Page 44 of Bent Heavens

“You want me to come?”

“Yes, I do.”

The costumes were kept in a low-ceilinged, concrete-walled dungeon beneath the auditorium, a labyrinth of overstuffed clothing racks arranged at odd angles. It was lit by overhead bulbs, just like the Armory, and when Liv clopped down the steps into the stuffy, mothball air, she was struck by a worrisome displacement, as if all paths led to the backyard shed. She hurried, sending puffs of dust upward and rains of sequins downward.

She found Bruno standing before a large bookshelf arranged with fedoras, bowlers, newsboys, berets, beanies, sombreros, pillboxes, visors, cloches, and crowns. He was staring up at the top hats, but even faced away from her, Liv could tell he wasn’t seeing them. He turned at her approach and looked at her with a sense of disbelief.

“Did we come down here to make out?” he asked.

The lean into him she’d started up above continued here down below, her hips and breasts pressing against his opposites. She placed her hands on either side of his torso. His T-shirt was pitifully thin. She could feel ribs, individual moles. She tilted her face up to his, making it simple—all he had to do was lean down a couple of inches—but his hands settled on the sides of her shoulders, and there was nothing sexy about that.

“You’re gay,” she guessed.

His lips were so close that his laugh fluttered her eyelashes.

“Mono’s going around. I have to sing with this voice.”

Mono was farcical to Liv. A’s blood, tumors, teeth, tongue, spittle—all of it had landed on her, hot and frantic, festering with extraterrestrial microbes worse than any kissing bug. She exhaled in frustration, dug her fingers into his back, and mashed her lips against his. This time, there was interest. She felt it in the grope of his lips and a slight tilt of his hips. His hands slid from the safe zone of her shoulders and pushed into the sides of her breasts. She found the hem of his shirt and raced her hands up his bare back. This is what she wanted: to feel, against her own skin, a skin that wasn’t sticky or gelatinous, and to hear hoarse pants of excitement, not foreign chirps of pain.

Bruno moved fast once he’d begun. He yanked down the nearest three costumes for cushioning and lay back on them, folding Liv down atop him. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, and felt Bruno’s tongue—still there, not severed—slide across her teeth—every tooth still rooted in place, not cast across the floor. Revolting, invading images; she pushed them away and buried herself in Bruno’s scents and textures.

Their clothes shaved off in alternation, just like skinners were supposed to shed skin. His warm thumbs ran under the elastic of her underwear, unsealing it, inch by inch, from her sweaty skin, and that did it—her mind blacked out in spots like when she took a hard body-check in soccer. She manipulated his penis from his boxers and stroked it. She’d done this only twice before, but was eager. He had a hand down the front of her pants when he climaxed all over some peasant tunic that hadn’t seen action in decades.

For a while they lay with legs interlocked, listening to the distant thuds of faculty leaving the building late. Liv pictured a janitor pushing his mop bucket toward the costume room, and she tried to care that she was half-naked. She couldn’t. Maybe it was Fleming genetics: She thought of her father, naked in the town square, and an oily puddle of bad mood bubbled inside her. She’d have to leave soon, tunnel through the darkness of Custer Road, and brave the shed. She swiveled her face away from Bruno.

“We don’t have to make this a thing,” she said. “My life is weird right now.”

“Are you kidding me? I wish this was a thing, like, three times a day.”

He was looking at her, she could feel it; she could also feel herself draw away. He had no idea who she really was.

“You need a ride?” he asked.

“So gallant,” she joked.

He shrugged, jostling her sweaty shoulder. “My car is cleaner than your car.”

“Car,” she sighed, and the rest came unbidden: “Bow. Hole.”

Bruno humphed. “Who’s that?”

Liv felt herself blush and wondered how far down her bare chest the pink went.

“It’s nothing.”

Bruno turned to face her, grinning. “Ooh, another Latin lover on the side. I’m jealous.”

She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a name, right? Carbajal?”

He said it phonetically: Car-bah-hall. Liv felt her throat swelling shut. Could it be that, all this time, Car-Bow-Hole had been a person’s name? Had A had been trying to give them somebody’s name? It made no sense, was bizarre beyond anything she’d ever considered.

She pulled her phone out of jeans still warm from friction.

“Well, this isn’t very flattering,” Bruno said.

“Shh,” Liv replied. Two years of high-school Spanish gave her the foundation to guess the spelling of the name, but to type it she had to take a slow breath and peck each letter with an index finger. Results sprang up, the usual screed of heartless hits and cold-blooded URLs. A municipality in Spain, a California congressman, a street photographer. None of them felt right. Liv used her index finger again, added Iowa. A basketball coach, an obituary.