A Charm of Finches

by Suanne Laqueur

  I’ll talk to you later.

  Later never came for Flip and Jav.

  Later was now.

  Please, Jav thought. If this goes somewhere or if it goes nowhere. If he’s cool or if he’s an asshole. If I get laid or I get heartbroken. I accept it. Thy will be done. Just let me come home. Give me this chance. Please.

  Let me live to find out who I really am.

  Dr. Bloom was strict with Geno’s fitness guidelines, lest he damage what was still healing. “They’re the same limitations for post-hernia,” she said at the last appointment before he went to school. “If you’re more comfortable saying that to strangers.”

  “For how long?”

  “Two months.”

  “Shit.”

  “If that’s what you desire to keep doing naturally for the rest of your life, then yes.”

  She knew how to get his attention. He could die happy without prepping for her exams with enemas, sitting in one more goddamn sitz bath or sticking one more suppository up his butt. It was no fun being ruled by your rectum.

  Truth be told, he needed the slow start. While the worst of his injuries were behind him—har de har har—a host of little aches and pains and discomforts were constant companions. His bum shoulder—but seriously, folks—and strained back gave him unpredictable grief. His jaw made disturbing clicks when he yawned big. His vocal chords recovered, but his voice would always be slightly hoarse and vulnerable to a cold or allergy season.

  His wrists had finally healed, though. He could cover the scars on his left wrist with his watch but the battle wounds on the right were out in the open. People stared, no doubt thinking he’d tried to off himself.

  If they only knew.

  He went to his first session with Wayne, the trainer at the Flatbush YMCA, with his guidelines and a slightly modified medical history, gleaned from a story in the NY Post. He told Wayne he was mugged in the subway. Jumped from behind and stabbed in the gut. He had the scar to prove it.

  Wayne gave Geno a thorough evaluation and laid out a plan. The walls of his little office were hung with pictures of himself in martial arts moves.

  “Taekwondo?” Geno asked.

  “Krav Maga.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Israeli self-defense.”

  Geno looked back. “Are you Jewish?”

  “No.” Wayne laughed. “It’s not a requirement.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “The goal of KM is to avoid confrontation,” Wayne said. “And if it starts, to end it as quickly as possible. It teaches you a lot about situational awareness.”

  “Situational awareness,” Geno said. The words filled his mouth like some rich, decadent dessert.

  “You learn about the psychology of confrontation, and how to see potential threats in your surroundings.”

  Situational awareness, Geno thought, nearly in a trance. It was what failed him at Anthony’s house. He had a gut feeling something was weird but didn’t trust it.

  Never again.

  Situational awareness.

  “You train your mind as well as your body,” Wayne was saying. “You use your mental strength first to diffuse or avoid a fight. Fists are the last resort.” He smiled at Geno. “But first things first, kid. Let’s get you back in shape. Man, you got a lot of work to do on your core muscles, otherwise that back of yours is going to bother you the rest of your life.”

  “So,” Jav said. “Not to get too personal on the first phone call…”

  “If it gets weird, I’ll just hang up,” Stef said.

  “You were married?”

  “I was. It’s not one of my finer moments.”

  “What happened?”

  “We met in grad school. We were young and liberal and had a lot of the same ideas about gender roles and societal roles and free love and open marriage.”

  “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  “Was she bisexual as well?”

  “No, actually. Strictly dickly, as girls like to say.”

  “They do?”

  “I’ve heard it.”

  “Did she know you were bi?”

  “When I say we were an open book, we were an open book. So transparent we were invisible. Anyway.” Stef ran a hand through his hair. “Trying to find the quick and dirty version that doesn’t make me look like an asshole.”

  “Trying not to make a joke with quick, dirty and asshole.”

  Stef laughed. Jesus, even if nothing physical panned out with this guy, Stef wanted to keep him around for conversation.

  “We got into the swing scene, which was the beginning of the end.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “We started hanging more and more exclusively with this one other couple. Straight swapping of spouses. Then me and the guy started hanging out. Just as friends, the way these things always start out. But then one thing led to another. Much to his surprise. And his wife’s.”

  “This is making me feel better about one of my disasters.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah. But go on.”

  “Not much else to tell. We got busted. It was ugly and they disconnected from us. They circled the wagons and managed to save their marriage while ours just…”

  “Blew up?”

  “You know, if it blew up it would be sort of noble. It really lay down and died without a fight. I look back now and, man, I’m appalled at how easily we gave up and walked away. Like the whole thing had been a game we got bored with.”

  “Do you still talk to her? What’s her name?”

  “Courtney. We call on birthdays. Text on the anniversary of the divorce because we’re weird like that. Certainly if she had cancer or something, I’d want to know. But she’s not what I’d call a friend. Not anymore.”

  “I see.”

  “Right on the heels of our separation came my parents’ divorce. I’d say it was the hardest time of my life. In terms of growing up.”

  “Huh.”

  “How about you?”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “When did you know you were bi?”

  “That’s hard to answer. It’s tangled up with the reasons why I got thrown out of my home when I was seventeen. And tangled up with whole lot of denial. Until recently, I’ve used cutesy expressions like bi-cautious and bi-curious.”

  “So…” Stef cleared his throat. “Not to get too personal on the first call, but have you actually been with a guy?”

  “Two, but been with is generous. I haven’t done much past kissing.”

  “I see.”

  “So I think the appropriate term is bi-clueless.”

  “Nice,” Stef said. “Who were the guys?”

  “One was… It ended before it started and it ended really sadly. I’ll tell you about it another time. The other guy is more in line with your disaster. He was a friend. I guess he still is a friend but it’s kind of awkward at the moment. Anyway, he and his wife were the closest friends I’d had in years. Alex, especially. If finding Ari was like finding a little brother, finding Alex was like reuniting with a twin or something. So I took the natural next step of falling in love with him.”

  “Because, why not?”

  “Last thing I expected was for him to feel the same way.”

  “Mutual bi-curiosity?”

  Jav laughed. “What was I supposed to do? The right thing?”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “How’d that bit of growing up feel?”

  “I’ve had root canals that were more relaxing. But anyway, that’s my experience with bisexuality. I’ve honestly always known it was part of me. Two times I tried to do something about it and both ended disastrously. So besides being clueless still, I’m kind of…skit
tish. Love’s really never been a friend of mine.”

  “Oh?”

  “Then again, I didn’t give it much of a chance. Hence, this is the new me. Or the old me with not so many parts hidden.”

  “Have you had any serious relationships?”

  “No.”

  “None? No girlfriend ever?”

  “Well.” Jav chuckled. “I had a lot of girlfriends.”

  “I’m shocked.”

  “Paid girlfriends.”

  Stef blinked. “Say again?”

  “I was an escort for twenty-three years.”

  A cool, prickling wave passed over Stef’s face and his heart felt slightly too big for his chest. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Twenty-three years.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But only for women.”

  “Only for women.”

  “And on your own? Not like with an agency or a…”

  “Pimp?”

  “I wasn’t going to say it.”

  “On my own.”

  “What did you make? No, don’t answer that. Never mind. Wow.”

  An uncomfortable pause.

  “You texted the other day that it’s better to be honest from the get-go,” Jav said.

  “Definitely. I mean, I appreciate you told me, I’m just…processing.”

  “I get it.”

  A lightning-fast slideshow whirred past Stef’s closed eyes. A montage of Jav with different women. Out to dinner. In bed. Dressed up. Dressed down. At a party. The opera. Taking women’s clothes off. Picking his clothes up from the floor. Collecting his money.

  Sex for money.

  No doubt the world of a high-end, highly-paid male escort was a far cry from a heroin addict turning tricks, or a slave under the control of a domineering madam or sadistic pimp. Still, prostituting yourself for two decades, no matter the wages or perks, had to take a psychological toll. Because, in Stef’s experience, voluntarily becoming a sex worker stemmed from a belief you weren’t good enough for anything else.

  When they were out for beers, Jav said he left home when he was seventeen and had been estranged from his family since. But really he’d been thrown out. Evicted as a high schooler onto the city streets.

  Was that when it started? The devaluing of his own currency?

  “Did I lose you?” Jav said.

  “No, I’m here. Just thinking.”

  “About?”

  “You know I work with survivors of sex trafficking, so my knee-jerk reaction is to make you a victim.” And frankly, he thought, I don’t need another person to save. I save people all day long. If you turn out to have a lot of baggage…

  “Well, I can think of some other ways I was a victim,” Jav said. “But the work was a choice and I was good at it and I liked it.”

  His tone wasn’t defensive or challenging. His self-awareness was refreshingly obvious. Stef rolled on his side, curling more into the phone. “What made you stop?” he asked.

  “I was tired,” Jav said slowly. “And lonely. And admitting a lot of things.”

  “Like?”

  “Like admitting that as much as I thought love was my enemy, I wanted it to be my friend. I wanted somebody to love.”

  Silence ticked by as Stef recalled a couple of male bedfellows who hinted they wanted as much, and how quickly he’d put the kibosh on going to bed again. Fucking guys was one thing. Boyfriends were something else.

  Yet here I am, he thought. Interested in his thoughts about love.

  “So do you want me to call you again?” Jav said.

  “Hell yeah. I have about five thousand questions now.”

  “Write them down.”

  “I will.”

  “All right.”

  Silence again. But softer this time. Almost coy.

  “I have to get to a thing.” Jav’s voice rose up into a more vertical timbre, and Stef realized all this time, Jav had been lying down. His hand reached, closed around the back of an invisible shirt and yanked Jav back.

  Don’t go. Stay. Five more minutes.

  “Go do your thing,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  He let Jav end the call. For five minutes he lay on the couch, the phone still pressed to his ear, listening to nothing.

  “This is gonna be a long three weeks,” he said, sighing.

  Miami was the perfect place to kick off the tour. The signing at Barnes & Noble drew a surprisingly large crowd, many of them from the city’s Cuban-American community. Speaking to readers in Spanish relaxed Jav while the sheer number of them boosted his confidence.

  He knew he had an audience, but they’d been faceless until now. Fan letters. Emails. Comments when his fiction was posted on magazine websites. Replies when he thought to put something on Twitter.

  Now they were lined up in front of his table. There to see him.

  Me?

  “I’ve been following you since you wrote ‘Bald,’” a woman said.

  “Gloria was the best book I ever read.”

  “Client Privilege broke my heart.”

  He signed new copies of his books as well as old, beat up, tattered ones. They thanked him and he tried to thank them back.

  Thank you.

  Gracias.

  I’m thrilled you enjoyed it.

  No, thank you.

  Muchas gracias.

  The more the grateful words slid out of his mouth, the more they slid out of meaning. He shook hands, hugged, leaned in and out for the innumerable camera clicks. He thanked them more profusely than they thanked him. He fell into bed exhausted, still unable to get his arms around it all. Worried about the venue in Atlanta, where he’d be speaking as well as signing.

  His publicist, Donna, was a PR wonder. Brisk, efficient, connected, organized to the most minute detail. She was also supernaturally introverted and, frankly, not too personable. One of those socially cautious people who preferred to be backstage, not centerstage. It made Jav realize it would be nice to have a friend along on this kind of thing. A friend to rehearse with before an event, drink and unwind with afterward. A buddy to stand in the back of the room. One familiar pair of eyes in a sea of strangers. To indicate with a little nod you were doing fine. You had this.

  Good luck, Stef texted right before Jav took the floor in Atlanta. Make sure the barn door’s closed.

  Thanks, Jav texted back. He checked his fly, took a last breath and went out smiling.

  He’d agonized over this presentation, wanting to come across both prepared and spontaneous.

  “They’re there to see you,” Gloria told him. “They know your writing, now they want to know you. Tell them a story. It’s what you do.”

  He couldn’t think how to start. Not until he dreamed about Flip Trueblood one night and remembered.

  Write it. Write me. Tell the story and don’t let it be forgotten.

  He started from the beginning in Queens, sharing a bit of the short story he’d submitted to Cricket magazine in 1979, winning the $500 grand prize. He left out the part about his uncle beating the shit out of him until he signed the check over.

  Save it for date three, Jav imagined Stef saying. He glanced over the heads of his audience to the back of the room. His mind placed Stef there, slouched with a shoulder against the wall, arms and ankles crossed. Chin nodding slightly. Eyes encouraging.

  You got this.

  The room condensed and drew in close when he told them how he met Philip Trueblood in the summer of 2001. How his face had evoked the image of a mariner. The captain of a mythical ship. Inspired, Jav began working on book, only to abandon it when Flip died on September 11, going down on the ship of Flight 93.

  “I stopped writing the story,” Jav said, his eyes flicking to Stef’s invisible presence. “But in a lot
of ways, the story kept writing me. This imaginary ship became a metaphor for my life, with people I met or friends I made becoming crew members. For example, I met my friend Roger Lark last year…”

  A murmured buzz went through the audience and Jav looked up, smiling. “Yeah, that Roger Lark. The Treehouse Guy.”

  “Can I get his number?” a woman called out to appreciative laughter.

  “You kidding, even I don’t get his number,” Jav said. “But when I… Oh God, now everyone’s leaving. He doesn’t have Roger Lark’s phone number, we’re out of here. Thanks. Goodnight.”

  More laughter and a smatter of applause.

  “When I met Roger, I was immediately struck by how simple, unaffected and content he is. He’s got this tattoo on his arm, it’s a compass rose. So I’m sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table when along comes The Thing. Anyone here who writes, or draws, paints, composes or creates, you know what I’m talking about. The great, almighty, mysterious creative Thing sits in my lap. The fork is hanging in mid-air and I’m adding Roger to my cast of crew members.”

  He opened his notebook to the marked page where he’d scribbled his thoughts.

  “His tastes and emotions were simple,” he read. “The Compass never worried. He patted problems on the head and told them to run along. If he was cold, he put on a sweater. If he broke something, he swept it up. If fear struck, it was a sign he was doing something wrong and he changed direction.”

  He talked a little more about his ideas for Trueblood, how they’d been accidentally waylaid by his vision of a book of Latin American folk tales. A woman raised her hand and asked how else 9/11 affected his writing. He took a deep breath and shared how he couldn’t get out of bed, let alone write.

  It was like taking his clothes off. Then peeling his skin off. He stood up there, bare to the bones, and told them of grief’s crippling depression. The audience drew closer. The energy in the room turned heady and exhilarating, full of connection.

  Then it was over. He put his skin back on and went to his hotel room. Just another struggling artist on the road. Waiting for Stef to call. Or waiting for the time Stef said he’d be free so Jav could call.