by Cy Blanca
Antony was itching to jump up, run to the front, and embrace the man he called lover, proclaim to everyone he didn’t care what happened to him, he loved Curt, and he would defend him to hell and back.
“Thank you, Mr. Ramírez,” President Simmons finally said. “We’ll take all of that into consideration. We’re going to take a break for about half an hour, so everyone please hold tight while we discuss this matter.” With a quick bang of his wooden hammer, President Simmons turned to his left and began to talk to the woman who’d spoken earlier.
Curt just stood there. He didn’t say a word, didn’t indicate he was anything but calm as he waited for the board’s decision. Antony wondered, would he feel the fire and brimstone fanning its thick heat at his back? What would it be like, the weight of each gaze from every parent, every person from town—people he’d grown up with and around—boring into him? If it were him, his body would be racked with anxiety, his bones sweating, muscles aching. Still, Curt stood there. In that moment, Antony was stricken with a reverence for his man, knowing full well if he were in the same situation, he’d be afraid to look behind him. A hollow dread would fill him, as if he might actually see demons staring at him, waiting to pounce, maws agape and hungry drool dribbling down their chins.
It was truly the longest thirty minutes of his life, and if he had it to do again, he’d ask Curt to implore the board for the final favor of delivering their verdict, or whatever they were doing, as soon as he’d finished speaking.
“Okay, everybody,” President Simmons said. “Settle down.” The murmuring in the room ceased, everyone refocusing their attention on the table at the front in anticipation of the final word. President Simmons cleared his throat, then with an upward wave of his fingers, summoned Curt back to the microphone.
Curt hadn’t moved, couldn’t for dear that anything more than a slight shuffle away from the microphone would cause him to stumble in the seats, right into Mrs. Johannsen’s lap.
President Simmons looked at Curt, scrutinizing him like a young man he was about to chastise, a young man who should’ve known better than to get himself into unnecessary trouble.
With a final exhale of breath, President Simmons said, “In light of the evidence provided by Mr. Kirkpatrick on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Johannsen, it would be my right to call for both Mr. James and Mr. Ramírez’s immediate dismissal. It is also within my rights to report this to the superintendent and recommend they are no longer allowed to teach in this district.”
“No,” Antony whispered, his breath catching and eyes closing in silent, desperate prayer.
Curt ducked his head.
“However,” President Simmons began again, and Curt snapped his head back up. “As Mr. Ramírez has revealed his plans to resign at the end of the academic year, the board has decided to allow both teachers to finish the year, and then they must present their letters of resignation no later than thirty days after the last school day. We will, however, not recommend any other disciplinary action against them, and this will not go on their record as anything more than voluntary resignation from Pauline Central.”
Curt’s breath came like a gust of wind, the amount of air almost knocking him off his feet.
“All those in favor of those conditions….”
Six voices steadily rose in agreement.
It was done. Jesse walked back to his seat and stared down at his hands. Antony could only imagine the conflict going on in Jesse’s head. God, he was so stupid for putting him in this situation. What must it feel like? On one hand there was the friendship between them that went further back than they could remember. On the other he held his responsibility as an educator. Antony knew the ruling was right, even lenient. But Jesse knew them. They weren’t deviants or troublemakers. Hell, they didn’t even jaywalk. The choice must’ve felt heavy in Jesse’s fists, the burden weighing down his shoulders and making his entire form slump forward.
“Very well,” President Simmons said. “Mr. Ramírez. Mr. James. Consider yourselves very lucky that Principal Keller has always spoken so highly of you.”
“Thank you, sir. Members of the board.” With a nod he turned to go back to his seat.
“Just a minute, Mr. Ramírez,” President Simmons said.
Curt stopped and turned back around. “Yes, sir?”
President Simmons inhaled deeply, then let the breath out his nose. He removed his glasses and spun the frame between a thumb and forefinger. “On a personal note and off the record”—he turned to the secretary as she scribbled the minutes—“it is never pleasant or desired to dismiss teachers who are obviously as dedicated to their students as you two. I’m both saddened and disappointed in you for your behavior and your inability to keep your personal affairs separate from your professional duty as teachers. I hope in the future you both consider what your actions mean to your students and those who go to bat for you.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you again.” He turned and made his way to the back, avoiding all eye contact.
With a final nod, President Simmons replaced his glasses, then said, “For the record, if you’re finished, Mrs. Johannsen….”
The amount of air in his statement allowed Mrs. Johannsen to make her way to the microphone. “I would like to request that you reconsider your notion to not report this to the superintendent. Surely it can’t be safe to—”
“Mrs. Johannsen. These board meetings are not the platform for you to go on whatever campaign you have going on. Your personal squabbles with Mr. Ramírez and Mr. James have no room here. You’ve done your duty in reporting misconduct, and that’s all we need from you. Thank you.”
Antony had to count his blessings and his victories where he could. As Mrs. Johannsen’s skin took on a pink pallor, her mouth flapping open and shut like a fish out of water, he allowed himself a small smirk.
When she continued to splutter at the microphone, President Simmons said, “Then I move that we close this topic and continue with the meeting.”
“I second” came the vice president’s voice.
“All in favor….”
A series of “Ayes” rang out.
“So moved. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Johannsen. Any more matters of the public?”
Curt turned to Antony. “Well, that wasn’t as bad as we initially thought, right?”
Antony glanced at him, then at the members of the board. Most of them had moved on to other things, but Jesse turned around in his seat. He gave them the smallest smile he could muster. Antony knew Jesse would feel guilty that he couldn’t do more, but Antony also understood the position he was in. When the dust settled, Antony would be sure to make it up to him.
“Let’s go home, babe. I’m starving, I’m tired, and I feel like if I don’t get out of here, I may just punch somebody.”
“Ant,” Curt hissed. He looked around, and sure enough, more than a few angry faces looked in their direction.
Antony sighed. “I know. Let’s just get out of here, huh?”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
As they made their way out of the hall, someone managed to fling a piece of garbage at their backs—a throaty hiss of “Faggots” plopped at their feet.
Antony stopped walking. He made to turn around, but Curt put a hand on his arm. “Ant…,” he said, clear warning in his voice.
Antony curled his hands into fists, the sting of nails cutting into the meat of his palm giving him something else to focus on, something to keep him moving. He walked out the door, a throaty scoff from the same direction as the slur chasing after him. He didn’t wait for Curt, afraid if he stopped moving he may just do something vile enough to make the board reconsider their decision to let him finish the year.
“Keep it cool, nene. Let’s just get home.” Antony felt Curt’s hand on the small of his back. He needed the anchor, needed the connection to keep him from turning back around. The tension in his body was sharp, like swords skewering him from his shoulder blades to the soles of his feet.
Antony continued to r
ush down the hallway. “We need to go. We need to go now. I can’t…. Curt, I swear to God if we stay here another second….”
“We’re almost out. Cool it.” The command was solid and exactly what Antony needed to keep moving. “Just breathe, nene,” Curt soothed. “Breathe.”
They turned a corner. Just a few feet away from the door, Antony leaned against the wall and inhaled deeply. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, let’s just—”
“That’s right, keep walking, queer.”
He choked on the next breath as it tried to make its way past his lips. The same voice that had followed them on their way out was right behind him. This time, however, he couldn’t contain his rage. Not even Curt’s grip on his arm could stop him from turning around, even if it did keep him planted where he was. He easily found the oval face of a young blonde woman, distorted with a sickening grin, lines forming in her face where the layers of pancake cracked. Of course she wasn’t alone. One could be quite brave with her thick-necked boyfriend in tow. Curt’s hand was tight on his bicep, but that just meant it wasn’t on his mouth. He scoffed in her direction, slipping bravado over his shoulders like a leather jacket.
“Oh, come on, sweetie,” he said with a snarl. “Don’t tell me you don’t like to take it up the ass.”
She gasped, and the young man standing next to her took heavy steps in Antony and Curt’s direction. “Listen here, nig—”
“What’s going on back there?” The booming voice of one of the security guards halted the young man in his tracks and made Antony jump, his nerves still on edge. “Looks like you two were just leaving,” the guard said, looking at Antony and Curt. “And Chad”—he turned his attention back to the kid on his way toward them—“I don’t need to tell you about the consequences of getting in a fight at a school board meeting, right?”
The rugged pile of meat known as Chad sneered at Antony. “This isn’t over, faggot.” He then turned back to the guard. “Sorry, Officer Donnelley. Won’t happen again.”
The guard just grunted but didn’t leave until Chad and his girlfriend made their way back toward the conference room.
Antony clenched his jaw, then removed Curt’s hand from his arm. Without another word he walked to the door, wrenched it open, and walked out into the mugginess of a late-spring evening.
“You’re in rare form this week, Ant,” Curt said as they made their way to his Pontiac.
“Please. That was tame compared to what I could’ve said. I wish that idiot would’ve tried something. He needs to tell his trailer trash dumpster-baby to watch her mouth. Calls me faggot, then tried to be quiet about it. Really? The fuck outta here!” he spat. “Shit, if she was so bad, she should’ve said it to my face, stupid little guttersnipe.”
“Coño, babe. Why don’t you save it for when we actually get in serious trouble? We got off light tonight, okay.”
Antony sighed heavily, reining in his frayed nerves and holding back the next few colorful modifiers for the young woman who’d spewed her hate at them as they left. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s just… let’s just go.”
4
AFTER THE board meeting, Antony and Curt were both on edge. It seemed like all of Topeka had it out for them. They couldn’t go to the grocery store without half a dozen strangers staring at them, a sort of bloodlust in their eyes one wouldn’t expect from civilized people. A child, one Antony recognized from the playground, had come up to him, tugged on his pant leg, and given him a note.
Your kind isn’t welcome here. You should be ashamed!
He’d turned around to ask the child if he knew what he’d just given him. But before he could even form words cogent enough, the kid had skittered off like a beetle, and Antony had lost him in the flurry of patrons and fruit.
He’d been distracted and just about ready to burst the entire day. He considered himself strong enough to handle pretty much anything. After growing up in East Topeka, he’d better be. But everything piled up was just about as much as he could deal with in one week.
After coming home from the market, he’d turned on some music in Curt’s office, whatever he’d left in the CD player the previous night while he was writing. He needed the noise. The quiet was gnawing at his shoulders and suckling on his backbone like the way his grandfather used to eat chicken—cracking the bones open and sucking out the marrow. When the phone rang, he flinched, his body wound so damn tight he couldn’t even walk straight.
“Dammit, Antony James, calm down!” He chastised himself back into the living room where their landline wailed away. “Okay, okay. I’m coming!” When he reached the phone, he took a deep breath to get his nerves under control, then picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Hello?” he said once more. Still he was met with dead silence. And just like that, Antony’s nerves were back on high alert. “Look, asshole, I don’t know who you are, but if you don’t stop playing on my phone, I’m going to—”
“If I was you, I’d get you and your faggot spic out of town before something bad happens.”
“Who the fu—”
Before Antony could get the words out, the window in the living room shattered. It wasn’t the pretty sound of an expensive wine flute falling delicately to the floor. No. This was Birmingham 1963, a bomb exploding to the ears of someone like Antony, who even recoiled at the boom and snap of firecrackers.
Instinct drove him to dive to the floor, an alto yelp of “Shit!” jumping from his mouth just as his palms and knees hit the carpet.
There was laughter, the sound of tires screeching, finding traction, then a heavy engine roaring before leaving its decrescendo on the breeze as the car sped off.
He couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. The phone lay on the floor somewhere, the automated blare coming from its depths telling him to get the hell off the ground and hang it up. He looked across the room and saw a large stone among the hand-sized shards of glass. As if to add to the flashback of water hoses and attack dogs, a piece of the frame that separated the pane into fourths had cracked and fallen inward, the harsh yellow streaming from the light in the living room making it a mockery of a burning cross on his front lawn.
Antony started shaking. A rock thrown in his window? In this neighborhood? A break-in he could handle. An errant bullet from a drive-by, sure. But a rock? This was Kansas, for crying out loud, not 1960s Mississippi. Who could’ve… would’ve done something like this?
He reached into his pocket, thankful he never left his phone anywhere he wasn’t. His hands were shaking. No matter how much he tried to reason with himself, his body was convinced he was still in danger. Crouched on the floor, he bypassed calling the cops, couldn’t even process 9-1-1. Instead he hit number two on his phone—Curt’s cell.
No answer.
“Shit!” he whispered.
He hit Redial. Still no answer.
“Nnnguh….” He couldn’t help the whine that slithered through and pierced the silence. Why wasn’t Curt answering him?
In a bit of desperation, he texted Curt: wjere u? anawee plz!
When he hit Send, he slowly started to get up. His hands continued to shake, his body incapable of calm, and as he reached for the coffee table for leverage, he dropped the phone, and it landed with a padded thump on the carpet.
Bits of glass that were still clinging to the sill dangled precariously, then let gravity have them, falling to the floor in smaller pieces and hitting those already resting on the carpet with less aggressive notes, but the sound was as chilly as a stalactite dropping on an exposed neck.
Antony jumped at the small noise. “Dammit…. Curt. Curt, please come home. Please hurry. Please—”
“Ant. Where are you, nene? I got your text when I was coming around the corner. Some porra was speeding like a motherfu—” Antony was pacing back and forth and was in midstride when Curt walked in the room. “Ant?”
The call of his name made Antony stop, startling him out of his stupor. But the look of pure terror remained on hi
s face. While his movements had ceased, he couldn’t speak, the words he might have wanted to say dying in his mouth.
“Antony? Baby, what’s wrong?” Curt moved toward him. “Baby, you’re scaring me, now. Say something.”
Antony rushed him, his body moving like the air around him was pushing him forward. He clutched Curt’s body close to his, squeezing him, afraid to lose Curt’s solidity.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
“Someone…. Somebody….”
“What? Who?”
But Antony buried his face in Curt’s shirt, inhaling deeply, as if Curt’s scent could teach him to breathe again.
CURT LOOKED around the room, hoping to find whatever phantom lurked in the shadows. Then he saw the broken glass and the mock crucifix protruding through the sill. “Baby. Antony, look at me,” Curt said, fingers caressing Antony’s head, the fine hairs of Antony’s faded haircut tickling Curt’s fingers. The light touch did the job of getting Antony to look up at him. “Babe, what the hell happened to the window?” He took another glance at the destruction. “Did… did somebody hurt you?” The calm he’d attempted to fashion for Antony’s sake hardened, turning his compassion to stone and forcing red-hot anger to take its place. “Antony, if somebody hurt you, I want to know. You need to tell me if—”
Antony’s kiss was so hard it hurt, forcing Curt’s lips to fight for space with his teeth.
Curt tried to separate himself from Antony, to get some answers. But Antony was pressed too tight, too close, too desperate for touch.
When he finally pulled away, it was only to whisper two words, spoken on the very edge of strained breath. “Need you.”
Curt looked at him. “Ant?”
“Please, Curt. I need you. Need you to… make it go away.”
There was something there, right behind Antony’s eyes, that Curt wanted to explore. But just as need flavored Antony’s breath, a pulsating want buried the confusion and anger of the moment. A curl of wet lust left a knot in his abdomen, a solid weight like a fist pushing at his pelvis and sending jolts to his cock at the sound of Antony’s quiet plea.
