“Who gave you that shiner?”
Again the boy checked for useful lies.
Would ‘a father’ work in his favour? A boy’s father, or better a girl’s? He
wasn’t sure, decided to play for time.
“Someone,” he said, layering on a little
sulk. His instinct told him to look down, as if ashamed or lying.
“Someone you stole from?”
“No!”
he spat, and glared at the man, suddeny certain how to play it. He forced
himself to think of the man who had hit him, to pump for anger and disgust. “He
stole from me. We had agreed…” He bit off the rest of the sentence, looked away
again.
“He had agreed, to…” he muttered.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man
adjust his belt, then wipe his brow, and he was certain he had him. But to make
sure he let the silence become uncomfortable.
“Well,” the man said. “You can carry my
bag.”
A short while later, they arrived at the
man’s cabin: a small windowless room, the confined space thick with the hum and
thrum of the ferry’s engines. The tiny, attached moulded plastic bathroom
smelled of disinfectant. The boy put the bag down. The man sat down on the bed,
looked up at the boy, then took off his glasses and began to polish them on his
sweater. When he had put them back on, he said:
“My name is Richard. How should I call you?”
and he put his hand out, as if he had forgotten how to introduce himself
without doing so.
The boy waited just long enough to make
Richard remember, then shook it – his palms were unpleasantly greasy – and said:
“Ariel. Ariel Storm.”
He let go, stuffed his hands into his back
pockets and looked down at the toes of his scuffed boots. “Um. Friends.” He
looked over to the little neon light glowing over the headboard of the bed. “Friends
call me Arik.”
For a while, neither said anything. Then
Richard cleared his throat.
“Are you hungry, Arik?”
The boy nodded and they went to the
restaurant. Richard asked him if he wanted a burger and fries, and then ordered
the Viking Burger with cheese and bacon for the boy, while he had the haddock
with chips and peas himself. He insisted on apple tart for both of them for
desert.
“Can I smoke on deck, please,” the boy
asked afterwards. Richard lectured him about health risks, but the boy could
see how it made Richard both uncomfortable and happy to have him behave like a
prisoner. He got his cigarette, and they talked about the stars. The boy
pointed out Cassiopeia, and Richard showed him how to find Pegasus from there.
“It looks more like a kite with a tail,
than a horse,” the boy said.
“True.” Richard looked at it for a while
and cocked his head. “But it can still fly, can’t it?”
Richard watched the boy finish his smoke.
Then he put a hand on the boy’s back: “Back inside, now.”
The boy knew he should shake it off
angrily, it would fit the character better, but he felt too tired. They went
back to the cabin. Richard guided the boy inside, and then locked the door from
the inside, pocketing the key after a moment’s hesitation.
His voice shook slightly when he said: “Make
yourself comfortable. I’ll be with you right away.” Then he went to the
bathroom and closed the door behind him.
The boy stood uncertainly in the room.
There was no sound from the bathroom. He sat down on the bed, opened his boots
and kicked them off. Suddenly he felt embarrassment for the sour smell of sweat
coming off him. Hastily he peeled off his socks, then his jeans, then his
jacket and sweater. He bundled all of his clothes together and put them
underneath his backpack in the corner by the door, farthest from the bed. Then
he sat down on the bed, with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, blanket
over the knees. And he closed his eyes and waited.
After a while he heard Richard flush and
run the tap and then open the door.
Richard had undressed, too. He was wearing
his unbuttoned shirt over a ribbed undershirt and grey retro boxers, and dark
socks. He looked most naked without his glasses.
Richard came over to the bed in little
steps, and sat down next to the boy. He put one hand onto the boy’s covered
knee, looked at him. With his other hand he brushed the boy’s bruised cheek.
Twice he wanted to say something, but failed. As if to release him, the boy let
the blanket slide down, went to his knees and pulled his dirty white T-shirt
over his head. Then he took Richard’s hand and placed it on his shoulder, as if
to dance. He took the other one, but instead of placing it on his hip he tried
to guide it between his legs.
Richard stood up.
“I am sorry…”
He disappeared again in the bathroom.
The boy waited for a while. Eventually he
went over to his backpack, and got dressed. He took the dog eared copy of
William Butler’s “The Butterfly Revolution” he had nicked from the Kirkwall
hostel out of his pack, sat down with the back to the cabin door and started to
read.
Eventually the bathroom door opened again.
Richard was dressed, too. The boy put his
finger between the pages and dangled the book between his knees. Richard came
over and sat down next to him.
“I am sorry.”
“It’s okay,” the boy said. “Do you want to
try again?”
Richard shook his head, took off his
glasses again and wiped them.
“I should never have even thought it. It
was…”
“It’s really okay, Richard.”
“No,” Richard suddenly said fiercely. “It’s
not.” And when the boy flinched, he added more quietly: “Not because…” He
hesitated but then forced himself to say it. “Not because of the gay sex. But
because you are a kid in trouble, and it was vile of me to even consider taking
advantage of that.”
To his own astonishment the boy found
himself smiling wanly, instead of bristling at the diminution. He patted
Richard’s knee. I would deserve it, he thought. I would deserve so much worse.
Why couldn’t you be a little bit less decent?
“So, what now? Want me to get out? I can
make my way from here.”
Richard stared at the opposite wall for a
while. Then he asked: “Do you play chess?”
