13

LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER OUR FIRST TUNING, CARS CHIRPED, and headlights flashed as we all dispersed from Howard and Jo’s. I glanced around for Kyle and noticed him walking off by himself down the street. I called his name and he stopped. I jogged over to him and asked if he was okay. He shrugged and took out his vape.

You left pretty suddenly, I said.

He took a puff, turned his head, and blew vanilla-scented smoke away from me—It’s just a lot to process.

We stood there, in the middle of the street, watching the others find their way to their cars. I asked him if he was still mad at me.

Why would I be mad at you?

I told him that it felt as if he had pulled away from me over the last few weeks. Sometimes we’d go a couple of days without messaging. I asked him if he was hurt that I hadn’t done more to help after his mom kicked him out.

He shook his head. No, it’s cool.

How has it been staying with Mark?

He shrugged.

Are you on the couch?

I don’t really want to talk about it.

I nodded. Okay. And then, after a silence, I said—I’m sorry. I feel like I failed you.

He breathed a little laugh out through his nose and shook his head—You’ve risked everything for me.

I’m not sure it’s made things any better for you.

Leslie’s car began to approach us, and we walked to the curb to clear the street. She gave us a little wave as she passed. We watched her red tail lights recede into the dark.

I miss our talks, Kyle said.

Me too.

He turned to look at me. His hair was plastered to his forehead. We had worked up quite the sweat during the tuning.

What did you think about all of this? he asked, nodding towards the house.

The tuning?

All of this, everything.

It occurred to me that it had been a very long time since Kyle and I had had a moment to ourselves to speak candidly about the group.

I think it’s pretty extraordinary, I said. Don’t you?

He nodded. I told him that it had kind of rearranged my whole frame of reference.

Does that scare you? he asked.

A little.

It scares me too.

Why do you think that is?

He considered this, as we watched Damian drive past in his pickup.

I think it’s scary to know how far we can be stretched. To feel pleasure like that. Because it means that maybe . . . the things that we thought contained us, don’t actually contain us. And that means everything is chaos.

But isn’t that also exciting?

He smiled, but left the question unanswered. Why does it scare you? he asked.

I feel um . . . I cocked my head to the side, searching for the words. Sort of . . . reshaped, by this. You know?

The whites of Kyle’s eyes glistened in the darkness.

And I guess in that reshaping I worry that some part of myself will be lost, I said.

What do you have to lose? he asked, which made me laugh.

You mean that I haven’t already?

You don’t believe in God.

This isn’t about God, I said.

Isn’t it?

I shook my head. No.

It’s certainly about something larger than ourselves.

Maybe.

Is that why you’re holding back? he asked.

I’m not holding back, I said, a little defensive.

Yes you are. I watch you in there. There’s a part of you that doesn’t want to let go. Doesn’t want to give in.

He balanced on one foot on the curb for a moment. I like that part of you, he said. But that’s also your fear. You’re afraid of what might happen if you give yourself over completely. But I know you want to.

He stepped down off the curb. And so do I, he said.

The street was empty now. The others must have driven away without us noticing. I told him, for the record, that losing one’s disbelief in God was still losing something.

And are you? he asked.

No. I don’t know.

I thought about it for a moment. I told him that it felt a bit like I had been living in this small room my whole life, and then Howard and Jo opened this door to another room, and we had taken just the smallest step into it. And the new room was dark and massive. I couldn’t even see its walls. Maybe there were no walls; maybe it was boundless. But I knew that all I wanted was to be in that new room.

Kyle looked at me. I want to be in that room with you, he said.

He then took a step towards me, coming inches from my face. I could smell vanilla smoke on his breath. He closed his eyes, and leaned in—and I stepped back.

Sorry, he said, opening his eyes, suddenly self-conscious. I shouldn’t have done that.

Why did you?

He looked over his shoulder, and then turned back, brow furrowed—Because um. Well. I love you, basically.

My mouth opened of its own accord, but I said nothing.

I-I don’t mean that I’m in love with you, obviously, he said, suddenly an awkward teenager again. Or maybe not obviously, I don’t know. But I love you. And not like a teacher, or a friend, or a mother, or anything romantic, it’s not like any of that. But it’s something sort of between all of those things. Something there isn’t a name for. I don’t even care if you love me back but I just needed to tell you—

I do, I said, without thinking; without ever having admitted it to myself before then. I loved this possibly gay seventeen-year-old former student of mine in the same unnameable way he had just described, which, by acknowledging, meant that I was so much further gone than even I had thought myself to be.

He made a little laugh of relief, and looked down. He kicked a stone into the darkness—So where does that leave us?

I don’t know, I said.

Standing on this street, I guess.

I guess.

I don’t want to go yet, he said. I know we can’t just stand here but, um. I kind of just want to keep talking.

I nodded, because I wasn’t ready to drive home to an empty house. He suggested going to the nearby park, and I told him that I didn’t think it was appropriate for us to be hanging around a dark park together after midnight.

And when’s the last time we’ve done what’s appropriate? he asked.

I smiled but stood my ground.

What are you afraid of? You are filled with the sound of the fucking Earth, Claire, you can do anything, you can be and say and do whatever you want because you have felt it, you have touched it, and you know how good it can be.

He then told me that he wanted to tune with me.

We don’t know how, I said.

Of course we do, we just did.

But not alone.

If we want to enough we will, we’ll figure it out.

He looked at me and he could see that I did. I wanted to feel it with him again; that ecstatic connectedness.

Please, he urged. Who’s going to stop us? Who will even know?

We’re probably being watched in the street right now, I said. This conversation. The fact that I’m not already at my car driving away.

So we better make a decision.

I shook my head, and looked down. He asked me what I was thinking. I told him that I thought we were in a very vulnerable and unstable moment in our lives, and that I didn’t want to regret this.

Step into the new room, Claire, he said, starting to walk off while holding my gaze. There are no walls anymore.

The park bordered the back fields of the high school. Besides a small playground, and some bike paths, large swaths of it remained wild, making it a favourite spot for dog walkers and birdwatchers. We walked through the darkness, with only our phones to light our way. The sky was empty that night; no moon, and no stars. Just temporary constellations appearing and disappearing around us in the blinking of fireflies. Just the smell of mud, and wet sage, the sound of cricket song, and our feet rustling through the underbrush, snapping twigs and branches. Kyle said he could traverse the park with his eyes closed, and I joked that we pretty much were. He seemed to be leading us somewhere in particular, and I let him take me. I suddenly felt utterly unburdened by obligation. I had nowhere to be but here. No family to return home to. No job to wake up early for in the morning. I could stay out all night in this park with Kyle, and no one would know, and no one would care.

We arrived at a thicket of bushes and he parted some branches to reveal a narrow path. He walked through first, and held the branches back so that they didn’t smack me in the face.

Careful where you step, he said. The ground was uneven, and raised roots snagged my feet, causing me to trip towards him. I put my hand on his shoulder and kept it there, so I could focus on looking down at the ground. We walked for what felt like three or four minutes, deep into the overgrowth.

God, what is that incredible smell? I asked.

Juniper.

He broke off a twig and handed it to me. I brought it to my nose.

Smells like a clear blue sky, I said. Or the colour indigo.

Or gin.

Oh yes, of course. You know, I bet I’m thinking of the Bombay Sapphire bottle, I said, laughing.

We’re almost there. He then asked me if I was okay, and I said sure, why? There’s nothing to be nervous about, he said.

I’m not.

Your hand is trembling.

And then I realized that he was right. He offered to turn back, but I said no. A moment later, we arrived in a small clearing, in the middle of which sat an orange family-sized camping tent.

Voila, Kyle said, gesturing like a doorman welcoming me into the foyer of a grand hotel.

Aha.

One sec.

He dashed into the tent and turned on several portable lanterns until the tent was glowing, warm and luminous. I saw his silhouette moving about inside, like a shadow puppet. I crossed the clearing, and poked my head into the tent.

Oh my god, I murmured, astonished.

Inside, the tent was fully furnished—an air mattress, quilts and pillows, makeshift shelving made out of bricks and boards, stacks of books, two lamps complete with fabric shades, pots and pans, bowls and cups, a portable stove, a metal basin, plastic jugs of water, an old traveller’s trunk, an amateurish painting of a horse in a gilded frame, and a tattered Persian carpet on the floor.

Cozy, isn’t it, he said.

How did you do this? I asked, marvelling, stepping inside, hunched over.

Luke and me built it in grade eleven, he replied. We’d come and smoke during our spares. But I just kept adding to it.

Look at all these books, I said, marvelling at his collection. At the top of one stack was his weathered and beaten copy of The Magic Mountain.

Did you ever finish it? I asked, picking it up.

The essay?

No, I know you never finished the essay.

I did so, he said, indignant but smiling. I suppose it would’ve been nearly impossible for him to pass the class had he not. He and I had never talked about my replacement at school, or really anything to do with school. We had a sort of unspoken agreement to avoid the subject altogether. Perhaps I let myself imagine he had never finished the essay as it was just easier for me to believe that. The thought of another teacher reading it caused a kind of jealousy-limned sadness to come over me, which I knew was ridiculous. Perhaps sensing this, he told me that it wasn’t very good.

I’m sure it was.

No it really wasn’t, trust me. I just phoned it in.

I told him that I was still working my way through the book. He looked surprised, and said he didn’t realize I was reading it.

Didn’t I tell you? I sat down on the air mattress, my back already starting to ache from bending over. I’ve been listening to the audiobook, I said.

Really? he said, crouching down beside me.

Well. I’ve slowed down a bit lately.

I told him that I had listened up to the passage where Hans Castorp gets caught in the blizzard and slips into a kind of death-bound reverie. His disoriented visions grow progressively darker until they culminate in the ritualistic slaughter of a child by two ancient, cultic priestesses. That’s where I stopped, I said.

Oh but that part’s so good.

Yeah, well—there isn’t always an overlap between good literature and what I wish to put into my head before bed.

Kyle said that sequence made him think about how nature is neither kind nor cruel, but simply a force which is. It sustains life and destroys it, and is beyond our capacity to comprehend or control. And yet we always try. Again and again.

I smiled at his philosophizing, and told him that maybe I should try listening to the book when I wasn’t half asleep.

Speaking of listening—He walked over to the trunk and pulled out an old battery-powered CD player. He sat it on the makeshift shelf, put in a disc, and pressed play. A jazz song kicked off with a plucky piano and a punchy trumpet line.

Well you’ve really thought of everything, I said.

Just the essentials.

Who is this? I asked.

Charles Mingus. Do you know him? I told him yes, I did, my grandmother was a jazz fanatic. This is his album East Coasting, he said. From 1953.

Kyle extended his hand to me in an invitation to dance but I declined, with a laugh—there was no room!—so he did a dorky and endearing little jig. I caught glimpses of the old man and the young boy who both inhabited him. He appeared to know the track by heart, anticipating its ebbs and flows. I couldn’t imagine he had ever dared show this side of himself to any of his friends; at least not the ones I knew. Though sometimes I wondered how many friends he really had, or good ones, at least. He seemed both well-liked and utterly aloof. Had anyone even been calling around, wondering where he was? Was anyone worried about him? He dropped down beside me on the mattress.

Please tell me you’re not living here, I said.

He looked around, like a proud homeowner—I think it’s rather nice.

This is not—My chest felt leaden. For how long?

It’s been a while now.

I shook my head. It’s not right. You can’t—

What? What can’t I do? he asked, with quiet defiance.

I was suddenly outside of myself, looking at us sitting in that tent, in the thicket behind the back field of the school where I was once a teacher, and he was once my student, back in a time when both of us had families, and I was suddenly struck by just how much The Hum had stripped from us.

I landed a summer job at the Best Buy, he said, flatly. I’m making money. I have what I need.

Yeah, except running water.

I can shower at the gym.

I told him that was madness, considering I lived in a practically empty four-bedroom house just six blocks away. He could have an entire bathroom to himself. He looked down and picked at a bit of fluff on one of the ratty wool blankets we were sitting on—I can’t just move in with you.

I’m not asking you to.

So then what happens tomorrow night? And the night after that? You going to kick me out? he asked, and I shook my head. Exactly, so then I’ll just be living with you.

Would that be so bad? I asked. He gave me a wary look. What?

It’s not appropriate, he said, and I smiled to hear my own word echoed back to me.

And letting you sleep in a park, is that appropriate? I asked. He shrugged. It’s also not safe, I said, and he laughed dismissively.

Wolves?

Drug deals, I said, for instance. He batted away the suggestion. Kyle, I’m worried about you.

Then go, he said, suddenly cross, and gesturing to the half-opened tent flap. I don’t need you to be my fucking mother.

Okay.

You’re going?

I won’t be your fucking mother.

We sat there in strained silence, letting the piano and trumpets do the talking.

I like it here, he said, eventually. I actually prefer it. And listen.

He leaned over and turned off the music, and we sat there listening. The Hum penetrated the night. The air seemed to vibrate with it. It’s strong out here, isn’t it? he said.

I can almost feel it in the ground, I replied.

Though even more noticeable to me in that moment, more than The Hum or the crickets, was the sound of our breathing. Kyle glanced at me and then slowly stood up. Stooped over, his head pushed into the top of the tent. He kicked off his shoes, and then casually pulled his t-shirt over his head to take it off.

I’m still soaked from the tuning, he said. He rooted around the tent for something to change into. His chest was smooth and ivory white. I could see the indents of each of his ribs. I heard Ashley’s words scrawny stoner in my head. His abs were clearly definable, but more from virtue of his sheer skinniness. With his back turned to me, he unbuttoned his jeans, pulled them down, and sort of awkwardly stomped out of them, until he was wearing just his baggy navy boxer shorts. I looked down and picked up the record sleeve to read.

My posture isn’t very good, he said. I looked back up, as he pulled on a pair of grey sweatpants, still shirtless. He tried to straighten his back a little, pushing his head further up through the tent. I’m working on it, he said. I’m worried I have scoliosis.

I smiled and reassured him that I highly doubted it. He then lifted his left arm, sniffed, and apologized—One downside is the shower situation. It’s hard to keep up my usual . . . freshness.

You’re usually fresh? I asked, eyebrow cocked.

Wouldn’t you say?

That’s not the word that comes to mind.

He laughed. Oh yeah, what is?

Mmm . . . musky.

What, like a-a dusty old attic?

No, not musty. I chuckled. Musky.

Oh, I was going to say …

Like the smell of the earth.

Or maybe more like the air after thunder. Or a birch, peeled of its bark. A thing can only ever be described in relation to something else. One body described by another. He stood there in front of me shirtless, neither performative nor self-conscious, as if daring me to study him. I suddenly felt as if I was in a different Mann novel altogether, on a beach, considering a beguiling Polish youth. Without another word, Kyle knelt down on the carpet facing me. And I moved off the air mattress and down onto my knees on the blanketed ground, facing him. And without ever touching one another, we closed our eyes, and gradually relinquished ourselves to the frequency of the Earth; to the most intense and bracing pleasure I have ever known.

Afterwards, I lay awake trying to gather myself until morning light began to seep through the tent’s translucent walls. Another night with barely any sleep. But I was not tired. I had never felt more awake. Strangely, I felt little guilt or approbation over what we had done. It was not sex. It was an intimacy unlike any I had experienced. To say sex and tuning were akin because they both invoked intimacy and pleasure was to say rain was akin to an ocean, or breath was akin to wind. Lying there now in my sports bra and pants, without shoes and without a shirt, basking in a night’s worth of accumulated body heat—the scene had all of the trappings of violation, transgression, obscenity. And yet I felt none of those things. I lay there in a wholly different kind of afterglow, thinking about limits. The limits we imposed upon ourselves, and the limits nature imposed. What were the limits of nature? I was aware of Kyle’s chest slowly rising and falling beside me. We were cocooned in separate, mouldering sleeping bags that smelt of bygone camping trips. Mine had some sand in it; probably from some childhood excursion to a canyon, or a beach.

Kyle took a deep breath and stirred; stretching as far as his sleeping bag would allow before opening his eyes. What time is it? he asked, with the groggy languor of a bear cub.

I checked my phone. Just after six, I said. I sat up and suddenly felt very light-headed. I rubbed my face, reached for one of the plastic jugs of lukewarm water, and took a sip. I looked down at Kyle; he was lying there, eyes half closed, on the verge of falling back asleep. He smiled up at me and I smiled back, and sank down into my sleeping bag. We lay there for a long while, watching the shadows of bugs fly over the tent. I could hear a bee buzzing and gently thwapping the sides of the tent with its bulbous body. Performing its sacred, life-sustaining duties. Using the Resonance for its intricate, internal navigation system. Kyle told me that you could cure hay fever by ingesting honey made by bees from the local pollen affecting you.

Really? That astounded me, and yet, the natural world was full of miracles. Miracles we once knew, and had forgotten or mislaid.

He then turned his head to look at me, across a mountain ridge of quilts and pillows—Last night was surreal.

It was, I replied. And very—

Intense.

Very.

He reached over and wiped sleep away from my eyes. He then asked if we had done something wrong. I considered how to give words to what I had spent the last few hours turning over in my head. I told him no. We didn’t hurt anyone. We didn’t break any law.

But tuning, without the others . . . are we keeping something from them?

As I lay there, considering his question, it struck me that the world was filled with an almost unbearably beautiful and limitless grace, and it was only we who were limited, in our capacity to perceive it. And just as no one possessed that grace, no one possessed our capacity to perceive it.

It’s ours to do with what we want, I said. He nodded and seemed satisfied with this answer. I eventually rallied myself out of my sleeping bag. He sat propped up on his elbows, watching me pull my shirt and shoes back on. I tried to convince him to come back to my house for a shower, and a proper breakfast. He refused, as I knew he would. I took a step towards the tent flap and unzipped it. Well, I said, you know where to find me if you need me.