If the Fates Allow

by Annie Harper

  Back inside, Shay grabbed the basketball to keep her hands moving. Milla came closer and held out a hand. Shay handed her the ball.

  “I could do something, you know. I could get the gym refitted.” Shay took a bounce pass from Milla and dribbled the ball. “I could do more than that. If I came back between seasons, I could run some basketball courses or general sports fitness for promising kids.”

  “There are kids who’d really benefit from that. The school’s a bit more diverse than it was when you were here. Not a lot, but a bit.”

  Shay watched as Milla dribbled down the court.

  “You were dazzling here,” Milla said from the center line. “On the court. I couldn’t stop watching you. I thought people would notice.”

  She passed the ball to Shay who held it balanced on one hand.

  Milla sat on the bench before she continued, “But you know what? When we were sitting on the bus, you and me, and talking about our philosophy of life or sharing a song, or the other day at my place, catching up—that was even more important. You’re a remarkable ballplayer. But if you never played ball again, I’d still be amazed by you.”

  Dust motes moved in the light that streamed through the windows. It took three long paces to be at Milla’s side. Milla half stood as Shay came, but Shay lifted one leg over the bench to straddle it and placed a hand at Milla’s neck, and they sat again. Milla closed her eyes. Her shaky intake of breath confirmed everything. Shay shifted closer and kissed her. Sensation shimmered up and down Shay’s spine. Her heart held still. When she took a breath, Milla lifted her chin. They kissed again.

  Shay shouldn't have been surprised that their first kiss was on the basketball court. But here she was, with sunlight angling through the windows and lighting the floor, with the smell of human bodies and sports shoes, the stale sense of everything shut down for the winter. It was unexpected. It was a renewal.

  They sat together, slightly dazed. “Honestly,” said Shay, “I can’t think of anything I ever wanted more than that.”

  Milla’s smile was shaky, “I’m pretty sure you wanted a career in basketball.”

  “Well, yeah—that and you.”

  Milla grinned. Her hand traced Shay’s cheek. “Shay.” She shook her head. “You’re so beautiful. I can’t believe— Every other person, I’ve compared them all to you.”

  Shay kissed her again. “No comparison, right?”

  Milla laughed against her lips. “There’s no one like you in this whole state.”

  Probably true.

  Shay heart was heavy as she moved away from another kiss. “It doesn’t… it doesn't really make sense though, does it? You live in Montana. I live in LA. I want everything. I want to take you out and take you home and hold your hand and keep kissing and talking. Not just now, for a long, long time. Honestly, there are a thousand things I’d do to be your girlfriend, but moving to Montana— I don’t think that’s one of them.”

  Milla held up a hand. Her half-smile was charming but inexplicable. “I got a letter last week. An acceptance.”

  “An acceptance to?” Shay prompted, and held her breath.

  “To vet school. At UC Davis. I’ve been talking it over with Luka and Arianne and Uncle Ilie. We’ve just worked it out. I’m going to college. We’ve found a new trainer to help Luka and Ilie. Jan and Greg’s daughter Sarah is going to come and help uncle a few days a week. Luka and Arianne want the house. And however much I love them and this place, I don't want to be stuck living in the cabin in the back forever.”

  “Davis.”

  “About 360 miles from Los Angeles. Not that I looked it up or anything.” Milla’s half-smile flashed into a full one.

  Shay huffed a short laugh. “No, of course you didn’t.”

  Milla leaned forward on the bench. “Okay. So it’s still far. But we’ll be in the same state. It’s driving distance. It’s possible, Shay.”

  Milla ran her fingertips across Shay’s knuckles. Shay shivered and lifted both their hands so she could kiss Milla’s palm.

  Milla’s eyes fell closed. She went on. “You’ve meant something to me since forever. Since the day we met. Every time you came back I’d hope I wouldn’t feel anything. I’d get my mind together, decide I was over you, then you’d reappear and I’d know I was fooling myself. This isn’t a fleeting thing. I think it’s worth trying.” Her chin was up. She was braver than anyone Shay knew. “If you’re in, I’m in.”

  Shay exhaled. “I’m in. A thousand percent.” She kissed Milla again.

  A week ago Shay had believed that being scouted was the only important thing that would happen to her in Montana. She wasn’t sure it was fair that she got this too.

  They drove home separately. Shay set her phone to play love songs through the Explorer’s speakers. Beyonce’s “Halo” faded into Mario and Usher. A new mix for Milla created itself in Shay’s head.

  The house looked the same as last time, the same as the time before. The wheels crunched over the gravel drive. Milla pulled in behind Shay and they walked to the door together.

  At the top of the stairs, Milla placed a hand on Shay’s shoulder. “Okay?” she asked. Her eyes were careful and lovely as she searched Shay’s face.

  “So much better than okay,” Shay said and bent her head so she could kiss Milla on the doorstep.

  Inside, the television was on. College ball. There was a fire in the fireplace. The room was everything warm and light. Devon was stretched out in one couch. Shay’s parents were on the other.

  “Hey,” said Shay.

  “Connecticut’s up,” said Devon. None of them turned their heads from the game. “This new point guard has some out of this world game IQ. She’s like you at that age.”

  “Um. Guys?” Shay tried again.

  Michele looked up. “Oh,” she said. “Hi, Milla.” She noticed they were holding hands and elbowed Anthony. Devon looked up, too, and smirked.

  “Are you here for dinner?” Michele asked.

  “I’d like that, if you want me here,” said Milla. She looked at Shay.

  “We want you here,” said Devon. “We definitely want you here. Don’t we, Shay?”

  “Shut up, Dev,” said Shay. Devon twinkled at her.

  “Good game?” Milla asked. She nodded toward the TV.

  “Absolutely. Pull up a seat,” said Anthony. He beamed at her.

  Devon swung around from where she was lying and dropped her legs to the floor. She patted the seat beside her. “Plenty of room for you both,” she said.

  Shay sat next to Devon and pulled Milla down beside her.

  Devon gave Shay’s shoulder a shove. “I can’t believe you broke up with me,” she said.

  The game was a close one. Anthony and Devon yelled at the TV. Michele yelped at every basket. Now and then one of them would glance at Milla and Shay. Their bright faces assured Shay that this wasn’t something she’d imagined.

  Shay ran her hand along the seam of Milla’s jeans and made her plans. She’d stay here till they had to fly to Russia. She’d spend the week acquainting herself with Milla’s mind and skin. Devon might not mind extending her visit too. They could train together. Once the European championships were over, Shay could come back and get local builders to start work on the school gym. Milla would start college in September, but before that maybe she could stay with Shay in LA, come to some training and home games. This was going to be an incredible season.

  Milla leaned against Shay. Shay wrapped an arm around her and tugged her closer. It was all so easy. The trouble was, it was going to hurt to leave here, no matter what.

  “Hey, any chance you want to come to Russia in a couple of weeks?” Shay whispered.

  Milla narrowed her eyes. “You can’t miss me already. You haven’t even left yet.” There was a smile behind the glare.

  On screen, a talented young athl
ete sank a three-pointer. The final whistle blew. Outside, a layer of cloud sat above the dark mountain. Behind the cloud, the sun set the sky on fire in pink and gold. It was the second most incredible thing Shay could see.

  * * *

  About the Author: Pene Henson has gone from British boarding schools to New York City law firms. She now lives in Sydney, Australia, where she is an intellectual property lawyer and published poet who is deeply immersed in the city’s LGBTQIA community. She spends her spare time enjoying the outdoors and gazing at the ocean with her gorgeous wife and two unexpectedly exceptional sons. Her first novel Into the Blue (Interlude Press, 2016) received a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Romance. Her second novel, Storm Season, was published by Interlude Press in 2017.

  Last Call at the Casa Blanca Bar & Grille

  by Erin Finnegan

  The Santa Anas snaked through the streets of downtown Los Angeles with merciless, unseasonable spite.

  The Devil Winds drove temperatures up and up, and with little else to report, news crews followed the climb toward a Christmas Day record high with unabated zeal. They bumped their usual allotment of predictable holiday stories —the crush of customers at a popular Boyle Heights tamale shop; the rush of Christmas Eve shoppers at the Grove; the hush that fell over downtown as its weekday occupants tried to beat the holiday traffic out of town — in favor of images of street-side thermometers and tourists in shorts and T-shirts.

  A veteran of media campaigns, Jack Volarde banked on the fact that the skeleton reporting teams of the holiday had no choice but to report and repeat. The Lakers would play Miami at Staples Center. Surfers would dress in red-and-white neoprene in Malibu. And his boss, the city’s mayor, would join a small cadre of B-grade celebrities to serve an early holiday feast to the needy at a downtown shelter.

  His only real competition for the lead story on the Christmas night news was the damnable heat, because his boss gave better sound bites than either surfers or power forwards.

  Jack stood elbow-to-elbow with actors and corporate volunteers as they served an annual feast of lukewarm turkey, stiff mashed potatoes, and slightly soggy green beans. Through it all, he calculated the odds of who had a better chance to beat the heat—the Lakers on the court or the mayor of Los Angeles on the evening news. The weather story had the good graphics—the kids ice skating in shorts and Santa hats at Pershing Square always made for good video. And for the late news, the likely power outages from the over-stressed electrical grid would offer up B-roll of the carnage at unmetered intersections as power slipped from neighborhood-to-neighborhood.

  But Jack had an ace in the hole: a handsome and charismatic boss who knew how to play to his strengths, holding babies and chatting up the constituents as he served their dinners, asking them about their lives, and sharing stories about his own childhood holidays.

  “We didn’t stop making tamales until we ran out of gossip. That was the rule,” the mayor said, repeating the story for more than a handful of guests. Jack had heard it dozens of times and had no reason to doubt its authenticity—he had known the mayor’s family for years, since he had signed on as an aide to a community campaign early in the mayor’s career. But the story had developed the characteristics of an old Christmas stocking—embellished, and maybe a bit musty. Jack added it to a mental list of items to discuss with the mayor before his next public event.

  Jack’s family had tried repeatedly to persuade him to come home for the holidays. His mother left reminders on his voicemail that his grandmother wasn’t getting any younger. His brother texted promises of a daylong sports extravaganza on his new television, the one with the sweet curved screen. His sister, doting and concerned, called him in the midst of the Christmas event in a last-ditch effort to convince him to come home, just for the day.

  “You shouldn’t be alone,” she said.

  “I’m literally surrounded by five hundred people right now.” He dropped his voice and cupped his hand over the phone to keep the one-sided conversation private.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

  He excused himself and stepped away from the mayor’s side to speak.

  “I know. I’m fine, really.”

  “No, you’re not. Come on, Jack. A day with family would be good for you.”

  She may have been right. It didn’t matter.

  He took a moment before answering, as if giving it serious consideration, and brushed away the beads of perspiration that dotted his temples.

  “Next year,” he said. “Give Nonna a kiss for me and wish everyone a merry Christmas, okay?”

  As much as he adored his family—the loud and loving hodgepodge of Italian and Mexican and what his grandmother described as a dash of who-knows-what—this was one year that he welcomed holiday work. A knot rose in his throat when he thought about just how much attention would be lavished on him at the family home, when all he really wanted was to curl silently into a corner with a good, stiff drink.

  He needed a break, a place of peace, quiet, and privacy—a place with a bar, and a television, and aggressive air conditioning.

  It was steamy enough with the kitchen and the bodies and the lack of ventilation at the Fourth and Mission food hall, but an outside temperature of eighty-five degrees translated to sweltering inside the cavernous room. During a Los Angeles summer, it would feel utterly ordinary, but a winter heat wave could turn downtown corridors into saunas, and the event team had been adamant: Thou shalt wear holiday sweaters.

  To save his life, Jack couldn’t figure out how the mayor could stand in a hot kitchen on a sweltering day—wearing a Fair Isles sweater no less—and not shed a drop of sweat. The man was truly blessed with a politician’s genes.

  The mayor had promised an hour to the event and stayed for close to two. He had planned to be there only long enough for news crews to get video of him dolloping sweet potatoes onto plates, for a collection of sound bites, and a quick side meeting with Jack and a television producer ready to invest in political futures. But the mayor was a chatty man and, without a full schedule, got caught up in the conversations and the stories and the campaigning until his security detail reminded him of the time and hustled him to his Town Car. He paused at the open door.

  “Jack, you sure you won’t come by for Christmas dinner? Patina’s catering. I promise—no campaign talk.”

  The mayor smiled and pushed his RayBans on top of his head. It was a well-worn move that Jack knew was intended to connect. Jack had seen it a thousand times.

  “You lie,” he said.

  The mayor grinned. He should know better.

  “True, but we hate the idea of you being alone. And I think Marie wants to fix you up.” He shrugged; his eyebrows contorted in approximation of an apology.

  Jack knew he should smile. He should appreciate the effort of friends looking out for him. He simply shook his head. Not today, not yet.

  “Tell her ‘Merry Christmas.’ I just want to get a drink and watch the game.”

  The mayor slipped the sunglasses down his nose and slid into the car.

  “Good luck finding an open bar—or at least one that isn’t full of purple and gold,” he said, and shut the door. The window rolled down as the engine roared to life. “And Jack? Try to have a merry Christmas.”

  Jack watched the sedan disappear to the north, toward the polished and secured confines of Hancock Park. Safely alone, he tore off the sweater, a ghastly acrylic pullover decorated with reindeer and pine trees, and tossed it in a donation bin. He rolled up the sleeves of his pinpoint shirt and took a moment to let the wind pierce the fabric.

  Free at last from work obligations and a gaudy polyester sauna, he pointed himself toward the heart of downtown and walked.

  It was a longer hike than he would usually choose for a hot afternoon. Wingtips weren’t designed for such a trek, and the concrete seared his soles. But he felt compelled to wander
, to clear his head and search for a comfortable bar. Most were closed. Those that weren’t—like the Gallery Bar at the Biltmore or the ghastly chain restaurants of L.A. Live—would be jammed with holiday crowds. He didn’t need to check.

  He shuffled down Figueroa, drawn like a homing device to an old stretch of the boulevard, to an aging Spanish colonial that decades earlier had towered over the street, but was now dwarfed by steel and glass. It was cozily familiar, a place where he would be known rather than recognized, even if he could no longer be considered a regular. They would leave him alone; or at least they wouldn’t pry. At worst, he could expect to have a shallow conversation about the Lakers’ prospects under new management or whether the Heat would ever recover from losing its biggest stars.

  He expected that it, like most of downtown, would be shuttered for the holiday. If it was anything like it had been back when it had been his regular haunt, the owner would grumble about lost revenue, only to send his staff home with a grunt and a modest bonus.

  But a far window flickered in neon: Open. Through an unlocked door, a wisp of cool air drifted past him, beckoning.

  The Casa Blanca Bar & Grille was never intended to be a trendy nightspot that topped Zagat ratings. It was a neighborhood haunt in the heart of the city, an establishment that evolved over the years as a reflection of one man’s devotion to a movie that clung to his soul and to food that stuck to his ribs.

  Taking a seat at the Casa Blanca was like stepping out of a time capsule in Morocco circa 1941, by way of Hollywood. Located on the ground floor of an aging hotel, it greeted patrons with the sound of big band music on the stereo and framed photos of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman on the walls. Cast on crimson and gold accents, the warm, dim lighting suggested a permanent midnight.

  A comfortable oddity compared to its five-star competition up the hill, the Casa Blanca’s style was part homage to the classic film, part tequila bar. The owner insisted on a sense of classic style— no jeans or T-shirts for its bartenders, who wore crisp, white dress shirts and black slacks, though he capitulated on the bow ties when the bartenders rose up against wearing the constrictive neck ware.