Page 33 of Boy Blue
If I looked over my shoulder, I knew I could see his fair hair limned in starlight. I didn’t look. We slept.
In the morning, the brightness was blinding as I opened the front door and looked out. The world was white on white, rolling away to the south beneath the gold-silver sunshine and the deep hue of the sky.
Blinking, I turned back and shut the door to find Blue standing there. We had a moment of me watching him watching me, like two animals in a comfortable cage.
I questioned my decision not to tell him who he was. Wondered what he’d think if he knew, if he’d be angry I’d kept it from him. Then he turned his head, a flush to his cheeks, curls and tangles behind his ears. I wanted to comb his hair for him.
In prison, we shaved with safety razors and trimmed each other’s hair with those, too. One time, a guy arrived with a pair ofscissors he’d smuggled in. Actual scissors. They were good ones. Sharp.
The man might have been a tailor in a previous life. Or maybe he used the scissors to cut cocaine and kill people. But he gave haircuts, traded for the usual things, and did a pretty good job. He had a line of men waiting all the time. Then one day he was gone.
“You okay?” Blue asked.
I’d been standing there for a good long moment, memories flickering of him watching me through the open bathroom door, way after I should have realized it was open. Every part of my body remembered his gaze and how he hadn’t looked away. How he’d not mentioned it afterwards.
I made sure to shut the door when he went into the bathroom to wash. I’d seen him naked, but this would be different: him awake and aware that I was looking. A temptation I didn’t need. Ogling he didn’t deserve.
“Breakfast?” I asked, instead of saying anything else I wanted to say. Or do.
“Yes, please.”
On such a cold, bright morning, a hearty breakfast was in order, so I made it happen. We had plenty of everything, so no need to count drops of milk or spoons of sugar. I made bacon, fried eggs in bacon grease, made toast, which Blue buttered. The table was groaning as we sat down, silence presiding while we made pigs of ourselves.
Blue had flecks of crumbs in his hair as he finished off his third cup of tea, and I didn’t stop myself from reaching over to ease them out, rubbing my fingers over my plate so I wouldn’t have to sweep those crumbs up later.
“Thank you,” he said. “I guess I should comb it.”
He meant his hair, flaxen tresses that reminded me of something out of a fairy tale. My mouth opened to offer, but I stopped to think for a moment.
In prison, we’d groomed each other like half-feral monkeys; the touching, the slight intimacy, a way of building trust, of a sort. In the cabin, such a gesture would produce the same effect. Trust. Intimacy. A way for me to put my hands on him, gently. Without intent. Only so that I could look at him and remember, one day after he was gone, what it felt like, his silken hair in my hands.
“I could do it,” I said, helpless as the words escaped me.
“Okay,” Blue said, a softness around his eyes as he said the single word.
We cleared the table and washed and dried, and Blue sat down in a kitchen chair facing the back door. The blue sky gleamed as though it’d been polished. I focused on Blue. Stood behind him and used the comb to ease through the tangles, using my fingers sometimes to hold the hair so it wouldn’t tug and hurt him.
Blue bowed his head so I could get at the back of his neck, winced with a small sound when I worked an especially tight knot. I eased through the tangles. Blue sighed as I drew the comb over his head, down the long length of his beautiful hair.
My hair was short. Scruffy, like a dog’s. A dark, muddy brown. Nothing special. Certainly nothing anyone would want to comb, let alone touch. I wanted to see Blue’s hair spilled across a white pillowcase. It was nothing I could ever ask for.
My hands shook as I went into the bathroom to put away the comb. When I came out, Blue was still sitting there. Hands in his lap, as if he’d waited all morning for me and would continue to wait until I continued combing his hair.
“All done,” I said.
“Oh.” Blue sounded disappointed, but I had to draw the line. Didn’t I?
We got dressed and ready for the day. I stood in the bedroom, and Blue was in the living room. No doors were closed. I kept my eyes to myself, licked at a bit of honey in the corner of my mouth, laced up my boots, and led the way to the workshop. Which was damn cold.
I turned both space heaters on low and sat down, spreading my hands over my notes and the few tools I’d left out. Blue joined me, pulling his chair close to mine.
“What’s this?” he asked, picking up a printed catalog, its pages folded open, a circle around a single item. “A lace master?”
“Cuts rawhide into strips,” I said. “Can make fine leather threads out of even moose hide. My hands are steady, but this would make a more even cut all the way to the end.”
“This machine is a thousand dollars,” he said.
“I’m saving up,” I said. I had hand tools, sure, but nothing like that cutter.
