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O’Hare is swarming with travelers as Jimmy weaves his way down the terminal concourse, duffel bag over one shoulder, dodging frantic families who rush to and from flights beneath the curved glass ceiling. He passes the baggage carousels, and the dead-eyed travelers who wait before them, and the cab drivers with their lettered signs, until eventually he emerges from the airport.
It’s early Wednesday evening and already dark, and, as Jimmy waits at the taxi rank, he draws his jacket tighter around himself—the heavy leather jacket it’s never quite gotten cold enough in Albuquerque for him to wear. Little kids bundled up in scarves and knit hats bounce on the sidewalk or spin with mittened hands around the pole of a ‘No Parking’ sign.
Jimmy’s breath ghosts in front of him, crystal vapor. He tucks his palms beneath his armpits and rocks on the balls of his feet, watching yellow cabs cruise slowly along the bay, picking up travelers and then peeling off, roof lights now dark. He feels like everything around him should be more familiar than it is, but the truth is that he hasn’t flown into Chicago very often, and, if he has waited outside this specific terminal before, he can’t remember it.
Eventually, he slides into the warm interior of a cab. He gives his mother’s address then settles down in the backseat, staring out his window at the industrial buildings surrounding the airport freeway and the other cars flashing past in the lane beside them. The taxi driver has the radio on low, top forty songs playing just outside of Jimmy’s hearing.
For the longest time, Jimmy had thought that returning to Chicago would make Albuquerque feel like a dream. Instead, the world out his window seems the dreamlike one, viewed for the first time through eyes that have become accustomed to the shape of other things.
But what strikes him the most, as now rooftops and housing blocks begin to drift lazily through his view, is how this place actually feels like a city. Unlike Albuquerque, where no matter where he went it had always seemed as if the open desert was just there, just behind the next row of buildings, desolate and empty and waiting. Here, he can tell the streets stretch on forever: mile after mile of marked-out grids, of districts and suburbs, of urban sprawl.
Here, the city has won against the land.
Jimmy wonders what it would be like to grow up in a place where you can walk from one end of the town to the other, where you can know the name of every street and recognize everyone you see.
The taxi turns off the freeway, and they slow, driving beneath train tracks, passing red-brick buildings and scrap yards, wild green growth that climbs the fences and curbs. Jimmy feels a smile dawn on his face as it all unfolds before him: empty lots filled with tousled grass, late-night bars and squat manufacturing plants, roads he’s driven on and walked down thousands of times before—Cicero.
It’s so familiar his stomach aches for it.
But then, of course, just as he finishes that thought, the taxi approaches something else. The jagged scar on the district. The space that, until a few years ago, had been filled by the Hawthorne Works—the enormous Western Electric factory, the city within the city. One time colossal, spanning blocks, employing tens of thousands of workers, now nothing.
And Jimmy suddenly realizes that he had rebuilt the factory in his memory while he was gone, had restored the enormous tower to the corner of Cicero and Cermak where it had once risen to a dark-tiled point above the colossal red-brick buildings. The guidepost he had once used to navigate, the beacon that had meant he was almost home.
Now there’s only a strip mall. He watches it go by, the area huge and empty. A gap in space.
The taxi leaves the main road and cuts in between side roads until the driver hangs a right into his mother’s street—Jimmy’s street.
And Jimmy leans forward, peering through the windscreen as they approach. “Just up here is fine,” he says after a moment, and the driver pulls to a stop. Jimmy pays the fare and steps out, shouldering his duffel bag again. He exhales in puffs of glowing vapor.
The streetlamps here are muffled and yellow, hazing at the edges. They line a street of narrow houses, built for height, with thin yards and pointed rooftops. The architecture is mismatched: some houses brick, others not, some with small porches and others with front garages. Tall trees, old and curling, rise from the grass parkway.
His mother’s house is white weatherboard with a steep roof and a dark blue door atop a narrow stoop. Out a square window on the second story shines an orange light, diffuse through lace curtains.
Jimmy huffs again, ice-breathed. The neighbors two doors down have cut their hedges way back, and their house looks strange and exposed, but all else seems unchanged from his childhood. He revels in the familiar closeness of everything: of walls and front doors and fences. If he squints, he can almost see Marco’s uncle’s old place, all the way at the end of the block.
There’s a soft rumble of a train passing on the tracks that sprawl behind the backyards of the houses opposite his mother’s. Then the muted, breathy sound of a whistle blowing.
Jimmy cups his hands and exhales into them hollowly. He rubs his palms together. Beyond the continued hum of the train engine, he almost thinks he can hear voices from the house before him, loud and vibrant in conversation. He crouches, unzips his bag and pulls out a bottle of wine wrapped in cellophane, then closes the bag and stands with it slung against his hip.
He walks down the garden path and up the stoop and knocks on the front door of his childhood home.
“Jimmy,” Chuck says, standing in the threshold, the door pulled back. He’s still in a suit, though his tie is loosened and his top button undone. “You made it.”
“I almost got stampeded at the airport, but—yeah,” Jimmy says, wiping his feet and stepping over the threshold. He sets his duffel down in the entryway, inhaling the familiar smell of the house, washing powder and dust. It’s warm inside, and the heat hits him like a wall. He rubs his hands up and down his arms, getting the circulation going, then looks around. “Where’s Mom?”
“Living room,” Chuck says, holding his hands out for Jimmy’s jacket.
Jimmy shrugs out of it and lets Chuck take it. “How long’ve you been here?” he asks.
“—is that Jimmy?” his mother’s voice calls, distant.
“—about a half hour,” Chuck says, waving a hand. “Just getting settled in.”
“Hiya, Mom!” Jimmy calls back toward the living room, slipping off his shoes and grinning at Chuck. “So how about you? Good flight?”
Chuck closes his eyes briefly. “We sat on the tarmac for an hour,” he says.
“Oh no,” Jimmy says, just as a jingling bell sounds, and a little speckled cat trots around a corner. He crouches down and scritches behinds Delilah’s ears. “Hello, old buddy.”
Delilah presses her head up into his hand, trying to rub her cheek on his fingers.
“Aw, yeah, I missed you too,” Jimmy murmurs.
With a shuffle of footsteps, his mother appears at the end of the hallway. Jimmy’s chest tightens at the sight of her, and suddenly he regrets letting Chuck convince him to go straight to Albuquerque all those months ago, because she looks so much older than he remembers—though it can’t have been more than a couple of years since he last saw her in person.
And like a stone sinking in his gut, he’s hit with the realization of all the time he spent hiding, the last five-going-on-six years, avoiding his mother in the same city as her, less than half an hour away.
So he stays where he is in the entryway, crouched and frozen, for longer than he should, as she approaches.
Until—“Mom,” he says, forcing himself to his feet.
Ruth smiles, reaching for him and gripping his upper arms. She looks him over assessingly. “I like this,” she says, brushing his bangs lightly, then she squeezes his arms and then releases him. “You look good.”
“So do you,” Jimmy says warmly. His mother goes to step away but he holds his arms out, and she moves into them. She smells of unplaceable things—familiar and intangible, like mornings.
Ruth rubs him on his back and then moves away again. “Come, come,” she says, reaching for Jimmy’s bag, but he grabs it himself and shoulders it again. She beckons for him to follow her into the family room through an open arch off the entryway. “We’ve put Rebecca’s mother in your old room, so you’ll be down here, if that’s all right…”
Jimmy hums in agreement, dropping his bag beside the foldout sofa. A set of sheets and a comforter rest on it tidily. “Betty’s here?” he asks.
His mother nods, and she straightens a folded blanket. Smooths out the wool with the palm of her hand. “There’s more blankets in the closet upstairs if you get cold later,” she says.
Jimmy nods.
“But of course you knew that,” Ruth says softly.
“Right,” he says. He glances around at the old television, the cabinet of dusty video tapes. The striped wallpaper that hasn’t changed since he was a kid. The shuttered window to the front yard. Then back to his mother, who hovers beside the foldout couch. “This is good,” he adds. “Thank you.”
Ruth shakes her head. “It’s a bit shabby in here—”
“No, it’s good,” Jimmy says. He gives a little laugh. “Reminds me of when Grammy and Pop and the cousins would be over, and me and Chuck would have to sleep in here…”
Ruth chuckles lightly. “I think you two drove each other a little bit crazy, those times.”
“Yeah, well,” Jimmy says, shrugging. “Of course.”
Ruth gives the folded blanket another light pat. Then she nods, and leads him back through to the entryway and down the main hallway. A new stair lift has been installed on the stairs up to the second floor.
His mother sighs beside him, slowing to a stop. “I really should get that removed,” she says. “I can make it up there on my own again now.”
Jimmy’s gaze flicks unconsciously down at her knee, hidden beneath a long skirt, then back to the stair lift.
“Ugly thing,” Ruth adds. “Governments have moved faster than it.”
Chuck appears through the doorway to the kitchen, an apron now over his suit. “Best to play it safe though, Mom. You never know when you might need it again.”
“Honey, I had the operation so I could be more active, not the other way around,” Ruth says mildly.
But Chuck just shakes his head. “Listen, are you drinking, Mom? Do you want wine with dinner?”
“Oh! I brought some,” Jimmy says, glancing around: at his empty hands, back down the hallway into the entryway. His jacket is hanging on a hook, but no sign of the cellophane-wrapped wine.
“I put it in the pantry,” Chuck says, after a moment.
“Thank you for bringing it, Jimmy,” Ruth says, touching him lightly on the arm. “And yes, I think I’ll have a glass.”
Chuck inclines his head. “Jimmy?”
“Uh, sure,” Jimmy says, and he follows the two of them through into the open plan kitchen and dining area.
Rebecca is standing at the kitchen counter halving cherry tomatoes, she looks up at their entrance. “Hello, Jimmy,” she says, wiping her hands on a dish towel and moving around to their side. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too,” Jimmy says, as she gives him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. He takes in the kitchen, the chopping boards covered with vegetables, the salad spinner in the sink beneath the familiar orange 70’s tile. “Can I help with anything?”
“That’s okay,” Chuck says, moving past the counter. He lifts the lid on a pot of boiling water.
“I think we’re just about set; thank you, Jimmy,” Rebecca adds. “I made the pesto ahead of time so there’s really not much left to do, just throw it together with the pasta. It was one of our favorites on our trip last year, and so simple!” She turns to look at Chuck, who nods.
“And Mom’s not lifting a finger, either. Right, Mom?” Chuck says.
Ruth waves a dismissive hand.
Old Bing Crosby music is coming from the living room, and Jimmy spots the white-haired head of Rebecca’s mother bent over the record collection beside the stereo. He wanders past the dining table, already set with five places, toward the sound of the music, stepping around armchairs and approaching the old woman. “Good old Bing, huh?” he says, when he reaches her.
Betty looks up from the records and smiles. “I thought that was James I heard.” She bustles over and wraps him in a tight, lavender-scented hug.
“You know, I seem to remember telling you to call me Jimmy,” he says wryly, after she’s released him.
Betty whacks him lightly on the shoulder and returns to the records, flicking through them and humming to herself out-of-time with ‘Don’t Fence Me In’.
Dusty old photographs are arranged in wooden frames on the cabinet beside the stereo. Pictures of his parents on their wedding day, of the extended family, of his mother and her bridge club friends.
There’s a line of photos of Chuck at graduation ceremonies, wearing different colored gowns, though his brother’s expression is the same in each: smiling gently on mottled grey backgrounds. Chuck has always looked so much older to Jimmy, has always served as the marker of a grown adult, whether fourteen or forty; but looking at these graduation photos, his brother’s hair thick and blond and preppily parted, it suddenly strikes Jimmy how young Chuck is in most of them. Just a child, really—though with the kind of driving gaze that even through twenty years and picture-frame glass can convince you he’s host to all the wisdom of the world.
His father looks young, too, but in the way that people in black and white photographs look young—still aged somehow, still old at the edges. Charles McGill Sr. waves to the camera from the passenger seat of a car, his hand blurred; and, for the first time, something in his expression reminds Jimmy of Chuck, something in the lines around his eyes or his nose. Beside him, leaning against the open passenger door, is Jimmy’s mother, vibrantly frozen in a summer dress.
Jimmy moves further along the cabinet.
More than anyone else, there’s photos of himself. A small one of him and Marco, maybe eight years old, smiling cheekily at each other, hands stained with paint. Another of him on a new bicycle. One of him perched on a stool behind the counter at the store.
At his oldest in these photos, Jimmy is fifteen, still in high school, smiling up at the camera from where he sits cross-legged on the floor. He’s surrounded by wrapping paper, his hair almost down to his shoulders. It’s the only picture where he’s looking directly at the lens, and Jimmy picks it up absentmindedly, staring into his own eyes.
“Reliving the glory days?” Betty asks, moving beside him and looking down at the frame.
Jimmy gives a light chuckle. “I just always liked that shirt,” he says, pointing to the old Blazing Saddles t-shirt he’s wearing in the photograph.
“A relic,” Betty says. She drifts along the photos now herself, briefly adjusting one of Chuck and Rebecca on their wedding day, then one of a tiny Jimmy running along a beach. “You’re very cute in these.”
“Hah,” Jimmy says. “Thanks.”
“All gone now, of course, dear,” Betty says, stopping her perusal at a photograph of Jimmy reading a comic book in his bedroom. She turns to him. “Thank you for letting me use your old room. If you want to look through your things, you’re more than welcome. Just barge in, don’t mind me.”
Jimmy shakes his head. “No, that’s all right.” He sets down the photo of himself. “I hope Mom’s trashed most of it by now, anyway.”
Betty raises her eyebrows coyly. “I suppose you’ll have to open the door to find out.”
“Dinner!” Chuck calls then, and Jimmy turns back to see his brother walking out of the kitchen with an enormous dish of pasta.
Rebecca follows him with a bowl of salad in one hand and a bottle of white wine in the other.
“Now, we couldn’t find authentic parmesan on our way here,” Chuck says as they all wander over and get settled. “But there’s the processed stuff if, ah—required.” He sets a small can of the cheese down on the table and takes a seat at the end opposite Ruth, shuffling his chair inward.
“We brought this bottle back from our trip to Italy,” Rebecca says as she twists a corkscrew into the wine. “I thought it might be nice to have something special tonight, too.” She pops the cork and pours out the glasses.
Chuck passes down the bowl of pasta, and Jimmy serves himself some, then holds it for his mother, who smiles at him gently. She doesn’t talk much over dinner, but she listens, and the same gentle smile lingers on her face as Rebecca and Betty trade off recounting their earlier flight delays, and Chuck talks about one of his cases, and Jimmy cracks jokes about Albuquerque.
That night, they watch one of the Thin Man movies—the one with Jimmy Stewart. It’s wonderfully nostalgic, and Jimmy laughs at it louder than he normally would, reveling in Nick and Nora Charles. His mother looks tired on the sofa beside him, but she’s the only other one really paying attention to the film. Chuck is reading over some case files he’s brought with him, making notes on a legal pad, and Rebecca and her mother are talking between themselves over a deck of cards, though Jimmy can’t tell what game they’re playing.
Jimmy folds his legs up under him and leans his palm on his hand, sinking into the warmth of the living room.
“I remembered the name of that film,” Ruth says softly at one point, and Jimmy turns to make sure she’s talking to him.
At her silence, he says, “Film?”
“The one with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy,” she says, pointing to Loy playing with the little white dog. “I saw it playing again the other night, and I remembered it so I could tell you. It was The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.”
“Huh,” Jimmy says quietly. He taps his fingers on his cheek. “That’s not a very good title.”
Ruth hums. “I suppose it makes more sense if you know what a bobby-soxer is.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Yeah?” he prompts. “And?”
His mother shrugs. “Well, I imagine it’s someone who wears bobby socks.”
Jimmy laughs lightly, and his mother joins in—soft and musical. Chuck glances up at the two of them and frowns, then returns to his notes, pen scratching on the paper.
Nick and Nora banter on the television, and their little white dog runs laps around them. Jimmy watches the film until the credits roll and everyone heads upstairs for the night, leaving the downstairs quiet and darkened.
He flicks through the channels for a little while, lingering on a made-for-TV movie for a few minutes, but then he clicks the set off. Moves to the kitchen and fills a glass at the sink and then stands there, looking through into the living room, where the light from the streetlamps outside shines through the curtains.
In the distance, a train passes.
Jimmy makes up his bed on the fold-out sofa and falls asleep the way he used to when he was a kid, counting the vine-leaves on the cornice until his eyelids grow too heavy and he slips away.
Jimmy wakes up at dawn the next morning, his body used to the schedule of the mailroom. He lies on the fold-out sofa for a few minutes, warm under the blankets, and then slips out from the covers and pulls on a pair of jeans. He moves on sock-padded feet to the kitchen and brews a pot of coffee, fumbling with cold hands to put in the filter.
As he waits, the coffee dripping slowly, he opens all the curtains and blinds, letting the half-light of morning into the house. Frost covers the grass out in the backyard and dusts the leaves of the trees. Though the sun has risen, a soft moon still hangs in the sky.
Jimmy wanders up to the ranch-slider and stands before it, letting his breath fog the glass. He remembers running through their yard when he was a kid, throwing baseballs with Marco, though it seems much smaller now. At the rear, the garage is closed up and white-roofed, his mother’s old Volvo no doubt still tucked away inside. Behind it, unseen, runs the back alley where he would ride his bike when he was younger and smoke when he was older.
Eventually, he hears movement upstairs, and first Betty and then the others join him. Jimmy drinks his coffee at the table quietly, listening to the others.
As the frost melts on the grass, the house fills with activity. Chuck and Rebecca launch into food preparation in the kitchen. Jimmy tries to help where he can, but there’s not much he can do—other than walking to the store for some more butter and milk when they suddenly realize they don’t have enough.
On his way back, he hears the sound of people playing backyard football: laughter and shouting and the thud of the ball. Jimmy stops for a moment to listen, plastic bag gripped in one hand, his nose burning with the cold. The houses either side of the one he lingers outside are boarded up, heading for foreclosure, like many of the other houses along the street. He doesn’t look at those too closely as he walks home.
By the time he gets back and hands Rebecca his shopping bag, the Macy’s Parade has started. Jimmy sits with his mother and Betty in the living room and watches the enormous balloons drift down New York streets. Betty, who it turns out has always secretly wanted to be a Broadway star, keeps up a running commentary on all the special guests: little orphan Annie and men in double-breasted suits tap-dancing on tables.
Eventually, the house fills with the smell of roasting turkey, and Jimmy doesn’t even want to think about how long it’s been since he’s had a proper Thanksgiving meal. As the new Goofy balloon coasts through Times Square, he keeps darting glances into the kitchen, where Chuck and Rebecca are talking sharply to each other and running over a sheet of paper like a battle plan. Every half hour or so, Chuck opens the oven to baste the turkey, and another wave of the incredible scent will carry through to the living room.
“Oh, I sang this one once,” Betty says, as the camera cuts from Willard Scott and Katie Couric to a woman performing ‘Sorry Her Lot’. She hums the tune along with the actress on the screen, then adds, “The school paper called me radiant.”
“The school paper?” Rebecca calls from the kitchen. “Dad wrote that, Mom.”
“Well, shush,” Betty says, but she’s smiling.
They fall silent again, watching the parade. Eventually, Rebecca comes to sit with them for a little while too, dropping down on the couch next to her mother and letting out a long sigh.
“Thank you so much for taking care of all this, sweetie,” Betty says. “It makes a nice change.”
“Right, Mom,” Rebecca says indulgently. She rubs the back of her neck and glances over Jimmy. “A nice change from already being three wines deep into a game of gin rummy with Joshua.” She chuckles. “Well, he’s gone to Aspen with Maggie so you have nobody left to torture.”
Betty opens her mouth in mock protest.
“You know, I think we still have some of our old board games around,” Ruth says mildly.
“Uh oh,” Rebecca murmurs.
“They’ll be in a cupboard upstairs somewhere,” Ruth says, and she begins to rise to her feet.
“No, I’ll get them,” Jimmy says, waving her down. He picks up a couple of their empty coffee cups and carries them to the kitchen, where Chuck is frowning intensely at the oven as if it’s on the witness stand. “Turkey coming along?” Jimmy asks, putting the mugs down in the sink.
Chuck starts a little and turns to face him. “Oh, hi, Jimmy,” he says. “Sorry, did you need something?”
Jimmy laughs lightly. “No, no, I’m all set.” He heads out of the kitchen again, patting Chuck on the shoulder as he passes. “Good luck!”
The old boards creak beneath his feet as he climbs the staircase to the second floor, passing framed photographs of old vacations on the landing. He tries the cupboard in the hallway first, but of course it’s just filled with linen, and he knows the cupboard in Chuck’s old room will still be crammed with boxes of his father’s things.
So he pushes open the door to his own room. It’s been tidied out a lot over the years, and his posters are long gone off the walls, though in some places, impossibly, ghosts of them still remain: the faint outline of his The Getaway poster where the sun once struck the wallpaper.
Out the window, shadowed, he can see the neighbor’s place, their lights off. It doesn’t look like there’s anybody living there now, and he can see down into the empty rooms: the bare skirting-board and open doorways. Certainly no sign of the girl who once lived there when he was a kid, who he’d climb fences with in summer, and throw snowballs into cars with over the holidays.
He steps back from the window. Betty’s suitcase sits beneath the sill, and the bed is made up much neater than he would have ever left it, the covers tucked beneath the mattress.
But, despite it all, the room is still unmistakably his—just as Chuck’s room remained unmistakably Chuck’s for all the years that Jimmy lived in this house, even though Chuck himself wasn’t there for most of them. There was always something of his brother that lingered in the space, even when it became ostensibly the guest bedroom, and Jimmy doesn’t need to look inside it to know that the bookshelves will still carry Chuck’s school textbooks, will still carry his animal encyclopedias, the spines fading into obscurity.
Jimmy opens his closet. It’s mostly filled with boxes of his mother’s craft supplies now. Atop them are stacks of old paperbacks, the pages curling. Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut. Jimmy picks up The Breakfast of Champions and flicks through it, the illustrations flashing past, and then he returns it to the pile.
And beneath the books he sees another stack: dark bound journals, ragged at the edges. He slips one out and lets it fall open. Pages of old doodles greet him: cartoonish, exaggerated drawings of kids he went to school with, or old men and women he recognizes from the diner where he and Marco used to get milkshakes. Some are paired with sarcastic commentary, others are slightly more serious, legitimate attempts at sketches. Dirty Harry in his tweed jacket and red sweater pointing a gun off the page.
Jimmy slides out another journal from a different place in the stack. He must have been younger when he filled up this one, because the doodles are cruder and at times unintelligible; but, grinning to himself, he stops at one that’s still recognizably Chuck, in a striped sweater, with hair swept neatly to one side. Jimmy leaves the page open on the top of the jumbled pile, and pulls out another from the stack.
And in this next journal, the balance shifts towards writing, spiked capital letters detailing his day or dreams or weaving his initials with other people’s. He finds Claire’s name matched with his own multiple times, or traced on imaginary album covers, years before the two of them got hastily married in Vegas—and he’d almost forgotten the teenage years he’d spent dopily pining for her, had let the last few months of their relationship color his memories of the entire thing. Leaf after leaf of initials and sketches…
He turns another page and a loose wad of cash tumbles to the carpet, furling open over the worn fibers like a fan.
Jimmy kneels. It’s singles and fives, mostly, but there’s a couple of twenties. He gathers the cash, spreading it out over the pages of the journal. More than fifty dollars all up.
And he knows without question that he’s looking at money from his father’s store, stolen from the till and stashed here and then forgotten about, left here folded between—
He snaps the journal shut.
Noises rise from the kitchen downstairs. The sound of silverware and the slam of the oven door closing. Jimmy pushes himself to his feet. He quickly shoves the journal he’s holding back into the stack, then stretches up to the top shelf of the cupboard and grabs a random pile of board games.
Something inside one of the boxes rattles as he walks back downstairs to the others. He lingers in the threshold of the hallway, watching Chuck and Rebecca work in the kitchen and his mother and Betty chat to each other at the dining table.
Eventually, Rebecca spots him. “Hey, Jimmy, food’s just about up,” she says, slipping on an oven mitt and removing a casserole dish from the oven.
Jimmy nods. He wanders to the living room and sets the board games down on the coffee table, then heads back to the dining table, where his mother and Betty are already seated at one end. Chuck carves up the turkey, and Rebecca brings over the rest of the food, and soon they’re all loading up their plates, and it’s like flashing back to a long time ago, settling down to eat at all the tables of his childhood.
“But we managed in the end, didn’t we? Caught the overnight train and found a place that would take us…pouring with rain…” Chuck says, rolling his eyes.
“It was very biblical,” Rebecca adds.
Jimmy sips his beer. His plate is almost empty, but he spears a bit of turkey with his fork and swipes it through the cranberry sauce and pops it into his mouth. The cranberry sauce—a reluctant addition to the table, as Chuck and Rebecca have gone for Tuscan-inspired versions instead of the usual fare, almost everything prompting lengthy recollections from the two as they relive their trip to Italy. From the expressions on Betty and his mother’s faces, it’s not the first time they’ve been told most of the stories, but they’re new to Jimmy, at least.
He scoops up some of the butternut squash polenta that’s serving as the mashed potato and eats it, then says, “So you’re gonna go back there, right?”
Rebecca nods. “Hopefully.”
“It depends on Rebecca’s commitments,” Chuck says. “And, of course, if things keep going as they are, I’m going to be busy for a while, too. Now I know you’re sick of hearing about it”—to Rebecca, holding his hands up apologetically—“but it’s really paying dividends for the company. That Amendola case made big waves. We might be on our way to becoming the go-to firm for anti-trust suits.”
“That’s wonderful honey,” Ruth says.
“Chuck was quite the hero, to hear him tell it,” Rebecca adds.
Chuck smiles effacingly. “Well, I’m sure the others would have handled it fine enough by themselves, but to get it thrown out in summary judgement…” He tilts his head. “Saved a lot of heartache, I can tell you that.”
Jimmy makes an impressed noise around his mouthful of turkey, but though he vaguely recognizes the name Amendola he has no real idea what his brother’s talking about.
“And what about you, Jimmy?” Betty asks, turning to him. “How’s HHM?”
“Oh, well…” He swallows. “Yeah, real good. I mean no”—he waves a hand at Chuck—“no heroism from me yet, but it’s good.”
“Give it time,” Rebecca says.
Jimmy laughs lightly. He leans forward to pile some more turkey on his plate, then settles back and glances around at the others. “Well, I’ve actually been looking into getting out of the mailroom, too—not that I don’t like it there!” He holds his palms up to Chuck. “Nicest people you could ever meet, and you know I appreciate it. But a guy can’t lick stamps forever, right?”
“I thought there was a sponge for that,” Chuck says dryly.
Jimmy smiles. “Right, yeah. Anyway, so I’ve just been dipping my toe in the water, you know. They let me pitch some marketing ideas, actually.” He doesn’t look at his mother. “So I’m still waiting to hear back about that.”
“Really, Jimmy? That’s wonderful,” Rebecca says.
He slices up some turkey and pops it in his mouth, nodding. “I hope so.” He flicks a glance at Chuck.
Chuck nods. “Well, Jimmy, that kind of thing is really Howard’s bailiwick…”
“Yeah, of course,” Jimmy says quickly.
“And if you ask me, Bates v. State Bar of Arizona was one big mistake, but—” Chuck smiles. “But nobody asked me. And to hear Howard tell it, the company is going to crumble to dust after a single scandal unless we invest in some cutting-edge new marketing.”
Betty gives a solemn nod. “I heard about that. Sounds like that was just a bad choice of client.”
“Well, some people see the flashing lights and get hypnotized, I believe,” Chuck says. He takes a sip of red wine, swishing it in his mouth before swallowing. “But Amendola, the class action…” He points a finger to accent the next sentence: “That’s what will keep HHM on the rise.”
“We should be saying congratulations, then,” Betty says, holding up her glass of wine. “And good luck to Jimmy.”
Jimmy raises his beer, too, and then takes a swig. As he sets down the bottle, he finally looks to his mother. She’s listening thoughtfully to the resuming conversation at the other end of the table and doesn’t seem to notice his gaze. He’s struck yet again by just how old she looks, just how sunken the dips are beneath her eyes. “Pass the brussels sprouts, Mom?” he asks, after a moment.
Ruth looks over to him, then nods and hands over the bowl.
Jimmy adds some sprouts to his plate then sets the bowl down. “Remember how much I used to hate these?” he says to her.
Ruth smiles. “You always said you could smell them from upstairs. Said you couldn’t even be in the same house as them.”
“Hah,” Jimmy says, shaking his head. “That was just so I could go out drinking with Marco.”
His mother’s lips lift in a small smile. “I know that.”
Jimmy chuckles. “I really didn’t like them much, though,” he adds. He stabs one with his fork now, and chews it, and nods. “But these are great!” He turns to the other end of the table. “What’s on them, anyway?”
“It’s a balsamic glaze,” Rebecca says.
“Revolutionary,” Jimmy says, jabbing his fork at the air for emphasis. He eats another one, then chuckles. “The bacon doesn’t hurt either.”
“Pancetta,” Chuck says.
“Hm?”
“Not bacon,” Chuck says, setting down his cutlery. “Pancetta.”
Jimmy shrugs. “I dunno, Chuck, if it looks like a pig, oinks like a pig…” He raises his eyebrows significantly and pops another brussels sprout into his mouth.
But Chuck only shakes his head, and everyone falls to silence after that, just the scrape of cutlery over their mother’s good china.
Jimmy swallows. “Hey,” he says, glancing around at everyone and grinning. “Remember how much Dad wanted to make his own cranberry sauce?”
“Oh no,” Ruth says, dropping her head into her hands. “Don’t remind me, honey.”
“I had forgotten about that,” Chuck says. “I don’t think he was ever satisfied.”
“Right?” Jimmy says, smiling. “He’d go crazy over it.”
“What do you mean?” Rebecca asks, looking between them.
“Dad's mother—our grandmother—used to make cranberry sauce when he was young,” Chuck says. “She died before I was born, but Dad was determined to reproduce it every Thanksgiving.”
“He’d ruin a good pot every year in trying, too,” Ruth says, laughing softly. “And the sauce would always boil over. The whole kitchen would be sticky for weeks.”
Jimmy joins in laughing. “And he’d always order in all those bags of frozen cranberries for the shop,” he says. “And none of the canned stuff! He’d try to tell people to make their own, instead.”
Ruth shakes her head slowly.
“Pissed off all his customers right before the holidays. And he’d have a whole freezer filled with the stuff. Like, the people are going to want this!” Jimmy chuckles, wiping a thumb under an eye. “And they never did!”
“And I was stuck making cranberry pies for months,” his mother adds.
“Hey, those were good,” Jimmy says. He lifts up his beer then chuckles again. “Just another one of Dad’s bad business ideas—”
There’s an audible scrape of knives on china.
Jimmy swallows. He takes a sip of beer, and his lips pop off the end of the bottle with a little hollow noise.
His mother exhales quietly. “He always did have more passion than sense,” she says softly.
Jimmy shuts down his thoughts before they drift upstairs again, up to the cupboard in his old bedroom.
Ruth sighs again. “But your father always wanted to think the best of people. Even if that meant hoping all the tired Western Electric workers were going to make their own cranberry sauce.” She smiles to herself, then looks over at Chuck. “Pass the gravy, would you, honey?”
It seems to take a moment for the words to register for Chuck, but eventually he nods, and he hands down the gravy boat. His eyes skim over Jimmy like a stone on a lake.
Jimmy wipes out the kitchen sink and tucks the sponge back into its little tub, then wanders into the living room. The others are sitting around the coffee table, lethargic. Bing Crosby is singing on the record player again.
Betty looks up at Jimmy and nods. “So, what’s your vote?” she asks.
Jimmy makes a questioning noise. “Vote?”
She gestures to the stack of board games on the coffee table. “We’re at a stalemate. Two for Monopoly, two for Clue.”
“Oh, ah…” Jimmy looks at the pile of tattered boxes, the cardboard worn away at the ends. He grins. “Monopoly.”
Betty laughs delightedly. “Monopoly it is!”
“Dangerous choice,” Chuck says softly. He’s leaning back in an armchair, his fingers laced over his stomach. He inclines his head to Jimmy significantly.
Jimmy holds up his hands. “You can be the banker this time.”
Chuck narrows his eyes.
Jimmy grabs the Monopoly box from the pile and puts the others aside. He sits cross-legged before the coffee table, and the others lean forward on their chairs.
They play for the next couple of hours. As Jimmy negotiates a trade with Rebecca for her railways, or gives higher mortgage rates than the bank, or gives his mother an advance on her trip past ‘Go’, he can see the steam rising from Chuck’s ears, and it reminds him of so many other games when they were younger: squabbling about breaking the rules or whether it’s based on skill or chance.
“For god’s sake, Jimmy,” Chuck says, as Jimmy offers Rebecca a postponement on her rent when she lands on his Virginia Avenue. “It’s in the rules. She has to pay, or mortgage a property.”
“She’ll pay me,” Jimmy says brightly. “After she gets her two hundred bucks in a couple of turns. With interest.”
“That’s—” Chuck pinches the bridge of his nose. He huffs out a sharp breath.
Rebecca pats Chuck’s knee. “I think I have to take the deal, sorry,” she says, leaning over to shake Jimmy’s hand.
“Done,” Jimmy says.
Rebecca only has half a mind in the game anyway, darting two and from the kitchen as she prepares whatever they’re having with dessert. Betty take her turns for her, calling out what square she’s landed on so Rebecca can respond in the kitchen. And Betty takes some of Ruth’s turns, too, as his mother leans back in her chair with Delilah on her lap, the old cat purring contentedly.
A little later, Chuck sighs again. “Jimmy, if you didn’t want it, it’s supposed to go to auction.”
“I did want it,” Jimmy says, dancing the red Illinois Avenue card between them. “I wanted it so I could sell it to you.”
Chuck huffs out through his nose, staring angrily down at his two other red cards. “That’s against the intention of the rules. What’s the point in even having the auction system if you can just immediately on-sell the property?”
Jimmy lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Because if I didn’t know how much you needed it, I would’ve let it go. But I do.” He grins broadly. “So I didn’t.”
“It’s not in the spirit of the game.”
“Chuck, it’s Monopoly. This is the game.”
“It is not,” Chuck says acidly. “I’m not paying you more than what you bought it for.”
“Suit yourself,” Jimmy says, and he tucks the deed card beside his others.
So Jimmy has always said it’s a game of skill, and, sure enough, it comes down to him and Chuck at the end—Chuck slowly bleeding money as he lands on all of Jimmy’s hotels, while Jimmy’s own pockets are deep from all his inter-player interest rates, from bankrupting the others.
Eventually, they just decide to call it, and Chuck gives a half-hearted congratulations and rises from his armchair.
Ruth leans forward and lowers Delilah gently to the ground, then looks over to Jimmy. “Don’t look so smug,” she says quietly. “You know how much your brother cares about rules.”
Jimmy shrugs. “It’s good for him.”
“Ever since you were kids, always winding him up,” Ruth says, shaking her head.
So Jimmy exhales slowly. He packs up the board, collecting all the houses and hotels and player pieces, carefully sorting them back into their little holes. He slides the lid onto the box, then pushes up off the floor and walks into the kitchen, where Chuck’s holding a pie die and studying it intensely.
He looks up at Jimmy and frowns. “Does this pie look set?” he asks, gesturing with the dish.
“Uh, I wouldn’t know,” Jimmy says, glancing down at the pumpkin pie. Three walnuts make a perfect little flower in the center. “Looks good, though.”
“Yes,” Chuck says, and he sets it down on the countertop.
“Listen, Chuck, I’m sorry about the game.”
“Why?” Chuck says mildly. “You won.”
“Right,” Jimmy says. He leans his hip against the counter. “But still. We’ll play it your way next time. I’ll bet those rules aren’t all bad.”
“Sure, Jimmy,” Chuck says. He opens a drawer and pulls out a stack of small plates, counting five of them. “Tell the others dessert is ready, would you?”
Jimmy nods, and he returns to the living room. They all move slowly back to the table, sitting in the same spots as before; though they’re quieter this time, the conversation dwindling until it’s just the scrape of forks on plates and the occasional compliment about the pumpkin pie.
Later that night, after everybody else has already gone upstairs, Jimmy sits on top of his covers with his legs out straight before him, leaning against the back of the fold-out. He flicks idly through some old magazines he found in the room earlier: 70’s fashion and housekeeping, with weird, dated home-decorating tips.
For a while, he can still hear noises from upstairs, footsteps along the hallways, but soon there’s silence. It’s late, but Jimmy’s not tired at all, and when he finishes skimming through the last magazine, he stands and moves to the window, pulling back the blinds and looking out into the front yard and the street beyond. The neighbors opposite still have their lights on, and there’s several cars parked up out front, rusting old things that seem like they’ve been in the neighborhood as long as his mother has.
Jimmy breathes out slowly. He remembers having block parties in the street over the summer. He wonders if they still do that. If the new families still barbecue food between the foreclosed houses and overgrown yards. If his mother still joins them like she used to, sitting on the stoop and laughing.
He heads down the hallway, soft-footed, and into the kitchen. It’s dark, and the light of the refrigerator casts long shadows when he opens the door, picking some turkey off the carcass. He closes the door and eats the meat idly as he leans against the counter.
A little red light flashes on his mother’s answering machine. Jimmy watches it for a while: on, off, on off. It’s bright enough to color everything around it red too, the fruit bowl and potted fern.
He finishes his turkey and walks over to the phone. The light flicks, on and off. He picks up the handset itself and takes it back to the family room, then sits on the edge of the fold-out sofa.
There’s a quiet rush of a car going past outside.
Jimmy glances at the clock, looking at the glowing digits for a moment, and then he dials the familiar number.
A click. “Hello?”
“Hey,” Jimmy says. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
Kim chuckles. “Happy Thanksgiving yourself.” A pause. “And just in time.”
Another glance at the clock. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Nah, I’m up,” Kim says. “My popcorn’s ready though, hang on.” He hears the beep of a microwave, and then rustling noises until Kim returns. “Okay, all set.”
“Popcorn, huh? Whatcha watching?”
“A Thanksgiving classic,” Kim says dryly. “No Way Out.”
Jimmy grins. “Nice. Costner at his best.”
Kim makes a humming noise of agreement. “So how’s the family?”
“Oh, you know,” Jimmy says lightly. He looks out into the darkness of the hallway. “Going strong.”
There’s a beat of silence, then Kim says, “Yeah?”
Jimmy chuckles. “We played Monopoly.”
“Oh boy,” Kim says. “So who lost an eye?”
“Hah. Me, I think,” Jimmy says. “I get pretty into it.”
Kim makes a little snorting noise. “Very cool.”
“Shut up,” Jimmy says. He shifts so that he’s leaning against the back of the sofa again, relaxing into the cushions. “What about you? Good day?”
“Mhm,” Kim says. “Andrea’s gone to visit family, so I’m enjoying having the place all to myself. Drowning in Thai food.”
“Nice,” Jimmy says, drawing out the word.
“You have a turkey?” Kim asks. “All the fixings?”
“Yeah. Chuck and Rebecca, like, Italianed everything up,” he says. “It was good, though.” His gaze wanders over the video tape spines in the cabinet beside the television: lots of his mother’s favorites, Cary Grant and Gene Kelly. Nestled in between them are more modern titles, and others where his mother has repurposed the cases of movies she disliked. A scrap of paper reading That Hamilton Woman rests beneath the plastic but above the original cover for The Boys from Brazil. “Weird to be back here again, though,” Jimmy says softly. He brushes his hair off his forehead and looks away from the video tapes. “So, what was a Wexler Thanksgiving like?”
Kim breathes out, and the silence that follows is long enough that he worries she’s not going to answer, but then she says, “Well, me and Mom would go to the diner. They’d always put on a roast, a big turkey, all that stuff.”
Jimmy catches the phrasing: me and Mom, and Mom only. He doesn’t say anything.
“Lots of people would be there, so it was kind of communal,” Kim says. “It wasn’t bad. Not the traditional family thing, though.”
“It sounds nice,” he says quietly. “Would it snow?”
“Yeah,” Kim says. “Yeah, sometimes it would snow.”
Jimmy tries to picture it. Flat white fields dotted with fence posts, like ellipses on a page, drifting into the distance, the November sun a cold disc above it all. Young Kim throwing snowballs at the world, her blonde hair up in pigtails, wearing a round puffy jacket. A little blue dot in the endless fields of white. He exhales. “Kim?”
She hums. “Yeah?”
“Can we go back to White Sands?” he asks.
A beat. “What, tonight? That might be pretty tricky.”
“Not like that. I just mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Kim says warmly.
Jimmy sighs. “But I don’t even—I just mean, can we talk? Like really talk?”
There’s silence from the other end of the line. “Is everything okay?” Kim asks, after a moment.
He gives a little effacing, breathy laugh. “Yeah, it’s okay. No big arguments or anything. I just feel like a fucking kid again, you know?”
Kim gives a gentle laugh. “Yeah.”
Jimmy leans back, folding his legs up beneath him. “We haven’t all been together like this in a long time. Not since—well, not since it all went down with—with Chet and everything.”
Kim makes a murmured noise of agreement.
“And I treated Chuck pretty shit that last time we were together. I was just…just screaming at him. I can’t even remember why.” Jimmy laughs breathily again. “But I can’t tell if Rebecca knows, and her mother’s here too, and nobody’s brought it up! So what can I do?” He sighs. It’s always easy to be open with Kim, and without seeing her it’s even easier, like he’s just talking to himself, alone in a dimly lit room. But his next words still surprise him: “And I think Mom is scared of me.”
Kim inhales.
“Not dangerous scared, not like that,” Jimmy says quickly, brain catching up with his mouth. He tips his head back onto the top of the sofa. “But scared of what I might do next. Scared to get too close, maybe.”
The silence down the other end of the line feels enormous, crackling with dust and distance. It’s like he can hear the connection between them, the long strands of copper wire humming over the country. “Is there anything you can do?” Kim asks finally.
Jimmy hums. “Nothing, I guess. Just keep steady.”
“Well, that’s good news, then, isn’t it?” Kim says. “You’re already doing that.”
“Huh,” Jimmy says. He scratches his cheek. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“She’ll see,” Kim says quietly, he hears her shifting on her couch. “She’ll eventually see.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy murmurs. He tucks a hand behind his head, threading his fingers into his hair, staring up at the vine-patterned cornice. He counts the leaves, one-two-three, but his brain keeps racing, and he still feels half a step behind something, like there’s something just around the next bend, like the top of a mountain that keeps vanishing into the distance, pulled taut away from him.
And then, as if she can feel the tension and wants to break it, Kim says, “You know, we could do more than just talk.”
Jimmy’s breath catches, and his head snaps forward. “Oh yeah?” he says, after a moment of silence that could have been seconds or could have been minutes.
“Yeah,” Kim says, and he hears her laugh lightly. “But, uh—Jimmy, you’re using the only line, right? No surprise extensions?”
“Jesus,” Jimmy says, grimacing a little. “Yeah, yeah it’s just me. It’s secure.”
“Good.”
“I mean, I haven’t checked the window, so Gene Hackman might be out there with an audio dish, but—yeah.” He glances to the window then starts upright. “Hang on. Shit. I’m in the family room.”
“What?”
“I’m in the family room. Rebecca’s mom’s in my old room,” Jimmy says, rising to his feet and looking out through the open archway into the hall.
“The cartoon grandma?”
Jimmy chuckles. “Yeah, that’s her. Hang on. Anyone could walk in.”
Kim’s voice comes through muffled, like she’s covering her face: “Oh my god.”
He walks out into the hallway with the phone, peering down toward the living room, then turning around to face the front door. “Bear with me, Kim, I’ll figure something out.” Kim’s stifled laughter is loud against his ear, and he’s grinning, too, so he keeps going: “I like a problem, right? I’m a problem solver. Never met a problem I couldn’t”—he opens a cupboard, it’s filled with old electronics and kitchen gadgets—“couldn’t solve.” He closes it, then walks down the hall, looking into the kitchen as he passes. “They, uh, used to call me Nancy Drew, ‘cause I really know how to get to the bottom of a”—he whips open the basement door and grins—“mystery.”
Kim gives a final little chuckle.
Jimmy steps into the basement and flicks on the light then closes the door behind him. “Okay, I’m good. I found a basement.”
“Lovely,” Kim says. “And it’s cartoon-grandma proof?”
“Don’t even joke,” Jimmy says, and he surveys the space.
The basement is loaded with boxes and old furniture, and he couldn’t finish descending the stairs even if he wanted to, because his mother’s loaded the bottom few up with papers.
“Jesus, it’s cold in here, though,” he says, his breath puffing out before him. He sits down on the top step, his back against the door.
“But, you’re safe?” Kim asks quietly.
“Yeah,” Jimmy says, clutching the phone to his ear. He huffs out a little laugh. “Kim, you for real? Thanksgiving dirty talk? That’s what we’re saying here, right? Just so we're on the same page.”
“I dunno, Jimmy,” Kim says dryly. “Maybe the mood is lost, now.”
He’s silent, looking down into the basement.
“I’m kidding,” Kim says quietly. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
Jimmy smiles. “I would never.”
“So how do you want to—” her voice cuts off, but he can still hear her breathing.
Jimmy exhales.
“Hmm,” Kim says, and then her voice comes lowly: “So, what would you do if I was there right now?”
“Jesus, okay,” Jimmy says. “I mean, we’d be in here. Away from everyone else.” He chuckles. “Except there’d be a heater on.”
“A heater, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s a fantasy, right?” But he tries to picture Kim in the cold basement with him, tries to picture her next to him at the top of the stairs, and he finds he can’t. “Or maybe I’m there with you,” he says instead. “And we’re sitting on the sofa. We just watched a movie. Uh—The Towering Inferno.”
Kim laughs brightly. “Okay.”
“I’m setting a scene, Kim. I’m a wordsmith.”
“Sure,” she says.
And then there’s silence again, just breathing.
“Okay, we’ve just watched the credits roll on Steve McQueen,” Kim says gently. “So now what? What would you do if you were here?”
Jimmy imagines the cosy living room of Kim’s apartment. He imagines the soft glow of the television, the empty boxes of takeout on the coffee table. He imagines sitting beside her, their knees a few inches apart. “Well—first I’d want to touch you,” he says, gruff and tentative. “I miss touching you.” It’s the first time he’s really spoken out loud about that physical intimacy, and something unwinds in his stomach, something that’s been coiled there a long time.
“Touch me where?” Kim asks softly.
“Everywhere,” Jimmy says. He breathes out, tipping his head back against the cold door, eyes tracing over the bare basement ceiling. “I guess...you have this little dip in your waist.”
“My waist, Jimmy?”
“Hey,” he says, chuckling. “I’m warming up.”
And Kim exhales, and it sounds heavier than it did earlier. “You know, I had bruises there after last time.”
Jimmy gasps.
“I’d look at them in the mirror,” Kim says, quickly. “When we got back. Before going to bed. Getting dressed for work the next morning.” There’s a moment of quiet, then she adds: “I thought you might notice somehow.”
Jimmy huffs out a breath. “Yeah,” he says roughly. “I dunno, Kim, I tried not to look at you too close.”
Another moment of quiet, then: “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy says.
“Why not?”
Jimmy closes his eyes, pressing his head against the door. He can feel the strain in his jeans now, and he slips his hand beneath the waistband—and his fingers are ice cold, even above his boxers, and he grimaces.
“You okay?” Kim murmurs.
He wonders what noise she just heard, and he tucks his hand over his thigh, warming it up. “Yeah, just—it’s real cold in here.” He laughs lightly. “Gotta wait a bit.”
Kim makes a little ragged sound, and it’s almost enough to make him forget the temperature again—and if it isn’t, the next question she asks is: “Why did you try not to look at me, Jimmy?”
He breathes out slowly. “I thought about it a lot. There’s a lock on the supply room door.”
“Is there?”
“Shush, it’s a fantasy, doesn’t matter,” Jimmy says warmly. “And anyway, I guess I thought if I looked at you too closely I’d have to drag you in there, and slam the door, and lock it, or something dramatic—just get us in there as fast as I could—and you’re in that one skirt, the grey one—”
Kim inhales. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, Jesus, Kim, I thought you knew,” he says. “The one with the, like—the side zip at the top.”
“Okay,” Kim says softly. “I know the one.”
And the words are flowing easier now, like a rhythm: “Anyway, I don’t even kiss you, ‘cause I can’t wait, so I just drop to my knees and start pushing up that skirt, and you help—uh, with the zip—and I pull down your underwear slowly, even though I can’t wait to—to taste you.” He inhales sharply, then chuckles. “And, remember this is a fantasy, so make sure your imaginary Jimmy is like, smoother than smooth.”
Kim laughs huskily, ragged. “Okay.”
“So I pull down your underwear, and lean in, and you grab my head and twist your fingers in my hair and hold me there—”
There’s a noise upstairs and Jimmy quietens, though he was speaking so softly there’s no way anyone could have heard him. He holds still, and he can hear his pulse under his skin, can hear the crackle of the phone and Kim breathing heavily on the other end—and that last has him finally moving his hand, warm now, and he touches himself over his boxers, gasping quietly down the line.
“Tell me what I do,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.
“Okay,” Kim says throatily. “So I’m holding you there, that’s okay?”
“Yeah,” he murmurs.
“And you’re grabbing my thighs for balance. And I think I might have bruises again because you’re holding so tight. And it feels so good, Jimmy, and you just—” and she falls silent, voice trailing off until Jimmy can only hear her arrhythmic gasps.
But it’s quiet upstairs again, so he picks it up. “And then I…” he begins, and then he feels awkward, and loses the right words, so he closes his eyes and just murmurs: “I’m there, Kim, I’m there.” She inhales sharply at his words, so he continues, rubbing his palm over himself. “I’m there, I’m right there, fuck Kim, I can’t believe how good it is, how good you are, I need it, you’re everything—”
And she gasps—and it’s so loud against his ear Jimmy feels like she’s right beside him, and he squeezes his eyes shut again, holding onto the image—and then Kim’s breathing slows, and he can almost feel it warm against his skin.
He hears a shuffling noise down the line. Another gentle exhale of breath.
Kim’s voice finally comes, husky and low: “I bet you'd look beautiful after that. Staring up at me.”
His skin flushes, hot and prickling, and he presses the phone tight to him, and strokes himself slowly over his boxers.
Then Kim murmurs: “I’d need you inside me again.”
Jimmy groans hoarsely, a jolt of electricity running down his spine. “Yeah,” he says thickly. “Yeah.”
“So I’d help you up, and then…”
“What?”
“Maybe we lean up against the door. ‘Cause maybe I’m not so sure there’s really a lock, now. So just to make sure nobody comes in. And we’d have to be really, really quiet.”
Jimmy nods. “Yeah,” he whispers.
“So we’d move really slow,” Kim says roughly. “So slow, Jimmy.”
And his hand has finally warmed up enough so he slips it beneath his boxers, skin on skin, and he hisses.
“So slow it’s almost like we’re not moving…”
“Yeah,” Jimmy gasps.
“God, Jimmy,” Kim says. “You have no idea. You’re—you’re not like anything. You’re—” And Kim seems to lose her words for a moment, falling silent, and it’s just breaths and copper wire again, and his heart is thudding so loudly he’s worried someone is going to hear it from upstairs. When she talks, her tone is low: “What do I do, Jimmy?”
“—faster,” he gasps roughly.
“Okay, I move faster.”
Jimmy speeds up, squeezing his eyes tight.
“And it’s getting hard to keep quiet,” Kim says. “But we have to, and I’m kissing you, trying to keep you from making any noise, but you can’t help it, it’s so good—”
And she keeps talking, but Jimmy can’t hear the words, just the sound of her voice, and he’s not cold at all now, and the basement seems like a furnace, and he can feel sweat beading on his forehead, and he’s burning, his hand like fire—and then he comes, jerking, in his boxers, his head pressed back against the door.
His pulse rushes in his ears like white noise, a fuzz that slowly dissolves into nothingness. Jimmy exhales shakily. Catches his breath, frees his hand.
“Wow,” he says quietly. He lets out a light little laugh. “We’re pretty good at that, you know.”
“Yeah,” Kim says, voice still thin between breaths.
There’s a drawn-out, comfortable silence as they each come back to themselves, and then Jimmy adds: “Though, when I said I felt like I kid, I didn’t think I’d actually be jerking off in my boxers and hiding from my mom.”
Kim laughs brightly.
He joins in, soft and hushed in the quiet basement. After they both stop, they’re quiet for a time, until he says, “Thank you, Kim.”
“Thank you yourself,” she says warmly, and he grins, something tight gripping him in his chest, a pleasant pressure on his sternum.
After a while, the cold returns, icy on his damp skin. He runs a hand over his face, then stands, and says, “Okay, I’m getting out of this freezing room, hang on.” He opens the door, and is immediately hit with a wave of warmth. “Oh my god, so much better,” he says, closing his eyes in relief. “I think I almost turned into one of those cartoon blocks of ice.”
“But it was worth it?” Kim asks.
“Are you kidding again, Kim? It was definitely worth it,” Jimmy says, grinning so hard his cheeks hurt. He opens his eyes, but as he starts to move down the hallway, he becomes acutely aware of the growing discomfort in his boxers, and he stops. “I, uh, might need to get changed. But we can keep talking, right?”
“Of course,” Kim says, laughing softly.
Jimmy nods. He makes a note to leave his mother some money for the phone bill, and says, “So I’ll call you back?”
“I’ll be here,” Kim says softly.
He hears her breathe again before he hangs up, one short inhale, crackling down a live wire.
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