Waterways (35 page)

“I know,” Samaki said. “We did too. But she knows you have your own place now, and she worries. You know how moms… how she is.”

Kory had a flash of his mom handing him a brochure on disease to read with his boyfriend, the image so incongruous that he couldn’t restrain a laugh. “I like your mom. Should we get it out of the way?” He patted the bed beside him.

Samaki did sit down then, his tail resting beside Kory’s in the familiar way. They looked down at the brochure. “We don’t have to read it out loud, do we?” Kory asked.

“No.” Samaki held the paper between them. “Just let me know when you’re done.”

It wasn’t one of the ones the Rainbow Center stocked, though the material was certainly familiar to Kory. This brochure explained things in rougher, simpler language that seemed aimed at a younger audience. He read the material about same-species diseases, which he and Jenny had gone over, and then said, “Done,” so that Samaki could flip the paper over and they could read about cross-species diseases and the ways you could get them.

“We don’t really do any of this stuff,” Kory said, pointing at the list. “That, sometimes.”

“And I’m fine with that risk because I’m pretty sure you’re not seeing anyone else behind my back,” Samaki said.

Kory slid his finger down a few more items, and then stopped. “I wouldn’t mind trying that one.”

Samaki nodded, giving Kory a smile. “We will.”

The door cracked open just then. They heard Malaya’s, “Hey, hang on,” and then Ajani’s high voice.

“Are you guys kissing?”

Samaki laughed, and folded the brochure. He pecked Kory on the cheek. “Not any more.”

“Can I come in?”

The door opened enough for his little red muzzle to poke through before Kory said, “Sure.”

Samaki tilted the box toward Kory so that the otter could see the three wrapped condoms in the bottom, then dropped the brochure on top of them while Kory was stifling a giggle. Ajani, looking around the room, didn’t notice Samaki closing the box.

“This is smaller than our room,” he said, edging between the bed and dresser. “Did you move these from your house?”

Kory shook his head. “They came with the apartment. And there’s only me living here. You’ve got Samaki and Kasim in your room.”

“Look, the paint is peeling here.” The cub pulled a big flake of it off the wall.

“Hey,” Samaki said, half-laughing, “don’t do that. Kory’ll get in trouble.”

Ajani’s ears flattened, then came back up. “It was already loose,” he said. “Anyway, it’ll be just me and Kasim when you move in here, right? I already called your bed.”

“That won’t be for a while,” Samaki said. “Beginning of the summer.”

“I wanted to call it before Kasim,” Ajani said, now looking out of the window. “Is that a drug dealer?” he asked, pointing.

“I doubt it,” Malaya said from the doorway. “They’re nocturnal.”

“Is he giving someone something?” Samaki asked.

“No,” Ajani said, “but people keep giving him money.”

“Oh, is he a raccoon?” Kory got up to stand beside the cub. “That’s Joe the Jokester. He just tells jokes all day for spare change.”

“Really? I wanna see him! Can we see him when we go back down? Please?”

“All right, all right.” Samaki laughed. “How much does he charge per joke?”

“Whatever you’ve got,” Malaya said. “He’s not picky.”

“Pickled, maybe,” Kory said. “You’re staying for dinner, right?”

“Depends.” Samaki raised an eyebrow. “Are you cooking?”

“Ha,” Malaya said.

Kory grinned back. “We don’t really have anything to cook. How does McD’s sound?”

“Great!” Ajani wagged his tail. “Mom never lets us go there.”

“Let’s hurry up, then,” Malaya said. “I have to be at work in half an hour.”

“How’s the job?” Samaki asked. He and Kory followed Malaya and the skipping Ajani back into the living room.

“Oh, wonderful,” Malaya said. “I get paid to tell stoned hippies where to find the Anarchist Cookbook.”

“What’s ‘stoned’?” Ajani asked.

Malaya and Kory looked at Samaki, who said, “Kind of like drunk.”

“Except from the drug dealers?” Ajani asked.

“Yeah.” Samaki shook his head. “How did you figure that out?”

Ajani wagged his tail proudly. “They play those “don’t do drugs” ads alla time during Yu-Gi-Oh.”

“Glad you’re listening.” Samaki ushered his brother out the door, Kory behind them as Malaya locked up.

After lunch, Kory, Samaki, and Ajani walked Malaya to the bookstore, then picked up the wreath from the car. In the lobby of Kory’s building, they ran into two of the mongoose family, the mother and a young girl. “Ah,” the mother said, smiling at the wreath, “I thought I smelled Christmas from your apartment. You’re Kory, right?”

Kory nodded. “We’re decorating. My friend brought over some decorations.”

“I’m Samaki,” the fox said, extending a paw, “and this is my brother Ajani.”

“I am Nani Ki-Yo,” the mongoose said, taking his paw gently, “and my daughter Jenny.”

Jenny and Ajani looked at each other and nodded acknowledgment. “Nice to meet you,” Samaki said. “I was wondering what Kory’s neighbors would be like.”

“Come for dinner sometime,” Nani said. “Let me know, Kory.”

Kory promised to do so. “They seem like nice people,” Samaki said once they were back in the apartment.

“I haven’t really talked with them much,” Kory said. “I guess Malaya met the son, Shara, and I met Nani a couple days ago.”

“We should take her up on that dinner.” Samaki unpacked the artificial tree and started setting it up. Ajani busily laid out all the ornaments, tail wagging.

“Yeah, sometime when you’re over,” Kory said noncommittally. He didn’t mind getting to know his neighbors, but he couldn’t help wondering what they would think of a gay couple.

The tree was pretty with the ornaments on it, even for an artificial one. Kory and Samaki hung Santa Fox in his bedroom near the dresser, stealing a warmer kiss as they did. Coming back into the living room, they were greeted with the overwhelming scent of pine; Ajani had hung all the scent-pines near the tree, right next to Kory’s doorway. “Malaya’s going to kill me,” Kory laughed, but he left them up. The smell already reminded him of Samaki and Christmas, two of his favorite things.

They took Ajani to the Rainbow Center with them for the afternoon, where Kory gave Margo an update on the apartment and Malaya’s job. Ajani got bored after only a couple hours and started to whine, so they had to leave the upstairs hallway half-painted.

“See you next weekend,” Samaki said.

“And Christmas break after that.” Kory couldn’t wait. It promised to be the first quiet time he’d had in a long time.

“You and Nick are coming over for Christmas Day, right?”

“If you’re sure…”

Samaki mock-glared at him. “Stop asking. It’s a family holiday, yeah, but you’re family.”

“We have fruitcake!” Ajani yelled, strapping himself into the front seat Kory had just vacated.

“Oh, okay, if you have fruitcake…” Kory grinned and waved. “Thanks for the decorations. See you next week.”

At school, things had settled down since the week Sal had exposed Kory’s relationship. Though Kory and his former best friend still maintained a stony silence toward each other during the fifteen minutes they sat next to each other in homeroom, the rest of the school treated the news as old hat, at least, as far as Kory could tell. Even Geoff had moved on, in a remarkably short time, to other amusements than teasing the two of them. Kory kept a low profile, perfectly content with this state of affairs, aware of how quickly it could change.

Only Perry continued to skirt Kory. The last session of their college prep meetings was supposed to be this week, but Kory had finished his applications and sent them out, and without his mother’s nagging insistence on attending the class, he saw no reason to waste his time on it. Mr. Pena had seen Kory in the hallway twice since the session he’d missed and hadn’t said anything, so apparently he agreed.

So the only time Kory saw Perry was when he walked into English class, before he sat down. The wolf never met his eyes, and waited until he was gone before getting up. Kory told himself that he hadn’t really liked Perry much anyway. That eased the sting of rejection.

In fact, things had settled down enough in that week before Christmas that when Kory noticed that Sal’s muzzle was swollen, he broached the silence. “What happened to your face?” he asked.

The other otter continued to stare straight ahead as if Kory hadn’t spoken. Then he reached up to touch the cut on his muzzle and said, “You talking to me?”

Irritated, Kory said, “Unless there’s someone else in here with a fat lip.”

“You could have one if you want.”

“Fine.” Kory stared forward at their homeroom teacher, a middle-aged spectacled bear, and waited for the bell to ring.

He mentioned it to Nick on Wednesday, when they went out for pizza, but Nick was more interested in talking about Christmas at the Rodens’. “Do you think they’ll have the candied peppers again?”

Kory laughed. “Maybe. I don’t think that was just a Thanksgiving thing.”

“I think I can stay the whole afternoon and evening this time. Hey, are you coming to Christmas Eve Mass?”

“Yeah.” Kory chewed thoughtfully. “I want to try to bring Samaki. And Malaya.”

Nick inclined his head. “I guess you know her better than I do.”

Kory laughed. “I don’t think she’ll enjoy it. But I want her to meet Father Joe.”

“I want to come sit with you guys.”

Kory shook his head. “You should stay with Mom.”

“I know.” Nick sighed. “I’ll come say hi after.” He indicated the last slice. “You want that?”

“Go ahead.” Kory grinned. “How’s swimming?”

“Fine,” Nick crammed the slice into his mouth. “Mfth.”

“Fifth in sophomores or the whole team?”

“Whole team.” His brother swallowed. “I beat out Reg last week and coach moved me up.”

“Hey, cool, congratulations.”

Nick shrugged. “So Samaki’s okay with you having your own place? Is he gonna move in there too?”

“Beginning of summer. It doesn’t make sense for him to move before school’s over.”

“You guys still going to the prom?”

Kory picked up his soda and took a drink. “I dunno.”

“When are you gonna decide? Isn’t it in April like ours?”

“I’m not sure. We haven’t really talked about it in a while. But we got our college applications done. Have you started looking at colleges?”

Nick grinned at him. “Depends where you go.”

Kory felt warmth in his chest. “Don’t limit yourself that way. You gotta go to the best place you can.”

“I know,” Nick said. “But I figure you will, too.”

Kory’s application to Whitford had been completed quickly and mailed the same day. The applications to Forester and State he’d taken more time over, worked on with Samaki back and forth, and still he didn’t know which they’d be attending, with his current financial situation and Samaki’s ongoing one. “What’s right for me might not be right for you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nick slurped the rest of his Coke. “Just go somewhere with a swim team.”

After dinner, they took the bus to Kory’s place and spent a happy hour hanging the ornaments Nick had brought from home. If Malaya hadn’t been at work, Kory thought, she would have thrown up her wings and grumbled, and indeed, when she did see the added ornaments, she said, “As if the pine scent wasn’t bad enough. You know, I have to sleep next to those things.”

“That one’s been mine since I was five,” Kory said of the gaudy snowflake Nick had hung right over the arm of the couch.

“Explains a lot,” the bat said, but she didn’t move the snowflake, even though Kory noticed it was just below her eye level when she hung upside down to sleep.

Samaki liked the ornaments too, when he arrived to pick Kory and Malaya up for Christmas Eve Mass. “Lot of church this year,” he said.

“For you.” Malaya hadn’t put a coat on and showed no sign of being ready to go, even though Kory had talked her into saying yes the night before.

“Come on,” Kory said to Malaya. “We’re not making you go in the morning, too. Father Joe is really cool.”

“I’ve had enough fire and brimstone to last my whole life,” she retorted, her eyes fixed on “Frosty the Snowman.”

“He’s not like that, I told you.”

She waved a wing at him. “Frosty’s just about to get melted by the magician,” she said. “I love this part.”

Kory started toward her, but Samaki held him back. “If she doesn’t want to go, let her.” When Kory hesitated, he said, “Come on, it’s Frosty. If you weren’t so into this church, I’d stay and watch it.”

“Next year,” Kory said to Malaya, shaking a finger at her. She raised a wing as they left.

They crunched through the snow to Samaki’s car. “So what changed?” the fox asked.

Kory slumped down in the front seat. “She got a card from her father, forwarded from Rainbow Center. I don’t know why Margo sends those things along.”

“She has to.” Samaki started the car and pulled away.

“I know.” Kory stared ahead at the city. The streets remained well plowed; that first snowfall had been only a couple inches. Still, it looked to him as though the streets had finally received their Christmas decorations. Even in his dirty downtown neighborhood, the snow frosting every awning and lamppost softened the cityscape’s harsh browns and greys until the street glowed in the twilight. This was the first time Kory found the sight of his new neighborhood peaceful and soothing.

“What did it say?” Samaki asked.

Kory shrugged. “She wouldn’t show it to me. It was a Christmas card, but knowing him, it was like, ‘Don’t bother enjoying the season of our Savior’s birth because He hates you’.”

Samaki shook his head. “I can’t understand how she survived sixteen years with him.”

“She almost didn’t.”

The silence following that remark was only broken by Kory’s directions as they approached the church. “We can park in the lot back here.”

Samaki pulled the car into an empty space. The two of them padded through the parking lot to the church entrance, where a trickle of people were filing into the church. As they turned onto the sidewalk, Kory spotted his mother’s car, parked right near the front of the lot. His steps slowed enough that Samaki turned to look at him. “Nothing,” he said, and kept walking.