“Why does it say ‘curator and sailor’ on your card?” Jav asked.
“It’s dumb,” Stef said.
“No really. Why?”
“Well, curator is from the Latin curare. Means to take care. In Old English, a curator is a guardian.”
“Are you someone’s guardian?”
“In a sense. I work at the Coalition for Creative Therapy and the past two years, I’ve been working almost exclusively with male survivors of sexual assault.”
Jav’s eyebrows rose above the frames of the aviator shades. “That has to be intense work.”
“But important work.”
“Why do you do it?”
“Why?”
Jav’s shy smile unfolded. “Asking people what they do is boring. Asking why they do it is so much more interesting.”
“Why do I do it?” Stef chewed on the question.
“Personal experience?” Jav said, with a quick sideways glance.
“No,” Stef said. “I didn’t choose this particular road, it kind of chose me.”
“I know the feeling.”
“I guess I seem to have the right kind of…” He wracked his brain, which looked back at him, just as clueless. Beside him, Jav was quiet. Patient. A hand on the wheel, the other rubbing his chin. Stef leaned on the patience as his mind relaxed into the question.
“I want to say I have a knack for it,” he said. “But knack isn’t the right word, it makes it sound like a trick to master.”
“Only so much of it is skill, I would think.”
“Right. The rest is insight and… Well, like any true vocation, it just is.”
“Are these victims of child abuse?”
“Some of them. Long-term abuse by a family member or someone in the community. For others it was a one-off event. They were raped by a stranger. Or strangers.”
Jav took off his shades and set them in little cubby beneath the radio. Stef waited. Whatever Jav said next would be a clear indicator of the kind of guy he was.
“That has to be a somewhat invisible demographic.” Jav’s gaze was intent on the windshield. “I mean, how many male victims come forward?”
“Not many,” Stef said. “If a woman is afraid or ashamed to tell her ordeal, a man can be twice as reluctant.”
Jav glanced at him, then looked away again, his shoulders giving a small twitch. “I’m fighting against the urge to say it’s worse because it’s not. Rape is rape. There’s no better or worse scenario for men or women. But for a man, it’s got to have some truly different psychological effects. Psychological? Do I mean cultural?”
“Both,” Stef said. “It fucks with their identity on a whole lot of levels.”
“Back to what I said: that has to be intense, complicated work.”
“It is.”
“But now ‘curator and sailor’ make sense.”
“I take them from one place to another place.”
“Using art.”
“It helps express the things that can’t yet be spoken out loud.”
Jav raised and lowered his chin in a single nod, his eyes blinking. “You’re a captain.”
“Kind of. Anyway, enough about me. Why do you do whatever it is you do?”
“I’m a writer,” Jav said. “I do it to keep from talking out loud to myself in public.”
“Books?” Stef said. So you do read?
Jav flipped a thumb over his shoulder, toward the back seat. “Just picked up the proofs of my latest.”
“No shit.” Stef twisted around and saw a large cardboard box on the floor. He loosened the seat belt and reached, plucking out a heavy paperback. A brand new book in all its exhilarating, pristine glory. The edges square and trim. The cover glossy and crisp, its corners unmarred, the spine unbroken.
Stef turned it in his hand. The Trade printed in white above a grainy photo of the Twin Towers. His eyes lowered to the author name. Doubled back and read it again.
“What the fuck?” he said.
Jav chuckled, running a hand through his hair. “I’m having the weirdest day.”
Stef scrambled between his feet to reach into his messenger bag. He pulled out his paperback and held both books side by side.
Client Privilege, by Gil Rafael.
The Trade, by Gil Rafael.
“You’re him?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you shitting me?”
Jav shook his head. “This never happens. Swear to God.”
Stef looked at the covers, then at their alleged author. “Can I see some ID?”
“Gil Rafael is my pen name. I don’t have ID for him.”
Stef put the books down in his lap and crossed his arms. “I don’t know about this, man. Could be a line you lay on people.”
“Fair enough.” Jav reached into his inside pocket, then handed Stef his phone. “Open my email, search for Lorraine Merril. She’s my agent. Look for something from her back in July. With ‘contract’ in the subject line.”
Stef took the device with a weird thrill. It was a startlingly intimate overture. These days, being granted access to someone’s phone was like being invited into their pants.
Easy, dude.
He scrolled through Jav’s email, finding dozens from Lorraine Merril. He tapped on an attachment and a PDF opened. Turning the phone horizontally, he read the first lines under his breath.
“Book publishing contract for agreement between Javier Landes, ‘author,’ a.k.a. Gil Rafael, ‘pseudonym,’ and Cathedral Rock Press, ‘the publisher’ in regards to the creative work The Chocolate Hour, ‘the work’… Holy shit.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“It’s weird to meet you. I never met an author in my life.”
“I never met anyone carrying my book in their bag.”
Stef held up Client Privilege. “I’d love to say I’m a big fan but so far I’ve only read this.”
The color was up high along Jav’s cheekbones and his head bobbled around like he was looking for a graceful exit from the conversation. “What happened to your eyebrow?”
Stef reached up to touch the scar that bisected through his left brow, intrigued Jav had noticed it. “Knife fight.”
“For real?”
“No. I fell and hit my head against a filing cabinet.”
“I like the knife fight better.”
“It’s more badass.”
“You said you live in Chelsea?”
“Yeah. I kind of live with my mom, which isn’t as pathetic as it sounds. She owns the townhouse. I rent the garden apartment.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s retired now, but she was a psychologist and a sociology professor at NYU.”
“Why d— I ask a lot of questions.”
“I don’t mind.”
They asked, answered and talked all the way down the Saw Mill, across the Henry Hudson Bridge and along the length of Manhattan. When the conversation took a rest, they sat still, looking out their windows, listening to classic rock. When Springsteen’s “Out in the Street” came on, Stef leaned to turn up the volume.
“This is so high school,” he said. “Friday night theme song.”
“I haven’t heard this in years,” Jav said. But naturally, any Springsteen song heard once was coded in your DNA forever, and soon they were both singing lustily, letting their voices go all rough and raspy to get to the high notes.
“It works on a Tuesday,” Stef said. “Who knew?” An excitement coursed in his veins. Curious, but tempered. On tune, but a little rough on the high notes.
“I like your ink,” Jav said, flicking his chin toward Stef’s forearm.
“Thanks.” He turned it up and then back again, letting Jav see the intricate design of winged horses and centaurs, each composed of stark, stylized geometric shapes. All interlocking together, rotated and fitted into one seamless pattern.
“Does it have a story?” Jav asked.
“More like a fascination.”
“Why’s that?”
“I guess because I was born both a Finch and a Sagittarius. So I look at a winged horse and something in me goes, Yeah.”
“I’m a Taurus,” Jav said. “Something in me likes to make up bullshit.”
“You always been a writer?”
“Been making up bullshit since I was a kid. Then I did a lot of web copy. Speaking of which, if you do want a site for the exhibit, I can hook you up with my friend Russ. He’s more the design guy.”
“Great, I’d appreciate that.” They were moving beyond the blocks of the Upper West Side, where Jav said he lived. “Dude, you don’t have to take me all the way downtown.”
“I don’t mind.”
Stef didn’t either, already constructing a casual way to feel out if Jav was interested in getting together.
Following Stef’s directions, Jav turned off Eleventh Avenue onto 19th Street. Up Tenth Avenue for a block and onto West 20th Street. The General Theological Seminary loomed on the left side of the car.
“It’s four-twelve,” Stef said. “The red brick cluster on the right there.”
“Are you kidding me,” Jav said. “You live on Cushman Row?”
Stef laughed. “Mom prefers to say I squat on Cushman Row.”
Jav double-parked and leaned on the wheel, looking past Stef at the seven red-brick townhouses. They were among the oldest homes in Chelsea, and considered to be the best examples of Greek Revival architecture in the city.
“You grew up here?” Jav asked.
“No, on Roosevelt Island. This was my maternal grandparents’ townhouse. Mom inherited it when they died.”
“Jesus.”
Stef hesitated. “You want to come in?”
Still leaning on the steering wheel, Jav looked at him. “Maybe someday.” His full lips parted in that shy smile, and Stef’s own heart curled inward, hiding behind his ribs, just as bashful.
“All right. Well, great to meet you. In a lot of ways.”
“Same.”
They shook hands. “I’ll give you a call about that website?”
“Sure.”
Stef got out and shut the door. Both men threw a palm up in a wave and Jav drove away.
Stef watched the SUV reach Ninth Avenue just as the light turned green. It crossed the intersection and slowly disappeared in traffic. Stef counted to thirty, then took his phone out of one pocket and Jav’s business card from the other.
Thanks for the ride, he texted to the number on the card.
Five seconds later, from the depths of his messenger bag, came an electronic chime he’d never heard before.
“Shit,” he said, digging around inside. He found Jav’s phone sandwiched between the two books, Stef’s text flashing on its display.
“I took his fucking phone,” he said.
He looked down the block, then back at his hands, each holding a phone. Slowly he sank onto the front steps, laughing under his breath. “This could either be brilliant or a disaster.”
He waited, following a hunch and fighting the temptation to snoop in Jav’s phone. It felt heavy and sleek and sensual in his palm.
Five minutes passed.
He wondered what Jav would feel like in his palm.
You’re insane.
After ten minutes, the black SUV came down 20th Street again and Stef felt a smile crack his face open.
Gotcha.
The passenger window slid down as Jav pulled up. He sat back from the wheel and crossed his arms, eyebrows raised. Stef got up and approached, wiggling the phone in front of him.
“Yours, I believe?” he said.
“Mine.”
“I lied about the art therapy thing,” Stef said. “I’m a professional thief.”
“I’m not a writer. I’m an assassin.”
“I knew it.”
“Glad I got your card. I may have a job for you.”
Laughing, Stef handed the phone over. “Let’s try this again. I’ll give you a call.”
“Okay.”
They both paused, holding eyes. The evening was a beautiful thing. A golden New York moment full of promise.
“Get out of here,” Stef said. He thumped his fist on the car’s roof and stepped back. Once more, he watched until the car disappeared past the intersection, then he turned to go up the stairs.
Lilia Kalo, his mother’s lover, was coming up the street, wearing her grubby red quilted jacket and carrying a cloth totebag in each hand.
“Hello, Pony,” she said, using his childhood nickname.
“Mom went to dinner,” he said, taking the bags from her. “She’ll get a car service home.”
“Yes, she told me. They had beautiful apples at the market. I brought you some.”
Stef loved apples. “You’re my favorite.”
“You look happy.” Her thick Hungarian accent made a goulash of happy.
I met someone, he thought.