One Life to Lose

by Kris Ripper

  Five people. I hadn’t known any of them, really, but I’d bought a young man a drink on his birthday only to discover weeks later that he’d been killed that night. I couldn’t grieve him; I hadn’t known him. But I stood on the sidewalk, flipping my collar up against the wind, and thought about that night, and that boy, who’d left by this exact door in the company of someone who had betrayed his trust so fundamentally that he had not survived it.

  I went home, turning my mind to Saturday. North by Northwest would be fun, and this time I would not drop my index cards.

  The second week of the film series went well. No index cards were dropped. I told the story of the journalist who’d originated the idea of the fake agent pursued across the country, and how he’d made ten thousand dollars when Hitchcock bought the story from him. I also encouraged the audience—again, filling most seats in the theater—to keep their eyes open for Hitch’s possible second appearance in the film. (The first was during the opening credits, when Hitch missed his bus.)

  I settled in to socializing in the lobby after, without the world being quite as gray and black as it had been the previous week, which meant I was a little more raw, a little less protected by my pleasant celluloid shield.

  Less prepared for Keith to touch my arm, casually, as I stood in front of an old White Christmas poster I superstitiously never took down. The two of them had approached, slowly, but I’d seen them coming. Still, the touch was a brief jolt to my system. I couldn’t feel his fingers through my suit coat, but for some reason I tried to, as if all I needed to do was make a wish and then I’d feel the phantom warmth of his hand.

  “I loved the movie,” he said. “Not as much as An Affair to Remember, but more than Rear Window.”

  I managed to smile. “Are you a Jimmy Stewart fan?”

  “I am, a little.”

  “He means a lot,” Josh added.

  “Then I’m sure I’ll see you for The Philadelphia Story.”

  Both of them smiled, satisfaction in stereo.

  “You’ll see us for all the movies, Cameron,” Keith said. “But will you come down to QYP this week? We’d love to show you around.”

  “Of course.” I forced myself to pause for a moment, to still all the twitching thought-stubs in my head (calculating how much longer people would linger, and if we’d run out of snacks, and if I should have petitioned for a temporary liquor license after all, since the array of juices looked so silly on their table). “Yes. I’d really like that.”

  Keith’s eyes were still so blue. A dark and forgiving blue, with flecks of sky and sea.

  “When will you be off? Or is that something you can predict at all?”

  I had no idea. “Mondays are generally safe. Monday late morning?”

  “Great.” He patted my arm once. “See you then.”

  Josh grinned. “Looking forward to it. Good night.”

  I said good night, and maybe I was searching for meaning in ridiculous things, or maybe there was some magic to the two of them, but opening the door seemed to pierce the surface tension of the room and soon everyone was saying good night and following Josh and Keith out into the cold.

  A coincidence, or just that kind of timing. No magic to it at all. But I found myself associating them with the peace of an empty lobby, smiling to myself about visiting their center.

  Merely the anticipation of going somewhere new, pursuing more conversations with new friends. Or so I told myself, sternly, with no room for anything else. Even as I pictured Keith’s eyes and recalled an echo of Josh’s laugh.

  It began raining late Sunday night and continued through Monday. I pulled the Volvo to the curb in front of the last warehouse on the row, which had a rainbow-painted sign out front, dripping bits of color onto the sidewalk.

  Queer Youth Project - Change the world.

  Simple sentiment. Hard to argue with. Too bad about the sign, though. They’d certainly need to invest in one that resisted weather fluctuations.

  I got out of my car and straightened my clothes as I walked, wishing I’d worn my longer topcoat. No awnings on this side of the Harbor District, no cover of any kind as I approached the large, horizontally sliding door—suitable for deliveries—which was open three feet wide.

  The first thing I saw, before I was even inside, were the colors. More colors. Bright colors, but not garish, not offensive to the eye: blues, purples, and greens, in blocks two-thirds of the way up the high walls. From there to the ceiling they were a warmish gray tone. I slid in through the opening and stood there looking around, appreciating the scale of the place, and the clever way it had been arranged to maximize and contain specific areas. On the far side were little conversational nooks, groupings of chairs and couches, all serviceable, none seeming altogether luxurious or comfortable. A few long tables with folding chairs along the outside wall, and another area beside it with two round tables. Places to work, or perhaps study.

  Josh sat at one of the round tables alongside a young man in a coat far too big for him. I couldn’t tell if he’d seen me, but he was clearly busy, so I side stepped to get out of the breezy doorway and continued a visual tour.

  The kitchen dominated the left side of the room, large and open, and the peninsula I’d seen on Josh’s picture had stools, as was only sensible.

  Beyond the kitchen, along the back wall, were a couple of thrift-store bookshelves, mostly empty, and a handful of brightly colored beanbag chairs. And a doorway, in which Keith suddenly appeared.

  He smiled and waved, but didn’t speak until he’d crossed the wide expanse of the room. “Hey, I’m so glad you could come out in the rain.”

  “I haven’t melted. Yet.”

  “Were you worried that you’d turned into the Wicked Witch? Here, can I get you anything? We have a pot of coffee made relatively recently, and vast stores of hot chocolate and dehydrated hot cider.”

  I followed him into the kitchen, where he poked around in cabinets until he found what he was looking for.

  “Sorry, we keep shifting things around. Here.” He handed me a mug and gestured to the little basket with supplies, and the coffeepot.

  “Thanks. It’s incredibly cold out there today. I thought the rain might warm things up, but this is clearly a cold front.” I tapped the pound bag of coffee. “Sobrantes? Your coffee budget must be high.”

  He grinned. “We make one pot of Sobrantes a day, which is what we’d make in the apartment if we didn’t come straight here in the mornings. What you’re drinking is actually generic grocery-store brand with a tiny bit of cinnamon at the bottom of the carafe to liven it up a little. But see if it doesn’t taste better when you’re looking at a bag of Moon Bay Blend.”

  I appreciated the notion and sipped my coffee, thinking about Los Sobrantes, the best roaster in La Vista. “I think you’re right. It certainly doesn’t taste cheap.”

  “See? Now let me show you around a little.”

  We turned to leave the kitchen when the sound of a chair scraping across the ground made both of us pause.

  The young man at the table had stood up fast and was staring down at Josh, body rigid with anger.

  “Hey,” Josh said sharply. He, too, pushed back from the table. But he didn’t stand. He stared up at the boy until the boy’s shoulders hunched, and he sank back into his seat.

  “I hate it when this happens,” Keith murmured. “Intellectually I understand that they do this father-child dynamic in a way that works for both of them, but I find the fighting hard to take.” He glanced at me. “That’s Merin, our second-in-command. I’ll introduce you when they’re done with their current showdown.”

  “Of course.” I turned, allowing him the opportunity to turn as well, so he wasn’t looking at the round table. “How did all this get started? I’m dying of curiosity.”

  “It was all Josh’s idea. Though he’d say none of it would have happened without me.”

  They’d met in college. I was surprised to discover that Keith was still in college, his fi
nal year before graduating with a BA in business administration. But even as surprised as I was, I could also see his youth in his cheeks, in his hands, constantly gesturing.

  “You work around your class schedule?” I asked.

  “Most of my professors have been great about it. I mean, I’m applying a lot of what my classmates have only ever read about, so a few of them will let me skip classes and turn in extra work, or attend classes and curtail some of the assignments for other things. I’m actually working with one of my professors right now on our bookkeeping as an independent study project, which is kind of amazing. I should be paying her, but she said she’s so delighted to have something real to think about, she should be paying me.” He shook his head. “Sorry, you were asking about how we got started. It was Josh’s crazy, amazing idea, but he pretty much introduced himself to me one minute, and the next minute told me that we were about to start a business together and was I prepared to be the brains of the outfit? I told him he better not be implying I wasn’t beautiful.” A smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and I watched, waiting that half beat until it won, fully taking over. “He’s so charming. It’s obnoxious.”

  I made my voice dry. “I can see that.”

  “Oh god, stop.” Now he blushed, and it was a lovely thing, watching Keith blush. I could appreciate the aesthetics without being personally invested. Who wouldn’t appreciate Keith standing before them in a blue plaid button-down, gripping his coffee and trying to hide his smile?

  “How long ago was that? It seems like QYP happened incredibly fast.”

  “Ha. Not from our perspective. We met three years ago. It took a year and a half to put together the full business plan and really work it all out, though we’ve had people interested in investing almost from the start. Josh likes to say rich white people can’t resist throwing money at him.”

  I considered his . . . obnoxious charm, and agreed. “I’m completely impressed so far. What’s the vision for it?”

  “We want to save the kids. All of them, but especially the queer kids.” His eyes flicked to the round table again. “Hopefully at some point we’ll have a good network of shelters, at least for the kids who are over eighteen. But the younger kids are a problem. Foster care isn’t a good solution, but everything else is illegal. Sorry. I’m mumbling to myself. We can’t anticipate all the needs our community will have, but even just getting started, we have a few people coming in to use the lockers, and more than a few requests for computer use, though we don’t have a good system for that yet.”

  “And are people coming by?”

  “Yeah, I know you can’t tell by today, but the rain’s killer. We get a good little group after the high school lets out, and throughout the day we have a little bit of traffic around meal times. It’s getting to be an issue with ages. We don’t demand ID, but we’re an under-twenty-five organization, for the safety of the younger kids. Food draws in everyone.” He gestured to the high windows, where rain kept pelting. “When it was sunny, we brought the food outside. That way we could offer it to whoever stopped by without compromising on our demographics. Harder now.”

  “And presumably there’s higher demand for a place to get off the street.”

  He held up his hand, seesawing it back and forth. “When we’re established, that might be the case. At the moment we don’t have too many people lingering. People who live on the streets often have their haunts and their usual places to go in bad weather. We haven’t made it into anyone’s regular rotation yet, and to be honest, that’s not our goal. We exist to catch a certain group of kids before they start living on the street.” Another glance over. I followed his gaze.

  Josh was sitting closer, talking to the young man at the table, leaning in. Not too close, but before there had been an invisible barrier between them, and now there was none, only space. I could see how much the boy wanted Josh’s help, and how resistant he was to accepting it, mirrored on the other side by how much Josh was holding back because this wasn’t the type of young man you could hug to make everything better.

  “I don’t know,” Keith murmured. “What do you do with a kid whose home life consists of putting their head down and hoping to scrape by safely until they turn eighteen? And then what do you do? Hand them off to a shelter? They’d make Merin go to a women’s shelter and—there’s no way.”

  I studied them again, but Merin still read like an angry young man to me. “He’d pick the streets?”

  Keith touched my arm, as he had the other night. “We don’t use gendered pronouns. But yes. He would choose the street over a women’s shelter, and even if we could somehow find a men’s shelter, I’m not at all sure that would be safe. The world is not set up for trans youth, Cameron.”

  “I’m sorry.” It was the only thing I could think of to say, no matter how absurd.

  “Let’s make lunch. Do you mind working? Sorry, that’s terrible, isn’t it? Inviting you down here and putting you to work.”

  “I don’t mind in the least. I don’t need to be back at the theater until four, so by all means, put me to work. What are we making?”

  “Sandwiches. Peanut butter and jelly, and tuna. Nothing fancy.”

  I took off my jacket and draped it over a stool, then rolled up my cuffs. “How can I help?”

  Keith blushed, again, and lowered his head. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I really like how you wear clothes. Um. God, that’s embarrassing. Anyway.”

  Take it the wrong way? I had no idea how to take it. I had no idea what to say.

  He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Um. Here, start on peanut butter. Let’s make a loaf of each type. The food’s mostly donated, and we bring the uneaten prepared food back up to the soup kitchen on Third and Water Street.”

  I nodded, still trying to find my tongue. And trying not to look over at my fellow sandwich maker, blush lightly staining his cheeks.

  I did not meet Merin that day. When they were done with their conversation, Merin slipped out the door with a vague backward wave I assumed was intended for Keith.

  Josh stood up, slowly, as if he ached, and made his way to the kitchen. A few people had stopped by for sandwiches, but we still had plenty left. He grabbed a tuna and jumped up to sit on the counter.

  “Sorry about not saying hello earlier,” he said to me.

  “Not at all. I completely understand.”

  “That makes one of us. I don’t completely understand anything right now.” He looked at Keith. “How do you feel about becoming a foster parent?”

  Keith winced. “Did you finally figure out what’s going on?”

  “No. But it’s clear Merin’s only telling us a fraction of what’s actually happening, and I don’t like any of it. Neither does Jaq. She called again this morning to make sure we had eyes on Merin, since the little punk skipped school. Sorry, Cameron. I don’t mean to leave you out or discuss totally private things in front of you.”

  “It’s really not a problem. Would you like me to step away for a moment?”

  “No, no. Stay. How do you like the center?”

  “It’s incredible. I am . . . impressed and amazed.”

  Josh’s grin was infectious. “Good. Glad to hear it. We do seek to amaze. We’re really happy you found time to hang out.”

  “Absolutely.” I didn’t have a follow-up, and he was chewing. The moment of silence wasn’t awkward, exactly, but I felt awkward suddenly, standing there in what felt like their kitchen. “What’s this about?” I asked, tapping a piece of paper taped to a cabinet.

  “National Coming Out Day is tomorrow, so we’d hoped to barbecue outside,” Keith said. “But the rain’s not supposed to break until late, unfortunately.”

  Josh shrugged. “My dad will barbecue in the rain. It’s just a matter of how much of that food we’ll end up donating to the soup kitchen.”

  “True. If you’re interested in dinner tomorrow, you should come down again, Cameron.”

  “I’m on from noon until closin
g, actually,” I said with some regret. I wouldn’t mind another excuse to sit and talk to them. Then again, maybe I could do one better. “National Coming Out Day,” I mused. “I think perhaps the Rhein will be donating all proceeds tomorrow to a promising organization helping queer youth.”

  Both of them blinked at me.

  It was last-minute, but I could make it work. “Would you send me an email with your logo? I need to print a couple of signs. Next year we’ll work it out a few weeks in advance, but there’s still a little bit of time to get the word out.”

  “Are you serious?” Josh set the last of his sandwich down. “Cameron, are you serious right now?”

  “Of course I’m serious. Why not? We’ve done things like this in the past.” And while technically I should wait until I did the books at the end of the month before cutting a check, I knew I wouldn’t. I’d estimate. The exact amount mattered less than getting them the money quickly; it couldn’t possibly be cheap to have installed the huge kitchen and furnished everything.

  Keith bit his lip. “I don’t even know what to say. Thanks so much. That means—that means a lot to us.”

  “Well, don’t get too excited. Tuesdays are not huge days at the theater. But between Ed, Alisha, and me, we should be able to round up a couple extra moviegoers. It might be worth dropping a flyer at Club Fred’s as well.”

  “Right, the logo. Give me your email address. And phone number.” Keith programmed both into his phone. “Cameron, thank you so much.”

  “Really, it will only be a few hundred dollars. It’s absolutely not that big a deal.”

  But there was no convincing them. They seemed unreasonably grateful and I finally distracted them by asking if they had a computer in the building we could quickly work up a flyer on so I could stop by the copy store and drop some off before heading back to the theater.

  Keith, it turned out, was something of a whiz. In no time he had the Rhein’s logo, QYP’s logo, and a pleasing invitation to see any film at the theater on Tuesday, October eleventh, and all proceeds would be donated to the Queer Youth Project. He also insisted on printing ten of them, in color, to save me the trip to the copy store.