Page 13 of Rhymes with Metaphor

“Martin was visiting me in Wales for May Day,” said Reg.

“We both got fantastically drunk and stoned. So stoned we would have eaten anything. The pantry was empty, except for an old tin of Christmas pudding my grandmother bought eons ago. It had expired in the 1970s, but I’d kept it for posterity.

We boiled it for an hour to be safe. I had a big paring knife, and I was cutting into it, and I should point out that the pudding came ready-sauced.

Anyway, I plunged the knife in and yanked, and it came out of the tin all at once, and the whole pudding flew into the air and stuck to the ceiling.

We sat there staring at it, then we started laughing till we pissed ourselves. Literally.”

“How old were you?” said Juliet, appalled.

“Twenty-two,” said Reg. “In our defence, we were very drunk.”

Martin buried his face in his hands.

“And stoned,” said Reg. “Which explains why, after we’d pulled ourselves together, we still wanted to eat the pudding.

But first, we had to get it off the ceiling.

It was so well and truly stuck that when it came down, some ceiling came off with it.

We ate it anyway, of course. We just picked the ceiling bits off. ”

Joel looked amused, and Martin would forgive Reg in a day or two. Probably. So, it was worth it.

They were so jet-lagged that they called it a night after they’d eaten and went straight back to the house and bed. Reg had made a point of putting Martin and Juliet in separate bedrooms.

The next day, they all went to London on the train.

Martin insisted on showing Juliet all the obvious touristy places while Reg rolled his eyes and Joel dozed on a stone bench.

Reg had been hoping to catch up with an old friend, but he was out of the country on business.

Juliet wanted to find something Joel would enjoy, so they did brass rubbings at a church.

On the way home, they inspected each other’s work.

Reg had done a lion, Joel, a Medieval knight.

Reg said to Joel, “Do you feel like an artist?”

“No. Tracing doesn’t require skill. It’s not real art.”

“What would you call real art?” said Reg.

“That picture on the wall in your loft.”

“Reg drew that,” said Martin. “It was a toss-up whether he’d be an artist, a pro tennis player, or a poet.”

“I’ve always known I’d be a clinical psychologist,” said Juliet. “And we’ve always known Joel would be a physician.”

“Have we?” said Reg, looking at Joel, and there must have been something in his tone that made Martin glance at him sharply.

Joel wouldn’t meet Reg’s gaze.

They spent the afternoon at home by the pool, sipping sun tea, courtesy of “Aunty Bethan,” Reg’s father’s housekeeper.

Juliet put on a bathing suit, which nearly caused Martin to faint when he saw her, though it was a demure, navy blue one-piece.

Martin joined her in the water. Juliet had installed Joel on a sun lounger by the pool.

He wore boat shoes and had conceded to wearing the white silk shirt Reg had bought him.

Every few minutes, he’d startle up like he’d forgotten something.

“You don’t have an off switch, Joel,” said Juliet. “You’re either go-go-go or you’re at death’s door.”

“I feel like I should be doing something useful,” said Joel.

“Keep up that mindset, you’ll wind up dead from a heart attack before you’re thirty,” said Reg.

“In your medical opinion as a poet?” said Joel.

“Sometimes, time wasting isn’t a waste of time,” said Reg. “You need to learn to do nothing and enjoy it.”

He went into the garage and found one of Hazel’s old toys—a metal ball with a bell inside. He came back to the pool.

“Lie back, Joel,” said Reg.

While Joel watched him, owl-eyed, Reg balanced the ball on Joel’s tense and trembling abdomen. He had to fight the urge to smooth his hand over Joel’s shirt first.

“What you need to do now is to lie still,” said Reg. “Or that ball will roll, and the bell will ring, and if I hear the bell ring, I will push you back on that lounger, understand? Don’t give me that look. You’re on vacation. There’s nowhere you have to be, and nowhere you have to get to quickly.”

“Operant conditioning,” said Juliet. “I’m impressed, Reg.”

Reg brought his own lounger over to Joel’s on the patio, along with his laptop containing a handful of poems one of his fellow MFA students had asked him to critique.

It was a good distraction and a reminder: What he was experiencing was merely a passing fancy combined with a feeling of responsibility for Joel’s well-being.

Yet, he was acutely aware of Joel’s proximity and the smell of his sun-warmed skin.

Reg had barely read the first poem when the tiny bell tinkled, and the ball dropped onto the patio.

Reg put his hand on Joel’s shoulder, pushing him gently back into a reclining position. “Now, now.” He repositioned the ball and reluctantly removed his hand from Joel’s shoulder.

“It’s dirty,” said Joel.

Reg panicked for a minute, then realized Joel had meant the ball. He took the ball to the edge of the pool, dipped it into the water, swirled it around, and brought it back, still dripping, and placed it on Joel’s belly.

“Happy?” said Reg.

Water seeped into Joel’s silk shirt, and Reg could see Joel was wearing a T-shirt underneath. Reg looked away quickly and resumed his seat.

The bell rang five times in the next hour, but it no longer rolled off, and by the end of the hour, the ringing had stopped.

For dinner, Bethan brought out smoked salmon on paper-thin slices of buttered bread, Mediterranean salad, and homemade crème br?lée with sugared violet petals scatted on top. Martin and Juliet came out of the pool exclaiming how good it looked.

“He’s fallen asleep,” said Juliet, checking on Joel. “Good job, Reg.”

“I’m not asleep,” said Joel, without opening his eyes. “I’m resting.”

“Still good job, Reg,” said Juliet. “You got him to relax at last. The colour’s coming back into your cheeks, Joel. Come and eat something.”

As they were eating, Juliet said, “Is that a tennis court back there?”

“Yes,” said Martin. “But I don’t recommend we play doubles.”

“Why not?”

“Because Reg would thrash us. He was a bit of a phenom in his youth.”

“Still in my youth, thanks,” said Reg, sipping his wine.

“He went to university on an athletic scholarship,” said Martin. “Almost turned pro.”

“Why didn’t you?” said Juliet.

“Verse called,” said Reg, “and I answered.”

“You know who else went to Reg’s university—and who did turn pro?” said Martin. “Flip Hillier. Have you heard of him, Juliet?”

“Yes,” said Juliet. “Did you know him, Reg?”

“We played a few times. Alas, we dedicated ourselves in different directions. He chose the path to peak athleticism and I, the road to peak lyricism.”

“Were you friends, Reg?” said Juliet.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” said Reg. “We knew each other.” Reg became suddenly aware that Joel was studying him, and Reg realized then that Joel knew.

Flip was a secret Reg had kept for six years. He hadn’t even told Martin. And after knowing Reg for less than two months, and without Reg saying a single word, Joel had figured it out.

The question was, would he tell Juliet and Martin? He didn’t seem the gossipy type, but Reg didn’t really know him. And he was afraid to tell Joel not to say anything, because that would remove any doubt in Joel’s mind that there was something to tell.

“Reg never once introduced us,” said Martin. “For which I will never forgive him.”

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T hat evening, at Reg’s suggestion, they went out to see Hot Duck Summer at the cinema.

“It’s a puerile comedy, Juliet,” said Martin. “Are you sure you don’t want to see A Life in Smoke instead?”

“Martin avoids lowbrow humour whenever possible,” said Reg. “Lest it influence him to write something the common man might be able to comprehend.”

“All right, all right,” said Martin.

“I’d prefer something funny,” said Juliet. “Joel would too, I think.”

At the cinema, Reg introduced Joel and Juliet to sugared popcorn.

The movie was as mindless as predicted, and twenty minutes in, probably overcome by the excitement of the day, the air-conditioned cinema, and the plush upholstered seats, Joel fell asleep on Reg’s shoulder, which was incredibly distracting.

Unfortunately, the movie was so inane that Reg couldn’t focus on anything but Joel.

As he sat there enduring Joel’s weight on him, he was suddenly struck with an inspiration for a comic poem, with the predicament of having nothing to write it on and nothing to write it with, since Juliet had insisted they leave their phones at home.

His cardboard popcorn container was only half empty, so Reg carefully dumped the contents into Martin’s, causing a mild overflow.

Martin didn’t notice, as he and Juliet were currently occupied, which precluded Reg asking for a pen.

Joel was still sleeping, and Reg could see the top of a pen peering out of Joel’s breast pocket.

He teased it out and, moving carefully so as not to disturb Joel, tore a slit along the popcorn tub, opened it out flat on his leg, and jotted the words as they came.

They never came when he was sitting at his desk in his brightly lit office, holding his own pen with a clean hand and a non-greasy sheet of paper in front of him, waiting for them to come.

Oh no. Inspiration only happened when he had nothing to write on but a piece of sugared cardboard.

Later, they emerged from the cinema, Joel blinking and yawning, Reg holding a deconstructed popcorn box and trying to decipher what he’d written in the dark.

“What did you think of the movie?” said Juliet.

“The what?” said Reg.

“There’s no point in trying to have a coherent conversation with a poet,” said Martin to Juliet. “I’ve wasted many a day trying.”