It's Not Shakespeare (13 page)

The woman went back to muttering over her cards. “Oh. Five of coins—you were taken.” Her look was more sympathetic now. “That was your tower event—you were taken, you made the poor choice, and now you are afraid. If you make wrong choice, you will be poor—you are reminded every day, you have no money and are poor.”

James felt the burn of humiliation on his cheeks. He couldn’t even look at Rafael. He hadn’t mentioned the money—it had seemed… petty. And, yes, foolish. And Noni knew it too.

“Ah—here is the King of Swords. He is a proud card—the only proud card here. You don’t like to admit you have pride. This is silly. All men have pride—even future roommates. I understand.” She nodded, and frowned, and then pointed to the last card imperiously. “You see this card?”

James nodded. The picture was of a man—not a young one, someone who who looked old enough to know better—with all of his belongings wrapped in a kerchief attached to a stick. The stick was slung on his shoulder, and the man was looking up at what was obviously a sunny day. A little dog yapped at his heels and his next step appeared to be plunging into the void of the great beyond.

Oh fuck. Really? “I see the card,” James muttered. Oh yeah—how could you miss the universe telling you that you’re a fucking moron?

“You think you know this card.” The woman shook her head. “Men are afraid of this card—always afraid. You don’t know this card. This isn’t who you
are,
Jimmy. This is who you should
be.
You
are
this man here—this
pendejo
who is looking away from love because he thinks maybe love is not for him. He is worried maybe love is the bad choice, that he will end up poor and stupid. But you will only end up poor and stupid if you look away, you see? What you
need
to be—at least what you need to be if you want this cup here, the two of cups, the happy partner—what you
really
need to be, is the fool. You need to take that leap of faith. You have the knight of cups here—he will save you. That is his job, Jimmy. The knight of cups, he saves us from our own foolishness. Isn’t that right, Rafi?”

Rafael startled, as if surprised. “Yeah, Noni—you’re right. Whatever you say, okay?”

Noni waved her hand. “Pfaw! You kids. You never listen. I don’t know why I bother.” With that, she started gathering the cards, shuffling them back into the deck. She’d put them carefully away before she looked at James with some determination. “You heard me, though, didn’t you, good boy?”

James nodded, because the cards were obviously symbols, and symbols were his bread and butter. Of course he believed. “You need to be the fool to fall in love,” he said after a moment, and the old woman’s sunny smile brought back some of the prettiness of Rafael’s younger sister.

“You
are
a good boy. Not a warrior. Not a businessman. Just a good boy. I like you. You and Rafi—you will be the knight of hearts and the fool. It is a good match.”

James just nodded stupidly and was supremely relieved when Rafael said, “Okay, Noni—we gotchu. I’m going to take Jimmy here to get some food.”

They stood up, and Rafael looked at him carefully. “You okay, Jimmy?” he asked as they made their way to the back of the patio—there was a spread of beans, rice, chicken, pork, and tortillas, along with that homemade salsa. The children had already come to eat, and James could see many of them, seated on the porch stairs or on their parents’ laps, balancing the plates of rich food on the skirts or pants of their Easter Sunday clothes. He got himself a thick plate and followed Rafael’s lead on dishing up (with smaller portions, of course, because his metabolism could
not
keep up) and then Rafael led him to a picnic table on the side of the house. James had a moment to think that, for such a tiny home, the place boasted a
huge
back yard, and not a small front yard, when Rafael took his first bite, swallowed, and then started to talk.

“You okay there, Jimmy?” he asked again. “You not too freaked out by my Noni? She’s not every white boy’s nana, you know?”

James smiled at him and shook his head. “She’s not, you’re right. She’s, uhm….” He cringed when Rafael glared at the dreaded “uhm,” but then kept going. “She’s really astute,” he said after a moment.

“Astute?”

James looked away. “Freaky,” he said with a little smile. “She was right on. I’m a believer now—don’t fuck with Noni’s cards.”

Rafael sobered. “Who took you for a ride, Jimmy?”

James shrugged. “Who do you think?”

“Married sugar daddy man?”

“Yeah—turned out, sugar daddy wouldn’t leave his wife without a nest egg. Austen had lived in my house, knew where I kept all my pass codes—hell, we had a joint checking account, right?”

Rafael’s eyes were big. “So you gave him his nest egg? Why you not call the cops, Jimmy?”

“Do you think I didn’t? Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I’m not gay, Rafael—they called it ‘spousal privilege’ and told me to sue him!”

Rafael blinked. “Well, did you?”

“I didn’t have a case,” James said with a shrug. “Look, I was stupid, okay? I trusted the wrong guy. I had no idea he’d been cheating on me since the get-go—apparently, I really am a fool.”

“You’re only a fool if you let that one guy fuck you up,” Rafael said, his expression unhappy.

James shrugged. “I’ll just have to be more careful next time.”

Rafael shook his head and put down his tortilla, like he’d just lost his appetite.

“It’s the careful that makes you a fool,” he said, and James proved to himself that he was a coward, too, and didn’t ask him what he meant by that.

They were strained for a moment, and for a moment, it felt like the clouds had come and blocked the sun. James longed for a white shawl to clutch around his shoulders like Rafael’s not-so-fragile old Noni. Then he asked, gently, how Liliana was, and Rafael looked up and started talking about how stupid it was that girls put all that thought into their fat when they should really put all that thought into how they could make their friends suffer in really hideous attendant’s dresses, and the sun came out again. They finished their lunch, they watched the children beat the piñata, and they laughed politely at all of Chewie’s stories about women, which he told while Teresa/Kim was somewhere else, casting him dark looks.

They left when the dancing started.

The music (which had never ceased blaring festively from the house) changed, and Rafael looked up and smiled. “Hey—dancing. I forgot! Jimmy, you want to….” His face fell, and he looked over across the patio to where his father stood.

James had seen Jorge Ochoa at various times throughout the day. Rafael hadn’t made any effort to introduce them, and James could understand that. Every time he so much as glanced in the senior Ochoa’s direction, the man was staring at him with an inscrutable expression. He looked very much like Rafael had described—his graying hair short on the sides and long and slicked back on top, faded tattoos on his powerful wrists and up to his shirt sleeves, the dark-tea color of his skin stained by time and force of will.

James wasn’t sure if he’d ever measure up to that grim, flat glare, and he appreciated that Rafael didn’t make him try.

“Probably a good time to go,” Rafael said, and James tried not to be such a weenie.

“Let’s say goodbye to your dad, first,” he said with a bright smile. “That’s only polite.”

Rafael gave him a grateful look at the same time he pulled in a big breath. “Yeah—you know, maybe he’ll even ask us to stay.”

He did not. Instead, Jorge Ochoa took James’s hand and tried to crush it between his calluses and then rolled his eyes. “You bring me a friend who can’t even move his own furniture? I thought you were pretending to be a man!”

Rafael’s grin grew tight. “I’m not pretending to be nothing, old man. How ’bout you not being shitty to a guest in your home!”

Mr. Ochoa senior grimaced. “Yeah, well, thank you for showing up, Rafi. Maybe next time, you show up to church, and not break your mother’s heart.”

Rafael rolled his eyes. “I haven’t been to church since Mari’s baby was baptized. The next time you see me there, it’ll be Liliana’s Quincea, and you’re welcome, old man. Maybe if you want her to parade in front of half the world in a white dress, you should stop calling her fat whenever she picks up a yoghurt, okay?”

James didn’t imagine the little pucker of hurt that appeared between Jorge Ochoa’s small eyes, and he winced. True—probably
very
true—but still. Not the most diplomatic way to make peace with one’s father, was it?

“You going to bring your…
friend
to the Quincea?” he muttered.

Rafael shrugged, and James suddenly felt like shit. He recognized the same pucker of hurt, there between the eyes, and he heard it reflected too when Rafael said, “We’re just now friends, Pops—I don’t know if we’ll still be friends then. It’s in December, right?”

Mr. Ochoa’s glare at James was
very
unfriendly. “Your Noni seems to think this one will stick around. Me? I have my doubts.”

Marlowe picked that moment to make his one sound of the day, and he barked, loudly, from their feet. Rafael’s father sneered at him, too, James turned all sorts of colors, and they managed to depart with only a few more words after that. The conversation sat heavily on his mind during the short trip home.

Still, when he went to get out of the Charger, he was disappointed when Rafael kept the engine running.

“You’re not going to come inside?” he asked, hearing the same hurt in his own voice. Rafael’s look was… sad. Melancholy.

“I’m not sure,
papi.
You sure you want me to?”

And James was. He was
very
sure. For one thing, he had a surprise of sorts, something he thought might take the little pucker of hurt away.

“I am. Even if only for a few minutes. I’ve got something I want to….” Well,
show him
wasn’t the right word. “Trust me,” James finished with dignity. “I think you’ll like it.”

Chapter 7

Open Space Beneath

R
AFAEL
didn’t say anything, but he turned the key, and the Charger’s loud engine was abruptly silent. James was very conscious of the same silence between them when he walked into the house in the growing dark. He took care to turn on the lights and open the shades and maybe bring back some of the bright sunshine that had been so promising that afternoon when they’d driven up to Rafael’s place.

James went to his stereo then and plugged his iPod into the jack, searching for the right song. There… there it was….

“Si Tu Disaise” by Calexico filled the room, and he turned to Rafael uncertainly as the sultry, slow combination of country, jazz, and Mexican music filled the room with melancholy and soul.

Rafael pulled his head back and smiled a little. “I like this music!” he said, honestly surprised.

James smiled. “I asked Sophie,” he said, pleased. “I like this music too. You… uhm… I don’t really dance, Rafael. You want to lead?”

Rafael was there so quickly, James could tell it was something he’d wanted to do for a while. He wrapped one hand around James’s hip, hard, and brought their lower bodies in contact while clasping James’s opposite hand with the other. James followed him with a loose, suggestive box step, and the two of them moved awkwardly at first on the shoe-catching carpet of James’s living room.

“Loosen up, Jimmy,” Rafael urged. “It’s like fucking, except with power chords and guitar.”

James had to laugh, and he threw his head back for a moment and relaxed. As soon as he did, he felt the change in it all, the seduction of the music and the seduction of Rafael’s body. Rafael kept dancing, but he set his hips on “swivel” and was suddenly tight and nasty against James’s groin.

The song was more than five minutes long, and every beat of the music was torture. Rafael started teasing James’s neck with kisses, and then moving his lips up to James’s ear. James tilted his head back and let Rafael have his way, enjoying the music, the sway of their bodies, the mmm-mmmm-yeah of every touch.

“You got too many lights on, Jimmy,” Rafael whispered, and James allowed himself to be danced from light to light and then danced backward in the darkness until the back of his knees hit the bed. He trusted the moment, the dance, Rafael’s slow, sweet kisses, and trusted that he would find his way.

While he sat on the bed, he started placing kisses of his own on Rafael’s stomach, bunching Rafael’s shirt up and kissing the soft fur on his lower tummy. Those loose jeans of his practically jumped off his hips as soon as James undid his belt. This time, James was the one to hold Rafael’s cock firmly and swirl his tongue around the head until Rafael tightened his fingers in James’s hair, muttering to him in broken Spanish that James wished he understood. Rafael started arching after a few moments, twitching, and fisting James’s hair unmercifully, trying to pull him away, and for a moment, James refused to go. For a moment, he wanted to ignore everything he knew about condoms, about being safe, and let Rafael erupt in his mouth so he could swallow it, just to be closer to him, to be someone special to Rafael, so special Rafi could maybe overlook all the things James was doing wrong, all the stupid, petty hang-ups he had, the pride, the fear, the insecurities, all the things that had made that little pucker of hurt appear between Rafael’s brows and the car sound like melancholy on the way home—all of that shit, go away.

But Rafael wouldn’t let him. “I’m gonna come,” he whispered. “Here… let me….”

“Rafael….” James looked up at him, over that fine young body to those limpid, too-easily-hurt eyes above him. “I want….” God, he had no words.

Rafael didn’t need any. He leaned down and cupped the back of James’s head, angling them both for a warm, tender, drawn-out kiss. When he stood up again, James struggled out of his jeans and white T-shirt while Rafael kicked his pants off his ankles and pulled both his shirts over his head. By the time Rafael was ready, James made sure he was back against the pillows, naked, his knees falling apart, begging as shamelessly as he knew how.