Blind hearts-ManxMan-boyxboy

friends forever

Alex, over the next couple of days, was spared the agony of a 102-degree fever, but not the 9.0 magnitude coughs that interrupted every tenth minute of lectures. Another ten-minute seizure of coughing dove him out of the class to the back of the Bren Hall.  And under the more exclusive shade of a California Maple, he gave the coughs his all: tears trickled, his sides protested muscular strain, his vision blurred over the high wall of windows shielding fellows sniggering at his geriatric performance.

There were the workers, heavy paunch, pug-faced, too parched for college-aged fribbery, confident with a lackadaisical can’t-do attitude. They gangled along in their work utility vehicles without so much as a soft glance of mindful engagement. The 4 pm mood of the day felt just as uncaring, quiet, cool, much too aloof to give a f*** about him or that bastard itch at the back of his throat. If only he could plunge his whole hand down there and rip the throat out. 

He spat to the side. With all his quaking and convulsing, his lungs only delivered a pathetic-sized droplet of greenish-grey gunk.

F*** this. His mother had nagged at him to stay in bed, and well he should have been a good little boy and done just as Mom said. Alex sighed. His phone rang. It was his father, David.

 “Sorry, I didn’t call back sooner,” David said.

Apologies were also refreshing when they were least expected.

“So you’re sticking around SoCal then,” his dad added with shy envy.

“Yeah, Mom’s not feeling too well.”

“She can take care of herself, you know.”

Did that make him feel better for leaving a bride for twenty years for someone twenty years ago, Alex wondered in a bitter spurt of recollection.

“We’ll see,” Alex said cautiously.

“Any way it goes, we’re proud of you.”

The ‘we’ dampened him just as the spare silence precipitated an annoying niggle of cough. He clenched his teeth through the hedge words to express both goodly concern and judicious disapproval of the girlfriend.

“I’ll see you both for lunch this Sunday, then?” Alex was ebullient.

“Yes, we’ll talk more then.”

There was a mutiny of noise, a surrendering release of energy into the air, as the class period had ended. Bicycles whizzed by, youngsters bent over their backpacks at awkward angles, and cars were kick started with sluggish neighs. Deciding to call it a day, Alex heaved his backpack and shambled down the street, into the restless sea of students phoning in the trivialities cogitated and ruminated through the lecture. He crossed the street and glanced over the schizophrenic row of tall, broad pines and box squat hedges, blue irises and purple fountainheads, curving away and downward into a dense parking lot. Impatience was the name of the day, and a prickly irritation. The possibility of Susan, languid and listless, in a sunlight-throttled bedroom prompted an irregular rhythm to his gait. 

She can take care of herself. He bet she could as he came to a full halt at a four-way stop. She was her own responsibility, just like all the other guys had a responsibility to take of themselves—those whom he had cuddled and f***ed and left without so much as a thought to their beating, quivering hearts, Tony, Jacob, Dimov, Frank ….

He paused and shivered a glance up and over the daggered crowns of twin pines, dark-hued and defeated under the sun’s citrine glare. He should wait a bit, he thought. Get a coffee, call Tony and renegotiate a f*** without dinner, make a head start on the cultural studies term paper that was due in three days. No, he would not call his mom for ideas on dinner, or call ahead about his evening plans.  She could take every bit of care for herself.