It’s almost like I can see the joy droop off him as we approach the gate to the Regal-Hi. The curves in his face dissipate into an angular pout and the only sign that his body was leaping through the air less than ten minutes ago is the sweat still trickling down his cheeks. I squeeze his shoulder as I unlatch the gate and Trevor still doesn’t snap out of it, even when we’re standing by the shit pool and the rest of High Street only exists in sound. I lean down so I’m looking him straight in the eyes. He tilts his head away from my gaze, so I cup the back of his head, which somehow is even more drenched in sweat, and hold it so that he has no choice but to look at me.
“What’s wrong witchu?” I don’t mean for it to come out harsh, but his eyes tell me it did. “You okay? You hurt?”
“No, I ain’t hurt,” he whispers, his voice still squeaky.
“Then what’s up with you?”
I can see it happen. The ballooning inside him. I can see it pushing at all sides of his body, stretching him from the inside out like bubbles on the surface of Lake Merritt, sitting there, pushing against each other until one bursts, sprays, and returns the surface to the shiny it was before. Trevor is on his way to bursting, his skin betraying him, sending waves of that heavy kind of lonely through the air.
“I just don’t wanna leave.” And it’s like his own words rupture his seams, tears flooding into his sweat.
I take him into me, hold him to my chest. The basketball falls out of his hand and bounces across the pavement. “What you mean, boy?” I whisper into his ear.
His response is half sobs and half words. “Mama ain’t been home and Mr. Vern keeps knocking on our door saying we gotta pay or leave and I been hiding so he don’t see me.” Trevor says he’s been betting to make rent money, but he’s been spending it all on lunch at school, hiding half of his lunch to save for dinner. He trails into deep heaves, and I grip him tighter, so tight I wonder if he’s lost circulation when he stops shaking, his body heavy against mine. His face is sunk and he lets me lead him back up to his apartment, where I leave him on the mattress looking like he’s gonna either fall asleep or burst into tears again.
The flying moments solidify inside my rib cage like a photo album in the body. Trevor and I sweltering, jumping, always close to the sky. Alé and her weed, that smile quick, Sunday Shoes, funeral day. For these moments, I forget my body is a currency and none of the things I did last night make any sense at all. Trevor’s body, the way it fills up with air and releases, reminds me how sacred it is to be young. These moments when all I want is to have my mama hum me a lullaby I will only remember in dreamland.
Marcus has been working at the strip club for a week and he told me if I came by tonight, he’d get the cook to make me dinner. I step into the club and it looks different than it did the first time, more oily and less dark, like the lightbulbs finally started glowing right. Marcus sees me and comes out from behind the bar to hug me, holding my head to his chest like he used to when I was younger.
“Take a seat, Ki.” Marcus returns to his side of the bar and I sit in the same seat I did when I was here last, glancing around the room to make sure Polka Dot isn’t around. He isn’t, but the memory still lingers where he used to be and my stomach churns. The club is full of its after-work crowd, everyone seated and the music still low and funky.
It’s interesting to watch Marcus work, his black shirt clinging to his muscles, so much more passive than I’m used to seeing him. I didn’t know he had the capacity to speak so different, even making his walk rigid and intentional. Marcus tells me my fries are on the way and then he pours me a club soda and leaves to take a new customer’s order.
Lacy steps out from the back after about ten minutes, bringing with her my basket of fries.
“Heard these were for you,” she says, placing them in front of me.
“Thanks.” I smile. “Not just for the fries, but for helping us out.”
Lacy nods. “Don’t really matter how things ended with Marcus. You both family.”
She pulls out her notepad and moves down the bar to take a young woman’s order.
Marcus returns to behind the bar and steals a few of my fries.
“You look happy,” I say.
“Don’t mind it here.” Marcus shrugs. “Would rather be in the studio, but this ain’t so bad.”
Both Marcus and Lacy continue to make their rounds, cycling from the kitchen to the bar to each table, always masterfully balancing ten things in two hands. Marcus brings me some kind of jalape?o poppers and I’m so absorbed with the taste of the food, I almost don’t catch Marcus’s slight tremors as he stands at a table by the stage where two men in suits are staring up at him, trying to hand him back a basket of chicken wings. Marcus shakes his head and takes the food and when he walks back to the bar, where Lacy is pouring drinks for a couple, his walk is slick and dramatic.