IL COVENO
Noah got me the job at the restaurant because he said my uniform made him dry heave.
I told him he never even saw me in the uniform.
But he said the knowledge alone conjured an image so grotesque it made him want to un-alive himself.
“You’re a good looking dude, Seb.”
“Um, thanks.”
“But nobody’s gonna know it if you wear that uniform.”
“Oh. Ok.”
And, yeah, at the sandwich shop, I had to wear a branded hat and tee shirt.
And, yeah, they were a kind of muddy yellow that didn’t exactly flatter my features.
And Noah said this was capitalist erasure.
And I nodded because, sure, but also a job is a job and I was glad to have one.
And it wasn’t like he was doing something super noble.
Noah was a back waiter at one of those very cool restaurants that people don’t even call a restaurant but call it, like, a spot and is on a lot of check this place out kind of lists and is sunken downtown on a forgotten block with nothing else but a tire shop and a permanently closed nail salon.
The kind of place I chain smoked outside of whenever he told me to come grab a drink at the bar while he finished up because I was too afraid to go in.
So, I shook my head, no.
But he said, “Dude, the owners will love you. They’ll think you’re so cute.”
And apparently that mattered because the owners hired anyone they thought was a vibe and wanted to be their friend.
And so it was ok that I didn’t have any restaurant experience.
And the hat and tee shirt were definitely embarrassing.
And maybe my soul was being erased.
And so I shrugged and said ok and had him set up an interview.
-
Il Coveno was dark.
The front facade was a charcoal-stained wooden wall covered in tiny slanted holes meant to look like for holding the necks of wine bottles.
From the outside, they gave the impression you could almost peek in, but if you tried, they trapped your sight.
Sitting on the inside of it during the day was like experiencing sunshine from under an avalanche.
I sat at the bar like a patron while Fallyn and Shay stood across from me like they were tending.
They asked relevant questions.
And I answered.
But I think the answers they were actually seeking existed somewhere beyond or beneath my words.
I felt their eyes traveling along the unruly spirals of my hair.
Perceiving my collar bone beneath my sweater.
Assessing the strength of my rib cage.
The dexterity of my fingers.
And, in general, I guess, like, sensing my aura or something.
And they didn’t talk to each other.
Or look at each other.
Just me.
But sometimes I caught them passing their in between thoughts.
Like Fallyn would sort of tilt her head toward Shay’s and I could see words falling from her brain into the other.
Or Shay would lift her chin in Fallyn’s direction and her closed lips would float a message into Fallyn’s ear.
And this silent conversation got me a new job.
And so I quit the sandwich shop and became a back waiter at Il Coveno.
-
Noah and I lived in a factory loft off Jefferson that our friend Savannah single and bare-handedly converted from a cinder block square into something semi-habitable.
There was no heat or AC and the windowless bedrooms had a ceiling height of up to my sternum, but there was hot water and electricity and WiFi, so I was plenty comfy.
Noah’s ex-girlfriend Olivia also lived there.
And Olivia’s new girlfriend, Peach.
And Atticus, an installation artist we knew from school.
And a stray cat Noah found in Cooper Park called Malaria because even on her best day she was on the brink of death.
When I told Savannah I’d be working with Noah at Il Coveno, she was her usual brand of quiet inscrutability.
“What about the sandwich shop?” She asked, maybe concerned or maybe apathetic.
“I quit.”
“Hm.”
And she held up a finger, like, wait here. And I did. And she went up to her room and came back holding a little piece of torn out graph paper with a little hand drawn heart on it that she folded up and placed in my palm and then she nodded to herself and continued making her oatmeal.
And I watched the silky robe on her slender back as she mixed the pot on the stove and sprinkled in some homemade blend of spices.
And I wanted to ask her, but I think I also didn’t want to know.
So I just walked over and hugged her from the side and she leaned into me.
“I love you, Savannah.”
“Be careful, Seb.”
-
Noah and I took the J into the city on my first day of training even though he didn’t actually have to work because Saturday was the only day with two back waiters and this was Thursday.
He said he was like a proud parent dropping their kid off on the first day of school and he gave a me a pat on the back and handed me a brown bag lunch. I opened it, incredulous, to find a fresh pouch of Drum. I laughed and hugged him again and felt grateful for my best friend.
And then he ran off to do whatever Noah does when I’m not around.
And I entered the dungeon wall of Il Coveno.
-
After training, at family meal, when I didn’t take anything and reluctantly revealed I was a vegan, I was met with the requisite stares of shock and bemusement.
“Oh. Sorry, man.” Tommy, the sous chef, grunted insincerely. Tommy was a hipster string bean with long, greasy hair and a narwhal tattoo on his forearm.
“I can make you something.” Ricardo, a line cook, said with more compassion. Ricardo was a smoldery beefcake with curly black hair inching out from the front and back of his shirt collar.
“No, please. I’m fine. I ate before I got here.” This was a lie, but I preferred cigarettes and coffee to food, anyway, so I didn’t care.
“Don’t be silly.” Fallyn, who acted as both owner and executive chef, cooed breathily. She lifted her Morticia locks into a wrist-held elastic as she stood up to go make me a salad.
And I felt my body slowly dying.
“Sorry, Sebastian, Noah didn’t mention it,” Shay, owner and Front-of-House Manager, shook her head like it was a diagnosis my guardian was supposed to disclose to the school nurse, but forgot.
“No - I’m sorry. I really don’t like to make a thing of it.”
“Babe. Stop apologizing.” Trish. A server. Bleach blonde with mahogany roots. Covered in isolated, artsy tattoos. Barely 5 feet and the single most intimidating human presence I had ever encountered.
“Yeah, honey, no. It’s actually totally your vibe. We should’ve known.” Nella. A server. The kind of casual, but unrealistic pretty you’d find in an Abercrombie catalog, if Abercrombie liked non-white people. She had a stoner glaze in her eyes and her syrupy speech, but with an air of stormy sincerity.
“I’m even more obsessed with you now.” Gayatri. A server. She whispered it, just to me, as she fanned her many-ringed, un-manicured finger tips onto my forearm and breathed into them as she gripped it. She meant it, too. Her honeycomb eyes and her undercut and her septum piercing were not likely to kid around.
None of them were.
These were very cool girls.
They didn’t have to pretend.
And I felt like maybe they wanted to adore me.
And I had never felt so desperate to be adored.
-
My first shift was hell.
I went from basking in the glow of these impossibly cool girls, to clang and rush and ding and sizzle and scrape and shout and ding and Sleigh Bells on the aux and excuse me and behind and corner and ding.
And Seb, Table 2.
And Seb, Seat 5 at the bar.
And Seb, reset 16.
And Seb, grissini at the bar.
And Sebastian, ice run.
And Seb and Seb and Seb.
And ding and ding and ding.
And Fallyn in the pass dropping hot plates onto my bare skin whether I’m ready or not and mumbling table and seat numbers and me trying to see the map in my brain.
And my skin throbbing and my brain leaking and tears welling up behind my eyes.
And Gayatri’s hand at my lower back, guiding me in the right direction.
And Nella whispering correct seat numbers in my ear.
And Trish handing me a bouquet of silverware at the next bell, “I got this one, babe. Just polish.”
And Shay hovering while I clear Table 5, the longest one with it’s seven seats.
And me trying to remember the puzzle of which plates to grab when and instead of it being an empty table full of empty plates like during training it’s a table full of people reaching and talking and looking and perceiving.
And I see the plate I should have grabbed first, but didn’t.
And the bowl that should be in my palm, but isn’t.
And it won’t balance on top of the others.
And so I’ll need to grab it with my left hand after I clear the silverware.
But the last thing my left hand is supposed to grab is the grissini basket.
And so I won’t be able to do that.
And so I’ll have to make a second trip.
And that’s, like, so tacky.
And so not Il Coveno.
And Shay sees it, too.
And so she grabs the grissini basket for me and slips off to the kitchen and whispers something to Fallyn in the pass.
And it’s over.
And I never thought I’d be someone who got fired on their first day.
And I already quit my job at the sandwich shop.
And I’m still standing there.
And I haven’t even grabbed the last bowl yet.
But I’m not totally sure I can move because I’m starting to shake and I’ll either drop everything or cry.
Or both.
Probably both.
And the man at the head of the table says, “Are you not working or hardly working?”
And with my right arm full of all but one of their vessels of post-mastication, I chirp a broken, one and a half syllable, “Huh?”
“We need wine,” he says to this idiot that is me. And he looks at his not entirely empty glass and then to the carafe of wine on the other side of me at the lip of the garde-manger station, which is where we place the open bottles and carafes of wine.
But I was specifically told not to pour wine.
Back waiters don’t pour wine.
Only servers pour wine.
So, I can’t pour this carafe of wine that I see and that he sees me seeing and not just because my only free hand must grab that last bowl and finish clearing this impossible Table.
And he hates that.
And he hates me.
And he shows me with his eyes.
-
And finally, I’m rolling a cigarette outside Il Coveno’s pretentious facade with its purposeless holes.
And there’s snow on the sidewalk that hasn’t finished melting.
But I didn’t grab my cardigan because I couldn’t put another second in between me and this cigarette.
And my fingers fumble with the lighter in the icy air, but the inevitable inhale hushes the chill.
And I almost sink into a place of mellow.
But the door opens and ignites my just acquired PTSD.
And of course it’s him.
The man from Table 5.
And he turns as he’s holding the door for his party and he sees me -
Well, not really sees me, but sees what he thinks of me.
And he sneers.
And I hate him. And his bland face. And his ill-fitting dress slacks. And his puffed out chest. And his financial district camel coat.
And he whispers something snide to his useless, condescending wife with her ugly fur and smudgy, wrong color lipstick.
And she looks at me and says, “Well, what do you expect?”
And if her face could still laugh, it would.
And I watch the group of them.
These people that make money look cheap.
And I roll my eyes away and inhale again and I notice the puddle that the melting snow has created in the gutter and it’s so perfectly huge and deceptively deep and a treacherous mix of slush and water and I imagine this horrible man falling into it and I let the smoke release from my lungs and I smile.
And his hilarious wife shouts for the neighborhood’s ears, “Do cabs even come down here?”
And they all laugh, but they’re also terrified that maybe they don’t.
But this very New York man is not deterred by anything and he lifts up his arm to prove he can get a cab anywhere.
And because he’s not paying attention to what’s beneath him, he’s only seeking the tops of cabs, he actually does step directly from the sidewalk into that magnificent puddle.
And he looks down to yell at it for daring to exist within his world and ruin his leather oxfords, but it’s a deceptively deep puddle and his other foot remains up on the still melting curb and he is so full of red wine, so his balance isn’t awesome, and he falls with his whole body, head first, into this most generous of puddles.
And my eyes widen is karmic amazement.
And my cigarette pauses before my gaping mouth.
And for a moment, magic is real.
And I feel a smile about to form in my numbing cheeks.
But, then, in a misguided effort to save himself, the man from Table 5 has kind of skipped and skidded too far forward, and instead of flailing, or reaching, it’s like his arms suddenly go limp at his side, and its his chin that first makes contact with the pavement beyond the puddle, and, like, shockingly hard.
Like, even my unsympathetic face goes from almost smiling to - oof.
And then a car runs over his head.
-
“Why aren’t you doing something?” his wife is screaming in my face after my world stops being blank.
And, admittedly, I’m not.
Instead of jumping into action, I am still leaning against Il Coveno smoking a cigarette while a mans head just became roadkill.
“Are you not working or hardly working?” I hear his voice and see his former face taunting my periphery.
I manage to stammer from my shivering lips, “I don’t have my phone.”
And it’s true. I wouldn’t have dared on my first day. And I don’t know what else she expects from me.
“Mom, come on, let’s go inside.”
Her son, maybe, is beckoning her away from me. Though, he doesn’t actually look at me, which is not different from how he behaved during dinner. He’s a clone of a man who could almost achieve handsomeness, in a state school JFK Jr. sort of way, if he wasn’t so tragically uptight. But I guess that’s inherited and maybe not entirely his fault.
Her daughter, maybe, or daughter in law - straight couples of this ilk do tend to keep close to the herd - is behind them on the phone, pacing and gesturing and speaking with emphatic exposition, so I assume she’s called 911. She’s also not unattractive, but in a corporate sort of way that feels forced and threatening collapse. She was the nicest of them all at dinner. Her please and thank you’s almost felt like cries for help.
The wife doesn’t break eye contact with me as her maybe son guides her back into Il Coveno.
“Fuck you.” She says.
And she spits in my face.
Except, no, she doesn’t say or do that.
But she wants to.
And I accept it.
Her husband did just get squashed.
So, I nod, apologetically.
And I look away.
And I see the man from Table 5’s gutted up head on the street.
And I take a drag, compulsively, as I ponder it.
Because I guess I thought maybe it’d be like a pancake.
Like my childhood brain assumed it would still be his face, but flat.
But it’s more a face that popped.
Attached to a body still stuffed with straw.
And then I feel my cardigan being placed around my shoulders.
And there they are.
Trish. Nella. Gayatri. And Callie, the pastry chef.
And Trish pulls out a Parliament. And lights it with a match from one of the Il Coveno matchbooks guests can keep as a souvenir.
And then Trish hands the matches to Nella, who lights up a spliff she made with my rolling papers after family.
And then Nella passes them to Gayatri, who lights an American Spirit Blue.
And then Gayatri passes them to Callie, still in her apron, tied tight over a black sports bra and matching leggings. She’s about the same height as Trish, with burlesque curves and an intricate tattoo that starts somewhere under her right armpit and travels the side of her torso to somewhere below her waist band. What Trish exudes in gritty ferocity, Callie matches in jovial delight. As she strikes the match to light her Newport, she lets out a tiny giggle of thrill at the spark and the fire it makes.
“Gruesome.” Trish says.
“Ouch.” Nella says.
“Sad.” Gayatri says.
“Yucky.” Callie says.
And they’re assessing the scene with a kind of measured calm.
And it weirdly has the energy of like they’re revisiting it.
Like they are ghosts of Christmas past observing what they already know happened in someone else’s memory.
-
“What did he say to you?” Trish had asked when I all but crashed into the kitchen to hand off the plates from Table 5 to Eddie, the dishwasher.
She had effortlessly snatched the last bowl and rescued me from the scene.
“Are you not working or hardly working?”
“Fuck him,“ she spat with venom and stormed out the swinging doors.
Eddie, boyish and chubby and many levels of cute, gave me a sitcom shrug and stuck out his tongue all goofy like it was his armor against the many dramas of Il Coveno.
I might have even smiled back before returning to my waking nightmare.
As I stepped, head hung low, from the long center hallway into the dining room again, Gayatri took my hand to walk me past Table 5, like she was my bodyguard.
“Come on, doll,” she said, as we strode through like popular girls on a playground.
I heard Nella at the table apologizing as she poured wine and offered complimentary gelato.
“It’s house made,” she said. “On us.”
Callie was over at the service station with Trish, nodding intently, rapt in serious conversation that halted when Gayatri and I approached.
“Soignee dessert. Table 5. Seat 4.” Trish was confirming with Callie.
“Salted caramel?”
“Duh.”
Callie nodded at Trish with a cheerful smile, but when she looked at me, her face dropped into a My Little Pony frown, and even though we hadn’t really talked yet, she hugged me like I was her Teddy Bear and it was a really hard day.
And that’s when I started to cry.
I didn’t mean to.
I was disarmed.
And Trish grabbed my shoulders and looked at me like she was going to yell in my face, but said with composed reassurance, “There’s no excuse for anyone to talk to you like that.” And her eyes asked me if I understood.
And I nodded.
And then Shay was at my back, with a hand on my shoulder, and instead of firing me, she said, “Well done tonight, Sebastian. Nobody comes that close to clearing Table 5 on their first day. Noah still can’t do it.”
And it made me almost laugh and I felt almost proud, but wasn’t totally sure it outweighed the horrors of the night.
And then she said, maybe acknowledging, but ultimately unfazed by or preferring to avoid my tears, “Um. Sorry about that asshole. Polish the rest of these glasses. Then go have a smoke or shoot up or something, I don’t know what your jam is. The girls can close out Table 5.”
And she allowed the severity of her perfectly porcelain face to offer a smile.
And it was something sinister.
But, like, a cozy kind of sinister.
Like we were in it together.
And I noticed the girls were matching it.
And I’d never felt so taken care of.
-
And, so, I wonder.
Slipping my arms into the sleeves of my cardigan, swapping what’s left of my cigarette from one hand to the other.
Sirens.
And police lights.
And a crowd forming.
And I wonder.
And Trish nudges my side, like, so casual.
Like - hey babe, you ok?
Or, even - hey babe, isn’t this fun?
And I wonder.
And I see the man from Table 5 eating his little scoop of salted caramel gelato with the pretzel chunks.
And drinking the rest of his wine.
And him and his family seeming so happy with themselves.
And so satisfied.
And the girls watching from the service station, polishing knives and stemware and smiling and seeming so happy with themselves.
And so satisfied.
And I wonder.
And I bring my cigarette to my mouth, but there’s nothing left and the paper just unravels on my frozen lips and I spit out the shag and pull out the stray pieces from my tongue.
And they laugh.
Trish. Nella. Gayatri. Callie.
But not, like, at me.
They laugh like - omg Seb, you are so adorable.
We so adore you.
And Trish slips me a Parliament.
And I hate filtered cigarettes, but of course I take it.
And Callie passes the matchbook back down the line.
And Trish strikes the match.
And our eyes meet through the flame.
And I inhale.
And I’m lit.
PLUSTER
Gaby Navarro and I first went to the Milton Public Library to research Benny Goodman for our Music History project.
We were burgeoning into a kind of a something ever since the seats in Bio were reassigned and the pair of us were moved to the very back lab table.
This was always my journey. On first days, when students reigned, I would pick the seat closest to the front and furthest to the side. A spot nobody seemed to notice. Least of all, desire.
Once the teacher seized control, we’d, of course, end up arranged alphabetically and I’d find myself somewhere in the central void. But after the first few weeks of the school year progressed and identities were formed and a familiarity was forged, I’d be sent to the back.
I sometimes wondered if I was the first decision or the last.
If my teachers thought, when sitting down to design their charts that, as the least of their problems, they could figure me out before the rest. And there would go my little name card, all the way back.
Or, if they only just realized, seeing me still standing against the wall, one hand tugging at the opposite elbow behind my back, everyone else already in their respective seats, that my quiet, competent, friendlessness had completely eluded their strategy. And they’d fluster, and recover, and pretend that empty seat in the back had been mine all along, pointing to the spot on their chart where my name card wasn’t.
Either way, they got it right. I never needed to be watched. Or worried about. I was listening. I was being good. I wasn’t trouble.
I was perfect for the back of the room.
-
I hadn’t yet interacted directly with my counterpart.
Paul D’Amico told me at lunch, on the first day of 7th grade, that the girl version of me was on our team.
“She’s you,” he said, “but a girl.”
It wasn’t news. There were murmurs. All through 6th grade.
She was from Carter Elementary, I went to Hansen.
“Just-as-quiet,” they would say, like it was unbelievable. Inciting competition, I guess, for teachers pet, or something.
A fascination, we were. Probably because when she was at Carter and I was at Hansen, we were, like, anomalies. But now we were like an untethered set. Not quite a pattern, but no longer a singularity.
When I walked into Bio after Lunch, she was sitting up front, all the way to the side. And Paul nudged me, indelicately, like - that’s her. But I knew. Because you know, somehow, who people are, by 7th grade.
And there she was.
And it was true, I learned, over the next few weeks.
Just as quiet.
And it was hard to deny the potential destiny of us.
Like we should -
But, how could we?
Because shy kids don’t make themselves known. They let other people find them.
There’s nobody to say hi, first. If, ever.
But I guess Miss Fletcher took care of that for Gaby and I when she sequestered us to that back lab table a month or so into 7th grade.
And, I swear, something cosmic happened in that moment.
A surge of the inevitable.
A hum vibrated the linoleum.
And flickered the overhead fluorescents.
And puffed an all but imperceptible cloud of chalk dust into the air.
A shrill squeal sung in the halls as the lockers expanded and settled.
As the important burden of fate was thrust upon us.
And the whole of Milton Middle absorbed its impact.
And I don’t remember who made the first move.
I’m sure we never even said hello.
I don’t know when it was decided.
But, soon, Gaby Navarro would become the other half of me.
Her sisters would call me brother.
Her mother would call me son.
And when Mr. Shapiro told us to buddy up for our Music History project, we chose each other, implicitly.
Wordlessly, as it were.
And we started spending our afternoons in the back stacks on the second floor of the Milton Public Library pretending to learn about Benny Goodman, but really learning one another.
Learning what best friendship meant.
What forever felt like at the beginning.
-
So, anyway, that’s why, one month into our Senior year, sitting in the front seat of her Christmas Tree green Jetta, covered in Craig McIntyre’s blood - wasn’t so much a surprise, as it was a commitment.
To her.
To us.
To a 7th grade promise still hidden in the stacks of the Milton Public Library.
Alice, Smiling
When she was eight, Alice Henderson briefly held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles.
Forty years later, the rat fur gray carpet at the expo center mocked her.
Suffocating in a crowded, hollow echo, she silently pleaded with every passerby not to speak to her, then ragefully chewed at the inside of her mouth when they obeyed.
Lame.
She was just so extraordinarily lame.
Because she wasn’t the first.
And she wasn’t the current reigning.
And she wasn’t even Marina Olfstrom who suffocated trying.
She was Alice Henderson, the briefly held.
Alice Henderson, the who?
Alice Henderson, the … oh, sure.
-
Every year she spent more money on her booth at GOATcon than she ever made.
Printed new headshots to sign even though she never ran out.
Stayed up all night with Tiff and Franco tying together little satchels of hand painted marbles to sell pretending she wasn’t going to end up giving them all away for free.
Every year, she almost believed that that one thing she did that one time that felt like it mattered actually did.
At least this year she didn’t get stuck next to the actual goats.
-
Geoffrey Durgin was the real marble star.
Alice could still feel his cold, slippery hand in hers on the day of abdication.
At the time she almost felt sorry for the greasy, gangly preteen whose skin was more blinding than his braces.
He needed it more than her.
Now, as she glared at the marbled mylar balloons looming in the distance over the cubicled maze of record holders and breakers and their adoring fans summoning them in his direction, she seethed.
Geoffrey never abdicated.
Anytime someone came close, he added just one more.
Seems hardly fair, as your mouth does get bigger as you age … doesn’t it?
Yeah.
… probably.
-
But it wasn’t just that.
Geoffrey wasn’t the same pathetic pimple popper anymore.
Geoffrey was marbles.
Durgins were marbles.
Kleenex.
Band-Aids.
Cokes.
Durgins.
Geoffrey Durgin was photographed on yachts with presidents and foreign diplomats and Hollywood stars.
He dated eighteen year old runway model girls in public.
He dated eighteen year old runway model boys in secret.
He had villas on islands where planes couldn’t fly over.
He tipped either zero or one thousand dollars.
He was the man.
The man made of marbles.
And Alice had handed it to him.
And Alice was going to take it back.
-
She knew money could buy records.
Alice had never stopped filling her mouth with marbles.
She had beaten Geoffrey’s record ten times over.
But nobody would certify it.
Not with Durgins filling their pockets.
But, here.
There were too many eyes.
Not all of the thousands of people at GOATcon could be bought.
Right?
It would need to be an ambush.
-
She didn’t remember leaving her booth.
She didn’t remember navigating the grid.
She just kept her eyes on those giant, tacky marbles in the sky and suddenly found herself locked in Geoffrey Durgins gaze.
For only the second time in her life.
-
Alice.
He said it so comfortably, so earnestly.
She didn’t think he would know her.
Every year she came to this convention, she would not so casually graze by his booth to see if he might beckon her over.
If maybe there was a world in which they were professionally chummy.
Comrades or colleagues or peers, even.
They weren’t.
He didn’t.
She would sometimes sit at her booth and look up, feigning surprise at his approach.
He was never there.
Nobody was ever there.
But now here he stood, knowing her, saying her name to her face.
-
Geoffrey.
Just Geoff.
Ugh.
How are you, Alice?
Let’s go.
What?
Let’s do this.
Do … what?
You and me. All the marbles.
A whoop rang out beside them.
Murmurs traveled along his infinity line.
Uh. That’s an intriguing offer, Alice.
It’s not an offer, Geoff. It’s a challenge.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Uh. Ok, ok. Um. Not here, though, right? Let’s, uh, let’s give it an - an official showcase, yeah, yeah? Isn’t that what you all want? A showcase of champions.
The response was tepid, so Alice quickly countered in her best hype man.
Or do you want a one time only champion versus champion face off right here, right now?
They liked that.
Well, uh, we’ll need judges.
No shortage here, right?
Guess not.
And so it began.
-
A flurry of photos were taken.
Alice sidled up next to her nemesis, who was now beginning to increasingly resemble the dweeby gawk monster she handed her future to.
His smile still slickly veneered.
His eyes still devastating with a sinister charm.
His biceps bulging with every flash.
But Alice knew the secret his hands held.
She tickled her fingertips into his palm.
His skin shuddered.
She gripped his chilly, clammy flesh with glee.
A ripple surged her body.
A steady, centering, impossibly endless breath descended from her nose.
Her jaw unhinged.
And she held up hers and Geoffreys hands as if two opposing boxers at the end of their match.
A booming and raucous applause burst from the ocean of attendees.
-
The marbles were quickly set in a glass urn like candy for a child's lavish birthday.
The judges assembled all around them at intensely serious vantage points.
An earth shattering hush fell among the airplane hangar of a room.
Geoffrey, the reigning champion, would get choice pull.
So Alice, the former, went first.
-
Seafoam.
With an elaborate white swoosh running through the center.
It was painful to admit how elegantly crafted Durgins were.
She licked it first.
Porcelain smooth.
A buttery warmth.
Salt.
Metal.
Lust.
Alice had always been unorthodox.
She let her tongue cup the orb and then slid it back along the roof of her mouth.
Most marble eaters build front to back.
As Geoffrey would.
He chose an onyx and slate beauty that looked like sex gritted between his pearly teeth and pale pink lips.
Alice slid her marbles as far back as they could go.
Favoring clogging up her throat and forcing her posture into a chest-heaved power stance.
Geoffrey resumed chipmunking, ever leaning forward to hold his marbles at bay.
-
One.
By.
One.
-
Beads of sweat.
Sighs.
Heartbeats.
Gulps.
A fervor.
A fever pitch.
A reckoning.
-
They were each one marble away from the record.
And, obviously, they both met it.
Alice with a brick red bubbled glass gem.
And Geoffrey with a lavender and blush delicacy.
It slid so easily into the mass of colorful swirls and splotches threatening to blitz from behind the gates of his teeth.
Maybe she had underestimated him.
Just because he had paid his way into blocking so many others from snatching his crown didn’t mean he hadn’t spent just as much time progressively honing his craft.
Her breath shortened every so minutely.
Shit.
Alice knew better than this.
Each exhale must be longer than the one before.
Any deviation from the pattern meant the jaw could tighten.
And with a mouthful of marbles, a jaw must stay loose.
So, she pushed a long stream of warm air from the back of her head out through her nose and looked up into Geoffrey’s eyes, nodding him along.
He nodded back, respectfully, and she saw his ears twitch up ever so slightly.
This translates to a smile among marblers.
And she felt her eyes mimic the sentiment.
They were not enemies.
Or, they did not have to be.
They were the only of the other that existed in the whole of the record breaking community.
In the world, really.
-
And then, Geoffrey’s face changed.
A civilian wouldn’t have been able to discern it.
A brief panic.
A denial.
A desperately trying to reverse.
A flare of the nostrils.
A clenching of the jaw.
The skin of his neck squeezing.
His Adam’s Apple plummeting.
His eyes widening.
And then, the lurch.
The crowd, as if choreographed, gasped backwards.
-
A heave.
And a heave.
And a heave.
And at first it’s just one.
A solitary marble.
Pinging the floor below and sliding quietly until it circles to a halt.
Geoffrey Durgin.
Fallen from grace.
This is followed by the spewing.
-
Cries of grief scatter the onlookers, all of them Durginites.
An orgy of hatred and disgust and pain and pleasure ensues.
They begin hurling jabs of misogyny and queerphobia and racism and self harm at Alice.
And also hurling the marbles from Geoffrey’s mouth that have pooled the floor beneath them.
The ones they aren’t putting in their own mouths, anyway.
Or rubbing along the curves of their faces.
Or on their chests.
Or down the fronts of their pants.
Or down the back.
Or onto someone else.
Some have started writhing on top of them.
-
Few, other than the ever dedicated judges and the hunched over and panting Geoffrey Durgin, have caught Alice quietly slipping a simple, totally unexceptional pheasant brown marble into her mouth with ease.
But after the judges nod to each other and raise up Alice’s arm in victory, they do notice her reach back into the urn and scoop up an extra three marbles just for good measure.
And pop, pop, pop each of them into her mouth.
And, with that sly and simple action, the entirety of GOATcon is a Henderstan.
And she floats among their cheers.
-
And she smiles.
She doesn’t remember the last time she did this.
Sure there were giggles here and there with friends.
The occasional good job at work.
A burgeoning crush.
But a wild, guttural, carefree, beaming kind of smile.
A whole body smile that lifts you up into a rainbowed sky.
That was a brand new kind of feeling for Alice Hendserson.
She liked it.
She’d stay in it.
So she threw back her head and sent her arms wide and let herself be.
-
Alice felt the marbles sliding down inside of her like a march.
Rhythmically pulsing her intestines.
Infiltrating her blood.
Digging their way into her bones.
Spilling out her nose.
Popping from her ears.
Pouring like tears from her eyes.
Bloating her belly.
Bulging from her skin like extra vertebrae.
She felt the crush of the concrete slab of a carpet beneath her.
And she gazed longingly, gratefully into the staring faces of her fans.
The shock, the horror, the awe.
To be in her presence.
-
Panic grew panic as everyone began slipping and tripping in a clamorous rush out of the convention center.
Marbles flooding like a plague underneath their scattering feet.
Ankles sprained.
Arms broken.
Chins crushed.
Noses bloodied.
-
And amidst the torrential chaos, lay Alice, smiling.
Because when she was forty eight, Alice Henderson briefly held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles.
And nobody would forget.
Gold Star Sanderling, 1.
1.
I fed the cassette to the tape deck. It ate from my hand and gurgled in a whir of mechanized digestion. I held rewind until it hummed to a stop at the start.
I got to choose the soundtrack that morning. It was a trick, I knew this. A ploy to distract me into a temporary perception of happiness. A negotiation to allow me one final moment of faux autonomy. But I allowed it. It was my favorite tape.
I felt the freshness of my summertime haircut as the warm wind whipped through the open window. I crawled my fingertips out to tap on the periwinkle shimmer of the passenger side door, retaining that end of June heat.The street looked different on a summer morning. A little too bright, even though it hadn’t yet reached its full potential. And relieved from the hustle and the panic of school bus Mondays.
I slid my hand back inside and rubbed my clammy palms on the cobalt, nylon and polyester blend bathing suit. I scratched at its soft, thin, rubbery sheen and squirmed in the mesh netting underneath. He said the boys would have instructional swim first thing and I wanted to postpone the discomfort of underwear-and-all changing for as long as possible.
Even with the window open, the front seat of mom’s not new car was suffocating. I stretched the fabric further down my knees. They were too short. Boys wore long bathing suits now.
My knuckles slid back and forth along translucent skin, greasy from sunscreen. Sunscreen on my legs. On my arms. Between my fingers. Up my nose. In my ears. When I rubbed my lips together I could taste its bitter, lemony cream. An ever congealing plaster stiffening me to immobility. And making me feel sweaty before I’d done anything worth sweating for.
“Watch your fingers.”
Mom didn’t like the windows open on the highway. So, I took one last breath, one last listen to the buzz of the tires on the tar and the pulsing breeze as I rebelliously gripped the lip of the dull, but apparently lethal window while it rose, waiting for that final moment of safety before slicing my fingers into my palm.
I’ve always hated air conditioning. A synthetic cool. A false sense of security. Like I don’t know the balmy truth of what’s waiting for me out there.
“I wish I got to go to camp when I was a kid.”
My mom, so skilled at offering comfort without making promises she couldn’t keep. She didn’t say, “You’re gonna love it!” Or “It’ll be fun!” She knew me too well. And I respected the effort, so I nodded, almost convincingly. Almost belying the tilt-a-whirl of my guts.
The poppy, ominous, synth artifice of the music was taunting and validating. I tickled the loop at the top of my backpack. Corrugated, crunchy fabric. Every ascending exit compounded the dread.
I tried to script what I would do and what I would say. Introductions. Avoidances. How to explain my too short bathing suit. Whether or not I’d actually wear a shirt to swim, like Mom said I had to for full body sunburn repellant. Thinking about the squelching of the drenched cotton suctioning off my belly after I yank myself out of the water and onto the dock meant for lither, tanner, outdoor bodies. The way it’s somehow more unflattering to see my pudgy, anti-athletic form through a wet white tee than it is to unleash my bare, marshmallowy torso unto the world.
I shivered. From the manufactured air and from the prospect of being publicly perceived in such a privately naked way. A humiliation one is benevolently spared from at school. Able to hide beneath boxy oxfords from Abercrombie and oversized hoodies from the Gap. So much of my skin will be shared with these summertime strangers.
The pit of my stomach swelled as we neared the inevitable off ramp and my favorite song tried, but failed, to soothe me.
When we toured the camp, I could recognize its idyllic achievement. The canned echo of chirping birds and rustling tree branches. The swampy blue serenity of the man made lake. The impossible swath of endless grass, scattered with activity centers, but also wildly unfettered. And the wooded hill punctuated with little russet brown, white-shuttered cabins.
The camp director called himself Uncle Chuck. And he seemed preserved in a perpetual state of woodsy authority. In a mossy green polo tucked into braid-belted, pleated khaki shorts. Knee-high white tube socks rose from a pair of weather worn topsiders. And his silvery hair peeked out under a maroon ball cap, stitched with the camp logo in white. He wore a whistle around his neck and wedged a clip-board under his arm, even though it was just me and my mom and camp was not in session.
The inside of the bunk was all raw cedar or pine or some other kind of perfectly American wood. The essence of its original aroma almost lingered, but was overpowered by a decade of absorbing the musty dampness of adolescent boys and their wet towels and burgeoning egos. Uncle Chuck kept looking at Mom, expecting her to be impressed. Mom kept looking at me, knowing I wasn’t.
I felt the memory of my feet walking those grounds. I could see the Bunk 5B cabin towering at the very top of the hill. I could see the cubby where I would stuff my JanSport. I could see the picnic table where I would open my MiniMate. And the lake I would swim in. And the field I would lose my breath on. And the basketball hoops I would sink nothing into. But I knew from school, the reality of a world depended on the life living within it. The social schematic truth was in the squealing lockers, the stage whispered rumor mongering, and the red-rovered clique formations. I wouldn’t know this camp until I knew the campers. They would decide what it all meant. And who I would become there.
I internalized the heart racing horror of the tick tock turn signal as Mom’s Camry hatchback slowed at the all but camouflaged welcome gate and sign.
Madison County Day Camp.
My body and my nerves vibrated with the rumble of the rocks as we travelled down the shaded, winding, gravel path that would eventually spit me out into my uncertain future. I gripped the strap of my backpack like the safety bar on a roller coaster. My eyes squinted in canine alert to prepare myself for any possibility. Any peripheral danger. I swallowed a good, guttural gulp. And as I saw the gold, glistening sparkle of the morning sun reflecting off the lake and heard the distant, cackling echoes of summertime fun, I looked at my mom like a traitor.
“Teddy.” Is all she said.
And then I really started to sweat.
Exactly Jacob
It’s happening.
Oh shit, it’s actually happening.
The moment Jacob has been waiting for ever since whenever it was he started waiting for it.
To see that face again.
To put himself in front of it one more time.
And there it is.
Next in line.
Quick, he pleads to his brain, what’s his name?
What. Is. His. Name.
-
This was a torturous lapse because he was an age-appropriate dreamboat who drove Jacob into a blood pumping middle school crush spiral after he came into the shop that first and, until now, only time. And name recollection was one of Jacob’s superpowers. He searched the man's face and the alphabet, desperate to unriddle the cipher before time ran out.
Adam.
Brian.
Ben -
Early-mid forties. Stocky. Bulky. Autumnal.
An independent gallerist or a landscape designer or a - some other kind of thing that is sturdy and utilitarian, but also creative and neatly trimmed like his stony, manicured hands. He carried a backpack, not a briefcase. He wore a crisp, clean outfit from the cover of a Todd Snyder catalogue. Ready to make a good impression on an important client, but still able to jump into the fray, if needed - to hammer a nail or load a truck or something. His arms were big. But not muscular. Not, like, ripped - thank god. Like two surprisingly firm couch cushions. To be held in that wingspan. To be broken in half by those beefy, burly -
Chris.
Daniel.
Dan -
Quietly handsome. Big, brown, patient eyes. Glancing away and then right at your soul and then away again. Like he knew the power of his gaze and didn’t want to abuse it. And he ordered something normal. Not a black coffee in a mug, which would’ve been fireworks. But some other type of quietly handsome, patient eyed kind of thing. Like truly unfussy.
Tasteful.
Classic.
Cappuccino.
He was such a cappuccino. Mostly serious, but with a hint of fluff. A minimalist decadence.
Eli.
Eliot.
Frank?
“Hi there.”
“Hey.”
“What can I get for you?”
“Uh. Just a cappuccino for here, thanks.”
Jacob couldn’t help a smirk as he tapped the CA on the periodic table of menu items.
Greg?
George.
Henry -
Working in restaurants and bars and, mostly, coffee shops for the entirety of the two decades he’d been in New York, Jacob developed certain strategies for patron flirtation. Not endowed with the mechanics for eyelash batting or pec flexing or unadulterated personality oozing, he had to hone a sleeker skill set.
One wrapped in a comfy quilt of familiarity.
Built on a single, simple, seemingly innocuous question -
“It’s Henry, right?”
Casual. Confident. Not really asking, already typing in the name.
And Henry blushes and says, “You remembered.”
And Jacob doesn’t say something shameless like, “How could I forget?”
He just gives Henry a coy smile and a closed eye nod, like of course, and says, “We’ll call your name when it’s ready, Henry.”
And so Henry is leaning in.
To see Jacob. Someone he already saw, but who is now a kind of brand new.
On his mind and infiltrating his thoughts and his plans for the future.
And Henry will ask him if he wants to maybe hang out sometime and Jacob will say sure and then he’ll write his number on an already stabbed receipt because he’s not digital, he’s a classic, too, just like cappuccino Henry and Henry will like him even more for that and the tangible connection to their connecting and this beautiful scrap paper memento that he can hold and cherish and he won’t be able to contain the exhilaration of this spark so he’ll ask Jacob when he’s done with his shift and Jacob will tell him I’m done at 2 and then Henry will wait and pretend to read a book but really be peeking up at Jacob the whole time and they’ll leave together and have a walk and a talk and maybe a kiss and maybe Jacob’s apartment will finally see someone naked other than Jacob.
Jeff?
Not Jeff.
Luke -
Ugh. But Luke will never incorporate Jacob into his future plans if Jacob can’t remember his name and do the smile and be so cool and enigmatic and major boyfriend material.
No.
Oh no.
Tragedy.
Because instead, Luke will go pick us his cappuccino from Aaron.
Aaron, who will call out his name with that smoldery bravado he has and flirt in that way that is so itchy and enviable and Luke will see the standard fare handsomeness of Aaron and they won’t need to communicate with words or exchange numbers because they can just intuitively know how to find each other in that secret society way that gay men who are actually good at being gay men do that Jacob has just never been invited to and they will have lots of attractive people sex and Jacob will hear all about it when Aaron comes over to talk to Jacob about all of the everythings that Aaron talks about when he comes to Jacob’s apartment and never stops talking about all of himself and all of the other anythings that pummel his brain.
So Jacob has to remember.
Mike.
It’s Mike.
Definitely.
It’s definitely not Mike.
“Do you have a milk preference?”
“Oat, please.”
Jacob and Aaron are friends.
Well, kind of.
No, yeah, they are.
When Jacob and his ex broke up -
When Jacob got dumped one Sunday morning by his partner of ten years a week after he decided to quit his job, he got, like, dizzy.
Mind dizzy.
Like past, present, and future life choices dizzy.
He went to the shop that afternoon more to escape the mean prank his apartment (and the whole of his life) had become than to seek employment, but as the cozy chaotic hum of grinders and steam wands and clanging plates and murmuring conversation wafted over him in a sonic aroma, he found himself floating back up to the counter asking if they were hiring.
And so he was a barista, again.
Or, a barista - still?
A super cool 40 year old barista.
Ok, fine, 41.
Aaron, at 34, was not younger than Jacob by actual generations like his other coworkers who were being born as he was starting and finishing college. But while Jacob aged by the minute, Aaron was just so oversaturated with that kind of trademarked eternal youth older people joke about bottling up.
And he owned it like an easy breath.
A carefree kind of charisma that is equal parts gnawingly immature and arrestingly brilliant.
And Jacob felt its repulsive intoxication leering at him anytime they were together.
Taunting him.
Teasing him.
Sticking its tongue out, all sexy and absurd.
He wanted to scream at Aaron - “I was like this once, too, you know!”
To tackle him into the space time continuum and travel back to 2009 when Jacob had hair past his shoulders and cutoffs and tank tops and his freckles were adorable, not concerning, and he would say yes to anything anyone offered to put in his mouth and he wouldn’t think about tomorrow and he would drink cheap scotch from paper bags in McCarren Park and dance drunk and sweat soaked at Sugarland and make out with strangers and end up on the roof of an illegally converted factory loft off Jefferson and smoke rolled cigarettes and bike everywhere without a helmet and not have enough time to shower and must have tasted so filthy, it was good.
But demanding someone see you as you were before is just a way of proving how sad you are now.
So Jacob swallows the sweet saltiness of his once was and lets himself be rigid and responsible and get enough sleep and drink enough water and floss his teeth and all the other things he assumes his younger coworkers see when they look at him. Knowing if 2009 Jacob walked into the shop today he would be a sparkly, haloed fascination. And Jacob would envy the way they squinted at him with furious astonishment as he took his mug of black coffee outside, no matter the weather, to pull out his pouch of Drum and seal up the sticky tobacco and suck on it like it was healthy, while reading something Beatnik or Foucauldian, pages wilting in the snow, framed by the picture windows like a tumblr post soundtracked by Beach House or Yeasayer.
He tries to imagine the way Aaron would look at Jacob.
And how it would be different from the way Aaron looks at Jacob.
Sigh.
Nate?
Nathan.
Patrick -
Patrick would swoon Aaron.
Everyone swooned Aaron. Heads comically turned in his direction like a compass finding North. And there he would be, perpetually facing forward in a lax, existential bliss. As Jacob melted like a forgotten candle in a room lit up by electric futurism.
And really Jacob wasn’t so delusional in his bitterness.
He understood his place.
Understood this was the natural pecking order.
The circle of life in the savanna of queer sexual desire in New York City, where Aaron existed as both predator and prey, but Jacob was neither.
Jacob was like a fly apathetically swatted away by an elephant's tail or an old acacia offering shade and respite, but mostly for the birds.
But there was also an element of skill-based spatial circumstance at play here.
Aaron, you see, was a terrible barista.
And Jacob was good.
Ok, fine - Jacob was great.
So, Jacob was always on bar and Aaron was always on register.
And everyone would come in and meet Aaron first.
And be undone.
By the time they got to Jacob, their eyes would be permanently locked on the prized pony who took their order.
Patrick would have ample time to fall in lust with Aaron and for them to spend a raucous afternoon together and for him to become yet another body that Aaron could have whenever he wanted and then feel burdened by and then forget and all his energy would be spent and wasted and flush with the memory of Aaron and Jacob would be swatted away.
But today, because Jacob was covering for Martha on register, he had a rare advantage.
A head start.
To snare Patrick before Aaron could work his hypnotic brand of messy debonair.
Peter.
Pete?
Robert -
“It’s Robert, right?”
“Yeah. You remembered.”
And Robert will see Jacob as the sincere and thoughtful and gentle kind of creature that he could build a life and a home with and when he picks up his cappuccino from Aaron, there’s no comparison because Robert knows he can find any number of men with all their eyes and hairs and body parts all working so great together, but Jacob. Jacob is different. Jacob remembered his name. Jacob looked at him. Like, really looked at him. And then Jacob was such chill vibes and full of knowing, wise energy and Robert will want to dive in and discover all of Jacob. But Aaron. Aaron is so immediate and right there and all heart and mind and fury on his sleeve and just exactly who he is and totally uncomplicated with his honeyed coyote eyes and teen beat hair and straight from the shoulder laugh and cartoon villain smile and, and, and shit.
Shit.
It doesn’t matter, does it?
Jacob can remember his name -
Sam.
Steve.
Tom.
And he can say it with all the dreamy, wistful, layered longing his siren song can muster.
“It’s Trent, right?”
And Trent will think, “Wow. That’s so nice.”
“What a sweet guy.”
“That lovely old bald barista just made my day.”
But it’ll never be more than that.
It’ll never be Jacob.
Because it will always be Aaron.
-
Aaron.
Aaron, who Jacob had now spent countless hours over the course of the last year curled up on his couch with talking about everything from witchcraft to work gossip to penis envy to scary movies to religion to body dysmorphia to literature to Satan to Alan Watts to the sun is going down and they’re opening wine and Jacob is making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and they’re giggling about the perfect wonder of juvenile delicacy that is a PB&J and it gets later and later and darker and darker and they lean in closer and closer and Aaron whispers to Jacob, “I guess I should go.”
And he goes.
And Jacob is standing at the door wondering why.
And why not.
And then there was the time Jacob forgot he had a check in with his professor -
Yes, Jacob is also a 41 year old freshman.
And so he shooed Aaron away to hide in his bedroom while he had the meeting.
And when it ended and Jacob went to get him, Aaron was lying on his bed with his feet up by the pillows like a teenager in Bye Bye Birdie.
And Jacob couldn’t remember the last time he saw someone else on his bed.
And Jacob had never been so nervous to be in his own room.
And Jacob lowered himself down in slow motion like he was getting into a boiling bath, hoping Aaron couldn't feel the frenzy of his heartbeat as he sunk his shoulder into the mattress and rested his head just beneath the pillows.
And as Jacob curled his knees into himself, Aaron turned on his side to match him in the opposite direction.
And they froze there.
Lying on top of the covers in a sort of infiniti shape.
Stuck in an upside down staring contest.
And the intimacy of it was so overwhelming that Jacob couldn’t breathe.
So he sprung up and asked Aaron if they should have PBJ’s and wine.
And so they had PBJ’s and wine at the kitchen counter, instead.
Aaron, who was everything Jacob didn’t want to want.
Aaron, who could have anyone he asked for.
But wasn’t asking for Jacob.
Which is how Jacob knew he wasn’t wanted.
Not really.
Not like that.
And Jacob was running out of time and running out of patience and running out of warm space in his heart and running out of letters in the alphabet.
So, like always Jacob should just give up, already.
-
“Can you remind me your name?”
“Zack.”
Of course.
“Zack. That’s right.”
And Jacob is awash with the sarcastic cruelty of fate, always putting him in the right place at the wrong time, as he types Z A C K into the POS and chews the insides of his cheeks.
And when he looks back up to recite the price of the oat milk cappuccino and their eyes meet again, Zack is staring him straight in the soul.
And it alights Jacob to a wild, unambiguous joy.
Not at all coy or enigmatic or chill vibes.
Dweeby and embarrassing and raw.
Revealing all his cards in one clumsy drop of the hand.
And because Zack and his eyes can unlock all the secrets of the universe and he knows all of Jacob’s already from this one simple scan, he offers -
“I wouldn’t have expected you to remember, I just came in that one time.”
And Jacob blurts, “I know, but I’ve been hoping you’d come back.”
Eek.
Not that.
Not that stupid idiot kind of thing that is something Aaron would say and manage to make sly and feisty and effortlessly irresistible but coming out as the accidental atrocity that Jacob just burped up is odd and stalkery.
Jacob tries to swallow the words back into his mouth, biting at the empty air and choking worthless saliva down his throat.
He closes his eyes like that might erase it.
Erase him.
Pleading with all the Gods or The God or Source or whoever is listening or whatever has power, to let this one second ago sentence be reeled back into the infinitum of things Jacob never said.
How to die.
How to run.
How can it be so impossible for someone no one notices to disappear when they need to.
And Jacob can feel his pasty skin morphing to a lethal plum.
And he opens his eyes in apology and guilt and regret.
And he is met with a curious, squinty eyed smile.
Not the look of humiliating disdain he had rehearsed encountering.
Zack is smiling that kind of smile you try to hold back because it’s too treacherous of a truth. Teeth threatening to burst with abandon through your lips. But you don’t want them to be seen yet because then it’s over. Then it’s all known.
And he even bites at his bottom lip to suppress it or feel it deeper or flirt or something.
And now this person and this moment and this day is a kind of brand new.
And so Jacob returns the favor, freeing all of his teeth and telling all of his truths.
And they lose themselves in the effervescent release of this pleasing tension.
Stuck in a right side up staring contest.
Until the fingernail clacking and throat clearing of the following customer explodes their world peace.
“So, um -” Jacob stammers, coming back to life.
“Yeah?”
“We'll call your name out when it’s ready.”
And they’re blushing like two boy band groupies on a sugar rush of butterflies and bubble gum.
And they un-velcro themselves off into their respective roles of customer and cashier.
And Jacob hopes they won’t liquefy and drain into the sewer system of ones that got away, as he turns toward the death stare of an extra sweet, extra hot, no foam demon monster.
“Hey,” interrupts Zack, reeling Jacob back to him.
And Jacob lifts his eyebrows to indicate listening, but is left without breath to speak.
He wonders if this is it.
If this is the cotton candy, Carly Rae rom-com meet cute he’s been waiting for.
The moment they remind each other of as they reflect on their decades of devotion.
And they’ll laugh about how Jacob wasn’t suave or mysterious or leading man because Jacob isn’t any of those things.
Jacob is Jacob.
And so he was.
And so Zack asked him out in that precise right then and right there because of his being exactly that.
Exactly Jacob.
“What’s your name?” Zack asks with all the husky, gravelly sensuality Jacob thinks he might, but never will exude.
“Jacob.”
“Jacob.” Zack repeats.
“Mhm. Zack.” Jacob affirms.
“Yep.”
“Cool. Hi Zack.”
“Hi Jacob.”
And Zack curls off to find a table. Looking back once, of course, for extra sweet, extra hot, good measure.
And before Jacob finally deals with the forthcoming large latte, he sets a porcelain saucer and the drink ticket down for Aaron at the bar.
ZACK
CAPP
OAT
STAY
He ponders it like art, then taps it twice for safekeeping.
“You ok?” Aaron asks, not looking at him.
“Huh? Yeah. Are you?”
“What was that about?”
“What was what about?”
“It just looked like - I don’t know.”
Jacob can see Aaron seeing him in the mirrored metal at the front of the ancient La Marzocco.
Something flickers in his eyes.
They lock in a second hand staring contest, both about to say something, but neither finding a thing to say.
Until Aaron shrugs out of it.
“So I wanna go to the Zen Buddhist meditation tomorrow instead of Church, I need a little Jesus detox.”
And Jacob feels his shoulders pulse and his molars clench.
Because he doesn’t want to do that. Doesn’t want to be trapped in the spin cycle of Aaron anymore.
-
Aaron.
Aaron, who never really asks Jacob about Jacob.
Aaron, who took more than a day to respond to “Have you ever watched the show Devs?”
Aaron, who Jacob was going to church with every Sunday as part of a spiritual experiment he no longer had interest in, who he would take crosstown buses to group meditate with, whose container of “potion,” which was actually just Crystal Light they put a spell on, was still sitting in his fridge.
Aaron, who Jacob always said yes to.
Aaron, who, on each of the only three times Jacob had been the one to suggest a hang, declined.
First, to watch The Craft, which Aaron expressed interest in when Jacob said it was his favorite movie.
Second, to go upstate for a hike, which Aaron expressed interest in when Jacob told him about his monthly solo excursions.
And Third, just last week, so that Jacob could give Aaron his Christmas present - an obviously haunted teddy bear he found in a vintage bookstore while upstate for that hike Aaron declined, which was still sitting, immaculately wrapped, in Jacob’s closet.
To Aaron.
Love Jacob.
Merry Christmas!
Aaron, who was “Not now. Def soon :)”
Aaron, who was “Maybe next time :)”
Aaron, who was “Leaving space for some creative energy :)”
Jacob was not going to keep participating in this one-sided, unrequited non-situationship.
Jacob deserved a Zack.
Jacob deserved a kind of a someone who thought about him when he wasn’t around.
Who missed him.
Who kissed him.
Who would change his plans to hang out with him because them being together was the best time that could possibly be had.
Not Aaron.
Aaron deserved a “Maybe next time :)”
A “Def soon :)”
A “No :)”
Just. No.
No, Aaron.
-
“Ok. Cool. Yeah.”
“We can meet at the bus stop at 9:45.”
“Sounds good.”
“Sweet.”
And Jacob hangs his head in lovesick shame, perking up ever so slightly as he realigns Zack’s ticket like just so. Then, he plasters on a witless, puppy dog smile to appease the impatient masses and lumber back to his cafe counter reality.
“Hey, can you call this order for Zack?”
“What?”
Jacob about-faces to see Aaron hokily pointing from Jacob to the ticket, miming calling out the fated name. His eyebrows and eyeballs and corners of his mouth bouncing and twitching like a Kit-Cat Clock.
Jacob searches him, slightly dumbstruck, trying to translate.
When he hops on the wavelength, the blood drains from his face and his mouth slackens to an aching, predictable O.
Because, right.
Because, duh.
Because they’ve been here before.
Aaron and his best buddy, Jacob.
“Oh.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
So.
You and Zack -?”
Aaron answers in the form of a wide eyed, tongue wagging, vulpine sneer of gleeful conquest as he sloppily pours a sickly gray stream of steamed oat milk into the pool of espresso, like in blatant mockery of the earnest love he knows Jacob dedicates to the craft of coffee making.
Jacob feels its sticky heat streaking down his body.
Burning a hole through the top of his periwinkle knit beanie.
Piercing the skin of his hairless scalp and dripping down the orb of his head.
He blinks its hot viscosity into his eyes and cries oat milk tears.
It trickles into his ears and invades his sinuses and his nose runs oat milk snot.
He laps it into his mouth and it fills his bladder and he wets his pants with oat milk piss.
It seeps into his skin and his pores ooze oat milk sweat.
He wipes it from his brow and sucks it from his finger, biting down to burst oat milk blood.
He seethes.
He hates.
He quells the rising pressure in his hands and his heart eager to smash.
To break.
To destroy.
To avenge.
To make ruin like he has been ruined.
To Sissy Spacek the fuck out of this third wave hellscape.
Watching Aaron set the insult of a cappuccino, with its leaking, muddled onion art, on the saucer and slide it to the center of the counter, then quickly turn away to pretend to be hard at make-believe work.
All its divine potential obliterated by those vapid, idle hands.
And Jacob breathes deep into his mushy, milky belly.
A reminder of life, maybe.
Of sanity.
Of control.
An effort to keep the crushing storm welling up inside of him at bay.
Which he can do.
Which maybe 2009 Jacob hadn’t mastered yet.
But this Jacob knows too well.
So, instead of freeing the ouch from his lungs, he sinks it to the back of his throat and lets it mist calmly from his nostrils in a cloud of heavy, swollen, invisible heartbreak.
And he inhales manufactured maturity.
And he calls out with a convincing, Stepfordian, polished and shellacked and only slightly cracking generosity -
“Zack.”