Contempt of a Great Man (Part 5)

He waited to start walking until I began to make my way towards the door. It was as if he was unsure if I was actually leaving or just stalling until I could make a dash back to his couch. I had no intentions to stay at his apartment; in fact, I was more eager to leave than he probably was. The last thing I wanted was to see John’s smirk as he seduced my cousin into thinking that I was some sort of loose whore.

We left the apartment, with my cousin locking the door behind us, and walked towards the elevator. I noticed the lions on the doors again. I had never really liked the lion. I had always wondered why it was considered the “king of the jungle.” What made lions so noble? The monkey is smarter, the elephant is larger, and the cheetah is faster. The only things lions have are those heavy manes around their necks. They have intelligence and speed, but not nearly as much intelligence as the monkey or as much speed as the cheetah. Furthermore, the elephant is nearly three times larger than the lion. The only reason that the lion is called the “king of the jungle” is because everything else is supposedly afraid of it. But why be afraid of something that isn’t all that special?

I began walking towards the elevator, my cousin following so closely behind that I could almost feel his breath on the back of my neck. I looked back at him and rolled my eyes. He was doing this strut where he stuck his hands in his pockets and kept his chin up towards the ceiling. I don’t know why, but I thought it would be funny if I stopped quickly and cause him to run clumsily into me. I think I may have just wanted to see how he would react to something throwing off his strut; it made me sick.
I reached the elevator and stopped in front of it, letting my cousin push the buttons and act like my caretaker or possibly my prison guard. The doors opened and I walked inside, turning around once my cousin took his spot next to me. I didn’t look at my cousin the whole elevator ride; I just stared straight out in front of me, the elevator door becoming more uninteresting the longer I stared.

The elevator finally stopped and my cousin, of course, waited for me to step out of the door first. I don’t know what angered me more, the fact that he didn’t trust me or that fact that I felt like a little child being closely watched by my older brother. My cousin was actually born eight months after I was. I can remember when we were younger and I would always make him do little errands for me in change of stupid prizes, like a PEZ dispenser or a plastic frog. He was always so much smarter than me, but for some reason I would always be able to trick him into doing what I wanted to do. I guess he was always afraid that if he didn’t do what I wanted, I would stop giving him stuff. You see, although we were related, his family situation was a lot different than mine. I can remember my father always slipping extra money to his dad, my mother’s brother. When my mother and father split up, my father stopped giving him money, probably because he wanted to indirectly hurt my mother.

I walked through the lobby of the apartment building, trying not to vomit as I looked at the gold trimming surrounding me. I glanced back at my cousin and caught him smiling and winking at a woman I had just passed. I wondered immediately if he had learned that from John. Then I remembered that John didn’t have to wink or smile, he would be charming and handsome even if he was coughing up phlegm.

I finally reached the big doors leading outside. My cousin touched me on the shoulder and I turned around to face him. He still had one hand in his pocket and his eyes weren’t on me, but instead it seemed like he was looking above my head and out towards the outside world.

“I’ll get a taxi to take you home,” he said, still without even glancing down at me.

He walked past me and towards the street. He reached out his lengthy arm and his sleeve went up a bit, showing a Rolex secured on his wrist. I remembered a joke that he used to tell me about a lawyer’s arm that was ripped off, but instead of noticing his arm missing, the lawyer noticed his Rolex was gone. I’m usually not a fan of mutilation jokes, but the way my cousin told it with such enthusiasm, always doing a belly laugh at the end of the joke, made me laugh right along with him.

A taxi finally pulled up beside my cousin and he let down his arm, concealing the Rolex, an object he had grown up ridiculing. He turned around to face me and he waved his hand in a motion that signaled me to come near. I realized that I was still standing in the building. I looked over my shoulder and saw a lady looking at me. The lady had the same expression as the women had the previous night when I was walking with John at the party. Instead of thinking she was sneering at me, I realized that she had a sparkle of regret in her eyes. I wondered if the women the previous night weren’t envious of me, but were actually remembering when they were once walking with John, not knowing what was soon to come.

A hand grabbed my arm and I turned around to see my cousin, his eyes telling me that he was now annoyed by my stalling. I began walking towards the taxi, my cousin’s hand still gripping my arm. My cousin released my arm and reached out to open the door of the taxi. I looked inside the taxi at the driver. He was balding and overweight, his stomach sticking slightly out of his “Yankees” shirt. He smiled at me and I felt somewhat relieved, his smile was one of the most genuine things I had seen in a long time.

“I will call you sometime in the next few days,” my cousin said as I stepped my foot into the taxi, “Just to see if you are alright.”

“Yeah,” I replied with little expression and a lot of doubt.

I ducked my head into the taxi and relaxed my body against the back of the seat. My cousin stood holding open the door for a few seconds as if he wanted to say something else. I looked at him as he gazed at the ground. He finally glanced up at me and looked straight into my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said before slamming the door shut and walking back into the building, his head down the entire time.

The taxi pulled off from the curb as I watched my cousin intently as he walked towards the building. I didn’t understand why he would apologize to me unless he knew about John. If he did know about John and still took his side against mine, it would have hurt me more than anything had ever hurt me before. I didn’t want to think about it any longer so I turned by head towards the front of the taxi. I would have watched him longer, if I knew it would be the last time I would ever see him.

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