Robin and Ruby by K. M. Soehnlein

and falls behind him. Soon George is snoring, hushed and contented.
    Eventually, Robin sleeps. He can’t tell for how long, or how deep; no dreams mark the shift. Then suddenly he’s alert and jittery. He rotates beneath George’s arms, repositions himself on his back, crosses his arms on his chest like a corpse. On the wall is the row of postcards, lined up perfectly inside a band of streetlight coming in from the window. The placement, Robin sees, is intentional. George has tacked them in this arrangement so that he can look at them even at night.
    James Baldwin stares down at Robin as if chiding him: “Brother, I saw this one coming.”
     
    Sleep eludes him now. There’s a bright, pale flash of illumination. Lightning. He sits up as the thunder crashes, and notices then the hissing of rain. How long has it been raining? Maybe he did sleep for a while. But he’s awake now.
    He slides out of George’s bed and tiptoes into the coolness of the apartment. They’ve left lights on everywhere.
    A tendril of water gleams on the floor, rain sneaking in through the front window, which has been left open. He throws it open wider and sticks his head out into the slanting shower, an instant, cool caress against his bare skin. His tousled hair catches the moisture, which beads on the tops of his ears and trickles down his neck and shoulders. He melts into it, a soft wave along his flesh. Below, the street is like dark earth that has been turned over; the concrete sidewalks, empty and hushed, look like they’re covered in moss. He fantasizes waking George for a naked sprint to the corner and back, a couple of urban nature boys staking their claim.
    Then he turns back into the living room, and there, beneath the lamp, is the fallen answering machine. The rainwater is trickling toward it. He picks it back up, plugs it in again. The red message light blinks.
    Perhaps it’s penance, or remorse, or just the curiosity that accompanies insomnia, but he absolutely needs to know what Peter has said.
    Play.
    “I’m sorry to bother you.” The voice is female, slightly strained, fighting to be heard above background noise: traffic, music, a roar that might be the wind. For just an instant he mistakes her for Rosellen, calling with a late-night request to fill a shift. Then he understands. It’s his sister.
    “I’m calling from Seaside Heights. Can you believe it?” Right, she’s down the shore this weekend with Calvin. In his disorientation, he can’t quite conjure it: Ruby in Seaside, a party town for teenagers. “Remember when Dorothy and Clark took us down here? Remember we stayed in that motel near the boardwalk? I just walked by that motel! I think it was the same one, with the picture of the lady diving in the water. It seems so long ago, but nothing’s really changed.”
    Robin recalls that family vacation with a wisp of ghostly resentment: Dorothy and Clark, bickering in the car over things like which lane on the Parkway was moving fastest, or which gas station was likely to offer the lowest price per gallon, and only cheering up in the evening over cocktails at dinner. When he thinks back on it, how could he not have known there were problems in his parents’ marriage? Years before Jackson’s accident, there were already problems. But the accident brought them all to the surface.
    Ruby is apologizing for the lengthy message, stretching it lengthier. “…I guess I just felt like talking. It’s not a big deal. I left the party and didn’t tell Calvin. There was this guy I used to know from Crossroads—that Catholic retreat weekend? I don’t think you ever met him. He was at this party—it was so out of nowhere—and now I’m trying to find him. I followed him. I’m a little buzzed. I’m not sure what I’m doing—” Blpppp.
    The machine had cut her off with a robotic slurp.
    She didn’t sound quite right. Ruby doesn’t have much tolerance for drinking.
    He digs out his Parliaments and lights one off the gas