Gay Fiction, Volume 1

by Mel Bossa

  She was sipping a cup of peppermint tea and nibbling on a slice of lemon poppy-seed cake. I was on my second chai tea latte.

  Even though it was the third week of November, Starsky was wearing her usual cotton sun dress and black jazz shoes like summer was just around the corner. At least she had on a pair of white leggings and a knitted scarf around her neck. Petite as she was, I worried she would freeze to death during the three-block walk from the train station to the coffee shop.

  It occurred to me my boss was always dressed to teach a dance class. Yet in the three years I’d known her, I couldn’t remember ever seeing her dance.

  From the wild state of her out-of-control blond hair, I wondered if she’d showered or just rolled out of bed and hopped the “L” train to work. She looked disheveled. Nonchalant. Like she just didn’t give a fuck.

  “It will be over?” I repeated, and then asked, “Are you talking about life?”

  “That, too,” she said. “But twelve days is nothing. Sometimes weeks go by before I get to see Sheila.”

  “Why doesn’t she just move to Chicago?”

  “Same reason I won’t move to Madison. Her life is there. My life is here. It took years before I could open Clouds—a place of my own. I’m not ready to give it up yet.”

  “Do you think you will?” I asked. “Someday soon?”

  “Only if the big guys keep taking away my customers.”

  “The corporate giants.”

  “They don’t even sell good coffee,” she reminded me. “Listen, I know you’re missing this guy real bad right now, but give it a day or two. Soon, you’ll get back into the swing of things. And before you know it, he’ll be here with you. Where he belongs.”

  “I know,” I said, “but then what? He comes back to town for a day or two and then off for another tour?”

  Starsky pushed her cake plate away from her. “I don’t envy you,” she said. “I dated a musician once.”

  “A guitar player?”

  “No. Her name was Annabelle. She was from Switzerland. She played the accordion.”

  “What happened?”

  “Apparently, the accordion wasn’t all she played. I got burned. Real bad. I still can’t stand the sound of polka music. It makes me crazy.” Starsky drifted off for a second, perhaps stepping back into a memory of Annabelle the unfaithful accordion player. I stared at her, wondering how and where she found the strength to survive a succession of broken hearts. She’d suffered through half a dozen breakups since we’d met. “Your guy is different.”

  I reached for my latte. “How? What do you mean?”

  “I saw it in the way he looked at you the first day he came in. He lit up. So did you. It was actually really adorable to watch. The blooming of young love. Which reminds me—we need more wildflowers. The other ones are dead.”

  “I’ll get some tomorrow after school.”

  “Don’t stress too much about your guitar player. If it’s meant to work out, it will. If not, enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before,” I admitted. “I feel crazy. Insane.”

  “You’re infatuated.”

  “Am I?”

  “I know the signs. It happens to me all the time. When it wears off, one of two things will take place. You either realize you’re in love and it’s real. Or you’ll want to smash an accordion into a million pieces,” she said. “Or in your case, an electric guitar.”

  “I think I’m in love with him.” She gave me a look. “No…I know I’m in love with him.”

  “Then fight for it,” she said. “And don’t give up.”

  “Even if that means moving with him to Los Angeles?”

  “You’ll do what’s best for you. I know that about you, Justin.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad one of us has faith in me.”

  Starsky pulled the half-eaten slice of lemon poppy-seed cake back toward her and resumed picking at it with a fork. “Thursday is Thanksgiving,” she said.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Now, is that any way for a pilgrim to talk?” she asked with a grin. “I’m making a tofurkey.”

  “You’re making what?” I asked.

  “It’s a healthier alternative to a turkey. It’s made with soy. Tofu. Shit like that.”

  “Since when did you become such a health nut?”

  “Since Sheila said she hated lesbians who were vegetarians.”

  “Are you purposely trying to make her mad?” I asked.

  “No,” she explained, “I’m proving a point. She’s not as in love with me as she claims to be. The tofurkey threw her over the edge.”

  “She’s not coming for the holiday?”

  “She said she’d rather have a traditional holiday. I told her to shove tradition up her pseudo-Republican ass.”

  “So then why go through with the tofurkey?”

  “At this point, it’s a matter of pride.”

  “I hate the holidays,” I groaned.

  “Hutch and I insist that you join us. Otherwise, you might suffer from loneliness. And I don’t want to be alone either. So it looks like it’ll be just you and me, kid.”

  “I’ll bring wine,” I offered.

  “None for me,” she said. “But feel free to knock yourself out with a big bottle of vodka. Remember…my drinking days are long behind me. Five years of sobriety this January.”

  I had a flashback of Halo Jet sprawled across the stack of pallets in the alley behind the 8-Track, drunk and cradling her bottle of vodka.

  And the mess she was in the backseat of the cab.

  “I’ve decided to boycott vodka for a while,” I explained. “But amaretto might do the trick for me…and ginger ale for you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I heard Darla Madrid in the department store before I saw her. I was at the Clinique counter, contemplating buying a bottle of Chemistry for Diego for Christmas. My mind was almost made up to forgo the cologne and continue my search for something a little more rock ’n’ roll, when I heard the ring of my glamorous friend’s contagious laughter. It was a haughty sound really, sweet and high. Sugary. It was almost convincing, but she hadn’t yet mastered the knack of making it seem authentic. It spoke volumes to its recipient. Within seconds, if the person she was laughing at was clever enough, they’d realize Darla wasn’t really amused at all. Instead, her laugh was just another way of saying “Good God, I’m so much better than this idiot who’s talking to me right now.”

  I followed the faux giggle until I found its source.

  Darla stood in a narrow aisle, surrounded by designer purses. She had her glittery cell phone pressed to her ear. She was wearing a pair of oversized sunglasses, a pink cashmere beret, a white scarf, and matching mittens. Her winter coat was unbuttoned, revealing a low-cut white sweater, black pleated miniskirt, and thigh-high go-go boots. She was either Christmas shopping or late for a new job as a pole dancer.

  “Darla?” I said.

  She turned her head slowly, raised her sunglasses above her pale green eyes, looked me up and down, tossed a handful of her raven hair over her shoulder, and said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Um…shopping,” I said. “It’s a department store. Are you working?”

  She snapped her flip phone closed without saying good-bye to whoever was on the other line. She gave me an evil look. “Are you kidding? I quit this awful job three days ago.”

  “You did?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Haven’t you heard? I got a record deal. They gave me an advance and everything.”

  “That’s awesome. Congrats.”

  “Geoffrey Cole is my personal manager now.”

  I noticed a new blinding ring sparkling on her left hand. “Is that all he is?” I joked with a grin.

  She rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. Apparently, she’d lost her sense of humor. “I agreed to marry the son of a bitch if he jump-starts my career. The man works fast, let me tell you. He was on
the phone within ten minutes. And within an hour, I was in a lawyer’s office signing my name on the line.”

  “So when do you start recording?”

  “Next week,” she said. “They’re flying me to New York, which is why I’m here. I thought I could find something decent to wear, but apparently, I was wrong.”

  Something had clearly happened to my friend. Gone was the fun-loving, thrill-seeking, star-struck Darla. She’d been replaced by an arrogant cutthroat bitch. I wanted to tap her on the shoulder and ask, “Where’s my friend? What have you done with Darla? May I please have her back now?”

  “How’s Diego?” she asked, with more than a hint of irritation lingering in her tone. Was talking to me a chore? “How’s the band?”

  “They’re in Europe.”

  “You didn’t go?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  Would I be standing here catching death stares from you if I had?

  “Let me guess. You’d rather stay here in freezing-cold Chicago and spend your holidays in misery feeling sorry for yourself in that ridiculous coffee shop?”

  I looked at her in disbelief. Had she sold herself to Satan to get her record contract?

  “You should’ve gone, Justin,” she said. “No idea what Diego is up to in Europe. One of those French boys might start to look really good to him once he gets lonely.”

  It took every ounce of willpower I had to not reach out, grab both ends of her winter white scarf, and tug as hard as I could.

  Instead, I knew exactly what needed to be said, how to make my point. To remind Darla Madrid of who she was, who she’d always be.

  “Well,” I said, “whenever Geoffrey Cole moves on to the next ambitious girl with no talent, let me know. I’d love to be there for you to help pick up the pieces. After all, isn’t that what friends are for?”

  As I walked away, Darla exploded into a temper tantrum, attacking every purse within reach with her bare hands. “You just wait, Justin! You’ll see!” she shrieked, swinging and hitting. “I’m going to be famous!”

  *

  As I headed to the “L” train station to return to the sadness of my studio apartment, Darla’s words started to sink in like heavy dread.

  Within seconds, I felt my body start to break out into a hot sweaty panic. I wiped my brow with the back of my hand and continued down State Street.

  Maybe Darla was right. Diego was gone. I was stuck here. His life was moving forward at breakneck speed. Mine was stagnant and dull. How could my world ever be appealing to Diego? Who was I kidding?

  What did I have to offer an up-and-coming rock star? He was a Latino sex god. I was a skinny white guy who was often mistaken for a Mormon missionary whenever I wore a white oxford and a tie. I wasn’t glamorous or cool or edgy or bitchy. I was a barista. A college student. I was a reject seeking refuge from my redneck heritage, trying to shed my Georgia accent with every word I spoke. I was an imposter. A runaway.

  I was nothing.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  A horrible scenario began to swirl in the dark pools of my imagination. Maybe Diego would be tempted to fall in lust with some French-speaking fan named Jacques or Pierre, or even Jacques Pierre. Diego would be drawn in by the accent. They would walk the streets of Paris—just like I was walking the streets of Chicago. But I was alone, trudging through ankle-high snow. They would be together, strolling through the City of Light, feeling the warmth of the Parisian sun against their skin. Holding hands. Exchanging glances. Sharing bites of Brie and a baguette in a park where a street artist would paint their portrait, while a beret-wearing mime would perform his usual routine in the background. They would make love every night in Jacques Pierre’s industrial loft overlooking the entire city of twinkling lights. In the spring, they would propose to each other at the top of the Eiffel Tower. They would have a simple ceremony, somewhere in the French countryside. They would wear matching rings, matching tuxedoes. They’re a match made in heaven is what their wedding guests would say while they watched the two lovers share their first dance to an Edith Piaf song. Months later, they would open up a French bakery and business would boom. Diego would teach guitar lessons to French children on the side, not for money but because he loved music and children. They would take summer trips to the Riviera, or even Monte Carlo. In the years to come, they would adopt French babies and raise them to embrace a bohemian lifestyle—much like their fathers had when they fell in love during the Jetsetters’ first European tour.

  Seconds before I reached the stairs to the “L” station, I heard it coming from the near distance. The sound was distinctive and haunting. I turned and saw her. She was young and dark-haired, tattered and dirty. She was standing on the opposite street corner, her instrument in her hands. She was playing with the hope that the strangers passing by would drop bits of change into her grimy white mop bucket. Maybe by noon she’d have enough to buy a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup.

  Or a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to kill the chill and sorrow inflicting her tortured soul.

  I know her pain.

  But it was the sound of her instrument that struck me, causing me to freeze in my tracks. The music made me realize that if I didn’t do something—something crucial—the risk of really losing Diego was growing greater with every day we were apart.

  The accordion had never sounded so awful to me before. So out of tune. So annoying, like a desperate screech from the universe.

  I listened to the message in the music, immediately reminded of Starsky’s story of her cheating, accordion-playing lover Annabelle.

  Infidelity? He would never cheat. We made a promise to each other.

  Maybe I’d set my standards too high. Maybe we were too young to even consider a serious, committed relationship. Maybe it was my fault for falling in love with a musician.

  The reason I’d fallen in love with Diego didn’t matter. I knew just from the strained, earsplitting notes of the stranger’s accordion that I had no choice.

  In order to be with him, and to love him completely—to give our relationship a fighting chance—I had to leave my life far behind.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The night before Thanksgiving, I found myself standing in front of the door to Dolores Delgado’s apartment, holding a store-bought pumpkin pie in my hand. My stomach was filled with fluttery nerves. I took a deep breath, knocked gently, and waited for her to answer.

  What am I doing here? Why?

  My decision to make a seemingly spontaneous visit to Diego’s mother wasn’t an impulsive one. Well, not entirely.

  Once my concern for her began brewing, it only took a few minutes to convince myself that going to see her—even if for a little while—was the right thing to do. Tomorrow was a holiday. She was a widow. She could be my future mother-in-law. I had no choice—I had to go see her.

  I was in Dominic’s looking for the perfect bottle of something to take with me to Starsky’s for our planned holiday tofurkey dinner the following day.

  I had my hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle of amaretto, poised above my otherwise empty shopping cart, when I saw her. She was an older woman with a haunting expression of loneliness in her sad eyes. Like Dolores Delgado, she was heavyset and looked Hispanic. Her dark hair was pinned up in a loose bun. It was streaked with lines of white, as if someone had taken a dipped paintbrush to her hair. She was wearing a pale pink turtleneck, a lemon-colored cardigan a few sizes too big for her, and lavender polyester pants. She looked like she had jumped out of an Easter basket. She was coming toward me, pushing her cart slowly, moving as if she were permanently wounded and brokenhearted. She looked up. Our eyes met briefly.

  The sound of my own voice surprised me. “Hello,” I said, as if we were old friends.

  Her mouth curled into a warm smile. Her eyes glowed with instant joy. “Hello,” she breathed, delighted by my attempt to make contact with her, to establish a connection between us, if only a short one. Her voice was like an embrace. It was gentl
e and comforting. It made me miss my grandmother, who died when I was eleven. I’d rarely thought of her since.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” I said, raising the bottle in some sort of strange salute to her.

  At the mention of the holiday, the light in her eyes dimmed a little and her smile faded. “I hope it will be a nice one for you,” she said, before moving on.

  Within seconds, the sad stranger was gone, off to another aisle, back to her life. But her sorrow hung in the air, choking and smothering the hope and happiness right out of me.

  Immediately I thought of Dolores. I wondered if she’d be spending the holiday alone, filling the hours with an endless marathon of novelas and flipping through photo albums, staring at the fading face of her beautiful ghost. Had a kind neighbor invited her over for the holiday with promises of a hot plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy? Was she going to leave the solace of her apartment, trudge through the snow, and make her way to a local Catholic church? Would Diego find a way to call his mother from Europe? Would he remember? Would he care?

  I hadn’t heard from him since he left. Not one word. No postcards. No e-mails. No phone calls.

  Maybe it was out of fear that I paid for my items, left the store, and slipped into the backseat of a taxi. I rode to Pilsen with a pumpkin pie in my lap, a bottle of booze at my side, and an avalanche of anxiety burying my heart alive.

  I wouldn’t have admitted it had anyone asked, but I was scared Darla Madrid was right. Even though she’d transformed into the biggest bitch in the Midwest, her words had triggered a sense of terror in my already anxious mind. Without reassurance from Diego, I was convincing myself the imagined affair he was having with the fabricated Jacques Pierre was fast becoming a reality. I was positive I was now a distant memory, just another notch in his leather spike-studded belt. I couldn’t compete with Paris. Gorgeous groupies. Hot French guys. Adoring fans with adorable accents.