Worse were the ones who popped the question: could you live with them? The ones who swore they’d take care of you. All you’d have to do was hang around, take a fucking every now and again. Disappear when they needed you to. Reappear just as suddenly. They’d tell you how much they loved you, how they couldn’t live without you, and that was Poke’s cue, it was all he needed to hear. He rubbed their heads and scratched their chests. He smiled at their jokes. He did all of these things because they’d never see him again.
* * *
• • •
Rod didn’t mention his diagnosis the next week.
That week became a month. Two months eased into three.
Moments to disclose came and went. They popped up in the apartment, as the sky dimmed through the windows, and in the evenings while the boys slunk along the walls of Blur, and under the pulsing bass of Guava Lamp, and, in the morning, piled onto the sofa, after everyone had made it home, and a lull in the conversation had bloomed, and a blip propped open for confession, and Rod would take a deep breath, cross his legs, and brace himself, but what he actually ended up doing was nothing.
He’d spit some sort of aphorism. Ask if his boys were good on cash. Mention something about the cost of electricity, the fact that they were always wasting gas.
It pissed Poke off. All that talk about accountability. Doing the right thing for your family when you could. And here Rod was—fucking around. Over pride.
So Poke began to press him. He’d wait until they were alone. At the apartment, or on some barstools, or in the booth of some diner.
But whenever Poke brought it up, Rod only shrugged.
I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, he’d say, hardly even dropping his voice.
Rod wasn’t delicate about it. The other boys noticed. This brusqueness between them was new to everyone, a chill. They asked and they asked and they asked, and Poke told them it was nothing. Or at least nothing that mattered. That’s just how Rod was.
But Rod still tricked, four, five, six times a week. And Poke knew there was something wrong with that. Something irremediably fucked. He never wondered if Rod used protection because he knew that he did not, and Poke tried mouthing the words to himself, just to see what they’d sound like: Our leader has failed us. Worse than the guys he’s gotten rid of. More lost than they ever were.
Poke didn’t like the way any of that came out.
So some days Poke left the apartment, stepped through the leaves plaguing Montrose, and watched the traffic straddling West Alabama. The garages along the road spat their stew of bachata and country. Poke peeked into the Black Labrador, where people huddled over their gins, and he walked past the library, across Richmond, over I-69, and he watched the cars speed from one end of the Loop to the other.
* * *
• • •
A couple weeks later, Poke told Emil.
Poke had found himself at Rod’s apartment less and less, popping in only when he absolutely had to. He was spending most of his days on the streets, or lying around at Emil’s, though he figured that’d be short-lived. Poke assumed that the man would drop him eventually. He’d tire of this louse with his grime and his sullenness, and his fingers all over the countertop, and his piss all over the toilet bowl. Poke waited, hoping for the worst, but the worst did not come.
Emil never said a word.
Emil washed the dishes. Emil wiped the counters.
Emil left the living room whenever Poke was brooding.
He’d return with a mug of tea. A guest in his own home. The whole thing made Poke burn, made him blush.
So, when he told Emil about Rod, he wanted only to see what would happen.
Emil’s lips froze.
He stopped moving. Stopped breathing.
He asked if Poke had it, too. Poke said he did not.
Emil winced, shifting.
I get tested, Poke said. Often.
Often, Emil said.
Every few weeks, Poke said. Last week. And I’m on PrEP.
The pills? You can afford them?
They’re free for me.
And then Emil deflated into the recliner.
They lay down in the bedroom. Poke sipped tea from a mug. The sex they’d had was rough, or at least rougher than usual, enough for Poke to feel like he had it in him to say something. And Emil actually apologized. Said he didn’t know what’d come over him.
An apologetic john. It made Poke laugh. No one would’ve believed him, no one would’ve ever thought it conceivable. And that was enough for Poke to want to try again, and he straddled Emil, rocking the frame until the other man moaned underneath him.
Afterward, they realigned themselves, lost in a bundle of sheets.
Poke’d heard enough of Emil’s story by then to write the book on him: Emil fixed computers for a living, or he broke them, or he fixed them to show other folks how to break them, and people paid him to do this. He’d grown up in a country that no longer existed: Emil had lived with his mother, his father. A sister. The mother cared for the children and the father delivered babies, bringing them into the world from a shack on the outskirts of town. He stumbled home every evening with a sack full of vegetables, and sometimes flowers for his wife, and sometimes a treat for Emil. They played games over dinner, guessing which names he’d given that day. His father’s favorite, whether for a boy or a girl, was Sasha.
So, Emil said.
There were only so many, said Emil, and my father would cheer every time I got one right. He’d call me a magician. A seer.
As Emil got older, his country’s politics grew complicated. A resistance formed within the working class. The government retaliated. Emil’s parents didn’t want any trouble, they struck an awkward truce with the neighborhood, and Emil watched as their friends began to split among themselves. After someone started a fire in the house next door, his mother kept her children from going outside.
Poke said that must’ve sucked. Emil assured him it hadn’t.
On the contrary, he said, we made our own world indoors. Our house had districts, villages. They had histories and legends.
Emil told Poke that that time was the thing in this life he most missed.
One evening Emil’s father came home in the middle of the night, with blood all over his pants, soaked through to his knees. Emil and his sister wailed, but their mother immediately went for the towels in the cupboard. None of them asked where the blood had come from, but soon it was clear that it hadn’t belonged to their father.
Emil’s mother destroyed the garments. His father never told them what happened. No one in the house ever mentioned it again.
The family left the next morning—they caught a ride with Emil’s uncle. Emil told Poke that they drove for days. They passed towns he’d never seen before, smoldering and stricken, and Emil fell asleep and woke up and fell asleep. He was always lulled back under by his mother’s low hums, and eventually he heard the cry of planes leaving a runway, and that’s when the car finally stopped; they’d reached the country’s final checkpoint, and Emil’s uncle stopped once a sentry flagged them down.
The boys who pulled them over weren’t much older than Emil. They smelled like cigarettes, with rifles slung across their shoulders. Emil imagined his father slipping the straps over their heads, flinging the weapons aside, sending them home to their mothers, and that’s when one of the boys told his uncle their car was too full.
For their safety, they’d have to bring it around to the other side of the road.
Emil’s uncle sighed. His brother swallowed deeply. Emil’s mother gave her husband a slow, sidelong glance.
Emil’s father and his uncle stepped from the car, hands in the air. They showed the boys their papers, and the boys simply nodded. They said that the car was too full.
Emil’s father told the boys that they weren
’t leaving their country, they were taking a weekend outing, the airport was simply on the way, and the boys simply nodded. They said that the car was too full.
Emil’s uncle, crying now, told the boys that they were doctors, medical professionals, that it was possible he’d brought them into the world, and the boys, if only a little slower, nodded, expressionless, and they asked the men to walk to the curb, they’d only be questioning them for a moment, and Emil’s uncle began to sob, slowly, and Emil’s father exhaled, deeply, and he blinked slowly at his wife, and he smiled at Emil’s sister, and he had finally looked at Emil when the boys shot them both in the back of the head.
The boys stepped around the bodies, firing twice more into both.
The boys looked into the car. They squinted into the backseat.
Emil’s sister screamed. He felt as if he were drowning on the air. But his mother wordlessly maneuvered herself into the driver’s seat.
She asked if the boys needed anything else.
She said she had the children’s papers. She could show them the documents. She unfolded them on the steering wheel, setting them where her husband had sat just before.
They’re here, she said.
She told the boys to check them. The boys looked at Emil’s mother. They told her she could pass.
They waved to the kids in the backseat, told them to have a nice day.
They arrived in Los Angeles. They moved to Arizona. Emil’s mother made her family a life in Phoenix, where she died a few decades later.
Emil’s sister lived in Austin. She sent her brother cards. Sometimes she paper-clipped photos of her family, with a smiling boy and a white man in her arms.
So, Emil said. I don’t know what your friend should do, he said. I only know what I know. But I know that when you choose, you choose for yourself.
Poke stared at Emil. Then he stood up, and lumbered into the kitchen. He came back with a glass of water, and Emil thanked him with a grin.
Poke allowed Emil to weave his fingers through his hair, and Emil asked him how he’d feel if it were like this every night.
Poke didn’t say a damn thing.
He settled into the sheets, crooked his head on Emil’s knee.
It was a while before he fell asleep, and his dreams were not unpleasant.
* * *
• • •
Poke spent the next morning dozing on the sofa. He didn’t mention Emil’s question, and Emil didn’t bring it up. When Emil dropped Poke off, he waved goodbye, and Poke waved back, and he wondered if he’d ever see him again.
Nobody asked Poke where he’d been, or why he’d come back. The boys accepted him wordlessly. Scratch griped about the heat and Google told him to get a job and Knock called them all lazy fucks, and this, Poke thought, was just how life worked.
They took the night off, opting to walk the streets of Montrose. Nacho lifted a couple of six-packs from the CVS. The night felt pregnant with excitement for Poke, as did the next few evenings, and if he felt something missing then it sat under his gut, rustling only in periods of silence.
Poke didn’t think about Rod. He didn’t think about Emil. He thought about cheeseburgers from M&M Grill and getting fucked up and watching Your Name at the theater on Greenway Plaza and the way the flowers on Elgin blossomed beside the town houses.
A few mornings later, Poke was eyeing the apartment ceiling when Google kicked him square in the ass. Wanna hear something wild?
Probably the last thing I need, Poke said.
Too late, Google said. Our humble leader’s been taking less calls. I heard he’s been turning people away, Google said, and he expected Poke to say something.
But all Poke did was blink.
Bullshit, Poke said.
Real talk.
Really.
You know anything about that?
Poke knew that the moment had fallen square into his lap. It would not come this easily again.
No, Poke said.
Figures, Google said.
The two boys settled into the silence. A pair of drunks argued downstairs.
Who’d you hear that from? Poke said.
People who’d know.
Poke looked at Google. He really didn’t mind him. He asked why the fuck Google was telling him now.
Ha, Google said.
Because he’s your boy, Google said. Figured if you didn’t know, it wasn’t happening.
Well, Poke said.
He picked at the hair on his thigh. And, for a moment, it looked like Google would say something devastating, something irreversible, the sort of thing you can never take back. So Poke did a very smart thing, a very sensible thing: he raised his leg, shut his eyes, and let one go.
Fucking animal, Google said, but Poke looked him in the eye and saw that he was grateful.
The next afternoon, Poke was dozing on the sofa, drumming his fingers along the length of his hip, when Scratch called him outside to the porch, practically yelling.
Doesn’t matter why, he said. Fucking family meeting.
Poke found the boys smoking in a loose congregation. They passed a cigarette between them.
Why the fuck we gotta whisper when we’re out here paying rent, Knock said.
Getting our backs broke for it, too, Scratch said.
Because I said so, Nacho said. Fuck.
Poke, he said. We think your boy’s got the bug.
A long horn went off in the lane below. A sliver of Spanish slipped out of an open window. Poke raised his eyebrows very high, and then sent them very low, and he thought about how you only felt so much in your face.
Okay, he said.
Okay, Scratch said.
Word, Google said.
Okay? Nacho said. Okay? You fucking hear me?
Well, Poke said.
Let’s say he does, Poke said. Hypothetically.
Hypothetically? Knock said.
Like, let’s imagine, Google said.
So Rod might not, Knock said, but he also—
Let this nigga speak, Nacho said.
All I’m saying, Poke said, is if he does have it—and I’m not saying he does—then so fucking what?
The boys looked at one another.
I mean, what’s it matter to you? Poke said.
It matters because this motherfucker’s lying, Nacho said. It matters that we’ve got a motherfucking hypocrite in the house. And you know the rules. You fucking know the rules. This shit is not new and you know what needs to happen.
So he’s poz, Poke said. Okay. Whatever. But you think you just breathe that shit in? You think it’s like a fucking cold?
It isn’t, Google said.
Really, Scratch said.
Look, Knock said. We feel where you’re coming from. We get you.
He’s your buddy, Nacho said. He brought you in. He made you a good boy and he got you off the street. Just like every nigga out here. Did the same for me. I know where you’re coming from.
The rest of the boys nodded. They allowed a moment of silence to pass.
But, Poke said.
But we can’t have that, Nacho said. We can’t have niggas walking around talking shit about us, too. Saying we’re sloppy. Because that’s what’s been happening. That’s what niggas are saying. Or hadn’t you noticed?
And the truth was that Poke hadn’t. He really hadn’t known. Between the thing with Emil, and the pocket of tricks he turned regularly, word of mouth and reputation weren’t things he’d had to worry about. But, glancing from one boy to the next, he saw this wasn’t the case all around. There had been repercussions, even if he hadn’t seen them.
So you boot him off the island, Poke said.
That’s not what he’s saying, Google said.
It is exactly what the fuck I’m saying, Nacho said.<
br />
We’re all saying it, Knock said.
And you’re gonna do it, Nacho said.
Me, Poke said.
You, Scratch said.
Because, Nacho said.
If you’re really this motherfucker’s friend, Nacho said, if he’s really your fuckboy, you don’t want me having that conversation.
And, he said, gesturing across the entirety of the porch, you really want anyone else to?
* * *
• • •
Way back when, the summer after Poke left the shelter, he walked the heart of Houston over the course of a month.
He walked past the palm trees lining the Galleria.
He walked through the smog hanging over Memorial Hermann.
He walked over the concrete sprawl of Reliant, down to the fields overlooking Rice by the park.
Poke sold cheap dope and DVDs. When he could afford it, he bought hash from the Nigerians lining McKinney. He slept on the curb of Washington Avenue as partygoers sidled around him, sloshing beer from plastic cups between the cracks around his head. Poke would dip his finger into the gravel, dab it against his tongue, and decide that he hadn’t missed anything much at all.
When winter came around, Poke found himself under a bridge. He didn’t have any sheets and he was not the only one. He filched what he could from the yards of the condos lining Alabama, stepping over the Christmas lights, careful not to tangle himself in the bulbs, but once he’d settled behind a column they were always torn off his back.
Some nights the other homeless beat the shit out of him too. Occasionally, although less often, they settled down beside him. But mostly they took what they wanted and left, and Poke watched them go, shivering under the cold, and he saw that, sooner than later, something would have to change.
Eventually, he saved enough money from dealing to pick up a metro pass downtown.
He’d board the rail just before midnight, jumping off once the day workers started to cluster.
Lot Page 13
