The Boys Wore Open Bathrobes

The story is an assignment from a writing prompt service: to write a story that starts with the line, "The boys wore open bathrobes and striped shorts" and ends with a stephanotis corsage.

The boys wore open bathrobes and striped shorts as they stepped uncertainly and unconsciously through the locker room. Their wet flip flops squished with each step, and each squish echoed off the tile floors and metal doors of the lockers. Their steps were in unison, though it was not intentional on their parts. The rhythmic noise of their steps joined with the random pings from the hot water pipes and the sound of dripping shower heads to create an uneasy music, a soundtrack of sorts for the cavernous, steamy white room.

They looked at the floor, scanning the location of their next steps carefully so as not to step in a puddle of some spilled personal hygiene product that would cause them to slip, or to trip over one of the myriad benches lining the rows between the lockers. They each held a towel in one hand, the other hand swinging mindlessly with each step. They didn’t speak and their breaths were calm and quiet, neither adding to nor taking away from the ambience that hung heavy and filled the place like the steamy air that was the last remnants of their recent showers.

After two detours down the wrong rows caused by their failure to count rows on their way to the shower, they finally arrived at the lockers that help their clothes. They were on opposite sides of the dividing bench, so that there would be some sort of enforced gulf between them as they stripped off their robes and striped shorts, and started the ritual of dressing themselves again. Each boy did not let his eyes stray near the demarcation line so as not to get a glimpse of the other in his vulnerable state of undress, though this, too, was not really an intentional effort. Each gazed at a spot halfway between their eyes and the moist, while tiled floor, maybe a couple of feet in front of him. The motions of stepping into clean, dry shorts; black knit socks; and black dress pants was slow and automatic. Each wrapped his white shirt around his shoulders. The taller buttoned his shirt from the top down, while the shorter buttoned his from the bottom up, a barely noticeable difference in the familiar dance they were performing. They were careful not to sit too closely as they postured themselves to slip on their shoes. The shorter, having comfortably slipped on his black loafers, stood up first, while the taller remained seated a few minutes more to absent mindedly tie his black wingtips. 

They each picked up the discarded striped shorts, robes, and towels stuffed them brusquely into the gym bags they retrieved from their lockers. The asynchronous sound of the two zippers punctuated the still heavy air and broke the rhythm of drips and pings that had continued throughout the silent dance of dressing. The taller slung his bag’s strap over his shoulder and head so that it drew a diagonal across his chest and held his bag loosely to his hip. The shorter boy grabbed the two handles in his left hand and allowed the bag to hang at the end of his motionless arm.

For the first time in what seemed like ages, they looked at each other, each one glancing at, but careful not to gaze into the eyes of the other. They each nodded in turn, breathed in deeply and allowed their shoulders to slump into a resigned posture as they let their breaths out through their noses. Each glanced to his left and his right, mirror images of each other, in an effort to determine which end was closest. They looked back at each other, and with their heads motioned in the same direction, then turned that way and started to walk.

The hard soles of their shoes created a staccato percussion that cut sharply through the air and echoed harshly throughout the cavern. At first, they were out of step, but soon unconsciously synched their paces and rhythmically trod out of locker room and in to the open air. They didn’t break stride as they pushed open the doors and strode through. The slamming of the doors as they closed behind them marked the fine to the first movement, but the music of the locker room was immediately replaced with the white noise of a steady rain punctuated by larger drops falling from the eaves and creating a hollow percussion as they landed in the puddles below.

They boys paused under the eaves, enjoying the momentary and temporary protection from the rain. While the temperature of their new environs was significantly cooler than inside the locker room, the same humid heaviness still hung over them like an uncomfortable blanket from under which they could not crawl. But that was somehow apropos to the oppressive emotional weight under which they both laid.

Once again, they breathed in deeply and out loudly through their noses, then turned to look at each other and nodded. Then they both leaned slightly forward, drawing their heads in as close to their shoulders as they could, like that would somehow prevent them from getting soaked by the rain, then synchronously stepped into the rain. A clop and a splash marked each hurried footstep as they half ran down the sidewalk toward the waiting car.

The black town car shone in an eerie brilliance in the rain. The falling water immediately beaded up as it landed, and started a sinuous journey down the side of the vehicle toward the oily puddle in which the car sat. The daylight, diffused and partially blocked by the heavy clouds, reflected off each drop giving a shimmering, sparkling almost living beauty to the painted metal and darkly tinted windows. Wipers swung back and forth, sloshing the water from the windshield. Steam rolled lazily out of the tail pipe showing that the car was patiently idling as its inhabitants sat in relative physical comfort inside.

As the boys approached the car, an unseen hand pushed the back door open. The taller boy arrived first, grabbed the edge of the door, opening it to its widest, and motioned the shorter boy in. The shorter boy swung his bag in front of him as he ducked his head and nearly dove into the protection of the dry interior of the car. The taller boy then swung his body around and held his bag tightly to him as he backed into the car, sitting, swinging his legs in, and closing the door in one fluid succession of motions. Both boys ran their hands through their hair, slicking it back out of their faces, then wiped the drops from their eyes and brows. They glanced furtively at each other then looked around the car. They were the sole occupants of the back seat. Another boy their own age sat in the front passenger seat. The driver was an older man with closely cropped salt and pepper hair that was barely visible under his black driver’s hat. The boy in the front turned to the back and acknowledged his fellow passengers with a curt nod, then turned back to stare out of the windshield at some point ahead, perhaps something obscured by the rain. The driver glanced in the mirror to make sure both boys were seated, then put the car in drive and stepped on the pedal. The town car lurched forward.

Once again, the boys, now three, were lost in the music of their surroundings. The hum of the engine and the splash of puddles as the tires mercilessly ripped through them provided the base on to which the steady back and forth of the wipers added rhythm. An occasional staccato string of squeaks escaped the wipers, creating a jarring punctuation within the monotonous and seemingly endless song.

Eventually the song quieted as the rain subsided. The engine hum remained while the splashes from the road and the rhythm of the wipers slowed and eventually fell into silence. The slowing of the vehicle and an unexpected right turn jarred the boys from the trances into which the hypnotic music had put them. They all three scanned the view outside the windows, curious to see if they had arrived at their destination, and like what this new place might look. Their eyes darted among the broken green canopy provided by the distributed hardwood trees, still dropping leftover rain water on to the lush, green and well-manicured lawn that itself still glistened from the recent rainfall. The lawn was populated, perhaps crowded, with white marble and gray concrete monuments, some standing erect, others reclining and barely visible in the grass. Some grand and ornate ones sported in large letters the surnames of the bodies decaying below. Smaller ones displayed the illegible details that remained of the life of the now lifeless person who lay underneath.

A few dozen yards into the lawn some white folding chairs lined up somewhat haphazardly facing a pile of dirt and a rectangular black capsule that reminded all three boys of the car in which they rode. The capsule, too, had a glistening black exterior on which the winding trails of raindrops were still visible. It seemed to levitate a few inches above the ground right next to the dirt pile.

The driver stopped the town car and put it in park, which unlocked all four doors simultaneously. The sound startled the boys, who promptly exchanged glances among the three of them before reaching for and opening their respective doors. The two boys in the back pushed their gym bags to the center of the back seat as they exited. The boy in front shot a questioning look at the driver who nodded as he looked toward the little tableau a small distance away. The three boys, all dressed in their black suits and white shirts stepped hesitatingly on to the lawn.

The taller boy unexpectedly turned back into the car, opened his door, bent over, and retrieved from his gym bag a small white cardboard box, which he cradled carefully in his hand as he closed the car door behind him and stepped quickly to join his companions. The various musical movements that had accompanied them on this trip had ended. Their steps fell silently on the lush grass, as did the remaining raindrops on the trees’ leaves. No wind blew. No birds sang. And the cold humidity still made the air around them heavy and caused goosebumps to run up their arms and down their spines.

As they reached the gathering of chairs and black altar which they faced, the boys were suddenly aware of others present at the scene. Rather than clean black suits, these four men wore dirty jeans and matching work shirts. Their names were embroidered above the right pocket, but the boys were not interested in reading them. The four men also wore work gloves, and as the boys formed a line in front of the chairs and next to the black box, the men put their gloved hands on four cranks and began to turn them. As they did, the glistening black box descended into a hole into which it seemed to barely fit. The sound of the cranks broke the uneasy silence and provided once again a musical accompaniment to the scene.

The rhythmic cranking and squeaking subsided as the box reached the bottom of the hole, and the silence once again returned. Each of the three boys stared into the hole, not sure if they were staring at or trying to look into the capsule, which was barely visible among the shadows of the hole. Slowly, the taller boy opened his little cardboard box, brought out a small object and tossed it gently into the hole. It came to rest on the black box.

It was a final gift for her, one he had meant to give her in person: a beautiful, white and delicate stephanotis corsage.