souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 152: faraway boys

The next few months felt like a dream of sorts, especially when the snows gave way to the blooms of springtime. Sam was alone in her apartment building with nothing more than those thoughts. She wouldn't be leaving for Scarsdale until the end of May but to her, it felt as though she waited for Christmas to come. Those drawings she had tucked underneath the corner of her mattress haunted her for a full week before she finally took them out of their hiding place and she contemplated tossing them into a fire pit.
But when she gazed on at them, while they sat there on the surface of the table, she never went any further of them. Those drawings were rough and scratchy, but she also thought of Eric's words when she shared the journal with him. They were erotic and they came from somewhere. She held the one at the top of the pile by the corners and she gave it a little tug. No way she could tear it to shreds, especially when she looked on at Alex's face as he stared back at her.
No way she could rid of them at that point with that in mind. No way she could rid of those drawings when they existed for a reason. She needed to keep them around regardless of her own feelings. Sam nudged the papers to the side and she glanced over all of those drawings for what felt like a whole hour. Those pencil scratches carried so much texture and weight to them: there was no way she could let them go to waste like that.
As long as no one else came into the apartment unannounced again, then she could keep those drawings there on her coffee table for as long as she wanted.
And she did: she kept them all there out in the open so they would lose their eroticism and the tender feeling that he had talked about. Every day, she strode past them and she caught a fleeting glimpse to them. She would fixate on Alex's face on one of them for a few seconds before she kept on walking into the hallway or into the kitchen. She sat down at the couch with a big piece of paper across her lap for a big drawing and she looked on at them for a second before she proceeded on the drawing before her.
There came a point, the day before Valentine's Day, when she swore that she would rid of those drawings. She would find a pair of scissors and cut them all up and save them for any sort of big project that involved snippets of paper. She knew that that would be their fate: if her art was to go public after her demise, then she had to rid of some of it to keep those prying eyes from finding their way into her private thoughts. They were in fact private thoughts after all. No one needed to see them before their very eyes.
When she lay down to sleep at night, she kept on picturing Alex somewhere in the city, all alone. Or worse, she pictured him with a woman who didn't love him. She wondered if there was in fact any truth to Eric's sentiments as well, as if he and Alex had tried each other out like a pair of shirts.
But nothing could shake the tears in her eyes when she awoke the next morning. She almost couldn't make any sense out of it, especially since she and Alex never became a full-on couple. They always stayed friends with one another all up to that big blowout and yet the failed friendship with him cut through her more than her separation from Joey. She couldn't hold a man down if it saved her, in either the platonic or romantic sense.
Such was the life of the art vixen.
A strange time to be alive indeed, as she was still very much in the thick of her twenties, and yet middle age and the throes and full realities of adult life loomed large in her windshield. And yet the feeling still resided within her to be the young seductress to a degree, to lure in those boys with her artistry and make them tremble down to their bones. She had lived in New York for the better part of a decade and it almost felt like a lifetime. A lifetime told through a series of drawings and all manner of art which she put up on display for all the world to see.
All manner of private art which she put up on display for herself to see every single day when she sat down to draw something or to head out for the gallery.
Come another round of springtime, she paid no more attention to those drawings and she forgot they were there. They became a part of the décor at that point.
Scarlett was more than excited for her new apprenticeship at the glass shop up in Scarsdale. All she could say that it would be a brand-new opportunity for her, and yet all Sam could think about was the guys she had set her heart on at that point, even a guy like Lars. She thought about making a bunch of drawings dedicated to him, at least a little something before she left for the rim of the area everyone referred to as upstate.
A simple pencil sketch on a sheet of paper the size of her art journal. A simple head shot of Lars, the young man who spent a night with her once upon a time, and a part of her wished she had spent another one with him. Another round with him.
His smooth mousy hair over the crown of his head. The little round scar over his left eye. That little button nose. That round face, as round and full as the moon.
And then she realized she hadn't heard a peep from him since the sessions with Fired. She hoped that he was okay, especially since she also hadn't heard anything from Metallica at that point, either. It almost felt as though her channels had all dried out and her well ran the risk of closing up for good.
All she could do for the few weeks prior to her departure was draw more sketches. The isolation, the lack of touch, and her retreat back into her apartment made her wonder if she was losing her mind.
Her hand on the paper and she ran the side of the pencil over the grains for curls. Curls on top of more curls. She had no idea if she needed to add a little white sliver to the crown there but she kept on going with the graphite.
His aquiline nose out from under the hair. His sensual lips and the edge of his chin. His Adam's apple and his slender neck.
She had drawn him with the view from the side, but he had such a beautiful profile to her. There was the memory she had had for years at that point, where she believed she would make a stained-glass window of Joey. She had all summer long to do it: it was the hope that she could do them that worried her a bit.
Come the thirty-first of May, she put on one of her old Death Angel shirts and then she climbed into her car with her handbag down by her feet. Without anything else, she drove up to Scarsdale. Belinda gave her the directions and it took her a little less than an hour to reach the shop at the heart of town.
It made her think of a shop class in high school, given the front door stood at the side of the building, close to a minute steely gray payphone attached to the outside wall. She strode inside and the first thing she saw to her left was a big wash basin with a few faucets jutted out from underneath a rectangular mirror. Under the basin was a bunch of five-gallon buckets and a handful of stained rags. To her right was the door to a broom closet and then a narrow corridor lined with a series of shelves filled with buckets and tools. Right in front of her was a full-fledged gallery of glass sheets consisted of all the colors of the rainbow.
A few tables were strewn about the floor and the ceiling rose high over her. It was in fact a shop straight out of a school.
The first thing Marla and Belinda had her do was warm up with a little stained-glass figure of some kind lined with gold foil: she had her choice of either a butterfly, a dolphin, or a peacock, and she took the peacock because she knew she could make it extra bright and colorful. It took her half of a day to relearn how to cut up glass, but she relearned it nonetheless. The curves of the feathers and the roundness of the bird's body were a bit rough given she always came in at an angle to cut them out of the glass.
The foil turned silver when she put the soldering iron down on it to bring it all together.
She thought about her father when she held up the finished peacock up to the lights. The blue, green, and violet glass of the tail shone bright under the light. The milky blue glass of the body made her think of the proverbial sugar she threw out at Alex right before their blowout.
She made another figurine, but one of a palm tree, complete with a crescent moon. Belinda also wanted her to try her hand at the sandblaster as well, so it wasn't until the middle of August and a month out from the end of her apprenticeship when she got down to brass tacks and began her first window.
"I'm sure you know about schedules and whatnot," Belinda pointed out to her when Sam believed that to be not nearly enough time to make something as monolithic as a full-sized window.
She knew that she had to make a drawing of Joey at some point. But then again, after the first day she clocked out, she realized that she barely had enough time to do it. Even though she had very little experience with stained glass, a part of her wanted to freestyle the one of him when she found the chance to do it.
One of her drawings acted as her base. She had to make those pencil scratches into a straight up design for her window.
A long-time dream broken out with shards, and there she was in the glass shop with actual pieces of glass in her hands. She flashed back to that hallway at school where she first thought of the idea.
And thus, at the very last minute, she decided to freestyle her window on Joey's side profile. Given he was off in his own world, she knew that he wouldn't see it for himself. This wasn't going to be a journal tucked underneath the corner of her mattress and she slid it out of there on accident. She spread the single piece of paper across the square board to act as the base and she followed along with Marla's hasty directions given she was making a rather large, and circular, window herself. The pieces cut out from the sheet of glass as best as she could make them to go over her quick design.
A green background to contrast his dark hair and the tones of red, orange, and yellow on his face and his neck. She added some lilies and roses to add a bit more life to his side profile. A voice in the back of her head told her that she was going to be pressed for time so she wouldn't be able to do one of Alex if she wanted to. All she could do was wish that her apprenticeship would continue on at some point in the future. Even with the strenuous, intense schedule and the realization that a whole summer wasn't enough to make all of this work, she still wanted to continue on with it. And yet she didn't want to leave Hell's Kitchen, especially when she had a gallery to run as well.
Even when she overheard the two of them talking about everyone else moving around and going elsewhere on her last night there.
"I heard the Cherry Suicides are actually coming back to Rhode Island, believe it or not," Belinda said. "Zelda gave an interview recently and she said that Providence is starting to come up in its own rite." It was right then that Sam realized that she hadn't spoken to Zelda in so long.
"By the way, I should probably tell you that Frank and Charlie moved out of the Bronx," Marla told her in a single breath. "Well, Charlie did. Frankie's living in a new place in—Yonkers, I think. I'll have to ask him the next time I see him again."
"I haven't spoken to Frankie and Charlie in literal eons," Belinda confessed as she tapped on the piece of glass in her fingers.
"Anthrax are—not in a good place right now," Marla told her.
"Really?" Sam was stunned by that.
"Yeah. It was like they dropped their album with—what's his name."
"John?"
"Yeah, John. They dropped that album back in May and it was a watershed moment. So, expectations are high right now with them. But the last time I spoke to Frankie, he said things are so tense between them all right now, like you can cut the tension between them with a pair of scissors. It's so bad that he and Danny barely speak to each other anymore. They get back from their tour in a couple of weeks' time so that'll be the time to talk to one of them."
"Wow!" Sam gasped, and she pressed a single hand to her hip. "And to think, Danny was willing to let me share his record player with him."
"Really?" Belinda chuckled.
"Yeah, way back when Spreading came out. He offered me to use his record player so I could play the initial pressing of it for myself, but it never came about. I hope I can find one for this new pressing of Testament's new one."
"I think those are just demos, Sam," Marla told her; she picked up the hammer and one of those thick nails with two fingers. She set the nail down before the edge of the glass and, with exactly three taps of the hammer, she inserted the nail into the wood to keep the window intact.
"Yeah, they are," Sam replied as she wiped down the face of her window with the paper towel. "I checked the front label and they're first demos for their new album. It's going to be so weird to not hear Alex's influence with them anymore..." Her voice trailed off. Marla picked up another nail and stuck it before the glass to reinforce the hold, and she took a glimpse over at Sam right then and there.
Sam meanwhile picked up the crumpled paper towel and tossed it into the garbage bin there at the floor. She set either hand on the edges of the wood and she picked up the first design of Joey's face, and she tucked it into the shelf underneath the table's surface. Without another word, she doubled back to the sink to wash her hands.
"I need some soft boy flesh nearby," Belinda confessed.
"You're telling me," Sam muttered under her breath, and she dried off her hands with another paper towel. She returned to the table for her hand bag and she never paid attention to Marla's gaze fixated on her all the while. She simply couldn't stop thinking about the fact Alex wasn't with Testament anymore.
Even though she had no say in the matter, she still wished Aurora would release herself from her duties there so the label could bring him back again. She still wished she could talk to Aurora again.
Sam clocked out for the night, and ultimately, for the summer, and she doubled back across the concrete to that heavy front door. Something touched her shoulder and she peered behind her, and Marla beckoned her to the space behind the shelves. Belinda turned away from there and thus, the two of them bowed back there for a moment's glance.
"What is it?" Sam asked her, to which Marla waved a finger before her to keep her voice down. "What is it?" she asked again, that time in a near whisper.
"Just thought about what you said with Alex not being with Testament anymore," she confessed.
"Well, it's true."
"Well, you see, for me, it goes a little further than that, especially if that blowout between the two of you was anything to go by."
Sam frowned and she pressed her hand to her hip again. "What're you saying?" she asked her. Marla peered through the shelf closest to their heads a second time to ensure that Belinda still paid no attention to them.
"He loved you," she told her in a hushed voice, and Sam held back for a second; she thought back to that afternoon when he came over to her place. The look of desire in his eyes, followed up by bitter tears and a bowed head as he slipped away from her through that elevator at the end of the hallway. "He loved you—he probably still does, too. Have you called him recently?"
"I haven't, no," she replied with a shake of her head.
"Alex loves you, Sam. I remember the first time I saw you guys hanging together—he had this really sweet look in his eye, like he really scored big time with you. He landed a friendship with you and he was just so—grateful to have you in his life, even if you were merely his friend. He wanted you to be his friend."
Marla peered through the shelves once more, and then she reached into her pocket for something.
"Do you have any spare change?" she asked Sam.
"I do, yeah. Why?"
"There's a payphone right out here beside the door. I'll keep watch so Bel doesn't see you."
"What're you saying?"
"Go call him," Marla coaxed her. "Really, Sam, go and call him. Even if you just catch the machine, he'll probably be more than happy to hear your voice."
"Two things, Marla. Number one, it's nine thirty here—it's six thirty and dinnertime over there. He's probably not even home, either. And number two, you don't think it'll be like Joey? Where I call him and he just straight up ignores me if I try to talk to him?"
"No. I doubt it. There wasn't anything like that between you and Alex, where you and Joey actually had a thing between you. And like I said, even if you do just catch the machine, he'll feel overjoyed that you took the time out to call him. Like I said—he loves you. I see it in his eyes. I hear it in his voice. Shit, he always smiled whenever he saw you. A guy who loves you will always smile at you because you're like the sun to him."
Sam sighed through her nose and then she slung her handbag forth, and she reached in for her wallet. She took out a couple of quarters and she padded past Marla, who followed her back to the door. She walked on over to that payphone in question and she inserted those quarters in through the slot. She picked up the phone and dialed his number.
Marla lingered back at the door, just out of Belinda's line of sight.
Indeed, she caught his answering machine.
Sam cleared her throat and then she was met with the beeping noise.
"Alex—hi. It's Sam, Samantha. It's been a while and I know you're probably still more than upset with me, and it's completely understandable. I hope you can forgive me for dropping that bomb on you in the form of those secret drawings. I want you to know that, again, I never intended for anyone to see them. They weren't to be released out to the public until something happened to me, like I died or something. I also want you to know that I meant it when I said I like looking at you. You really are a beautiful boy, even if you can't see that yourself. Even when you look in the mirror, and you see that gray sliver in your hair and those low eyebrows over a pair of deep eyes and that large hooked nose, I see a sweet, pensive little face staring back at me. Just something so delicate and soft even if he feels as cold as ice at times. I want you to take that with you for the rest of your life, that you affect me in such a way that I can't help but bring your countenance to life through pencil and paper. You really are like a prince, a heavy metal prince with the gray streak in your hair as your crown jewel. A little pearl from the full moon above. I'm just waxing poetic and totally bullshitting and pulling all of this out of my ass, but there's no denying how I feel right now. I hope you can forgive me." She swallowed: the words were there and yet something held her back. No way she could say them to him right at the moment.
"I hope we can talk again soon," she added, and she swore her heart stopped. She hung up the phone right there and she closed her eyes. A hand clasped onto her shoulder, which in turn made her open her eyes again: she peered back to find Marla right behind her through the shadows.
"Was that good?" Sam asked her in a small voice.
"That was perfect," Marla replied. "I hope we can get together with him again in the future."
To which Sam frowned.
"Wait. Aren't you coming back to Hell's Kitchen this weekend?"
Marla shook her head. "No, and I was going to tell you this at some point, too—it was just waiting for the right moment. You know, before your apprenticeship is up. But Bel and I both decided to move up here so there's not much of a commute between here and there. She goes back down this weekend to pick up Genie and put down the notice that we're out of there but that's about it, though. It's a total cliché around here, but we're officially a couple of city girls who finally picked up and moved upstate. I hope that's okay."
"I was kind of hoping you both would stay down there near me," Sam said, hurt. "You know—given the whole fact that the three of us were to live in Hell's Kitchen together. The two of you recommended that neighborhood to me after all."
Marla shrugged. "Well, Sam—I'm sure you know that people change and what we want out of life changes along with us. It's not the Eighties anymore. I'm going to be thirty next year and I kind of want to be in a place where I can stay and call home. Bel told me that she likes it up here, and she likes it up here better than the city. Granted, I thought that was weird, too, because we always considered the Big Apple to be our one true home, but she was sincere about that, though."
Sam closed her eyes and bowed her head again. Marla set her hand back on her shoulder.
"Listen. Bel is going back down there this weekend to get Genie—I'll be down there tomorrow, actually, to cash my paycheck. On Saturday, I'll come back with her and we'll go to Coney Island or something. That's bit of a subway ride from H.K., but what do you say?"
Sam lifted her head and gazed into Marla's eyes, shroud in shadow, but she gazed into them nonetheless.
"I have never been to Coney Island after all," she pointed out.
"There you go! Even though people and goals in life change with time, wins never go sideways."
"You said you'll be there tomorrow?" Sam recalled.
"Yeah. It's pay day after all." Marla put her arms around her and held her close to her chest for what felt like the blink of an eye. Louie's dream of a big commune of artists living together suddenly felt like a total pipe dream at that point.
"Mar?" Belinda called out from the shop, and Sam held back to look into her best girl friend's face one last time before she left.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Marla vowed to her with a wink, and Sam nodded her head. They walked back towards the front door together, but Sam kept on walking to the parking lot for her car. The darkness of the night and the withering of the summertime all around her: at least she would have some sort of companion at her side when she returned to the city.
She slipped into the driver's seat and she set her handbag down on the floor under the passenger seat. The edge of a piece of paper stuck out from the mouth of the bag; she reached for it and took it out for a look herself. That sketch of Alex which she planned on making a window out of in the future. His face turned to the side, such that his jet-black hair obscured most of his face except for the tip of his nose and his lips. The mere sight of him was enough to keep her silent for a good long minute. He was more of a ghost than the silver streak in his hair.
She closed the door and she set that sketch down on the seat next to her. The overhead light faded out to the darkness; however, the darkness wasn't enough for her to stick the key into the ignition.
To think Alex was going to be turning twenty-five in a couple of days, and yet she never believed she wouldn't see him again from that point onward. For all she knew, he reacted to that message on his machine just how Joey reacted to her. For all she knew, that was it between them. Every guy she had a fancy for left her behind in the dust, or at least that was her belief. Every so often, she could still taste Alex on her lips.
Every so often, she could still taste Joey on her lips. It was rather harrowing to think that she started to forget the sound of Cliff's voice.
She left Scarsdale and returned to the northern end of the city via a short stint on the expressway. Almost ten years in New York and the full bank of memories haunted her like the drawing next to her.
She rolled up to the very first stoplight and she realized that she was a block outside of that old neighborhood, that first place she lived in right when she moved to New York City. That old furniture shop she met Joey and Frank at stood quiet and dark up the street from there. She turned her head to the drawing on the seat next to her. In the dim light, her eyes grazed over the curls in Alex's hair, including that stray curl at the crown of his head to indicate his gray streak. Turned away from her and away from the rest of the world before him.
She set a hand on the paper and her fingers caressed the grains underneath his shoulder.
She couldn't say it to him over her message but she did in fact feel it, especially when Marla's words echoed through her mind. It was something that she never could completely say to Joey when they were together, and something that she wished she could have said to Cliff when she had the chance in all of the time which she had shared with him.
"No one will ever love you the way I do," she said right aloud. Her fingers caressed over the drawing of his face. Even with his face turned away from her, she could still feel him underneath her fingers. She had to hear the words from her own lips. "No one will ever love you the way I do."
Sam returned to the street in front of her. Back to the Bronx; it felt like meeting an old friend who used to take good care of her. She was about a block from that old apartment complex. Reality set in with her right then and there.
It was rather surreal to think that her former landlord had gone away at that point, and it was even more surreal to think Frank and Charlie didn't live there anymore.
Everyone had gone at that point, and it was official that Marla and Belinda were moving away from Hell's Kitchen for good in the future, given they were to take a special trip to take Genie with them back to their new place. She pulled forward into the intersection as the tears brimmed in her eyes. Her last day at the apprenticeship for the books and there was nothing more left for her.
And just like the separation from Joey and then the one from Alex, she never saw any of it coming.
She never expected to keep her mind fixed on those words, either, all said in her own voice no less: "no one will ever love you the way I do."
Not even the guy who ran the red light on the other side of the block.