Eric Puchner - Model Home

It seemed unlikely now that she was having similar thoughts. The windows were open and a breeze ruffled the curtains, sending bright ribbons of sunlight over the bed. Camille turned around. Her eyes were smeared with mascara, and for a moment he didn’t recognize her, so distant were her thoughts from him.

“It’s a good movie,” Warren said, as gently as he could. “Very original.”

“Please,” she said. “How dumb do you think I am?”

Later, unable to sleep, Warren lay in bed counting his heartbeats. Camille was curled into a cannonball on the left side of the bed; she’d inched to the edge of the mattress, as though she’d rather imperil herself than accidentally touch him in the middle of the night. Listening to his wife’s breathing, as familiar to him as his own heart, Warren thought again of their wedding. He’d been so nervous getting ready that he’d forgotten to snip the price tag from his tie. Calmly, in front of everyone, Camille had reached down and bitten through the plastic fastener with her teeth. She hadn’t wanted to spit on the floor of the church and had kept the plastic twig in her mouth, tucked under her lip, for the duration of the ceremony. Afterward, glowing with triumph, she’d pulled it out of her mouth like a salmon bone.

At one point, this had been an anecdote they’d shared at parties, acting it out to make people laugh.

Warren went into the kitchen for a glass of water and flipped on the lights. Mr. Leonard was sitting on his doggy mat, still as a statue, staring at the wall ahead of him. He looked like he might jump out of his skin. Warren said the dog’s name, but his eyes didn’t blink. They began to frighten him. Could he be asleep? Treading softly, Warren walked over and put his hand on Mr. Leonard’s head, which barely filled his palm. The poor mutt was trembling. Warren knelt in Mr. Leonard’s bed and put his arms around him, trying to soothe the shaking from his bony ribs, holding him like a child.

“Don’t look at me,” Lyle said, pulling up her jeans. “I hate my ass.”

“I think it’s beautiful,” Hector said.

“It looks like a turnip.”

He shrugged. “Some vegetables are very attractive.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“I like the way you look.” He grew serious, the way she preferred him. “You’re like… I don’t know. An angel or something.”

They were in the guardhouse, listening to Hector’s dopey, doom-smitten music. Lyle watched him straighten the name pin on his uniform, which had tipped up-and-down so that the little horseshoe insignia was spilling its luck. They’d had sex against the wall again: less frantic this time, but still briskly navigational. There was the sense of wanting to get home after a long day of hiking. That was amazing, Hector had said afterward, though she’d barely moved a muscle. It seemed to her there were some pretty low standards at work. It was like the Presidential Fitness Test she’d had to take in fifth grade: she hadn’t done well, in fact had managed only a single pull-up, and they’d given her a certificate anyway. As for the craving itself, the one Hector’s poem had aroused so torturously, they might as well have been doing actual pull-ups.

What she’d come to look forward to was this: the time afterward, when they sat together in the warm guardhouse and listened to the slow whoosh of the wind and watched the trees shiver in the floodlight. Sometimes they gave each other back rubs; Lyle would rub the soreness from his skinny shoulders, feeling the Braille of pimples on his skin. The street was deserted at 3 a.m., and it seemed to her that they were the last ones on earth. The clock was still broken from before, stuck permanently at 3:37 a.m. She punched the stop button on the boom box.

“Hey,” he said. “That’s a good song.”

“I like it,” she lied. “I just have a headache. From last night, I guess.”

“You’re hungover?”

“Shannon Jarrell and I got drunk again. After work.”

He turned and looked at her. “Shannon? I thought you hated her.”

“She’s not so bad.”

“This is the one who almost got you fired? Who’s always staring at her legs?”

“We waited till closing this time. There wasn’t anyone there.” Lyle sat down on the floor, pulling her LIKE A STURGEON T-shirt over her knees. “She’s smarter than she seems. She’s got this list of words she keeps to improve her vocabulary. If you look like her, everyone just assumes you’re stupid.”

Hector smiled, his mouth pinned up at both corners. There was something about this smile that annoyed her. A smugness. No matter how hard you try, it seemed to say, you’ll always be rich. He sat down beside her, the dank, walnuty smell of sex rising from his uniform.

“How come you haven’t told your parents about us?” he asked casually.

“They’d shit a brick.”

“I’m only nineteen.”

“In California, that’s statutory rape.”

Hector frowned. “It’s just weird seeing your mom at the gate. Like she has no idea. Yesterday we were talking in Spanish, and she told me you were pregnant.”

“What?”

“ Embarazada. I think she meant embarrassed.” He looked at the silent street outside. “You’ve been to my place twice.”

It was the first time Lyle suspected there was some hidden motive there, that he hadn’t just invited her over for the hell of it. It was some kind of competition. She wondered if it was partly this that attracted her.

“Anyway,” he said, “I thought you didn’t care what your parents thought.”

“I don’t.”

“So what’s the big deal?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“You could start by letting me see your house.” He laughed. “Or how about the garage? I hear it’s really nice.”

It was the first time she’d heard him be sarcastic. “All right,” she said quietly. “Let me tell them first.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Soon.”

She expected— wanted —him to pin her down further. Instead he seemed to trust her, which made her feel worse.

“Some clown was shot on our corner yesterday,” he said.

“Really?”

“A drive-by.”

“Jesus.” She put her arm around him, scooting closer. “Why do you say he’s a clown?”

“That’s what he was. An actual clown. Makeup and everything. He was on his way to a birthday party — this little girl that lives down the block.”

“Jesus. Who would shoot a clown?”

“Lots of people, I guess.” He shrugged. “The weird thing is, they still had the party. One of those big inflatable moonwalk things? You could see all the kids bouncing inside of it, screeching like crazy. It was shaped like a castle.”

He was a lousy poet, but there was something sad and perplexing about him that reminded Lyle of a poem written maybe by someone else. She looked at Hector’s truck in the floodlight, the word KAMELION spelled out on the back. Suddenly, it seemed impossibly touching.

“My mom’s freaking out,” he went on. “She wants to sell the house and move to the country.”

“Why doesn’t she?”

“She’s been talking about it, like, for years. El campo, el campo. She’s convinced she can’t afford it.”

“She can?” Lyle said.

“There’s money in the bank. She’s been saving up for it. It’s why she won’t put my grandmother in a nursing home. She wants to make sure there’s enough for a house, too. Meanwhile, Abuelita keeps sneaking out and getting glass in her feet.” He flexed one arm like a bodybuilder, tapping his elbow with the palm of his hand. “Mexican for ‘cheap.’ It’s what my dad used to do, whenever Mom bitched about money.”