The Skin of Things

When Cade woke up the sun was in his eyes, but there was a key jiggling in the door, and he wondered if that had brought him back to consciousness as well. He’d slept in his shorts and tee shirt on the surface of the bed, and now Donovan, in very old khakis and a rumpled dress shirt walked in, closed the door, and then pulled the blinds, saying, “Fuck all this. I’m going back to bed.”

“Where’ve you been?” Cade said.

“Watching the sunrise.”

“What time is it?”

“Six? Seven? Something like that.”

“Shit we just went to sleep like four hours ago.”

“But I wanted to see what sunrise looked like,” Donovan yawned long, and when he was almost finished, yawned again. “And it was beautiful.”

“I thought you were opposed to getting up early unless you had to,” Cade turned over, folding himself into a ball, and pulled the comforter around him.

“Well, I had to. And as soon as I pre make this coffee, I’m going back to bed.”

“When do you wanna head back?” Cade called into the kitchenette while Donovan took out the coffee pot.

“Uh…. Some time after we wake up, I guess. Whenever that happens. Do you have anything to do?”

“Not really. Say, won’t you be glad when the school year is over?”

“Good God, it’s hardly begun.”

Even though Cade woke before Don, it wasn’t until his friend woke up in the other twin bed and headed to the bathroom that Cade got out off his to turn on the coffee pot..

“I wish there was an alarm on it,” he remarked. “Next coffee pot will have an alarm.”

They were more or less alike in waking habits. Half passed out in their beds, with a cups off coffee on the night table between them, emerging to sip until Cade got up in a bit of a rush, locked himself in the bathroom and then, twenty minutes later said, “Don’t go in there for a while.”

But Donovan was sitting on the balcony overlooking Union Street on the way to the beach. He was drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette, thinking of what a beautiful world it was. Not even that the day was beautiful, though it was, the sky like blue glass, the white thin clouds, the sun shining on the rails of the tracks that passed before the row of townhouses and hotels they were in. There was something wholly beautiful in the world, like the beauty of an old friend even in his most worn out and unkempt condition.

“You wanna look around town?” Cade asked as he came out onto the balcony, “or do you wanna head home?”

When Cade said this, the blue sky was already becoming less blue, and the sun starting to hide behind clouds.

“I like the drive better than just hanging around here,” Don said, “and it’s kind of sad on Sunday with everybody leaving.”

Cade nodded.

“I would like,” Donovan said, “just once to take the train. See what it’s like. Not that clunky old South Shore, but the Amtrak into Chicago. Imagine what it would be like to be so rich you could spend your weekend Amtraking—is that a word?—to New Union to spend the weekend at your beach condo?”

The way he said it, though, Cade thought, did not make it sound good or bad. It was simply as if Donovan was saying, “Imagine.”

Cade’s phone made a ping and he stopped to return a message before driving on, as he looked back, briefly at the station.

“You know, we should stop at some weird places,” Cade said, his car rolling over the tracks. “Bump around in Saint Joe’s. Not make a hurry of it.”

“Yes,” Donovan agreed. “A hurry is greatly overrated. Look. There comes the Amtrak. And all the little people getting on it, on their way back, just sitting on the benches waiting.”

But by the time the word waiting was out of his mouth, they were past the station and onto Benning Street.

On the platform Andrew sat beside Cory.

“I hope this train comes before the rain. Not that it matters. I guess we’re under a shelter.”

When Andrew said nothing, Cory shook his arm playfully.

“You alright, Baby?”

“What?” Andrew blinked at him. “Yeah.”

“You’ve been weird this morning. Something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Andrew shrugged. “I’m just ready to go home and sleep in my own bed.”

“Yeah,” Cory said, looking at him askance as the train approached.

Andrew had seen the message from Cade when he woke up this morning:

-Good night.

Andrew typed:

-Sorry for being out of line. I hoped you had fun anyway.

He was surprised when an answer came back right away.

-What are you talking about? I don’t regret anything. You alright?

-I’m fine. But the train is coming in right now, so I have to sign out. I just wanted to say sorry for being nuts.

He put the phone back in his pocket, aware Cory was looking at him with concern. As they stood up and picked up their bags, Andrew didn’t look back. It was nice just to know, for the moment, that Cory was actually seeing him.

On their way back into town, Donovan said, “That’s a funny looking little Methodist church.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because I can see it, and it’s funny looking.”

“I meant how can you tell what kind of church?”

“The cross with the flame around it, or the flag that’s a flame, or whatever it is.”

“My grandma was a Methodist,” Cade said. “I tried to be a Quaker for a year.”

“Really?” Then, “No, I can see that. What was it like?”

“I felt like I’d changed. I had to be quiet a lot, and I had to watch the news. I watched all these documentaries and got really involved with being this different type of person. I stopped drinking real milk and started drinking almond milk.”

“Why?”

“I saw a documentary about the way they treat cows, and how the utters get chafed and bleed, and so there’s cow blood in the milk.”

“But then you would have had to stop eating meat too.”

“Yeah, I was getting thinner and thinner and so… I’m not a Quaker anymore.”

“That is…. There’s a book in there.”

Cade grinned over at Donovan. “There’s no book in there.”

Then he said, “What did you ever do? That was odd?”

“I tried to be a Jew for a year and a half.”

“What happened?”

“They… uh… always remarked about how interesting it was to have a Black Jew, or assumed I was a convert or talked about…. Well, they never stopped talking about me being Black, and when I grew up Catholic they never brought it up. That shit got old. Also….Jews clean all the time. And I wasn’t really up on Jesus, but I got tired of being down on Jesus. It’s like every week I kept hearing about how they didn’t believe in Jesus and now… I’m kind of done with churches. And you know, it’s all a church. Even a synagogue is a church. It’s all the same bullshit.”

“We should have our own church.”

“That is exactly the opposite of what the fuck I just said.”

“No, but our church would be cool.”

“That’s exactly what Martin Luther and Uldrych Zwingli said.”

“Firstly, I don’t know who Ulrich or whatever his name Zwingli is, and secondly, I’m sure Martin Luther never said that.”

“You know what we should be?” Donovan said.

“Huh?”

“Exactly what we are right now.”

The sky that was fitfully sunny becomes darker the further they move from the beach. Don can’t help thinking how good it would be to still be there, to see the storm return over the waters. Ahead of them, though, the sky is blacker still, and now rain is pouring in sheets, and hail pelts the sides of the car.

“You need to stop driving,” he tells Cade. “I’ll look out for a place we can stop.”

Despite the windshield wipers, the view is like melting paints, and the grey of the road wavers with the dark greens of the fields. At last they find a lot they can turn off into and park the car under the shelter of a tree. The sky is darker than Don has ever seen it, and Cade says, “I hope this isn’t a tornado or anything.”

“We could turn the radio on,” says Don, and Cade nods and does so.

As they sit in the shaking car, Cade went from station to station, but the Rolling Stones don’t care about the storm, and no one on the eighties station does either. At last, a serious and professional voice announces that there is a storm warning for the following counties…

“But not a tornado,” Don says.

“You brought this on,” says Cade.

“I’m waiting for your rationale.”

“All that witchcraft in the hotel yesterday. The incense, the burning candles. That’s why the mermaid came.”

“You’re blaming me?”

“I don’t know if blame is the right word,” Cade says, “but you brought it.”

“I can accept that.”

We sit in the car, not really listening to the radio as it fizzes in and out. We both need to know that the world exists, safely, outside of this storm and this car.

“What else should we do?” Cade says.

“Whaddo you mean?”

“Burn candles, light incense. See a mermaid. Though that’s not really doing something. That’s like having something happen to you. Read Tarot cards, I guess.”

“I have been dispelling an egregore.”

“What?”

“An egregore, a group spirit. You know, when you go to a fucked up place and everyone is fucked up, and the whole spirit of that place is fucked up, and nothing turns out right? That’s the egregore. It’s like a group mind. It’s like the spirit of the group.”

“So like… what group in specific? What egregore are you getting rid of?”

“I was starting small, with the school, cause it’s really fucked up. Those kids. And then maybe the school board, the city. Maybe the country. I think the president is an egregore. People keep wondering how we got him, but I think we got him because he’s what we are.”

“Do you think a life has a spirit?” Cade asks.

“Huh?”

“Our lives. Like, can your life just be fucked up because you’re feeding fucked up stuff into it?”

“Well, yeah,” says Donovan. “Of course. But that’s different. You’re in charge of that. Just change the way you live.”

As hail filters through tree branches, pummeling the car, and the sky goes black, the radio sings:

Just walk away Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame.

Cade, unstraps himself from his seatbelt, and Don, realizing he still has his on, does the same.

“Kiss me, Don.” Cade says, even though it is he who is leaning in, kissing him.

They move together, kissing, until finally Don says, “This is inconvenient,” and together they move to the backseat, pushing it down into the trunk to make one long bed, lying side by side, arms around each other, kissing, running hands through hair, over head, with silent agreement, lifting tee shirt and shirt and kissing, and at last, under the blackness and under the rain, laying together naked, linking thighs and arms, running hands over each other. The radio comes in clear enough for a moment.

You're gonna fly away,

glad your goin' my way
I love it when we're cruising together
The music is played for love,
Cruising is made for love
I love it when we're cruising together