Chapter Two
THE ROOM was burning hot. Why wasn’t the air conditioner on? I tried to shift on the sweat-soaked bed, but someone was crammed against my back and drooling down my neck. I knew the offender was Nunzio even with a timpani drum banging inside my head.
I slammed my elbow into his sternum with pissed-off, hungover lack of care that he might be in a similar state.
“Get offa me.”
He grunted and detached himself with an incomprehensible slurry of Italian swearwords. He rolled over, splayed out, and continued to take up the majority of the space.
Nunzio was definitely not cut out for sharing a bed.
The thought brought a realization to mind, and I jerked up too fast for the state of my stomach. I lunged for the side of the bed and crashed to the floor in a heap of limbs, just managing to grab the wastebasket before upchucking.
Nunzio peered down at me. “Ugh. You couldn’t make it to the toilet, bro?”
“Shut up.” When I stopped heaving, I leaned on the wall and shuddered.
Nunzio moved to the edge of the bed with the sheets pooled in his lap. The memory of him fucking into my ass while I sucked on his fingers wanted to leap to the forefront of my discombobulated brain, but I wouldn’t let it.
“Where’s that guy?”
“Made tracks as soon as the sun came up.” Nunzio stretched, yawning and arching his back with a ripple of flexing muscles. “He woke me up to lock the door behind him and wouldn’t look me in the eye. I think he was embarrassed that he got used. Or else he had morning-after shame because of a boyfriend.”
“So I’m guessing he didn’t leave a number.”
“No.” Nunzio stared at me like I’d sprouted another head. “What the fuck, did you think that was a date?”
“No, but I wouldn’t mind railing his sweet ass again.” I groaned. “Help me up.”
Nunzio grasped my hands and pulled me to my feet, allowing me to slump against him.
“Oh God. Just kill me.”
“Nah. I think I’ll keep you around for a while.”
“No, seriously, just fucking kill me.”
Nunzio guided me to the bathroom and turned on the shower, then nudged me under the spray. I couldn’t even shoot him a grateful smile because I was too busy sliding down the tile and sprawling on the floor with the water beating down on me. I fumbled for the knob to reduce the temperature. The steam didn’t help the building pressure in my skull, but having the sweat washed off my body was worth it.
The night before returned unbidden. It had been like something out of a porno and easily the hottest sexual encounter of my adult life. It was weird that Nunzio had been part of it. Even though we’re both gay, we had never done anything beyond an awkward kiss in middle school. But there was no awkwardness now. He was treating me the same as always, despite me having invited his dick into my ass by grinding all up on him while sucking on his fingers like a whore.
I went from flaccid to semihard, but I didn’t make a move to touch myself. Ejaculating while half-dead and passing out in the shower wasn’t going to improve my situation at all. Even so, it took a lot of willpower to ignore—especially the mental images of him combined with David.
There was always the possibility that someone had only been attractive through a filter of alcohol and lust, but I distinctly recalled a tight, fit body, a fat ass, and the kind of mouth that had been engineered solely for giving head.
I wished I’d been awake to demand a number. Or for threesome round two. Maybe with Nunzio in me for longer.
“You all right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Nunzio slid back the shower door and poked his head in. “Have you even moved? It’s been like twenty minutes.”
“If I stand up, I’ll die.”
“Oh Jesus. You act like we ain’t never drunk before. I don’t know how you’re going to survive the summer partying with me in Italy if this is the best you got.”
“Suck my dick.”
He smiled wide, and I flipped him off. Nunzio just laughed.
TWO HOURS after Nunzio had dumped me back into the bed and left me in his apartment to go be a functional human being, my brother showed up. He nearly kicked down the door after I ignored the first few knocks, and he pounded until I finally dragged my ass out of bed.
“What’s taking you so long, son? Unlock the damn door.”
“Pérate, pendejo,” I growled loud enough for him to hear.
I hesitated, glancing over my shoulder to check for obvious signs of gay sex before undoing the chain. Raymond barged in without a greeting and shoved past me.
Raymond was seven years younger than me, but we were the same height. That was where the similarities ended. His build was leaner, skin a few shades lighter, and he’d come out a lot prettier, despite his perpetual mean mug. I found myself continuously suppressing the urge to take a pair of scissors to the glossy black hair he wore in a long ponytail or ragged knot beneath his baseball cap.
“You realize this is not even my house, right?”
“It might as well be, as much as your ass be over here.” Raymond looked around. “Where the fuck is Zio?”
“Don’t know. I was hungover, so he didn’t wake me up.”
Raymond swung his hooded gaze back to me. “Look, you gotta come home.”
I glanced at the red numbers on the cable box. It was already four in the afternoon, and I had just begun to kick my headache.
“I don’t know about all that. I have a bunch of stuff to do before I leave for vacation in a couple of weeks.”
“What vacation? You didn’t even tell me.”
“I did—you were probably high and playing Xbox.” I rubbed my head and willed Nunzio to appear so he could run interference on this developing argument. “I told you I’m going to Italy with Nunzio for a few weeks. I told you this when I bought the ticket back in February.”
He still looked at me like I was playing a trick on him.
I heaved an exasperated sigh. “Ray, just tell me what you want.”
“We got family shit.”
Raymond had this amazing ability to annoy the hell out of me with just one sentence and very little information. We used to be close enough to be friends as well as brothers, but that had changed after I’d moved back to our childhood home in Queens to help take care of our mother. After her death, Raymond had started copping an attitude that reminded me a little too much of my most defiant students.
More often than not I wanted to return to the city and get the hell away from him, but I couldn’t bring myself to move out of our mother’s house again. I knew it would be condemned if I left it in his care, even though it had been more his home than mine for the past decade. Raymond seemed hell-bent on doing as little as possible until the money our mother left him was gone.
“What are you talking about?” I slid off the arm of the couch and sank down onto one of the cushions.
“I told you—we got family shit.”
“Ray, I’m hungover. I don’t have patience for fifty questions.”
“That’s your problem. I got the car. Get your shit on so we can go.” Raymond looked at his watch. Perhaps he didn’t have room in his busy schedule of Xbox, weed, and random fuck buddies to squeeze in my demands for clarity. When I just stared up at him, he kicked my foot. “¡Vete!”
“Vete p’al carajo.” I kicked him back. “What the hell is your problem?”
“Look, Dad showed up, and I don’t got the patience for him. He and Titi Aida came by all of a sudden, claiming he needs cash and a place to stay.”
My stomach twisted in a way that had nothing to do with my hangover. “No thanks, I’ll pass.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“I have to go to the mall, the pharmacy, the cleaners, and I have to figure out what reliable person is going to pay bills at the house while I’m gone. I also have to make sure I’m all planned out for school in September since I won’t be back until August. When I say I don’t have the time, I really don’t have the fucking time. Even if our father decided to pop back up because he’s out of beer money.”
Raymond didn’t respond, and that indicated trouble. When I looked up, his eyes flashed in the way he reserved for fistfights. He reminded me too much of our father when he was angry—how his expression darkened before a coming beatdown. I was inching away when he grabbed my shoulder, but all he did was haul me to my feet.
“If you leave him to me, I guarantee one of us will be in jail before the night is over. Now get your shit on and let’s go.”
I SLID into the passenger’s seat of Raymond’s Altima and secured the seat belt to prevent flying through the windshield when he rear-ended someone like an asshole. Raymond’s driving was a summation of him as a human being: reckless and much too fast. That, combined with the queasy feeling in my stomach and the reggaeton he insisted on blasting, landed me in a shitty mood by the time we emerged from the heavy traffic on the Queensboro Bridge.
I still knew nothing other than that our father had appeared after months of radio silence and he was being more of a dick than usual. Raymond was so vague and edgy that worst-case scenarios had begun to heighten my tension.
I hadn’t seen my father since the day we’d all met with my mother’s attorney. Dear old dad had stormed out after realizing he was not a life insurance beneficiary and that the other half of the house was now in my and Raymond’s names. It had been an ugly scene, but I’d spent the past six months bracing myself for a reappearance. He always returned once he needed something he couldn’t scam from anyone else.
I peered out the window through a pair of aviators and kept my forehead tilted against the glass until we turned into the driveway of the tan clapboard house we’d grown up in.
Raymond shut off the engine and got out of the car, but I remained sitting and stared at the park across the street.
As a teenager I’d cut school in Kings Park on a daily basis to play handball with older guys. I’d picked off the gay or curious ones to take up to the rooftop of one of the nearby apartment buildings to indulge in the kind of casual, reckless sex that would have made my health teacher cringe. I cringed just thinking back on it.
The sound of my aunt Aida’s voice floating out from the house prompted me to drag myself out of the car. Unlike my father, she checked in with Raymond and me on a regular basis, but her pleading the old man’s case was a totally new development. I wondered what was wrong.
Nothing looked out of place besides the fading paint on the house’s vinyl siding and the lawn that was looking increasingly shabby since our mother’s death in March. Merengue was playing through the dented screens in the windows, and when I stepped inside, I caught a whiff of my aunt’s arroz con gandules.
I’d made it three feet before Aida swept in with a big smile.
“Hey, Titi.” I kissed her cheek. “¿Bendición?”
“Dios te bendiga.” She pulled away and nodded at the rack by the door. “Take your shoes off.”
I complied, even though I was only wearing flip-flops. She made rules for us even when she was in our house.
“What’s going on? Where’s my father?”
She returned to the bright yellow kitchen, where my father stood by the counter, cracking open a can of beer with a fierce glare on his face. Joseph Rodriguez looked the same as always—lean and tall, salt-and-pepper hair falling in waves down his neck, and wearing a torn-up jean jacket. After her cancer diagnosis, my mother had aged rapidly, but it seemed like Joseph always stayed the same.
His presence unfurled a sense of loathing deep inside me, but along with it came a vexing reminder of the promise I’d made to my mother as she wasted away in the hospice. She’d wanted me to give my father another chance. Until the end, she’d worried more about him than her own well-being.
“Nice to see you too,” I said flatly.
He took a gulp of beer and jerked his chin at Raymond, who was glowering by the back door. “Your brother has been talking shit since I got here. Acting like this is his house.”
“This is my house.” Raymond looked coiled to spring, fingers tucked into his palms and malformed knuckles ready to fight. “You ain’t staying here.”
“Raymond.” Aida slapped her hand against the counter. “Cállate.”
“No, fuck that. This piece of shit thinks he can come waltzing up in here like king of the castle every time he needs some dough, but it ain’t like that no more. Mami ain’t here no more, Joseph. It’s a wrap.”
My dad looked ready to toss the beer at my brother’s head, but Aida intervened. “Raymond, go outside so I can talk to your brother.”
Raymond muttered something inaudible and pushed away from the counter. The screen door slammed shut behind him when he stormed out into the backyard. Even covered in tattoos and drenched in bad attitude, Raymond fit in more with the family than I ever had. I was oddly adrift without him in the room.
The sense of not belonging had set in the moment I’d hit puberty, but had grown more pronounced with each year I’d spent living away from my mother and the house, not seeing the rest of my family as I’d created my own life away from them all. I was an outsider, disconnected from the family and off living some foreign lifestyle in Manhattan while Raymond stayed at home like a good son. He’d never worked a real job or bothered with school, but still… he was the one who had been deemed loyal.
I rubbed the back of my neck and looked at the stove instead of the simmering rage brewing inside my father. The makings of a large dinner were in the works, even though it was the middle of the week, and Aida didn’t look like she planned on staying the night.
“What’s going on?” I asked finally.
“I’m coming home.”
“Home,” I repeated.
“Yes. I’m moving back in.”
Joseph said it like it was the most natural thing in the world, even though he hadn’t lived in the house for years. After middle school, he had only dropped in for a few weeks at a time. My mother’s continued acceptance of his presence in our lives had always been a complete mystery to me. Especially since he’d always shown up reeking of booze and ready for a fight. He’d only been beaten in the mean department by Nunzio’s asshole parents.
The black eye Joseph had given me on my thirteenth birthday had acted as a catalyst for me bonding with Nunzio in the seventh grade. We’d sat next to the chain-link gate during recess, comparing bruises and battle scars. My dad hadn’t been around all the time, but Nunzio didn’t have the same lucky break. His own parents were awful.
After realizing that Nunzio lived across the park from us, my mother had practically adopted him.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t have to ask you for permission. This is my goddamned house.”
I didn’t raise my voice, but I did stare at Joseph like he’d lost his mind somewhere in the last six-pack.
“How the hell is this your house? Half is in your name, but you’ve lived here for a grand total of four months if I put all the days together in the past two decades. Just because Mami let you come in and stay the night every time someone kicked you out doesn’t mean you’re entitled to anything.”
“Michael, stop it. He’s your father.”
“The hell he is.” I shouldn’t have been surprised that Aida was taking his side, but I still was. She’d always agreed that he was an absentee bastard who hadn’t even bothered to take care of my mother toward the end, but he was her younger brother. Not that their oldest brother was any better. “He didn’t take care of us. All he did was show up and try to convince my mother to give him the money for our Christmas presents.”
“That was one year—”
“No, it fucking wasn’t. All you ever did was use my mother and treat me and Raymond like crap. If you think I’m going to fall for whatever sob story you have now, you’re bugging.”
Aida put a hand on my father’s arm and nodded, giving him the signal to unleash his complete load of bullshit on me.
Except, it wasn’t bullshit.
Joseph spoke for the next twenty minutes without interruption. He told me all about needing a stable place to live while battling the aggressive nature of his cirrhosis. He also told me about the effect it was having on his body, and all the ways he was starting to fall apart. At times his voice was unsteady and thick enough to wring an ounce of compassion from my heart before my eyes settled on the beer still clutched in his hand.
He didn’t want a place to stay while trying to get healthy. He wanted a peaceful place to drink himself to death. He didn’t want help with getting treatment or rehab, he wanted a dark hole to retreat into, even if that meant asking his children to watch another parent slowly die. It was so apparent, and so unbelievably selfish, I couldn’t find the words to express how disgusted I was with the entire display. I wondered if, on top of everything else, he really had come to beg for money but knew better than to ask at this point.
By the time Raymond returned to the kitchen, I was staring down at the table and thinking about that last conversation with my mother. Give him another chance, she had insisted. Promise me you won’t shut him out of your life forever. And I had fucking promised.
“Listen, mijo, I just want us all to try to be a family again,” Joseph said after several minutes had gone by without a word from me. I was picking at the plastic tablemat, trying my damnedest to peel the little coquí frogs from the center. “Your Tío John is coming by tonight to eat with us. Aida cooked and everything.”
“She always cooks.” Raymond pointed at me. “And I bet he’s going back to Manhattan. He don’t wanna be here. He has to prepare for his big Italy trip with Nunzio and leave me here to deal with your stupid ass.”
“What Italy trip?” Dollar signs were likely popping up in Joseph’s head. “You have the money for something like that?”
Raymond had the decency to look regretful for spilling my business. I didn’t even bitch at him. The chair scraped along the floor when I stood.
“I’ll take the train.”
“You haven’t seen me in months and you’re leaving?” For a moment I thought I saw a glimpse of dejection in Joseph’s eyes, but then he took another long drink.
“What does it matter? You’re staying, right? Going to fill the refrigerator with beer and cheap vodka and ask me to make you comfortable while you wait to die.”
“Michael, stop,” Aida said again, tone getting sharper and more impatient. “Have you no shame? If Vanessa was here—”
“Titi, no. Please don’t bring up my mother.” I blew out a slow breath and tried to keep the heat from my voice. “And to answer your question, I don’t have any shame. Not when it comes to this fucked-up situation. Give John my love.”
The last part came out heavy with sarcasm, but it was no secret that I despised their older brother. The guy was a homophobic douche bag who’d started with the gay jokes as soon as Nunzio jumped out of the closet with a bullhorn after high school. No one in my family knew that I’d been sucking dick longer than my Sicilian best friend.
Raymond followed me when I strode out of the room, cursing under his breath and sounding just as disgusted as I was. I slid my feet back into my flip-flops, relieved when neither my aunt nor my father followed us.
“I’m canceling the trip. I have to go tell Nunzio.”
“For what? I was just fucking with you, man. You should go.”
I pushed the door open and stepped outside. My body was tight with building anger that I wanted to unleash on everything around me. “And trust you to pay the mortgage and the utilities? Right. And even if I did, now that he’s here, he’ll wreck the place and have his lowlife friends over. Maybe a couple of whores he’ll pick up on Sutphin Boulevard. And you’ll get so pissed off that you’ll either try to kill him or spend the whole time getting high in your room while he takes over. Sounds fucking brilliant, Raymond. Do you have any other stunning ideas?”
“Don’t be a dick about it. Ain’t no one telling you to not go on your little trip. Don’t put that shit on me.”
“I have insurance on the ticket.”
A keen urge built in me, making my fingers itch and my hands sweat. I pictured the respectable number of bottles I’d accumulated over time to fashion myself a minibar. Grey Goose, Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniels—one of them would quell the surge of tension and frustration, but I wasn’t about to go back up to my room so Aida could spend hours lecturing me.
“Look, do you want a ride?” Raymond pressed. “I wasn’t trying to come down on you. I’m just stressed.”
I stopped halfway down the driveway. The commute back to Nunzio’s apartment would take me an hour, and I was still hungover enough to flip out on the first person who shoulder checked me too hard on a subway platform.
“C’mon, bro. It’s the least I can do.”
Raymond looked so determined that I acquiesced. He gave me a tight-lipped grin in response.
“It’s for the best, though,” Raymond said as he peeled out of the driveway, tires squealing. “Because you’re right. I’m a fuck-up, and I’ll take that motherfucker out if he says the wrong thing. I hate that dude so much. I’ll never forget the way he acted after she died. You got no idea.”
I had an idea, more of one than he did. Raymond had been too young to remember the details of the explosive arguments between my parents that had finally gone nuclear the day she kicked him out. The memory was burned into my mind, and I saw it every time I saw Joseph.
Him reeking of booze and slurring curses at my mother, and her threatening to take his head off with a cast-iron pan. How I’d feared it would become physical even if it never had. I’d reminded our mother of those things several times in the years that followed, but it had never made a difference. She would just look at me and say I wouldn’t understand until I was older.
Twenty years later, and I still couldn’t figure out what it was about him that she’d loved. All I felt was resentment for being trapped in a promise I never should have made. Deep down, I’d hoped to never see him again so I wouldn’t have to make the attempt.
Raymond was white-knuckling the steering wheel, and the car was void of the music he normally flicked on with a Pavlovian reflex. “You’re all dependable,” he continued, likely trying to reassure himself more than he was trying to compliment me. “And what if that bastard is actually sick? I won’t know what to do. You’re the smart one. You knew what to do for Mami.”
I looked out at the park again.
“Anyway, do you want to make sure Nunzio is home before I drive all the way over there?”
“It doesn’t matter. I have keys.”
Raymond gave me a too-knowing look, and I wondered if he was finally seeing through my permanent-bachelor act. It was only a matter of time. But instead of commenting, Raymond silently guided the car back to the bridge.