Where the day takes you
3
The building was burning and they should have known it. That’s what Jamal said as they walked up to the apartment building with the fire trucks flashing their red lights, and smoke coming out of a window on the fourth floor. All along the first floor were little shops that were closed now, and Max noticed the main lobby door was open and people were walking in and out.
“Looks like it was only a bit of a fire,” he noted.
No one seemed to be stopping them, and so they went right in, and Jamal noted, “In fires you’re supposed to take the stairs and not the elevator.
“I honestly can’t trust my sense of perception so I’m going to take the elevator,” Max said, and then regretted it a little as it rattled up to the fifth floor. It still smelled like smoke up there, and when Max walked into the apartment, Darius was sitting there naked and unaffected, a cigarette burning in one hand.
“Fire out, yet?”
“Yes,” Max replied in an equally measured tone.
“You all had fun?”
“We had a lot of fun,” Jamal said.
Standing up, as if his penis weren’t swinging in front of him, Darius gestured with his cigarette.
“Aren’t you supposed to be home?”
“I’m thinking of keeping him forever,” Max said as he moved into the kitchen and water came on.
“Fine with me,” Darius shrugged. “Split rent three ways. So much the better. But fires do tend to happen.”
“I have to be at work at one,” Jamal said, as if this explained everything.
“Well, it’s barely six, so that’s probably not a problem,” Max shouted from the kitchen, and Darius shouted, “Whatchu making?”
“A surprise,” Max said. “Jamal, put the beer in the fridge.”
On the top of the roof, where they were not supposed to be, Darius Watkins, Jamal Taylor and Max Farrow sat around a plate of fried flounder, salmon and shrimp and drank beers while watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan.
“That’s fucking beautiful,” Max said.
“A Zen master would say that it’s a shame to call something beautiful that is,” Darius noted, breaking off a piece of flounder and stuffing it in his mouth.
“He should fuck himself,” Max said. “Who has time for all that one hand clapping bullshit?”
“If I get off on Fullerton, I can get on the Brown line and get to work,” Jamal said, taking a very long hit of the joint Darius had rolled.
“How,” Darius exhaled cigarette smoke, “does a very pale white boy in need of a haircut get the name Jamal?”
“My Mom couldn’t stand my dad so when I was born, just to piss him off, she swore that she’d been fucking a Black guy and I was the kid, and in a few days I would darken up. She named me Jamal after him.”
“After the non existent Black guy?”
“Yes.”
“And then what happened?
“My dad noticed I was still white and my mother remembered she hated my dad and they split up.”
“Lovely story,” Max commented.
Jamal shrugged.
“Well,” he said, “it’s a story. Lovely or not.”
“I feel normal now,” Max said. “I feel like it’s over now.”
Down below he saw cars passing like little toys. He imagined hands pushing them up and down Kenmore and up and down Thorndale. He kept his eyes on the lake and thought if he continued to do that he wouldn’t see how ugly Chicago was sometimes, ugly with its rail tracks and building after building after building all pressed together over tree lined streets.
“It’s only a little over,” Jamal said.
“There’s still plenty to go.”
“I’m having a lie down.”
“We should all have a lie down,” Darius said.
“Make sure I’m up by eleven?” Jamal asked.
“We can do that,” Darius promised.
“That was a damn good breakfast,” Max commented, fingering the beads around his neck
“It makes me want to get on the Brown Line with Jamal and get off on Francisco. Stop by the botanica. Find a little something for Mama Yamaya.”
“I got a message from Michael.”
“Oh?”
“He’s getting married.”
“That fucker.”
“I know.”
“I mean, people can get married,” Max said. “But why the fuck would he make sure you knew that? And after you ended shit so badly.”
“It’s because we ended things so badly.”
“Throwing it in your face. Son of a bitch.”
“He is,” Darius agreed, but he said it like he didn’t really care.
“I was trying to read this book,” Max put it down. “But the letters keep turning to fire and rolling off the page.
“I guess Jamal wasn’t wrong.”
“He wasn’t. I’m going to go to bed.”
“I’ll set the alarm for eleven.”
Their apartment was old and small and lovely. Darius had hung it with succulents and declared that he now felt like a white woman. The place was made of two studios where a wall had been knocked out and a new kitchen set up between them, and Max moved through the kitchen and through a space where the clothes he had hand washed had been hanging from the ceiling since yesterday, He said, “Gotta put that shit up, soon.”
He opened the partition that made his bedroom door, looked at the mess that wouldn’t take too long to clean up, and then collapsed on the bed beside Jamal who, arm flung over his head, was sleeping, his shirt up so that Max could see his stomach rising and falling.
“Time is it?” Jamal wondered, half awake.
“Bout eight.”
Jamal half snored, and turned on his side.
“Great.”
“The fuck—” Darius had been arguing on the phone with someone, but went quiet when Jamal came through the partition, stretching.
“It’s nine thirty,” he told the thin boy who, yawning, nodded and went to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
“Hey, Max?” Jamal said, returning to the room.
“Um….?”
Under the crochet blanket, Max grunted.
“Last night… at the place,” Jamal took his hand through his hair as he looked in the mirror, “you never got to come did you?”
“Huh?”
Jamal hung his tee shirt over the little desk chair.
“You never came. When we were with those guys. Remember, I came. In that guy’s mouth. Fucking hot.”
“And then there was that other one,” Max said, lying on his back like a fish in a blue net.
“Yeah,” Jamal said, hands jammed in his old black jeans.
“I mean, he felt good, but I never came. It’s a nice place, but not like a place for lots of stuff. Like, you wouldn’t fuck there.”
“Once I got fucked there,” Max said.
“Really?” Jamal said.
“Yeah. It was quite a surprise. Never happened again.”
Jamal casually went to a table and picked up a bottle.
“These poppers?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I take a hit?”
“Sure. I guess. Are you still tripping?”
“Just a little. Just so it’ll be nice and in the background for work,” Jamal said as he held the bottle to one nostril, closed the other and took a huge hit, swaying on his feet.
“I wanted you to come,” he said, and then screwing the bottle top on, he placed it on the low bed, beside Max.
“I want you to come,” he said.
And he pulled down his jeans and stood there naked, his penis larger than Max would imagine it, bobbing like a heavy headed diving board from a nest of brown hair.
Max’s mouth dried and his head spun a little, but he leaned on his side and then took a great, dizzying hit from the bottle, and his mind flew out of his body while his flesh went hot and, lazily, as Jamal came to the bed, Max unwound the blanket from his naked body.
THE END
