An Exaltation of Larks

by Suanne Laqueur

Javi promised and thanked the Durantes from the scraped bottom of his heart’s barrel. He packed up and went to the one other person who hadn’t turned a back on his plight.

  Leni Rivera had been kicked out of her own house when she got pregnant at sixteen. She built her beauty supply business on guts and unsentimental determination, writing off her family’s estrangement as pure laziness.

  “So much easier to blame the slut,” Leni said. “Throw it away like garbage and pretend it never happened.”

  “What happened to your baby?” Javi asked.

  “None of your business.”

  Leni was tough but decent. She let him sleep in the storeroom of her beauty shop and cooked him a meal or two. When she heard of jobs in Flushing or Elmhurst, she sent them Javi’s way. He lugged boxes, stocked inventory, made deliveries and got paid in cash, which he socked away in a empty coffee can. Counting it comforted him. Work soothed him. He went into a job knowing exactly what was expected and what he’d get in return: I will do this. You will give me that. We have an agreement.

  Unlike the made and broken promises of love, the transactions of employment were absolute.

  “Love’s dangerous,” Leni said. “It destroys more than it creates. I’ve seen more people use love to be manipulative than be supportive. Fuck it, Javi. Sex and money, those are your constants.”

  True to her word, she took Javi to bed on his eighteenth birthday. His life shifted into a triangle of school, work and sex. He laid low at school. He worked hard—no matter the task, he gave it his best.

  Do a good job.

  Whatever you do, be excellent at it.

  Instead of his father’s pride, he was rewarded with sex. Leni didn’t love him, but that was all right.

  Love was no friend of his.

  He heard Rosa sold the restaurant. He heard she paid back some of the money owed to Miguel, but not all. He heard these things from Miguel and a few buddies, who cornered him at a loading dock, informing him the outstanding debt was now Javi’s responsibility.

  “Coward,” Leni said, laying a steak on Javi’s blackened eye that night. “He can’t deliver the message himself, has to bring a posse along. Some men can’t do anything unless there’s an audience.”

  “What am I going to do?” Javi said.

  “Soon as you graduate, you get out of here.”

  “And go where?”

  “Let me think.”

  She had a friend who had a friend who knew a family with a spare room in their Washington Heights apartment. Javi packed up his things once more. Leni drove him over the Triborough Bridge, along 125th Street through Harlem, then up Broadway to the building on West 172nd Street.

  “Don’t come back to Queens,” she said.

  “With pleasure,” he said.

  She kissed him goodbye and drove away. Javi stared after, imagining an umbilical cord attached to him and her bumper. Stretching out long, then snapping.

  He had to breathe on his own now.

  His room was tiny, but out its single window he could see the George Washington Bridge. The family was cordial to him. He came and went invisibly, leaving his bed made and no trace of himself in the kitchen or bathroom.

  He made one phone call a week to the apartment in Queens. He was still too hurt and angry to speak to his mother, but he made the gamble in case Naroba picked up. She never did. He took one entire Sunday to go to Corona and skulk in the shadows of his neighborhood, searching for a glimpse of the Queen. She didn’t appear.

  Fight them, Naria, he thought, heading home on the subway. Fight them hard. You’re a queen, not a pawn.

  He found work waiting tables at a popular place on the Upper West Side. He was an excellent waiter without having to try: bilingual, charming with the customers, deferentially flirtatious with the women. His coffee can bulged with the money he made in tips. You could bartend in New York at eighteen, and the manager gave him a couple brunch shifts.

  “Goddamn, I thought the building was going to tilt off the foundation,” the manager said during closing. “You should’ve seen the women crowding his end of the bar. How many phone numbers you get, kid?”

  Javi got a ton, but he didn’t dare bring a woman back to his little room. Hookups had to be done at her place. Problem was, it was usually married women slipping him their digits.

  And his heart had rules about things like that.

  He came home late one night and Tío Miguel was waiting outside his building. To his credit, he came alone.

  “Time you started paying me back,” he said.

  “Hello to you, too,” Javi said, shouldering past. He was hitting the gym in his free time, finding physical strength comforted him as much as cash. But he was tired tonight. Taken off-guard by Miguel’s appearance. And he was young, still harboring a shred of stubborn belief your family would do you no harm.

  Miguel seized the back of Javi’s jacket and yanked him back off the stoop. “Don’t fuck around with me, bugarron,” he said. “I will fucking bury you.”

  “You and who else,” Javi said. Then he was thrown down to the pavement.

  “You’re gonna pay, you cocksucking pájaro.”

  “I don’t owe you shit,” Javi said. A kick to the balls immobilized him. He curled up tight, enveloped in pain and nausea.

  “You move up here looking for more of your papi chulos, huh? You looking for Nesto? Is that it? You won’t find him here anymore.”

  The words and blows blurred together. Javi curled tighter, sucking wind through more kicks to his back and ribs. Finally they stopped, and he felt Miguel’s hands rifle through his jacket and pants pockets. He found the wad of cash, nearly three hundred in tips. He put one more kick in his nephew’s side, then walked away down the sidewalk.

  “I’ll be back,” he said. “Better suck enough dick to make the next payment.”

  Javi missed two days of work from the beating. He went back the third day, wincing and limping, and told the manager he’d been mugged. He was put behind the bar where he didn’t have to lift trays or hustle too much. After the brunch rush, the restaurant took a siesta. Only a couple tables were occupied. Two customers nursed drinks at the stools.

  Javi was inventorying bottles when in the mirrored wall behind the shelves he saw a man take a seat. He turned and looked into the face of Nesto’s father, Enrique Gil deSoto.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Enrique said.

  Javi stared back, secure with the wall of the bar between them.

  Enrique’s eyes narrowed. “Can I get a beer?”

  In silence, Javi set down a coaster, then drew a beer. He slid the heavy glass in front of the man he used to call Tío Kiko. Then he set both his hands on the bar top and waited. Ready. The bar’s owner kept a sawed-off pool cue under the deck. If Kiko was looking for some shit, Javi would give it.

  Enrique took a single, almost prim sip. “Where’s your sister?”

  “What do you mean, where’s my sister? How would I know where she is?”

  “She ran away.”

  Javi’s heart lurched but he kept his face neutral. “Good for her,” he said, while his mind filled with visions of his big little sister on the streets somewhere. Easy prey. A delectable morsel to feed New York’s underbelly.

  Fight them, Naria. Remember, you’re a queen.

  “Your mother’s heartbroken.”

  “My mother has no heart.”

  Uncle and nephew stared at each other. Finally Enrique looked away, clearing his throat.

  “Something else you want?” Javi said. “Miguel already shook me down, I got nothing to give you. Beer’s on the house, all right? I’ll buy you a fucking beer. That’s all I can do.”

  “I paid off Miguel,” Enrique said. He took a drink as Javi stared, then put the glass down and rubbed his hands together in a gesture so reminiscent of Rafael, Javi’s eyes misted.

  “You paid…?”

  “I paid it off. I’d rather you owe me the money than him.”

  Now Javi’s
eyes burned. “Oh, so I’m being refinanced? Am I supposed to be grateful? Why am I the one who has to pay for what happened? What the fuck has Nesto done to make amends after he ruined my life, huh?”

  “Nesto’s dead.”

  Javi stepped back. The duckboards behind the bar were slippery and he almost went down on his ass. The world wobbled on its axis as he looked into Enrique’s eyes, suddenly remembering Miguel’s words.

  You looking for Nesto? You won’t find him here anymore.

  “Qué?” he whispered.

  “He’s dead.”

  “He… How?”

  “Jumped off the GWB.” Enrique took another sip of beer, his eyes never leaving Javi’s.

  Cool, hop-infused air rushed into Javi’s open mouth. The majestic George Washington Bridge was the backdrop of his tiny world. He saw it every day from his little bedroom window. It was the gateway out of Manhattan. Not the end of the road.

  “I… Kiko, I’m sorry…”

  Like a cobra strike, Enrique’s hand shot out and grabbed the front of Javi’s shirt. “You sorry little faggot,” he said in a hiss. “You killed my brother and you killed my son.”

  The world stopped and abruptly began spinning the other way as Enrique released his fingers and took the ballpoint pen in Javi’s shirt pocket. He wrote something down on a napkin and pushed it across. “That’s my address. You pay me back. All of it. Or I’ll leave a hole in your ass so big, you can fuck two men at once.”

  Javi ducked as the pen was pegged at his head.

  “Pay me back and then this is over,” Enrique said. “I don’t ever want to see your face again.”

  As he left, he tipped the beer glass over, spilling it onto his nephew’s clothes.

  1983

  Wave Hill Estate, Bronx, New York

  The bride’s father must have spent a fortune.

  It struck Javi as obscene, the amount of dough people were willing to wantonly throw around to prove it couldn’t buy love. Still, he couldn’t complain—a lot of that thrown money ended up in his tip jar. He’d emptied it twice already.

  He enjoyed tending at parties and events more than he did at the restaurant. He could laugh and joke with the guests and pretend he wasn’t a worker, but a family friend who good-naturedly tossed off his dinner jacket and stepped behind the bar to lend a hand. Catching sight of himself in the mirrored wall behind the bottles, he thought his appearance agreed. He hated looking seedy and polyester at these kinds of venues. His shirt was crisp, the sleeves fastened at his wrist with silver cufflinks. His belt was tight and trim at his waist. The bowtie tied not clipped.

  Two women had been loitering at the bar all evening. One was about sixteen, buxom and fidgety in a strapless dress she kept fussing with, hauling it up her breasts. She was the only one in her age bracket here and clearly didn’t know what to do with herself. Stuck in the demilitarized zone of adolescent misery, either too young to do one thing or too old to do another. She reminded Javi of Naroba, who apologized to the oxygen in the room for breathing.

  Javi wished he could give her something to do. Nothing like a useful task to make you feel you belonged somewhere. Instead he made her beautiful Shirley Temples and coaxed her out in conversation. He bit his tongue from telling her to quit yanking at her neckline and relax. When she held still, she was lovely.

  At the other end of the bar was an older woman. Javi guessed mid-forties although she could’ve been well-maintained fifties (he wasn’t good with age estimation and with women, he’d learned to avoid the subject). In stark contrast to the teenager, this lady would’ve been serene in a wind storm. Her back was straight on the barstool, yet she looked as comfortable as if lounging on a chaise. She was all elegant economy: not a word or gesture wasted. The oxygen thanked her for the privilege of being breathed and hoped she had enough. She didn’t go to the bride and groom to convey her best wishes. They came to her.

  Javi served her two glasses of Bordeaux as she held court. All evening, her eyes followed him, with an interest he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Attraction, definitely. But something more. She studied him when he interacted with guests, her analytical gaze caressing the back of his neck. The caress turned to a press when he talked with the young teenage girl.

  It wasn’t unpleasant.

  Through the toasts and the bouts of dancing and the cake, Javi was kept busy. Then it was last call and last dance and the floor filled up with couples swaying to “Unchained Melody.” The busboy delivered racks of clean glasses. Javi dried them, deftly spinning them with one hand against a white towel in his other, holding them up to the light and then lining them up on the bar.

  “One for the road?” he asked the woman.

  She crooked her finger at him. When he came closer, she offered her hand. “Gloria.”

  He shook it. “Javi.”

  She frowned. “Short for?”

  “Javier.”

  “No. You should be just Jav. One syllable is best. And it suits you.”

  He smiled, rolling the new name around his mind a few times and thinking she might be right.

  “You’re an extremely handsome man,” she said.

  He didn’t yank at the neckline of the compliment, only continued drying a glass and letting her look at him.

  “Tell me your troubles,” she finally said.

  He laughed. “Shouldn’t you be telling me yours?”

  “I have none. And you sigh a lot when nobody’s looking.”

  Which was true. His worries tended to store in his lungs.

  “Money problems?” she asked.

  “Are there other kinds of problems?”

  “What if I paid you to come home with me tonight?”

  Jav almost dropped the glass. “Why would you pay me?”

  She put her cheek on her hand. “If I don’t pay you, it’s about you. If I do pay you, it’s about me. Understand the difference? Because with your looks and the way you behave with women, you could make…” She leaned toward him on her forearms and her voice turned confidential. “A lot of money.”

  On the cab ride to the Riverdale address, Jav felt a twinge of taboo guilt. He hadn’t been to church since leaving home, but the inherent Catholicism in his blood knew God wasn’t smiling at him right now. You didn’t get off for this kind of sin with ten Hail Marys. A pilgrimage to Lourdes on your knees more likely.

  Get paid for sex.

  This woman was going to pay him to sleep with her.

  Technically he could be called a prostitute. Or gigolo? Was that the word?

  She’s going to pay me to fuck her.

  Could he do it?

  It wasn’t a question of ability. He was twenty-one years old. He could fuck a fire hydrant and get something out of it.

  Why not money? A business transaction.

  I will do this, and you will give me that.

  Staring out the window, a montage of Richard Gere and Blondie’s “Call Me” in his head, Jav thought about the hand-to-mouth existence of the past three years. He worked hard, was excellent at what he did and every Friday night, he bought a lottery ticket.

  Second chances are given or made.

  Six months ago, his numbers came up lucky.

  It wasn’t the windfall of a lifetime. He wouldn’t be excellent at having no job. But to a cast-off boy living in one room in Manhattan, the lottery win was a miracle. He’d entered into a business agreement with fate:

  You give me a second chance and I will make the most of it.

  He paid off Tío Enrique and cut ties with the family for good. He found an apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue, miniscule and Spartan, but his. He opened a bank account and put a grand away, a stash not to be touched unless in emergency.

  He relaxed a little and started meeting his own eyes in the mirror. After a late, but welcome growth spurt, he stood up straight at six foot two. His debts were paid and he was allowed to breathe again. He enrolled in a few courses at Hostos Community College and started thinking about some
actual goals. Like getting a degree. Getting a job that could lead to a career. Getting a life.

  “You getting out, man?”

  Jav shook his head back to the present. He paid the cabbie and stood in front of the house a moment. And it was a house, not an apartment building. A mansion in a leafy green neighborhood that bore no resemblance or affiliation with New York City.

  What the fuck are you doing?

  He exhaled. Best case, they’d have a good time and he’d walk out with some cash. Worst case, he wouldn’t be able to get it up for her, he’d say an embarrassed good evening and run like hell. It wasn’t like anyone would know either way. Not like Miguel would bust in and throw him down the stairs.

  He rang the bell and Gloria opened the door. She was still wearing her black silk dress but she had taken her hair out its bun. “How lovely you came,” she said, beckoning him.

  Inside was golden warm, sleek and expensive. She hung his coat away and then crossed her arms, her expression stern.

  “Does anyone know where you are?”

  “My mother.”

  “Don’t be fresh,” she said. “Rule number one, always tell someone where you’re going. Even if you write it down and tape it to your mirror.”

  “All right,” Jav said, wondering what she meant by always. Always in general? Or always when he was going to a strange woman’s house to get laid? He got the feeling she had done this before.

  But who says I’m doing this again?

  “Rule number two,” Gloria said, “trust your gut. If you get where you’re going and your gut tells you to leave, put down the money and get out.”

  She handed him an envelope. “Rule number three, the money is given up front. And the money is for your time. This is for the next three hours and what happens in those hours is between two consenting adults. Rule number four, it’s about me. Got all that?”

  Jav nodded.

  “Can you handle one more rule? Put that away, please, the less we see of the money, the better.”

  Jav nodded again, slipping the envelope in his pocket.

  “Slow is better than fast. Less is better than more. Be confident. And if you’re not feeling confident, fake it.”

  “That was four more rules.”