Day: July 15, 2016
hemingway once wrote a scene where a woman was masturbating, & he wrote it so that she was thinking the whole time abt how hot she was and how good she looked instead of thinking abt something arousing, & that tells me that one of two things must have been true: a) he was so clueless abt sexuality that he assumed that women must find themselves attractive rather than other people, b) he himself masturbated while thinking abt how hot he was & just assumed it was normal
It’s ten zillion degrees in the shade in Bed-Stuy, and Clint Barton is trying to grow a victory garden.
“You have a farm,” Clint whines, sweaty shirt discarded over the rusted iron railing, heat from the stoop baking into the seat of his pants. “Tell me how this works.”
“I do have a farm,” Laura says, distracted but still warmly amused. “And you want to know how it works because—? Oh, no, sweetie, stop that. Straws don’t go in noses, they go in mouths, see?”
“Don’t listen to her, straws absolutely go in noses,” Clint says loudly, and somewhere on the other end of the line his niece giggles madly.
The victory garden is more like a bare patch of victory dirt right now, dry and crumbling. Clint’s been clearing dead crabgrass and bricks and all kind of trash out of it for most of the morning, fingers numb and his back aching. “Now, just what are you up to?” his sister says, and Clint leans back on his hands.
“So the maintenance guy, he’s gone, right? Been here forever, fell off a ladder fixing a lightbulb and broke five things, his brother took him in?”
“Ri-i-ight,” Laura says slowly.
It’s so hot the sky is barely blue anymore, contrails ablaze under a searing white sun. “He’s been gone for a while, but the point— the point is he left and there’s all this junk in his place, right? He had a couple rooms in the basement. Full of junk.”
“Mmhm. You know, I think I’ll take this tea to the porch.”
“And I’m going through all this junk and I find— wait, why are we going to the porch?”
“So I can sit and relax while I listen to your crazy.”
“My crazy what?”
“Clint. Everything you do is crazy.”
She’s not wrong, but still. “It’s not crazy,” Clint insists, just as Lucky ambles up from a lazy sniff of the victory dirt and plops down on his outstretched legs. “Aww, dog, no. Gross. Hot.”
“How’s he doing?”
“What, the dog? He’s fine, just needs to get off me,” Clint says pointedly, jogging his legs. Lucky rolls with the movement and resettles with his muzzle on his paws, eyes closed. “Ugh.”
“So. The junk.”
“The what? Oh, yeah, junk everywhere, trash bags full of books, nineties computer keyboards, Arnold Schwarzenegger workouts on VHS. Weird sh— uh, stuff. But then there’s this box, and it’s full of pictures.”
“Weird pictures?” she asks.
“Some of them, yeah, don’t even get me started, I’ll never look at feather boas the same way and forget handcuffs—”
“You said not to get you started.”
“Right. Yeah. But there were photos of the building too. Old photos. Old tenants. And it wasn’t just a couple years ago, it’s all these eras, back to black and white. And there was a garden.”
“I see.”
“The whole inside courtyard. I’m going to replant it.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He scratches at the stubble he missed shaving this morning, a patch at the hinge of his jaw. “Well, you know. Got used to it.”
The two months Clint spent at Laura’s after Sokovia were nice. Peaceful. Watching her farmdogs get baboozled by rabbits and trying to make friends with the barn cat tribe had filled whole days for him, until he could start to let himself notice other things. Iowa sunsets. Homemade pies. Homegrown tomatoes taken right from the vines outside.
“I see. The kids are sad you’re not around to do the weeding for them anymore, you know,” Laura says.
“I’m not sad!” his niece insists somewhere on the other end of the line. “Uncle Clint was better at it!”
“I was, huh?” Clint smiles.
“I guess so,” Laura laughs. “Do you know what you’re going to plant?”
“Hadn’t really got that far,” he admits. The family on the second floor have their window open, and the theme for Dueños Del Paraíso has just started playing. It must be two already. Clint slides himself out from under the dog and pivots on a hand to his feet. “Before that, I’ve got a pile of nasty old beer cans bigger than my car to get rid of.” He burns his fingers on the metal doorknob. “Ow, dang it.”
“That soil can’t be any good, either,” Laura muses.
Clint grabs his shirt and uses it to open the door, holding it so Lucky can squirm past him into the hallway and trot down the stairs. “There’s bad dirt?”
Laura laughs again, long and loud. “Tell you what. Jenna’s school sent home a whole workbook for their summer ag project. I’ll send a copy of that. Small words, lots of pictures— it’ll be perfect for you.”
kototyph 