Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

“I’m seventeen,” Jordan said. He smiled tentatively. Don’s sudden aggression had momentarily driven away any thoughts of the intrinsic creepiness of sleeping in a dead man’s sleeping bag. “But it’s OK. I have money for the rent. I brought it from home.” He patted his jacket pocket. “Right here.”

Don said again, “For fuck’s sake. Do we need a kid here? Are we that fucking broke?”

“Jesus, what’s your problem? He’s fine. In case you haven’t noticed,” Mack said, looking pointedly at Fleur’s swollen belly, “we need some bread right about now.”

Jordan said, “Hey, if this isn’t going to work out, you guys-I mean, I don’t want to get in the way, you know what I mean?” His voice cracked. He sounded like a kid now, even to himself.

Fleur giggled and, for the first time, gave Jordan her full attention. She smiled widely. “Relax, man. It’s beautiful. Don, relax, baby. It’s cool. The kid’s all right. Aren’t you, kid?”

“Yeah, sure. I mean, yes. I’m all right.”

She laughed. “You’re cute, kid. What was your name again?”

“Jordan. Jordan Lefebvre.”

“Nice.”

Don flushed a deep red. The cords on his neck suddenly stood out in sharp relief. He scowled and looked away while Jordan and Mack shook hands awkwardly.

“Welcome, man,” Mack said. “Don’t worry about the sleeping bag. We washed it. It’s clean.”

That afternoon, Jordan had returned to the hotel on Jarvis. He’d packed his rucksack and put his guitar back in its case. He paid the bill, and checked out. He sniffed the sleeves of his flannel shirt, catching a whiff of roach spray. His nose wrinkled in distaste.

As he set out across downtown towards the apartment, Jordan had allowed himself to believe, for the first time since he’d arrived in the city, that he might have some sort of future here, free of his father’s shadow. The July sunlight had been hot and bright. Jordan felt sweat gathering under his armpits and along the line of his back. He stopped and shrugged off the strap of his guitar, placing it gently on the sidewalk. He took his flannel shirt off and tied it around his waist. Yes, better. Jordan squinted, shielding his eyes with his left hand. He scanned the still-unfamiliar cityscape and assessed the quickest route to his new apartment and the beginning of what he believed was to be his real life.

He’d found a job washing dishes and occasionally busing tables at a restaurant on King Street that paid him just enough to cover his rent and keep from starving. His roommates, by and large, ignored him, though Fleur and Mack seemed to like him, which made him feel like an adult. Occasionally Fleur brought him a cup of herbal tea when she was making some for herself.

He sometimes caught her staring at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Once, when she’d been looking, he’d turned to smile at her. She’d smiled back, but it wasn’t the sort of smile she used when Don and Mack were present. It seemed somehow private, somehow inviting, though Jordan would have been at a loss to identify exactly what sort of invitation was being extended.

On one of those occasions, he’d become aware of Don standing in the doorway. Don looked from Fleur to Jordan, and then back again. His eyes had been cold as two chips of black ice. Jordan had felt a territorial menace coming off Don in waves. Unlike Mack, who was always amiable, even if he seemed perpetually stoned, Don had never relaxed around Jordan. And he watched Fleur the way a wary dog watches a piece of meat-covetously and on guard for challenges to his primacy.

In the three months that he’d lived with them, Fleur’s belly had grown round and full. Jordan occasionally wondered what it would be like to be born in this apartment, not knowing which of the two men was your father.

He’d asked Fleur once, when they were alone, if she knew. She smiled at him and pressed her index finger against her lips.

And then, that afternoon, after three months of silence, he’d called his mother in Lake Hepburn to tell her he was OK. He called from a payphone in the early afternoon when he knew his father was at work. She finally picked up after six or seven rings. When she came on the line, Jordan knew there was something terribly, terribly wrong. Her voice was small, and her words sounded like she was speaking them through a mouthful of meat.

“I’m fine, Jordan. Are you all right, honey? I’ve been so worried.”

“Mom, what’s going on? What’s happening?” Jordan squeezed his eyes together against the images that rose in his mind: his mother’s careworn face bruised purple and swollen, her body crisscrossed with belt marks. Broken glass, broken doors, holes in the walls. I should never have left, he thought. I should have tried to take her with me, at the very least. On her end, he heard his mother begin to sob and he damned himself with guilt. I should have known that if I left, he’d start hitting her instead of me.

“Mom, I’m coming home. Right now. I’ll be there by tomorrow.”

“Jordie, listen to me. I want you to stay where you are. Don’t come home. I don’t know what he’ll do. He was real mad when you left.”

“Can you go stay at Aunt Lee’s?”

“I’ll be all right. Please don’t come back here, at least not now. I’m all right, I promise.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Mom. I’m coming home soon. Then, I’m going to kill him.”

Jordan had walked back to the apartment in the rain. When he arrived, Fleur was sitting at the kitchen table writing in her journal. She raised her head and pushed her long hair out of her eyes. When she saw that he’d been crying, she stood up, her face softening into an expression of concern.

“Hey baby, what’s the matter?”

The simple kindness of her question had threatened what little self control Jordan had still been able to exert.

“Ah. Nothing. Rough day. Lost my job,” he lied. “I don’t think this is for me after all. I should never have left Hepburn.”

She stood up and reached out her arms. He allowed himself to be enfolded, welcoming the tenderness. Then, Fleur was kissing him and unbuttoning his shirt. He kissed her back, at first with a virgin’s tentativeness and then with an entirely unfamiliar, instinctive aggression. He smelled patchouli and Halo shampoo as he pressed himself against her awkwardly, feeling the rise of her belly wedging them apart.

“Are you sure we should-”

Fleur slipped her tongue into this mouth, cutting him off. She ran one hand through his hair, still damp from the rain. She slipped the other down the front of his jeans, taking his cock-which felt harder to Jordan than it had ever been-between her fingers and squeezing it with an exquisite, expert skill. She undid the button and pulled his jeans and his boxer shorts down across his naked hips. He pushed them the rest of the way down till they were tangled at his feet and kicked them away, naked, for the first time, in the presence of a woman. If his nakedness shamed him at all, it was transitory. Jordan had three thoughts simultaneously. The first, that he was going to get laid-seriously and thoroughly laid- for the first time in his life. The second was that the first woman he was ever going to fuck was pregnant with another man’s child. The third, that he didn’t give a good god damn because he was going to get laid- seriously and thoroughly laid-for the first time in his life.

A fourth thought-that this was as dangerous as anything he’d ever done in his life, knowing that Don could come home at any moment- came and went in another wave of lust.

When Fleur shrugged off the bathrobe she wore, Jordan saw she was completely nude. Her belly arched gently outwards from a body that was more slender than he would have expected, freed of the smocks and baggy shirts she’d worn during the time he lived there. Jordan marvelled at the pale curves of her body, the swollen breasts and the soft delta between her legs, almost hidden by the press of her belly. When she knelt down and took his cock in her mouth, he thrilled at the unfamiliar sensation of her mouth and tongue on a part of his body that only he had ever touched.