Page 94 of Rhymes with Metaphor
“All in good time.”
“It was the perfect fucking time,” said Joel.
Reg plucked tissues from the bedside dispenser and wiped Joel clean.“Oh dear.”
“What?”said Joel, eyes half open,cariadandaddoliobscured.
“It appears that some of these markers were permanent.I’m sorry.”
Joel’s belly trampolined under Reg’s hand as he laughed, and then Reg laughed, and they held each other.
“What will you do when you run out of elements?”said Reg.
“I already have.Oganesson’s the last one.I could do constellations.”
Reg tapped Joel’s glittered left nipple, and Joel laughed again.
Before Joel got dressed, Reg asked if he could photograph the words on his body.
“I could transcribe them onto paper, of course,” said Reg.“But the effect would be lost.I promise not to show your face.”
Joel indulged him, and Reg had him pose, sprawling across the rumpled bed covers.The word on his tongue had blurred, so Reg had to re-ink it.
“I’ll give you something to eat afterwards to sweeten the taste,” said Reg, which led to kissing, which grew heated until Reg had to call a stop as he hadn’t finished taking photographs.
“Shall I take you to dinner?”said Reg.
“I need a shower first.”
As it happened, apart from the food-grade marker on Joel’s tongue, all of the markers Reg had used on Joel were permanent.Joel came out of the bathroom in much the same state as he’d gone in.
“I can’t go out like this,” said Joel.“I look like an underpass.”
“I’m the one who made you indecent,” said Reg.“It’s my responsibility to make you decent again.”
Reg dressed Joel in long pants and a long-sleeved dress shirt fastened with cufflinks, and he pinned a silk scarf around Joel’s neck.He completed the look with a pair of white cotton gloves and sunglasses.
“How do I look?”said Joel suspiciously.
“Like the bearer of deathless verse, who’s had a very satisfying evening.”
They ate on the patio of the local pub.Joel had a ravenous appetite, but it was a warm evening, and he was uncomfortably hot in his clothes.
“All right?”said Reg.“Are you melting?”
Joel downed a glass of water and asked the server for another.
As soon as they got home, Joel didn’t bother to go upstairs but went straight to the pool, stripped off his clothes where he stood, and dove in.
“Aren’t you a picture?”said Reg, watching him swim.A picture needing words.Perhaps a thousand of them.He scrabbled desperately at his pockets to locate his notebook.He wrote with an errant marker on the paving stones and was still at it when Joel pulled himself from the water and sauntered over to watch him write.Reg gazed at him, dripping, lit by the golden spotlights around the pool, and he did look like he’d just fallen from heaven.
The next evening, Joel asked Reg to take him to an outdoor production ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream, as he’d seen an advertisement in the pub, and he’d read the play in the library a few weeks earlier.
Joel covered up again, but it wasn’t as venomously hot as it had been the night before.In the dark, as they watched the play, Joel slipped off his sunglasses, and his hand stole to Reg’s, clasping it.
As they walked home in the dark, the sound of their footsteps unnaturally loud in the quiet, a fox ran across the road, stopped to look at them, then ran on.They could have been the only people on Earth.
Joel said, “I enjoyed that.I’m starting to understand Shakespeare now.I think the reason I didn’t before was because I’d never been in love.”
