The Immortalists(22)

‘When I was a kid,’ he says, ‘you people arrived by the truckload every goddamned day. I thought you’d’ve learned we didn’t want you, but you’re still here, clogging up the system like fat. You don’t do anything useful with your lives, just live off the city like parasites. I was born in the Sunset, and so were my parents, and so were their parents, all the way back to our relatives who came here from Ireland, and that’s excluding the ones who died ’cause they couldn’t get fed. In my mind?’ He leans in close; his mouth is a pink knot. ‘You deserve whatever you get.’

Simon yanks out of his grip, coughing. In his peripheral vision, he sees a flash of bright red, a flash that becomes his sister. Klara stands at the foot of the stairs in a puff-shouldered black minidress and maroon Doc Martens, her hair blowing behind her like a cape. She looks like a superhero, radiant and vengeful. She looks like their mother.

‘What are you doing here?’ asks Simon, panting.

‘Benny told me he saw cop cars. This was the nearest station.’ Klara runs up the granite steps and stops in front of the cop. ‘What the fuck are you doing with my brother?’

The cop blinks, stopped short. Something flies between him and Klara that Simon can’t quite see, something he can only feel: sparks, heat, a sour fury like metal. When Klara puts an arm around Simon’s shoulders, the young cop shrinks. He looks so straight, so out of place in this new city, that Simon almost feels sorry for him.

‘What’s your name?’ Klara asks, squinting at the little pin on the cop’s blue shirt.

‘Eddie,’ says the man, lifting his chin. ‘Eddie O’Donoghue.’

Klara’s arm around Simon is firm, their recent wounds forgiven. The comfort of her protection makes Simon think of Gertie, and his throat swells. But Eddie is still looking at Klara, his cheeks pink and slightly slack, as if Simon’s sister is a mirage.

‘I’ll remember that,’ she says. Then she walks Simon down the steps of the station and into the heart of the Mission. It’s eighty-five degrees, the sidewalk fruit stands full as Eden, and no one tries to stop them.





6.


‘What’ll it be?’ asks Simon.

He rummages around in the tiny pantry, which is really a closet on whose jutting beams they keep an assortment of nonperishables: boxed cereal, cans of soup, alcohol. ‘I can do a vodka tonic, Jack and Coke . . .’

October: brisk silver-gray days, pumpkins on Academy’s front steps. Someone put a men’s dance belt on a fake skeleton and propped it up in the reception area. Simon and Robert have hooked up at Academy – kissing in the men’s bathroom or the empty dressing room before class – but this is the first time Robert has come to Simon’s apartment.

Robert leans back in the turquoise armchair. ‘I don’t drink.’

‘No?’ Simon pokes his head out of the closet and grins, one hand on the door. ‘I know I’ve got some dope around here, if that’s your trip.’

‘Don’t smoke, either. Not that stuff.’

‘No vices?’

‘No vices.’

‘Except men,’ Simon says.

A tree branch waves in front of the living room window, blocking the sun, and Robert’s face goes out like a lamp. ‘That’s not a vice.’

He gets up and brushes past Simon to the sink, where he pours himself a glass of water from the tap.

‘Hey, man,’ says Simon. ‘You’re the one who likes to keep this shit quiet.’

In class, Robert still warms up alone. Once, Beau saw Robert and Simon leaving the bathroom and whistled with both pinkies in his mouth, but when he asked Simon about it, Simon feigned innocence. He senses that Robert would disapprove of any disclosure, and his moments with Robert – Robert’s low, murmured laughter, his palms on Simon’s face – are too good to give up.

Now Robert leans against the sink. ‘Just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean I keep it quiet.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Simon puts his index fingers through Robert’s belt loops. He never dreamed he’d have the confidence to do such a thing, but San Francisco is a drug. Though he’s only been here five months, it feels like he’s aged by a decade.

‘When I’m at the studio,’ says Robert, ‘I’m at work. I stay quiet out of respect – for the workplace, and for you.’

Simon pulls him close, until their hips are pressed together. He puts his mouth to Robert’s ear. ‘Disrespect me.’

Robert laughs. ‘You don’t want that.’

‘I do.’ Simon unfastens Robert’s jeans and shoves his hand inside. He grabs Robert’s cock and pumps. They still haven’t had sex.

Robert steps back. ‘Come on, man. Don’t be like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Cheap.’

‘Fun,’ Simon says, correcting him. ‘You’re hard.’

‘So?’

‘So?’ repeats Simon. So everything, he wants to say. So please. But what comes out is different. ‘So fuck me like an animal.’

It’s something the Chronicle reporter once said to Simon. Robert looks as though he might laugh again, but then his mouth twists.

‘What we’re doing here, you and me?’ he says. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with it. Nothing.’