I’m just waiting ’til the shine wears off.

“Do you want to watch a movie? We have one of those video screens back there.”
“No, I’m ok,” I say, tucking into the backseat of the car.
“You sure? We have Ice Age 2.”
“No, I’m good,” I say.
“It came with the car,” Russ says.
“Obviously.”

I am nervous about carsickness, so I try not to focus on the sun going down over the shooting landscape. Angry scratches of clouds mar the sky. I think it is no coincidence that the turning of the trees makes me ill. As they shed and die for the winter, I am reminded of often feeling the same.

I am amazed at how young I feel in this situation. John is twice my age; Russ is 76. They think of me as a teenager and I bow to this, curling up in scrunchy socks that are as thick as boots, ponytail bouncy and high.

“Eat this,” Russ says, handing me a granola bar. “Fiber.”

For old people, ‘fiber’ is a complete sentence. Like how some people use the word ‘breathe’ as an entire thought – it’s a compulsion, a demand, and a plea all in one word. There is an implication and an understanding that goes along with the word. Fiber.

We are on our way.

–

Their house in the Poconos is small and messy, and the most random mishmash of styles crams the living room. They are pieces from every home, every stage of their lives: the gilded opulence of Russ’s past, beachy florals from the Hamptons house that burned, odds and ends from designer and artist friends. A glass cabinet of porcelain clowns and dogs. Dusty cassette tapes litter the house; Barbara Streisand everywhere. Leopard print and seashell lamps exist side by side, opposed and unhappy.

Russ immediately turns on the television and finds an exercise infomercial, which stands in for gay porn in a pinch. He starts hooting and hollering about the exerciser’s pecs while John unloads the car. The whole weekend will be like this – Russ the star, John the stagehand.

Eventually, the TV gets stuck on Degrassi so that’s what we watch. Russ falls asleep under a fluorescent red afghan within minutes of the opening credits. When he wakes up, John has gone off to bed and I’ve been engrossed in the September Vogue (“Who is that fat bitch on the cover?” are the first words Russ says when he wakes up.) With excessive amounts of creaking and groaning, He pulls himself upright on the couch.

“I feel very strange lately” he says. “I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore, just you. I can’t talk to John, he doesn’t understand. Everyone I know has died of AIDS or emphysema. Only two remain and I don’t like them.”

–

I sleep like heaven. There is no noise, there is nothing. There is no reason to get up in the morning and there is certainly no purpose in getting dressed. We all appear in the kitchen around noon and John makes eggs benedict. After we eat, they go back to bed. It rains all day. The hours slip through my fingers. I don’t know how I pass the time, but I do.

We reappear in the kitchen for dinner, still in our pajamas. John goes back to bed and again, I find myself on the couch with Russ. The house is very still, save for a cuckoo clock that praises every passing hour. Russ sits in his massage chair and watches TV, nodding off every so often. When the chair clicks off, he wakes and makes me sit in it. The nubs move up and down my back, feeling mechanical and pitiless. I hate it.

“It will help you,” he promises. “Your soul needs it more than your back.”

–

Russ’s young lover, Jeffrey, calls. Jeffrey and John treat each other they way one treats an extra five pounds or the sight of a small cockroach scurrying under the baseboards – denial sets in. The fact that Russ has a young lover isn’t a surprise to me; I wouldn’t expect anything less.

Russ puts Jeffrey on speakerphone and introduces us. “She’s like a teenager,” Russ says of me. “She’s sitting here like in jodphurs and a sweater, looking like Kate Hepburn.”

(For the record, I have on black leggings and a long t-shirt.)

“She’s getting over her ex-boyfriend,” Russ says.
“Wait, is that the guy I met at lunch a few months ago,” Jeffrey asks.
“Oh, right. Yes, that’s him,” Russ replies.
There’s a long pause and then Jeffrey says to me, “Honey, you and I have never met, but I have to tell you something about your ex-boyfriend…there is something deeply upsetting about him. I was troubled for days after meeting him. He is nothing; there is nothing behind those eyes. That guy is a shell. He is an empty soul.”

–

Around one in the morning, Russ goes into one of his psychic trances. I swear in the moment that I will remember every word, but as is typical when he goes into a trance, so do I. His eyes become impassioned and his voice tumbles into a sweet growl.

“You need to stay away from him. Don’t ever go into a room alone with him.”
“Because it will be too painful?”
“No…not that…I see…he’ll rape you.”

Russ has yet to be wrong about his premonitions.

He snaps out of it and makes me sit in the massage chair again. We watch True Blood and I pretend he never said what he said. The thing is, Russ probably doesn’t even know that he said it. So it just hangs in the air — the sleeping, speculative rape.

–

The next day is warm and sunny. I go for a run on a seemingly endless straight road, so straight that it’s impossible to get lost and so endless it’s impossible to decide when I’ve had enough.
When I get back, I stretch by the koi pond. Russ joins me, sits on a bench and pulls the dog into his lap.

“Just forget him,” he says.
“I’m trying,” I joke. “It’s a little hard when you keep bringing him up.”
“I’m not bringing him up – he’s there. And you’re not trying. He’s here because he’s on your mind. I’m in there too. But it’s time to forget him.”
“I am…I will.”
“He is like these oak trees, the leaves falling all around and the acorns. Only for a
short time in the fall…beautiful. The rest of the year, it’s just mulch. I see it. I forget it. You do the same.”

–

At night, John sleeps and Russ sees things. He sees future bits and past bits. The past bits are all very real, and are all things I never mentioned. He describes to me a man I will marry. He is tall, blonde, and someone I already know. This could be one of two people, and I’m really ok with either. I must look sad because he says, “He was not the one for you,”
“I know that,” I say sleepily.
“Help me up, please?”

I stand and pull Russ to his feet, and all the moaning and groaning that goes along with it. He shuffles to the stairs in his tight sweatpants, slowly ascending the first few steps. He pauses and looks to the side, confused. It’s like he’s been struck in the head. He appears puzzled and calm all at once. He nods slowly and faces me. He looks through me. His eyebrows clench together behind smudged gold-rimmed eyeglasses. Russ’s lips part pensively and he says, “He can’t let go of you. He remembers that you made love. That will stay with him – not the memories you hold. Only that you made love and it was the first time he’d ever done that. He was thinking of it tonight, actually.”
Another pause. I’m waiting for another insight, practically frothing for it.
Russ thinks hard, knits his brow, and says, “My ass hurts.”

–

Now its just open road and open eyes
And right where the water meets the sky
Is where I’ll hold you my dear
No you’ll never be so near
As when my eyes
Are on
The horizon

And its true my hearts a mess
Oh but it was never really clean I guess
I have said all I will confess
To you

–

I wrote this piece three months ago. Reading it now, it doesn’t make sense anymore. I don’t even remember writing it. That is good.