A Scarcity of Condors Page 2

  Obviously nothing was close to okay. The Condor and his fledglings took off. The wife went running for a payphone. The husband yelled louder, “Hey,” and then, in an extraordinary and fortuitous turn of events, he let the trained German Shepherd off the leash and gave a terse command.

  Jude didn’t hear the order. He only saw a barking, snarling streak of tan-and-black fur jump the chain link fence and barrel at the Condor, taking him down like a linebacker.

  Going into shock, Jude thought it was a wolf. His mother’s name was Penelope, but all the women of the Chilean ex-pat community called her Lupita. The little she-wolf. Through the narrowing tunnel of his vision, Jude saw the endearment made manifest, coming to his rescue with a jaw full of snarling teeth and…

  He woke up ten hours later in the recovery room of Burnaby Hospital, his lower leg pinned and screwed back together. Feño had a severe concussion but was expected to recover. The Condor was in custody and two police constables from VPD were waiting to talk to Jude.

  It was over.

  Or rather, that part of the ordeal was over.

  Jude’s mother liked to say parenthood was constantly trading one set of problems for a new set of problems. Jude was released from the hospital and another pair of crutches came to live in the Tholets’ house, along with a new set of problems.

  Neither he nor Feño went back to Killarney Secondary School. Jude was home-tutored while his leg knitted. Feño’s family whisked him away to boarding school in Victoria—an elegant euphemism for a Christian mental health facility that specialized in conversion therapy. He wasn’t allowed to call or write Jude, wasn’t allowed visitors.

  All that long, lonely summer, Jude stayed ensconced behind locked doors and windows as the civil suit against Juan-Mateo Díaz grew more contentious. The conservative, Catholic community slowly made the Condor’s crime into Jude’s character flaw. The contention turned to violence and the Tholets finally left in August, fleeing not only Vancouver but the country. Putting an international border between them and the ordeal. Starting over in Seattle.

  Feño emerged from the facility in Victoria a converted man. To his credit, he came to Seattle to formally break up with Jude in person.

  Jude never saw him again.

  His leg healed and his gait smoothed out, but stress and anxiety liked to manifest in his left shinbone, making him limp when he was upset.

  He never went back to Vancouver.

  Until today.

  He pushed off the chain link fence and walked toward his car, favoring his left leg.

  The sun streamed through the stained-glass windows of Corpus Christi Church, splashing over the preponderance of wood and emitting the dry, baked aroma of a sauna. It mixed with the sickly-sweet smell of the lilies and carnations heaped on Fernando Paloma’s casket. A pregnant woman in the pew ahead of Jude’s finally slipped out for fresh air, a tissue pressed to her mouth.

  The priest droned. Feño’s stepfather read the eulogy. Communion was taken. A hymn warbled. Jude sat tight and still in his pew.

  You can go, his conscience told him. The record reflects your presence. You don’t have to stay any longer.

  But some stubborn resolve sat in his lap, determined to see this through to the end. Committed to finishing strong, Jude flung his ego on the altar of mercy and went down the receiving line after the service. He shook the widow’s hand and introduced himself, adding, “Feño was my best friend in high school.”

  The entire line went silent.

  I told you to go, his conscience reminded him.

  “Oh, you’re Jude,” the widow said. She was a California blonde, her red-rimmed eyes the thin blue of an early spring day. Cold and sullen on top of the unspoken question: So you’re the one who used to fuck my husband?

  “Yes, I am,” Jude said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Move along, Tholet,” Feño’s stepfather said in Spanish.

  No Paloma offered to shake hands as Jude moved along. The eldest son, Hernán, ignored him. Middle son Patricio did some macho posturing, muttering loudly, “You got some nerve showing your face here, cola.” The woman next to him put a calming hand on his arm, glaring at Jude for this intrusive disturbance. Jude murmured his condolences down the rest of the line and exited the church, limping a little.

  Made it.

  Done, his conscience echoed. You don’t have to do this anymore.

  This time, he believed it.

  “Jude?”

  He turned to see a woman in a black dress with a piece of black lace pinned to her hair.

  “Jude, is that you?”

  He raised a hand, brows furrowed at the name dangling just out of his reach.

  “I’m Feño’s cousin. Brenda Salazar. I mean Brenda—”

  “Ronco,” Jude said, as a seventh-grade taunt elbowed him in the back.

  Brenda Ronco. Rhymes with bucking bronco.

  A tired shame winced behind his eyes, remembering Brenda was one of the few decent members of the Paloma clan. She gave him a plump, warm hug. Her hand rubbed a firm circle on his back and her presence restored order in the world. Even her perfume evoked a common-sense compassion.

  Eau de Just Be Nice.

  “I haven’t seen you since…” Her hand turned over in the air.

  “Since the time of which we will not speak?”

  “Give or take a few days.”

  “I haven’t been back here, no.”

  “At all?”

  “Well, once or twice to sign legal paperwork. You know.” His own hand made a circle in the air.

  She switched to Spanish. “But you came back for Feño.”

  “For closure.”

  She sighed. “As you can see, forgiveness runs deep in my extended family.”

  “I did nothing that warrants forgiveness,” Jude said, a little too sharply.

  “I know.”

  “Sorry, Bren. That wasn’t directed at you.”

  “I understand.”

  “Emotional day.”

  “Of course,” she said, touching his arm. “They treated you like shit in there, and for what purpose? Feño is still dead. God, what a fucking waste.”

  “Mm.”

  “Some people are incapable of evolving,” Brenda said, with a glance over her shoulder. “Emotional Neanderthals banging rocks together.”

  “It’s all fear-based,” Jude said. “Gay cooties in the presence of the children. And I guarantee at least one macho prick in there got a hand job from a buddy in college and liked it.”

  Brenda’s smile cringed.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “I think I left my filter in the pew.”

  “Except you’re right,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know about the hand job thing, but it’s definitely fear-based. It takes so much effort. Good lord, the time and energy spent hating, they could… I don’t know, build houses or something.” Another big sigh and she bit her lip, hesitating.

  “What?” Jude said.

  “Where are you living now?”

  “Seattle.”

  “Do you still play piano?”

  “I’m a company pianist with Pacific Northwest Ballet.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” she said. “You were so talented. Are so talented, I mean. I left my brain in the pew.”

  He laughed. “The game I used to have keeps getting better.”

  “I remember the best parties were always at a house with a piano and you would play and play. Everyone gathered around like it was an Irish pub, shitfaced and singing.”

  Again, Brenda’s face twitched, hesitating around something she obviously wanted to say.

  “Tell me,” Jude said.

  “Feño was never the same after the conversion therapy.”

  A bitter chuckle snorted out his nose. “I think that’s the purpos
e of conversion therapy.”

  Her face flushed.

  Would you knock it off, he chided himself. She’s being kind and you’re throwing it back in her face.

  “He always struck me as a man on auto-pilot,” Brenda said. “Like he could take it or leave it. Even when he went into remission those couple of years, he had none of the life-is-short-embrace-every-minute attitude. When he relapsed, he could’ve participated in a clinical trial for a new drug regimen. He chose hospice instead. He was just done.”

  “It’s hard work being straight when you’re gay,” Jude said.

  God, man, would you just shut up?

  Brenda took his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  Jude was helpless to answer. He could only nod, lips rolled in tight.

  “Nobody in there will say it but I will, Jude. You were the love of his life.”

  He squeezed her fingers. “Thank you.”

  He came all this way and if he was going to do it, he might as well fucking do it. So he left Corpus Christi and drove past Killarney Secondary School, which was fat with new wings, sleek with renovations and depressingly unrecognizable. He went down Ormidale Street to see his old home. A spot at the curb beckoned, so he parked and got out to get a good look.

  Butter yellow in his day, the house had faded to a tired buff, its white woodwork shabby and peeling. A low, wrought iron fence surrounded the yard and within, all Penny Tholet’s beautiful gardens had gone to grass and weeds. Jude looked up over the porch’s gable to his bedroom window, peering through the curtained glass to his youth.

  “Can I help you?”

  Jude jumped in his shoes and spun to face a woman walking a dog, her brow pulled tight and her posture defensive. He moved quickly away from what was obviously her front walk.

  “Hi,” he said. “I used to live here. I was just looking and remembering.”

  “Oh,” she said, still wary. “Long time away?”

  “Twenty years. It looks smaller. I think because those trees are bigger.”

  She smiled now. “And you’re bigger.”

  “That, too. Do you mind if I take a picture to show my parents?”

  She didn’t. She didn’t invite him in, and if she had, he would’ve politely refused. Nothing he needed was in the house.

  All clues are on the ground, he thought, walking down the sidewalk a few steps. He looked back to ascertain the woman had gone inside, then reversed course, eyes sweeping the curb, searching for the exact place his father’s car had been parked one ordinary morning. Or rather, the new ordinary: Cleon taking Jude to physical therapy instead of school. Jude being schooled at home because he’d been outed by El Cóndor and now he had a broken leg and a target on his back. His house transformed into a bullseye’s center circle and rare was the day it didn’t take a hit. Death threats in the mailbox. Promises by phone to break Jude’s other leg. Bricks through the windows. Tires slashed. Swastikas spray-painted across the driveway. Homophobic slurs in English and Spanish left on the garage door.

  No fresh graffiti was visible that newly ordinary morning. Only the merest trace of royal blue letters power-washed away by Cleon. A whispered faggot echoing off the concrete.

  Cleon opened the passenger door and took Jude’s crutches. Jude sat sideways, then pivoted and eased in his casted left leg, then his good right one. Cleon shut the door. He opened the back door, put the crutches on the seat, shut the door. He came around to the driver’s side and got in, easing his own bum legs behind the steering wheel and stowing his cane. He started the engine. Because it was humid, he turned on the A/C. Because it was rainy, he flipped the wipers. Because the glass was grimy with damp pollen, leaf matter and bird droppings, he pulled the wand to spray some washer fluid.

  And then the windshield was covered with blood.

  “What the…” Not understanding, Cleon pulled the wand again. More blood spurted. The wipers scraped arches through the viscous red and flung it aside, splashing it onto the hood, the sidewalk and the street. Still not understanding, Cleon pulled the wand a third time and now Jude shouted, “Papi, stop.”

  He went on crying out. He couldn’t stop saying stop. The word rolled over and over in his screaming mouth as he fell sideways in his seat, curled on the armrest howling and sobbing, arms over his head and hands clawing at his temples, yanking at his hair. Beside him, Cleon hunched over the wheel, fists pounding the rim in time to Jude’s “Stop…stop…stop.”

  Stop. You don’t have to do this anymore. You’re done.

  Just stop.

  The police lab determined it was pig blood. Not human. Not infected with HIV, as a note taped to the inside of the hood attested. Detectives couldn’t pick up any fingerprints from the note or the car. It was a clean, dirty job.

  Jude’s eyes searched the street, the curb, the sidewalk, but he found no traces of blood or spray paint. A combination of time, rain and scrubbing had erased the evidence from the ground.

  He got back in his car and took a last look down the street through his clean windshield. His fingers hesitated around the control wand, then he gently pulled it forward, exhaling as clear wiper fluid sprayed onto the glass.

  “All gone,” he said softly. “You’re done.”

  He drove through the housing co-op on School Avenue. The unit where Feño lived was completely concealed by trees and shrubbery. Nothing to see here, it told him. He turned down the street where his friend Hewan Bourjini once lived. Trees had been cut down on the property and the house begged to be noticed.

  See me, it shouted, as Jude slowed the car to take a picture, which he texted to Hewan:

  Greetings from 666 Memory Lane.

  She replied with a picture of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, her head poised atop her shoulder blades and spewing green vomit.

  My sentiments exactly, Jude replied.

  Are you OK? Tell the truth.

  I’m all kinds of OK. Promise.

  At work but call the shit out of me tonight. I want to hear all the pukey details. XOXO.

  He got a milkshake at Tomlinson’s Café because it would be illegal not to. With the thick icy taste of chocolate in his mouth, he drove back to Central Park, locked the car and took a certain trail into the woods. He had one last thing to check off his list.

  Walls of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar closed in. Taller, thicker and denser than he remembered. He skirted clumps of blackberry bushes and waded through sword ferns. His hand trailed across rough bark while his eyes scanned the trunks. His ears full of Feño’s wicked promise: I’m going to make you come against every one of these trees.

  After each conquest, Feño took his pocketknife and carved J/F in the bark.

  He was your dear friend.

  He was never the same.

  You were the love of his life.

  And he was done.

  Jude searched and searched for their memorials. Just when he thought they’d all been culled or swallowed up, he found one.

  “Hey,” he said softly, feeling his smile stretch wide and true. “Here you are.”

  His fingers traced the letters, now twenty rings farther from the tree’s center.

  It’s all right, he thought.

  You’re done. You don’t have to do this anymore. Neither of us do.

  We can both go back home and be ourselves now.

  We’re free to move on.

  He crossed the border, then stopped in Blaine to get gas and text his mother.

  All is well and uneventful, he typed. Safe on this side again.

  Thank you for letting us know, Penny replied. Do you still want to come for dinner, is it too much?

  No, not at all. I want to.

  Come around seven then. Drive safe, querido. I’m proud of you for going.

  Jude slid behind the wheel, put in his ear set and dialed his therapis
t’s number. He got Phil’s voicemail and left a message as he pulled back onto the road.

  “Just checking in,” he said. “As promised. I’m on my way home. Alive and intact. Got some token shit from the family, which I’m not taking personally. Got some unexpected kindness from an old classmate, which I’m taking with me. So… Honestly, it was all kind of anti-climactic. I came, I saw, I brooded. I visited all the proverbial graves. I feel all right. Pretty good, actually. But you know me, my most intense emotions run on a forty-eight-hour delay, so I will still see you Monday morning. As promised. Ciao.”

  He turned on the radio. The miles fell away behind him and he felt more than pretty good. A warm peace had coiled up in his chest, both strange and familiar, like a classmate whose face you knew but name you’d forgotten.

  He breathed in deeply, positive the oxygen was reaching new parts of his lungs and stomach.

  I feel good.

  The exhale was tight with anticipation.

  I feel ready.

  It’s time. Let’s go. Let’s do it.

  His eyes glanced to the empty passenger seat, imagining a travel companion. His fingers drew along his thigh, conjuring a hand to hold. He thought about a face to go with the hand and for once, it wasn’t Feño’s face. Or any of the boyfriends who came in and out of Jude’s life, leaving no impression and making no difference. He drew another deep breath, exhaled and thought about the iconic news footage from the fall of the Berlin Wall. A crane lifting out a section of the notorious barrier and opening up the world. Hands reaching across, bodies slipping through. One story ended and a thousand new ones begun, because the winds of change blew and it was time.

  It’s time.

  He twined fingers with his invisible passenger, wanting someone. Every breath taken, a brick in his wall loosened, opening to someone. Every mile he put between him and Vancouver was a hand he reached toward the possibility of someone.

  I want someone.

  His phone chimed and he quickly glanced at the text from Phil: Got VM, see you Monday. Looking forward to it.