Toward the end of February, Jav got Stavroula pregnant.
He didn’t mean to. It was The Thing’s fault. In the kitchen one day, Stav took her hands out of soapy dishwater and stretched. Back arched with one hand pressing into the small, kneading the muscles there. The other hand, thick with woven bracelets, brushed her bangs back, water droplets sliding down her forearm.
And shazam, she was pregnant.
Pregnant with the world, Jav thought, his fingertips itching. Pregnant with the sun. The son or the sun?
Little Ears was drawn out of the water. Bracelets of rope at her wrists. Her hair never dried. She was always pregnant.
She was on the ship a year before anyone thought to mention she hadn’t had her baby yet.
That’s when everyone knew she was pregnant with the world.
She was the one they’d waited for.
“What?” Stav said.
Jav blinked. “What?”
“Stop staring at me,” she said, laughing.
“I’m not staring at you, I’m staring through you. An idea is on the other side. Hold still and let me get it.”
She rolled her eyes but her face went rosy pink. “You’re really making up a story right now?”
“A character. She might tell me a story.”
“What will you name her?”
“I love Stav,” he said. “And not just because it rhymes with Jav.”
“It’s a strong name,” Geno said, who’d been quiet up until now. “What does it mean?”
“Stavroula? It’s Greek for cross.” Stav tucked her hair behind her ear. “My birth mother’s last name was Cross.”
“You’re adopted?” Geno said.
“Mm-hm.”
“Cross,” Jav said. “That’s a good name, too.”
His shift was over and just in time. His head was starting to overflow. He had to get some of this down. He got a little lunch and sat at a table with his notebook, scribbling away. He’d filled two pages when his phone pinged an incoming text from Roger Lark.
Brother from another mother, Rog typed. Got some news. Can I call you in about ten minutes?
Sure, Jav typed back. Good news or you-better-sit-down news?
Good news. Bad news I send by registered mail. Talk in a few.
“This seat taken?” Geno said, appearing with a plate of ziti and meatballs.
“No, no,” Jav said, putting down his phone and pushing a chair out with his foot. “Siéntate.”
Geno plopped down with a long exhale. His dark hair, cropped short when Jav first met him, had grown in enough to start waving a little. His light brown eyes were smudged with fatigue.
“Qué lo qué,” Jav said.
“Nothing.”
“Feel all right?”
“Didn’t sleep much last night.”
Jav nodded sympathetically, capped his pen and let it roll into the notebook’s spine.
“You’re almost at the end of the pages,” Geno said.
“I know. I’ll need to start looking for another one.”
“What were you writing about Stav?”
Now the circled eyes had the tiniest sparkle of curiosity, and Jav wanted to coax it bigger. “Oh, I’d tell you,” he said. “But the voices in my head would say I had to kill you.”
“Come on.”
“No, I’m serious, they get really angry when I share the— Shh, wait.” Jav put up a finger and tilted his head toward the ceiling. “Did you hear that?”
“You’re ridiculous,” Geno said, and right then, with the rolling eyes and the snort, he was Ari. Young, full of sass and bemoaning the tragic unhip-ness of the adult population. Jav’s brain swelled with questions begging to be asked.
Where are you from? Where are your parents? How long will you be here? What happened to you?
No, wait, don’t tell me.
As he was walking back that question, another sneaked out. “Is Geno short for something?”
Geno looked up from his plate, brow furrowed.
“Sorry,” Jav said quickly. “That’s personal. I’m a writer. I like names. I read the newspaper just to collect them and sometimes—”
“It’s short for Geronimo.”
Jav sat back a little. “Shut up.”
“Swear to God.”
Geronimo, Jav thought. You couldn’t think it quietly. It begged to be yelled. Preferably as you were jumping off a diving board.
Geno laughed now. “Dude, you’re looking at me like I gave you a million dollars.”
“That’s the greatest name ever.”
“My dad’s father was Jerome. My mother wanted the Spanish version. Doesn’t exactly go with Caan, but…”
“Caan. Like James Caan?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
Geronimo Caan.
Yes, he Caan.
Wrath of Caan. Jav chuckled at that one.
“What?” Geno said.
“Nothing. It’s a great name.”
“So, what comes first when you’re writing? The character or the name?”
“Usually the name.” Jav tapped the cover of the notebook. “I have a ton of them in here. Like the other day I came across the name Ike. You don’t hear many guys called Ike these days. It feels cool to say. A character named Ike would definitely be badass.”
“Ike Turner?”
“Well, he was an asshole. I guess that theory’s ruined. But I still think names with X or K sounds have a lot of strength.” Jav was babbling a little now, his mouth jumping off the diving board. “Rex is Latin for king. Rex is a badass name. Javier in French is Xavier. If my parents changed one letter of my name, I could’ve had a whole different life. This is the kind of shit I think about.”
“No, you’re right,” Geno said. “A lot of great leaders or legendary kings had those sounds. Constantine.”
“Tutankhamen.”
“Alexander.”
“Lex Luther.”
Geno laughed. “Christopher Columbus.”
Jav pointed. “Carlos Quiñones Velázquez,” he said, exaggerating all the hard syllables. “Not a king. Relief pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers. Before your time.”
Geno’s expression trembled a little. He looked down and with his fork, drew lines through the tomato sauce on his plate. “My brother was Carlos. Carlos Caan.”
“Oh.”
“He died last summer.”
Jav blinked, adding this death to Geno’s father, also last summer. “Lo siento,” he said. The obvious next question being, What happened? But he didn’t ask.
“It’s kind of similar to your situation,” Geno said. “The thing you told me about with your cousin. How he turned on you and died before you could find out why? Something like that happened with my brother. Left me with a shitload of unanswered questions and unfinished business.”
“I see,” Jav said. He switched to Spanish, drawing a bit more privacy around them. “Man, I’m sorry. You got my heart on that one. It’s so hard not knowing why.”
“Yeah.” Geno made a vague gesture around. “One of the many pleasant things I’m working out in this place.”
Jav tried not to laugh too heartily. “Was he older than you? Younger?”
“We were twins.”
Jav’s phone rang. He twitched at the sound, having forgotten about Roger. “Shit, that’s my buddy. I have to take this.”
“I gotta go get my head shrunk.” Geno threw up a palm, took his half-empty plate and left.
“What’s up, ugly,” Rog said, voice booming over the line.
“Hey,” Jav said, thrown by the abrupt end of one conversation and the quick-change into a different language and dynamic. “Where are you?”
“Hibernating in Vermont. But guess where the show’s coming next?”
Jav hummed, eyes circling an imaginary globe, looking for locales Rog would be calling him about. “The Dominican Republic?”
“Close enough. Randall’s Island.”
“Get out,” Jav said. “You’re building a treehouse in Manhattan?”
“This is a first.”
“Santa Claus is coming to town.”
“In a manner of speaking. Are you being a good boy?”
“At this stage of my life? Fuck, no.”
“Excellent. So I’ll be in town maybe second week in March to scout the site with my team. Hopefully start building in April. Wrap-up end of June, budget willing.”
As Jav took in the timeline, a germ of an idea took root in his mind. “Where will you live?”
“I’m crashing on your couch for three months. That okay?”
Jav opened his mouth, closed it. Managed a weak laugh. “Really?”
“No, dumbass. They find me a long-term hotel or a studio apartment.”
“I see,” Jav said. “Well, this’ll be great. Let me know as it gets closer.”
“Will do. How’s your boyfriend, when you getting married?”
“Jesus,” Jav said, laughing. “He’s fine and not anytime soon.”
“Tell him I said hi. Gotta run. Adíos, amigo.”
Jav collected his things together, pulling the pen from the pages of the notebook and giving a broad glance at what he’d written. He’d had more but it was gone now. Flounced out in a jealous huff to find another writer.
Walking home, his head was a mess. Loose threads of ideas snarled in a knot. Women pregnant with the sun (or the son). Kings with X and K names. Names you had to yell rather than speak. The wrath of Caan (really, he needed to write that down). Last summer. How hard it was to not know. But hey, good news, Santa Claus was coming to town. And needed a place to stay.
I could sublet him my place.
April to June. The lease is up in July.
Let Roger live at my place and I move downtown with Stef.
Three months. See how we feel.
Why not?
Is this too soon?
It’s too soon. You’re out of your mind.
“How’s your boyfriend,” Roger said. “You getting married?”
I’m not getting married.
Yet.
But I could move in with him. For a while. For the spring. See how it feels come summer.
His swirling mind pulled and tugged at the tangle of thoughts. Last summer. The high sun of summer. Pregnant with the summer sun. Or was it the summer sons?
The sun god, he thought. The sun god is two sons. Sun sons. Twin gods born in the sun.
Twin gods…
He stopped walking. Last summer.
He turned around, looked down Eleventh Avenue. He could just make out the northern facade of the brick warehouse where a boy Ari’s age lived, got his head shrunk and worked out unpleasant things.
“Something like that happened with my brother,” Geno said. “Unanswered questions and unfinished business.”
We were twins.
“Twins last summer,” Jav said under his breath, remembering newspaper headlines three inches tall. Remembering the effort it took to say prostitution. The worst-case what-if-ing on what might have happened to Ari if Jav hadn’t been around. The luck that allowed Jav to survive and be there for his nephew. The there-but-for-the-grace fortune of not bouncing off the streets of Queens into the hands of…
“Oh my God,” he whispered.