MARCH AND APRIL

March brought the bluster of wind, spring, storm, three weeks of football practice, midterms, Ben’s mother’s chemotherapy, Ben’s anger. A feeling of chaos overtook the quiet space in which they had spent time together. There was a feeling of union that turned into colliding, careening apart. Early one morning, wee hours, he read Ben’s palm. They were in the study lounge, everybody else had gone to bed, all the other lamps were dark, and they were tucked in the back corner on a couch. Reading palms was something Ronny had done in high school and now and then still practiced at parties, a way to talk to strangers. With Ben it was an excuse to touch his hands, callused and hard, to caress his fingers, to trace his life line, his head line, his heart line, to press the mounts of Jupiter, Saturn, Apollo, Mercury; a way to talk to Ben about himself. To calm him down. Ben had come to study a little drunk, which he was not supposed to do because he was in the middle of spring practice; he had ignored curfew to stay in the study lounge. He was hard to contain, had fought with somebody at the end of practice, a late hit, he said, but wouldn’t give any more details; he’d had a call from his sister about his mom, but didn’t want to talk about it; he gripped his books as if he wanted to crush them; he mainly wanted to sit and pretend to study, to hear Ronny read aloud some of the education textbook, to close his eyes and breathe. They were sitting close on the couch so Ben could look at the book while Ronny read; at times their shoulders touched, at times Ben touched Ronny’s hand on the textbook, tracing a line. As the night went on he started to calm a bit. “You’re going to get in trouble about curfew, Ben.”

“Nah. They don’t really care about spring.” The slight smell of beer on his breath.

So Ronny took his hands and held them and told him about himself. “This is bullshit,” Ben said, but left his hands in place.

“It’s just fun,” Ronny said.

“Yeah. I guess.”

He had clear, definite lines on his palms; his fingers were thick, with knobby joints, rounded tips; his mount of the moon was high and dense; the flesh below his fingers was thick skinned. They were leaning closer and closer, Ben’s breath on Ronny’s collarbone. Ronny had stopped talking and they went on sitting there like that, the books on the floor, the room dark, the building quiet. He found he could not move away. He kissed Ben lightly on the lips.

Ben shoved him back, wiped his mouth, frowned, sat with his hands in his hair, and for the first time in a while Ronny felt the terror inside himself, stood up, backed away into the dark. Ben followed, shoved him again, not hard, but enough that Ronny knelt and picked up his own books, gathering them in a stack. He could hear Ben breathing. He stood and started to walk away. “I’m sorry,” he said, very quiet, a few feet away, and he heard Ben move forward, lunge at him, pull him around, knock the books out of his hand.