Homecoming Three

Adam took me home on our anniversary, and in the new tradition, we tore down old walls and planted new seeds.

Over the next two days, the wood swelled damp and grew moss.  The small fingerling sprouts which stretched out their hands to the ceiling fattened and thickened into the trunks of trees.  Roots creaked angry over the floorboards, splitting planks at whitewashed knotholes, and the ivy slithered quiet around Grady's ankles while he painted, and Drama while he wired, and split, and wired, and mounted.

The transformation of Adam from a dry thing into a wet thing is done by infection.  Hard lichen skeletons travel in his blood until toxic pathogens awaken them to an algae, and that algae warms, and blooms.  The ghostly diatoms swimming in the vitriol of him come to life, move quickly, and pitch him forward, hand over his heart, to gasp inward sharp and say, "My God."

So the house changes, and Adam changes, and I meet him on the road coming from camp, after dark has fallen.

"Evelyn," he says, surprise in his voice.  "I was on my way back.  Just taking one last look around."

As I walk toward him, where he is outlined in darkness, his jacket flaps open in the wet wind, and he turns the collar up.

The gesture is small, and automatic.  Adam, outlined in darkness, leans into the wind and rain and turns the collar of his jacket up.  His hair slumps damp curls onto the plane of his forehead.  His shoulders gather together to perform a freezing shrug.  His frame is thin, tall, his dark slacks flapping slightly at the edges as he takes two bending steps.  He lowers his hands back into the pockets of his jacket, and his eyes raise again to meet mine, as brown as mine were ever blue.

As I walk toward him, I become someone that wouldn't die for him, but is already dead.  A part of me that understands his name to be synonymous with justice, and sabotage, and existence, and bearing.  My feet get light on the ground, to leave all pebbles unturned.  My hair blows cotton in the dark breeze.  I dismantle, and reassemble into a smaller, denser object with less space between cells - a crystallization that turns me into a poisonous concentrate.

When we meet by the small bridge that spans the little creek by the entrance sign, I burrow into the spaces of his jacket warmed by his body heat and touch his ribs with cold hands.  I kiss him hard enough he stumbles over the frozen mud, and presses us further together.

I know he's waiting for the spring to come, and it will come at the arrival of some barely-measurable change in the air at the bayou.  The dampness of the air will turn from exhausted to determined in his lungs, and he'll soften inside and fur with green moss.  Until then, his fingers stay hard on my shoulders, and cool like the branches of a tree.

"I wanna show you something," I whisper in his ear, eliciting a vibration sighing from inside his chest.

"Alright," he agrees.  "Here?  Now?"

There's a studious tone which creeps into his voice.  I know he's wondering if he'll need to lay his coat down as an improvised bed, if he'll need to take notes, if he should have brought his glasses, if he left his map in the car, if he has matches, if he cut his fingernails, if he should be getting this hard.

"At home," I tell him.  "The garden is finished."


At home, Adam's eyes reflect the light flickering from the screens.  Our bed spans beneath the tree that's grown and is now riddled with small lights, glossy red hearts, and has a name carved into it: JOHN.

We slide backward over the sheets, messy already from the night I spent in them with Clyde.

"What do you want to show me?" Adam asks, shedding his coat and shoes with kicks from his heels.

When we were teenagers, I showed Adam first the results of his treachery to God, the man he would eventually become.  I let him touch where he'd found space to make room for his body inside mine, and he stroked gently the swollen lips of my pussy, sore after he'd created them the long Night before.

"What do you want to show me?" he asks again, now more insistent than he was before, pulling his shirt impatient over his head.  "Show it to me, Evelyn."

I work my panties down fast past my hips as he fights the fly of his slacks apart.  He makes a strangled sound as he pushes his cock inside me, and suddenly, as if this world slips on a new reality like a glove, we're dancing.

"Adam?" I ask him, and his face presses into my hair.

"Evelyn," he replies, breathy.  "Where are we?"

"Dancing," I remind him, as we spin near a wooden table on a gray cement floor.  The light cutting across the room is hazy and gold, casting the room into shadow.  I see leaves wide and shining along the walls.

"It's the club," he whispers.  "I can still feel you."

Gripping his shoulders, I can feel the fabric of his undershirt, and he gasps.

"Christ," he moans.  "Eve.  Harder."

We press into one another, and the smell around of artificial smoke and conditioned air makes it feel like a bomb shelter.  It makes me light-headed as we revolve slow through the empty room.  Static plays across each of the screens, and shows peeking suggestions of pornography through green and red lines.