Kings of B'more, page 22
He wondered if it was too late to go back to Rahul. He wondered if he even wanted to. He wondered what was next after that and how much time could pass before he had to move. He wondered whether he might be sitting poolside with some teenage grandchild of his at some point in the future, waxing rhapsodic about butternut squash and sage. He wondered how he’d even go about having a grandchild in the first place, as the truth was that his Pop wasn’t actually his grandfather but really his great-uncle, who had no offspring of his own. But the truth was also that family finds a way to fit itself into whatever words we give it.
3:35 p.m.
It only took one comment from Mazz—“Harrison is so fun”—to get Linus going. He talked all the way up the hill, across the street, past the tennis courts, and up another small hill. He didn’t stop until he and Mazz had reached the Reservoir at the top of the hill, where they had to briefly decide which way to walk around it. They chose left.
“And there was this time when Harrison was doing this play Fiddler on the Roof and he didn’t have any lines or anything, he was just in the chorus. But he did get to bounce on a trampoline while playing a ghost in this one song where a girl flies out of a closet and he was really funny doing that. Anyways, we went out to a diner afterwards. I guess it’s what they do. And he told me to come and it was nice but they were talking about stuff I didn’t have any idea about, so I just spent time looking up what the play was really about, like, the historical background. But every time somebody made a joke, like, a theater joke or a joke about his school or anything, he’d lean over and he’d tell me what it meant. And I told him he didn’t have to, because for real I was fine just reading about Russia in the 1800s, but he said he came to hang out with me and the jokes were just funnier to him if I knew what they were about, even if I didn’t laugh. So then I start noticing that it wasn’t Harrison who is making the jokes mostly. He’s just sitting there, having French fries, laughing, and then leaning over to me to explain, and then laughing again. And I thought it was such a fun night. Even though I didn’t say nothing to anyone, just about. But the fun was the connection, the connection he was making. He’s really good at that.”
Linus paused at last. They stepped onto the jogging path around the Reservoir and walked left.
“My aunt has this saying: You two are like a salt-and-pepper set. It’s so annoying, but”—Mazz laughed at themself—“it’s exactly what came to mind. It means like a salt-and-pepper-shaker set. I don’t know where she got it. But it means you two are opposite but you’re made for each other.”
Linus laughed because that sounded dramatic and intense. But also, it was true. “He’s my best friend. Which one is salt and which one is pepper, though?” he said. “This is important!”
“I don’t know him well enough to tell you. I think you’re—”
“Cinnamon,” Linus said defiantly.
“Oh, you just have to be difficult.”
“True. True. What are you?”
“You mean what spice, or am I difficult?” Mazz asked.
“Spice.”
“Have you heard of the Spice Girls?”
“No,” Linus said.
“Oh, never mind. I was going to make a joke, but you wouldn’t get it.”
“No, go ahead,” said Linus.
“I’m Baby,” said Mazz.
Linus stared at Mazz blankly. They were right, he had no idea what they were talking about. Linus wasn’t even sure the joke had happened, so he just kept staring until Mazz cracked up and put their head in their hands.
“Oh no! I’ve totally ruined everything!” Mazz cried.
“There is no way,” Linus said. “Seriously—so much of the time I spend with Harrison is me making bad jokes that he doesn’t get or doesn’t want to get. Not that what you said was a bad joke. I bet it’s hilarious. You should tell Harrison. He probably won’t get it, either, but I think it’d be funny to watch.” Linus experienced a moment of crushing self-awareness. He turned to Mazz. “I’m talking about Harrison too much!”
Mazz laughed. “No! If you didn’t talk about your best friend, who planned a whole day of adventure for you and also maybe a second ago saved you from drowning—”
“I was fine.”
“—I’d be surprised.”
“I’m glad that you’re here, too,” Linus said.
“When you texted me this morning, at first I was like, ‘Who did I lend a shirt to?’ and then I was like ‘Oooh!’ It made me so happy. And it looks so good.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Especially like that. All beach casual. You’re all set for South Carolina.”
“I don’t think we’re going to be close to the beach, but maybe.”
“What are you most excited about?” Mazz asked.
Linus had thought about this move for weeks, from every possible angle, all of them terrible. And it had never occurred to him that he might be excited about some part of it. Now he felt like he’d shown up without doing his homework. Would Mazz be disappointed in him if he told the truth—that he just couldn’t bring himself to see a bright side?
“I don’t know,” Linus said finally. “I like my aunt Bird. So. I guess that.”
“Yeah, that’s cool,” said Mazz. “My aunt moved in with us last year, and I’m obsessed with her, so I definitely feel you on that. You probably know this, but Charleston is the most magical city. My aunt used to work at a gallery in the Low Country, and we went down to visit because she had put together a show as part of this thing called the Spoleto Festival. And it felt like I was in a different world. The trees and the horizon and the air and the art. The art, Linus. I’m telling you. I think my favorite thing, though—well, my favorite thing was the food. But my second-favorite thing was that all the buildings are so brightly colored and they’re all built on stilts high above the ground. It just feels . . . strange and beautiful. Like a dream. All the buildings are flamingos and cranes. All the land is the sky. I’m so envious of your move, actually, Linus.”
Linus was seized by the pang of an intricately mixed emotion. He was transported by everything Mazz was saying, by their voice and the way their face lit up as they talked about it. He was intrigued, maybe even excited to discover this new place. And he was sadder than ever that he couldn’t experience it with Mazz, who saw it so vividly, or Harrison, who saw Linus so vividly.
He worried that if he tried to say anything about what he was feeling, he’d start to cry, so Linus changed the subject. “I love that tank top you’ve got on. Is it from Maybe This Time?”
“No, I made this.” They pointed to the brick on the tank top. “This brick is supposed to be the first one that got thrown at the Stonewall Riot, the gay—”
“—gay rights protest in the sixties,” Linus finished.
“Right. A trans activist named Marsha P. Johnson threw it—”
“—supposedly,” Linus said. “But maybe Silvia Rivera, or—”
“—any number of people, but—”
“Yeah, I wasn’t saying—”
“No, I know,” said Mazz. “I think we’re saying the same thing. It’s largely—”
“—symbolic,” Linus said.
“Exactly. Pride is a party and it’s a protest. Always has been. Happy Pride.”
“Happy Pride.” He nudged Mazz’s hand—maybe it was accidental, maybe he was saying hello. He didn’t know for sure. Mazz smiled. They turned at the bend in the track, and Mazz climbed up on a low stone wall beside them, balancing. On the other side of the wall, a hillside of daffodils and tulips spilled down into an intersecting nest of curved highways. They were high enough that they could see most of the city, and the road noise barely reached them.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get to hang out more before you left,” Mazz said. “Are you coming back to visit?”
“I don’t know. Right now I don’t have enough saved to buy a plane ticket back, plus I gotta figure out how I’m going to pay for test fees and I don’t know if I’m going to have a job down in Charleston . . .” Linus trailed off. The enormity of the future rose up all around him once again.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“There’s the cemetery!” Linus exclaimed. He climbed up onto the stone wall behind Mazz and pointed. Beyond the looping, curving highways, down North Avenue, just between two high-rises, he spotted a patch of green. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just got excited. Do you see that thing in the distance that looks kind of like a castle?”
Mazz searched but couldn’t find it. It was so far and so small, you had to know where you were looking. Linus tried to describe where to fix their gaze, but finally Mazz said, “Turn my head so I’m facing it.” Linus gingerly tilted Mazz’s head until it was just about the right spot. He ducked behind them to make sure, as if they were two parts of a telescope aimed at the heavens.
“You see the tall red apartment building?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, now look down and you’ll see something that looks like a castle. That’s the front gate to the cemetery.”
Mazz could see it. Perhaps it was the architecture or perhaps it was the journey to get there, but it felt like discovering a fairy-tale land.
“It’s my favorite place in Baltimore,” Linus said.
“A cemetery?”
“Is that weird?” Linus said.
“Everything is weird.”
“Well, that’s true. I just feel like, actually, everywhere feels awkward or strange or not where I want to be, but there, it’s pretty and it’s quiet and it’s full of history and you can see the whole story, I mean city.”
“Both, right? Story and city?”
“Sometimes. Although, some of these fancy grave markers? I tell you. I don’t know what these folks were on. I go home and google some of these names, like, ‘Who the hell did you think you were, with this twelve-foot angel on your grave?’ But that’s how I’m trying to be. Put a big ol’ statue on my grave.”
“No time soon, though, right?” Mazz said. They sat down on the wall and ran their hand over a tulip.
“No. I ain’t in a rush.” Linus sat down next to Mazz. “Truth is, the cemetery is where life makes the most sense to me. Everything just feels like being in the middle and not having any control over what’s going on in your life. But at least in the cemetery, it’s like, ‘Well, all the questions got answered.’ ”
Mazz laughed in spite of themself. “That’s incredibly morbid.”
“I think it’s nice!”
The sound of two revving motorbike engines traveled up the hillside toward them. Down on the serpentine road, they saw two Black boys on bikes come roaring down an exit ramp and merge onto the highway. The road was essentially empty, and they took full advantage of it, each assuming ownership over a lane, revving their engines again, and speeding off southward down the highway.
“I feel like,” Mazz said, “I know that feeling: ‘Well, all the questions got answered.’ My parents used to spend so much time worrying about my aunt, trying to help her—she is incredible, but also . . . Well, my aunt likes to quote this one line by Langston Hughes—‘Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.’ It’s like that. And when she finally came to live with us, it was like, not only was all the stuff that just never seemed to get solved got solved—well, not solved, but it wasn’t weighing on our life in the same way. And with her around, I felt like I had new answers about who I was and what I was trying to be in life.”
Linus tried to imagine Mazz’s aunt—or someone he imagined was Mazz’s aunt, since he had no idea what she looked like—standing on a crystal staircase. Maybe holding a teacup, like the painting in the museum. It made him smile to think about that, and he promised himself that one day he would find a way to describe what he saw to Mazz.
After a moment, Linus spoke up again. “I thought it was going to be like that when I moved in with my dad,” Linus said. “My parents got divorced, and I went to live with my mom and things were okay, or I thought they were okay. But everything just felt so tense, and then I’d get tense and then we’d argue. This was like when I was a kid. Then in the pandemic, everything got worse. We were stuck at home and I had just gone to middle school and I didn’t have a computer, so I couldn’t get to class, and I was angry at her about that and angry, angry at everything. And everything I was doing was making her unhappy. I just knew it. And I started to think that everything I’d done had always made her unhappy. There was this one time, before all that, when we went to a concert at church where they were recording an album. And the choir sang her favorite song. And when it started, she started crying so loud. And I could feel her crying, shaking in my hand. Because she was holding my hand. It was so loud, you can hear it on the recording, and I can’t stop listening to it cuz I keep thinking that’s where the answers are. I know that’s not the case. But I don’t have anything else.
“I just wish my mom liked me; it’s always been hard between us. And when schools opened back up again, I got the idea that I would just leave. And I started telling her every day how much I wanted to live with my dad. And I called myself helping her by getting out of her hair, but I was mad, too. I was. And finally she said fine. She said, ‘You and me, we need a clean break.’ And so I went, but ain’t nothing been clean about the break. And we kept arguing; I could never do right in her eyes, I felt like. And last summer, we had this argument over nothing. Over, well, she asked if I had a girlfriend even though she knows I’m gay, and I got mad. And she said it was just an honest mistake. Like . . . Anyways, I said I couldn’t take it anymore. I told her, ‘When something breaks, it’s got to stay broke.’ Because I didn’t feel like I had another choice.”
Linus ran out of words. Mazz slipped their pinkie around Linus’s pinkie and held it there. Linus wondered if he would get to be happy. Or whether he would have to settle for a piece of life that was a little less-than. He rolled it around in his mind, as he had many times before. He didn’t let himself answer.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Mazz said. “There’s something really hopeful in the way you listen to that CD from the concert.”
“You think?”
“You haven’t given up on finding whatever you’re looking for,” Mazz said.
“Do you want to hear it?” Linus asked. He fished in his pocket for his MP3 player.
“No, thank you. If that’s okay with you. I think that’s yours. Is that okay?”
Linus nodded.
They watched cars go by on the highway for a while.
“Now that you’ve told me about it, I’m going to try to find that cemetery,” Mazz said. “I’m going to go and try to imagine everyone who ever lived.”
“And then what?”
“Well, I haven’t done it yet. But I’ll let you know.”
“Send me a picture when you do.”
They sat in silence again. Pinkies linked as their hands rested on the stone wall. On the far side of the highway, the two boys on motorbikes zoomed north.
3:36 p.m.
Harrison made his way across the pool deck to the folding table where two women were selling food. Behind them, it looked like the DJ had taken a break. The sound system played the radio—he could tell because the music was intercut with commercials. He assumed it was 92Q because there was a banner with the station’s call letters hung up on the DJ booth, but he thought it would have been funny if the DJ was actually from the classical music station and decided to drop the beat all of a sudden. Harrison paid for a scoop of chocolate ice cream pulled from a huge cooler packed with ice and wondered how radio stations chose what to play. How did one station become hip-hop and R&B and another become country? He had never thought to ask his father, despite the fact that he worked in radio. Everyone he knew liked all kinds of music, and the artists who were popular were always releasing songs in different categories. In general this was good, but it was also how you got something like “Press the Sky Higher,” which was performed by four of the judges of a TV singing competition, all of whom came from different styles of music, plus a children’s choir and, on one remix, a cartoon.
Harrison asked where he could get sprinkles, and one of the women pointed him to a table, which was currently being blocked by a man in jeans. Jeans at a pool? It takes all types. Harrison moved over to the table, still caught up on how radios chose their music and why there wasn’t a Broadway radio station. Everybody likes Broadway. It’s not called Narrow-way.
“Excuse me,” he said to the man’s back. The man looked up and then shifted over. Harrison started scooping sprinkles onto his ice cream.
“Harrison?” the man said. Harrison looked up at him. For a second he couldn’t place him—this was just a person wearing person clothes.
A person wearing person clothes who looked like his father.
A person wearing person clothes who looked like his father, who worked for 92Q.
Now it clicked.
“Dad?” He loved seeing his parents out and about, it had to be said. Like when they came to visit him at work unexpectedly. He grinned at his father brightly, and then, seeing the confusion on Obed’s face, Harrison came back to Earth and realized where he was, and what he was doing, and how much trouble he was in. “This isn’t what it looks like,” Harrison said.
“You already took your lactose pill?” Obed said. What? Oh, the ice cream! No, he also had not done that. In fact, he didn’t have any pills with him.
“Um. No. Do you have some?”
Obed fished a foil-packaged pill out of his pocket and opened it for Harrison even though Harrison was capable of opening his own pills. “I would have invited you if I’d thought you’d be interested, but I know Linus doesn’t swim.” He gestured at the booth with the banner on it that, Harrison realized, really should have rung an alarm for him.
