The Painting of Porcupine City (41 page)

When the couple in front of us cleared out and there was nothing between us and the clerk with the long, cherry-red nails, I slipped out of line and slunk over to a concrete bench near the bottom of the escalator. Jamar stared at the empty space between him and the window and then turned and followed me. He sat down hard on the bench and sighed.

“I just can’t do this, you know?” I told him, just as he was beginning to speak. “I’m sorry, Jamar, but I can’t do it. Too many gay people have worked too hard and wanted this too badly for too long for me to come along and marry my roommate for
insurance
benefits.”

But he seemed barely to hear me. He was looking at Caleb. “I can’t do this either, Bradford,” he said. “I thought I could but I can’t. I don’t ever want to be married again.”

“I miss her too.” I sat down.

“Damn it,” he said, squeezing his hands in his lap. Caleb was reaching up at his chin but he didn’t seem to notice. “I feel like I’ve already broken my promise to you.”

I looked around the big concrete space, trying to get my bearings or at least spot a sign, but this place was not only ugly but poorly labeled too.

“Look, Jamar, there’s something else we can do. Something that’s way more right for us.”

“What?”

“It’s called a domestic partnership. Have you heard of it? All it means is that we depend on each other. It’s exactly what we’re going to have.”

The little office was in a different part of the dank labyrinth that is City Hall, but we found it eventually and filled out some paperwork with ceremonious signatures, standing tall, because this had a weight for us both. When we left City Hall we left as a weird little family, with a certificate stamped with the Bostonia seal, as proof. We stood on the wide brick plaza looking at it, then Jamar slid it back into its envelope and tucked the envelope in the kid-pack, for Caleb to hold.

I pressed the ribbed switch

and the oil-smelling typewriter stopped humming. Cara had given me this typewriter some time after
Porcupine City
, when I was trying to start a second book but kept getting mired in false starts and derivatives of the first. She’d gotten it at a thrift store in Jamaica Plain for $8—it was worth at least twice that, haha. I’d cleaned it up, scraped gunk out of the letters with the end of a paperclip, and scoured the Internet for new ribbon. I hadn’t expected to actually use the thing, if only because it was so young-writer cliché, but the clacking sounded nice and the pace was closer to my thoughts, and I got a pretty decent short story out of it right away.

I cranked out tonight’s product and put it face-down on top of some other pages in the manuscript box.

I turned in my chair, leaned forward, rested elbows on knees, looked at my feet. Yawned. Got up.

Jamar’s door moved open when I knocked. He was lying on his bed with his legs hanging off.

“Whatcha doing?”

He put his hands against the foot of the bed and pulled himself up to a sitting position. His back was slouched. “Laying.”

“He sleeping?”

“Sounds like.”

“Wanna do something?”

“Eh. I’m feeling sort of tired.”

“Oh come on, big boy, you’re not going to leave me alone on our honeymoon night, are you?”

He smirked and perhaps blushed, it was hard to tell with Jamar.

“What do you say I break out the Scrabble?”

“Bradford, I’ve learned never to play a copyeditor in Scrabble.”

“Hmm. Good point. How about a video game? Can I interest you in a little Guitar Hero?”

He was going to say no but then he said, “Ha. Sure. Set it up.”

“Sweet.”

“You want some tea or something?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

“I think I’ll have some tea,” he said, and I stepped aside to let him out.

Giving my two-week notice

was difficult because I didn’t know exactly what to tell the people at Cook. Just what
was
I doing next? Even I wasn’t sure. I ended up telling them all different things, variations on possible futures. To my boss Janice I said there’d been renewed interest in my book and I was leaving to become a full-time writer. I told Porn Randy I had a new job selling bear-skin rugs (he obviously got the reference and quickly changed the subject). Only Babette was given most of the truth. It wasn’t a very talkative workplace and I had little fear these stories would ever interact. And if they did I’d be long gone by then, content to be thought of as nuts.

The end made me introspective,

though, as endings tend to do. My cubicle had always been pretty bare, and only now that it was time to clear it did that make me sad. I took down what little there was—a Christmas card from Babette from two years ago, a sympathy card from more recently, a couple of thank-you notes push-pinned to the wall—wishing there was more. Four years here and I suddenly wished there was more to show for it.

No sixteen-by-twenty boxes for me. Not even metaphorically. I’d invested very little in this job, had only ever seen it as a way to pay the bills, had only ever been waiting for 5:00. And that always seemed fine, as far as I’d considered it, which hadn’t ever been very far.

At least I wouldn’t have to deal with these mojo-killing fluorescent lights anymore.

I emailed myself some files I wanted to keep, mostly snippets of unfinished stories, and then began cleaning off my computer. Scanning through my archived emails, I came across the first one I’d gotten from Mateo, back when he was still New Guy, asking me to lunch. That was barely a year ago but seemed so much more distant, given all that’d happened. Mateo’s Cook email address didn’t even exist anymore.

At 4:00 I went to H.R. for my exit interview, where I handed over my office key, was given some COBRA literature on continuing my health insurance (weird to think I was covered through Jamar now), and was told I had about $3,000 in a Cook pension account or something that I’d receive with my final paycheck.

I shook H.R. Allison’s hand. “Take care,” she said, and she told me to let her know if there were any problems with my paycheck. I told her I definitely would—it would be my last one for the foreseeable future. Would I be getting an allowance now? How much had Jamar really meant by
et cetera?
Maybe I’d have to look for some freelancing.

When I got back to my desk I found my phone showing a missed call. I didn’t recognize the number. There was a voicemail to go with it.

“Fletcher, it’s your, um, old boyfriend,” the voice said. A touch of accent. My heart pounded. “Sorry to call while you’re at work, but yours is the only number I know by heart now that Marjorie is moved. And I’m only allowed one call. So you can probably guess where I am. And what happened. I’ll tell you where I am. I have it written down.” He shuffled something and told me he was at the Newton Police Department, and he gave me the street address. “They don’t know who I am. I mean I gave them my name, but they don’t know
who I am
. So it’s going to be minor. But I’m scared. And I’d like it if you’d come. Sorry I’ve been out of touch for so long. Will you come?” He told me the address again and then someone said something to him and he hung up.

And that is why I

rushed out forty-five minutes early on my last day at Cook. At least it spared me the handshakes and the nostalgic departure, which probably would’ve felt forced and false anyway. I was a little ahead of rush hour but I-95 was still a bitch, and in the slow-moving traffic I had time to pick out a total of four Facts just from the view from my car. He really had been everywhere; it was a wonder he hadn’t been caught sooner. It had only ever been a matter of time, I think even he knew that, so what worried me was not
how
or
why
but
why now
? I hadn’t seen him since he came to my house in that snowstorm, but then I’d been afraid. He’d seemed one step away from this ever since he got fired. Maybe even before that.

I was used to being surrounded by cruisers, but not the police car variety, haha. I laughed too loud at my own joke, realized I was trying to distract myself. What would he look like? What was going to happen? Would he have to go to jail?

If that girl Pell Mel got six months in prison for writing graffiti at Back Bay Station, what the hell would Mateo get? Mateo tagged Back Bay as a warm-up on his way to wherever he was actually headed. I knew he could be looking at serious time. It was scary, the idea of him in prison. But another part of me thought it might be good for him—an addict going to rehab.

I pulled into a space, walked slowly across the lot, held open the door for a woman and her kid, followed them inside.

I’d never been inside any kind of police building before and I was expecting the Big House. I was expecting a rat-infested dungeon, a Turkish prison like in
Midnight Express
. But in fact it looked a lot like the RMV and I tried to pretend I was just there to renew my license. Not that it put me at ease, but it could’ve been worse.

The woman in front of me with the kid walked up to a counter and gave a name. She seemed to know what she was doing—even the kid gave off the uninterested air of someone for whom this place was old news. I looked down at my shoes to avoid making eye contact with criminals and by the time it was my turn at the counter I was shivering.

I told the woman I was here to see Mateo Amaral, who’d been arrested. She was not unfriendly but had the air of a government employee with no need to satisfy me because I needed everything from her and she needed nothing, not even money, from me.

“Mateo Amaral,” I repeated, wanting to give her his full name just to prove that I knew it. Mateo Vinicius Armstrong Amaral. Then she asked my name and I gave her that too.

“Have a seat,” she told me. “We’ll call you. Could be a while.”

I settled onto a wooden bench. The woman with the kid was reading a magazine. Not flipping through a magazine like other people were doing, but actually reading it. She had the attention to spare. She’d definitely done this before.

Eventually they called my name.

Again I imagined a dungeon and again it was more like the RMV: fluorescent lighting, glossy gray tile floors, walls of that rough brick with shiny pale-blue paint like in elementary school cafeterias. We went up a rubber-treaded ramp and around a corner and another waiting area and here, like some kind of zoo, were the bars.

“Do not touch the bars, do not pass anything through the bars.”

“I won’t,” I said in case I was supposed to respond.

My god, he looked so small in there. Like a caged bunny among bigger beasts. One flinching glimpse of him was all it took to make me take back my earlier thought—no way could jail ever be good for him. I somehow knew without doubt it would kill him. He was sitting on a bench with his colored fingers clasped between his knees, the toe of one shoe crossed over the toe of the other. His head was hanging and his hair covered his face.

“Teo,” I said, and he looked up. The bright eyes popped against the darkness of his hair and his glossy, month-long beard.

He smiled. It broke my heart. It filled me with rage. I lifted my hands to touch the bars, to fucking rip them apart, to grab him and hold him and carry him away from here.

And on the heels of that fantasy came the realization, with surprise, with a gasp, with perfect clarity:
I love him.

He stood up. “There you are. You got my message.”

“Of course. I came right away.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“What happened, Mateo? When are you getting out of here? Do you have a lawyer? I can try to get you a lawyer. Jamar’s dad would know—”

“...One will be appointed to me,” he recited in monotone.

“A public defender? No. You want someone good, goddammit, Mateo.”

“He’s nice. Young. Cute. You’ll like him.”

“This is serious.”

“It’s going to be OK.”

“Mateo.” I didn’t know how much I could say here. Certainly I couldn’t risk revealing to anyone nearby that Mateo wrote the Facts. “When do you get out?”

“Oh, won’t be long.” He scratched his beard and pushed his hair up away from his face. “Before night, I think.”

“What do you want me to— Jesus, Mateo, you’ve got paint in your hair.” Running along his hairline was orange paint, dried and flaking like neon dandruff. I reached through the bars and touched his forehead with my thumb.

“Hands, please!” an officer shouted and I looked at her, confused, and withdrew my hand. What the hell did she think was going to happen?

I was ready to cry. I wanted to scream. “What do you want me to do, Mateo? You called me and I’m here and now I don’t know what to do.”

He seemed to be thinking about it. “There’s only one cure for me.” He raised his finger and pressed an invisible valve on an invisible can, and smiled.

“No no no. You need a break.”

“No breaks.”

I sighed. “Do you want me to wait for you?”

“You don’t have to wait. Thank you for coming. It was good just to see you. I’ll be OK. I’ll call you.”

I looked again at the paint on his forehead, wondering how you even
get
paint on your forehead. Had he been kissing a wall? Would I be surprised if he was?

I turned the ignition and

started to back out of the space. I stopped. Stared for a long time at the police station doors. Turned off the car. Pulled out my phone and called Jamar. And sat.

When a parking space opened near the main doors I moved so it would be harder to miss him when he came out. Twice I went back inside to the vending machines for soda and Snickers. I listened to the radio long enough to hear the popular songs three or four times. I would’ve thought that if I had to kill an indefinite amount of time in a parking lot, a police department lot would be a good one to do it in—the foot traffic would be entertaining, right? Cursing pimps in feathered hats. Stumbling drunks. Murderers bathed in their victims’ blood. Prostitutes calling officers
sugar
. But there was none of that. While I watched, two men and one woman were brought into the station, all three with that perturbed air of being under arrest, but one of the three wasn’t even handcuffed.