The Feast of Love. Charles Baxter

of me all the time, how he wanted to be with me, and talk to me, and how he was distracted at Dr. Enchilada’s, thinking about me, how much I was a car that he wanted to drive, no, not a car—the car. I would take him to heaven. It was so sweet of him to say that. He had a streak of romanticism, it turned out.

      By then I had earrings all the way up and down my ear. He had done his vibe on me and I had answered. Also, we had talked all night long twice, by phone. We said that no matter what, we’d be there for each other. So then we did the inevitable and fucked happily several times and he sort of moved in. Not that he really moved in, he was just there all the time day and night, touching me everywhere. My roommates, the Spice Girls, tried to ignore him. As if they could ignore a boy that beautiful, good in bed, as I carelessly bragged, a boy in recovery and therefore almost glamorous, a knight in shining armor galloping out of rehab.

      But then we decided we had to move out, this particular night when the noise level was extreme, a headbanger party, bodies everywhere, every room a mosh pit. This couple, these two sexual fascists, they were kissing and molesting each other unobtrusively—they thought!—in the kitchen, standing up. But it was show-offy, whatever it was they were doing, and unsanitary besides. I didn’t even know them. They were friends of somebody. When I told them they should find a bed like everyone else, the girl stopped what she was doing and said that being a food-service professional had warped me and would I please keep my opinions to myself. How’d she know about my day job? It had to have been that they had seen me at Dr. Enchilada’s tricking out the tacos with the guacamole pistol. There and then I decided to get another position somehow. I don’t know, maybe the Spice Girls had been talking about me. But these two, they were blocking the refrigerator. You just don’t do that at a party. When you don’t know the people who’re doing it, sex, or whatever those two were doing, can be repulsive and karma-damaging, if I may be so bold as to say.

      So me and Oscar decided to take a walk.

      We went down the side streets in the dark. I could hear locusts, and the hot night air lay like a damp towel against my skin. I saw this pre-teen girl doing cartwheels on her front lawn, back and forth, slowly and sweetly, as if she were performing all those actions as absentmindedly as a Ferris wheel. She was wearing a charm bracelet, and tinkling came from her wrists. I said, “I used to do that. I used to practice back flips. I was into cheering.”

      Oscar said, “You?”

      “Yeah. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a cheerleader. So I was. For the wrestling team.”

      “No kidding.”

      “Yeah. But I guess I got degenerate, or something. That was when people didn’t believe my cheers anymore, I guess. My cheers weren’t infectious.”

      We walked on quietly for a while, hand in hand.

      Oscar said he’d read in the paper about the Perseid meteor shower. Because it was August or because it was time for them to die. The meteors were all suicidal. They were bored with space, he said, looking up toward the night sky. They were burning themselves up in the atmosphere. A meteor deathfest. It was romantic, the way trees are romantic, and the way Oscar could be romantic if he set his mind to it. Also cosmologica!, a word I once learned. He pointed out constellations to me, the ones viewed for centuries and named for kings and queens. We were walking hand in hand and then we were talking about this new music group, Castro District, that we both liked. Our conversations were getting deep and personal the longer we talked. I could feel his love entering me through my spine. And we’d look up to see a meteor, but, fuck and alas, all you could see was another street light.