The Weather Report

by >>Jae

The first time Mark sleeps with Sam, it's raining.

It's not a hard rain. Mark kind of likes a driving rain, or a storm. The people who show up for burials during a downpour all look grimly satisfied as they stand soaking beneath their umbrellas, as if for once the world has acknowledged their grief. He even kind of likes digging on those days, likes the way it feels to sink his boots into the mud while water streams over his face, like he's a farmer or a miner or something in one of the movies they show sometimes on the Lifetime channel. Sometimes, if nobody's watching them, he'll yell, "Come on, Eliza, we've got to get these crops in before the flood," looking over his shoulder to see the clueless look on Dave's face. Mostly, though, when it's raining that hard he doesn't do anything at all, just sits in the gatehouse with Dave or under the arch of one of the mausoleums and smokes up and waits for the rain to stop.

The first time Mark sleeps with Sam, it's not raining that hard.

It's just drizzling, chilly and half-hearted. Mark can barely feel it as it falls, but somehow by the end of the day it's weighing him down. Everybody's pissed when it rains like that, and everything breaks and takes twice as long to fix. By the time he's headed home, all he wants is to spend fifteen minutes standing under warm water that he can turn off whenever he wants, and to get high.

Sam is standing out front of his house when he gets there. She's leaning against the wall next to her bike, which is one of those old-fashioned ones with a pink banana seat and a basket. The stupid-ass bike is one of the things he hates about her, the way everything about her is so deliberate and quirky and young. He told that to Large a couple of weeks ago, when Large called him from LA to tell him to be nice to Sam. "It makes me worry about you a little, man," Mark told him, "she's awfully Japanese schoolgirl-y."

"She's not Japanese," Large said, and then, "This from a guy who's still living with his mom and smoking pot every day." Mark didn't say anything, and Large said, "Listen, I'll be back next weekend -

"I've heard that before," Mark said, and Large was quiet long enough for Mark to realize that it wasn't Large just watching TV for a second or eating or something, it was a silence. An awkward one. "I meant when you said it like two weeks ago," Mark said, and Large laughed, a whoosh of air that was almost more like a sigh. It was awkward, too.

"What's with all the back and forth, anyway?" Mark said. "I mean, not like I care," because he didn't, not really, all those years since Large had left the first time and Mark had never cared. But Large had come back a couple of times now, and Mark still wasn't used to it. In his experience, people didn't come back, not for real. They left and scattered, floated away into memory and then even farther. Parts of them drifted in occasionally, high school reunions and parents' funerals, but their real lives were idling somewhere else, waiting for them. Or else people didn't leave at all. They just stayed, sinking down slowly into their own footprints, like his boots in the mud when it rained. That's what people did, until Large came back.

"I don't know," Large said. "It's harder than you'd think, to let go of something that you didn't even want in the first place. It's just - you get so used to not wanting."

There was another silence, then Large said, "I'm coming back, though, like I was saying. But I can only stay for three days this time, and she doesn't have a lot of - just be nice to her for me, okay?"

"I don't really know how," Mark said.

Large laughed and said, "Thanks, asshole," but he must not have believed him, because Sam started turning up a couple of days later.

"Hey," Mark says, and Sam follows him into the house silently. When Mark gets out of the shower, she's sitting on the couch with the cat in her lap, scratching its stomach. She smiles at him. For a girl who can't shut up when Large is around, she's pretty quiet with Mark. Mark doesn't mind, really, because he doesn't know what the hell to talk to her about either. He says what he always says.

"You want to get high?"

She says, "Sure," like she always does.

Sam follows him into his bedroom and sits down on the floor, leaning against his bed. Mark shuts the door. The first time they smoked up together in his room, Mark said, "Are you sure you can do this?"

"What - sure," Sam said. "Why?"

"I mean, because of the -" and Mark rolled his eyes back in his head and jerked around. When he stopped lurching and looked at her, Sam was watching him steadily, and he thought maybe something was shining in her eyes. He wondered if maybe Large wasn't supposed to tell him that, and then he thought, Well, hell, if she doesn't have a sense of humor she should just bail right now. He didn't have a chance to tell her that, though, because Sam laughed suddenly, light and clear and it wasn't even forced.

"Just to be safe," she said, "I'll wear my helmet." When she jumped up to get her backpack she twisted strangely, in a way Mark had never seen before, and it was just so odd and clumsy and brave that for one fast pure moment all Mark wanted was to die. Then she turned back to him, the stupid helmet tied underneath her chin, and draped a pillowcase over Mark's head so he'd have a hat too. When Mark laughed, his throat hurt with a dull relentless scratch.

When they're good and baked they slump back against the bed, their legs flopped out in front of them like they don't quite connect to the rest of their bodies. Sam slides down, insistent inch by inch, until she's pressed against Mark's side with her head on his shoulder. The first time they did this together, Mark had pulled away, then relaxed back into her when she didn't move.

"We're like cats," Sam had said then.

"Meow," Mark said, but Sam kept talking over him.

"Like when you've got a cat, and you go over to someone else's house and their cats start rubbing up against you. We can smell him on each other."

"Gross," Mark said. "I took a shower today," and they laughed and leaned into each other. Mark closed his eyes. His throat hurt.

Now Sam laughs when he starts coughing. "I think I'm catching a cold," he says when he stops. "From being out in the rain all day."

"Oh, I'm sure that's it," Sam says, and waves the smoke away dramatically.

"No, seriously," Mark says. "My throat's been killing me all day. It's like I've got this itch, like something's scratching just below the surface, you know how that is? Like there's something under there, and it hasn't come out yet, but it's gonna, you know?"

"Like an egg," Sam says. "Like a baby chicken, scratching to get out of its egg."

"It doesn't feel like a chicken," Mark says. "It hurts too much for that."

"Maybe not a chicken," Sam says dreamily. "Maybe it's like a dragon, a what do you call it? A Komodo dragon. I saw this thing once, and they come out of eggs, too, just like chickens. But bigger. And the mother leaves them there, and when the baby dragons start clawing their way out, they're so hungry that if anything's around them, they'll eat it. Sometimes they even eat each other, if there's nothing else around. It takes them a long time to get hatched, so by the time they finally get out, they're really hungry."

Sam looks at him for a moment, then leans forward and says, "That's a lie."

"I don't -"

"I mean, about the dragons," Sam says. "I made it up. Not the egg part but the other thing." She puts her hand on his leg and Mark stands up quickly. "The hunger," she says.

Mark says, "I'm going to get something to drink."

He closes the door behind him and leans against the kitchen sink, gulping down a big glass of water while the faucet runs.

When he goes back into his room, Sam is perched on the bed, hugging her knees. She looks at him like she's trying to figure something out. Mark's voice is fake and soft as he tries to slide it past his sore throat. "Hey, listen, I think I'm going to -"

Sam says, her voice open and raw and brave, "Every time he leaves again, I think he's not coming back."

Mark doesn't say anything. He stands against the closed door and watches as Sam starts to cry, messily, her whole body shaking with it. Mark slides down until he's sitting, still watching, and he still doesn't say anything. He doesn't know how. Sam rolls over to her side, her face to the wall, and he watches Sam's back as sobs shudder over her like tiny earthquakes.

When Sam has cried herself to sleep, Mark gets up and lets himself out carefully. His mom is home from work, sitting on the couch with the TV on but the sound turned all the way down. When she sees his face she says, "Sweetie, what -" and Mark says, "Shh," before he can catch himself.

His mother doesn't finish what she was saying. She just looks at him for a long time, not all concerned mother eyes like some bitch in a TV show, but like she's just figured something out about him and she's deciding whether or not she likes it. "We're not doing anything," Mark says finally. "Jesus. I'm not fucking her."

"Sometimes things happen that you don't intend for them to happen," she says. "Sometimes things happen by accident."

"Oh no they don't," Mark says. "Not things like sleeping with your friend's girl. They don't happen by accident, people just say they do because they don't want to say they did it because they wanted. They don't want to know that about themselves. But I'll tell you one thing, if I fuck her - and I'm not going to, but if I did, it wouldn't be by accident. That shit's for addicts and cowards. Jesus, give me a little credit."

"I do," she says. "And I believe you. And I think if you and Sam -" she pauses, and Mark knows for a certain fact it's not because she's never said the word fuck before - "did that, it would be an accident."

"Whatever," he says, and starts to walk by her.

"She's not what you want," she says.

"Whatever," he says, but he sits down heavily on the couch next to her. He doesn't look at her, though. For the first time in his life he's a little scared of his mom. She hasn't tried to get him to do the real estate tapes in weeks, and if she's fallen for any more scams she hasn't told him about them. Three nights ago she stood in the kitchen while he was watching TV and said, like she was just talking out loud, not to anybody in particular, just thinking things through, "I think I'm going to have a little money in about a month. Uncle Kenny said he'd give me his old truck because it wasn't hardly worth the trade-in, and I bet I could get three grand, maybe a little more, if I sold mine."

"Crazy ladies talk to themselves," Mark had said.

"So there'd be some money," she said, like she hadn't heard him. "If you needed it - if you wanted it. To start with," she said. "If you wanted to leave."

Mark had turned around then, kneeling up on the couch and leaning on the back. His mother was staring over his head, at something just above the TV. "I thought we had this covered," he said. "Just let me do things my own way, all right? I don't rush you."

His mom looked at him then. "Yeah," she said. "Maybe someone should have," and she walked outside quickly, letting the screen door swing shut behind her.

"Sweetie," she says, when Mark reaches behind him and pulls the door open just to hear it bang shut. She's turned sideways on the couch to look at him. She wraps a hand around his and he says, "Don't," and it's that fake voice again, soft and pathetic. Even to himself he sounds weak. He covers his throat with his hand and says, "I think I'm getting a cold."

His mom puts a hand over his forehead to check for fever, then slides her fingers up into his hair and tilts his head down. She kisses his forehead, then lets him go. "Okay," she says.

When Mark goes back into his room, Sam is still sleeping. She's spread out a little, her head on the pillow and her back arched into a curve. Mark can hear her soft uneven breaths and above them the whisper of rain on the roof. The third time Sam had come to him it had been raining, not a hard rain but a drizzle like today, and he'd been pissed off and she'd been silent and finally he'd said to her, "I don't even like you. Why do you even come here?"

Sam didn't even have to think about it. "Because you're the only one who misses him." Mark started to shrug and she said, "Who misses him the way I do."

Mark did shrug at that. He wasn't even sure he did miss Large, exactly. All those years he'd been gone and Mark had barely thought about him, and now he wasn't sure he even had a good enough idea of who Large was now to miss him. But Large came back and now every time he left again Mark felt that tearing in his throat, that same insistent scratch beneath the surface, and he knew there was something he was missing. It wasn't Large, maybe, or at least not the real Large but an imaginary version of him, one that had never existed outside Mark's head. It wasn't Large at all, maybe, but an imaginary version of himself, a Mark who had never existed anywhere at all but who he was just now thinking maybe could have. He was just now starting maybe to want to.

Mark eases himself onto the bed and lies on his side without touching Sam, his head on the same pillow and his body curving out from hers. It's the first time he's slept with a woman he isn't fucking, with anyone, really, since he was a little boy sneaking into his mother's bed. Late at night, during thunderstorms, he used to creep into her room, looking for comfort, maybe, or for something else that he never really believed he'd find. He never did find anything but an empty space bigger than he'd ever be, one that he knew wasn't his to fill. That didn't stop him from crawling into the sheets, curling up still and small, his throat sore and swollen with things he didn't have the words to want. He knew that if he just made enough noise, if he cried or called his mother's name, she'd wake up. She'd hug him and they'd sit up in bed and watch TV together until it stopped raining.

He never did wake her. Instead he'd lie on his side, close to his mother but not touching her, and match his breathing to hers, over and over, long slow exhalations that strained his chest and never quite put him to sleep. If he lay there long enough, the sound of their breathing together would almost drown out the beating of the rain on the roof. He'd whisper words into it, although even back then he didn't really think anyone was listening. "The rain's gonna stop," he'd breathe, in as his chest rose, out as it fell. "In the morning, the rain's gonna stop." If he whispered the words long enough, eventually they'd dissolve along with his fear, first into sound and then into sleep. Sometimes when he woke up in the morning, they had even come true.

Mark lies down next to Sam, breathing with her long and slow. He closes his eyes and whispers the way he used to when he was a little boy, over and over, so low he's never really believed anyone else would be able to hear it.

"He's coming back," Mark breathes. "He's coming back."