3. Grave Diggers
3
GRAVE DIGGERS
A fter his failure to visit last year, Mathias was almost expecting to see the place untidy, littered with dead flowers and leaves and dirt, but his mother’s tomb was, as always, immaculate, and adorned with so many fresh blossoms, it looked like the windowfront of a flower shop.
Alberto stood before it with a look of surprise. “Do you come here often?”
“No. Actually...I haven’t visited in a long time.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” Mathias forced out a smile. “Maybe because I’m a coward.”
He wished he hadn’t said that, and yet, it was exactly how he felt, so he was grateful when Alberto broke the silence. “Was your mum someone important?”
Mathias shook his head. “Nope.” He noticed his incredulous frown and asked, “Why?”
“She has a spot at the Montparnasse Cemetery, and it looks like someone is buying flowers for her every day.”
“Not every day...” Mathias bent down and rearranged the enormous bunch of sunflowers at his feet to avoid meeting his eyes. “But she had friends. Good friends.”
“Friends who could afford a spot here?” Alberto clearly didn’t believe him. “You always act like your family has no money and like you despise rich people, but… look. The tombstones in this spot all bear the family name Reyes. So, your mother was rich, or she wouldn’t have secured a place here.”
“Herfamilywas rich, okay?” Mathias said in a sharp tone. Seeing Alberto’s expression, regret churned his stomach, and he sat in front of his mother’s grave with a sigh. “My mom had nothing. And she couldn’t afford to be here. No chance.”
Alberto looked at him, his lips pressed tightly together.
“All they cared about was appearances,” Mathias confessed. “So, Mom ended up here. They knew Dad didn’t have enough money to...do better, and that’s what they did. They never lifted a finger when she was sick, never spared a penny to help with her treatment, they just sent some lawyer after her death to make all the arrangements.” He forced himself to take a deep breath to push down the anger still simmering inside of him. “They didn’t want her buried back in Venezuela, but that was fine with us, because she didn’t want to leave Paris. She wanted to be here with her friends. Thesepeople, her so-called family, they didn’t even bother coming to see her off. Only one cousin showed up from over there. The rest, they thought she was dirty.”
Alberto took a seat next to him. Mathias was about to warn him about his coat, but he didn’t seem to care. “Why did they think she was dirty?”
“It’s complicated,” Mathias said, hanging his head. “They didn’t really accept her in the first place. Her mother wasn’t the matriarch, you see. And it showed. She looked different from the others; she stood out. When it became too obvious, with her red hair and all, they sent her away here to live with her aunt, and she never wanted to come back. Years later, when they heard about her engagement to my dad, they threatened to cut her off, and she sent them packing and married him anyway. They disowned her, as promised. In the end, she was a simple dance teacher married to a math teacher, and they probably thought she was a big loser.” He let out a dry laugh. “I don’t understand how they could not have loved her. I don’t get it. In fact, I hate them so much for...for...letting her down like that.”
Alberto slowly bowed his head. “That’s why you don’t like rich people.”
“I don’t...” Mathias resisted the powerful urge to swing his arm around his long neck, biting his tongue instead. “Fine. Maybe...maybe it looks like I don’t like rich people, but I just don’t like selfish...shits. ”
They didn’t speak for a minute, both of them seemingly lost in their thoughts, then Alberto said, his voice soft, “Tell me about her.”
“About Mom?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t even know where to start...” Mathias took a moment to think about it, seeing her figure in his mind, laughing and waving at him. “Mom had so much energy...like a tornado. She liked playing sports. She was proficient at Taekwondo and taught it to kids, but what she liked the best was dancing.She danced all the time.”
Mathias noted the corners of Alberto’s lip had slightly turned up. He continued with a smile of his own. “She had electric guitars in her veins; she was always twitchy. She got me intoGarbage, and she’s the only reason I even knowBloodhound Gang. Mom went to concerts until the day she couldn’t, you know? The only thing she was useless at was cooking. I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe that’s how I got into it: to save us all from whatever shit she was making.”
“Were you close?”
Mathias glanced up at the headstone. Beloved mother, wife, and friend ,it said. So unremarkable, compared to the woman she was, and yet, these words were nothing but the truth.
“We were too close, maybe. She had me at nineteen. We basically did everything together. I even brought out the rings at her wedding,” he added proudly.
Alberto drew his legs up. “Like a dog.”
“No, not like a dog!” Mathias was about to bite his head off, but he looked too cute, with his chin on his knees.
“My mother had me at nineteen, too. Imagine… that’s just a year older than us.”
Less than six months away from his nineteenth birthday, Mathias chose not to comment. “Wasn’t she a famous supermodel? Why did she have you so early?”
“She fell in love. You know how it is for some. It changes everything.”
Mathias cast his eyes down. He was so close to Alberto, he had to be careful not to move, or their arms would brush together. He wanted that very much, but here, in this cemetery, it would feel inappropriate, wouldn’t it?
“Your mum had beautiful hair,” Alberto said, unaware of Mathias’s turmoil.
“You’ve noticed. ”
“Hard to miss the picture on your nightstand.”
Mathias conceded with a smile. During the holidays, Alberto had woken facing that photograph of him and his mom at Disneyland more than a few times. She was laughing and holding him so tight, he could barely breathe, and her curly hair was so enormous that it obstructed that asshole Mickey Mouse standing beside them. Mathias was scowling, but his eyes, so alike hers, shone bright with all of his unspoken joy.
“That fucking hair,” he grumbled. “You found it everywhere. On the floor, inside the sofa, even in the kitchen where she never set foot! It was driving me insane! Until, one day…” His voice grew weak. “No more hair. No matter how long I looked…” Feeling Alberto’s eyes on him, Mathias carefully averted them. “Weeks later, when it was all done, I went searching for her hair in her bedroom—between the sheets, under the mattress—but it was all gone. I don’t know what I was hoping for… She’d lost it all during treatment, anyway. But in her wardrobe, I managed to find one.”
Mathias knew his eyes were filled to the brim and if he dared blink, a fat tear would drop and crash like a meteorite on his lap. He willed himself not to. Not in front of him.
“I knew it,” Alberto said, his voice like a whisper.
“Knew what?”
“That’s why you went for the buzzcut. Or else you’d look like a crazy poodle, just like your mum.”
Mathias burst out a laugh, the tears tumbling and crashing down his lap. “I will never admit it.”
“You don’t need to.” Alberto arched his eyebrow. “I know it. You’ve got crazy curly hair like your mother, and you’re trying to hide it.”
“You—”
“I know, I know. I talk too much.”
With a long sigh, Alberto leaned back and made himself comfortable. Stretching his long legs, he pretended to be reading the letters on the headstone long enough for Mathias to collect himself.
“She requested one song,” he said when his eyes were dry. “One song and twelve lesbians.”
Alberto blinked several times. “Pardon me, what?”
“Her funeral. She asked for“Las Ketchup”to play as they lowered her down.”
“She did?”
“She knew how much I hated it. It was our private joke. I think she did it to make me laugh. ”
“Did it work?”
“No. I cried the whole time.”
Alberto’s face contorted in a grimace. “And the twelve lesbians?”
“Ah… Forget them. There were only ten anyway.”
Now he looked perplexed, like he wasn’t certain he hadn’t imagined this conversation. “So, she made that playlist, didn’t she?”
His expression was enough to bring a smile back to Mathias’s face. “Yes. For our last road trip.”
“Now, that makes sense…” he mumbled. “How fast did it— I mean, was she sick for a long time?”
Of course he would want to know the gloomy stuff. Mathias tried to imagine an Alberto who would be joyous and bright, like his mom, and he couldn’t even conjure an image. All he could see was that sweet, innocent smile from the portraits hidden in the basement. Perhaps his joyous nature had been buried underground like those pictures, like Mathias’s mom.
“Not really. She was gone in a year, you know. She seemed fine, and then she was really sick, and then… and then…” Mathias’s throat tightened.
“Then she was really dead.”
Mathias blinked at him, stunned. Alberto gazed back at him with a childish pout. A weight lifted off his shoulders; he flicked Alberto’s lower lip with his index finger. “Yes, pollito . Then she was really dead.”
Such a weird thing to say, and yet, his mom once made a similar joke, a feeble attempt to distract him from her impending death. She was trying to lighten up the room, but he was angry and hurt, and he couldn’t bear her upbeat mood there, in that place, in that hospital bed. He told her not to joke about death, and she asked, “Only dead people can joke about death, then?” He said, “Yes,” and she laughed even though she was close to the end. Then, she slid down the bed, her tongue stuck out, playing dead, and when he got mad, she said, “Can I get an advance? I’ll be really dead, really soon.”
God, she was so annoying. He’d never met anyone so annoying and wonderful in his entire life. He kept telling her how annoying she was, and she kept messing with him, telling him, “You don’t know every time you call me annoying, I hear wonderful. Every time you tell me I’m the worst, I hear I’m the best. Every time you say you can’t stand me, I hear you love me the most.” And he did. He loved her the most.
It’s a really bitchy move to make people love you so much and then fucking die on them .
There it was… the anger. The hurt.
How could he still go around pretending it was all her fault, when, in fact, she had tried her best until the very end? And what did he ever give in return? He had been useless the entire process, and all he was now was mad. Mad at not being as good as her at making light of the whole thing. Mad at not being able to get over it the way others could. Mad at wondering what sort of good person he could have become if she’d stuck around, instead of the wreck he was now. He was consumed by darkness—the void she left behind her had swallowed him whole. No one could understand, and he couldn’t ask anyone to keep him company. Who would want to wander these dark corridors with him, anyway?
He slipped a look at the person on his right. Alberto didn’t just wander dark corridors, he’d probably designed them. Passageways with endless doors leading to haunted places… Behind each of these doors, there was probably another poor chump trapped between his lips. That’s what Alberto was: just another void waiting to consume Mathias.
“The thing about Eric,” he said, forcing his gaze away, “is that he reminds me of her. He’s so… sunny. He’s so…” He puffed out a laugh. “Sometimes, I feel bad around him because he’s so bright, and I have this darkness inside of me. It’s like we don’t match at all.”
“You shouldn’t feel bad,” Alberto said, and his tone was cooler now. “Eric is only like that because he hasn’t had any hardships. He hasn’t lost anything or anyone yet. When that happens, his light will get—” He snapped his fingers together. “—snuffed out. Just like that.”
Mathias frowned. “I can’t let that happen now, can I?”
“In any case…” Alberto lowered his gaze. “… Isn’t there beauty in darkness, too?”
There is ,Mathias said to himself. I’m staring at it right now .
What happened to you? He wanted to ask. Why do you never speak about your dad? Did you lose him, or did he lose you?
He was well aware now that Alberto didn’t want to talk about him. Mathias was curious, but he didn’t want to pry and risk Alberto slipping away again. Still, he couldn’t help wondering… how ironic would it be if Alberto’s dad was homophobic, as opposed to Mathias’s own upbringing? Alberto didn’t ask himself many questions about what he liked or how that came to be. Mathias was born under a rainbow, and yet he… had no understanding of such things. All he ever felt was confusion .
Even now.
“Is it true that Gwen and your stepsister threw you into the pool when you were a kid?” he asked, for lack of a better thing to say.
Alberto snorted. “Yes, a few times.”
“Why?”
“They thought it was funny, I guess.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know, Mathias. They just couldn’t resist.”
“And why didn’t you defend yourself?”
Alberto glanced up at the sky with a shake of his head. “Who knows? Why did people watch and do nothing when Kayvin did the same thing the other day?”
The blood drained out of Mathias’s cheeks. About that day—that damn waste of a day that had started off so well—he had had enough time to regret his inaction. “I wasn’t fast enough…” he said, embarrassed. “And then it was too late.”
“Well, maybe it was the same for me.” Alberto sounded tired now. “Once you let things happen the first time, there isn’t much you can do about the others.”
Despite Mathias’s fears that he might be—rightfully—furious at him, Alberto didn’t look upset. He was picking lint off his jacket, his lower lip stuck between his teeth. His face burning, Mathias wasn’t sure what to say. Now that they were sitting here in front of his mom, he felt at a loss.
Usually, Mathias felt uneasy telling others about his mother. He really missed her, missedtalkingto her. But not today. Today, he felt if only he could have seen her one more time and asked her about demons and all, maybe he would have been all right. “I wonder what she would have said about you,” he muttered.
“About me?”
Mathias realized he’d spoken aloud and gave a nervous laugh. “Yeah, whatever.”
“Oh, but I know.” Alberto nudged him with his elbow. “She would have said… Fuck me, he’s very handsome .” And without warning, he leaned in and caught his lips.
Mathias tried to jerk away. “Fuck! We’re in a mph ?—!”
He gave in at the first slide of his demonic tongue. Surrendering so nicely, it was he who gripped Alberto by his neck to bring him closer, and he was the one who sighed into his mouth when he felt the weight of his arms on his shoulders .
They made out in front ofhis mother’s last resting place, the displayed flowers painting a fragrant rainbow over their heads. Mathias kissed him like their stage wasn’t a cemetery, like he had never lost what was most important to him. A kiss like that might have resurrected the dead, in a perfect world.
“You’re crazy,” he whispered when they broke apart. “This is a mourning space. Don’t make fun of the dead.” Still, he held his face between his hands and had no desire to release it.
“I’m not making fun of the dead, I’m making fun of death. Not the same.” Alberto puckered his lips, and Mathias kissed them again. “What do people know about the dead, anyway? Nothing at all. Maybe they are actually watching over us, especially in a place like this, and they’re bored out of their mind to see ugly crying faces all day, and watching us just now made everybody’s day. Maybe your mum was proud. Maybe she really was thinking, Fuck me! ”
He’s very handsome… Mathias ran his fingers through Alberto’s hair then gave it a tug. “Screw it. You’re right. My mom was fun, she didn’t play by the rules, and she was a rock star.”
“If anything, we honoured her.”
“Yes… yes! I like that.”
Alberto’s lip curled. “What should we do now?”
Mathias stared avidly at his mouth, then said four memorable words in his ear, making him chuckle. They hadn’t played the game in a while.
“This one’s too hard to remember.”
“That’s okay.” Mathias got to his feet and helped Alberto up. “I’ll let you look the lyrics up on my computer while I rip off your clothes.”
“Lovely.” Alberto froze mid-movement, an adorable frown on his face, then he reached out to poke Mathias’s shoulder and pressed himself into his space. He spoke a few words, his voice barely audible in his ear.
Mathias leaned back. “I haven’t removed your clothes yet.”
“No, those are the lyrics.”
“Oh, fuck!”
“Exactly.”
They burst into a laugh. Mathias stared at Alberto, who looked back with round eyes, in disbelief. They turned away from each other, and Alberto tore toward the exit without a look back.
After a few parting words against the cold headstone and a promise to return soon, Mathias hurried after him. There was a spring in their steps when they walked out of there. Mathias was so febrile, he almost fell flat on his nose outside the metro station.
Back home, they were already all over each other before they even made it to the elevator. Mathias would have gladly had him in here if there was a possibility. He blindly slammed his hand against the button panel, so they had to stop at pretty much every floor, but none of that mattered; he had him in his grasp again. They crashed and bounced against the walls of the shaft, Mathias’s deft fingers already pushing Alberto’s coat off his shoulders. When the doors opened, they stumbled out of the elevator and smashed into Mathias’s front door. He never understood how he managed to open it with Alberto’s tongue in his ear and his hand in his pants. His fingers were shaking something crazy.
In Mathias’s bedroom, they battled for who would be the fastest at removing the other’s clothes. Mathias won; he always won. But none of that mattered. He undressed them both more or less accurately—one of Alberto’s feet was still caught in the leg of his pants, causing him to laugh in his ear. They were so frantic, they slid off the bed and ended up on the carpeted floor. When Mathias felt Alberto’s erection digging into his abdomen, this time, he didn’t hesitate. He put the whole thing into his mouth. Alberto yelped like his dick had never been sucked before, so Mathias must not have been so bad at it after all. He flung his hands over his eyes and instinctively tried to close his legs, but Mathias dealt with them easily.
Yes, sex was messy, and Mathias honestly used to think it was a lot of effort for not much reward. It just never felt right. Gay sex was even messier, and it wasn’t for the faintest of people. Good thing he wasn’t the faintest of people. He always did what he had to do in the least amount of time, knowing they were always at their best when they didn’t give a damn.
Twice before, Mathias had attempted to take Alberto from the front. Twice before, he was severely rebutted. Not just with glares, but with a sharp Don’t! uttered through gritted teeth. Maybe Mathias was the boring kind, but missionary allowed a view few could boast they’d seen before. But today, there was no rebuttal. Alberto said nothing, and Mathias didn’t tease him either; he kept his head down the entire time. No way he would fuck things up like before. He wouldn’t look into his eyes, even though he wanted to.
It was just as they liked it. Fast. Intense. Sweaty. Alberto moaned, writhed, and hissed nonsense in two different languages, his legs pressed against his sides. Mathias believed his heart, thundering uncontrollably, was definitely going to explode, until he heard something that made it stop altogether.
“What was that?” He panted. “What did you say?”
Alberto wrapped his long legs around Mathias’s waist. “I love it, I love it.”
For a moment, Mathias thought he’d heard something else. He kissed him—or more precisely slammed their lips together—drawing another interesting sound out of Alberto, who hid his face back into his neck. Something was rising and swelling in his chest, blocking up his throat, and his thrusts intensified; he didn’t know how else to say it.
When it was Alberto’s time, Mathias rose abruptly. He saw his face, his eyes, his tears. Pleasure erupted, and his vision turned white.