Surreal Estate

by Jesi Lea Ryan

  The hard-on in my pants would disagree.

  I woke in my makeshift bed when the first rays of dawn slanted through the curtainless windows. My lips curled into a lazy smile at the memory of Nick kissing me in the elevator the night before. Damn, it made me half-hard just thinking about it. I’d been hoping for a repeat when he’d dropped me off last night, but no. He’d only muttered something about seeing me tomorrow before he’d hightailed it out of here.

  I couldn’t blame Nick for being trippy over the whole thing. This one time my band had been performing in a bar near school, and afterward some drunk chick, who’d been all upset about her boyfriend, had planted a sloppy, lipstick-flavored kiss on me. Shock had kept me from pulling away instantly. I’d stood there, not knowing how to get her off me without upsetting her further. When her tongue had begun to lick at the seam of my lips, trying to get them to open for her, I’d taken that as my cue to gently push her away. It’d been horrifying and slightly nauseating at the time. And then for the next week, it would hit me at odd times that a woman had kissed me.

  I wondered how Nick felt. I had assumed he was straight, what with the ex-wife and everything, but had I misjudged? He’d been the initiator and an enthusiastic participant. Very enthusiastic.

  As awesome as that kiss had been, I knew better than to hope for a repeat. Nick probably regretted it already. What if things were strange between us now? What if he didn’t want to be friends anymore? Better work on my exit strategy.

  I groaned as I stood, my joints creaking and popping. Sleeping on the floor was getting old, despite the two sleeping bags piled beneath me for padding. I needed a bed. But before a bed, I needed a place to call home, even if it was only a rented room somewhere. Nick and whoever he could scare up for a crew wouldn’t arrive for another few hours, but when they did, I’d have to tell him about getting laid off from the coffee shop. Shit, if he didn’t think I was a loser already, he would then.

  I picked up my discarded jeans from the floor and rooted around until I found the small roll of cash I’d made busking last night. Thirty-eight bucks. Not bad for an hour’s work on a Monday night. I did some mental math. Adding this to what I had in my stash, my last paycheck, and the two weeks’ severance pay that Bill had promised me, brought my total worth to just under eight hundred dollars. Enough to rent a small roach-infested room down at the Michigan Inn, a pay-by-the-week, gentlemen-only boarding house for derelicts and drunks. It was owned by a local nonprofit, and a hundred bucks a week got you a room decorated in the worst of the seventies that smelled like stale booze. Each floor had a shared restroom with large community showers. Not a place a gay boy like me would feel comfortable dropping the soap. As much as the thought of living there disgusted me, it would be better than sleeping under an overpass. And if I hoped to get in, I’d have to get my name on the waiting list today.

  It was too early to call, so I went about showering and getting ready for the day. Back in my room, I sniffed the jeans that I was starting to think of as my work jeans since laboring on the house had made them so holey that they weren’t much good for anything else. They were dirty, but hadn’t quite crossed the point where they could stand up on their own, so I could get one more wear out of them. I added laundry to my list of tasks to do later.

  I wandered the house chewing a dry granola bar, trying to find something to work on until Nick got there. Without someone to give me directions, I was still sort of useless on a jobsite. And thanks to his insisting we clean everything up at the end of every workday, there wasn’t even stuff for me to straighten. Well, there was one thing I could do.

  I walked to the skeleton kitchen and took a cross-legged seat on the floor. The morning sun streamed in the eastern window, illuminating the fairylike dust motes in the air. Resting my fingertips on the bare hardwood planks, I opened my mind to the rhythm of the house, forming a mental bond of perfect communion.

  The house had the same slightly wounded feel that she’d had since Nick began working on her, but she wasn’t as anxious as last week. There was an air of acceptance in the vibrations, as if the house was finally giving its permission for the rehab. I knew from past experiences that a home could make things difficult for occupants if it wasn’t happy. I’d seen wood railings that dry rotted before their time, floor boards that buckled under the slightest exposure to moisture, window frames that sprung seemingly spontaneous leaks. Keeping this house calm and happy would go a long way toward the success of the renovation.

  In my mind, I visualized and meditated on each room individually, sending soothing and positive thoughts as I did. The house loved it when I did this, so much so it almost purred under my ministrations.

  When my thoughts reached the south-facing bedroom, vibrations niggled in my mind. I slipped deeper into the meditative state to investigate. In my mind’s eye, I could see a red sore spot on the rear wall of the closet near the floor. It wasn’t clear what the problem was, but there was definitely something going on there. Show me, I insisted, but only that glowy red came through.

  “Sasha!”

  The voice startled me back to myself. I opened my eyes to see Nick leaning in the doorway, arms crossed and concern on his face.

  “Sorry,” I said, shaking off the house connection. “What?”

  “I asked what you’re doing. Why aren’t you at the coffee shop?”

  “No work today. Hey, come with me a sec. Bring your crowbar.” I needed to check out that closet to see what the house was trying to show me.

  Nick fetched the crowbar from his toolbox and followed me up the steps to the south bedroom. I flung open the closet door and knelt, running my hand over the nubby plaster of the wall. Nothing felt odd or out of place with the wall itself, but that same sore vibe ran up my arm when my fingertips grazed the spot.

  “You need to open up this wall.”

  “Why? I can’t go around opening walls. I can’t afford to re-drywall the whole place.”

  “Trust me, all right? Open the wall from here to about here. If you don’t find anything, I’ll pay to patch it myself.”

  Nick stared down at me with one eyebrow popped up in curiosity. Finally, he sighed and said, “Move out of the way.”

  I stood back and watched, curious myself, as he knocked a hole in the wall and broke through the wooden lath. Nick used the flashlight app on his phone to peer in. After a moment, he turned and gave me an incredulous stare.

  “How’d you know?” he demanded.

  I swallowed hard. “Know what?”

  “About the broken drain pipe.”

  I didn’t know what to say, and it must have shown on my face, because Nick grasped my wrist and drew me down to look for myself. I peered into the hole at the underside of the bathtub in the next-door bathroom. Nick’s phone shone light on the pipe running out of the bottom. Sure enough, there was a jagged, rust hole the size of a quarter in the galvanized metal.

  “First time someone took a bath or shower in there, the entire downstairs would’ve flooded.”

  “Uh, sorry.”

  “Sorry? I had no plans to open up this wall, Sasha. It’ll cost me a couple hundred dollars to switch out this pipe, but that sure as shit is better than the thousands of dollars a leak would’ve caused.”

  I grinned stupidly, thankful to the house for warning me of the problem. When Nick frowned at me though, my grin faded.

  “So I’ll ask you again, and you better tell me the truth: How did you know?”

  I moved to stand, but his hand clutched my forearm, keeping me in place. My brain scanned through my mental rolodex of plausible excuses, but blanked.

  “Um . . . lucky guess?” It came out as a question, to which Nick shook his head, clearly not buying it. “Look, I have to get going. I have an appointment this morning.”

  “This isn’t over,” he warned. “We’re gonna talk about this.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, staring at him pointedly. “We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

  He le
t go of my arm and turned his gaze back to the hole in the wall, not meeting my eyes. “Fine. We’ll talk later. About everything.”

  I walked across to my bedroom, gathered my dirty clothes up into a ball, and stuffed them into a duffel. I usually took my guitar to the laundromat with me, but not today. The neighborhood folks doing their laundry appreciated the free entertainment, but I had other errands to run and didn’t want to mess with dragging the big case around.

  I felt a little guilty about using last night’s awkwardness to make my escape, but dang, I needed some time to figure out what I was going to tell him. The only person who’d really known about my visions had been my zayde. He’d used to tell me stories about his home village in western Russia, what is now Belarus. He’d been raised on the folklore and superstitions of the old country. A place where the witchlike descendants of the Baba Yaga were thought of as a fact of life. Tales of people who had visions and could read minds were common. When I’d gone to him as a child to tell him about the strange emotions and visions I’d been having, he’d set me on his lap and assured me I was fine. Then he’d told me of his sister, who used to visit people’s dreams, and of his mother, who’d claimed to read people’s emotions. He encouraged me to test the limits of my abilities and see what they could do. He’d explained to me that it was a hereditary gift, and I should nurture it. But at the same time, I should guard it, because many people would not believe what they couldn’t see.

  I didn’t know Nick well enough to guess at his reaction if I told him the truth.

  The laundromat down on National was empty apart from the ever-present old lady who owned the place sitting at the counter. Behind her was a row of single-use detergent boxes and tiny fabric softener bottles. She looked up from the zipper she was sewing into a pair of pants and grunted.

  I dropped a couple of bucks on the counter. “Can I have a box of detergent please?”

  She grabbed a red box from the shelf behind her, slapped it on the counter, and tossed my money into the till as if it were dirty or something. She was always like this. If there were any other laundromat within a mile of this place, I’d take my business elsewhere.

  I found an empty machine as far from her as possible and dumped my clothes in, not bothering to sort. Then I slipped my jeans off and tossed them in as well. If anyone came in and took issue with my boxers, they could shove it.

  While I waited for my clothes to wash and tumble dry, I used the several-years-old phonebook, which was chained to the broken pay phone on the wall, to look up numbers. First, I called the Michigan Inn. The man who answered wasn’t too optimistic about me getting a room before the end of summer, but I gave him my name for the wait list anyway. If Nick sold the house and I had to sleep under a bridge for a while, at least the weather would be reasonably nice.

  Next, I phoned around to the various employment agencies where I had résumés on file to ask for an update on new jobs. Each harried and hurried person I spoke to directed me to the job boards on their websites. Like I had a computer.

  When the dryer’s buzzer rang, I slipped into my warm jeans and folded the rest of my clothes into the bag. If I was going to continue working with Nick, I needed a few more sets of work clothes. With my bag slung over my shoulder, I walked five blocks south to the Dig & Save Outlet. The place was filled with giant bins of wrinkly, unsorted clothes, and ten bucks would buy you whatever you could fit into a brown paper bag. T-shirts were easy to find, and I snagged a few of them, but it took an hour of hunting before I found two pairs of jeans in my size. I needed underwear too, but I’d rather go commando than buy someone’s used boxers. I’d have to remember to stop by Walmart.

  I walked out of the store holding my bag of musty-smelling clothes. I would have to wash them before they could be worn, but a trip back to the laundromat just didn’t appeal. Instead, I ducked into a neighborhood grocery and bought some store-brand detergent so I could wash them by hand in the sink at home.

  I rounded the corner to the house and slowed at the sight of a strange minivan parked in the driveway behind Nick’s truck. Stuck to the back of the car was a weathered rainbow bumper sticker that read, I’m an LGBT ally. I use social media. And I vote!

  What the hell?

  I opened the door and saw Nick talking with a tiny lady with dyed black hair. When they turned toward me, I was struck by the resemblance of their eyes.

  “Well, hello, dear. You must be Sasha.” She shot a sideways glance at Nick. “Damien has told me so much about you. Now, set that down.” She rustled my shopping bag from my arms, wrinkled her nose at the stench, and set it on the floor beside her luggage-sized purse. “Look how skinny you are! Nick, the least you could do is feed him. Come now. Sasha. I brought sandwiches. Let me fix you lunch.”

  Nick smiled apologetically as his mom half dragged me into the kitchen, where a large cooler sat. She reached in and lifted out an individual-sized bottle of milk and a cellophane-wrapped ham sandwich, both of which she shoved into my hands.

  “Now, I’ve got string cheese, baby carrots, and grapes in here.” She held up a gallon-sized Ziploc bag to show me. “And if you’d like dessert later, there’s homemade chocolate mousse in the Tupperware.”

  “I’ll take some of that,” Nick said, stepping forward.

  His mother smacked his hand. “Oh, no, you won’t. You have plenty of food. Poor Sasha doesn’t even have a kitchen to cook in.” Turning to me she said, “Now, I have a pot roast in the Crock-Pot at home. You’re invited to our place for dinner tonight. No arguments,” she ordered when I opened my mouth. “Nick, have him there by six thirty. Don’t be late. Have a nice day, boys.”

  And with that, the little woman breezed out the door. A moment later, her van started and she drove away.

  I turned to Nick, still holding the milk and sandwich in my hand. “She’s scary.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he groaned, scrubbing his hand over his shorn hair. “Oh, that was my mom.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “She can be a little . . . excitable.”

  “Ya think?”

  Nick chuckled. “You gonna eat that?”

  “I’m afraid not to. I’ll share the mousse with you, though.”

  “Sweet.”

  We stood in the kitchen and ate in silence. The sandwich was good, and when I checked out the cooler, I saw three more. It touched me that Nick’s mom cared whether I ate or not. My own mother didn’t give a rat’s ass about my well-being. Hell, she’d never even thanked me for bringing her bail money.

  I never had been the type to be jealous of my friends’ parents. I’d known my shitty mom wasn’t my fault, and my zayde had always taken good care of me. Still, it surprised me when parents extended their kindness to me.

  After lunch, Nick removed the interior doors and stacked them in the driveway. There, he set me to work stripping the paint from them while he left to meet Kelly at Home Depot. The plan was to refinish all the original woodwork with a natural stain. Stripping decades of layered paint was smelly work, but easy enough, and it allowed me a chance to think. The daydreaming must have worked, because the wisp of a melody floated into my mind. Before I lost it, I retrieved a notebook from my room and wrote it down with a rudimentary treble clef with five lines extending out to place the notes. I kept the notebook beside me for the rest of the afternoon, jotting notes on lyrics as I worked.

  It felt good to write again, even though I didn’t have Justin with me to help. We’d made a pretty good composing team back in the day. I was good at dreaming up odd bits of melodies and lyrics, and he had fleshed out the harmonies and arranged the music for the various instruments. Basically turning my amateur idea into a real song. For the millionth time, I thought about forming a new band. And for the millionth time, I dismissed the idea. I needed to be practical and focus on surviving. Making music wasn’t something you did for the money.

  With another door finished, I set it against the garage to dry and began prepping one to strip, when I
misjudged my footing and knocked the can of turpentine, splashing my notebook. I could only watch as the liquid blurred the new song beyond all recognition.

  Fuck my life.

  “Shit,” I muttered, seeing both of my brothers’ vehicles parked outside my childhood home.

  “What’s wrong?” Sasha asked from the passenger seat. The whole way over I’d been acutely aware of his presence. It was unnerving, and my reaction to him was frustrating the hell out of me. For his part, Sasha didn’t seem the least bit nervous around me. But then, maybe that was because he was all pale and shit with the idea of seeing my mom again.

  “Nothing. Just that my brothers are here, which means Mom’s making some kind of family occasion out of this.”

  Sasha groaned. “Maybe this is a bad idea.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the truck door. “Oh, for sure it’s a bad idea. But I don’t think either of us want to suffer the punishment if we bail. Promise me that you won’t hold my family against me, okay?”

  “I don’t really do so well in large groups of people,” he said warily.

  “No worries, man. They’re decent . . . well except Steven’s boyfriend, Tod. He’s a tool, but he’ll probably go to great lengths to ignore both of us, so it’ll be fine.”

  We walked in the front door and were met with the usual cacophony of my family. Dad and Damien were sitting in front of the TV in the living room arguing over the Brewers/Cubs game. Damey had decided as a kid to support Chicago sports teams. In the beginning he had done it to be contrary to our die-hard Wisconsin dad, but over time, he’d genuinely turned into a Chicago fan. Damien always had to be the rebellious one. I stayed out of it.

  When they saw us enter, both stopped sniping at each other and greeted us warmly.

  “Hey,” Damien said, pulling Sasha into a one-armed bro hug.