We Are the Ants(53)

“I could paint you sometime.”

“I’m afraid to ask what you see when you look at me.” I wondered if he saw Henry Denton or Space Boy, or if there was even a difference anymore.

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

I could have spent days examining Diego’s paintings, peeling back the layers for meaning, searching for insight into what drove him, but even though we were surrounded by bits and pieces of Diego’s naked soul, I was the one who felt exposed. “Is everything cool with your sister?”

Diego nodded. “Of course.”

“You didn’t tell her I was coming, did you?”

“I might have forgotten to mention it.”

If he was in trouble, he didn’t let on. “So . . . is that your room across the hall?”

Diego seemed as eager to leave the gallery as I was to stay, and he shut the door behind us. His bedroom was the only one in the house that didn’t look like it had been lifted out of a Tommy Bahama catalog. His twin bed sat unmade in the corner with the blankets and pillows piled in the center, clothes adorned every surface—pants on the floor, shirts hanging off the edge of his dresser, boxers swinging from the doorknob—and a distinctly musky smell lingered in the air, like sweat and sneakers and hair gel.

“It’s a little messy.”

It was so different from Marcus’s bedroom, which was enormous and always spotless, and from Jesse’s, which always looked on the verge of being condemned. Diego’s room felt lived in and real. I spied a stack of comic books on his desk, the topmost issue was a series called Patient F, and next to it was a cramped bookshelf. I crouched down to scan the titles. He must have owned everything Ernest Hemingway had ever written. “I take it you’re a fan?” I held up The Old Man and the Sea.

Diego flopped down on the bed, shoving the dirty clothes aside. “Kind of.”

“Mr. Kauffman forced us to read A Farewell to Arms last year. I hated it. Hemingway’s writing is so bland. He never says anything.” I leaned on the edge of his desk.

“It’s not about what he says but what he doesn’t say.”

I sniffed the air. “I smell bullshit. Do you smell bullshit?”

Diego snatched the book out of my hand. “It’s not bullshit.” He returned the book to the shelf, lining up the spines so that they were all even. “Hemingway wrote in the negative spaces. His stories were shaped by what he didn’t tell you.”

“It still sounds like bullshit,” I said with a smirk.

The doorbell rang before Diego could reply, and Viviana shouted at him to answer the door. He sighed. “Forget it. Let’s go have some fun.”

? ? ?

If the inside of Diego’s house was a bed-and-breakfast, the backyard was a tropical island. Viviana had built the deck herself, and erected a fully-stocked tiki bar, complete with carved masks, coconuts, and a thatched roof. The centerpiece of the yard was a stone fire pit surrounded by the comfiest chairs my ass had ever graced. By the back fence she’d strung a hammock between two palm trees that looked over a lazy canal. It was paradise.

Diego and I mingled, inserting ourselves into various conversations with Viviana’s friends. Their names slid in and right back out of my brain. The conversations were -painless—-mostly about how I liked school and what colleges I was applying to. Before Jesse, I assumed I’d wind up at whatever school he decided to attend. After, I stopped considering college at all. Rather than endure endless lectures about the necessity of being prepared for my future, I told anyone who asked that I wanted to go to Brown, but only because I’d heard Jesse mention it once.

When the food was ready, Diego and I loaded our plates. Viviana cooked burgers and hot dogs and steak and ribs. I grabbed a little of everything; Diego focused his attention on the meats. While his back was turned, Viviana nudged me and smiled. “I’m happy you came.” She was wearing one of those joke aprons that said I LIKE PIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE and had practically been chained to the grill all afternoon, but she still managed to carry on conversations with everyone within a five-foot radius and not burn the food.

“Really?”

She glanced at Diego as he served himself a preposterous helping of ribs. “Really.” The way she said it sounded like I was doing Diego a favor by coming when he was the one who’d saved me, but before I could question Viviana further, Diego finished filling his plate and waved for me to follow.

We found a quiet spot by the hammock, where the music was loud enough to hear but didn’t drown out our conversation—though we were both too focused on eating to talk much. Everything tasted amazing except for the potato salad, which had competing flavors of curry and celery. It was difficult to believe anything could taste so repulsive. Diego tore into the ribs with zeal, and his lips and chin were soon slathered with barbecue sauce. By the time he finished, which he announced with a belch loud enough to draw Viviana’s attention from the other side of the yard, he looked like he’d devoured them with his hands tied behind his back.

“Did you get enough to eat?” Diego asked, motioning at my empty plate.

“I’m stuffed.”

“If you say so.” Diego whipped a handful of napkins from his back pocket and set to cleaning his hands methodically, scraping the sauce from under his fingernails. When I laughed, he said, “If you’re not going make a mess when you eat ribs, you may as well not bother.”