AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Did you go trick-or-treating as a kid?” I ask Rex.
“Naw, too shy,” he says. “My mom would usually bring home one of those plastic pumpkins from whatever bar or diner she was working in, and some candy. You?” he asks me.
“Oh hell no. Ring a stranger’s doorbell in my neighborhood and you would’ve gotten shot.” I wait for Will to chime in about whether or not he went trick-or-treating as a kid, but he doesn’t say anything. He gets up and gets another round, Rex waving no to a third beer.
“There are these ghost tours in Philly,” I tell Rex. “You know, like haunted history stuff. And one year, Ginger and I followed the tour to see the route, then on Halloween, we dressed in all white and Ginger did this makeup so we looked dead—she’s really good at makeup—and we hid in this one old graveyard in Old City that the tour went past. And when the tour guide started talking about the ghost of some elder statesman who supposedly haunted the graveyard, we jumped up and ran at the tour group. They all screamed and everything. It was perfect. But then, this old guy came running after us dressed in, like, a rotted potato sack with this long, bloody hair, and we screamed and ran. I guess he was supposed to be there to scare the tour group and we totally fucked it up.”
Will has slid another drink into my hand while I’m talking and I sip it absently. I scoot a little closer to Rex, staring at Will. He’s not so intimidating.
“Daniel,” Rex is saying. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Um, at your house?”
He shakes his head. “That was a piece of toast. I think you need to eat something. Are you hungry?”
“I could eat,” I say, as my stomach gives a loud growl. “Do you guys want?”
“Fries,” Will says. Rex shakes his head. I order at the bar and stop at the bathroom. When I get back it’s clear they’ve been talking about me—or, Will has been—because he stops midsentence.
I slide back into the booth and lean my head against Rex’s shoulder just a little bit because I’m so tired all of a sudden. He puts his arm around me.
“So all it takes are a few shots of whiskey to turn the porcupine into a kitten, huh?” Will says. Is he talking to me? Rex’s arm tightens around my shoulder.
“I don’t like you at all,” I say to Will, who grins at me. It seems to break the ice, though, because by the time the food comes we’re all chatting about different places we’ve lived and Will asks me about teaching.
It’s funny: Will is kind of a messy eater. He crams fries in his mouth like the kids I used to hang out with in diners, and it looks odd with his refined face and expensive clothes. I only notice it because I used to eat that way too. I grew up guarding my plate against my brothers and eating as fast as I could. It’s one of the things I worked hard to fix when I noticed the other grad students at Penn didn’t eat like me.
I eat about half my BLT and fries and push the plate over to Rex, who started eyeing it as soon as the smell of bacon hit his nose. He squeezes my thigh.
“You don’t want any more?” he asks, like he always does, and I say “I’m done,” just like I always do, and I have this weird picture in my head of that exchange happening a thousand more times. I shake my head, which is all fuzzy, though I feel better now that I’ve eaten.
Will is watching us, his greasy fingers leaving prints on his martini glass.
“You want to get out of here?” Rex asks me when he finishes the food. His eyes are warm and his stubble is a little longer than usual because he worked from home today. It looks soft, and in the light of the pub, I can see the red in it and a few strands of silver at his temples. I nod.
Outside, it smells bright and cold and Rex puts his arm around me again.
“I’ll walk you home,” Rex says, though you can almost see my apartment from here.
“Go to bed, old men,” Will calls, waving behind him as he walks in the other direction without looking back.
Rex and I amble toward my house.
“Wait, how old is Will?” I ask, registering the old man comment.
“Twenty-six.”
“Wow, so you dated when he was only, what, twenty-two?”
“Yeah, he’d just finished college.”
I unlock the door and for once my apartment doesn’t feel too oppressive. I left the window open a crack, so the ramen smell has dissipated, anyway. Kicking my shoes off and dropping my bag on the quasi-fixed kitchen table, I walk into the bathroom and brush my teeth twice. Nothing makes the day feel distant like the taste of toothpaste. I wander back outside and Rex has locked the front door.
