Love Drugged

by James Klise

“I know,” she said. Now she was almost crying.

  I asked, “What about the café?”

  She shrugged, a little defensive. “Selling it, closing it. Don’t know yet.”

  How ironic, I thought painfully, that she would abandon a successful business like the Bound & Ground while my parents would cling forever to the sinking ship of their doomed enterprise.

  Rita seemed at peace with her plans. “This was fun while it lasted,” she said, looking around. “But you know what? This place is cute, and I’ve put a lot of time into it. I’m proud of it. But at the end of the day, an adorable little café can’t love me the way a man can.”

  “I’ll miss you so much,” Celia said.

  “It’ll be hard for all of us at first,” Rita said gently. “But, Celia, you’re at the age when you can jump on an airplane and come see me anytime. Come for a nice long visit in the summer, and we’ll shoot snakes in the desert.”

  Celia sniffled. “That’ll be fun, I guess.”

  “You’ll come too, Jamie, okay?”

  I nodded to be polite, even though the notion of snake shooting seemed cruel and scary. I’d never held a gun in my hands, except for Dr. Gamez’s handgun in Mexico.

  “Now listen, Celia, I haven’t told your dad yet. He won’t be pleased.”

  “He’ll miss you.”

  She waved away the notion. “Get serious. Your dad won’t give a tough taco that I’m going. But he’ll be annoyed that I’m closing the café, after all the time and money he’s invested. I can deal with him, though.”

  When Rita got up to attend to customers, I patted Celia’s hand. I wanted to put my arm around her, but feared Rita might see. We sat in silence for several minutes, letting the news soak in.

  Finally, Celia wiped away her tears with a paper napkin. “Oh, what the hell,” she said. “Speaking of taking risks for love, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

  “You’ve met a roofer named Rudy, too?”

  Finally, I got my wish; she smiled. “Be serious.”

  I made the universal gesture for buttoning the lip.

  “Thank you. Okay, James, I wanted to say, this thing we’ve got going? It totally rocks.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “Now listen a second. I love being with you. I love the quiet, thoughtful way you have. I like how well you listen. You’re so cute, and you’re a great kisser, and smart, and you’re fun to cuddle with. You have been a perfect gentleman, as Rita would say.”

  I blinked, making sure to smile. “At this point, it sounds like you’re going to dump me … for a snake shooter.”

  She ignored me. “So I wanted to say, you know, that it’s fine with me that we’re taking things slow—physically. Like you, I want my first time to be with someone I trust. Someone I care about.”

  Now it was clear. This was a rehearsed speech, with an agenda. Suddenly I felt anxious. I waited a moment before speaking. “We agree on that.”

  “The thing is, I do trust you and care about you. Completely.”

  “I feel the same way.”

  “And when I think about why you haven’t been very aggressive with me, in the physical sense, I wonder if maybe it’s because you’re scared of what might happen.”

  This seemed like a prompt. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  She nodded. “Right. Sex is a big deal. A huge deal, with real consequences. It’s the biggest deal.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I wanted you to know—I mean, the thing is …” She gulped, as if she was more nervous than me. “I don’t want you to judge me or anything after I tell you this.”

  “Trust me, Celia. Just say it.”

  “Okay, here goes.” She took a breath, leaned close, and whispered, “I’m on the Pill.”

  I wanted to say, Is that all? That was one of the first things I ever knew about you! But I feared what was coming next, so I kept my mouth shut.

  She gazed out the window rather than looking at me. “Yeah, so it’s something my dad wanted me to do as soon as I hit puberty. Obviously he would prefer that I don’t have sex when I’m so young. But he also doesn’t want a pregnancy to disrupt any plans I have for college or a career.”

  “Celia, I don’t think differently about you because you’re on the Pill.”

  “The thing is, it’s a safety measure. It makes the idea of sex a little less scary, right?”

  I nodded. “Less scary, yes.”

  She stared, as if waiting for a different response. More enthusiasm perhaps.

  A smidgen of enthusiasm?

  She gestured with her hands as she spoke, as if they were helping her to search for words. “So, if you’ve been holding back, or taking things slow or whatever, because you’re scared of me getting pregnant—you don’t need to be.”

  I nodded again like an idiot, my brain scrambling for something to say. “Does the Pill prevent one hundred percent of pregnancies?”

  “No, but—”

  “Does it prevent STDs?”

  “Jamie!” She pretended to look angry and insulted, then burst out laughing. “You know I don’t have a friggin’ STD. We both come to this with zero experience. Unless you’ve been lying to me. Which you better not have been.”

  I grabbed her hand playfully, but she drew it away. “Relax,” I said. “I was kidding.”

  “Okay, so, in fact—when you think about it—we’re never going to have a safer experience than the first one.”

  “True.”

  Across the room, the espresso machine hissed and gurgled.

  “So, what do you think?”

  I sat back in my chair, trying to contain the panic that was rising in my gut. I knew the pills made me less attracted to boys, but I wasn’t sure if they would get me through sex with a girl—yet.

  I remembered to smile. “Okay, great! Thank you. That gives me something to think about.”

  She raised an eyebrow, annoyed. “You’ll think about it? That’s what you have to say?”

  “Well,” I said, then stopped. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “Whatever.” She pushed away from the table and reached for her bag. “Listen, I’ve got to get back to school. I’ve got Latin Dance in twenty minutes, and I’m going to be late as it is.”

  She was still frosty to me when we got to the sidewalk.

  Another iceberg to navigate.

  “Celia, in the first place, where exactly do you expect us to have sex? On the bus? In your backyard, like Amanda Lynn?”

  She rooted through her backpack as if she didn’t want to look at me. “What’s wrong with your house? You’re always telling me your family leaves you alone.”

  “How am I supposed to explain having a beautiful girl over? I’m not allowed to date, and neither are you.”

  “There’s always an excuse with you. My house, then.”

  “Celia, I don’t understand why your dad is so trusting. He lets me come and go, hanging out in your room like I’m any ordinary friend. Your dad’s a freaking genius. Why is he so naïve?”

  “Oh, about that.” Her smile was sarcastic. “Here’s the other thing I’ve been meaning to tell you. And don’t freak out or anything.”

  “Tell me.”

  She turned away again, facing the street. A garbage truck rattled by, its brakes screeching as it slowed at the corner.

  “My dad thinks you’re gay.”

  I stepped backwards. “Whoa. Why does he think that?”

  “Because—I told him so.”

  He thinks I’m gay.

  He knows.

  “It’s funny when you think about it,” she said, her voice softening finally.

  It was so Not Funny when I thought about it. At that moment, the old phrase the blood drained from his face applied perfectly to me.

  “Relax, will you? Jamie, my father would never let you come to the house if he thought you were my boyfriend. Or even if he thought you were any random straight boy. Please. I had to
tell him something. We were just lucky he believed me.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Don’t you think it’s worth that tiny, silly, stupid lie so we can spend time alone together?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So what’s the problem? In my dad’s view, you’re welcome at our house any old time. We can have sleepovers! Problem solved. No more excuses.”

  I shook my head, speechless. I remembered the private conversation I’d had, all those weeks ago, on a rainy winter day with Dr. Gamez inside the café.

  “Wait, when did you tell him I was gay? Just recently?”

  “No, a long time ago.”

  “When? Tell me the day.”

  She shrugged, as if growing impatient. “I don’t know. When we first started hanging out together.”

  “Before Mexico?”

  “Of course, before Mexico. Jamie, keep up. My dad would not have let you come with us otherwise. Okay, I remember. I told him after the first time you came over—when we designed those stupid flower tags. I didn’t want to get in trouble for having a boy over.” She smiled, a little bitterly. “At the time, I had no idea how useful it would be for us.”

  Now it all made sense. Dr. Gamez could not have known I’d be at Rita’s café that rainy day, but when I walked in, he saw his chance and took it.

  Opportunities arrive like trains and they depart like trains.

  Celia looked at her watch. “I gotta run.”

  “Me too.”

  “Bye.”

  No kiss.

  After she ran off, I stood in front of the café, trying to process this new information. I reconstructed the story from the beginning. As soon as we’d met, Celia had lied to her father to allow us to spend time together. Dr. Gamez, thinking I was gay, told me about his “secret” new drug, and then immediately gave me the opportunity to steal the pills. He invited me to Mexico to monitor the effect of the drug, and even let me take more pills when I wanted them. All along, he’d been using me as his guinea pig. He knew the truth all along.

  The only person who didn’t know was Celia.

  twenty-one

  This time I was prepared.

  With Celia safely at dance class and the six digits of her birthday in my head, I had no trouble getting past the security checkpoints and into the house. My anger made me confident. I knew what I was doing. Inside, the place was quiet. Late-afternoon sunlight poured through the front windows, landing on the carpet in intervals like warm spotlights. I stepped lightly down the hallway toward the kitchen and stopped in front of the white security door that led to the lab. I punched in the birthday code and reached for the metal handle. It released, turning with a cold click. Easy as opening the refrigerator at home.

  The lab corridor was long and brightly lit, a series of five office doors. My sureness wavered a little as the door shut behind me. Dr. Gamez’s lab assistants would be gone for the day, but I listened for sounds of activity anyway. Nothing but distant, slow piano notes. Classical music.

  I crept along the linoleum floor, taking slow steps. Fleetingly I remembered that scene in The Silence of the Lambs when FBI agent Clarice Starling approaches the evil Hannibal Lecter’s jail cell for the first time. She faces a row of scary-looking cells, and the audience knows by instinct that Lecter’s cell is the very last one; likewise, I knew that Dr. Gamez’s office would be the farthest away.

  The air was sterile-smelling and familiar, like the old tin of Band-Aids in my grandparents’ medicine cabinet. At each office door, I paused, taking a quick peek. Four indistinguishable offices, each with a cluttered, messy desk. Corkboards lined the walls, decorated with charts, photographs, cartoons ripped from magazines. I didn’t see anybody. Across the hall, a door led to the big lab—elegant rows of black Formica counters, chrome fixtures, glass beakers.

  I paused just before the last office. The classical music was louder than ever. I wanted to catch Dr. Gamez by surprise. I tilted my head forward, expecting to find him bent over papers or working at his computer.

  Instead, he was looking right at me. He stood behind his desk, facing the door, his fingertips resting on the desk surface in front of him. His stare and his smile rattled my nerves. “Good afternoon, Jamie!” he said cheerfully.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Why wouldn’t I know it?”

  He gestured toward a security monitor in the corner of the room. It looked like the little TV in my bedroom. Its black-and-white screen showed the entire lab corridor, one end to the other.

  “Dr. Gamez, you haven’t been honest with me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The pills. You’ve known all along.”

  “Of course, yes, I know about the pills. I invented them.”

  “You haven’t been playing fair.”

  He smiled, unflustered. He turned for a moment to lean down and silence the classical music. “I might say the same thing about you. You stole many pills from me.”

  “You practically handed them to me! You set them down in front of me and walked away. After Celia had told you I was gay.”

  He shrugged, grinning, as if embarrassed to be caught. “The funny thing is, Jamie, I could not know for certain if Celia was telling the truth. Teenagers lie all the time, as you well know.”

  “If you weren’t sure, why did you show me the pills?”

  He crossed his arms. “It was a safe gamble. If you had no interest, you would have left the pills alone. I knew that you had taken them the moment I left the café and got into my car. It was a simple matter of counting. I gambled and won. Celia may have thought she was lying to me, but she was telling the truth.”

  “Is that why you invited me to Mexico? To study me?”

  “You may see it that way. There were a lot of reasons. Celia wanted your company, obviously. The fact is, you were safer under my watch. I needed to monitor the effects of the medication on your body.”

  I didn’t buy it. “You were using me. You still are.”

  “Some might say you were using me. Naturally, I was eager to see if the drug would work. In retrospect, Mexico was a waste of our time, due to your carelessness with the local water.”

  “Does Celia know about you experimenting on me?”

  For the first time, I saw a flash of something dark in his eyes. His tone was firm, but his voice remained even. “Now listen. Celia is innocent. She knows nothing about any of this, and we need to keep it that way.”

  “Maybe I’ll tell her.”

  “No, that’s not a good idea. Or do you want your girlfriend to know that you are a homosexual?”

  “Girlfriend? What makes you think—”

  “Jamie, let it go. I have known since the beginning that you and Celia are seeing one another. I know my daughter. I could see how she felt about you from the start. She may be naïve, but I’m not.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  He smiled. “Given the time you have spent together, I certainly do not want Celia’s feelings to be hurt at this point.”

  “Whatever. We don’t tell her then.”

  “Jamie, please don’t be angry. I wanted to help you, and I still do. You have already put forth such an effort. It seems to me that you are very close to being cured.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to take them anymore.”

  I spoke in a rush of anger, but the words lingered in the air as a sort of question to myself. Did I really want to stop taking the drug?

  “We both committed to this process the day you stole those pills from me at the café.”

  “I’m done with it,” I said stubbornly.

  His stare was powerful, full of disappointment. “I have to say, Jamie, I’m surprised at how ungrateful you seem. And foolish.”

  “To be honest, Dr. Gamez, I don’t care what you think of me. I’ve got about fifteen pills left, and unless you want them back, I plan to flush them down the toilet.”

  He stood up. “Not recommended. The development of
this medicine is of vital interest to my company. It’s too late to stop what we’re doing here. I’m sorry, but if you choose not to continue with the experiment, I will need to have you arrested for theft—grand larceny—and it will take every dollar of your parents’ and grandparents’ money to keep you out of prison. They’ll be bankrupt.”

  Probably too late for that.

  “Face it,” he continued. “Your family cannot afford an attorney. And even if they could, he or she would be no match for my legal team, the best that money can buy. I take this work very seriously, Jamie, and I can afford to protect my interests.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I couldn’t argue with the facts.

  He added, more gently, “This whole argument seems so unnecessary, since I am helping you get what you want.”

  “You have no idea what I want,” I mumbled, but it was true. If the drug worked, I still wanted to be straight. To be normal. I wanted to be obsessed with girls the way Wesley was. I wanted to be like every other boy at Maxwell. And I wanted the option of someday having a wife and children of my own. Maybe, if I kept taking the pills, all this would happen.

  Dr. Gamez pulled his chair under him, sitting at the desk as if he intended to return to work. “Here’s what you want,” he said calmly, not looking at me. “You want to curb the attraction you feel for the boys in your class. You want to stop hating yourself for never fitting in, always having to hide your secret desires. You want to stop feeling like an outsider in your own family.”

  There was a long silence.

  I nodded, ashamed. He was exactly right.

  “Do we agree then?”

  “Yes,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.

  He sighed. “Thank goodness. Honestly, I have had quite enough of this negative attitude for one day.” He pulled open a desk drawer next to him and busied himself with the files inside.

  “I need to go,” I said.

  “Wait, before you leave, I want you to answer a few questions. Sit down. Over here, next to my desk. Hurry up.”

  My instinct was to flee, but I did as he instructed. I didn’t want him to “out” me to my whole family. Even more, I still wanted the pills to work.

  From the desk drawer, he pulled out a folder. It was thick with papers, what looked like his notes. Next he grabbed a legal-size yellow pad, the kind Celia sometimes brought to school, and flipped the pages until he came to a clear sheet. “All right then. How often have you been taking the drug?”