by Solace Ames
“Okay, I’ll get the money.” Jay slipped off the couch and walked to the bookshelf where he’d laid the envelope. He hadn’t minded being naked in front of Paul before, but now it felt...not right. Vulnerable. He took out the stack of cash and walked back to the couch.
Adriana was curled next to Paul with her head in his lap, her eyes closed, as he stroked her hair. Jay sighed. He was glad they hadn’t taken pictures. Nothing could have captured this.
When Paul looked into his eyes, he didn’t feel vulnerable anymore. He didn’t understand Paul, didn’t know how to read him, but that one connection they’d made—I trust him—held incredible power. “Here you go,” he said, and handed Paul the cash.
Paul nodded solemnly and counted it. Jay got the sense that like any other large cash transaction, the counting was for both their benefit. “It’s exact,” Paul said when he was done. “Thanks.”
“Thank you.” Fuck, now all of a sudden this was awkward. He wanted Paul either gone or not gone, here or not here, and instead he was slipping away, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault, because this was exactly the way it was supposed to be, even if it didn’t feel right.
It didn’t feel right at all.
“I had a great time with you two,” Paul said. “You’re a beautiful couple. I’m glad to be a part of you exploring your relationship.” He kissed Adriana on the lips as slowly as he’d stripped the grape, tasting her mouth at leisure. Then he pressed a graver kiss to her forehead. She looked into his eyes as if searching for something.
Jay hoped her thoughts weren’t as complicated and, well, inappropriately mournful as his own were right now.
When Paul put on his clothes and shrugged the shirt over the sign of his—what was it, a calling?—he put an arm around Jay’s waist and kissed him too. Paul’s mouth tasted like grapes, of course, bright and sweet and clean.
“I’ll stay in touch over email,” he said. “Goodbye.”
He waved once from the door, and then he was gone.
Jay’s head was swimming and he felt light, like he could float right up into the sky if it weren’t for the ceiling. So he lay down next to Adriana and held her tight. “Remember the weekend at the hotel?”
“Mmm-hmm. I thought about it.” She yawned. “It was good.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too. Sleepy.”
He pulled the blanket over her shoulders and shifted to give her more room on the cushions.
She deserved everything she wanted.
He only wondered if she wanted more.
* * *
The knife blade was fresh. When Paul pressed down, it made a clean, crisp noise and slid through the foamcore board right along the pencil line. He let out a sigh of relief and went back to trim the ragged paper edges cut by an older, duller knife.
He wished he could get it right the first time, but something always went wrong with models. He was better with drawing. Less wasted time. The studio seemed to suck time like a black hole, never mind its overwhelming whiteness—white fluorescent panels shining down, white walls surrounding, white plastic tables, inhuman and white white white. It was late and his eyes ached.
A rapid-fire curse—“Motherfuckerfuckshitdamn”—made him turn sharply. He was about to ask Thuy at the next table over to keep it down, but when he saw her holding up trembling hands, he swallowed his irritation.
“Are you okay?”
Thuy stared at her hands as if she could threaten them into submission. “Yeah. I’m fine. I almost spilled some coffee on my model. Shit. I’m totally fucked anyway. Sorry.” She looked pasty and puffy-eyed, but then most everyone did under these lights.
“I’ve been here since four.” He would have loved to have taken the day off after his session with Jay and Adriana, but after a quick shower he’d turned around and driven straight to this sad second home of his. “I saw George leave at ten. You know how his first-floor bathroom was only two feet wide? Well, he gave up on fixing it. He’s going to enter it for review tomorrow just like it is.”
“What the fuck is he thinking?” Thuy asked, her voice charged with a kind of vague anger that came from exhaustion and didn’t go anywhere.
“No idea. But it means he’s going to get torn apart in front of everyone tomorrow. My review’s going to be crap, but at least it won’t be as bad as his.”
“That’s shallow and petty and makes me feel a billion times better about mine. Thanks, Paul.”
He gave her a thumbs-up, then turned back to his knife. His model was lumpy and represented a mediocre design, but at least he wasn’t failing utterly. He could do this. Only two more years. Architecture school was supposed to be humiliating, miserable and isolating—everyone knew that.
He found himself drifting from these familiar arguments into more pleasant recollections of the afternoon. He could only focus on the placement of static planes for so long. Charged glances and complex, flowing dynamics, on the other hand, invited endless analysis...
He’d gotten way more out of the hours than usual. On an emotional level, especially.
It should have ended more smoothly, though, so maybe that emotional connection had tripped him up. He should have stayed a bit longer, talked them down some more, and asked them in a subtle way to leave a review. And a tip. He didn’t blame Jay for that; Jay was a first-time client, and had still been out of it while Paul was counting the money.
Paul always loved when the clock started. It wasn’t that he became another person—sometimes he did, but it wasn’t that—it was that moment of crossing over, of assumption. Even when the session did nothing for him sexually, that moment was enough to keep him going.
But when the clock stopped, it was always different. Unpredictable. He might feel relief, satisfaction, pride, queasiness, soul-crushing loneliness, mysterious grief, or nothing much at all.
He lined up the fresh-cut piece and carefully glued it into place. The model still looked lumpy. He wouldn’t want Jay and Adriana to live there.
He’d be up all night if he kept letting warm people into the cold world.
He shook his head, blinked his eyes, made resolutions. He’d check his emails once, focus entirely on design for the next hour, then go home to catch four hours of sleep before the review.
The laptop screen threw vicious glare in his eyes until he found the right angle.
Hello, Paul, it’s Jay. We had a nap, and now we’re watching David Lynch movies and having arguments about dream elements and cowboys. Thank you so much for the grapes; they were delicious! When we went to leave a review, we realized that, um, tipping is very much appreciated. Forgot! Sorry! I’m going to send it via that system you told us about. Anyway, I started leaving a review in dialogue form, a bit like a script, but Adriana told me it looked too confusing, so she’s going to write it to match the style of the other reviews, and then we’ll post it. I hope you like it! We had a great time. Thanks, again, for the grapes.
Sincerely, Jay.
When Paul closed the email, he caught a glimpse of his reflection on the black screen. Pasty and puffy-eyed, certainly, but grinning very widely.
An hour later, he said goodbye to Thuy and another student, both of whom were planning all-nighters.
The lumpy model he left behind didn’t taunt him.
It was a long drive from the Saylor University campus to his studio in Venice Beach. A few miles down the Santa Monica Freeway, Evan called.
They’d known each other long enough, and the pattern of their relationship-turned-friendship was so well established, that Paul didn’t bother to say hello. “I can’t come out tonight. School.”
“Fucking typical.” Terrible music played in the background. “I got signed for a new movie, so I’m going out to celebrate.”
“Congratulations. What’s it called? And did you read the co
ntract?”
“Bondage Bitchboys Something-that-begins-with-B 4. Or 14. You’re so patronizing.” Evan already sounded halfway to wasted, so Paul didn’t push the contract angle.
“I’ll see you at the Sunday brunch thing. You can tell me all about it.”
“If I wake up in time. How’s tricks?”
Evan had always looked at escorting as a poor second to porn. He was doing well in that world, slim and sharp-boned like a fashion model but enough softness to keep him looking young and corruptible. Paul had the opposite opinion about the merits of porn versus escorting, and they rarely saw each other anymore. Talking, however, was still very welcome.
“Decent,” Paul said, and changed lanes to avoid an erratically weaving Hummer. “I saw a great couple today. A non-gay couple.”
“Ew.”
Paul wasn’t offended; he and Evan had done things together that rendered these kinds of expressions impossible to take seriously.
“Well, don’t get hung up on them. With all the shit that went down in Las Vegas you’re crazy to see couples at all.”
“Don’t patronize me, bitchboy. Seriously, I hope you can make it.”
“I’ll try. And if you change your mind and want to make some real fucking legal money you don’t have to hide from your parole officer, they’re still casting for tops.”
Evan hung up, but Paul would have told him he wasn’t tempted in the slightest. The career he had in mind after architecture school wouldn’t mesh well with a history in porn.
He didn’t want to think about Evan’s warning. The couples thing and the going-to-prison thing were, indeed, very closely linked, but Jay and Adriana had nothing to do with that. They had a healthy relationship.
He headed toward Lincoln Boulevard, so tired that the streetlights left blurry streaks across his vision, wondering if a fetish for a healthy relationship even counted as a fetish.
* * *
Adriana felt awful on Monday morning. She was pretty sure the feeling stemmed from staring down the barrel of a long week at Sapore, though, and had nothing to do with sex.
She put on her game face and walked through the lunch special with the grill station cooks, talked over how to sell it with Terry, then wedged herself into the tiny office and set to work on costing recipes until the doors opened for customers.
When she took off her chef’s jacket, she noticed that her wrists did have marks: faint darkened half-circles. But they were low, away from her hand, and only visible when her sleeves rode up.
She put the jacket right back on anyway.
She wasn’t sore, otherwise. Although when she really thought about it, and tensed and adjusted her thighs, she did feel...something. And smiled to herself, remembering.
Wait—oh my God. She was sitting on the chair Wallace usually sat on. While rerunning in vivid sensory detail exactly how hard she’d gotten fucked.
Stop it stop it stop it. Think about your boss and his coffee breath and while you’re at it think about Steve. And tuna die-offs and global warming.
Now that jolted her off the cloud. She took a deep breath, picked up the phone and started calling for duck prices.
When the lunch orders began, she noticed one of the fry station cooks was wobbling on his feet, eyes watering, nose running. She told him to go home. In between hacking coughs, he thanked her, then shuffled off the line. That left Graciela, who was slow. “Are you sick too?” Adriana asked her, eyeing the sage leaves that should have been finished a minute ago.
“No. Sorry.” Graciela averted her eyes, fumbled her knife, recovered, let out half of a Spanish curse. Adriana worked alongside her for a while, making sure the station didn’t fall behind, and made a mental note to go over some knife skills with her later, on a break. Graciela was the only other woman working in the back of the house, but that didn’t necessarily make her into a friend, not with their difference in authority. Adriana was still trying to navigate that.
There weren’t any breaks, though. A series of minor emergencies had her ceaselessly moving. Then a food vendor refused to believe she was the one in charge and kept asking for Wallace until she threatened to call his company, then grudgingly let her sign for the delivery.
She hoped Jay was having a better day, at least. He’d wanted to spend the day applying at temp agencies, but she’d halfway convinced him to do something fun instead.
Near the end of her shift, contemplating an ugly spill of marinara sauce, she felt a powerful yearning toward a more integrated life. Dividing herself into compartments and keeping them separate took so much dull work.
Still, there wasn’t much alternative. Imagining everything swirling together filled her with visceral horror. Jay didn’t need to know the ridiculous shit she had to put up with. Chose to put up with every time she walked into the kitchen.
She had to keep that wall up. It wasn’t too bad of a price to pay. And on the other side of it, what they’d done this weekend had only brought them closer. Part of her wanted even more, wanted the things that Jay couldn’t give her and Paul could—more pain, perhaps, the kind that took her down to where all the walls melted away.
But everything had a cost.
Jay gave her all she needed and most of what she wanted. They’d work out the rest together.
* * *
Next Sunday, they finally gave in to Eduardo’s cajoling and went to a church social event. Jay couldn’t resist the title—it was billed as an LGBTQBBQ. Adriana made a potato salad and Jay bought a pack of vegetarian hot dogs, then they headed out to meet Eduardo and Peter at Dockweiler Beach.
Every so often, a rumbling drowned out conversation as a massive jet from LAX passed overhead. Otherwise, it was all beautiful. The sand was clean and stretched for miles; the ocean was searing blue. When families strolled by, their babies were dimpled and beaming.
Some of the LGBTQBBQ-ers had brought cute little kids. Most of the attendees were a couple decades older than Jay and Adriana and Eduardo, but the conversation still flowed easily.
Jay stared at Adriana—so like a movie star of a bygone day with her cat’s eye sunglasses and hair in a high bun—and pictured her with a chubby-cheeked toddler on her hip. God, he’d be dead of the cuteness. That probably wasn’t the best reason in the world to have a baby, though. On the other hand, was there ever a perfect reason? Jay’s mother still called him her “oops baby” in English. She’d been forty-seven and not expecting another. He didn’t mind the silly name; she hadn’t loved him any less.
It wasn’t primarily his decision, anyway, which was nice. He could imagine and speculate all he wanted, but as long as Adriana wasn’t worried about the right time, then he didn’t have to worry.
“Will you play volleyball with us? Please please please?” Speaking of kids, the two hopping up and down in front of him now were impossible to refuse.
“Don’t kick my butt,” he warned them. “I move kind of slow.”
Adriana gave him a sharp look as he walked over to the net, but didn’t say anything. Oh. Well, the sand was soft, and he’d take it easy, and he was feeling so normal, like his lower spine was actually part of his body and not some horrible alien parasite trying to kill him from the inside.
The sun was in his eyes and he was terrible at volleyball, but the kids weren’t much better. He begged off after ten minutes of fun and high-pitched screaming, ate another hot dog, then walked ankle-deep in the surf with Adriana, watching the wind tease her hair free.
“Eduardo and Peter are leaving,” she said. “What do you want to do tonight? My friend Jasmine’s in town, but she has to do stupid tourist things with her family. I’d love to see her later, though.”
He took her hand, running his thumb along the inside of her wrist. The bruises had freaked him out a little, but they were long gone by now. He smiled and spoke just loud enough to be hea
rd over the ocean’s roar. “Let’s go home and watch some porn. Get some ideas. Then go out later.”
“Liar! I bet you already have some ideas.” She squeezed his hand. “Let’s go.”
They helped clean up the picnic area and said their goodbyes.
Jay was still smiling as he climbed into the passenger seat. He did in fact already have ideas: they revolved around a certain garter belt. And anal. Their sex life had been pretty awesome lately.
Adriana put on a collection of boleros from the 1930s—gorgeous, lush, crackling with static and sentimentality—and he lost himself in the music as they drove down the freeway.
She coasted to a stop at their parking spot. He swung the car door open.
He couldn’t get out.
“No. No. Goddamn it, no,” he whispered. But the pain was already flooding his body. It started at the end of his spine, curled around his bones, cascaded down his left leg. The crazy thought of tourniqueting his leg came to him. Or just gouging away and sucking out the pain like it was a fucking snakebite.
There was nothing he could do. Nothing. Except grit his teeth and try not to cry as it mounted, and mounted, and mounted.
Adriana was gone.
I need her. I need her so much. If I could just hold her hand...
He couldn’t even move his fingers from their death grip on the door handle. And she was gone, anyway, she was—
“Take the pills,” he heard her say. “Now. Come on, baby.”
He tasted bitterness and swallowed it down. He tried to open his mouth to drink the water that she pressed to his lips. The glass clinked against his teeth.
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“No. I’ll...give me some time. I can...wait. Just wait.”
He heard her climb back into the driver’s side and felt her hand warm on his own.
Not much later—it was still light, that was all he knew—the agony scaled down to a level where he could think about twitching and relaxing some muscles. So he thought about doing that for a while. And then he did it. His arms worked. His legs worked, too. Just not very well.