A Charm of Finches Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Suanne Laqueur

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or trans-mitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Suanne Laqueur/Cathedral Rock Press

  Somers, New York

  www.suannelaqueurwrites.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to busi-nesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Design by Write Dream Repeat Book Design LLC

  A Charm of Finches/ Suanne Laqueur. — 1st ed.

  ISBN

  Table of Contents

  Titlepage

  Copyright

  Author's Note

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue Feed Yourself

  Part One July The Book of If

  Knife Skills

  How It's Supposed to Be

  The Game

  The Land of Nos

  Deadweight

  What Else We Found

  Life Advice From A Whore

  The Kvater

  Dumb Or Greedy

  A Distinctive Scar

  Dr. Frankenstein

  August Son Rise

  Batteries Drained

  Out of My Hair

  Jealous in the City

  Lollypop

  Dough

  Here to Help

  My Father's Child

  Curving to the East

  September Ben Hieronim

  Client Privilege

  Cushman Row

  Better Than This

  The Optometrist

  Ladder

  An Amateur Lover

  Situational Awareness

  Been With

  The Thing

  Bricked Boundary

  A Technique Perspective

  Inside Looking Out

  October Catch My Breath

  Bi-Romantic

  So Close

  A Great Dynasty

  Vampire

  Fanciful Dimension

  The Bacon Bagel

  Jump For You

  Shanksville

  Acela

  Strong Like Bull

  November Shrimping

  Easier Than Breathing

  Heart Behind Your Teeth

  It's A Weird Day

  Valiant

  Four Hot Studs

  December Fun To Be Around

  Ps And Qs

  The Worst Position

  Terms of Venery

  Gelang

  A Female Not His Wife

  Part Two January An Unattended Glass

  Guys Like That

  Str8t Dude Seeks Same

  Afraid of Everything

  Two More

  Not Your Brother

  QuieterThan Usual

  How Men Make War

  A Clean Color

  The Youngest Resident

  Like Your Tongue's On Fire

  Good Music

  Aware of the Stars

  February A Beautiful Life

  On the Beach

  The Color Beneath

  Every Step Means Something

  Xavier

  The Last Chapter

  March Brain Chemistry

  Stave

  Brought Here For Drinking

  The Wrath of Caan

  Messy Work

  Screws and Bolts

  Say You Want Me

  Guys Like Him

  Rainstorm

  Talons

  Turn the Head

  Vasovagal Syncope

  Potential Hazards

  Lovebirds

  Inner Teenager

  For Give

  Domestic Sex Slave

  April Háblame

  I'll Take You Home

  The Only One Left

  Something to Someone

  Tangle of Flesh and Mind

  Six

  What Love Looks Like

  May The Right Work

  Arschficker

  Home, Hearth and Family

  My Last Job of the Day

  A Man's Desire

  The Bread Basket

  June Mos in Armor

  The Mothers Always Jump

  Him Holding Himself

  Two Sides of One Man

  New Name, New You

  Epilogue I'm Listening

  A Better Man

  The Wind

  Afterthoughts & Resources

  Acknowledgements

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Also By Suanne Laqueur

  This book contains adult subject matter including adult themes of sex and sexual violence, written in adult language. An Exaltation of Larks spoke of The Disappeared Ones of Chile. A Charm of Finches speaks to a different group of disappeared. An invisible demographic who often suffer in misunderstood silence. Geno Caan speaks as one who knows, but he also speaks for men who will never tell their stories. Or for men who told their stories and weren’t believed. These extraordinarily brave and resilient males possess strong hearts and I stood in awe of them during the writing of this book, knowing there was a lot more I could get wrong than right.

  It’s my sincere hope I got it right.

  —SLQR

  Somers, New York

  October 7, 2017

  For Rach, who saw me from beginning to end on this important book. Inspiring, challenging and not letting me get away with anything. You’re one of my toughest critics, one of my wisest readers and one of my dearest friends.

  I write, you read, I drop.

  “Because I’ve been lying asleep at this little farm where you were born, and to wake up I had to have the warmth of a fire only you could light.”

  —Chilean saying

  “Listen and learn it. Learn to tell it. And tell it to teach it.”

  —Latin American saying

  “And if I had a boat

  I’d go out on the ocean.

  And if I had a pony

  I’d ride him on my boat.

  And we could all together

  Go out on the ocean.

  Me upon my pony on my boat…”

  —Lyle Lovett

  June 2008

  New York City, New York

  The Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea buzzed under a brilliant blue sky. Greenwich Street was closed from Gansevoort to Jane, its curbs lined with vendor booths. The air juggled a dozen tantalizing smells and sounds. The crackle of grilled sausage and chicken, falafel, burgers and kebabs. Buttery popcorn, sugary fried dough and honey-roasted almonds. A Babel of languages wove with street musicians playing jazz on one corner, reggae on another and classical in between.

  Over on Horatio Street, smack in the middle of the festival, the Bake & Bagel hummed with a productive energy bordering on frantic. Already one of the neighborhood’s most popular joints, it was packed today, the line curling through tables and easing out the door.

  The owner Micah Kalo had been up since three in the morning, making dough. His daughter and co-owner, Stavroula, was a blur behind the counter. She hustled from display case to register, calling orders back to the double-staffed kitchen.

  Assembling and wrapping sandwiches, Geno Caan moved with the automated purpose of one who has reached the tipping point of fatigue. He’d been up since three as well, first helping Micah with the dough prep, now working the line. Coffee couldn’t touch him anymore. He revived himself with strong mint che
wing gum and icy swallows of water, coasting on waves of disjointed thought.

  The orders were piling up and Javier Landes came in the back to lend a hand. He and the bakers immediately began giving each other friendly hell in Spanish. The one female cook smoothed her hair in the reflection of the stove’s hood, looking back over her shoulder, eyes full of undeclared love.

  Everyone loved Jav. No secret that two-thirds of the crowd out front came for the food, while the other third came hoping for a look at the gorgeous hunk who worked here sometimes.

  “Move, fucky,” Jav said, hipping Geno out of his way and reaching for the big cutting knife.

  “Did you just call him fucky?” one of the bakers said, laughing.

  Jav reached the hand not holding the knife around Geno’s neck and smacked a kiss on his crown. “He’s my wittle fucky.”

  “Get out of here.” Geno hipped him back with his own collection of Latino put-downs. His Spanish went rusty after his mother died three years ago. But since he became friends with Jav, it flowed again fluently, laced with words his mother wouldn’t approve of.

  “I finished that book you gave me,” Geno said to Jav. “The biography of Genghis Khan.”

  “How was it?”

  “I liked it. You know anything about him?”

  Jav ripped a sheet of butcher paper off the roll. “Only what I learned in school. Emperor of half the world. Badass motherfucker.”

  “When he was about fifteen, his father died, and the tribe kicked him out. Him and his mother and brothers and sisters. They were wandering around in exile. Starving. Then he was captured by his father’s friends. And they made him a slave.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They put him in a cangue. It’s kind of like a yoke. A flat piece of board you put your head through. You know, like Puritans would put you in the stocks, but this was a portable stock you could walk around in.” Geno’s hands shaped a square frame around his head. “You could walk and work, but you couldn’t feed yourself because your hands couldn’t reach your mouth.”

  “Wow.”

  “I was surprised to learn how much of his youth was spent being hungry and a captive. Anyway, he finally escaped, and the escape earned him a reputation. Men began to join with him. They became his generals. That’s how it started.”

  “With escape,” Jav said. His dark brown eyes slowly blinked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And getting your hands back to your mouth to feed yourself.”

  “And being known for something else than as a slave.”

  They were quiet as they finished up the last of the orders. The pulse of the shop slowed and the buzz of the crowd settled into a lull. Everything in the hot kitchen seemed to exhale and deflate.

  Geno took a long swig of ice water and asked Jav, “Do you believe everything happens for a reason?”

  “I do,” Jav said. “But not everyone gets the privilege of liking the reason. Of feeling the reason was worth the ordeal or the experience.”

  “Never thought of it that way.”

  “What, that you don’t have to like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jav looked at Geno a long moment. “You’re going to be a huge voice in the world.”

  Geno’s heart curled away shyly. “You think?”

  Jav nodded. “You have an important story to tell. A story with a lot of power. It can be the kind of thing that…”

  “What?”

  “The kind of thing that builds an empire.”

  Wednesday, July 4, 2007

  Stockton, New Jersey

  “If you could trade places with anyone for a day, would you?”

  Geno closed his eyes to consider the question. “No,” he said.

  Beside him, Kelly Hook turned the page of a small square tome titled, The Book of If.

  “If you could spend a day with anyone who is now deceased,” she said, “who would it be?”

  “My mom, I guess.”

  “Same,” Chris Mudry said, from his sprawl in the leather recliner.

  “You’d spend the day with my mom?”

  “And night.”

  “Chris,” Kelly cried as Geno let out a howl and fired a throw pillow at the recliner.

  “Spend that, asshole,” he said, flipping Chris off.

  Grinning, Chris fired the cushion back. Geno crossed his arms over it and the two motherless boys locked understanding gazes an instant before looking away. Membership in this unfortunate club allowed them to crack dead mom jokes. But only with each other.

  Kelly slouched deeper in the couch cushions and stretched her long legs next to Geno’s on the coffee table. Her smooth calves and pale blue toenails made him swallow hard. Until this year, Kelly Hook had been nothing more than background noise. One of the dozens of girls he’d known since kindergarten. Extras in the drama of his life. Overnight, it seemed, her volume went up. Her presence blocked Geno’s path at every turn. Getting in his way, derailing his train of thought, occupying his waking time and monopolizing his dreams.

  This girl is wrecking me.

  He kind of loved it.

  She had the look. A soap-and-water clean beauty. Long red hair she didn’t do a thing with and a smattering of freckles across her nose. She couldn’t be bothered with makeup and she didn’t need it. She was standalone gorgeous, right down to those blue toenails so close to Geno’s sneakers and the hint of perfume tickling his nose.

  It was becoming a bit of a problem.

  Resisting the urge to adjust himself, Geno moved the cushion a little lower into his lap.

  “Where you there when your mom died?” Kelly asked.

  “No, school.”

  “But she died at home.”

  “Yeah, she was in hospice at that point.”

  “Freshman year, right?”

  “Sophomore. I was in geometry class. The principal came to get me in the middle of a test.”

  “Maybe your mom timed that on purpose,” Chris said.

  “Thanks, mom,” Geno said, laughing. “It was weird how Dr. Stanton didn’t say anything. Everyone looked up and he was in the doorway looking right at me. We just held eyes and… I knew.” He freed a hand and held it out to Kelly, his thumb gesturing toward the base of his pinky. “That dot there? Can you see?”

  Kelly peered close, her breath tickling his palm. “Yeah.”

  “I had my compass in my hand. I sort of slammed my fist down on the desk and the point stabbed into my palm. Right there.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Show her what’s in your wallet,” Chris said.

  Kelly’s copper eyebrows raised. She’d turned more in Geno’s direction. A subtle shift in body language that gave him courage. He fished his wallet out of his pocket and, from its folds, drew a small square of denim. The blue was smeared across with maroon.

  “I wiped my hand off on my jeans,” he said. “Got blood on them. I cut this piece off and threw the rest away. Been carrying it with me since.”

  “Wow,” Kelly said. Her shoulder was touching Geno’s now, pushing against it. In another minute, she’d meld right into him. The idea made his belly coil like a snake in the sun. Hiding his burning face, he put the scrap of fabric and his wallet away.

  “Who did Dr. Stanton tell first?” Kelly asked. “You or your brother?”

  “Me,” he said. “Then I went with him up to Carlito’s class.”

  “That must’ve been awful.”

  “Yeah,” Geno said. “He looked at me a few seconds and then closed his eyes and nodded, like he’d been expecting it.”

  “Do you guys ever feel the same things or have a psychic moment?”

  “No,” he said, brave enough to give her a playful shove. “I don’t read his mind, he doesn’t feel sad when I do.”

  He was lying. He did somet
imes feel what Carlos felt. But it was too hard to explain the twin bond and now Kelly was shoving him back. They were nearly wrestling, each trying to knock the other off the couch.

  “Get a room,” Chris mumbled, aiming the clicker at the TV.

  Kelly laughed and laughed, her hair tumbling over her face and getting in Geno’s mouth. She was writhing to get out of his grasp, but not too hard. All of his skin jumped up and down in curious excitement, wondering what this would be like if he and Kelly were alone. In the dark. Lying down. And naked.

  She’s luscious, he thought. One of those words that sounded exactly like what it meant. She was warm and luscious, her muscles firm under his palms, yet soft and springy. Her flesh gave under his touch. He could knead her like dough. Butter her up and eat her.

  He chuckled under his breath. Butter was a word that made him giggle since he was a little boy. Butter and pickle.

  “You laughing at me?” Kelly said.

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie, Geronimo.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Geronimo,” she shouted, holding the O long as she gave him one last shove to tumble onto the floor. It was an overused joke that came with having a famous name. He didn’t mind it coming from Kelly, though.

  Not at all.

  He rolled on his stomach, head on his crossed arms, calculating how he could make his move at the party tonight. The logistics were tricky. Kelly Hook’s father was the Stockton Police Chief. Which made him Captain Hook. Which meant Geno couldn’t fuck around with his daughter’s luscious honor.

  As he turned scenarios over in his mind, Kelly was on and off the phone, talking to kids coming over that night to swim and cook out. A combined party for the Fourth of July and her birthday.

  “Stacey’s coming,” she said to Chris.

  Chris’ eyes didn’t leave the TV. “Mm.”

  “Stacey likes him?” Geno asked.

  “Big time. Is your brother coming?”

  “Why, do you like him?”

  Her eyes held his like a challenge. “Is he?”