Hanging the Stars

by Rhys Ford

  “Grabbing stuff for the bakery because I don’t need pretty fruit in plastic boxes. What I need is cheap and a lot of it,” Angel explained. “I’m going to remind you, you’re the one who wanted in on this. And no more stories about any bodily functions from either of you for at least a couple of hours.”

  “If I don’t talk about that kind of stuff, can I get kettle corn?” Roman flashed Angel’s own smile back at him, an off-center half smirk loaded with as much charisma as he could muster. “Or cotton candy?”

  “Why should I give you shit just because you behave?” Angel asked, returning Rome’s smirk. “You get extra stuff for going above and beyond, not for showing up and keeping your face clean.”

  “’Cause you don’t want to be a dick in front of West?” his brother wheedled.

  “West knows I can be a dick, especially to you,” he replied, pretending not to hear West’s muffled snort. “You help out, you get extra stuff. That’s how it goes.”

  “Carrying the bakery stuff counts, right?”

  “That it does.” Angel jerked his chin toward a stand at the end of the row. “So does looking for stuff I can use, like Johnson’s got over there. Find me something cool, and we’ll talk about cotton candy.”

  “Deal.” Rome bolted off, then skidded around a few yards away, facing his brother while he half jogged backward. “You’re still a dick.”

  “Nice, asshole,” Angel called out, but Rome had already turned around, his long legs eating up the distance to the large stall on the row’s corner. “Seriously, what’s with you guys? You’re just as bad as he is. It’s like I’ve got two little kids now.”

  Like most California open-air markets, the rows were filled with a wide spectrum of vendors. The stalls ran large to small, filled with a variety of local produce, silk-screened T-shirts, pickled vegetables, and junk people bought in bulk to sell cheap. Some of the faces they passed were familiar ones, sun-worn hawkers Angel saw nearly every time he ventured out to a shuttered bowling alley’s grass lot, and he nodded a few hellos, scanning the rows to see which ones he’d go back to once he had a better idea of what people brought in.

  Early in the morning was best. Only the most hardcore of market browsers were around, and the air sparkled with a hint of morning dew. The mountains held back most of the sun’s glare, and there was a touch of deep-fried bread on the breeze, the promise of powdered sugar and cinnamon leaving a kiss on Angel’s senses, and he pondered a spiced apple cobbler muffin, topping it with crumble and a piece of twisted puff pastry.

  The rows were wide, the field’s packed-down grasses smelling dusty-sweet as people walked from stall to stall. Carla from San Mateo Hot Buns yelled out a hello as she bagged up torta rolls for a customer, the small booth’s yeasty aroma tickling Angel’s nose. A few steps later, the produce stalls were still being set up, crates of sun-ripened vegetables and fruits being laid out on long tables, most gently set in loose for picking through. A bucket of apricots tempted Angel, but he kept walking, wanting to see what everyone had before circling around to buy. Magnus Johnson always had interesting fruits, purchased from Asian fruit farmers along the interior, and from the colorful piles of dragon fruit and rambutan bristling over Johnson’s gray bins, he’d hauled in the mother lode of exotics.

  He didn’t notice West’s silence. Not until his lover slowed his pace and quietly remarked, “Rome makes me feel like… a brother.”

  West whispered so softly under the market noise Angel wasn’t sure he’d heard him right, but when he turned to look at West, he found his lover staring down the row at Rome, who was contemplating a bin of sunset-blush loquats.

  “It sounds stupid, but… it’s kind of… nice,” West continued, picking up one of the plump bubble-gum-flavored fruits to study it as if it held all the answers to every question he had. Setting it back, he turned to Angel. “I’ve never felt like a brother before, you know? Lang and I never… we were never brothers. Not like you two are, and… sometimes it hurts to feel that. Maybe I realized there’s a piece of me I’ll never ever have, but now I know what I’m missing.”

  “West—”

  He let out a shuddering breath, then interrupted, “Being silly with Rome kind of makes me feel like I’m filling in that hole, Angel. I know it’s stupid, but—”

  “I was teasing, West.” Angel stopped, gently pulling West to the side and out of the way of the crowd. Hooking his fingers through West’s, he held them together, tightening his grip when West looked away. “Hey, it’s a part of… it’s kind of what we do. He gives me shit, I give him shit back. I just kind of rolled you into it. Kind of makes you… one of the family, I guess. I didn’t even think about it.”

  West’s cool assessing look lasted for several heartbeats, and then a glimmer of a smile ghosted across his mouth. Dabbing his tongue on his lower lip, he gave a short hum, then said, “Guess now’s when I try to con you out of cotton candy.”

  “You can try,” Angel scoffed. “But don’t hold your breath. Same deal holds for you like it does Rome. You’ve gotta work for it.”

  “I could buy and sell this market twenty times over,” West grumbled. “And you’re holding me hostage for slave labor.”

  “Yep, pretty much.” He shoved the totes he’d been carrying into West’s hands, then peered over his lover’s shoulder. Angel couldn’t see his brother anywhere, but Johnson had a big booth with tall displays, making it hard to spot a lanky eleven-year-old boy no matter how quickly he seemed to be growing. “Where’s Rome?”

  “He was right there.” West turned around, breaking away. “He’s got to be nearby, right?”

  “Yeah, he should be. I told him if he can’t see me when we’re out, then he’s in deep shit. Come on.”

  Angel strode over to the booth at the end of the row, jostling his way through the crowd. His nerves were already on edge, drawn to a fray by everything from the shooting to the fire, and he tried to reason with himself as he hurried through the ever-thickening river of bodies around him. Rome’d been at the market with him at least a hundred times before. His baby brother knew all the regulars, probably even had a better relationship with them than Angel because he hadn’t quite gotten to the level of detached wariness Angel layered over himself since leaving their father behind.

  A quick scan of Johnson’s booth came up empty, and Angel frowned, looking down the next row in the hopes of seeing a dark-haired youth bobbing along the booths. Clearing his throat to get the broad-shouldered, towheaded vendor’s attention, he asked, “Hey, Magnus, did you see Rome?”

  “He was just here. Asked me to hold a bin of sugar salak.” The man ducked to avoid one of the booth’s beams from hitting his forehead. “Tasted a bit of the sample I put out and said it would get him a bag of cotton candy.”

  “Find him?” West trotted up to the booth, favoring his ankle. His brow furrowed when Angel shook his head. “I came from the other side, but I didn’t see him.”

  “Must have gone back to look for me,” Angel muttered. “He’s trying to sell me snake fruit.”

  The dread crawling through his thoughts whispered poison into his mind. His breath shortened, pulled in by the fear tightening its chains around his chest and throat. Swallowing didn’t help. It only thickened the already viscous saliva coating his tongue. Every gulp of air only seemed to drive a panic-forced slender dagger deeper into his sternum, and his stomach churned, kicking up a froth of sour bilious foam to burn the roof of his mouth.

  “He’s got to be close by,” West reassured him, but Angel could hear the crack in his voice. There was a hint of worry, not enough to blossom into concern but skirting its edge. “We’ll find him.”

  “Rome!” Angel walked back to the row they’d just come down, craning to see over the crowd. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he yelled his brother’s name again, but no one turned around, and Roman didn’t emerge out of one of the other booths. Giving one last shout down the opposite row, Angel tried to clamp down the icy sweats running through hi
m. “Rome, get your ass over here!”

  Nothing.

  And panic struck him, gouging out his heart to broil it in a cold fire he couldn’t seem to get control over. It raged through him, cauterizing every sensible reason he could come up with about why Roman wasn’t there at his side… wasn’t hearing him… wasn’t coming out to joke about how he’d scared Angel half to death.

  Every. Sensible. Reason.

  Leaving Angel with only the nightmares of where his little brother could be and what was happening to him.

  “It’s okay, love. He’s around somewhere.” West intruded into Angel’s rapidly tightening panic. “We’ll find him. Let me go back to the car—”

  “We need to call the cops.” Angel reached for his phone. His mind raced, circling back to all the horrific possibilities lurking within the dark. A flash of sanity punched through, and he grasped at it. “Mag, can you call the security guard? Maybe they can call him on the PA.”

  “Good idea.” Magnus’s soft Nordic accent carved odd planes into his words. “They’ll find him, Angel. He can’t be far.”

  It seemed like forever until he heard a crackly voice mostly order Roman to high tail it over to Magnus’s booth. The world continued to turn. People meandered by, haggling with Magnus over bananas and apples, with a particularly shrill-voiced woman outraged over the price of cherimoyas. West was gone, lost in the market’s throng, periodically raising his voice to call out for Angel’s brother.

  But not a hint of Roman in the crowd.

  “You better make that call, Angel.” Magnus’s voice was rough, tumbled with heartbreaking gravity. “Just in case. Better they be here and we not need them than….”

  Angel began to dial his phone, fingers trembling, when he heard a faint scream above the market’s low murmur.

  The scream came again, familiar but riding high with terror. Tossing the ringing phone at Magnus, Angel shouted for West to follow him and took off running toward what he knew would be his greatest nightmare.

  “LET ME go!” Those words froze the blood in Angel’s veins. Then heartbreakingly, Roman shouted, “Angel!”

  His screams were clearer once Angel was out of the market’s noisy thrall. The air was crisp, cold in Angel’s lungs, keeping him on the razor’s edge of collapsing, fueling him along with the adrenaline coursing through him. The bowling alley’s cracked bleached-gray asphalt was hard under his All-Stars, the tarry ribbons veining the lot slightly spongy, but not yet sticky from the sun’s rising warmth.

  Any other time he’d have been walking behind Rome, playing tread on the tar snake on the ground, trying to keep his balance as he kept his feet to the line. It’d been a stupid thing they’d come up with the first time he’d dragged Rome with him to get ingredients, his brother sullen with worry and repressed anger. They hadn’t walked the snakes that morning because Rome thought West might think he was a little kid, whispering his fears before they’d left the house. Angel’d planned on introducing West to the snakes when they left, knowing his lover would do anything to make Rome happy.

  If only he’d kept as good an eye on his little brother as he had on West.

  If only he got a second chance to get sticky black tar all over the bottoms of his high-tops.

  If only he’d reach Roman in time.

  Angel rounded the building’s corner and saw his brother sinking his teeth into a tall man’s tanned, beefy arm. He didn’t slow his stride. His rage drowned his terrors, its red-hot fingers closing over his squirrely fears and squeezing them tightly until they popped. Every whispering doubt and horrifying thought he’d had while searching for Rome scattered, waxen birds beating their melting wings as Angel lost what little control he had left in him.

  His wrath turned the world red, a crimson filter running white at the edges where his temper cracked. Angel was aware of a faint burst of pain down his arm, only briefly noticing he’d punched the man in his already skewed face. He got a flash of a hook nose, already broken far too many times for the bridge to heal and now spurting a river of blood from one nostril.

  Another hook into the man’s jaw and Angel heard a crack. Pain bloomed over his ribs, a solid hit to his side when Rome’s attacker landed a firm punch into him, but it wasn’t enough to stem the flow of anger slickening his nerves.

  He was briefly aware of screaming at Roman to run back to the market, but he wasn’t sure if his brother heard him around the mouthful of blood Angel was forced to spit out in order to breathe. Keeping his panting shallow kept the anguish along his ribs down to a bare minimum, but the ache was intense. Another blow came too close to his face, glancing off his temple, and Angel dodged to the side.

  Not a sound reached him. Lost in the tight circle of fear, anger, and blood thirst, Angel was barely aware of Roman scrambling to get away, and when the scowling man lunged after the boy, Angel tackled him to the ground, slamming both of them into the hard-packed dirt.

  Gold flashed in the man’s smile, a single tooth gleaming amid the blood and yellowed enamel. His lips were fleshy, inches above Angel’s face when he rolled them over, pinning Angel to the ground. The man was older, lines digging deep into his cheeks and forehead, dimpled black with dirt. A sour rankness permeated his skin, scraping at the back of Angel’s throat with its foulness. His hands were as filthy as his smell, knuckles bloodied and raw, poised over Angel before one thundered into Angel’s cheek.

  The blow hurt, rattling Angel’s brain. It rocked his skull back, slamming it into the ground, and the impact sent stars across Angel’s eyes. Grunting, he tasted blood, his tongue swelling along one side where he’d bitten through its edge. Another fist hovered, pulling impossibly back, and the man’s ugly face split with a maniacal hyena grin. His arms were thick, fleshy, and beneath a layer of thick fat, probably solid muscle. Another hit would not only hurt, it would do serious damage, and Angel didn’t know if Rome was safe. He couldn’t risk another strike, not if his brother wasn’t out of the man’s reach.

  His attacker shifted, rising up off of Angel’s stomach, gaining leverage for his blow, and Angel jerked his knee, catching the man between his legs and driving straight into the softness of his balls. He didn’t have time to take any pleasure in hearing the man’s soft urk. A shove at the man’s chest proved nearly futile, and Angel struggled to get loose, his back aching with the pressure of moving the man’s weight. A blow to the man’s temple was enough to send his attacker reeling, and Angel suddenly found himself free.

  Small stones in the ground dug Angel’s hands open, scraping them, and the cold sting of air on his palms was enough to make him hiss. He couldn’t breathe out of his right nostril, and his balance seemed off-kilter. The sky tilted, turning fuzzy on its edges, and Angel shook his head, trying to clear away the buzzing in his ears.

  “Always was a smartass, boy,” the large man muttered, flashing another malevolent grin through his mask of caked blood and dirt. “You always did think you were too good for the likes of us.”

  Standing toe to toe with the man, Angel combed his memories, trying to place where he’d seen the scraggly-toothed, thin-haired giant before. A glimmer of recognition hit, nothing firm enough for him to grasp, and when he tried to focus, it slithered off, a gelatinous echo of a memory slipping away under a rush of nausea.

  “Say nighty-night, bitch.” The giant’s laugh boomed, his spit spraying over Angel’s face. His fists were up, but his stance was relaxed, daring Angel to make a move. “Come and get it.”

  “Fucker,” he growled and clenched his fist, but his punch never landed. As Angel stepped forward to anchor his weight for the blow, his head exploded, a meteor strike of pain blinding him in a flash of fiery white. Someone laughed, a taunting sound. Then he fell, slamming back into the ground, and the sky churned black, taking Angel with it as it lost its light.

  Sixteen

  THE LIGHTS hurt. No question about it, of every bit of ache along his battered body, Angel hated the blurring burn of the emergency room’s harsh lights the
most. The slightly off-yellow glow dug into his eyes, scalloping out bits of his brain through his blown-wide pupils.

  Blinking only alleviated the stabbing for a brief moment. Then the wash of white pouring past his lashes began the searing all over again. Angel wanted nothing more than to close his eyes against the light and fall back into the soft, warm darkness he’d been pulled out of a few hours before. Or at least he did until he saw Roman’s tear-streaked face and West’s bloody lower lip, speckled along its plump from where he’d dug his teeth into his own flesh sometime during the time Angel hit the ground, then woke up in the hospital.

  Angel’d smiled—he remembered smiling at them—then he’d gone back under, only to wake up alone in a cordoned-off ER stall, shirtless and sporting the largest headache in known history.

  Now he was awake and cranky, left to wonder where his brother was and why West wasn’t with him.

  He hated hospitals. Growing up, he’d been conditioned to avoid authorities, and the only thing screaming authority, badges, and social services more than a hospital was a police station. In this case, Angel was going to have to revise that particular opinion his father’d imparted, because from what he could see from his bed on the ER ward, there were more than enough cops milling about in the outer hall to hire a dispatcher and convert a supply closet to a jail cell.

  Then the one cop Angel would have liked to never have seen again walked into the curtained-off space where he’d been placed and pulled up a chair, settling down for what looked like a long talk.

  “Swear to God, Montague,” Angel ground out as he laid his head back onto the pillow. “I’m going to pay a girl and her little dog to land a house on you pretty soon.”

  Talking hurt, and Angel half wished he hadn’t started the conversation, especially when Montague slid the metal-legged chair across the floor, bringing it closer to the bed in one long ear-shattering shriek. In the last half hour, he’d seen all manner of white-coats and blue-uniforms, enough to last him a lifetime, but no sign of West or Roman.