The Starving Years (33 page)

Javier crossed his arms, looked at Marianne, and said, “Do you know how to cut hair?”

“You want to cut off his hair?”

“Appearance is everything on television news. He needs to look credible. He needs to look like a scientist.”

“Yeah? Well, he’ll look like a
joke
if he gets a haircut from me.”

“We’ll put it in a ponytail,” Nelson said, not because he gave a damn whether they hacked it off or not, but because he felt profoundly sick, not just in body, but in spirit. “It’ll be fine.”

Javier pulled a gray suit out of his closet, held it up in front of Nelson, and said, “It will do.” Marianne peered around Javier into the closet. “Do you have any sneakers or anything? The duct tape shoes aren’t exactly cutting it.”

“They’ll be too big, and that might rub and make things worse.” Javier turned to his dresser and pulled out a crumpled five-dollar bill. “Why don’t you see if the woman across the hall will sell you a pair of her slippers?”

“Okay. What’s her name?”

“I don’t know. I never introduced myself.”

Marianne shot Javier a hard look. “You’re not making this very easy, you know.” She took the money and stepped into the hall, and a moment later, Nelson heard knocking, and muffled voices.

Javier pointed at a narrow, chipped sink in the corner of the room with an unadorned mirror hanging over it, and said, “Shave.”

Nelson turned to the basin, ran the water, and lathered his face—but it wasn’t until he put the razor to his cheek that he realized how badly his hand was trembling. He tensed and relaxed the arm a few times to try to make it act normal, but it was no use. The razor shook as if he was attempting to shave on the J Train.

“Here.” Javier took Nelson by the wrist before he sliced off his own nose, pried the razor from his fingers, and turned him around. The patented Javier-scowl was firmly in place as he took Nelson by the chin and dragged the razor down his cheek. Nelson would have found the thought of Javier shaving him profoundly hot…in another life. But not now. From where Nelson stood, he’d be surprised if anything got a rise out of him ever again.

Javier didn’t linger or fuss. He shaved Nelson with long, sure strokes, only pausing at the lower lip to ensure he’d subdued every errant whisker. When he finished, he indicated the sink with a curt jerk of his head, and said, “Rinse.”

Once Nelson had rinsed and blotted, Javier shoved a white dress shirt on a hanger at him. Nelson handed it back so he could take off his own shirt. “I’m going as fast as I can,” he snapped.

Javier pressed his lips together and said nothing as Nelson slipped into the borrowed shirt. He glared as Nelson struggled with the buttons, then knocked Nelson’s hands away and began buttoning it himself. Nelson started to work on a different button, but his hands shook so badly they only got in the way. Javier buttoned all the buttons leading up to the one with the seemingly impossible hole, then brushed Nelson’s hands aside again and buttoned it.

“I get it,” Nelson said. “I’m slowing you down. But do you have to be such a prick about it?”
 

Javier paused, said nothing, then buttoned the final two buttons and turned to the closet again.

“Not that I want—or expect—you to hold my hand and feed me some bullshit about how everything’s gonna be hunkey-dorey, but come on, after all we’ve been through…why’re you being so attitudinal?”

Javier turned back with a tie in his hand, muted blues and greens, subtly patterned. A hell of a lot nicer than the one Nelson had traveled to the morgue to borrow from Kevin for his big job interview with Canaan. Javier stroked it absently, looked at Nelson hard with his uncovered eye, and said, “I know.”

Nelson waited for an explanation. Instead, Javier handed him the tie and turned away.

He knew…what? About that thing in the bathroom? If Javier thought Nelson was going to ask for permission first before he put the moves on Tim, he had another thing coming. “That’s what the whole ‘watch yourself’ thing was about, back in the truck, wasn’t it? You acted like you were worried I’d string Tim along and hurt his feelings, when what you really meant was that you wanted him all for yourself.”

“Not at all.” Javier reached toward Nelson, flicked up the collar of the pristine white shirt, and looped the tie around Nelson’s neck.

Nelson planted his hands on his hips and didn’t even attempt the half-windsor that Javier seemed perfectly capable of tying, even backwards. “That’s fine. Admit it. You’re jealous. ’Cos you thought you could serve it up to him and he’d be putty in your hands. But you know what? Just ’cos your kink and his kink happen to click doesn’t mean he should ride off into the sunset with you.”

“Drop it, already. I know.”

“You know what? Here’s what you should know: I would’ve been happy to see where the whole three-way was going to take us, but you’re the one who’s making him choose—and you know what else? He’ll probably pick me.”

Javier tightened the knot, then slid it up until his knuckles pressed into Nelson’s windpipe. Hard. “Do you think it even matters, who’s fucking whom? Here’s what I know: you’re the one who turned him in.”

In another absurdly appropriate kung fu move Nelson had only ever tried, laughing and not very forcefully, with Bao, he slipped a hand around Javier’s fist and knocked it away from his throat. If he weren’t trembling with serotonin, he might have even given Javier’s arm a twist for good measure. “I was beginning to wonder if you’re a head-case, but now I’m positive. What possible reason could I have to throw Tim under the bus?”

“Whatever they offered you. Opportunity. Prestige. Money.”

Nelson took Javier by the shoulders—mostly wanting to shake him. But instead he squeezed, digging his thumbs in hard, as if the pain might force his words through Javier’s thick skull. “I know you’re half-blind, but even so, do I seriously look like I give two shits about money?” He pushed his face in so close their noses brushed. “I fucking hate money. Get it?”

The tension between them dragged at Nelson, palpably, a gravitational pull that drew him toward Javier even as he wanted to wipe that fucking accusatory scowl off his face. And even though Tim was off somewhere trying to save Nelson’s kid, even still, Tim was there, in the joyless apartment, with them. It wasn’t just about Nelson and Javier. It was about Tim. Because as hard as Nelson tried, he couldn’t stay angry about Javier figuring him for a sell-out…not if Javier was only doing it to protect Tim.

“It wasn’t me.”

Javier shifted, and looked at Nelson harder.
 

“Come on,” Nelson said. “Think. You know me better than that. Why would I? Seriously. Why would I?”

Javier’s shoulders sagged as the anger drained out of him, the fronts of their thighs brushed together, and the heat of his body made the tiny hairs on Nelson’s forearms stand on end. They were so close they could have kissed, but somehow a kiss couldn’t begin to encompass the relief of their sudden synchronicity, the energy that flowed between them when each met the other partway, enough to allow them to mesh.

It was Javier who leaned in, closer still, dropped his gaze to Nelson’s mouth, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

The words rocked Nelson like a current. He was surprised Javier even knew them.

They did kiss, then. A mere brush of the lips, and still, the contact raged through Nelson, so intense that even his fingers and toes tingled. Javier drew back reluctantly, and said, “Someone turned him in. But you were the only one who knew about the site. Who else could it be? Randy?”

“He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy—”

“You give away your trust like it’s nothing.”

“Fine, whatever—even if I’m the world’s shittiest judge of character, I’m positive Randy had zero clue that Tim’s the Voice of Reason.”

A crash startled both of them. They jumped apart, and there, in the doorway, stood Marianne. She wore a tattered leopard print coat, a pair of red sequined house slippers, and a chartreuse knit hat with a white pom-pom on top. At her sparkly feet, a tray of manna and canned peaches lay splattered where, in her shock, she’d dropped it. The scent of syrup and faux coconut filled the small room. She gaped at both of them, eyes showing whites all around, and then repeated, “
Tim
is the Voice of Reason?”

***

It was hopeless. Tim would dredge up the memory of exactly what Bao looked like in his mind’s eye—he’d fix on some detail, the length of his hair, the way his T-shirt hung from bony shoulders, the panic on his face with Nelson called the morgue—but when Tim actually searched for him, the only thing he saw was a bunch of Asian kids.

But he wasn’t entirely Asian. He was half-Caucasian. And that would differentiate him. It had to. Because as much as Tim felt the contagion settling in his pores and entering his body through the moisture of his eyeballs and the very air he breathed, he couldn’t exactly grab a random kid and say, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Bao,” Randy bellowed, “where are you?” He crowded out the guard who’d been flinging manna like slops and strode up the center of the aisle where the grasping arms couldn’t touch him. “Bao, c’mon, stop fucking around.”

“You’ll scare him,” Tim said, but the wailing drowned him out.

“Come on, Bobby, we’re gonna get you out of here.”

For all Tim knew, Bao was jumping up and down and waving his hand. Between the bars and the shifting shadows and the teeming mass of kids, it was impossible to say.

“Pham Duc Bao,” Tim called—he’d never been clear on the Asian equivalent of first and last names either, he realized. His voice hardly carried.

“There’s not enough room for both of you in here,” the guard said. “If you don’t find the kid—”

“Bobby,” Tim called, panicked. If they didn’t find him, they’d get thrown out after spending all day in line, and they wouldn’t get a second chance. “Bobbyyyy!” The cries of the children drowned him out.

“Okay,” the guard said, “that’s it.” He grabbed Randy by the arm and hauled him toward the door. Randy struggled. They skidded on the manna-slicked floor. The guard reached for his gun.

“Come on, Bobby!” Tim’s voice broke. “We’re taking you back to Nelson.”

Among all the crying, grasping, desperate kids straining toward the bars in hopes of getting out, as Tim spoke Nelson’s name, one child met his gaze with a glimmer of understanding in his eyes. One terrified child, pressed against the cell wall, who didn’t say a word. One child who shifted anxiously from foot to foot.

Exactly like Nelson did when he was nervous.

“Out!” the guard yelled. “Now!”

Randy yelled right back. “What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?”

“Don’t make me pull my gun!”

“Wait,” Tim hollered at the top of his lungs, “there he is. Right there.” Randy and the guard both stopped struggling and looked at Tim, who’d never realized he was capable of such loudness. He pointed again, and bellowed, “Right there.”

The guard’s expression closed down as if he might throw both of them out anyway, but Randy shoved the paperwork at him and said, “The less kids you need to deal with, the better. Right?”
 

With a resigned shake of his head, the guard approached the cell, drew his gun, and pointed to Bobby. “You,” he barked, and the children’s wails ebbed. Many of them flinched into cowed silence. “Stand here.” Bobby froze. “The rest of you, get back. Against the wall.” The mass of children shifted. “Now,” the guard barked, and they clumsily sorted themselves out, mostly obeying, except for the girl on the floor in the throes of a temper tantrum to whom the other children were giving a wide berth, in case she drew more trouble to herself than she was in already, and they along with her. The guard indicated Bobby with his gun. “Now get over here.”

Bobby crept up like he couldn’t tell whether he’d be released, or shot. Once he was within range, the guard slid open the barred door only far enough to grab him by the arm and wrench him out of the cell. Now, with no bars between them, the reality that this was Nelson’s son hit home. His eyes latched on to Tim’s like he was tumbling off a cliff, and Tim was the one who’d reached out a hand and caught him by the wrist. Thoughts of bacteria and viruses and parasites fell away as Bobby flung himself at Tim and threw his arms around Tim’s waist—so incredibly fragile-feeling—and Tim wrapped his arms around Bobby’s thin shoulders, and held him—and suddenly it felt like the eye of calm in the center of a whirlpool, where some way, somehow, everything was going to turn out all right.

Until the tantrum-girl began convulsing like a goldfish that had just flipped itself out of the bowl, and an older boy used the distraction as an opportunity to make a break for it. Tim swung Bobby around, instinctively blocking danger with his own body, and the sharp shock of gunfire split the air.

Tim crushed Bobby against his chest and turned back to look, but before he could see what was happening, there were hands on him. Randy. Dragging him toward the exit—and Bao too, since Tim was holding him so tightly it hurt, and had no intention of letting him go.

“Who’d he shoot?” Tim yelled—which was useless, he realized, because how could Randy tell him? It wasn’t as if they knew anyone. Though did it matter? These were children.

But Randy was big and strong, and when he hauled on Tim’s arm, Tim had no choice but to be dragged along with him, through the gauntlet of wailing, grasping children, and out the door.

It seemed as if someone else would challenge them, but nobody did. Staff was stretched to capacity, and the ones who were there looked like they hadn’t slept in days. Once or twice a guard would do a double-take at Bobby—looking him in the forehead for signs of a black-marker cross, Tim thought, though he couldn’t say for sure—but Tim held his paperwork out in front of them like a shield, and once they’d climbed stairs, and stairs, and stairs, they found themselves, in a very sudden and surreal manner, outside on Centre Street.

Free.

They found the truck. The car in front of it had gotten its windshield smashed in while they were in The Tombs, but the truck was intact, too old and battered to be worth vandalizing. “Okay,” Tim told Bobby, who’d managed to stumble all the way there with his arms tight around Tim’s ribcage. “I’m taking you to Nelson.”