“The tales don’t always leave you satisfied,” Jav’s recorded voice said from the computer. “They’re often unfair. But always they have a little saying at the end, like a curtain call for the teller. It goes, ‘Listen and learn it, learn to tell it, and tell it to teach it.’ I love that. It just beautifully describes the work I’m doing right now. Listen to learn. Learn to tell. Tell to teach.”
Now Camberley Jones’s voice came through the speakers: “Gil Rafael’s novel The Trade comes out in September. You can read an excerpt on our website, along with another Latin American folktale he collected from the immigrant neighborhoods.
“For Moments in Time, this is Camberley Jones in New York City.”
Camberley reached to stop the sound file, then turned to Jav with a smile. “What do you think?”
“I love it,” Jav said. “Holy shit, it came out great.” He spun in his chair and looked at his new publicist, Donna. “What do you think?”
She leafed through her pad of notes. “It’s excellent. And I think we found your mission statement.” She turned the pad around and showed a quick sketch of a website header. A long rectangle with his pen name, Gil Rafael, in block letters. Beneath it, “Listen to learn. Learn to tell. Tell to teach.”
“Boom,” Camberley said, holding a fist out to Jav.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Jav said, touching his knuckles to hers.
“It was a pleasure. I’m so glad we got a chance to work together.” Her voice was crisp but a rosy blush crept up from her throat. Her eyes flicked surreptitiously to Donna before she winked at Jav. “Again.”
He blinked back. He remembered the way she blushed, hairline to heels, obscuring her freckles.
When Camberley won the Peabody Award in 1993, she hired Jav to accompany her to the awards ceremony. And accompany her home afterward. She was emerging from a nasty divorce at the time, and decided a night devoted to her bruised ego was well worth the money.
She was one of a few one-time clients who stuck in Jav’s memory. While he didn’t see her again after their date, he heard her all the time on the radio. A few weeks ago, they ran into each other at a Starbucks. They caught up over coffee and next thing Jav knew, Camberley was trailing him on one of his jaunts to Latino neighborhoods.
The segment would air before the release of The Trade in September, followed by Jav’s first book signing tour. A three-week trip along the entire east coast that by turns, thrilled and terrified him.
“Got time for lunch?” Cam asked Jav.
“I don’t.” He checked his watch. “My nephew’s coming home from Vancouver. I need to head to LaGuardia.” He leaned to kiss her cheek and the pink blush swept over her face again.
Jav didn’t kiss the introverted and formal Donna. A smile and a nod sufficed, then he was on his way.
A sappy anticipation coursed through his heart as he drove to the airport to collect his nephew. After a lifetime of each not knowing the other existed, Jav and Ari were tragically introduced a little over a year ago, when Jav’s sister died and named him guardian for her seventeen-year-old son. Instead of uprooting Ari and causing further disruption, Jav shut down his city life and moved north to a little town called Guelisten. He found an apartment for them, and found building a relationship with Ari to be a complicated but ultimately rewarding experience. So much so that when Ari went out to Vancouver for a film school workshop this summer, Jav missed him. A lot. He’d gotten used to having a buddy around.
“I keep looking for you,” he said when Ari called him after a week.
“Oh my God, T, are you crying?” Ari said. He called Jav T, for Tío. Spanish for uncle.
“Shut up.”
“Come on, I bet you have an absolute surplus of toilet paper now.”
“This is true. One box of cereal lasts forever and I only have to buy a half-gallon of milk.”
“See? You don’t miss me at all.”
“You’re right. Glad to have you out of my hair. Don’t ever come home.”
Ari was back in Jav’s hair now, looking an inch taller and a few pounds heavier when Jav got arms around him. The traffic on the Grand Central Parkway was obscene and Jav used the delay to play the MP3 of the radio piece.
“Man, T, that is awesome,” Ari said when it was over.
“Thanks,” Jav said, turning off the car stereo. “I can’t believe how great it came out.”
“I can.” Ari scrubbed a hand through his hair and yawned. “Working on any other projects?”
“I’m thinking about writing a memoir called Life Advice From a Whore.”
Ari groaned and slouched in his seat. “I said I was sorry.”
Jav laughed, shoving him. “I’m just giving you shit.”
“Yeah, I missed you too.”
“Anyway, I’ve retired from escorting.”
Ari sat up a little. “You kidding?”
“Nope. I’m done.”
“Not because of me. What I said, I mean.”
“Because it was time.”
“Oh.” Ari went quiet. Typically, he dozed off, his body sliding until it was curled like a shrimp against the passenger window. Jav quelled the urge to pat him and sighed heavily instead.
It was time.
He didn’t second-guess the decision. But it was supposed to be liberating. He was completely unprepared for this soul-sucking emptiness in his heart and guts. Overwhelming emotions of confusion and regret often dissolving into a panicked fear.
I’m too old.
I’m too late.
What have I done?
It happened at night. When so many things happened to him. By day Jav wrote, ensconced in his apartment, unshaven in ball caps and ratty jeans, ears plugged against distraction. At night he unfurled like a flag and hit the streets in a hustler’s confident strut. Sleek and groomed, his ears attuned to his date’s verbal cues, his eyes laser-focused on her non-verbal ones.
One night, he was just done with it all.
It wasn’t the woman. She was perfectly lovely. Like Cam, a recent divorcée needing validation and a date to a family wedding. He gave her everything she paid for. Attention. Flirting. Dance after dance after dance. He listened to her. His eyes lingered on her. He made her feel beautiful.
“I’m having such a good time,” she said, a hint of tears in her eyes.
They went to her place and he gave her an even better time. It wasn’t his A game. Not that she would know. She was an incoherent heap in the sheets by the time he was done. Jav on the other hand, couldn’t get his thoughts to shut up. He was distracted. Tired to his bones.
A little bored, frankly.
And ever-so-slightly disgusted with himself.
You’re worth more.
When time was up, Jav kissed the woman goodnight. He dressed, making sure the envelope with his payment was safe in his jacket pocket, and saw himself out.
It wasn’t late and she didn’t live all that far from him. He opted to walk.
It took all of four blocks to realize he didn’t want to do this anymore.
No lightning bolt realization. No breakdown. No fed up fist shaking at the sky. The thought was quiet but resolute. An almost laughably easy decision.
I’ve had enough. I’ve done enough.
He sighed, remembering a promise he’d made not too long ago. A pledge to give himself another chance at being friends with love. It was an empty promise if he continued selling himself.
I’m worth more. And it’s not only about me.
He passed a homeless man sleeping in the recessed alcove of a building’s service doors. Jav’s fingers closed around the envelope in his pocket.
You did a good job. Whether it was a hundred an hour, or a thousand an hour, you always treated a woman like she was paying a million an hour. You’re not a whore.
You’re just better than this.
It’s time.
Jav crouched and carefully tucked the envelope beneath the snoring man’s shoulder.
“I will do this,” he whispered beneath the night. “And you will give me nothing.”
When Ari woke, he was hungry and eager to see his dog, Roman. After twelve hours sleep, he’d be bored with Jav’s company and itching to get up to Guelisten to see his girlfriend, Deane.
Jav had two of three matters under control. He’d ended the sub-lease on his longtime apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue and moved to a new building on Riverside Drive that allowed dogs. It was also a block from Fairway, where he’d been this morning to fill the fridge and stock toilet paper. If Ari wanted to get laid, he’d have to put his horny ass on a train tomorrow.
They had couch dinner that night, balancing plates in front of the TV, watching baseball. Ari licked his plate clean and set it on the coffee table, then held out his arms to Roman, who climbed up and into the boy’s lap. Roman, a Duck Tolling Retriever, turned his sleek, coppery head toward Jav with a smug expression.
Master is home. You’re dismissed.
“Check it out,” Ari said, reaching around Roman to push up his T-shirt sleeve. An eye was tattooed on the cap of his shoulder.
“Nice,” Jav said, leaning in to get a closer look. The pupil was heart-shaped, a tiny white question mark making a highlight in the black.
“Deane and I both got it,” Ari said, his fingers rubbing the skin.
“What’s the meaning?” Jav asked.
“Love each other and see what happens,” Ari said.
“I like it,” Jav said. “Good philosophy for the moment and in the long-term.”
He suppressed an apprehensive sigh. When you had the misfortune to fall in love with your own cousin, loving and seeing what happened were your only options.
They talked away the innings, gradually lowering the volume on the TV until it was barely background noise.
“Were you ever afraid when you were escorting?” Ari asked as they dug into ice cream.
“Afraid?”
“Yeah. You know, the cliché story of the hooker getting offed by some psycho trick. Did you ever have that fear?”
“Not so much fear as an awareness. Not to get lulled into a false sense of security just because it was a woman. Only takes one female with a knife or a gun and then I’m floating in the river or something.”
“Anything like that ever happen?”
“No. But a couple times I walked into a date and my gut told me to leave the money and walk out. It’s one of the rules. Always trust your instincts.”
“What’s another?”
“Always let someone know where you’re going, even if you write it down and tape it to your bathroom mirror. Leave a trail with someone you trust.”
Ari stared at him a moment. “Who was it when we were living in Guelisten?”
“Alex.”
Alex Lark-Penda was Deane’s father and, for all intents and purposes, Jav’s best friend.
And lover for all of twenty minutes. If some sloppy kissing and grappling qualified one as a lover.
Alex’s wife qualified it that way.
“You been back to Guelisten much?” Ari asked, cuddling with Roman again.
“Technically the lease on the apartment isn’t through until the end of August. Some of our stuff is still there.”
A smile played around Ari’s mouth. “That wasn’t the question.”
“I haven’t been up there in about three weeks.”
“Did you and Alex have a fight?”
Jav glanced down the couch. Two human eyes, two canine eyes and one tattooed eye met his.
Bottom line: what happened between Jav and the Lark-Pendas was none of Ari’s adolescent business. Still, Jav had rules about lying to his nephew and he finally answered, “Kind of.”
Roman closed his eyes and Ari’s gaze grew troubled. “What about?”
“It’s complicated,” Jav said. “It wasn’t really a fight. Just a…thing. A thing between us we’re taking some time and distance from. It’s going to be fine.”
Ari seemed satisfied, and reached for the clicker to turn the game back up.