Love Comes In Spurts
an excerpt

City Bus, 1974

They were holding hands. Alicia tried hard not to stare at them, but it was a challenge. There was something nearly poetic about them. The dark haired one looked like he was gazing right through the entire world, his lips slightly parted and parched like he hadn’t had a drop to drink in a long while. The pallid look on his face made her think that he might be one of the walking dead- the homeless on the streets of the New York City- but his clothes were much too nice and his gentleman friend didn’t seem to the sort to be a street benefactor. His gentleman friend was probably the more attractive of the two, but there was something about him that was so off-putting. She found herself drawn more to the dark haired one. His gentleman friend had piercing blue eyes that lacked the dreamy, translucent quality of the other. His eyes locked on to the world and laughed at it all with a cruel mirth that made her stomach drop. His cheekbones were high and his nose arched and statuesque. He looked like a Roman with bleached blond hair and a safety pin rammed through his square, plump, smooth bottom lip. It seemed he was intent on defacing his perfection, perhaps for the benefit of his less extraordinary friend. But even in his attempt to destroy his beauty, he only managed to make it dark beauty that made her want to pull away and draw near all at the same time. If it truly was for the benefit of the man who’s hand he held, it seemed he was maliciously driving even more of a wedge between them because even as he made himself a monster, he still outshone his counterpart.

As she studied them more, periodically staring out the window at the passing, unintelligible scenery, she noticed that neither one could be older than seventeen. But when she looked at the way they gazed on forward, not looking at anything or looking at everything, and the way their lips curved down, not with displeasure, but with the weight of experience, she knew that seventeen did not do justice to their age. They were touching each other like war vets, holding on to their blood brother to wait out the storm. She wondered the true nature of their relationship, but it would have been unbearably rude to ask. The way they avoided each other’s eyes seemed to rule out lovers until she considered that perhaps they knew each other so intimately, they needn’t look at each other to know what the other was thinking. But they way they held hands seemed casual and desperate at the same time, as if they were afraid of what the comfort of their relationship represented. New lovers. Friends turned lovers.

“Where are you headed?” She nearly jumped out of her seat. She narrowed her eyes, trying to decide which had spoken because she couldn’t remember seeing either boy’s mouth move.

“The Bronx. I live around there,” she replied, meekly, deciding she would rather speak to dark hair even if his friend had spoken.

“So you work in Times Square and live near the Bronx?” It was light hair that had spoken. His voice was like velvet, but she didn’t like the sound of it in her ears. It was like the foul drip of cocaine as it descended from her nasal passages into her throat- the horrible remants of something that made her feel alive once.

“Yes,” she said, looking out the window into the grey, intimidating skyscrapers. Their lifelessness was even more prominent without sunlight. To be polite, she asked, “Where are you boys headed?”

The two seemed to exchange a response without even turning their heads. “We live in Queens. We were visiting friends.”

“You were copping,” she laughed, kicking her booted heels up on the back of the seat in front of her.

“Do we look like junkies?” She was confused. There wasn’t indignation in his voice, almost like he had perceived it wasn’t an accusation- as if he wasn’t threatened by the accusation.

“Well, I didn’t mean any offense, I just… If you’re in New York, and you’re young, and you’re alone, and you’re out late. Isn’t that what you do?”

“We were at a club. We weren’t buying drugs.” The light haired one slung an arm around his friend. At first, dark hair tensed up, but soon, it appeared as if he melted into the other, as if his body and mind alike relented. She felt like turning away, not simply because she felt like she was viewing something intimate, but because it made her nauseous. Watching them, she felt waves of animal waves of hatred and animal desire, mixed into a furious clash of necessities, waft off of them like smoke. She could almost smell it and taste it in the back of her throat. The dark haired one let his head loll on the other’s shoulder, but his eyes did not close in the slightest and he didn’t yawn or show any signs of exhaustion. He inched closer so his entire side was pressed into the curve created by his friend’s cradling. They looked like puzzle pieces. She felt like a voyeur, especially in her over anayalsis of what each gesture and touch meant, but there was something alluring about their unique beauty together that would have made her feel guilty if she looked away.

“All right,” she said, feigning disinterest as she squinted over at them. It almost looked like the dark haired one wasn’t breathing. It looked like he had just fallen over and died on his friend’s- or lover’s- shoulder. “Did you have fun?”

“Not really. It wasn’t our kind of party.” Light hair reached in his pocket, wiggling and jostling his friend who didn’t seem to notice or care. He simply rolled with each motion, his expression never changing. He pulled out a lighter and started flicking it open and closed. She would have tossed the gesture aside and cataloged it as a nervous habit of light head, but he looked at her and made sure she watched each time he clicking it open. She found herself fascinated with the flame. It leapt up and then calmed down and right when she could see the black eye in the center, he would flick the lighter closed again, almost like he was playing a game with her.

“Is he sleeping with his eyes open?” She indicated his friend, who started to look less and less like he was sleeping and more and more like he was lapsing into a drug-induced coma.

“No. He’s not asleep.” Open. Closed. Open. Closed. His fingernails were painted black, some of the paint chipping off in uneven lines and chunks, almost like it had been burnt off of the surface. His jeans had holes in them, so many holes that she wasn’t sure how he could have kept the Zippo in them at all. She decided he must not carry around money or an ID and if he truly was lying about his drug use that night, it must mean his friend had been the purchaser. Which could explain how far gone he was.

“Then what the fuck is wrong with him?” She tried not to stare into his eyes because she felt like dark hair could somehow get into her brain and take whatever he wanted without bothering to put it back, even though she knew that was an absurd idea. She avoided looking too hard at both of them all together, simply because the little voice in the back of her head that she rarely listened to anymore told her not to. And she did listen this time.

“Nothing is wrong with him. He’s resting his head.” He didn’t have any affection in his voice; it was clinical as if he were talking about someone he had never met before. She tried to figure out from what place this almost animosity and condemnation for his friend could come, but she couldn’t think of anything. If they were lovers, she was afraid to think about what happened anytime they disagreed. It was probably ugly because even their peaceful times seemed overridden with some undiluted sense of anger and tension.

“Is he your brother?” She knew the answer to that question, but she felt like being pleasant. They looked nothing alike and they touched each other far too much to be brothers. Her own brothers wouldn’t have even sat in the same bus seat, much less held hands or cradled one another as they “rested their heads.”

“No.”

“How do you know him then?”

“We’re… We have a complicated relationship.”

“Friends then?”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“I don’t want to talk about him. Mind your own business.”

“Look, I’m not going to attack you or anything. I’m sure you get a lot of people ready to jump your bones because you’re queer, but I don’t give two—“

“You don’t understand. Just close your mouth and think about something else.”

To her surprise and dull horror, that’s exactly what she did. She felt like her jaw was closed shut against her will and her mind drifted to how she would decorate her apartment for Christmas. She tried to regain focus and formulate a snaky response to the good-for-nothing teenager, but she couldn’t. And eventually, she just forgot they were sitting there at all.

The bus driver would later describe what happened next in a mental hospital just outside of where Alicia used to live. The dark haired one sat bolt upright like someone had shouted his name at the top of their lungs and he climbed over the seats so he was kneeling on the seat in front of Alicia. The bus driver watched in his overhead mirror. He described his movements as reptilian, not at all human. His body contorted and his face was like a snarling mask and his fingers looked like talons. The woman stared him face on and she didn’t even look afraid. She looked at him like he was a child, regarding him with a quiet disappointment, as if she had accepted her fate and merely regretted that this boy had to be the one to hand it to her. He knelt in front of her and leaned down. The bus driver at first thought he was kissing her because of the look in her eyes as they connected with his in his overhead mirror. He said they clouded over like he was kissing the life right out of her. But when he saw the crooked little smile on his friend’s face, he knew that the boy was in fact biting the woman. He heard the obnoxious and disgusting sounds of his slurping and nearly vomited. He swerved a little bit as he tried to contain himself. The boy continued making his crude noises, nearly humping the bus seat like a dog in heat, bucking into her warmth and draining the life right out of those eyes. The woman never screamed. It seemed like he had taken the fight out of her even before he had made his way over there. His friend leaned back in the seat and started moaning, like the sound of his friend devouring the woman was some erotic experience shared between the two of them and the bus driver swerved again, closing his eyes and forcing himself to remain calm, even as the other teenager started beating his fists against the seat, his hair tossed back and his eyes glazed over like he had heroin sheen. His friend finished with the woman, letting her fall limply against the window. Her lips were white and her eyes stone. He thought about that mischievous twinkle in them, how they had shone like jewels, so pretty and innocent and full of life they had seemed just minutes before. Now they were an echo, not even a memorial or testament to what they once were. The boy sucked some blood of his fingers, but some still stuck to the corners of his mouth like maroon and brown Kool-Aid. He made his way back over to his friend, his complexion much more agreeable and his manner much more vital and alive. His friend scooped him up in a bizarre embrace, almost like he wanted to inhale him, and he licked the corners of the other’s mouth. His tongue looked like a cat’s, narrow and pointy, much too long to fit into his mouth. The two of them kissed and it was so gruesome he really did vomit all over his lap. The two boys just laughed, pulled the handle and made him stop just outside of a quiet suburb in the Hispanic quadrant of Queens, though neither boy was Hispanic, and got off of the bus, still holding hands.

He called the police immediately. He found himself unable to stop looking at the woman in the bus seat, her hair matted with dark blood that looked black in the poor lighting and the two holes in her neck. They were white, dead white, and he could see into them. There was no blood left in those veins, he could see only the gaping hole of nothingness inside of her. And he threw up again. He was terrified of that nothingness because he knew that woman pretty well. She was a proud mother, a hard worker, and she always managed to make ends meet. She was happy with her place in life and worked hard to get there. She was vital, human, alive. And now she was full of nothingness and if it could happen to her, it would happen to him that much faster.