Roses in the dreamhouse

Rocks thrown at the face leave scars, and the boy studies the long kiss of a scar above my left eye. The kitchen floor is littered with chicken bones, barbecue sauce containers from fast-food restaurants, Saran wrap, and a baby’s unassembled crib. “It’s because my brother can’t walk so she just throws shit on the floor,” the boy says. In his brother’s bedroom there’s a poster of the film “Bully” showing the famous scene where Brad Renfro holds a phone up to his ear.

The brother’s not in the room so the boy takes me back outside where the flowers strangle the house with their tentacles. He stoops down onto one knee and tells me they’re orchids. He digs into the soil with his fingers and shows me the roots. He tosses me a look of contempt because his fingers are covered in red scratches and welts, but mine are welt-free and spotless since hustling’s a different kind of work. A girl across the street curtsies in her pink and white dirndl, and her mother leads her away by the hand. The orchids are mostly a comely blue, but pincered by a rose army. The boy laughs and says that he likes to confuse passersby and neighbors by painting the rose petals different colors somedays, so people think it’s some kind of magic that the flowers have changed colors from one day to the next. But when the rain comes all the colored paint washes away.

The orchids never change their color. These orchids are effed-up flowers because you have to do all kinds of crazy shit to get them to reproduce. Pollination is done by specially-chosen insects and blah, blah, blah. He says it’s like breeding thoroughbreds, but I obviously don’t know anything about that. I don’t want to play this game. It’s a game where he pretends that he doesn’t know me or doesn’t understand why I’m here. He never asks me any personal questions about myself. It’s a kind of politeness.

He uses spiders to trap the insects that might harm the orchids. You see, not all the insects are good for the plants. He has a jar full of spiders that he’s messing with. These spiders tap the sides of the glass to the tune of “Go Tell It On The Mountain” blared by a church van across the street. The boy pauses at one point to look back at me, and he softly sings “Over the hills and everywhere,” but stops singing to himself because he’s polite. He asks me if I want water. We can go back inside to the kitchen where his brother has thrown junk all over the floor and drink glasses of filtered water. He has a Brita. I laugh, say no thanks, and look away, which is my own kind of politeness. Then the brother rolls onto the grass in his wheelchair.

They live two miles from the nearest bus stop. It’s the middle of nowhere. My previous client has an insane home life, and when her husband comes home with their son she starts going in on him. “Don’t touch him,” she says. “Get your fucking hands off of him!” Like she’s afraid her husband will do something to their son. She hinted as much when we were eating rice crispy treats after our paid-for time and before her husband showed up. I was there the whole time watching and listening to them yell at each other. And then I had to catch the bus all the way the fuck out here. All kinds of things can be seen from the bus window. I see shade trees, the memory of the trees on the faces of the people, the Church of St. Charles Borromeo, and the living dead going in and out of a steakhouse.

The wheelchair squeaks because one of the tire locks is broken. It’s more of a scratch than a squeak. We scratch all the way back to the boy in the wheelchair’s bedroom. He doesn’t say anything along the way. He wouldn’t shut up when his brother was around, but he’s quiet now it’s just the two of us. It’s not until we reach the tall mirror in his bedroom that he says, “Can you push me closer?” I push his wheelchair close to the mirror.

“I love my hair. I love my eyes. I love my lips. I don’t love this though.”

He means his wheelchair.

“It’s not true that I throw garbage on the floor,” he says. “I know he told you that because he tells everyone that. Kon throws shit on the floor, but he says it’s me.”

“Who’s Kon?”

“That’s my brother. It’s like being an asshole is a way of life for him. Why can’t people be nice?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never met any nice people.”

“One day I’ll move to a planet where everyone is nice.”

“Which planet is that?”

“I don’t know.”

In the mirror’s reflection the boy is doing backflips, dancing the minuet, pretending to put gel in his hair, pretending to comb his hair with an invisible comb. I ask him where he learned to dance the minuet, but he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t want to do any adult stuff even though he’s paying me. He asks me to read a book that sits atop his dresser. His finger holds the page, and he hands it to me. He doesn’t like the sound of his own voice.

“And the people were so excited to hear the church music and see the itinerant preacher kiss a snake. They heard ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain’ and ‘Must Jesus Bear His Cross Alone’ and sang along without need of their hymnals.”

My phone rings. It’s Ford. He wants to know when I’m coming home, but it’s not really home. Boys that get rocks thrown at them don’t have permanent addresses, which can cause problems when it comes to filing your taxes. I don’t know when I’m coming back. Adam is still missing and God only knows where he is. I hang up and the boy in the wheelchair wants to know if I have to go because I have another client.

“He’s not a client,” I say. “It’s just Ford.”

“It’s okay if you have another client.”

“No, you’re paying me to read this stuff so here I am.”

I start reading again, but after a minute or two he stops me to ask me how I can support myself in this economy with hustling. He doesn’t say it in a mean way. I don’t just do that for a living though. I dance semi-professionally. I do phone sex. People don’t do phone sex anymore. That’s what he thinks. No one rides horses anymore. No one goes to drive-ins. No one kisses snakes on the mouth.

“No one knows what it’s like to not be able to do things,” he says. “I mean, the things you feel like you have to do.”

“Humans are not sympathetic by nature,” I say.

“I know.”

“At least you’re not a drug mule.”

“Yeah, at least I’m not a drug mule. It’d be hard to be a drug mule in this fucking thing.”

There’s a baggie of weed atop his dresser, but I find it hard to believe he smokes.

“I hate him, my brother Kon,” he says. “But it’s like we’re stuck here together.”

Then Kon shows up. He’s standing at the bedroom door watching us, but I don’t notice him at first because I'm reading about church meetings again. When the young man in the wheelchair sees Kon, he grabs tightly onto the armrests of his chair. “Get the fuck out,” he says. He’s so angry that he’s rattling his whole chair. It’s a fed-up, crashing clack like shaking a barrel full of auto parts. His eyes are dry, but one day he’ll weep rivers that’ll flood the repair shop and the parking lot where the living dead park their Hondas. Après moi, le déluge.

And then there’s sandwich boy. He’s putting too much salami on the brioche bread at the conference center food court. It’s Kon’s sandwich because Kon asked me to go to the flower show with him, but the flower show hasn’t started yet so we’re getting food. Sandwich boy doesn’t realize he’s messing up the salami because he’s making eyes at She-Ra who’s also waiting in line for a sandwich. I’ve never been to a flower show before. We attend a lecture about pollination of rare tropical plants in temperate climates. Then this guy talks about how he got kidnapped trying to smuggle orchids out of some effed-up country. It’s a miracle he made it out alive.

“There’s all kinds of things you can do,” Kon whispers to me. “No, I’m not talking about not getting shot while smuggling orchids. To pollinate, I mean. I’m talking about pollination.” His black, stringy hair is bandaged to the sides of his face.

The leaves bandage themselves to the window sides in preparation for the storm. I’m at the house of the two brothers, and it’s crazy how much traffic Kon had to drive through to get there. A lot of things can be seen from a car window before a storm. I see the leaves turn their bellies upwards to swallow the rain. I see the casino that the local Indians opened, the Church of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, and the tsk-tsks of the school crossing guard.

Kon has his shirt off and he’s cooking pancakes and bacon for his brother and himself even though it’s 11:34PM. Kon’s dancing, gyrating, and laughing to himself as he cooks. I wonder how he doesn’t burn himself with the bacon grease. Kon sets a place for his brother at the table even though the brother and his wheelchair are nowhere to be found. No scratches from the wheelchair’s broken brake. We don’t wait for him. We sit at the table and eat.

But I find the brother back in his bedroom. His brown clothes blend in with the well-cared-for panels of the wainscoting. The whole bedroom is wainscoted. It’s funny to me that he never told me his name.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Kon,” he says.

He despises his brother, but he despises himself more. That’s why he chooses his brother's name instead of his own. “Push me closer to the mirror,” he says. The storm has come, and the gusts are like heathen children praying to foreign gods. In the mirror’s reflection I see myself, the wheelchair, and the boy. But it’s like the people in the mirror are entirely different to us. The boy in the mirror stands up from his chair and walks closer to the mirror’s surface. He still has that you-touch-me-and-you'll-lose-that-fucking-arm face that the other boy has. “I hate it here,” the boy in the mirror says. “They throw rocks at hustlers and people in wheelchairs. Anger blooms in the spring like fucking roses. I’m leaving this evil planet. Let’s go.” And he reaches his arms out of the mirror and pulls me into it.