Chapter Twenty One
Mateo's
shoulders were wide, shapely and strong from outdoor work. It had
taken Sasha a long time to persuade him inside the house, let alone
upstairs into the bedroom. Gently Sasha ran his fingertips from one
smooth-skinned collarbone to the other, making the boy catch his
breath and laugh. “I'm sorry. Did that tickle?”
“I'm sorry?”
“Te hizo eso cosquillas?”
“Oh. Ah, sì, a little.”
“Well, it's no good. You're forty two inches across there at
least. We'll never find a shirt to fit you out of Laurie's clothes
and mine.”
“It doesn't matter. My uncle will lend me something—not as nice
as yours would be, of course. But you've already done so
much.”
“You did most of it yourself. Come down and have a coffee, and
tell me all about it.”
They
padded down the broad staircase, bare feet silent on the polished
wood. It was the small hours of the morning, Mateo’s first
opportunity to escape his various dogsbody jobs and graveyard
shifts and bring Sasha his news. Sasha indicated the chair at the
kitchen table where he’d been working. The laptop sat open on the
table, idling through a screensaver mode of holiday snaps from
their last visit to the Languedoc. The photos were innocent—just
Cezanne pines and golden sands—but Sasha had such hot memories and
associations with that faraway shore that he was smiling as he
switched on the Gaggia. He'd tamed it to make plain black coffee
now, and it could rattle away to its heart's content in this empty
house. “All right,” he said, returning to the table with two
steaming mugs. “I'm sorry about the shirt, but let's make sure
you're ready apart from that. What time’s your
interview?”
“Ten o’clock, with one of the advisors in the Ventura Boulevard
branch of the IGC. He says he thinks I’d be a good test case for
DACA, just like you said. And... there’ll be an immigration officer
there, so things can start happening straight away, if—”
“Wait. You don’t have to agree to that.”
“I don’t mind. I really don’t have anything to hide, and I’m
tired of living this way. I have to prove when I got here and how
long I’ve stayed. I don’t have papers, but I contacted some of my
teachers from my high school, and they’d be prepared to speak for
me. I have to be willing to register with Selective Service, and do
military duty if I’m called.”
He sat
back, looking weary but pleased with himself. He had every right.
“Sounds like you’re more than ready,” Sasha said, trying for a
smile. The work was done, freeing Sasha’s mind once more for
thoughts of Laurie. Sasha had repaired the phone but not tried to
use it. He was once more aware of the damn thing sitting in his
pocket, its silence like a hole punched in the fabric of the night.
“That’s a big step, though, about Selective Service. Are you sure
it’s what you want?”
“Of course not. But if I’m living in this country, and that’s
what its citizens do...”
Sasha
tucked the papers Mateo had brought with him back into their file.
To each soul his own battlefield. If it gave Sasha a pang to think
that this boy, barely turned eighteen, might have to find his in
the dust of Afghanistan, the decision was none of his business.
“You’re all set. I’m done with you.”
“How can I thank you?”
“For what? All you'll be doing is telling the
truth.”
“Without you, I'd never have known who to tell it to. Which
parts I should tell.”
Sasha
tucked the papers back into the file. He closed it reluctantly.
That had been the essence of his Guidance Council job—to show where
justice could be found and how to obtain it. In some ways he'd been
no more than a fingerpost, a conduit. But when that channel was
blocked, bad things could happen to people like Mateo, like Yosiri
Cuza, and he missed his work. He wanted more from it now. He wanted
to take his law degree, and more than anything he wanted Laurie
sitting where Mateo was, hearing this decision with the
diamond-bright joy that lit him up whenever Sasha overcame his
doubts about himself and took a step.
His
phone buzzed. Both he and Mateo flinched. Sasha overcame a pang of
bitter disappointment—only an email, and he clicked on it
automatically to stop the alert light from flashing. It was just a
video link, probably a virus or an advert for breast or penis
enhancement: he got both, with his gender-neutral first
name...
No. This
came from Libby Palermo. Sasha frowned at it, bemused. What on
earth reason did she have to contact him? She had all his details
from the time when she’d been helping organise his visa, but they
hadn’t become friends. Far from it. Probably her account had been
hacked. Sasha shouldn't touch the link at all.
Then a
terrible fear overcame him that something had happened to Laurie,
something Libby knew about and wanted to tell him, and this was her
only way. The chances of this were remote, but Sasha felt as if his
heart would stop if he ignored them. Forgetting everything—Mateo,
the paperwork, the subtle whispers of the night beyond the kitchen
window—he tapped the link open, and watched while the screen
changed to the YouTube interface, then a black-and-white still shot
of something he couldn't interpret. The clip began to
play.
Sasha
didn't watch much TV. His Facebook account was a list of
professional posts from the Guidance Council, and he loathed the
world of celebrity culture and gossip; only ever used a search
engine that didn't thrust such vicious jabber upon him.
He could
have lived for weeks safe from the sword-thrust the universe had
prepared for him. But Laurie had made an enemy of Libby Palermo,
and the blade was in her hands.
She cut
deep. Sasha recoiled from the table. His chair clattered over and
he would have fallen, blinded and dazed by his need to retreat, had
Mateo not caught him. “No,” Sasha choked, trying to push him away.
“Don't touch me.”
“Sasha—mi amigo, what has happened?”
“Nothing.” The powerful arms closing round him were too warm to
bear. They were stopping air from getting to his lungs. “Leave me
alone. Just go.”
Automatic play and replay. Christ, Mateo was watching now.
With a superhuman effort Sasha wrenched him round, away from the
screen. Mateo had never met Laurie—the pool boy didn't shake hands
with the new young movie god—but he would know him, either from
the Blood Moon trailers or the observations he made of all the neighbourhood
comings and goings. Mateo would know. “Don't look,” Sasha pleaded.
He lifted a hand and tried clumsily to cover Mateo's eyes. He'd
blindfold the whole world if he could, shield it like a child and
somehow shield himself too, because each time this horror was seen,
the sword would enter Sasha's guts again. It was twisting there
right now. He fought like a wildcat in Mateo's grasp,
impaled.
Mateo took hold of his hand. The last time he had kissed its
palm. Now he immobilised Sasha with one arm, drew the hand down to
his mouth and brushed its knuckles with his lips, a gesture of
desperate comforting, erotic and fraternal at the same time.
“Mi querido Sasha,
don't believe this. These things can be faked. Or if it is true—if
it is true, come with me. No-one should make a man like you cry.
Come with me and I will love you. I will love you until all this
goes away.”
Nothing
would ever make it go away. Sasha stood gasping, his brow on
Mateo's shoulder. His hand was still captive in that strong grip.
The video unspooled its monochrome horrors once more inside his
head, just as it was playing and playing across his laptop screen,
unstoppable. Sasha thought about the couples he and Laurie knew in
London, the partnerships against which he'd tried to measure his
own. He thought of their small infidelities, their break-ups and
reunions, so fluid and easy, a blow-job in a nightclub doorway
nothing really, just a misdemeanour.
He had
tried to be a little bit like them. Tried not to show that Laurie
was his universe, the beginning and end of everything—such
primitive intensity didn't sit well with a flash young theatre
crowd. And it hadn't been an issue, because never once had Laurie
given him cause for doubt. They could sit in restaurants and
nightclubs, only their elbows or fingers in contact, and know that
they were all in all to one another.
Sasha
was nothing like their London friends. He was a foreigner, an exile
who could give his heart once and once only. He lifted his head
from Mateo's shoulder, beginning a desperate effort to compose
himself. He breathed deeply. The boy's embrace tightened. For a
moment Sasha let his shattered thoughts rebuild themselves in a new
shape—the one where he took up the offer, responded to the big,
warm hard-on pressing firm against his hip. Why not? They were both
exiles in a desert. Sasha built the future further. A sharp,
bruising fuck here, right on the table where he and Laurie ate
their breakfasts, and then they'd run away. Never mind papers and
visas—Sasha the gipsy had once found his way across borders without
those. He'd run with Mateo to Colombia, and there he would take up
the battle against warlords, drugs barons, any bastard out there
who needed to be fought, because Sasha too needed his battlefield.
Living in Laurie's safe harbour, he'd forgotten.
“Mateo. I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything. Tell me.”
“I need you to gather up your papers here, make sure you've got
all the notes we made, and... I need you to go.”
A sharp
inhalation in the broad chest. “No! I won't leave you.”
Sasha
allowed himself a weary chuckle. It came out as a sob. “You said
anything.”
“Yes, but I am frightened for you. What will you
do?”
“I'll tell you exactly. I'll make it a promise, then you won't
have to be scared about me. You trust me, don't you?”
“More than anyone I ever met before. But...”
“I'm going to pack up some things. Then I'm going to book a
flight back to England, because there's something I need to do over