by A. Sanchez
Charting New Waters
by A. Sanchez
Dedication
To Caroline, the cat most dedicated to making sure no writing ever happens. Your nefarious plans have been foiled.
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by A. Sanchez
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover photo Copyright © 2017 by A. Sanchez
Author's note: The cover is of the Larnaca Salt Lake in Cyprus. It is dry and ugly all year until winter, when it fills and is descended upon by flamingos. Sometimes things aren't always as they seem.
Any Sicilian that went wrong is entirely due to me not listening to half of what Vito says.
Any Lebanese Arabic that went awry is entirely the fault of my mother.
Chapter 1
Joseph
I was out at The Oasis as I had been for the past two months, every Thursday and Friday night, with my completely slutty pal Jean-Paul, who never left the club alone. I, on the other hand, always left alone. I was too afraid not to. I didn't have to worry about him abandoning me yet though, since we'd only just gotten there, and even Jean-Paul, with his dark good looks, couldn't manage to get a guy in fifteen minutes.
But we were there for a reason. Not that going out and having fun required a reason, of course. I'd had my eye on a certain someone who always came in around this time. He stuck out like a sore thumb. While everyone else was letting the music take them, stripping off their shirts, showing off, grinding, this guy almost brooded by the wall or at a table with a friend. They were foreign, so maybe they did things differently where they were from, but he was gorgeous. Thick, straight black hair, snow white skin, tall, thin, a nose that would be too big on anyone but him, and the most gorgeous lips I'd ever seen. I'd been dreaming of him since the first time I'd seen him two months ago. Sometimes I thought he'd approach me, but he never did. Instead, we made eyes at each other like children all night.
“Are you looking at that stupid guy again?” Jean-Paul asked, coming back to hand me his shirt since it was clear I wouldn't be hooking up with anyone tonight. Why break the habit of a lifetime, after all?
“He's not stupid!” I shouted over the music. “He's so hot I can't even...” I trailed off, shaking my head and giving my why do I bother explaining? face.
“He's not hot. You do know that, right?”
My shoulders shook with pent-up anger. We went through this every week, Jean-Paul trashing my love interest and me defending him. In a roundabout way he was insulting me, too. My taste, at least.
“Take off your shirt! It's hot in here. Or are you scared to?”
I wasn't precisely scared to. I just didn't feel... comfortable doing it. Not yet. “Maybe later.”
“He probably doesn't even speak English. Have you thought of that?”
I didn't care. We would speak the language of love, I thought dreamily while colorful lights half blinded me. “Your parents don't speak English,” I shot back instead.
“Yours only think they do,” he snipped.
The truth of it was, we were all kind of foreigners. Jean-Paul and I were Lebanese, born in the US, so we were American, but still close to the culture of our parents and families. Sometimes we were as American as apple pie, and other times it was like we were from another planet. It's a tiny country, the Motherland or Fatherland or whatever you want to call it, but it's filled with all kinds of different people, religiously and physically. Jean-Paul was stocky, hairy, olive-skinned, with brown eyes and black hair. He looked like an Arab. I, on the other hand, was a natural blonde with blue eyes, kind of tall. I'd heard we had Greek and French in our ancestry, and I thought Jean-Paul had a few doses of Ottoman in his. Everywhere I went, people assumed I was just a regular white guy. How wrong they were...
“Do you want me to go over there and talk to him for you? I mean, this is not a secret to anyone; you, him, the bouncer, the bartender, every guy in here...” He listed everyone who knew about my crush smugly on his fingers.
“I'm scared! You know why,” I exclaimed, my eyes wide with panic. I couldn't expect this guy to really want me.
“You made your bed, so lie in it,” Jean-Paul snapped before throwing his shirt on the table and heading right for the guy. I felt dizzy. I clutched the corner of the wobbly table and almost fell over. I closed my eyes and then put my hand over them for good measure. Jean-Paul was ruining my life. “Thisisnothappeningthisisnothappening,” I repeated over and over.
When I finally opened my eyes after a few seconds, I saw Jean-Paul gesturing and pointing at me. It seemed the guy really didn't speak English and I sighed my disappointment. What kind of relationship could I have with a man who couldn't understand me?
I spazzed out completely. Jean-Paul, shirtless and gleaming in the colored lights, was bringing me my mystery man, hand wrapped around his upper arm so he didn't escape, his tiny friend trailing cautiously behind him. “Here you go. Have fun.” Jean-Paul left us there immediately, dragging the tiny friend away with him like a burly caveman. At least we were alone. I couldn't deal with further humiliation and an audience, both.
He smiled at me, mostly with his eyes, through a shaggy pixie kind of hairstyle. He was very shy, his shoulders almost shaking. “Hello.”
Oh, that was good! He said hello! I found myself smiling back at him, probably looking like a loon, but I was just so excited to have him standing here in front of me at last! “Hello. I'm Joseph,” I screamed slowly over the music.
“I'm Vito,” He hollered back. If he was anything other than Italian, I'd be stunned. I asked anyway.
“Are you Italian?”
“Sicilian,” he corrected. As far as I knew, Sicily was part of Italy. That was strange.
“So... you're not Italian?” It looked like he was as mixed up as I was, culturally speaking.
“Yes and no. I speak Italian, too, but my blood is Sicilian.”
This was not a good conversation to be having in a loud club. I looked around for Jean-Paul. He was licking some guy's chest on the dance floor. He was in his element. “Too?”
He nodded. “I speak Sicilian.”
He did have an accent, but I was relieved he did in fact speak English. Still, everything could and probably would go wrong from here. This I knew from experience.
I didn't know what else to say. Vito was a total stranger, despite our two-month-long oglefest. “Is your family in the Mafia?” Ugh, I shook my head and looked away in shame. What the hell was wrong with me? I was too sober to think.
He smiled again. He wasn't going to snub me or stab me. That was good... “My grandfather was. He was murdered.”
“Are you joking with me?” I asked with a nervous laugh.
He shook his head. “No. He was attacked in his car, but I don't know more. No one speaks about it.”
“Naturally,” I said with a nod. I refrained from asking if his name happened to have been Sonny.
No one spoke of all the trouble my own grandfather had caused. Despite what people like Jean-Paul said in jest, my parents were also born in the US. They had the local accent, which other Lebanese people found funny. They said things like y'all and yella and chester drawers. My grandfather was the kind of man who should have been deported. I don't know why he wasn't. He and his five brothers had made their own little mafia right here in Richmond, stealing cars and selling the parts off, illegal gambling in the backs of bars, beating up rivals and God knows
what else. My grandfather had been in prison and even shot in the head and lived to tell about it, though the family wished he wouldn't. In this way, I understood Vito's family a little. The older generations were not playing.
“Let's go get a drink,” I offered, cocking my head in the direction of the bar.
Vito was tall and thin. He didn't look like he had a muscle on him, and the closer we got to the light, the paler he became. He was the damned whitest Sicilian I'd ever seen. My sister called me The Lobstah because that's how I ended up looking after going to the pool, my skin not taking the sun well, but as we stood by the bar, our arms next to each other, I saw I was darker than Vito by a shade or two, but what kind of victory was that? We were still a pair of snowballs.
I got a vodka tonic and he got something Italian, like Sambuca or something coffee-flavored. That's how the trouble began. Alcohol. After two or three drinks each, we were all over the dance floor and each other. At one point I think I tried to climb him.
“You're not taking him home with you, Joseph!” Jean-Paul was yelling. He was trying to make me put my shirt back on, and I was resisting. Vito stood by with his little friend patiently.
“I can take him home if I want to!” How dare he do this to me now? I'd wanted this for months! I stomped my foot and crossed my arms like a petulant drama queen. “He's mine, not yours!”
“Come on, we're going home. Tell him good night.” I knew that look Jean-Paul was giving me, but I was too drunk to care. I wrestled my arm free of his grip and scurried back to Vito's side like a boomerang.
Vito didn't like Jean-Paul's dictatorial tendencies. “Are you his lover?” he asked, taking a step toward him.
“No, I'm his distant cousin on his mother's...No!” Jean-Paul snapped, pulling the shirt over my head inside out and ruining my hair.
“Dickhead,” I muttered, wobbling.
“Then let him go now. You can not do that.”
I looked up and saw Vito had something hard and cold in his black eyes as he stared Jean-Paul down. He was thin, almost bony, but he had determination and I didn't doubt for a minute that he would knock Jean-Paul out cold or summon someone out the darkness who would. I shivered. “Ooh.”
“If you hurt him, I'll kill you,” Jean-Paul said, stepping closer, staring up at the calm Sicilian.
Vito smiled, just a little, his eyes still icy and jet black. “I don't think so.” He took me by the arm, gently, and led me to the door, leaving Jean-Paul behind. He didn't expect to be followed, and he wasn't. He spoke in Spanish to his little friend. “He will drive us,” he explained as I leaned on him in my intoxicated state. He put his arm around my shoulders, but it seemed a little formal.
Vito's car was a deep navy sedan of some kind, tidy and spacious. It wasn't the kind of car guys our age usually drove. I didn't want to say it was the kind of car the Mafia preferred, but I thought it. Still, we settled back in the seats and he said, “We must go collect my cousin, Dominic. He is at another club down the street. Then we will leave him and Juan. By then, I will be able to drive you to your home.”
I just nodded. It looked like we were going to have a very long night even before we got home. I settled back in the seat and tried to make myself comfortable.
Damn, Dominic was a loud, belligerent drunk. He'd clearly been in the US for a very long time, probably born here, and he had no filter on that big mouth of his. He turned around to us from the passenger seat after letting out the longest burp I'd ever heard. “So who's gonna fuck who?” Vito and I just stared back at him blankly. “Who's the woman?” He laughed and cracked open a can of beer. I wondered why Vito didn't say anything. He was visibly angry. I nudged him with my elbow. He looked at me as if to ask if I really wanted him to tell off yet a second person this evening. I shrugged. My family routinely told people off at loud decibels. No reason to hold back on my account.
“Bonu.” He shrugged as if this was of no consequence. Vito let out a slew of something that sounded Italian but was not. I understood then. Sicilian really was its own thing. Whatever he said worked. “Sorry, um, Joseph,” Dominic said before staying quiet. I liked Vito. He was quiet, classy and strong, in the way men needed to be—mentally.
“He's young,” Vito said as he relaxed. “His father spoils him.”
I just nodded silently. It occurred to me then that I had gone off with strangers and I didn't know where we were going. I looked around and saw we were heading to the West End. I lived in Southside so we were almost an hour from my house. I wanted to talk, get to know Vito a little more, but we weren't alone. Instead, I took his hand in mine and gave it a squeeze. He looked down at me, his face very serious, and said, “I have wanted to meet you for so long.” He whispered this, like dandelion fuzz on the breeze, his words only just floating past my ears.
“Me too. I'm just...shy.” That was true, but it wasn't the truth. I was starting to sober and realize what a mess I was making. I sat back and tried to stay calm.
“I watched you in these last months. You never went home with anyone. You did not kiss. You did not touch. Why?”
I could have asked him the same, but I said, “I went there the first time because my cousin invited me. I kept coming to see you again. I was never interested in anyone else.” That was the absolute truth. I didn't know why or how I had fallen for this stranger so hard, why I could hardly stand to face Saturday and the rest of the week. Wednesday was the hardest. I was frequently avoided by all and sundry on Wednesdays.
“Well, isn't that just the most romantic thing,” Dominic sang.
Vito spoke in Spanish this time and the car slowed down on Broad Street, eventually pulling over to the side of the road. He spoke again in Sicilian, his voice raised, until Dominic got out the car, cursing a blue streak in English, then Juan drove on. “It will be quicker now Dominic is no longer with us.”
I wanted to laugh. Dominic must have known Vito wasn't the kind of man who played, but he was probably too drunk to recall it. “Will he be all right, do you think?” I asked, remembering my mother had done something similar to my brother when he'd pissed her off, but it had only been about five miles from home. I liked that we both had this crazy Mediterranean hot-blooded thing in common. It would keep life interesting.
“Camurria,” he said with an exasperated sigh, then sat back and held my hand.
Once Vito finally had his car back, he told me Juan was a worker at one if his restaurants and he paid him extra to be his designated driver when he went out on Thursday and Friday. “Didn't he get bored or...freaked out... spending two nights a week in a gay club?”
Vito held back a laugh. I know he wanted to, but he reined it in at the last second. “I asked him. I didn't force him to do anything he didn't want to do. I supposed when he began to volunteer that Juan was more than willing, either for the extra money or atmosphere. I'm not sure which.”
Oh hot damn, he had a dimple in his right cheek. I sighed pathetically, looking him over. He was even more handsome close-up. We would be home soon and then he would be mine. I just didn't know what to do with him.
Shit. We would be home soon! He would be expecting me...and him... I squeaked.
“Are you all right, Zhosif?”
I loved how he said my name, with the emphasis on the Zho. I nodded and said I had a nice bottle of Italian white wine he might like, just to change the subject.
He found this amusing. “Sicily also makes wine.”
“You really don't consider yourself Italian in any way, do you?” I asked, surprised.
He took a little time to answer this, but said, probably as politically correct as he could, “they don't like us in Italy. They think we're cafoni.” He glanced over and saw that word meant nothing to me. “Eh, sicula. Ignorant. Our culture and language are different, but a man is only stupid if he chooses to be. I have met many stupid Italians.” He smiled again. “I only want Sicily to be known for more than crime and hairy men wearing too much gold. I am proud of where I come from.”
>
I could understand that. Lebanon used to be a beautiful place until the civil war back in the 80's. Then, a few airplanes were hijacked, a few American soldiers were kidnapped, Beirut was bombed to smithereens and the world thought we were all terrorists. Just like a lot of people thought of Sicily and associated it with the Mob. It was a hard stereotype to break. I hoped I did my part upholding the more positive Lebanese aspects while the rest of my family highlighted the less desired ones, and Vito was doing a fine job of boosting Sicily's reputation so far. “Get off at this exit,” I said, pointing.
“You live at the end of the world, Joseph,” he said, still saying my name so sexily.
“I try.”
I both lived and did not live with my parents. My parents had a large house on the edge of the suburbs bordering the woods. They had broken the house into apartments because their three kids kept leaving and coming back like homing pigeons, sometimes with a partner or spouse, and then sometimes no one was there at all, and they rented the apartments out to strangers. I had a first-floor apartment, two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, tiny bathroom because Dad measured something wrong, and a Florida room. It had a private entrance, like all the apartments, and it was really all I needed. Lebanese parents did not let go of their children easily, anyway. If I'd moved into my own apartment across town, Mom would never understand why. “So here it is,” I said, hanging my keys on a hook beside the door and flipping on the lights. “Would you rather French wine? I mean, if you'd prefer. I also have some Chilean, Lebanese, Hungarian, Australian...”
“But no American?” Vito asked with a soft laugh. He was dressed in black trousers and a black dress shirt, far too elegantly for the club. I wondered how he'd look in a florescent tank top and tight jeans. I led him to my perfectly tempered wine fridge with glass door, which reached from floor to ceiling, almost.
