Page 38 of Rhymes with Metaphor
“Martin was visiting me in Wales for May Day,” said Reg.“We both got fantastically drunk and stoned.So stoned we would have eaten anything.The pantry was empty, except for an old tin of Christmas pudding my grandmother bought eons ago.It had expired in the 1970s, but I’d kept it for posterity.We boiled it for an hour to be safe.I had a big paring knife, and I was cutting into it, and I should point out that the pudding came ready-sauced.Anyway, I plunged the knife in and yanked, and it came out of the tin all at once, and the whole pudding flew into the air and stuck to the ceiling.We sat there staring at it, then we started laughing till we pissed ourselves.Literally.”
“How old were you?”said Juliet, appalled.
“Twenty-two,” said Reg.“In our defence, we were very drunk.”
Martin buried his face in his hands.
“And stoned,” said Reg.“Which explains why, after we’d pulled ourselves together, we still wanted to eat the pudding.But first, we had to get it off the ceiling.It was so well and truly stuck that when it came down, some ceiling came off with it.We ate it anyway, of course.We just picked the ceiling bits off.”
Joel looked amused, and Martin would forgive Reg in a day or two.Probably.So, it was worth it.
They were so jet-lagged that they called it a night after they’d eaten and went straight back to the house and bed.Reg had made a point of putting Martin and Juliet in separate bedrooms.
The next day, they all went to London on the train.Martin insisted on showing Juliet all the obvious touristy places while Reg rolled his eyes and Joel dozed on a stone bench.Reg had been hoping to catch up with an old friend, but he was out of the country on business.Juliet wanted to find something Joel would enjoy, so they did brass rubbings at a church.On the way home, they inspected each other’s work.Reg had done a lion, Joel, a Medieval knight.
Reg said to Joel, “Do you feel like an artist?”
“No.Tracing doesn’t require skill.It’s not real art.”
“What would you call real art?”said Reg.
“That picture on the wall in your loft.”
“Reg drew that,” said Martin.“It was a toss-up whether he’d be an artist, a pro tennis player, or a poet.”
“I’ve always known I’d be a clinical psychologist,” said Juliet.“And we’ve always known Joel would be a physician.”
“Have we?”said Reg, looking at Joel, and there must have been something in his tone that made Martin glance at him sharply.
Joel wouldn’t meet Reg’s gaze.
They spent the afternoon at home by the pool, sipping sun tea, courtesy of “Aunty Bethan,” Reg’s father’s housekeeper.
Juliet put on a bathing suit, which nearly caused Martin to faint when he saw her, though it was a demure, navy blue one-piece.Martin joined her in the water.Juliet had installed Joel on a sun lounger by the pool.He wore boat shoes and had conceded to wearing the white silk shirt Reg had bought him.Every few minutes, he’d startle up like he’d forgotten something.
“You don’t have an off switch, Joel,” said Juliet.“You’re either go-go-go or you’re at death’s door.”
“I feel like I should be doing something useful,” said Joel.
“Keep up that mindset, you’ll wind up dead from a heart attack before you’re thirty,” said Reg.
“In your medical opinion as a poet?”said Joel.
“Sometimes, time wasting isn’t a waste of time,” said Reg.“You need to learn to do nothing and enjoy it.”
He went into the garage and found one of Hazel’s old toys—a metal ball with a bell inside.He came back to the pool.
“Lie back, Joel,” said Reg.
While Joel watched him, owl-eyed, Reg balanced the ball on Joel’s tense and trembling abdomen.He had to fight the urge to smooth his hand over Joel’s shirt first.
“What you need to do now is to lie still,” said Reg.“Or that ball will roll, and the bell will ring, and if I hear the bell ring, I will push you back on that lounger, understand?Don’t give me that look.You’re on vacation.There’s nowhere you have to be, and nowhere you have to get to quickly.”
“Operant conditioning,” said Juliet.“I’m impressed, Reg.”
Reg brought his own lounger over to Joel’s on the patio, along with his laptop containing a handful of poems one of his fellow MFA students had asked him to critique.It was a good distraction and a reminder: What he was experiencing was merely a passing fancy combined with a feeling of responsibility for Joel’s well-being.Yet, he was acutely aware of Joel’s proximity and the smell of his sun-warmed skin.
Reg had barely read the first poem when the tiny bell tinkled, and the ball dropped onto the patio.
