Ulysses, OH

The show was over and I left Valentina and Enrique at the table sipping their beers, immersed in a conversation carried half in Spanish, half in English that made sense only to them and no one else in the world. My mouth was hot and dry and sticky from the cheap beer, and I wandered off to buy myself a Coke. On my way I noticed the two members of the band perched on bar stools, conversing quietly with expressions of vague displeasure. On an impulse I pushed my way towards them, even though the queue at that part of the bar was bigger and moving more slowly. The line cleared gradually in front of me and as I was about to reach the bar, I accidentally caught the singer's eye. He didn't break eye contact, so in a rush of bravery I decided to compliment him.

"Nice show," I said. "I'm sure Rimbaud would approve."

His face lit up suddenly.

"People don't usually get the reference. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here?"

The question mark hung at the end of his sentence. There was something foreign in his accent that wasn't there when he was singing - something French, maybe, something so sharp it sounded almost rehearsed.

"I'm just here for the summer," I replied. The last person stepped out of the line with four beer bottles in his hands.

"So what are you drinking?" the boy in the band asked before the bartender could.

"A Coke, I guess," I said, taken aback a little. He raised an eyebrow, amused.

"How old are you? Don't you have a fake ID?"

"Eighteen," I shrugged. I had a fake ID, in fact, but left it at home on purpose as I didn't want to push my luck here just yet.

"Come on, I'll buy you a beer," he said, "for being well read." He did, and having heard the whole exchange, the bartender handed him the bottle laughing.

"I'm Leo," the boy said, extending me my drink instead of his hand. "And my friend here is Eliza."

She didn't shake my hand either, but gave me a smile and a little wave instead. Her eyes looked slightly fogged up, as if she was somewhere else entirely.

"I'm Jude," I said after a moment, feeling awkward and suddenly out of place, but Leo flashed me a bright smile again.

"Your mom a Beatles fan? Do you have a cigarette?"

I laughed and followed him out the door, Eliza trailing behind us, pale and glowing in the dim light, eyes fixated on the screen of her phone. Once outside, I handed them a cigarette each, and Leo lit up with a sigh of relief. With the cigarette hanging from her lips Eliza shrugged on her denim jacket, finished up a text message and finally sank her phone in her pocket.

"Sorry," she said. "So what are you doing here? Not the best spot for a vacation." Her voice was oddly hoarse as well, and she spoke as if she was in a hurry.

"My dad owns the laundromat," I replied as if this explained everything. And then, realizing quickly that this wasn't quite an adequate rundown of the situation, I added the rest of the story as well. "My mom is trying to finish up her dissertation. She sent me down here so I wouldn't be in the way."

"That's tough," Eliza said. "You're a New York kid, aren't you?"

I nodded, but her eyes were back on her phone which didn't seem to stop buzzing.

"So what does your mom do?" Leo asked, eyes trailing from the stars slowly back to my face.

"Philosophy," I said, unsure of how much detail I should get into. Leo's face lit up with wild enthusiasm again.

"Oh, how cool is that! What's she into?"

With a rush of excitement, I quickly told him about my mother's lifelong project to make Thoreau relevant again. "My middle name is Henry," I added as an afterthought, and Leo laughed heartily. "So what's your deal with philosophy?" I asked, lighting another cigarette.

"Oh, not much. I love reading about films, I guess? Nancy, Flusser, Deleuze?"

I knew these names from the bottom rungs of my mother's massive bookshelf. He pronounced them so perfectly that I was now sure that he was French.

"You're not from around here, are you?" I decided to ask, just to confirm, and he laughed, almost embarrassed.

"I'm from Canada. We just moved here to, um, pursue the American dream. So now my dad runs the most authentic American diner you've ever seen."

"You're kidding."

"No, really. You can find me there flipping burgers like ninety per cent of the time."

I felt a hand on my arm and turned to see Valentina and Enrique, ready to leave.

"Our shifts are starting soon," Valentina said. "Are you coming with us? Or you can find your way on your own?"

"Yeah, I guess I'll stay for a little while," I said. "See you back at the laundromat?"

She smiled and swung her arm around her husband's shoulder, and their laughter rang out long after they disappeared around the corner.



Eliza left soon after as well, but Leo coaxed me into staying, bought me a beer, a gin tonic and two lemon vodkas for appearance’s sake, and effortlessly but relentlessly quizzed me on my life, on the music I was into, on the films and books and other things I like. (“You play as well?” he asked me after I complimented him on his beautiful guitar, and I had to tell him all about my aqua blue Strat, which resulted in an immediate invitation to hang out at his house the following day “to jam”). And then we were the last two people in the bar and the bartender, Joel, Leo’s good friend, has kindly asked us to leave so he could finally start cleaning up the place, and the stars were spinning slowly as I stepped out onto the street and looked up at the sharp black sky. I lit my second to last cigarette and handed it to Leo after three long drags as we were walking down the street, the whole world swaying gently around us like an oversized sailboat. I felt the calluses on his fingertips as his hand brushed against mine.

He ended up walking me home, accidentally, because he was telling a story that he thought was hysterical – I couldn’t really pay attention to it because everything was just a bit out of focus, and as we reached my father’s front yard, he sat down clumsily on the lawn, the laundromat’s neon sign a red halo around his head. I fell down heavily beside him, the grass cold under me and the ground rough and uneven.

“One more cigarette?” he begged, sleepiness seeping through the enthusiasm in his voice. I looked at him, really looked at him for the first time, shadows and lights in all the wrong places, his eyes rimmed with dark circles, crooked teeth behind chapped lips, the mosquito-bitten, scraped skin on his knees peeking out from his ripped jeans, and I felt the sudden urge to touch him, to undo his shoelaces, to drag my finger along the zipper of his jacket. Instead, I lit a cigarette and leaned away from him laughing as his hand shot out to grab at it.

“So what’s up with Eliza?” I asked, leaning back on the grass because I couldn’t hold my head up anymore. Leo lay down as well, I could feel his elbow digging into mine, a minuscule island of warmth.

“What do you mean?”

“She seemed a little, I don’t know.” I blew out the smoke and handed him the cigarette, and our knuckles knocked together painfully. “A little distant, I guess.”

“Oh, Liz is a great girl,” he finally said after a good few moments of contemplation. “And she’s great at this music thing, we really just get each other, if you know what I mean. But her little heart’s not in it.”

I could feel the warm smoke on my face, and the stars were still spinning around slowly, like a carousel.

“I mean, she’s got enough on her plate already, with college and her boyfriend and all.”

“What’s up with her boyfriend?”

“Oh, he’s a little troubled. Possessive, paranoid, a little too into drugs, you name it.”

“Is that who she was texting all night?”

“I would assume, yes.”

“Why isn’t he around?”

“Oh, he’s not from here. And he usually stays up in Pennsylvania for the summer anyway. He comes down sometimes, so you might run into him, but it wouldn’t be a terrible loss if you didn’t. He’s a bit of a handful, really.”

He stubbed out the cigarette – it went out with a hiss on the cold ground – and gathered himself up from the ground. I grabbed the hand he held out to me and let him pull me up as well, my bones already heavy with sleep.

“See you tomorrow then?” he asked, and it took us a good few minutes to exchange phone numbers, disobedient fingers, numbers rolling heavily from our tongues, tired laughter. And, when we finally succeeded, he pocketed his phone, raised his hand in a little wave, turned his back and walked away without a word.

That night I dreamt of the smell of leather, the sights all wrong and disjointed – bus seats, motorcycles at abandoned gas stations, moonlight catching on the zipper of a jacket.