by C. S. Poe
My dad ran his hand up and down my back, like he used to when I was a kid, coming home from school—bullied and alone. I’d later perfected the art of pretending like I didn’t give a shit.
Except that had been a lie. I always gave a shit.
I liked myself when I was happy and confident. I liked when the world wasn’t gray—no pun intended. I wasn’t looking to make a one-eighty in personality. I was always going to be a bit of a crotchety grump. But the self-loathing as of late? The buildup had been worse than I’d ever cared to admit. After last night’s scare and the extreme emotions of inadequacy that’d accompanied it, I wanted it to stop but felt caught up in a vicious cycle. I hated it.
Pop stepped back, gently pulled off my sunglasses, and set them aside. He took my face into both hands. “I love you so much, son. No matter how alone or hopeless or rejected I felt after your mom left, there you were to always guide me home.”
I swallowed and concentrated on breathing.
In.
Out.
Again.
“Calvin has probably let you see him at some of his darkest moments, would you agree?”
Thrashing in his sleep. Sobbing in a diner bathroom. The fearful, faraway look before being brought back to reality.
I bit my lip as it quivered, and nodded.
Breathe.
In.
Out.
Again.
“And you’ve probably held him and comforted him?”
“Y-yes.”
“Why won’t you trust him to do that for you?”
“Because it’s not the same,” I whispered. My throat hurt.
“Never compare pains, Sebastian,” Pop said. “Yours are just as real.”
Remember to breathe.
In.
Out.
Again.
Pop reached for something on the counter, then wiped my cheeks dry with a napkin. “Let him be a lighthouse when things get dark. When you have doubt and fear, tell him. What was it you call him?”
“Knight.”
Pop nodded. “You have to tell him what you need to be protected from. Otherwise he’ll fight any and everything trying to figure it out. That’ll only sow the seeds of contempt.”
“What if he doesn’t care?”
And there it was. Through all the waste and filth—the kernel of truth.
What if Calvin didn’t care?
No one else ever had. Every man I’d been romantically engaged with, at the end of the day, just hadn’t cared.
Pop took my face into his hands again. “If more people had partners that looked at them the way Calvin looks at you, kiddo, the world would have far more love and less hate in it.”
Breathe.
I took in a deep, gasping breath and felt my insides alight.
“It’s okay to not be the strongest or the bravest,” Pop continued. “It really is. He loves you for your wit and intelligence. Your humor and your charm.”
“I’m not handsome.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” He smiled and let go of my face. “And of course you’re handsome. Look whose genes you have.”
I laughed, although it sounded kind of pathetic, and carefully dabbed at the corners of my eyes. “I’m so sorry you had to see that.” My mouth worked, but even though I felt drained and oddly clean inside after that sobfest, my lip wouldn’t stop quivering. “I feel better, though,” I added.
“I’m glad.”
The kettle started whistling loudly. Pop moved to take it off the burner.
I used my T-shirt to wipe my face dry one more time. “I know he loves me.” I looked up at the fuzzy outline of Pop. “He came out for me.”
“That’s true,” Pop said, pouring the water into the mugs. He set the kettle down and faced me again. “And did you ever stop to think, his ex is precisely that?”
“An ex?”
Pop nodded. “Instead of comparing yourself to someone who came before you, consider the reasons why what the two of you have works better.”
Huh.
“What does Calvin think of you talking to Neil?”
“He doesn’t care.”
“Probably because he focuses on the fact that you two function in sync and not against each other, like you had with Neil.”
I leaned back against the counter. “Straus and Winter sounds like a tax firm.”
Pop laughed softly. “A bit.”
“Snow and Winter sounds like….”
“A happy accident?” Pop supplied.
I picked up my sunglasses and fiddled with them for a moment. “Sounds like forever.”
Chapter Eleven
“IS IT okay with you if I stay the night?”
Pop set down his empty mug and reached across the table for one of the last cookies on the plate. “If I knew you liked the couch so much, I’d have given it to you as a housewarming gift.”
“The request comes from Calvin,” I clarified.
“Do you want to stay the night?”
“A little.”
Calvin was right to be wary of the apartment. My gut was telling me to steer clear without some sort of backup, and my gut had kept me alive this long.
“Just until Calvin gets off work,” I added.
“Then, of course.”
My cell rang. I picked it up from the tabletop. “One sec, Dad.” I stood and answered the call. “Hey.”
“Hey, sweetheart. I’m sorry I only have a minute—I’m between locations.”
“It’ll be the best sixty seconds of my day.”
“Is that so?”
I shoved my free hand into my pocket as I wandered across the living room. “Really needed to hear your voice.”
Calvin paused for a beat. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I answered quickly. I paused at the couch, raised my eyes to the ceiling, and blew out a breath. “No. I will be.”
“Sebastian?”
“Don’t worry,” I continued. “All limbs are accounted for and I’m not bleeding profusely, so… can’t ask for much more than that, can you?” I walked a bit farther away from the table at my back and said in a low voice, “I just mean—I like you, you know?”
I could feel the tension over the line ease a bit.
“I like you too.”
“What’re you doing?”
“Heading back to the precinct.”
“Were you able to collect any shell casings? In my statement, I said there were four shots.”
“Nothing was found,” Calvin said.
“That’s weird. Maybe it’s an old gun?”
“To not leave behind casings?” Calvin asked. “We’d be looking at black gunpowder and lead balls. Which would have been how long ago?”
“Prior to the 1860s.”
“Thank you. It’s more likely the shooter collected them.”
“I don’t think there was enough time for that. Neil and your—uh—Lee, went after the suspect.”
I think Calvin caught that, but he didn’t remark on it. “Well… we’ll find out soon enough. Millett’s digging one of the bullets out from the pillar near the register.”
“I’ve been thinking of changing up the shop interior, but the rejection of aesthetics is a little bit too Dada for me.”
“I’ll only start to worry if you install a urinal on the showroom floor and call it art.”
I chuckled.
“I’m not totally ignorant of your world.”
“You’ve no idea how happy it makes me.”
I could hear Quinn mutter in the background, followed by the blaring of a few car horns.
“I need the name of that shipping company used for the Kinetoscope,” Calvin said.
“Why’s that?”
“So I can get a warrant and obtain the shipper’s information—since they gave you the runaround.”
I glanced down at my hand. Jim Bob’s address was still scribbled on the back, albeit a little smudged after all the tears from earlier. “Uhm… B
arnes Brothers Shipping.”
“Thanks.”
“What about the kid?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“Any idea who he is?”
“I’m still waiting to hear if he has any official connection to the Javits Center Antique Fair. All the people who can answer questions are ‘unavailable.’ He had some sort of ID on him, but it wasn’t plastic.”
“A paper ID?”
“Mm-hm. Folded one too many times and stuffed into a sweaty back pocket.”
“Fabulous.”
“Forensics is trying to decipher it.” A car door opened and shut. “I’ve got to go.”
“Sure. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Bye, Seb.”
“Bye, Cal.”
I lowered the phone, pressed End Call, then turned and walked back to the table.
“How’s Calvin?” Pop asked.
“Good. Just checking in between crime scene and precinct. Dad, do you know of any schools in the city that supply paper IDs to their students?”
“Like colleges?”
“I’m thinking so.” I’d pegged the kid as being eighteen—twenty, tops.
Pop leaned back in his chair. “I can’t think of any. The plastic ones obviously last longer. Plus, they have the barcodes on the back so students can make purchases or check books out of the library with ease. You had one like that. My old teacher’s ID was the same.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “What about those academies you see advertisements for in the subway? That host summer workshops or those intensive two-week courses.”
Pop put his hands behind his head. “I’m not sure. Some may supply paper IDs—what with the high turnover rate of students. Why?”
I looked down at my hand, tapping the address with my finger. “Just thinking out loud. Do you mind watching Dillon for a few hours?”
“Of course not. I was thinking of bringing Maggie to the dog run anyway. Do you have somewhere to be?”
I HATED the subway.
It wasn’t the heat, stale air, smell of piss and garbage, or that the rats were big enough to wield knives. The tunnels were over a hundred years old and the system was in use 24-7. That was an impressive feat of engineering which I tried to always marvel when I was underground.
And it wasn’t the lack of personal space that bothered me either—I was a born-and-bred New Yorker. If I didn’t have someone’s armpit in my face during rush hour on the Uptown 6, I’d be concerned I’d gotten on the wrong train. It was the lighting inside the train cars that I despised. The newer ones were so goddamn bright that even with sunglasses, the world was washed out to white and the faintest of grays. If I was alone, it meant having to rely on my walking cane.
Usually I’d have opted for a taxi, but after first and last month’s rent, plus a security deposit on the new apartment, let alone Calvin and I basically buying all new furniture, I was dead broke. So the choice between using my MTA card, which had a balance of nine dollars on it, or paying upward of thirty bucks for a taxi to take me seventy blocks to the Upper East Side… it was sort of a no-brainer.
But still.
I hated the subway.
I hiked the stairs out of the Seventy-Seventh Street station, collapsing my cane as I did. I walked toward Seventy-Eighth Street, stuffing the stick into my messenger bag. The smell of a halal food cart at the end of the block made my stomach growl painfully loud, reminding me it was now after 1:00 p.m. I gave the street meat a longing glance, sighed, and turned right to Third Avenue.
I came across a row of brownstones between avenues and consulted the address on my hand. In my rushed conversation with Mr. Robert, I’d actually written down “red door.” Helpful. I scanned the million-dollar homes for addresses.
31… S. It was probably a five.
Or was it a six?
I was too far away, and hiking up the stairs to each door to read the numbers would get old real quick.
I looked around, backtracked, and approached a teenager standing under a tree, texting away on his cell phone. “Excuse me?”
He glanced up, reached inside his hoodie to remove an earbud, and asked, “Yeah?”
I pointed to the brownstones. “Do any of these have a red door?”
He immediately pointed over my shoulder to a door I’d walked by twice now. “That one there.”
“Second one down?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure.” He returned to texting.
I went to the house in question, opened the gate, and hurried up the steps to the stoop. I hit the buzzer to the right of the frosted glass door and waited. I shoved my hands into my pockets and rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet. I’d been to plenty of these gorgeous old homes since opening the Emporium—whether as part of an estate sale or because the client was far too old to deal with the hassle of transporting antiques—but I still got excited. I’d never be able to afford such a property, so I lived a bit vicariously through my customers when I was offered such invites.
Frowning, I pressed the buzzer again.
I should have asked Mr. Robert for his telephone number.
Cupping my hands around my face, I leaned into the glass but couldn’t make anything out through the texture.
I tried the buzzer a third time.
“I fucking hear you!” an angry voice suddenly answered, crackling through the intercom.
I jumped and looked at it. “Uh—sorry, sir.”
“Who’re you? You’re not a delivery man.”
Nice. Jim Bob the Grouch had a camera system.
“No. I’m Sebastian Snow. You called me earlier—I own the Emporium in the East Village.”
“Oh right. You. Hang on.”
I hung on for at least another minute before I heard the inner door open. The front door was unlocked, and a shrunken, balding man with wild hair and wilder eyebrows shuffled back a few steps. He was wearing a plaid bathrobe, slippers, and had a lit pipe clenched between his teeth.
What the fuck? This was the owner? I suddenly didn’t feel the need to keep my guard up. No way was Mr. Robert involved in this mess. Which meant this wasn’t about extortion, but the content of the films….
“I was on the john,” he explained. “Come in, come in.”
“Er—thanks. Sorry it took a while to get here.”
“Take your shoes off,” he warned, pointing at my feet.
“What—oh—okay.” I reached down and tugged the loafers off, setting them to the side in the short hall between the doors.
Mr. Robert chewed on the end of his pipe, shook his head, and shuffled through the door. “Kid’s got the same shoes I do….”
I pretended not to hear that and followed him to the parlor floor of the house. “Wow.” I paused in the threshold between the staircase and the living area. The room was chock-full of antiques—Victrolas, cabinets of silver and china, grandfather clocks, musical instruments, and a penny-farthing bicycle pushed up against one wall behind a pair of parlor chairs with what I suspected was the original fabric and cushioning. Every square inch of the walls was covered with paintings, mirrors, pistols, and swords, as well as odds and ends that Mr. Robert had obviously run out of room to store in a more traditional means.
He turned to look up at me, puffing on his pipe in such a determined manner that he was doing a decent job of emulating a chimney. “Like it, eh?”
“It’s a very impressive collection you have.”
“So why didn’t you call me when you got the damn Kinetoscope?”
“The shipping company you hired didn’t provide your name or address on the contact sheet, just their own office.”
“Piss,” Mr. Robert muttered. He turned and began the shuffling journey to the next room.
“What can you tell me about the Kinetoscope?” I called, following after him. I stepped into a kitchen just as full of awesome gizmos and gadgets as the previous room. Everywhere I looked, vintage and antique baking tools, mixing
bowls, and advertisements on the walls. “Jesus,” I muttered.
Mr. Robert opened the fridge and removed a container. He slowly made his way across the room to the counter. “I got a lot of shit,” he said, as if in agreement.
I went to a shelf that had an old flour sifter, rotary egg beater, hand-crank coffee grinder, and even an array of Christmas cookie cutters. It reminded me of the collection of kitchen tools I’d kept for Calvin after an estate sale in late January. He’d seemed so genuinely into them, and I thought at the time that maybe they would encourage his potential cooking habit.
But I’d lost those in the explosion too.
“My boyfriend would really like these,” I said.
“He cooks?” Mr. Robert asked.
I looked away from the items and watched my crotchety host pour himself a small glass of some dark-looking liquid. “When he has free time.”
“Any good?” he asked before downing the drink and making a disgusted face. “Prune juice,” he told me.
“Uh… yeah. He made lasagna the other night.”
“Marry him.”
“Pardon?”
Mr. Robert put the glass in the sink and returned the jug to the fridge. “Gay marriage is federal law now, ain’t it?” He put his pipe back in his mouth.
“Yes….”
“Then if he cooks, marry him. Or you’ll end up like me, eating runny eggs every day of the week that ends in y.”
“I’ll… thanks.” I was, in absolutely no way whatsoever, discussing my romantic hopes and dreams with Jim Bob. “So, about the Kinetoscope?”
Mr. Robert walked past me, back to the living room, while waving his hand. “I sent it to you for safekeeping.”
Crap.
“Sir, that’s not what my business—”
“I was looking for the cat this morning,” he continued, picking up a paper bag sitting on a chair, “and found the other two reels. Then I remembered I didn’t have a goddamn cat, and called you about the films.”
