She told Cleon when they were getting ready for bed that night. His toothbrush froze mid-scrub and his eyes held hers in the bathroom mirror a long beat. Then he leaned and spit and came up nodding. “A lot of things make sense all of a sudden.”
“What do you mean?”
“The whole business with Hewan Bourjini, for one. It always seemed a little too perfect to me. Deliberately perfect. Almost staged.”
“Oh.” She’d never given it a thought but now that Cleon brought it up, it was brow-smackingly obvious that Jude’s longtime girlfriend was a beard.
Cleon wiped his mouth with a towel. “And he has no other male friends.”
“Oh stop it, he has friends.”
“Pen, he has male classmates and acquaintances. When was the last time he had a buddy over to hang? Who took Feño Paloma’s place? No one. Jude’s tightest with Serena and Hewan. Telling you, Pen, I’m surprised but I’m not.”
“What should we do?”
“Nothing. We wait for him to share with us.” He set his hands on the edge of the vanity and sighed, closing his eyes. “Christ, what’s going to happen to him?”
They agreed not to confront him. This was personal, private and, above all, his story to tell. Instead, they did what they could to prepare the soil for whatever Jude might want to plant. Penny held tight and silent, biting her tongue. Hyper-aware of teenage cruelty that could easily turn into mob mentality. All the hours Jude was out of her sight, on his own and at the mercy of others.
Be merciful.
Be kind.
Or you will answer to me.
Her guard stayed up, her sword sharpened and at the ready. But even when you were prepared, you were never prepared. Penny harbored a niggling guilt she and Cleon hadn’t handled Jude’s official coming out the best way. To be fair, he sprung it on them at the end of a long, tiring day. But what were they expecting—an appointment?
She and Cleon were in bed with the news on. Penny was already half-asleep. Without preface, context or warning, Jude tapped on their door and sidled around the jamb, spilling a string of words across the foot of their bed. “Hey, got a minute I just want to let you know that I’ll pay.”
Penny repeated, “You’ll pay?” just as Cleon said, “You’ll stay?”
Exhaling at the two old fogeys he was burdened with, Jude crossed his arms and spoke with exaggerated enunciation. “I said, I want you to know I’m gay.”
“Oh,” Cleon said. “That.”
Jude’s arms dropped. “What do you mean, that?” So affronted, his still-deepening voice squeaked.
“We know,” Penny said.
“You know?”
“We’ve known a long time.”
“How?”
Penny’s mouth hung open. She wasn’t going to mortify him by mentioning the stash of magazine pages, but she had no backup plan. Instead she looked helplessly at Cleon, who looked encouragingly back.
You take this one, his eyes said.
Penny glared. No, you.
I’m good cop, he telegraphed.
That’s why you should take it.
“Mom,” Jude said. He only used Mom when he was annoyed with her.
“I don’t know how,” she said, holding up her palms. “I just knew.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Like what?”
Oh my God, should I have said something? Did I screw this up from the get-go?
Parenthood: trading in one set of problems for a new set of problems. With no goddamn instruction manual for any of the problems.
“We didn’t say anything because it’s private,” Cleon said, swinging his legs out of bed and reaching down for his crutches. “It’s your private business and your story to share with us at the time you choose. So. It’s time. You chose. And here we are.”
“God, honey, all the color just went out of your face.” Penny got out of bed. “Are you all right?”
Jude was still hanging on the door jamb. As she moved to him, Penny couldn’t tell if he was going to burst into tears or burst into a run.
“We love you,” she said, reaching out a hand, as if calming a feral dog. “We love you no matter what.”
She put her arms around him. He trembled in his skin and didn’t hug back.
“It makes no difference to me, hijo,” Cleon said, a hand on Jude’s head. “No difference whatsoever. Nothing changes. We’re your family, this is your home.”
As Cleon kissed his temple, Jude let his breath out and let go of the doorframe. “Okay.”
“Is there anyone else?” Cleon asked.
“Hewan knows.”
“No, I meant do you have someone?”
“Are you kidding?” Jude said. “I don’t have a death wish.”
“Well, when that changes,” Cleon said. “You can always bring him here.”
Jude’s eyes made a circuit around the ceiling, skepticism in every line of his tall body.
“Listen to me, hueón,” Cleon said. “I know this is hard and I know you feel isolated and in hiding. But Vancouver is one little corner of the world. When you go to college, the world is going to get bigger than you’d ever believe.”
“You’re going to meet a lot of people like you,” Penny said. “I promise. It’s not always going to be the way it is now.”
Jude’s gaze started to roll again, then stopped. He drew a deep breath and let it out slow. “I hope so.”
Cleon took his shoulders. “It’s going to be different someday. Someday soon. I promise. And you will meet someone. You’ll bring them home and they’ll be welcome here. Cachai?”
A gulped “‘Chai,” barely audible.
“Te queremos tanto,” Penny said. “You’re our boy, you’re always our boy.”
Then Jude put his head on his father’s shoulder. “Estoy tan cansado.”
I’m so tired.
“I know,” Cleon said rubbing his hair. “It’s exhausting to hide who you are and worry all the time. Not here though, po. Not in this house.”
Lucky Cleon, the good cop. It was up to Penny to sit her son down the next day for a scathingly clinical discussion.
“Mom,” Jude groaned, in between squirming and rolling his eyes and blushing to his hairline.
She crossed her arms on the kitchen table. “AIDS is legitimate concern to you now. You cannot ignore it.”
“All right. Jesus, just stop saying the word anal already.”
“If you can’t say it you can’t d—”
“Mom.”
“You have condoms?”
“Yes, I have condoms.”
“Do you know how to use them?”
He answered through his teeth. “Yes, I know to use them.”
She put up a finger. “You carry them and you use them. Every time.”
Jude’s mouth opened and quickly shut. Penny could see him culling the exasperated I know on the tip of his tongue. Swallowing the impulse and taking a breath. His shoulders squared for responsibility he now bore.
“I will,” he said. “I want to be alive, too.”
“All right. Torturous sex ed class dismissed. You’re free.”
Jude couldn’t get out of the kitchen fast enough. Sighing heavily, looking forward to the next set of problems, Penny opened the fridge and mucked around for dinner makings. Leftovers were a thing of the past, since her three teens ate like linebackers. And were they out of milk again?
“Mami?”
Once more, Jude was curled around a door jamb. Smiling this time.
“Thanks,” he said.
Start again because thou shalt survive.
Imagine yourself. It’s 1971. You and Penny marry the same year John Lennon’s Imagine releases. Uncle Louis likes the title track, although he never bothers to learn the words. He accept
s the gist of your translation, but he’s content to jimmy the one Spanish word “Imagínate” wherever it fits and hum his way through the rest.
“Imagínate la la…”
“There’s no heaven,” you say in English. “Come on, it’s not difficult. ‘Imagine there’s no heaven.’”
“I see what he means in my head,” Louis says. “I don’t need to say it out loud.”
In time, you will come to arrange certain things in your head so they don’t have to be spoken aloud. Select emotions are permitted into your soul’s melody as you see fit, and the rest will have to hum their way through.
But that’s later.
Now, the soldiers are calling your name.
(Lucy.)
This time, you’re not taken into a booth.
Handcuffed, your eyes taped under dark glasses, you’re put into a van and taken to a new house. The Villa Grimaldi. Once an old colonial weekend home, but now the DINA—Pinochet’s secret police—use it as a detention center.
(Lucy, how will you find me now?)
Things happen in the Villa Grimaldi. Things that defy imagination.
Things that don’t fit into rooms of houses.
Things that cannot be survived.
The door opened. Tej stood in loose jeans and a T-shirt. Feet bare and a little stubble along his jaw. “As I live and breathe,” he said, the brown of his eyes deepening and the gold flecks twinkling through like stars.
A two-by-four of pure desire smacked Jude in the chest, breaking open a piñata that cascaded into his belly and groin.
“I went way out of my way to be in the neighborhood,” he said. “Thought I’d stop by.”
Tej looked him up and down. “No flowers?”
Jude plucked a twig from the dead foliage in the planter and handed it over.
“You shouldn’t have,” Tej said, twirling the stem. Behind his legs, a cat meowed. He bent to pick it up.
“Are you busy?” Jude asked
“No.”
A long staring moment which felt like the greatest game of chicken in the world. Tej’s shoulder slid a little further down the door frame, as if he were settling in for the night. Jude moved a little closer. His fingertip reached and slowly drew up and down the placket of Tej’s jeans. In full view of the street and its pedestrians. Not giving a shit who saw.
They stared, breathing the electric air.
“See, this is where you ask if you can come in,” Tej said.
“Can I come in?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” He gestured over the threshold. As Jude walked by, a fingertip caressed his neck and he was instantly and thoroughly hard.
Jesus Christ, what is happening to me?
“Nice place,” he said, unzipping his jacket. “I noticed the other night, but I forgot to mention it.”
Tej put the cat down. “You were distracted.”
Jude laid his jacket on the back of a chair. It was a monumental effort not to take the rest of his clothes off. He’d never been so horny in his life. He doubted he appreciated or even comprehended what horny meant before tonight.
“Anyway, don’t get ideas above my station,” Tej said. “I’m house-sitting.”
“Oh.”
“Nothing here is mine so don’t break any of it.” He headed into the kitchen. “Including the cat.”
Jude followed, sniffing at the buttery crispness lingering in the air. “What’s cooking?”
“A poor man’s reuben.”
It was a beautiful sandwich, cut along the diagonal to show layers of ham, cheddar cheese and pickles. A single bite taken out of one triangle. A bottle of beer stood open by the plate, frosty around the neck and starting to drip condensation.
“Looks good,” Jude said.
“It is,” Tej said, taking a bite and chewing slowly. Perfectly comfortable in Jude’s hungry gaze as the seconds dripped by. “What, my body isn’t enough, you want my dinner, too?”
“Just your body.”
Tej took another slow bite. “You totally want this sandwich.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. You can’t even meet my eyes, you’re so fixated on my plate.”
Not looking away, barely blinking, Jude put a knee down on the hardwood floor. Then the other. Not looking away, he unbuttoned and unzipped Tej’s jeans. Reached inside to find what he came for. Above him, Tej kept eating, chewing slowly and deliberately. Never looking away.
“I don’t want your sandwich,” Jude said.
Tej kept eating, his free hand casual on the countertop, his ankles making no move to uncross. Their eyes stayed locked as Jude went at him. The game of chicken intensified. Tej blinked a little more rapidly. Swallowed hard as the sandwich hung suspended in his fingers. He reached for the beer bottle, took a long pull and then lowered it to Jude’s level.
“Here,” he said softly. “Make your mouth cold.”
The dark, icy stout made Jude’s teeth ache while the alcohol burned down his throat and into his belly. He wrapped his cool mouth around Tej’s hardness again.
With a luscious thud, the poor man’s reuben hit the floor and spilled open like a book. Up rose a tangy wave of mustard and vinegar and Tej’s voice surfed above it.
“Baby…”
His eyes closed and his hand threaded through Jude’s hair.
“Colder,” he whispered, his head falling back, knuckles white on the counter’s edge.
Jude drained the last of the beer, then slid up closer, got in tighter and with his ice-cold mouth, finished Tej off.
“Tell me about this?” Tej’s fingers drew along the deep, livid scar on Jude’s left shin. “I noticed the other night, but I forgot to mention it.”
“You were distracted.”
“Tell me.”
“I broke it.” Jude was too blissed-out and stupid with sex to use the intransitive verb.
“Well obviously. What happened?”
His endorphin-soaked brain spun the roulette wheel of trusty fish tales—motorcycle wreck, skiing accident, skydiving mishap—before deciding, Fuck it.
“Oh, what usually happens,” he said. “Neighborhood homophobe took offense to my sexual persuasions, so he took a baseball bat to my leg.”
Tej’s hand closed tight around Jude’s ankle. “Shut up.”
“Shut down.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope.”
“What happened then?”
“Lots of things.”
“I mean did anything happen to him? Is he in jail? Say yes.”
“He took a plea deal, did two years. We sued the shit out of him in civil court.”
“Did you win? Say yes.”
“Settled.”
“I know it’s vulgar to discuss money, but I hope it was a tidy sum.”
“Juan-Mateo’s father owned a multi-million-dollar construction business. Let’s just say my siblings aren’t student debt-free by luck and my parents do not own beachfront property on Alki Avenue by accident.”
“Good.” Tej drew a finger along the scar, mumbling something in a different language.
Jude raised his head from the pillow. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“What language was that?”
“Arabic. I was throwing down a curse on Juan-Motherfucker’s progeny.”
“Who are you?” Jude asked the ceiling, not for the first time that evening.
“Your future husband. Get used to it.”
“Shut up.” Jude’s laughing mouth shaped the words but put no sound behind them because Tej was kissing up his thighs, breath warm and rough beard scratchy. “You’re a persistent man, Timothée Jalil.”
“Pardon your French.”
“Do you speak French?”
“O
ui.”
“French and Arabic.”
“Oh God, I’m gonna be profiled now.”
“Forgive me, I’m a little obsessed with ethnic origins at the moment.”
“Fair enough.” He wiggled Jude’s legs apart and lay between them, putting his cheek on Jude’s belly button. “Guess mine correctly and you can sit on my face.”
“You’re Irish.”
Tej’s head lifted. “You’re not even trying. Obviously my offer doesn’t appeal to you. I’m insulted. Get out of my house.”
Jude pushed his head down again, keeping a hand threaded in the thick, dark hair. “French and Arabic,” he said again, envisioning a map of the Middle East. “Syria?”
“One over.”
“Iraq?”
“The other way. Toward the cedar trees.”
“Lebanon.”
“If you were wearing pants, I’d call them smart.”
“When did you family come here?”
“My father’s eldest brother came in the early sixties. They’re all vintners on that side of the family. Huge winery in the Beqaa Valley got them stinking rich. My uncle always had itchy feet and he wanted to check out the Napa Valley. He came first, started building the empire.”
“When did you come?”
“Seventy-eight. Dad left first, to secure the way. Then Maman would follow with us kids.”
“Was Raymond still alive?”
“No.” A ruffle of sighed breath across Jude’s stomach. “My little sister died in a bombing, just before we left.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you out to your parents?”
“Yes.”
The terse tone made Jude hesitate. “How is it?”
“Cool.”
“Cool like groovy, or cool like cordial?”
“Cordial.”
“Ah.” He said no more, kept running his fingers through Tej’s hair.
“Actually, that’s a lie. I don’t talk to my parents.”
“Ever?”
“My father not at all. My mother rarely, and only through my sister, Mireille. She’s the hero in my sad story.”
“She’s an ally. You’re the hero.”
A Scarcity of Condors Page 18
