by Rhys Everly
Pierce was silent. He didn’t know what to say.
“That’s my story,” Rafe said.
Pierce shook his head and blinked several times. He rubbed his eyes. “Wow! So what are you doing now? Are you taking your meds?”
Rafe laughed. When other patrons turned to stare at him he tried to stop but snorted like a pig instead.
“I’m homeless, Pierce. I’m lucky if I make fifty bucks from a fuck. And my meds cost almost two thousand. How on earth do you think I could be on my meds? I’ve managed to buy them once, but they only last a month. I made them last two. But they don’t work that way. You need them every day. Every month.”
Pierce nodded. “There must be some charity or someone that helps people with HIV,” he said, and Rafe snorted again.
“Yeah, and we both know what kind of charities and places New York City has. If I wait for them to help me, I’ll die first,” he said.
“We’ll find a way. I’ll help you. I’ll find a way,” Pierce said and reached for Rafe’s hand across the table.
Little spiders crawled up his arm and his heart pumped louder.
This man, this guy! Perhaps he wasn’t as poisonous as he thought. Perhaps Pierce was a dream. A dream Rafe didn’t want to wake up from.
Fifteen
Pierce
From that day on, Pierce and Rafe didn’t lose sight of each other again. Wherever they went, they went together. Sleeping in subway cars, next to each other, using Pierce’s jacket as a makeshift blanket for them both. Using their spare change to browse the internet and to find a solution to Rafe’s problem, or simply walking without purpose and talking endlessly about themselves.
Of course, Pierce wouldn’t let Rafe rent his body again, something which stressed Rafe, he’d said, as he had grown so used to earning money for his meds that way. Between the two of them, they had a little over two thousand dollars and could afford one month of Rafe’s medication, but they needed to find a more permanent fix to the problem.
On their second day living as conjoined twins, Rafe took him downtown to a place called Mario’s Pizza where they were greeted by the smell of dough and herbs and a warm hug by the owner’s wife, Sonia, who not only gave them both a wide smile but a free drink too.
“She’s a really nice lady. She gives us a free slice and a drink every day,” Rafe told Pierce once they were both sat down on one of the tables.
Rafe pulled a third chair to their table and kept looking at the door, waiting for his friend to arrive. Pierce couldn’t believe this place even existed. He wished he’d known about it sooner, when he was starving and went days without proper food. It didn’t look particularly busy either, so he was astounded to find out they were so generous with the services they provided. He wanted to do something good for Sonia and her big heart.
Five minutes later, the doorbell chimed and in walked a girl. She was short, with wide hips, a bit on the chubby side, wearing black clothes and dark make-up, and she took a seat between Rafe and Pierce. Rafe introduced her as Marissa.
She was a shy girl, for all her intimidating Goth appearance, but Rafe felt at home around her, and Pierce was beginning to realize there was nothing sweeter than seeing Rafe happy. Even if it was feeble and temporary.
Soon after Marissa sat down, Sonia approached them to take their order, and Pierce had already made up his mind. Tonight’s dinner was on him. Not so much for Rafe and Marissa as for Sonia and what she did for people like them.
“I want a Margherita and Marissa here wants a Pepperoni. Pierce? What are you getting?” Rafe asked and all eyes turned on him.
He coughed. “Can you make those two into full-size pizzas and make me a third vegetarian with no cheese and a BBQ base, please?” he asked her, and he felt all the eyes turn inquisitive when he had finished. “I’m paying for everything today,” he explained.
Sonia came closer to him and grabbed his shoulder, putting her pad down. “Oh, honey, you don’t have to pay here,” she told him.
“I know. But I want to. Give back for what you do for Rafe and others like us,” he replied.
She gave him a gentle hug and then went behind the counter to give the order to the kitchen. Marissa drank her tea, concentrating on an empty spot across from her. Rafe, however, was staring at Pierce, smiling like a baby.
“What?” Pierce asked. Not that he disliked the attention.
Rafe shook his head casually and took a sip from his cocoa. “Nothing,” he said.
“Get a room made out of cardboard already, dudes,” Marissa mumbled retrieving her lips from the mug long enough to make her point and then slurped her hot cocoa.
Later in the week, when the weekend came and Pierce had to go to work, Rafe followed him, not that he’d needed too much persuasion, and would sit by the end of the bar, either nursing a hot cocoa, or a soda.
Pierce was concerned his colleagues would be weird around Rafe, but he was proven wrong once again, since Rafe’s natural charm won them over very quickly, as it had with him. He was very social with them, not afraid to comment or joke with them, or, at times, even insult them.
By the end of Friday night the entire staff and two drag queens that frequented the bistro had all proclaimed Rafe their new best friend. And Pierce was so proud of Rafe. Not the least bit jealous. He knew they were completely different characters and that Rafe’s charisma was something he lacked.
Pierce realized how much more he adored Rafe when he counted his tips to find he’d made almost $400, double what he usually made, and it was all thanks to him.
“Here!” he said giving him $100.
Rafe looked at it inquisitively and then back at Pierce. “What is that?”
“That is for you to spend as you please. Not thinking about the meds, hostels or food. That’s for you to buy anything you want. And if you want to buy some fancy new clothes, I know a good place,” Pierce told him and Rafe pushed the notes back to Pierce.
“Pierce, I thought I’d made myself clear. I don’t want charity,” he said. He didn’t look insulted, only reluctant.
Pierce smiled at him and leaned in over the bar, closer to Rafe. “That’s not charity. You made me these tips because everyone loved you and they tipped me for bringing you here. This is yours. I mean I’d give you the other $100 I made thanks to you, but I’ll put it in the savings for your meds. I mean you do need to get them at some point,” he told him and put the notes back in Rafe’s hand.
“Okay, whatever,” said Rafe and put it in his pockets. Pierce mimicked his voice making Rafe laugh. And then Pierce mocked Rafe’s laugh.
Rafe ended up putting his palm all over Pierce’s face to push him back behind the bar. “Don’t you have a job to finish, mister?”
Pierce continued repeating and mocking everything Rafe said to him while he was closing down the bar. Most of the waiting staff had left at that point and only Vance and the floor supervisor remained, counting the money.
“Hey, you two lovebirds, care to join us?” Vance echoed from across the room.
Pierce rolled his eyes and looked over to Rafe.
“Bring some beers while you’re at it,” Vance instructed them.
Pierce called him a douche and Rafe slapped his arm, but Vance laughed.
“So what do you do, Rafe?” Vance asked him once they settled down on one of the big tables.
Rafe shrugged. He was so cute when he shrugged, as if he didn’t like talking about himself. “Well, nothing. I’m homeless,” he said.
Vance rolled his eyes. “Well, I got that, but why do you guys let that define you, I don’t understand. I’m sure you like something, or you used to do something that you enjoyed”.
It was Pierce’s turn to roll his eyes and he opened his mouth to protest what Vance had said, but Vance put his hand in front of Pierce’s mouth and stopped him.
“It’s Rafe’s turn to talk,” he said with a grin. “You shut up now, dear.”
Rafe sighed and clasped the edges of his chair tighter. “I li
ke drawing. Always have. So I guess I’m a hopeless case either way”.
“Hey!” the supervisor, Janice, lifted her eyes from the notes in front of her and protested. “Why do you say that? I draw. I’m not a hopeless case. I’ve got an exhibition coming up and I do some freelance illustrations. If you like drawing and you’re good at it, then you’re as hopeless as the next person. You just got to know what to do with it,” she told him.
Rafe smiled, but his eyes seemed to process a thousand things at the same time. “Thanks,” he told her. “What kind of things do you draw?”
Janice sipped some beer from her bottle and put the notes down, passing them to Vance. “Abstract stuff. I like playing with colors and patterns. I’m not into sketching so much, but I do it for some picture books. I hope I can get into textiles eventually,” she replied.
Rafe nodded and kept his mouth shut, but in a light smiley way. Janice smiled too and resumed her counting. Pierce leaned in and whispered in his ear.
“You have no idea what she just said, do you?”
Rafe didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at Pierce, just shook his head slowly, sucking his lips in. Pierce chuckled.
Later that night, when they’d checked in at the hostel, something Pierce had to insist on again, they sat around the communal area, that consisted of a kitchen, several fridges and a ton of couches mostly loitered with people and their laptops.
Pierce and Rafe just sat in one watching the TV and hearing the cluckety-clacking of other lodgers typing. Pierce kept stealing glances at them. He still hadn’t given up on his search for a solution to Rafe’s problem and he wanted to find the courage to ask someone for some screen time. The girl that was sitting next to them left her laptop on her seat and walked to the kitchen area to prepare a meal, and Pierce took the opportunity he’d been looking for.
“Do you mind if I use your internet while you’re eating?” he asked the girl when she returned with a plate full of macaroni and cheese.
She passed the laptop to him and sat very close next to Pierce and looked at his browsing while taking small bites of her food. Pierce was reluctant to type the words he wanted on the search engine, but he needed an answer more than he cared about embarrassing himself so eventually he did type “hiv help nyc”. Once again, he was rained with irrelevant articles about how to deal with having the disease rather than what he was looking for.
Between mouthfuls the girl asked him. “What exactly are you looking for?”
He looked at her to see whether she was freaking out, but instead he was met by a humble face willing to give a hand.
“I need to find whether there is any free meds for HIV patients, or an organization that helps uninsured people,” he whispered to her, not wanting to distract Rafe, who was snoozing while watching the TV and his head rested on the sofa’s pillow.
“May I?” she asked him and took her laptop back into her hands, leaving her plate on the headrest between them.
She typed “medical help HIV uninsured New York”. She browsed through the results and clicked on the fourth. She skimmed through the article, pressed back and entered the result under it. Again she went through the paragraphs in glance and passed laptop back to him, taking her plate back in her hands.
“There you go. They’re a charity that help uninsured patients of HIV and AIDS,” she told him and he pinned her with his eyes.
“I’ve been looking for ages. How—?” he begun, but she cut in.
“You just got to know how and where to look. I’m a college student. Finding reliable information is my forté,” she said and gave him a proud smile.
He read through the article and visited the other pages on the website. It was ideal. There was only a small problem. But he was determined to find the solution no matter what.
He wouldn’t let Rafe die.
“What are you doing?” He turned to look at Rafe, who was rubbing the sleep off his eyes.
“I’m sorry. Did I wake you? I was just looking for help. I found a place that can help you maybe. From what I can see here, you just need an address,” Pierce told Rafe and waited.
Rafe barely reacted. He simply shrugged and turned his attention to the TV.
“Well, if I had money for that, I’d have money for my medication,” he mumbled.
“What if we put both our money together and find you a room to rent? That will be faster. And if you hang out at the bar with me every day we should get some good tips,” Pierce said.
“And where are you going to live? Aren’t you saving up for a room too?”
Of course! How did he not think of it earlier? It made so much sense.
“What if we move in together? In one room? That way we both have a place to sleep at night. And it definitely beats sleeping on the subway,” he said and Rafe turned to look at him with a sad face.
“You know it’s not going to be that easy, right?”
Pierce put his hand on Rafe’s knee and brought the boy’s attention to him. “I know. But now we’re a team, right? We’ll do this together.”
Rafe didn’t say anything. He only stared into Pierce’s eyes and nodded.
“Great. We’ll start looking tomorrow!” Pierce said.
A smile finally crept up in Rafe’s face and Pierce felt his insides flutter, his heart pumping faster. Rafe’s smile was truly beautiful and he would do anything to see it more often.
Well, if they moved in together, he would.
“Okay. If you’re sure. Then, after that, all I’ll need is a job and I can apply for Medicaid and free medication.”
Pierce jumped in his seat and took hold of both of Rafe’s shoulders. “See? Exactly. You’ve got yourself a solution. All we gotta do is find a room and then a job, and you’ll be back on track with your health in no time.”
Rafe didn’t share in Pierce’s excitement. “I guess,” he shrugged.
“Rafe,” Pierce shook him, “don’t be so pessimistic. You’ll see. Everything will be okay now. You’ve got me.”
The glimmer in Rafe’s eyes did things to Pierce again. Things he didn’t know he could still feel. Boy! He really was in love with Rafe, wasn’t he?
Sixteen
Rafe
“And there is always hot water, except for late at night, when the valve is switched off automatically, but it shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve not had any complaints so far,” the woman said.
She was short, brunette, with dark skin, wearing a black suit with blue heels that failed to make her taller, especially standing next to Pierce. She was giving them a tour of a house in the Bronx, a three-bedroom flat with no communal areas other than the kitchen and the bathroom.
“We don’t care about the water in the middle of the night. The room is great. The area is… great. Can we get to paperwork?” Pierce asked, and Rafe, who was standing a little behind him, pinched his thigh.
“Sure. Just to double check this room is only for one of you, right?”
And there it was again. As if the whole shit with finding a room by legitimate ways wasn’t hard enough, it was made even harder by the fact that no one wanted to lease a single room to two people.
It’s not like they had a choice. Everything bigger was way too expensive.
“Sure,” Pierce sighed and Rafe knew what he must be thinking. They were never catching a break.
“Perfect. We’d need a holding deposit, two forms of ID, references from two past landlords, your bank account to run a credit check on your behalf, six weeks of pay stubs, and our agency fee is a hundred and thirty-nine dollars per person, which you will need to pay before we can run the checks on you,” she said, and Rafe already knew they were walking out.
It had been the seventh or eighth house they had viewed in the past week, and they all required the same crap. Rafe was starting to lose hope that their plan would work and that he would ever be able to get help with his medication.
Even though Pierce and Rafe combined had enough money to pay for deposits and a month’s rent,
everyone wanted to run a credit check, and since Rafe had no account linked to his name, that was impossible. Everyone also asked for proof of work, which again, Rafe didn’t have. No one was willing to risk letting an apartment without the security of future payments, and Rafe couldn’t blame them. He didn’t know if he’d let them stay in his place if he had one.
Pierce wasn’t giving up, though. He kept phoning people up and getting viewings, thinking he could talk his way in and score them both a place.
That was what he was trying to do now. Explaining the situation, with as little detail as possible, in hopes it would change her mind.
“I mean, if you are working, we could technically run the check on your name and do the whole contract, but if you say you’re working part-time, I don’t think you’d pass the credit check,” she told Pierce. “And if your name’s on the contract, he wouldn’t be able to live here. The landlord has been very specific.”
“No, he has to be in the contract. The room is for him. He needs to apply for medical help. He will get worse if we don’t find a place soon enough.”
“The only way he’d be able to get a contract approved if he isn’t working would be with a guarantor.”
“I can be his guarantor,” Pierce said.
The agent pursed her lips and sighed. “I’m afraid guarantors need to be earning at least three times the price of rent and if you’re working part-time I can’t imagine you’d be pass the check.”
“Are you sure you can’t make an exception for us?” Pierce insisted, trying to sound pleasant, but sounded plain rude instead.
God bless him, he couldn’t shake off the brute image no matter how hard he tried. But Rafe knew what hid under it: a heart of gold.
