Almost Gone

A Simple Thing

a simple thing PAulo · 1976· SAturdAy · Paulo was almost sixteen, but he’d understood since he was eleven. It was after his first dream—which he wished had been about Isabella but was about Jenny, a girl from ccd class—that he realized what the sounds really were. In his dream he found himself on top of Jenny on the floor of a bright, crowded school hallway, his hands squeezing the round breasts she kept tucked behind fuzzy gray sweaters. That whitehot feeling came from nowhere, spiking in his thighs and spine, and he tensed on the slippery edge of waking. Jenny opened her mouth, her breath hot on his neck. “No,” she said faintly, “no!” Paulo’s eyes blinked open in the dark. The voice grew louder. “Stop, Nuno! Stop!” He rolled off his sagging mattress with a thud, clutching his dick, and the house went abruptly silent in response. Hours later Paulo woke up on the floor with his brittle underwear glued to his thighs, proof that he hadn’t imagined it. Tonight, when the noises started, Paulo was already thinking about Isabella. A few hours before, they’d been were pressed together in the back of a movie theater, her legs wrapped so tightly around one of his that it fell asleep. But he didn’t even think of moving away. Paulo immediately sat up and clicked on the clock radio, static twitching as he played with the dial. It had to be music, not talk, and it had to have a full sound in order to work. Rock and Roll worked better than jazz or classical. A singer who screamed, like Robert Plant, worked pretty good to cover up most of it. Unless it was one of those Led Zeppelin songs that AlmoSt goNe· 132 · suddenly cut away to a quiet part, like “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.” Paulo loved Zeppelin, though he only owned one album, his tattered copy of Led Zeppelin IV. “It’s Only Rock ’n Roll (But I Like It)” by the Stones was on, and he put the volume about halfway up, clasped his hands under his head, and instead of concentrating on Isabella, tried to go over each mistake he had made at soccer practice. For each missed trap and bad pass, he imagined what he could’ve done differently. Paulo started to drift off, his thoughts blinking on and off with the rattling drum beat of The Who’s “Squeezebox,” but tonight he thought he could still hear the squeak of the mattress, the breathing and whispering. But maybe it was all in his head? Paulo wished he had the balls to bring it up with his dad. His mom acted different in the mornings afterward, too. She was too nice to him, and she mostly just stared out the window into the yard, where seagulls paced and shat in the early light. He felt bad for her, but he didn’t think there was anything he could do. Before going to school he’d hug her goodbye, even at his age, and her body crumpled into his. Paulo always had to let go first. It was funny. Late at night, when he felt trapped between the noises and the hiss of the radio, Paulo imagined waking up in Lagos. He’d never been there, but he just made it up, based on pictures he’d seen. He’d learn to surf, and spend hours lying in a hammock as dark-skinned women with long black hair sunbathed topless next to him. Sometimes, Paulo imagined taking Isabella to Lagos for their honeymoon. They’d drink Sagres from tall icy glasses—the beer that there were always commercials for on Rádio e Televisão de Portugal—and it would be so much better than the sour cans of Busch-Lite and Natural-Light that burned his throat. They’d watch the colored fishing boats set sail off of the coast, the water the same green as a Rolling Rock bottle. Some nights Paulo woke up still clinging to visions of climbing the pink and rust-red rock cliffs that jutted out over the water. Sometimes his mom was walking beside him on the beach, smiling for once. In those dreams, his dad was nowhere to be found. A SimPle thiNg· 133 ·· SuNdAy · “Do you think we’re weird?” Isabella’s voice sounded thin. Paulo was sprawled...