Aqua looked up toward the sky and closed his eyes. Kat let him take his time. He used to do this back at school too. He would talk about the sun on his face, how it relaxed and centered him. For a while, it had even seemed to work. But that face was weathered now. You could see the bad years in the lines around his eyes and mouth. His “mocha latte” skin had taken on the leathery cracking of those who live on the streets too long.
“He came back to the room,” Aqua said. “After he ended it with you.”
“Oh,” she said. Not the answer she’d hoped for.
Because of how he was, Aqua had always been in a single on campus. The school tried him with a roommate, but it never worked out. Some were freaked out by the cross-dressing, but the real problem was that Aqua never slept. He studied. He read. He worked in the lab, the school cafeteria—and at night, he had a job in a fetish club in Jersey City. Sometime in his junior year, Aqua lost his single room. Housing insisted on putting him with three other students. There was no way that would work out. At the same time, Jeff had found a two-bedroom on 178th Street. Serendipity, Jeff had called it.
Aqua was tearing up again. “Jeff was destroyed, you know.”
“Thanks. That means a lot eighteen years later.”
“Don’t be like that, Kat.”
Aqua may be confused, but he hadn’t missed the sarcasm.
“So when was the second time you saw him?” Kat asked.
“March twenty-first,” he said.
“What year?”
“What do you mean, what year? This year.”
Kat pulled up. “Wait. Are you telling me you saw Jeff six months ago for the first time since we broke up?”
Aqua started to fidget.
“Aqua?”
“I teach yoga.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m a good teacher.”
“The best. Where did you see Jeff exactly?”
“You were there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You took my class. On March twenty-first. You aren’t my best student. But you try. You are conscientious.”
“Aqua, where did you see Jeff?”
“At class,” Aqua said. “March twenty-first.”
“This year?”
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me that Jeff took your class six months ago?”
“He didn’t take the class,” Aqua said. “He stayed behind a tree. He watched you. He was in so much pain.”
“Did you talk to him?”
Aqua shook his head. “I taught class. I thought perhaps he spoke to you.”
“No,” she said. Then, remembering that she wasn’t dealing with the most dependable mind in the free world, she tried to let it go. There was no way Jeff was in Central Park six months ago, watching their class from behind a tree. It made no sense.
“I’m so sorry, Kat.”
“Don’t worry about it, okay?”
“It changed everything. I didn’t know it would.”
“It’s okay now.”
They were half a block from O’Malley’s. In the old days, they would all hang out here—Kat, Jeff, Aqua, a few other friends. You would think O’Malley’s would have been a rough place for a biracial cross-dresser back then. It was. In the beginning, Aqua dressed like a man at O’Malley’s, but that didn’t really stop the sneers. Dad would just shake his head. He wasn’t as bad as most from the neighborhood, but he still had no patience for “fruits.”
“Gotta stop hanging around those types,” Kat’s father would tell her. “They ain’t right.”
She would shake her head and roll her eyes at him. At all of them. People often referred to these cops now as “old school.” True enough. But it wasn’t always a compliment. They were narrow and insulated. Excuses could be made (and were), but in the end, they were bigots. Lovable bigots maybe. But bigots nonetheless. Gays were treated with derision, but to a lesser extent, so was pretty much every other group or nationality. It was part of the lexicon. If someone negotiated with you too hard, you complained that they “Jewed” you down. Any activity not deemed macho was for “fags.” A ballplayer choked because he was playing like an N-word. Kat didn’t excuse it, but when she was younger, she didn’t really let it get to her either.
To his credit (or maybe patience?), Aqua hadn’t seemed to care. “How do you think we get views to evolve?” he’d say. He took it as a challenge even. Aqua would breeze into O’Malley’s, either not caring about—or, more likely, making himself ignore—the sneers and snickers. After a while, most of the cops moved on, got bored, barely looking twice when Aqua strolled in. Dad and his buddies kept their distance.
It pissed Kat off, especially coming from her father, but Aqua would shrug and say, “Progress.”
As they reached the pub door, Aqua pulled up short. His eyes went wide again.
“What is it?” Kat asked.
“I have to teach class.”
“Right, I know. That’s tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “I need to prepare. I’m a yogi. A teacher. An instructor.”
“And a good one.”
Aqua kept shaking his head. There were tears in his eyes now. “I can’t go back.”
“You don’t have to go anywhere.”
“He loved you so much.”
She didn’t bother asking who he meant. “It’s okay, Aqua. We are just going to grab a bite to eat, okay?”
“I’m a good teacher, aren’t I?”
“The best.”
“So let me do what I do. That’s how I help. That’s how I stay centered. That’s how I contribute to society.”
“You have to eat.”
The door to O’Malley’s had a neon sign for Budweiser in the window. She could see the red light reflecting in Aqua’s eyes. She reached for the handle and pulled the door open.
Aqua screamed. “I can’t go back!”
Kat let go of the door. “It’s okay. I get it. Let’s go somewhere else.”
“No! Leave me alone! Leave him alone!”
“Aqua?”
She reached out for him, but he pulled away. “Leave him alone,” he said, his voice more a hiss this time. Then he ran down the street, back toward the park.
Chapter 17
Stacy met her at O’Malley’s an hour later.
Kat told her the entire story. Stacy listened, shook her head, and said, “Man, all I wanted to do was help you get laid.”