by V. L. Locey
I ran my hand down the long white side of a bus from Pennsylvania then stepped around the front of it, right into the path of a cab. The blare of a horn scared me half to death. I danced back out of the way, the cabbie calling me names that made my ears bleed. I bolted to the corner, streaked across 5th Avenue, and nearly bowled over some poor woman exiting Babette’s.
“Sorry, sorry, late for work,” I said as I pushed around a line of people waiting to be served. Lou was in back, so I grabbed an apron, tied it around my waist, and leaped in to help Sandy. It was insanely busy but busy was good. Busy kept my mind on things other than Caiden and how much I cared about him. It kept my mind off the fact that we’d had sex without a condom. My gut churned as the realization slapped me hard across the face, my father’s words about gay diseases pealing like a church bell in my head. Christ above, we’d fucked without protection. Had he ever been tested? Probably. I’d not been. We’d never even had that talk. I grabbed the counter, swaying slightly, a thousand rushing worries blowing me into shore.
Now, even busy wouldn’t keep my mind off the fact that my life was a shitstorm swirling across the coast of Africa and would develop into a hurricane of epic slurry levels by the weekend. Maybe I should be on the lookout for those red and white maritime flags to hoist up the mizzenmast to warn the poor citizens of Manhattan that the crap storm was likely to wash them out to sea. Or maybe that was just me about to be pulled under…
Chapter Five
It was easy to avoid most everyone for the rest of the day. It might not have been wise, but I’d always been a man who pulled his worries inward. My mother used to say she knew when I’d had a bad day because I was eerily quiet. Guess Mom had been right about that as well as how I tended to make really bad choices. Or had that been Dad spouting off about choices? Did it matter? No, not in the least. I’d spent the day saying perhaps ten words to other human beings, and that included waiting on customers. They got a grunt in greeting, my edginess spurring Lou to make me stay in the back for the rest of my shift. It was even easier to not be sociable on the set. Things were two levels above the usual chaos. Time was running short, and we were behind on the production schedule. I’d spied Caiden having a heated discussion with a woman who, I suspected, was Don Diamond’s agent.
I lingered in the shadows, doing odd jobs, following the key grip that worked for Caiden around, trying to absorb what my job with Muffin Top would be like as my mind kept playing scenes from Philadelphia on a steady loop. Worry hung off me like a wet wool cloak. What if he was positive? What would I do? Die. I would die, here in the city, all alone.
My macabre thoughts were my only companion. I shied from talking to the others on the set, nodding dully when something was said to me, and I kept a wide berth from Caiden. Maybe it was lucky that he was so involved with the movie. It kept him from seeking me out. I spent a few hours getting an elevated camera secured to a skateboard dolly, which was simply a long stretch of rails and a wheeled cart. We use them to ensure smooth horizontal camera movement.
Once the lighting and cameras were ready, I stood at the back of the hundred or so workers and extras and two hellhounds who would charge into the scene when directed by the animal wrangler. This scene tonight was a dramatic one where Don confronts the knowledge that the man he loves has turned him into an undead bloodsucker. Lots of shouting to the skies and beating on the chest. Don, amazingly, fucking nailed it on the first take. Even the damn dogs raced in and laid down beside their new master in a perfectly choreographed moment of pure hellhound love. Everyone standing around applauded the moment. Don wiped at the tears rolling down his cheeks then bowed as if he were on stage.
“And that’s that. Now we clean all this shit up,” Wally wearily said as he left me to dismantle the trolley and track. Everything was loaded into vans and taken back to Budgie in the Dell until we’d haul them back for the final shoot tomorrow night. It was a huge pain in the ass but that was the downside of location filming. The city had not been willing to let us set up camp on 5th Avenue for six or seven weeks. Sometimes they would, but not for this film. Why? Who knew? Maybe because it was LGBT and they wanted to be dicks. Or maybe shutting down 5th Avenue for that length of time was simply unthinkable. Whatever. It made our end of things doubly difficult.
I clocked out—not that there was a time clock anywhere—at one a.m. as a light rain shower moved into the area. Ducking around the block, I showed my Budgie in the Dell ID employee lanyard to one of several NYPD blocking off Bryant Park as well as the entire block until they could reopen the streets at 2 a.m. sharp. He gave me a nod, and I stepped over a low rope, hands in my pockets, my goal the nearest subway entrance. Caiden appeared from behind the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe monument, a big umbrella over his head. I skidded to a halt, my shoulders and hair wet, and gawked stupidly.
“Join me?” He held the umbrella off to his left a bit. I looked around, up at the lights and the softly falling raindrops and let them gather on my cheeks and lashes. “Devon?” When I stepped under the umbrella, the warm smell of his cologne wafted under my nose. His arm brushed mine, his hip as well.
“We fucked bareback.” I’d not meant to say it like that, so bluntly, but several hours of worry simply pushed the tactless words out of my mouth. It was hard to see his expression under the shadows the umbrella cast, but I could hear his sigh.
“Yes, and I am taking full responsibility for that.” He slid his arm through mine and led me to a small table with tiny green chairs. “Let’s talk.”
“It’s raining,” I pointed out.
“Yes, it is. I love this city on a rainy night.” He sat down on the wet seat, hooked the closest one with his foot and pulled it close, and then held up his big umbrella. I sat, uncaring that my pants would get wet. They were mango shorts so, yeah, likely to never be worn again anyway. I huddled up onto myself, hugging my middle, wishing I’d been able to eat because now I felt lightheaded. “Okay, so before you flail yourself into a panic. I’m negative, I take PrEP, and I’m tested regularly as I assume you are so we should be fine.” And this was where my eyes fell to my old sneakers and the key lime socks worn with them. “Devon? Is there something you need to say to me?”
“I don’t know my status. I’m sorry, I just…I was too ashamed to go to my family doctor back in Kansas and ask, and then when I was kicked out I lost my insurance coverage so, yeah, I can barely afford my rented room under the fucking restaurant; paying for blood tests is not happening.” He didn’t reply right off. I squeezed myself tightly. “What if I have it and made you sick?”
“Devon, you need to breathe.” I pulled in a long, rattling breath then let it out. “Okay, do that several more times.” He switched his umbrella to his left hand so he could rub my back with his right. “Good. Okay, now listen to me. I’m taking a tablet every day which provides a ninety-nine percent reduction in HIV risk. Are you on it?” I shook my head. “Okay, well, we’ll get that set up for you tomorrow right after we both go get tested.” I began arguing, citing my pauper status, but he shut me down. “First off, there are ways to get the medicine when you’re poor. But, I’ll cover the costs until your health insurance kicks in under your new union.”
“No, I can’t have you doing that when we’re not even together.”
His hand moved from my back to my face, his thumb and forefinger taking my chin then gently lifting and turning my eyes to his. The ambient light of the city and surrounding buildings weren’t quite bright enough to show me his eyes well, but the tender kiss he gave me let me think they were that warm cloverleaf color they shifted to when he was emotional.
“No matter what happens with us, this is something I want to do for you because I care about you. So, tomorrow we get up early, I’ll get us into my doctor, we’ll test together, and then we’ll get you a nice, long prescription and we’ll move on.”
“I’m really wrecked,” I confessed, falling to the side to bury my nose in his throat. “What if I’m positive? My pastor told
us—”
“We’re not using anything your pastor told you as scientific fact. Even if you are positive and given how inexperienced you were when you came into this romance of ours, I highly doubt you are, but if you are that is not a death sentence, not anymore. So I need you to scrub all the shit you’ve been fed by homophobic zealots and learn about life as it really is. Knowledge is power. How does a brilliant future filmmaker like yourself not know what you need to know about life as a modern gay man?”
“I’m a fucking bumpkin. I guess I just…I’m stupid.”
“No, no you’re not, you’re just ill-informed.” He pressed a kiss to my wet hair. “This is not exactly how I hoped to spend the night, but when we get to my place, we’re having a short but important lesson about all the things you’ll need to know. As a gay elder—”
I sat up to stare at him. “Elder? Really? You’re eight years older than me not forty years or something.”
“Life experience, honey,” he teased. Some of the cramping in my belly eased. “I got caught up in the moment, but I promise that will not happen again. Is this why you ran off without eating this morning? Luis was nearly in tears. He thought you were disgusted with the warmed-over oatmeal. I tried to text you a dozen times but you never replied.”
And there was another hard issue to deal with. I wasn’t mentally ready to toss that out on the table, not with the past fourteen or so hours of stress I’d just put myself through. Better to keep that to myself. I’d already embarrassed myself enough for one night, no sense in making a grand show of declaring my love for him. No. This I kept to myself. Forever. I’d burdened him enough already.
“Yeah, my phone died twenty minutes after I got to work, and my charger is at your place. I was kind of freaked out about the medical stuff.” It was only a half lie, but it sure as hell tasted like a full lie as it lay on my tongue.
“Silly boy,” he said with a sigh. “Okay, well, let’s go home and talk over some hot chocolate and a few peach pastries Luis baked for us. He bakes when he’s blue. Unless you’ve eaten your weight in brioche?”
My stomach snarled. “I could eat some pastries.”
He slid his arm around my waist. The walk was leisurely, the rain soft little pitter-pats on the umbrella. If I’d thought my feelings for him had been strong this morning, the walk and subsequent late night talk over cocoa and peach tarts solidified things. Yes, I loved him. To hell with old people who say instant love is a farce or a flight of fancy. I’d fallen hard and fast. It was one hell of an exhilarating and terrifying experience.
As was going to the doctor the next morning to be tested.
“I shouldn’t have eaten those spicy scrambled eggs,” I whispered to Caiden as we waited in one of the poshest medical offices I had ever seen. Even the exam rooms were tastefully done in cool shades of light blue and yellow, uplifting colors according to Caiden. Maybe they made him feel happy inside, but I was two burps away from throwing up in that pricey trashcan behind the cool blue privacy curtain.
“It was nervous eating,” he replied, his hand resting on my knee a most welcome anchor. “I do that when I’m feeling down. My first movie, a short, was panned by every critic who viewed it. I ate fourteen tubs, not quarts, those huge cheap ass tubs you get for birthday parties, of ice cream in a forty-eight hour time span.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. To this day I cannot see or smell mint chocolate chip ice cream without feeling queasy.” I tried to smile. It failed. “It will be fine. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
He gave my knee a squeeze, and we waited a little longer, then a little longer, and then a little longer still. By the time the doctor tapped on the door then slipped into the room, my anxiety was spiraling out of control.
“I have it, don’t I? That’s what took you so long, right?”
She sat down beside me on a small rolling stool. All I noticed about her was that she was a redhead and middle-aged. “I’m sorry for the delay. We had a baby come in with a life-threatening fever and we had to attend to her. Your results are both negative.”
Oh my God. I had just shouted at a lady for saving a baby. Relief crashed down on me. It knocked me to my knees mentally. Caiden pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and whispering sweet tender things that eventually stilled the tears and tremors.
“Here,” he said, handing me a neatly pressed silk handkerchief that matched his black slacks and dove gray polo shirt. “Thank you, Doctor Mako. Can you please write a prescription for Devon here for his own supply of PrEP? Can you make it for a year? A private payer will cover it, as well as the bills for this test and consultation.
“Of course. If you’d like, when you check out, you can set up another appointment to be retested in three months or so, and if those come back negative as well, you’ll be able to consider getting rid of the condoms.”
“We’ll certainly consider it.” Caiden thanked her again then swept me along. He waved down a cab, and we rolled to his pharmacy. He paid for my prescription as well as a huge box of condoms. I felt absolutely shitty, bottom of the barrel, worthless. “These are for you. No, do not say a word.” He waved down another cab, this one reeked of onions. “6th Avenue,” he told the cabbie, a skinny guy with a wide nose and hairy ears. “Use the condoms every time, even with the prescription. It takes anywhere from seven to twenty days to be effective, according to what I’ve been told. Also, there are other nasty things out there besides HIV that you do not want to contract. When you find that special someone, then you can relax a bit, but until then, boot up, buddy.”
What if I’ve already found that special someone?
“Yeah, I’m not going to be out cruising for sex as soon as your plane takes off.”
He gave me the oddest look. Pensive. Flattered. A funny tangle of emotions played out on his face. “Well, just be careful.” He leaned over to taste my lips. “I’ve grown wonderfully fond of you.”
“Same.” He snuggled close, letting his perfectly gelled hair rest on the shoulder of a cinnamon-colored t-shirt with a panda bear wearing aviator glasses for a moment. Luis had toned down the colors today and had laid out the t-shirt with black jeans. “If I asked to be able to pay you back for the clothes…”
“I’d say hush. Now, let me fill you in on what will happen tonight after that final scene is in the can.” He launched into this long discussion, punctuated by a phone call from Polly, about the atmospheric lighting for the scene where Don is reunited with the vampire he loves and how important it is thematically to the whole story of love, betrayal, and forgiveness. “And then we’re going to go to The Purple Plume for the wrap party. Tell Lou that you’ll miss work tomorrow because I cannot foresee us getting to bed before the sun comes up.”
“I’m going to get fired,” I replied, and Caiden waved off my concern.
“He won’t fire you. He’s a softie.” Yeah he was, but I was really screwing the work ethic I’d grown up with. “Just remind him that this is the last night of production, and then you’ll be back to being a full-time brioche baker.”
We pulled up in front of Babette’s. Caiden gave me a fast kiss before heading to his office for a few hours of work on the eight thousand other projects he had going. I watched the yellow cab blend into the crush of early morning traffic then glanced across the street. Clutching my tiny bag of meds and Trojans, I had an overwhelming urge to go lie down in the grass of Bryant Park and listen to the wandering violinist.
“Hey, Devon, you going to stand out there all day staring into space or you coming into work?” Lou shouted from the open door of the shop. I smiled sheepishly and joined him, hoping I could wheedle one more day off without being raked over the coals. The burn from his upset was only a light one, like a mild sunburn on my ass. Caiden was right, Lou was a softie despite his gruff exterior. He put up with a lot of shift changes and days off from college students, and I often wondered why, so, as we were making a batch of do
ugh, I asked.
“Never got to go myself. Wanted to be a fancy bakery chef, maybe work in the Grill across the street or some uptown place, but life got in the way,” he said as he gradually added a bit more flour to the mix. I stood beside him, watching the giant hook roll and knead the dough, sweat making every tiny molecule of flour in the air cling to any exposed flesh. A shift in a bakery during the summer was akin to spending eight hours in the seventh level of Hell.
“You could still go,” I suggested, using my dirty white apron to swipe at my wet brow.
He chuckled. “Nah, I’m too old, ain’t got enough spry brain cells left. Better to help you kids.”
“Thanks, we kids appreciate it.” I patted his thick shoulder and moseyed over the sink, the huge pile of doughy baked-on pans waiting for some elbow grease making me groan. I was never so glad to be let go at two instead of five. “I promise this will be the last time I ask for a day off until fall semester starts,” I shouted to Lou as I whipped my apron into the blue laundry bin.
“I hear ya!”
He waved me out. Sandy gave me a glower. I gave the skinny young woman with the green hair a chipper salute then bolted out into city heat that nearly stole your breath. July had arrived, and it was unhappy. Humidity hung in low pockets of moisture at the tops of the skyscrapers. Waves of heat undulated off the black top, the road shimmer adding to the cloak of yuck settling over the city. I bet a ton of urbanites beat it out of Manhattan over the weekend to celebrate the Fourth in a cool little cabin in the Catskills. Swimming in a lake sounded amazing right about now.
