A Charm of Finches

by Suanne Laqueur

  Ari was back in Jav’s hair now, looking an inch taller and a few pounds heavier when Jav got arms around him. The traffic on the Grand Central Parkway was obscene and Jav used the delay to play the MP3 of the radio piece.

  “Man, T, that is awesome,” Ari said when it was over.

  “Thanks,” Jav said, turning off the car stereo. “I can’t believe how great it came out.”

  “I can.” Ari scrubbed a hand through his hair and yawned. “Working on any other projects?”

  “I’m thinking about writing a memoir called Life Advice From a Whore.”

  Ari groaned and slouched in his seat. “I said I was sorry.”

  Jav laughed, shoving him. “I’m just giving you shit.”

  “Yeah, I missed you too.”

  “Anyway, I’ve retired from escorting.”

  Ari sat up a little. “You kidding?”

  “Nope. I’m done.”

  “Not because of me. What I said, I mean.”

  “Because it was time.”

  “Oh.” Ari went quiet. Typically, he dozed off, his body sliding until it was curled like a shrimp against the passenger window. Jav quelled the urge to pat him and sighed heavily instead.

  It was time.

  He didn’t second-guess the decision. But it was supposed to be liberating. He was completely unprepared for this soul-sucking emptiness in his heart and guts. Overwhelming emotions of confusion and regret often dissolving into a panicked fear.

  I’m too old.

  I’m too late.

  What have I done?

  It happened at night. When so many things happened to him. By day Jav wrote, ensconced in his apartment, unshaven in ball caps and ratty jeans, ears plugged against distraction. At night he unfurled like a flag and hit the streets in a hustler’s confident strut. Sleek and groomed, his ears attuned to his date’s verbal cues, his eyes laser-focused on her non-verbal ones.

  One night, he was just done with it all.

  It wasn’t the woman. She was perfectly lovely. Like Cam, a recent divorcée needing validation and a date to a family wedding. He gave her everything she paid for. Attention. Flirting. Dance after dance after dance. He listened to her. His eyes lingered on her. He made her feel beautiful.

  “I’m having such a good time,” she said, a hint of tears in her eyes.

  They went to her place and he gave her an even better time. It wasn’t his A game. Not that she would know. She was an incoherent heap in the sheets by the time he was done. Jav on the other hand, couldn’t get his thoughts to shut up. He was distracted. Tired to his bones.

  A little bored, frankly.

  And ever-so-slightly disgusted with himself.

  You’re worth more.

  When time was up, Jav kissed the woman goodnight. He dressed, making sure the envelope with his payment was safe in his jacket pocket, and saw himself out.

  It wasn’t late and she didn’t live all that far from him. He opted to walk.

  It took all of four blocks to realize he didn’t want to do this anymore.

  No lightning bolt realization. No breakdown. No fed up fist shaking at the sky. The thought was quiet but resolute. An almost laughably easy decision.

  I’ve had enough. I’ve done enough.

  He sighed, remembering a promise he’d made not too long ago. A pledge to give himself another chance at being friends with love. It was an empty promise if he continued selling himself.

  I’m worth more. And it’s not only about me.

  He passed a homeless man sleeping in the recessed alcove of a building’s service doors. Jav’s fingers closed around the envelope in his pocket.

  You did a good job. Whether it was a hundred an hour, or a thousand an hour, you always treated a woman like she was paying a million an hour. You’re not a whore.

  You’re just better than this.

  It’s time.

  Jav crouched and carefully tucked the envelope beneath the snoring man’s shoulder.

  “I will do this,” he whispered beneath the night. “And you will give me nothing.”

  When Ari woke, he was hungry and eager to see his dog, Roman. After twelve hours sleep, he’d be bored with Jav’s company and itching to get up to Guelisten to see his girlfriend, Deane.

  Jav had two of three matters under control. He’d ended the sub-lease on his longtime apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue and moved to a new building on Riverside Drive that allowed dogs. It was also a block from Fairway, where he’d been this morning to fill the fridge and stock toilet paper. If Ari wanted to get laid, he’d have to put his horny ass on a train tomorrow.

  They had couch dinner that night, balancing plates in front of the TV, watching baseball. Ari licked his plate clean and set it on the coffee table, then held out his arms to Roman, who climbed up and into the boy’s lap. Roman, a Duck Tolling Retriever, turned his sleek, coppery head toward Jav with a smug expression.

  Master is home. You’re dismissed.

  “Check it out,” Ari said, reaching around Roman to push up his T-shirt sleeve. An eye was tattooed on the cap of his shoulder.

  “Nice,” Jav said, leaning in to get a closer look. The pupil was heart-shaped, a tiny white question mark making a highlight in the black.

  “Deane and I both got it,” Ari said, his fingers rubbing the skin.

  “What’s the meaning?” Jav asked.

  “Love each other and see what happens,” Ari said.

  “I like it,” Jav said. “Good philosophy for the moment and in the long-term.”

  He suppressed an apprehensive sigh. When you had the misfortune to fall in love with your own cousin, loving and seeing what happened were your only options.

  They talked away the innings, gradually lowering the volume on the TV until it was barely background noise.

  “Were you ever afraid when you were escorting?” Ari asked as they dug into ice cream.

  “Afraid?”

  “Yeah. You know, the cliché story of the hooker getting offed by some psycho trick. Did you ever have that fear?”

  “Not so much fear as an awareness. Not to get lulled into a false sense of security just because it was a woman. Only takes one female with a knife or a gun and then I’m floating in the river or something.”

  “Anything like that ever happen?”

  “No. But a couple times I walked into a date and my gut told me to leave the money and walk out. It’s one of the rules. Always trust your instincts.”

  “What’s another?”

  “Always let someone know where you’re going, even if you write it down and tape it to your bathroom mirror. Leave a trail with someone you trust.”

  Ari stared at him a moment. “Who was it when we were living in Guelisten?”

  “Alex.”

  Alex Lark-Penda was Deane’s father and, for all intents and purposes, Jav’s best friend.

  And lover for all of twenty minutes. If some sloppy kissing and grappling qualified one as a lover.

  Alex’s wife qualified it that way.

  “You been back to Guelisten much?” Ari asked, cuddling with Roman again.

  “Technically the lease on the apartment isn’t through until the end of August. Some of our stuff is still there.”

  A smile played around Ari’s mouth. “That wasn’t the question.”

  “I haven’t been up there in about three weeks.”

  “Did you and Alex have a fight?”

  Jav glanced down the couch. Two human eyes, two canine eyes and one tattooed eye met his.

  Bottom line: what happened between Jav and the Lark-Pendas was none of Ari’s adolescent business. Still, Jav had rules about lying to his nephew and he finally answered, “Kind of.”

  Roman closed his eyes and Ari’s gaze grew troubled. “What about?”

  “It
’s complicated,” Jav said. “It wasn’t really a fight. Just a…thing. A thing between us we’re taking some time and distance from. It’s going to be fine.”

  Ari seemed satisfied, and reached for the clicker to turn the game back up.

  It wasn’t a fight.

  Just a thing.

  Me trying to seduce your girlfriend’s father. That kind of thing.

  Hey, I was half successful.

  Not that it’s something to brag about.

  Shit…

  The nauseating shame and heavy heartache Jav first felt in the affair’s wake had downgraded to embarrassment and functional melancholy. He missed Alex, yet every time he reached for the phone to text or call, he froze, not knowing what to say. Afraid anything he said would only make things worse. He wrestled with conscience and sentiment and ended up doing nothing. Then he glared at the phone for hours, pissed Alex wasn’t calling or texting. Wondering if he was going through the same mental gymnastics. The same bicep curls using the phone as resistance.

  Do you miss me?

  Jesus, he was lonely.

  I knew a ton of women, but I didn’t know anyone.

  Ari bounced around the tri-state area, hooking up with friends old and new. He headed up to Guelisten for weekends with Deane, leaving Jav alone and jealous in the city. Realizing what a reclusive life he’d led during the daytime hours, he forced himself out of the apartment from nine to five. He stuck a finger into a map of Manhattan and picked a neighborhood at random. He took his laptop, took Roman if the venue allowed, and hopped the subway. A different office every day. Coffee shops and diners and libraries. He changed his workouts from mornings to evenings so he could hit the gym at a more crowded and somewhat more social time.

  Get out there, man. Meet someone.

  Roman was an excellent wingman and ice-breaker. Jav met a lot of dog lovers. His laptop, notebook and pen invited overtures from grad students and freelancers.

  “Hi,” they said.

  “Hi,” Jav said. “How are you?”

  “Good, what are you working on?”

  “A book. You?”

  An article, they answered. A research paper, a dissertation, a novel or short story they’d had in a drawer for years.

  He met Oneida this way, when a Yorkville cafe’s outdoor seating area was crowded and Jav shoved things aside so she could sit at his little table. Beneath it, her bulldog began to sniff Roman enthusiastically.

  She was pretty. Smart. Getting her master’s in literature at City College. A voracious reader. Cuban-American, and it was a treat to converse in Spanish, her throaty accent like honeyed cognac. He shared some of his folktale research with her. She shared a story her abuela used to tell at bedtime. Their brains connected, and the atoms between their bodies definitely crackled with physical chemistry. They exchanged cards.

  A few nights later, they went to a movie. Tonight, they went out to dinner. The chemistry was still crackling and after dinner, they went to her place.

  They had sex.

  Jav couldn’t understand it. Once in Oneida’s bed, his body and brain disconnected completely. Below the belt, he was in the game. Upstairs, he was a thousand-yard stare.

  What am I doing? What do I want?

  He made up an early meeting commitment and left her apartment. Down the hall, into the elevator and out on the street to hail a cab, with a nagging feeling he’d forgotten something. His hands patted his person. Wallet, yes. Keys, yes.

  Oh.

  The envelope.

  Which wasn’t there anyway.

  “This is harder than I thought,” he said, staring down First Avenue.

  “You ain’t kidding, brother,” said a homeless man shuffling by.

  Jav lay in bed that night, eyes fixed on the ceiling. He pulled a pillow partly onto his chest, one palm smoothing it as if it were someone’s head. First it was the rough, coiled dreadlocks belonging to Flip Trueblood. A golden dream that slipped through Jav’s fingers, boarded a plane on 9/11 and disappeared forever. Then it was the thick softness of Alex’s hair beneath Jav’s palm. A dream that shouldn’t have been in Jav’s hands in the first place.

  He pulled the pillow to his face, remembering a jaw rough with beard growth. He hugged it again to his chest. It became a tattooed arm, first olive-skinned with a silver globe, then black with a dragonfly.

  Open your pants for me, rude bwoy, Flip whispered.

  Put it against mine, Alex echoed.

  Feel this and want it.

  I want this.

  Your voice gives me a hard-on.

  I get a hard-on every time I think about your fingers between mine.

  I wanted…but I left before I could get greedy.

  I wanted it bad and letting it go is tearing me up inside.

  I’m kind of missing you already.

  I miss you.

  Come here, Javier.

  Come on, don’t make this harder…

  Clutching his pillow, moaning into the dark behind his eyes, Jav came in his hand with the two men he loved in his head. A thousand times more engaged and aroused than he was mere hours ago, in bed with a woman.

  “Maybe this will be easier than I thought,” he said softly, his chest heaving hard, his palm damp with desire.

  It’ll be worth more, Alex silently agreed.

  “Any pain there?” Dr. Bloom said.

  “Little bit,” Geno said.

  Her finger probed deeper. “How about here, along the scar tissue?”

  “Yeah, that’s still sore.” Geno closed his eyes and turned his head on his crossed arms. The paper on the exam table crackled. His kneecaps were starting to howl from contact with the hard platform at the table’s foot.

  Should bring my pads next time, he thought, as he always thought, but never remembered to actually bring them.

  He closed his fingers around the cuff of the nurse’s cardigan. She lay her palm across his knuckles.

  “Doing great,” she said quietly. Her name was Mary Pat and she had the unflappable air of a veteran mother. Incapable of being shocked or grossed out. She could catch vomit with one hand and wipe an ass with another.

  She’d done both for Geno on occasion.

  Her touch was heavy and still. She knew he didn’t want to clutch her or be patted through these exams. He just needed a Valium and a little bit of contact with someone who wasn’t afraid of shit.

  Literally.

  “Don’t ever retire,” he said.

  She smiled, showing her crooked incisor. “With five kids? I’ll be working until I’m eighty.”

  “Almost done,” Dr. Bloom said. “Deep breath in now. You’ll feel pressure, bear down against it. On three, exhale hard. One. Two. Three…”

  The paper crackled again as Geno pushed his breath out. The scope slid in, cold and rigid.

  At least buy me dinner if you’re going to do that.

  “It’s all healing beautifully,” Bloom said. “You’re using the suppositories? Morning and night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And soaking?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good, good. This is excellent.” The scope withdrew, leaving a smarting burn in its wake. Geno let go of Mary Pat’s cuff as Dr. Bloom tugged the exam gown closed over his exposed ass.

  “Come sit up here,” Dr. Bloom said, patting the table. She and Mary Pat walked over to the counter, Bloom to peel off her gloves and wash her hands and the nurse with some kind of busywork. Geno sat, a little KY jelly oozing out of him, his feet icy cold and clammy in their socks.

  Bloom looked in his eyes, nose and ears. Listened to his heart and tested his reflexes. He didn’t know if this was all truly necessary, or if she did it to convince him he wasn’t just another asshole to her.

  A corner of his mouth flickered, wondering how many a
sshole jokes a proctologist heard in any given day. Miranda Bloom had a dry sense of humor, as well as gentle hands. She probably gave as good as she got.

  He imagined asking, How’d you get into this line of work, doc?

  She’d answer, You start at the bottom and work your way up.

  But seriously, folks.

  Bloom had him lie back and she palpated the skin around the stoma scar on his abdomen. Ten days ago she’d reversed the colostomy and all his plumbing was reconnected. Not since he was three was such a fuss made over him taking a crap all by himself.

  Didn’t even get a gold star or anything, he thought, studying the ceiling tiles.

  “Bowel movements are all right?” she asked. “Any pain?”

  “Sometimes. Not terrible.”

  The cold disc of her stethoscope traced paths on his stomach. “You’re taking the stool softeners?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Blood when you pass stool?”

  “I haven’t seen any.”

  “Excellent.”

  He trusted her use of excellent. Hers was the only compassion Geno trusted lately. Which made it difficult to lie to her.

  “You’re still seeing your psychiatrist? Dr. Stein?” she asked.

  No. “When I need him.”

  “Any side effects from the Prozac?”

  I quit taking it. “No.”

  “Sleeping all right?”

  No. “Good nights and bad nights.”

  “What do you do on the bad nights?”

  Cry, throw up, pace. “Ambien helps.”

  “You’re living at your sister’s still, correct?”

  “Yeah.” The truth was cool relief on his lying tongue.

  “Sit up. Everything is looking good. Keep up with the baths and the suppositories. I’m going to graduate you to monthly exams so make an appointment for four weeks. Any abdominal pain or rectal bleeding, you call in. Especially if it’s accompanied by a fever. Don’t screw around if you’re running a temperature.”

  “I won’t.”

  She gathered up his chart and closed it. “I’ll see you next month then.” She reached in her lab coat pocket and came up with a lollypop.

  Geno smiled as he took it. “Thanks.”