Pastel-blue bro picks up the chair. Maybe this is going to work out fine.
Lead bro puts down his beer and rubs his knuckles. Maybe this is not going to work out fine.
I’ve been in my share of fights before, and the whipsmack of this lifetime-achievement prize trip being so sucky has definitely given me the urge to connect my fist with something that’ll scream back, but as I start to do my chest-forward-bumping-the-air toward lead bro, I catch a glimpse of Darren and he’s got this look on his face — not scared, exactly, but more tired, like he’d give anything to be surprised by what’s about to happen.
If I’m a good dad, my priority should be getting us out of here.
For the sake of my kid, I put my hands up and turn away from the bros. They start chuckling and victory-snarking, and it makes my shoulders square off and the hair on my forearms rise, but I still walk away. Darren stands up, looking all meek and lanky, but he takes one last chicken finger from his plate and waves it like a Potter wand. “Faggot out!” he says, before sauntering after me and out of the restaurant.
The fight fury fades. It’s replaced by a queasy middle zone, where the pastel voices join together behind me and I’m waiting to feel a beer bottle or a hock of spit hit the back of my neck, things men have done to me and will do to my son for decades to come, but also my mind is skimming along the new reality that my meek sensitive kid stands up for himself, has developed a whole gay arsenal of zingers. Who taught him how to do that?
We’re out of the room, and I’ve got my arm around him, rubbing his birdlike shoulder, and then I’m laughing. “Faggot out,” I say. “Amazing.”
“I dunno, that just came out of me,” Darren says.
“I should use it,” I chuckle. “Faggot out. Awesome line.”
“You don’t need to use it, Dad.”
That can mean ten different things, and I try to ask him to tell me more, but the words stop before they get to my mouth.
Darren looks back where we came, to the closed doors. “I’m glad those guys aren’t following us. They were total assholes.”
“Yep,” I say.
Without quite meaning to, we’ve wandered back into the pool area. I lean down and slap the warm, slightly cloudy water. “Want to take a swim again?”
Darren shakes his head. “I think I want to go back to the room.”
I knew that would be his answer. We don’t even have our trunks and towels with us or anything, and after nearly getting gay-bashed, neither of us is exactly inclined to any father-son skinny-dipping.
We walk past the steam room, and since it’s still barely sunset and we have a whole night of sitting on our hotel beds on our phones ahead of us, I drag my feet by looking inside. Narrow tiled box, dingy without officially being dirty anywhere. It’s like sitting under a giant hand dryer that blows wet. I’ve never gotten the appeal of those rooms.
Darren’s waiting for me, worrying his fingers and tapping his knees, so I close the steam room up and walk with him down the corridor of nautical carpet. We get to our room, and he’s immediately absorbed in his phone, unclipping it from the charger and hurling himself onto the bedspread. I take a piss, then waffle in the doorway. “Did you get enough to eat?”
He nods and pats his belly.
“I’m not sure I did,” I say. The hair on my forearms has risen again. “I might go back out there and see what I can scrounge up.”
He nods again.
“Sure you don’t want anything?”
Headshakes.
“Okay, see you soon.”
I step out, and press the door closed behind me. My palms are sweaty, my mouth full of a metallic taste. All I hear beyond my racing heartbeat is the feeble roar of air conditioners behind closed doors. Where are all the other hotel guests? In their cars somewhere, out to dinner, I guess. But not here.
My feet bring me to the restaurant. I could do with another beer, a cracker, a leaf of lettuce, anything, whatever I can steal from those assholes. I want them to see it, and I want to see the consequences. I listen to the door, then crack it open. There’s just a server left there, cleaning the tables and putting chairs up. She gives me a Hey, stranger smile and I give one back. There’s still some food left, so I could get some, but since the party bros aren’t there it wouldn’t count as stealing, and stealing is what I want to do. I do grab a beer, though, and start it going down quick. That gets a genuine smile from the server. She might like me.
She’s way too young, though, so I leave the restaurant and lean against the door, drinking my beer and listening to the nothing happening all around me. Male murmurs in the distance, the sigh of the steam ticking on and ticking off, the constant hum of the pool pump. An old lady in a bathrobe shuffles down the hallway. I nod and smile at her, she nods and smiles at me. Think she’s the same one who was doing laps in the pool.
I wish I had a cigarette. But I don’t smoke anymore unless it’s at a party. This is not a party.
The question that got me was geography. I wasn’t stuck in the moment; I wouldn’t have gotten it even from the comfort of my living room. I wasn’t meant to be more than a third-place contestant on Guess It Now.
The Amazon River passes through Peru before entering Brazil.
How hard is life going to be for my son?
A roaring janitor passes me, his industrial vac advancing and retreating, advancing and retreating. He dips into the pool room, keys jangling. He comes out a few minutes later, closes the door, and flips a sign on a chain.
The vac roars back to life, then fades as the janitor passes around a corner and out of view.
My fingers flick over my phantom cigarette. Alone again.
Until I’m not. Voices approach from down the hall, voices I recognize.
I don’t hide, but I do go still.
The bros, only two of them now, orange bro and pink bro, lurch along the hallway, coming from the same direction where the janitor disappeared. Pink has his arm around orange’s shoulders, and the pressure of his heavy limb makes orange trip as much as he walks. They’re staying upright, but only just.
My fingers drop the phantom cigarette and make a fist instead.
The bros go right up to the glass door to the pool area, peer in. They totally ignore the Closed sign and push through.
Their voices fall away beneath the hum of the pool pump. I’m alone in the hall. It’s as if the bros were never here, as if they dropped into the water and were sucked away.
I stand there for a moment, resisting the urge to check my phone, just wondering about people being here, people being gone.
I step toward the pool entrance.
I’m totally silent, not from any special source of elegance, but because the carpet is so plush and so thick. I reach the door and peer in.
In soft focus through the blurring glass, the bros are doing midnight laps, laughing and splashing as they kick against either side. Their polo shirts stick to their torsos, and as they pull themselves out of the pool their shorts cling. Would my son enjoy the sight of this? The bros probably wouldn’t want to be seen by my son, and tonight that matters.
The lights are out, but the streetlight silhouettes the bros as they jostle and push, as they scamper along the edge of the pool, frantic and agile, like little boys at a sleepover.
They head toward the door, toward me. I tense, ready for a confrontation. My fist on a jaw might just be the answer I need, the thing that will clear this murky unease.