Walls

“Where is he?” John complained between drags on his cigarette. He felt restless in this unfamiliar territory.

“Give him some time. He has to drive from the ‘burbs a ways to get to the big city. He’s not that late anyway,” Carl said, casually looking at his watch.

The two young men seemed like a mismatched pair. Carl, although not clean cut in a military or jock kind of way, was obviously a well-taken-care-of suburban product. He was dressed less laid back than when on campus, where he usually just wore a t-shirt and jeans, but he still wasn’t dressed like a hip Chicago twenty-something. He looked more like a hiker dressed for dinner at a cushy ski lodge.

John’s good looks resided in a rural bad boy package. The curls in his long blond hair made it look wild even after he brushed it out. His jeans, torn at the knees, were not a fashion statement. He really couldn’t afford new clothes. But they fit John’s message to the general public that he also had encrypted in the tatoos he got while in juvenile detention. The one on his right shoulder showed a spider that had spun the letters F.T.W. into its web. It stood for “Fuck the World.”

“We’re a little early. Take in the sights,” Carl suggested off-handedly. They were waiting for their friend Dan on the north side of Chicago near Caberet Metro where his favorite hard edged band would be playing. Carl wanted to go to the show there and hit Pravda Records and Wax Trax as long as he was down town.

“Ya mean sights like those home boys over there staring at us? We shoulda met somewhere else.” John was trying to look casually tough and nonchalant, but he couldn’t stop dragging hard on his cigarette and lit a new one minutes after he put the last one out. He had disciplined himself not to fidget, to look calm and possessed, master of any situation. Smoking allowed him acceptable movement when he was nervous or restless.

“Relax Johnny. They’re probably as on their guard as you are. This hood is mostly white-bread. It’s not that rough, especially compared to what’s considered bad in Chicago.”

Carl was usually relaxed, and he enjoyed the mellowing late August evening now that the intense summer heat had been broken by a hint of autumn. He enjoyed the buzz of the youthful urban neighborhood music scene, so different from the central Illinois collegeit atmosphere. There it seemed that mindless revelry was mandetory, and the small underground music scene sometimes mired into an underachiever popularity contest. To Carl, North Clark Street felt cheerful and vibrant in comparison. He wished John could feel the same positive affects from his first visit to Chicago.

John kept his eyes on the subjects of his attention and let out a “Hmf.” He put on his shades and leaned against the corner drugstore wall. After awhile of unproductive staring he said, “OK, I guess your probably right, Carl. This is your city. You know it better than I do. I guess maybe I’m just a little bored.” He put his hands in his pocket, cigarette still hanging from his mouth, and turned to get a view of their side of the walkway down the street. “I need to scope me some skirt.”

“Whatever keeps you happy, Johnny. Why don’t you keep your eyes peeled for Dan while you’re at it” Carl stood restive but alert. He looked around some but kept focusing in the direction he expected Dan to come from.

“Sure thing pal. But if I catch sight of some gorgeous pair of legs, I’m gone.”

“You’re all talk,” Carl dismissed with a light shake of his head, a small punctuating breath escaping his nostrils. “At least you better be tonight. Dan’s been looking forward to getting together since he heard you were coming up. He really took to you on his visit downstate. He thinks you’re a pretty cool guy.” Carl put his hands in his pockets and leaned his back against the wall.

John pushed off of it to pace an imperfect circle as he inhaled his last puff of smoke before tossing it to the ground. “Well that’s just swell, Carl. Danny boy loves me.” He let out a sarcastic laugh. “I don’t care much for him,” he continued. “He’s got no guts and he don’t do much of anything.”

Carl pushed off the wall too, facing John for a moment of his wobbly orbit. “What do you mean you don’t like him? You spent almost two whole days hanging out together while I went to classes. You drank all that Jack Daniels and flirted your asses off with those girls and almost got kicked out of ‘Chugs.’ I thought you two bonded or something.”

“Bonded. Jeeze Carl, you make it sound like we got married.” John took off his shades and hooked them over the front of his t-shirt. The sun had just begun to slip behind a building. The intense angle of it began to create dramatic shadows that the street lights were unable to even out. The summer breeze eased its way through the city mazes.

John ran his hands over his long hair, getting the bangs out from in front of his eyes. He went for another cigarette and held it between his lips while fishing in his pocket for his lighter. He lit up and drew in the smoke with a slow, deliberate motion. “No, Dan’s alright,” he drawled unselfconsciously. “He’s really alright when you get him drinkin’ and jokin’ around.” He laughed again, this time with a crude smile behind it. “Yeah, he’s funny.”

Carl relaxed against the wall again. His friend’s tendency to take offence confused him. He couldn’t understand why he took offense when there was none intended. But he usually just let it slide. He was sure John meant well, and there were always bound to be misunderstandings. He knew that he and his friend Dan enjoyed hanging out with John, even if John was too busy acting cool to be able to acknowledge having a good time with them himself. Carl thought more about John and Dan’s antics and chuckled.

“Yeah John boy, I think you brought out a whole new side in Dan. I’ve never seen him so jazzed up before. That’s why he likes you, ya know? You woke up the sleeping wild man in him and now he remembers he’s alive.”

John had laughed comfortably back against the wall but now he was again squinting up the street, dragging pointedly on his cigarette. He drew it out with his long hand and let out a dense waft of smoke. John often used cigarettes to help his hand punctuate his sentences. “You know,” he began slow and deliberate, “you have this way of sayin’ things… If I didn’t know you, Carl, I’d say you was a fag.” John pulled out his loose single dollar bills after occupying his mouth with the cigarette. He had finished his sentence with a practiced calm finality, followed by a busy count of his cash. He already knew he had just enough for either a pint of hard liquor, or for two quarts of cheap beer, but he made sure to concentrate on the bills awhile.

Carl watched his activity with a contemplative smirk. “Well you do know me, and you know I’m not. So why do you think it’s so queer that I tell you this stuff?” Carl leaned toward Johnny’s profile, which seemed to be having trouble finding something to do. His face became still and Carl sent his words in to tag some kind of base. “Johnny, get real. You know I’m not trying to set you guys up or imply something sexual or anything. Do you really have that much trouble just talking about your friends?”

John reeled his head in over his shoulder which he unslouched with stringy tightness. The same pull seemed to control his face. The snarl beneath his rigid skin, rolled up with an inhale of his own second hand smoke, covered his voice with dirty cool. “Friends is one thing,” John said around his cigarette while stuffing his cash back into his pocket. He turned to face his companion. “But this ‘waking up the wild man in Dan’ talk is too much Carl. Don’t tell me shit like that. It sounds fruity.” He delivered his command with outspread hand bobbing authoritatively, his cigarette now between his fingers.  “I don’t’ give a shit about Dan’s stupid life.” He finished his words and began to smoke with concentration, his eyes straight ahead.

Carl took in a deep, even breath and let it out slowly. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned his back in harder against the rough bricks then turned around to rest his forehead on them. He looked into their lines and patterns, the cracks in the old building seemed to be trying to tell him something, to beg a favor of him. He uncrossed his arms, let one drop as the other led his hand to trace over the texture of his wall. He let himself imagine that he could make it better, kiss the wall and restore its soundness, make it smooth and beautiful. But he was no prince and princesses were hard to come by. So he just said his apologies to this beast of clay cement. “Sorry, there’s nothing I can do,” he murmured. He pushed away from his place with the tracing hand and looked down to where bricks met the side walk. He let his gaze trail to his friend’s shoe then to the cigarette hand then past it down the lit up street.

“What’d ya say, Carl?” John asked, speaking more tentatively now. He realized that he felt something he had always pushed away whenever he felt it. But he couldn’t now. He felt shame. Shame for pushing his new friend away with his anger while Carl continued to put up with it good naturedly, continued to be his friend. He wasn’t used to that, and it made him question what he knew. Because of this, everything felt different. He thought he felt the time shift or the street change shape. A strong smell burned past his own inhaled smoke. He was looking at Carl now but he was different too. His eyes were less green, his features more defined but less recognizable.

Carl’s eyes traveled further past John, picking out shapes of the city street without bothering to identify them anymore. He let these shapes hold him rather than needing the wall’s support while John seemed to shift his back further into it. John looked at his own hands and then to the cigarette that had burned almost to the butt. He thought about letting himself slide down to the sidewalk, his t-shirt scraping the bricks all the way down. He wanted to sit. He wanted to get drunk. He wanted to go into the drugstore to buy his liquor without having to say anything to Carl but it didn’t seem right. “Shit, Carl,” he said almost softly, “I don’t feel so good.”

Carl brought his distant gaze back to see that John’s face was subdued with a dim and never before acknowledged confusion. He let himself identify it and began again to put names to things. “No, something isn’t quite right, John. We need to go to the club. We need to go be around people and music and beer.” He let his feet bring him to action, took two steps away from John and one toward him. “Come on John. The club will make us feel better.” He went up closer to his friend and gripped his shoulder, then gave him a couple solid pats on the back. “Don’t worry about cash. You’ve got enough for the cover charge, and I’ll take care of all our beers.”

Carl let his hand rest on John’s back while he waited for a response. John did not resist Carl’s easy show of camaraderie, but looked blankly unsure. “What about Dan?” his deep voice now questioned softly. Unable to keep meeting Carl’s gaze with his own eyes, John shifted them slightly toward the car parked beside his cajoling partner. Carl let his hand slide off, collapse at a rest to his own side, then find its way into his pocket. He looked at the watch on his wrist with his hand still in the pocket, checking the time that had randomly moved past them almost without notice.

“Hell, Johnny, he’s past late now. Maybe we’ll meet up at the show.” Carl began to walk. “Come on,” he said, directing mildly with a jerk of his head. “Dan probably just needed his absence to make a difference.”