“Laters,” he said as he lingered at the window.
Her eyes looked moist, but he knew it was only the reflection from the TV, which was playing a VHS copy of “Faces of Death,” she had rented for him. It was hard to believe that only an hour ago he had been trying to pull his own face off in the mirror and now he was exiting with grace, yet not under the most graceful circumstances, out of the second story window. As anyone would guess, he exited this way as to not be seen. He wasn’t embarrassed of her and she wasn’t embarrassed of him, but she would get in trouble if he was found there. She would be in figurative “deep shit” if he were seen doing anything in her room at this hour, let alone doing whatever else it was they did on those nights in the darkness.
First, he blindly hung his foot out of the window and onto the perfectly placed vertical wooden beam belonging to the unfinished patio roof. Then he lowered himself with the strength of the youth in his chest and shoulders quietly down onto the soft grass and dirt. He could have done this with his eyes closed and still been as quiet. He was much more quiet than the sound of her window closing and he was even more silent than the buzz of his pager as it read “6000*171647.” At the time, she didn’t have a pager, so he whispered “Good Night” into the air as he mounted his bicycle, which had been hidden in the woods, and rode off.
He felt no fear as he rode past the sleeping trailer park. With a fleeting thought, he recalled the petty drug dealer he had troubles with in the past, who lived close by. This “baller” of a child drove an Acura, which would have been something to be proud of in those days, but this car was old, beat up, slightly rusted and of a drab hue of silver. He still drove it like a medal of royal honour through the streets even though it was, to be frank, “a piece of shit.” He felt alone despite the cars passing him on the long road home; the final road in the dark to where he slept.
He loved these nights. The cold Fall air on his face would make him sniffle just a little. It was just enough impending sickness to remind him he was human. It reminded him he was capable of physical incapacitation, capable of outward pain, capable of dying, despite his thoughts of invincibility. On those nights, coming home all alone with the pistol tucked into his pants, the metal poking into him as his legs moved upwards and downwards with the piston-like movement of the pedals, he sometimes wondered why he liked her. He enjoyed the traveling alone and the feeling of getting to a destination. The woods behind her home smelled sweet to him. Sometimes it was as if he lived for the feeling of not being about to see through the brush and how the moist leaves felt under his sneakers. He liked many of the occurrences that went along with their surreptitious late-night rendezvouses, but did he really like her? Was it merely out of convenience? She had approached him, told him he was beautiful, told him she liked him, she pursued him. She wasn’t the first girl to do this, but at that moment he just went with it. Plus he liked the attention.
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