deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 34: black heart drawings

The lake effect snow fell over the cabin and the entire area for the whole day and thus, Sam and Belinda couldn't hardly do anything in honor of Joey's birthday, even though he swore that it would be fine if neither of them got him anything. There wasn't much of anything about the cabin to make something with, either.
"I wanna do something for you, though," Sam told him at one point, after he got out of bed at about nine thirty: he was one of the last ones up and he explained to her that he had had a bit of a rough night. He awoke three times given his feet kept getting cold from the blankets moving off of him.
"It's okay, I swear," he assured her. "I'm just glad you guys are all here right now with me. I promise." And he threw his arms around her and held her close to his slim little body. That same little body that she caressed and then she drew without his knowing. However, she still wished for him to remove his clothes for her so she could see his true colors for herself. She still wished to take off his clothes for him.
That evening, they dug into the first of the two cakes, a two tier vanilla cake with a creamy frosting all around the top and the middle, courtesy of Lars and Kirk.
"It was actually Lars who picked it out, though," Kirk insisted as he took a little plate for himself. Belinda and Charlie both took two slices for themselves, but Sam was excited for the other one on the actual day of Joey's birthday. Once she and him climbed into bed together again, she wondered how and when they would return home for the next day for school, especially when she, Marla, and Belinda started class early in the day. For all she knew, they would have to stay up all night long following the trip home.
Joey lay flat on his back and rested his arms on either side of his body. He tilted his head back a little bit so she could better see his Adam's apple and his fine collar bones. He rolled his head over the pillow and he gazed up at Sam with his eyes so big and liquid.
"What's on your mind?" she asked him as she climbed onto the side of the mattress next to him. Once again, she lay a few inches away from him. She thought of Cliff as he had turned in early that evening and she wondered how he was doing over there with Lars.
"Just thinkin' about tomorrow," Joey replied with a clearing of his throat. Sam shivered a little bit from the day long tenure of no jacket over her short sleeved shirt: at least she hadn't brought shorts along with her. She lay her head atop the pillow and sighed through her nose.
"Are you sure you don't want anything for your birthday?" she asked him.
"Positive. Really, it's been a while since I had a good birthday, to be honest."
She raised her eyebrows at that.
"Really?"
"Yeah. The last time I had a good birthday was when I was fifteen. It was right before I started playing hockey semi professional."
She thought about Alex and if he had a good birthday back on the twenty ninth. A good seventeenth birthday. And yet she wouldn't know what would suit for a seventeen year old boy who played guitar.
"So when you started playing hockey," she started, "your birthdays just kind of went down in quality?"
He shook his head. "Nah," he replied. "My sixteenth birthday was just rushed given I was playing so much at that point. Playing hockey and drumming at the same time. I couldn't hardly focus on it at that point."
"Aw." She propped up her head with her right hand so she could better see into his face and his big brown eyes. "I want you to have a good birthday tomorrow, though."
"We will, though," he assured her. "I promise. Like I said, we're all here. Everyone is here with me."
He sighed through his nose and his eyes pointed up to the ceiling. Sam brought her head back down to the pillow. She gazed on at his side profile, the same side profile she had sketched down in her journal. The same side profile that got her into art school.
He closed his eyes and that was her cue. She inched closer to him and she put her arm around his chest. Joey dropped his gaze to her arm as it hung right there underneath his face. His dark lips curled up into a sweet little smile.
"I did tell you to hold me last night after all," he recalled. Sam kept her arm there for a few more minutes but then she moved her fingers and she realized her forearm was already feeling tired.
"I'd like to have a fat doobie right here right now," he confessed.
"Why would you want a fat doobie?" she chuckled.
"So you and I could get baked together and then eat a bunch of cakes."
"A bunch of that same cake that we had had earlier?" she asked him.
"Yeah, kinda. You know those little personal cakes you see at like a bakery or some place?" He brought his fingers together to form a little ring shape.
"Oh, yeah!"
"Yeah, a bunch of those. Just eat up a whole bunch of those and fill ourselves up with them." He set his hands on his slender belly and Sam raised an eyebrow at him.
"This is new to me," she declared.
"I guess it's from my being Italian, but I like to eat, and I like to eat a lot to boot. And there's a part of me that just wants to go nuts with it. Go nuts with it and get kinda big to protect myself from the cold here in upstate New York."
"So I guess you must really like pizza," she told him in a singsong voice, and she thought back to the little lunch party they had had back at the rehearsal space.
"I love pizza. Pizza, pasta, cannoli, all of it. All the cooking from my dad's side of the family should'a made me fat by now but—" He shook his head across the pillow. "—it's from my being a hockey player, I s'pose."
"There's a part of me that wants to feed you a bunch of cannoli," she confessed, "just feed you a bunch of cannoli and then make you take off your clothes so I can draw you."
Joey rolled his head across the pillow and he looked at her with his eyebrows raised high up into his bangs.
"Do you have anything on hand so you can draw?" he asked her.
"I'm afraid not."
He pursed his lips together and he rolled his head in the opposite direction. He then sat upright and he swung his legs around over the edge of the bed. She couldn't see what he was doing but the drawer on the nightstand slid open and he took out a pen from the bottom. He stooped over and took something out of the drawer beneath it.
"What you got there?" she asked him as she moved one hand out and lifted herself up from the mattress.
"I thought I saw something in the drawers when I got up this morning," he confessed to her. "Just kinda out of curiosity..." He turned around and handed her a plain white pen and a narrow pad of plain paper.
"This is almost like the pen and paper you'd see at a hotel," she remarked.
"Exactly! And—I think I saw another slice of cake in the kitchen, too." He showed her a little grin.
"I think there was," she admitted. "Just one more for the birthday boy."
Joey climbed out of bed and, careful not to wake anyone in the cabin, he ducked out of there and into the darkness. Lars' snore floated into the room. When she listened closely, she could hear a slow, steady ebb and flow underneath it. Cliff was sound asleep.
She pictured him laying there on his side with a piece of his hair spread over his face. She had no idea if they slept in the same bed and from head to toe, and yet she pictured his body, rested on the side right next to Lars, and he dwarfed him all the while. Sam sighed through her nose and she lay the pad of paper upon her lap. It was happening a little too fast at that point, but she had hope that Joey knew where he was going with it.
Indeed, he returned to the room with a couple of paper plates, each with a slice of that vanilla white cake and matching frosting.
"There were actually three slices of cake left," he told her, and he shut the door with his hip. He handed her the plate in his right hand. "I'm taking the one with the two slices 'cause I'm gonna be the one being drawn."
Joey set the plate down on the foot of the bed and he peeled off his shirt, and in turn he revealed his slender little body. He then picked up the plate and dug into the slice of cake closest to him.
"Where did this come from?" she asked him, befuddled.
"Where did what come from?" he asked her, taken aback.
"This—" She gestured to his body and the plate in his hand. "—especially since you were so reticent to do so a few times before when I asked you."
"Well," he started as he brought a bite of cake up to his dark lips, "it's kinda you and me here right now. And I noticed you didn't bring your journal along with you, too."
Sam squinted her eyes at him.
"I don't know about you, Joey Belladonna," she confessed to him as he dug into the first slice of cake.
"Why?"
"You're so—all over the place."
"Because," he swallowed the bite of cake down, "—I gotta admit. I want to feel safe in the presence of someone else."
"So you didn't feel safe or comfortable when I was feeling your body down at the lake?"
"With you, I did. But I didn't feel comfortable with the fact that we were out in the open and I believed someone would catch us."
"Well, why didn't you say anything?"
"Well, like I said, I felt comfortable with you out there."
Sam knitted her eyebrows together at that. He dug more into the cake, and she remembered he had already eaten a rather large slice after dinner earlier. This was the first time she actually saw him indulging in something that wasn't alcohol, and yet there was something about this sight right before her. He downed the first slice and then the next one within time, and he brought a hand to his flat stomach.
"Had enough?" she asked him.
"Oh, yes. You want me to pose?"
"At least lemme see your belly from an angle. I'm gonna need you to sit still, too."
He shifted in his spot there on the side of the bed and he showed off the side of his body, and he lay his right knee on the mattress. His black curls sprawled over his left shoulder and onto his chest: given he was so full of cake, he could sit upright. He set his right hand on his knee and his left hand on the edge. His body was slim and gorgeous to her.
Sam put the pen to the paper and she was quick to sketch his head and shoulders first with the black ink, followed by his lanky arms and his body: she noticed that his belly had an ever so slight curve to it from all the cake and dinner of the evening.
"I like the way you look," she remarked as she ran the pen along the outline of his body. "And I wish we had something more than this little pad of paper and this cheap pen, though."
She showed Joey the paper and he raised his eyebrows at the sight before him.
"You sure about that?" he asked her. "That looks so amazing."
"I don't really wanna show it off, though," she confessed.
"Why?" He looked hurt at that.
"Because this is just between me and you."
"Would you show off a full body drawing of me to everyone if it was done with paint or sump'n?" he asked her.
She nibbled on her bottom lip.
"Would you?"
"If—I was asked," she replied in a soft voice; she brought the pad closer to her so she could sign her initials.
"If you were asked. Would you do it on your own whim, though?"
"I don't really know, to be honest."
"Well, if you ramp up a whole drawing with me and make such a huge deal about it, why keep it a secret? This is also why I haven't really been so up front with you before. Because you won't be that way with me with your own career."
"I have been up front with you!" she scoffed.
"Yeah, with my drinking! I may be a damn hick, but I ain't dumb, though. So you've been honest with me, but not with yourself, though. So tell me." He turned around all the way and he placed his large hands on the mattress right in front of her. His bare chest hung right in front of her and he brought his face close to hers.
"Tell me," he started again, that time in a lower, more curt tone of voice, "would you—share a full drawing of me in the nude with everyone? Not just Anthrax and the girls, I mean everyone. Have it up on display for the whole entire world to see. Would you do that? And before you ask—" He closed his eyes and held his breath for a few seconds. "—yes. I would be comfortable with it. The question is would you be comfortable with it."
Sam kept her lips pursed together and thus she never said anything back to him. Those big brown eyes stared back at her so hard that it felt as though it went straight into her soul. The room was silent, and she tried to listen for Cliff's soft steady breathing across the hall, but Joey's presence took her attention. For a few seconds, he glanced down at the pad on the bed between them.
"Take as much time as you need," he whispered to her. "I'm a patient man, I can assure you that."
She let out a long low whistle and his face softened at that.
"You okay?"
"That was—intense."
"What, me asking you that?"
"Yeah. I'm just—kind of not really used to digging deep like that." He shook his head at that.
"It's okay. It's happened to me before. In fact, I'll have you know something." He peered past her to the door to ensure they were alone. "I'm bit of a late bloomer," he whispered to her.
"Really?" She lowered her head a little bit. "You—really?"
"Oh yeah. I've been a work horse for several years, so it's not really something I focus on that much."
"Huh."
"Yeah. So—" He shook his head. "—like I said, don't sweat it. Take as much time as you need. Literally, take as much time as you possibly need before you feel comfortable to do it."
"Thank you," she said, and she couldn't resist the smile on her face. "And happy birthday." She handed him the pad of paper.
"And thank you," he replied as he brought the rough ink sketch close to his chest. He stifled a belch in his throat and he brought his free hand to his stomach. "I think that was a bad idea."
"What, eat all that cake?"
"Yeah. Oh, well. It was good cake, after all."
"Oh, yeah!"
"Anyways, let's go to bed—I dunno if anyone can hear us in here."
Indeed, they turned in within mere minutes, and she continued to lay within a few inches of clearance between them. And they awoke to a new round of lake effect snow and some homemade waffles courtesy of Marsha. The whole morning was dedicated to Joey and his big stack of waffles and a plate of the second cake, a devil's food cake accompanied with chocolate frosting on top.
He was perfectly content with the single ink drawing that Sam had made for him as well as all the food. He was happy without any gifts from anyone there. Sam, Marla, and Aurora stood on the side of the room with their attention fixed on him. He took large bites of devil's food cake and drank from a big cup of coffee all the while, and Frank, Charlie, Lars, and James all made him laugh all the while.
"He looks so good without all the booze," Aurora remarked as she brought her cup of coffee to her lips.
"I know," Sam answered as she inched closer to the heater vent, and she wondered if this was the end of his drinking. She folded her arms across her chest to keep the warmth in her body. The very sight of him there in the kitchen made her feel even warmer. There was something sweet about the way in which his face lit up and his cheekbones rounded out like ripe little cherries. Something sweet and even kissable. She had rested her arm on his chest and she wished to do it some more, some more before she made a full body drawing of him. Perhaps if she did that again, she could feel more comfortable with the idea of putting it on display for the whole public to see for themselves.
Before noon, they all filed out of the cabin and into the snow. Sam and Belinda huddled close together like a couple of penguins.
Cliff and Jon stepped out of there first; the latter locked the front door and turned to them with a big goofy grin on his face.
"Be free and get warm, ladies!" he declared.
Even though Charlie's car stood at the curb, it felt as though it was a mile away. Belinda reached it first after she darted straight across the snow covered lawn.
"Sam?" Cliff's voice carried across the snowy lawn. Sam turned back towards him with her eyebrows raised, and he gestured for her to move in closer to him. He bowed his head closer to her ear: the cold of the lake effect snow around them only accentuated the warmth of his body and his neck. She shivered and shook but he looked as though he wanted to tell her something important.
"Will you be my girlfriend?" he whispered to her, and she gasped. He stared right into her face with his eyebrows raised in question. She had been wandering around for months and yet she wound up coming back to Cliff. It felt so far away and yet so obvious at the same time. Those eyes gazed firm into her.
It was all right there, right in front of her. The yellow tulips, the books, and of course, the kiss in her apartment. It was so obvious. It was so obvious and she had to do something about it in turn.
"Yes," she said with a soft tone of voice.
"Don't tell anyone, though," he whispered into her ear.
"I won't," she vowed in a whisper herself.
"Sam!" Belinda called out from Charlie's car.
"I'll catch you later," Sam told Cliff, and he flashed a wink at her. She doubled back to the car and she ducked into the back seat next to Belinda. Charlie was quick to turn the heat all the way up by the time he had started it back up.
Four hours and they returned to the Bronx by the middle of the afternoon. Sam all but stumbled into her place: she was dizzy from the long drive as well as what Cliff had told her. She had a boyfriend. She had a boyfriend and she had her first big client with Joey. It was dizzying. It was euphoric. It was unexpected.
She picked up her journal from the couch cushion. The euphoric feeling within her. She could pick up the pens and get right to work until she fell asleep.
And indeed, she did. She put the ink to paper and she kept going. Every so often, she stood to her feet for a bite to eat, to stretch, and to use the bathroom, but she drew the ink drawings until she fell asleep at one in the morning, much to her initial chagrin.
But she awoke at six thirty in the exact same clothes. A few hours time, but not enough rest to go on the day with. She was quick to change out of her clothes and she put the papers that Legacy had sent her: if and when she caught a moment, she figured she could fill those out and then send them off by the time school let out. Indeed, it was Monday, and they would receive it by the middle of the week.
The pieces seemed to fit together perfectly, even with only a few hours of sleep, and thus, as she strode into Bill's classroom, she kept her head held high. The man in her dreams was right: the clock served as a friend to her!
He had cut the class short by twenty minutes and thus, she could finish the remainder of the ink drawings. She knew about those final three at last: the dream boy was in fact Cliff, complete with a clock in his hand, while Joey was the muse and then the friend was the man from her dreams, also with a clock in hand.
She completed that drawing by the time Marla offered to take her to lunch. Marla caught a table for them on the far side of the cafeteria right underneath the window and she volunteered to take plates of Swedish meatballs for them. Sam sat there alone for a few seconds when Belinda stepped in through the glass front doors right then. She looked, despite her heavy sweater and long dark overcoat, still too cold from the lake effect snow over the weekend.
"They're all done now," Sam told her once she entered within earshot; Belinda paused, and then her face lit up at the sound of that.
"All of them!" she proclaimed.
"All thirty one. I can't believe I actually did it, either."
"What's all done?" Marla asked as she returned with a pair of white plates of Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes and gravy.
Sam glanced over at Belinda.
"Should I tell her?" Sam asked her.
"Might as well."
Sam turned her attention to Marla right as she took her seat before her with her eyebrows raised.
"Bel offered me to draw thirty one ink drawings for the month of October," she explained, "well, no. It was to represent each day in October, but I was so engrossed by it that I wound up making all thirty one in a couple of weeks instead. I came up with a prompt on the spot and I just ran with it." She took the journal out of her bag and lay it on the table in between them. Marla gaped at her.
"Wow!" She lifted her left arm. "I'm getting chills, Sam."
"I actually did it in honor of the boys' new album," she continued, nonplussed, "that was what brought the suggestion out of her and what drove me to do it. But I want it to be between us, though. At least for the time being."
"A little something special for the release party!" Marla followed along as she handed Sam a fork.
"Exactly! I'll let you look through it for yourself—I've got something important to fill out..."
"Oh? A grant?"
"Nah. Something better." Sam took out the fan club papers from her binder. "Legacy's fan club."
"Shut up!" Marla's eyes twinkled at that.
"Yeah! Would you believe they actually sent this to me?"
She and Belinda glanced at each other with stars in their eyes.
"Get on it," Marla told her; Sam opened the journal to the first of the ink drawings and Marla gasped at it.
As she ate up her meatballs and potatoes, Sam filled out those papers within a few minutes. It was all really happening, and she figured having the full body drawing of Joey on display would be a genuine possibility as Marla and Belinda fawned over the ink drawings in the journal for their entire lunch break.
And by the day's end, she slipped the papers into the little envelope they had given her, and she slipped that into the mailbox and she strode away from there with her head in the clouds, and her heart within the paper, through the ink. On the subway ride home, she decided to call the ink drawings "black heart drawings" for that very reason.
Black ink from the heart.