Free Robin and Ruby by K. M. Soehnlein Page B

he should stand: facing the river with his back toward the park? That feels sort of vulnerable, like someone could sneak up on them from behind. But looking outward puts them on display, inviting action. Is that what George wants? Is he hoping to hook up tonight? Robin faces sideways, leaning on his hip.
    “So you come here for sex?” Robin asks him.
    George clears his throat. “Mostly, I watch.”
    “I didn’t know you were a Peeping Tom.”
    “I’m not creepy about it. I just like to be around it. I guess you could classify me as a bit of a voyeur. Everyone’s either a voyeur or an exhibitionist.” He adds, “ You are an exhibitionist.”
    “I’m a thespian ,” Robin says, deliberately using a word he finds ridiculous. “It goes with the territory.”
    George pulls his wallet from his pocket. From the billfold he fishes out a flattened joint. “Gimme your lighter.”
    Robin’s never seen George with pot before. “You’re full of surprises tonight.”
    “Blame it on the full moon.”
    “Oh really?”
    “Yes, really. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the moon can influence our circulation, like it does with tides. Our bodies are mostly water.”
    “I’m glad there’s a scientific explanation.”
    “There almost always is.”
    George leans forward, matching paper tip to flame; a moment later, he erupts into coughing, smoke swirling furiously around him. “I’m still new at this,” he says.
    Robin takes one deep hit, and right away feels himself melting. He leans back into the fence for support, as a wave takes hold like a warm embrace. It’s so seductive: Hey there, remember me? Remember this feeling? Yeah, I remember, Robin thinks. He smoked so much of this stuff in high school, in New Jersey, when all you had to do was walk into the courtyard between classes and someone would get you high. George never did; he wasn’t part of that scene. Robin never buys it anymore; he doesn’t hold, as they used to say. He can’t get anything done when he’s stoned, though he can get into plenty of trouble.
    “Since when do you buy pot?”
    “Cesar gave it to me. He told me to share it with you.” A faint smile curls George’s lips; behind his glasses, his eyes are already glazed and goofy. He makes a stab at Cesar’s accent. “Tell Blanco, he smoke a little of this, he be less uptight.”
    “Uptight! Is that what they say about me?” Robin thinks of himself as friendly and talkative with the customers, eager to hang out at the bar with the waitstaff after closing, cool with being singled out as “Blanco.” But then of course he gets frazzled a lot, and walks on eggshells when Rosellen is near, and when he’s in the weeds he knows he can get bitchy with the busboys and dishwashers. He says, “I am not long for that job.”
    George says, “He keeps talking about my ass.”
    “He does that with me, too!”
    “Me and you and Blanco, we should all party together.”
    “Do you think,” Robin asks, “that he’s totally trying to engineer a three-way?”
    He can’t quite make out George’s reaction, but Robin feels himself thrust into a pornographic dream: the two of them, himself and George, bent over, Cesar naked and erect behind them, taking turns and barking out dirty names in Español .
    That’s the other thing he remembers about smoking pot. It’s the on switch to horniness.
    “OK, George, admit it. You don’t come here just to watch.”
    “Well, think of it like this. You go to a museum to look at paintings. You just want to be around the art. It doesn’t mean you wish you were a painter.”
    Robin considers this. “The first time Dorothy took me to MoMA, and I saw Starry Night , I wanted to go home and throw paint all over a canvas.”
    “Maybe I’m just waiting for the right inspiration. One time, this guy talked to me for a while. He was kind of a clone, a big Italian guy with moustache. He wanted me to follow him that way.” He points toward the railroad tracks. “Didn’t