Narragansett Avenue

Nothing was out of the suitcase. The apartment he found online had come furnished and so far he was still wearing the same sweatpants and t-shirt he’d stepped off the plane in. That had been two days ago. He’d only nearly be able to afford it in the off-season, and once summer arrived, he’d have to find a new place to live. In the meantime, he could enjoy the circular layout, the spacious kitchen, the hardwood floors, the view of the shared backyard from his third floor window, and the little desk where he could study Psalms and write intentions. During one of their daily phone calls, his sister teased him for moving into a nice place first knowing he’d have to live somewhere dingy and ramshackle in the summer.

“It’s going to seem even worse after you’ve had all that paradise,” she said, and he knew she wasn’t wrong, but he thought a nice apartment would ease the homesickness for Fort Worth. He’d be here until the week before Thanksgiving, and it was his first time on the East Coast. The company he’d be working for in a week’s time offered tech troubleshooting and cyber security for hospitals. Most of his job would be done from wherever he was living. A day or two a week, he’d go into the hospital a few miles from here and walk around with a clipboard looking officious. If anybody looked at what he was writing, it would probably be a drawing of a man with a birthmark on the left side of his neck.

Sy hated the birthmark, but he would kiss it anyway whenever they were laying on the couch in his studio after going to the farmer’s market. They’d wrestle, because Sy was ticklish, and then Sy would give him three words and he’d have to draw something in the sketchbook he carried with him everywhere. He’d give Sy three words and Sy would have to tell a story. Around the studio, there were half-finished paintings, but he loved how unfinished they look. Sy’s waning interest in any given project only seemed to make his enduring interest in the man he was dating even more special. He felt valued by Sy. They would go out, and people would stare at Sy’s biceps displayed by his sleeveless shirts and the way his black hair went down over his ears, and he’d hold his hand even harder. He’d claim him and show no hesitation in doing so. He’d take any set of words and draw Sy and his birthmark and Sy would accuse him of cheating, but he’d laugh at his own lecture, and tell him to take off his sweatpants. They had two fans that did nothing to affect the Texas heat.

When Sy got into a program in Seattle, he was excited for him. They went out for braised lamb and brown rice and raspberry cheesecake and nobody brought up saving money or how long distance relationships don’t work. Back at the studio, he kissed Sy’s birthmark and his chin and sucked on the back of his knees, because it made Sy’s legs shake. At half past one, they passed a vape back and forth to each other and talked about long weekends where he could fly out to Seattle and Christmas where Sy would come home, or they’d go somewhere together. To a cabin. To a cabin in the middle of a forest with snow and deer and a frozen lake.

Sy left on a Tuesday in the early afternoon. He helped him pack his suitcase. They kissed and Sy bit his lower lip before telling him he loved him and that he’d call when his plane landed in Seattle.

The calls were always meant to be daily. The first time they missed one, he felt a seed plant itself in his stomach, because he refused to water it. It grew in spite of his attention. They kept missing calls. Sy would apologize. Things were good, but intense. He assigned descriptions to things that didn’t seem to fit. Classes were provocative. Professors were non-linear. Sy seemed to be losing sense of reality, and while he’d never had a drug problem, higher education seemed to present itself as addiction to him and he had fallen into its rising price. When the chance for his own change of scenery came along, he’d called Sy to ask him what he thought, and had gotten that abrupt ringtone cutoff that let him know he’d been sent to voicemail. Not slid down into a voicemail, but violently put there. He accepted the offer, and they only had two more phone calls. One where both of them screamed, and another where they wept. He left on a Friday morning for New England.

At the bottom of his suitcase was his sketchbook. A travelogue of a relationship with a man covered in grease. Try and love him, and he’ll let you. Try to ink him into your skin, and you’ll find that he discolors. Like Sy’s teachers, he found that his life immediately began to slip around a clock’s assertion. Here he was three and four days later still in the same clothes with an unpacked suitcase. A moment later, he was on the beach in July and he had begun seeing a valet in town who played bass in a cover band on Friday nights at the True Cafe. The valet had soft lines that weren’t fun to draw, but he’d try anyway, and one of the drawings made its way onto the valet’s refrigerator. It felt childish, but he didn’t say that. He didn’t say much at all.

One morning, it was November and his living room was covered in open suitcases. Each one had clothes and a toothbrush and colored pencil and sketchbooks full of unfinished drawings. He was living with the valet, because the apartment he found near the city center had black mold. The valet had left him a note saying he’d miss him, and he walked around trying to determine how he’d wound up with so much and so many containers for it.

Where do you put all this stuff, he thought.

Where could any of it go?