by Damon Suede
Huh. I guess porn’s kind of a cure for hang-ups.
Dante puled the door open for Griff to climb inside, then closed it firmly. He jogged around the front and hopped into the driver’s seat. “I can’t believe I get to drive your damn truck.”
“I always wanted a slick wop chauffeur.” Griff took a big bite of apricot Danish and chewed happily.
Dante laughed and dug a wad of folded paper out of his back pocket to hand him Loretta’s listings: his escape plan. They were warm with Dante’s body heat and curved from being snug against his butt. “Where to first, Mr. Muir?”
Griff chewed a moment and let the creased pages cool off a little before he unfolded them.
Dante was raring to go. “Pick a dump, any dump.”
Griff scanned the page. Loretta had thoughtfuly organized them by neighborhood. “Hmm. First stop, looks like Sunset Park.” Dante bobbed his head, checked the mirror, and puled into the street smoothly.
GRIFFIN didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but he had no idea New Yorkers were wiling to live in such disgusting places. For some of them, slums would have been a step up.
They al sucked, every apartment Loretta had dug up—not just a little, but on a biblical scale. It was appaling to see what Brooklyn had to offer to a blue-colar bachelor seeking digs. Finaly, Griff understood what Loretta had been trying to tel him so tactfuly.
That wasn’t completely fair. Some of the places turned out to be nice but completely unrealistic. Even with his income from the FDNY, bouncing at the Stone Bone, and working construction on the weekends, these apartments were so expensive that Griff would have to work sixty hours a day to make the rent, let alone eat or pay for electricity.
The apartments he could afford, al three of them, were medieval in their ugliness and unfitness.
Option one was a sixth-floor walkup that had actual piles of trash scattered up the endless steps and dog turds on the landing. On the floor, a couple screamed at each other in French, it sounded like. A toddler wandered outside the door in diapers and bare feet. No thanks.
One apartment hadn’t even had wals or a toilet, just the bare pipe sticking up out of unfinished concrete in the dead center of an empty room. “Couple weekends, good as new!” the super had exclaimed. “You can instal whichever rooms and whatever crapper you want.” He pointed at the three-foot window high on one wal. “And a view!”
The third place turned out to be a semi-legal two bedroom that had been built over a pizzeria without permits by a couple of shifty cousins. They explained that their family couldn’t find out about the tenant so rent had to be paid weekly in cash. As a bonus, Griff could have al the pizza he could eat, plus they could place bets for him with their dad’s numbers racket. Upstairs, Dante found a rat the size of a possum curled dead in the pepperoni-scented bedroom. The sheepish cousins explained that they’d spread poison downstairs in the basement, so the rats had come up here: “On vacation, like.” Dante laughed al the way back to the truck, thumping Griff on the back, trying to get him to laugh too.
Once they were on the road again, Griff didn’t say anything. He just folded and refolded Loretta’s pages, stil curled with the shape of Dante’s ass.
Dante was driving back toward the kindergarten so he could colect Nicole.
“Sorry.” Griff felt like an idiot for dragging Dante al over creation.
“C’mon! For what? I wanted to help.”
“You don’t mind driving around?”
“Duh. No! I fucking hate it, G.” Dante turned to Griff and twisted his handsome features into his vilage idiot face: eyes crossed, tongue out. “I want you to move in with me, man.”
“Nah. I appreciate it, but I need to get a place of my own. I’m a grownup.” Griff turned to look out the passenger window, not wanting to see the plea in Dante’s bottomless eyes.
“Think. I got al those rooms.”
“Without fucking wals or doors!” Griff laughed and looked over at his best friend.
“Exactly! We could pool resources. Half the costs. I could use the steady rent, and you could even cover your part of the bils by helping me renovate. We’d both be better off and you know it. Even my parents think so.”
“They said that?”
“Griffin, they suggested it.” Dante took his eyes off the road to nail him with a glance. He frowned. “They know how much you work. They know what it’s like at your dad’s. And they worry about both of us.”
Griff tried to put his anxiety into words that didn’t cross any lines and stil sounded grateful for the offer. “Dante, I don’t think I should ever live with anybody.
I’m a pain in the ass. I keep rotten hours. I snore.” And I jerk off every single night watching you on the web.
Dante wasn’t buying that. “Yeah, asswipe, and I’m an arrogant prick. I own and use more grooming products than a chick. I can sleep through a missile strike and I have the same damn schedule, in case you hadn’t noticed. Why are you so dead set against me?” He put a hand on Griff’s thick leg and squeezed.
Why-why-why? I wonder.
Griff struggled to keep his thigh relaxed, not to react. He looked down at the hand and then at the road in front of them. He swalowed. “It’s not you. I love your place, you know that. And hanging out. Hel, I helped build out a lot of the deranged heap it is today. It—I don’t want to crowd you.”
“You’re not! How can you crowd me?! I’m asking!” Dante’s exasperation crept into his voice, reasoning with a lunatic.
Griff took a deep breath and let it out. “I just don’t want to put any pressure on you that isn’t already there.” Dante squeezed Griff’s leg and patted it— good dog— before putting both hands back on the wheel. “Okay. Okay. I just want you to know that I want you there. I wish you’d think about it.”
“I know.” Griff nodded. His thigh stil tingled with the handprint. “I do. I did. I have.” I think about it twenty-three hours a day, which is why it’s a rotten idea.
Dante puled into a space down the block from Nicole’s school. He kiled the engine and handed the keys back.
Griff took them and turned to Dante. “Sorry about wasting your Friday. You should be in bed.”
“It wasn’t wasted. Sheesh.”
Little people were miling with moms in front of the pastel letters painted across the front of the building.
Dante pointed and started to climb out of the truck. “There she is.”
To Griff’s surprise, he heard himself ask, “Can I come say hi?”
“Sure! Yeah. She’d love that.” Dante waited for Griffin to lock the truck and pocket the keys.
Under a bright painting of stacked pumpkins, Nicole was holding a young teacher’s skirt, pointing at their approach. The teacher leaned down so Nicole could say something.
Dante spoke out of the side of his wine-stain mouth. “I should mention, just so you know: she cals you Monster.”
“Monster?” Griff shook his head as they crossed the street. “Where’d she get that, I wonder?”
“Dunno.” Dante looked away and completely failed to seem innocent. “You’re huge and grouchy and fiery red.”
“I’l try not to step on any midgets.” Griff smiled and shouldered him hard enough to make him stumble.
“Hey!” Dante gave a bark of indignant laughter. “I’m fucking fragile! I’m recuperating.”
“Seem bad as new to me.”
The two firemen picked their way through the mob of tiny students to colect theirs.
Nicole watched them approaching with a kind of patient skepticism, like she was waiting for Griff to step on a building. Griff did feel like Godzila.
“C’mon, bug.” Dante scooped his niece up, nodding thanks to the teacher for waiting with her.
Nicole roled her little eyes at the injustice of being treated like a child. “Uncle Dante.”
“And Monster,” Griff muttered as they headed to Dante’s car.
Dante and Nicole laughed until he laughed too.
SOMETIME around two in the afternoon, Griff realized that he and Dante would make good parents—like, together. Oddly enough, Nicole was the one who diagnosed their delicate condition.
After the two men had picked up Nicole at school, they had gone for lunch at Ferdinando’s, old-school Sicilian ristorante al the way. They demolished a couple orders of rice bals, and then Nicole and Dante shared a few paneli specials, tasty chickpea fritters that were Dante’s favorite lunch. Griff had the pizziole, the pork so tender that he never touched his damn knife.
Griff insisted on picking up the check, and the soft way Dante looked at him to say “thanks” made him want to buy a milion lunches, lunches for strangers.
While he knew that having kids wasn’t realy this easy, Griff loved having the chance to goof off with his best buddy and play dad for a while. No alarms, no bar fights, no renovations. Just the three of them wandering around Cobble Hil, taking bakery breaks every now and then. And if some secret part of him pretended that they were a male couple spending the afternoon with their daughter, he tried not to think about it too much. Dante had promised his sister he’d have Nicole home at three.
Outside Ferdinando’s, Dante made sure Nicole was bundled and wrapped a lumpy knitted scarf around his own lean throat. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and squinted into the sky like he was embarrassed. “Uhh. I’d like to run by the bank. I got an appointment for now-ish. Financial planner.” Griff wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “The what? On a Friday?” He was so surprised that he forgot to keep walking.
Dante didn’t notice and headed up the sidewalk saying something about having a solid plan and a round number in his head.
I’ll be damned. He listened to me.
Nicole finaly toddled back and put her hand in Griff’s and tugged; otherwise, he might have stood there stunned until sundown.
“Bank,” offered Nicole with an eye rol just visible above the colar of her purple coat. She knew she was talking to the big dumb monster, so she spoke slowly and carefuly. “He wantsa go.”
Dante finaly realized he was solo and paused to look back, the wind pushing the raven tangle around the clean planes of his face. His white smile gleamed.
He opened his hands as if to ask “What’s your deal?” while Nicole dragged the big monster back upstream to her uncle.
Griff finaly said something when they’d nearly caught up. “You listened.”
“I always listen, G.” And with that, Dante took Nicole’s other hand and the three of them went to the bank—off to see the Wizard.
DANTE’S bank in Brooklyn Heights turned out to be a palace, literaly: tiled wals, vaulted ceilings, marble floor. The entire main floor was an echoing slice of Renaissance Italy.
“Wow,” Griff managed. “I think your bank is doing better than mine.”
Dante laughed. “Yeah, no. It’s a copy of some house in Florence. Italians, huh? Some family built it as a replica like a hundred years ago.” His eyes scanned the desks for someone.
Down at their knees, Nicole was carefuly stepping only on the cream tiles to make her way inside. The room had the muffled reverb of a church.
“Mr. Anastagio?” A man’s voice bounced off the wals and ceilings, making several people turn.
Dante and Griff turned to see a stiff-looking man in his forties raising a hand at him from a low desk halfway across the cavernous room.
“This shouldn’t take but a sec.” Dante checked silently with Griff to make sure he felt okay being left in Nicole’s hands.
Griff nodded. “I think she may wanna case the joint.”
“Thanks.” He squatted to Nicole’s height. “Be nice to Monster.”
Griff let Nicole tug him around the room, one cream tile at a time.
Ten minutes turned into thirty, and Nicole had gotten her fil of the imposing space. When she announced her legs were tired, they found a seat and plunked down. Dante was stil talking to the suit.
Was something wrong? Griff shifted his weight, itchy and restless to find out what the hel was taking so damn long, but there was no way he was going to butt in.
Griff looked over at Nicole sitting on the other side of the bench next to a half-empty juice box.
The kid seemed joly enough; she was making up elaborate histories about the characters in the two deposit lines, sharing her diagnoses with Monster. Weird.
She scanned the room for another doomed soul in need of a story.
“Sorry, honey. Are you bored?”
Nicole cocked her head in confusion. “Why’m I bored?”
“Al this grownup stuff. He didn’t think it would take this long.”
“You bored?” Nicole looked very serious, crossing her arms like an oncologist who was worried Griff had cancer.
“Uh, no. I’m not. I like doing stuff with you and your uncle.”
“Is he bored?” She swung around to check Dante for cancer.
At that moment her uncle was sitting twenty feet away in front of the glossy desk, brow knitted and nodding while the starched loan officer said something emphatic and held up a piece of paper. He had unconsciously finger-combed his curls into tousled spikes, which meant he was trying to keep his shit together and failing.
Griff strained to eavesdrop, but weirdly enough the echoing space actualy made that impossible. Al conversations were masked in reflected mutters across the room.
Again Griff had the weird fantasy that they were a couple and they were going to the bank together, that he could sit next to Dante the way a husband would while the banker offered options. He could take Dante’s hand so he didn’t yank his hair out. He hated seeing Dante stuck alone over there in his worst nightmare: calmly listening to someone who could take away his house.
Please give him whatever he needs.
Then, as if Dante could feel their gaze, he turned and looked straight at Griff and smiled so that his whole face lit up. He pointed at his watch and held up a hand. Five minutes. Black eyes on Griff’s, he gave a slow, sweet blink— thank you—and looked back at the loan officer.
Griff snapped back to where he was sitting and realized he had the same lit-up smile on his blushing face. Also that his little doctor had slid closer to explain something to her big monster.
“Nuh-uh. He’s not bored.” Nicole gave her diagnosis of her other patient. “He just misses you.” She patted his massive shoulder with her tiny hand— pat-pat— before scooting back to her side of the bench. The doctor went back to making the grownups more interesting under the smal octagonal skylights.
Griff swalowed around a lump in his throat, looking at the tiled floor. She meant Dante was having fun goofing off with them. For some stupid reason, his eyes burned and he felt lightheaded.
Don’t cry, asshole.
Griff sucked in a ragged breath and let it out and puled the sadness back into himself before it got loose. How was he going to explain that one? He glanced at Nicole. He probably wouldn’t have to; she’d explain it for him.
Suddenly, with perfect clarity, Griff could imagine what their son would be like. His and Dante’s. He’d have Dante’s humor and looks, Griff’s height and heart, and no fear of anything in the fucking world. He’d be strong and thoughtful and sily and kind—the kind of kid that other parents were jealous of, a boy to win things and climb mountains. Griff could imagine his smal, sturdy, smiling face exactly, as if their son were sitting next to him, and Nicole was chatting with him instead of herself. Griff almost gasped at the sweet vision of a family he’d never be alowed to have.
And then he was looking at Dante’s shoes. He looked up to find Dante standing in front of him, looking a little gray. Their imaginary son evaporated into cobwebs beside him. “You okay?”
“Sorry, gang.” Dante’s voice was hoarse. “He was in a grumpy mood.”
Griff asked a silent question of Dante’s eyes.
Dante shook his head. It had gone badly.
“You need an olive,” Nicole announced. The doctor was back in, it seemed. “Mama
says olives—”
“—can cure anything.” Dante and Griff spoke together and then laughed.
“Yeah, bug.” Dante nodded at her. “She learned that from Nonna. I think you may be right.” They stil had just enough time to swing by Sahadi to pick out a couple kinds of olives before taking Nicole back to her parents; by now they probably needed a diagnosis from their daughter too.
As the three of them headed back up Clinton toward Atlantic Avenue and the store, Griff inclined his head toward Dante and spoke under his breath.
“Whatever it is, we’l cover it.”
“I don’t think you’re gonna—what it’s gonna take, I mean. I don’t think you can.”
Griff’s heart squeezed, and the words popped out of him louder than he’d intended. “Shut up.”
“That’s rude!” Nicole was trying to figure out how she’d gotten stuck babysitting these two chuckleheads.
“Sorry. You’re right.” Then Griff mumbled again to Dante. “Dante Anastagio, I am going to help you if I have to break every bone in your body. Please.” Dante looked queasy, glanced down at the kid. “You’re gonna end up hating me. God.” More likely you’re gonna hate me. Griff pushed him so he stumbled. “Stop it.” Dante didn’t laugh. “I’m such a scumbag.”
What had the bank said?
Nicole had paused to pretend interest in a window ful of orchids. How did a kid know to do that? Living with her wacky mom, probably.
Griff stepped a few more feet away, then stared right into his best friend’s worried eyes. “D, I don’t care what it is; I don’t care what I have to do. You decide. Okay? I promise you. We wil get the ful amount to them, on time.”
Please stay with me. Our son was sitting this close, this close to me.
“Okay.” Dante looked exhausted. His eyes seemed sunken and his earlier glow gone. “Griff, you’re letting me drag you through the slime.” Fuck. Like throwing a switch, they weren’t a family anymore. Click! They were just two dipshits babysitting for a needy in-law. Dante was just some hothead losing his house. Griff’s impossible feelings and their imaginary son were just that.