol of our togetherness that it is, into the quiet desolation of Smith Street.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay,” I say and we look at each other and I move the cosmic gum around in my mouth a bit and then I bite down on it.
He stands in the street, just off the sidewalk, and he looks at me, really looks at me. And for as long as I’ve waited, for what seems like an eternity, for him to look at me, there is a part of me that doesn’t need to wonder if this is wrong, because I know it is. Because of Claire. He hasn’t leaned in to kiss me, hasn’t done much else other than ask me for gum and stand with me in the street, but I wonder what will happen if he does. I think that all I’ve ever wanted in the world has been reduced to this very second, to how much I want Elliot to kiss me, if for no other reason than for all the hours I’ve logged.
But the universe, thinking about the universe, it keeps getting in my way. It’s the way of the universe, I think, that you just don’t kiss other people’s boyfriends. I think of all the boyfriends I’ve ever had, all the way back to Benji Brown who might have been the only good one, and in a way, how sad is that, or is it okay? Right now though what I’m thinking about has less to do with Benji Brown, the best boyfriend even if he is, chronologically, the farthest away from me now. Right now, with the real possibility that Elliot Death might at any minute lean in to kiss me, I can’t help thinking of the boyfriend who must only be referred to as Cheater. I can’t help thinking that somewhere along the way, out there in the universe, there have been girls who kissed my boyfriend.
Standing on Smith Street, in my Pumas, waiting for Elliot to kiss me, I can’t help thinking that maybe the universe owes me something.
“Okay, well I am actually going that way,” he says.
“Oh, right,” I say, “I should get a cab.” I wonder if cabs drive around this late at night in Brooklyn. I hope that they do, because right now, for so many reasons, I don’t want to be on the train.
Something behind me catches Elliot’s eye and he looks away from me, looks over my shoulder. His arm goes up.
“Here comes a cab,” he says. He stares at it with determination as it approaches, like it is one of so many Old Master landscapes. The taxi pulls up, and the moment is gone. And then, as I bite down again on the gum, the gum that I thought was so significant only a