A Charm of Finches

by Suanne Laqueur

  Geno pressed harder, made the azure mark nearly from top edge to bottom edge. He put the blue down, rubbing his fingertips together. He picked up the black pastel and sniffed hard, pushing the heel of his hand into one eye, the pastel between his fingers like a cigarette.

  “It’s okay,” Stef said.

  “Shut up.” Geno made small black marks around the base of the blue line. He rubbed his face, leaving a coal smudge like a bruise. He made more marks. Then he shoved the paper away, dropped the pastel and walked toward the window, sniffing and tugging at one ear.

  “You can’t make it go away,” Stef said. “But you can make it smaller.”

  Geno drew breath in through his nose. It trembled out his jaw and shoulders. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “I’d like to work with you.”

  Geno said nothing.

  Stef neatly stacked the two sheets of paper and left them on the table. He put his business card on top, then gathered his sketchbook and coffee. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  As he walked away, two tiny words, like chimes on the wind, floated to his ear.

  Stef turned back. “What’s that?”

  Geno looked over his own shoulder, his expression startled. “I said, take care.”

  The moment folded back on itself in a strange déjà vu. Stef unsure if he’d met Geno before, or if all the ghosts of clients past were looking at Stef through Geno’s eyes.

  “‘Take care’ tells me something,” Stef said.

  “What?”

  “They didn’t get the best of you.”

  “Everyone’s nice,” Geno told Vern on the phone. “It’s a good place.”

  Good in that it could decidedly be worse. He could be locked up in some dingy, gross mental hospital with Nurse Ratched. Exodus Project, he had to admit, was a beautiful facility. Clean and well-maintained and easy on your eyes. The staff was kind and respectful. The food was decent.

  Everyone had his own room, because nobody in this joint was keen on roommates. Each room had its own adjoining bath, because residents were even less keen on communal showers. Privacy was held above all else, leading to a stiff politeness on the residence floors. If someone’s door was closed, you knocked and waited for an answer. If the door was already open, you asked, “Can I come in?”

  Nobody touched.

  He was told Exodus Project had no age restrictions but right now, he was the youngest resident. The oldest, Corley, was fifty-six. They were black, white, Latino and Asian. Blue collar, white collar and one had been weeks away from a priest’s collar when he was attacked at a seminary retreat. Some residents were gay. Most were straight. All were raped, and Geno learned their stories during group therapy.

  Hasan was a former prostitute. One of his tricks stalked and raped him. Chaow was trafficked from Thailand, kept locked up in a shipping container and sold for sex. Juan and Patrick were both raped in prison. It happened to Corley while he was in the navy. To Albie in a college locker room. Pablo’s ex-boyfriend brutalized him with a mop handle after they broke up. Jeff was minding his own business, taking a leak at a gas station bathroom, when three guys busted in and raped him at knifepoint.

  Story upon story piled up in the center of the circle. A charnel heap, buzzing with flies and oozing blood.

  Then it was Geno’s turn.

  His mouth opened and nothing came out.

  “It’s okay, man,” Corley said on one side.

  “No shame,” Pablo said from the other.

  Geno swallowed and tried again, then shook his head. He couldn’t. Mos had a death grip on his throat. Ruby, the woman from the rape crisis hotline, had a fistful of his hair.

  We don’t talk about this.

  I won’t let you do this.

  “Try a sentence,” the group leader, Nolan, said. “It doesn’t have to be a story.”

  “Don’t worry about not being believed,” Patrick said. “We already believe you.”

  “Believe me, dude,” Jeff said, staring at his hands. “We believe you.”

  He couldn’t do it. Not at that meeting nor the next. By his fourth group session, Geno had descended two levels below rock bottom into some primordial swamp. He sat in the circle, his hoodie cinched tight, his perpetually cold hands fisted in his pockets, letting the discussion stream around him. Albie was talking about his relationship with porn before and after he was assaulted. Patrick said he didn’t wish death on anyone, but he’d sit front row at the public execution of a child pornographer. Jeff agreed, because remember that fucked up-shit that went down in New Jersey last summer?

  “That was me,” Geno said.

  All eyes turned. Geno almost turned as well, looking around to see who said that.

  A stab of silence as everyone stared at this half-open door and waited.

  “You got this,” Corley said quietly.

  Geno pulled in a double lungful of air and stepped through.

  “The house the police raided,” he said, holding his breath. “I was there. In the basement. I was there almost two days. I got raped by seven guys.”

  As one, the heads in the circle nodded. Hands fisted onto knees. Muscles bulged in clenched jaws. Faces pale and eyes wide as the rotting meat of Geno’s story plopped onto the pile in the center of the ring.

  “Breathe, man,” Hasan said.

  Nobody touched him, nobody looked away. No averted gazes or hands slid over mouth and nose to create some kind of shield. They sat still, stony and attentive, like a fence of Easter Island statues.

  “Breathe,” Nolan said. “You did a great thing today.”

  Geno waited to feel triumph. Or relief. Or validation.

  He only felt sick to his stomach. Nobody followed him into the men’s room, but when he came out, Pablo was waiting with a bottle of water and Hasan gave him some peppermint candy.

  Geno threw up a lot that first week in therapy. Anxious puking was common in this place, as was gallows humor treatment.

  “How you doing, man?” one would ask.

  “I only threw up once today,” another would answer, to admiring looks.

  Weak and dehydrated and riddled with anxiety, Geno had no energy for any of the other activities. Like when they went over to the other side of the building every day for art therapy, whatever that was. Geno had to go, in that he was required to be present in the room. Once there, he sat and looked out the window and felt sick.

  Gradually, his mind shook off a bit of the fog and looked around. His eyes picked out more people who were part of his world now. The therapists on the other side of the old warehouse.

  Beau deBrueil looked like Paul Bunyan. Tall enough to block the sun, big as a pile of boulders, with a beard that arrived in the room ten seconds before he did. Aedith Johnson had a gap-toothed smile taller than it was wide, with a Milky Way galaxy of freckles across her broad face. Katie Bernstein was pale as a glass of milk, her plump body always in demure vintage dresses that looked straight out of Leave it to Beaver.

  If this place were a TV show, Steffen Finch would be the panty-melter. A tall, built silver fox, with rings on all his fingers and tattoos crawling along his neck and arms. Something about him kept drawing Geno’s attention. It wasn’t just the big-and-small encounter of the other day. It was his strong, steady presence. The energy changed when Stef came into the art room. It didn’t ratchet up or fly apart, rather it pulled together and concentrated.

  “Day doesn’t really start until Stef gets here,” Beau said. “Like he’s the key that opens the place for business.”

  “What if he goes on vacation?” Geno asked.

  Beau’s smile split his big beard apart. “Then I’m in charge.”

  During free time, Stef sat with his own sketchpad and some random object. Geno often walked behind to peek, amazed how Stef, using only pencils, could pull something up out of the paper.
A flick of the point here, a sideways shading there, a smudge of his thumb and you could reach into the pad and gather the thing into your fingers.

  He’s cool, Geno thought, sliding his hand into his pocket where Stef’s card was still tucked. He wants to work with me.

  People in hell wanted ice water.

  If work was to be done, Geno would decide when.

  The kitchen beckoned Geno every day. He spent most of his unscheduled time down there, prepping and cleaning and cooking. After two weeks of low-grade nausea, he was nibbling his way back to an appetite. Betty, the head cook, was indulgent with his grazing. A piece of carrot here. A stick of celery there. An apple. A banana. Another banana. An oatmeal cookie. A third banana with some peanut butter on it. He could finally taste things. His stomach wanted to be full again.

  The buzzing at the edges of his brain was driving him crazy. It was like being touched with a live wire, making his awareness fade out. Only for a split second, like the vacuum apex of a yawn. Once or twice wasn’t anything, but getting zapped all damn day was annoying as fuck. Still, between mini-shocks, his head felt a little clearer. A chink of light shone into the gloom and he was noticing things and people. Getting used to the facility and his place in it.

  His first month, he’d be strictly monitored. His antidepressants were kept at the infirmary. If he wanted an Ambien, an aspirin or even two lousy Tums, he had to ask the nurses for it. He could only leave the facility to go to appointments with Dr. Bloom and Dr. Stein, and only with a staff member accompanying him. Vern could sign Geno out for an activity or meal, but curfew was nine-thirty and not a minute later.

  Everyone at EP had to chip in with the running of the place. To build community, Geno guessed. Besides residents, the kitchen saw a slew of volunteers during the week, each with his or her regular days. Geno looked forward to Mondays and Fridays, when a woman named Stavroula cooked. She was a mature version of his soap and water type. Always looking a little tousled and windblown, like she stepped straight off a sailboat and into the kitchen.

  She was a big woman, easily five-ten, with solid shoulders and an impressive butt. Glancing at her, Geno tried to find an appropriate adjective to capture her fleshy presence. She wasn’t fat. She had curves but the curves were long and vertical. Geno recalled his grandfather often using the term zaftig. He wondered if it meant women like Stav. Stacked and mighty, like the Commodores would say.

  She’s a brick…house.

  A guy named Javier volunteered on Mondays and Fridays, too. He was ridiculously good-looking and should’ve been an asshole. Instead, he was self-effacing. Quiet, but his silence was abstracted. He always looked occupied with something, brows furrowed as if working out a problem. Sometimes his lips moved like he was talking to himself, to the point where Geno wondered if maybe Jav had a few screws loose upstairs. Staff and residents teased him about talking to imaginary friends and he always laughed along.

  “It gets worse as I get older,” he said.

  Down in the kitchen, EP was a first name world, with the same stiff politeness as above stairs. Jav didn’t get in Geno’s space or ask personal questions. They often worked long, silent stretches side by side while listening to the radio, which was usually tuned to NPR.

  “When I was a kid,” Jav said, “I thought little people lived inside the radio.”

  Geno smiled. “My dad convinced me a little man lived inside the refrigerator who turned the light on and off.”

  The exchange didn’t go any further. For some reason, Geno’s tongue got tied-up when he was around Jav. Constantly thinking up and rejecting things to say and not sure why he cared how he sounded to Jav’s ears.

  If Pablo or Juan was working a kitchen shift, Jav spoke Spanish with them. It was half-conversation and half-competition to see who could speak the fastest. Jav always won.

  “Fucking Dominicans,” Pablo said. “You talk like your tongue’s on fire.”

  Jav laughed. “And I’m one of the slower ones.”

  Juan glanced at Geno. “Sorry,” he said in English. “We’re being rude.”

  “No you’re not,” Geno said in Spanish.

  Pablo laughed and fired a carrot across the work table. It was a typical substitute for physical interaction around here. Instead of punching a guy’s shoulder or giving him a shove, you threw something at him.

  “How’s a nice Jewish boy like you speak Spanish?” Pablo said.

  “My mother was from Mexico. Her grandparents immigrated there from Lithuania.”

  “¿En serio?” Jav said, eyebrows raised. “When?

  “I don’t know, in the twenties, maybe? Whenever the U.S. started to make immigration quotas.”

  “So technically, you’re not Latino,” Juan said.

  “No, I am,” Geno said. “My maternal grandmother is Mexican. She converted.”

  “How’d her family take it?” Jav asked.

  Geno shrugged. “I didn’t hear that part of the story, but I imagine not too well.”

  “Every family has their hang-up,” Jav said. For a moment, all the muscles in his face tightened like a fist, his eyebrows pulling together. Then he sighed and caught Geno staring. “¿Qué lo qué?” he said, smiling like a big brother. Shyness wrapped around Geno’s throat like a scarf and he didn’t answer.

  Jav usually spent his breaks writing by hand in a little notebook. Sometimes like the pen was on fire, sometimes with a lot of heavy, frustrated exhales and staring into space.

  “Are you writing a story?” Geno asked one day. “Or is that a journal?”

  Jav looked up. “Stream of consciousness journal. Hopefully to be a book someday.”

  “A book about what?”

  “I don’t have the elevator pitch yet. Much to my agent’s annoyance.”

  “You have an agent? So, you’re like a real writer?”

  “Well, I often feel like a fraud. But yeah, I write for a living.”

  “How many books do you have?”

  “Three published. The fourth is being edited.” Jav fanned the pages. “This mess will be my fifth.”

  “Huh. Would I know any of them?”

  “I write under a pen name. Gil Rafael.” Jav told him the titles and Geno shook his head, not recognizing any.

  “How’d you come up with Gil Rafael?” he asked.

  Jav ran his palm in circles around the cover of the notebook. “Gil is a family name. Rafael is my dad.”

  “What’s you dad do?”

  “He died when I was seventeen but he owned a restaurant in Queens.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” Geno hesitated. “My dad was a lawyer.” Another beat. “He died last summer. I was seventeen, too.”

  “Lo siento.”

  “Is your mom alive?”

  “No,” Jav said. “I left home right after my dad passed and was estranged from my mother and sister. They’ve both passed away. My nephew and I are the last leaves on the family tree.”

  “Why’d you leave home?”

  Jav pushed his lips out a little, brow furrowed. “A cousin and I got into some trouble. And he let me take the fall. Threw me under the bus, if you want to be honest. Everyone turned on me. It got abusive and I left.”

  Geno’s eyes seemed to blink in slow motion. “Do you ever see him?”

  “No, he died too,” Jav said with a faint smile. “Because the tale wasn’t tragic enough.”

  “Did you ever find out why he turned on you?”

  “No. That will be a mystery until I reach the other side.” Jav’s broad shoulders shrugged. “And I’m not sure I need to know anymore. Somehow I have a feeling he was caught up in a tragedy of his own, and he did what he did to survive. Until he couldn’t do it anymore.” He picked up the notebook and whacked it lightly against his other palm. “I don’t know. I spent so many years embittered and angry. You reach a point where let
ting go and forgiving is so much easier. I mean, it still matters. It shaped my life and made me who I am. But all things considered…” His gaze went around the kitchen and came back to Geno. “It’s not such a bad thing.”

  Geno nodded, lost in thought as he touched the edges where his story and Jav’s story overlapped. Sharp and keen with betrayal, dull with sadness. The space between where why lived.

  Why? Why’d you do it? Tell me why.

  Your hand poised to knock, to make a fist and bang on the door and demand why?

  But you didn’t.

  I’m not sure I need to know anymore.

  Monday mornings, Geno went down to the kitchen at the crack of dawn for prep work. Jav typically stumbled in a little after five. Today, instead of Stavroula, an old man was in the kitchen. The hale kind of old, muscled with years of hard work, his white hair pulled into a little tail at the back of his neck and his thick eyebrows black. Like Martin Scorsese with a mustache.

  “Ke haber, habibi?” he said to Jav.

  “Miguelito, komo estash?” Jav gave him a hug. “Geno, this is Stav’s father.”

  “Micah Kalo,” the old man said, shaking Geno’s hand.

  “Geno. Hi.” He couldn’t see anything of Stav in this man. Stav’s musculature went up and down while Micah’s went sideways. Even his face was broader and wider.

  Maybe Stav looked like her mother.

  “Poor Stavi is sick to her bones,” Micah said. “I am here instead.”

  “Who’s making bagels?” Jav asked.

  “It’s done. I got up at three, made the dough. Now I’m here. I made coffee.”

  “You kill the average guy.” Jav went to pour a cup.

  Geno looked at the blackboard where Betty had written instructions for the morning prep. French onion soup was on the lunch menu. Micah was ripping open net bags of onions and spilling them onto the work table. Fifty pounds of those suckers to be chopped.

  “The cooks who cry together, stay together,” Micah said, taking up a knife.

  Steeling his eyes, Geno tied on an apron, got his own knife and dug in.