“Jesus fuck,” he said, pulling onto the shoulder. The other car pulled off as well. It was full of teenagers, piling over themselves to get out.
“Are you all right?” Jav called, crossing the road. “Anyone hurt?”
“We’re fine, we’re good,” a tall boy in a baseball cap said, breathing hard. “Holy shit, what did we hit? Was it a deer?”
“It was a dog,” Jav said, brushing past him. He turned back and pointed a finger around. “Is anyone drinking? Say it now.”
“No, man,” the boy said, wide-eyed. “I swear.”
“Good.” Jav hustled over to where two other boys were crouched down over the dog.
“Oh fuck,” one of them muttered. “Oh fuck this isn’t good. Fuck.”
It wasn’t good. Jav took the panting, yelping dog’s head into his hands. “Get my phone out of my jacket pocket,” he said to one of the boys. “I have the Hudson Bluffs Animal Shelter in my contacts. Call them first, say we’re ten minutes away. Then call 911 and ask for Animal Control. Go.”
“I didn’t even see it,” the other boy said, on the verge of tears. “I had my eyes on the road, I wasn’t texting or anything, I swear. I didn’t even see it.”
“It’s all right, it was an accident,” Jav said, trying to keep his voice calm above the dog’s keening howls. “We have to get him to help now.”
“Her,” the boy said in a strangled voice. “And I think she’s pregnant.”
The first boy came back. “Shelter says if we can get her there it’ll be faster. They’re paging their on-call vet right now.”
They put the seats down in the back of Jav’s SUV. The teens had a blanket in their trunk and the driver crawled in to sit with the dog.
Jav felt a twist of nerves in his gut as they pulled into the shelter lot. Alex went with the rescue, he told himself. He’s not even here, so knock it off.
But when the on-call vet hurried out to help them, Jav’s stomach dropped to his shoes.
“Maldita madre,” he muttered, cursing fate as he opened the hatch.
“Let me in, boys,” Alex said, brisk and efficient. “Out of the way, please.” His hands moved in a swift assessment before he caught Jav’s eye. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. His game face was latched down tight.
“We’re going to take her in, blanket and all,” he said, gathering edges and corners. “Straight through, first door on the left. On my three. One, two…”
Jav shut his mouth and his feelings down, following orders and keeping the teens out of the way. His head spun from all the yelping and crying and keening, undercut with the fast, jargon-laced decisions Alex and the vet tech were making. Jav’s tired eyes filled with protruding edges of bone, his nose breathed blood, wet fur and urine.
One girl was losing it, hellbent on making a situation that had nothing to do with her all about her.
“Put her down,” she screamed over the dog’s screams. “Put her down, make it stop.”
The dog convulsed and the girl started gagging.
Pale and haggard, blood on his gloved hands and his scrubs, Alex didn’t look up. “Javito, get her out of here,” he said in Spanish.
Jav grabbed the girl and hustled her out, barely getting her to the small lavatory in the hall where she was dramatically sick. When he emerged, all the kids were in the waiting area, trembling and upset. Jav got some waters from the vending machine and calmed who he could. When parents showed up, he assured them it was a tragic accident and their kids had done all the right things.
Once the last family left, the bottom fell out and Jav dropped into a chair.
Holy crap.
His chin jerked up. He’d dozed off. Checking his watch, he saw it was nearing five in the morning. Lisa, the vet tech, came behind the reception desk with some papers and did a double-take. “Oh, Jav. You’re still here?”
“Yeah, I fell asleep.” He stood up stiffly and walked toward the counter. “What happened?”
Lisa shook her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. “She had five puppies. Four were dead. The fifth was alive, but barely.” She put her elbows on the counter, fingertips at her brow. “It rallied for a little while, seemed to stabilize. Alex put it with a German shepherd who whelped this week. She couldn’t get it to eat though.” Lisa glanced up at the clock. “Died about twenty minutes ago.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s Alex?”
“Cleaning up.”
“I thought he went on the thing in Ulster County.”
“No, our regular on-call vet is sick so Alex stayed behind to cover.”
“Is he all right?”
Lisa’s tired, swollen eyes blinked as she slowly shook her head. “He’s…not handling it well tonight. For some reason. Want me to tell him you’re still here?”
“No. Leave him be.”
She got Jav some paper towels and cleaner and he wiped out as much piss and blood from the back of his SUV as he could. He’d do a more thorough job in the morning. He returned the spray bottle, washed his hands and headed back to his car.
“Don’t make this about you,” he said, paused with his hand on the door latch.
I’m not. I just want to make sure he’s okay.
“He’s fine. This is his job. Leave him alone and go home.”
He turned around, put his back to the car and crossed his arms. He waited, staring at the clinic. Time dripped by. Jav was patient. Finally, Alex came out the back doors. He’d changed out of his scrubs into jeans and a T-shirt. Instead of walking to his car, he sank down onto the concrete steps and put his head in his hands.
Jav hesitated only a moment, then walked over. As his footsteps echoed on the concrete, he expected Alex to look up. He didn’t. Coming closer, Jav saw Alex was practically hyperventilating.
“Alejo,” he said.
Alex’s fingers clenched tight in his hair and he kept looking down between his feet. “I told you not to come near me.”
Jav ignored the threat and crouched down. “You all right?”
“I’m fine. Fucking get lost, will you? Shit…” Alex curled tighter in on himself, head to his knees now.
“Take it easy.”
“Fuck off.”
“You’ll pass out if you keep it up. Take a breath in and hold it,” Jav said. “Let it out slow through your nose. Breathe slow through your nose, not your mouth.”
Alex stayed slumped over but seemed to be listening. His breath slowed down and his fingers let up. Jav stayed crouched at a distance, measuring inhales and exhales.
“Better?”
“Christ, I need a drink.”
“Be right back.” Jav’s birthday gift from Talin Trueblood every year was a bottle of Appleton Estate Rum. He had it in the car because he didn’t like keeping booze in the apartment with a teenager around. He fetched it, using the penknife on his keychain to cut the foil.
“Here,” he said, unscrewing the cap.
Alex looked up, like a man emerging from sleep to find a quarter century had passed. His eyes met Jav’s in bewilderment, which gave way to a slow nod as his hand reached.
“Thanks,” he said hoarsely, and took a slug. He screwed up his face as he swallowed, shaking his head hard. He looked at the bottle label in the dim light, then took another swig and handed the bottle back.
“I really don’t want to talk to you,” he said.
“We’re not talking, we’re drinking.” Jav took a healthy chug, letting the oaken vanilla flavor fill his mouth before slipping in a fiery kiss down his throat.
“Shit,” Alex said, hands in his hair again. “Jesus, it doesn’t always bother me this much. I mean it bothers me, but you learn how to distance yourself from it. But sometimes… Man, it’s when they’re howling like that. When a dog cries in agony like that.” Alex reached for the bottle and took another swallow. “Plus I’m not good when I’m woken up in the middle of the night. By a doorbell or a phone ringing. It kind of rattles me. I mean, it�
�reminds me.”
“Of what?”
“The night my mother disappeared.”
Jav crouched down, listening.
“The police arrested my father first,” Alex said, turning the bottle over and over in his hands. “Burned the bookshop and took him in. About four days later, they took my mother…” His voice dissolved and he put his forehead into a palm a moment, taking a deep breath in. “They came around three in the morning. They rang the doorbell and woke us up. My mother and I. She pushed me into her closet and went with them. I never saw her again.”
Jav slowly leaned back and rolled down onto his butt.
Alex took another chug of rum and handed the bottle over. “I was alone in the apartment for nearly a week. Hiding in the closet. And outside the window… The window I showed you in Santiago, it was my parents’ bedroom. The window was open and out on the streets the dogs were barking. Until the soldiers started taking pot shots at them. Then the dogs started howling.” He jerked his head over his shoulder. “Exactly like that one was.”
Jav slowly nodded, as two pieces of a puzzle joined hands and gave a sly, mean glance his way.
“They shot one right by my building. It was screaming and crying and howling and I could hear it through the window. But it wouldn’t die. It went on crying and crying. I couldn’t take it after a while. So I got my father’s knife.”
“Oh Christ,” Jav said into his hands, more puzzle pieces falling into place.
“And I went downstairs and cut its throat.”
Jav went on nodding into the steeple of his fingers, remembering Alex crouched down by the front wall of the apartment, touching the sidewalk as Val asked, “Here?”
It’s where he killed the dog. To put it out of its misery.
Eleven fucking years old.
Alex was staring off across the parking lot. In the dim orange light he didn’t look like a man who had unburdened his soul. He kept licking his lips and starting to speak, then his eyes would close and he’d sigh hard, trying to expel the last secrets lingering in his heart.
“There’s more,” Jav said. “Something else happened.”
Alex nodded. “They gutshot her.”
Jav leaned forward slightly. “Y estaba embarazada?”
Alex nodded, his lips curled in so tight they were invisible.
Jav looked down at the pavement. The dog was pregnant. And gutshot. Innards and dead puppies on the sidewalk. She was crying for her babies. No wonder tonight kicked Alex’s ass.
Alex’s breath was growing choppy again, his shoulders twitching. “So was my mother.”
“Your…?”
“My mother was pregnant when they took her.”
Jav swallowed. “How far along?”
“Seven, eight months.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I can’t think what… I don’t talk about it. I can barely think about what they might have done to her.” He swallowed. “And I can’t not think about it.”
Jav closed his eyes.
“I’ve read eyewitness accounts of pregnant women being pushed out of airplanes,” Alex said.
“Oh God, man, don’t.”
“I’ve read other testimonies of babies being born in prisons and detention centers and dying there. Accounts of babies taken from detained mothers and smuggled to Peru or Argentina. Adopted out of orphanages and growing up with no idea who they are. I could have a brother or sister out in the world. Or maybe he or she died with my mom. Maybe they shot her stomach open and she cried to death with her baby on the bloody ground. Or both of them could be rotted bones at the bottom of the Pacific—”
“Stop,” Jav whispered.
“I can’t stop,” Alex cried, his voice echoing across the parking lot. “I can’t ever fucking stop and neither can you. Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t dwell on the last minutes on that goddamn airplane. Don’t tell me you haven’t imagined twenty-seven ways Flip died. His last words. His last thoughts. Whether he was on his feet or on the floor. If he was holding someone’s hands praying or if he was alone in a ball screaming for his mother. Don’t fucking tell me you don’t do it.”
“I do it,” Jav said. “You’re right. I do it all the time.”
Alex gave a final exhale and crumpled, exhausted and drained. “Well, you got to see the show,” he said around a terse chuckle. “Phone call in the middle of the night and a screaming dog who was pregnant. The perfect storm to make me lose my shit.” His knee joints popped as he got up. “And I’m spilling it to the guy who used to get paid to fuck my wife. Christ, could my life be any weirder?”
Jav stared as Alex started walking away. Not to a car but an airplane.
Then he heard his own voice calling after.
“You want weird? The guy who used to fuck your wife is in love with you.”
A sick thrill surged through him. Slightly triumphant. Almost holy. The martyr with nothing more to lose, willing to concede the war if he could win this battle. Die for his cause in a blaze of glory.
“Come on, man, let’s make this really interesting,” he said. “Why strike a match when you can burn the house down?”
Alex stopped. “The two of you are playing me for an idiot.”
“I want you so fucking bad I don’t know what to do with myself. Who’s the real idiot in the parking lot?”
Alex looked back over his shoulder. Jav got up.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “I came around Morelli’s Diner all those months because I liked you. I liked looking at you, watching you interact with people. Wishing I were one of them. I gave you my card the first time because you asked for it. I gave it the second time because I thought maybe you’d call. Just to hang out, you know? But when the phone rang, it was Val. I didn’t know who she was to you but figured if she was calling me for a date, it couldn’t have been that serious. Besides, I’m an escort, not the morality police. She called me and I had the time. It was a walk. Walks are easy, you just have to pay attention and give a shit. Then one thing led to another and—”
“I really need you to stop talking now.”
“She hired me six times. I liked her. She was my favorite client. For a while I thought it could be something more but she was too smart for my baggage. She knew I didn’t trust love, certainly not enough to give up the work. And she knew I liked men but I wouldn’t admit it. No, that’s not true. I admitted it, but never did anything about it. I was content to be bi-curious and bi-cautious.”
“I’m going home,” Alex said, and didn’t move.
“I got too attached to her and she stopped hiring me. I sulked for a few months but soon enough, I got dopey about another client and she was my new favorite. I realized Val was right. Escorting is the work I do best. It’s a sweet fucking gig. I don’t want to quit, why the hell should I?
“Then a bunch of years go by and I meet this guy. He likes me. And I like him. I like him a whole fucking lot and I think, Yeah, this could be it. This could be the one. But he got on a plane on Nine-Eleven and my life turned into that picture you told me about. Jagged metal, rubble, smoke and apocalypse. I thought, Never again. Forget it. Love and me aren’t friends. I’ll stick to escorting. That way lots of women love me, I don’t have to love anyone in return, and nobody leaves me. I don’t want and I don’t lose. It’s perfect.”
Alex had turned all the way around now but Jav kept talking past him.
“Then I get a phone call one day,” he said. “My sister’s dead and I have guardianship of a nephew. In Guelisten. Like fate playing some practical joke. I see you on the street and it starts all over again. Except this time I want to make the man miss his plane. I want to grab onto him and not let go. I don’t want to talk him down to death from the sky, I want to talk him into my bed and never shut up because…”
The Earth was utterly still and silent. No traffic. No crickets. No hum of streetlights or rumble of A/C. Only Jav’s voice, weaving through the quiet like a thread, sewing the pieces together.
“Because I love him,” he said. “I love you, Alex. It started outside the embassy in Santiago. When you were between me and Val and we were holding you. I don’t know if you remember, but for me it was unforgettable. It was a pure moment, nothing to do with sex or desire. It was when you became my best friend. But it was also a match. Flame took hold around Thanksgiving. Then it exploded the day Pinochet died and I’ve pretty much been a forest fire since.”
“Jesus Christ,” Alex whispered.
“I fucking love you. I love all the weird coincidences and random meetings and crossed paths. I love how my tiny little family got tied up in yours. I even love that Val…”
He finally looked at Alex. “Fuck it, I don’t care anymore. I blew it all to hell with one stupid text. I might as well throw it all out there now. I love Val to pieces, man, but I don’t want her. I want you. Now go home.”
Alex swayed on his feet. “Jav, you and I—”
“Go home, man. Go home to Val. She loves you so much it’s ridiculous and she’s been your home since you were eleven. Don’t hold this over her head. It was my fucking fault, my stupid text. Go home. You’re straight, she loves you and I’m the idiot. Let there be one idiot, all right? Me. I’m good at it. I’m excellent at this job. You’re excellent at being her husband. Let’s just go do our jobs.”
He pushed the rum bottle against Alex’s chest until it was taken, then he walked away. Without looking back, he got into his car and drove home.
I’ll leave, he thought. I’ll lay low and stick it out until Ari graduates. Then I’m going. For good. I’ll get a place in the city with room for both Ari and Roman. It will be all right. I’ll get over it. At least he knows.
Alex knew. Jav wasn’t choking down the truth any more. Strangling on his own desire. He’d let it be known. A small step of progress.
“I’m bisexual,” he said. He took a breath, let it out and came out. “I’m bisexual. I like women and men. I like sleeping with women for money and sleeping with men for love.”
He inventoried all four limbs and his head. Still here.
An Exaltation of Larks Page 39