Bouquet (4 page)

It seems as though there is something thick
on the air—tension, thick with meat and juicy beneath. He imagines
a knife slicing through the air and killing the millions of
particles he knows are there, then it slicing into his partner’s
chest and killing him on sight. Just the tone of the words makes
him feel as though something is wrong.

“
Michael,” he says,
frowning when his partner’s smile begins to widen across his face.
“What is it? Tell me.”

“
I got a job.”

A job?

Has he heard correctly?

“
A job?” he asks, laughing
as Michael’s smile continues to get wider and wider. “Doing
what?”

“
Working as a museum tour
guide.”

“
That’s great, baby,” he
laughs, once more taking Michael into his arms. “Where is
this?”

“
Just down the
street.”

“
So you’re the guy that
basically leads them through the museum, telling everyone what
everything’s about?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Oh God, Michael. This is
great.”

Beyond great, actually—in years past, he
thought Michael incapable of even thinking about work, much less
attempting to do it. However, despite that, something in his gut
tells him his partner is more than capable of doing this.

He’s good with
people,
he thinks,
and he knows how to talk about things.

How Michael could go on for hours and hours
about something he’d learn. Just the other day, he’d told him
almost the entire history of a pharaoh from Egypt and then some. If
that wasn’t a display of his ability, then he didn’t know what
was.

Unable to contain his happiness, he pulls
Michael into his embrace once more.

Things seem to be going just fine.

“
So,” Jim says, raising his
eyes as Michael steps through the door. “How was your
day?”

“
Long,” Michael replies,
“but great.”

His boyfriend is wearing a
long-sleeved, button-up shirt that bears the local museum’s logo on
its breast.
Burnet’s Bazaar
is home to many things—some mummies, medieval
weaponry, pottery, but it is most famously known for its
reconstruction of all things Arabian, particularly in regards to
their historical reconstruction of one such location it is named
for. The fact that Michael is learning to navigate such a place is
almost beyond him, but in that regard, Jim stands, smiles, and
takes his partner into his arms, only to have him fall to his side
and onto the couch a moment later.

“
Beat?” Jim
asks.

“
Beat,” Michael
replies.

“
I’ll make dinner
tonight.”

“
Thanks, Jim.”

“
No need to thank
me.”

His secret passion is cooking. While he loves
to get his hands dirty with machinery, he can’t help but feel a
certain thrill when he is poised above the stove with food
simmering in a pan. It’s like a drug—adrenaline, fueled by the very
need to make something delicious, the saucer his needle and the oil
his pain.

He did it,
he thinks.
He really did
it.

His boyfriend—his
Michael—
has finally done
what he thought was impossible.

Tonight should be a celebration.

He will make it as such.

He prepared a feast in all respects—chicken,
noodle, with a bit of vegetable on the side. When Michael rises
from his short catnap and comes into the kitchen, he merely stares
at the pile of food sitting on the counter and laughs when Jim
raises his head and waves his eyebrows. “Jim,” he says.

“
I don’t get to do this
enough,” he replies. “Especially not for you.”

“
But this… have you been in
the kitchen this whole time?”

“
Chicken Alfredo with
Velveeta and broccoli on the side.”

“
It smells delicious,”
Michael says, pacing around the counter to take a bit of the cheesy
broccoli on the tip of a spoon. “Tastes delicious too.”

“
I’m glad you like it,
babe.” Jim sets his hands on Michael’s shoulders and guides him
back around the counter. “Sit down. I’ll get it for
you.”

“
You don’t have to
do—“

“
You’ve been at work all
day.”

“
But you were
at—“

“
School. Yeah, I know, but
I haven’t been on my feet for the past eight hours.”

Frowning, Michael does as asked, reclining in
his seat as though it were more than just a simple plastic kitchen
chair and watching Jim as he makes his way back around the counter.
Once there, he begins to splay food out on two plates, humming a
tune under his breath as he does so.

The day seems to be going perfectly well.

He can’t ask for anything more.

“
You ok?” Jim
asks.

“
I’m fine,” Michael says.
“Why?”

“
You look sore.”

“
I’ll get used to it. Don’t
worry.”

Can’t expect me not
to,
he thinks, but only kisses Michael’s
brow in response.

Settling down into bed, Jim tries not to
think about Michael’s work or his schooling. It seems impossible,
given the lack of activity and the current circumstance, but he
eventually manages to settle into an even routine of breathing and
almost falls asleep until Michael rolls over and sets a hand on his
face.

He cracks one eye open.

Michael frowns in response.

“
You ok?” Jim decides to
ask.

“
Fine,” Michael replies.
“Just thinking.”

“
About what?”

“
Us.”

“
What about us?”

“
Our future… what’s going
to happen after you get out of school.”

“
You worried about
it?”

“
No. I…” Michael pauses.
“Can I say something, Jim?”

“
You know you
can.”

“
I don’t like living
here.”

“
I know.”

“
You know?”

“
I don’t
either.”

“
I mean… I know we’ll have
to wait until you get out of school, and I know that’s not going to
be for another two years, but I… I dunno. It’s just tough, that’s
all.”

“
You’ve got a job,” he
says, “and I’m in school, so at least we have a future for the two
of us.”

“
You really think so,
Jim?”

“
I think so. Don’t
you?”

“
I honestly don’t
know.”

“
Don’t worry about it,” he
says, pressing his lips to his boyfriend’s. “Nothing more we can do
about it now.”

At the crux of his schooling career, he finds
himself almost unable to believe that he has almost been attending
college for an entire year. In this town of screams and means, it
seems impossible to go about accomplishing anything, much less
doing it in such a simple matter. This place is filth, vile—it
breeds hate like rats and in turn leads to religious persecution.
How he’s managed to avoid it these years he doesn’t know, but he
doesn’t think it particularly matters.

As they stand at the end of the harbor,
looking out at the lake that lays complete with lilies and swans,
he reaches out to hold his partner’s hand, but stops when someone
passes by.

Not here,
he thinks.

How he would love to hold Michael’s hand, to
kiss his cheeks or lips in public. In California, maybe, they would
not be lynched, or in New York, New York, but not here. It’s an
undeniable fact that should they even begin to do something of the
sort, it will swallow not only him, but them whole.

This is what I’m doing this for. This is why
I’m back in school.

Someday—
someday—
maybe they could move to the
coast, to a place where the economy would thrive and the energy
clean and clear.

Someday.

Someday.

He thinks of someday two
years later, when he is standing at the podium in the
socially-oppressed town he has lived his entire life in. With his
diploma in hand, garbed in a robe and with a hat on his head, he
holds a plaque made of wood and embossed in gold. Upon it is the
name
Jim Gabriel Arnoldson
and the words
Bachelors
in Computer Sciences.
The sight of an
audience full of not only his fellow peers, but his one and only
family makes him feel as though he is the greatest man on
earth.

In the third seat in the seventh row, near
where the patrons with the last name of A sit, he finds his partner
looking upon him with eyes proud and smiling. In that moment, when
their eyes are captured within one another’s, he thinks of how much
hell he has gone through to get to this point—how, despite all his
fears, doubts and misconceptions, he was able to do the one thing
he has set out to do.

This is all because of
you,
he thinks, nodding as he begins to
make his way off the stage and toward the man he loves.
This is all because of you, babe. All because of
you.

When Michael steps forward and into his arms,
he can’t help but think he’s the happiest man on Earth.

Seven years later, he is standing at the
register buying flowers for his boyfriend.

“
They’re beautiful,” the
cashier says. “Who are they for?”

In this socially-oppressed neighborhood, you
can’t get away for being gay—you can be lynched, beaten, raped and
even murdered for such an open declaration, but in his mid-thirties
and with more money in his pocket than he could ever imagine, he
smiles, swipes his debit card through the machine, then looks the
clerk straight in the eyes.

“
My boyfriend,” he
says.

The woman does the one thing he doesn’t
expect she will do—smile.

“
They’re beautiful,” she
says once again, then smiles as she passes the flowers back with
the receipt. “Have a good day, sir.”

As he turns to leave the grocery store, he
can only think of the bouquet in his hand and the man back
home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kody Boye was born and
raised in Southeastern Idaho. Since his initial publication in the
Yellow Mama Webzine in 2007, he has gone on to sell nearly
three-dozen stories to various markets. He is the author of
Amorous Things,
as well
as the forthcoming novels S
unrise: The
Revised and Expanded Edition
and
Pretty Things.
His
fiction has been described as ‘Surreal, beautiful and harrowing’
(Fantastic Horror,) while he himself has been heralded as a writer
beyond his years(Bitten by Books.) He currently lives and writes in
the Austin, Texas area. You can visit him online at
KodyBoye.com.