Jav went through a background check, attended sensitivity training and started volunteering in the kitchen at Exodus Project. He picked the same days Stavroula worked, because he liked her.
The Bake & Bagel became Jav’s downtown office. He kept the cup he bought from Stav behind the counter, and sat with it and his work at least three days a week. Word got around Chelsea that Gil Rafael frequented the local bagel store. Business boomed as people, women especially, dropped in for a bite and a glimpse.
Sometimes Jav stepped behind the counter, put on an apron and took orders. Then the line snaked out the door. Stav looked on in amazement as all her pottery pieces flew off the shelves and the bacon bagels sold out.
“Not to toot my own horn,” Jav said, “but I’m kind of a marketing man’s wet dream.”
“You think?” Stav said, closing out the register. “You’re walking with me to the bank tonight, cookie.” She squared off the pile of receipts, tapping edges on the counter. Looked up to find Jav staring at her.
“What?” she said, sweeping her long bangs out of her face.
“You have the tiniest ears I’ve ever seen,” Jav said.
She laughed, touching one. “I know. Aren’t they ridiculous?”
Spending a lot of his daytime hours in Stav’s company gave Jav some funny feelings to chew on. He wasn’t attracted to her. He was pretty sure he wasn’t attracted to her, but her tall, Junoesque figure made his hands remember smooth, soft skin and the curved, heavy weight of a breast. When she bent low to pick something from the floor or pull something from a shelf, Jav had to slap his eyes away from her ass. Chiding himself to knock off the reminiscing of a woman bent over the bed like that, back arched and thighs quivering. His fingers curved around the knobs of her hip bones. Giving her the what-for until she screamed.
Recalling sex with women made him horny and defensive, two things that didn’t go well together.
I don’t want it, he argued to a mental courtroom. I just remember it. I haven’t had that kind of sex in four months.
Objection, his dick cried. Jav was basking in sex. He and Stef were at each other all the damn time. Getting each other off in bed, in the shower, on the couch and at the kitchen counter. Pretty much any horizontal or vertical surface that would hold their weight. On the roof of Cushman Row once, which vindicated Jav in all kinds of ways. He came in Stef’s hand, in his mouth, all over his body. Then Jav opened hands, mouth and skin to willingly and enthusiastically return the favor. Without a shred of idiocy or an iota of doubt he liked having sex with men.
Well, maybe not all men, he thought. But I sure as hell like it with Stef. So yes, your Honor, I’ve had sex in four months. I just haven’t had any penetrative sex.
The court fixed him with a penetrative look. And?
Jav averted his gaze. Never mind.
A metallic flash before his eyes broke his thoughts apart. Pablo, one of the EP residents, was waving his paring knife through Jav’s thousand-yard stare. “Ground Control to Major Tom?”
Jav shook his head hard as laughter went around the large worktable where volunteers and residents were peeling potatoes.
“Hearing voices again?” Stav said.
“They’re telling him where the mother ship is docking,” Corley said.
“Hey, don’t be dissing my imaginary friends,” Jav said. “They always tell me the truth.”
“Unlike us,” Pablo said, laughing.
Jav could’ve made any number of smartass replies, but didn’t. He minded his Ps and Qs down here, following other jokers’ leads instead of instigating his own. He shut down his natural propensity to ask questions, stayed far away from the subject of sex and avoided any and all terms for genitalia. Maybe he was being ridiculous, but better safe than triggered.
The weeks went by and he got to know a few of the men. He spoke rapid, curse-laden Spanish with Juan and Pablo. Corley was one smart son of a bitch. Jeff could talk books from hell to breakfast. He was deeply offended Jav had never read any Neil Gaiman and pressed on him a personal, well-worn copy of American Gods.
“Read it,” he said. “Thank me later.”
Jav read it in two days and not only thanked Jeff, but begged forgiveness for his ignorance. In the weeks to come, he and Jeff became a two-man book club, discussing reads over prep work and dishes and mopping the floor. Jav made little casual relationships with almost all the residents he met, but he kept it tucked in the back of his mind all of them were here for a reason. When some of them shared bits of that reason, Jav didn’t know what to do.
“You just listen,” Stef said, as they ran along the High Line, one extraordinarily mild December day.
“I know, I know,” Jav said. “I learned that much in training. It’s just… Jesus, their stories are fucking horrid and I know I’m only getting a sliver. I don’t know how you deal with the whole story.”
“You’re a storyteller,” Stef said. “Maybe I don’t know everything about you, but I know you can’t write a scene unless you’re totally immersed in the emotion of it. Which means you’re a sympathetic, compassionate guy. And that’s all you need to be.”
“It’s weird, though,” Jav said. “Just like you have rules of confidentiality? I feel I’m sort of bound by different ones. Like I shouldn’t tell you about the relationships I have with these guys.”
“You don’t have to,” Stef said. “But Christ, if you see a resident testing the edge of a knife against their wrist bone, tell someone. It doesn’t have to be me.”