Schlub

Schlub

Anthony glanced at the Stevenson boys tumbling over their plastic playground across the street as he made to turn into his driveway. They were cute, when they weren't wrecking carefully arranged leaf piles or hoarding the neighborhood cats. He cut the engine and stepped out, remembering by the bite of the air that Janice still had his jacket wrapped, comically large, around her when he'd dropped her off. Cold, but chivalrous, he took pains not to notice the flecks of rust on his hand when he grabbed at their black railing to dash up concrete stairs. Another day, he promised himself, as he was greeted by the hiss of their front door.

"Where have you been all afternoon?" his mother sighed at him by way of a greeting, lounging in peach marabou by the light of daytime soaps in their den.

He pulled himself out foot-by-foot from his muddy tennis shoes, stepping white-socked feet onto the ivy-patterned carpet. "I just hung out for a bit after school, Ma," he explained, dismissive. "And Janice needed a ride home, is all."

He watched his mother's eyes light behind a wispy cloud of smoke. "Oh, has my Antony finally found his Cleopatra?%u201D she grinned, relishing her oft-repeated joke with a wave of her willowy cigarette.

Anthony rolled his eyes, dismissing her with an exasperated "Shut up, Ma,", pounding up their exposed-wood stairs to slam down in his room. Her failed actress airs exhausted him, a history he'd learned by unhappy accident. He'd been frantically tearing through his dad's Playboy collection--the one thing he had bequeathed him, Anthony thought, recalling his father's casual last advice to him, "Keep your nose clean, kid", before he putt-putted away in the station wagon--hungry for something to beat off to, when he discovered it. A shoebox of photos of the same pretty brunette, mostly professional pin-ups in varying degrees of taste. He was surveying her approvingly when he happened to glance too hard at one of her headshots. There, on her left cheek, half-obscured by makeup, was the unmistakable port-wine stain his mother was always fussing over.

Dropping the photo with histrionic self-revulsion, he'd shoved the box away to the recesses of its attic alcove and sworn off his aids for a month. Recalling it now brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose for a long pinch as he sprawled over his comforter.

Little Janice. She was cute, he thought, forcibly changing the subject. And the grin she gave him lately, mischief framed with a brown bob, was very encouraging.