“I promise I have no matches,” Jav said.
Alex shrugged and gestured toward the Hudson. “First sign of smoke and I’m jumping in.”
They walked along the rec path, heading for the marina docks.
“Ari got into that summer program,” Jav said. “In Vancouver.”
“I know, I heard. Good for him. Roger always had great things to say about Vancouver.”
Their feet fell into step down the long pier, elbows occasionally bumping.
“Everything all right at home?” Jav said.
“Getting there.”
“Feels weird not to call you every day.”
“I know. I miss it.”
“Do you?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.” Alex leaned elbows on the wooden railing. “I’m not going to bullshit you and I’m not going to lie to you about anything.”
Jav leaned as well, their upper arms grazing. Boats chugged in and out of the marina. The hum of bridge traffic was a dull roar in the distance. Seagulls cawed their harsh lament.
Jav gave a single, snorted chuckle. “You know, I’ve never been dumped. This is a first.”
“I’ve never dumped a guy.”
“Couple of forty-something virgin fags.”
The water slapped against the pilings.
“Sorry,” Jav said. “That was…stupid. And inaccurate.”
Alex cleared his throat. “No me puedo.”
“I know.”
“I want it,” Alex said. “But I have too much to lose, man. I can’t.”
“And it’s not you, it’s me.”
“Knock it off. Do I look like I’m enjoying this?”
Jav stared out over the Hudson. “Te amo, Alejandro.”
Alex pulled in a tremendous breath and let it go. “I know you do,” he said. “I know. I’m not dismissing it.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Will you?”
Jav shrugged. “It’s par for the course.”
“And that’s what I hate.”
“Why?”
“Because I fucking care about you, Jav. Jesus, you know, the way I feel about you is so many different things.”
Jav didn’t take his eyes off the water. His silence wasn’t hostile. It beckoned like an open hand.
“My daughter crashed on the other side of the world,” Alex said, “and you got to her first. She froze up on the mountain and you got her down. You being there for her… I can’t even tell you. I love that she has you. I love that Ari has you. I love that I have you and I’ll fucking miss it.”
“Will you miss me touching you?”
“Yeah. I will.”
Jav ran a hand through his head. “Look, whatever you can give me, man. It’s enough for—”
“Oh come on, what are you going to do? Stick around Guelisten and wait for me to get weak? Come to you desperate, sneak to your place for an hour or grab five minutes in the shed? Then sneak off again? A rest stop, fast food relationship, is that really what you want, Jav? Is that what you think you deserve?”
Jav pushed off the railing as if he were going to walk away but Alex grabbed his arm. “Get back here. Look at me.” He took both Jav’s upper arms now. “Hold still. Look me in the eye and tell me it’s what you deserve.”
Jav met his eyes a second then moved away.
“You’re worth more,” Alex said. “You’re worth more than all the money you’ve made escorting. Those women needed what you had and you made a career, you made a life being everything to them. Who was your everything?”
“You.”
“I’m not free and you deserve more,” Alex said, digging his fingers in. “I want you to be all right. I wanted that long before all this other stuff showed up. I wanted you to stay in Guelisten, I wanted my home to be your home. A place where you feel good. A place you can come as yourself and bring along your happiness and your pain. I wanted you around since the beginning. I told you. It was like finding a brother.”
Jav glanced up, a small smile playing around his mouth. “Falling for your honorary siblings. This is like a thing with you.”
“I know.” Alex let go Jav’s shoulders. “No shock I didn’t look outside the nest to find a mate. When the Larks took me in, I imprinted like a little bird.”
“Same,” Jav said. “It’s not the Larks that kill you. It’s the exaltation.”
“Christ…” Alex pulled Jav back in, hugged him hard. Jav held on for one deep inhale and exhale before stepping back.
“Don’t,” he said, putting his back to the dock railing and crossing his arms. “I can’t stand it.”
“I want you to know this isn’t easy for me. I don’t know how I got here, I never saw it coming. But let the record show…for what it’s worth… I wanted it bad and letting go of it is fucking tearing me up inside.”
“Yeah,” Jav said, his voice thick and tight.
“I want it. Bad. And I could take it, but I’m not going to. Cachai?”
Jav slowly nodded, pulling at his bottom lip. “My dad always said second chances are given or made.”
“I wonder,” Alex said. “If my old man and your old man found each other on the other side.”
Jav laughed. “It’s no wonder.” His chuckling died down and he looked at Alex a long moment. Alex held still, letting Jav fill his eyes. Tasting it. Touching it. Pressing it into memory and letting it be all right.
“It felt good to me,” Alex said. “It made no sense but it felt like me.”
“Goddammit…” Jav pushed off the railing, took Alex’s head and kissed him. Alex tried not to kiss back and, when that failed, tried to let it fill him to some spiritual brim so he could take it along after he said goodbye.
“Come home with me,” Jav said. “Just once.”
“I can’t.” Alex turned his head away, rested his temple on Jav’s lips. “Come on. Don’t make this harder.”
Jav’s palm slid along the front of Alex’s jeans. “Too late.”
“Don’t,” Alex said, but he didn’t move from the stroke and squeeze of Jav’s hand.
“Maybe I should stick around Guelisten and wait for you to get weak,” Jav said. “Something tells me I wouldn’t wait very long.”
“Fuck you.” Alex shoved him off, the blood pounding behind his eyeballs. Jav started walking backward, a curl in his lip and the barest trace of arrogance in his eyes. Turning on the full power of his appeal and letting Alex take a good look at it.
For the first time, Alex saw the tiger.
Torn apart with anger and desire, he saw the walker and the nephew.
Watching Jav turn and stride down the dock, Alex saw the assassin.
T, where R U?
Celeste’s. Bad creative mojo in the apartment today, I needed a change of scene.
Is it working?
No.
LOL. Where’s my birth certificate? I need it to get a passport.
Strong box under my bed. Key’s in a little envelope in my top desk drawer.
Thx. I’m running to get pictures at CVS. Then I’m going to bed. Wiped out.
Night. Sleep well.
Need condoms?
Ha ha. No. Smartass.
Jav pounded at the keyboard until the barista cleared his throat. It was five of midnight, the place was empty, chairs turned upside-down on tables. Smiling a sheepish apology, Jav shut down his document without saving. It was shit anyway. All of him was stuck, stoppered up in a writhing frustration. His bones ripped apart with longing again. Lonely and aching and wanting, but none of it wanted to get out of his skin and get into words. Sons of bitches.
He wished he had a date.
Maybe I should hire someone…
Wouldn’t that be something?
You’re worth more.
He trudged upstairs, weary, but when he lay down in his bed, sleep refused to come. He turned over and over, rolling from one side of the mattress to the other. Finally around quarter of three, he gave up and got up. If he was going
to brood, he may as well pace and brood.
Setting the carton of orange juice on the counter, he knocked off the bundle of Ari’s papers. He collected them back into order: the passport application, the photos taken at CVS and the copy of Ari’s birth certificate.
Or rather, certificates. Both were on the counter. Ari’s original birth document and the amended one from when Nick Seaver adopted him in 1997.
Jav’s eyes lingered curiously on the original, momentarily taken aback as he remembered he and his nephew shared the same surname at birth.
Child’s name: Aaron Rafael Gil deSoto.
“Huh,” he said, a fingertip touching the typed letters, seeing both his father and his pen name within them. His gaze moved down the fields.
Mother’s maiden name: Naroba M. Gil deSoto
Father’s name: Rogelio Alondra.
“Rogelio Alondra,” Jav said under his breath. “So who are you?”
He set the paper aside, thinking. Lining up the timeline in his head. Ari was born in 1989. Naroba was twenty-seven. Long done with nursing school and working. Somewhere.
He remembered meeting his nephew for the first time at Lark House. I think my mom worked here for a little while, Ari said.
Jav picked up the certificate again.
Rogelio Alondra.
He blinked. Then slowly his fingertip reached out and covered up the -elio of the first name.
“Alondra,” he said, louder now.
Was it a word?
His face felt hot and his heart thumped loud as he went online to a translation tool.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
Ari’s a great kid, Roger said at Thanksgiving. He’s going places.
Man, I like that kid, he said up in Vermont.
Hey Schnozz.
You’re no slouch in the honker department either, kid.
“No,” Jav said, staring at Ari’s bedroom door. “Roger is your… No.”
Impossible. The name was just a coincidence. Pure chance. Like everything else in this fucked-up story.
No wonder we kept finding each other.
Jav closed his eyes, seeing Roger’s hand reach to ruffle Ari’s hair. The long scar from when he broke his arm. It was one of the Lark legends. Jav himself heard it at Thanksgiving. Rog worked on the tree fort at Lark House in the late 80s. He toppled off the edge of the main platform and fell ten feet to the ground. He was lucky he only broke an arm. When he came to and saw the bone poking through his skin, he threw up on the resident nurse.
The punch line, wait for it… He got the nurse’s phone number. They dated a little while. Great story.
“He was sitting right the fuck in front of Ari,” Jav said, pulling his hands back through his hair. “At the table. Skiing. At the fundraiser at Lark House…”
I think my mother used to work here, Ari said, sitting on the platform of the tree fort, seventeen years after Roger fell off it. She said she worked at a private group home. In some rich little town on the other side of the river…
“Fuck,” Jav whispered as pieces fell into place. As branches bloomed on an intertwined family tree. As Roger’s scar was tattooed over with a compass rose. A single letter “N” at its point.
Roger was Ari’s father.
Which meant Ari was Val and Alex’s nephew.
Which meant Deane…
Jav was on his feet and pacing again, the truth clutching at an ankle, trying to bring him down.
They’re cousins.
In a sickening backward jolt through time, Jav was up on the roof, drunk on mamajuana. Nesto hard in his hand, his mouth full of daring sweetness.
We’re blood. This is nothing.
It was just some fun.
It didn’t mean anything.
He winced, remembering the hard shove between his shoulder blades, followed by the pinball crash of his young, drunken body down the stairs. The treads catching his knees and hips, the stairwell walls catching his elbows. The final slam on the landing and Miguel rising up over him, fists clenched, breathing fire.
Stop, he thought. Don’t twist this into your story. Ari and Deane aren’t you and Nesto. Alex and Val aren’t your uncles. This is different.
Isn’t it?
He walked over to Ari’s bedroom door and set his fingertips against it a moment. He took a deep, deciding breath. He wouldn’t tell Ari tonight. No. It could wait until morning. Tomorrow Jav would break it to him. Break his heart.
I’m sorry, he thought. I know you love her. Believe me, I know.
He carefully and quietly turned the doorknob. He needed to look at his sister’s son, this boy who never did anything to hurt anyone.
Aarónito, sobrino, I’m so fucking sorry.
He peered into the dark, then opened the door wider. His hand slid along the wall, found the light switch and flicked it.
Ari’s bed was empty.
The doorbell rang at three in the morning.
Val lifted her head off the pillow.
“Was that the…?” Beside her, Alex went on sleeping, undisturbed. His chest rose and fell. Deep and even, like an ocean at peace. Val laid her head back down. She must have been dreaming.
Then the doorbell rang again.
Alex exploded awake, sitting straight up. “Qué mierdas pasa?” He flung the covers back and put his feet on the floor.
Deane, Val immediately thought. But no, Deane was home. She’d said goodnight to them, she was safe in her bed, thank God.
Alex stood up, ready to fight or flee.
This can’t end well, Val thought, throwing her side of the covers open.
“Stay here,” Alex said.
Her pulse loud in her ears, Val followed him. Together they moved past Deane’s bedroom door, down the stairs as the doorbell rang a third time.
Val’s mind whirled in dire scenarios. My sister? Did something happen to Trelawney?
Alex fumbled on the stairwell wall for the porch light switch. Val braced to see police officers through the front door’s glass panels and put a steady hand on Alex’s shoulder. Doorbells in the night and uniformed men. This could be ugly.
The light clicked on. Val saw Jav on the porch and the bottom fell out from her stomach.
Her heart thudded against her breastbone as Alex unlocked and opened the door. Cool air swirled around Val’s bare arms while an anxious heat swept down from her scalp.
We had an agreement, she thought, clenching her teeth hard. You promised you’d tell me first.
The porch light fell golden across Alex’s bare torso as he looked at Jav. Val’s hands fisted at the unfair disadvantage. Alex woken from sleep, full of adrenaline and uncertainty, with nothing but a pair of scrubs for armor. Squinting because he didn’t have his glasses.
How dare Jav pull a move like this? And pull it by ringing their bell in the middle of the night, when he knew damn well what it could do to Alex.
I should throw you down the stairs, you son of a bitch.
Jav stood feet apart, fully dressed and armed for battle. Up on the high ground with the element of surprise on his side. His dark, handsome face a stone as he looked from Alex to Val, and back to Alex again.
Nobody spoke. In the distance, a car drove by. From the yard, the spring peepers continued their incessant chorus.
Life has rules, Val thought. And you cannot come in the middle of the night and take what we agreed isn’t yours.
Her throat constricted with betrayed rage. “Jav, what are you doing?”
Arms crossed now, Alex turned his head to look at her. The faintest trembling in his shoulders indicated his body was still dealing with the shock, but his eyes were sober and resigned. You know what he’s doing, they said. You knew it was coming.
Val moved closer to Alex’s side and slipped her hand into his. He pressed their linked fingers against her leg, moving her slightly behind him.
“It’s too late for this, man,” he said.
Jav stared over their touching shoulders.
&
nbsp; “You have something I want,” he said.
Jav didn’t have to ring the doorbell. He had walk-in privileges at Tulip Street.
He rang it. And enjoyed seeing both Alex and Val come to the door, wild-eyed and shook up. He waited through the moment of triangular staring on the threshold. Relishing the confusion.
“You have something I want,” he said.
He let Alex think it was love.
He let Val think it was money.
He gave them a long moment to ponder before he lifted his chin and shifted his gaze higher over their heads. “Actually, Deane has it.”
Alex and Val looked back together. Their daughter stood on the stairs, her arms crossed tight over her middle.
“Send him down, honey,” Jav said.
Ari was already coming. Tousled and rumpled, his sneakers in one hand. The other slid over Deane’s shoulder a brief moment before he came the rest of the way down. He looked at no one. Only whispered, “Sorry,” as he squeezed past the adults.
Jav gave a brief nod to the Lark-Pendas. “Sorry to wake you. But life has rules.”
He followed his nephew down the porch steps. Ari said nothing on the walk toward town. He was still barefoot and his shirt was on inside-out.
Runs in the family, Jav thought sourly. Gil deSotos are good at getting our clothes off but we suck at getting them back on.
“We need to talk in the morning,” Jav said as they turned onto Main Street. He tried to get a hand on his nephew’s shoulder but Ari shook it off.
“Did you have to embarrass Deane like that?” he said in a hiss. “Jesus Christ, T, if you’d fucking texted, I would’ve come home.”
“You shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
You’re not allowed, Jav thought, gritting his teeth. And even if you were, you don’t get to make love in that house where I can’t. You don’t go up the stairs I was thrown down.
“You’re not my fucking father.”
“No shit, but I’m your goddamn legal guardian. I’m paying the rent, paying your expenses. I’m responsible for you.”
“Jesus Christ, I went over for a minute. We fell asleep.”
“Bullshit,” Jav said, taking a bit of Ari’s T-shirt and turning it up to show the exposed seam.
“So?” Ari yanked away again. “The fuck do you know anyway?” He stomped up the stairs to the apartment door, Jav following.
An Exaltation of Larks Page 44