And what the fuck? All he needed was a pair of socks—his were all in the laundry—and Juanito was out on a run to the bodega to get some bread and cinnamon for their Sunday morning French toast. It’s not like he had been searching for it.
He thought about opening the bedroom window and throwing the pipe out of it and watching it crash into a gazillion little pieces. He’d go downstairs and stomp on them with bare feet and when Juanito came back home with the bread and the cinnamon, he’d look him in the eyes and say, When you hurt, I hurt too, and he’d walk around a few steps and Juanito would see his bloody footprints and finally realize what he was doing.
No, he wouldn’t do that. He put the pipe back in the drawer, as if he had never seen anything. He took the blowtorch and put it at the bottom of the cabinet in the bathroom, behind the rolls of extra toilet paper. When he heard the front door click and Juanito do his best Ricky-from-I-Love-Lucy impression—honey, I’m hooooome!—he walked out of the bedroom without socks, kissed Juanito on the cheek, looked at the bags, and said, “Do you need any help?”
JUANITO
His boss, Paul, asked Juanito to help pick up a new speaker from a friend’s place on Greene. Juanito smoked a cigarette while Paul pressed the buzzer, then banged on the door, then cursed out the friend who had apparently forgotten about the ordeal. It was night, so all the stores on the street were closed. As they walked, Paul pouted. “I can’t believe that jackass,” Paul said, “isn’t home right now.”
“Maybe his buzzer is broken?” Juanito was feeling generous, though he was also annoyed that they had made the trek all the way to SoHo for nothing. Since they were in the area, Juanito asked, could they walk by the furniture store so he could get a glimpse of the famous sofa.
“Sure, why the hell not,” Paul said. “Might as well do something so the journey isn’t a complete waste.”
When they arrived and looked through the glass window, he saw what Daniel was talking about. Folded in two, there was a small piece of paper that read SOLD. “Fuck,” he said. “It really is too late.”
“Don’t worry,” Paul said, patting a new soft pack of cigarettes on the inside of his wrist so the tobacco would tighten. “There’s a shit-ton of other couches in the city.” He put one between his lips and lit it.
“There are also tons of other speakers in the city,” Juanito said.
“Don’t,” Paul said. “Fresh wound.” He drew in so hard that the pleasure was evident on his face. It made Juanito crave one too. Paul blew out the smoke through his nostrils.
“Yeah,” Juanito said. “But not this one. This is the one that he wanted.”
But did he actually think he could’ve snatched it up before it was shipped out to its new owner? He had two hundred in his wallet, the little thing that he had made with duct tape and an X-Acto blade. What had Daniel said the other night up on the roof, was it two thousand? He thought maybe the store people could’ve given him credit, or some kind of payment plan option. He had heard somewhere that shit like that was possible.
“You’ll find another, kid,” Paul said. Juanito nodded. He hated when Paul called him kid. Claro, Paul was his boss and he could say whatever he wanted. Juanito couldn’t even imagine the kind of money that it took to open up a joint like Lalalandia. The constant flow of bills—all in cash—for the iced-down drinks they served in small plastic cups. Pero, shit, did he have to call him kid?
Juanito looked back through the window at the darkened store. It was just about ten o’clock, after closing time in that sweet spot when the stores were shut and the clubs weren’t full yet. He imagined that Daniel was at home sitting on the floor wrapped in a set of blankets, watching one of the scary pics that Juanito had turned him on to, until Juanito would walk in after his deejay set at three in the morning and find him passed out on the floor, waiting for him, all cute and shit, before going into their cama together. “I can’t sleep in the bed without you,” Daniel had once told him. “It would feel all wrong and lopsided.”
It was cute when Daniel waited for him, but Juanito couldn’t help but feel like it was time for Daniel to get out of the house sometimes, make friends, do something. When he told this to Daniel, his only response was that he was scared to. A little bit of fear was okay, Juanito could understand. Their area of Brooklyn was not like the Village. Their neighbors weren’t fabulous queens. There were no gay bars. It was hard to meet new people if they didn’t have a house to belong to, or balls to attend.
“C’mon,” Paul said. “Let’s hit it. The club’s gonna be at full in just about an hour and you’re on set.”
Juanito shot another glance at the couch before they walked to the subway. “What do you think?” he asked Paul.
“About?”
“The couch,” Juanito said. “What else?”
“Oh,” Paul said. Juanito was two steps behind Paul and needed to catch up. Juanito could already feel the summer heat rushing up the steps like the infierno of piss smell that permeated the subway during the humid months. “To be honest with you,” Paul continued, “I think it’s not very practical. It doesn’t really have a back, so you can’t recline on it. It just looks like an oversize footrest.”
“Sure, but Daniel is in love with it.”
“And it’s white,” Paul said. “Sure, white is elegant. Especially in that ivory-bone slash silk-damask kind of way. But don’t forget that white stains so easy. There’s no getting around that fact.”
Juanito shrugged. They were at the top of the stairs and Juanito watched as Paul fiddled with the gold hoop that was in his earlobe. He had been complaining earlier that the hole was infected and it was itching him like that one time in college when he got crabs. Except the itch was inside the lobe, not on his junk.
“Then scout out a similar one,” Paul said. “I dunno what to tell you. That one got away.”
“Yeah,” Juanito said. He held onto the railing as they walked down to the station.
Qué extraño for objects to be placed in a window and put up for sale. And then for people to be lusting over them. When he was young, he thought that having enough money to buy an object—to own it and make it yours—was a sign that a person had made it alright in the world. That a place of security and comfort could exist out there, and that place was furnished to the nines and tens with objects of different sizes and shapes. But that sofa? That damn sofa. He could see what Daniel saw. It was different. It was striking.
He knew what he had to do. He had to convince Paul to give him a little bit of a raise. Or maybe a bonus. He leaned back on the subway column and turned to Paul. “I need you to pay me more,” he said.
Paul raised his eyebrows and then looked past Juanito to see if the train’s lights were down the tube and ready to pull up to the platform. Paul sighed, “I dunno, kid.”
“Don’t be buggin’. I see how much cash you got flowing at Lala,” Juanito said. “It’s just until I find a couch that matches. Think of it like a bonus for extra time. Then I can go back to regular once I got the couch.”
Paul was standing too close to the edge as the train was whooshing up to the station. Juanito grabbed Paul’s arm and pulled him closer to the column. “You trying to get yourself hit?” Juanito said.
“I wasn’t going to fall,” Paul said.
The doors opened to an empty car and Juanito said, “There’s gotta be something I can do.”
They stepped forward together and plopped down on two empty, orange seats. Paul turned to Juanito and smiled alarmingly. “You’re right, kid,” Paul said. “I’m sure I can figure out something for you to do.”
* * *
The club was closed on Tuesday nights. It was usually his only free night of the week, so he took the train to the piers to see if he could get a glimpse of Angel. But homegirl wasn’t walking around that night. Or if she was, Juanito couldn’t find her. He took the long route home: walking east on Houston, through SoHo. He wanted to see if the sofa was still there.
But it wasn’t. Gone, like poof. As if
the shit had just sprouted piernas and walked it on out of there like Nancy Sinatra’s boots made for walking. In its place, there was a dining room table. The sign said AUTHENTIC MAHOGANY. Giving vibes that it was the kind of table that could carry a ton of weight without even cracking a smidge. He imagined someone taking an ax to it, but failing to break it in two. That made him want it even more, knowing that it would never be his, that unbreakable table.
An hour later, he walked into the apartment and gave Daniel a kiss. “So the sofa’s gone?” he asked Daniel.
“Sí,” Daniel said. “How’d you know?” He was frying some chuletas on the stove. It was so hot in the cocina—windows open to the summer humedad, the little fan struggling in the corner to give any kind of wind. “We shipped it out today,” Daniel said, using a fork to flip over the meat.
“Ay, bendito,” Juanito said. He moved in front of the fan and unstuck the T-shirt that was sticking to his chest. The fan was a little piece of shit—hardly blew nada—but Juanito loved it because it always sounded like it was trying its best to keep them cool. He liked to joke around by calling it The Little Fan That Could. He twisted the knob to the highest setting.
Juanito set the table and, when he was done, he sat down on the uneven chair so that Daniel could have the sturdier one. He watched Daniel plop the chuletas on the plates and pour the leftover oil down the sink. Daniel said he was sorry that dinner was so small because he didn’t have enough cash to get stuff for a mixed salad.
Juanito told him not to worry about it. “Ay, Daniel,” he said. “You’re too sweet to be cooking every night. I don’t deserve this.”
He thought about bringing it up again: telling Daniel to get out of the apartment, to go make friends. At least Juanito had Lala and the space and coworkers that came with it.
“¿Estás loco?” Daniel said. “Of course you deserve this.”
“I just want to do more, sabes?” Juanito said. “And you should be doing less, going out, meeting people.”
Daniel smiled and looked down at his chuleta as he was cutting it with one of their knives. The knives they had were too dull. Daniel sighed and said, “We’ve already talked about this.”
“I know that. I’m just saying,” Juanito said. “It’s been how many years?”
“I’m not ready to go out there and meet new people yet,” Daniel said. His tone was not to be messed with.
Juanito wondered if they were ever going to have a conversation about Venus and Angel and their past. Or if their plan was to just keep all of the pain buried away, deal with the present, and hope that eventually things would be better.
“You know I love you,” Daniel said. But Juanito didn’t even think it was a matter of love. It was about Daniel saying they needed to leave Angel, and Juanito feeling like he had to make a choice. He couldn’t understand how Daniel didn’t understand that, but he didn’t have the energy to push the issue.
“I love you too,” Juanito said and they ate their meal together as the fan tried its best to give them air.
* * *
Paul had a patio with a little garden that was all dirt and no flowers. Juanito hadn’t expected for Paul to invite him and some coworkers to his apartment for drinks after the club closed, but there they were, sipping on some drink. Juanito looked in the flowerpots to see if he could find any flowers, but he didn’t see any. Paul probably saw Juanito looking because then he started telling the group about how he was trying to grow mint leaves so that he could add a little something authentic to his juleps and mojitos.
“Right, Juanito?” Paul said. “A mojito simply has to have the right mint leaves?”
“Sure,” Juanito said, shrugging. He chuckled. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had ordered a mojito.
It was almost five in the morning and Juanito felt like he needed to take a shower. It felt like an entire day’s worth of city grime, plus an entire night’s worth of club sweat, were caked onto his skin. He was sitting on the back patio of the Chelsea brownstone that had been turned into apartments. Heidi and Robert and Paul all went inside to refill their drinks.
He could see the sky starting to get lighter already. He imagined Daniel at home sleeping on the floor, and he felt bad. He really hoped that Daniel wasn’t being a cabezota and sleeping on the floor just because he wasn’t there to give him the cuddles. He hoped he was in bed with all the covers on him keeping him tight. Someone called him back inside. It was Robert.
“You want a G-and-T?” Robert asked.
Juanito said yes, that he would lend a hand.
“And a tongue,” Robert said, cackling. “God, I’m being a nasty bitch. I’m just pulling your leg, Juanito.”
Ever since he met Robert, Juanito was fascinated by him. He was a young Parsons student who hated Parsons, but loved New York City. Robert once invited Juanito to one of his performance art pieces that was at a gallery in Chelsea. Juanito brought Daniel and they stood there and watched as Robert kneeled on a giant plastic tarp as his boyfriend stood over him and cracked huevos over his naked body. The yolk dripped down and got all sticky-sticky over him as he just waited there with his lengua all out. The drip-drops of huevo dangled like long wads of phlegm.
“Ave María,” Daniel had said to Juanito después. “I just don’t understand why—”
“Se rompió los huevos,” Juanito said, laughing. Broken eggs, broken balls. Robert had announced that it was a comment on masculinity. Juanito didn’t really know how. He didn’t know what to tell Daniel. He’s from New Hampshire, Juanito had wanted to say, as if that would explain the locura. Pero he wasn’t quite sure where New Hampshire was exactly, though he knew the general area. Not that New Hampshire really had anything to do with it—he knew that, claro—but whenever he saw Robert, so jovencito, he felt like Robert was the kind of kid who came to New York with the idea, somehow, that life would be like those movies where the white people come to the city in order to find themselves.
Now Robert was holding a bottle, waiting to pour. “How much tonic do you want?” Robert said. “Tell me when to stop.”
He imagined that New York, for Robert, was a city of dreams. A city where a blond boy from New England could come with his sweater-vests and chinos and pay full price for an art school that he hated, just so that he could soak up the streets of Manhattan. Robert probably thought that the Bronx and Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island were just afterthoughts, like jealous primas that were somehow related to Manhattan, but not really. He watched the tonic fill the glass half-full and said stop.
“You want a lime too?”
Juanito sliced the lime himself and dropped it in the drink and swirled the glass because there were no spoons on the counter. He watched Robert stir his drink with his finger and then lick it after, like he was a kid making a cake and he didn’t want any icing to go to waste.
Robert was nineteen or twenty—he had never asked, or if he had, he didn’t remember. Juanito was convinced that Paul only hired Robert because he was on a quest to fuck the boy.
When they walked into the sala, Heidi was on the couch telling Paul about her most recent acid trip. “I swear on my mother’s grave,” she said, “that I could see the corner of the room breathing. I was in this time-warp wonderland. It was incredible.”
Paul was nodding his head viciously as Robert and Juanito sat on the other couch across from them. “I totally feel that,” Paul said. Juanito watched as Heidi kept yapping—homegirl always had trouble keeping a lid on it, but the customers liked that about her and rewarded her with piles of tips. Plus, she was pretty and the straight boys went crazy for her eyes. They were so damn blue, Juanito felt like he’d turn to stone every time they made eye contact.
“What about you?” She turned to Juanito. “You got any piercings? Any that we can’t see?”
Juanito laughed. “No,” he said. It wasn’t like he had any that they could see, anyway. He stared at Heidi’s double nose rings and the string of hoops that went down both ears. He wanted to
know if there was a story behind those piercings. If there was any pain involved. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Juanito would look good with his cock pierced,” Paul said, getting up to fill his glass with more gin.
“Ay, por favor,” Juanito said. “I would never. I can’t take that kind of pain.”
Robert swirled around his glass so that the ice cubes were clanking. “I’ve got both my nips done,” he offered.
“Of course you do, sweetie,” Paul shouted from the cocina. “I bet your boy toy really digs them.”
“Excuse me,” Robert said, hand out like he was a Supreme about to tell Paul to stop in the name of love. “But I am his boy toy.”
“Oh, keep tellin’ yourself that,” Paul said, but Juanito agreed with Robert. Robert’s boyfriend was at least fifteen years older than Robert—so then that would make him the boy toy, no?
Robert told them about the time he went to Punta Cana to get his nips pierced. He was in the back room of some bar called BAR and the guy who was piercing him wanted to fuck him, or at least that’s what Robert said. Coulda been a lie, but Juanito didn’t think of Robert as some kind of mentiroso who would indulge in a story like that.
“You think everyone wants to fuck you,” Paul said, still in the kitchen.
Juanito chuckled.
“Hey!” Robert said.
“Oh god,” Heidi said, chewing on an ice cube. “In a third world country. I’d never get my tits done in Mexico.”
Juanito laughed and made eyes with Robert. “Dearie,” Robert said, pointing a gentle finger up in the air. “Punta Cana is in the Dominican Republic.”
“Same shit,” Heidi said back.
Paul walked back in and sat down on the couch and crossed his legs. He was eating yogurt out of a martini glass.
“I hear the men there,” Heidi said, “are hung as hell.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Robert said in a singsong. He held his chin up, then raised his glass up in a toast. Pinky up, as if he were toasting to his own purity.
“Oh, please,” Paul said. “The only reason that kid learned the metric system is because he needed to know how many centimeters the back of his throat could handle before gagging.”
The House of Impossible Beauties Page 36
