Photo by Duncan Adler on Unsplash
I.
Law entered the house holding a wad of mail clenched between his teeth, trying to avoid sloshing either his cereal or his coffee onto the welcome mat. The television in the den by the entrance was still on Spike, like he left it, but the volume had been turned down until it was little more than an obnoxious hum, like a pair of earbuds left playing at the bottom of someone’s pocket. Sam, who Law co-leased with, was working on his laptop on the far side of the room, pausing every few seconds to take a bite of his salad. Law figured he was working on another online class. Sam had been spending the past few months working in management at the local Goodwill while trying to pad in the extra course credits he needed to apply for a Master of Social Work.
“Keep it up and you’ll turn into a rabbit,” Law said, sitting down in the den and cranking the volume back up. He spread the mail across the coffee table and browsed over them. Law didn’t like mail for most of the same reasons he didn’t like computers. Only address lines, computer systems, and his grandfather had called him Lawrence ever since he decided to reinvent himself at the age of sixteen.
“Rabbits eat carrots. Not arugula and cashews. Did I get anything?”
“Thing from Boston University and two from Chapel Hill,” Law said, sliding the letters across the table. “Nothing in state? UNCs a bitch if you’re not native.”
“No good programs in state,” Sam said, returning to his laptop. “Finally found someone to fill the extra room off of Craigslist, by the way.” Law held his coffee under his face, watching Sam’s forearm as he typed. Every time he hit a key with his middle finger, Law could see the tendon running all the way up his arm and pop around a coil of muscle. The blonde hairs of his arm all pricked half up and then fell again as the air conditioner whirred on in the background.
“Sorry, what?” Law said, taking a sudden pull from his coffee. “New guy?”
“I said he’ll be here in a day or two. Driving down from New York now. He’ll probably make a stop or two.”
“Probably couldn’t keep up with rent,” Law said, standing. “Hope he can hold a real job here at least.” Sam looked up from his work, watching Law over the top of his glasses.
“Speaking of real jobs,” Sam said, letting the sentence float unfinished into the air like some delicate, stray leaf. He was also so polite, Law thought, even when he was trying not to be.
“I need to go warm up my bike,” Law said, ignoring him. He killed the last of the coffee and walked out, leaving the cup and cereal alone with a pile of bills and Food Lion coupons addressed to Lawrence.
II.
Law owned a 2007 Triumph Bonneville T100. It was painted matte black with a custom stretched leather saddle. He picked it out the same day he bought the bike, because its bright copper tone reminded him somehow of summer camp the summer after ninth grade. This point became moot after a month of use, sun, and sweat darkened the leather enough to blot out any nostalgia creeping around his mind. Around this same time, Law learned from a woman on Yahoo! Answers that motorcycle engines were measured by volume, his was an 865 cc making it rather large, and that he should be very careful out there. Law decided that this was why it was so loud when he warmed the bike up in the morning. Once, as he rinsed out a half-finished coffee cup, Sam called the rumbling very throaty. “Yeah, she’s nice, huh?” Law said as the bike continued to spit at the autumn air outside. The sound terrified him.
III.
Law came home for lunch. He worked the desk for the Office of Financial aid, a job he held since junior year of college. There weren’t many calls or visitors during certain times of year, allowing him to set up a sign and an answering machine in his place for over an hour at a time during the middle of the day. The old house, also a relic from junior year, shook with the sound of hammering.
“She’ll break if you go at her too hard, Sam,” he called up the stairs from the kitchen.
“Sam left early to fill an open shift at the store,” said a voice beside him. Law spun around to see a stranger standing in the doorframe. The man had the sort of slender frame that let Law see all the sinews in his neck. A white shirt with a grey striped cat screened onto it draped over the sharp corners of his shoulders. His head was shaved, save for a short stripe down the center, and his eyes were the same empty shade of blue as the cat’s. Probably gay, Law thought.
“I’m Carter,” the man said, offering a hand. “You must be Lawrence. Sorry, I was just ha—“
“Law.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s Law. Like, one practices Law.”
“Oh,” Carter said. “Well, I’ve never practiced you.” He laughed at what was, apparently, a joke. Definitely gay, Law decided.
“So you’re hanging stuff?” Law said, walking into the room. The corners of the room were crowded with frames, popping with more color and abstraction that Law cared for. “What in the hell is that lady in the photo doing with that bird?” he asked, pointing at the one thing hanging.
“That’s Lili St. Cyr,” Carter said. “She’s kind of my hero.” He ran barefoot over to a corner, picking up a long frame filled with magenta and brushed metal. “I just got this one,” he said. “Kat couldn’t bear to liquidize it, so she gave it to me as a farewell gift.” Law looked at the piece for a moment before looking down at Carter’s feet. They were, he decided, unusually well manicured.
“You like art?” he asked.
“Well I worked at a gallery,” Carter said, setting the piece down and looking at it himself. “Spots got the sister piece. It’s really a shame we had to—“
“Spots?”
“Oh, we worked together,” Carter said. “That’s just what people called her. I was Stripes.” He said this proudly, puffing out his small chest.
“Spots and Stripes?” Law asked, walking out of the room. “Not Stars and Stripes? Y’all painters are weird.”
“I don’t paint!” Carter shouted out of the room. “And people don’t have stars on them, silly.”
IV.
Law decided to purchase the bike while looking through a men's fashion magazine in the lobby of an autoshop where he was getting his tires rotated. There was a two-page spread at the front of the magazine showing a man with pale blonde hair slicked sideways racing down some English country road and looking very retro-chic while doing it. Law stared at the ad for a while, not paying much attention to the leather jacket it was trying to sell or the man’s all-too-well-fitting racing gloves. Once the tires were finished and he returned home, Law spent a full hour browsing the search results of “British + motorcycle,” “Triumph + motorcycle,” and, finally, “Ewan McGregor + motorcycle.”
V.
In Brooklyn, Carter was known exclusively as Stripes. He and Spots together worked as house performers at a small art gallery that doubled as a neo-burlesque club. Spots was a tall woman, much bigger than Stripes, with thick curls down to her shoulders. Her skin was the deep, dusty bronze of an emptied clay river, save for the large patches of pure white dappled across her body like fallen wax. The way the spots, where her body had driven out all the pigment in her skin, seemed to move in the low lights of the gallery, the way they seemed to cup and hold her like so many small pale hands, would entrance Stripes. But she never got as much attention as he did. The crowds would always drift slowly over to Stripes.
“Marvelous,” they said.
“Such brave art,” they said.
VI.
The police report noted that, despite being a two-vehicle collision, both parties were not at fault. The driver of the car, a miss Carla Lee, had a green light and could not have reasonably been expected to see and stop for the second motorist. Miss Lee had just left a gas station, having bought a ginger ale for her daughter (also in the car) who was out from school with stomach flu. When questioned, she said she heard the screech of brakes before ever seeing the bike.
Skid marks and leaked oil trails at the scene, combined with witness accounts, say that the bike was moving at full speed until immediately before the light. With the light rain that had been falling throughout the day, the ground was wet and the motorist apparently lost control. The motorcycle swung in an arc as the rider tried to turn right until the bike, nearly parallel to Carla Lee and her daughter's car but still skidding in the same direction. Parts of the right tail lights, both footpegs, the left mirror, and an oil cap where found at the scene. According to witnesses, the motorcyclist passed over the top of Miss Lee's car and rolled several yards up the road. He then stood, tried to take one more step away, and collapsed.
VII.
Law studied Economics and Chinese Literature. He wanted, he decided in high school, to be rich. Rich people, Law learned from television, were more attractive. Rich people, Law learned from music, found love and happiness and great sex with strangers. Rich people, Law learned from his grandfather, never spent their whole lives working with goddamn rocks just to feed a bunch of useless queer grandchildren. Law didn’t have any particular interest in Schumpeter or the Romance of the Five Kingdoms. He had an interest in avoiding ugliness, queer grandchildren, and dying alone.
It is this same urge that had Law emailing each of his fraternity brothers, none of whom he’d talked to since graduation, asking about where they were working, if they were still with the same girl and, hey, I don’t suppose there’s an opening over there? It is this same urge that helped Law overcome his fear of placing telephone calls and his fear of possibly leaving the house. Law lifted the receiver and put in the numbers he wrote down on a small legal pad.
“Hey bro,” Law said into the phone, keeping his pen gripped tight to the paper in hope. “I hear that y’all might have an opening?”
VIII.
Unlike a car windshield, his faceplate didn't have any wipers. It wasn't raining hard, but the droplets would still cluster and accumulated on the visor, making passed taillights burst and diffuse into meaningless globes of red light. The road was left looking like it had been painted by an anxious young impressionist trying desperately to produce something that might sell with the last of his paint. He didn't pick out the stop light from the blur until he was right on top of it.
He threw both front and rear brake at once. His grip tightened, partly to control the wheel and partly because he could feel hands crawling up from the base of his spine that told him to tighten his grip. This opened the throttle, causing the engine to open its mouth and roar as it kicked and rattled to escape its cage between his legs. He tried to run away. This released the front brake. The front wheel sparked off the ground as he tried to stand suddenly, his hands clawing at the base of his helmet. The car's mirror hit him first, breaking against his left thigh as the motorcycle thrashed away and escaped, dragging its side some twenty feet up the road before dying.
IX.
“Have you seen my tie?” Law shouted, to no one in particular. His interview was a city over, about twenty miles from the opposite side of Sherman’s Rest, and he had only half an hour before he had to be there.
“No,” Carter called from his room.
“I need it,” Law shouted. “There’s an interview and I’m going to be late and I need my tie.”
“Come here,” Carter said. “I can give you one of my ties.”
“I need my tie,” Law said. “I’m going to be late.”
“Get in here then!” Carter shouted as Law clunked through the hall, trying to put on his shoes while walking. He got one on before getting through the door.
“How’s this one,” Carter said, as Law walked into the room and promptly dropped his shoe to the floor. Law stared ahead at Carter, seeing him for the first time as he emerged from his room, his narrow chest bare. He gently pressed the crumpled tie into Law’s hand.
“Let me get dressed,” Carter said, turning back, “and I can dri—“
“You’re beautiful,” Law said. Carter turned back around. His torso was covered in long, heavy scars that wrapped his body like he was a tiger. Law stepped, his hand steady and careful, and traced his middle finger along a line stretching across his chest. Carter watched him, like a parent watching a child.
“That happens when you cover yourself up for too long,” Carter said. Law kept running his hands along the lines, his head swimming. Outside the rain continued on in the same dreary pattern it had all day.
“I’m going to be late,” Law said.
“I can drive you.”
“You’re…” Law said.
“You’re high,” Carter said.
“I’m going to be late.”
“Yeah,” Carter said. “Probably.”
Michael Pruitt is a Lieutenant in the US Navy currently working at the Office of Naval Intelligence. Originally from South Carolina, he currently lives near D.C. with his dog Jo and his various fears and insecurities.