The days began to orient themselves around Geno’s sessions with Stef. More often than not, Geno left them feeling better. Stef could always reach into the junk heap of Geno’s soul and extract one tiny piece of gold. Some little piece of truth that sustained him until the next time.
Stef began to show up in his dreams. Geno would be climbing a mountain or trekking down a long road. Stef gave a boost, threw a rope or directed the route.
Hold on, let me check first. No, don’t go that way. It’s not safe. Come this way. Follow me.
In dreams Stef stayed close by. Tough and tattooed and immutable, but soft with compassion. Firm, but gentle. Like a father.
Or a big brother.
Sometimes Geno woke from the dreams alarmed. Am I crushing on him?
He reviewed the imagery carefully. No, I’m just trusting him.
Everyone trusts him. He’s good at what he does.
Geno watched Stef work with Juan one day. Clearly unearthing some painful insight because Juan broke down. Geno could tell it wasn’t a clean, cathartic cry but one of those jags that made you feel you were utterly losing your grip on the world. This one would kill you. You were done. Defeated. You couldn’t go on anymore.
Stef got him to walk. He did this a lot with residents having a breakdown. To attach gross motor movement to the experience. To be present in the moment so you could remember later (if you were alive) you survived. To show that you could carry the fuck on even as you were being shredded into pieces.
“It’s all right,” Stef said. “Keep moving with me. Every step means something. You’re doing great.”
Juan leaned on him like a wounded soldier, stumbling and shuffling with a hand over his face. His other hand in a white-knuckled clench on Stef’s shirt. Hanging on. Trusting Stef to walk him the hell out the other side.
Another time, Geno arrived in the art room to the sound of sobbing. A pathetic wail that went on and on without a pause for breath. Ebbing and flowing like a siren. Over by the windows, Stef was pacing. His youngest client, six-year-old Max, draped on his broad shoulder, crying and crying.
Geno stared as Stef walked back and forth, backlit by the sunlight pouring through the glass, his hand rubbing between the little boy’s shoulder blades as he talked.
“I know he said boys don’t cry. That’s baloney. I cry all the time, Max. You can cry, too.”
Geno’s arms itched, remembering his nephew’s trusting weight and the press of a wet face in his neck.
“It’s all right,” Stef said. “You cry as much as you want.”
Max moaned and wept harder.
“I’m right here. I got you.”
Geno couldn’t look away. He could feel that solid mass of muscle and bone under his face. Stef’s chest pressed to his. His strong arms carrying Geno away from all of this, like a kvater. The hand between his shoulder blades. The shushing air between his teeth. The beautiful, perfect words that broke apart chains and knocked down prison walls.
I know what he said. He was wrong. He lied to you. I am telling you the truth now. I am here to put it right.
Geno wanted it. He could taste that mighty protection. The sweetness of having a champion.
He craved it.
He began to dream about it.
He dreamed of being his grown self in a child’s body and Stef was carrying him. Sometimes draped on his shoulder. Sometimes cradling Geno in both arms. This time, being a baby boy was so pure and peaceful and secure.
Hold me, brother mine.
I am one chick in an empty henhouse.
“How have your anxiety levels been?” Dr. Stein asked.
“Better,” Geno said. “It doesn’t seem as constant as it used to. I still get panic attacks but not every day. I’m getting better at getting through them.”
“What do you do?”
“Visualize safe places. Or places I remember being happy. I remembered the other day how much I liked being at the beach. Stef found this app I could download that plays different kinds of white noise. One setting is ocean waves. It helps get me into that place in my head.”
“Ah,” Stein said, nodding. “Excellent.”
“Stef’s got a lot of good ideas.”
“I’m glad you’re working with him. He’s extremely insightful as well as creative. He comes at a problem from all directions.”
“Yeah, he’s good. They’re all good there. Even some of the people who aren’t therapists are good. I mean, I feel like I made a few friends.”
In fact, he had to build an addition onto his little henhouse. Stef already had a room. Now Javier and Stavroula had moved in.
Geno watched them all the time in the kitchen, studying their interactions like a map. Putting down pins when Jav’s gaze went far away into the zone where his ideas lived, then came abruptly back when Stav walked by.
Gotcha, Geno thought. Pin after pin making a route when he caught Jav looking at Stav. Quick little glances, like he was taking careful spoonfuls of some delicious dessert. Stav’s eyes on Jav weren’t as intense, but she called him cookie sometimes. Like he was something she wouldn’t mind nibbling on. The guys gave him a ton of shit about it, helping themselves to his new nickname.
“Hey,” Jav said, a finger pointing around. “Only Stav calls me cookie. Everyone else, it’s Mr. Cookie.”
He totally likes her, Geno thought.
Stav was easy to like. And goddamn, she had that look. The clean, simple beauty that came out of Geno’s past like a long-forgotten dream. It was older on Stav, mature and solid and a little weathered. Still, it rested easy on his eyes, while the age difference kept it safely at a distance.
Her hair was brown, with pretty blonde highlights and a few faint streaks of silver. She had a way—as most women did—of gathering her hair up in a sloppy fist, winding an elastic around the whole mess and ending up with a bun that looked on the verge of falling apart, yet never moved. The shorter pieces of hair fell down around her temples. Over and over, she’d brush them to the side and tuck them behind one ear.
“Geno, look at her ears,” Jav said. “They’re the tiniest ears I’ve ever seen.”
Stav laughed. “I’m like the opposite of an elf.”
Her ears weren’t pierced, either. Small, pink, perfect ears. Just like her fingernails: short, pink, unpolished and perfect. The veins and tendons of her hands lay close to the skin’s surface. Swift, competent hands that chopped and sliced and stirred. When she leaned over a pot or bowl, her short hairs fell in her face and she pushed them back with the sleeve bunched around her elbow. The crook of her arm soft and secret, a single blue vein flickering. If you kissed that spot, would you feel her pulse?
Jav looked at her. Geno looked at him looking and it filled him with a warm, luscious pleasure. His eyes followed the path of Jav’s finger, through the air to catch the tendril of Stav’s silvery-gold hair, and draw it back behind the pretty pink seashell of her ear.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, laughing.
Are they together? Geno wondered. Or getting there?
His imagination sawed and hammered at the henhouse, assembling a master bedroom. Busting out a back wall to expand the kitchen. He hauled bricks and built a fireplace, dragging furniture around it. A comfy couch for Jav and Stav. Mismatched arm chairs for himself and Stef. The door latched tight against foxes. Feet stretched toward the flames. Stav’s hair tucked behind her little ears. Companionable silence within and the sound of ocean waves outside.