He tells me he had a dream of finding teeth in the soft spot of an apple.

I don’t know what convinced me to let the boy stay last night. It was only my second time seeing him.

JULIAN BY CJ CALAMARI 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 123

He tells me he had a dream of finding teeth in the soft spot of an apple. Every few minutes he slides a finger in his mouth just to be sure that his teeth are still there. I can hear his teeth grinding. The grey of his hoodie is marked with drool.

He sits at the counter of the diner his mother works at with his head down. His mother gives him a glance as she goes to the other end of the counter with a pot of coffee. The man whose mug she refills every time he has taken a sip is a truck driver for a food distributor. The driver scratches his patchy beard and says, “Thank ya, toots.”

When she walks back past us, she pokes a fork at her son. “Pick your head up, don’t be rude.”

His mother is young and thin, but her face is aged. The pockets around her eyes are yellowed and cratered with loose skin that hangs like a dog’s jowls.

I can’t see the resemblance between her and her son at all. I would guess that he looks more like his father, but neither of us know what his father looks like.

He cradles a cup of coffee to his chest, laughing to himself a bit.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s fucking Babe,” he says.

“Babe?”

“That guy over there. Big potbelly, pink skin, just the pig in that old movie. You should hear him wheeze after he finishes and you’ll get what I mean.”

-

I don’t know what convinced me to let the boy stay last night. It was only my second time seeing him.

The first was at the dive bar in town. He followed me into the bathroom and we made out against the stall doors. He smelt overly sweet like a knock-off cologne, which did nothing to cover the stench of the piss pooled next to the toilet.

He cradled my face between his hands and kissed me slowly. I could feel that his lips were cracked and coarse. He slipped his hand down the front of my pants.

“I won’t make you pay,” he said, just faintly enough that I wasn’t sure if I heard him right. I stopped him there, my hand light on his wrist.

We went back out to the bar, I bought him a drink and walked him home. At his front door he put my number in his phone as bar guy and patted his hand against my cheek with a bit of a smile.

I was thinking that in that moment he was beautiful. Something about the way his pupils eclipsed the color of his iris made him seem like a phenomena—the sort of once in a lifetime celestial event I should take notice of. I don’t know if I smiled back.