by Laurie Loft
“Todd, I am Dr. Roodnitsky.” Unsmiling, the woman drew near and put a hand beneath Sebby’s chin, peering into his face. “Describe what happened when you fainted.”
While she shone her penlight into each of his eyes in turn and examined his face, Sebby explained how he had found himself facedown on the floor. She assessed his mental status with a few questions “You have taken medication?” She stepped back and referred to the touch screen. “Emergency room report is here. They prescribed you two medications.”
Todd was on his feet, handing her two prescription bottles. “I brought them,” he said proudly. Sebby blinked. He hadn’t thought of bringing them along; when had Todd grabbed them?
She peered at the bottles and back at the touch screen. “You take these this morning?”
“This morning? Just the one for pain. About six thirty. I took the other last night, but not since then.”
She nodded. “You take with food?”
“No. I didn’t have breakfast. Just coffee.”
“X-rays?”
“Yes. They took one of my face, my head, my arm . . . They said everything was fine.”
She nodded. “Radiology report is not here. We will check with hospital.” With that, she was gone.
“Todd. What were you going to promise me?”
Todd blinked and shook his head.
“Right before she came in,” Sebby urged. “You said, ‘And I promise—’ Tell me. Please? Don’t be mean. It’ll distract me while we’re waiting.”
“I was . . .” Todd hesitated. “I promise not to pressure you. I promise to be less intense. And not to expect so much from our relationship. In short, I promise to be reasonable.” He grinned crookedly.
It wasn’t the promise he wanted to hear. Sebby dropped his eyes, biting his lip until he felt Todd’s restraining finger across his mouth. “I did say that you expect too much. But I don’t want you to change. Besides, I think I expect too little.”
“What do you mean, my love?”
“Todd, I didn’t expect you to come back with me for the exam. I didn’t expect you to mow my lawn, or take care of me when I’m hungover, or be so fucking nice to me. I didn’t expect you to care so much how I feel or to want only me, or a thousand other things. You said I hold back, and that’s true too, and I don’t want to anymore, I don’t want to hold back from you.”
“Sweetheart, then don’t! Hold my hand, jump with me!” Todd seized Sebby’s hand in his.
“Jump?”
“Plunge! Hurtle! Abandon caution!”
This is less intense? But he didn’t say it. After all, he had just said he didn’t want Todd to change. “Yes.” Sebby squeezed Todd’s fingers. Closing his eyes, his fingertip-hold on his reserve slipped, slipped, and he mentally uncurled his fingers and let go. “Geronimo.”
There was a knock, and they both turned; Todd stayed near this time, Sebby’s right hand gripped in his own right hand, his left arm at Sebby’s back.
“Radiology report is here. No fractures.” The doctor picked up Sebby’s prescriptions and rapped them on the counter. “Medication is working for your pain?”
“Yes. It works good.”
“The medication is mislabeled.” She shook the bottles at them.
“They gave me the wrong meds?” Sebby squeaked. Todd made a noise of outrage.
“Meds are right. But the label’s missing. Take with food. Avoid caffeine. This is probably why you fainted.” She sat down at the computer.
Sebby wilted, feeling foolish, like he couldn’t even take his medicine the right way.
“Your scratches are not bad. Keep them clean; apply antibacterial ointment. You have this?” Sebby nodded. “They won’t scar. And keep cold on your face fifteen minutes of every hour. It is more swollen than it should be.” She went on with her instructions as Sebby’s insides curled up in misery. “If you take medication, take with food. No coffee. You will not clean the house. You will let him, your boyfriend, do this. You will lie down the rest of today and all day tomorrow. Okay?” Sebby nodded. “I will write an excuse for your employer.” She turned away and scribbled on a pad of paper, ripped off the top sheet, and handed it to Todd. The lines around her mouth melted away in a broad smile. “Such a nice boy you have. You are lucky.”
“Thanks, doc.” Todd looked surprised.
“Thanks,” Sebby echoed faintly. Dr. Roodnitsky squeezed his shoulder and exited the room.
“Jesus!” Todd collapsed into one of the flimsy plastic chairs with such force that Sebby winced. “Best fucking medical care in the world nearly gets one killed!”
“Was she talking to you or me?” Sebby hopped down.
“You or me what? They couldn’t take thirty seconds to caution you about your prescription?”
“Maybe they did caution me, maybe I forgot. Maybe they did make a mistake; mistakes happen. Was she saying you or me is lucky, having a nice boy?”
“Oh. I thought she was talking to me.” Todd’s face reddened, and he raked his fingers through his hair, surprise blooming on his face as he encountered the unfamiliar tie at the back of his neck.
“We’re both lucky. Vamos, querido.”
Sebby had sat and fidgeted as he watched Todd pick up the broken glass and set the room to rights. Even though he was so tired, it had been hard to sit still, and hard to keep from bossing Todd too much. Later they cuddled on the sofa under an afghan, making plans for Todd to move in.
“Ryan will be so sad,” Sebby said. “He loses his roomie, and to me, who he doesn’t like.”
“I’ll remind him of the alternative—that I could be moving all the way back to New York.”
Sebby groaned at the thought and snuggled closer, insinuating his knee between Todd’s legs, pressing his thigh to Todd’s groin and wiggling about as if he were trying to get comfortable.
“Stop, love,” Todd said firmly. “The doctor ordered rest.”
“I want you. I had plenty of rest today, yes? And we haven’t . . .” He hesitated. “We haven’t made love since we said we love each other. And I think it’ll be different, no?”
Todd’s eyes softened, but still he shook his head no.
Sebby pouted. “Who put you in charge of my sex life, you dictator?”
“You did,” Todd replied, and his expression went solemn. “When you said you loved me and asked me to be with you. We are now, each of us, in charge of the other’s sex life. It is a grave responsibility.” He untangled Sebby from himself, stood, and drew Sebby to his feet. “You’re more weary than you realize. Don’t you imagine that I can see you are not quite yourself?”
“I—I—” He gave up, shrugging. Maybe he was too ugly for Todd to want him. “Okayyy. I’m not going to beg you. You just let me know when you think I’m myself again. It’s your grave responsibility. Don’t expect me to ask you again, ’cause I won’t.” He huffed, but Todd pulled him close against himself, and maybe Sebby was tireder than he’d thought, because Todd’s arms had never felt so unyielding. “Ohhh!” he wailed, giving up and burying his face in Todd’s shirt. “I can’t make you do anything!”
“Didn’t I say you were not yourself?” Todd’s voice was full of amusement.
“So do you quit, Todd? Or are you coming to work tomorrow?” Sebby asked.
A pretty head of coffee-scented hair was pillowed in the crook of Todd’s shoulder, and Todd felt that he would comply with any request issuing from that head. They had come to an agreement that Sebby had had enough rest to allow sex, and now they were cuddling contentedly on the last morning of Sebby’s leave.
“Since that dilettante of an accountant they employ has not yet processed my resignation, I feel I must put in an appearance. Besides, I need to protect my investment, lest the others attempt to go where Todd has gone before.”
Sebby laughed. “Oh, you think you’ve put ideas into their heads? All those construction workers will be lining up outside my office?”
“They already do that, cielito lindo.”
<
br /> Never before had Todd and Sebby arrived at work at the same time, in the same vehicle, Todd’s truck no less. Numb fingertips could not feel the press of Sebby’s fingers, numb lips barely felt the morning peck as they parted, and his breakfast roiled in his belly as he donned his hard hat and joined the crew.
“Clean out the trucks,” was the closest thing to an apology Gus uttered.
Morning break arrived, bringing Sebby with his thermos of pressed coffee, no different than any other morning, except that Sebby’s free hand slid all along the inside of Todd’s arm before lacing their fingers together, and he leaned on Todd as Todd, trying not to look furtive, drank his coffee. Gus’s expression stopped short of a scowl. There were some unfriendly stares as the crew headed back to work, and from somewhere behind him he heard the comment, “Get a room.” He ignored it, but it got him to thinking. On the occasion that a wife or girlfriend showed up at the site, there might be a hug or a peck. But the beaming, the hand-holding, the leaning . . .
The trucks were as clean as they were going to get, and as he joined the others, Rob posed the question: “So what happened?”
Silence fell. Todd hesitated; it was, after all, Sebby’s business. But Sebby was now in the role of Todd’s significant other, and it was natural for coworkers to ask Todd about him, as they asked each other how a sick child was faring, how a divorce was unfolding. “Violent, obsessed ex-boyfriend,” he said.
Rob pursed his lips and nodded. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
“He was arrested. Charges will be pressed. A restraining order will be filed.”
Rob’s question haunted Todd the rest of the morning. “What’re you gonna do about it?” He had not been planning to do anything about it, other than keep Sebastián safe and support him in his pursuit of justice.
Lunchtime arrived, and Todd went to the mobile office to fetch Sebby.
“Just a sec, just a sec,” Sebby mumbled as he finished something up on his computer.
Todd nodded. “I’ll meet you at the truck.” As he made his way across the dusty expanse where the crew parked, he was brought up short by an eye-searing hue of pink splotched all over the side of his pickup. It began with a drippy F on the driver’s door, and oozed across the cab and down the side of the truck bed. Faggots burn in hell was the inscription, surmounted by a pink triangle and underscored by a row of what appeared to be wilted pizza slices—flames, Todd conjectured. He stared numbly, waiting for someone to comment, someone to be outraged, before a thing resembling sense stirred and said, Don’t let Sebastián see this. Todd bit his tongue at the thought. The truck’s not working; it’s the transmission, must get it towed. He pivoted, his lips rehearsing the lie, and there was Sebby, rooted.
Large, wounded-deer eyes wandered back and forth, back and forth along the side of the truck, as Sebby’s lips rounded to shape the question that would not quite emerge, but that Todd heard anyway: Who would do such a thing? Dismay crept over Sebby’s visage, and Todd knew that Sebby did not want to believe that any of the men whose paychecks Sebby so lovingly cut would commit such an affront. “It wasn’t directed at you, cielito lindo.”
“Todd, don’t even! If it’s at you, it’s at me. You think if we’d driven my car they would have left it alone?”
“Yes,” Todd replied honestly. He reached for Sebby, who drew back, folding his arms.
“There’s an s on ‘faggots.’ That means more than just you, and that means me.”
“I believe it to be a generalized plural rather than specific. There is no comma after ‘faggots,’ therefore it is not meant as a directive.”
“If it’s generalized to say all faggots burn in hell, that includes me too.”
“It does not say all faggots. I don’t believe it to be a prediction, merely an observation. Faggots do burn in hell, some of them. I offer up a fervent prayer that Collin will.”
Sebby huffed, swiped his hand across the bright letter F, and rubbed his dry fingertips together. Belatedly, Todd craned his neck. If only he had thought to look around when he’d first seen the graffiti! He might have spotted the perpetrator attending the reaction to his handiwork.
“You have to fill out an incident report.”
“Later. Lunch.” Todd unlocked the door.
“What! In that? You’re just gonna cruise through the McDonald’s drive-through?”
“No. I intend to park in the Star of India lot. We’ve spent enough time there together; I doubt they’ll be surprised.”
“You have to fill out an incident report!”
“Not on an empty stomach, I don’t.” Todd opened the truck door and climbed in. “Coming?”
For answer, Sebby glared and hollered, “Gus! Get over here!”
“Sebby, leave it.”
But Sebby planted his feet, and Gus made his way over. Resignedly, Todd dismounted and slammed the door, that Gus might view the thing complete.
“Son of a bitch,” Gus said. “When did this happen?”
Sebby said, “This morning. Here. Someone here did it.”
“You gotta fill out an incident report,” said Gus.
Sebby smiled triumphantly. “Sí. I know.”
“And you gotta call the site manager. Gimondi Brothers’ll reimburse you. For removing the paint. Or repainting.”
Sebby tilted his head to one side. “Gus, what’re you doing for lunch? Can we tag along?”
That afternoon, an inspection was called. Nothing incriminating was found. No one confessed or informed. They were all sentenced to attend diversity training. Gus pulled out a random orbital sander and exfoliated the graffiti from the truck, down to the gray primer.
At home, an incensed Sebastián stabbed with a wooden spoon at frying chorizo and vegetables. “Diversity training! ¡Qué mierda!” Bits of hot food flew from the pan, and Sebby ignored the mess.
“There may be more value to diversity training than you think.” Todd winced at the flying food. “I’m sorry you were hurt.”
“I’m not hurt, I’m pissed off!” Sebby shoveled the food onto plates. They clunked as he dropped them on the table.
Over his protests, Todd gathered Sebby into his arms. “Imp, you excel at making me see my own frailties, but you hide from your own.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me!” But he laid his head on Todd’s shoulder and sighed.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Todd laughed at his own joke, but it either went over Sebby’s head, or he didn’t find it funny. “I imagine you feel betrayed. Disillusioned.”
“I insisted you come out, and I told you everyone would be nice. How could I be so wrong?”
“You were right, for the most part. It may have been only one individual proclaiming his displeasure.”
“Dios mío, Todd! All these years, at Gimondi’s, no one’s ever, ever been anything but nice to me.”
“It’s the classic don’t-ask-don’t-tell mindset. As long as it stays underground, they can pretend to themselves that it doesn’t exist. But if it gets in their faces, they become upset.”
“You’re telling me I should back off.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re thinking it, though!” Sebby slumped. “If I do, it’s showing them that their little terrorism is successful. They’re upset because they think it’s shameful and belongs underground. But if we don’t hide, we’re saying that it’s good and right, and that’s what they can’t handle. That someone thinks it’s good and right.”
“I’m not asking you to change your behavior. Er, our behavior. Er.”
“You wish I would, though!”
“No. I don’t know. Perhaps we were a tad inappropriate. You don’t see the others with their significant others leaning on them during break.”
“Damn it, Todd!” Sebby lurched upright, his face inches from Todd’s. The swelling had gone down considerably, but the flesh surrounding his eyes was still the deep purple of a late-summer evening. “You don’t even understand the issue! You would have foug
ht those men downtown on July Fourth, but where it matters, where you go to work every day—” Sebby paused to smack the flat of his hand against Todd’s chest “—you will roll over and take it in the ass.”
Todd bit back a venomous reply, reminding himself that Sebby had been hurt and deserved a turn at drama queen. He forced mildness into his tone. “Interesting choice of words, considering.”
“You act like it doesn’t matter! Aren’t you even angry? It’s like you expected it, like this is how the world works.”
“Do I appear so jaded? I assure you, I am not.”
“You appear jaded, yeah.”
“What would have me do?”
“Stand up for yourself! Stand up for me!”
It was wounding, bewildering. Rob’s words from that morning echoed in his head: “What’re you gonna do about it?” And his own, implied response: Nothing. Well, he could change that. The next person who looked at him or at Sebby cross-eyed would receive a good clip to the jaw.
Sebby drooped, and his next words came out muffled against Todd’s neck. “It’s like monkeys flinging feces on your prom outfit. You feel beautiful and special, and then . . . shit!”
Todd’s mouth quirked. “While I cannot speak from personal experience, I would venture to say that one ought not to wear one’s prom ensemble to the zoo.”
There was silence, and Todd realized that, while he had been flip, Sebby was finding significance in his words. “That is deep, I . . . But, no, it is not like prom at all. Shit washes off, but . . . Carajo. I . . . I’ll stop leaning on you. At work.”
“I love when you lean on me,” Todd murmured, rubbing his cheek against Sebby’s hair.
Sebby squirmed and placed his hands around Todd’s neck as if to strangle him. “Well, which is it? You want me to back off or no?”
“No.”
But there was no recovering the blissful hours of that first morning back at work. Self-consciousness made them wary, as encountering a worm in an apple will make the eater watchful while consuming the remainder, unable, with mincing little bites, to enjoy the fruit, no matter how sweet.