9. Somewhere Else
N aomi knocks on my door around six. Her voice is bright and casual. “Dinner? I’m thinking Colonnade. Real butter and big portions. You in?”
I haven’t moved since I got home: still in my towel from the shower, still warm from the sun, sprawled across the bed like the day never ended.
“Rain check?” I yell.
Naomi doesn’t press. She clicks her tongue and says, “You better eat something that isn’t pickles and Triscuits. I’m serious.”
“I will. Promise.”
“Mmhm,” I hear her say as she descends the stairs toward the front door. I hear no guilt, just enough neighborly love to sting.
Four hours later, I’m awake from a nap I hadn’t intended to take. I throw on jeans and a tee and stride out into the dark.
~
Burkhart’s is quieter than usual for a Friday night—at least upstairs, where Mateo tends bar at night.
The lighting is low and golden, bouncing off the polished wood counter as if the whole place is sealed in amber glass.
Synth-pop hums through the speakers—something danceable but subdued.
I’ve been nursing a vodka tonic for twenty minutes before Mateo finally makes his way upstairs to take over.
“Didn’t think I’d see you tonight,” he says, sliding a rag across the bar as he stops in front of me. “Thought you and Naomi would be hanging out.”
“She invited me,” I say, taking a slow sip. “I passed.”
Mateo raises an eyebrow. “Damn. You’re spiraling.”
“She wanted Colonnade, but I wasn’t in the mood to be sociable tonight.”
Mateo tosses the rag over his shoulder and leans on his elbows. “Alright. What is it then? Brooding? Longing dramatically at a half-empty glass?”
I manage a half-smile. “Just wanted a cocktail.”
He studies me, then nods toward the drink. “Only one?”
“I don’t know.”
He reaches under the bar, pulls out a lime wedge, and plunks it onto a napkin in front of me. “You don’t usually drink alone. You okay?”
I shrug, which means no.
Mateo folds his arms. “It’s that guy, Kevin, right?”
“Kevin,” I confirm.
“So, what, you still thinking about tracking him down?”
I shake my head. “No. I ran into him. We talked.”
Mateo’s face goes slack with surprise. “You talked?”
I nod. “Yesterday. ”
“And?”
“And nothing,” I say. “He was nice. He gave me his number, but I haven’t called.”
Mateo taps his fingers against the wood. “You know I’m gonna ask the obvious.”
“Why haven’t I called?”
He nods.
“Because if I call, it’s real. And I don’t know which version of Kevin I’ll get.”
Mateo huffs. “That’s your excuse? Not even curious? That’s next-level cowardice, mi amigo.”
My eyes narrow. “Thanks for the support.”
“I’m just saying,” he says, voice softening. “He saw you. You saw him. That’s an opportunity, not a lifetime guarantee.”
I don’t answer. I down the last of my drink and let the ice settle.
Mateo tilts his head. “Look—maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s not what you think it is. But if it is, you’ve already done the hard part, right? You know how to reach him.”
“Sure, except now I can’t stop seeing him in my mind.”
“Then call him, or don’t,” he says, pushing off the bar and turning to make another drink. “But pick a lane, buddy. This middle shit’s gonna rot your gut.”
He’s already walking away before I can come up with a retort. And then it hits—that slow, familiar burn of someone watching me.
The bar’s not crowded, but it has that growing Friday buzz—people unwinding from the week. Mateo pours two drafts, wipes his hands, and moves to the corner where I’ve planted myself. I sit on a wooden stool, elbows resting on the counter, staring past the liquor shelf to the mirror behind it.
“You always look like you’re solving equations when you drink alone,” he says.
“It’s either this or pacing my apartment.”
Mateo leans against the bar again, eyes scanning my face. “You gonna call him?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s something,” Mateo says, shrugging. “Just saying—you looked different when you talked about him.”
“Different, how?”
“Like you gave a shit. Like it wasn’t just a passing thing.”
I exhale through my nose, the only laugh I can manage. “I don’t even know what it is.”
“Doesn’t have to be anything. It could be closure or something new. But you won’t find out from this barstool.”
I lift my glass and finish it in two gulps.
Mateo grins. “I’ll get your next one. You look like you need a do-over.”
While he pours, someone sits next to me. He’s older, maybe in his late twenties—stocky, five o’clock shadow, smells like cologne and cigarettes.
“You always come in here looking that conflicted, or is tonight special?” he asks.
I glance sideways. “Just tired.”
He leans back against the bar, eyeing me, then tilts his head as if he’s unconvinced. “You don’t look tired. You look like someone waiting to make a mistake. ”
He says it like a compliment. I let it hang there, waiting for the punchline that doesn’t come.
He smiles and leans in slightly. “Let me guess. Someone did you dirty.”
“Does it matter?”
“Nah,” he says.
I can feel his gaze travel around the bar, then rest back on me. I don’t look at him.
“You’re not gonna find the answer in that glass,” he adds.
“No,” I say as I stand. “But maybe I’ll find it somewhere else.”
He chuckles as I stand. “If you change your mind,” I hear him say as I walk away.
I find Mateo and thank him for the drink. “I’m heading home,” I add. “And do me a favor. The asshole who sat next to me at the end of the bar—Visine his next drink for me.”
Mateo tilts his head, giving me that slow, incredulous look from under his brows. “Call him, dumbass.”
~
The radio’s low as I head home, but I’m not listening. I drive—city lights flickering off the hood, traffic lights changing without urgency, the night humming low and indifferent. Mateo’s voice still resounds in my head. So does Kevin’s face. So does Patrick’s.
I catch myself tapping the steering wheel as if trying to knock something loose.
Mateo said to call him. Or not. Just pick a lane.
The moment stretches, and the drive slows.
I pass the turn for my street but keep going.
I drive in wide circles on city streets around Midtown.
After twenty minutes, what began as a drift becomes a decision.
I could’ve gone home. I meant to. I even passed my turn. But the apartment felt too safe—too familiar for my mood—and I needed somewhere darker than memory.
I turn left, then swing a right down Cheshire Bridge Road, headed to a different kind of place—a different kind of quiet.
I pass neon signs for adult video stores, closed diners, and a shuttered pawn shop with bars on the windows.
The further I go, the more I disappear. It’s not that I’m drawn to this place.
It’s that I don’t want to be anywhere else.
The complex doesn’t look like much—just rows of concrete block structures painted gray in a nondescript industrial park.
There are other units just like it, to the left and right, but all are closed except for this one, which has an unlit sign above the door that reads “Steamworks.” I park in the back of the building, near the black metal entrance door, and see a few men going in, their heads down, shoulders squared. I follow.
The man at the counter and glass window doesn’t ask for ID; he asks for a membership card, purchased daily for five dollars and valid for twenty-four hours.
He asks if I want to rent a room. I decline.
He takes my cash and slides me a towel and a key with a locker number.
I nod and push through the metal door to the locker area, stripping down like it’s not my first time.
It isn’t. Mateo brought me here once, a few weeks after our first and only date, convinced we needed friendship more than we needed each other’s sex.
I don’t know how often he frequents this place—we don’t talk about it.
I only know he’s working tonight, so he won’t see me here.
I shove my clothes into the locker, wrap the towel low around my hips, and step into the main corridor.
The lighting is low and red-tinted, nearly swallowed by the black ceiling and dark walls lined with private rooms. The hallway smells like disinfectant and something sourer—like desperation scrubbed but not removed.
Figures drift through the dim corridors like shadows.
I don’t want introductions. I want to forget.
There’s a video room with sofas and a large projection screen at the end of the hallway.
It’s a place where guys drift in to rest or lose themselves in the flicker of looping adult films. Some just watch.
Others linger along the wall. A few eventually join in, wordless and slow, as if following an unspoken script.
Beyond the video room, another hallway lined with partitions, some occupied by men turned inward, their bodies pressed to the barriers, seeking something faceless on the other side. It reminds me of a milking station at a dairy, and I tread past them. Perhaps I’ll return.
This hallway leads to a steam room and a jacuzzi. Signs near the jacuzzi remind guests of health rules and discourage anything beyond relaxation. The steam room, by contrast, carries a different kind of expectation—one that goes unspoken but understood.
I weave through a series of short passageways—a labyrinth of turns—until I reach the final room: the darkroom.
It’s pitch black. I can’t see my hand in front of my face, even when I bring it to my nose.
But that’s the point. The space isn’t for sight.
It’s for what happens when vision is denied.
I can’t tell how large it is, how many others are inside, or what any of them look like—and that, too, seems intentional.