An Exaltation of Larks

by Suanne Laqueur

  “What?” Alex said. His car was still parked behind the Lark Building. Like a true fleeing lover, he’d made a beeline up a side street and headed straight for home. Leaving his car behind, skirting the parking lot entirely in case Ari was wandering around.

  “Where’s your—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s in town, I’ll explain later.”

  “You’re wrecked.” Val folded back the comforter. “Come lie down. Go to sleep.”

  Alex took two lurching steps and fell sideways across the mattress. A breeze of cool air across his back and legs before the sheet dropped softly on his bare skin. His hand crept beneath his pillow and found his handkerchief. He squeezed it tight in his fingers.

  “What the fuck.” Alex’s fingers squeezed the phone as he stared at the texts. “I thought he was on the rescue in Ulster.”

  “So did I.” Jav was stuffing one leg, then the other into his jeans, hopping around and pulling them up. “But now he’s home, the punk. God motherfucking dammit. Give me the phone.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Alex tossed it to him, seized his own clothes and pulled them on.

  Jav was texting. “He has to be tired. He’ll come in and go crash. Just stay in this room.”

  “And what, hide in the closet? Your shirt’s on inside-out.”

  Jav’s laugh had an edge of hysteria as he yanked the shirt off and put it on properly. He dashed out to the living room, grabbed Alex’s jacket and sneakers and threw them into the bedroom. “I swear, someone up there hates me.”

  “What if he doesn’t crash?”

  “He will.”

  Alex jammed his right foot into his left shoe. “I don’t know. At that age I needed four bowls of cereal and cartoons to unwind.”

  “You’re right.” Jav pointed to the window. “Fire escape.”

  “I’ll see myself out.”

  “I can’t think when I had a better time,” Jav said, shaking his head as he pulled the bedroom door shut.

  Alex opened it. “Listen—my wife doesn’t know about us. Don’t send a text asking, all right?”

  Jav looked back from the front door. “Where the fuck you been all my life…”

  Alex opened his eyes and Sheba looked up at him from the floor, wanting to know where he had been.

  If a million dollars were in it, if a gun were held to his head or his daughter dangled off a rooftop, Alex would not be able to say what happened the rest of that Sunday. Whatever transpired, whatever he did and said and thought, his subconscious studied it and made an executive decision. Let’s put this day away and pretend it didn’t happen.

  Monday dawned cool, clear and bright like a promise. It was Alex’s day off and he bashed through a to-do list of errands, household chores and yard tasks. His body crackled with productive energy as he put his world in order. Getting shit together where it belonged.

  He didn’t text Jav, who didn’t text him. The desire seemed far away. A garment he’d ordered online, tried on, found not to be a good fit and returned.

  It really is like a dream already, he thought. Maybe it’ll just be a weird, random thing. A crazy moment between friends. Like Roger and I jerking off to porn. We’ll let it go and let it be. And laugh someday, about how I left via the fire escape.

  In the late afternoon, he was mucking around in the shed when a hand grabbed his arm, whipped him around fast. His shoulder blades hit the wall, the breath collapsed out of his chest.

  “Where were we?” Jav said, and kissed him.

  It was no dream. It was right here, right now. And it fit perfectly.

  Jav’s mouth was hard but his tongue was soft. A sweetness with a tannin edge was in his breath and it exhaled warm on Alex’s face.

  They stopped, breathing hard, Jav still holding Alex’s head. Alex’s fists clenched tight around Jav’s belt.

  “Scared the shit out of me,” Alex finally said.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re right.” He kissed Alex again. His weight shifted onto one leg and with the other he kicked the shed door shut.

  “Nice afterthought,” Alex said in the dark.

  Jav tugged Alex’s shirt up and over his head. “I get kind of stupid around you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  They kissed. Alex pulled Jav in tight, gripped in an alien physical desire he thought would suck out his soul. Jav’s hands slid down his chest, then around his back. An involuntary groan tumbled out of Alex’s throat, the iron rod of Jav’s erection against his making him remember unfinished business. Jav pushed against him harder. The dark wrapped him in a hot cloak. Alex didn’t like the dark. Didn’t like small tight spaces, either.

  But he liked this.

  He pulled Jav’s shirt off so he could get closer to it. Opened his mouth to bite and lick at it. Dug his nails into the itch and scratched hard.

  “I swear I could fuck you right now,” Jav said, his hand stroking the front of Alex’s jeans.

  Alex laughed against Jav’s mouth. “You’re not fucking me here, man.”

  Jav laughed too, holding Alex hard, but Alex’s hoot dissolved into a nervous chuckle. Jav was easing the tail of Alex’s belt of its loop. His mouth was on Alex’s neck and the dark’s soft cloak turned rough and scratchy. Anxiety began curling around Alex’s heart, siphoning off his breath. Jav picked his head up, inhaling deep and putting his hand flat on Alex’s chest. He exhaled and pressed it.

  “It means something,” Jav said. “Your whole life means something to me.”

  “I know.”

  “Relax for me.”

  Alex let the shoulders up around his ears fall. Jav’s palm rubbed a circle on Alex’s heart. His other hand slid to the back of Alex’s neck, then kept sliding until Alex’s head was cradled in Jav’s elbow. Jav kissed him. Pressed and pinned him. Muscle and bone and skin. All that lean power and strength holding Alex safely in place. All the desire and hurt and passion mirrored back, revealing some essential core truth.

  He acts in my stead. Until I get there, he is me…

  His hands reached for Jav’s belt, yanked it apart and went for his zipper. Jav’s hands were undoing Alex’s pants, their mouths twisting and grabbing, opening and closing. An identical groan in each chest as their hands dug in and took hold.

  “Jesus,” Jav said, gasping and laughing. “Val was right.”

  “About what,” Alex said, his hand gripping, squeezing, moving up and down as he pushed his hips further into Jav’s fist.

  “About you being hung like a horse.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Yeah.” Jav’s mouth closed around Alex’s bottom lip and let go. “I made her tell me everything about you.”

  “This is so fucked-up.”

  “I want you back in my bed,” Jav said. “I’m not done with you.” His hands went down the back of Alex’s jeans now. Inside his boxers and on his ass. A nice double handful as leverage to pull Alex in tight, grind their hardness together and God, it felt fucking good.

  “Let’s go,” Jav said. His smile curled against Alex’s mouth. “Before Val kicks the shed down.”

  Alex tensed up, his head full of a remembered splintering noise. The crash of a foot connecting with wood. The squeal of a door torn off its hinges to reveal Val, angry-eyed and breathing smoke, coming after what belonged to her. Only a split second of shock before Alex realized he’d expected nothing less. A locked door wouldn’t stop her. Wild, well-hung horses couldn’t stop her. She’d tear an embassy gate down to go after the things she loved. She got on the fucking train to Crazytown to make sure her man came back to her.

  I’m her man.

  Jav’s my brother.

  Hermano.

  Her man… Oh, Christ, what am I doing?

  “Basta,” he said. “Jav, hold up.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t breathe.” Panic filled the back of Alex’s throat. “I mean, I don’t kn
ow what I’m doing.”

  “It’s all right, neither do I.” Jav’s hands ran up Alex’s chest. “Come on, let’s go home.”

  “I am home.” Alex’s hands found Jav’s shoulders, dug into his skin even as he was trying to push him away. “This is my… I can’t.”

  He couldn’t see Jav’s face in the dark and he was glad of it. He needed to get out of here and out of this. He wasn’t striking matches. He was burning his house down. Worse, he was letting Val think she was the sole arsonist.

  The realization punched his stomach. He wasn’t just cheating on Val. He was torturing her. He was staging a coup on his marriage and violating his own Geneva Convention.

  “I can’t do this,” he said, in a cold sweat. “It’s too much to lose.” He felt around on the floor for a shirt. He pulled it on, hoping it was his.

  “Alejo, don’t,” Jav said.

  “I’m sorry.” Alex tucked himself back into his pants, zipped and buttoned. “I love her. She’s my life, this is my life. You know this. It isn’t…”

  “Hey, calmate,” Jav whispered, but calmate was the wrong thing to say. Bad things happened when Alex calmed down.

  “We can’t be here,” Alex said. “Deane’s coming home from school any minute. Ari will probably be with her.”

  Jav was buckling his belt. “The story of my fucking life.”

  “Jav, I can’t sneak around like this. I’m too fucking old.”

  And too fucking married.

  He went out of the shed. And when he saw Val on the back porch, shaking out the kitchen rugs, it was with a mixture of sickening dread and abject relief. And no small amount of absurdity.

  Hi honey. Jav was just borrowing the hedge clippers.

  Roman and Sheba trotted over barking, as Val stared at Alex and Jav. Two cats trailing canary feathers. Tousled and sweaty, eyes glazed. A suspicious bulge in each pair of pants. Jav’s shirt on inside-out and backward.

  Alex watched his wife’s face go from surprise to realization, then slowly fill with rage.

  I. Am. Fucked.

  Deane and Ari came around from the side porch, hand-in-hand and laughing, followed by Stella with Henry.

  “Christ, es una fiesta,” Jav mumbled, jamming his hands in his pockets.

  “Whoa, is this an intervention?” Deane said.

  “Deane, we’re here because we love you,” Ari said, crouching down to hug Roman.

  Val looked at her daughter and gave a weak laugh. She gathered her rugs and went back inside, closing the door gently behind.

  From the windows on either side, Alex saw flames.

  “Hey, Mr. Landes,” Stella said. “How are you?”

  “Leaving,” Jav said. “Sorry I can’t intervene. Got shit to do.”

  “I have to go to work,” Deane said.

  “Big math test tomorrow,” Ari said.

  “God, who planned this intervention?” Stella said.

  Alex walked away from all of them and went inside. The kitchen was empty. The downstairs quiet. “Val?” he called.

  He went toward the stairs. “Valerie?”

  He looked up to the landing. Never—not in the closet in Santiago, not when he cut a dog’s throat, not on his second 9/11 and not at Deane’s hospital bedside—had Alex been so frightened.

  Get your fucking ass up there now.

  Going up the steps was like walking through water. His heart pounded slow and heavy. Strikes on a gong, making his limbs and fingers vibrate.

  He found Val in the bathroom, throwing up.

  “Oh, honey,” he said, crouching down.

  “Fuck you,” she whispered. And heaved again.

  He raked her hair off her neck, gathering it into his fingers. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  He pressed the handful of hair against the back of her head and slid his other arm across her chest, holding her steady. The way she needed to be held when she was puking. This was his job. And he was excellent at it.

  “It’s all right,” he said, feeling sick himself.

  I fucked up. Oh God I fucked this up bad.

  She gagged and spit. “I hate you.”

  “I know.”

  She bucked and dry-heaved, but didn’t fight off his arms. When he wet a washcloth, she turned her face into its soothing damp. Then she put her forehead on the rim of the toilet and wept.

  “Val,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You lied,” she said. “In that chair, when you were fucking me and in our bed. You lied to me. You threw me over the side and let me suffer through the worst night of my life when we could’ve had a conversation about who he was to both of us. You lied and let me suffer through these past few days, thinking I’d lost you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, wanting to die.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “It’s over. Nothing even started but it’s over. All of it. I swear.”

  She picked up her head and slapped him. An open hand straight across his jaw, her face contorted with fury. “You son of a bitch,” she said through her teeth. “You wanted him all this time—”

  “I don’t want him. I want you.”

  She slapped him again, on the same side of his face, making his teeth rattle. “Who the fucking hell do you think you are?” she cried.

  “Val…”

  Her hand hung in the air, then slowly curled into a fist with one finger left pointing. “You,” she said. Her hand dropped in her lap as a fresh stream of tears fell from her swollen eyes. “I don’t know you…”

  Not knowing either, Alex braced himself for the verdict as the flames rose up. Thick choking smoke burning his eyes and searing his lungs. Timbers cracking and collapsing. The roof caving in. It was over. All of it. He wouldn’t be sleeping here tonight. He’d be the one fixing it with Deane in the morning.

  I’ve lost her.

  “Valerie, please.”

  “Don’t touch me.” She rolled off her knees, onto her butt and slumped against the side of the bathtub, a cheek against the cold porcelain. “The other night I begged you, please, and you…” She curled an arm around her head and dissolved into weeping.

  Alex reached and flushed the toilet. He ran the washcloth under cold water again and laid it on the ledge of the tub. “I’m sorry.”

  “If you gave me shit about sleeping with him twenty years ago when you were fucking him in our back yard, I swear to God, Alex—”

  “I didn’t fuck him,” he said.

  Things you never imagined saying to your wife, he thought, floating in some surreal dimension running parallel to normal.

  “I don’t believe you when you said nothing started,” she said. “Something’s been going on and it didn’t start today. It was all over you when you walked out of the shed. You think I can’t read your shitty poker face? Think I don’t know you and your moral compass that only points one way? Think I don’t notice when you’re considering getting a hard-on?”

  He wrapped his arms tight around his knees, trying to squeeze himself into nothing. “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, something’s been going on and no, it didn’t start today.”

  A cautious knock on their bedroom door. “Mom?”

  When Val answered, “Yes, Deane,” her voice calm and steady, Alex thought he’d never loved her more and liked himself less.

  The click of a locked doorknob being tested. “Are you all right?”

  Val glanced at Alex. “I’m a little sick to my stomach, honey.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  Her gaze intensified. “He’s in here with me. Cleaning up.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I’m going to work. Feel better.”

  Val picked up the wet cloth and pressed it to her face. “Start from the beginning. And I don’t care if it was when you were waiting tables in eighty-six, or if it was last night.”

  Alex started with the drive home from Vermont. When he was finished, Val took a deep breath
and weakly threw the washcloth at him. “That’s everything that happened?” she said.

  “It is. I swear. Val, I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” she said. “You really are the sorriest man sometimes, Alex.”

  She got up, holding onto first the tub, then the sink for support, and lurched into the bedroom as if one leg were shorter than the other. She pulled a tote bag out of the closet and started opening drawers.

  “Where are you going,” Alex said.

  “I’m going to my sister’s,” she said. “I can’t sleep next to you tonight. I don’t want to see you. You can explain to Deane.”

  “Val, please. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I never saw this coming. I’ll do anything—”

  “Good. You can start by leaving me the fuck alone.”

  “Feel better?” Trelawney asked.

  Wrapped in a robe, her head swathed in a towel turban, Val shrugged. “No, but I feel cleaner.”

  “I’ll open a bottle of wine,” Trelawney said. “Unless you prefer the harder stuff?”

  “I need to get something in my stomach first.”

  Trelawney put out her hand and Val took it, let herself be led into the kitchen, grateful to be the little sister now.

  “Your phone pinged a few times,” Trelawney said, flicking her chin to the counter where the phones were charging. Val picked hers up. If it were Alex, she wouldn’t answer. But she had two texts from Deane.

  Mom, I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m really scared.

  Mom, R U coming home?

  Val sighed. “What do I tell her?”

  “The truth,” Trelawney said.

  “That her father’s screwing around with her boyfriend’s uncle?”

  “No, no. The other truth.”

  “I’m having a sleepover with my sister, we’re going to get drunk and dish and I’ll be back in the morning?”

  “Perfect. Don’t text. She needs a voice.”

  Val called her daughter’s phone. “Hey, baby.”

  “Mom, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing you need to make into a worst-case scenario, I swear.”

  “Are you in love with Jav?”

  “No,” Val said. “I wasn’t then, I am not now. What I am is upset, so I’m hanging with my sister.”

  “Can I come over, too?”