The Haight by Peter Moreira

Author:Peter Moreira [Moreira, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

Light from two candles flickered across the corrugated metal above their naked bodies. It illuminated the plaster cast sculptures that surrounded them—a horse’s head, a car with a smiling face, a baby-blue unicorn. The props from recent plays and pantomimes at Vague Dimensions had been painted in bright colors, but the hues were dull in the weak light. With her chin resting on Fox’s chest, The Seamstress studied each one and looked around the storage area.

“So this is where you live?” she asked, shifting on the bare mattress.

“A guy I work with showed me this place—I crash here sometimes,” Fox murmured. He was fighting off sleep. He wanted to be awake with her, to talk with her as long as he could. The Seamstress had been impressed that someone his age liked rock, and even knew some of the bands that performed at Vague Dimensions. Just before the last set finished, he’d taken her by the hand and led her behind the stage’s rear curtain to a rickety ladder that led up to the metal catwalk. Off to the side was a storage area, with a mattress on the floor. He lit a candle and they lay down. She was nervous, even a bit reluctant at first. But he used gentle persuasion, told her she was special, beautiful. She was comfortable in her nakedness, let him kiss her, eventually responded passionately. She was nervous, Fox knew, and the next time their passion would overcome the tension.

“I live in my van,” he told her. “Where do you live?”

“Tony found me a place.”

“Didn’t want to move home with your gun-toting dad?”

“Not my gun-toting dad. Not my over-protective mom.”

“I thought it was dads who were over-protective.” She didn’t respond. “He wasn’t protective?”

“What? Oh, uhhh. Yeah, yeah. In his own way he was protective.”

He couldn’t see her face but there was something in her voice that said she was smiling. “How?”

“He taught me to protect myself. That was his form of caring. He told me, never drink too much, never get in a car with a drunk boy.” Her voice drifted off.

“And he taught you how to shoot a gun.”

She was about to agree and caught herself. “To use a gun. To clean it, aim it, how the safety worked.”

“Life lessons from an aging Republican.”

“No.” She lifted her head, turned to him and smiled. “No, a Kennedy Democrat. But very, very big on military service.”

“The World War Two generation. Even their liberals are fascists.”

“Right on.”

“So is that why you left home? Because he wanted you drafted?”

It was a lame joke and it fell flat. “No,” she said. “My friend Raymond.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No, no. Raymond was this goofy kid who lived down the street. We always played together.” She smiled. “I think I liked him ’cause I always won when we wrestled. Even though he was two years older than me.” She rolled over so she was lying on her belly and dropped her face into her hands. “Didn’t have an athletic bone in his body.

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