Soft and Warm Against Me

Evan Morgan Williams

Jimmy and I were heading out the door when the phone rang. We should have let it go, but maybe the girls needed us to bring something. We always loaned them stuff. Textbooks. Records. Weed. Their apartment was on the same airshaft, and we always heard them as they chattered, or drew a bath, or cried on the phone, and sometimes they even yelled up to borrow stuff, but mostly they phoned or came to the door. Sarah and Elizabeth. They both had blonde hair and blue eyes, and they always swapped sweaters, so it was easy to mix them up. They always smiled when we handed them what they needed, and we were always glad to help them. 

     I picked up the phone. 

     “Matthew, is that you?” 

     “Can’t talk, Mom. We’re in a hurry.” 

     Jimmy said, “Shit!” He stomped over to the window. The snow fell choking the light from the streetlamp. Jimmy fished through his pocket and took out his pipe. He lit a bowl with his vintage lighter. Orange flame lit his face. 

     “Hey, over here.” I held out my hand. 

     My mom said, “What? Matthew, you know what tonight is.” 

     Jimmy came back from the window and handed the pipe to me. I took a hit, marijuana and kerosene stinging my lungs. 

     My mom said, “Matthew, you ever think about your sister anymore?”

     Robert, my other roommate, came out of his room. He wore his leather jacket, and he smelled like cologne, the good stuff he never let us borrow. One look at Jimmy and me, and he rolled his eyes. He took Jimmy’s pipe and helped himself to a hit. 

     “Matthew?” 

     I said, “Mom, I got to go.” 

     Robert exhaled. “Little boys,” he said. 

     “Where do you got to go that you can’t talk to your own mother?” 

     “These girls are having a party, Mom.” 

     A pause on the line. “My golden-haired daughter is murdered. Two years, the memory burns. My son, he amuses himself at a party.” 

     “Mom!” 

     “She used to tell you stories. Remember her stories, Matthew? But how can she tell stories now when she’s so alone? I mean, of course she’s not alone anymore. Sweet Jesus.” My mom choked up. 

     Jimmy glared at me and made the cut-off sign across his neck. 

     Robert took another hit from the bowl, embers glowing. 

     “Mom, we really got to go.” 

     “To your party. Go to your damn party.” 

     Robert shoved his way between me and Jimmy and out the door. Kerosene, weed, leather, cologne. He would smell like a girl’s perfume when he returned in the morning. 

     “Your uncle’s over from Philly. Matthew, I tell you—” 

     Jimmy waved the lighter under the phone cord. Smoke rose, and plastic dripped onto the floor. 

     “Jesus Christ!” I pulled the cord away, but the signal had cut off. My sister, I had totally forgotten. Girls. Weed. Weakness of the soul.

     Jimmy patted my back. “Let’s go.” He clicked the lighter shut, and the room went dark. 

     We took the stairs two at a time. The cold poured in from the street on the first floor. Someone had wedged a Shakespeare anthology under the main door to prop it open. Jimmy said, “Dude, that looks like your book.” And it was. The god-damned girls. 

     Snowflakes blew into the hall, settled on the tiles, and melted away. 

     Jimmy knocked on the girls’ door. 

     I said, “I’m fucked, Jimmy.” 

     “Dude. You only took one hit.” 

     “No. My sister—” As I stood in the hall and shifted my feet to keep warm, I couldn’t even find the word that was my sister’s name. I wanted to run out that door into the night and keep on running. The cold and wind would hurt more than anything, but that’s what I deserved.

     “We should have brought some beer,” Jimmy said. “The girls don’t have ID.” 

     “They don’t need ID.” I made the outline of a girl’s figure with my hands. “Any clerk who cards Sarah is gay.” 

     Jimmy said, “Elizabeth’s the hot one.” 

     I said, “Which one’s Elizabeth?” 

      “We are so fucked.” 

     We laughed. I felt terrible about laughing. Then we heard music and voices in the apartment, and we let ourselves in, and I forgot about feeling terrible for a while. 

     The room’s heat hit me in the face. Heat and cinnamon and clove. We didn’t see Elizabeth and Sarah at first. Three guys hovered by the kitchen door. They wore hockey jerseys, the kind you buy at the bookstore, your graduation year printed on the back. Two 85s and an 86. The boys were talking hockey and drinking Coronas, which they gripped around the neck. 

     “Shut the damn door.” An older man sat in the girls’ papasan chair. He wore a tight tweed jacket underneath a tweed coat. He glared at me as he drank from a dark bottle. 

     I shut the door. 

     He said, “That’s better.”

     Elizabeth came in from the kitchen. She nudged between the hockey boys. She wore an apron over a plaid skirt and pink sweater, and her face was flushed. We hugged. My hands slid across her long smooth hair.

     Elizabeth flopped on the couch. “It’s fucking hot in there.” She wore a silk scarf knotted around her neck, and she tugged at it. 

     Sarah came in from the kitchen. She looked like Elizabeth, but she wore a blue sweater with a white turtleneck beneath, the collar mussed around her throat. She looked straight at Jimmy, and he looked straight back. 

     One of the hockey boys said, “Don’t get any ideas. She’s dating her professor.” 

     Sarah turned and glared at the hockey boy. 

     “And her daddy’s the college president,” the hockey boy said. He was skinny, and his hockey jersey hung loose around his body. He looked like a little boy. 

     Sarah held out her hand, and Jimmy took it. Sarah smiled. You just knew Jimmy’s other hand was on that brass lighter in his pocket. 

     The man in the papasan chair coughed. He shifted his body, and the chair groaned.

     Elizabeth said, “We’re baking apple pie.” Her fingers twirled the end of her scarf. 

     I looked around the room. Me, Jimmy, Papasan Man, the hockey guys, the girls… I said, “Big enough?”

     The papasan man laughed, but I didn’t mean it to be funny.  

     I dropped beside Elizabeth on the couch. Sarah sat on the other side, and she gathered her skirt so Jimmy could sit, but the couch was small, and Jimmy had to squeeze in. Jimmy and Sarah talked, their heads bent close together. 

     I said to Elizabeth, “Is her dad really the president?” 

     “Yes.” 

     “Golly.” 

     Elizabeth said, “Golly? Golly? Little boy, who the fuck cares? Don’t you want to know whether she’s dating her professor? I would rather want to know that if I were a guy.” 

     “Okay then. Is she dating her professor?” I felt Papasan Man’s eyes on me. I tried to remember my sister’s name, and all I could think of was this tight, tweed, wheezing man.

     “Never mind!” Elizabeth rolled her head against my shoulder and closed her eyes. Her hair was warm. “Matthew, did you bring some?” 

     And I knew. I knew the word. I said, “Jennifer.” 

     “Excuse me?” Elizabeth pulled away. 

     “My sister’s name. I just remembered. I mean, you look sort of like my sister, Jennifer. You see—” How did I explain this? I was aware of my hands forming a gesture, or trying to form one. I set them down. 

     “You’re a cute boy, Matthew, but you are clueless.” Elizabeth put her hand on my knee and pushed herself off the couch. She walked over to the hockey boys and took a swig from one of their beers. She propped her other hand on her hip and glanced at me over her shoulder. I didn’t care. I had remembered my sister’s name, god-damn it. 

     Elizabeth wandered over to the stereo. “Matthew, suggestions?” 

     I didn’t say anything. Half those records were mine. 

     Jimmy got up, quick-stepped into the kitchen, and came back with three beers. He handed one to me, kept one for himself, and handed one to Sarah. I was glad to drink on their dime. 

     I said, “Elizabeth and Sarah. That’s so preppy.” 

     “What did you say?” Jimmy said. 

     “The names. And the sweaters and kilts and the smooth hair.” 

     “Will you shut up, stoner?” Jimmy looked at me hard. 

     Papasan Man chuckled. He drank from his dark bottle. His tweeds bulged around his ribs, and his chuckle gurgled out. He inhaled with a rasp. 

     From the kitchen came a billow of smoke. Elizabeth got up from the stereo and ran in. The music, Squeeze Singles, started up. 

     The skinny hockey boy blurted at Sarah. “So if you’re the president’s daughter, did you grow up in the mansion? Did you have servants and stuff?” 

     Sarah opened her mouth to speak, but a second hockey boy interrupted her. “I heard that place is haunted.” 

     “Everyone says that…” Sarah looked away. Her fingers reached and tugged the collar of her turtleneck. 

     “A girl was killed in there.” This hockey boy was muscular and short, and his jersey hung to his knees, another little boy. 

     Elizabeth came in with more beers. She kept one and gave one to me. “Wait, who was killed? What’s happening?” She looked around like she was confused. 

     I guzzled down my first beer and started in on the second. 

     Jimmy produced his pipe and his lighter. It had been his dad’s lighter, and his uncle’s lighter before him. It was from the war, and—I don’t know. It was something he could do with his hands. I wanted something. I picked at the label on the neck of my beer.

     Elizabeth squirmed in next to me, folding her knees under her skirt. She leaned against my shoulder, heavy, maybe drunk. She smelled like cinnamon and butter. My heart was beating fast. 

     The little hockey boy stood before Sarah, too close. He said, “The mansion was built by some newspaper baron, before it became a college. His daughter was strangled by a psycho.” 

     “How the hell would you know this?” I asked. I didn’t like him so close to us, me and Jimmy and our girls. Because that’s what they were. They were our girls now.

     “I used to give campus tours to incomings. I’ve been in there.” 

     “Why don’t we just ask her?” I pointed to Sarah.

     Our girls.

     “I’m not participating.” Sarah slumped down. 

     Jimmy set his pipe in Sarah’s lap. She picked it up and looked closely at it, her chest rising and falling under her blue sweater.

     The hockey boy waved his little arms as he talked. “So the girl was named Veronica, or something, and she was beautiful. There’s a painting of her in the foyer.” 

     “That much is true,” muttered Sarah. 

     “And the girl’s dad never let her outside. She had tutors, and she was like a bird in a cage.” 

     Jimmy’s lighter made its sliding metal sound. Sarah’s breath sucked in deeply. 

     “So how did she die?” one of the other hockey guys asked. 

     Sarah exhaled. “Jesus Christ.”

     Hockey Boy went on, “There was this dude, he broke into the mansion. He knew about a secret tunnel because he was like a stonemason who’d worked on the place. He knew about the girl. She was taking a bath when he burst in, and he dragged her into the tunnel and strangled her. There was a shootout with the cops, but the gun noise made the ceiling come down, and the girl and the man were never found. They sealed off the tunnel after that.” 

     “So how do you know she was strangled?” I said. My hands. I really wanted something for my hands. I put an arm around Elizabeth and her smooth hair. 

     “Well, my dad is on the board. He took me through there once. There’s still a secret door, and you can see stuff. And it is totally haunted.” 

     “Your daddy’s not on the board!” Elizabeth said. Her arm tensed against my shoulder. 

     “And there’s no secret tunnel,” Sarah said. 

     “Is too,” Hockey Boy said. “And I’ve seen it.” His lips got firm and white.

     I said, “What is this fucking ‘board?’ that everyone’s dad is on?” Stoned out of my gourd, and I couldn’t keep my mind still. I couldn’t keep my mouth still.

     Papasan Man gurgled. 

     “Will you shut up, old man!” one of the hockey players said. 

     Papasan Man clenched his bottle. He tensed in his bulging clothes. The wrinkles in his jacket tightened. I felt his tightness. I felt the gurgle in my own throat.

     Elizabeth was against me close and soft and warm, and she let me tighten my arm around her. I clenched my beer bottle in a fist. Elizabeth took my fist and laid it across her waist. Her hand was warm over mine. I opened my fist. 

     The record ended. The boys finished off their beers, gathered their jackets, and left for the game. 

     “Do you know those guys?” I asked. “Those punks.” I felt so strong. 

     “Oh yeah, they loan us stuff all the time.” 

     Jimmy rose. He tossed me his pipe, his vintage lighter, and his film canister of weed. He took Sarah’s hand and helped her up. Sarah smoothed her hair, bright and blonde against her blue sweater. She led Jimmy toward a bedroom, then stopped. She closed her eyes and frowned and said, “Wait. Not that one,” and pulled him toward the other bedroom. 

     Elizabeth nuzzled my chest. 

     “So if her dad is the president, why doesn’t she just live at home?” I asked. 

     “That’s a silly question, boy.” She brought her face close and pressed her lips to my ear. “Matthew, let’s smoke some!” 

     I was already stoned, and everything felt dark and close, and Elizabeth was soft and warm against me. I packed a bowl for her, and she took a long hit and handed it back. I took a hit, and I tasted her wet mouth on the pipe, sweet and sticky and cinnamon. We put down the pipe and kissed, and her tongue tasted the same as her lips. 

     Papasan Man got up. He buttoned his tight tweed coat over his tight tweed jacket. 

     “So what do you teach?” I asked him. 

     Elizabeth said, “Matthew, no. Oh dear boy, oh dear.” 

     “It’s a fair question. Why is he here?” 

     Papasan Man glared at me, and my stoned brain knew he was asking me the same thing. Why was I god damned here? Well, I knew exactly why I was here. I knew what I was trying to forget, too, what I was trying to remember and forget at the same time. Papasan Man left. Cold air washed into the room. 

     A timer went off, and Elizabeth stumbled into the kitchen and came out with a huge apple pie, steaming, tilting, dripping off the side. She wore pink oven-mitts, and she set the pie on the coffee table. “There’s another pie after this, too.” 

     “Who the fuck?” I pointed at the door. 

     “That was Old Man Bill. He lives one floor up. He’s in the hallway all the time. If you stopped ogling girls once in a while, you might notice such things.” 

     “That’s what you call him? Old Man Bill? He’s such a charmer.” 

     “Did you know he has a gun? I held it once.” 

     “What kind of gun does he have?” 

     “What kind of gun? Well, let’s see. A black one? It was rather heavy. By the way, he likes you.” She smirked. 

     “What’s so funny?” 

     “He likes you because he knows you’re not getting anything tonight!” She giggled. 

     “I might get something.” I tried to hold her gaze, but my hopes were fading fast. “Maybe?” 

     “Oh my god, Matthew!” 

     We each took a fork and dug into the pie. 

     Elizabeth said, “If you must know, I’m the one sleeping with my professor. But I cut off that arrangement. I was rather mean about it, really. Kissing boys right in front of him after class! But what the fuck could he do about it? Besides, Old Man Bill has a gun. I’m telling you, he would look out for us. I really should take him some pie.” 

     “You’ve never brought us any pie.” I tried to remember if I’d ever smelled pie in the airshaft. 

     “You shouldn’t keep track of such things, little boy.” 

     We ate right from the pan. So hot it burned. Elizabeth drank my beer, which was technically her beer, and she leaned against me, her skin warm. We smoked another bowl, and we kissed, sweet and sticky. 

     I said, “My sister used to make pie.” 

     “You have a sister?” 

     “Well, yeah. I mean—” 

      Elizabeth grabbed my hand. Her mouth was full, but she looked like she wanted to say something. She swallowed the bite and stuffed in another. “I’ve been in that mansion a million times, and I can tell you there’s no tunnel. That whole story was bullshit.” 

     “My sister was—” 

     “Did you know my dad is on the board, too?” 

     I reached up to Elizabeth’s neck and untied her gauzy pink scarf, sliding it away from her skin. She held still, but her body teetered. The scarf sparkled as I dangled it in the air. We watched the sparkling pink scarf until the music stopped. 

     I took another hit. “So my sister baked the most amazing pies. And her name was Jennifer.” Elizabeth nestled against me. “And she was pink and soft and warm like you.” Elizabeth closed her eyes. “But then she decided she wanted out, wanted out of everything. and being alone hurt more than anything she had ever felt in her life, but lately she had begun to feel nothing at all, as if her heart were hollowed out with a spoon.” Elizabeth’s body softened. I kissed her hair. My voice was a whisper. “And the princess ran from the castle, ran farther still, towards the sunshine, ran over a snowy hill, and was never seen again.” 

      “Matthew.” She put her fingers on my lips. 

     “I’m serious. Every word. She used to tell stories. She was—” 

     We kissed some more. I clenched that scarf in my fist. 

      “She met this motherfucker…” 

     Elizabeth said, “So your other roommate. Robert. The player. Now there’s a motherfucker. Old Man Bill hates his guts.” 

     She took the empty pie dish to the kitchen and brought out the next pie. It had cooled some, and she set it in her lap. She poked the crust with her finger. First came the good cinnamon smell, and then a wisp of steam. Finally, a bubbling sugary goo bled across the crust. The wisp of steam hung in the air like a ribbon, then twisted away. 

     We watched the pie. Elizabeth said, “So my professor said to me, ‘Someday you’ll be old and alone and cold.’ Isn’t that funny? And I’m twirling the ends of my hair, and I remember this exactly because he grabbed my hand and said, ‘Don’t you dare taunt me, Sarah,” and I yelled, ‘Don’t you tell me not to do anything.’ And I go on twirling my hair. Isn’t that mean of me? I don’t care.” 

     “I thought she was Sarah—” I pointed to the bedroom door. 

     “Oh my gosh, Matthew! No! Hold on a second.” She set the pie on the coffee table and went into the bathroom. I stared at that pie. She was in the bathroom a long time. She came back, kneeled at the stereo, and put on Squeeze again. She slumped beside me, and we kissed, but her mouth tasted like peppermint now, and I knew what she had been doing in the bathroom. She lay against my shoulder, and we watched the bouncing lights on the stereo, and I watched the second pie on the coffee table steaming, and I wanted the peppermint taste out of my mouth. I still held her little pink scarf. 

     “Matthew, I am such a mess.” 

     “You have no idea.” Everything was blurry, and I was stoned, and I forgot my sister all over again. Did she really tell stories? Was she really soft and warm? Maybe that’s why I got high, so I didn’t have to worry about how much I’d forgotten. I would sit by the airshaft and smoke Jimmy’s weed and listen to the girls’ voices floating up the shaft, and wonder which preppy girl was splashing in the tub, wearing her Walkman and singing The Pretenders out of tune, and I would rest my head against the hatch of the airshaft and gaze into the cool gray light going down, down, and I could tell when the girls were smoking, or crying, or puking their dinner into the toilet, or maybe just braiding their hair, or talking on the phone to their mom and dad on their fancy cordless telephone, begging for more money, or talking to boys, or professors, apparently. Not talking to me.

     “Matthew—” 

     “Not everyone gets old, Elizabeth. To hell with your damn professor.” 

     “I’m not Elizabeth.” She giggled. “Oh my gosh, you are such a silly boy.” She closed her eyes and rested her head on my shoulder. Her blonde hair spilled down her back, her chest. She slid her hand down and began to rub my cock through the fabric of my jeans, slowly, firmly, and it got hard, of course it got hard, and she worked it upward in my jeans and unbuckled my belt, but then her hand began to slow. 

     “I am not silly,” I said. 

     She worked her hand up and down smoothly, then her breathing became slow and regular, and her hand slid away. Her soft warm body slumped against mine. 

     “She was going to NYU. She was living in the city. She met this guy, the motherfucker…” 

     This girl named Sarah slept. Everything was blurry, and she was golden hair and soft pink sweater, and I held her tight only to have something to hold. I decided to wait for Jimmy, and I watched that pie as it cooled on the coffee table. Man, I wanted that pie. The record had ended, and the needle popped, but with the girl asleep against me I couldn’t move. I pretended she and my sister were friends and that they talked about boys and laughed, but I had to pretend really fucking hard or it didn’t seem real. 

     Jimmy came in from the bedroom. He scooped up his lighter and his pipe. When he saw my unbuckled belt, he smiled at me. 

     “You bad boy.” 

     “You’re the bad boy.” 

     “Dang girl fell asleep. I fell asleep too. Shit, I got nothing.” 

     “What did Shakespeare say? ‘Inspireth the act but taketh away the ability?’ You should haveth some pie.” 

     “I will taketh some pie.” Jimmy took a fork and ate from the dish. 

     There was a tap at the door, and Robert came in. Cologne. Leather jacket. Cold air. Perfume. He stared at us and the girl and the pie. 

     “You fucking losers,” he said. “Then he pointed at the girl asleep against me. “Now’s your chance, boy.” 

      “Want some pie?” I said. 

      “Don’t mind if I do.” Robert kneeled by the pie and took up a fork. “Unlike you twerps, I’ve earned it tonight, if I may say so myself.” 

     With my foot I pushed the coffee table away. I said, “You can’t have any.” 

     “What did you say?” 

     “You heard me. Now get the hell out of here. Get the hell out, right now.” 

     Robert stood. He faced me. 

      Jimmy’s lighter nervously flashed. Orange kerosene.

     Elizabeth, or Sarah, or whatever her name was, whimpered and nuzzled against me, but soft and warm was all she was, and soft and warm weren’t enough anymore. None of this was enough. I slid away from the pink pretty girl, and I lay her sleeping body gently on the cushions. I stood to my full height, facing Robert. I resolved to make a fist, and I was glad this meant releasing the sparkling scarf from my hand. 

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