souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 149: stanley

Sam returned to New York City on the second day, after she had spent the night at her father's house. Ruben advised her to stick around for an extra day given the amount of traveling she had done in the past week alone. He also advised her to stay there at the house lest the riots down in Los Angeles had spread back East. She trusted that it was all centered down there in the city that she had never realized that she loved so much.
The battle of Los Angeles, as a few people on the news referred to it. From what she could gather through the living room window and from Ruben's television screen, the fact that it was all based down there in the valley only tightened up the tension in the Bay Area and the hills that surrounded it all. Everyone from the heart of San Francisco to the surrounding areas and all the way down to Monterey and out to Sacramento sat on the edges of their seats as they watched their friends and neighbors down south fight for freedom.
Alex and Eric visited them on that next day, only to check on what was happening with them there. Ruben told Sam that as long as they stayed up at the top of the hill, they needn't be involved in any part of the tension below them. He had a pantry full of food and his spare bedroom was always open if she ever needed to pay him another visit.
"Your mom told you that we've got that blood in us, right?" he asked her at one point, to which Sam nodded her head.
"Part of why I made that drawing was to embrace those roots," she explained. "I'm definitely going to do more."
"Be careful, though, honey pie," he advised her.
Her father's words echoed through her mind and followed her all the way back to New York City. A part of her wished that she could keep the whole thing under wraps, but then again, as Alex had said, the world needed to see her art. The gallery needed her brand-new art and Scarlett needed to witness and experience it for herself.
She had to tend to her art for a while anyway, especially since Alex was out auditioning for the Spin Doctors soon enough. If anything, she worried about him, especially when the riots in Los Angeles then spanned over the course of a week. Even in the couple of weeks following, she hoped that things wouldn't boil over again as she sat down on her couch with her private travel journal plunked right across her lap for another series of sketches.
She pictured him on her guest bed once again, and again with no jeans on: nothing more than a single shirt and a little pair of pearly white shorts. His bare legs spread out before him and his feet relaxed right at the end of the bed. His black hair tousled back from the side of his head and back towards the pillow and the edge of the bed.
She pictured him with his arms up before his face, especially with his left arm up a bit more so it lifted up the hem of his shirt. That little sliver of skin between the hem of his shirt and the top of his shorts. That little sliver of skin that she wished to touch again, especially since the way in which he lay on the bed accentuated the lovely shape of his body.
She had made love to him in that back room when they under a bit of alcohol but she could feel the desire within her. She had to go further with him at some point, to blur the line between her artistry and the real touch of her fingers upon his skin.
The tip of her pencil grazed over the paper's surface and she made his hair spread over his face so she could only see the bottom half of it as well as the tip of his nose and the bottom of his ear. The side of his neck in all of its fine elegance and the way in which it met up with his slender shoulder. That vulnerable gentle side to him that she wished to see.
Then again, she wished to see that with Cliff when he was alive.
It was that moment she realized that it had been almost six years since Cliff was killed. That autumn felt like a thousand years ago. A way's off, nonetheless, but she needed to put something on display for the ten-year anniversary of his passing. Something bright and colorful, and yet with all of the class and grace that resided with him. The class and grace she wished to see more of when they were together. Given the amount of tension in the air over in California there was no way they could go and visit the place where Lars and James had scattered Cliff's ashes. But she vowed to do it for real the next time, however. And the next time, she had to bring something to further commemorate him, whether that gift was a seashell or something else like a singular yellow tulip: she had to pay her dues to an unfinished relationship.
It was also that moment when she realized that she hadn't seen any yellow tulips anywhere in California, in Oregon, in New Orleans, or in New York. But then again, spring had only barely sprung for the Northeast and she hadn't paid much attention to them anymore.
But then again, they always caught her eye no matter what the circumstance. She was an artist: part of her modus operandi was to observe her surroundings, and as a result of that her surroundings bled into her mind as well as her art.
Sam brought the tip of the pencil back to the curvature of Alex's hip for a touch more shading. A touch more shading for his sweet little body.
There was that first drawing that she did in that journal, and the one that she had to put on hold given the possibility that Alex could awaken at any given second on that hotel bed. She flipped back to the very front of that journal and there he was, in all of his rough and scratchy glory. She showed the drawing a smug little smile.
If nothing else, she could have him there with her in paper form, all to herself. The only place she had all the boys all to herself especially once they left her presence, right within the thickly grained pages of journals, private and otherwise. When she couldn't feel their skin anymore, she had her pencil with her. And as a result, the pencil was mightier in the end.
She ran the tip of the graphite over his dark hair, which she left as mere swirls over the top of his face: a few rested upon the side of his neck. Part of the way on his stomach and part of the way rolled over onto his side so his body had a bit of a twist; and she still didn't understand how he didn't have a crick in his back after the fact. She gave his unbuttoned jeans a bit of a thicker outline when she caught a gentle knock on the door.
"Come in," she called out. The door opened and a crown of smooth jet-black hair poked into the apartment. She took a glimpse up and she gasped.
"Oh, hey, Eric," she greeted him, taken aback as she wasn't expecting him there.
"Hey!" he retorted back to her, and he stepped into the apartment. It was a warm spring day there in New York and thus he wore nothing but a Cramps T-shirt and little black board shorts; but then again, he kept his pure black hair down so it spread over his shoulders like a thick mane.
"What brings you here?" she asked him as she closed up her journal and tucked it under the throw pillow next to her.
"I was just down at HQ and I wanted to see how you were doing is all," he told her.
"Just making art and taking things one day at a time," she replied.
"That's always the best way to do things," he confessed. "Do you—know the date at all?"
"Yeah, it's the fourteenth of May. Why? What's going on?"
"Is there anything—special associated with this date?"
She paused for a second and then she remembered, and she gasped.
"Aw, happy birthday, Eric!"
"That's it!" he declared, and she walked on over to him with her arms open for him. "I'm twenty-eight today."
"Oh, man, I've got to do something for you now," she told him as she stroked his back. She then gestured for him to come on over to the couch. "Come here and have a seat."
"I'm really down for anything," he assured her. "Nothin' fancy, but I would like a drink, though, if you've got anything."
"I think Marla still has that bottle of brandy with her," she recalled as she padded into the kitchen and delved through the cupboards.
"Are they home at all?" He set his arms up on the top of the couch and spread his legs out a bit out of mere comfort.
"I—don't think they are," she confessed as she took a peek under the cabinets over the bar. "Alex and I shared a couple of glasses with her not long ago after a big ol' dinner and it made him so sleepy."
"Ha! Alex is such a lightweight. I kind of feel bad for him for that, though."
"Why is that?" she asked him as she took out a couple of glasses from the cabinet closest to the refrigerator.
"You weren't around much when it all happened—you know, you were more with Anthrax or at school—but whenever we had a bit of a party, we always busted out the booze and Alex, being under twenty-one always had a little sip of beer. He couldn't drink that much because of the legal limit but he always gave it a try. The times I've caught him smoking a cigarette—I could probably count on one hand—it was always weirdly funny to see him do it."
"Alex tried to smoke?" she asked him, taken aback, as she poured out a couple of glasses of ginger ale in her fridge.
"Like once or twice, yeah. He decided not to do it because he said it always made him sick to his stomach and it made him gag." The very thought of Alex smoking made Sam's stomach turn a bit. That noxious smoke damaging his beautiful body and his soft skin; she shuddered at the thought of it as she put the cap back on the bottle of ginger ale.
"Lou and I tried it out, too," he continued.
"Really?" Sam returned to the front room with the glasses in either hand.
"Yeah, it was funny with him because it was right after when he and Zelda got together. She caught him doing it and she goes, 'the hell, Lou? Since when do you smoke?' and he goes, coughing his lungs out no less, 'what do you mean? I've always smoked.'" She chuckled at his impression of the Rhode Island accent.
"I just never get into smoking, either," he continued. "Now, a little drinky on the other hand, I'm always down for, though." And she handed him the glass.
"Ginger ale," she promptly said.
"Yum! Ice cold?"
"Straight out of the fridge." She took her seat next to him there on the couch. She spotted her journal as it jutted out from underneath the pillow next to him. He took a glimpse over at the journal himself.
"Mind me having a peek?" he asked her.
"That journal's kind of private," she told him. "I mean it's private, too. It's a total secret, like Alex doesn't even know about it when I got it over in Oregon."
He turned to her again, that time with a serious look upon his round face.
"Have you ever thought about what happens to your art after you die?" he asked her in a hushed voice.
"What's this have to do with my journal?"
"It's got everything to do with your journal," he replied with a slight raise of his eyebrows. It resembled to nothing like Alex raising his eyebrows where his entire face lit up in question: Eric was like the full moon and thus, when he raised them, she thought of the moon behind a thin veil of clouds. "You know, this is something I've thought of when I go sometime down the line, especially since I'm looking at thirty in two years' time. Like, what's going to happen to Testament, especially since I'm the guy who founded the whole thing from the get-go with Zetro and my cousin?"
"I'm sure you have a plan," she pointed out.
"Absolutely. But I think of you, though, like what's going to happen to your art once your number's up. That is, all of your stray drawings and paintings and also—" He raised his arm up and showed her the edge of her journal from underneath the pillow. "—the stuff in your journals. A part of me wants to see it for myself, you know, as like a sneak peek of sorts into the mind of a great artist."
"A great artist?" she echoed him. "You know, it's funny—Alex threw that phrase out at me, too."
"Alex knows his shit."
"I just think of how Belinda described him when you guys first entered the picture. She called him 'precocious.'"
"That's—actually not a bad stretch for him, come to think of it," Eric chuckled, and he brought the rim of his glass up to his lips for an initial sip. "Precocious, focused, intelligent, and mature—just everything that I would imagine in a badass guitar player like him."
"Refined, too," she added.
"The day he starts playing classical music on one of his guitars is the day he goes into 'refined' territory," he pointed out as he brought the glass back to his lips once more. He took another sip and then he returned to the journal once again. "Anyways, I'm really curious about this thing now."
"Like I said, Eric, it's a private journal. I don't really intend to share it with anyone. At least not until I drop dead or something."
"The more you try to silence art, the stronger it gets," he told her, and she pursed her lips at that. That was how she felt about her current drawings, of the black woman and the next rounds of black skin on deck as well. With those words, she realized that she needed to abide by her own word.
She sighed through her nose and she set down her glass on the coffee table right in front of them.
"Okay, but don't tell Alex because I'm afraid he'll kill me if he finds out about these," she told him.
"Is it really that bad?" He raised his eyebrows at her again.
"Not bad, just—private." Eric set down his glass on the coffee table before them and he picked the journal out from underneath the pillow. She closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. "I've only made a few so far," she quipped to him in a near whisper.
The turning of pages grazed her ears.
"Whoa," Eric gasped at the sight before him.
"Yeah, I know," she murmured.
"No, I mean—Sam, these are fantastic. They're raw and honest. Wow!"
Sam opened her eyes and she found Eric with the journal opened up to the very first page. He kept the very tips of his fingers right near the darkest of markings around Alex's head.
"He was—laying kind of twisted on the bed," she explained, "and I just liked the way his body and his face looked."
"No way he was comfortable," he declared as he raised his head to her.
"I often think about that," she told him in a low voice. He turned the page and he showed it a smile.
"That was from memory," she explained.
"Wow. Yeah, he was right to say that you're a great artist, Sam. You really are. You've got the shape of his body down so well. There's something—strangely tender about these, too. Like they're soft and gentle, even with those rough pencil scratches all around him. They're almost—" He paused for a second and his eyes darted around a bit.
"Leering?" she asked him.
"Erotic," he finished, and he took a glimpse over at her with a slight hooding to his eyes.
"You think these are erotic?" She tried to stifle down a chuckle but she chuckled anyway.
"I don't think that," he corrected himself, "I know that. These are hot, Sam. You're drawing him when he's showing off his body to you. Even fully clothed and sound asleep, you're seeing the curves and shape of his body." He nibbled on his bottom lip. "Do you ever think of getting down with him?"
Sam picked up her glass for a hearty sip of the ginger ale.
"Don't run from it, Sam," Eric advised her, and she took another big sip from her glass. "Once you unleash it in a place like this, there's no going back. Take this from me, the guy who comes up with the riffs and overall groove of Testament's songs. Once you start doing it and find it in your fingers, you can't stop. There's no going backwards."
She downed the rest of the ginger ale and then she turned to him with her lips damp and her face as warm as the day outside. His expression was serious and yet he had a little twinkle in his eyes.
"What're you thinking about?" she asked him in a low voice.
"Well, two things actually. The first thing is—" He peered around the room even though they were alone in the apartment. "—you got any pot?"
"I haven't had pot in a long time," she told him, to which he stifled down a bout of laughter. "What?"
"You went out with Cliff," he said.
"Yeah, and? What about it?"
"You got together with Cliff—I am literally surprised you guys didn't smoke any bowls together," he confessed in a single breath.
"No, he always kept that away from me, now that I think about it..." Her voice trailed off at that, and then she shook her head. "No, there's no—there's no bud around here. Joey might have some left, but I wouldn't count on it."
"He lives all the way upstate, too," he added. "Anyways, I ask because a little bit of that would relax us both big time."
"And what's the second thing?" she asked him as she leaned forward and rested her elbows upon her knees.
"The second thing."
"Yeah, you said you were thinking of two things," she recalled.
He hesitated for a second and then he nodded his head.
"Ah, yeah... I hate to do this to you," he began again, "but I really want to share a big secret with you."
"What is it?" she asked him, and she took a glimpse down at the journal spread over his lap. "It can't be that bad."
"It is, though," he replied with a slight shift of his weight on the cushion next to her. She took another glimpse down at the journal, at the drawing of Alex sleeping on his side on the guest bed. There were a few more drawings of him that she had in mind right then, but she couldn't do them until Eric had left her apartment.
"And I should probably mention that it's—nothing as soulful or graceful or classy as this right here." He gestured to the journal with his fingers fanned out like a starfish.
"What is it?"
He nibbled on his bottom lip at that.
"I really, really want to kiss you," he confessed.
"Kiss me," she echoed him in a lower voice.
"Yeah—I hope that isn't too creepy."
"Eric, this is—this is something."
"I knew that was too much," he said, and he rolled his eyes and shook his head at that. "God damn it, Eric, you really did it this time."
"No, that wasn't too much," she assured him with a little wave of her hand. "Believe me, Eric, that wasn't creepy. It was just sudden is all."
"Why I gave you that warning before hand—that it is in fact that bad." He raised his eyebrows again and added a chuckle in for good measure.
"Well, besides the sudden factor, why else are you so reluctant to tell me this?"
"Because I just think of all these things you've been doing with Alex lately," he confessed. "All these things you're doing with him and it almost feels like you guys talk amongst each other all the time."
"Yeah, we do, but—why would you think that? He's not mad at you for ridding of him. If anything, he was more pissed off at Aurora for doing that to him, especially since it wasn't her decision to make, either."
"No, it wasn't her decision," Eric agreed with her, and that time with a little bow of his head. "She forced me to do it."
"We're not mad at you, Eric," she assured him; she set a hand on his knee and gave him a loving pat. He showed her a sweet little smile.
"I should probably mention that I've thought about kissing you for a while now," he continued. "Ever since you and I went upstate that time and we were reclining back in the car and listening to the music. Ever since we came back to the room across the hall and we snuggled up next to each other. I had to literally stop myself when we slept together across the hall."
"A part of me wishes Marla and Belinda were home now," she confessed.
"Why's that?"
"Because we'd get the brandy and I'd get you loaded."
"Nah, you don't wanna get me drunk."
"Why not?"
"I'm not like Alex when I'm blitzed off my ass like that. You know, he gets all loosened up and goofy and whatnot."
"What happens to you?"
"I fall asleep."
"You fall asleep."
"Yeah, that's according to him and also Chuck and Greg. I kick back a couple of drinks and I say some weird shit and then I fall asleep. Like literally, the last time the bunch of us had drinks together and we all drunk off our asses, I was lucky to keep my eyes open. Alex and Louie were singing something with their arms around each other's shoulders while Greg and Chuck were doing this weird little rain dance thing."
"And you were asleep."
"And I was asleep, yeah."
"I really wanna loosen you up somehow," she confessed to him. "I have yet to draw Eric Peterson anyway."
"It's alright. We don't need booze for any of that anyway, especially now that the cat's out of the bag." He leaned forward and picked up the glass. He downed the rest of his ginger ale in a few large gulps and then he set the glass down on the table's rim.
"Especially since—seeing as it is my birthday after all."
"Want me to get the stool?" she offered him.
"There's a stool?" He stopped with his fingers on the bottom hem of his shirt. She lunged for the bar for one of the spindly chairs underneath and she brought it back to him.
"Have a seat," she told him, complete with a pat on the top of the stool. "I'll be right back."
Sam doubled back into her room for the big drawing pad. Even though he was as white and milky as porcelain, she remembered that Eric was half Mexican. Another score for the darker piece of the earth.
She opened the pad to a fresh new sheet and she wiped off the surface with the edge of her hand. She swiped her pencils from the top of her desk and she returned to Eric, who had stripped down to his bare skin and took his seat there on the stool.
"Oh, my," she gasped.
"What?" He rested his hands on the edges of the seat on either side of him.
"I just—wasn't expecting to see you like this."
"What, naked?"
"Yeah."
"C'mon, if you're drawing Alex with clothes, you've gotta draw me in the buff."
"I've drawn Alex in the buff, too," she told him as she took her spot on the couch in front of him.
"Oh, have you now?"
"Yeah. Hence all of that in my journal. The man's got a lovely body that I just—I just—"
"Can't stop thinking about it?"
"Not at all." She picked up her plain graphite pencil and she proceeded to sketch out Eric's nude body. Given he was a bit on the round side and since she had come a long way since she drew Cliff in the nude, she put down the graphite with a bit of extra haste. Even with his milky skin, he had a bit of an olive tone all around, especially around his neck, his collar bones, and his shoulders. A kiss of burnt umber for that, followed by that and some Prussian blue for his smooth black hair.
"I didn't tell you this yet, but Alex and I are thinking of going back to school," she said at one point.
"Really?"
"Yeah, we made a little pinky promise that if neither of us were going anywhere in our careers, then we're going to school together. Him with music theory, and me with a double major in fashion and earth science."
"That'd be badass as hell," he assured her.
"What, me or him?"
"Both of you. As much as I want to see him go forth and carve out his own path in the wilderness after all this nonsense, I'd love to see him go to school. And especially with you, too."
"What would you like to do in the future?"
"Well, I'd like to have a family at some point," he confessed. "I also would like to go into another direction musically."
"Outside of Testament or as a side project?"
"Side project. Testament is becoming its own thing at the moment—well, trying to, anyways. Once we have our lineup finalized in the next year or so, we'll see where we go from that point onward. I don't really want to do anything else to contaminate it any further. So, a little side venture would be nice."
"What'd you have in mind?" Sam asked him as she picked up the Prussian blue for his hair.
"Do you know what black metal is?"
"Black metal?"
"Really extreme, really filthy and dirty sounding metal that's weirdly epic at times. It's really big back in the motherland, back in Sweden and Scandinavia, and I've been privy to it lately. Some people think it's Satanic or it's fascist, but I want to have a go at it and make it peaceful, make it beautiful, make it awesome."
"Make it epic!" she proclaimed as she ran the side of the pencil over the traces of umber around his head.
"Exactly, yeah! I kind of want to add a classical element to it, too, now that I really think about it. There's just—something about classical music."
"There really is," Sam said as she held back for a better look at the drawing on her lap.
"Something powerful and graceful and—I know that Alex's slight penchant for it has something to do with it. Sometimes, like when we were recording Practice What You Preach, we would get to talking about his training with Joe Satriani, back when he was a kid, and he'd mention classical music to me. I also just think about your ties to Cliff, too, how he was really into that when he was growing up."
"It influenced him," she recalled in a soft voice. "Like I remember when we first met, and we were talking about that, he said classical music influenced him as much as country and good old rock n' roll."
"We're all classical musicians at heart when you think about it," he told her. "The only thing that holds some of us back is popularity. And the only thing that's really holding me back from venturing out into this side project in mind is everything going on with Testament at the moment, and also recruiting people for it."
She then lifted the pad from her lap and showed him the drawing, a mostly graphite rendition of his naked body there on the stool with the occasional touch of colored pencil.
"You can move now, by the way," she told him.
"That's amazing," he declared with a gesture of his hand. "See, you have so much to offer us, Sam. You have so much to offer the world in terms of your art, too. When you're gone, it'll outlive you and last at least a lifetime." He climbed off of the stool and he tugged his shorts back on over his legs. The waistband hugged the soft skin underneath his belly button and upon his hipbones.
"You don't want me to tell Alex about this, do you," she stated in a soft voice.
"Nah, I want you to share that everywhere! Really, put it up in your gallery with that black girl you showed us the other day. If anyone pries into it, just say that we were chillin' out in your apartment and you asked me if you could draw me. That's kind of the truth—bit of a stretch, but that's what you wanted to do, wasn't it?"
"Yeah?" Eric put his shirt back on over his body and he lifted his black hair out from underneath the collar. He then padded over to her on the couch and he pressed his lips to her forehead.
"No need to hold back, Sam," he told her. "No need to hold back with any of us. Remember Chuck's whole thing a long time ago? 'We don't have much but we have each other'?"
"Vaguely, yeah."
"Alex and Louie may be out and I may not have a single where Testament is headed to next, but we'll always come back here to this apartment, though."
"We'll always come back to the quiet place," she corrected him.
"Exactly!"
"I kind of want to give you a cake now," she confessed.
"Oh, man, you know I would like a little cake at the moment. Some dulce de leche, too! Dulce de leche on a princess cake." Sam chuckled at that.
"What?"
"Princess cake, is that what you said?"
"Yeah, that's literally what they're called," he said, and he chuckled along with her. "Princess cakes. Another thing from the motherland of Sweden. Again, if anyone asks, it's just because you're hanging out with me."
She set the drawing pad down on the couch and she turned to him.
"By the way, Eric?"
"Hm?"
"Thank you," she said. "For getting me out of my comfort zone a little bit more."
"And thank you," he retorted back to her, and he flashed her another wink.