From Morocco to Paris (14 page)

“What are you really afraid of, Zane?”

“Afraid?”

“Are you a homophobe just like Daddy? Scared of being a faggot?”

“No! Don’t fucking say things like that. I told you my brother’s gay, and I adore him! This isn’t about that.”

Davey slipped his hand into his back pocket and withdrew a keycard.

“You have issues with your own sexuality,” Davey said. “That goes deeper than your father kicking you down the stairs for sucking a cock.”

“Maybe I do,” Zane said. They stopped in front of a door, and Zane looked into Davey’s eyes, those blue depths calm now, but not happy. “I’ve had a lot of conflicting messages in my life,” Zane said. “You have no idea.”

“You’re a grown-up now. It’s time for you to make your own decisions about who you are and what you want.”

Zane wished he could explain -- the tension in his house growing up, simmering just below the surface always; his father’s fists; the screaming, the names called.

“It’s not that easy,” Zane said and looked down, shame battling with pride battling with a sense of his own weakness. His chest still smarted from the punch.

“Zane, look at me,” Davey said.

He did.

“When I was fourteen,” Davey said, “my mother was shacking up with this shady guy on the outskirts of Indianapolis. He had a son, a year older than me. I was fascinated by him. I thought he was cute. One day, he let me kiss him in the backyard. It was my first time kissing another boy, and it felt good. The next morning on the way to school, he and two of his friends jumped me. They called me a faggot and knocked me around a little. Then they dragged me into a shed where that cute, fascinating boy shoved his cock in my mouth while his friends held me and pushed it down my throat until I threw up.”

Zane closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“The point is,” he nudged Zane and he opened his eyes, “I never let their actions define who I am. I let it define who
they
are. A bunch of close-minded, violent bigots. The best revenge I could have ever gotten was to not let it put me in the closet.”

Zane looked away. He didn’t want to imagine Davey being abused in such a way.

“I’m not like anyone you’ve ever met before, Zane,” Davey said. Zane looked back at him. “And I guarantee you’ll never meet anyone like me again. I don’t want you to miss out.”

“You’ve got a high opinion of yourself.”

Davey swiped the keycard and opened the door.

“I think you have a pretty high opinion of me, too.”

Zane just gazed at him, not speaking.

“You need to take a lesson from your father, like I did from those bastards.” Davey reached out and touched Zane’s lower lip with his thumb. Zane tasted the salt of his skin. “Don’t be him. You need to understand what makes you a man has nothing to do with who you sleep with. Until you realize that, you’ll be missing out. On me, and a lot of things.”

Davey withdrew his hand and stepped into the room. The door closed in Zane’s face; he stared at it for a while, thinking Davey might open it up again, but when he didn’t, he stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets and walked back to the elevator.

Chapter 11

“You should get him a gift,” Elliot said.

“What?” Zane looked up from his paper. Elliot sat across from him, eating eggs and toast. Elliot didn’t like foreign fare. He preferred his food familiar, as Zane had learned from numerous food runs. “What are you talking about?” Zane asked.

Zane had, after much internal debate, consulted Elliot and Cristiano on his dilemma with Davey -- providing as few details as possible, of course. He needed some advice, never having been in such a delicate situation before.

“Oh yes, that’s a good idea.” Cristiano sipped tea while reading his own section of the paper. He probably didn’t need to find the English parts. “Get him a gift.”

“Get him a gift,” Zane repeated.

“It’s a good idea.” Elliot stabbed at his eggs with his fork. “Gifts can say a lot of things. They can say I love you, I miss you…”

“I told you it’s not about that. We just got in a fight, that’s all. I just want to find a way to make it up to him.”

“They can also say I’m sorry,” Cristiano said gently. “If it’s the right kind of gift.”

Zane considered his words. He took a drink of his coffee, staring at the table, brow furrowed.

“What kind of gift would I even get him?” Zane asked.

Elliot swallowed and looked at Cristiano. “There’s only one way to decide.”

Cristiano smiled and folded up the paper. “Let’s go to the souks.”

They went to Khan al-Khalili in the Islamic district, a sprawling maze of a market roughly the size of a small town, bustling with people and offering for sale any item one could imagine. The heat and humidity were intensified there. Zane looked around at all the people, some in modern dress and others in traditional garments. Every race and ethnicity seemed represented.

Elliot had a map.

“It’s divided into sections, see?” He showed Zane. “If we decide what we want, we can go there.”

“I have no idea what we want,” Zane said.

“Let’s browse a little,” Cristiano suggested. He wore jeans and white button-down shirt, sunglasses perched atop his head -- yet another pair, this time with stylish red frames, and Zane wondered if he collected them. “Maybe we’ll get an idea.”

They browsed, but Zane realized quickly they weren’t going to cover any substantial area very fast and would wear themselves out in the heat if they tried.

“All right, let’s start thinking here,” Elliot said. He walked on one side of Zane, Cristiano on the other. “We’ll name some things. How about jewelry?”

Zane made a face. “Too girly.”

Elliot paused. He looked Zane over, eyeing the necklace around his neck, the layers of wrist gear, the rings on his fingers.

“I mean
giving
him jewelry would be girly! You don’t give a man jewelry. If you’re another man, I mean.”

Cristiano frowned and looked at the slender gold bracelet on his wrist.

“No jewelry!” Zane waved his hand, bracelets rattling. “Something else!”

They walked on, gazing into and pausing at various stalls. Zane listened to all the haggling going on, the voices talking a mile a minute, reminding him of Davey at the market in Marrakech.

“What about pottery?” Elliot asked. “Nothing says ‘I’m sorry I was an insufferable bastard’ like a good piece of pottery.”

“That makes no sense,” Zane said.

“Oh, but it does.” Cristiano smiled sweetly. “He can bust it over your head, then he’ll feel better.”

They moved on, Elliot and Cristiano presenting various ideas and Zane shooting them all down. No clothes, they were worse than jewelry. Flowers were insipid, along with candy or any other sort of food. Cologne, while sophisticated and interesting, usually remained a personal preference. Zane started to run out of creative excuses.

“You know, I’m reminded of something my father once told me,” Elliot said, when they stopped to get drinks in a little coffee house. “He said, when you give someone a gift as an apology, it should not only fit the crime, but give them back what you took from them.”

Zane took a sip from his little porcelain cup, filled with strong Arabica coffee. They sat at a table near the door. Cristiano had several bags already, mostly filled with clothes he’d purchased, and he sifted through them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zane asked.

“What was your crime?” Elliot asked.

Zane considered his words for a moment, holding his cup and gazing out the door at the people passing by.

“Pride, I guess.”

“Well then,” Elliot said, “you’ve got to show him your -- “ he cleared his throat and fixed him with a condescending smile, “
friendship
is more important to you than your pride.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to humiliate yourself,” Cristiano said. He placed the bags at his feet and smiled at Zane. “You have to put yourself on the line and show him you don’t care what other people think of you.”

The idea made Zane’s insides cringe.

“That doesn’t sound like it would help either one of us,” Zane said.

“You have to take the rest of my father’s advice too,” Elliot said. “You have to give him back what you took away from him.”

“I didn’t take anything from him!”

“Then why’s he so mad at you? Think about it, Zane. This is a metaphorical taking away, not like you stole his watch or something.”

“I don’t know.” But Zane tried to think, cup hovering beneath his lips. He took a sip and thought some more. “I don’t know,” he said again. “His peace of mind? His child-like sense of wonder?”

“His faith in you?” Cristiano said softly. He gazed at Zane with those maddeningly dark, knowing eyes.

Zane didn’t respond. He wasn’t entirely convinced Davey ever had any faith in him. Really, what did “having faith” mean? Did his feelings stem from believing Zane to be more than the sum of his parts?

“I don’t think a piece of pottery is going to restore that,” Zane said, putting his cup down. “No matter how much it costs. Or how easy it breaks.”

“Maybe you should make him something,” Elliot suggested. “Give him something from the heart.”

“I’ll get out my needlepoint.”

“You know, maybe he’s right, Zane.” Cristiano spoke with the gentle voice of reason. “A gift isn’t necessarily something you can hold in your hands, especially if it’s from the heart.” He leaned forward and brushed his fingers across the back of Zane’s hand. His fingertips were soft. “And sometimes,” Cristiano lowered his voice, “when pride is very strong, even the smallest gesture can make huge ripples.”

They sat and finished their coffee, silent for a while, and then Elliot and Cristiano started discussing their purchases. Zane barely listened, chewing Cristiano’s words over in his head. He drummed his fingers on the table, mind flitting from thought to thought. He stared at the floor, then the wall. Finally, he focused on the sunlight slanting on the ground outside and widened his eyes.

Zane finished off his coffee, determination surging in his chest.

“You guys think we can find a digital printing service around here somewhere?” he asked.

***

In the afternoon Elliot did pickups and Zane joined him in the studio. Zane had a huge leather binder stuffed with Elliot’s scripts, schedules, pertinent correspondence, and every mention of him in magazines or on the internet to track what the gossip was saying about him. Zane lugged the thing around everywhere, a sort of office really, and he’d attached pictures of his own family and friends to the covers. The binder rested on his lap while he watched Saul talk to the actors about the scene.

A snort pulled Zane out of his concentration.

“You guys stop fighting then?” Rory asked. He stood nearby, waiting for Saul to need him, much the way Zane waited around for Elliot.

“Yep,” Zane said simply.

“Aw, that’s sweet,” Rory mocked.

Zane said nothing. He caught sight of Davey crossing the room and his heart crawled into his throat. Cristiano had conveniently put Davey in charge of monitoring costumes during the shoot.

Davey wore track pants and a blue t-shirt, a bulging duffel bag hanging from one arm and a water bottle in his opposite hand. He glanced at Zane as he approached, expression wary. Zane had deliberately perched himself in the costuming area.

Zane looked back at Saul. He heard Davey come up beside him, as Zane was completely in the way, and felt a thump as Davey dropped his duffel bag on the floor. Zane shifted in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, bobbing his dangling foot. From the corner of his eye he saw Davey staring at him.

“Zane.”

Zane looked up, forcing his best poker face. “Huh?”

Davey stared at Zane’s binder, mouth opened a little. Zane couldn’t read his expression and wondered if that was a bad sign.

“Where did that come from?” Davey asked and pointed.

Zane looked down at the binder, as if just noticing it on his lap. Davey, of course, was referring to the picture on the front cover. Zane had snapped the photograph during filming in Melilla. They’d been a little tipsy because catering snuck vodka onto the set and Zane wanted to test his new camera. He grabbed Davey and snapped a picture of the two of them, faces pressed together, grinning like idiots in the afternoon sunlight. Zane had bought a strip of stickers at the market and stuck the picture on his binder with several glittery pink hearts.

“Melilla.” Zane chuckled. “I think Saul figured out we were drinking on the set that day.”

Zane cast a sideways look at Rory, but he had been summoned and walked away. Zane looked back at Davey and found his face still unreadable.

“I gotta go to the bathroom,” Davey said. He turned and walked off.

Zane got up and went after him. He caught up to him in the hallway where the bathrooms were.

“Listen!” Zane said. Davey stopped and looked back at him. “Do you know what it took for me to do that? What it’s taking for me to leave it there?”

“Why did you put it on there? It’s ridiculous.”

“Because. I -- please don’t make me say it. You never take it easy on me, despite what you think.”

Zane had a whole speech prepared, but the words were lost. His mind raced, his heart raced, and he just wanted Davey to say something, anything, reassuring.

“I spent all day trying to figure out a gift for you,” Zane said, “to try to make it up to you. And then I realized -- what you need most from me is an apology.”

Davey tilted his chin up. He didn’t speak, but Zane saw the light in his eyes soften and change.

“I’m very sorry.” Zane stumbled over the words but struggled to keep his footing. “I’m sorry I’m fucked up. I’m sorry I’m so worried about what other people will think of me, even behind closed doors. I’m sorry I can’t be wild and crazy and carefree like you.”

Davey stood silent, listening.

“You have to be gentle with me,” Zane said. He looked down, trying to escape Davey’s gaze, trying to withdraw into the safety of himself. “I don’t know anything about this place you want to take me. I’m scared. Can you understand that? Do you know fear at all?”