“And every week is a good week when I’m with you,” Ezra says, fluttering his eyelashes at Joaquin before kissing him. Iva whips her phone out and takes a picture.
“You two are so fucking adorkable,” Iva says.
“We know!” Ezra crows. I laugh, and he turns to me.
“Dude, what about you? You’ve been so busy with the show that you’ve barely told us anything about the trip!” Ezra says.
“How did it go?” Joaquin asks.
“Good. Really good,” I say, and tell them about it. About the salt and the wind and the open air. I tell them about the towns we visited and their people, the cats and the steep hills we had to climb. I tell them about the squid and the truck and meeting Isadoro’s battalion.
“Wow, how what that?” Ezra asks.
“It was good. I mean, obviously, I knew about them and had talked to most of them briefly but meeting them was almost…an honour. Like, these were the people who kept Isa safe, you know? That he shared his life with for the last four years, since he joined the Ops. It was…yeah, it was good,” I say, and they nod, smiling in understanding.
“I think I wouldn’t make a bad soldier,” Ezra says. Joaquin looks at him incredulously.
“You do know that soldiers take orders?”
“Oh yeah. Well, then, maybe you would make a good soldier,” he says, smirking. Joaquin blushes.
“Shut up,” he says. Ezra laughs, wrapping his hand around the back of Joaquin’s neck and kisses his temple. Joaquin closes his eyes and smiles.
It’s a quiet, intimate moment. The sight of it presses on an old bruise. It’s not that their relationship is perfect. They’re very different, and although that has its advantages, they also clash heads on things, which is probably only going to increase when they live together. But their love for each other is so obvious. It’s not just the soppy phrases and the kisses of the honeymoon stage, which they’ve already left behind. It’s the way they look at each other. Not just moonstruck, but like they see each other, fully. Like they respect and love what the other is, right the way through.
There’s nobody on earth that’s not looking for some version of that. To be seen and accepted as you are.
When I tune back in, Iva and Ezra are arguing over how to pronounce the word “sergeant”.
“Well, how do you say it in Spanish? Cause maybe you’re being influenced by that,” Ezra says. Iva narrows her eyes.
“Are you saying that ‘cause I’m Hispanic your English is better than mine?”
“That’s not-”
“Oooh, mira el gringo este…que bien habla inglés santo mío que talento tiene el pendejito!” Iva says, waving her hands around.
“That’s not-”
“I can’t believe you’re pulling the America First card on me.”
“Don’t even joke about that, that is not what I meant!” Ezra says, gasping in horror.
“Sure. Sure, sure, sure,” Iva says with teasing sarcasm. Ezra looks at Joaquin imploringly, but he just raises his eyebrows.
“You’re alone on this one,” he says. Ezra pouts.
We’ve all finished our drinks, so we head back inside, where Ezra and Iva drag us to the dance floor. We start off in a circle, but Ezra and Joaquin soon pair off, grinding against each other. They look lost in it, Joaquin’s eyes closed and Ezra watching him with an intensity that turns even me on. Ezra’s hand is at the back of Joaquin’s neck again, holding him in place. Ezra leans in slowly and brushes his lips against Joaquin’s, who parts them immediately. Ezra only teases him, however, his hips grinding obscenely while he keeps the kiss chaste.
I look back at Iva and we share a look before laughing.
The music is loud and the tone familiar from my childhood. It isn’t long before some guy is sidling up next to me, his hand brushing the small of my back. I look at him, and he’s surprisingly good looking, dark hair and eyes and the kind of skin you want to lick, but I’m not feeling it. I shake my head, putting my palm between us. Thankfully, he stops right away. I see a similar situation happening to Iva, so I pull her close. We dance against each other, but something about the interaction has left me discomfited.
The feeling materializes from nothing. It unfolds itself into a hole that grows until it’s pushing against my ribs, my spine. I feel lonely, suddenly, amidst all these people. The crush of them around me just makes it worse, like the hollow inside my chest has to expand to compensate. I have to catch my breath for a moment at the sudden pain of it, the dizzying pull of its gravity.
I don’t want to leave Iva alone, but as soon as she spots people she knows, I tell her to join them and point to myself, and then the exit. Iva nods, not pushing it, and gives me a kiss on the cheek.
She’s a good friend.
I leave the other two to it—they won’t even notice I’m gone, too wrapped up in each other.
When I step outside, the fresh air is a pure relief, but the ache lingers.
I walk home.
*****
It’s only a little past midnight by the time I get home, but Isadoro is still up. For once, I’m glad to see he’s awake this late, shrouded in the warm glow of the living room lamps. The TV is off, but a laptop is propped on his lap, his legs stretched with his feet resting on the coffee table.
“Hey,” he greets.
“Hey,” I say a little tiredly, slumping next to him on the couch.
“Thought you’d be back a little later,” he says.
“Mmmh. Everybody was pairing off to dance.”
“Nobody catch your eye?”
“No,” I say. I close my eyes, resting my head on the back of the couch as Isadoro clicks away at his keyboard.
Suddenly, a woman’s voice speaks from Isadoro’s laptop as he places it on the coffee table. ‘Play it, Sam. Play, As Time Goes By’. I open my eyes as a song streams through the living room. Isadoro is standing with a hand outstretched like a fairy tale prince. I snort, rolling my eyes, but I let myself be pulled up. We move away from the couch as he pulls me close, our hands clasped and his other hand on my waist, mine resting on his shoulder. We sway to the sound of a man’s deep voice and a piano, singing about love and time.
That hollow place inside me fills up, its raw edges soothed.
“Is this from Casablanca?” I ask, listening to the song as I rest my head on his shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t the movie, like…racist or something?”
“I think you’re thinking of The Sound of Music.”
“Pretty sure there’s more than one racist film in Hollywood, Isadoro.”
“I’m just saying that The Sound of Music is especially racist.”
“But what does that have to do with anything? I was talking about-”
“Fine, I’m sorry for playing us a racist song, Iván.”
“I like the song.”
“Oh my God,” he laughs. I grin into his shoulder. We shuffle in a circle. I feel his thumb stroke against the back of my hand.
“…Actually, I think it was misogynistic, not racist. Wrong fork of the asshole trident.”
“Iván.”
“I’m just saying!”
Isadoro holds me closer, and my hand moves from his shoulder to the back of his neck, my fingertips running through the bristles of his short hair. I close my eyes, and let one song melt into the next, pressed close against him.
**********
Two days before the show, Isadoro comes back from the V.A. in the morning with a cloud thundering over his head. He goes straight into his room and shuts the door, which he’s been keeping open more and more lately. I take a deep breath, but despair doesn’t hit.
This is the organic pain of a healing wound, instead of a festering one.
He skips lunch, but I join him on the bed before dinnertime. He turns to face me when I lay down next to him and we just rest there for a while, being.
“How are you feeling about work starting soon?” Isadoro asks eventually. I smile
, knowing this simple act of communication is miles ahead of how it was before.
“I’m looking forward to it, actually. I like the work, and the company is good. I mean, the clients are a nightmare, but since I’m not freelancing, at least I don’t get stiffed. I swear to God, there would always be these adverts for ‘young’ graphic designers or artists and what they meant was cheap and desperate. And since I was broke and desperate…it sucked when they thought they could pay you in exposure. Fuck off. And some of the instructions! ‘just make it more…more.’ Once I made a logo that was completely made of different shades of purple and the client said it ‘wasn’t purple enough’. Like…I’m about to shove an aubergine up your ass, lady,” I mutter. Isadoro laughs.
“That sounds like how I felt about the Fobbits—the middle and upper management who rarely leave the FOB, you know? It’s like they lived in another world. When I was a Private, they’d have us give out these, like, newspapers to the local population that was basically anti-ISIS propaganda, then ask what the impact of them was. We’d have to tell them that most of the population there wasn’t literate, and they’d be completely gobsmacked. They were just fucking clueless. Even in the Ops, they’d order us to not only raid a mosque, but on a Friday, for some bullshit mission which wasn’t nearly worth the blow-back that would cause regarding building relationships in the town. I almost went ballistic on that one.”
“Fuck…that’s majorly fucked up.”
“Yep. Never underestimate the stupidity of middle and upper management in any area of life.”
“Amen to that. I kinda get why you wanted to go deeper into the army, now.”
“Yeah. When you live through all that shit you either lose hope, or you gain persistence,” he says.
“That’s why you have nothing to worry about, Isadoro. That persistence, it’s who you are. It’s not gonna let you stop,” I say. He looks back at me, saying nothing, but his face doesn’t stiffen and close off. I smile at him.
“Nervous about the show?” Isadoro asks, changing the subject.
“Meh. I think I’ve run out of emotions, to be honest. You’re coming, right?”
“Of course I’m coming,” he says, frowning.
“Just making sure.”
“Have you thought of selling your art? I know we've talked about it before, but…”
“I mean, yeah. But…I don’t know. That’s such an…unknown. I couldn’t afford—like, literally couldn’t afford—to go down that path before, so…but we’ll see how this show goes. I’ve just never had the opportunity to put anything like this together before.”
“You’re going to kill it. I would definitely buy your pieces.”
“You can have them for free.”
“I mean if I didn’t know you, I’d buy them.”
“I’d still give them to you for free. Who could resist this pretty face?” I tease, pressing his cheeks together to give him fish lips. He smacks my hand away, laughing. We settle again, looking at each other.
“I am so fucking proud of you,” he says, warming me.
The truth is, so am I.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The show takes place in a large gallery big enough to dedicate a room to each of the chosen students. It’s an important event within the local artistic community, showcasing emerging talent to interested parties. The opportunity is not only for the students but for galleries and patrons searching for people they can invest in.
I’m in Iva’s showroom, feeling too anxious to watch people react to my pieces for too long. People mill around with drinks in their hands, travelling the rooms alone or in groups, their eyes on the art pieces.
Iva’s show is stunning. The series depicts a healing Puerto Rico. It transports you to an island that was just hit by a hurricane, not shying away from showing the destruction left behind by wind and rain. The scenes could easily look post-apocalyptic. Instead, they are filled with hope.
Iva has not lingered on the devastation. Her paintings contain the suffering caused by the storm—the expression on an old woman’s face as she looks at the remains of the house she was born in, the house her children were born in. The tired slump of a man’s shoulders as he looks at the downed powerline that affects his whole neighbourhood. But, what glows from her paintings is a sense of community. Of strength. Behind the old woman, her daughter has a hand on her shoulder, comfort on her face. On the road with the man is a group of people hard at work.
These are windows into the lives of people who refuse to give up.
Each picture depicts a moment of such intense intimacy you are instantly taken there. You can walk around the room and suddenly know people you’ve never met. You look at a painting and are suddenly standing in a kitchen, watching a small, skinny girl point a wind-up flashlight at where her mother is cooking dinner. The girl is leaning forward, face delighted as she accepts a piece of the food to try. You can smell the spices and the meat, the scent of the sizzling vegetables. You can hear the laughter of the rest of the family working around the house.
You walk forwards and find yourself outside. The stars are bright in the sky, but your attention is fixed on the people sitting on a home’s porch, spilling onto the garden. This house is one of the few with electricity, and the owners have wheeled their TV out to share with their neighbours. Kids crowd against it, illuminated by the screen, each expression vivid with life as they stare transfixed or turn to talk to the person next to them, sharing snacks and laughter.
You take another step and see two neighbours talking, their gestures and expressions speaking of a deep familiarity as they exchange goods, each willing to give what the other needs.
The paintings may be filled with shattered houses and sprawled debris, but they are filled with colour. The bright dresses of women. The green that flourishes even after the storm. The façades that remain are red, yellow, orange, pink. The sky above is cloudless and blue.
I’d seen all these pictures before individually, but seeing them together like a story takes my breath away.
“Iva…” I say when I reach her. Joaquin and Ezra are off to the side, looking at a picture depicting them. They’re working on a house, having flown to Puerto Rico during Christmas to help Joaquin and Iva’s extended family, who couldn’t all fly out of the island.
“Iva, these are so amazing. I’m just…wow,” I say. She grins at me and looks uncharacteristically embarrassed.
“Thanks, I…they mean a lot to me.”
“I can tell. They’re just…”
“Fucking amazing,” Joaquin says, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her tight. I grin at the slightly out of character show of enthusiasm.
“They’re so good. So good,” Ezra says, practically vibrating with happy energy.
“So good,” I agree. Iva makes a happy noise and we all crowd in to hug her, laughing.
I leave them to it, moving towards my own showroom when someone calls my name. I grin as I spot Jack, walking toward her.
“Hey! You made it!”
“Duh, like I would miss this,” she says, hugging me. “I just came from your room. Iván…Jesus. Like, I knew you were talented but I’m…I’m kind of speechless,” she says.
I feel myself blushing.
“Thanks,” I say a little awkwardly. She laughs.
“Are they for sale? There’s one I fucking love. Well, there’s a few, but one I have to take home.”
“You don’t have to buy them! You get the friend special, which is 100% off.”
“No way. First rule of business. No, first rule of life; know your worth, and charge accordingly,” Jack says, pointing her finger at me.
“Whatever,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Don’t whatever me, young man. Anyway, did you come with Isadoro? Where’s he at?”
“No, I had to come early to set stuff up. He probably thought I’d be in my room and headed straight there,” I say.
“And why aren’t you in your showroom?” she asks as we start walk
ing towards it.
“I’m going!”
My collection is not unlike Iva’s. It is a series of moments. A series of scenes in someone’s life. They are free of context, but they are meant to transport you. Not only to a place but to a time in someone’s life. Isadoro’s life. The life of a soldier, through a veteran’s eyes.
The scenes are chiaroscuro. They are the blinding heat of Afghan days casting long, deep shadows in the still forms of waiting soldiers. It is standing in the sun, exposed, as a group of men peer at you from the gloom of a mosque entrance. It is a scene at night, a confusion of movement, cut through with a beam of light filled with the swirling moondust of the Pakistani border.
It is people. The small muscles on their faces rearranging themselves to tell you something, or to hide the truth. There is so much you don’t know, looking at these pictures. Your mind cannot catch up to what the feeling in your gut is telling you at being so suddenly in this foreign land. One moment you are safe in the smile of a fellow soldier, the next vulnerable to the bright beam of suspicion from the people waiting for you on the other side of the wire.
There is one single picture which is different. My throat squeezes for a moment as I recognize Isadoro standing before it, back stiff and straight, shoulders a perfect line as he looks at himself drawn by my hand, by my eyes.
The Isadoro in the picture is painted with light. He is almost glowing, but only because he seems to be disappearing, his skin diaphanous, casting moonlight all around him. He is greys, blues, the translucent black of shadows. Everything around him is space and silence. As you look at him, there is a void between you, and with it comes a longing you can feel in the pit of your stomach. It makes you want to touch the canvas, to poke your fingers through it and to the other side, to be pulled inside and join the man in the picture, sitting with his light and his shadows.
It’s like he can sense me. As Jack and I walk towards Isadoro, he turns around. The moment he meets my eyes, I know. I’ve made a mistake. I can see the realization on his face, a spear through me. No one could look at that picture and not figure it out. Not understand the desperate want, not feel the sting of the salty wind blowing from the love that is an endless expanse as far as the light can reach.
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