The Painting of Porcupine City (35 page)

«Do you remember how we used to sit and count helicopters?» Mateo said.

«I think of it every time I pass by there.»

«Do you?»

«Of course.»

«Huh. Want to go?»

Tiago smiled, showing his teeth again. «I guess.»

They lay on their backs

on the edge of the roof, end to end so the tops of their heads were almost touching, Mateo’s dark waves meeting Tiago’s buzz. From above they looked like the propeller of a pinwheel, or a helicopter. They each dropped one leg over the edge, as they always had done, keeping the side of the building against their calves to remind them of the place where relaxing would become falling.

They were up to four helicopters when Tiago raised his hand to point out another one.

«Yup,» Mateo said. He threaded his fingers over his chest and rubbed the side of the building with his heel.

«Do you do this in Boston,» Tiago said, «with your boy?»

«Count helicopters?»

«Yeah.»

«No.»

«Oh.» There was a smile in Tiago’s voice.

Quickly Mateo added, «There aren’t any helicopters in Boston.»

«There aren’t? How do the rich people get around?»

«They just drive. There’s helicopters but they’re just news helicopters looking at traffic. And sometimes hospital helicopters. But that’s all.»

«That’s boring.»

«It’s quieter.»

«Oh.» Tiago shifted himself on the ledge and Mateo felt the tops of their heads rub together. «I’m sorry what I said before, I guess,» Tiago said to the sky. «About shanty queens.»

«It’s OK. Fletcher and I aren’t together anymore, anyway. He dumped me.»

«Oh.» Tiago was quiet a minute. A new helicopter was buzzing somewhere but they couldn’t see it yet. «Why you defending him then?»

«I don’t know.»

«You love him?»

«I plead the Fifth.»

«Huh?»

«Never mind.» Mateo pointed at some tiny lights in the sky. «There it is.»

«I see,» Tiago said, and he moved just a little so this time their heads rubbed together on purpose.

Three days seemed quick

to bury someone, though it didn’t seem hastily done. It was fast as a result of surprise, like a sleeping cat jarred into motion by a shattering plate.

The calling hours and the funeral that immediately followed were a series of disjointed blurs separated by startling interludes of crystal-clear reality.

I don’t remember putting on my pants or my suit jacket but, for some reason, I remember putting on my belt, fitting the stiff leather through the loops and then feeling to make sure I hadn’t skipped any. And I remember taking off the suit when I realized it’s what I was wearing when Cara died. I don’t remember driving to the funeral home and I don’t remember entering it, but I remember the cold gleam of the casket wood at the front of the narrow, flowery room—the first sight of which made my bowels feel full of bricks. Jamar had wanted cremation but her parents pushed hard for a burial and he relented. And here she was, my Cara. I hadn’t wanted to see her, had intended to slip as far back in the room as I could. But once I saw her I couldn’t look away.

If you’ve ever seen on any of those
National Geographic
shows a mother animal, of any species, baffled over a dead baby, you have some idea of what I probably looked like standing at Cara’s casket, my fingers bridging the plush inside and the cold wood—wanting, not wanting, to touch her. I’d never been more reminded that people are animals too. Just as confused, just as powerless to reverse this. Everyone wondering at the most basic level, what is
dead?
How is she dead? She looked so much the same. She was wearing lipstick. I’d never get to talk to her again. Her son would never know her.

I skipped the receiving line—Jamar was doing his best to stand up straight but his eyes fixed were with a glaze in the direction of Cara—and retreated up the aisle and slid into a chair near the back of the room.

I watched the door for distractions, for comfort. Everyone I knew who failed to come through it to provide one or the other, I hated. It surprised me. I wouldn’t have expected to care so much but I knew, sitting there, scraping my shoes against the dark green carpet and watching the door, that I would later categorize everyone in my life by who showed up to that funeral and who did not.

But some people came. Babette, from work, was the first. She held her purse at her belly and waited in line, stopping beside Cara and spending a moment there—older people who’d done this before seemed to have a routine—then making her way down the receiving line. She spotted me and came to give me a hug.

“Such a pretty girl,” she said, shaking her head. “Such a shame. Such a shame. But the baby is OK?”

“The baby’s fine.”

She nodded.

“It was really nice of you to come,” I said.

She put her hands on my cheeks and squeezed my face between her palms. She smelled of spearmint. “How are you doing, sweetie?”

“Fine,” I said, and then: “Horrible.”

She smiled and cleared her voice. “I don’t have any say-so, of course, but you just take as much time as you need, and I’ll do what I can at work.”

“They’ve been fine. They gave me the week.”

“Good.”

She left a minute later and I resumed watching the door.

I missed him come in, but when I looked up Alex was in the receiving line talking to Jamar. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder—Jimmy Perino was standing beside me. He was wearing the same shirt and khakis I had taken him out of four days earlier. Four days? I stood up and he gave me a hug, and I hated myself for wanting to press closer and feel him all against me one more time.

“I came right to the back,” he said. “I don’t really do—death.”

“That’s OK.”

“I don’t like to think about it.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” he said, finally, “I’m real sorry.”

“Thank you. Thank you for coming.”

“No problem.” He looked around. “The flowers are nice. Hey, I haven’t seen Mr. Brazil around here anywhere. Are you guys still—?”

“He went to visit his family.”

“And left you?” Within a chuckle he disguised the word
asshole
.

“He didn’t know. About her.”

“Double asshole,” he said, with no disguise this time. “So how’d she die?”

“Childbirth.”

“Does that still happen?”

I wanted to say,
Well she’s in a fucking box so apparently it does
, but instead I just said, “I guess.”

“She passed away on Valentine’s?”

“Early the day after.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said. “After our...?”

“Yeah.”

“At least something good happened that day, though, right?” He nudged my arm. “Was that why you snuck off? I woke up hoping for another round but you were gone.”

“I guess. It was early. So.” I saw Mike come through the door, look around uncomfortably and slink into line. He was wearing a tie.

“That reminds me,” Jimmy said, “I think you have one of my socks.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

He went on, grinning, “I know this really isn’t the right place to say this—”

“Then don’t fucking say it. Excuse me.”

I pushed forward the chair in front of me and slipped out of my row. Walking down the aisle and against the flow of the receiving line, I squeezed Alex’s arm when I passed him on my way to the door. Mike had let some of Cara’s cousins cut in front of him and he was farther away from the casket now than when he’d started. His face was white and I walked into him and hugged him, bumping him backward into a piano.

“Fletcher,” he said, “I don’t know if I can look—”

“You don’t have to. Please, will you get me out of here?”

They counted fourteen helicopters

and then they went back to Tiago’s apartment. It had pale green walls, small windows, and a mattress on the floor. They did sleep together that night, Mateo and Tiago—and it wasn’t the fling I’d like to imagine it was. It was the sex of old boyfriends falling back into a comfortable habit made of all the best things. It was, I think, sex fueled by two of my favorite words:
razbliuto
, the sentimental feeling you have for someone you once loved but don’t anymore, and
saudade
, a deep longing for the return of something lost. One word for each boy.

As the sun came up Mateo idly traced with a painted finger the perimeter of the plug in Tiago’s left earlobe. He stared up at a twist of bare wires sticking out of the ceiling plaster, where a light fixture once existed. The previous tenant of Tiago’s little apartment must have taken it with him when he left.

«I have to go to work,» Tiago said finally, looking at his phone—it was one of the fancy ones—before dropping it into the folds of the sheet. «Your cousin’s waiting for me.»

«I know.»

Tiago got up and kicked his long caramel legs back into his underwear. He wore thin black leather bands on both wrists and one around one ankle—the missing one was the one that had long been on Mateo’s. He pulled on a t-shirt with a rip under one armpit.

After flinging a purple towel over his shoulder he left the apartment. The towel was wet when he came back a few minutes later. Mateo asked where he’d gone.

«My showerhead sparks like a motherfucker so this guy down the hall lets me use his.» He spread the towel over the back of a folding chair to dry, then took his yellow work t-shirt off the arm of the same chair, pulled it on. «You’ll have to get moving. Or I could just give you my key?»

«That’s OK.»

«We should do this again, though.»

«I’m not in SP for long,» Mateo said, sitting up.

Tiago handed Mateo his shorts and sat down on the mattress. His bare knees came up high in front of him. «But we’ll do this again.» He started to get up and then looked back at Mateo. «You know, we both know Vinicius. And we know how he is. I don’t know exactly what he’s told you, but I’m guessing he’s painted you a picture of me where I’ve just
spent my life
crying over Mateo Vinicius Armstrong Amaral. That I’d slash my wrists and bleed all over SP if that’s what it took to get you back in my life. We both know Vinicius. So I hope you know all that’s not true. But I never really stopped loving you. OK? I know you’re not home long enough for me to waste any time acting like I don’t. It’s exhausting being nasty and so much easier to admit to feeling sad. So I love you. And I think last night was pretty great, the two of us. I’ve hoped for it for a long time. Since the last time. You know who I am. I’m your Tiaginho. I’m not going to slit my wrists. I get by; it’s what I do. So listen: It’s not about me when I say I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing up there. Why you keep going back there. What you have there that’s so great. In my guts I know someday you’re going to be up there and suddenly realize that everything that makes you you is here in SP. It’d be a lot easier if you would just realize it now. If there’s any way I can get you to stay a little longer— If there’s anything I can give you that would make you want to stay here where you belong, I hope you’ll let me know.»

Mateo looked at Tiago’s crooked white teeth and the beads of water that dotted his throat. Then his green eyes met Tiago’s dark brown ones. He crawled across the mattress and sat on the edge. «You always did give a good speech,» he said.

«Is that all you have to say?»

He pressed his chin against Tiago’s shoulder. «Remember the night we painted at your heaven spot? All that rope and all that patience. Never saw anyone happier than you were when I pulled you back up with your empty can. What I want is a place that makes me that happy. The craziest, awesomest place to write, ever. I’m looking for my heaven spot. Know any?»

Tiago frowned and said, «I’ll see what I can do.» He didn’t say what he was really thinking: that the reason he’d been so happy that night wasn’t because he’d just sprayed paint on a building. It’d been because the person holding him up, holding his life in his hands, was Mateo. «Now I need to go,» Tiago said. «Vini’s waiting.»

Outside Tiago’s building Vinicius

was standing near the busy street watching a vendor selling kitchen knives from a push-cart. There were only two or three others observing the demonstration but the salesman was wearing a tiny microphone attached to a crackling speaker. First he cut paper into thin strips, and by the time he’d gone through various vegetables and graduated to slicing a pane of glass as though it were cheese, Vinicius was gawking at Mateo as he and Tiago emerged from the building.

“Oi, primo,” Mateo said.

«Didn’t expect to see you here together,» Vinicius said. «You guys look like you didn’t sleep much. Doing some smooching?»

«We were hanging out,» Mateo said. «You didn’t notice the bitch pad was empty last night?»

«I was at Aline’s.» He grinned.

Tiago said, «Dedinhos, don’t you recognize his famous shirt? Always good for a second day, he says. Let’s go, blondie, people need new phones.»

Tiago tossed his keys in the air and caught them before Vini could. He put his arm around Vini’s shoulders and shot a smile back at Mateo as they walked down the street toward Tiago’s armored car. Mateo made his way back to Rua Giacomo and crawled into the hammock on his back patio.

They slept together three times,

according to Tiago. The next night after this, and the night before Mateo left. And perhaps one other time that Tiago wanted to keep for himself.

Jamar called me the day

after Cara’s funeral and thanked me for going. He sounded stressed but told me he was doing OK. I wondered if he really was. I wondered how much time would have to pass before I could really be sure. When I could decide that he was not only getting through the day but getting through his life. Weeks? Months? Years?

“How’s the baby?” I said, gritting my teeth to say it. I wanted to be the first to mention him, though. I’d been working hard on thinking of him as a baby and not as the monster who killed Cara.

“Caleb’s OK,” Jamar said. “He sleeps a lot. I’ve been feeding him with the bottle. My mother taught me how to change his diapers. He doesn’t cry as much as I expected. I should’ve learned all this stuff earlier. I guess I figured Cara would just know, or something, and she’d teach me what to do.” He paused. “He misses his mom.”