A Charm of Finches

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Twice.”

  Stef laughed. “I’m sorry, man. That sucks.”

  A tornado sigh. “I’ll live.”

  “Well, listen. I’m gonna plow through some shit here and then I’ll buy you a steak.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “No, I want to. You need solace and distraction and I need motivation to clean my office. Steak-frites at Estelle’s, medium rare. Creamed spinach. Mucho beers.”

  The beat of silence at the other end was thoughtful. “What’s for dessert?”

  “Me.”

  Another big sigh. “Fine. I guess I can cheer up for that.”

  “Meet me here in an hour. You know, I’ve never given you a tour of this place.”

  “An after-hours tour of your office?” Jav said. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “I’ll tell the security guard you’re coming.”

  “I’m not even touching that.”

  “I mean you’re arriving.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we both know what you meant, Finch.”

  Geno turned a page of Jav’s notebook and saw his own name.

  Geronimo Caan.

  Geronimo! The crowd yelled as he went up for one of his signature dunk shots.

  Genghis Caan, the wrestling star of PS 194.

  The bleachers were dotted with hand-lettered signs:

  Genghis Caan!

  Wrath of Caan!

  Anything you can do, he Caan do better!

  “Honey, I can’t,” the girl said, limp and spent.

  “Honey, you Caan,” he said against her neck.

  “Geronimo,” the girl cried in the dark, as she came for the third time.

  The pages shook in Geno’s hands, a thousand emotions rippling through his chest as his head spun in both directions at once.

  This is me.

  He’s writing about me. I don’t play sports. Genghis Caan, what does that mean? Who’s this girl? Why’s he writing about me?

  He read the lines over and over, his chest filling up with a warm, flattered curiosity.

  He’s writing about me.

  “Genghis Caan,” he said. Softly, then louder. It never occurred to him Caan sounded like Khan. It was a word you didn’t fuck with. King was light and noble but Khan was a hammer on an anvil.

  Khan.

  A strike on a gong. Name and title. Caan and Khan.

  Beware the wrath of Caan.

  “Damn,” he said, turning the page.

  The sun is not one but two. Two in one. Two gods burning within.

  Sun sons.

  Sunsons?

  What about twins?

  Sacred twins.

  Twins whose bond is magical. A rarity with a distinctive name.

  Could make up something based on Gemini.

  Géminis (Spanish)

  Gemeloj (Esperanto)

  The bond is the place where two become one.

  Geno felt his eyes bulge and his last inhale wouldn’t release.

  The place where two became one.

  Holy fuck, he knows about Nos.

  It’s a visible thing. Is it skin, actual flesh that joins them? Conjoined twins are magic?

  Or more metaphysical, like an aura?

  “Our power is in what joins us.”

  “Our combined power is in the space between us.”

  Is it an actual thing someone can take?

  “He gained his power by stealing the bond from the Gemini.”

  Geno’s fingers trembled as he turned a page.

  It’s an ancient saying in these lands, my child:

  “Break the bond, the Gemini cries.

  Take the bond, and the Gemini…”

  Lies?

  Flies—does the bond anchor the twins to earth?

  Dries—are they water creatures?

  Prize—it has value, worth power?

  Ties—the twins are bonded to you now? What’s the advantage of that?

  Is this a genie-in-the-lamp thing? The twins do X favors or tasks and then they can be restored?

  “Break the bond, the Gemini cries.

  Take the bond, the Gemini…”

  “Dies,” Geno said. “Take the bond and the Gemini dies.”

  He stared across his little room. His throat now tightening up for some stupid fucking reason. His heart revving beneath his ribs, dissolving all the warmth that had just been there. The awful rolling sensation of impending anxiety, coming over the horizon like storm clouds. Like a herd of wild horses. Coming for him.

  He stood up. Sat again.

  Calm down, he thought. C’mon, let’s walk it out.

  He stood up. His room wasn’t conducive to pacing. He had eight steps up and back, tops.

  I’m being staved. I need to stave this off.

  I need somebody.

  The leather notebook was warm in his hands. Tactile like dough. Like skin.

  He put his nose to the covers. His hands squeezed, trying to wring the presence out of the pages.

  He wished Jav were here.

  He wanted him.

  The thought made his stomach twist in fresh panic.

  Easy, easy, he told himself. I don’t want him. I just…want him.

  He tried to pretend. He turned on his white noise machine to waves. Imagined a long stretch of sandy beach and the red house in the distance. Up higher on stilts now, to keep from flooding at high tide.

  I’m going home. I’ll just go home and bring him back what was lost.

  The lost bond.

  His teeth chattered above his footsteps. Round and round in the carpet, believing he was walking a straight line in sand.

  Hey, you dropped your notebook in the kitchen.

  Want to go for a walk?

  Jesus, that sounded gay. What the fuck was he doing?

  He sank onto the bed, head in his hands.

  My head, my head, what is happening in this fucking weird, fucked up head of mine?

  I don’t want him.

  I just want to be a normal guy.

  Str8 dude seeks same.

  “Stave this off,” he said. “Stave it off.”

  His fingers shook as he fanned the pages of the notebook. The piece of graph paper with its fiery, loving sentiments slipped out and settled in his lap.

  “Trust is heavy,” he whispered from memory. “Your trust is heavy in my hands.”

  His secrets were safe with Stef. They were in Stef’s big, strong hands. Their weight couldn’t be forgotten. Geno’s palms turned up to the ceiling, needing to feel them. His fingers itched to sort through and measure them.

  Trust is heavy.

  It’s heavy…

  Then he remembered the coffee can.

  “So this is where the curating happens,” Jav said, walking along one of the long tables of the art room, fingers trailing. “Funny, I envisioned it messier.”

  “Clean environment. Messy work. Plus we like things in their place.”

  Jav smiled, lined in silvery streetlight from the tall windows. “Now I’ll be able to put you in this place. I mean, when I think about you during the day.”

  Stef stared back, suspended in the thick moment. “You think about me during the day?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Pretend I forgot.”

  Jav leaned back against the sill, hands in his pockets. “I just wonder what you’re doing. Who you’re sailing with.”

  Stef walked toward him. “I feel bad I can’t share much about the voyages.”

  Jav shrugged. “Now that I have the setting, my imagination can fill in the blanks.” One hand came out of its pocket and slowly moved along the side of Stef’s leg. “Mostly I wonder if you think about me.”

  “Yo
u know I do.”

  “Pretend I forgot.”

  Stef ran the backs of his fingers along Jav’s neck. “When I’m not thinking about the ship, I’m thinking about you.”

  Jav wet his lips, teeth shining in the dark. “Same. Pretty much all I fucking do is think about you.”

  They kissed, Stef sliding his thumb along Jav’s throat, over his Adam’s apple, around his chin and across his bottom lip.

  Jav closed his teeth around the caress. “Show me your office?”

  Stef put his face against Jav’s neck, breathing in. “It’s nothing to show.”

  “I want to see where else you spend the day.”

  “It’s nothing,” Stef said, as his soul whispered, God, you are everything, everything to me.

  Jav pushed him back. “Go.”

  Geno’s sneakers squeaked across the cool marble of the lobby. Streetlight sliced through the front doors and made silvery grey rectangles on the floor, while the security booth was bathed in warm gold from a single lamp. Kandice was on duty. The light picked up the bronze strands in her black hair as she yawned over her books. Geno knew she worked two different night jobs after attending nursing school in the day. Her eyes were ringed with smudged circles but her smile was broad.

  “Child, what are you up to,” she said. “Signing out?”

  “I left something in the art room.”

  She raised her ballpoint pen to the ceiling. “You know the way.”

  Geno took the steps two at a time. His quads burned after only a few treads and he had to stop on the first landing to catch his breath. He was so out of shape. So slack and weak.

  Aren’t you, baby boy?

  “Knock it off,” he said behind his teeth. He sat on a tread, breathing through the dizziness. His cold, clammy hands shook, craving the feel of bits of metal. Screws and bolts to push into piles as he recited multiplication tables.

  I’ll sort it out, he thought. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll call Stef.

  I’ll try to handle it myself, and if I can’t, I’ll get help.

  I can do this.

  I’m allowed to do this.

  Walking along the upper hall, Jav slid his hand into Stef’s. It took Stef by surprise. They didn’t hold hands much. Usually falling asleep in bed for a little bit. Never walking anywhere. Jav’s fingers folded around his, palm to palm, their feet in step on the carpet. Stef all at once wishing the corridor were twice as long. Wishing they were on the High Line. A beach. The Appalachian Trail. Somewhere they could walk forever, holding hands.

  He hit the wall switch in his office. The bleaching overheads lit up the small room. Neater now, but still as inspiring as an empty cardboard box.

  “This is terrible,” Jav said.

  Stef turned the light off.

  “Better,” Jav said.

  “Come here, you moron.” Stef yanked him in and around, nudging the door closed with his foot. Hands on Jav’s shoulders, he walked him backward toward the window. Laughing and kissing but wrestling at the same time. Twisting and pushing, pulling and grappling.

  “I was told there’d be steak,” Jav said.

  “Fuck steak.”

  “You can’t lure me out of my spectacular sulk with dinner and not deliver.”

  “I’m delivering on dessert.” He whipped Jav around and pressed him up tight to the wall by the window, threading his arms through Jav’s elbows and pinning him.

  “No fucking at the office,” Jav said, his smile a beautiful thing.

  “Believe me, Landes. When you’re ready for me to fuck you, it’ll be in my bed.”

  “Our bed,” Jav said against Stef’s lips. His tongue brushed, his mouth opened and a rash of prickling goose bumps swept over Stef’s skin. He needed to get them out of here. It was a highly inappropriate place to be screwing around.

  And the door didn’t lock, either.

  In a minute, he thought, his thoughts sticking together.

  “I still want my steak,” Jav said.

  “Say you want me.”

  “No.”

  “Say it.” He pulled up on Jav’s arms a little more.

  “Make me.”

  Stef threaded a hand in Jav’s hair and turned his head back. “Say it,” he whispered, and kissed him. A kiss for the ages. A kiss to tear Jav slowly in half, until his chest rose up and he moaned into Stef’s mouth.

  “You’re killing me.”

  “You love it.” Stef pulled Jav’s head back more, showing his throat to the streetlight. His soul was down on its knees, first banging fists on the ground in a terrible need, then throwing hands to the skies in rapture.

  “Finch,” Jav said, his voice like ice cream melting on Stef’s skin, hoarse with desire.

  Stef’s arm tightened through the tunnel of Jav’s elbows, pulling him in. “Say you want me.” He slid his lips along the curve of Jav’s neck, toward his shoulder. He dragged back with his teeth, slowly let them press into the skin. “Say it, baby—”

  Then something exploded.

  Stef’s office door was closed, but Geno knew the lock didn’t work. Stef had trusted him with that information.

  And trust is heavy.

  He pushed the door open.

  Two men in Stef’s office. One up against the wall. The other pinning him.

  “Say you want me.”

  A back to a chest. A head yanked by the hair.

  “You love it.”

  A twist. A moan. A silhouetted struggle.

  “Say it, baby…”

  This is not allowed, Mos said. This is against the law.

  Fear seized Geno by all four limbs, then let go just as quickly and anger filled him. Guys like that were in the world but the world also had guys like him.

  The world would be wise to beware the wrath of Caan.

  He grabbed the coffee can full of nuts and bolts and threw it.

  A clanging crash and Jav let out a yell as Stef’s teeth bit into his shoulder. The air was filled with flying pieces of metal, pouring on him like a weighted rainstorm.

  A pipe bomb? he thought. Then Stef made a garbled moan and his slumped weight was pulling Jav down, dragging at his neck.

  “Stef,” he said, turning in the choking grip. “Stef…”

  Stef let go and went stumbling backward.

  Someone else was in the room.

  Stef’s brain sloshed from one side of his skull to the other before settling into a dull, aching throb. Bits of cold metal were in his hair and tumbling down the back of his shirt collar.

  I’m falling.

  He grabbed and clutched the solid mass that was Jav, still in his arms. Time and memory doubled back on themselves. He and Jav were falling down the stairs, bumping and rolling like apples tumbling into the dark.

  No neck breaking on the first date.

  Something sank talons into his shoulders, grabbed big folds of his shirt and then he was flying…

  Not in my house. Not in my land.

  Not on my watch.

  Geno didn’t know he could be so strong. He was mighty and terrible, flinging the man down to the floor, sending the wastepaper basket skittering.

  “Stef,” a voice cried.

  Stef?

  “You,” Geno said, dropping to his knees on top of his beloved big brother, mounting him. Hands flew up, inked patterns on his forearms. Horses and archers and wings. Bows and arrows.

  “You son of a bitch,” Geno said, his hands reaching toward Stef’s throat.

  “Geno,” It was the same voice as before. “Qué mierdas pasa. Basta...”

  The hell I’ll stop. Not this time. Not in my house.

  “Ya basta,” the voice behind him cried. “Suéltalo.”

  Hands were pulling at him but Geno had the power of two in his body, the fiery str
ength of twin sun-sons in his bones. And he had the weight of trust in his hands. Weight that became immeasurable when it was betrayed.

  Take the bond and the Gemini dies, motherfucker.

  His fingers squeezed Stef’s neck but then the winged horses reared up and grabbed his head.

  “Get back,” Stef shouted. “Jav, get off him. Move.”

  Jav?

  The name and the Spanish smashed together, tearing a hole in Geno’s mind. His head was yanked down, pulled tight into Stef’s chest, two big hands spreading wide on Geno’s face. Fingers hooked against the bridge of his nose.

  Hey, Mos said, almost happily. He knows the move. In an attack from above, they’ll expect to be pushed away. Instead, you pull them in close.

  “Off me now,” Stef said, starting to turn Geno’s head. Hard. Then harder. “Geno, stop.”

  Turn the head, the body follows.

  Geno writhed against the force but the strain on his neck was pulling into pain.

  “Stop right now,” Stef said. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He writhed too, but with a smooth, liquid purpose. He was shrimping out, throwing Geno off balance. Now Stef’s hip was free. One hand kept turning Geno’s head, the other started pushing at his shoulder. A foot pressed Geno’s hip bone and he was beaten. Rolled off and over and down. Onto his back in the musty carpet, nuts and bolts and screws digging in his skin.

  Stef didn’t run like hell. He stayed put, hands on the balls of Geno’s shoulders, pushing him straight into the floor.

  Trust is heavy.

  “You’re done,” Stef said. “This is over now. Look at me.”

  The room lit up harsh and white then. Stef loomed over him, pale beneath five o’clock shadow. His eyes were coal black. They were supposed to be blue.

  You’re not Stef.

  What did you do with Stef?

  A winged horse took him by the jaw, moved his head this way and that. “Geno, look at me. What did you take?”

  Geno stared into the black.

  “What did you do?”

  What have I done?

  Over Stef’s shoulder he looked at the window, searched for the stars and the portal into Nos. He made himself small. Made himself disappear.

  Made it happen to someone else.