The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [41]
“What’s so great about this?” We were lying side by side, doin’ our thing with our hips sedately, but it’s weird because it’s so secondary, though I’m heating up? I was so wet down there but I was also trying to concentrate on what he was saying. “What’s so great about getting bills?”
“Hello? You’re not listening to me,” he said. “’Cause I’ve got these bills, they’re like, uh, you know, the national debt, but look at the look on my face.”
“Now?” His eyes were kind of not-focusing just then. He was staring toward the Monopoly game, on the other side of the room, and his glass Mason jar full of pennies, and the other Mason jar full of old shoelaces.
“No, not now. In the future. Look at me, Oscar-of-the-future. Uh. Do I look scared?”
“I can’t see you.”
“Yes, you can. Look harder. Close your eyes.”
I closed them.
“Okay, now imagine Oscar-of-the-future. That’s me. That’s me comin’ home to the house, not-bummed by the detour. Look at the look on my face while I’m holding these huge bills I gotta pay. Do I look scared?”
“No.”
“How do I look?”
I kept my eyes closed. “Like a man. Confident and like that. A hero, even. You’re smiling?”
“Fucking A. I’m smiling. You know why I’m smilin’?”
“’Cause you can pay all those bills, right?”
“Oh, yeah. ’Cause I’m a big man and nothin’ scares me and I can pay all the bills because we got plenty of money, and, uh, I’m fearless —”
He made a yelp, and he suddenly came, to his surprise. When he comes, his shoulders sometimes jerk back, and they did this time, too. It made me so happy to see him that I came with him, right on the dotted line, but quick. Efficient. It’s like we’re connected with wires that way. Something happens to him, it happens to me. We’re concerted. Is that a word? It should be. Now it is.
We took a minute out for a breather, though we kept ourselves together. No condoms, I don’t like them, I’m on the pill. It’s funny about Oscar, he can come and pretty soon he’s got his hard-on back, standing up and smiling at me. Weird. Maybe this was, like, the month of his sexual peak. I mean, in some ways he was still a boy. You could tell how he was still treating sex like it was a drug and vastly illegal. He had that addict glint in his eye. But it could be tiring also, like shoplifting. It goes from being hip to being a chore. You get to where you want to do something else. The righteousness goes out of it. That can happen.
“Now you,” he said.
“What about me?”
“The future, man. We were talkin’ about the future.” He put his finger on my earlobe, where it had been pierced, as per his suggestion, my earlobe where I wasn’t underpierced anymore, thanks to him.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Sure you can. Chicks can always see the future, it’s what they do. Guys don’t, so much, except those weathermen, you know — meteorologists. Forecasters. So whattya see?”
“I can’t see anything,” I repeated.
“Don’t be lame. Close your eyes.” I did. “Okay. Whattya see?”
I put my head on his chest. “Well, maybe in that foyer we were talkin’ about? With the, what do you call it? umbrella stand?” I was speaking real slow. Groping love-talk.
“Yeah?”
“There’s a table made out of wood? And there’s, like, this vase, and it’s red glass, and it’s got flowers and . . . wait a minute.”
“What?”
“Your heart sounds weird.”
“Oh, yeah, that.”
I had my ear to his chest, where usually with humans you hear chunka-thoom, chunka-thoom, chunka-thoom. But! Oscar had this other sound, chunka-jazz-thoom, chunka-jazz-thoom, chunka-jazz-thoom.
“I’ve got this heart thing,” Oscar said. “Valves and shit. Like a murmur.” He shrugged. His dick went down from where it was, but he was working up the confidence look and the greaser sneer on his face, like what’s-his-name, the movie star. Even in bed he was working hard on his attitude. “It’s nothin’,” he said.
“Fuck and alas, Oscar! It’s something. You should, like, have it looked at?”
“They did already. And they said, Forget it, he’ll live. So tell me about this vase, Chloé, that you mentioned.”
But now, I sort of didn’t want