The Fire Hazards of Chasing Perfection - 2. 2. White Gold and 950 Silver

Pascual Di Falco’s father had been a mason. His mother, a housekeeper.

He grew up in Villa Luzuriaga, a working-class neighborhood in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. His family was neither known nor well-established; neither of his parents made it to high school, but they ran themselves into the ground to make sure their only son did.

And he made it much further than that.

As a student, Pascual excelled by virtue of his own merit. While many of his classmates landed snug positions at their fathers’ firms or pulled webs of connections into lawmakers’ bureaus, Pascual worked, worked, and worked.

Lucas saw much of himself in Pascual. Or, at the very least, he liked to think they had much in common. It made him hopeful.

Being like Pascual was all Lucas wanted.

Being like Pascual, and being with Pascual.

***

As Lucas’s private relationship with Pascual deepened, so did their professional relationship.

Swiftly—but not without caution—Lucas began to be trusted with more and more responsibilities, far exceeding his role as a mere TA. He would take Pascual’s calls, answer correspondence, schedule meetings and, if needed, after particularly difficult days, give Pascual head on the parqueted office floor.

The new position as Professor Di Falco’s personal secretary came with a stipend (Lucas had never been so glad to quit a job before) and the benefit of being able to spend as much time around Pascual as was possible barring both their ulterior obligations.

He would wake up thinking about Pascual, and Pascual would be the star of his last conscious thought before his head hit the pillow at night. Despite having more free time than ever before, his grades began to falter for the first time since enrolling in university, and he couldn’t find it in him to care.

His friends began to notice. They’d recriminate him for the ignored messages, the missed invitations to hang out on weekends or after school to revise. At some point, the messages stopped coming, the invitations ceased to be extended, and the friends started to be mere classmates again.

Jose was livid. For all he did, she would never cease to be his sister, and so she’d never stop calling him, reminding him just how odd he was acting, how out of place it all was.

“You can’t ditch everything in your life for this job,” she would say.

But he could, and he would, because it wasn’t just a job.

It was all Pascual.

***

Pascual Di Falco could count the people he loved in the fingers of a hand.

His wife and two kids were among them.

He met Beatriz—Betty, to those who knew her—at an art gallery exhibition shortly after his graduation, and they married not too long after. Six years into the marriage came firstborn Delfina, followed by handsome Rodrigo.

As Lucas became a more prominent fixture of Pascual’s life, he also got to know the people whom Pascual called family.

Beatriz was polite, well-spoken and, even in her late fifties, decidedly beautiful. Delfina was studying abroad (she’d inherited her father’s academic prowess and secured a full ride scholarship at Cornell), but she visited often, and had proven herself to be as charming as her mother. Rodrigo, for his part, reminded Lucas of the type of boys who’d made his life a living hell in high school—though to him he’d never been anything less than a sweetheart—.

Lucas could see how much Pascual loved his family, and how much they loved him.

Lucas hated that.

And that, in turn, made him hate himself.

***

“About time you picked up.”

It was night time, and Lucas had just come home from the office. He’d been ignoring Jose’s calls for a week now, and he knew he just couldn’t keep putting it off.

“Sorry, it’s just–”

“Don’t even say it. If you say it I’ll go down there and kill you with my own two hands.”

He laughed it off, but he knew his sister well enough to recognize the hyperbole as a sign of genuine bother. He’d heard it all before. Lucas knew how much Jose disliked Pascual as his employer.

But maybe, he thought, she would understand if she knew the whole truth. And if there was someone in this world Lucas could trust with the truth, it was her.

“I need to tell you something.”

“Famous last words.”

He swallowed hard. Confessing a crime would’ve been easier—though he rarely stopped to think about the legality of his relationship, much less the morality thereof—.

“I’m seeing someone, Jose,” he said. “Been for a while.”

He wondered if she already knew, if it was necessary to put it into words.

He did it anyway. And the pause that followed could have occupied a thousand words.

In Jose’s voice he found more sympathy than he’d expected, but it wasn’t sympathy he desired.

“He’s a married man, Luquitas.”

He released a shaky breath.

“I don’t expect you to understand…”

“There’s nothing to understand. You’re screwing your boss, who is a married man.”

His heart dropped. This wasn’t how she was supposed to react. She was supposed to support him. She was supposed to be his confidant, the only person with whom he could share his adoration.

She sighed across the line. “You should know better than this, Lucas. You, of all people–”

“I love him,” he said, his voice pathetic and weak. He knew it was no excuse, but it was all he had to say for himself.

“Do you know for sure?”

He knew.

“Of course.”

“And does he love you?”

***

On a laid futon in a quaint Retiro apartment lay an overachieving law student and one of the most prominent legal scholars of the nation, their bare bodies shielded from the cold by nothing but a squalid bedsheet and the heat emanating off each other’s proximity.

Lucas took the half-burnt cigarette from Pascual’s hand and placed it between his own lips. He left it there for a second, not inhaling, but simply enjoying the sensation of knowing it’d grazed Pascual’s lips just moments ago. The ashtray had strayed a little too close to the edge, but neither of them seemed to care.

Pascual’s voice was raspy and breathless as he said: “I could use a drink.”

As if on cue, Lucas stood up to pour his boss a glass of Jack, not minding the way the brumal air slipping through the window frame made goosebumps rise up on his skin.

He knew Pascual’s eyes were on him.

Handing him the glass, Lucas took his place back on the older man’s chest, treating the thicket of wiry hairs as his own personal pillow. He ran a hand through Pascual’s arm; thick, crass, prickly to the touch. He could’ve kissed every spot on his skin, every elevated vein. He had done it before.

“The semester’s starting next week,” he said, tentatively.

It’d almost been a year since Lucas took up Pascual’s offer to become a TA.

Pascual hummed in assent.

Lucas pressed: “It’s gonna be a year on the 10th…”

“Ah,” Pascual rose, leaving the comfort of the sheets and Lucas’s embrace behind. “That reminds me. Betty’s birthday is on the 19th. I need you to buy something for her, just take the card and get whatever you think she’ll find pretty.”

Lucas forced his throat to swallow down what was forming at the base of his stomach, dark and bitter.

“Sure.”

He stood up to pour another glass.

***

The burning taste of alcohol had always been too bitter and too familiar on Lucas Valverde’s throat.

He’d never drank much before meeting Pascual. And, for a time, he only drank with Pascual: whiskey, at the office. Red wine—only the finest—at dinner with the Di Falcos. Ritzy cocktails at conferences at fancy five star hotels.

These days, however, Lucas found a stray bottle or two never failed to make it into his pantry despite never being on the grocery list.

Just a couple of glasses over dinner after a long day wouldn’t hurt, he rationalized.

Long days were numbering plenty.

***

“Why me?” was the natural, almost instinctive response.

Although they’d been side by side in almost every class during the first two years of university, it’d been a while since the last time Lucas had spoken to Martu Wojaczek. Once a loyal and diligent study partner, her friendship had been one of the many casualties of Lucas’s all-encompassing relationship with Pascual.

“Lucas, you’re one of the smartest people I know. You work hard. Do you know how hard it is to find people like that in this place? You’re the kind of guy we want in our firm.”

It never ceased to be surreal, learning people he’d met in his first classes were now becoming established practitioners of their office. It was a natural thing, of course: that had once been Lucas’s goal, too; his north.

And now?

“I’m flattered, Martu, really. But… ”

Martu made an exasperated noise. “C’mon, you can’t be serious about this internship with Di Falco. Have you really spent the last three years of your life working your ass off to be an ad honorem at the faculty?”

He looked away, beyond the ample perron of the school building, to the row of bare jacarandá trees by the avenue, their branches devoid of color. He knew those words had not been meant to cut deeply, but paper cuts can go deep enough at the right angle.

“Maybe I have.”

She fixed her coat, impeccably new, as she readied to leave.

“You’ve got potential, Lucas, it’s time you started thinking of what to do with it. My offer stands, in case you change your mind.”

***

Chanel perfume, a designer bag, a dainty necklace of rose-tinted pearls, tickets to the opera at Teatro Colón.

What could even begin to suit Beatriz Di Falco’s refined tastes?

A one-way trip to New York and a signed set of divorce papers.

The glass of wine practically poured itself for him.

Lucas had been scrolling down the luxury section of the online store for an hour now, to no avail. And Pascual’s wife’s birthday was in two days.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a shiny something.

He heard himself chuckle at the sweet irony.

The watch on the screen was as delicate and beautiful as Beatriz herself, made of white gold and 950 silver. Understated, yet effortlessly tasteful. It was a little on the costly side, but he knew—and that knowledge was acrid on his mouth—that Pascual would spare no expense when it came to his wife.

Lucas raised his left arm to the screen, comparing the newly purchased watch to the worn vintage on his own wrist.

By the time he went to bed, the wine bottle was completely empty.

***

“Do I not pay you enough?”

Lucas was startled by the irritation with which the response came.

He hadn’t known what his intentions were when he told Pascual about Martu Wojaczek’s offer. He didn’t know how to feel about the offer himself in the first place. Perhaps, he thought, he would decide how to feel about it based on Pascual’s reaction.

But this was certainly not the reaction he was expecting.

“You pay me more than enough–”

“Then what is it?”

Pascual’s eyes were cold; colder than usual. An ice storm was brewing behind them, and Lucas was uncovered in its way.

“Well, I’m graduating next year, and I just thought…”

“I thought you wanted to take a teaching spot at the faculty,” he spat. The edge on his voice was sharper than a blade. Anger laced with mortal irony, Pascual’s weapon of choice.

Lucas gulped.

“I did.”

“Are you no longer pursuing an academic career? Otherwise I don’t see how this makes any sense for you.”

It took him a moment, but Lucas was finally able to recognize the sourness on Pascual’s face, the grit to his tone.

It was jealousy.

Pascual didn’t want him to leave.

Something warm lit up inside him. The triumphant beat of a much-awaited victory march. And something that felt dangerously close to hope.

“You’re right. Forget I said anything.”

***

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to stay here?”

Lucas had already asked the same thing twice, both times dreading a negative.

“This is my home,” insisted Pascual, somewhat annoyed at that point. “I want you here.”

His arms wrapped around Pascual’s neck in an upward arc, the older man taller than him by a few inches. Their kiss tasted of sulfur and cigarette smoke.

The news had come like milk and honey. For her birthday, Beatriz had received an invitation to stay with friends at a quinta just across the River Plate. The younger son, Rodrigo, was vacationing in Patagonia with his girlfriend, thus leaving the Di Falco house alone for a week.

A week. Seven whole days to themselves.

They didn’t bother with pleasantries; they knew each other far too well for that. The welcome reception was spent in hungry kisses from the entrance to the master bedroom, a Way of Saint James from Sodom to Gomorrah.

Lucas’s clothes were left somewhere near the door. The sound of Pascual’s belt unbuckling was music to Lucas’s ears.

He knew it was wrong. Namely, the sick, debauched pleasure of taking Pascual raw on the king size bed he shared with his wife of thirty years—they’d been married longer than Lucas had been alive—, all while the solemn faces of the family portrait looked on from the nightstand.

Pascual’s fingers wrapped tightly around his neck, pace and breath derailing into erratic frenzy. Their eyes locked, steely blue on oak brown. Even like this, the senior’s body easily overpowering him, Lucas knew this was Pascual at his most vulnerable—his weakest—.

Beatriz would never see him like this. No one else but Lucas would ever see him like this.

He was his.

Lucas spoke, but the words were drowned by the clamor of the shaking mattress and Pascual’s own bellowing growl as he came inside him.

I love you. I love you. I love you.