The Heart is a Poor Judge Ch. 07

A hand tugged on his wrist. He uncovered his ears and opened his eyes—which he had no memory of closing—fully expecting Miguel to be the one gripping him. But it wasn't. It was the blond boy from outside who had beckoned him to follow.

"Don't panic," came that saccharine voice. He wasn't yelling. He didn't need to. The words came through loud and clear: "Everything's fine."

Gabe felt himself being drawn from the crowd. His eyes were closed again. If Miguel wasn't around to determine his next move, he might as well let someone else take over. Slowly, steadily, the music faded...hand fastened tight around it wrist...nearly tripping over a kink in the scarlet rug.

Miguel's voice pierced violently into his headspace: "Who the fuck are you?"

"He was panicking," the boy said.

Gabe opened his eyes, looked dumbly at Miguel. "I'm fine."

"He seemed pretty upset."

Gabe wrenched his hand away from the stranger. "I said I'm fine." Instantly, he regretted the severity of his response, adding tepidly: "Thanks for your concern." His voice was growing hoarse from all the shouting. To Gabe's relief, the boy smiled faintly and left, rejoining the group he had arrived with.

Miguel handed him the fresh glass. "You sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine. Is this a double?"

"Who the fuck was that guy?"

Gabe pointed frantically into the pale drink, jabbing his finger below the icy surface, repeating, "Is this a double?"

Miguel nodded. "And then some. Plus it's Tanqueray, not the bottom-shelf. Mixed by Mr. Lo himself, at my request."

That last part sounded made up. But as always with Miguel, it was very hard to tell. Gabe wanted to ask if he really knew the owner personally, the way he knew Alice at that other bar in Odinberg, but instead, he took a long drink. It tasted much, much stronger than the last one.

Gabe stared back at the dance floor, the heap of tangled, swaying bodies, a single rippling organism. He laughed. And then, he couldn't stop laughing.

"What's so funny?" Miguel shouted.

Gabe responded by shooting him a devious smile—one that felt every bit as foreign on his own lips as it must have looked to Miguel. Then he tossed back the drink. One, two, three, four, five, six thick gulps. The cold tugged achingly on his brain; the heat swirled in his stomach and chest.

Miguel gave him a single diagnostic glance, then chugged his own. They slammed their empty glasses down on a battered high top table, then reentered the organism.

It was different this time. The beat didn't cause Gabe's heart to stumble, but rather to swell. His body did everything automatically, comfortably, the exact way he had wished it would the first time. No longer suffocating beneath all that agonizing cognition, his mind was free to calmly observe.

Miguel danced close, but seemed careful about maintaining the slightest amount of space, to leave Gabe room to breathe. It was when Miguel committed these calculated, wordless acts of devotion that Gabe cared for him the most. He reached out and tugged on Miguel's big arm. Miguel inched closer and Gabe pressed his face into his chest.

They danced for what felt like a long time. The crowd swelled. Besides Miguel, the principal spectacle vying for his attention was a shallow stage running the length of the dance floor, hosting an increasing number of thrashing bodies, until a bouncer made half of them descend. Gabe and Miguel touched at times, but mostly hung back a foot or two, observing one another.

Glances around disclosed all manner of play, from tame to something short of wild; the boys from Hong Kong neared them again and even Miguel seemed to take note of the most handsome among them, the same boy who had invited Gabe to join before. A second glance, lower, gave away his arousal through black spandex as he ground up against the hip of one of his companions.

Just as Gabe was about to suggest one more drink, a sweaty arm hooked around his shoulder. A body pressed into him from behind. A wet mouth collided with his neck.

Miguel stepped back, clearly suppressing the urge to laugh.

Gabe twisted out of the unsolicited embrace. He turned to face the mysterious boy once again. "What the fuck?"

"I'm sorry."

"What are you doing?"

"My friends dared me to."

If the boy was taller than him, it wasn't by much. His features were delicate and beautiful, eyes deep blue, obvious even under the ever-changing lights. "To kiss me?"

"To say hello."

"Then why didn't you?" he demanded, but the boy didn't hear him. Resolutely, Gabe pressed his way out of the crowd, toward the bar, with the vague intention of securing a drink all by himself. But at the last second he angled left, guided by the clouded memory of the drag queen, back, far from the dance floor, into a shadowy corner where he had, a lifetime ago, been promised a place to sit down.

The room narrowed into a sort of annex. He passed between chrome-trimmed diner tables, half-filled with milder patrons. A few eyed him. At the very end, a long rectangular table nested within a wrap-around vinyl booth, purple with teal piping. On the wall above the table hung an enormous portrait of Marilyn Monroe, lying on her side, set completely in sepia tones except for the blood-red of her lips.

Then that deep, gorgeous voice: "Darling, come here."

She sat near the center, head directly beneath Marilyn's, staring straight at him. She had been real after all.

"You're here," he said.

"Where else would I be?"

Gabe approached the group cautiously, standing at the booth's opening. He eyed a single open space to his left, but didn't take it. Four other drag queens flanked her, along with several vivacious young men. Everyone seemed to be talking at once except for her, and none but her paid him any attention at all.

"Where's your friend?" she asked.

"He's still dancing—oh." Miguel had come up suddenly by his side.

Her lashes flared, eyes growing impossibly wide. "This is your friend?"

"Yes."

"Hello Mona," muttered Miguel. "I see you and Gabe have met."

"Not formally." She offered a porcelain hand. "I'm Mona."

Gabe shook it and introduced himself using his long name, a move he predicted Miguel would later deride him for.

"A pleasure, Gabriel, truly," she said. "I wanted to be sure you were looked after. Turns out, you are."

Gabe glanced sideways at Miguel.

"I suppose your friend never mentioned me," she continued, hardly looking at Miguel. "He used to show his face here quite often...back in his wild days...but he abandoned us."

"This place would have killed me," countered Miguel.

Mona nodded solemnly. "I supposed it'll do that to some people."

"Not much has changed."

"No."

"Except no one's smoking inside."

"It's not allowed anymore. Get with the times."

"I've missed you," Miguel said after a pause.

She flitted her hand.

"You know I've missed you."

Finally, Mona seemed to fully acknowledge Miguel. There was no more theater. She looked genuinely sad. "And I've missed you, too, darling. How I've missed you."

And then, to Gabe's utter surprise, Miguel clapped his palms to the table, leaned across and planted a kiss directly on Mona's cherry-red lips. The others hardly seemed to notice, or otherwise feigned distraction. He drew back silkily from her, resuming his post next to Gabe with the soothed expression of someone returning from a long vacation.

"Best of luck to you both," said Mona wistfully. She raised her hand in dismissal: a silent beauty-pageant wave.

They turned away, walked slowly between the other tables. Gabe swore he had caught something in their exchange, some final, brilliant flash of an old story, at last fully extinguished.

Miguel cleared his throat. "That white boy's completely obsessed with you. I told him to fuck off, but I'm not sure he took it to heart."

"Then let him come back again," Gabe said, still distracted. "How about another drink?"

"How about it—let's sit here."

Gabe took a seat in the tattered booth as Miguel left for the bar. By the time he returned, Gabe had decided that he would be doing them both a grave disservice not to ask. He drew in a breath and held it while Miguel sat down, took up his drink, slid Gabe's across the lacquered pine. Out with it: "Was Mona your lover?"

Miguel looked away. "I wouldn't use that word."

"What word would you use?"

"I don't know."

"Why did you take me here?"

"I just wanted you to see."

Disarmed, Gabe looked down and noticed his drink for the first time, right under his nose, fresh and spitting bubbles.

"Another, straight from the man himself," said Miguel.

"Is that really true?"

Miguel shrugged. "His ghost. What's the difference?"

"He's dead?"

A long drink prefaced his joyless expression. "Two years back, and damn, that was already a rough year. First, Mother Teresa, then John Denver. Both my mom's false idols, gone in a flash..." Miguel trailed off, briefly lost in thought. "Hey." He leaned forward, swatting at Gabe's chest with the back of his hand. "Not to mention Eddie's old flame, Biggie Smalls, the legend himself."

"But your mom is Mormon."

Miguel help up a finger. "She never stopped praying to Mary, even after my dad took her away from her family. That shit's in her blood, and nothing he did or said could ever change it. No matter how hard he tried."

Gabe studied Miguel's solemn face, offered a small shrug. Miguel shrugged back.

"Tell me what happened to Tom Lo."

"Oh." Miguel frowned at his glass. "Here one day, gone the next—and I mean that quite literally."

"Was he young?"

"Couldn't have been a day older than Eddie."

"So what happened?"

"Same thing that happened to so many people like us."

Gabe paused. "I thought people died slowly when they got that."

"A lot of people do. They way it goes for most people—at least the way I hear it—is that there's plenty of time to say goodbye, leave get-well-soon cards by the hospital bed, all that shit." Miguel chuckled to himself before disappearing back into his glass for several seconds. He wiped his mouth with his hand. "Anyway, that's not how it happened for Mr. Tom Lo."

It seemed Miguel needed a minute to ruminate on this thought, so Gabe let him have it. He looked up, past Miguel's shoulder, and they locked eyes. The white boy stood at the edge of the annex, still face denoting a reluctant departure as his friend tugged impatiently on his arm. His eyes, expressive as they were, suggested he mourned the loss of what could have been. Gabe was rattled to think that a complete stranger might have pinned so much hope on a narrative lost to circumstance, one that saw them both...doing what? Going home and fucking, only to never speak again? Exchanging phone numbers and slowly falling in love? And, really, what could this glittering, indefatigable star of a boy, who clung so faithfully to his bright-eyed notions of romance, possibly have seen in Gabe?

As they walked back to the train, Miguel teased him again about his relentless admirer. "He was probably just a rice queen," he said, adding under his breath, "the pale little fucker."

"What's so wrong with that?"

Miguel stopped, looked right at him. "You want somebody going after you like a hungry puppy just because of how you look?"

"Isn't that why anybody goes after anybody? At least at first?"

Miguel spat down into the filthy crevice were brick facade met fractured concrete. "It's not the same. He's making assumptions about you—I promise you. Racist ones."

"Like what?"

Miguel stumbled a bit and then spat again, only this time he came up dry. "That you're a bottom, for one thing."

"That I'm—"

"Yes."

"Well..." Gabe thought back to that night in his empty living room with Miguel. "Maybe it's the truth."

Miguel missed a beat. "I mean—that's not the point. The point is that nobody should ever make assumptions like that based on a face."

"Okay."

"Well, do you agree or not?"

"Of course I do."

"Good."

"I'm just saying...I'm not sure he was that way."

Miguel took several paces in silence. "I guess we'll never know."

—

It was after five in the morning by the time they stumbled into Miguel's apartment. Gabe sat on the carpet next to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the harbor. Dim lights fluttered on container ships stationed miles out at sea. Clouds slowly emerged as black wisps, set against the navy backdrop of an early-morning sky. Stars faded into oblivion. Though his childhood home still hadn't sold, he was spending fewer and fewer nights there. The view from here was better.

Miguel cranked open two windowpanes and sat beside him on the floor. Cool air spilled down on them both.

"This whole building could fall in an earthquake."

Gabe looked over. "How?"

"The vertical concrete elements are too thin. Hard enough shaking, and they'd form cracks. Long enough, and they would start to crumble. And then..." Miguel brought both hands down in a smooth, meditative motion.

"Are you worried?"

"No." He stood, lit a cigarette and inhaled, then released the smoke through the wedge-shaped gap in the window. He looked down at Gabe. "Why did you turn that white boy down, anyway?"

"What?"

"I'll admit, he was pretty easy on the eyes. A little pushy, maybe..."

Gabe could hardly believe Miguel was still thinking about it. "You're saying I should have danced with him? Or whatever it was he wanted?"

"Not necessarily. It's just...don't you think he was hot?"

"Sure."

Miguel paused. He plucked the cigarette from his mouth, examined it, then stuck it back in. "I can't imagine what was stopping you."

"This."

Miguel shot him a glance, inhaled again. His gaze returned to the predawn sky. "I didn't ask for anything like that. You're a free man. You can do whatever the fuck you want."

"I know."

"What if I don't return the favor? Say I find myself in tempting situation like that—I'm just saying, what if—and I act on it, instead of turning him down?"

"That's okay."

Miguel was quiet for a minute. "It's okay to fuck around, you know."

"That's exactly what I just said."

"But you don't want to."

"No."

"Why not?"

Gabe was too tired to guess at what drop of information Miguel hoped to extract from him. He felt exhausted, in fact, shifting on the carpet, suddenly longing for the cool comfort of the oversized bed one room away. He had lost count of the nights they'd spent together, flashes from which taking up residency in some warm and fuzzy part of his brain he had forgotten existed: their limbs intertwined as they bonded over meals their mothers used to cook; Gabe learning to do a headstand in the living room while Miguel spotted him, broad hand planted firmly against his back, another cupping his thigh; being held until he felt safe after a violent crack of thunder shook the windows; the innumerable moments when one, or the other, or both, became so obviously aroused that it felt to Gabe like the entire universe was screaming at them to fuck...and yet, Miguel had made his position on that crystal clear: another time.

Gabe's life was changing. The entire premise of this change defied logic, and therefore he could not reason it from existence. Out of practice, his mind raced to catalogue memories he hoped to hold onto rather than shed. His mood fluctuated as before, but the peaks were loftier; the lows no longer felt bottomless. He couldn't remember the last time life had been this way. Many months ago, certainly, if not years.

Of course, his days were still colored by moments when numbness crept in, and sometimes, he knew, something much more sinister still lurked in the shadows. However (and perhaps he was only realizing it now, as he surveyed his recent days in aggregate), things had gotten markedly better. He savored this new goodness, not once taking it for granted, and knowing he owed every last bit of it to this boy whom his father had once called golden.

"I'm sorry," said Miguel. "You don't have to answer that."

Gabe had been silent for so long he'd nearly forgotten the question. He brought his knees to his chest, hooked his arms around them and looked up at Miguel, fully aware of the tears forming in his eyes. "I'm always going to feel this way about you. And I'm willing to wait—forever, if I have to—until you feel the same way about me."

Miguel put out the cigarette and knelt down beside him. "I already do."

Gabe buried his face between his knees. "I feel dirty, always wanting something you don't."

"I want it too. All the time. It's just that I've been down that road...and I—"

"How can you not see that this is different?" Gabe demanded. He knew he sounded angry. He didn't care.

Miguel didn't answer. He knelt silently next to Gabe for a long time. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Nothing about the way my life has gone so far makes me believe this will last."

Gabe unburied his face, looked harshly at Miguel. "So you'd rather believe it won't?"

Miguel stood and lit a second cigarette. "I'd rather not believe. Period."

"So that means we can never be together?"

He inhaled, seemed to let the smoke swirl in his brain. "I don't know what it means."

"Well here's something for you to believe: I'll wait for you for the rest of my life."

Smoke streamed thick from his mouth and nose into the dawn. "You don't mean that."

"I do." Gabe smacked his hand to the carpet. "I swear it on the graves of my mother and my father." He watched Miguel intently, waiting for a response. Briefly, he swore the cigarette would fall from his open mouth.

"You can't do that."

"I can do what I want. You just said so, not five minutes ago."

Miguel looked at him for a long time. His finger hooked over the window ledge as the cigarette burned down on its own. "I still see too much of him in you," he muttered.

"Then let him be a part of me. He is. He always will be."

"I was in love with him, Gabe."

"I know you were." It was a lie; he hadn't truly known until now. But nothing about it shocked or concerned him. "And I'll bet he never could return that love, could he?"

A heartbroken expression flashed across Miguel's face. "No."

"Are you in love with me?"

Looking away, Miguel nodded. "I think so, yes."

Gabe stood and went over beside him. "Then I don't understand what the problem is. The universe has handed this to you. To both of us." Miguel still wasn't looking at him. He took a breath, knowing his next words (sage advice that he himself seldom had managed to follow) were stolen directly from Eddie: "Let's not overthink it."

Miguel finally turned to him. He offered the cigarette and Gabe took it, inhaling a small amount and breathing out through the gap. Miguel reclaimed it and took one last puff before putting it out. His eyes searched Gabe's. Then he stepped forward. Gabe let himself be taken over; Miguel's lips clashed suddenly with his, an eager hand feeling him up beneath his t-shirt. The aggressiveness made his legs go weak, but Miguel's strong arms kept him close, holding him tightly against his considerable frame.

Those hands explored him all over, starting at his chest, back, the bony limits of his shoulder blades, then they moved gradually down. Tauntingly, Miguel felt the front of Gabe's pants, skimming but never fully grasping that part of him, until Gabe believed the zipper might split open from his excitement.

But then Miguel drew back from him. "Are you sure you really want this?" he asked. "You know...all of it, to the end? Because if you do, I'll give it to you."

Over and over, Gabe nodded yes. It was all he could do not to shout the word aloud. A thousand times, Miguel, yes.

—

Three nights later, Gabe backed the long beige Acura into the warehouse and shut off the engine. He had spent the past couple of days feeling sore in a specific area he wasn't used to, coveting the sensation while it lasted, disappointed when it finally left him.