A Scarcity of Condors

by Suanne Laqueur

  Penny brushed off a chair and sat. Carefully. As if a dramatic flop would break her bones. She pressed a hand to her chest, rubbing the gordian knot of shock and confusion that blocked her from taking a full breath.

  Hey, Jude. The two-note Beatles refrain was inextricably tangled with her son’s name, but now she couldn’t get past don’t make it bad, because this was terrible. The knot in Penny’s chest yanked tighter because for all she knew, she had made it bad.

  How did this happen?

  How could he not be ours?

  It was absurd. This was Jude, their first child. Born into abject terror, clutched in arms as they escaped Chile. Lying on his wounded father’s chest in the hospital. Charming the passengers on the ship to Canada. Cleon’s stay-at-home compañero in the early years in Vancouver. Father and son going everywhere and doing everything together, learning their new home and new langugage. Penny’s little deputy at meetings and penas and airport runs. Their bright, kind, blue-eyed boy filling the world with music.

  Jude wasn’t theirs?

  How did this happen?

  “I don’t know what to do,” Cleon said, his voice hiding in the back of his throat.

  “He just needs a little time,” Penny said.

  And I need time to figure out how this happened.

  “I swear, if I lose that boy—”

  “We are not losing him.”

  “He’s disappeared.”

  “Stop it,” she said, sharper than she intended, but that evil, intransitive verb had no business in this conversation. “He’ll come around. He always comes back.”

  The look Cleon threw her was hard and hurt. “You can’t say he always comes back when he’s never gone away from us. Not like this.”

  This level of emotion was unusual for Cleon. Whatever he was feeling was important enough and strong enough to break past chemical bonds and shiver in his voice and demeanor. Which meant Penny had to corral all her crazed feeling, make it take several seats and shut up. Detach and let Cleon have the floor. It was his rare turn. She had to hold still and steady with open ears and hands. It was how they worked. It was how they survived.

  “He’s in shock,” she said. “We all are.”

  Cleon looked down at his phone, lips pressed tight. “He won’t answer me.”

  Despite her desire to be calm and reassuring, Penny felt a frisson of anger. Not answering was the cruelest thing Jude could do to his father. Unknown whereabouts were the cardinal sin of the Tholet children.

  But Jude wasn’t a child anymore.

  And he’s not our child.

  Penny shook her head hard, flicking the thought away. These goddamn DNA tests changed nothing. They were still a family and their family rules remained in place.

  “I know you want to get in the car,” she said. “Go driving around the neighborhood looking for him. I do too. I’d go with you. But he’s a grown man now, not a teenager. He’s upset. You need to give him some time.”

  Feeling she was full of shit, Penny reached and took the phone out of Cleon’s hand. “He’s our son and I know him. He’s not himself right now but he’ll calm down, he’ll come back and then we’ll talk about it.”

  And until then, I am not thinking about it. This changes nothing.

  She got up, putting the phone in her pocket. “Let’s unplug and take the kayak out. The exercise will do us both good.”

  Special booths are constructed in the stadium. Inside, Pinochet’s security services learn the mechanics of torture. Interrogation skills will come later. Right now, they practice applying the electricity, experimenting where and for how long.

  They practice and experiment on you.

  You keep trying Uncle Louis’s way. You build a house and ignore the screams. Ignore the cold and the hunger and the increasing filth and despair. Ignore that your turn is coming. Build your house. Furnish your rooms. You must endure. Thou shalt survive.

  Try again. Imagine yourself. It’s 1967. The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, along with the double A-side single “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

  You’re in love. This music is your life. You don’t consider yourself an artistic man, although you’re the son of a landscape designer and the nephew of a sculptor. You don’t paint or draw or even doodle. Yet the music of the Beatles creates grandiose works of art in your head. Some songs are sweeping murals, others are miniature portraits. The village life normalcy of “Penny Lane” juxtaposed with the lucid-dream imagery of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The mundane and surreal blended to perfection in “A Day in the Life.” Sandwiched between are odes to the beautiful simplicity of friendship, and a couple pledging devotion into old age.

  (Forever, Lucy. Grow old with me.)

  They call your name.

  The electrodes are placed.

  (Oh God, Lucy…)

  Your house collapses.

  You will not survive this.

  Eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night typically saw Jude in bed or heading toward it. Instead, he was in a booth at a Capitol Hill pub, heading toward his fourth beer.

  I’m not my parents’ child.

  He’d never again use the word “stunned” lightly. He couldn’t feel his face and he was sure the alcohol had nothing to do with it. One billion and seven thoughts careened through his brain, like an eclipse of moths around a lightbulb. What the fuck alighted on his shoulder, then flew off again. I can’t believe it made loop-the-loops around his head, followed by a more sluggish What do I do?

  What now?

  Where do I go now?

  He stared at the window. Sometimes through it, looking for answers on the street. Sometimes into it, catching his reflection in the window, unable to recognize his own face.

  I’m not theirs.

  So who am I?

  What is my name?

  “He’s not worth it.”

  Startled, Jude looked the other way to see a man lounging against the booth. “What?”

  “He shit on you. He broke your heart. Fuck it, things happen for a reason. He’s not the one. This is happening because you’re destined to meet someone better. I’m telling you, one day, you’ll be lying in bed with the most excellent dude to walk the planet, and you’ll look back on this night and wonder who that prophetic stranger at the bar was. I’ll say you’re welcome now.”

  Jude blinked. The guy kept smiling back, handsome and confident. A little too much of each, frankly. In Jude’s experience, exceptionally good-looking men were either guarded as hell or entitled as hell, and this grinning tomcat exuded the latter.

  “Do I know you?” Jude said.

  “In the biblical sense? Not yet.”

  Jude stared, the hoppy air of the pub cool against his teeth and tongue.

  “Close your mouth. It’s making me have inappropriate thoughts.”

  Resisting the urge to check over his shoulder or point a finger at his chest, Jude said, “Are you hitting on me?”

  “Are you available to be hit on?”

  The sober Jude would roll his eyes and flick this lothario off like a horsefly. Instead he leaned back on the alcoholic buzz and settled into his skin. Gaze holding still as he took a long sip of his beer.

  “Don’t lick your lips like that,” the lothario said. “It’s not helping get rid of me.”

  Not looking away, Jude licked his lips again. The guy’s head tipped back with laughter, showing a rather lovely throat.

  “You got game,” he said, sliding uninvited into the opposite bench. “I knew you did.”

  “What’s your name?” Jude asked. Since when were throats a lovely thing to him? This one looked meaty rising up out of a shirt collar, with a bristle of incoming beard through the soft skin. Delectable little adam’s apple rising and falling as he said, “I’m Tage.”

 
Jude frowned. “Tage?”

  “T-e-j. Rhymes with page.”

  “Tej. Cool name. I like it.”

  A long staring moment before Tej raised an eyebrow. “See, this is where you tell me your name.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Your name is sorry?”

  “My name is Juleón. Friends call me Jude.”

  He’d punch this guy out if he started singing the Beatles.

  “Nice to meet you, Juleón,” Tej said. “So what’s going on?”

  “How old are you?”

  Tej winced. “Dude, seriously?”

  “I’m thirty-six and just found out I’m adopted.”

  “Now I’m losing my erection.”

  A waitress materialized and collected Jude’s empty glass. “Another one?”

  “Please.”

  “Something for you, Tej?”

  “I’ll have what he’s having. To soothe my wounded ego.”

  When she’d gone, Jude sat back and tried to assess his new company. “You’re quite the force to be reckoned with.”

  “Thank you, I try. Now run the adopted thing by me again?”

  “I would if I could get two thoughts to sit next to each other. So I’m obliterating all thoughts entirely. Or trying.”

  “I got a better means of obliterating thoughts. Without the debilitating hangover.”

  Again, the Jude that Jude knew, who hated this kind of come-on, was nowhere to be found. Tej was making him preen a little. Sit back in relaxed confidence and accept his due.

  “What are you smiling about,” Tej said.

  “Normally, arrogant audacity turns me off. But I’m rather enjoying this pick-up.”

  “And this is my bare minimum effort. Can you imagine if I really turned on the charm?”

  “I might combust.”

  “Hopefully.”

  As fast as the confident rush came, it left. Jude felt his face flame up as all clever comebacks deserted him. “I don’t really have the wherewithal to spar with you right now.”

  “Do you have the wherewithal to fuck with me?”

  “Dude… You can’t say shit like that.”

  “Why not?”

  Because it’s giving me a hard-on. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”

  “Talking to strangers gets you laid.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Besides, we stopped being strangers five minutes ago. So let’s stop talking and get out of here.”

  “Shut up.”

  Tej leaned his chin on the heel of his hand. “You’re actually giving this some thought.”

  “What I’m thinking is you’re insane.”

  And I’m kind of loving it.

  “Come home with me,” Tej said, unperturbed. “I’ll make you feel better. You get a good night’s sleep and things will look clearer in the morning. And if they don’t, at least you got laid.”

  “I’m a lousy lay when I’m distracted.”

  “I’ll have to work harder at holding your attention then.”

  Jude held still, knowing the slightest attempt to readjust the erection in his jeans would not only be detected, but remarked upon. “This is extremely flattering,” he said. “But I don’t go home with strangers.”

  Tej jerked his head toward the back of the pub. “We could go in the loo.”

  Jude lowered his laughing face into his hands. “Who are you?”

  The waitress returned with their drinks. “Here you go, fellows.”

  Tej tugged at the pocket of her apron. “Rosie, I need a favor.”

  “What, baby?”

  “I’m attempting to seduce this gorgeous gentleman and he’s wisely being prudent about consorting with arrogant and audacious men he doesn’t know.”

  “In other words, Tuesday.”

  Tej pointed a finger. “That was unnecessary.”

  “Sorry. Where do I come into the seduction scheme?”

  “You already know everything about me. Can I ask you to please note his description?”

  Rosie looked at Jude and winked. “With pleasure.”

  “Perhaps he’ll give you his contact information. And if he goes missing in the morning or is found floating in the harbor, you report me to the police with all due dispatch.”

  “You are the dispatch.”

  “This is true.”

  Her empty tray on her hip, Rosie smiled at Jude. “For real, he’s an EMD. He answers nine-one-one calls.”

  “No shit,” Jude said.

  “I do know where he lives. And all his secrets. He talks a big game but he’s really a mush. You could do worse.”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Tej said. “I don’t recall asking for this.”

  Rosie ruffled his hair. “Good luck. Both of you.”

  Jude watched her walk off. “Your sister?”

  “I wish. So what do you think?”

  But the second the word sister slid through Jude’s teeth, it free-associated into siblings, lost children, unknown family and who am I? And then for fuck’s sake, he was tearing up. What, he was going to fucking cry about this? He never cried. Not anymore.

  “Hey.” Like a curtain falling, the teasing dropped out of Tej’s face. In an instant he went from unknown libertine to trusted companion. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry. You’re legit upset. I’ll let you be.”

  Jude felt an odd stab of panic at the thought of this guy leaving him anywhere. “No, no,” he said, shaking the episode off hard and getting what shit he had together. “It’s just… I’m a sloppy drunk.”

  “You’re not drooling or slurring.”

  “Yet.”

  “I’m bold but I’m not stupid. I can see whatever’s going on, it’s hurting like hell. I’m sorry.”

  “I typically try much harder than this to make a good first impression.”

  “There’s something to be said for getting your worst moments over with.”

  Jude raised his glass. “Welcome to my shit show.”

  Tej clinked his against it. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Anyone ever tell you you look a little bit like Daniel Westling?”

  “Who?”

  “Daniel Westling. Prince consort of Sweden.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll be the first then.” Tej held up his glass. “Skål.”

  They drank, eyes locked over the rims of their glasses. Beneath the table, the slightest, tiniest pressure: the toe of Tej’s shoe against the toe of Jude’s. It sent a tiny current up Jude’s calf.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he heard himself say.

  “Like what?”

  Like you want to fuck me.

  “Like…that.”

  Tej reached and pushed Jude’s glass back down to the table. “Come on. You’re cut off and so am I. This was fun, but now let’s find you a cab.”

  They didn’t do-si-do around the bill. Each put money on the table. Jude pulled on his jacket and Tej went to retrieve his from wherever he’d left it. Outside, the air was icy and bracing.

  “I think I’ll walk a little,” Jude said, inhaling deep into his stomach.

  “I’ll come with.”

  “You will?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Okay?”

  Tej crossed his arms, eyes flicking to the skies. “Don’t look so surprised. You’re nineteen kinds of gorgeous, but you also look like your life’s been turned inside-out. I feel bad.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  Tej took a step in. “Don’t misunderstand me.”

  “Mm?”

  “My only goal tonight is to get you safe in a cab home. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to get you naked.”

&n
bsp; Jude filled with curious and arrogant heat. As the cold night enveloped him, he was shocked steam didn’t start rising off his body. “I see.”

  “And not for nothing, but I want that pretty bad.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “Instinctive lust. It serves a certain purpose.”

  Son of a bitch, the heat switched off and Jude was freezing cold. And light-headed all of a sudden. He put a hand against the building’s brick façade. “Oh man, I’m wasted.”

  Tej touched his elbow. “You okay?”

  “I swear, I don’t…” He laughed softly as he drew in breath after breath. “This isn’t me.”

  “No, I think it is you. And I’m digging it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No really. And whatever’s hurting you, I want to make it stop.” The fingertips on Jude’s elbow turned into a palm, then a warm, strong grip around his bicep.

  “Who are you?” Jude whispered, staring at Tej’s mouth.

  Tej’s smile—quick, wide and true—was a beautiful thing. “I’m just me.”

  Jude stared, caught up in the moment that wanted him to trust it so badly.

  Tej leaned in a little. “It’s me.”

  His other hand ran lightly through the hair above Jude’s ear.

  “Only me.”

  He closed the gap and rested his mouth against Jude’s. Soft and neutral, letting Jude get used to his proximity. Jude closed his eyes and leaned into the kiss. Opened for it. Slid down it, falling through the darkness behind his eyelids.

  “You taste amazing,” Tej said against Jude’s chin.

  “So do you.”

  “Feel better?”

  “Yeah. That was…rather head-clearing actually.”

  “You want to walk or find that cab?”

  “Neither.” He pulled Tej back in, turning them so Tej’s shoulders were up against the bricks now. His fists full of Tej’s jacket, he kissed him. Opening his mouth a little more, inviting the slide of tongue and the edge of teeth. Following it back into Tej’s mouth, swallowing his breath, echoing back a sharp moan in his throat.