souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 143: boys on the radio

"do what you want
'cause i'll do anything.
and i'll take the blame.
what's mine is yours;
you can't have all of it.
and i'll learn to beg."
-"boys on the radio", hole
"Samantha?" Alex's voice echoed through her ears; Sam opened her eyes part of the way just to see his silhouette right over her. His flesh-colored silhouette, no less. She blinked several times and he came in far more clearly that time around: his inky black hair streamed down from the sides of his head and down towards her like the tentacles of an octopus. The light patch over the right side of his brow seemed to blend in with the rest of his head like bleeding watercolor paints: the shadow around his eyes made him look like he had the head of a mere skeleton on his shoulders.
She blinked her eyes a few more times before he came in all the way for her. Still completely naked, except for a towel around his hips: the way he knelt down towards her made his slender little body seem much smaller and rounder than usual. Sam parted her lips to let out a little whimper for him. Alex showed her a lopsided little smirk and he flicked back a lock of hair right behind his ear.
"Are you alright?" he asked her in a low voice.
"I am," she replied with a slight clearing of her throat. "What's going on right now?"
"You passed out," he told her. "Like, you blushed at me and then you went all rigid and then you fell right onto the floor."
"Are Marla and Belinda here?" she asked him.
"Nope. Never even opened the door—well, and there was no way I could, either, given I'm buck-naked right now." He nibbled on his bottom lip and then he adjusted the hem of the towel. "You sure you want to do this?"
"Yeah, I'm definitely sure of it," she assured him as she hoisted herself up onto her elbows. "Definitely sure of it."
"Want a little help?" he offered her with an outstretching of his hand and that smirk still plastered across his face. She locked eyes with him for a second and then she gave him her hand: he helped her up to her feet as they kept their eyes fixed on each other. She gazed down at his body, wrapped up in nothing more than that towel; and then she took her seat at the counter once more with her journal and her pencil in hand. Her skin was extra warm with the feeling of being in the same room with him. Warm with the feeling of the fever.
Alex let it fall to the floor and her eyes grazed over the curvature of his hips and his thighs for a second before he put his foot back up on the seat of the chair.
Everything out in the open for her to see. She fluttered her eyelids a few more times before she looked on at his legs from his feet up. All the way up his slender ankles and his shapely legs.
His slender knees. His sinewy thighs.
The space between, which in turn made her blush from the very sight once again. His hips, so shapely and even slightly round. His slim waist which still carried a little bit of thickness from childhood. His deep chest. His lanky strong arms: even from his slenderness, his arms looked as though he had been pumping iron since he was an infant; the veins near his wrists and his elbows were prominent but beautiful. His shoulders had this fine curve to them and the skull head tattoo on his right shoulder still looked fresh with the black ink, as if he had just gotten it.
Such a beautiful body and it was all for her in the meantime. All to herself for the time being.
She brought the pencil down to the surface of the paper and she let it guide her way. She thought about when they made out in the back room of the studio back home in San Francisco. Even though he was inebriated like he had said, she still could taste him on her lips all the while. She still could feel him on her fingertips.
She wanted to love on him right then and there. Do it all again. Right to his naked body as he posed before her in all of his unadulterated and raw beauty. Have him all to herself for real that time around.
She never realized the little dark marks on the inside of his thighs before until she ran the edge of the graphite over the outline of his thighs and into those little grooves. They were right next to his genitals as well and thus she had her eye fixed upon those markings for a good length of time.
"Like what you see here, Samantha?" he asked her in a low voice.
"You have these little markings on the inside of your thighs," she remarked.
"Oh, those are, um—stretch marks." The thought of a boy having them struck her as odd at first, but then again, he had skin just like her and the rest of the girls. She also didn't think of someone as slender as him having them, either.
"You have stretch marks?" She couldn't hardly shake the surprise of it. "Already?"
"Yeah. Your skin is stretchy and there are points where it's going to stretch out. It just so happened to stretch out a little bit right there between my legs. I have a few on my waist, too." He gestured to the tops of his hips. "See?"
She raised her gaze from the journal to see where he pointed at: indeed, there were a few little faint markings right above his hipbones. "Oh, yeah!"
"Remember how I still had a little bit of baby fat around my waist going into Testament's first tour?" he recalled.
"Kind of, yeah."
"Well, I gained a little more weight at one point and then I lost it. Out with it came the stretch marks, though. I pointed it out to my mom and she told me 'Oh, honey, it's just natural. It's nothing to worry about.' She was the first person I told my gray hairs about to, too."
"I remember you told me about that!" Sam recalled with a chuckle.
"Yeah, and she thought it was one of my dad's hairs when—you've seen him. He's completely stone bald."
"Part of me wants to walk up to your dad and rub his head for good luck," she cracked, and Alex burst out laughing at that.
"Hold still!" she commanded, and he stopped and set his hand back upon his knee. "By the way, and forgive me for staring, too—"
"Part of your job is to stare," he teased her with a straight face.
"—but," she stifled a chuckle at that, "you have a really lovely waist, Alex. Like, really lovely."
He took a glimpse down at himself and at his waist especially: he was rather slender there, almost delicate, and his skin had a gentle roundness to it, such that Sam showed him a smile when she put her pencil back down on the paper. He took a glimpse back up at her like a shy little boy.
"Your tummy's really gorgeous," she said, "almost perfect."
"Almost?"
"Yeah."
"What exactly qualifies as 'perfect' then?"
She stopped right in her tracks. She thought about Joey and how skinny he was; she also thought about Cliff and his lanky statuesque body: Alex was in another ballpark altogether, slender and sleek but there was that bit of boyishness to him however.
"You have the cutest little belly button," she remarked.
"You don't mind the hair there?" he asked her with a bit of a warble to his voice. "The little 'happy trail' as it's called?"
"Not at—" She stopped, and then she giggled at him, complete with a hand over her mouth.
"What?"
"Happy trail? Is that what you called it?"
"Yes!"
Sam thought back to Belinda's initial comment about him, that she called him precocious. That right there was proof when she wondered he had heard that before. She pursed her lips together and he held still with the tension.
"Happy trail," she echoed him again, that time in a lower voice.
"Happy trial," he corrected her.
"Happy trial?"
"Happy trial by fire. That's an alternative take to Testament's song 'Trial by Fire.'" And she laughed out loud again.
"It's the happy version," she said as she continued on with the shading all up his svelte belly and onto his chest. "You've got really nice nipples, too."
"Nice nipples?" He showed her a smirk again. When she took a glimpse up to his face, she noticed his looking on at her chest, to which she snapped her fingers at him and then pointed to her face.
"Eyes up here, big boy," she scoffed at him, and he continued to smirk at her even as she reached his neck and shoulders. "The prettiest and quietest of boys have the filthiest of minds."
"Indeed, we do," he retorted with a wink. "Although, I'm not too sure about pretty, though."
"Alex, if you weren't pretty, I wouldn't be drawing you right now," she assured him. He took another glimpse at her chest and then over to her journal upon the counter.
"Want me to like—tousle my hair over my shoulder a bit?" he offered her.
"Yeah, could you? I don't really want to draw you with your hair behind your back like that."
He reached behind his head for his hair and he tossed a few locks over his shoulder: they cascaded down onto his chest; she ran her tongue along her bottom lip at the sheer sight of that hair over his shoulder like that. He kept a straight face, complete with a little hooding to his eyes. His dark eyebrows accentuated those steely irises and the shadows to where they almost resembled to black holes.
Sam took a glimpse down at the drawing next to her and she ran the graphite a few more times around his eyes for a darker look.
"Such an interesting looking boy," she noted, "such deep eyes and such a prominent nose."
"It's all of the Jewish blood in me," he said in a low voice, "stereotypes do exist for a reason, you know."
"Absolutely! But you say that like it's a negative thing, though." She then held back for a better look at the drawing before her. "A very lovely Jewish boy. A very lovely Jewish young man, excuse me."
"Can I put my foot down now?" he asked her.
"Why? You've got an itch somewhere?"
"Nah, my leg's just tired and I feel all stretched out down here, too."
She examined over the drawing one more time and then she nodded her head.
"Yeah, by all means," she told him. Alex set his foot back down on the floor, and he raised his arms over his head and closed his eyes. Sam's eyes grazed over his body and his legs, the very same body of which she had just drawn right then and there. She had a better view of his hips right there as well: his slender waist right above shapely, slightly rounded hips. She snickered to herself when she thought about what he had said about him inheriting the Skolnick belly, such that he stopped himself and raised an eyebrow at her.
"What?" he asked her.
"Nothing," she replied with a little wave of her hand.
"No, what is it?" he asked her with the sly little smirk still plastered across his face.
"It's nothing, Alex. It's—something Scarlett told me back at the gallery once. It's kind of a long story." She giggled again and he squinted his eyes at her.
"I don't think I'm ready to understand you yet, Samantha Shelley," he told her as he wrapped the towel back around his hips and his legs.
"And I don't think I'm ready to understand you as of yet, Alex Skolnick," she retorted.
"Do you know where the thermostat is in here, too?" he asked her. "I'm kind of chilly if nothing else."
Sam and Alex took the next couple of days to themselves, especially since the whole thing with Fired! kept on going sideways from Dave and Lars' eruptions into arguments. After her day at the gallery, the two of them always lingered off to the side with that big bass guitar and her journal nearby while Dave and Lars continued to butt heads and lock horns with each other. Joey always sat on the other side of the room with his hands between his knees as if he was awaiting something. He always looked so lonely over there, such that Sam considered pulling up a chair next to him but she knew that if she did, she would have to bring Alex over there as well. She did just that at one point, and Joey turned his chair in the opposite direction. Even with their being in the same room, no way she could reconcile things between them, especially whenever Joey said something to Alex it was always in curt fashion.
Thus, there was no way she could do that, especially with how he and Joey clash as much as the redhead and the Great Dane before them. Things between them weren't as heated which made it far more difficult to witness and heal as well.
The bitter cold of the New York soon waned away and the blossoms of the trees showed their heads in the springtime sun, and all the while, Sam thought about Anthrax, especially since Frank and Charlie's apartments were rather close to the warehouse. It was a bit of a subway ride from Hell's Kitchen up to Yonkers as well as the Bronx, and thus there were times in which she thought about taking a break from the warehouse just to go see them. Marla and Belinda came home every other weekend and thus she hardly saw them again. The Cherry Suicides were off in their own world with their tours and their new songs, and Aurora was virtually untouchable at that point, and thus the one real friend she had anymore was in fact Alex.
Granted, she considered Lars her friend and every so often, she got a call from either Eric, Greg, or Louie just to check in on her, but it was mostly the two of them in her apartment in Hell's Kitchen. She relished every moment she had with him as well because she knew he was going to have to return home to California once the recording sessions for the supergroup were completed. A part of her wanted to run off with him, but she had set her roots down there in New York City. To give it up at that point would be unthinkable.
"You can always do what I'm doing," he pointed out to her one evening during dinner, "come and visit me, especially since your parents are out there, too."
She nodded her head at that, but she still itched for his closeness and his comfort, especially when he always came to dinner in his little shorts and his socks. But then again, she moved to New York on a whim, three thousand miles away from him. She lived in her own hometown as a stranger and a prisoner. She could live there in Hell's Kitchen alone for a time if she had to.
She was about to say something to him when a knock on the door caught them both off guard. She set down her plate and she made her way across the floor, only to be greeted by a head of tangerine orange hair with a black streak on one side.
"Hey!" she exclaimed.
"I was hoping you'd be home," Marla declared, and she opened her arms for her.
"How've you and Belinda been?" Sam asked her. "I hardly ever see you girls anymore."
"Oh, man, we've been kicking ass up in Scarsdale right now," she replied. "So much has happened since we last saw each other and there's so to talk about." She then looked past her and her face lit up. "Hey, Alex!"
"Hey, Marla!" he called out to her and he stood to his feet to greet. "Wow, it's been a while."
"Yeah, I'll say," she replied as she let go of Sam and embraced him.
"Where is Belinda?" Sam asked her as she closed the door behind her.
"She's back up the road—something came up and she had to stay behind for a bit. She'll be back down... Friday, I think?"
The three of them took their seat on the couch all together, and Marla ran her fingers through her hair.
"Once again with the orange," Sam remarked with a gesture to her head.
"It was either that, blue, or bright red," she said, "and Bel was like, 'nah, the red would be a bit much on you, Mar.' So, I was like, 'okay, I'll go with orange again' especially since they didn't have blue on hand."
"I like the streak, too," Alex added.
"I've been really liking the streak," she said, "and everyone who comes into the shop are always like, 'where's the girl with the stripe in her hair? Where's Miss Taylor?'" She nodded her head to the side and showed them a smile. "What's been going on with you guys? I heard you and Zelda broke up, Alex."
"Yeah, about a couple of months ago," he replied, "it could be far worse, let me tell you."
"Oh, yeah, when Charlie and I broke up, it was hard on me." She turned to Sam. "Wasn't it?"
"That's an understatement."
"And how's that gallery going down the block here?"
"It's stylin'," Sam replied with a bit of a shiver down her spine. "We're just—we're doing fantastic down the block. Every so often, we rotate the drawings to keep the public interested. It's a good-sized building, too, so Scarlett tells me I can have a few exhibits going at the same time at some point in the future."
"Right on! By the way, I should tell you—Bel and I saw Bill in our gallery recently."
"No!" Sam gasped.
"Bill," Alex muttered.
"You know, Bill," she told him. "My old counselor who made me sign an agreement and forced me into his house over in Lake Elsinore. Snippy old bastard who treats his kids like they're puppets."
"Bel and I were gonna beat him up for you," Marla recalled.
"Kinda wish you did, too," Sam confessed.
"Oh, yeah, that guy!" Alex exclaimed. "So much has happened since you were stuck there that he just kind of escaped my mind."
"You, Chuck, Eric, and Greg actually busted me out of the house a couple times," she added.
"That's right, we did! We were taking you to go see Death Angel—I remember it now. You fell on Greg, too."
"And I fell on you," she chuckled. "Eric broke a window."
"He's moving out to Seattle," Marla declared.
"Yet another person moving to Seattle," Sam noted.
"Yeah, it kind of makes you wonder what's going on up there," Alex added with a nod of his head.
"The hotspot of the whole alternative movement, that's what," she pointed out.
"He came waltzing into the shop about two weeks ago," Marla explained, "and he didn't even recognize me, because of my hair and whatnot. He saw Bel and he wagged his finger at her as if he was trying to remember her from somewhere—because she changed her hair, too. He told us that he was moving up to Seattle and he needed a stained-glass window for his new house up there."
"And why's he moving up there, too?" Sam asked her. "Did he say?"
Marla shook her head.
"Nah, he just said he was moving there over the summer. No explanation or anything. Bel and I took his offer and then we told him our prices and all of that, and he looked at me funny and he said, 'where have I seen you two before?' And Bel and I look at each other like, 'what do we do?' And then she goes, 'it's probably just a coincidence. Every person on earth has a doppelganger.' And the whole entire time he was looking at us funny like that, too, and it was making the both of us nervous. When I start drawing up the plans, he goes, 'you know what, ladies? I change my mind. I'll go somewhere else. I don't care to be perfectly honest with you both.' I asked him what the problem was and he said something about the numbers being too high or something like that, I don't really remember. Doesn't help that he kind of muttered them, too. When he left, Bel and I let out a sigh of relief. We started wondering about his kids, too, those two little girls."
"Were they with him?" Sam asked her, and Marla shook her head.
"No, that's why we were wondering about them. What are their names again?"
"Matilda and Cassandra. Mattie and Cassie."
"Yeah! We were like, 'don't tell me they're up in Seattle now, all by themselves.' It's been five years since you were out there, Sam, they're older now."
"Closer to ten or eleven," Sam recalled; she barely knew their age let alone anything about them.
"Part of why Bel and I wanted to come back down here was to tell you about him," Marla continued, "we also just haven't seen you, either. Not since you moved in here."
"It's been a time of upheaval for all of us, I'd think," Alex confessed.
"Yeah, he got fired from Testament," Sam told her. "D'you hear about that?"
"I did, yes! I also heard about Lars, too. And Joey. What a time to be alive, right?"
"Totally," said Sam. "The three of them plus Dave from Megadeth formed a supergroup of sorts a couple of weeks ago called Fired! With an exclamation like that."
"And how's that going?" Marla asked Alex, and he pursed his lips at that. She raised her eyebrows at him. "How's it going?"
"Dave and Lars are about five seconds from cutting out each other's throats," Sam said in a single breath. "Like every twenty minutes, one of them says an offhand remark and then an argument erupts."
"Oh my god!" Marla was taken aback by that.
"Yeah, and he and I are right there on the side right next to them. There's nothing I can do about it because I'm really just there to keep him—" She gestured over to Alex. "—company."
"What about Joey?"
"He just kind of sits on the other side of the room all by his lonesome. I tried sitting with him and Alex came over with me and we got probably all of ten words out of him."
"We went to his place a while back and he looked like he wanted to bash my head in," Alex piped up right then. "We were going to tell him what was going on down at HQ and—yeah. He gave me the evil eye."
Marla rolled her eyes at that. "Man, I'm so sorry about that," she said in a low voice.
"It doesn't really help that my relationship with him is pretty rocky now," Sam continued, "and now it's my fault, I get that. But at least have some kind of communication with me, though. I'm not trying to be mean or anything—I really want to have some kind of tie to him again, even when he begins a brand-new chapter of life with—with—what's her name."
"Krista," Alex filled in.
"Yeah, her. I don't know why I forgot her name there for a minute. A brand-new chapter of life with her and without Anthrax, too."
"Well," Marla began, "when Charlie and I broke up, we didn't talk for a while and then—little by little, we came back onto terms with each other."
"How'd you do that?" Sam asked her.
"A lot of it had to do with Frankie and also just our closeness to Anthrax, too. I remember thinking 'there's no way we can go around each other with them in the same room as us.' You know those times in school when your friends are fighting and it's hard to watch? I remember thinking back to those times. I finally reached out to him one day. I said, 'listen, Charlie—I know we're not together but I want us to be able to converse with each other normally like we would if we were friends, though. I want us to be able to do that, too, especially with Frankie right behind you, too.' He stood still there for a good long minute, and then finally he nodded his head and he said, 'you know, I've been thinking about that, too. Like I still want a relationship with you, but not in that sense, though.'"
"Then what?" Alex joined in.
"Well, we hugged and then that was that. He and I still talk, too. I'm sure Zelda and Louie did the same thing, too."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did," he recalled.
"They did!" Sam exclaimed with a slight slap of her knee. "I remember after they broke up, Louie told me that he still got a Merry Christmas from her. I think he still does, too." She turned to him with her eyebrows raised. "A little food for thought."
"Absolutely," Alex replied.
"But Joey's really willing to not even do that, though?" Marla asked Sam, who shook her head.
"Not even. My guess is it's because it was so abrupt and so sudden. But still—I would like a little bit of softening at some point, though."
"Give it time," Marla told her. "Charlie and I got lucky given it was only like a few months, but it was some time, though."
"It's been almost a year, though," Sam pointed out.
"Give him as much time as he possibly needs," she continued, and she leaned back to the couch. "You know, it's a nice night. You two wanna take a little walk when you're done with dinner here?"
"I was just about to put some pants on," Alex told her with a straight face.
"You know a guy's comfortable when he takes off his pants in front of you, Sam," Marla joked; and Sam wanted to tell her about the drawing she had made of him, but she decided it would be best for a time when the two girls were alone together, away from Alex's twinkling eyes and the little smirk on his face.
"We were just about done, too," Sam pointed out as she picked up his dish, but then he stopped her.
"No, no, I got it," he assured her, and he took their plates into the kitchen. Marla gestured to him and showed Sam a little smile.
"How do you do it?" she asked her, to which Sam shook her head.
"I'm not sure," she confessed, and Alex doubled back to the guest room for his jeans and his white sneakers.
"You metal boys and your sneakers," Marla teased him; Sam then picked up her key and they headed out for the nice evening, complete with the lock on the door. Indeed, it was a warm spring evening, and the crescent moon hung over the horizon: the glow of the skyline bathed over them as they strolled down the street towards the gallery. The windows were dark for the evening, and thus Sam led them up to the corner and then across the street. Right up the block stood a music shop and she thought about that young boy in the guitar store all those years ago.
For all she knew, that young boy was right next to her at that very moment.
They strode underneath the awning outside of the shop when the loud abrasive guitar riff caught their ear. A swirling descending riff as big and monolithic as the city before them: it was followed up by a fierce snarl of a singing voice.
"D'you hear that?" Marla asked her.
"I did!" Sam declared. "That sounded like James."
"Think that was James," Alex filled in. "Mark my words, it's going to be a matter of time before we hear Anthrax and their new singer on the airwaves." He took a few steps forward to the florist next door, right before they closed and he picked up two of the marked down flowers and handed them to both girls.
"Aw, thank you," Marla said.
"Such a sweetie," Sam followed. James' snarl bled away to a faint whisper followed by those drums, which continued to beat hard into the fade out.
"That was Metallica with 'Enter Sandman'," said the female DJ, "man, they have been hitting it out of the park since they fired drummer Lars Ulrich but they haven't been the same to me, though. I'm old enough to remember Metallica when they were just a bunch of young kids on the Sunset Strip out in L.A.!"
"Hey, we do, too!" Marla called up to the speaker, much to Sam and Alex's amusement.
"I'm old enough to remember when they had that thing that made them unique," the woman continued through the speaker, and Sam thought about Joey right then. Whomever Anthrax chose as their new singer, it wasn't going to be the same afterwards. Joey gave them their signature with those big heavy fast riffs and then his operatic voice made the whole thing into a strange balancing game of sorts. She also knew that whomever Testament chose as their new lead guitarist and drummer, it wasn't going to be the same as well. Alex warped those strings like an artist painting with bleeding watercolor and Louie kept such a hearty, steady rhythm while he led the way through.
"And speaking of unique, here's that new song that everyone keeps talking about," the woman continued, "really, ever since Nirvana came out back last summer, the phones have just been ringing off the hook for them and all the bands out of Seattle, too. This next one is from their compatriots Pearl Jam, it's called 'Alive'."
Sam snapped her fingers. "Eric and I heard this song together not long ago," she told Marla and Alex.
"Oh, Bel and I hear this song all the time," Marla told her. "You wouldn't think of this whole alternative thing being as good working music, but it really is. Them as well as Alice in Chains, I think they're called?"
"They came with us on Clash of the Titans," Alex recalled. "They kick some serious ass, don't they?"
"Definitely. Lot of soul. Lot of unique soul, a lot like how you metal boys have a lot of heart and soul, too."
"Metal boys on the radio now," Sam said, and then she lowered her voice a bit as she kept her eye on Alex and the light patch over the right side of his forehead. "And I hope that wherever they all go, they keep the heart and soul intact."