An Exaltation of Larks

by Suanne Laqueur

  He went into her bathroom feeling strangely vulnerable. Feeling only like himself. He pulled off his shirt and looked a moment at his chest and arms and shoulders. This is me. Both in and out of his experience, he undid his belt and slid his shorts down, looking at his legs. Me.

  Hot steam filled in his lungs, but his skin rose up in goosebumps, his nipples two tight hard beads in his chest. His hand closed around his penis. He was hard, aching and ready to do an excellent job. Yet he hesitated.

  Me, he decided. I will do this as me. And you will give me that which is you.

  He held her from behind a long, breathing moment. Then, soaped up and slippery, Val turned in his arms and drew him into the spray of water, holding his face in her hands.

  “Now what are you going to do,” she murmured.

  He set his thumb in the center of her bottom lip and trailed it down beneath her chin, tilting it up for his kiss. “I’m going to ruin you,” he said.

  They tore up the next three hours. He had an autobiography in his head and a fire in his belly. He fucked her into an incoherent heap between the sheets, then he crashed down next to her, an arm and a leg flung over her body, his fist in her blonde hair. Her juice on his tongue and her perfume in his pores. Feeling like one single, eight-limbed body.

  Excellent job, he thought before sleep took him.

  She hired him six more times in 1987. Always to accompany her to some short party or event, then back to her apartment for sex.

  “Is there something you want me to be?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told you, most clients have an ulterior motive going on. A role they want the escort to play.”

  She thought about it a moment. “I want you to be a lover who can’t wait to get his hands on me.”

  The pattern and flavor of the dates quickly fell into place. At events, Jav was attentive and deferential, following Val’s lead, taking silent direction and being precisely where she needed him to be. They didn’t hold hands or steal kisses, and when asked, they said they were simply friends. But every now and then Jav broke the rules, leaned in and smoothed a bit of her hair, or moved her necklace clasp from front to back. Whispered, “I can’t wait to get my hands on you.”

  With each date, the whisper grew bolder.

  “I can’t wait to get my tongue on you.”

  He’d move a bit closer to her, leaning a moment and letting her feel his impatience against her hip.

  “See what you do to me?”

  She never blushed. Only a rapid blink of her eyelashes above the cool nod of her chin showed her arousal.

  “I can’t wait to put it in you,” he said, stepping away again.

  “You’re going to have to.”

  She called the shots in public. Once her apartment door locked behind them, she wanted Jav to take complete control. Unhook her bra one-handed and put all his gifts to use.

  He always enjoyed it. She was good in bed. A pleasure to fuck. No neurotic quirks or insecurities. She relaxed completely during sex. She knew what she wanted, knew how to communicate that want in whispered words or a guided hand. Picking up her cues took no effort. Jav found from the first kiss, he could read her like a map, instantly knowing if they’d be sweet and tender, smoldering and silent, or lewd and loud. No matter the mood during sex, they always lay around afterward, talking like old friends.

  He liked the talking even more than the sex. With little prompting, he told her about his childhood in Queens. About the bitter estrangement from his family and the years of scraping by until he met Gloria.

  “Is Javier Soto your real name?” she asked.

  “Maybe.” His finger traced her eyebrows. “Is your real name Valentine?”

  “Maybe.” She turned in the circle of his arms and put her back against him. “Let’s keep it maybe.”

  Their chests rose and fell in deep, contented breaths.

  “Tell me about Alex,” he said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  Everything, Jav thought. “How did you meet?”

  The story captivated him. “He fled Pinochet’s coup in Chile in nineteen seventy-three,” Val said, “and came to live with his uncle. Dr. Penda lived a few streets over from us, he and my father were good friends. My brother Roger was Alex’s age. They hit it off, so Alex was always around, hanging out, sleeping over. I think every Sunday morning of my childhood, he was at our breakfast table. Then his uncle died when he was fourteen and my parents took him in.”

  “Adopted him?”

  “No. They couldn’t. They had no proof his parents were dead and there are international refugee laws about such things. If his uncle hadn’t specifically named my parents in his will, it could’ve turned into a real complicated legal matter. But it worked out as a foster situation, and he came to live with us.”

  “So he’s like a brother to you.”

  “Yes,” she said, shifting in Jav’s arms. “But…no.”

  “No?”

  She sighed. A heavy dark one, like the worried huff Jav often expelled from his own lungs. “I’ve always been attracted to him,” she said. A hesitation Jav had never heard filled her voice. “But I don’t mean sexual attraction. It went deeper, but… I was only twelve when we met.”

  “Your brain doesn’t have language for it at twelve.”

  “He made me so confused. The air felt different when he was around. Like it was trying to grab me by the shoulders and shake me. Do you see? Look at him. Do you understand? Look…

  “I did the only thing a twelve-year-old girl could, which was to either joke everything away or ignore him. Treat him like Roger. Nothing but a brother.”

  “What about when he came to live with you?”

  “Oh, I was fifteen and impossible by then,” she said. “Sophomore in high school and wouldn’t be caught dead crushing on a freshman. Please. I ignored him at school, and at home, we bickered constantly. Fighting over everything and driving my mother insane.

  “I still felt strange around him. Instinctively drawn to him, able to tell him anything, but scared of him at the same time. Scared of how I could tell him anything. So I fought him instead. He’s such a transparent guy, it’s easy to push his buttons.”

  “How do you feel about him now?”

  “Funny, whenever my thoughts start to dig into how I feel about him, it’s like a voice inside says No, dear, you’re not old enough yet. I’m twenty-fucking-six years old, what does that even mean?”

  She let out another dark sigh. “We were both on the ski team in high school. My senior year, we were on an overnight meet in Lake Placid, and Alex hooked up with one of my girlfriends. I’m telling you, I thought I was losing my mind.

  “I saw him kissing her in the hallway in the hotel. I stared, literally with my mouth open, as she stepped backward inside her room and pulled him along by the lapels of his shirt. Into her room and the door closed. Not with a slam but this little click that slapped my face. I thought I was going to throw up.”

  “From jealousy.”

  “The kind of jealousy that makes you want to commit murder,” she said. “The thought of her kissing him and running her hands all over him? I felt rabid about it. Foaming at the mouth and territorial. Like she’d robbed my house.”

  “Robbed your cradle.”

  “Then on the bus ride home, when she and I were sitting together? Out of the blue, no context whatsoever, she casually turns the page of her magazine and says, ‘Alex has a really big dick.’”

  Jav laughed and Val joined in, hands over her face. “I wanted to kill her. I hadn’t even seen a guy’s dick at that point in my life and not only had she seen one but it was Alex’s.”

  “She must’ve seen more than one. You can’t say a guys’ dick is really big unless you have something to compare it to.” Jav was starting to get hard, either from Val’s gorgeous body in his arms, or all this talk about Alex’s dick.

  Possibly both.

  “So nothing happened bet
ween you and Alex?” he asked. “Ever?”

  She rolled over and pulled Jav into a deep kiss. “Story for another day, as you’re so fond of saying.” Her hand closed over his erection. “Right now I’ve got another hour of this big dick.”

  “Bigger than his?”

  But then she was kissing him and a voice inside answered, No, dear, you’re not old enough yet…

  Be a lover who can’t wait to get his hands on me.

  Jav kept collecting the materials to build his story.

  “Where did you and Alex grow up?” he asked.

  “Little town upstate,” Val said. “By Poughkeepsie.”

  “What did your parents do?”

  “My dad’s a veterinarian. My mother…” She laughed softly. “My mother makes dollhouses.”

  “Really?”

  “She was once a curator at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Which displays one of the greatest dollhouses ever built. A silent film actress commissioned it. My mother’s father was one of the craftsmen who worked on it. He was in charge when the house went on tour in the thirties. Breaking it down, transporting, setting it up. Breaking it down again. My mother learned on the road, and when the house came to the museum for permanent display, she took charge of it. And in her leisure time, she built dollhouses.”

  “Well, that’s a profession you don’t come across too often.”

  “Her houses are displayed in a gallery in our town. Brings in a lot of tourists. We have this iconic Main Street, the heart of the business district. Every shop has a scale model, made by my mother, displayed in their front window. So it’s like we have two Main Streets: one big, one small.”

  Between dates, he found himself wanting her. Not just to fuck her but to be near her. To talk to her. To hear the stories of her family, anecdotes about growing up with Alex. In a weird twist on the Scheherazade tale, her stories about him were Jav’s reward for excellence.

  By the fourth date, it became hard to leave.

  “I’ll see myself out,” he whispered, as he always did.

  “All right,” Val said.

  He pulled the covers around her, tucking in. “I can’t think when I had a better time.”

  She smiled. “Am I your favorite?”

  “Yes,” he said, telling the truth. He kissed her.

  A little hum of pleasure curled in her throat.

  “Open your mouth,” he whispered. She did and he went deep, as if starting things, not finishing them.

  “You’re worse than a used car salesman,” she mumbled against his lips.

  He laughed and wormed his hand under the sheet, ran it down her stomach and between her thighs. She sighed as he slid fingers inside, then she crossed her legs around his hand, stopping and trapping him.

  “I can’t afford this,” she said.

  “It’s a gift,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “You start giving me gifts and then I start giving you my heart. Then I ask you to stop working and be faithful to me and then it’s over.”

  And the shitty thing was, he couldn’t argue with her. He gently took his hand away, tucked her in tighter and kissed her forehead. He dressed, retrieved his envelope off the mantel and left.

  Their sixth and last date, before Christmas of 1987, he almost went into her without a condom. Her hands stopped him, reached for one and rolled it on.

  “You’re getting sloppy,” she said softly.

  I want to feel you, he thought.

  When the three hours were over, he asked to stay.

  “I can’t pay you,” she said. “The budget is spent.”

  “I don’t want to be paid.”

  “Jav…”

  “I’ll pay you,” he said in a desperate impulse. “Another three hours, I buy the time back and it’s a wash.”

  Her fingers ran through his hair. “What’s the matter?” she whispered. “This isn’t you.”

  “I know,” he said, setting his forehead on hers. “I don’t know what it is, I only know I don’t want to leave. I want to stay and sleep with you.”

  “Jav.” Her arms crossed over his back. A hand settled warm and firm on the back of his head. “It won’t work.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because whatever drove you to become an escort is part of you.”

  “I do it for money.”

  “You do it because you’re good at it. You like being good at it.” She kissed his temple. “You’re crushing me.”

  He rolled off her, staying on his side to face her. Their bodies mirrored: cheek resting on a bent arm, kneecaps touching.

  “You’re a beautiful lover,” she said, stroking his cheek. “Best I’ve ever had.”

  “Mean it?”

  “Mean it.”

  “Being with you feels like home.”

  “I shouldn’t have to be your home.” Her eyes were bright and liquid in the dying candlelight of her bedroom. “The people who should’ve kept you safe put you in danger. The ones who should’ve known and loved you best threw you away. I don’t understand how, because you’re so good.”

  “Am I?”

  “Of course.”

  He only had about twenty minutes left. He ran his hands all along her body, pressing the moment into memory. “Are you going home for Christmas?”

  “Yes.”

  He imagined a multi-leaved table laden with food, surrounded by generations of silver-and golden-haired people. “Will Alex be home?”

  “Mm-hm.” The wordless affirmation was suffused with affection. It left Jav standing in a hotel hallway, watching Val be drawn into a room, a faint click slapping his face.

  “Tell me more about him,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I love stories.”

  She blinked slowly. “Alex is like bread.”

  “Bread?”

  “Not Wonder bread. I mean like a well-crafted, artisanal loaf of really fucking good bread. You know? He’s simple, but he’s finely made. His experiences have crafted him. He has a moral compass that only points one way.” Her laugh was soft in the dark. “He’s a lousy liar. No poker face whatsoever. But he’s good to have in a crisis. He does we.”

  “We?”

  “He always says things like, ‘We’ll get through it.’ Even if he knows he can’t do a damn thing, he’s there at your side. ‘We’ll work it out.’”

  “I sensed that,” Jav said, now hearing his voice from far away. “He was the guy I was telling you about. The night we had supper. I’d been going to Morelli’s for weeks. All those nights hanging around when he was working. Going out of my way to be where he was. The way he worked with the other waitresses, like he was the heart and soul of the night shift. I’d sit there wanting to belong. Wanting to be part of his we.”

  Val was slowly nodding, no shock in her face, only a satisfied revelation of pieces falling into place. “I see,” she whispered.

  Now Jav could smile at himself, an actor telling secrets to his dresser. “Giving him my card even though I figured it would end up in the garbage.”

  “I don’t know what else he’d do with it,” she said. “Maybe I don’t know everything about Alex, but I know he’s straight.”

  “And I’m bi-cautious,” he said. “It stays in my head, anyway. And now that you’ve described the dimensions of his manhood, I have a lot to think about.”

  She whacked him with a pillow. They wrestled a bit before he pulled her into his chest and held her still. “Let me stay. Just this once.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, Jav.”

  “I know.” He kissed her, then slid out of bed and got dressed. “I’ll see myself out,” he said, as he always did.

  “All right.”

  “I can’t think when I had a better time.”

  “Bet you say that to all your clients.”

  He put his face against her hair and inhaled deep. “You’re the only one who believes me.”

  “Goodnight, Jav.”

  “Goodnig
ht, funny Valentine.”

  He left the envelope on the mantel.

  She never called him again.

  1988

  Guelisten, New York

  When the doorbell rang, Val ignored it. Her aching head turned on the pillow and her dry eyes swept over the low eaves and gable windows of what had been her childhood bedroom. A guest room now, her twin bed long gone, replaced by this queen-sized one. Only a few of her mementos and possessions were on the walls and shelves.

  The doorbell rang again.

  The chime echoed away through the Lark home on Courtenay Avenue. The house was quiet but full: Val was in her room, Trelawney in hers, and the boys bunked up together in their old lair. All of them home for Fourth of July and hung way the hell over. They’d closed down McKierney’s Pub last night and then took a few six-packs down to the riverfront. Val fumbled on the bedside table for the water glass she’d wisely set there a few hours ago. It was empty. She winced as the doorbell rang yet again.

  A stumbling thump, followed by Roger crying, “Goddammit.”

  He sounded exactly like their mother. It was her favorite oath. Enjoyable to hear if it wasn’t directed at you. You didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Meredith Lark’s damnation.

  Groaning, Val got up and stumbled toward her door.

  “Who rings the bell at the fucking crack of noon,” Roger said. He wore nothing but briefs and five o’clock shadow. One arm was in a cast—he fell out of a tree two weeks ago and broke it.

  “Put some pants on,” Alex said, slapping a pair of shorts into Roger’s chest.

  “Where’s Mom and Dad?” Roger said, yawning as he stepped into them.

  “They took Grandma to brunch, remember?” Val said.

  Trelawney came out of her room, pale as milk. “A cop car is parked out front.”

  A vague nausea squeezed the back of Val’s throat.

  Roger led them down the stairs. Until he was sixteen, he never used the bottom four when descending, preferring to get a hand on the banister and hurdle the newel post. Sixteen was the year of the growth spurt, however, and he jumped the post one day, clonked his head on the front hall chandelier, broke three of its expensive bulbs and earned a “Goddammit, Roger” from Meredith that lost him the car keys for a week.