If the Fates Allow

by Annie Harper

  Admittedly, the Casa Blanca hadn’t always been Jack’s idea of a great bar. It had been an acquired taste, born of devotion and a willingness to follow. To some, it came across as fashionably ironic: Kasbah décor-meets-Mexican restaurant to a soundtrack from the American songbook. Jack would protest that it was a hipster joint, would try to default to something chic and modern atop Bunker Hill, an elegant spot with a view, but the Casa Blanca’s quirks and contradictions grew on him over time.

  Like a fungus, he would say.

  Like love, he would be admonished.

  Maybe it became so much a part of his routine because it was where they had spent many of their best moments together and a few of their worst.

  The Casa Blanca was a habit born out of a relationship, a routine that died of unnatural causes one year ago.

  Rattan fans swirled overhead, casting erratic shadows across the depths of the near-empty room. Televisions at opposite ends of the bar echoed the play-by-play of ESPN in hushed and reverent tones; the voice of the broadcast team usurped by Peggy Lee.

  At the far corner, his back to the entrance, a solitary bartender wiped glasses while glancing at the game.

  “You open?” Jack asked.

  “So long as you’re thirsty,” he answered without so much as a glance in Jack’s direction, as if anticipating the interruption. “But the kitchen’s closed.”

  “That’s all right,” Jack said. He made himself comfortable at a table a few feet from the bar and adjusted his chair to face the television. It might not have been sociable, but he wasn’t there for conversation.

  A napkin floated to the table. A bowl of Chex Mix settled in front of his fingertips. “What are you drinking?”

  Jack glanced at the bartender’s hands without looking up—the prominent veins hinted at athleticism. The nails were buffed to a soft sheen.

  He drank beer at games, but beer was a drink for the sociable, to be consumed among friends. Whiskey had an appropriately solitary feel, but seemed out of place for a warm evening.

  “Tequila,” he said. “Casa Dragones.”

  “And here I had you figured for bourbon.”

  It would have been a good guess. But he’d had too many nights lately when he made the acquaintance of a glass of Kentucky’s finest. Besides, the Casa Blanca was known for its tequila collection. Jack had known that as a regular, just as any experienced bartender would.

  “You’re new here?” Jack asked. He glanced up, finally registering a brief connection with the young face looking back at him. Months before, when the Casa Blanca was habit, he knew all of the bartenders. This one must have been hired in the year since Jack walked away.

  The bartender nodded toward the multi-colored Christmas lights strung atop the bar and shrugged.

  “The new guy always gets the short straw, right?”

  “I had a feeling,” Jack said.

  “Because I got your drink wrong?”

  “On any other night, you would have had it right. I haven’t had tequila in months.”

  The bartender reached for the sliding library ladder that would help him climb to the heights behind the bar. He stretched for the clear bottle with easy, singular grace.

  “Lime with that?” he asked, reaching for a short tumbler.

  Jack shook his head. “I’ll be sipping it.”

  The bartender winked and set the glass aside. He opened a cabinet where specialty barware was stored, pulled a stemmed tequila glass from the shelf, and spun it between his fingers before setting it on the bar and pouring a generous shot.

  He set it on the table and stood, hands on his hips, as if awaiting a compliment.

  “Thanks,” Jack said.

  “No problem,” the bartender responded, but he didn’t move. If he was waiting for an invitation, Jack hadn’t planned on extending one. “Can I ask you something?”

  Jack sipped the drink in silence.

  “It’s Christmas. Why are you looking like you’re headed to a business meeting, Jack Volarde?”

  Jack scowled at the bartender. Young and clueless. But he carried himself with casual confidence, undeterred by Jack’s intimidating glare, a look he had mastered in countless closed-door negotiation sessions.

  The bartender nodded toward a television across the room, the only screen set to the local news. On it, the mayor smiled and handed out holiday dinners with Jack at his side.

  Jack glanced at his watch. 5:01 p.m. The mayor had won the Christmas night news cycle.

  “People recognize you all the time, right?”

  In a town that paid its debts in currency of celebrity, Jack sometimes hated the fact that he was considered one, at least in political circles. His face was familiar to anyone who paid attention to city hall or to the mayor’s ascension from neighborhood organizer to polished politician. Recognition didn’t usually surprise him. Being called out did. He looked back at his drink. He didn’t respond.

  “You following him to Sacramento?”

  Ah, there it was: the question asked by political junkies citywide—the question that obliged Jack to remain mute, at least for another week or two.

  Of course the mayor was running for governor. His next decade was carefully charted to place him on the fast track to the US Senate and quite possibly beyond.

  “Who said he’s going anywhere?” Jack responded, a practiced non-denial.

  “Who doesn’t?” the bartender answered. He grinned—a warm flash of cheeky smile that said I’m on to you. “There are people who think you belong up there, or maybe DC.”

  Jack chuckled, more a muffled courtesy harrumph than legitimate laughter. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been solicited: a run for the state legislature or maybe Congress. He had the brains, the looks, the silken voice, and a quick wit that could easily win over hearts and minds. He had allowed himself to consider the possibilities only infrequently, but Jack was married to this life, to this city, and, for all intents and purposes, to the man he had lost the year before.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  “A change of scenery can be a healthy thing.” The bartender tossed his towel aside and rested his hips against the dark wood of the back bar.

  “Is this one of those bartender things, where you get the guy to tell his life story? Because you shouldn’t bother. There’s nothing here.”

  “It’s what bartenders do,” he said. He extended his hand. “I’m Javier, but call me Javi. Javier’s reserved for the long, full-name treatment.”

  Jack allowed himself a muted chuckle. He knew how that worked.

  “So, now that we’re on a first name basis, let me ask you something. There has to be a dozen places you could be right now. What are you doing alone in a bar on Christmas?”

  Because it’s better than being home alone.

  If he was going to spend Christmas on his own, he had to do it where he could at least distract himself.

  “Maybe I just wanted some peace,” Jack said, hoping to put an end to the conversation. But there it was again, that cheeky smile, almost a smirk. It reminded Jack of a look he had come to know well over the past half-dozen years.

  “And so you came here?”

  “You were open. Your air conditioning felt good. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Was that all?”

  Of course not.

  The city and life that once had felt so rushed had stalled into a slow-motion dive over the past year, though the falloff was imperceptible to anyone but Jack. His had kept his calendar booked. His assistant had tried to push off appointments to other members of the mayor’s staff. The mayor himself had encouraged Jack to slow down, to take a break.

  None of them realized that his life was already slow, nearly a crawl. No matter how frenetic his workload had appeared, it was never enough. To Jack, the world turned at a glacial
pace. Breaks allowed him time to think, to dwell on his life—and he wasn’t prepared for that.

  “Is that all?” Javi repeated. He placed his hands on the back of the chair across from Jack; he was digging in, pushing for more.

  The playful tease that had accented his words had evaporated.

  Jack looked up and took him in for the first time. The bartender was a few years younger than he, old enough for the earliest hint of laugh lines beside his eyes, but young enough that he had to push back the ever-present fall of chestnut hair. His eyes were focused and inquisitive and trained squarely on Jack. Once Jack would have taken notice sooner and done something about it.

  “I used to come here a lot,” Jack said.

  It had taken some convincing to get Jack through the inlayed doors of the Casa Blanca for the first time.

  You’ll love this place.

  But I made reservations.

  Cancel them.

  You know how hard it is to get into Bestia on a Saturday night?

  Not for you. You’ll like this. Take off the tie and live a little. Trust me.

  He had been taken aback. He didn’t belong there. The Casa Blanca’s customers were too young, too self-consciously hip, too aware of the ironic clash of food and decor. But Joey? Joey loved it.

  And, over time, so did Jack.

  “Let me guess,” Javi pressed. “A breakup?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Javi deepened his grip on the chair. Glen Miller echoed through the room, “Moonlight Serenade.” Jack couldn’t break the interloper’s gaze.

  He held the stem of the tequila glass tighter and tighter—an agave death grip that secured his confidence.

  His conscience told him to stay mute, to shoo this guy away. But something that Jack couldn’t quite pinpoint opened the door for him, and he cautiously walked through.

  “He’s dead.”

  The room went silent, a simple break between songs that accented an already awkward pause.

  “I’m sorry,” Javi said.

  Jack wrapped his fist around the stem, locking the glass to the table.

  “I know what it’s like to lose someone—to know that it’s over, even though you’re not ready.”

  “You make it sound like breaking up,” Jack said.

  Javi dipped his chin, looked up to Jack, forced him to meet his eye. There it was again, that look, that light. It was more subdued, but unmistakably and unexpectedly reassuring. Jack’s cascading grief started to dissipate, even as this stranger overstepped the lines behind which Jack had so firmly entrenched himself.

  “It’s exactly like breaking up,” Javi said. “Getting used to being alone, overcoming that weird guilt when you finally let yourself live again, forgiving them for leaving you?”

  “He doesn’t need my forgiveness.”

  He hadn’t been perfect, not by a long shot, but Joseph Francis Xavier McCallan had had a way with people, just as he’d had a way with Jack.

  They had met at a fundraiser, not that that was Joey’s style. He couldn’t have cared less about politics. As a substitute teacher and part-time coach, he cared about kids and athletics and the role team sports could play in shaping students’ lives. When a pro soccer league sponsor hosted a fundraiser for an up-and-coming politician, Joey took the time to show up and to listen. He also caught the eye of a political advisor who was there as much as friend as he was consultant to the future mayor. And, though his introductory words sounded contentious, they were tempered by flirtatiousness that was undeniably direct.

  So, you’re one of those guys who serves twenty-year-old Scotch in office meetings and takes people out for five-hundred-dollar dinners, right?

  You’re thinking of a lobbyist. I’m a consultant to the mayor.

  Do you take people out for swank dinners?

  I take people out to dinners, sure. Why?

  Because I’d love a swank dinner sometime.

  Jack wasn’t usually drawn to scruffy beards or ponytails, but something about the russet hair and raucous laughter reeled him in like a fish on a hook. It started as casual conversation, continued with life stories over drinks, and concluded on gray thousand-count sheets in Jack’s condo.

  It took less than twenty-four hours for Jack to realize he was smitten, a week to know that this was something different, something more, and less than a month before he told Joey that he loved him, even if it was while Joey slept curled into his chest.

  In some ways, they couldn’t have been more different. In some ways, they fit together like a lock and key. It was the first time in his life that Jack realized he needed a contrast to his button-down life.

  And somewhere in his hodgepodge blend of priorities, Joey McCarran proclaimed a love of Jack Volarde.

  He also declared his love of a methodically poured Guinness, of late-night Australian rules football, of sing-a-longs at the Hollywood Bowl, and of the latest gourmet food trucks to hit the streets of Los Angeles.

  “Everyone loved him. He was a regular here… we were. He’d jump behind that bar and help out when it got busy.”

  “He worked here?”

  “Not exactly, but George knew he could mix a decent cocktail, and Joey knew how to talk up a stranger. He could get anyone to open up. He loved it—meeting people, making drinks, telling bullshit stories. He lived for it.”

  He called it home.

  They had all but moved in together after six months, but it never quite felt permanent. Joey had put down roots at the Casa Blanca; his relationship with Jack’s home was another story. Joey had insisted on keeping his place in the Valley, even though Jack had plenty of space in his downtown condo with all the clean and streamlined comforts that served as accent points to success.

  I can sell it. We can get something that we both like.

  And what could that possibly be?

  Jack drained the last of the tequila from his glass and raised his index finger as he set it back on the table.

  “Uno más?”

  Jack nodded. Javi grabbed a fresh glass and returned with the bottle.

  “Can I join you?”

  Jack let him pour two shots. He raised his glass in a silent toast.

  “Tell me more about your man.” Javi asked.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What do you need to tell?”

  Jack glanced behind the bar, to the mirror and the face staring back at him. His hair had become flecked with gray; his eyes were lined with the first tracks of crow’s feet. It had started subtly with a hint of salt sprinkled at his temples and through the stubble of a beard, and Joey had treated it as a ceaseless source of mirth, a means of reminding Jack of the years that separated them.

  Should I call you Daddy?

  Absolutely, fucking not.

  As much as he would tease, the jokes were nearly always accompanied by a gentle touch, by fingers that slowly trekked across Jack’s scalp as they traced the soft, silver lines.

  Not that he considered eight years that much of an age difference, but Jack could feel a pull between them that, while not exactly generational, highlighted a gap that sometimes separated them. The quirks that so many found endearing sometimes wore on Jack’s nerves: the persistent scruffiness; the roller-skate key worn on a leather strap around Joey’s neck; his damned insistence on riding a bicycle through the unforgiving traffic of downtown Los Angeles, when the subway stop was scarcely a block from his home and a driver was an app away.

  Joey had made it clear that he hated Jack’s suits, or at least that he liked taking them off. His elaborate shopping trip as part of his Make Jack Human Again Campaign resulted in bags full of color-washed jeans and skin-tight, short-sleeve shirts Jack wore only in private.

  And always, always there was the hair. Joey, with his wavy mop that fell to effortless perfection, couldn’t le
t it go. That wouldn’t be any fun. He would slip behind Jack in the shower and run his hands through the emerging slivers of silver.

  I know someone who can fix this.

  You know you like it.

  You’re kind of hot for an old man. If I squint a little, it’s almost like sleeping with Clooney.

  “For what it’s worth, it looks distinguished.”

  “What?”

  “Your hair. You’re one of the guys who just looks hotter as he gets older, aren’t you?”

  Jack shook his head and chuckled. It was the closest he’d been to a laugh since he’d heard the substitute weathercaster try to explain the origins of downslope winds that morning.

  “Was that too much? I can’t help myself. Silver foxes are my kryptonite.” Javi shot him a look that was at once intense and playful. It had been so long since he had been attracted to someone that Jack almost didn’t recognize that he was being hit on. Against his better judgment, he did nothing to stop it.

  “You want to tell me about your man? What was his name?”

  “Joseph,” he said. He sipped the tequila, letting it coat his lips. “Joey.”

  Jack traced the line of Joey’s spine with his fingertips, detouring at his hips. He braced his chin on Joey’s shoulder and whispered in his ear: Joseph Francis Xavier McCallan.

  I only hear that much name when I’m in trouble.

  You are trouble. And I like your name.

  “He had these damn dimples. You could see them straight through the beard. They were his tell, a sign that a big grin was about to break out, and laughter, so much laughter. That man loved to laugh. He said that the dimples were ‘happy creases.’”

  “Like this?” Javi grinned, and his smile folded into a cheerful repetition of folded skin. “I hear they’re my best feature.”

  They’re not bad.

  “I just keep smiling. I figure if they’re good, put ‘em on display, right? That’s why people with dimples smile so much.”