Дэвид Левитан: Boy Meets Boy

"It appears that Joni has started something with—" "Stop!" Infinite Darlene interrupts, stepping back and holding up her hand. "I can't take any more. Why, Paul? Why?"

"I don't know."

I am not about to argue with a football captain who has long fingernails.

"Haven't I taught her anything?"Infinite Darlene is clearly exasperated. "I mean, I know she has bad taste. But this is like licking the bottom of your stiletto."

Clearly, Infinite Darlene still feels some hostility toward Chuck.

"I have to find that girl and talk some sense into her," she concludes. I put up a show of trying to dissuade her, but we both know there's no way I'm going to stop her. She leaves in a huff.

"Friend of yours?" Noah asks, eyebrow raised.

I nod.

"I'll bet she's always like that."

I nod again.

"I feel very calm in comparison."

"We all do," I assure him. "This is the kind of stuff I was dealing with yesterday when I should've been here."

"Does this happen often?"

"Not this specific thing, but there's usually something like it."

"Do you think you could escape the crisis for a few hours this afternoon?"

Since Infinite Darlene blew my cover so thoroughly, I decide to take a risk.

"You're not asking me just because I like you?"

He smiles. "The thought never crossed my mind."

We don't say any more than that. I mean, we say things—we make plans and all. But the subject of us is dropped back into signals and longing.

We make plans for after school.

I'm going to help him paint some music.

Painting Music

Noah's house is in a different part of town than mine, but the neighborhood looks just the same. Each house has a huge welcome mat of lawn sitting in front of it, bordered by a driveway on one side and a hedge on the other. It should be boringly predictable, but it's not really. The houses are personalized— a blush of geraniums around the front stoop, a pair of shutters painted to echo the blue sky. In Noah's yard, the hedges have been made into the shape of lightbulbs—the legacy of the former owner, Noah tells me.

He lives close to the high school, so we walk the bendily cross-hatched roads together. He asks me how long I've lived in town, and I tell him I've lived here my whole life.

"What's that like?" he asks.

"I don't really have anything to compare it to," I say after a moment's thought. "This is all I know."

Noah explains that his family has moved four times in the last ten years. This is meant to be the final stop—now his parents travel everywhere for business instead of making the family move to the nearest headquarter city.

"I'm so dislocated," Noah confesses.

"You're here now," I tell him.

If my family were to move (honestly, I can't imagine it, but I'm stating it here for the sake of argument), I think it would take us about three years to unpack all of our boxes. Noah's family, however, has put everything in its place. We walk through the front door and I'm amazed at how immaculate everything is. The furniture has settled into its new home; the only thing the house lacks is clutter. We walk into the living room—and it's one of those living rooms that look like nobody ever lives in them.

We head to the kitchen for a snack. Noah's sister is sitting alert at the corner table, like a parent waiting up late at night for a kid to come home.

"You're late," she says. "You missed Mom's call."

She must be in eighth grade — maybe seventh. She's old enough to wear make-up, but she hasn't figured out yet how to wear it well.

"Is she going to call back?" Noah asks.

"Maybe." End of conversation.

Noah reaches out for the mail on the table, sifting through the catalogs and bulk mail for something worthwhile.

"Paul, this is my sister, Claudia," he says as he separates the recyclable from the nonrecyclable. "Claudia, this is Paul."

"Nice to meet you," I say.

"Nice to meet you, too. Don't hurt him like Pitt did, okay?"

Noah's annoyed now. "Claudia, go to your room," he says, giving up on the mail.

"You're not the boss of me."

"I can't believe you just said that. What are you, six years old?"

"Excuse me, but aren't you the one who just said 'Go to your room'? And by the way, Pitt wrecked you. Or have you forgotten?"

It's clear Noah hasn't forgotten. And neither, to her credit, has Claudia.

Satisfied by this turn of conversation, Claudia drops the subject.

"I just made a smoothie pitcher," she tells us as she gets up from the table. "You can have some, but leave at least half."

Once she's out of the room, Noah asks me if I have a little sister. I tell him I have an older brother, which isn't really the same thing.

"Different methods of beating you up," Noah says.

I nod.

After drinking some of Claudia's mango-cherry-vanilla concoction, Noah leads me up the back stairs to his room.

Before we reach his door, he says, "I hope you don't mind whimsy."

In truth, I'd never given whimsy much thought before.

Then I see his room and I know exactly what he means.

I don't know where to begin, both in looking at it and describing it. The ceiling is a swirl of just about any color you'd care to imagine. But it doesn't seem like it was painted with different colors — it looks like it appeared at once, as a whole. One wall is covered with Matchbox cars glued in different directions, with a town and roads drawn in the background.

His music collection hangs on a swing from the ceiling; his stereo is elevated on a pedestal of postcards from absurd places — Botswana, the Kansas City International Airport, an Elvis convention. His books are kept on freestanding shelves hung at different angles on a sea-

green wall. They defy gravity, as good books should. His bed is in the middle of the room, but can be rolled effortlessly into any corner. His windowshades are made from old bubblegum wrappers, arranged into a design.

"You did all this in two months?" I ask. It has taken me fifteen years to decorate my room, and it isn't nearly as intricate or . . . whimsical. I'd like it to be.

Noah nods. "Since I don't know many people here, I guess I had time."

He goes to the stereo and hits a few buttons. He smiles a little nervously.

"This is very cool," I assure him. "It's a very cool room. Mine isn't nearly as cool."

"I doubt that," he says.

It's not that the weirdness of the moment doesn't strike me. I realize that the two of us don't really know each other. And at the same time, there's that comforting, unattributable vibe we're both feeling, which intuitively tells us that we should get to know each other. By showing me his room, he's giving me a glimpse of his soul. I am nervous about giving in return.

In the middle of the book-angled wall is a very narrow door— it can't be more than two feet wide. "This way," Noah says, guiding me toward it. He opens it up, revealing a guard of shirts. Then he disappears inside.

I follow. The door closes behind me. There is no light.

We push through the closet, which is unusually deep. Because it's so narrow, Noah's clothes are hung in layers. I push through the hangered row of his shirts and find myself folded between two dangling sweaters.

"Are we going to Narnia?" I ask.

I squeeze to a crawl to follow him through a vent-like passage. Then his legs stretch up—he's standing in a new passage, pulling himself up a rope ladder, up toward a trap door. By my reckoning, we're headed into a corner of the attic. But I can't be sure.

As the trap door is raised, light streams down on us. I am surrounded by brick. I am in the middle of an old chimney.

At the top of the rope ladder is a white room. There is one window, one cabinet, and two speakers. An easel stands in the middle of the room, with a blank square of waiting paper.