Jav shrugged. “Friend of mine said I was worth more.”
“You should keep that friend.”
“I’m going to try.” He cleared his throat. “You know what I realized recently?”
“What?”
“If you take some poetic license, you could say Rog is my brother-in-law. Right?”
“Sure.”
“So if you’re my brother-in-law’s brother-in-law, doesn’t that make us kind of…brothers?”
Alex’s chin slowly rose and fell and the dimples began to show. “Holy shit.”
“My thoughts exactly. Now bring it in, brother, before this gets too cheesy.”
Their right palms smacked together and they pulled in hard, pressed chest to chest with their fists on each other’s shoulders.
“It felt good,” Alex said.
“It felt like me.” Jav bussed his mouth against Alex’s temple, then grabbed his ass.
“Son of a bitch,” Alex said, laughing as he broke away.
“Don’t poke the tiger.”
Alex opened the driver’s side door. With a foot in he stopped. “You know what a group of tigers is called?”
Jav crossed his forearms on the roof of his car. “What?”
“They’re typically solitary animals so you don’t see them in groups,” Alex said. “Sometimes they’re called a streak. Or an ambush. Depends who you ask.”
“This tiger is making himself a third chance,” Jav said. “Third time’s the charm, right?”
“A group of finches is called a charm.”
Jav put his chin down on his forearms. “I can’t tie that back to anything.”
Alex slid behind the wheel, slammed the door and leaned an elbow on the window. “What, you’re watching me drive away?”
“Yeah. Actually.”
“Te quiero, tigre.”
“Te quiero, alondra.”
Javier parked in front of the Lark building and went into Celeste’s.
“You seen Trelawney?” he asked the barista.
“Upstairs in the gallery.”
Outside, Jav touched the glossy red door that led to the place he called home for a year and a half.
You walk into my house and I will be on you.
He walked past Lark’s, glanced at the window of Deane Fine Tailoring, then went upstairs to the gallery.
Two voices echoed down to him, amplified by the empty room, cleared of its dollhouses and shadowboxes.
I’m having déjà vu.
Trelawney stood in the center of the space with a tall man. “Hey, handsome,” she called to Jav.
The man turned around, his arms crossed. A startling flash of blue eyes. Jeans and a black T-shirt. Thick, dark hair easing into silver. A bit of healthy sunburn along his cheekbones and a slowly-spreading smile as his right hand broke free and extended toward Jav. “Hi, I’m Stef.”
“Javier. Hi.” They shook.
“Jav’s my favorite ex-tenant,” Trelawney said. “And among other things, a marketing specialist.”
“Only free marketing,” Jav said. He glanced up at Stef whose eyes glanced away.
“Stef’s an art therapist,” Trelawney said.
“Really?” Jav said.
“Yeah, I’ve been doing a program with women and kids at a domestic violence shelter in Poughkeepsie. I’m looking for space to do an exhibit of their work. Raise money for the shelter.”
“And awareness.”
Stef smiled. He had one dimple. “That’s right.”
“You have a website set up?” Trelawney asked.
Now Stef sighed with a pained expression. “It’s on my list of things to avoid.”
“You need to talk to this guy,” she said, a thumb in Jav’s direction.
“You do web development? Seriously?”
“Among other things,” Jav said. He had to consciously detach his eyes from Stef’s deep blue gaze. Especially the thin scar that cut through one of his eyebrows, telling a story.
The scar was the price for bedding the Queen. He didn’t take the cut personally. She kept his eyebrows in a locket around her neck—how many men could say that?
“Come down for a cup of coffee,” Trelawney said. She put her hand on Jav’s arm. “You, too.”
The bookstore was quiet. Only a couple of readers sat by the fireplace. “Holy crap,” Stef said, looking around. “I want to be held hostage here.”
Jav looked at him. “That’s literally what I said the first time I walked in.”
“This place with an art gallery upstairs? Dude, I think I just came.”
The shop was hot. Jav slipped off his sport jacket.
They sat side by side at the bar and Trelawney served them the house blend. Cupped around the mug, Stef’s hands were large, flecks of paint on the knuckles and nails.
He’d painted the one and only portrait of the Queen. It was said he used the blood from his slashed eyebrow to color her lips.
“Who drew all the comic strips?”
“My nephew,” Jav said.
“No shit. Where’d he go to school?”
“He just started at New Paltz.”
“Oh, he’ll love it there.” Stef leaned, blew across the surface of his coffee and took another sip. “They have a great program.”
He got up and walked over to the wall where Ari’s prints were hung. He sipped and studied. Leaning in. Stepping back. His left forearm, wrist to elbow, was thick with tattoos. The top of another inked design peeked over the edge of his collar.
A tattoo only the Queen had seen.
Trelawney came around from the bar and wiggled back between Jav’s knees, pulling his arms around her from behind. Jav put his chin on top of her head.
“If you’re my sort of brother-in-law’s sister,” he said, “does that make you my sort of sister? In law? Ish?”
“Definitely.” She leaned further back against him. “Ish.”
“Aren’t I lucky then.”
Stef turned and smiled at them. “I’d say she’s lucky.”
“He’s the best hugger,” Trelawney said. “He really should get paid for it.”
Jav winked at Stef and mouthed, “I do.”
Stef grinned into his cup. The bell on the jamb rang and customers came in. Trelawney went back behind the bar and Stef sat next to Jav. Beneath the counter, their knees bumped.
“You live in town?” Stef said.
“I did. I rented the apartment upstairs from Trelawney. Which reminds me.” He reached in his pocket for the keys. He held them a moment, letting the memories jingle in his palm before he pushed them across to Trelawney. “I’m in Manhattan now. Riverside Drive. You?”
“I’m down in Chelsea.” Stef checked his watch. “And yikes, my train’s in ten minutes. Gotta get.” He took a last sip of coffee, then reached for his messenger bag. “Listen, it was good to meet you.”
“Same.” They shook hands.
“You got a card? I’d like to talk to you about a website.”
“Sure. Give me yours?”
Stef set his bag on the stool and dug around. “You can see I’m hopeless at selling myself. I never have a card when I need one. Goddammit…” He took out two marble notebooks and set them on the bar, followed by a paperback with an emerald and black cover.
Client Privilege, by Gil Rafael.
“That’s a great book,” Trelawney said, leaning her elbows on the counter and not looking at Jav.
“It’s fantastic,” Stef said. “I’m going to finish it on the train. Ah. Here you go.” He slid a card down the counter toward Jav. “Don’t lose it.”
Jav turned it over.
Steffen Finch
Curator & Sailor
Stef shouldered his bag and tucked the book under his arm. With a last cobalt-blue look, a flicker of one dimple and a wave, he walked out. A jingle of bells. Then silence. It filled Jav’s ears as he stared at the card.
A group of finches is called a charm.
He looked up and through the w
indow, watching Stef cross Main Street to the station.
“Jav,” Trelawney said sharply. She reached across the bar and whacked the back of his head.
“Ow. What?”
She pointed toward the door. “Fetch.”
Jav bolted off the stool and out of Celeste’s.
“Hey,” he called, running across the street. “Stef.” His tongue pushed the name to the roof of his mouth, while his teeth locked against his bottom lip and kept it from escaping.
The finch turned around, his hair and eyes full of the sun.
“I’m actually driving back into Manhattan,” Jav said. “Want a ride?”
“So touching purest and so heard
In the brain’s reflex of yon bird;
Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,
Through self-forgetfulness divine,
In them, that song aloft maintains,
To fill the sky and thrill the plains
With showerings drawn from human stores,
As he to silence nearer soars,
Extends the world at wings and dome,
More spacious making more our home,
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.”
—George Meredith, The Lark Ascending
You have to be careful what you say and do around me, because it will end up in a book:
As the family legend goes, Aunt Susan was sick in bed with the flu. And Uncle Dave was being impossible, teasing and yanking the covers off her bed. He ran and hid in the bathroom to gloat. Susan backed down the hall and in a fever-induced rage, kicked the bathroom door in. We tell this story every time we get together. These are the stories that make a beautiful life. And not everyone gets one.
When I was about three or four years old, living in Croton-on-Hudson, a family called Trueblood lived next door. They eventually moved away but the name stayed behind, stuck in my head like a beautiful untold story. Until now.
When PJ Geraghty’s daughter had mono and insisted she was dying, he told her not to die in the house because he’d have to disclose it when he tried to sell the place. You just can’t squander that sort of line.
I forgot who referred to Connie Buono as “often wrong, never in doubt,” but it’s not a bad way to go through life.
The late, great Jerry Gross told my father about the distinction between walkers and nephews (said information gleaned from a book Jerry was editing at the time). My father didn’t believe him until some years later, when he was at the April in Paris ball, and heard a woman behind him shriek, “Cynthia! You have to come meet my nephew, Derek!” True story.
I went straight to Art Harvey for a recommendation on what kind of car Felipe would drive. Without hesitation he told me the 1966 Ford Thunderbird Convertible.
Jen McPartlin found the camel swing coat on a rack at Savers. It wasn’t her size but on principle she had to alert her fellow patrons. “Does anyone realize this is a Halston?”
Bourgeois twit is a nod to Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers. When told by his daughter she might get involved with an American Ranger, Laurence Stern advises her she is, yes, a married woman, “but not a bourgeois nit-wit.”
On 9/11, Krista Rizzo told her husband Will, “Come here now.” They are one of my favorite love stories.
The postcard reading Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I’m dead first appeared on the extraordinary blog Post Secret and has never been explained or solved. From the moment I saw it, I thought, “Here’s a story…”
My friend Marla Behler has a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever named Luke. He’s beautiful and chill and when I started sketching out Ari, I knew Luke was his dog.
Kevin Smith has the dubious honor of crash-testing Deane’s ski accident. Unlike Deane, he got up after the collision, told the U-turner off in no uncertain terms, and did another run on his broken binding. Then he thought maybe he should get himself checked out. Men.
I never met the late George Buffaloe and I know he didn’t invent the saying “Here’s to those who wish us well, all the rest can go to hell…” But I have fond memories of it from both his daughters’ weddings, so he gets credit.
My father, the not-so-saintly Bernie, wrote letters to me at college and ended every one with “con mucho abrazos amor y besos, pero no pesos.”
My mother, Carol, taught me to sew clothes and costumes, and built me a dollhouse from the plans in Better Homes and Gardens.
Sometimes I ask people to deliberately tell me things so I can put them in a book. I cannot reveal the names of three gentlemen who openly and generously answered my thousand questions about escorting, but without them, Jav would not exist, nor do the excellent job he did.
Sometimes I have to thank strangers. I only know him as Carlos, and he appeared on a segment of Momondo’s DNA Journey series. He’s Cuban, or so he thought. I watched his face as he looked at his trueblood and discovered he was a man of the world. His smile made me want to tell a story. He became Flip. And everything about Larks changed.
Then I have my usual suspects, people without whom I cannot do anything:
My editor, Becky. I do the thing, I give it to her, she does the thing and gives it back to me a better thing.
My designer, Tracy Kopsachilis. I ask for a beautiful thing on the cover, she gives me the beautiful thing.
My formatter Colleen Sheehan. I want a thing to look like this. She makes the thing look like this.
Rach Lawrence of the microscopic eyes. She does a final proofread and picks out all the wrong things.
My assistant and squishy, Jennifer Beach. She makes me pretty things, and then does all the things on my list of things to avoid.
My army of advance readers. I write a lot of things. They read all the things.
Naroba Castillo Lozano. She let me use her name and scrutinized all the Spanish things.
My daughter, Julie. My squheeghy little woman-girl. Even in the rough teen years, she always for to take leetle nap with me.
My magnificent, most excellent son, AJ. This kid is going places.
And always, JP, who is happiest on the mountain. You fact-checked the ski chapters. Pointed out Stella Artois wasn’t on the market in the 1980s. Didn’t question why I had eleven books on the sex trade industry in my Kindle. And endured the synopsis that lasted from New York to Philadelphia (there’s the elevator pitch, and then there’s the stuck-in- the-elevator pitch). I love being your wife. Our combined bullshit has always been bigger, better and more important than all our individual crap. Thanks, fucky.
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Suanne Laqueur went from choreographing dancers to choreographing words. Her goal is to create a new kind of emotionally-intelligent romance that appeals to all readers, crossing gender, age and genre. Her debut novel, The Man I Love, won a gold medal in the 2015 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards and a gold medal for Best Debut Author from Feathered Quill Book Awards. Her second novel, Give Me Your Answer True, won gold in the 2016 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards.
Suanne graduated from Alfred University with a double major in dance and theater. She taught at the Carol Bierman School of Ballet Arts in Croton-on-Hudson for ten years. She lives in Westchester County, New York, with her husband and two children. An avid reader, cook and gardener, she started her blog EatsReadsThinks in 2010 and now blogs about books, food and life at Suannelaqueurwrites.com.
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