It's Not Shakespeare (7 page)

Marlowe was good enough to relieve himself in the grass on the way to the main gates, so James could use one of his habitual plastic bags to throw it discreetly in the trash on the way in and forget about the whole process for a couple of hours. It was nice of Marlow, because it meant that James didn’t have to worry about dog shit while his dog was in dog heaven.

For one thing, a number of the men showing their cars had dogs, and Marlowe—who was a social butterfly at heart—loved walking up to other dogs and introducing himself. The other dogs (many of them bigger and meaner than Marlowe ever dreamed of being) often simply took a deep drag off of Marlowe’s fur, snuffled him around a little, and then went back to snoozing next to the car, which seemed to be their specialty.

After about an hour of wandering, and simply soaking in everything from Rafael’s enthusiasm (and his enthusiastic lectures on how the muscle car was one of the most positive definitions of American culture on the worldwide stage) to the artistry of the cars themselves, Rafael said, “I’ll have mercy on you, Jimmy, and we can get some food now. Out at the swap meet, they got barbecue cooking and some porta-tables. We can sit there, and you can pretend to be interested some more—you been a real good sport.”

James, who wasn’t joking about how he couldn’t even change his sparkplugs, was absolutely honest and sincere when he told Rafael that the cars themselves were beautiful.

“It’s really neat!” he said, forgetting for a moment that he’d been trying not to sound old and outdated with his wordplay. “I never knew cars could come in such a variety, you know? I thought they were mostly boxes with engines—this is a lot of fun.”

Rafael smiled and ducked his head a little as they stood in line at the barbecue kiosk. “Cars are funny. Some people think that cars are like… a right, and the people who work on them are, like, staff, right? We’re barely good enough to work on their shit, right? And some people think that we’re, like,
gods,
because we can do shit that they can’t understand, right? You’re like the first person I’ve met who looks at it like, I don’t know—a skill set.”

“It
is!”
James argued, and Rafael shook his head and reached for James’s hand again.

This time James curled his fingers around tightly, and he was rewarded with Rafael’s unfettered grin. James shrugged, feeling uncomfortable—it wasn’t like he’d earned it.

“So what’s your skill set, Jimmy?”

James blushed. “I correct a mean paper,” he said truthfully, and Rafael laughed.

“Sophie says you’re the best thing to happen to our little piss-ant college since they upgraded the computer lab. With what you have to do to impress that heifer, I’m thinkin’ maybe you’re better than that.”

“I love what I do,” James said simply. “I mean… I used to
think
I loved it when I was at a big university and had a lecture hall and everything, but that was small time. I
love
the small classroom. I
love
arguing literature with my students. I
love
it when someone just totally gets something that I’ve always thought was earth shattering, but that the rest of the world seems to think is… I don’t know, trivia. For geeks only.”

They made it up to the window, and Rafael let go of his hand long enough to order for the both of them. James would have made a protest, but as they walked away carrying three orders of barbecue (one for Marlowe) Rafael grinned at him and said, “My treat!” and it was that simple. He wondered if evil-ex-who-would-not-be-named had ever, once, picked up the tab between the two of them, and thought that maybe not. Of course evil-ex wouldn’t have bothered coming to a car show and swap meet, either—but that would have been his loss.

They sat down at one of the portable plastic benches, Marlowe at their feet, and James started ripping one of the pieces of chicken into little barbecue-free bits to feed his dog. He looked up to find Rafael watching him with sort of a quiet amusement.

“What?”

“That’s a lot of attention to detail,
papi.
I’m wondering what other things you pay that much attention to.”

For once, James didn’t blush. Rafael was young and vibrant and exciting—but James had something to bring to the table, in this area at least.

“You’re going to be
so
excited to find out!” he promised earnestly, and was rewarded when
Rafael
blushed and then turned his dark eyes away.

“Oh man… you know, I don’t got nothing to say to that!”

James gave a toothy smile, and they sat in a companionable silence for a while, eating. Watching the people was a fascinating distraction, anyway. The swap meet was loosely arranged in rows of cars, with drop cloths and tables full of vintage parts, model cars, and somehow meaningful doodads lined up in front of them. The clientele was mostly male—and mostly late middle age. A lot of burly men with stocky beer bellies, handlebar mustaches, and tattoos wandered around, scowling at the offerings and then lighting up like children when they saw a car part that was especially dear to their hearts.

Some of them actually had children with them, saying, “Look at this, Dad! Do you like this?” and taking cues from their fathers when they found something worthwhile. There were women there too—some of them long-suffering, looking for the deals at the rare-antique lot, but some of them tattooed and avid, as into the cars as their male counterparts and completely submersed in the life.

Rafael looked up from his chicken (which he was eating with a single-mindedness that impressed the hell out of James) and took a gander around to see what James was so intent on. A Hispanic man in his fifties walked by, hair buzzed close on the sides and slicked back on top, wearing a red plaid shirt and loose and faded jeans. He had faded tattoos up and down his forearms, and Rafael looked at him, startled, and then shook his head.

“Man, for a minute I thought my pops was here—almost shit my shorts!”

“Your dad looks like that?”

Rafael nodded vigorously. “Yeah—and this parking lot looks like his garage threw up on a drop cloth in nice, neat little rows. Probably why I love places like this—I find the
best
stuff for the Charger, you know? There was an inset dash and a steering wheel back there—I swear, if I hadn’t just finished buying her rims, I would have
so
tricked that sweet little bitch up, you hear me?”

James looked at him, head cocked. “You’re a gay man. Why isn’t the car a twink?”

Rafael laughed so hard he choked on a mouthful of beans, and when he’d recovered, he rested his face in his hands and laughed some more. James smiled at him, beautiful in the blue and gold day, and thought
I did that. I made him laugh, and it’s something he loves to do.
Suddenly, a little part of James that he hadn’t known he’d possessed started doing the chicken strut in his chest. Laughter—a skill set. He was proud.

Rafael looked up at him eventually, still wiping tears from his eyes. “You proud of yourself, Professor Jimmy?”

James nodded. “Yeah. In fact I am.” Austen hadn’t laughed a lot. He’d concentrated on being sophisticated and intellectual. In fact, it was one of the things James had been relieved to walk away from, although until this exact moment, he hadn’t known if that relief was real, or sour grapes. Turned out, it was relief—and now it was tripled.

“So, your dad has tattoos like that?” The thought of someone’s father looking like… well….

“Yeah, Pops was living the life when he was Sophie’s age. He pulled out of it—moved out to Lincoln, back when land was cheap ’cause there was a whole lot of nothin’ out there. Our little suburb street—when I was little, used to be, that was the only part of the place looked like civilization, you know? Had to drive that whole twisty thing of 193 to find a grocery store—and back then, it wasn’t all slicked down like it is now. Man, Moms used to get car sick and once a week, there’s Pops, dragging her to town.” Rafael was prattling on about his family, and James listened with half an ear, still stuck on the first thing he’d said.

“‘Living the life’?” he asked, not sure if it meant what it sounded like.

Rafael nodded in a purely matter of fact way. “You know—Fourteenth Street Crips, I think. But back thirty years ago, they had a different name. Didn’t matter—same old bullshit. Guns, drugs, fights. Bullshit. Pops don’t talk about it much, but I guess he had some brothers, and then he
had
a brother, and then after his brother died, he decided he’d rather have a wife and six kids somewhere far away. Lincoln used to be far away.” Rafael sighed. “Ain’t so far now. But it don’t matter—Pops and Moms managed to convince us all that we’re ordinary folks. No blue bandanas or red and black Giants hats in my past, you feel me?”

James nodded, busy having his entire world-view shoved wider by a couple of sentences. It didn’t matter that Rafael hadn’t been “in the life,” as he’d called it. What mattered was that something he’d seen on the news, had dismissed as something that “other people” lived, had touched this man who had… who had so unexpectedly touched him.

“What’s the matter?” Rafael asked guardedly. “You think I was joking when I called myself a brown hoodrat?”

James blinked. “You know—I don’t even know what that means. But no—it’s just that I was thinking there aren’t a lot of gangs in Maine. Or a big Hispanic population. Or anyone who’s ever interested me like you do.”

Rafael’s head tilted slowly sideways, as though he wasn’t sure what to make of that, so James blushed and started again.

“I’m sort of a boring old white guy, Rafael,” he said apologetically. “From
Maine.
It’s like an entire state full of boring old white people. There’s going to be a lot of stuff I don’t know.”

“You saying you don’t want to do this?”

James shook his head, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “No. No. You’re probably the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in ten years—which is hard to believe, because even when I was a kid, and I humped any gay man walking like a schnauzer humps a fire hydrant, I don’t think I ever
dated
someone for longer than three days and felt like I could say that.”

Rafael laughed, hunching over his lap so only the top of his shoulders could be seen over the edge of the picnic table. “So what are you saying, Jimmy?

James shrugged. “I’m saying I can see why I’d follow you through a parking lot full of car parts that are apparently hidden treasure, but I’m not sure why you’d want to drag me here.”

Rafael straightened his spine and rolled his neck a little, relaxing. He gave James a sleepy-eyed smile that reminded James that he
was
evil sex on legs, and said, “Maybe I like you because even if you can’t fix a car to save your life, you still know that this parking lot is pure gold, you ever think that? Maybe I like you because you tried to mother Sophie Winchester, and even her own mother thinks that’s a bad idea anymore. Those are good reasons, you think?”

James shrugged, not convinced. “I think I’m sort of unremarkable,” he said honestly. “And every time you laugh at something I say, it feels like I won the lottery.”

Rafael blushed and scrubbed his face with his hand. “Just the fact that you’d say that to me?
Papi,
that’s a reason to be here with you, okay? Don’t worry about being boring, old, and white. I don’t think you’re boring, you’re not as old as you seem to think you are, and you can’t help the being white. You know, Sophie kept talking about you and how much she liked your class, and I said anyone who could make her not be such a flaming bitch had to be magic. You want to know why she thought you were my Prince Charming, that’s it right there.”

They sat there and blushed at each other for several weighted moments, when the only thing they could hear was the beating of their own hearts, the sweep of the wind overhead, the far-off traffic sounds, and the babble of the other visitors to the car show. At that moment, the wind—not content to sweep the yellow pollen into glittering clouds against the blue sky, swooped
down
instead, blowing napkins, Styrofoam cups, and plastic utensils to the four corners of the earth while the people sitting in the chilly shade chased haplessly after them.

For James, the moment marked the end of his allergy medication, because while Rafael was chasing after their trash, he started a sneezing/coughing fit that didn’t stop until Rafael had driven them halfway to Lincoln, and then, it was because they stopped off at the nearest Walgreens so he could run inside and buy some Zicam.

“I’b do dorry,” he apologized, sitting miserably in the passenger’s seat and waiting for the happy little pill to kick in. He wiped his nose for about the one hundred and fifty thousandth time, grateful for the Kleenex with the aloe in it. “Dis is
doooo
not texy.”

At that point Rafael started to giggle, and he pretty much giggled through James’s directions until they drove up to James’s little house. Rafael pulled up into the driveway, and James looked at him, feeling miserable with embarrassment, as well as from achiness, headache, stuffed head, and general misery caused by the kind of violent allergy attack that only someone who
hadn’t
lived his entire life in the Sacramento valley could experience in the spring.

“You pwobbly don’t want to ’pend the night now, do you?” he asked, aware of how supremely
unsexy
he had to appear at the moment.

Rafael looked at him sideways, little crinkles in the corners of his eyes showing off for the moment that he wasn’t as young as he looked. “Nah, Jimmy. I’ll stay. Maybe no special sex or anything, but if you don’t mind dropping me off at Sophie’s again tomorrow, we can go in, watch a movie, cop a cuddle on the couch. I told you, it’ll be good.”

James managed a smile. “Good,” he said, aware that his allergies had finally eased up enough to talk. “Becauthe I bought gwocewies. I wad goi’g do make you omelets in the morning.”

Rafael’s expression was… hard to define. If James had to put a finger on it, he’d call it “luminous.” No matter what its name, though, James was suddenly supremely grateful that he had maybe a few other talents besides the one they probably wouldn’t use.