Jon Talton: Powers of Arrest

They cruised deeper into Kentucky as the sun went down and the other boaters found their places closer to the city. They passed under the bridge that carried the Cincinnati beltway before Zack cut the engines and tied up at an old, abandoned dock beneath a thick canopy of branches.

“So John Borders.” Zack spoke to him for the first time. And that was all he said, as if rendering a judgment.

Zack turned to Heather and soon they all were talking schools. They could switch from the latest slang to jokes to perfect adult conversation. Zack was starting at Harvard in the fall, pre-med, but after a month in Paris on his own. One of the blondes was doing an internship in John Boehner’s office this summer. She was going for an MBA after finishing her undergrad at Brown. Everyone but John was impressed.

Zack hooked up an iPod to some speakers and they belted out a play list from the 1980s. It was so Cincinnati, frozen in time. Then he opened up a cabinet and pulled out liquor bottles and glasses.

“Red Hook cocktails, anyone?”

“Me, me,” Heather purred, and the other girls laughed.

“That is so legit,” Chelsea, one of the blondes, said. “I had my first last week. Wow.” The prospect even made her stop texting and put away her cell phone.

As Men at Work sang, Zack expertly mixed the drinks, which looked like brown martinis and tasted of whiskey. Heather broke open the picnic basket and passed around food, but John didn’t feel hungry. Soon, they were on the second drink, talking about friends he didn’t know, and college plans he didn’t care about. They had all recently graduated and yet appeared so focused. They were younger, but he felt out of his league, felt, depressingly, like he was back at prep school.

He had never fit in. He wasn’t Catholic, wasn’t an athlete, geek, academic star, or secret goth. Since graduating, he had drifted. John didn’t know what the hell he wanted to do. He only knew he didn’t want to be back in Cincinnati. Heather might have changed that, but she was barely with him now. It was a dynamic he had felt so many times before. He fell into a dark silence, feeling the knife he carried in his pocket, imagining what it might do to Zack’s handsome face. It was only a passing thought. His imaginings of how well this night might go were quickly fading.

“And a chaser.” Zack passed around a bag of pills. Everybody took one but John.

“A little ecstasy won’t hurt you, Borders, unless you’re narc’ing for your old man.”

“Look, I don’t like ecstasy. That’s it.” John didn’t even especially like hard liquor, and he was feeling the Red Hooks.

Heather popped one of the pills and drained her glass, letting out a war whoop.

John had never done ecstasy, never done the hookups that were popular in school, especially among the rich Catholic kids at school. He had never been invited. He didn’t even want that. He wanted Heather. But his mind shifted into momentary optimism. Maybe the night would turn into something after all. He retrieved the bag and took two of the pills. Chelsea and Jennifer giggled.

Zack smiled. “Now if anybody wants to use the little boat back there for some privacy…”

The river rocked the boat rhythmically and a sweet smell came from the foliage on the bank. Maybe the boat would sink and he could rescue Heather, be a hero, and she would fall in love with him. The other blonde, Jennifer, was telling a story, the ghost ship of the Licking River…a paddle wheeler in the nineteenth century that suffered a boiler explosion killing everyone on board, but for years people would see that ship at night, passing noiselessly down the river.

John couldn’t feel any effect from the pills. But he started talking.

“See over there, to the west beyond the trees? It’s the old Decoursey Yard of the L &N Railroad. It was huge. Now it’s mostly abandoned and deserted, but the CSX main line between Cincinnati and Corbin runs through it.” He was like that. He knew odd things, but somehow they didn’t add up to much that anyone was interested in.

“We should hike up there and see it,” Jennifer said. She was only wearing flip-flops.

He kept his eyes on Heather. “You might not want to. There’s a story, where sometimes people see a man standing on the tracks, waving a red lantern. Like a warning. They say he’s dressed in railroad clothes from the nineteen-thirties. Nobody knows who he is. But he waves that red lantern across the tracks at the old Decoursey Yard, and when he does, the railroad shuts down for a while. The old timers say the red lantern means there’s going to be a wreck. So they stop the trains.” He paused, and saw they were paying attention to him. “So listen…No trains. That means the man must have been seen tonight. He’s right up that riverbank, over the trees.”

“That’s a great story,” Heather said.

“Trains are yesterday,” Zack said.

John’s stomach was feeling the drinks. He should have eaten something. He set the glass aside and wondered how to keep Heather’s attention. He thought about talking her into the Zodiac and they could go off together, get away from these bores. The play list from the Reagan years ran on. Huey Lewis and the News gave way to Journey. I Want to Know What Love Is . John had always thought the song was a maudlin oldie. Now it filled his heart and he thought, yes, Heather, I do want to know . He tried to catch her eye.

The moan awoke him, and for a second he thought about the mysterious man with the lantern, about the ghost ship. But it wasn’t that kind of moan.

John didn’t know how much time had passed. The sky beyond the overhang of trees was inky, filled with stars. Jennifer and Chelsea had disappeared. A few feet away, he saw Heather embracing Zack. He was sitting in his captain’s chair and she was in his lap. The chair was turned to face the stern, where John was sprawled on the bench.

“You were so busy up front with the Jennifer and Chelsea that I didn’t think you were interested in me,” Heather said.

“Saving the best for last,” Zack said.

The two were kissing deeply and he had his hand in her shorts. She moaned again.

John felt sick but not from the liquor. Yet he sat there and pretended to be asleep, watching the thing unfold. Zack slipped off her light top and expertly unhooked her bra. Her skin glowed in the starlight as she sat on his lap, facing away from John. After a few minutes, she dropped to her knees and unzipped him.

“My, my, what’s this?”

It was a woman’s voice, husky, alien.

“You like, babe?” Zack said.

She laughed. “What do I do with it?”

As she moved her head, John stared at Zack’s penis, transfixed.

“Let me help.” Zack reached down to undo it. Heather leaned forward and her hair covered what came next. But it was clear what was happening. Her head bobbed up and down. The boat rocked gently and John wanted to kill them both. He wanted to kill himself. It was a feeling that only grew as he saw, through the slits of his eyes, Heather kick off her shorts and black panties, climb astride the captain’s chair, and reach down to put Mister Perfect’s penis inside her.

“Fuck me!” she whispered.

John felt his face grow a hot blush.

They rocked against each other. Heather laughed and arched her back.

It seemed to last for years. He watched the whole thing, the drill of betrayal boring into his middle, but also…arousal. Maybe he was a peeping Tom. A freak.

They moved with ever-greater urgency until both were groaning loudly.

Heather’s voice split the night. “Oh! You’re making me come.”

John closed his eyes and tried to think of nothing. After awhile the powerful engines of the boat started and idled.