Suddenly, I feel really scared about what would happen if he told me to fuck off. Suddenly, I really don’t want him to.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, more softly.
At last, Giancarlo smiles, a broad smile that completely transforms his otherwise stern face into something much more charismatic. “What, you think I can’t take a joke?”
I’m awash with relief––more than I should be, considering I don’t really know this guy very well. I shouldn’t care so much what he thinks.
We keep walking, sidestepping around a few homeless people piled under an awning. I glance back at them, considering whether to give the extra dollar or two in my purse, but Giancarlo tugs me onward. Across the street, several closed designer boutiques are still lit up with ostentatious Christmas displays in the windows: sleek mannequins in the front posed in thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise. It’s the haves and have-nots in this city in high relief.
Giancarlo ignores the sleeping people, but glares at the boutiques. “You see, in my country, it’s not like here.”
“No?”
Giancarlo shakes his head, and the movement causes a lock of thick black hair to fall over his brow. He tries to give me another smile, this time less genuine. It’s obviously not a natural expression for him, since it looks more like a grimace. Then he pushes his glasses up his nose, looking halfway between a librarian and a rake.
“Not so many gifts,” he continues. “We have presents, of course, but most people make them instead of buy them. And maybe only a few. The rest of the time, we do other things. It’s not so much a holiday about presents, all of these flashy things”––he gestures in the direction of the stores––“but more about family. God. The soul.” He looks directly at me, and his eyes practically flash under a streetlight. “The things in life that really matter, don’t you think?”
It’s hard to look away when he stares at me like that. Searching, like he wants to know the depths of my soul; the soul he’s talking about.
But eventually, I nod. “Yes.”
Giancarlo turns, like I just passed some sort of test. We keep walking steadily north, up toward the park. The Plaza Hotel looms in front of us, with its gold-lit green roof and gold-leaf trim. Another famous symbol of wealth and status in New York.
“My parents are like yours too,” I tell Giancarlo after I toss my empty cup into the trash. “They have money, but they really wanted me to make my own. I ended up sick last year trying to make enough to live in this city. It’s so expensive.”
Giancarlo grunts in agreement. “And now?”
“Now…I’m getting help from my mother. They aren’t as…strict as they were before.”
I don’t mention that my parents are also too busy wallowing in their own misery to pay attention to mine. I try to focus on the silver lining. No one is breathing down my neck anymore. I can live my own life.
My roommates never understood why I had to work as much as I did, and even Nico sometimes treated me like a spoiled princess just for struggling through it. But Giancarlo clearly knows. He knows how hard it is to have had something once and to have to go without it. To figure out that life on your own, all at once.
“What about you?” I ask. “You said your father insisted that you work, right? Where’s that?”
“Yes, I work,” Giancarlo replies slowly, almost like it’s a secret he shouldn’t share with me. “But it’s complicated.” He pronounces the word slowly, one syllable at a time in his thick Argentine accent: “com-plee-cay-ted.” “My visa doesn’t allow me to work outside of the campus. And those jobs don’t pay a lot of money.”
I frown. “So…what do you do?”
“I work for a promoter downtown. Help bring in people. Go out and get college girls, young people to come to his events.” He looks at me meaningfully. “So, if sometimes I don’t answer the phone late at night, that’s why. Sometimes I am at work. It’s cash, so I have to do what they say.”
His words are foreboding somehow, even though nothing specific about them is a threat. Like he’s warning me against something, but I don’t know what.
I continue to brood about this a few more blocks, until I realize that we’ve crossed the street, right under the lit awnings of the plaza, and are standing at the corner of Fifty-Ninth Street: at the entrance of Central Park. I look around the corner, bewildered, then at Giancarlo, who stops a few steps ahead of me, like he was about to pass into the trees and only just realized that I hadn’t followed.
“What?” he asks impatiently. “What’s the problem?”
I peer into the trees, toward the blackness beyond them. “Um, it’s the park.”
Giancarlo looks at me like I’m missing some brain cells. “Yes…”
I frown. “It’s after dark. In New York City. And you want to go into Central Park?”
He says nothing, just crosses his arms over his lapels and waits. I glance down the path, which is unlit and opaque. I feel like a storybook character trying to decide whether to go down the friendly, well-lit 6 train entrance across the street, or the foreboding, wolf-ridden path of Central Park at night.
Giancarlo sighs, then takes a few long steps back to me. He picks up my hands and holds them to his chest. “Do you really think I would ever let anything happen to you, mi joya?”
I bite my lip and try to pull my hands away, but he doesn’t let me. “Joya? What does that mean?”
“It means you are a jewel. A precious gem. I would protect you always.”
He squeezes my hands, then waits for me to respond. When I don’t immediately, he just sighs and kisses me lightly on the forehead before releasing me. It’s the first gesture that’s actually been sweet with him––not tinged with a little too much intensity, or something else I can’t quite name. It melts me a little. Enough to do something I know I shouldn’t.
But really. Who’s even here to care?
I follow Giancarlo into the park, which eventually doesn’t seem quite so dark as my eyes get used to walking without the glare of the city streets. As we progress, the sounds of the city dim. I actually hear a couple of squirrels scamper here and there––even a few birds getting ready for bed. It makes me wonder why people always tell you not to go into the park at night. It doesn’t seem scary at all. The quiet is actually really nice.
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 Gianc
arlo’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
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 freakin’ 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.
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