There's music, that tinkly, percussion stuff for pattern dancing. I take my beer into the kitchen and stuff it into a cold box already full of beer and wine. Nobody's dancing yet. I see Peter talking to a couple of people and say hello. I go back and get a beer so I have something to do with myself until I fit into the party. I see Cinnabar talking to another flyer, a woman with long crinkly hair, a red jacket and hips like a twelve-year-old. I don't recognize many flyers, I know some of their silk colors and that's all, and I haven't been to a race since before China.
Cinnabar doesn't seem to have much furniture. Makes a great space for parties.
I drink my beer and say hello to a couple of people I know from Peter's building. I end up talking to Robert, who doesn't know anybody here either. "You're in the building? How come I haven't see you at the meetings?"
"I've only been there a couple of weeks."
We make small talk. It's eight-thirty, I figure I can sneak out at eleven, maybe ten-thirty.
I glance around and to my astonishment make eye contact with the guy from the boardwalk, Invierno.
"It's the angel!" he says and saunters over.
"Hey," I say, delighted. "Are you a friend of Cinnabar's?"
He is, well not exactly, he's a friend of a friend. "I almost didn't come tonight," he says.
"I'm glad you came."
He knows a lot of people at the party. "The woman talking to Cinnabar? That's Gargoyle, the flier. Only her name's really Angel. And that guy over there? That's Previn Tabat, the guy on the news."
He tells me that the flyer in the vid is Cinnabar's elder brother, dead in a flying accident. He flirts with me. He flirts with Robert. He has large dark eyes and very long eyelashes. He's dressed in his matador's outfit again.
"I haven't seen you on the boardwalk," I say.
"I don't get out too much." He shrugs. "I work at a bank, I work weird hours in Routing." Something about keeping track of credit.
Robert drifts off while we stand talking. Invierno's such a kid, full of himself, aggressive, almost obnoxious. But I keep finding him funny.
"Dance with me," he says. People have started dancing.
"I don't know how," I say, amused.
"I don't believe you."
"It's true," I protest, laughing. "I really don't know how."
"I'll teach you a pattern," he promises, and taking me by the wrist, pulls me to the center of the room where we are most noticeable, and teaches me a pattern, a simple one. We dance and I think he'll get tired of me, but he doesn't. He changes pattern dancing into something baroque, to go with his Spanish clothes. He invests the steps with a stiffness, machismo. He holds my hand high and when he looks at me, he has veiled his eyes under those lashes. He looks like a willful boy who is sensitive to slights. And the more I laugh, the more he warms under the attention.
So, of course, late in the party I take him home. We slip down the steps to the subway and sit on the train, casually uninterested in each other, my left knee touching his right, while an old man sleeps across from us and a girl in a waitress' uniform knits next to us.
I take him into my room, out of the dark hall where the lights go off the moment you open your door, and he says, "This is where you live?"
I imagine it's too bare for him, I don't even have a chair. "I haven't been here long."
Then he surprises me. "This is really nice," he says softly, enviously. "Is this the way they do things in China?"
"No," I say, "in China you'd program lights and wall colors. And there'd be more furniture."
He nods, touches the walls with the tips of his fingers. "It's white. Doesn't white mean death?"
"It also means life. It depends on whether you're eastern or western."
"What are you?" he asks.
I shrug. "A little of both."
He stands there, looking at me. Waits for me. I am the older man, I make the first move. That is a shock, too. I've always been the pick-up, or we were both young and there was no older/younger, like with Peter. But now we are in my place and I have Invierno.
So I take him to bed.
I sleep and wake, turn carefully on the bed not to bother him, sleep again, coming half-awake to shift. He shifts against me a couple of times, often only a moment after I do. We didn't sleep until four or five. The light through the one window is bright by mid-morning. He has a lovely shoulder, hairless, the color of tea. Broad flat shoulder bone like an ax.
Used to be I'd be lying here wishing he would leave. Young men leave, don't even sleep, they grab their tights, stand in the bedroom like one-legged storks, getting dressed. Once I'd have shifted around until he woke up, then I'd offer him breakfast. I'll be thirty-one in four months. I'm tired but I like him here, sleeping on his stomach, his face turned away from me.
He told me the tear tattoo was a prison thing a hundred years ago. Fashion now. After the liberation, gay men doing reform through labor had the tattoo. A totem. A sign. A signal. I don't touch him, he'd wake up.
Someone knocks on the door and Invierno sits straight up.
"Just a minute!" I call.
"Shit," Invierno says, rubbing his face. "What time is it?"
"Around ten-thirty." I drag on the pants to my suit-lying on the floor next to the bed-and push my hair out of my face, open the door just wide enough to see out. It's Vanni, my next door neighbor. She's fresh, brown face turned up, big eyes, wild black hair caught back.
"Oh," she says, "were you asleep?"
I slip out in the airless hall, the heat hits hard, makes me feel as if I can't breathe. "What are you doing up so early on a Saturday morning?" Vanni works late hours, I hear her come in at two, three in the morning.
She's embarrassed, "I was just up, I was wondering about if you could help me strip my floor this weekend. I didn't mean to wake you."
"Sure, I'll help you strip it." I say, "I'm so bored I don't know what to do with myself. Look, I've got company, are you going to be home later this morning?"
"Oh God," she says, covers her mouth, "Oh Rafael, I'm really sorry. I'll be home."
I smile at her, "Okay, I'll see you later." I guess I should be irritated, but I'm pleased. I like the idea of having neighbors.
Invierno is still sitting on the bed, bare feet on the floor. "I didn't know it was so late," he says.
"Are you late for work?"
"No, but I've got to do some stuff first." He grabs his matador pants. In the bathroom my reflection is a revelation, haggard face, hair stringing all over the place. I splash water on my face, drag a brush through my hair and tie it back.
While he's in the bathroom I make coffee. He downs a cup, refuses my offer of breakfast. I tell him to call me if he's free, give him my number. He stuffs it in the pocket of his jacket without looking at it or me. The morning after. But he smiles at me in the hallway.
Smiles are like tears. Totems. Signs. Signals.
In the white time, you cling to signals.
I become a teacher.
It's laughable, in a way. The way I become a teacher is simply to have someone say 'you're a teacher.' A professor no less.
Brooklyn College is an old school with a long and illustrious tradition. They say that even before the liberation, anyone who had a college diploma could go to Brooklyn College and that it was free. There's a statue of Christopher Brin in front of Martyr's Hall and a plaque explaining that and that Brin was a graduate of Brooklyn College. I don't exactly understand the logistics of all this. If anyone who wanted to could go to school, how did they keep from having classes of 200 or 2000 students?