Drew Smith - Arcade

I imagined the boy and the man at the start of a long relationship, a combination of paternal mentorship, lustful sex, and a sincere emotional bond. I envisioned the fun they were having and the memory each of them would carry of that day in the parking lot, how ballsy and insane, both of them saying to the other, “I have never done anything like that in my life,” and meaning it.

I drove home from the arcade horny and unsatisfied, thinking about these things, projecting the relationship between the older man and the younger man many years into the future. I wondered why the man had picked the other kid over me. He had seen me, after all. I didn’t like thinking about it, but I felt I had to. I thought about it for a long time.

THERE HAD TO BE A WAY TO TAKE OVER THE KID’S POSITIONin the cop’s life. I pictured myself as an ant crawling on the surface of a sphere suspended in space, searching for a way in. My little ant brain knew there must be a way, that there was some passage that others before me had taken. I covered the same ground over and over in my mind, examining the problem from every possible angle, hopeful that my dedication would eventually yield an answer. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering what they were doing, checking the cop’s email, congratulating myself on my rigor.

Over lunch, I showed Joan a picture of the kid on my phone where I had saved it. She looked closely at the photograph, zooming in and out and squinting at the image. Then she turned and looked at me with the same scrutiny.

“Your skin is better than the kid’s,” she said at last, “but it could still be better. It could be really smooth and have a great glow.”

“My skin?”

“You have some blackheads, you know. And some oil issues in your t-zone. Which is totally normal, but maybe you should go see the girl who does my facials. It makes such a difference. And it makes you feel good too. It really does. You leave feeling like you’ve had a massage.”

Grateful for a piece of advice I hadn’t heard, I made an appointment and went to the aesthetician Joan recommended, a pretty girl with long hair, the hippie-born-too-late type, with a linen tunic and a pleasing, earthy aroma. She put me on an electric gurney and covered me with a blanket almost as heavy as the lead shield dental assistants use during x-rays.

As she methodically inspected my face and directed a steam machine at it, she asked why I had come to see her. I told her about Joan’s referral. Then I told her about the kid’s skin. Then I had to tell her about the cop. I wept through extractions of age-old blackheads.

“Keep talking,” the girl said. “All these feelings are held in your skin as toxins we have to get rid of.”

Later she said it had been a lucky thing she had seen me crying because had it revealed to her that what my skin needed most was a Paprika Lifting Mask.

“This will feel intense,” she said, slathering goop onto my face, “but it will solve some of your problems.”

“I would never normally say this,” she said, “but try not to cry for the next fifteen minutes. The mask has to harden.”

At the end of the session, the aesthetician booked me another appointment for six weeks later and told me to wait while she dug around in her purse for a business card. She handed it to me at last and said, “I really think you should go see this man.”

The card listed a name, beneath which were the words “Palmist, Psychic, and Consultant.”

I went, of course, putting the one-hundred-fifty-dollar, forty-five minute session on a credit card, along with everything else I bought during my reckless period of recovery.

The psychic was an unexpected figure in a three-piece suit, but his office was filled with all the cliché trappings of the trade, including what looked to be a genuine crystal ball. He read my palm, my face, and a tarot deck, which I shuffled, cut, and dealt according to his instructions.

I told him I was really only interested in what would happen to the cop and me.

He closed his eyes and drew a slow breath. “I see you as friends,” he said at last. “That’s it.”

“You don’t see us involved in a romance again?” I asked.

He squinted, peering thorough the psychic fog. “I’m sorry, but I’m getting that he’s occupied with someone else.”

“Yes, I know that. But when will that end?”

“I don’t think you will be together with this man in the future. I think you should focus on using this time to improve yourself. You can still change your relationship with him into a friendship.”

“But what can I do to move our relationship in the direction of a romance?”

Growing frustrated, he said, “I don’t think you can do that, I’m sorry to say. I think this is just where things are from now on.”

“But there’s a twenty-four year age difference between them.”

“I hope I’m wrong,” he said, “but I don’t think I am. Would you like to talk about other things, like your career path? There might be some interesting developments there.”

“No, I’d just like to talk about this, please.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have anything else to say on this subject. I’m very sorry. I do think things are going to get better for you, though. I hope that helps.”

“I guess it does,” I said. “Can you tell me something about their lives that I don’t already know?”

“I have a feeling you already know more than you should,” he said, “but I can tell you this: The three of you have been linked in past lives many times. And you will all meet again in future incarnations.”

When I left, the psychic gave me a CD recording he had made of our conversation. I took it home and smashed it underfoot against the tile floor in my kitchen. If for no other reason, I regretted our meeting because from then on I had to wonder about the absurd notion that the three of us had been linked in our past lives. Had we been husband, wife, and son? Siblings? The Three fucking Stooges?

I planned to see another psychic in town for a second opinion, but my credit card company called to ask if it had been stolen. There had been some very strange charges in the past few weeks, they said, and the card was over its limit.

THERE WAS A MAN I SAW AT THE ARCADE A FEW TIMES, a tough-looking white thirtysomething, whom I had pegged as military. I entered a booth to find him with three other men. The military guy was naked, but the other three men were half dressed, their pants around their ankles and their shirts lifted from their stomachs and pinched beneath their chins. When I walked in, he was going down on them in turn. I watched him do that for a while. Then he stood and turned away from the men so that their wet dicks were now at the same level as his ass.

He leaned close to me and whispered, “Can I?”

Then he raised his arms like he was going to hug me.

I understood that what he wanted was to lean on me. So I let him. He put his arms around my neck and hung his head so that the top of his skull was against my cheek. The three guys were behind him, grabbing his dick and theirs.

“Are you gonna let me?” one of the guys kept saying. “You gonna let me?”

The military guy appeared drugged or as if he was having a religious experience. His face was three inches from mine. “Should I let him?” he whispered.

“Do you want him to?” I whispered back.

“Don’t ask me. It’s up to you.”

“Yes, you should let him.”

He nodded, as if a grave finality had been reached. “Okay,” he said over his shoulder.

I can’t remember whether or not the guy put on a condom. I couldn’t see what was being done to the military man. He was leaning on me with most of his weight. I could tell when the man was inside of him. That guy finished quickly, then another of the men did it, and he got off fast too.