Captain Hook laid down a strict no-alcohol rule for tonight’s shindig. Being no dummy, he also set up a bowl for keys and a breathalyzer.
“Dad,” Kelly said, mortified but resigned.
“Yes?” he said, standing in his shirt sleeves at the kitchen counter, mixing a gin and tonic. “Geno, we got a lime in the fridge?”
Geno found one. His father liked a vodka tonic in the evenings, and Geno had learned how to score a lime with a paring knife, cutting off a spiral of peel to float among ice cubes.
“Now that makes a drink handsome,” Hook said, holding up his garnished glass before taking a long sip. “You got some knife skills, kid.”
Geno flipped the knife and caught the handle in his palm, then went back to cubing vegetables. Chris threaded the cubes onto skewers, alternating chicken and beef and shrimp. At the far end of the counter, Mrs. Hook was frosting a two-layered chocolate cake.
“Where you boys headed next fall?” she asked.
“Lewis and Clark,” Chris said.
“Oregon?” Above his glass, Captain Hook looked impressed. “You’re flying far from the nest.”
Chris gave a slow nod but made no other comment. Hook’s eyes flicked to Geno.
“Brooklyn College,” Geno said.
“Poor man’s Harvard,” Chris said.
“Beautiful campus, I hear,” Hook said. “How about your brother, where’s he off to?”
“He got into Parsons but he’s going to take a gap year.”
“Geno, how’s your dad doing?” Mrs. Hook asked.
“Good. Busy. He’s in Singapore until Monday.”
The police chief raised an eyebrow. “Why isn’t the party at your house?”
Geno pointed the knife at him. “Because you have the best breathalyzer in town.”
Carrying the mixing bowl to the sink, Mrs. Hook brushed her lips against her husband’s broad shoulder. At the same time, Kelly passed by Geno and casually scratched his back. As if they were a couple. He looked around the domestic scene and a contentment drew the walls of his heart in, close and warm, like hands cupped around a flame.
“You’ll find joy again,” so many people said after Analisa’s death. “You’ll smile again, feel good again, laugh with friends again. It will happen.”
Chris definitely helped make it happen. He was largely responsible for breaking up Geno’s agoraphobia, getting him out of the lonely henhouse into other people’s homes. Sticking by him through nervous episodes, pushing him to keep participating in life.
“You’re allowed to have a good time,” he said. “She’d want you to.”
The truly good times happened in kitchens, Geno thought. Life was conquered and feted in the triangle of stove, sink and fridge. The room where people came both to cry and celebrate. Here he could be social while keeping a barrier of little tasks between him and the guests. Cooking and prepping occupied his hands and smoothed out his awkward, shy edges.
Guests began to trickle into the Hooks’ house and yard. Mrs. Hook lit the grill and a meaty smoke hovered over the smell of the cut lawn and the chlorine haze from the pool. As dusk fell, Captain Hook lit the tiki torches. Three guys brought out guitars, and singing wove with the laughing and splashing. Flames danced in Kelly’s eyes and made her perfect skin glow as she and Geno fed each other cake, laughing between chocolate bites. They shared one lounge chair while Chris occupied the other, the besotted Stacey at his feet. He was kind and attentive to her, but a blind man could pick up the He’s just not that into you vibe. Finally, with a dignified hair flip, Stacey moved on.
Kelly heaved a sigh, threw Geno an apologetic look and then followed her friend, leaving the boys alone.
“Not feeling it?” Geno said, scraping the last bit of cake frosting off his plate.
Chris made a vague noise, half apology, half explanation.
“What about Jenny Steenberg?”
Chris cracked his knuckles. “I don’t know.”
“She totally digs you. Never understood why you didn’t ask her to prom. You could’ve—”
“Dude, stop.” Chris’s voice split open on the word.
Fork poised in the air, Geno froze, staring, realizing his friend was practically in tears. Chris seemed to realize it, too, and with a scrape of the chair legs on concrete, he bolted, striding toward a far corner of the wide lawn. Geno set his plate aside and went after him. “Yo. Chris, wait up.”
“Just leave me alone.”
“Hey. Come on. Talk to me.”
With a small groan, Chris leaned on the split-rail fence at the far end of the property. Fireflies lit up the scrub beyond. “Just fucking leave me alone, G.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You gotta back off with that shit. Enough already.”
“What shit, what did I do?”
“Just…” Chris squeezed everything. Eyes. Face. Fists. Wringing the answer out of himself. “I don’t like any of the girls at school, okay?”
“Okay, I just—”
“I don’t like girls, G.”
The confused moment twinkled with fireflies.
“I don’t like girls,” Chris said again.
“You’re…?” Geno couldn’t get his mouth to wrap around the word.
“Gay.”
“You?”
“Yeah. Me.” Chris crossed his arms, jaw tight and eyes narrowed. “I’m gay. The date I wanted to bring to prom was impossible. Okay? I just… I can’t take it anymore. I can’t stand this town and this school and this fucking act I have to put on for everyone. I can’t be me anywhere I go. It’s like I want to kill myself sometimes, my life is such a phony crock of shit. Jesus, I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. Start somewhere new.”
“Dude, I—”
“Don’t.” Chris held up a palm. “If you’re gonna walk away, do it now. I get it if you feel threatened.” A snorted, resigned chuckle made his shoulders hitch. “No offense, man, but you’re not my type.”
Geno blinked a few times, wetting his dry lips. “Nobody knows?”
Chris shook his head.
“Only me?”
“Yeah.” A bit of soft laughter. “I always thought if anyone would understand, it would be you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because of Carlos.”
The lawn seemed to expand, growing longer, wider, leaving Geno a small speck in the center. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“No, not nothing. What?”
Even in the dimness, he could see Chris had gone pale. “Oh fuck, I really put my foot in it now.” A hand through his hair, a rough exhale. “Shit. I thought you knew. I mean…”
“Carlos is gay?”
Chris’ hands lifted, then fell. “I thought you knew.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I—”
“You’ve talked to him about it? He told you?”
“No,” Chris said. “But I saw him once… Couple weeks ago. I was getting some stuff at Target. And… Oh man, I feel like shit now. Fuck.”
“Tell me,” Geno said.
Chris’s face twisted up with something that looked like shame. “You don’t understand. Outing someone is so fucking uncool.”
“You saw him with someone?”
Chris groaned. “It was a crowded day, I was parked around the side. Walking back to my car I saw him. Actually…” He gave a weak laugh. “For a second I thought it was you. Then I saw the leather jacket. Anyway. They were standing together by the loading dock. They were, you know, making out.”
Silence, punctuated by peepers and splashing and laughter.
“Who was it?” Geno said, his voice dry.
“I don’t know. No one from around here. He looked like an older guy.”
A hand slipped around Geno’s chest and squeezed.
Come see me soon. —A
“I almost wondered if it was that photographer,” Chris said. “The one your parents had some kind of trouble with? All those years ago?”
“Fuck.” Geno slumped against the fence as the night cracked open and caved in on his head. Realization piling up on realization, edges aligning and corners shifting into place. The clothes. The vain streak. The posturing and the selfies. The female entourage.
The notes.
“What was his name again?”
From far away, Geno heard his voice answer. “Anthony Fox.”
I could barely let you go yesterday. —A
“Right,” Chris said. “He did the after school photography program, my sister was in it. But what ended up happening with Carlos?”
I love you so much, I need two of you. —A
“He was in that program for years,” Geno said. “Then Anthony took some pictures of him and wanted to enter them in a competition. Carlos was only fourteen so he needed parental consent. Instead he forged my father’s signature on the release form.”
“Who forged it? Anthony?”
“No, Carlos signed my father’s name.”
“Damn, that’s a federal offense.”
“No shit. Then Anthony won and the exhibit was in the paper. Giant double-spread of my brother in the Sunday arts section. My parents fucking flipped.”
“Were they nude shots?” Chris said, eyes wide.
“No, but still kind of sexualized and weird…”
Your body is so beautiful. —A
“That’s fucked up,” Chris said. “And it was when your mom was going through chemo, right?”
It was. Adding insult to debilitating injury. His mother had been weak and fragile and Fox had upset her.
“That goddamn Fox was in my henhouse,” Geno heard her mutter to his father. And Nathan, usually so cool and implacable, had a look on his face Geno had never seen before. The warm blue eyes hardened to icy slate, two hatchets poised to chop the enemy in the midst.
“Yeah,” Geno said, his voice still disembodied from his thoughts. “They yanked him out of the course and it was basically a clusterfuck. Anthony’s not supposed to have any contact with him. Or vice-versa.”
I could barely let you go yesterday. —A
“Look, dude,” Chris said. “I didn’t mean to plant it in your head it was him. It was a total knee-jerk assumption.” He crouched down, elbows on knees and hands in his hair. “I feel like ten kinds of crap. I’m sorry. I’m making it all worse.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. Shit.”
Inked words running, rinsed away in the wash. Paper bits in the lint trap.
A for Anthony.
“G, I’m sorry.”
“I’m…” Geno couldn’t finish, all at once unsure what he was. Because if Carlito, his brother, his twin, his mirror and the other half of his soul… If Carlito was gay, what did that make him?
A border dropped onto the topography of Nos. A red dotted line of demarcation defining where Geno could not go.
Why are you going where I can’t follow? I can’t be one with you there.
Then, from far away, beyond the hills and within the walls of the little red henhouse, Geno heard Analisa speak up.
It’s not about you tonight. Be kind.
It was all she wanted from her boys, she said. More than grades, more than success, she wanted them to be kind. To be good men. Empathetic and compassionate. Aware of the secret battles others were fighting.
Just be kind.
Geno shook his head, hard enough to make Chris blur into two boys, then back into one.
Be kind.
Geno’s eyes focused from inward to outward. From him to his friend. “Are you all right?” he asked.
Chris’ brows furrowed. “Me? Yeah.”
“Literally nobody knows?”
“My sister knows. Just her. My dad wouldn’t take it too well.”
“Nobody else?”
Chris shook his head. “Well,” he said. “This guy I’ve been secretly seeing. Obviously he knows.”
“He from around here?”
“No. And no offense, G, but I’m not going to talk about him. It’s already too much tonight.”
“I got it. It’s cool.”
“C’mon, let’s head back,” Chris said, smiling. “Before they start talking about us.”