PodCastle 810: And in Rain, Blank Pages

* Author : Lora Gray

* Narrator : Joe Moran

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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Previously published by Fantasy & Science Fiction

Content warnings for a surgical procedure, homophobia (including slurs), assault, sexual assault, and domestic violence

Rated R

And in Rain, Blank Pages

by Lora Gray

It’s 1981, I’m nineteen and now I know the truth.

It rains in New York just like it rains in Indiana.

I’m wretched as a wet kitten and drunk, trudging through Brooklyn in a cardigan and combat boots. My lip is split. My left eye is beginning to swell.

I’m not even sure I know how to write poetry anymore.

Funny that I grabbed the notebook Tony gave me before running from his apartment, as if the potential of those blank pages was somehow more vital than an umbrella. A jacket. Fucking socks.

By the time I find an open diner, my feet are soaked and I’m shivering so hard it takes three tries to open the door. It looks empty and nobody greets me, but the stink of old grease presses over me like a damp palm. I sniffle, card my fingers through my hair, tacky with Aqua Net, and squelch my way to a booth.

My hands are vodka clumsy and cold as I take the notebook from my pocket and try to smooth the water-warped cover. I remember being sixteen, my head buzzing with new-to-me Plath and Wilde, daydreaming in couplets and free verse, an imaginary Kerouac beside me as I scribbled onto paper once reserved for geometry. Believing that, if I could just tap into the right words, real words, ones that lived and breathed, I would somehow better understand my loneliness and self-loathing when bullies shouted “fag” at me from across the school cafeteria.

For a while, here in New York, with Tony, I thought I’d finally made sense of it all.

A shadow falls over me and I stuff the notebook he gave me into my pocket. I look up. Long legs, a narrow hip cocked beneath a stained yellow apron, wire-rim glasses, feathered hair. A slow, disarming smile.

His name tag says “Felix” and he makes a show of straightening it. His hands are beautiful.

I fumble a “Hello” and then, “Um, I’d like a small coffee. Wait. Shit. I don’t know how much I have on me. How much is it?”

Felix doesn’t answer. He ticks his pen toward the order board instead (one dollar, thank God I have four quarters and a dime in my shoe), but I can practically see myself in the strain of his smile. What must he think I am? A punk? A kid hooking blow jobs for ten dollars a pop?

No wonder he doesn’t want to talk.

“I’ll have a small coffee, please,” I say, worrying my soggy sleeves over my hands as he disappears into the kitchen again.

Across the street, the downpour has reduced a strip joint to an impressionistic haze of legs and tits. A payphone slumps beside it. I could forgo the coffee, sacrifice a quarter. Call Tony. I imagine him, his hands fisted on his cab’s steering wheel, his broad back coiled like a half-thrown punch. The silence on the ride to his apartment, like a teakettle preparing to scream.

A coffee mug plunks onto the table.

I startle, smack the mug, and nonono, it tips, scalds my hand, splashes over the table, onto my sleeve, onto Felix. He catches the mug mid-topple and, nonplussed, begins mopping the coffee with a dish towel.

“I’m sorry!” I suck my burned fingers into my mouth, frantically try to help with a fistful of napki...