by Kyell Gold
"And not talk to any of them?"
The cougar's ears folded down, but he smiled. "Yeah, well. Most of them just want to hit on me or...well, that's about it, really. Not many here who want to have a good conversation."
Aziz felt warm at having produced the smile, and then the moment dragged on. What was happening? He didn't want to break the connection, but didn't want to encourage it either. He reached back for more history, what little he knew. "You know this was a wolf neighborhood, historically."
"Right." Gerald's smile didn't waver. "There's still street names like 'Pack Ave.' and there's like three 'Howl' streets."
"Upper Devos used to be foxes." Aziz relaxed. Just innocent conversation, that was all it was. "Longer ago. The street names have changed more. Cottage Hill was still heavily canid when we moved here, though not as much as in the sixties. Upper Devos was more diverse at the time. Now I think it's reversed perhaps. In the early 2000s a lot of money came into Cottage Hill and it became a shopping destination. We looked at putting a store in there but couldn't afford it."
"Oh. What kind of store do you own? Sorry if you mentioned it already."
Aziz said, "Pawnshop," before he could stop himself. He went on quickly, trying to blow past the slip. "Cottage Hill was becoming a boutique kind of place. They actually put laws in there preventing anyone from owning a single plot of commercial zoned space over a threshold to keep out the big retail chains that weren't already there. Upper Devos was trying to put in an ordinance like that four years ago, but it didn't pass."
"To stop that big development?"
"The Homeporium, yes."
Gerald shook his head. "That thing is gross."
"It is the way the world is moving. Fifteen years ago everyone wanted to be Cottage Hill: small, independent stores with loyal clientele. People came from all over Port City to visit. Now I could put a store in Cottage Hill if I wanted to, but it doesn't make sense. The rents are far higher than the stores are taking in." Halifa had done much of that research months before, when they'd looked at their options in the wake of the Vorvarts offer.
"I don't think there are many pawnshops in Cottage Hill. You might do okay."
Aziz hurried to get off the subject of pawnshops. "I don't know when I realized Cottage Hill was a gay neighborhood. Or at least, had a large gay population. I think it was just a few years ago. Like I said, it was not always so obvious, and in the past decade I have mostly kept to Upper Devos." That wasn't true of Marquize, but...that was another matter, and it wasn't Gerald's business. "Did you grow up here?"
"Oh, no." Gerald's ears flicked back and then forward. "I grew up in western Upland, coal country. Ben's from here, so I moved here when I got back. Wasn't much for me in Upland anymore anyway."
"How did you meet?" Here, at last, he might be getting to their marriage and their problems.
"That's a long story. Might need another beer for it. You want anything? It's on me." Gerald got up, and Aziz shook his head. He stared down at his glass, wondering how long he was going to sit here talking, why he felt more able to open up to Gerald than to most of his other friends.
"Hey." The cougar had only stood up, hadn't moved beyond the table. He looked upset, his ears flat, tail lashing.
The cheetah set his own ears back instinctively, very aware now of how much more muscular Gerald was than him. "What's wrong?"
"Pawnshop." Gerald's eyes stared down. "Did I...did I bring the camera into your shop?"
He wanted badly to lie, to smooth things over. He couldn't force the lie past his throat, though. The lie about being more tolerant of Marquize had been hard enough, and that was based in truth, albeit Halifa's truth. To lie now would be worse, and in a sense, facing Gerald's wrath now would be punishment for that lie as well. "Yes," he admitted.
Gerald's lips were tight, his muzzle bunched in a near-snarl. "That means you must have been the one Ben went to to get it back."
Aziz's tongue felt twice its normal size. He gulped and couldn't get any words out. Gerald's paw landed on his shoulder with a hard, unforgiving grip. "So what's your game? Did you find out we were having trouble? Figured you'd swoop in on me here, get me off guard with a little conversation?"
"N-no. I didn't want--"
"Why didn't you tell me first thing? Oh. Because you don't come over here. You wouldn't have known me unless...you watched the tape, is that it?" He gave Aziz only a second, not enough for the cheetah to compose any kind of response. An hour might not have been enough time to compose a reasonable response. "Did you watch the whole thing? Had yourself a nice little jerk-off to our honeymoon?"
His voice carried, or else the bar had fallen silent, or perhaps both. "Please," Aziz said. "It's not--"
"But that wasn't enough. So you figured you'd come find me. Did you follow me here? Or have you been asking around to see where I go?"
"I saw you on the street," Aziz gasped. "I only wanted--"
Gerald let him go with a shove that almost sent his chair toppling over. "You're not getting it, whatever it is. Just forget it. Fuck off."
The cougar stalked away without looking back. Aziz sat gripping the edges of his chair, willing his heart to slow. The entire bar's eyes moved from him to Gerald as the cougar shoved open the door. When it swung shut again, Aziz felt their attention, though most were courteous enough to keep their eyes and ears from focusing directly on him.
Then a shape loomed over him. He snapped his head up and saw Ray, the kangaroo's brow lowered, eyes dark. "Think you better leave as well," he said. "You're upsetting the customers."
"It was only him." But Aziz was already getting up as he said it, and Ray didn't respond nor follow him as he headed for the door.
9
Doug and the Future
Mortified, he hurried along the streets back to his house, sure that everyone could see his shame, as though the angel on his left were hurrying alongside him scribbling down a record of that conversation. Only when he'd closed the front door after him and leaned back against it, panting, did his chest unclench and his breath come in long, ragged gasps.
Upstairs, he headed for his room, but stopped with a paw on the door. His wife's room was still lit, her door half open. He walked there and peered around the corner at her empty bed. What would he have said to her if she were home? She'd done what he knew had to be done when he himself didn't have the stomach for it. He crept quietly to his room, lost himself in the isha, and fell into a fitful sleep.
He woke early, uneasy. After his morning prayer, he spoke a short du'a asking for forgiveness for his treatment of Gerald and for his angry thoughts toward his wife. He would ask again in the evening, with his fellows around him to remind him that his community was supportive. The thought crossed his mind that he should seek Gerald out and apologize to him in person, but that could hardly go well, could it?
The sun shone on his walk to the store, and the shame of the previous night almost felt consigned to his past. He'd been an idiot to pursue Gerald anyway. Anything might have happened to him--what if Gerald had been violent and Aziz ended up in the hospital? Not that Halifa couldn't manage the sale on her own, but his signature would also have been needed, and it would have complicated everything.
Perhaps he'd wanted to complicate things. Perhaps he felt uncertain about selling, about abandoning this life to move into the unknown. The worry slowed his steps in front of Tanska's shop, moderately crowded. He had time to stop for a pastry, so he went inside.
The Siberian tiger had a bright smile on for all her customers, dishing out cinnamon-walnut rogaliki and crisp hvorost dusted with powdered sugar alongside donuts and gingerbread, with cups of coffee steaming alongside them. The smells, as always, brought Aziz to lick his lips.
When he made his way to the front of the line, Tanska's smile vanished. "Good morning, sir," she said. "What can I get you?"
"Gingerbread, please. But Tanska, I wanted to talk about--"
In the time it took him to say half a senten
ce, she snatched a piece of gingerbread with her tongs, slid it into a brown paper bag, and pushed it across the counter. "Three dollars, please."
"And a coffee."
She turned away from him to fill a cup from the urn behind the counter. "Tanska," he tried again, "we should talk about what's going to happen..."
When she brought the coffee alongside the gingerbread, her muzzle remained expressionless. "Four fifty total."
He laid a five on the counter. "Please talk to me."
She held out two quarters; he took them and dropped them in the tip jar. "Yes, ma'am?" Tanska said to the female leopard behind him.
"Tanska--"
"I'm very busy, sir," she said, and then returned her attention to the leopard.
So Aziz took his gingerbread and coffee down the street to his shop and breathed in the strong coffee smell as he prepared to open. He made his usual circuit of the shelves to ensure that nothing looked out of place, touched some of the items he particularly remembered and thought about the people who'd owned them. Cameras, musical instruments, pieces of art (fine and pop culture), jewelry, computer equipment, handbags, place settings and dishes, pieces and fragments of a thousand other lives. Gerald and Tanska were only two people in the great big world, he reminded himself as he returned to his computer and register and made sure that both were ready.
But when a red fox pushed the door open a little after nine-thirty, Aziz tensed until he saw that it wasn't Benjamin. He usually read the news on his computer while the store wasn't busy, but today his eyes kept flicking up from the screen to the crowd outside, Whenever a cougar passed, Aziz felt a mixture of excitement and dread, his heart sped up, and his paws tensed. But none of the cougars was Gerald, and none of the foxes was Benjamin, and by the time seven-thirty came around, he closed early and walked to the coffee shop.
It wasn't until he was on the patio looking for a table that he remembered that Gerald also came to that café. But the cougar was nowhere to be seen, and Doug was waving him over with a large reddish paw.
Aziz slumped into the chair across from the squirrel. "You're early," Doug said. "Slow day?"
The squirrel looked as though he'd already retired, sitting across from Aziz with an easy smile, his shirt hanging open to show off his bright red chest fur, and a casual swish to his tail. Aziz's own tail felt as tightly coiled as a spring. "Rather slow. But this Vorvarts thing is on my mind."
Doug cocked his head. "Because of Tanska?" Aziz nodded. "She's going to have to make her own way. You can't solve her problems for her."
"But why not? Isn't that what community does?"
The squirrel sighed. "Yes. When we can. But sometimes someone is determined to go contrary to the community, and then you can't waste too much time trying to get them back. Look: she feels like we're rejecting her, so she's rejecting us to get back the upper paw. She doesn't want to come back to the community now; she wants to feel like she's left it on her own terms."
"I don't know," Aziz said. "She's very upset. I think she would be happiest if the whole Vorvarts deal went away."
"She hasn't made a secret of that. I'd be happiest if my prostate worked properly. We can't always get what we want."
Aziz sighed and smiled. "Perhaps you're right. But she's our friend. Will she stay with her pastry shop on this corner as they build around her?"
"They're not going to build around her. They're going to go after her."
Aziz's eyebrows rose. He felt a chill as though a cloud had passed over the sun. "Are you serious? Horace said they had plans, that they didn't need..."
Doug's smile had no humor in it. "They're not going to give up the block for one holdout. They've got a team of lawyers that probably makes more than what they've offered us for our shops. They'll get her pastry shop. Probably the days of people planting mice in restaurants are over, but the legal tricks they have are just as dirty."
"I know from..." Aziz gestured toward the Homeporium. "But they said this time it would be different."
"It's never different. It's always about the bottom line. But why worry? You and Halifa are going to sell and I am too. Which reminds me..."
Aziz sipped his tea, ears perked. Doug took out his phone and set it on the table. Aziz leaned over to see pictures of a bright blue sky, a beach with golden sand and turquoise water, slender people of all species in skimpy beachwear, white stucco houses with red clay roofs in an Old World style. "This is Coronado, some pictures my son sent me. It's nice there, sunny most of the time, near the beach, no harsh winters like here. I decided I'm going to take him up on his offer." He grinned. "I've always wanted to watch the sun set over the ocean."
"You're moving to Coronado?"
The squirrel nodded. "I put my place up on the market today."
"Wow." Aziz looked around the café again. "So no more café."
"The shop will still be here. You can call me on the phone. Just remember it's three hours earlier out there." The squirrel winked. "Not that I'll be keeping regular hours or anything."
"How expensive are houses out there?"
Doug raised his eyebrows. Aziz looked past him to the clientele of the café, and his eyes were drawn to the dingo and fox, sitting together again and both looking at their phones. "You and Halifa might want to come out to Coronado?"
"Well." Aziz avoided his friend's eyes. "Halifa has her charity work here. We might buy a house for vacations. Perhaps I would stay there longer."
"Oh." The squirrel brought his coffee cup to his lips and sipped slowly. "I'd enjoy your company, of course."
Aziz often envied Doug's ability to keep from blurting out things. Doug had known for years that he and Halifa had been living separate lives, but Aziz had always stressed that they remained happy, that a marriage allowed both spouses freedom. This was Doug's first hint that they might spend time apart. Honestly, it was the first time Aziz had vocalized it to anyone, but the thought had occurred naturally to him. Of course he and Halifa would miss each other, but they barely saw each other anymore anyway. And with the events of the past day, Aziz would as soon make a clean break.
He looked again at the dingo and fox, now both watching something on the fox's phone with broad smiles. "We haven't discussed anything, but...she's been talking about moving on to new things." Doug nodded, but didn't say anything. "We live separate lives," Aziz said. "And I think she's been talking to Marquize."
"Oh?" Doug lifted his head. "Why do you think that?"
"Because of what she said at the meeting." Aziz shifted in his chair. "Of course she can talk to him if she wants, but I asked her not to. He turned his back on us and on Islam and if we act as though that means nothing, it demeans our faith and our family."
"I know."
"Sorry." Aziz pushed his tea away and clasped his paws together, fingers intertwined. His tail curled around a chair leg tightly. Around him, the café remained completely unconcerned by his dilemma. "The sale is bringing all this back, and the camera I told you about."
"Right, the husband with the camera." Doug leaned forward. "Something happened with that?"
"Yes. I mean." Aziz shook his head. "I ran into his husband. We talked. He seems like a nice fellow."
The squirrel raised an eyebrow. "Where did you run into him?"
"Here, actually." Aziz gestured to the patio. "Benjamin--the fox--described his husband as a cougar with a military background, and I saw a cougar in army clothes here, so I spoke with him."
"Uh-huh. And did you tell him why you were speaking with him?"
"No." Aziz scowled at Doug's smile. "I was curious. Someone comes into your store with a story, you want to know the rest of it."
"I see. And did you find out?"
"Some of it, yes." The cheetah glanced around, but still Gerald was nowhere in evidence. "They're having problems. I didn't pry."
"Mm."
Doug's silence prompted Aziz to keep talking. "Their problems are like any married couple."
"Sure. Gay couples aren't an
y different." Doug gestured at him. "You and Halifa aren't exactly a traditional married couple where one spouse works and the other doesn't."
Aziz didn't say anything, thinking about all the ways in which he'd thought his family was traditional, until Halifa started spending more time away from the shops, until Marquize betrayed them. "We may be traditional in the manner of a TV or movie drama," he said. "The dysfunctional States family."
When Doug didn't say anything, Aziz remembered why he didn't discuss his family very often. "I'm sorry," he said.
"It's fine." Doug waved a paw. "It's been years. I'm at peace. But that's partly why it'll be nice to be nearer Thom. And he says there's a small Prevost's community out there. More than here, anyway. He's seeing someone."
"Oh, that's good to hear. Maybe you'll be there for a grandkit."
"That's my hope. But I'm happy just to relax by the beach. I want to be one of those old guys who sits on the beach all day drinking coffee and watching all the young cute females go by. You know there's a nude beach there, Thom says?"
"No!" Aziz laughed. "I've heard of those things but I can't imagine it myself."
"Come out to Coronado, you won't have to."
"But...wouldn't we have to be nude as well?"
The squirrel beamed at him with a gleam in his eye. "At our age, you don't think that a fair trade?"
"I suppose you may be right. I'll talk to Halifa." Aziz's smile faltered.
Doug nodded slowly. "I don't know if it's any consolation, Zeez. But you know, there's life after marriage."
"It's different," Aziz said. "Not more painful, but harder to know why it happened. Was it always fated to end? Was it because of Marquize, and if so, was it because of how she handled or or how I handled it? Or was it because--"
The fox and dingo were holding paws now, talking low with smiles on their muzzles. Aziz broke off and stared at them, then jerked his gaze back to Doug.
"You can't know why it happened." Doug's voice was quiet, his muzzle creased in sympathy. "But you also can't wonder how many more years you might have had. You're at a fork in the road and you're choosing to take a branch. Are things really at that point?"
