All things considered, he felt pretty good.
Maybe next time I’ll put it all together, he thought, turning into the small lot behind the Lark Building. Maybe there’ll be a next time. A third chance.
He was so lost in thought, he didn’t realize Alex had pulled in next to him.
Alex came around his trunk and stood between the rear tires of both cars, blocking all egress.
“You ruined my dramatic exit,” Jav said, closing his door.
“Shut up,” Alex said above the thud of his heart.
Jav crossed his arms. “My silence is expensive.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Jav closed his eyes once and opened them again.
“We’re so alike, you and I,” Alex said. “With our missing families and our Nine-Elevens—”
“Yeah, yeah. Tell me what I don’t know.”
“When I called the hospital in Santiago to tell them you were coming, you know what I said?” Alex didn’t wait for an answer. “I said my brother was coming. Those exact words. I said, ‘My brother Javier is coming, and you tell him anything you would tell me. He acts in my stead. Until I get there, he is me.’ You said I became your best friend outside the embassy. You were mine before I even got on the plane.”
The wind blew through the lot, scattering a bit of litter and single tin can.
“I quit believing in God a long time ago,” Alex said. “But when I saw you on the street with Trelawney last year, I had this crazy idea God or fate or something was saying, Here, you lost your family, so I’m putting this guy back in your life. He’s supposed to be here. You’re meant to be around him. He’s not Roger who comes and goes. He’ll always be close. A friend who speaks all your languages. The guy who’s always where you need him to be. When you need him.”
Jav shrugged. “I’m an escort. I get paid to be where I’m needed.” His eyes narrowed at Alex. “Now are you getting out of my way? Because if not, my time is a hundred and fifty an hour. Up front.”
“You’re worth more than that to me.”
The space between them stretched and contracted, like a pair of lungs. Dawn was beginning to turn the sky pale grey, yet time disappeared. As daylight emerged, layers of defense dropped from Jav’s face. Atom by atom he unfolded, his shoulders sinking, arms dropping to his sides. Light began to fill the angles and planes of his face, his gaze filling with a pain that reached arms out to Alex like an old friend.
“What do you want, man?” Jav said, his voice hoarse. “I just came out and put my dick at your feet. I get you don’t feel the same. But being told I’m your best friend isn’t much consolation right now.”
“I’m trying to tell you I do feel the same.”
“I’m not crushing on you Alex. I fucking want you.”
Alex moved a step closer. “The night you told me about Trueblood, I dreamed about you.”
“Don’t,” Jav whispered.
“You were up against my back. All along my back. I was between you and Val. Exactly the way we were outside the embassy. I remember it. I relive it every night in my sleep. And every time I drive somewhere, I can feel your fucking hand running down my arm.”
“Stop telling me this shit.”
“No. It’s blown to hell so might as well throw it out there. I don’t know what this is. I’ve never been attracted to a man in my life, but ever since the drive home from Vermont, I don’t stop thinking about you. Jesus, I haven’t fucked my wife since this shit went down but you’re still in my goddamn dreams every night. All you do is hold me and I wake up coming. I get a fucking hard-on any time I think about your fingers in between mine.”
Jav’s voice was a like a bottle breaking on the pavement. “Don’t do this to me.”
Alex never knew what made him do it. Maybe the sadness of living a good life when those you loved were pushed out of airplanes for someone else’s cause. Maybe the struggle to be excellent at a job you never asked for. Or maybe it was the tiger filling up his eyes. Whether a momentary insanity or an impulse of the heart, he closed the last bit of space between them and put his mouth against Jav’s.
Jav’s body bucked, as if touched with a current, then, with a ragged exhale, he went still, his breath blowing warm against Alex’s face.
The machinery of the universe ground to a halt. Bucked once, like Jav had, then settled.
Alex closed his eyes.
And breathed.
They didn’t touch, except for their mouths. They didn’t move, except for their breath. The inhale of one became the exhale of the other. Alex felt the Earth tilt and adjust beneath his feet. The odd proximity of rough, male skin and its beard growth became ordinary. The strange desire in his chest and groin became normal. The world was surreal but he felt himself present in it.
“Open your mouth,” Jav whispered.
A jerk and a tug behind Alex’s ribcage. A stab of adrenaline and his limbs were on fire, fingertips prickling. His eyes still closed, he let his lips part, tasted cool air across his teeth and tongue. Tasted oak and molasses as Jav slowly curled his mouth around Alex’s bottom lip. Then the upper. Then he rested his eyebrows on Alex’s and took a shaking breath. All of him was trembling.
“Do that again,” Alex said.
Jav did. Slower. His lips releasing their hold with an agonizing reluctance. As he drew back this time, his hands came up and rested on Alex’s shoulders. Warm and heavy. He didn’t caress or pat. Only pressed, as if pinning them both in place.
“If you’re going to walk away, do it now,” Jav said.
“I’m staying here,” Alex whispered. He was so hard, it hurt. So confused, he couldn’t get one thought to hold still. His hands itched. He didn’t know what to do. If Jav were a woman, Alex would have her up against the building now, his fingers plunged deep in her hair, turning her face around his kiss and pushing into her softness. If Alex were a woman, he imagined his back would be against the bricks, his hands pulling Jav’s hardness closer.
Who was hard and who was soft here?
Who was pulling and who was pushing?
“Man, say something,” Jav whispered.
“I want…” Alex swallowed, shivering under Jav’s hands. “I want…you not to laugh at me.”
“Do I look like I’m laughing?”
“Fuck, you always made me act like such an idiot.”
“Hey.” Jav took his head. His thumb touched Alex’s bottom lip. “I’m the idiot, remember?”
A rush of cold air in Alex’s throat as Jav leaned in.
What I want is nothing I am.
And then Jav’s warm, rum mouth was on his.
Nothing I am.
Yet it was everything. Jav was kissing him and he was kissing back. Open-mouthed and hungry. His hands slid along the back of Jav’s jacket and held on tight as he pulled hard and pushed soft.
He was a foreigner in his own skin and couldn’t remember a time he felt more human.
Polarity reversed. Gravity resigned. The natural laws of the universe threw up their hands and surrendered as Alex threw everything he had at Jav, who caught it and threw it back. He kissed Jav, sinking into his mouth, holding Jav hard up against the brick wall. He felt edges of teeth along his tongue, rough stubble along his lips. It was all wrong, yet his body scooped it up and dumped it over his head, soft and wet and hot and melting and right.
“Jesus, I can’t breathe,” Jav said, breaking away, breathing hard. He was shaking.
Alex’s teeth chattered as he pulled Jav back.
“Let go of me before I do something stupid,” Jav said.
“No,” Alex said, the world tilting and wobbling under his feet, his chest torn apart with desire that flooded his mouth like rum. He swallowed and swallowed, afraid it would go further. Terrified it wouldn’t stop.
“Trelawney’s coming any minute to open Celeste’s. She’ll find two idiots in the parking lot.”
“Then let’s go be idiots upstairs,” Alex said.
Jav stared at him.
�
�Ari’s on that rescue, isn’t he?” Alex asked. “He’s not home.”
Jav shook his head, licking his lips.
“Come on,“ Alex said.
Jav reached behind him and peeled Alex’s fingers off the clench on his jacket. He twined them with his, holding both their hands behind his back. “If you come up,” he said, “if you put a foot over my doorstep, if you breathe one breath into my house… Then I’m locking the door behind us. Cachai?”
“Let’s go.”
“I’m not even close to kidding. You walk into my house and I will be on you.”
“I know.”
And it was Alex who led the way, walking past his wife’s dress shop and opening the narrow red door between Celeste’s and Lark’s. Without looking back, he started up the stairs, breathing deeply. Filling the space with his air.
Behind him he heard the door close and a bolt slide. The snap of a light switch. Then footsteps up the treads. Following him.
On him.
Twenty minutes later, Alex trudged up the front steps of his house, returning from a long journey as a changed man.
Sheba looked at him as he came into the front hall, her liquid eyes full of reproach.
And where have you been?
He walked past her, lurching toward the kitchen like an automaton with a few wires yanked out.
Already the memory was fading, replaced by a surreal doubt it even happened.
From the open basement door, Alex could hear the rhythmic cadence of feet on the treadmill. Val was working out. She had made coffee. He poured a cup, then left it forgotten on the kitchen table and went back toward the front hall. Heeling off his sneakers, he bumped the little table and knocked over a stack of magazines.
His memory focused, obliterating doubt.
The apartment door hadn’t yet closed when Jav was on him. All three of them—the door, Alex and Jav—slammed. They crashed like a wave against the wall, careening against a little table and knocking things to the ground. Heeling off shoes, tearing arms from jacket sleeves and seizing each other again. They kissed like the world was ending. Like La Moneda was bombed, the Twin Towers were falling and the plane was in a nosedive. Neither was soft in the dark or pulling at the desire. They were both hard and pushing harder…
Alex went upstairs and started the shower. Waiting for it to warm up, he stood at the sink, running fingers over his mouth. Jav’s kiss echoing there. He leaned forward, a hand on the wall on either side of the medicine cabinet, his forehead pressed to the cool glass. Remembering.
In the bedroom, Jav took Alex’s wrists and pressed his hands to the white sheetrock. As if Alex were under arrest.
“Hold still,” Jav whispered.
Alex set his forehead to the wall, fingertips curling and digging but finding no purchase. Jav’s palms were warm on his head. They slid down to Alex’s shoulders, glided warm down his back. Stopped at his sides, fingers spreading, fitting into the indentations between ribs. Jav’s mouth touched the back of Alex’s neck.
“All right?” he whispered.
Alex nodded, his skin a raised matrix of bumps, his teeth faintly chattering.
“Hold still,” Jav said again. He took one of Alex’s arms, worked it gently out of a T-shirt sleeve and then replaced the palm on the wall. Repeated with the other sleeve. Then drew the shirt over Alex’s head.
Jav’s hands followed the same path now: head, shoulders, back and sides. On Alex’s skin this time, warm and dry and strong. His breath a little choppy within the measured inhales and exhales. He touched the inked Unisphere. The long scar from Albacete. The band of Valerie and Deane around Alex’s right arm. The band of The Disappeared Ones around his left.
“Your whole life means something to me,” he whispered. His arms slid around Alex then. His chest glided warm and wide against Alex’s back. A sound came out of Alex’s throat, something between a cry of mourning and a sigh of relief.
Jav’s fingers dug into Alex’s hair. The edge of his teeth gently ran along the two 9/11s between Alex’s shoulder blades. His mouth closed again on Alex’s nape and his hands slid down, pulling the tail of Alex’s belt free from its loop.
Alex’s hands went to fists and the sound out of his chest had the tiniest echo of a howling dog. Jav’s mouth slid along his spine. The floorboards creaked and tilted beneath Alex’s feet. Jav was kneeling, his hands on Alex’s hips, soft hair in the small of Alex’s back. A long exhale.
“Turn around.”
Alex turned around. The bathroom was filled with steam now. He took his shirt off. Unbuckled his jeans. And remembered.
Jav touched Alex’s belt buckle. Swallowed. “Are you scared?”
“No.”
“I am.” His fingers worked the buckle open. The air was heavy and thick as Alex moved his hand through it, pushing molecules and atoms aside to lay his palm on Jav’s head. The spring and give of his thick hair. The shape of his skull beneath.
Button. Zipper. Jav pulling his jeans and shorts down. Off one ankle along with that foot’s sock, then the other. Then his hands were on the map of Alex’s body, looking for him. Finding him…
Alex found the soap and scrubbed as he usually did. Another ordinary day. His same bottle of shampoo, his same bar of Dial. His shower in his bathroom in his house where he lived with his wife. Her mouth had been the only one to touch his, and her hands had been the only ones on his body for the past eighteen years. Now Jav’s hands had been on him. Today was eighteen years plus one day.
He shut off the water and dried off. His body cried to lie down but he went to the armchair in the bay window instead and sat. He thought about Val’s beautiful back to him in the moonlight. The sucking pulling warmth up and down the length of him. The memory of Jav’s hands and mouth in her head. Riding Alex’s cock and lying to him.
Raindrops began to plink and plunk against the windows, beading up. Alex’s hands ran up and down his bare legs. Remembering.
Jav ran his hands down Alex’s quads. Then his arms circled Alex’s legs and his cheek pressed down low on Alex’s belly. Alex’s heart pounded slow and thick but not out of fear. Not even in surprised wonder. As if standing here naked with his erection snugged up under Jav’s chin were the most normal thing in the world. The air in the bedroom cloaked him in a cape of certainty. He wanted what he wanted.
His hands fisted around Jav’s T-shirt. “Stand up.”
He pulled Jav’s shirt off, then went for his belt buckle. Jav stepped out of his pants and Alex reached for him. Facing the dream, pulling it against him, testing its strength. Testing his own desire.
Are you in? Are you breathing this breath? Walking this walk?
Jav planted one forearm on the wall and put his weight on it. The other open palm made slow circles around Alex’s heart. “Feel good?”
“Yeah.”
Jav moved closer. His hands slid around Alex’s head. Then they were going at it again, kissing like tigers. Sighing and growling. Tumbling like felled trees onto the bed. Skin on skin. Pain on pain. Hard to hard and soft to soft. Neither above nor below, only face-to-face, four hands wrapped around two needs and rum-sweet breath in their mouths and noses and lungs. Spanish words. English words. Wordless words.
“All right?” Jav said.
“Stop asking me,” Alex said. “I’ll tell you when it’s not all right.”
Jav rolled on him, pushed him down and pinned him tight. This kind of loving felt like fighting. Their bodies crashing together like two rutting bulls, locking horns and twisting, trying to see who would break or back off.
“Press on me more.” Alex shook with hunger. He was a ravenous hoard, starving, ready to fight to the death for this meal. “Come on, fucking crush me. I can take a lot more than you think.”
“I know.” Jav’s voice chiseled away at the dark. “But can you take me, Alejandro.…?”
“Alejandro?”
Alex blinked and came back to the present. His bedroom in his house. His wife standing in the doorway.
Pink-cheeked and sweaty from exercise. His fierce tigress. His beautiful lark.
“When did you get home?” she said.
“Just now.”
“Was it horrible?”
He looked at her, unable to answer.
Because it was ridiculous.
From the floor, inside a pocket, Jav’s cell phone rang. Jav slid off Alex and they both froze up, panting. Listened through four shrill demands for attention, and then a silence that screamed. Jav reached to put his palm on Alex’s head, his thumb running along Alex’s eyebrows. The pained desire in his face beautiful in a way Alex couldn’t articulate aloud, only feel in his bones and recognize in his heart.
Now the house phone rang, loud and jarring from the night table.
Alex swallowed. “Answer that?”
“No.” Jav kissed him, crushing him into the mattress. His skin fiery and his weight pinning Alex down. The moment swelled, buzzed like a hive of bees. “I want you so fucking bad,” Jav whispered.
Alex grabbed at Jav’s mouth like it was honey, gulping and greedy. He barely recognized himself—his arm hooked up around a man’s neck, his fingers sliding over sideburns and digging into short hair and liking it. Thrashing and snarling inside this alien desire. Groaning as Jav kissed his way down Alex’s chest, his biting mouth finding places Alex didn’t know existed. An electric current in his cock, so full of blood and want. He arched into the ruffle of Jav’s breath on his stomach, looking for the remembered dream of Jav’s mouth.
A cell phone pinged an incoming text. Then another.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jav said, falling to his back.
“Someone needs you,” Alex said, giving Jav a shove. “Go.”
Jav slid off the edge of the bed and went crawling around in the dropped and flung clothing. “Shit,” he said with a groan. “It’s Ari.”
“What?”
The phone arced up from the floor and landed next to Alex on the mattress. A series of text bubbles from Ari were on the display:
U there?
T, I’m downstairs. U threw the deadbolt on the street door. Can’t get in.
T… Wake up. Tired. Gotta pee.
Where R U? I saw ur car parked in the lot?
“Where is your car?” Val said.
An Exaltation of Larks Page 40