Giancarlo keeps a brisk pace, then takes a quick left, and then another until we are suddenly out in the open again, facing another iconic site: the enormous boulder that towers over the Pond, a crescent-shaped pool at the southeast corner of the park. He gives me a wolfish grin, then scrambles up the rock, slipping a little in his loafers on his way to the top. He turns around. The scramble causes his glasses to fall slightly down his face, and he pushes them up with another half-smile.
“Come on,” he calls.
Mindful of the slippery soles of my leather boots, I manage to get to the top, and am once again completely awestruck by the view of the Plaza and midtown over the tops of the Central Park trees and the mirror-like surface of the Pond.
Giancarlo drops his paper bag on the rock and bends down to pull a few things out of it. Bemused, I watch curiously as he folds and bends a few pieces of paper around some wire frames until they have formed two rounded paper lanterns. He takes a couple of candles from the bag and sets them inside the lanterns.
“One thing about this city,” he says as he works, “you can find anything from anywhere. I found these in Chinatown last week.”
“What are they?” I ask curiously.
“Globos.” He twists a few things together, then sets the candles in place and pulls out a lighter. “Well, almost. They aren’t quite the same thing, but they will work.”
He hands me one of the lanterns, and I hold it up while he lights it from underneath. Before I know it, the lantern is flying out of my hands into the darkness.
“Oh!” I cry with surprise. “It floats!”
“Now light mine.”
On my tiptoes, I obey, lighting Giancarlo’s lantern so he can release it into the night sky, hovering just below the first.
“Instead of staring at a big fake tree,” he says as we watch them float, “in my country, this is what we do. And at the New Year, everyone lights globos all together, and we set them into the sky, like stars.”
He stares at the lanterns flying above us for a moment, but in that moment, I’m transfixed by him. It’s the first softness I’ve seen in his usually stern face. Watching the lights with something close to wonder, he almost looks childlike.
“You miss home,” I observe.
Giancarlo gives me a shrug, another almost-smile. “I miss some things, yes.” He looks back at the lanterns. “It’s a little different when you do this with so many people around you.” He shrugs again. “I didn’t think it would be so lonely to light only two.”
I try to imagine what a sky would look like, filled with football-sized golden cylinders, illuminating the park from above. Magical, I’m sure. Beautiful.
“Still,” Giancarlo says as we watch the glowing lights float farther and farther into the sky, “it’s nice to share it with someone, even now.”
“Yes,” I agree. “It is.”
Beside me, his hand takes mine. This time, I don’t pull away as we continue to watch the two lonely lanterns, tiny golden orbs against the black night sky. They float together through the dark, up and up, only drifting away when we can barely see them anymore, and then, with a brief flash of fire, burn quickly until they disappear into ashes and wisps of smoke.
Giancarlo turns, his face no longer lit by the warmth of a candle, but by the cold moonlight rising over the city. He kisses me, and I let him, taken in by the feel of his lips, the tightness of his clutch. He knows I will come with him after this, up to his apartment, or bring him back to mine, where I’ll let him have his way with me like he has before. Mostly in ways where he is concerned with his own pleasure, his own tastes, and mine are afterthoughts. But right now he wants me, and that feels good. Better than good. Right now, it’s something I crave.
Still. Even as I stand on this rock, in this beautiful park, kissing another man, I can’t help thinking of another one far away from his family near Christmas. I can’t help wondering what he’s doing now. And if he’s thinking of me too.
Chapter Eighteen
December 2003
Nico
“Get the fuck outta here.”
I help Ben, one of the other bouncers, toss a couple of drunks out of the club, pushing them beyond the fake velvet ropes of Venom to the street, where a line of cabs waits on the corner.
“Man, fuck you, you fuckin’ wetback!” one of them calls at me drunkenly. “You’re lucky I don’t call the cops on you! Have your brown ass arrested in a second for assault!”
I roll my eyes and cross my arms in front of my chest. “So I guess you don’t care if they find the blow in your pocket, huh? You guys must really like living on the edge.”
“Monkey!” the guy shouts, even as his friends start dragging him away from the club. I take a step forward, like I’m ready to come at him, but they jog away before I can do anything else.
“You okay, man?” Ben asks.
I shrug. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. That doesn’t make it get under my skin any less, but these two aren’t worth the fight. “I’m fine. They’re just high.”
For the first time since coming out to LA, I’m genuinely tired of it here. As in, ready to fuckin’ pack my shit and leave. But I’m realizing that it’s not the city itself I’m tired of, even though, yeah, there are some things I would change. And I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t New York I was tired of before. After all, I would kill for a Gray’s Papaya right about now. And don’t even get me started on my mother’s cooking.
No, it was my life that I was sick of, a life that followed me across the country. I’ve been doing the same things for a decade. I’ve been sitting on stools like this, checking IDs at clubs like these, for almost ten years. I came out to LA thinking the beaches and the palm trees would give me something different, show me a different side of the country, a different way of being. But all I ended up with was a job just like all the others. Tagging on someone else’s coattails, just like I always did. Fighting against the stupid fuckin’ stereotypes that everyone seems to see when they look at me. The only difference is that things are hotter here.
I’m tired of staring at people’s grumpy faces for hours at a time.
I’m tired of picking drunk people up off the cement while they scream racist slurs.
I’m tired of arguing with entitled fuckheads who think a twenty is going to buy my favor.
I’m fucking tired of all of it. A lot more tired than a twenty-seven-year-old guy has any right to be.
“Seriously, man,” Ben say as he lumbers back onto the stool left for us outside. “You been a little down lately. Everything all right?”
I shrug. I don’t know what to say. Yeah, this last month hasn’t been my best. I’ve been going through the motions—here, at the gym, at home. I feel like I’m stuck in the mud, waiting.
Last week, I got a call from Gabe telling me that one of his friends from high school got a letter from the FDNY containing his test results and his list number, the number he ranked among applicants. The lower, the better—the lowest are called up first to interview and take the medical exams. His friend scored somewhere around two thousandth out of everyone who applied. Which means I probably did even worse if I haven’t gotten anything.
I’m starting to think that Jessie was right. That all that studying, all that time and hope that I might actually be able to do the thing I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid was just a waste. And here I am, in a different city, but with the same issues I’ve always had. Just fuckin’ stuck.
Ben goes back inside, and out of habit, I pull out my phone and scroll through the string of text messages I still have from Layla—messages I never erase, even though they take up too much room on this piece of shit flip phone.
I don’t have any right to call her like I do—after Thanksgiving, she stopped calling me completely, only responding here and there to texts. I fucked up, I know. Made her feel like I wasn’t as interested as her. But I couldn’t tell her the truth because I know my girl. She gets more excited about my future
than anyone. She dreams quicker, more eagerly than anyone I’ve ever known. Layla lives on a different level, one where her own dreams haven’t ever really been crushed. She doesn’t know yet what it feels like to fall. Really fall. I hope she never does.
I scan the messages we send from time to time. Maybe we shouldn’t be in contact at all. I’m not going to lie—it didn’t take long before I started letting Jessie crawl back into my bed again. But fuck, I’m lonely. It’s not fair to her when half the time I have my eyes closed, pretending she’s someone else. Covering her mouth with my palm so her voice doesn’t interrupt my fantasies. Jessie doesn’t realize that when she’s asleep and I’m sketching, it’s not her face that floods the pages of my book.
Those eyes are blue, not brown.
That hair is black, not blonde.
God, I miss her. And I regret so fuckin’ much not begging her to come here for Christmas. I should have just told her everything about the test. Coño, you fuckin’ idiot. What the fuck were you thinking?
“Hey.”
I turn around to find the club manager walking out with an envelope—tonight’s tips.
“We’re at last call,” he says, handing me the money. “You can go home now.”
The envelope is thin. It’s been slow as fuck tonight, just like I knew it would be on Christmas Eve. I use it to salute him, though he’s already carrying my stool back inside.
“Thanks,” I say, but he’s already too far away to notice.
* * *
The apartment is empty when I get back. Jessie left yesterday to spend Christmas with her family after asking me about fifteen times to come with her. Christmas in Oregon. It was tempting. Another change of pace. She all but guaranteed a white Christmas, nestled in the big evergreen trees we don’t have in New York. Something else besides sunshine and palm trees, concrete and asshats.
But the idea of sitting at a kitchen table in a room full of white people staring at me like I kidnapped their daughter doesn’t sound so great. Especially not when it’s with a girl I’m trying to get away from, even though every time I try, we just seem to get closer. Maybe it’s because Jessie and I are both equally stuck. Maybe it’s because we are both equally lonely. Whatever it is, something brings her into my room in the middle of the night. And something keeps me from kicking her out when we’re done.
I unlock the door to the apartment and take a moment to enjoy the solitude. It’s not often I get to be alone like this. I still like it. A lot. I dump the mail on the table, then grab a water from the fridge before I start shuffling through the envelopes. Cable bill. Shit, a doctor’s bill for Allie—poor kid had chicken pox, looks like. Notice for next term’s tuition for Gabe. Bills, bills, bills, most of them other people’s.
Then a letter pops up that makes me feel like the floor just dropped out from under me. The return address is in big blocked letters, with my name printed clearly across the front.
The FDNY.
I sink into a chair in the kitchen and stare at the envelope. This is late. Maybe too late. Everyone else has heard already. I’m probably at the end of the list. The pity letter they only send because they have to.
With hands that tremble, I tear open the envelope and pull out the flimsy piece of paper like I’m ripping off a Band-Aid. At the top, in big, broad letters, reads “Notice of Results.” And right under that, my name and a number.
Nico Soltero: 23
At first I’m not sure I see it. Maybe I’m imagining that I just got a number that puts me within the top twenty-five scores of a test that seven thousand people took with me on that day alone. I’m not sure there isn’t a zero at the end, or maybe two. I flip the letter over. Look over the next page, which contains another application for the fitness exam, and a note that says a packet for my background check is on its way. No, this isn’t a prank. This is real.
Twenty-three. Twenty-fuckin’-three. Me, Nico Soltero, the fuckup kid who at one point wasn’t even sure he was going to graduate high school. The guy who thought he was going to end up delivering packages or pouring drinks for the rest of his life because they were the only jobs anyone was willing to give my criminal ass. I just got an A on a fuckin’ test. Not just any test. The most important test of my life.
And there’s only one person I want to tell.
It’s late, too late, but I’m dialing anyway while I rush around the apartment, my fingers slipping over the keys. Maybe it’s just early enough here that she’ll be up soon. The phone rings four times, and I’m just about to hang up when I hear her voice, faint and groggy.
“Nico?”
I sit down on the bed, tugging off my tie. “Hey, baby.”
“Hey...what’s...up?”
Goddamn. I can just see her. Face a little puffy, bleary from sleep. Her brown-black hair curled from the way she sweats just a tiny bit around her neck when she’s really out. I can see her rubbing her lips, trying to wake up. They’ll be swollen a little, the color of rose petals in the Central Park gardens.
Fuck. Just the thought of them gets me hard. I wish to God I was there with her, wish I could help her wake up the right way. Down, boy. That’s not why you’re calling.
“I just...how are you?”
I don’t know why I can’t get it out. I stare at the paper, looking at the numbers. Twenty-three. Out of thousands. It’s a good number. No, a fuckin’ great number. It means I’m pretty much guaranteed for the series of interviews. And maybe, just maybe, the academy as a cadet.
But then my heart sinks as I realize the hurtles I’m actually facing. This test wasn’t ever going to be the hardest thing I had to face in trying to get this job. I might have been just a minor when I robbed that bodega with some other kids in high school, but the guilty verdict for assault––an assault I didn’t even commit––is permanent. The fact that I lived in a juvenile detention facility is not something I’ll ever be able to erase. And no one is going to think that someone who used to be a criminal could be a new hero for New York City. No one.
I open my mouth, trying to figure out how to answer her question. But then I hear another voice. A deep voice that calls her name.
“Layla?”
I stiffen. “Who was that?”
Layla’s silent for a second. I hear her palm cover the phone speaker while she talks to someone, her voice muffled through her hand. Then she gets back on.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m back. What was it you were trying to say?”
I open my mouth to tell her the news. But that voice±that very male voice—echoes through my head, and I can’t see straight. My fist closes, and the paper in it crumples.
“Nothing,” I say in some feat of magic, since I manage to keep my voice level. “I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, sweetie.”
“Oh.”
She pauses. Her thoughts are so loud, I can practically hear them through the phone. I just wish I knew what they were. I wish I knew who that guy was. I wish I was there to kick his fuckin’ ass out of her apartment. Mine, I want to shout, with every bone in my body.
But I stay quiet.
“Merry Christmas, Nico,” she says, her voice small and very far away.
And then we hang up. Because there isn’t anything else to say.
Chapter Nineteen
January 2004
Layla
“Giancarlo, please. We need to go. My friends are waiting for us.”
“Your friends, your friends. That’s all I hear about—your friends.”
I lean against the doorframe of Giancarlo’s bedroom, waiting impatiently for him to finish putting on his shoes. He’s been dragging all evening, clearly unhappy about coming downtown to meet Shama, Jamie, and Quinn. My roommates all got back from break last night, but I was holed up at Giancarlo’s apartment uptown until tonight. We ended up spending most of the last few weeks together, cocooned at his place or mine. Somehow I woke up, and it was almost the end of January.
Maybe it’s too soon to spend so much time tog
ether, but I couldn’t help but like having him with me when I opened the impersonal checks from my mother and father. I think he liked having me there too when he opened the small package from his family containing some treats from home. We even went to Mass on Sundays. It was...nice. Better than being lonely, even if he is kind of intense.
Like right now.
He sighs. The head-to-toe black he’s wearing doesn’t help his sullen expression. It’s his preferred color, but his skin is too pale for it, though I’d never tell him that. It would just be asking for a fight. And Giancarlo, I’ve learned, doesn’t give up on a fight.
“Do I really have to go?” he demands. “They’re your friends. What do they care about me? I don’t need friends.”
I wilt. This is not how the evening was supposed to go. It’s going to look really bad if I show up at the bar having promised new boyfriend without said boyfriend in tow. And then there’s the other side of the equation: that things between Giancarlo and me don’t seem quite official until someone outside of the two of us actually acknowledges our existence. Sees us. Interacts with us. Approves of us. Giancarlo doesn’t even have a roommate, and since my roommates have been gone...well, let’s just say you can’t live in a cocoon forever.
His cantankerous attitude remains through the subway ride downtown, all the way to the tiny bar, where I scan for my friends from the entrance.
“I don’t know why we are here,” he grumbles as he stands behind me. “I could have worked tonight. Do you have any idea how many jobs I have given up this month to be with you?”
I push him in the side light-heartedly, hoping I can get him to smile. It’s not something he does a lot, but I know if I can get him there, my friends might actually like Giancarlo.
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