Cetus and Chimera - Part II
Last week, we learned about Hector’s coral bone graft and Matthew’s research. Matthew tells Hector how he and David met. After work at the hospital, Matthew meets David for sushi.
Later that night, with a bottle, we head to Nina’s place, an apartment she shares with her girlfriend. Salsa booms from the streets. Whether restaurants are playing their live music into the night or the music is coming from houses down the block, I can’t tell.
Nina opens the door. “Hey, you made it,” she says, spilling some of her wine over her glass. “Oh my God you brought Matthew and wine, you shouldn’t have, and also you’re late.” She fixes her braids and pushes them over her shoulders.
“We’re gay,” says David.
She leads us inside, where people from David’s program have been drinking and eating pizza. There are more people than I expected so I stay close to him.
“Help yourselves to whatever,” says Nina, waving to the kitchen counter. Her girlfriend Amal greets us there, opening a fresh bottle of wine.
Nina catches me looking at everyone, like I’m trying to figure out who everyone is, and she says, “I invited some of the physics and chemistry people for a little excitement.”
“More than a get together,” I say.
I pour us some whiskey, hand one to David and lose myself in the drone and hum of the apartment. Hand in my pocket, I finger the plastic baggie with Hector’s coral. I feel its jagged edges and though it feels like nothing more than a rock, my elbow tingles, a phantom pain. In another life, the same species of coral I suggested for Hector’s bones is the same grown in farms to repopulate lifeless reefs. Empty bottles line the kitchen counter, trash high with green glass, branching out like a fragile tree. Everything stretches around me; voices all sound the same. I’m thinking of Hector’s future, not just in quality but what a world would look like for him, the disarticulation of his body.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, a message from Hector: “I hope you and David are enjoying your night out.” He attaches a smiley face at the end.
I text back, “Yeah, but I’m so tired. Ready for bed.” I tuck my phone away when David walks over.
He’s finished the first drink and has poured himself another. He’s happy around his cohort, and he looks over, flashes that fire smile, whiskey-flushed cheeks, and the sight sends tingles through my stomach. Someone pours David a shot, and he downs it.
“We should go to the beach tomorrow,” says David.
“Yes, please,” I say, straightening his shirt collar.
The thought of lying on the sand with him makes me smile. It’s not until he presses against my side that I remember the coral still in my pocket. I’d forgotten about it, just for a moment, and I’m aware of every sensation, the sweat creeping at my underarms, my ears blazing, heat spreading to the rest of my face, David’s lips lingering, his arm around my waist, holding me there. When he presses his body against mine, I press back a little and shift myself so that my crotch touches his leg. He squeezes my soft side, and I feel his hand glide lower so that it rests just above my ass, so I kiss him because that feels like the thing to do, let everyone know that this body holding me against it is a sign not to mess with, and the thought of it makes me hard in a way I’d forgotten. I’m stiff and rigid, near melting in David’s arm because his touch tastes good, and I trace fingertips up his spine, pull his skin taut. I look away to some point in the room’s ceiling and think of carving coral out of his back.
Nina sets her glass down next to us and pulls a carton of cigarettes from a drawer. She shakes it in David’s face, and he starts to follow her out to the balcony.
I catch him by his wrist. “Hey,” I say.
“Just one,” he says. “Please.”
I follow him out to the balcony and keep toward the farthest edge, the wind blowing the smoke away from me. Nina hands David a cigarette and lights it for him. From here, I can see downtown, and through the glittering haze, I imagine Hector’s room gone dark, the shade pulled over the window with a shit view. Nothing I said or did was enough to give him a more comfortable room. He’s being moved to a place I can’t see from my own window, either, a building between buildings where I imagine his gaze piercing through the porous night and finding me somewhere in the ether. Here, I can dream it, and when a shiver slips through my spine, I think it’s the coral in my pocket creeping its way up my body, metamorphosing my skin into something Hector can know. Then, the next time we touch, the coral in our bones will recognize itself and fuse, our bodies something new and dazzling.
I see David light another cigarette, the flame in someone else’s hand. It’s not just the smell that lingers in your hair, your skin, but all the rot they bring. As if he knows I’m watching, David leans over toward me.
“This is the last one, babe,” he says. “Promise.”
I let him, knowing he’ll have another, and I’ll always allow it.
*****
I wake up early the next morning. I don’t need the alarm on my phone to remind me of our plans for the beach. David’s in bed. The smell of cigarettes has worn off him.
In the kitchen, I set the cafetera and start packing the cooler. I make sandwiches—ham, cheese, turkey, and mustard—fill a plastic bag with lettuce and tomato slices. I make them with mayonnaise, which David likes. Then I head back into the bedroom with coffee. David is snoring. I try to nudge him awake.
“What is it?” he says, more mumbling than anything.
“We’re supposed to go to the beach today?”
“What are you talking about?” he says.
“Last night. You said we should go to the beach today,” I say.
“You sure I said that?” He rolls over. “I just want to go back to sleep.”
“Why would I make this up? We talked about this last night.”
“Can we go on a different day? Tomorrow? Next weekend?” he says.
“You know what? Forget it.”
In the bathroom, I find my clothes from last night lumped in a corner, my wallet and keys spilling from pants pockets. The coral is still there, dull and pale, the color of a cut fingernail.
I leave our apartment with the cooler and drive to the north end of the beach, where David and I used to go. It’s quiet with the exception of a lone gull crying in the sky. I leave my shoes and shirt on the towel and run into the waves. The ocean is ice against my skin, and the sun blazes. A large wave crests closers. I don’t dive into it. Instead, I let it tumble me underwater, where I hold my breath until my chest burns.
I swim back, lie on the sand and let the sun burn the seawater off me. I wonder if this is what Hector feels after a bath, the water vaporizing off his pores leaving his body dusty with salt. I eat most of the sandwiches and wash them down with water. The coral sits in its plastic baggie. It’s no bigger than my thumbnail. I drop it into my palm, roll it between my fingers.
Then I put the coral in my mouth, press it against my tongue. I knock it against my teeth, dry and salty. I cradle it behind my gums.
The first time I spoke to Hector after the surgery, he was weary. I still don’t blame him for assuming I was another doctor fascinated with the complexity of the process. After all, it was my idea. I’m the reason he’s living in some half-state sphere. He needed a lot of time to heal, his muscles were weak and his voice, shot. I was the only one able to calm him down after the coral started growing, after nurses had to tranquilize him in the shock and the howling. I wasn’t upset when he blamed me for what happened, and I’m sure I’d have done the same, but with no family to visit and no regular contact with friends after they saw what had become of him, I think he forgave me. We never talk about it, and neither of us has brought it up because sometimes the choice not to is enough.
Hector once told me about his dreams before all this. He’d said he wanted to design roller coasters for amusement parks, to merge fields of physics and design to create something thrilling and exciting.
“I wanted to tour every amusement park in the country,” he told me. “I’ve already done them all in the state, a few major ones away, too, Midwest, Northeast. And all that good food that’s so bad for you.” He laughed when he said this, and I imagine him in that element, sitting front row of a massive roller coaster, one of those floorless kinds, an overhead harness locking his body in place, and when the track crests to the drop, I see him let go of the handles at his chest and extend his arms to his sides as if wings, falling through the sky, wind through a door.
My phone buzzes and I look. It’s David. He waited this long—he can wait a little longer.
Once, around the time we had moved in together, David said my body was the sky. I asked why.
He said, “That’s the place we look to when we can’t believe what’s in front of us.”
I look out again, tossing the coral in my mouth. Blue everywhere.
To be continued…
Christopher R. Alonso was born and raised in Miami, FL. He has worked as an indie bookseller and is a graduate of the NEOMFA program. His work has appeared in Catapult, Strange Horizons, and Fireside Fiction, among others. His writing has received support from Juniper Summer Writing Institute, the Miami Writers Institute, and the Periplus Fellowship. He was awarded Tin House's 2022 First Book Summer Residency. He is querying a novel.
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