Chapter Five #3
pietà in Laurie’s memory, and even now, half in and half out of the
borrowed sweater, irresistible. “But that’s not gonna get you a
job, is it?”
“Depends what kind you… Wait, though,” Sasha said, smiling
broadly. “I have one. I meant to tell you. A real one, washing cars
at a while-you-wait. I had an address, because of you, so they
could hire me.”
“A…car wash?” Laurie stared at him. He knew the kind of places.
They mushroomed up overnight and disappeared just as fast, usually
when immigration shut them down. “Sasha, no. They’ll exploit you.
What are you doing—ten-hour shifts for fifteen pounds a
day?”
“Twenty, actually. It’s not so bad—I can pay some rent on a bed
in a van and spend the rest on food and coming here. What more do I
need?” He reached out to cup Laurie’s face in his hands and kissed
him fervently. “I’m doing fine. I’m doing better than you, my
beautiful captive prince.”
Closing
his eyes, Laurie submitted to the warm mouth exploring his
own—leaving it to brush over his eyelids, his brow, as if trying to
erase the marks of his imprisonment—until the touch became
unbearable, threatened to crack him to tears or roll them both down
onto the utility room floor and to hell with the consequences.
Laurie pushed him reluctantly back. “God, Sasha. Stop. I’m not
gonna risk you.”
“All right. But promise me, Laurie, you’ll think about getting
out of here somehow. Run away with the gypsies, if it comes to
that. Anything’s better than a cage.” He took Laurie’s hands. “I
saw how you looked when you thought it was your father coming down
those stairs.” Letting Laurie go, he turned away.
Laurie
watched him getting dressed, slipping out of the beautiful,
tailored things and into his street clothes. “Will you come again
tomorrow? For the class?”
Zipping
up the parka, Sasha nodded. “Yes. For the class. Thank you,
Laurie.”
“Thank you.
I’ve spent nearly five years failing trig. Be careful at your car
wash, will you? They raid those places. And…” He dug in his jeans
pocket, pulled out his wallet. Sasha’s face immediately shadowed,
but he forged on, “It must be costing you nearly twenty bloody quid
to get here and back. At least buy yourself a fare card for the
Tube.”
* *
*
The next
day Sasha was there, and the next, and so they began a strange kind
of routine. Sasha would make his dash across the city between his
split shifts at the car wash, leave his clothes—often damp and
soap-stained, but at least he had more than one set of them now—in
the utility room, and turn up on the top floor, insouciant and
smiling, every inch the foreign prince. Laurie varied the things he
left for him, and if Sanderson ever noticed they shared clothes, he
never saw fit to mention it. He seemed only too glad to have
someone in the class who kept his pupil happy and alert, especially
when Clara’s social engagements kept her away. Sanderson also
seemed genuinely intrigued by his new charge’s ability to transform
abstracts into concrete situations that Laurie, who had been
floundering, would then grasp easily. Within a week, they were
somewhere near the point in the syllabus they should have been two
weeks ago, and catching up rapidly. Laurie could read the relief in
Sanderson’s face and the set of his shoulders. If Sasha had gone
about his magic arrogantly, it would have humiliated Sandy, but the
boy had a gift of presenting his ideas so quietly and obliquely
that he often left Sanderson to think he’d come up with them
himself. Laurie concluded that diplomacy must run in the
blood.
For
Laurie, these days were sharp-edged joy. He opened his eyes each
morning knowing Sasha would come—the dangers of his world
permitting. That he would be able to sit with Sasha, elbow to
elbow, watching his face become intent and pleased as one after
another of Sanderson’s mysteries opened out before him—and that
this would be all the contact they would have. That he would walk
Sasha down the corridor after the class but leave him, with rigid
discipline, to run down the steps on his own. He could move like a
ghost, Laurie knew. For all his own grace, Laurie had never had to
learn the skills of prey. If he went with Sasha, he would at least
double their noise.
And make
their partings even harder.
Sometimes Sasha stole a kiss—or bestowed one—on the threshold
of their separate worlds and gave him a look that told Laurie
plainly that he would gladly trade their classroom afternoons for
one refugee night. Laurie would ease him back, eyes closing in
hunger and pain. Although he had no very clear idea of how this
tuition would help Sasha out of his car wash and into some better
life, he was grimly determined that Sasha should have the chance.
The tension rose between them. Laurie wondered sometimes that Sandy
did not feel it, the crackle in the air, although the two of them
sat like demure English gentlemen throughout, only the occasional
brush of hand to hand flashing off silent sparks.
The days
flowed on, one to the next, shortening as the year got old, until
one freezing, brilliant afternoon, Sanderson announced he had to
leave early and would be setting a batch of exercises to be
completed in his absence. Laurie glanced up, caught Sasha’s eye,
and quickly looked down at the page once more. Sasha was looking
well these days. He rippled with energy, and at times his gaze
would shine with a pure gypsy glimmer—mischief and promise, strange
dark fires. Laurie’s self-control was disintegrating. The obvious
outlet was no longer enough, and he seldom bothered touching
himself, alone in his room after those silent partings; he could
remember too clearly the real thing.
Nevertheless when Sanderson had gone, Laurie turned his
attention to the task. They both did—Sasha in companionable silence
at his side, occasionally stopping his own work to explain to
Laurie what x would do to y/z
if these various quantities were weights,
measures, cranes, cars, spaceships, instead of inscrutable little
glyphs on a textbook page. Once he was done, he slipped away from
Laurie as if aware of his power to distract him, and went to sit
quietly on the window ledge, looking out into the sun.
Laurie
slogged on for a while. Sasha made things easier, but Laurie’d had
a long morning before he arrived, and his head was pounding dully.
Eventually bogging down, he sighed and rubbed his hands across his
face. When he looked up, he saw Sasha had turned and was watching
him, poised catlike on the ledge, his arms wrapped around one knee.
Laurie pushed aside his book and faced him, smiling, waiting with
interest to hear his conclusions.
“Tired,” Sasha said. “Bored, frustrated. And pale, even for a
gajo. Would you be missed if you vanished for the
afternoon?”
Laurie gave it thought—or tried to. His heart had suddenly
bumped up into the base of his throat. He said carefully, after a
while, “By Clara, maybe. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be
missed as such if I
vanished into thin fucking air and never came back.”
Sasha
nodded, weighing this statement for all its bitter worth. “All
right,” he said. “Come with me.”