Not only that, but Lee could tell that even though he was trying to keep some distance between himself and the audience, people were starting to stare. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to pull in on himself, but it was no use. Unless he’d spontaneously developed the ability to turn invisible, he was going to be seen.
He had his attention on a particularly threatening-looking group of District dwellers in leather and spikes and chains when he blundered directly into someone—a young woman in tattered black denim with eyes ringed in thick purple liner. She might have seemed threatening, if her high pigtails didn’t remind him of a five-year-old Emma.
Lee automatically reached out to steady her. “I’m sorry.”
When Lee’s fingertips brushed her shoulder, she raked him up and down with her gaze, and she smirked. “Don’t be,” she yelled into his ear. “That’s the most action I’ve seen all night. So, tell me…what’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”
No doubt he wouldn’t have been more obvious if he had Boomer written across his forehead. But the woman didn’t seem angry with him for being there, just curious, so he figured he might as well ask for help. He leaned in and yelled over the feedback, “I’m looking for Roman Sharp. Do you know him?”
The question earned him a raised eyebrow and a lingering once-over. Pigtails didn’t answer. She gave him a shrug, then turned away, slipped into the crowd, and disappeared into the flickering darkness.
Strange. But at least it gave him an idea. The District women seemed willing enough to talk to him, more than the women would’ve been in the Benefit Sector—and although they might be just as likely as the District men to pull a knife or knee him in the groin, they didn’t feel nearly as threatening.
“Do you know Roman Sharp?” he found himself asking, again and again, pressing his mouth to dozens of women’s ears as intimately as a lover. Personal space was different at the Bonfires, and not only for the men knocking each other down and then scooping their fallen comrades right back into the fray. The women leaned into Lee. Not only was he obviously harmless, but he probably looked like an easy mark, too. Mr. Babcock at Cat and Canary might not have been the chattiest guy, but early on, he’d made it known that Lee would soon find himself without a wallet if he insisted on parading around the District with a billfold in his back pocket. Given the number of times by the Bonfire Lee felt hands fleeting across the back of his jeans, he figured plenty of other dumb Boomers must not have had the benefit of that advice.
How many people were there, a few hundred? Not many more than he expected at his sister’s wedding. Tomorrow. He shoved that thought aside and worked his way around the crowd, finding the ebb and flow of the music, figuring out when songs would end so his question was more likely to actually be heard. Eventually, when he was fairly sure nobody was going to stab him, Lee tried asking a few men if they knew Roman Sharp. Nobody did.
At the far end of the gathering, an area the size of the meeting hall’s kitchen was sectioned off with a makeshift fence of crude wooden stakes and rope. The cluster of people inside was thick. They weren’t dancing or shoving each other around. They weren’t really paying much attention to the band at all. Maybe Roman was there.
Lee joined the straggling line of people being let one by one into the special pen. A man sat on a stool at a gap in the fence with a bucket on his lap, collecting admission. Lee wasn’t keen on pulling out his wallet at the Bonfires, but he’d picked through the rest of the crowd, and if Roman was anywhere, it would be inside that special area.
He pulled out some smaller bills when no one was looking, then shoved his wallet back beneath his button-down, into his T-shirt pocket. The line moved forward, faster now. As each person dropped in their payment, the guy on the stool—a very big guy, bald, with lots of spikes on his leather vest—checked the bucket first, then nodded the person through. Usually. But once he made a “more” gesture, and the guy in line had to cough up extra money to get in.
Lee wadded together a few bills and hoped it would be enough. Before long it was his turn at the bucket, and he did his best to look casual, to look like he knew what he was doing, like he knew what things cost in the District, things other than dog-eared used books. He tried very, very hard to look like he belonged.
Stilling his face into what he hoped was a mask of indifference, Lee dropped in his wad of cash and prepared to go inside. The song wound down and the music stopped, all but a thin whine of feedback and the sizzling reverberation of a cymbal. And in the sudden silence, the big bald guy in leather and spikes bellowed, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
CHAPTER SIX
TOO LITTLE? TOO much? Lee steeled himself and looked into the bucket.
The interior of the rim had been decorated with stickers, District style. And inside, there was his money-wad. Sitting right on top. Not on a pile of cash, but on a pile of random objects. Coffee packets and batteries and lipstick and mints. The only thing that even vaguely resembled cash was the scattering of shuttle tokens.
He pawed through his pockets to see what he could possibly come up with. Some change (useless.) A crumpled note containing a few phrases for his speech (also useless.) And a comb.
He dropped in the comb.
The bald man looked into the bucket, then back up at Lee, and mouthed the word, “What?” He shoved the bucket into Lee’s chest with a scowl that conveyed, loud and clear, Stop fucking around.
But Lee had nothing else to give.
“I’m sorry,” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time that night, then held up his hands and backed away. Or he tried to. The line behind him had grown restless, and suddenly it felt like people were pressed all around him. District residents. Who were a lot more intimidating than they’d seemed a minute ago.
A pair of hands fell on his shoulders, and Lee knew with a striking clarity that he should never have come. Maybe people hardly ever got killed at the Bonfires. But sometimes, they did.
He steeled himself, fully prepared to be dragged away, beaten, kicked, and thrown in the river, but instead he was only shoved aside so a hand could thrust into the bucket and drop something. Lee stared down stupidly at the huge handful of sugar packets that now covered his unwanted money…sugar packets printed Howard and Emma in fancy script, with tomorrow’s date beneath the names. The scary bald man nodded, and Lee let himself be dragged into the roped-off pen.
When the hands spun him around and he found himself staring into Roman’s dark eyes, he suspected the whole thing was actually some sort of dream…or at least a delusion. Either he’d boozed himself to sleep after the rehearsal dinner and was having disturbing vodka-dreams, or he was currently sinking to the bottom of the river, where his dying brain offered up a final longed-for image to take with him to the great beyond.
“Seriously,” Roman shouted over the music, “a comb?”
“I’m sorry.”
Roman gave Lee’s shoulders a squeeze, then took him by the hand and led him to the far end of the enclosure. The music shifted as his angle to the amplifiers changed, and now the guitar and vocals ebbed, leaving mostly bass guitar, thumping steadily, punctuated by the rap of a snare. They pushed through a cluster of people. In the corner behind a folding table, a gray-haired woman was pouring drinks from a gallon jug, filtered through a scrap of cheesecloth fastened over the jug’s neck. The cups were a mishmash of shapes and sizes, some teacups, some highball glasses, some jelly jars. All-you-can-drink? It appeared so. And the people crowded around the table were intent on getting as much return as possible on whatever they’d tossed in the bucket.
Roman let go of Lee’s hand, grabbed a drink for himself and shoved another drink at him. All around them, people swarmed to the table, snatching up drinks as fast as the woman could pour. From the corner of his eye, Lee watched a man drain the last of his drink and put his World’s Greatest Dad coffee mug back on the table. The woman refilled it and set it out with all the others.
Roma
n tapped the rim of his plastic tumbler to Lee’s and shouted, “To your health.” That toast actually pre-dated the plague…but even if Roman could hear Lee imparting that bit of trivia over the roar of the band, it was unlikely he would’ve been terribly impressed. Because what good was knowing all about language when, in fact, you had no clue what anything truly meant? Lee met his eyes and tipped back his drink—and very nearly spit it back out. The overpowering flavor was mustiness, verging on rot. Beneath that, the burn of alcohol. And maybe a hint of fermented orange.
Lee gagged. Roman nodded sympathetically and yelled over the music, “Orange Malt. It’s an acquired taste.” He finished what was in his glass, snagged two more cups from the table, and motioned with his chin for Lee to move to a spot on the perimeter that was slightly less mobbed. Lee found a gap in the crowd. Roman came and stood beside him and drank, watching Lee intently over the rim of his canning jar. Lee took small sips from his tumbler. It wasn’t quite as bad if he was careful not to breathe through his nose.
The song that had been thundering along meandered to a stop. “So, you showed up,” Roman said in the relative silence, though he still needed to raise his voice over the weave of a dozen other conversations.
“Here I am.” Lee’s sister was right, he was a big dork. He hid a wince with a sip of his drink. Which was growing on him, except for that undertone of rot.
“There you are.” Roman knocked back the rest of his second drink, pocketed the cup, and started the third. He shook his head. “I didn’t think you’d—”
Whatever else he’d been about to say was cut off by the sharp, staccato attack of a snare with a bass riff rumbling along beneath it. He didn’t think I’d what? Have the courage to find the bonfire? Not surprising. Every step of the way, Lee had fought the impulse to turn around and run back home. Heck, he was still struggling with the urge to flee.
Much of the nuance of language lay in the inflection and tone. In other words, it’s not what you say, but how you say it. There were so many things to say, but the meaning would be lost if he shouted them into Roman’s ear. How long did a song last? Three minutes? Four? It seemed like he’d been waiting forever for the band to wrap up whatever it was they were churning through. But every time he was sure the song was coming to an end, they launched into another verse.
He should have used the pause to gather his wits and think of something to say that wouldn’t make him sound ridiculous. But he’d finally found Roman. As Lee watched him looking back with a smile playing at the corners of his eyes, words drained away. Roman hadn’t done anything special to his hair after all. It was still a glossy black fringe that slanted across his forehead and tickled the top of his cheekbone. And Roman still felt no need to brush it off his face. He’d changed into a leather biker jacket and black jeans, but they didn’t look much different on him than the catering uniform. He was still a harsh black silhouette, all angles and planes.
Finally, the song ended, and Roman spared Lee the discomfort of trying to figure out what to say. “What made you decide to come tonight?”
A better question might have been how Lee managed to overcome the fear of ending up at the bottom of the river, though it sounded appealingly calm and restful compared to the anticipation of enduring Emma’s wedding. “No idea. When we talk, I feel like I don’t know anything about anything.”
“So ignorance isn’t really bliss.”
But it was. Lee didn’t know much about economics, other than the fact that it was nowhere near as interesting as language. Now that he saw his knowledge was cobbled together from presumptions and propaganda, he suspected that ignorance was, if not blissful, at least a lot more comfortable than the feeling of his reality turning upside down and inside out.
“Whatever the reason,” Roman said, “I’m really glad you did.”
The band churned into another song. Never taking his eyes off Lee, Roman tipped back his third drink, draining it. Lee attempted to follow suit, but only managed to swallow about half of his. Roman pulled the tumbler from his grasp, finished it off, pressed his mouth to Lee’s ear and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE WAS MORE than one footpath through the trees. Lee didn’t have an entire mob to follow, though, only one man, but the simple contact of palm to palm pulled at him as strongly as the surge of the crowd. As the trees grew thicker, the music’s character changed as distinct elements were muffled, and soon it sounded like more of a rhythmic throb with the hint of a melody threading through it. As Lee threaded through the trees in the dark, he became a melody, drawn along by the rhythm, the foundation, of his tenuous connection with Roman.
He hadn’t heard this particular song before, so he couldn’t quite sing along—but he was willing to listen.
Roman’s feet found a path, and soon they emerged on a typical District street. When Roman let go of his hand, Lee didn’t know what to do with it anymore. He settled for shoving it awkwardly in his pocket. Roman gestured toward a side street that led deeper into the warren of old apartments as he glanced at Lee. Lee nodded and hoped he looked even remotely casual. They headed in.
“You looked pretty spooked after I kissed you,” Roman said. “I thought maybe I’d pegged you wrong after all.”
“That depends on what you were thinking.”
“Figured you were either one of those introverted loner intellectual-types who doesn’t want to deal with a wife—or you were gay, or at least curious, and didn’t want to drag all your baggage into an arranged marriage.”
Lee trudged along the cracked sidewalk. “I’m not a loner,” he said. “I like spending time with my family.”
In the distance, a song ended with a squeal of feedback. The gravelly sound of an untethered car rolling by filled the silence.
“But you are gay.”
People in vintage TV shows were gay. Just like they had huge houses and voted for political officials, and they got married and divorced and married again, and had great scads of kids with multiple partners, or maybe decided to have no children and live alone, possibly with cats.
As for Lee? He’d gone through the motions of sex ed to make sure he kept up his GPA, and he’d played along with the snigger and swagger of his classmates without really understanding the allure. But the encounter in the kitchen broke open something inside he hadn’t even realized he’d been suppressing. He shrugged. “Guess I’d avoided thinking about it until today.”
“I was so sure I’d screwed everything up, I didn’t realize what was going on tonight. Someone told me a guy was looking for me, and it never even occurred to me it was you. People kept snagging me, though, telling me some guy was asking around. My debts are settled and I’m not in the market for any batteries or pills, so I even thought about leaving early, taking off and avoiding some kind of misunderstanding…until my friend Roxy mentioned that this guy had a Boomer accent and face like an angel, and it all clicked. If I didn’t hurry up and take you home, she said, somebody else would.” Roman paused in front of a clapboard three-story walkup and fit an old metal key into the security grating. “You don’t have to spend the night with me, y’know.”
Oh, but he did. Lee didn’t say so out loud. It wasn’t worth arguing—he’d come too far to leave now. “I can’t stop thinking about that kiss,” he said. And then he felt like an idiot.
At least until Roman slid his gaze to Lee and said, “That makes two of us.”
Lee didn’t know what to do with himself, but it didn’t matter. Roman swung him around, pressed him into the security grating and kissed him hard. He’d been replaying the kitchen kiss all day, so many times that he knew it inside and out. Enough that he thought he knew everything there could be to know about a kiss. But he was wrong. This kiss had a different character, as a word might have a different shade of meaning, depending on its context and tone, and the relationship of the speaker to the listener. This kiss was solid enough to hold decisions. What, exactly, Roman had decided, Lee couldn’t kn
ow. But it embodied his own choice to come to the District and find Roman. And it held his resolve to see how the night would play out.
Out on the street, voices rose and fell. People fighting, or maybe laughing. Roman broke the kiss to glance back over his shoulder, then nudged Lee aside and pulled open the security grate.
Lee didn’t think he had any particular expectations of Roman’s house, but apparently he had. Not things like decor, or even size. But that the rooms would serve the same basic functions that they did in his own house. Instead, the main room looked more like Cat and Canary, with shelves of items and mismatched furniture, bureaus stacked several high. He had to duck three bicycles hanging from the ceiling on his way through the maze.
Roman pointed out a door and said, “Bathroom,” and though Lee didn’t really need to go, he figured he should at least check and make sure there wasn’t something weird involved that he’d need to learn. Maybe he’d always presumed things were basically the same in the Taxable District. But they weren’t. Not at all.
The bathroom walls were crowded with shelves. Three toothbrushes protruded from a cup on the sink. Multiple towels hung from the walls. But at least he recognized the fixtures—hopefully. He checked the shower for “bathtub gin,” but thankfully, he found nothing more than scrubbies and soaps and shampoos.
“Want to shower?” Roman said. “You won’t catch anything. Promise.”
You won’t catch anything? And here Lee’d been scandalized by How are you? “No. I just…wondered.”
“How many people live here? You only need to ask. Three. We’re housemates—totally platonic.”
It would never have occurred to Lee the relationship might be otherwise.
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