Five Boroughs 01 - Sutphin Boulevard (13 page)

By the time she finished speaking, I was willing myself to implode all over her desk and the goddamned rubric she kept pointing at with a red-lacquered fingernail. I tried to calm down, but I knew my face was veiled in anger. I’d rather be burned at the stake with Bruno than listen to her bullshit.

Criticizing me for things that had yet to happen had always been Price’s strong point, but it had never been about my teaching. I may have been a disaster in most other areas of my life, but my teaching had always been on point.

And if the ninth grade history teacher had gotten up to the 15th century, I wouldn’t have had to backtrack so far in September to review. The words gathered in my mouth, but I held in the string of retorts. The fire of my defiance fizzled before I could put up a fight.

“Okay. I’ll do better.”

She looked surprised. The papers made a slapping sound when she dropped them onto the desk. “I hope your father is well.”

“Thanks.”

T
HE
NIGHT
of parent-teacher conferences, I ditched my jeans and jacket combo for a button-down shirt and slacks. I’d called all the parents on my list in the days after my meeting with Price, and because I spoke Spanish unlike the rest of my grade team, I was able to schedule appointments with most of them.

David poked his head into my classroom twice to “check up on things,” and each time I had to resist the urge to slam the door in his face. That desire didn’t fade even after three hours of nonstop parent meetings and another half hour of cleaning up my room for the morning.

I was in the midst of dragging desks back into their quads when I heard keys clinking behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see David standing in the doorway looking tired and disgruntled.

“How’d it go? You looked busy all night.”

“I was.” I finished lining up the desks, scrutinized the layout of the room, and then grabbed the stacks of report cards and transcripts. “I heard your outreach didn’t pan out so well.”

David didn’t miss the cheap shot. “You can’t resist making fun of me, can you?”

“Nope.” I shoved the paperwork into a folder and crossed several names off my list. “You can’t resist the desire to talk shit so I’m following your lead, Papi.”

His forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean?”

“Forget it.”

“Why can’t we have a decent conversation?”

“Because you’re just as bad as I knew you would be, and I hate it when people live up to my low-ass expectations.” I walked to my desk and dropped the folder on top. “You went behind my back and complained about me to Price.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Don’t play me for a sucker, kid. She told me all about it during my last post-observation. She said there was
hostility
between us.”

David recoiled, his features locked in an indignant expression. Some of my conviction crumbled.

“I never said any such thing to her. Why the hell would you believe I’d do that?”

“Because we don’t get along, and I second-guess you in front of the others.”

“Yeah, but why would you think I’d go running to Price after what you said to me about setting a tone? I know you think I don’t listen, but I do. You’ve been teaching much longer than me, and I have a lot to learn.”

I contemplated his earnest expression. “Then who did you talk to?”

“I didn’t—” David broke off when I glared. He smoothed his sleeves from where they had bunched at his elbows and tried to straighten out the wrinkles. “I just spoke to another teacher. I was frustrated with you, but I never said that we had hostility between us. I didn’t even go into detail. I’m just as much a problem in this as you are.”

“I’m glad you know that.”

David gave me a scornful look. I couldn’t help but smile.

The guy was so high-strung it was hard not to poke at his flaws. In the month and a half we’d worked together, I’d realized how contradictory he was in terms of expectations and actions. He wanted to seem like an indestructible automaton with the best strategies and classroom practices, but didn’t have the patience to wait for the experience that would get him closer to that goal.

I had no doubt he would burn out after his third or fourth year. No one could run on fumes for so long when they were so demanding of themselves and everyone around them.

“Why don’t we talk like adults and forget this kiddy shit?”

I sat on the edge of my desk and patted the spot next to me. David moved closer, watching his step as though my room was hazardous and full of landmines. He leaned against the whiteboard nearest to my desk.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to know which teacher you spoke to.”

David shrugged. “Too bad. I’ll discuss the situation with them myself. I’m sorry I trusted the wrong person, but I’m not going to throw them under the bus before I have the facts.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but at least the little fucker was loyal. I studied him and switched gears. “Where are you from?”

“Connecticut.”

I nodded, unsurprised. “Where’d you go to school?”

“Brown. Why?” It seemed like he was waiting for a punch line that would land him on the butt end of a white-bread joke. “What about you?”

“All city colleges.”

“Oh.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No! Why the hell are you so defensive all the time? It’s like you walk around with this chip on your shoulder and think everyone is always trying to say they’re better than you.”

“People usually are.” When he opened his mouth to protest again, I held up a finger to thwart the words. “You have no idea what it’s like being me. You’ve got no fucking idea how it feels to be scolded by a twenty-four-year-old kid about professionalism while in a room full of white people. It’s bad enough that this system makes it seem like teaching experience is inverted—the more time you put in, the worse you get according to the city. Better trust things in the hands of baby grads who have their head full of ideals and are easily brainwashed by the admin.”

“No one thinks you’re a fuckup because you’re not white.”

“Don’t turn this into race baiting—that’s only a fragment of what I said. I’m not saying you have problems with me because I’m Puerto Rican. I’m telling you how your attitude, and how Price’s attitude, makes me feel. And why that leads to it looking like I have a chip on my shoulder.”

David nodded, but I could tell he didn’t see what I meant. I bet he’d grown up in some safe household in a whitewashed suburb where everyone played at politically correct activism. He had likely never considered the possibility that a guy like me could still feel uncomfortable in a school full of people like him. No matter how liberal he thought he was.

“I don’t think I’m perfect,” he said after a breath of silence.

“I sure as hell hope not.”

“I don’t. I’m messed up and stressed all the time. I’m sure… I’m sure my stuff sounds stupid compared to your dad being sick and everything, but it’s not like I’m thrilled with my situation either.”

David inched closer to the desk and looked at me from beneath a fall of platinum hair. The kid’s face belonged in a Botticelli painting.

“Is this about your complicated situation?”

“Not entirely, but kind of. I mean, it relates.” David adjusted the collar of my shirt, smoothing it down; a minor imperfection that had nagged him and his unceasing need for order. “My parents were by all accounts perfect, and I’m their only son, so I have to live up to that. I seek out these situations that should be ideal and work really hard to achieve things, but I never feel successful.”

“Financially successful?” I pushed his hand away from my shirt.

“No. I wouldn’t have become a teacher if I cared about the money.”

Spoken like a true trust-fund baby.

David widened his eyes again, turning the conversation into a confessional. “I mean intrinsically. No matter what I do, there is no intrinsic sense of accomplishment. I always feel like I’m trying to catch up to something that’s out of reach. I plateau when I hit a milestone and then can’t move up no matter what I do. And my relationship with my boyfriend is just like that.”

“So you do have a boyfriend.”

“We’ve been separated a couple of times but….” David looked at the ceiling for answers. “I always know I’ll end up going back to him, and I’m always disgusted when I do. And then I get angry that I’m such a dick about it because there’s nothing
wrong
with him. It’s just… not what I wanted. Not how I thought I’d feel with another person. But he’s perfect, so there’s no real reason to break up.”

“Your generation is so messed up.”

“It’s true.” He didn’t appear surprised by my assessment. “The Millennials are screwed up in a lot of ways, but which one do you think applies to me?”

“People your age either use the recession as an excuse to not even attempt adulthood, or try to fight the reality of the economy by expecting 200 percent from yourselves—like that will change the situation. A lot of teachers here are like that. They do everything they can to capitalize on this system’s idea that youth is superior to time put in by vet teachers by racing to leadership positions. But then their stamina fizzles out because they take on so much.”

David’s gaze turned imploring, and he nodded slowly. It was almost like he wanted me to explain what was wrong with him so he could go out and try to fix it. Watching him look so lost was depressing. The kid was doing a lot better for himself than most.

“My boyfriend is like that too,” David said. “He’s achieved more than most of my friends from college, but he still thinks it isn’t enough. He’s a wreck because of it, but he also has a lot of guilt over his privilege and wealth. His father owns some hedge fund. He’s like a billionaire.”

“Is that why you don’t feel the same way about him?”

“No… not just that.”

“So, then, what? You’re waiting for a soul mate, and he’s just good on paper?”

David shrugged and tried to affect nonchalance, but I saw his mouth twitching up in a guilty smile.

“Am I right?”

“Kind of.” David studied the Enlightenment books the kids had created and then a map of Versailles I’d stuck to the whiteboard. “The problem is… sexual chemistry. Or lack thereof.”

“Oh.”

His gaze settled on me again. “Yeah.”

“And that’s why you push up on me when you’re drunk and feeling all naughty and brazen.”

The answer came slower, his voice quieter, “Yeah.”

I wanted to laugh at the cliché of it all. The Ivy League graduate, buttoned-up and shiny blond, earnestly trying to make a difference in the inner city, but bored with his yuppie boyfriend—a lawyer, premed, maybe some executive at a start-up—because the sex was vanilla, and I was the macho Latino dude with the answer to it all.

It was so corny that I wanted to tell him I wasn’t the firecracker Puerto Rican to spice up his sex life, but my mind was already cranking out the possibilities of how I could do just that. No wonder the kid had come so hard from being used by me and Nunzio’s hot, Sicilian ass. I could clearly see him deep throating Nunzio while I ran my tongue all over him, and my gears shifted from castigating lecturer to willing participant in his undoing.

I tried to look away, but David’s lips were parted, and damned if he didn’t look like he wanted a repeat performance right then and there. Just admitting to his dirty little secret seemed to have turned him on. He moved in a step until he was standing between my thighs and dropped his hands on either side of me.

My thoughts hurtled ahead, and I wondered how bad he wanted my dick—if he’d let me do him right there even if it meant him cheating on his poor bastard of a boyfriend.

The idea was at once delightfully filthy and a massive turnoff, but the notion of someone wanting me so much was enough to make me shoot my load. Too bad it was never going to happen.

David listed forward, and I leaned back inch by pathetic inch until a figure shadowed the doorway over his shoulder.

Nunzio’s hands were in the pockets of his bomber jacket and a book bag hung from one shoulder as he stood in the doorway. I waited for him to smirk or joke, to make some inappropriate comment referencing our threesome, but he was just silent and staring.

I planted a hand against David’s chest and shoved him away. Confusion flashed in his face, but then he noticed Nunzio looming behind him.

“I didn’t know the market was still open on your ass,” Nunzio commented with a hint of his usual drawling smarm. “I’d have been all over that, Mr. Butler.”

David reddened and muttered something, but I’d already quit paying him any mind. I wondered if Nunzio was serious. After that night in July, he’d never given any indication that he still found David attractive, and the possibility wasn’t as pleasant as it had been thirty seconds ago when my brain had provided a play-by-play of us wrecking David on a sweat-soaked bed.

I didn’t realize I was frowning until Nunzio’s smirk finally made an appearance, hard-edged and teeth flashing white at me.

I stepped around David and he looked at me sidelong, but I followed the route of pretending nothing out of the ordinary was happening. I jerked my chin at Nunzio. “You want to head out?”

“Nah, why don’t you finish up with David.”

“We’re finished.”

David nodded, but it may as well have been in slow motion. The baffled look he was aiming at me only heightened my sudden desire to kick him out of the room.

“Nope, I’m gonna head out on my own. I need to get the fuck out of this building before I slaughter someone.” Nunzio gave me the same tight-lipped smile, unreadable and completely fake, and backed away. “But you should tell David about the happy hour tomorrow.”

Now I was dumbfounded. He’d informed me that David was persona non grata at his annual post-PTC shindig, as were Kimberly and Erica.

“Okay, then,” I said slowly.

“Catch you kids later.”

Nunzio turned away, and I listened to the sound of his receding footsteps until they faded completely when a door opened and closed.

“That’s cool that he invited me,” David said, face lit up and oblivious like a kid on a summer morning. “Who else is going?”