backdrifter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
backdrifter) wrote2009-06-29 09:48 am
backdrifter) wrote2009-06-29 09:48 am
Entry tags:
70863
“We keep seeing you around here,” Teri commented, wagging a cigarette between her index and middle fingers. Respa didn’t recall her being a smoker. “Why don’t you ever say hi?”
“Would you want me to?” he said, digging his thumbs deeper into his pockets. Teri’s expression didn’t change, but Kelly cracked a smirk.
It was true that in the months since giving up Kathy, he’d started spending time in Chelsea again. He associated the neighborhood with Horace, and he associated Horace with a second chance he’d previously tossed aside. He almost never saw Horace, though, and when he did, he saw him with a man with features like a bird of prey and mouse-brown hair, and so he kept his distance. Mostly he kept running into Teri and Kelly—never separately—and often they cornered him to interrogate him for their amusement.
“Anyway, Horace isn’t out tonight, so you can crawl back to your hovel,” Teri said, taking a puff of her cigarette. “Or wherever it is you live. He’s home with the boyfriend.”
Ah. The hawk man. “Shaun?”
“He remembers. Impressive,” Kelly said, mockingly doffing her fedora. “Yes, Shaun. You really should stop stalking Horace, you know, or we might tell him about it.”
“I’m not stalking him,” Respa said with a scowl, shoulders hunching defensively. “I don’t stalk.”
“So you just hang around Chelsea every night watching for him for, what, fun? Are you bored?” Teri asked. “Come on, kid.”
“Sure, I’m bored,” he said, stretching his mouth across his face in a grimace. “I could be stalking you two instead, you know.”
“I thought you said you didn’t stawk,” Kelly said, imitating his accent with a grin.
“Forget it,” he groaned, turning to leave. Teri heaved a big dramatic sigh, flicking her cigarette into the gutter and grabbing his shoulder.
“Listen, you wanna talk to Horace?”
He didn’t say anything, just watching her.
“You,” she said, pulling a pen out of her small purse, “find yourself a phone, and you call this number. This is his cell, so Shaun won’t answer it, unless he’s nosier than I thought.” She wrote on his left palm, though the pen didn’t write at first and she ground the tip into his skin painfully.
“Isn’t it more expensive for him to talk on his cell?” Respa asked, studying his hand.
“What do you care? You get to talk to him, don’t you?”
He put the immobile hand down. “Thanks,” he said quickly.
“Just don’t expect us to be doing you favors all the time, kid,” Kelly said. He nodded automatically, and turned to walk away. As he walked, he glanced over his shoulder at the women, and he caught a glimpse of Kelly looking like she was telling Teri off; Teri seemed to be waving her off.
Respa spent about a week loitering near a payphone that was also near Horace’s apartment, twiddling a quarter in his functioning hand. When he saw Horace or Shaun coming in or out of the building, he would always duck away, or turn around, and because Horace was never really looking for anything out of the ordinary (and Shaun had no clue who he was), he was never recognized. He tried to reason with himself, calling himself a wimp and a pussy for avoiding Horace, and telling himself that every time he turned his face away, he was acting just like the stalker he’d told Teri and Kelly he wasn’t.
It did no good. The next week was nearly the same as the first, a staring match between him and a phone that looked like it carried several infectious diseases. The quarter heated in his palm.
Friday, he put the quarter in the phone, dialed the number he’d copied to a scrap of paper. It rang five times and went to voicemail; he slammed the phone and listened for the clink of a returned coin, but his quarter was gone. He begged another one off a stranger, though it took several strangers before one deigned to give him twenty five cents.
Saturday, the coin went in again. It rang three times, and without warning Horace’s sleep-filled voice filled his ear. “Hello…?”
The phone was slammed again.
Sunday nobody gave him a quarter, and when he got a look at himself in the mirror of a public bathroom, he couldn’t say he blamed them very much. Monday, he watched the passerby on Horace’s block as he sat on a stoop, wondering if it was worth it anymore to ask for quarters. The one time Horace had picked up, he’d hung up immediately, and he’d never left a message on previous tries. Pussy. Wuss. Wimp, he scolded himself, but it didn’t change a thing. He was still curled up on a stoop step, elbows across knees and chin across wrists, when Shaun stopped in front of him. The bird man. Respa looked up, bouncing his heels nervously.
“You lost, man?” Shaun asked, still a careful distance away, hands in pockets. He was dressed a plaid flannel shirt over an undershirt, cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and paint-splattered blue jeans. How bohemian, Respa thought to himself disdainfully.
“Nah,” Respa replied, more of a grunt than a word. Steepling his fingers, where they twiddled manically.
“Because I keep seeing you around my building, man,” Shaun said, shifting his weight to one foot and tilting his head. “Like, every day.”
“A guy can’t sit on a stoop?” he said defensively, sticking out his lower jaw.
“Sure,” Shaun said with a shrug, “a guy can sit on a stoop. But why the same stoop for weeks on end? You can’t find another stoop? You can’t, you know, stop fucking stalking me like some loser faggot who’s got nothing better to do?”
“Hey, whoa, talking a little highly of yourself there, aren’t you, pal?” Respa said, rising from his seat with his chest thrown out. Not that it compared, really. He realized when he stood that Shaun was muscled all over, with a broad and deep chest; if anyone was a “bird man,” it was himself. Shaun seemed unfazed.
“So if you’re not stalking me, then what’s your problem?” Shaun growled, crossing his arms.
“Respa?” a voice interrupted, and both men turned to see Horace standing there, looking perplexed as he looked from one to the other.
“You know this clown?” Shaun asked, jerking a thumb in Respa’s direction.
“That ‘clown’ is an old friend of mine,” Horace said, still looking at Respa in confusion, a small smile forming on his lips even as his brow knitted upward. “Hey, Respa, what’re you doing over here? I thought you lived in Brooklyn.”
“Well, yeah, I did,” Respa said, taking a step back onto a higher step, away from Shaun. “Not anymore.”
“Yeah? Where’re you living now, then?”
“Ah…around. You know.” He waved his hand vaguely. “Around here.”
“That’s…that’s nice.” Horace scratched the back of his neck, and got a look at Shaun’s face, which was currently frowning pretty hard. “Oh, uh, Respa, this is Shaun, my boyfriend.” Shaun nodded once. “Shaun, this is Respa. We’ve known each other a couple of years, just fallen out of contact lately.”
“Is that so?” Shaun asked slowly, staring at Respa. It unnerved him, so he glared back.
“Yeah. Um, listen, Shaun’s about to cook dinner…do you wanna come up and join us?”
Before Respa could reply, Shaun was shaking his head. “Babe, I didn’t get enough groceries for three.”
“Well, that’s okay, you can run out and get some more,” Horace said, beaming. “I’ll give you extra cash for it, so don’t you worry about it.”
“Cool, then,” Shaun muttered, and he started padding off to their building’s entrance.
“So, it’s alright then, for me to come up?” Respa asked, watching Shaun’s back anxiously.
“Don’t worry about Shaun, he just gets…a little jealous sometimes, I guess,” Horace said, patting Respa on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go. He’s making something good, definitely. Never fails.”
The hallway on their floor was like walking into pumpkin soup, with shades of deep orange, forest green, and most abundantly red everywhere. Shaun had left the door open for them, and the interior was IKEA-chic, with a glass-topped coffee table in the small living room, and a sculptural light fixture in the entrance hall.
“This is a very nice place you have here,” Respa said, trying to whistle and failing. He’d never actually been taught.
“We manage,” Horace said with a quick smile. “Go and sit over there while I talk to Shaun a second.”
Shaun was already coming out of the kitchen, a piece of paper that looked like a grocery list clutched in one fist. Horace sidled up beside him, hands caressing Shaun’s shoulders and arms as he spoke, too softly for Respa to hear. Shaun rolled his eyes at first, but something Horace said made him smile. Horace patted his face before they parted, and Shaun left looking much less sulky.
“I’m guessing you don’t have guests often,” Respa said, touching the glass top of the coffee table, and being horrified when he found he’d left a smudge the literal color of dirt. He tried rubbing it out, but it only made things worse. Horace didn’t seem to notice.
“Teri and Kelly come over a lot,” Horace said, taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch. “So, you live here in Chelsea too, now?”
“Yeah, uh, you know. Not really, just…in the area. Near the Chelsea area.” Waving his hand again.
“So you live in the meatpacking district?” Such honest curiosity. Respa turned his vision to his knuckles, hoping his lies weren’t coming out in his face.
“Y-yeah.” He’d never been sure exactly where that was; for all he knew, all of twelfth avenue was considered the meatpacking district. There were certainly enough warehouses.
Horace sat back, drumming his fingers on the arm of the couch. “Respa, are you being honest with me?”
“Why would I lie about where I live?” he asked, not looking up. “Come on, Horace, that’s stupid.”
Horace only looked at him.
“I live over on ninth avenue, okay?” There was such dirt under his fingernails. “It’s an alright place.”
“Ninth and what?” Horace asked, resting his elbows on his knees and thrusting out his chin. “Respa, what happened to the place in Dumbo? With that girl?”
“Tanya,” Respa muttered.
“The one who sent you out, yeah.” His dislike for Tanya was evident in his tone, and in the brief grimace he pulled. “Her.”
“It’s gone, she’s gone,” Respa said, heels starting to bounce again. “That’s all gone, now.”
“Wh—did she kick you out? You let her?” Horace moved closer on the couch, looking sincerely worried. “Respa, that’s not like you.”
“She didn’t kick me out!” he shouted, hands flat and tense as he held them out in front of him, elbows bent and locked. “She—“ The hands shook, once, and then he dropped them with a sigh. “She didn’t kick me out. She died.”
“Oh.” Horace was dumbstruck, and Respa felt stupid for saying it out loud, as if not skirting the issue made it somehow trivial. “Um, I’m sorry.”
Don’t be, Respa wanted to say, but even he knew that was the wrong thing to say, and so he and Horace stayed silent for a moment.
“You don’t have a place of your own, though, do you?” Horace finally said, breaking the silence. “Respa.”
“No,” Respa admitted, inspecting now the dirt-ingrained whorls of his fingertips. He was so sick of being dirty.
“You can stay with us for awhile, crash on our couch, if you want,” Horace said, leaning over and craning his neck to try to look into Respa’s face. He lifted an oily black lock. “Have a place to shower, at least.”
That made Respa grin, at least, if bitterweetly. “I’m pretty ripe, aren’t I?”
“I’ll be honest with you, you definitely smell like a subway elevator. And that beard is out of control.”
“My beard is awe-inspiring,” Respa protested, looking up, but he hated it, too, now that he’d lacked the means to trim it for months. It hadn’t grown to rabbi-like lengths, but it felt like living in a squirrel’s nest, and it made him look like a bobblehead. “Is Shaun gonna be okay with it, though?”
“I put my name on this lease, not him,” Horace said, sitting up. “And you’re my friend. So if I say you get to crash here, then that’s that.”
Respa surveyed the apartment. The mauve walls with white kickboards, the hardwood flooring; the vintage lamp that probably Horace had picked out, and the goddamn glass-topped coffee table. And him. One of these things does not belong, he thought in a little sing-song mental voice.
“I’ll be okay—“ he started to say, but Horace grabbed his hand as though they were going to arm wrestle, an almost frighteningly determined look on his face.
“You do this to yourself all the time!” Horace reprimanded him, his grip strong. “I ran into these guys at the bar who apparently know you too, and they said you pulled the same shit with them! They offered you a comfortable place to stay and get your life together, and what do you do?”
“I—“
“You blow it! You fucking kick it over the wall! I don’t know what kind of goddamn insecurities you have that you can’t even accept a couch to sleep on, but if you don’t get over them you’re going to wind up dead, Respa. They’re going to find you in some gutter in St. Mark’s, starved literally to death, flies circling you—“
“—STOP!”
Respa tore his hand away from Horace’s, rubbing the feeling back into it, looking at Horace with a mixture of fear and anger.
Horace sighed, pushing the heels of his hands against his forehead. “I’m not trying to be mean, Respa. This is a reality check, and you need it. You can’t keep taking this imaginary moral high road where you flog yourself for every past fuckup. If a friend offers you help when you need it—and you desperately need it—you take it.”
“I’m just…luxury makes me uncomfortable,” Respa said, jiggling a knee and looking around.
“You think a real bed is luxury!” Horace cried, throwing up his hands. “Uy!”
“What guys did you run into, anyway?” Respa asked.
“Oh, these guys, called, um…” He snapped his fingers with a frown. “Um, Jesus, what were their names…? Oh!” The fingers snapped a final time as revelation hit. “Terrence. That’s right. And, uh, Jonas. Yeah, Terrence and Jonas. This little black twink and some really nondescript buff guy.”
Respa blanched. “How the hell did you run into them? That’s just—that’s too convenient, that’s—“
“It’s a long story, and I’m not that proud of it,” Horace groaned. “I met them, okay?”
“And how’d they know you knew me, then, huh? And vice versa?”
“It’s just stupid, don’t worry about it.” It was Horace’s turn to wave the subject away. “Alright?”
“Come on, if it’s so embarrassing, tell me it before Shaun gets back.” He scooted closer and patted him awkwardly on the elbow in an attempt to be reassuring. “Come on.”
“Alright, alright,” Horace finally relented, hands flapping like birds around his face. “I was at the bar, and,” he sighed, “I was looking for you.”
Respa reeled. “Looking for me?”
“Yeah, looking for you. I told you it was stupid.” Horace rolled his eyes, more at himself than at Respa.
“And?”
“And what? These guys, they came over, and the buff guy told me I looked ‘troubled.’ He said he was a counselor, and I told him I didn’t need that, I was just waiting for somebody. It would’ve stopped there, but,” another big sigh, “I was kind of drunk, so I elaborated, and the twink was like, ‘What did you say his name was again?’ and I was all, ‘I didn’t, but is name is Respa,’ and then the twink did a little dance and was all like, ‘I know that guy!’ And then they sat down and we talked for awhile, and they told me some interesting things about your housing record.” Horace raised his eyebrows, resting thumb and forefinger on the side of his face. “Very interesting.”
Shaun came in before Respa could respond, a bag of groceries dangling from each fist. “Okay, so listen, I hope you like chicken parm, because that’s what I’m making,” Shaun said, oblivious to the tension he was walking through. He went to the kitchen, and Horace gave Respa a Wait here look before rising to follow his boyfriend.
There were some murmurs, Shaun’s deeper and louder than Horace’s, but it seemed like Horace had successfully used his powers of persuasion, because he heard no shouts of protest, no angry whispers.
Respa took a shower before dinner, and as he scrubbed the layer of grime off his skin, he took note of the inventory of masculine hair products littering the bathroom. They had to belong to Horace; Shaun’s hair was as soft and unstyled as the day he’d been born. There were no girly shampoos and conditioners, no soft soaps. Someone used Selsun Blue, and Respa decided it was Shaun, because so far Shaun had been a jerk, and he deserved imaginary dandruff. And because he’d decided it was Shaun’s, he poured out a palmful into his hand and scrubbed his own head, properly washing his hair for the first time in awhile.
The towel wasn’t exactly fluffy, probably having been through the dryer countless times, but it was certainly warm from the steam. He looked at his old clothes with a sense of resignation, and sat on the toilet lid for a few minutes, debating whether he should pull the rags back on or ask Horace for a loaner. Horace’s clothes probably wouldn’t fit him, but they’d at least be clean.
Finally, he stuck his head out the door, fingers curling around the edge to keep the opening as small as possible. “Horace?” he called.
Horace appeared in a flash, startling him a little bit. “What’s up?”
“Can I, uh, can I borrow some clothes? Only mine are–“
“No problem,” Horace interrupted with a big smile. He returned shortly with a white t-shirt and dark jeans. “Oh, you might need this,” he said, fumbling briefly at his belt buckle before pulling the belt one-handedly off his hips. “Since, um.”
“Thanks,” Respa said, accepting the clothing with a slightly mollified look.
He emerged to find that Horace had given him a muscle tee, and since he had no muscles to speak of, it hung more like a normal t-shirt, rather than the pajama-like situation he’d been expecting. He couldn’t remember the last time pants had ever fit him so loosely, so easily.
“Oh, hey. You look good like that,” Horace said as he entered the living room, still toweling his hair. “Now we just need to get you to a barber. Right Shaun?” he added, raising his voice to try to include the man in the kitchen.
Shaun grunted noncommittally, the only other sound coming from the kitchen the sound of a knife hitting a plastic cutting board.
“Would you want me to?” he said, digging his thumbs deeper into his pockets. Teri’s expression didn’t change, but Kelly cracked a smirk.
It was true that in the months since giving up Kathy, he’d started spending time in Chelsea again. He associated the neighborhood with Horace, and he associated Horace with a second chance he’d previously tossed aside. He almost never saw Horace, though, and when he did, he saw him with a man with features like a bird of prey and mouse-brown hair, and so he kept his distance. Mostly he kept running into Teri and Kelly—never separately—and often they cornered him to interrogate him for their amusement.
“Anyway, Horace isn’t out tonight, so you can crawl back to your hovel,” Teri said, taking a puff of her cigarette. “Or wherever it is you live. He’s home with the boyfriend.”
Ah. The hawk man. “Shaun?”
“He remembers. Impressive,” Kelly said, mockingly doffing her fedora. “Yes, Shaun. You really should stop stalking Horace, you know, or we might tell him about it.”
“I’m not stalking him,” Respa said with a scowl, shoulders hunching defensively. “I don’t stalk.”
“So you just hang around Chelsea every night watching for him for, what, fun? Are you bored?” Teri asked. “Come on, kid.”
“Sure, I’m bored,” he said, stretching his mouth across his face in a grimace. “I could be stalking you two instead, you know.”
“I thought you said you didn’t stawk,” Kelly said, imitating his accent with a grin.
“Forget it,” he groaned, turning to leave. Teri heaved a big dramatic sigh, flicking her cigarette into the gutter and grabbing his shoulder.
“Listen, you wanna talk to Horace?”
He didn’t say anything, just watching her.
“You,” she said, pulling a pen out of her small purse, “find yourself a phone, and you call this number. This is his cell, so Shaun won’t answer it, unless he’s nosier than I thought.” She wrote on his left palm, though the pen didn’t write at first and she ground the tip into his skin painfully.
“Isn’t it more expensive for him to talk on his cell?” Respa asked, studying his hand.
“What do you care? You get to talk to him, don’t you?”
He put the immobile hand down. “Thanks,” he said quickly.
“Just don’t expect us to be doing you favors all the time, kid,” Kelly said. He nodded automatically, and turned to walk away. As he walked, he glanced over his shoulder at the women, and he caught a glimpse of Kelly looking like she was telling Teri off; Teri seemed to be waving her off.
Respa spent about a week loitering near a payphone that was also near Horace’s apartment, twiddling a quarter in his functioning hand. When he saw Horace or Shaun coming in or out of the building, he would always duck away, or turn around, and because Horace was never really looking for anything out of the ordinary (and Shaun had no clue who he was), he was never recognized. He tried to reason with himself, calling himself a wimp and a pussy for avoiding Horace, and telling himself that every time he turned his face away, he was acting just like the stalker he’d told Teri and Kelly he wasn’t.
It did no good. The next week was nearly the same as the first, a staring match between him and a phone that looked like it carried several infectious diseases. The quarter heated in his palm.
Friday, he put the quarter in the phone, dialed the number he’d copied to a scrap of paper. It rang five times and went to voicemail; he slammed the phone and listened for the clink of a returned coin, but his quarter was gone. He begged another one off a stranger, though it took several strangers before one deigned to give him twenty five cents.
Saturday, the coin went in again. It rang three times, and without warning Horace’s sleep-filled voice filled his ear. “Hello…?”
The phone was slammed again.
Sunday nobody gave him a quarter, and when he got a look at himself in the mirror of a public bathroom, he couldn’t say he blamed them very much. Monday, he watched the passerby on Horace’s block as he sat on a stoop, wondering if it was worth it anymore to ask for quarters. The one time Horace had picked up, he’d hung up immediately, and he’d never left a message on previous tries. Pussy. Wuss. Wimp, he scolded himself, but it didn’t change a thing. He was still curled up on a stoop step, elbows across knees and chin across wrists, when Shaun stopped in front of him. The bird man. Respa looked up, bouncing his heels nervously.
“You lost, man?” Shaun asked, still a careful distance away, hands in pockets. He was dressed a plaid flannel shirt over an undershirt, cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and paint-splattered blue jeans. How bohemian, Respa thought to himself disdainfully.
“Nah,” Respa replied, more of a grunt than a word. Steepling his fingers, where they twiddled manically.
“Because I keep seeing you around my building, man,” Shaun said, shifting his weight to one foot and tilting his head. “Like, every day.”
“A guy can’t sit on a stoop?” he said defensively, sticking out his lower jaw.
“Sure,” Shaun said with a shrug, “a guy can sit on a stoop. But why the same stoop for weeks on end? You can’t find another stoop? You can’t, you know, stop fucking stalking me like some loser faggot who’s got nothing better to do?”
“Hey, whoa, talking a little highly of yourself there, aren’t you, pal?” Respa said, rising from his seat with his chest thrown out. Not that it compared, really. He realized when he stood that Shaun was muscled all over, with a broad and deep chest; if anyone was a “bird man,” it was himself. Shaun seemed unfazed.
“So if you’re not stalking me, then what’s your problem?” Shaun growled, crossing his arms.
“Respa?” a voice interrupted, and both men turned to see Horace standing there, looking perplexed as he looked from one to the other.
“You know this clown?” Shaun asked, jerking a thumb in Respa’s direction.
“That ‘clown’ is an old friend of mine,” Horace said, still looking at Respa in confusion, a small smile forming on his lips even as his brow knitted upward. “Hey, Respa, what’re you doing over here? I thought you lived in Brooklyn.”
“Well, yeah, I did,” Respa said, taking a step back onto a higher step, away from Shaun. “Not anymore.”
“Yeah? Where’re you living now, then?”
“Ah…around. You know.” He waved his hand vaguely. “Around here.”
“That’s…that’s nice.” Horace scratched the back of his neck, and got a look at Shaun’s face, which was currently frowning pretty hard. “Oh, uh, Respa, this is Shaun, my boyfriend.” Shaun nodded once. “Shaun, this is Respa. We’ve known each other a couple of years, just fallen out of contact lately.”
“Is that so?” Shaun asked slowly, staring at Respa. It unnerved him, so he glared back.
“Yeah. Um, listen, Shaun’s about to cook dinner…do you wanna come up and join us?”
Before Respa could reply, Shaun was shaking his head. “Babe, I didn’t get enough groceries for three.”
“Well, that’s okay, you can run out and get some more,” Horace said, beaming. “I’ll give you extra cash for it, so don’t you worry about it.”
“Cool, then,” Shaun muttered, and he started padding off to their building’s entrance.
“So, it’s alright then, for me to come up?” Respa asked, watching Shaun’s back anxiously.
“Don’t worry about Shaun, he just gets…a little jealous sometimes, I guess,” Horace said, patting Respa on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go. He’s making something good, definitely. Never fails.”
The hallway on their floor was like walking into pumpkin soup, with shades of deep orange, forest green, and most abundantly red everywhere. Shaun had left the door open for them, and the interior was IKEA-chic, with a glass-topped coffee table in the small living room, and a sculptural light fixture in the entrance hall.
“This is a very nice place you have here,” Respa said, trying to whistle and failing. He’d never actually been taught.
“We manage,” Horace said with a quick smile. “Go and sit over there while I talk to Shaun a second.”
Shaun was already coming out of the kitchen, a piece of paper that looked like a grocery list clutched in one fist. Horace sidled up beside him, hands caressing Shaun’s shoulders and arms as he spoke, too softly for Respa to hear. Shaun rolled his eyes at first, but something Horace said made him smile. Horace patted his face before they parted, and Shaun left looking much less sulky.
“I’m guessing you don’t have guests often,” Respa said, touching the glass top of the coffee table, and being horrified when he found he’d left a smudge the literal color of dirt. He tried rubbing it out, but it only made things worse. Horace didn’t seem to notice.
“Teri and Kelly come over a lot,” Horace said, taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch. “So, you live here in Chelsea too, now?”
“Yeah, uh, you know. Not really, just…in the area. Near the Chelsea area.” Waving his hand again.
“So you live in the meatpacking district?” Such honest curiosity. Respa turned his vision to his knuckles, hoping his lies weren’t coming out in his face.
“Y-yeah.” He’d never been sure exactly where that was; for all he knew, all of twelfth avenue was considered the meatpacking district. There were certainly enough warehouses.
Horace sat back, drumming his fingers on the arm of the couch. “Respa, are you being honest with me?”
“Why would I lie about where I live?” he asked, not looking up. “Come on, Horace, that’s stupid.”
Horace only looked at him.
“I live over on ninth avenue, okay?” There was such dirt under his fingernails. “It’s an alright place.”
“Ninth and what?” Horace asked, resting his elbows on his knees and thrusting out his chin. “Respa, what happened to the place in Dumbo? With that girl?”
“Tanya,” Respa muttered.
“The one who sent you out, yeah.” His dislike for Tanya was evident in his tone, and in the brief grimace he pulled. “Her.”
“It’s gone, she’s gone,” Respa said, heels starting to bounce again. “That’s all gone, now.”
“Wh—did she kick you out? You let her?” Horace moved closer on the couch, looking sincerely worried. “Respa, that’s not like you.”
“She didn’t kick me out!” he shouted, hands flat and tense as he held them out in front of him, elbows bent and locked. “She—“ The hands shook, once, and then he dropped them with a sigh. “She didn’t kick me out. She died.”
“Oh.” Horace was dumbstruck, and Respa felt stupid for saying it out loud, as if not skirting the issue made it somehow trivial. “Um, I’m sorry.”
Don’t be, Respa wanted to say, but even he knew that was the wrong thing to say, and so he and Horace stayed silent for a moment.
“You don’t have a place of your own, though, do you?” Horace finally said, breaking the silence. “Respa.”
“No,” Respa admitted, inspecting now the dirt-ingrained whorls of his fingertips. He was so sick of being dirty.
“You can stay with us for awhile, crash on our couch, if you want,” Horace said, leaning over and craning his neck to try to look into Respa’s face. He lifted an oily black lock. “Have a place to shower, at least.”
That made Respa grin, at least, if bitterweetly. “I’m pretty ripe, aren’t I?”
“I’ll be honest with you, you definitely smell like a subway elevator. And that beard is out of control.”
“My beard is awe-inspiring,” Respa protested, looking up, but he hated it, too, now that he’d lacked the means to trim it for months. It hadn’t grown to rabbi-like lengths, but it felt like living in a squirrel’s nest, and it made him look like a bobblehead. “Is Shaun gonna be okay with it, though?”
“I put my name on this lease, not him,” Horace said, sitting up. “And you’re my friend. So if I say you get to crash here, then that’s that.”
Respa surveyed the apartment. The mauve walls with white kickboards, the hardwood flooring; the vintage lamp that probably Horace had picked out, and the goddamn glass-topped coffee table. And him. One of these things does not belong, he thought in a little sing-song mental voice.
“I’ll be okay—“ he started to say, but Horace grabbed his hand as though they were going to arm wrestle, an almost frighteningly determined look on his face.
“You do this to yourself all the time!” Horace reprimanded him, his grip strong. “I ran into these guys at the bar who apparently know you too, and they said you pulled the same shit with them! They offered you a comfortable place to stay and get your life together, and what do you do?”
“I—“
“You blow it! You fucking kick it over the wall! I don’t know what kind of goddamn insecurities you have that you can’t even accept a couch to sleep on, but if you don’t get over them you’re going to wind up dead, Respa. They’re going to find you in some gutter in St. Mark’s, starved literally to death, flies circling you—“
“—STOP!”
Respa tore his hand away from Horace’s, rubbing the feeling back into it, looking at Horace with a mixture of fear and anger.
Horace sighed, pushing the heels of his hands against his forehead. “I’m not trying to be mean, Respa. This is a reality check, and you need it. You can’t keep taking this imaginary moral high road where you flog yourself for every past fuckup. If a friend offers you help when you need it—and you desperately need it—you take it.”
“I’m just…luxury makes me uncomfortable,” Respa said, jiggling a knee and looking around.
“You think a real bed is luxury!” Horace cried, throwing up his hands. “Uy!”
“What guys did you run into, anyway?” Respa asked.
“Oh, these guys, called, um…” He snapped his fingers with a frown. “Um, Jesus, what were their names…? Oh!” The fingers snapped a final time as revelation hit. “Terrence. That’s right. And, uh, Jonas. Yeah, Terrence and Jonas. This little black twink and some really nondescript buff guy.”
Respa blanched. “How the hell did you run into them? That’s just—that’s too convenient, that’s—“
“It’s a long story, and I’m not that proud of it,” Horace groaned. “I met them, okay?”
“And how’d they know you knew me, then, huh? And vice versa?”
“It’s just stupid, don’t worry about it.” It was Horace’s turn to wave the subject away. “Alright?”
“Come on, if it’s so embarrassing, tell me it before Shaun gets back.” He scooted closer and patted him awkwardly on the elbow in an attempt to be reassuring. “Come on.”
“Alright, alright,” Horace finally relented, hands flapping like birds around his face. “I was at the bar, and,” he sighed, “I was looking for you.”
Respa reeled. “Looking for me?”
“Yeah, looking for you. I told you it was stupid.” Horace rolled his eyes, more at himself than at Respa.
“And?”
“And what? These guys, they came over, and the buff guy told me I looked ‘troubled.’ He said he was a counselor, and I told him I didn’t need that, I was just waiting for somebody. It would’ve stopped there, but,” another big sigh, “I was kind of drunk, so I elaborated, and the twink was like, ‘What did you say his name was again?’ and I was all, ‘I didn’t, but is name is Respa,’ and then the twink did a little dance and was all like, ‘I know that guy!’ And then they sat down and we talked for awhile, and they told me some interesting things about your housing record.” Horace raised his eyebrows, resting thumb and forefinger on the side of his face. “Very interesting.”
Shaun came in before Respa could respond, a bag of groceries dangling from each fist. “Okay, so listen, I hope you like chicken parm, because that’s what I’m making,” Shaun said, oblivious to the tension he was walking through. He went to the kitchen, and Horace gave Respa a Wait here look before rising to follow his boyfriend.
There were some murmurs, Shaun’s deeper and louder than Horace’s, but it seemed like Horace had successfully used his powers of persuasion, because he heard no shouts of protest, no angry whispers.
Respa took a shower before dinner, and as he scrubbed the layer of grime off his skin, he took note of the inventory of masculine hair products littering the bathroom. They had to belong to Horace; Shaun’s hair was as soft and unstyled as the day he’d been born. There were no girly shampoos and conditioners, no soft soaps. Someone used Selsun Blue, and Respa decided it was Shaun, because so far Shaun had been a jerk, and he deserved imaginary dandruff. And because he’d decided it was Shaun’s, he poured out a palmful into his hand and scrubbed his own head, properly washing his hair for the first time in awhile.
The towel wasn’t exactly fluffy, probably having been through the dryer countless times, but it was certainly warm from the steam. He looked at his old clothes with a sense of resignation, and sat on the toilet lid for a few minutes, debating whether he should pull the rags back on or ask Horace for a loaner. Horace’s clothes probably wouldn’t fit him, but they’d at least be clean.
Finally, he stuck his head out the door, fingers curling around the edge to keep the opening as small as possible. “Horace?” he called.
Horace appeared in a flash, startling him a little bit. “What’s up?”
“Can I, uh, can I borrow some clothes? Only mine are–“
“No problem,” Horace interrupted with a big smile. He returned shortly with a white t-shirt and dark jeans. “Oh, you might need this,” he said, fumbling briefly at his belt buckle before pulling the belt one-handedly off his hips. “Since, um.”
“Thanks,” Respa said, accepting the clothing with a slightly mollified look.
He emerged to find that Horace had given him a muscle tee, and since he had no muscles to speak of, it hung more like a normal t-shirt, rather than the pajama-like situation he’d been expecting. He couldn’t remember the last time pants had ever fit him so loosely, so easily.
“Oh, hey. You look good like that,” Horace said as he entered the living room, still toweling his hair. “Now we just need to get you to a barber. Right Shaun?” he added, raising his voice to try to include the man in the kitchen.
Shaun grunted noncommittally, the only other sound coming from the kitchen the sound of a knife hitting a plastic cutting board.