Blind hearts-ManxMan-boyxboy

fortress of pain

Tony’s fridge turned out a wasteland—milk, bread, and nothing more. And Alex forced the honors of driving to the grocery story onto Tony, who looked bleary, perhaps with pleasure’s afterglow or nausea about the downgraded dinner plans for mac and cheese. On the car ride, Tony kept trying to image something on the side view mirror. Alex, himself was trying to ignore Tony’s uneven driving and hold on to the dying glow in his groin, and all while calculating the least expensive way to evade an entire night in the jail of Tony’s bed.

 “New York huh?” Tony said for the third time. “I’m actually going to miss your selfish prick.”

The sentiment was touching, damning. Alex was a little wasted, a bit disoriented with the disarming effect of it, and he chuckled.

“Probably New York, I dunno yet. But this selfish prick will be here all night long, most of the summer actually.”

“Yeah …” Tony pulled the parking brake.

There was something protective about the night, draping over the boxlike roof, cradling the egg of light emanating from the grocery’s façade. Alex could see through the automatic doors, pink balloons rising about the blur of shelves into the florescent white ceiling—an smashing party with the late-working cashiers maybe? Or a carnival of fighting tumescent cocks? Oh dear he wished.  Well, at least he could get Mom’s tea in there.

Tony wanted to get the boxed mac and cheese, whose ingredients, Alex was sure, were chemically isomorphic to rat poison. It was like a revelation to Diehard script-churner—Real cheddar cheese that came in block wedges, vegetable rows of the red and green and yellow, fresh pasta that came in the fridge aisle. Soon enough he was bouncing off to check out stands to proclaim the miracle of guavas in sunny California.

He wandered off while Alex perused a wall of teas. Nowhere among the mosaic of logos and colors was Susan’s preferred brand of tea, so he turned on his phone to call her. And waiting for him was a tower of digital blue bounding boxes; all messages from Frank, and Dimov had still not replied. He deleted the messages furiously through tumbling feelings of disappointment. Suddenly it seemed the perfect idea to turn down the two California jobs and take the New York job without informing Frank until another one or two years perhaps. 

He was feeling lighter when his mother picked up the phone, and even more buoyant when she announced she was making Eggs Benedict for dinner.

 “Sounds like a feast,” he said. 

“It was the best I could do after you letting me down on dinner. Anyway I can’t find the chamomile tea you bought.”

Her displeasured died on Alex eying over the candy stands the tall blue profile of Tony, who was feeling in his fingers the dreads of the lone boy cashier. An odd feeling colored him.

He asked her if she would make do with another brand and added, “If you’re ok with that, I’ll bring it in the morning.”

“You’re coming back in the morning?”

Alex took a moment to ignore the poison in her question. “The date fell in love with my red hair at first sight. Hate it when that happens.” Meanwhile Tony was inviting the cashier boy to read his screenplays now. Alex continued blandly, “Kind of magical when love fucking happens just like that.”

“Did you just swear at me?”

Alex took a deep breath. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“You haven’t been doing much of that lately.”

She was precisely right because behind a row of yellow-branded boxes, the green silver of her special brand glimmered there, but her relief was difficult to detect at the news.