by Mel Bossa
Then don’t go. Stay here. With me. Forever.
I placed my palm against his cheek. His skin was warm and smooth, despite the stubble. “I know you have to go,” I said. “It’s important. I can tell.”
“We’ve been working toward this for three years. Playing every shitty place they let us. Proving ourselves each time. But I think it’s finally going to happen. I think we’re about to get signed to a major label.”
“Is that a good thing?”
He looked away, toward the never-ending horizon. “It’s what Brenda wants.”
“But not you?”
I caught a beautiful reflection of the moonlight and the shiny surface of the water floating in his light brown eyes. “I just want to play guitar,” he confessed. “That’s all. It doesn’t matter to me where or how, I just love the music. I always have.”
“From what I can tell, you’re really good at it,” I said.
“Thanks,” he replied. “It’s the only thing I really know how to do.”
“Then do it,” I told him. “Go kick ass on the tour.”
I hoped we were alone on the beach, that nothing or no one would ruin the incredible moment between us: the sand beneath our shoes, the water rolling back and forth, the moon casting an angelic white glow over us.
He wrapped an arm around my waist and the front of our bodies brushed against each other. “But will you be here when I come back?” he asked.
I almost laughed. “Where else am I gonna go? I hate to break it to you, Diego, but I don’t have much of a life. I have school. I have my job at Clouds. I live alone.”
I felt the palm of his hand pressing against the small of my back. “Is it unfair of me to ask you to wait for me?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “But something tells me that you’re definitely worth it.”
He kissed my lips and whispered, “All I can promise you, Justin, is that I’ll be back in five weeks. And I won’t stop thinking about you until then.”
I slid my arms around his neck and answered, “Then what more could I ask for?”
*
We jumped in a cab a few minutes later. Diego directed the near-deaf driver to the Lower West Side of Chicago, to a primarily Latino neighborhood known as Pilsen. I’d never been there before, but I’d heard of it. It had a reputation of being a tough place to grow up. I glanced out the window at the storefront Mexican bakeries and grocery stores as we slid down 18th Street before turning onto a side street and arriving in front of a three-story apartment building.
I waited for Diego to get out of the cab but he didn’t. He seemed frozen. I wondered if maybe he was paralyzed by a memory triggered by being in front of this particular place.
“Diego,” I asked, “what are we doing here?”
“This is where I’m from,” he told me. “This is where I grew up. In there.” He pressed his fingertip to the glass and pointed at the building. “I wanted you to see it. To know me. Who I am.”
I looked through the window. The faded brick building was surrounded by wrought iron, even the windows. Either the residents were trying to keep outsiders from entering, or living there felt like being trapped inside a prison. “It seems like a nice place,” I offered, noticing the front cement steps leading to the main entrance were cracked.
“It’s not much, but it’s home,” he said. “Well, it used to be. My mother still lives there. On the third floor.”
“Don’t you want to see her? To say hello?” I asked. “Or good-bye?”
“I said good-bye to her three years ago before I moved to L.A.,” he said. I heard the faint strain of tears rising in his voice. “I can’t go back in there now. It’s too much for me to see her. I just look at her…and I can tell…how much she hurts.”
“Did you guys have a fight?” I asked, worried I was prying.
Diego took a quick breath before he spoke. “My dad was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “It happened during the fall of Saigon.”
I met his tear-filled eyes in the dark and said, “That’s very sad.”
“I never even met him,” Diego continued. “He died right before I was born.”
“And your mom? Is she okay?”
Diego lowered his eyes. “She bought me my first guitar. On my sixteenth birthday.”
“She must be very happy for you. For the band.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s never been happy. She gets sick real bad when it gets cold. She hates the winters in Chicago,” he said. “She’s always wanted to go back to Mexico.”
“Why doesn’t she leave, then?”
Diego shrugged. “I think she’s holding on,” he said, “to his ghost. Maybe a part of her is still hoping he’ll come home.”
My mouth felt dry and my stomach ached. “That’s really sad.”
Diego shifted in the backseat, shaking off the somber mood. He flashed his crooked Elvis smile at me and asked, “So tell me about you. Where are you from?”
I licked my lips before I spoke. “I’m from a little town in Georgia. Not far from Macon.”
“Georgia?” Diego repeated, sounding surprised. “I thought I heard a little bit of a Southern accent.”
“It used to be worse, believe me. I’ve spent the last three years trying to get rid of it.”
“What was it like living there?”
“I grew up on a farm,” I explained. “We had goats.”
“You still talk to them?” he asked.
“To the goats?” I joked.
“No.” Diego laughed. “To your parents.”
I shrugged. “Only when I have to.”
His smile dimmed. “They don’t like you?”
“They don’t know me,” I answered.
“Yeah,” he said with a gentle nod, “I feel the same way. I’ve never really had the family I wanted. But now…I mean, with you…”
I reached for his hand in the darkness of the cab, stirred by the intense look on his face. “With me?”
“With you…everything seems possible,” he said. “I was thinking…maybe me and you…we could—”
There was an intrusive ringing in the cab. A cell phone. It rattled the moment, postponed it. Diego slipped the phone out from his pocket, flipped it open, and answered it with a frustrated “Yeah?” He looked at me while the voice on the other end of the conversation spoke to him. His gaze drifted down to our hands and out the window at the place he once called home.
I felt a tremendous sense of sadness swirling inside me. So much had occurred in such a short span of time. Twenty-four hours ago I didn’t even know Diego Delgado or that his rock ’n’ roll band band even existed. A part of me was elated Diego and I had discovered each other: Fate had intervened and insisted our paths cross. The other part of me was terrified I would never see this incredible man again. If I let him out of my sight, he could be gone for good.
He lives in L.A. now, Justin. Just let him go.
Diego leaned forward and tapped the shoulder of the old guy behind the steering wheel. The cab driver turned down the radio, muting Patsy Cline.
“We’re ready to go back,” Diego said in the direction of the man’s hearing aid.
Diego leaned back and slid his arm around me, pulled me toward him. We sat in silence, drifting through the streets of Chicago.
A few minutes later, we were back at the club, in the alley where a white passenger van was waiting for Diego.
To take him far away from me for five weeks.
Diego leaned into our kiss good-bye. “Promise me you’ll be here when I get back.”
“I promise,” I whispered into his soft lips.
He slid the chain of dog tags from around his neck and dropped them into my palm, closing my fingers around them with his hand. “Hold on to these for me,” he instructed. “Guard them with your life. They belonged to my father.”
He kissed me again, slow and tender. I opened my eyes in time to watch him step out onto the broken sidewalk. He closed the cab door and our eyes sear
ched for each other through the glass.
“Pull away slow,” I told the driver, who either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. He floored it and we zoomed away from Diego, leaving him on the curb.
Within seconds, Diego Delgado disappeared from sight. As if on cue, the tape deck in the dashboard clicked to life and Patsy Cline’s voice resumed, filling the darkness around me.
Yet I knew there was nothing that could comfort me. There was no song sad enough to mark the occasion.
Chapter Six
I lived in self-inflicted agony for the next five weeks. Each day dragged by like a punishment, intent on constantly reminding me that I’d fallen in love with a man I couldn’t have.
At least until he came back to Chicago.
I kept myself as busy as possible, stumbling from one daydream to another. I worked extra shifts at Clouds, allowing Starsky to take a much-needed weekend trip to see her long-distance lover in Madison. I offered to dog-sit for her. I took Hutch for extra-long walks to tire us both out. I spent each night listening to sappy love songs, cleaning my apartment like a bad habit, and doing my homework. Any free time I had, I devoted to finding out as much as I could about the man whose return I was waiting for patiently and faithfully.
The Internet became my new best friend. The more I researched Broken Corners, the more I realized they were on the brink of worldwide fame. Brenda Stone, who had grown up in San Francisco, was a classically trained vocalist. Inspired by her lifelong musical muse Pat Benatar, Brenda turned her back on a possible career in jazz or opera for the glamorous world of rock ’n’ roll. Athena Parker, the band’s drummer, came across in interviews much more endearing and soft-spoken then her butch stage persona suggested. She was a staunch vegetarian, believed in holistic medicine, and was an advocate for animal rights. Mary Jane Lewis, the subdued bass player who I suspected was addicted to painkillers, was a former first grade schoolteacher turned band member.
And then there was Diego Delgado. The object of my not-so-secret desires had been born and raised in Chicago. He graduated from a local performing arts high school, where he’d excelled in their music program. He attended college (the same one I was struggling through four days a week) but dropped out after the first semester to pursue a professional music career. There was no mention of his family, a boyfriend, siblings, enemies, or a secret wife. Nothing. The man was a mystery.
Of course, it only made me want him more.
The band had formed in Santa Monica three years ago, and just as Diego had told me, they’d played every dive across the country—more than once. They’d gained a small following, but as far as I could tell they were broke and probably starving, living from one gig to the next.
By the fourth week, I was beyond thinking rationally. Not once did I consider the possibility Diego would return to Chicago for a just few days only to leave again. Somehow, I convinced myself in my lovesick stupor that a relationship between us was not only possible, but destined.
We would be the exception in the music industry. We would be the couple who survived the glare of the public spotlight. We would be the ones who never broke up.
In my mind, there was plenty of room for me in Diego’s rock ’n’ roll world. I would fill the void in his life perfectly. I would go on tour with him. I would ration out bottles of his favorite ale so he wouldn’t get too drunk to play guitar. I would make beaded necklaces for him by hand. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t the type of guy who would wear a beaded necklace (not even a choker), so I would light his cigarettes for him, or carry his guitar, or battle off groupies. I would do any and every thing in my power to make him happy. And, in return, he would be inspired to write songs about me. About us. About our happy gay life together.
Eternal bliss awaited us both.
First, he had to hurry up and come back for me.
What I wasn’t expecting were the postcards. The first one arrived five days after our temporary good-bye. I found it on the floor of Clouds, slipped through the metal slot in the door and mixed together with the other mail.
The front of the postcard was a scenic photograph of the Atlanta skyline. I turned the card over. It was addressed to me.
I’m in Georgia. Atlanta, to be exact. Of course this place makes me think of you. But, then again, everything makes me think of you. Yours, Diego D.
I studied his handwriting carefully, noticing the way he wrote in all capital letters and dotted his i’s with dashes instead of dots. I wanted to lick the postcard, smell it, shove it in my mouth and devour it.
I wanted Diego Delgado. I wanted him bad.
From that day on, one postcard arrived for me six days a week like clockwork. Each contained only a few lines of devotion.
Van broke down in Tallahassee. Wish you were here with me. Counting down the days. And the nights. Yours, Diego D.
Each night when I got home, I would secure that day’s postcard to the front of my refrigerator, creating a mural of Diego’s beautiful words. I would sit on the floor, reading them over and over for hours until my eyes blurred, or I passed out.
Five weeks couldn’t go by fast enough.
*
The stranger sitting at the wooden café table stared at me over the top of her cup of coffee. “Do I know you?” she asked, squinting. She drummed her French manicured nails against the sunflower yellow mug.
I looked over to where she sat in the front window of Clouds. Behind her, the world outside was gloomy and gray. The first snow of the season was in the forecast. It would be another long and lonely chilly night.
I was holding the most recent postcard I’d received from Diego, rereading his brief words for the hundredth time.
I’m in Lubbock. And I think I’ve fallen madly in love with you. I hope that’s okay. Yours, Diego D.
I tucked the postcard into the front pocket of my coffee-stained barista apron and focused my attention on the questioning customer.
She was my age, but sexy and glamorous. She looked like a supermodel: filthy rich, gorgeous tan, an expensive designer purse. Her long, dark hair was curled and held back away from her face with a pair of oversized designer glasses sitting on top of her head. I wondered if she’d snuck inside Clouds to avoid paparazzi chasing her. But no hounding photographers appeared in the window or doorway of the shop.
I’d never seen this woman before. She was captivating. I was instantly intrigued by her.
She crossed her legs and tugged at the hem of her pleated black miniskirt, appearing to be concerned about the amount of flesh she was showing. Her low-cut pink tank top barely covered her breasts. I wondered if she was freezing. Or delusional. Or both.
“I saw you,” she continued, as if her memory of me was becoming clearer with each word she spoke. She turned her gaze to an empty corner of the shop, perhaps seeing the moment reenacted in her mind. “In the alley,” she recalled. “Kissing the guitar player from Broken Corners. Yeah…yeah, that was you.”
I moved from around the counter and approached her table, nearly tripping over the untied laces of my Converse. “You know them?”
She smiled at me and her teeth were as perfect as the rest of her.
She should be on a toothpaste commercial. Or selling America bottles of shampoo.
“Apparently not as well as you do,” she said. “But, yes…I’m a huge fan. Brenda Stone is my personal idol. I live and breathe for that woman.”
She gestured for me to sit down with her, so I did.
“I’ll be honest with you. I’ve always suspected that Diego played for the other team.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.
“Boys. He likes boys. I mean, you’re a boy, aren’t you?” I nodded. “Strange…you don’t seem gay either.”
For some reason, I started to blush. Never before had my sexuality been talked about so candidly. “I don’t?”
“No. You look more like a skater. Especially the hair.”
I touched my overgrown bangs. “My hair?”
�
��So, you and Diego, huh? Do tell. Do tell.”
I shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.”
Her pale green eyes narrowed. “He used you once and kicked you to the curb? Wow. He doesn’t seem the type.”
“No. Not exactly.” I slid my fingers beneath the collar of my dark green T-shirt and pulled out the chain revealing the precious dog tags to the wide-eyed stranger as if they were proof that Diego and I liked each other. “We made a promise to each other.”
She gave me a strange look and said, “Awwww…that’s adorable.” I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or sincere. Her smile was so convincing it was difficult to detect if evil was lurking behind it. “I hope it works out.” She reached across the table and offered me her hand to shake. “I’m Darla Madrid. And before you ask…no, it’s not my real name. I invented it.”
During the minutes that followed, I learned that not much about Darla Madrid was real: her nose, her boobs, her spray-on tan—even her purse was fake.
Yet as superficial and shallow as Darla Madrid was, I welcomed her company. In her, I discovered a fellow lover of all things Broken Corners. While she raved on about how fantastic Brenda Stone was, I was deep in my devoted thoughts about Diego.
“It’s settled,” Darla declared. “When the band comes back next week, you and Diego can elope, they can finally send Mary Jane to rehab, and I can join the band.”
“What instrument do you play?” I asked.
“Other than the stereo?” she wondered aloud. “I think I could handle a tambourine…or one of those triangles.”
I struggled to hold back my laughter. Was she kidding? Was this an act?
“Do you sing?” I asked.
In response, Darla stood up, positioned herself in the center of Clouds, like she were taking center stage in a stadium arena. Her mouth opened and her pop-perfect, baby-doll voice filled the shop as she sang a few a cappella lines from the cult classic “There’s a Barbarian in the Back of My Car.” It was almost as good as the real thing by Voice of the Beehive.
