deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 40: orion's belt

"Happy birthday, Sam." The words crept over her like the body of a snake.
It was the day after her birthday, but Cliff had finally showed up to her drawing class. The modeling for the first level had been canceled for a reason that neither Sam nor Marla had been told about, and Miss Estes told them it was because of money, but she never elaborated on anything further than that: she had hoped to see a little more of him before Christmas break, but she never could because of Metallica's new record. But the two of them put it behind them once Cliff himself showed up to their second tier drawing class, a class which included easels, perfect for that sort of drawing.
He had found a new free little spot in between the New Year and the first date of their tour. He called her the night before on her birthday to tell her about it.
"Consider it the first of my birthday gifts to you," he told her, "my other one'll come—at some point. I can't remember. I didn't tell you about the modeling because it happened kind of at the last minute and then I just—kinda forgot about it. I also didn't know when it would come up again. That's why I didn't mention it once when we were at your parents' house."
"It's okay—it happens," she assured him. "I was just happy to see you when we spent Christmas together."
He had strolled right into the middle of the room with a filmy little robe over his body. A stool stood there in the middle of the floor, right before her and Marla with their easels propped up before them. The latter had put on a thin white coat over her clothes even though it was with graphite instead of paints.
His light hair spread across his shoulders: he held onto the lapels of his robe as if they were about to get away from him.
"So do you think I can do it already?" he called out to Miss Estes.
"Well, I have to take roll call and then you can let the robe drop," she replied from behind Sam and Marla. The former glanced over at the latter with a raise of her eyebrow; Marla nodded at her. It had snuck up on her and it also couldn't come to her at a better time. She needed to hide her love away under something like that smock, but she had nothing more than her little thin white sweat shirt. Just so long as she kept her arms close to her breasts, she hoped Cliff couldn't see her.
"Okay," Miss Estes said from behind the two of them. "Now—for our first model for Drawing Two, we have Cliff here! First off, let me apologize for all the run around—" To which Cliff shook his head in reassurance. "—second, it's nice to know that we have someone so eager for doing it for us."
Sam peered up at him while she kept her head bowed down; it was really happening.
"Eat all the cake, Sam," Cliff mouthed at her.
"So, let it all hang out now," Miss Estes continued, and he opened the lapels and at long last, Cliff revealed his bare body to Sam. His chest was toned and his stomach was flat. His hips had a nice little curve to it, and his thighs were slender but sinewy at the same time: his lower legs had a nice gentle but toned look to them. His large, narrow feet were bare. And then there was his skin: clear and soft looking from his better habits.
Sam brought her attention to his genitals, much larger than she had imagined in that room in the subway. She pursed her lips together as she picked up her pencil. To think they were so close to each other in her bed not even a couple of weeks ago, and yet they had no way of touching each other. They never touched each other once while they were at her parents' house and there was no explanation, either.
And right there she understood why, especially when he winked at her and took his seat on the stool.
Of course! Away from her parents! At least that was what went right through her mind right then as she gazed on at his body as if it was a true piece of art in and of itself. She brought the graphite to the paper and she scrawled out his hair first.
The crown of hair and then the square shape of his face. The narrow shape of his neck. His slender tailored shoulders. Then his body.
She closed her eyes for a few seconds as she thought about her struggles with shading the weeks before. With her eyes closed, she brought the side of the graphite down to the paper. She thought about the strange man in her dreams and the void upon his head. He gestured for her to come on closer to him and her pencil made its way over the paper.
Like he was guiding her. Leading her through the darkness on the backs of her eyelids.
Why didn't Cliff mention the cancellation the few months before? Why didn't Cliff do anything more for her over the Christmas break?
She opened her eyes and she beheld the sight of his hips and thighs within a mere few feet from her. So close and yet so far from her. She skimmed over the paper and the dark shading had made its way onto the curvature of his hips and thighs.
She stared on in between his hips and she let her hand do the talking, complete with the pencil. She ran the edge of the pencil over the spot in between his hips and thighs. That skin looked smooth and even delicate. She thought about how she felt him in that little closet in the subway.
Smooth and delicate, like a stick of butter. She noticed a slight crease on his waist, right under his belly button and over his hip. A crease left over from wearing a belt so much.
She made her way down to his legs. She paid no attention to everyone around her, not even Marla. Sam kept her pencil at an angle over the paper so the shading would be consistent; she pressed down a bit so it would be darker in comparison to her struggles from the previous term.
She dropped her gaze to his feet and his ankles. Nice, smooth curves. They were bare but tight and perfect.
She returned her attention to the paper before her and she gasped at the sight of the drawing.
"Whoa," Marla breathed, and Sam looked over at her with her eyebrows raised.
"Amazes me, too," she said.
"Wow, Sam," Miss Estes declared from behind her. "You've come a long way since the fall."
"I know!" Sam added as she peered over her shoulder at her.
"I'm eager to see," Cliff told her; she signed her initials at the bottom of the page, right under his left foot. But he never did get to see it, even when he returned to Jon and Marsha's house for the evening and when he returned to the Bay Area.
A full two months had past by the time she heard another peep from him, and the whole entire time, she wished to show him that drawing: every time she looked at it, and she took her easel out of the rack on the side of the room, every day in class, she wished to show it to him. There was so much more she wanted to ask him because none of it made any sense to her, either.
In the two months following her twenty first birthday, Belinda was eager to serve her a cake courtesy of the baker down the street from where she and Marla both used to live down in Hell's Kitchen. She had spent the day with them as well as Frank and Charlie given she had no class that day, but that entire side of New York City had been slammed by a blizzard, and Marla hadn't received her grant money at that point, either.
"When it comes, I'll get you something nice," she vowed as she left that evening. Sam told them she need not any more sweets given her jeans fit her a bit more snugly than before and her new hectic schedule didn't help matters as well: her otherwise slim waist filled out with a gentle curve over the course of those eight weeks. It also didn't help matters that Cliff ordered her a slice of cake from the bakery in Hell's Kitchen in honor of his twenty fourth birthday, and yet she took it regardless. It came from him, after all.
The weight crept onto her body, and she could feel it all the while: and her face slowly became rounder and fuller with each day. She put on her little sweat shirts and fitted tops and the fabric around her waist felt a little more tight: indeed, when she peered into the bathroom mirror, she made sight of a little more of a curvature to her body. She thought about Cliff and the way in which he touched her while they lay in her bed together.
She wished for a touch of his hand as she finished her slice of cake. She wondered if Joey could stomach a couple of slices for himself with a thought back to his birthday and the donuts he had eaten over Christmas break. So many sweets for each of themselves and it started to show upon her, especially when Belinda took a seat next to her with a plate of cake upon her lap.
"You're not fat," Belinda assured her. "Just a little fluffy because of the winter time. In fact, you actually look better with some weight. Besides, if there's anyone who's getting chubby, it's me." Indeed, she had a slight roundness to her face but to Sam, she just looked like good old Belinda.
"I dunno if I want to look like this when we go see Metallica, though," Sam confessed with a shrug of her shoulders; she peered down at her waist as it gently poked out from over the band of her jeans.
"You look great, though," Belinda insisted. "Like I said, you actually look a lot better with a bit of weight. I always thought you could use some weight, too. I always thought it always looked like you were starving." Sam frowned at that, but it was a compliment nonetheless: she took it with a sigh and a bit of a nod as well.
"Did we get tickets for one of their shows, though?" she asked her.
"I dunno if we need tickets, to be quite frank," Belinda admitted as she took another bite of cake, and Sam thought of Frank himself right then. "At least that's according to Marla."
"Do you know where Marla is, though?"
"I think she could be downstairs with Frank right now. I saw her violet hair as I came up and brought the cake up here. It was courtesy of the two of us. The two of us and Charlie."
"Charlie, too?"
"Yeah, he felt bad about the day of your birthday because it just snuck up on us and we couldn't find a cake, either. You know, it being the middle of January and everything."
"Oh, absolutely."
There was a gentle knock on the slightly ajar door.
"Come on in," Sam called, and Marla poked her head in through the space there: the rich violet color was still very much intact from the winter months but Sam could make out the sight of her dark roots at the crown of her head.
"Hey, we were just talking about you," Sam told her as she set her plate on the coffee table in front of them.
"And what better timing, too," Marla said with a twinkle in her eye. "The five of us—you two, myself, Aurora, and Zelda—have been cordially invited to see Metallica and Anthrax both in upstate New York."
"Where in upstate New York?" Belinda asked her as Sam stayed leaned forward in order to hide her body from Marla.
"Syracuse," she replied, "either that or Rochester. Charlie has to check the dates first, but yeah—we're gonna do upstate New York for the bunch of us."
"And Zelda's coming along, too," Sam stated.
"She might see them in Providence with the Cherry Suicides, but—who knows, really?"
"Why exactly Syracuse?" Belinda asked her.
"We'll have to go on the weekend, though," Marla pointed out, "'cause of school and whatnot. And the only dates they have around New York and Pennsylvania are in the middle of the next month. Yeah, they can't do it for spring break coming up here. We'll bounce up the road to the Syracuse on Friday for the show on Sunday and then we'll come home on Monday. We'll have to miss class. They are gonna be here in the Big Apple in—August, I think? But I dunno if Anthrax are going to be with them, though. I'm just going by what Charlie told me so far."
"I dunno if I can wait 'til August, though," said Sam with a shrug of her shoulders. "You know, my whole thing with Cliff and whatnot."
"Right, right, right! Okay, so Syracuse it is. We'll have to miss class, probably."
"The two of you might," Belinda pointed out, "I'm just gonna be an aide for Mondays this spring."
"We'll be taking glass together," Marla announced with a glance over to Sam.
"Yes, we are!" she added. "I'm taking another drawing class plus sculpting."
"Oh, boy!" Belinda clapped her hands together. "All kinds of extra physical arts. I hope I can get to aide for the two of youses."
Sam then turned her head back to Marla.
"Care for a slice of cake?"
"Please!"
It would be another week before Metallica and Anthrax embarked on their tour together, and it was right in the midst of spring break no less. The official first day after was when Sam and Marla resorted to Belinda for advice on stained glass and the approach to the material and the class itself. Two months Sam couldn't ask Cliff of anything more, and she couldn't show him the drawing, either.
Belinda had brought them back to her bright but small studio apartment in Hell's Kitchen: a table stood on one side of the kitchen, one which she referred to as her "handy lady table" given the tools strewn upon it and the sheets of glass tucked behind the legs to protect them from the outside world. She demonstrated on how to cut glass on a spare little piece: she explained on how she didn't want to do it on her good textured glass.
"I'm gonna make a slit here," Belinda started. "A little slit and then this little orb here—" She showed them the glass cutter, which had a small blade on one end and a metal ball on the other; "—on the back of the cutter will make it so it doesn't cut so much."
"A little slit?" Sam asked her.
"A little slit. Make you look right at it." Belinda had a smirk on her face when she said that.
"I'm gonna look right up a slit," Marla joked.
"I'm gonna look right up your slit, Marla," Sam chimed in, and Belinda burst out laughing. She brought her attention back to the glass and she kept on thinking about Cliff and that drawing back in her class. She hoped she could fetch it out of the hiding place in the class by the time her third level drawing class started that Monday. She could fetch it out for him. She could take it backstage with her and she could show it to him when she found the chance.
Indeed, she had thought about it so much that she could hardly pay any attention to Belinda's commentary and demonstration of the glass. She even had to step outside to the cool spring rain so she could clear her head. She peered up to the gray sky and she felt something cool on her waist: the thin black fabric of her sweat shirt rode up a little bit on her body. She tugged it down over her filled out waist.
"I gotta lose weight," she muttered to herself. She thought of Cliff and the way in which he looked at her from that stool. Naked and exposed on a stool.
"Sam!"
She glanced down to the sidewalk and the sight of Joey's crown of black curls.
"Hey!" she called out to him, and he held up two big brown paper bags. "What you got there?"
"Big bowls of pho!" he replied as his voice echoed over the sidewalk and the apartment buildings around them. She awaited for him at the top of the stairs and he made his way up with a smile on his face.
"Good thing it's pho," she said even though she kept her body close to the balcony.
"Pho is good." And then he hesitated. "But why, though?"
"I'm trying to lose weight," she told him.
"Why?" asked Joey as he knitted his eyebrows together. "You look great. You look healthy. Real healthy, and a little round, and full—how a girl should look."
"You think so?"
"Yeah. Move on out and show me your body."
She sighed through her nose and she turned to her side. She showed him the slightly full shape on her waist and the widened shape of her hips.
"You have a ways to go before you're considered fat," he confessed. "A long, long ways to go. You look gorgeous, actually."
She gasped at that. Cliff didn't even call her gorgeous, but he did remark on her shape. She could find the beauty of those two boys, and yet she couldn't see it with herself.
"Now, c'mon in—I wanna give you ladies something before we leave for Kansas City tomorrow."
She couldn't ask Joey about anything that involved with Cliff but she needed to ask something, however. It started to itch, the need to ask him about the feeling at her parents' house and why he never made note of it one time to her in that time. Maybe it was because they were at her parents' house and they had no way out of it. Maybe that was really why he spat at her when she made that joke.
Maybe that was the driving force behind their argument. All the questions and all the possibilities made their way through her mind as she ate up her bowl of beef pho.
She thought about bringing up the idea of a full body drawing to Joey again as well at one point, but it slipped from her mind when Belinda gave another demonstration with the glass.
Maybe it was the lack of genuine touching paired with the intensive school work, but Sam could not recall a time in which she felt more distracted and in over her head. What she felt to be important took a back seat to everything else. All the things she had to remember for her classes as well as her own artistry, and as a result, Cliff fell by the wayside. She handed in the full body drawing as well as her other projects over the course of the winter to Miss Estes for a grade and she was on her way to the higher levels for herself. And yet, something still didn't add up to her. It all seemed to sneak up on her, from her realization that Cliff never touched her in her bedroom to their fight to his trust issues with her.
She remembered what he had said about himself and Lars, how they began to drift apart prior to the making of their new album, and it made her uneasy to think about. She needed to talk to him when she saw him again. No phone call: it had to be done in person.
There was the date in Syracuse, or in Rochester. The one chance she had to ask him about it before they left for the rest of the country followed by Europe. Months and months without seeing him again. Such was the life of a metal bassist's girlfriend.
Indeed, when that Friday came along, and she, Marla, Belinda, and Zelda piled into Aurora's car and they made the four hour drive up to Syracuse, she wondered as to how she could phrase it out to him. They were going to be backstage with all of them, with James, Lars, Kirk, and Cliff, as well as Joey, Frank, Scott, Dan, and Charlie, even if it wasn't for long. Even if it was only for a few moments.
There was always New York City later that summer. But her questions might have become water under the bridge at that point. Sam had to relish every minute she had with Cliff there in Syracuse.
Given Metallica had ramped up their way in the music world, and they were hot on the heels of their new record, security had tightened quite a bit on the venue. Add to this, both bands had a show down in Pennsylvania that Saturday and so they never showed up to Syracuse until three in the afternoon. Marla called Charlie from the hotel and he replied from the phone on Metallica's bus, and the second she told the four of them that they were an hour outside of town, Sam and Aurora darted out of the hotel room together, much to Zelda's amusement.
The very second she recognized Cliff on the sidewalk behind the arena, Sam almost climbed out of the front seat of Aurora's car while it was still moving. But once they parked right behind the bus, she hurried up the sidewalk with her hand upon the strap of her purse.
"Cliff!" Her voice echoed over the street. He turned around with a puzzled expression on his face, but then he recognized her and his face lit up.
"There's my girl!" he declared, which brought a laugh out of Kirk, who stood right behind him with his guitar case slung over his shoulder. Sam opened her arms for him and they embraced one another right there before Metallica's bus. Cliff shoved his tongue down her throat: the fuzz over his upper lip grazed onto her skin.
He then held back and he set his hat upon her head.
"I'm so glad you could make it," he told her; out of the corner of her eye, Marla and Zelda climbed out Aurora's car with smiles on their faces. "I'm so glad you girls all could make it!"
"This is driving me nuts," she started in a low voice, but she was cut off by James and Lars laughing about something right behind them. Marla and Zelda joined them, followed by Aurora, who proceeded to talk to one of the guards near the back door. Cliff guided her away from the bus, into the bushes.
"Well, something is driving me nuts," he retorted to her.
"What's that?" She brought her gaze to his hips, at the sight of the shiny silvery belt, complete with studs made from old bullet casings. So fierce and fiery, and yet she knew the truth about him. She had seen the real him, underneath those clothes and underneath those bullets. She had seen the real him for herself on a sheet of paper as well as the backs of her eyelids.
"It's how you never showed that drawing to me yet."
"Oh, you mean the full body drawing I made for my class?"
"Yeah."
"I just haven't been able to get it out of there and towards you," she confessed. "You being on tour and me being in class. By the way—is there a reason why you never touched me at my parents' house? Like, right before we got into that fight. You touched me a little bit, but that was about it."
"'Cause we were at your parents' house," he replied, "it was also why I didn't touch you when we met my family, either. Also—don't take this the wrong way—maybe that's why you're also gaining weight."
"Gaining weight means there's been no touching," she muttered.
"Although—but understand, I think you look amazing, even when I haven't been able to touch you and you haven't been able to see me, either. Absolutely amazing. You can rock curves so well. Come here—" He held her close to him again.
"I don't want us to drift apart," she confessed to him.
"We won't," he promised her. "We'll always be close. You, my parents, and my sister are all I have." He held back for a better look into her face.
"Are you serious?"
"Dead serious. I feel like I'm slipping away with them. I have a bad feeling about this tour, too—like James and Kirk are gonna force me to lay it down on Lars at some point."
"But James and Lars were laughing just then."
"Don't let it fool you," he told her. "If we lose Lars, I'm out, too. I can't deal with that."
"What would you do?"
"Be with you," he said in a low voice.
"Are you sure?"
"Positive. There's no way I can do this long distance thing, Sam. I have to be with you. I need to be with you!"
"Do—they even know about me?" she asked with a gesture to the bus.
"They do. I tried to hide it but I had to tell them about it. It only made sense to talk about it. It was the only way I could be heard to them anymore..." His voice trailed off, and Sam began to wonder if their argument about trust was at all warranted given she told Joey about the two of them.
"Hey, Cliff!" James called out, and he turned his head in the other direction, where he and Aurora both awaited the two of them.
"I have to go," Cliff said to her. "I think Aurora got you guys into the best seats in the house, too."
Sam sighed through her nose again as he leaned in for another kiss on her lips. That time he tasted sweeter than ever. She had finally seen him for herself, and right in front of her classmates as well. Right in front of Marla as well. And no one knew about it!
She was about to hand him back his hat but he waved her off.
"Keep it," he said to her in a low voice, and they both bowed out of the bushes. They walked side by side but they never held hands or touched each other, lest James or Aurora see them.
"I hope we can see you again," she told him.
"New York, baby," he whispered to her with a lean closer to her ear. "We're gonna be in the Big Apple in the middle of August."
"That hat looks cute on you, Sam," Aurora remarked as they came in earshot.
"Looks better on her, doesn't it?" Cliff told her, and James gestured for him to follow him into the arena. Once the two men ducked inside, Aurora turned her attention to Sam.
"What were you guys doing right there, anyway?" she asked her in a low voice.
"I—needed to ask him about something," Sam replied, given Aurora was still in the dark about her and Cliff as far as knew. "It's nothing important."
Aurora showed her a thoughtful smile and then she guided her into the cool, quiet side of the arena. Within time, that place was going to be packed full of people. It was going to be even louder than she could imagine compared to that night she and her parents saw them in San Francisco. The whole feeling before hand was enough to launch her into space.