February 1-2, 2012
"Michael." Katherine Black was seated on the sofa, legs curled up by her side. Her idea of a casual stay-at-home Friday night ensemble was a Gucci turtleneck and slacks.
"Hey, mom." Slightly unnerved as always by the sight of his mother, Michael stepped into the living room and locked the door behind him. He was shuffling away to the kitchen without another word when she said, "Where have you been?"
He rolled his eyes, though as his mother was on the sofa and he had his back to her she couldn't see it, and said, "My curfew is midnight on Fridays. It's, well, midnight now. What's the problem?" Michael poked around, looking for food, then he found it frozen in a tray within the microwave. Last night's leftover chicken lasagna. Yum, he thought glumly.
"I just like to know where you're going, that's all. You know I worry."
Bullshit, Michael thought. He served himself a healthy-sized slice on a plate and shoved it back in the microwave for a minute. "I was just out with my friends. Bowling," he fibbed.
"Bowling?" she asked. Her tone was soft and neutral. Shit.
"Really." God, this stuff was good. My mother's not perfect, but damn! This woman can cook.
"Till midnight?"
"We hung out at Phil's place," Michael improvised wildly, spooning a large chunk of minced chicken and cheese into his mouth.
His mother rose from the sofa. Flecks of grey now touched the thick blonde hair that was combed back from her forehead.
"Don't lie to me, Michael." She approached the kitchen and glowered before him, arms folded across her chest.
"I'm not lying!" Michael spluttered, hoping his flustered demeanor would somehow be misattributed to indignance and not guilt.
She looked him squarely in the eye, and Michael, as usual, found it a little disorienting to see his own vivid midnight-blue irises staring back at him. It was like the woman could read his mind.
"Look," he said, swallowing in a hurry, "I was out with friends. I didn't do anything I shouldn't have. I'm home before time. I got an A plus on an organic chemistry pop-quiz we had at school. What is the problem?"
"The problem is that I don't like being lied to. Least of all by you," Katherine said calmly. In all his seventeen years, Michael had never heard her voice raised; yet he could instantly detect the danger-signal in its even iciness.
"Then maybe you should believe me when I say I'm telling the truth." Picking up his plate, he stalked off to his room and slammed and locked the door behind him.
Soon it was past midnight, as good a time as any to smoke a joint. Michael hoped his mother had retreated to her room, but didn't really care enough to go check. He let himself into the bathroom and locked and bolted the door behind him. Once the exhaust fan was running at maximum power, Michael opened his bathroom cabinet, slid the empty second shelf off its ledge and felt around for the opening of the false back. When he found the small hole, his fingers neatly prised the wooden panel off its ledge to reveal the secret hiding place of his stash.
The little red box had been a gift from Matt on his thirteenth birthday, and Michael had discovered pot not long after. Hiding weed in it seemed like a natural association to make between two things he loved, and over the years it had come to represent a four-cubic-inch haven of peace. So much so that he could not remember the last time it was empty. Caricatures of frolicking women, saxophones and champagne glasses decorated the steel lid. It summed up his personality so utterly that Michael could only marvel at the percipience of his brother's choice.
Michael held a toke in his hand before he knew it; the act of cleaning and rolling had become so ingrained in him that he was barely aware of performing it anymore. He lit the end, took a drag and reveled in the familiar, bitter, burning-plant taste in his mouth. A slight twinge of guilt passed through him - an integration assignment remained pending, due in two days for an Advanced Math class; oddly, calculus was the sole challenge he could not face when stoned.
It had been a strange day. The effects of the alcohol had worn off, but still felt unsettled and peculiar in Michael's system. His mind wandered, but in an ambitious, aggressive sort of way - fighting its way back to that sight of the city, stretching far beyond the horizon and how Ray looked beside it as he leaned across the parapet wall, the sharp red checks on his scarf a contrast against the perfect, sculpted lines of his face. It was a miracle. They had lived in this dense sea of metropolitan anonymity together all these years - walking the same streets, breathing the same air, perhaps even passing each other at the same Starbucks. Yet this was this the night that they were destined to meet, to look out at the city together and feel it resonating in their bones... it was about then that Michael knew for sure that his ties to home were merely tenuous. They could sever or fray or snap and he would be beyond noticing. He would follow this man, this dark enticing handsome stranger to any corner of the world.
Michael did not dream much anymore; often he fell into stoned stupors rather than asleep in the early hours of the morning, consciousness passing with fuzzy disjointed images fading into nothing. He would wake what seemed like seconds later with sunlight pouring in at the window and a splitting headache - lack of sleep causing him actual, physical pain. Tonight he tossed and turned, staring at a blood-red, starless sky through a gap in the curtains. Michael was not aware at which point he lost consciousness, but almost immediately he found himself walking along a tiled rooftop veranda many miles in the air, looking out onto a vast expanse of fluffy white cloud. Suddenly Ray was there too, holding out a hand to him from the terrace of a neighboring building which had just materialized. He was smiling - Michael could see with perfect clarity the long, sharp dimples symmetrically cleaving his cheeks and pink lips curved to form the very picture of happiness. Michael knew he had to jump, that if he simply took that hand without fearing that seemingly inescapable void, he would fly - soar across the sky and the rooftop and land there beside him, right where he belonged.
Right on cue at 0645, Asia's Heat Of The Moment exploded out of his phone, and wrenched Michael unceremoniously from slumber. A dream, he thought, almost alarmed at the surge of emotion that flooded through him. Was it really only a dream? Reluctantly he dragged the duvet off his body, head reeling with the sudden movement. Swinging his feet down, the first thing he did was step on the plate of half-eaten lasagna that lay forgotten from last night, which clattered loudly on the granite floor.
"Shh!" he said futilely, then checked for any sounds. Nothing. Quietly, he ducked out of his bedroom and into the kitchen to drop the guilty plate in the dishwasher. This was much easier than having to endure what his mother would say if she found it, unwashed, in his room later. "You expect me to do everything for you... living in your own little world...don't understand life's difficulties... I gave up everything for you..." I gave up everything for you. That was her standard, favorite line.
Michael had a benign day at school. Phil was subdued, apparently he had been grounded for another week. Danny was sulky because their radical night of rebellion had been so dismally cut short. When Michael suggested that they do it again sometime when circumstances were more favorable, the two stared at him in surprise.
"I thought you hated drinking," Phil said, pulling on a white rubber glove with one hand and slamming his locker shut with the other. Further down the corridor, Mr. Harris stood ominously by the entrance of the chemistry lab, ushering students in and watching the three of them with a beady eye.
"I don't mind a gin every now and then," Michael answered honestly. It was not his preferred source of inebriation, that was true, but drinking socially wasn't a total taboo in his book. "Plus, they served us alcohol once at Second Chance's. Who's to say they wouldn't do it again?"
Danny looked at him doubtfully, and Michael affected an expression of innocence. Casey might let them drink again, but Ray would not. Then again, Phil and Danny didn't know that.
"That bartender chick didn't seem that convinced," Phil said, picking his book satchel up off the floor. He looked curiously at Michael. "What was she talking to you about for that long?"
"Oh, random stuff." Then Michael smirked. "Her brother is hot as hell."
Danny's eyes lit up. "What, the suit guy?" he breathed. "Dude, he looked like a fucking movie star. Did he seem into you?"
Michael couldn't help grinning. He had dated prolifically but unemotionally for five years, and it was touching that these two followed it with such an active interest, though he seldom returned the same courtesy.
"Dunno," he answered, and the three of them began to walk toward the now-scowling Mr. Harris with a deliberate torpor. "Name's Raymond Chance. He owns the bar, and he's a lawyer - he's like twenty-nine."
Phil looked at him shrewdly. "Does that bother you?"
Michael shook his head, feeling his cheeks burn for the umpteenth time in two days. "He's hotter because he's older," he confessed.
"Score!" Phil said, laughing. They picked up their pace; their chemistry teacher was now beckoning them into class. "You gonna see him again?"
"He gave me his card and told me to call him," Michael said with a straight face, and it was worth it to see the looks of shock and admiration on theirs. It was when he stepped into the lab that he remembered, with a sinking feeling of dread, that the business card was still in last night's jacket pocket, in his living room at home.
Michael was jumpy on the walk back from school. He navigated quickly through the seemingly sluggish pedestrians on the overcrowded street, starting at the slightest noise, and instead of stopping for his usual coffee he lit a cigarette at a stop-signal. When he finally unlocked his front door and stepped inside, he was startled out of his wits to see his mother sitting on the sofa. He almost blurted out, "What are you doing here?" before he remembered that it was her day off.
"Hi Michael." She stood as soon as she saw him. She was dressed in slacks and a formal blazer, so Michael hoped that she had somewhere to go. He had come to rely on her chronic workaholism for his maintained solitude, and thereby peace of mind.
"Hey mom." Panic welled in him as he saw the empty coat hanger; his trench wasn't where he'd left it.
"I'm sorry about what I said last night," she said, her tone sounding warm and truly apologetic. Like hell, he thought. "I just get worried."
"It's okay," he said with a sigh. "You don't need to worry about me." Because I'm the perfect son.
Michael's eyes darted about the room, and saw no sign of his favorite navy Vero Moda jacket. Had he taken it off in his room after all? He moved swiftly toward his bedroom , and just as he had his hand on the doorknob, his mother spoke again. "So who's Raymond Chance?"
Michael blanched. The blood drained from his face. "Wh-who?" he said innocently.
"Associate lawyer, Avery, Watson & Hunter. The card fell out of your pocket."
He spun around, and to his unpleasant surprise found that she was standing right behind him, dangling Ray's business before his face, her expression almost a sneer. Michael quickly snatched it away and shoved it in his pocket. The woman was supernatural; she moved like a damn ghost.
"Someone Mr. Whitaker knows," Michael blurted out the explanation he had planned in lieu of the foreseen situation. "I uh, I mean, he might know of a potential, uhm, clerkship at the ah, place where he works." The words sounded hollow and flimsy in his own ears. Obviously, because he had no idea whether or not law firms hired teenage clerks.
"Clerkship?" His mother sounded mocking. Maybe they didn't, then.
"It's just an idea," he said, trying to make his tone seem airy and dismissive.
"Sure."
He opened the door, and before he could duck inside she said, in the passive-aggressive voice he knew so well, "You can't lie to me. I thought you knew that."
Michael froze. "Who says I'm lying?"
"Do you think I don't know about your... perversions by now?" Katherine was walking away from him, speaking softly enough to make sure he strained to hear her words as they trailed away. "You want to jump on the downward-spiral bandwagon like I did, go right ahead. Since you know best."
You're wrong, Michael almost said, closing the door firmly behind him. I can't get knocked-up and saddled with a kid for life like you did.
Then he dropped his satchel on the floor, pulled the card out of his pocket and collapsed on the bed. It was sleek, glossy and expensive-looking - not unlike Raymond himself, thriving associate lawyer at the age of twenty nine. A quick Google search of Avery, Watson & Hunter confirmed that Raymond Chance was part of their multi-national dominance.
For a while, he attempted his calculus assignment. The trigonometry formulas swam before his mind's eye, confused and out of sequence, though he'd had them at the tips of fingers for years now. At last Michael gave up, retreating to his bathroom to roll himself a light one with the exhaust fan running at full blast. What on earth was he to do? He couldn't concentrate - could barely eat or sleep, let alone think. Yet he knew the answer to that apparently rhetorical question almost instinctively. This was not simply another of those handsome faces he sometimes saw on a street, smiled at and forgot in a second. He had a phone number - an actual phone number, and he intended to use it.