Blind hearts - 12. The end of a cold.

Upon the sight of the seashells of red hair, a delightful shock broke through Dimov, but the delight quickly faded—perhaps triggered by his fever headache—with a sickening afterglow of déjà vu. Even the room’s staid faux-paneling walls and its circumambient thrum of a sluggish design reiterated his cramped sense of the week. In the space of five days he had seen Alex three times. And abandoning himself to the window—a panoptic of sea and sky undulating in viridian hues—he was, not unlike a man awakened to metaphysical fervor, surrendering to Gilda’s eldritch musings about Universe and its plans for inconsequential him.

“I used to think it was great to work by the beach,” Dimov said, “Ocean waves are supposed to be calming. Being close to the sounds of toddlers, gay and giggling, over beach castles is nice right?”

Alex, dispassion stoning his face, repositioned himself in his chair, for a more—Dimov would guess—manful stance. Dimming himself to resignation, Dimov, flipped open his binder and glanced at the twelve-point Arial font name on the resume.

“So Frederick Stanton—”

“Let’s stick to Alex. Alexander is my middle name.”

“All right. If you’re cool with this, I’ll be cool about this.”

“I’m Okay. Just shoot.”

Alex did not smile Dimov noted with a quirk of a grimace. Nothing reminiscent of the ridiculous fellow who had boasted about flipping guys; if anything the charcoal grey suit and the salmon shirt clad the granite of a man nursing a lupine stare and a rictus of unconcern. And then a triple succession of sneezes stopped all thought.

“The summer internship at New York last year was good?” asked Dimov fumbling with a handkerchief.

“Yes, it was. I learned a lot.”

“Must have fucked a lot.”

“Goes without saying.”

Leaning against the windowsill, Dimov laughed dryly. “I bet you’re fielding offers from New York.”

“My focus has been on the SoCal area.”

“Los Angeles is not the starting point for a finance career. Makes me wonder about your goals and ambition.”

Dimov snapped the binder shut; unease flickered across Alex’s face.

Alex said carefully, “Personal reasons force me to stay in Socal.”

“What could be so personal to a twenty-three-year old boy slut?”

“That was inappropriate.”

The dry grit in his tone tickled Dimov with the hints of victory, even lightened his feverish pall as he chuckled his way to the desk and sat across from Alex. The desk was bare save for the pens resting atop a stack of blank sheets.

“For sure, Frank isn’t the personal reason. At least not after you ditched him the other day.” Dimov took a moment to savor the crimson shading Alex’s brow. “A sweet guy like him doesn’t deserve that.”

“He’ll get over it. He always does.”

Dimov allowed Alex to gloat for a valiant minute before opening his binder and glancing down the rows of A’s on his transcript.

“You took physics,” Dimov said too cheerfully, “You can tell me all about Hooke’s law.”

Alex took over a sheet of a paper and a pen and began drawing a graph of a sloping line. “The force exerted on a spring is proportional to its linear displacement. Sure, if you apply too much force on the spring, you will reach the elastic limit, and the spring becomes damaged and no longer obeys Hooke’s law.”

“And when do you suppose is Frank’s elastic limit?”

Alex’s lips hardened at the corners of his mouth. Dimov endeavored to remain cordial.

“If you intend to sabotage this interview, allow me the courtesy to leave. I don’t have time for weasely games,” Alex said.

“Alex, Alex, lighten up. Unlike you, I’m not a dick. The more fag associates in here, the better it is overall. Trust me on that.” Dimov guffawed, but quickly ended up sneezing, and sneezing morphed into an extended hacking cough. Flushed and winded, he dared Alex’s stolid gaze.

“You should have stayed home with your cold.”

Dimov shuddered at the sudden gentle tone, and seeking in the perfect riposte, looked up at the wall clock. “And my twenty minutes are up. The secretary will fill you in the itinerary for the rest of the day,” he said, closing the binder, and arising. “I‘d shake your hand, but my cold is bad… In any case, good luck.”

“Thank you for your time.”

And Dimov shuffled out the room and spent the rest of the afternoon with a considerable rise in his mercury.

By seven pm, Dimov had given up on the pickled eggplants and miso soup offering at the Izakaya bar and gave over to the dissilient discomfort seeping the hot mask of his face. He thrust himself outside into the mauve air crisp and sharp with the ocean’s foretaste. Home should have been his destination, but the streets were seamed tightly with the refractory glare of brake lights and the crepuscular impatience of all of Los Angeles honking and damning their way to family dinners. Dimov shivered, wrapped tightly his evening jacket and braved more shivers and more hatchet turns of his headache to the beachfront.

The sun was long overboard the northern outcrop of hills bordering the western ridge of the Pacific Coast Highway. He shuffled away from the cyclopean wheel of spinning light jutting out of a cramped hamlet of excitement and permissive optimism. And as he pushed southwards down the coastline, exhilaration burned around him: over the waters rolling edaciously towards him and bearing the shimmering lights of the red, white and blue, over the edge of the world where sea and sky clashed and sprayed bands of fiery oranges and florescent reds. The sea air wuthering through his woolen coat into his cackling bones brought to him an abrupt stop. He sneezed, and with the excitement and laughter convulsing around him, reconsidered his foolish venture.

And through the twilight haze, about a stone’s throw away from him, he noticed someone sitting before the waves, hugging knees to chest, shoes neat to his side. The water teased came to the feet, not quite reaching the toes, and in the wake of the retreating waves, the wet sand glittered in the stray light. The waters teased more than toes, rather rushed up the ankles and lapped at the folded trouser cuffs, and even higher still and rolling more strength, the sectile lace of spume scrabbled up the knees and thighs, and yet the figure remained rigid, defiant before the demiurges of the cosmos seething a watery rage—as if demanding the inevitable, Dimov surmised with sudden flare of his fever headache.

Leave them to dregs to the night, Dimov thought tiredly, and he must to a hot soup and a couple painkillers. But as Dimov made his about-turn for his car, the person arose—a man judging by his folded up shirt and trouser sleeves—hopped to his feet, picked up his shoes, and approached his direction.

“Wait up.”

Dimov shuddered as the dark blur closing in shaped up into a familiar cocky face.

“I felt it had to be you,” Alex said, winded, brushing off the sand stuck to his wet trousers.

“I was about to head home actually.”

“Let’s walk.” Alex hooked his arm around Dimov’s.

Dimov protested, “I don’t want to give you my cold.”

“I’ll take a cold in exchange for topping you.”

Dimov extracted himself from the hook and damned himself for preferring the hard ass of three hours ago to this Alex buffoonish and ridiculous.

“Just pretend to be the holiest pope for the next hour at least. Then I’ll give you anything you want. Not a job of course.”

“I don’t care about the job, I just decided.”

“You don’t?”

Avoiding Dimov’s focused stare, Alex hooked his arm again, and felt the too-hot hand. “You really should have stayed home and rested off the flu.”

“Look on the bright side. At least, now you get your greatest wish.”

“My greatest wish …”

The rush of cold air upon Dimov’s arm felt too cruel as Alex cast off his arm to rub his eyes and brow like he was fighting against a horrent hail of pernicious thoughts.

Alarmed, Dimov held up Alex’s face. “What is it? Is it the job? Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks, but seriously I don’t care about it—let’s just walk, shall we?”

Dimov palmed the face, felt the blood rising beneath the moist cheeks, felt the torrid breath streaming over the soft lips, and there in the warmth of skin and bone was his avatar of possibility. Alex pulled down his face and kissed him. Dimov, resigned to whimsy and exhilarating delirium, held him tightly, clasped his hand hard against the back of Alex’s head and kissed him deeply, fervently. Amid the salt and sweat, the stale notes of cologne, the distant taste of sugar and coffee, Alex was Charles. Round-faced cheeks rubbing against his rough cheek, soft narrow shoulders shivering against his, the high of his voice cleaving to the deep notes of his soul, and the ratiocinated matrix entrapping his impossibility of his heart. All life evaporated from Dimov. And before him Alex was smiling and pawing his cheeks.

“Yeah, sorry, I remember I was supposed to be the pope.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Dimov, dead, “Kiss me, blow me, fuck me, it doesn’t matter. I’m in love with someone else.”

“Join the effing club.” Alex crashed onto the sand, still splashing in laughter, which passed over Dimov like a dream, and then he was falling in beside the laughter and somehow welcoming Alex laying down on his lap and pointing up to the sylvan of stars.

“Charley huh?” Alex said. “Not exactly my definition of hot.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Come on, you think Frank’s kinda of hot.”

“In the obnoxious way perhaps.”

“I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t think he was hot.”

“I bet you didn’t think so when you’re five.”

“Don’t remember shit when I was five.” With that, there was in rush of seriousness as Alex pulled himself off Dimov’s lap and felt his forehead. “You should go home and have Charley pamper your flu away.”

He would like that, and Charles would relish every minute of playing nurse. Dimov groaned. “What are you going to do about Frank?”

“Thanks to you, I took care of it. I cut him off.”

“He just might like you too, you know.”

“I know Frank. He just goes out there and does shit. Hiding and weaseling just isn’t his style. Besides he isn’t blind. He likes me thinking about his dick.”

“Maybe. You still can’t just go breaking things because you can’t have your way.”

“At this point, my sanity is more important—come on, let me walk you to your car.”

Dimov had his arm into Alex’s, and peering down the eyes glistening in the dark, felt the refreshing aura of possibility, perhaps not of the directions he wanted, but those still freeing and warming all the same. And as they ambled away lockstep in smiles, he wished he could gamble as freely with his feelings, as he would in a poker game.

***

By week’s end, Dimov was offering shivers and sniffles to the raven-haired pharmacy tech, looking to score on the good cold medicines that get him through dinner with Charles and Gilda. Behind him a gynarchy of giggles was convening perhaps on his buttock bulging with his wallet, or the ziggurat of adult diapers on sale, or the damned cold when outside was a cauldron of sunshine, or something else uncanny and equally indivisible to his virus-hosed neurons. And neither could he absorb the affectionate totality of a teenage boy tying the laces of a toddler seated in the recess of a shopping cart. Dimov stared at the swinging little feet, the impatient big hands, and quite regretted growing up the only child. Then his phone rang; it was Pedro. He grimaced. He made a point to sniffle loudly at the receiver.

“Sorry, I have been battling a cold all week, still fighting one,” Dimov said not quite apologetically.

“Mi’jo, poor you. Charley better be taking good care of you.”

Dimov scowled at the pharmacy technician glaring for an unknown reason and then disdained the dreamy lull of Charles’ voice suffering him to soups and hot teas. He sniffled resolutely.

“The cold is our little secret, Mi’jo.”

Laughter rustled from the phone. “Be well in two weeks. We’re planning a party, a good bye party for Charley.”

“I’ll be there … You and I can have little time to ourselves?”

“After you’re completely better.”

Giggles geysered again the gaudy clamor for a good day, a hopeful evening, but added not one molecule of energy to his feeble self.

Then the day, with the bounce of pseudoephedrine and iburoprophen, gangled onto his preparations for the evening dinner. Shaved and clean-looking in baseball jacket and jeans, Dimov danced out of his bedroom to the living room, in groggy pride for having successfully evaded Charles’ nursing missiles all week. Gilda, seated at the dining table, with the grace of an old actress accenting the finishing touches to her couture, worked with French roll in her hair, the tennis bracelet on her wrist. Charles, in the kitchen, was mesmerized with the digital dial of the droning microwave. Dimov had a nasty premonition of Charles nursing him.

Gilda turned in giddy thought. “Wow twenty-five years of wedded bliss … Scary, but absolutely divine at the same time. One can only hope right?”

“You just buckle down and decide this is how you want to live: these are the vows you chose to keep.” Charles fished out a box of teas then stole a glance at the purple Dimov. “Think about it. We have so much choice and freedom, and we still end up lonely motherfuckers.”

“Now you like rules and boundaries? You’re the one who sprang on buckteeth park ranger.”

“What’s with you and buckteeth? Ok, dick is nice. Lots of dick is nice … But we aren’t going to get twenty-five year anniversaries like Jeremy Chester, I’m just saying.”

A vicious pain circled down the wells of Dimov’s head, and he hurried to settle himself on an armchair far away from Charles’ roaming gaze.

“Twenty-five years must be swell for him,” Dimov called out, “Maybe we should ask his wife, how being married twenty-five years to a closeted d-bag works.”

“You did not tell me that,” Gilda said tartly.

Charles shrugged. “Dimi, they’re still together, which means they’re happy enough. We overestimate how much we need to be happy anyway. Sometimes just accepting your shitty circumstances is the only way.”

“As long as someone else is doing the accepting, I too would be very happy.”

“When are we going to this dinner?” Gilda groaned.

“After my tea’s done,” Charles said.

Jeremy Chester, Dimov pondered the inutility symmetrical with that name. Momentarily, the Manhattan cold was pouring down his collar, and he was blinkering at Charles consoling a crying and bleeding and sozzled Jeremy hanging onto a parking meter for the remains of his pride. Dimov’s fingers were stiff and sore, and his spirits capsizing into rage. Charles had barked at him, “I don’t need you to play my guard.” Suddenly the Universe that had graciously granted Jeremy marital bliss and reprieve from the full force of his fists was not the munificent engine of order as Gilda would assert, but a putrid little whore.

He slipped back to blithesome moments at the kitchen counter of Charles being too happy for tea and happily shoveling five teaspoons of sugar into a teacup. The abrupt plinks of the teaspoon stirring brought to attention Gilda finally done with hair and bracelet and now plethoric with sorrow.

“We’re so going to miss you,” Gilda whimpered, rounding her ash-green-lined eyes over to Dimov

Dimov brushed off the needy glimmer in her mien to peruse the twice-read-through Wall Street Journal. But the arrays of stock prices self-arranged into a snapshot of Jeremy feeding his flaccid penis into Charles’ mouth.

“Good to know you won’t miss me, Dimi,” Charles said in mock hurt.

“The Universe has decided. And I have surrendered to its cosmic forces for the sake of happiness.” Dimov smiled bitterly. “On second thought, I still don’t see this darling benevolent Universe.”

“Aww, another week of despair and drudgery, Dimi,” Gilda said.

Dimov loathed her calling him Dimi. “Good health, a great job, a good house, good friends. No, I can’t say my week was terrible. Stupendous in fact.”

“Ah, I knew it, you and College Boy hooked up last weekend,” Charles said, his teacup splashing.

Dimov wished he had taken two more aspirin. “Yes, Charley, the great grand news of sex last weekend.”

Crimson lit up Gilda’s round cheeks, Charles arranged his lips in his best smile, Dimov remembered, suppressing a sniffle, the Wednesday goodnight kiss that transmuted into a sordid backseat fuck. But that was another tale to be recounted ten years in the future.

“But there is good news,” Dimov said with a start, “Your Latin trio are planning a goodbye party for you.”

The news seemed to have scant effect on Charles, who was contorting his lips in strange poses as if he was digesting an unsavory prospect. Dimov didn’t like the look.

“Well then,” Gilda said to Charles, “You’re going to have to apologize to Miguel after all.”

“Yeah …”

Dimov didn’t like Charles’ raspy groan either, but that did not color him enough to leave the relative darkness of the living room for the shine of the kitchen.

Charles said, “Here’s the thing, Miguel comes with Joachim and Pedro. There’s no one of them for me, it’s all three of them. But Miguel is bitching like a little general, mine, mine, mine. Fuck that.”

Dimov shivered, unable to penetrate Charley logic, which was still dank and murky after seven years, and those years warned of the heart-needling directions the conversation was veering to. And there was an eel of irritation itching deep in his nose, precipitating a treacherous sneeze. He broke out of his chair, flitting for the sanctuary of the balcony, and just as soon stubbed his toe against the coffee table, managed to recover himself from falling, but not before he trumpeted a hearty sneeze.

“Gesundheit,” came Gilda’s brittle affirmation.

“Dimi?” Charles’ voice hovered over the back of Dimov’s head.

“I’m all right. Completely fine.”

Happily, the lovelier, more angelic yellows of the sky bore him gently away to the balcony. But sounds of Gilda and Charles deliberating the dimensions of jealousy, the flashes of Jeremy flipping Charles over for better entry position, dimmed the beauty around, and he ebbed away under the tepid rays of the dying sun.

There came the restive concern in Gilda’s exhortation, “Jesus Charley, Miguel is the one guy who’s taking you seriously. In my book, that’s normal and GOOD. He likes you and wants you. You’re the one who’s too fucked in the head to let it happen.”

“Am I complaining? I’m happy being a fucked up little machine.”

“Sure you are. You’re the one admiring long marriages.”

“There’s a difference between admiring and wishing to have one,” Charles voice crooned in longsuffering pitch.

Dimov’s senses flurried the long depths onto the street; the shadows etched tar and ate up long ponds of light and quivered under the refractive mass of exhaust. Blearily, he resigned himself to Charles being happy. Despite his penchant for torrential tears in the province of another’s distress, Charles was ever secure, ever unfazed. Even Jeremy, with all his net worth bursting with zeros, sobbingly begged him in middle of that Manhattan Street, so as not to end their affair.

Dimov’s eyes felt hot and watery again, and he moped for more painkillers, for a revelation in the celestial yellows of his worth.

“Ok, guys, let’s bounce,” Charles called out.

“Finally,” Gilda grunted.

Dimov was holding open the door while the others ushered out, but Charles stopped to stare at him. Another itch slithering in his nose, Dimov avoided the steel irises for the bulbous quadrants of the baldhead. Charles remained on him like an auditor recounting merchandise, making certain of two eyes, one nose, ten fingers, and yet still simmering a mountainous aura with the requisite glimmer of need and helplessness.

“Your face is rather red,” Charles said finally.

“I’m good.”

“Yeah, he’s good, let’s go,” demanded Gilda, like a woman wanting on ten pounds of garlic ribs.

In a hurry to sneeze in private, Dimov moved to close the door, but alas with the door bag rumbled another cosmic sneeze complete with gobbets of mucus streaming down his nose.

Dimov flurried a hand to cover his mouth; his idiot senses inflated with every second of Charles’ maternal what-shall-we-do-with-you look.

“You’re sick,” Gilda cried, warded him off with her fingers shaped like a cross “Stay far away from me, I have practice on Monday.”

And that was that. Gilda wailed the loss of bloody steaks, while Charles was stirring up his chicken soup extravaganza. Dimov was remaindered to bed, and there he lay, woozy and heavy with the thought of Jeremy’s cock pulsating inside Charles. Or maybe it was the other way around, Dimov wondered irately, but that quickly sketched a risible idea. Just how did Charles get news of a wedding anniversary anyway? Were they still seeing each other??? Tossing in the bed, Dimov clawed himself away from the questions that would drive him down a wrathful abyss.

It was all so long ago, he ruminated, a naïve time then when you thought being good was all you needed. Being the man upright and unyielding, the man apart, had been so easy considering Charles’ retinue of flakes. But that was not enough.

Dimov splayed himself over the bed and forced his mind to walk with the shadows running bars over the walls. He could hear the ghostly whine of the television, and jabbing the near-inaudible frequencies, was Gilda’s rabid octaves grumbling about terrorism by icky viruses. Shelves opened and closed, and footsteps were skittering all over, slapping haste, pounding up closer and louder, and then his door opened, and soon his bed was giving way to under the weight of a foreign object.

Dimov leveled upright in bed and glowered at Charles looking rather disconsolately at the beveled edge of the bedside table.

“It’s just the flu, not cancer,” Dimov muttered.

“Yeah whatever.”

A great start, thought Dimov sniffing a savory mélange in the air.

“I was thinking …”

Dimov collected himself for the bit of falderal that was sure to follow.

“Seven years now. And there’ll be another seven, and another seven, before you know, another fifty years. Then we die.”

Dimov blinked. “Sure, we’ll be the death of each other.”

“You really think so?”

“No! What the hell are you talking about anyway?”

“Nothing. Just thinking.”

“Thinking isn’t something you do. You just do.”

Charles drew from the bed and lowered him a tiring gaze. “Soup’s going take a while. I hope you aren’t too hungry.”

“Thanks—don’t sweat dinner. You two should go out.”

Charles nodded, picked his way to the door, but stopped short of opening it. Out there in the nexus of dark and light, Dimov could see Charles turning his head, trying to compute words and coming up short. Dimov prepared himself.

“My door has always been open, but you give me this fucking ruse of being a hard ass,” Charles said.

Sighing, Dimov wondered how many doors Jeremy had to knock before he stumbled onto Charles’. Or was it the other way round?

“I could ask you the same thing,” Dimov muttered.

“I’m not the one who’s dying for a fuck.”

“Can’t exactly be dying for it, if I haven’t asked for it ...”

“True ...” Charles looked up to him with a big smiled carved on the sun of his face, which made Dimov’s heart swell a majestic bloom, the last bloom before self-death.

“You’re a good man, Charley.” Dimov was certain of the strength in his tone. “I’ll miss your soups. But your mom needs you in Philly even though she doesn’t deserve you, not after she threw you out in the first place, but family is family—” Dimov sneezed. “Would you just get me my soup?”

“Yes sir!”

With that pure smile of his, Charles jostled away, leaving Dimov to diagnose his pustular bits. No doubt, common words, terrible words, vulgar words would suffice, but he preferred to leave that to his future self. Alex would relish telling him off, maybe not if their sexual ease would be threatened. Charley wouldn’t hesitate—well damn him. Damn him.

But his curses failed to bleed blood, and they were still peering at him, the many failed truths of himself, flaunting their indubitable corporeality, and he was trembling and helpless. His face drowned in mucus and in pain. The dark walls seemed to be falling down away from him as a sickening weightless feeling accreted in his stomach. Furiously, he thrust the comforter over his head and abandoned himself to the deep darkness of his blind heart.