The intruder is clean—skin smooth, freshly shaved, black hair wet from the shower. He is toweling off in my bedroom while I stand watching from the doorway. He smiles lightly at me, as if maybe I knew he’d be here, and honestly, maybe I did. I’m leaving something out, but more on that in a moment.
We never dream when we are awake, so I’m reminded of a daydream photograph of my mother, sitting on the hill behind our home, in a panic of violets. The North Carolina sun shines on her hair, gold filaments breaking into the lens, raiding the light. Her hair appears luminous, as if it could return the sun to infancy. How did the photographer—my younger sister—capture this beautiful, cosmic second? A moment transpired and was caught in a lens. That’s it. A single moment, tragically and perfectly alive forever.
Gravity keeps me here in the doorway with this man. I could stand here all day. I am eternal right now, watching him, beads of water on his shoulders running down his body, as if seeking the source of all things. To the water. To be this water.
There is a current that runs through us just before violence or passion, like the breath of a runner, at the peak of a run, at the top of the hill, about to merge with the horizon. I hear the traffic outside my window and the rustle of the intruder’s towel on his body. He’s drying his chest now, and he hasn’t broken his gaze from my face. Every part of me holds onto the alarm of pending action.
I’m reminded of my father’s large concrete garage bay, the manliness of his spaces. His Oldsmobile Cutlass with its broken window, the oil cans and buckets overflowing from countless oil changes. The sounds of the yard from within that space, like echoes freed from a tin can. The ruckus of my sister and me knocking a tennis ball against the red brick of our house, and how he’d grind his teeth angrily, yelling, “You’ll knock the mortar loose!” We’d run inside, tennis rackets clattering to the ground. Our father would follow, hiccuping into a limping run to stop us from ruining his world.
The intruder has placed the towel on the bed, the white cotton towel blending with the white cotton comforter. He is shirtless, clean, wearing khaki pants and still no shoes. I notice the small hairs on the tops of his toes, like fine black threads. He clenches his feet into balls a few times. I am frozen, a commemorative coin of this moment, perched on the mantle of time.
There is a wooden box sitting heavy and silent on my bookshelf. I imagine my sister Sherry, young and wide-eyed, hands rough with fresh blisters from carving butterflies into wood at camp, breathing in the wild scent of pine and sweat. I was twenty then, at Seminary, lost in books on penance and priesthood, forgiveness and atonement. She made the box for my rosaries—a sister’s earnest gift for a brother drowning in thoughts of constant contrition.
That summer, I met Keet. He appeared as if summoned by heat and dust, emerging from the green shade with eyes dark as a deer’s, watching and unwatching, as if they took in everything yet asked for nothing. His eyes seemed to see beyond all this—beyond me, beyond the buzzing animal electricity of summer fields, beyond anything that wanted to own him.
We debated politics and prayer, and discussed the distance between the two. He adored the box Sherry made for me and would often trace the carving with his finger. Nudged by perfect fall weather in Massachusetts, I started jogging around campus in the mornings. Keet would join me. He was from Algiers and enjoyed cigarettes before our jogs, placing the half-smoked cigarette behind his ear while he laced his shoes. His crisp white shorts stood out against his tan skin and the black hairs on his legs. Our silences while jogging revealed more than our conversations. I’d catch his dark eyes tracing my face. We never spoke of love. He finished Seminary and moved to Scotland. He said he wouldn’t stay in touch. I stayed and finished my last two years at St. John’s, alone on my jogs, thinking of him every time I saw a half-smoked cigarette discarded near the curb or gutter.
“Tu me rends la vie très compliquée,” he would say to me sometimes after dinner in the dining hall or after a jog before class. I asked him what it meant, and he said, “Make your life more magical.” It wasn’t until I traveled to France years later that I found out it meant, “You’re making my life very hard.” Keet, lingering in our conversations, heading to his dorm room at the Seminary, the dark hallways opening to him, to me, like a mouth. I embarrass myself now, thinking how serious and rigid I was, how awkward and impatient when I felt misunderstood. How impossible I was to everyone I hated or desired.
The intruder is reaching for his shirt now—a white cotton oxford, freshly pressed. The snap of starch lingers in the air. I notice the ironing board pulled out of the hall closet, the anarchy of blue spray starch sitting on top, next to the iron, still steaming. The room feels impossibly warm. My creature comforts have been overridden by the intruder—shower steam meeting iron steam. The A/C is off on a July afternoon. The room is a pillory.
I walk through the doorway, placing my suit jacket on the slipper chair next to the bookshelf. The green velvet of the chair, covered by the tweed of my business life. The intruder stops buttoning his shirt.
I clear my throat. “You came back.”
“Of course. I always do.” He resumes buttoning his shirt, hesitating on the top button as though wondering if he might have gone too far.
“Thank you.”
