Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 (40 page)

“The thing,” I said. “I don't have. The cable.”

He patted his pants pocket. “That's okay, I do.”

We sat on the bed, shoulders touching, backs against the wall, and played
Mega Man 2.
Evil robots came at us by the dozen to die.

I touched the cord with one finger. Such a primitive thing, to need a physical connection. Case smelled like soap, but not the Ivory they give you in the system. Like cream, I thought, but that wasn't right. To really describe it I'd need a whole new world of words no one ever taught me.

“That T-shirt looks good on you,” he said. “Makes you look like a gym boy.”

“I'm not. It's just . . . what there was. What was there. In the donation bin. Once Guerra picked out all the good stuff. Hard to find clothes that fit when you're six six.”

“It does fit, though.”

Midway through Skull Man's level, Case said: “You talk funny sometimes. What's up with that?” and I was shocked to see no anger surge through me.

“It's a thing. A speech thing. What you call it when people have trouble talking.”

“A speech impediment.”

I nodded. “But a weird one. Where the words don't come out right. Or don't come out at all. Or come out as the wrong word. Clouding makes it worse.”

“I like it,” he said, looking at me now instead of Mega Man. “It's part of what makes you unique.”

We played without talking, tinny music echoing in the little room.

“I don't want to go back to my room. I might get jacked in the hallway.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Can I stay here? I'll sleep on the floor.”

“Yeah.”

“You're the best, Sauro.” And there were his hands again, rubbing the top of my head. He took off his shirt and began to make a bed on my floor. Fine black hair covers almost all of me, but Case's body was mostly bare. My throat hurt with how bad I wanted to put my hands on him. I got into bed with my boxers on, embarrassed by what was happening down there.

“Sauro,” he whispered, suddenly beside me in the bed.

I grunted; stumbled coming from dreams to reality.

His body was spooned in front of mine. “Is this okay?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.” I tightened my arms around him. His warmth and smell stiffened me. And then his head had turned, his mouth was moving down my belly, his body pinning me to the bed, which was good, because God had turned off gravity and the slightest breeze would have had me floating right out the window and into space.

“You ever do this before? With a guy?”

“Not out loud—I mean, not in real life.”

“You've thought about it.”

“Yeah.”

“You've thought about it a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn't you ever do it?

“I don't know.”

“You were afraid of what people might think?”

“No.”

“Then what
were
you afraid of?”

Losing control
was what I wanted to say, or
giving someone power over me,
or
making a mess.

Or:
The boys that make me feel like you make me feel turn me into something stupid, brutish, clumsy, worthless.

Or:
I knew a gay kid, once, in a group home upstairs from a McDonald's, watched twelve guys hold him down in a locked room until the morning guy came at eight, saw him when they wheeled him towards the ambulance.

I shrugged. The motion of my shoulders shook his little body.

I fought sleep as hard and long as I could. I didn't want to not be there. And when I knew I couldn't fight it anymore I let myself sink into data—easy as blinking this time—felt myself ebb out of my cloud port, but instead of following the random data beamed into me by the nearest router, I
reached
—felt my way across the endless black gulf of six inches that separated his cloud port from mine, and found him there, a jagged wobbly galaxy of data, ugly and incongruous, but beautiful, because it was
him,
and because, even if it was only for a moment, he was mine.

Case,
I said.

He twitched in his sleep. Said his own name.

I love you,
I said.

Asleep, Case said it, too.

Kentucky Fried Chicken. Thursday morning. For the first time, I didn't feel like life was a fight about to break out, or like everyone wanted to mess with me. Everywhere I went, someone wanted to throw me out—but now the only person who even noticed me was a crazy lady rooting through a McDonald's soda cup of change.

Case asked, “Anyone ever tell you you're a sexy beast?” On my baldness his hands no longer seemed so tiny. My big thick skull was an eggshell.

“Also? Dude? You're
huge.
” He nudged my crotch with his knee. “You know that? Like
off the charts.
”

“Yeah?”

I laughed. His glee was contagious and his hands were moving down my arm and we were sitting in public talking about gay sex and he didn't care and neither did I.

“When I first came to the city, I did some porn,” Case said. “I got like five hundred dollars for it.”

I chewed slow. Stared at the bones and tendons of the drumstick in my hand. Didn't look up. I thought about what I had done, while clouddiving. How I said his name, and he echoed me. I dreamed of taking him up to the roof at night, snapping my fingers and making the whole Bronx go dark except for Case's name, spelled out in blazing tenement window lights. It would be easy. I could do anything. Because: Case.

“Would you be interested in doing something like that?”

“No.”

“Not even for like a million dollars?”

“Maybe a million. But probably not.”

“You're funny. You know that? How you follow the rules. All they ever do is get you hurt.”

“Getting in trouble means something different for you than it does for me.”

Here's what I realized: It wasn't hate that made it easy to talk to my mom. It was love. Love let the words out.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because. What you are.”

“Because I'm a sexy mother?”

I didn't grin back.

“Because I'm white.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he said. “Right. You see? The rules are not your friend. Racists made the rules. Racists enforce them.”

I put the picked-clean drumstick down.

Case said “Whatever” and the word was hot and long, a question, an accusation. “The world put you where you are, Sauro, but fear keeps you there. You want to never make any decisions. Drift along and hope everything turns out for the best. You know where that'll put you.”

The lady with the change cup walked by our table. Snatched a thigh off of Case's plate. “Put that down right this minute, asshole,” he said, loud as hell, standing up. For a second the country-bumpkin Case was gone, replaced by someone I'd never seen before. The lady scurried off. Case caught me staring and smiled,
aw-shucks
style.

“Stand up,” I said. “Go by the window.”

He went. Evening sun turned him into something golden.

Men used to paralyze me. My whole life I'd been seeing confident charismatic guys, and thought I could never get to that place. Never have what they had. Now I saw it wasn't what they
had
that I wanted, it was what they
were.
I felt lust, not inferiority, and the two are way too close. Like hate and love.

“You make me feel like food,” he said, and then lay himself face down on the floor. “Why don't you come over here?” Scissored his legs open. Turned his head and smiled like all the smiles I ever wanted but did not get.

Pushing in, I heard myself make a noise that can only be called a bellow.

“Shh,” he said, “everyone will hear us.”

My hips took on a life of their own. My hands pushed hard, all up and down his body. Case was tiny underneath me. A twig I could break.

Afterwards I heard snoring from down the hall. Someone sobbed. I'd spent so long focused on how full the world was of horrible things. I'd been so conditioned to think that its good things were reserved for someone else that I never saw how many were already within my grasp. In my head, for one thing, where my thoughts were my own and no one could punish me for them, and in the cloud, where I was coming to see that I could do astonishing things. And in bed. And wherever Case was. My eyes filled up and ran over and I pushed my face into the cool nape of his sleeping neck.