“It’s hormones, probably,” Mom says to my father, and that makes me even more pissed. Why can’t I just be mad? Joy has been harping about the stages of grief and anger being one of them. The person is supposedly angry at the one who died as well as at the world. Of course, her analysis is according to western textbooks and expectations of our responses, and I just can’t deal with that crap. All I know is I’m definitely mad right now, and it’s not at Julian. It’s his brother I have a beef with.
I call Joy to have her go over to the Queen and “check on my stuff.” That’s random as hell, and she instantly calls me out on it.
“Oh yeah, god forbid the Fratters rob you blind all of a sudden.” She snorts. “You want me to get a padlock for your door?”
“Whatever, just... can you head over?”
“Geneva. What’s going on? What are you worried about?”
“My stuff,” I say to be funny at this point. I exhale, rubbing at something that feels like a knot between my eyebrows. It’s been there since I spoke with the guys a few days ago. Damn, they’ve turned the Queen into the Playboy Mansion. “I talked with Diego.”
“And? You didn’t tell him I want him, right?” She’s joking. Not about the wanting-him part. I’d never tell.
“It’s mayhem at the Queen. Luka’s pulled out every stop and is going crazy over there.”
“What’s he doing?”
She’ll read between the lines anyway, so I might as well be up front. I hate it when she interprets me, embellishes, and engraves my crap into my soul so I’ll never forget it.
“He’s bringing women over, and it’s not just one or two like before. Dude’s hauling home a butt-load of his, quote-unquote, colleagues, and he’s letting the other Fratters partake in the fun. Like, all over the house. It’s a— By the sound of it, the Queen has become a… a…”
“A dungeon of sin? A nonstop, hopping orgy?”
I need something to drink. I look around and find lukewarm water on the night stand.
“Sorry, Geneva. I need to not say things like that.”
“But it’s true though. What are the neighbors going to say?”
“Is it the reputation of the house that worries you?” she asks, voice sweet. “Or something else?”
“Everything about it worries me. What’s it good for? I love these guys like family. They are family, and now Luka isn’t just thwarting himself. He’s doing it to his friends too. I can’t stand the thought of what’s going on there. They drink, fight, have sex like it’s going out of style. It’s crazy.”
“They’re out of balance.” I can almost see her sage nod, chin thickening on the way down.
“Exactly.”
“You gotta let them live out their despair. You don’t have monopoly on reacting to what happened, darling. He was their friend. Luka’s brother, twin brother at that. Of course they’re going to act out.”
“What are you talking about? Luka’s reaction isn’t normal.”
“It isn’t?” That sweet voice again, like I’m supposed to see it for myself.
“No! He’s always been promiscuous as hell, but if he doesn’t calm down, he’s going to end up dead too. Don’t you see? Can you imagine Mama if the last of her men dies in a random mishap, like some sex game gone awry or AIDS.”
She quiets. Then she says, “You really care.”
I choke up. I’m young, and I don’t have children. Maybe I never will, but it’s probably biologically ingrained in women to relate to a mother’s agony. To lose a child must be like I feel, just multiplied by… a lot.
“Mama has been in my life for a while.” I try for a laugh.
“The whole Verenich clan has,” she replies.
Insomnia and darkness is a horrible mix. Why do they go hand in hand? My laptop is my friend until the moon and the river call from outside.
The opposite riverbank is free of houses, a miracle my parents don’t take for granted. Now, it gives me the freedom to get out of bed and pull the curtains apart without having to get dressed. I let the night invade my room, moonlit water shimmering and the shadows of well-known trees interrupting a blue that’s not as dark as my thoughts.
Julian. My studies. The Queen. The Fratters. Luka.
I haven’t heard from Joy since she agreed to visit them. It’s been days now. I’ll call her in the morning to get her straight-forward account of the situation. It will be different than Lenny’s drunken version and Diego’s censored one.
James. Handsome, straight-laced James with his dirty-blond, short-cropped hair, intelligent eyes, and small, stubborn mouth. I remember his arms, steady and solid around me. He lulled me to sleep at the Queen with his slow, even breaths. I text him.
It’s four in the morning, and I don’t want him to text back. What I want is for all Fratters, Luka included, to be asleep.
Hey. It’s been awhile.
How are you? I type back.
Okay. Studying for finals. You?
I exhale, relieved. Of course, that’s why you’re awake. The instant I write it, I want to take it back.
It’s easy to stay awake with Luka around.
My heart sets off, and I realize that I don’t actually want James’ side of things. I’ll wait for Joy.
Keep studying, I type. Then I add, XOXO to not seem too obvious.
My cell rings. I can’t not pick up. “Hey, James.”
“Hey, babe.”
“You guys and the ‘babe’ thing.” I want to ignore the deep thump of the bassline in the background.
He lets a quiet chuckle out through his nose. That’s James. Understated but crystal-clear, he won’t speak unless he’s sure of his opinions. Neither does he engage in what Julian called social-laughing, i.e. laugh to be a part of a joke or enjoyment in a group. If James laughs, it’s because he’s genuinely entertained.
“You call us ‘Fratters,’ and we call you ‘babe.’ You’re the babe of the Queen. It’s one of those things.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I could have been ‘the lady of the Queen’ or ‘the chick of the Queen. Hey, the queen of the Queen.”
“Well, you’re a babe and we love you, so there you go: we have double reason to call you that.”
“You didn’t before Julian died.” It shoots out before I can think it through.
“We did,” he replies softly.
“Ha, you don’t think I’d have remembered?”
“Because we never did it to your face. Julian knew.”
“Seriously?” I can picture him now, lazily finding that funny.
“Yeah. We used to refer to you as ‘the babe.’ When are you coming back? You are coming back, right?”
I shift to my side, legs curled and the phone pressed under my ear against the mattress. “Yeah, I’ll be back soon.”
“Is Portlandia treating you well?”
I snicker. “Yeah, it is.”
“Sleeping?”
“So-so.”
“Figured that’s why you were up.”
I wake up gasping. I fell asleep talking with James, and I didn’t even notice it. Nipples taut and my skin overheated, I’m squirming. The dream of Julian making love to me was so vivid I can’t shake it off.
I still feel his hands on me, the searing path he made over my breasts. He was inside me, moving. We were climbing, but then his face morphed to James’. I noticed, but it was too good for me to stop, and by the time I woke up, his moans were those of Lenny when we kissed.
I squirm under the sheets. The fabric chafes nicely, and I stroke my stomach and the inside of my thigh. The house is quiet. A quick glance at the alarm clock shows six a.m.
With cautious fingers, I glide through my own folds and circle the hard knob waiting for release. I don’t feel guilty when I orgasm to a fantasy of Connor, then Marlon inside me. They’re just fantasies. My body still burns and longs, so I force out a third climax.
“You’re quiet,” Dad says a few hours later. He keeps a home office for when he’s not seeing patients, and today is a home day. “Are you working on the Amazon trip?”
“Not much else to do until the funding solidifies,” I say, and we don’t discuss the obvious, that I’ll need a new partner.
“Unless you can work on the first doctoral article? Maybe it’s too early.”
It’s easy to get lost in inertia, but Mom’s encyclopedia and Dad’s gentle reminders nudge me in the right direction. Despite thinking I should have pursued a more lucrative field, they’ve supported me a hundred percent since I landed on anthropology.
“I was going to give the Reading Room a try today,” I say.
He nods, chewing on a piece of bacon. “Sounds like a good idea.”
After breakfast, I do what I promised. With my laptop, I settle in at the small study desk between two bookcases. The wall in front of me is made of glass, beyond it the lawn and the river below soothe.
I start downloading published articles. I need to narrow down the number of tribes I can visit in the Amazon. There are still a handful that haven’t been contacted by missionaries or anthropologists, and I’m definitely staying away from those.
We know more today than we did decades ago about the repercussions even the slightest contact with our world can have on these micro-societies. It’s one of the first things we learn in my field of study, to always be alert to our subjects’ needs. In more than one case, entire villages have been wiped out due to diseases that were new to them. They were often as simple as a cold.
Which rules out the Vi Araras, the Kaw’a group, and the Lacasso Indians.
Julian dreamed of us being the first to contact one of them. “We’ll just make sure we’re healthy and don’t bring any diseases with us.”
“And how could we prevent that? We’ll bring foreign bacteria with us no matter how healthy we are.”
He shrugged and flipped his book closed. Crossing his legs on the bed, he leaned forward and pulled me in like he always did when he wanted to charm me into surrender.
“The odds are so small. Come o-on. We’ll act like it was an accident, like we were simply going to study the Lara’ people, and then we ran into the Vi Arara. Can you imagine? We’d be famous afterward. We’d get funded by Harvard!”
He was a dreamer, my man. Not always that ethical, but I was there to shoot him down. No way I’d have the destruction of a whole culture on my conscience. My job is to document and describe, and that’s where it stops. The loggers and surrounding Amazon farmers do a good enough job at the destruction side of things.
I narrow down the groups from four hundred to fifty. I’ve always been drawn to the tribe that started my obsession with foreign cultures, the Lara’s with their burial rites and inexplicable treatment of women. Yarunami will have passed away by now, but the thought of meeting one of her descendants makes my heart jump.
To approach this scientifically, I can’t select a group based on my heart and a single story though. There needs to be more than that, as well as a hypothesis to prove or reject.
I startle when my phone buzzes. Snapping out of my reflections, I realize that I’ve worked a good two hours already. “Hello?”
“Hey, I’m at the Queen now,” Joy murmurs under her breath like she’s doing something illicit. “Good timing too; everyone’s out of the house.”
“How is that good timing? I wanted to hear your take on how they are. Wait, how did you get in?”
“The spare key in the flowerpot.” She exhales, doors creaking as she moves around. “Okay, they need to clean up in here. Geez.”
“Seriously?”
“They’re guys, Geneva. You’ve been away before and come home to a pigsty.”
“Not with James around. James and Diego usually keep it tidy.”
“Well, they’re not doing a very good job of it this time. Hold on.”
She sends me videos. Short snippets with the drapes of our main living areas in disarray, haphazardly drawn or open despite the sun outside. My favorite tablecloth droops to the floor, leaving half of the dining-room table naked. I should have tossed out the flowers, I think, narrowing in on the vase lying sideways with wilted roses spread across the fabric.
“It’s like a pack of wild animals ran through the house, tipping over furniture and shit on their way. This is so bizarre,” Joy says. “I’m reconsidering my affinity for Diego. What a bunch of jerks. Hold on, I’m going upstairs.”
“No, please. I don’t even want to know.”
Another door creaks. “Diego doesn’t make his bed.”
“Really, you’re checking his room?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty neat in here for a guy. Boxer briefs, huh? Nice. He’s got the ass for it. He has condoms in his underwear drawer.”
“Joy.”
“I know, I know. Getting to your room.”
My hinges are oiled, so I don’t hear her open the door.
“Untouched. Unless you didn’t empty your lingerie drawer and spread it out on the bed yourself?”
“What are you talking about?” I shout. “I so didn’t! What the hell is going on in that—”
“Kidding! Where’s your sense of humor, girl?” Joy snickers. “It looks like you were just here. Even your bed is made.”
I exhale so hard I feel my shoulders sink.
“But so you know, in the hallway there’s everything from towels to baseball gear, golf balls, tennis balls—o-oh, a pretty bra. And here’s a G-string. Yep, I can see that Luka must have brought his friends home, and they weren’t confined to the downstairs areas either. Seems he, or someone else, got them to the upstairs hallway. As of yet, there’s no telling if they’ve been in any bedrooms.”
“Take a picture.” It can’t be as bad as she describes it.
She sends me one.
It’s as bad as she describes it.
What were they doing with all the sports gear? That’s Nathaniel, though. He’s all about the ballgames. I hope he didn’t mix sex with sports, especially not team sports. Geez.
“Do you want me to check any other rooms?”
Luka’s.
“Nope, I’m good.”
“Here’s Luka’s. Ready?”
“No!”
“Okay. It’s locked anyway.”
It isn’t. It’s just an old house. “He never locks it. You just need to shove it open.”
That sound must be the door banging into the wall of his room. I’m relieved that my psych friend doesn’t state the obvious, that I clearly want her to check.
“Whoops! Sorry, guys. Just looking for... scissors.”
Groans. Sleepy moans. Luka muttering something to the effect of “in the top drawer of my desk,” and “that you, Joy? What’re you doing here?”
Joy must be playing along, because the phone clatters to a hard surface and the sound of a drawer opening and loud rummaging ensue. I hold the phone away from my ear.
“Who’s she?” a soft girl’s voice asks.
“A friend of a friend,” Luka replies and clears morning sexiness from his voice. My heart sprints off.
“Got the scissors,” Joy says, breathless. “Thanks, Luka. Was gonna pick up some stuff for Geneva and send it off.”
“She’s staying up there, isn’t she?” he gravels out.
“Seems like it.”
“You’re hot,” a different female voice purrs. “You want to join us, hun, since you woke us up anyway? I’d love to see what you’ve got under that little dress.”
“Nope, I’m good! Gotta split, ya know. Have fun though.”
“But Luka should be in class!” I yell, and Joy goes completely quiet.
“Is that Geneva?” Luka sounds closer. “You’re on the phone.”
“Oh god, sorry,” Joy says. “I hit speaker phone. That was so not on purpose.”
Crap! The only thing worse than this would be Facetime. Which Luka switches us to, and it would be damn obvious if I didn’t accept.
“Hey,” he murmurs, staring at me with bloodshot eyes that have no white left around the irises. His hair hasn’t been raked in days, much less brushed. “Sending spies out on me, Geneva?”
I flip his focus so he sees the river.
“Wait, let me see you. I’ve missed ‘the babe of the Queen,’” he mocks.
Offense is the best defense. “Don’t change the subject, Luka. Aren’t you finishing up school? Aren’t you going into residency next year? Why are you not in class right now?”
“Omigod, you’re gonna be a doctor, Luka?” A bimbo with big lips shifts into view. Pretty sure she’s wearing exactly no clothes. “When’re you gonna make an honest woman out of me,” she adds, and there are at least three girls chuckling at that.
“Who says I have class this morning?” he asks me.
“I do.”
“She’s obsessed. She knows my schedule,” he says over his shoulder.
“You know what? You’re a jerk. Think about Mama. You’re the only one left now who can take care of her.”
His smile dries up. “Oh I’m here for her. My mother will never lack anything. Don’t you worry.”
“I was thinking more of an honest way of making sure she didn’t lack anything. You know what I mean?” I say it in the most derisive way I can manage.
“Uh-huh, maybe I need a break from school.”
“A break? Who the hell takes breaks when they have fucking months left of their degree?”
Luka’s eyes widen in fake surprise. Then his thumb appears on the screen as he points backward at his own face. “How about me? I need a break, and I’m taking a break. As of right now. Give me a single reason why it matters.”
“Your brother! He wouldn’t have approved. You need to finish your degree for Julian.”
A mixture of disgust and surprise reigns his expression. “Really. You’re going there? My brother didn’t give a shit what I did, Geneva. I could have dropped out of school and into a full-time career in the adult industry, and he’d have been fine with it.”
“He would not!”
“No? Why would he have different standards for me than for himself?”
“Can I have my phone back, please? You guys can fight on your own phones,” Joy mutters, but a tug on the phone and a glare from Luka shuts her up.
“Ha. ‘Finish my degree for Julian.’ What a joke. The king of follow-your-passion.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Julian was a free-loader.”
I gasp. Joy gasps. The room goes still around Luka, who narrows his beautiful, evil eyes on my screen.
“You don’t get to bad-mouth Julian,” I finally manage, and now Joy takes the phone from his brother and stares at me with big, sad doll eyes.
“I’m so sorry. That should not have happened. You’re an ass, Luka,” she yells behind her as she leaves his room and slams the door behind her.
Of course it slides open again. It needs a feral shove to close.
I’ve cried like a baby all afternoon. I can’t stop crying.
“You loved Julian, and you love Luka too in your own way. When Luka disrespected Julian, you just weren’t in a place to absorb it. You feel really hurt right now,” Joy explained over the phone. I think she meant to be helpful.
But it isn’t that simple, and I don’t want it broken down like that. Instead, I take the torrent of tears and grief and sadness and let it inundate me. That’s healthy, right?
My sister makes red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting to cheer me up. Mom makes meatballs in her homemade gravy with tiny bits of bacon in it, my favorite comfort food from when I was little. Dad pulls out a bottle of his aged French red wine. He bought it personally in Languedoc a decade ago. I just have too many tears today.
Freeloader. As I go to bed that night and pull the duvet up under my nose, I think that there are different definitions of that word.
I don’t want to discuss it with Luka again. I bet he thinks Julian should have worked instead of taking up student loans. To me, it’s not freeloading to take up loans when we pay them back with interest.