but I won’t hold it against you. Vodka cranberry, by the way.” He extends a hand. “I’m Alex.”
“What a coincidence,” you say. “Me, too.”
You shake hands, noting the wide, sinewy finger pads like a frog’s toes. A callus catches you below the thumb. Tonight he’s safe, but maybe some other night he’ll be appropriate. You disappear and a moment later fit his hand with a plastic cup from the bar.
“Drink,” you say, and he does, thanking you. You grin, satisfied with yourself. You spit in that drink.
“Wanna go home?” he asks.
“Things at home aren’t so good right now.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Not tonight.”
Making your vague excuses—the bathroom, a friend waiting—you walk away. You’ve already wasted too much time with him.
The night progresses swiftly once you’ve refocused, and before long you spot your perfect boy dancing alone. He is translucence incarnate.
The rest comes simply. Your left hand meets his right shoulder. Your lips mesh. Can he taste you? No. You lack a distinct flavor; you are a perfect reflection of him even in this way.
“Matthew,” he says.
“No shit. Me, too,” you say. Your place, a string of things you say.
He agrees.
And then you’re both gone, slipped into the night like a knife into its chock.
FEW KNOW BETTER THAN LAILA MORALES THAT SLEEP, AS A luxury, is best enjoyed by the overworked. But all luxuries expire.
In the darkened room she stirs. Wispy tendrils of an amorphous dream—something on a ship, maybe? Or in a car? Or was it an airboat? And wasn’t that an old colleague, a lab partner?—dissolve into her subconscious like a slick of blood diluted in water.
Blackout curtains keep the sun out, air-conditioning maintains a constant temperature, but nothing counteracts a full bladder. Biology wins every time.
The stir deepens, lengthening until wakefulness breaks over her all at once with a race of the heart and a sharp intake of breath.
Squinting, she automatically seeks out the phone on her nightstand, dismissing, unread, the notifications cluttering the display. It’s ten A.M.
Her first conscious thought is Alex.
Her second: Bathroom. Now.
The second, more insistent, compels her to move.
She shuffles across the worn Berber, flicks the switch in the en suite, and yawns her way onto the toilet. She scrolls through her calendar. No work today at least, and for a moment she luxuriates in the blissful relief of a free Wednesday. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t tasks to accomplish. After weeks of tracking, projected forecasts, and escalating warnings, Hurricane Natalie is nearly upon them. They’ll need water, at least a few gallons each. She keeps empty jugs in the truck for just such an eventuality. Gas, too, for the truck, while she’s at it.
She flushes and moves to the sink, brushes her teeth, gargles, spits. Dries her hands. She’ll need Alex’s help with the shutters. That’s the sticking point. Downstairs she can handle, but she doesn’t like climbing ladders so her bedroom window presents a challenge.
Alex.
Hers is not a large place. It’s small, actually: a one-bedroom town house with a whisper of a screened-in patio. But it’s hers and it’s enough for one person. That’s the problem, she thinks. It’s not one person anymore. Not with Alex crashing on her couch. Indefinitely, Laila reminds herself. Two months in and the arrangement still irks her. “Please, mi’ja, it’ll be just for a while,” Alex’s mother, Esther, had insisted over the phone while Alex pressed in beside Laila, shouting obscenities at the phone. A hastily packed duffel bag slumped at his feet. Things at the ancestral home have degraded. That’s how Alex put it when she persuaded him to calm down and present his side. “He doesn’t listen!” Esther interrupted, prompting Laila to take the call off speakerphone. “I don’t know what to do. If your father were here—” Tears prevented her from continuing. Laila didn’t so much relent as embrace the inevitability—Alex was standing in her living room, after all. She weakly mustered the strength to ask: “How long is a while?” She’d wanted to add that she had her own life and that she liked it just the way that it was, but between her brother and her stepmother, the family hardly needed another diva. For the sake of harmony she held her tongue. “I don’t know,” Esther said. “Just until he settles down.”
She’d been through this before and the parallel is not lost on her: a decade as an only child, the doted upon pride of a small, well-to-do family. The role suited her. It was enough. It was quiet. She had her routines, a life with room enough for a mother, a father, and her. Then her parents divorced. Her father married Esther soon after. Then Alex came and crowded things. Seventeen years later he’s doing it again.
She sighs, steeling herself against the chaos reigning beyond her bedroom door, her inviolable sanctuary. (Meaning off-limits to you.) Downstairs she expects to find a trail of discarded fast-food containers, their contents half consumed, littered across every surface from the kitchen counter to the couch, where her brother’s thin, naked body will be sprawled, long limbs reaching like a spider’s across the balled-up sheets of his ruined web while a snore bubbles his parted lips. (“Coño, Alex! I don’t wanna see your dick, man.” Was it too much to ask that he put on a pair of underwear at least? “Yo, why not? It’s a nice dick.” She finds herself smiling at the memory. How is it that Alex always manages to make her smile, even when he’s being a little shit?)
But instead of that, when Laila descends the stairs she’s greeted by silence.
Silence and a long shaft of sunlight scorching through the half-moon window above the sliding glass door leading out to the patio. The light traverses an impeccable interior before resting on a tidy couch where Alex should be. In his place, she finds folded sheets and neatly stacked pillows. How is it possible? She remembers seeing her brother when she got home last night after inventory. Somewhere around two A.M. she navigated the collateral damage of his late adolescence, guided only by the amber glow of streetlight filtering in through the blinds. Alex had been asleep, and not wanting to disturb him—and, let’s be honest, she was exhausted, little more than a withered twig in a lab coat after twelve hours on her feet—she silently grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and an oatmeal cookie sandwich from the pantry, before retiring to her room, pausing to kiss her brother on the forehead. “Good night, papo,” she whispered. He had been home. She saw him. Didn’t she?
“Alex?” She sniffs the top pillow and lurches. It’s damp and redolent with a tangy mix of sweat, grease, and musk—the sharp scent of teenage boys. He definitely spent the night. “You home?”
No answer.
Though there are few places to hide, she checks them all. The half bath in the foyer is vacant. The kitchen empty. The patio undisturbed.
He must’ve gone out. But this early? And where? And why? Alex is not one to rise before noon for any reason. She can recall only one instance in which he got up in the A.M. without a lot of hassle: the morning of their father’s funeral. But that was an exception, one she prefers to not dwell on.
She checks her phone to see if there’s something in the long list of notifications she ignored. Sure enough, a text: going out. No further details. She counts herself lucky that he bothered sending that much. Esther never got even that small courtesy when he ran out on her, and now she’s persona non grata after sending him to live with his sister—like that’s some great punishment. If anybody should be pissed at Esther it’s not Alex.
The time stamp on the message reads 8:30. Something is definitely up. What does he have to do at 8:30 in the morning? It’s not like he has a job. She opts for the light touch when texting him back.