Kell first saw him at baggage claim at Reagan. Just from the back. Buzz cut, clean camos, cap in his back pocket, combat boots. Tall. Big feet and big hands. Legs apart, at ease, at parade rest, but watchful even though he was home now.
The carousel lurched to life, and everybody else rushed forward to crowd the sides, craning their necks and saying “I don’t see it yet.”
He lifted his head but didn’t move as a giant army green duffel came down the ramp. Kell thought she saw a flash of bright red right behind it, maybe the red belt she’d buckled around the handle of her black rollie.
She kept watching the back of him and he stood still and let her do it like he knew she was. The frenzy subsided as the people from the plane dragged their squealing luggage and scuffed kids toward the exits.
Suddenly he took one long, smooth stride forward to the carousel and lifted the massive duffel off as easy as if it were filled with nothing but desert air and love letters from old girlfriends.
As he lifted it, Kell spotted her red patent belt lolling on its side like a harlot’s lost garter. No black rollie in sight.
She debated leaving it there but then she trotted over and snatched it up, sparing it and herself one more loop of shame.
She turned to the boy, because of course he was watching her, and shrugged.
Something lasered between them, so intense Kell literally broke out in a sweat. She knew he felt it too, even though his expression didn’t change. His gaze just narrowed and sharpened like she was a sheen of water in the sand or a glint in his rifle scope. She would never forget that moment. It was epic.
He walked over to her. “You checked a belt?”
“Ha. No,” Kell’s face was Fahrenheit five thousand. “It used to be buckled to my suitcase, wherever that is.”
He swept the perimeter with his blue-green eyes and pointed. “That it?”
It was sitting far off to the side of the carousel.
“Yeah. Somebody thought it was theirs, as usual.”
“Oh, okay, I get it now. That’s why the red belt.”
He walked with her as she retrieved it.
She said to him, “How did I not see you on the plane?”
“Were you up in first class?”
“No. Were you?”
“They thanked me for my service.”
Kell laughed. “So,” she said, “are you from here?”
“Nah, passing through.”
“Ever been to DC?”
“A class trip once? I think seventh grade?”
“Want to come into the city with me? I know an outdoor bar where you can sight-see the White House and get hammered at the same time.”
“Uh, I would, but I actually gotta make a connection.”
“Maybe you already have.”
A little twitch of a smile in the corner of his mouth. “Maybe I have.”
They walked out into bright sunshine and they both put on sunglasses immediately and god, it was perfect.
He said he had to change out of his OCP’s so she took him to her apartment and they never made it to the bar, of course. She had beer and some weed. They sat in opposite chairs pretending to have self-control. It made passing the blunt very inconvenient but that was all part of the dance.
His name was Collum. She called him Collum when she called for him to kill a wasp in the bathroom. She called him Collum all night.
Kell was twenty-one and he had just turned. As young as he was, he was not coiled tight or roughneck. He waited for her to come to him. It wasn’t cockiness or even confidence. It was something else. He was easy in his body, in himself. He didn’t say much or make much noise and he was generous except for the times he was only thinking about himself.
She was sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the bed and he was up against the pillows with the sheet barely covering him.
“I’m jealous of your tan,” she told him.
“Nine months in the Sandbox will do that to you.”
“Welcome home.”
He smiled at her and shook his head. “You are so beautiful.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked him.
“Kinda.”
“I’ll make something,” Kell said, shocking herself.
She came back to the door of the bedroom. “I got eggs, cheese and bread. I’ll make omelets and toast. I even have orange juice. Well, Sunny D. And I remembered I have vodka in the freezer.”
He didn’t care if her hair lay across his chest in a tangle when they held each other. He just wound it around his hand. He didn’t grab at her, or play-slap her behind or say crude shit. He would open his arms and she would move into them because that was all she wanted to do.
They got high on vodka and beer and weed. Kell had some random odds and ends of other stuff too. She’d hold up a baggie in each hand and say, “What’ll be, Collum? Head rush or body rush?”
They never watched TV or answered their cells or ever said, “What should we do today?”
They took a daily shower, brushed their teeth and went back to bed. For a week, they stayed mostly wrapped around each other in her twin bed. A couple of times they went out to the bar around the corner, where they drank and ate chicken wings and danced slow to every song and basically stayed right up against each other the same way as at her apartment only standing up with clothes on. They were so obsessed with each other that people noticed, saw two kids drowning in young lust and it made them feel sad for the kids but even more sad for themselves.
So it went until Collum said he had to get down to Fort Benning. Without much discussion they decided that she was going with him; they would use whatever money she had and he had, rent a car and get married on the way down. When he reported for duty he would fill out the paperwork and they would get base housing, no problem. He knew lots of guys who had done it.
Kell packed up the apartment, she’d graduated from GWU two weeks ago and her lease was up at the end of the month anyway. The furniture wasn’t hers so all there was to take was books, some DVDs, her 19-inch TV and her laptop. She left half her clothes and all the kitchen stuff. She called her parents in New Jersey and told them she was moving out and going on a road trip.
“Of course you are,” her mother said. “I would have expected nothing more.”
A kind of shitty thing to say, but Kell’s mother always insisted her statements were misconstrued. Or she was just artless with her words. “Oh honey, I was just kidding. You know me, I always go for the jocular.”
Kell didn’t let it bother her anymore. “I’ll text you every two days and let you follow me on Google maps so if I get murdered the cops will have a timeline.”
Kell would not text every two days and no way in hell would she allow her mother to follow her every movement on Google even if her mother would have bothered to look which she wouldn’t have.
“Are you still going to look for a job in DC?”
“Slight change of plans, Mom. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted.”
There wasn’t enough time for Kell and Collum to get married and still spend 80% of their trip in motel beds but at least they made to Fort Benning in time for Collum to report to base.
They had to rent another crappy motel room for Kell to stay in until he figured out where they could live.
The only thing that mattered to Kell was that it would be days before she could see him again. She missed him so much she couldn’t see straight. Her belly ached. She was doubled over in want of him. They’d talk on the phone but that made it worse.
“I’m dying,” she told him. “Can’t you just knock off for the day? It’s not like you’re in the slammer.”
“It’s not far from it,” he said. “Baby, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just dream of me until I get there.”
“That’s all I do do!”
She didn’t leave the motel because they had no car again and she refused to walk down the highway to the strip mall like some girl named Jolene. She lived off the chips and Cheetos and candy bars in the vending machine. She watched TV but mostly reread her old hardcover copy of Wuthering Heights.
She hated the weasel face of the night guy at the front desk but she had no choice but to pay him to buy her wine and beer and weed. She took it from him in the parking lot and wouldn’t let him bring it to the room like he was dying to do.
Collum finally came back. It was like six a.m. and she heard a noise at the door and he came in and sat down on the bed and she put her head in his lap and her arms around his waist and cried.
He eased away and stood up and took off his camo shirt and hung it on the back of the chair. He lined up his boots underneath. Then he went into the bathroom and ran water in the bathtub.
“Come on, baby. I’m gonna put you in the bathtub. I’ve been doing nothing but thinking about putting you in a bathtub. Put your arms up. Lift your butt up.” He took everything off her and said, “C’mon.’
“I don’t want to waste time.”
“Trust me your time won’t be wasted.”
“I’m too weak. Carry me.”
He scooped her up and let her hang off his arm while he used his other hand to check the bathwater. Kell wouldn’t stand up and get into the tub.
“Seriously?” he said and put her in. “Stop crying now.”
“Make me.”
He knelt down. “Lie back.”
After a while, he got up and sat on the toilet seat. Kell got out and stood between his legs and he wrapped her in towels and dried her off by holding her.
“No more crying until after I leave. That’s an order.”
They only had twenty-four hours but it didn’t fly by. It rose up and rolled over and went on forever.
Limerence
a tragic tale of romantic obsession