The Starving Years (5 page)

Even people like Nelson Oliver.
Especially
people like that. Good-looking, effortlessly cool guys like Nelson Oliver made Tim nervous. And when he was nervous, he sounded like a creep. In an effort to seem less creepy, he supposed he should attempt to be nice to Javier’s friends. “So,” he said to Randy. “You’re an activist? What group?”

“Huh?”

Tim assumed Randy hadn’t heard him over all the crashing outside. And the screaming. He repeated, louder, “What group do you belong to?”

“I dunno what the fug you’re talking about.”

Javier came forward and crouched in the gap between the seats. “None. We just met at the conference.”

Javier didn’t know him? That could be dangerous. Randy might be just the type of extremist right pro-foodie who worked at Canaan Products and loved every minute of it. Or a nutjob from one of the extreme leftist groups who’d shown up outside to protest—with guns. Why were moderates who could think for themselves so hard to come by? “What about Nelson? He’s with you. Right?”

“No,” Javier said. “I don’t know anyone. But they helped me get out of the conference hall when the power blew.” Javier was there in Tim’s peripheral vision, trying to pull him into a conversation. But Tim had more urgent things to do—like staying on the road without hitting the car in front of him that kept jolting forward and braking fast. Or like running anyone over, because even though the truck was now well past the mob, scattered people were still throwing things—bricks, shoes, clods of broken asphalt—and darting into the street to chase each other. Plenty more were realizing that running while trying to carry big electronics got old, really fast. Javier suggested, “We should at least get them home safe.”

“This isn’t a limo service.”

“I am not attempting to find my way home in this,” Marianne shouted from the recesses of the truck behind Javier. “It’s not safe for a single girl. You can see it isn’t safe, can’t you?”

Tim spared a glance toward the back. Marianne was straining to see past Javier. Nelson must have been somewhere behind her. “Right. Yeah. We’ll all go back to my place and figure out what’s going on.”
All
was good, Tim decided, since
all
included Nelson Oliver.

“What the fug
is
going on?” Randy said. He turned on the radio. There was a weather report playing.

A weather report.

Tim did lock gazes with Javier, then. It was disconcerting with the eye patch—how was it that in the week they’d been chatting online, Javier had never thought to mention the
eye patch
? Still, the fact that someone else in that truck realized how screwed up everything had become…that was a great comfort. More of a relief than Tim would have ever anticipated. He nodded, once, then clenched his jaw and fixed his eyes on the road again.

The line of cars he was in slipped past a dark traffic signal, the fourth one they’d passed. Perpendicular traffic was stopped. Those drivers gesticulated wildly as they laid on their horns, but Tim couldn’t risk letting one in. If he let one in, others would follow right on their bumpers, and pretty soon he’d be the one stuck on Lafayette, and the drivers behind him would pour out of their cars and tear the truck apart.

When the line lurched to a stop that didn’t immediately begin sprinting forward again, Tim wondered if maybe someone had grown tired of waiting to cross, and had panicked and made a break for a too-small gap in traffic. But soon it started again, and Tim saw, to his surprised relief, that the traffic light on Lafayette and Grand was still working—though the drivers who wanted to turn left looked like they were pretty short on luck.

Just a few more blocks and they’d be home free. Tim had never had four people in his Soho efficiency walkup at once. The day was turning out to be full of surprises.
 

A man stepped into the street, just as he thought that. A swarthy man of indeterminate ethnicity, about as wide as the truck itself, wearing a FUBU jersey, a sideways baseball cap, and a look on his face that said he’d gladly kick Tim’s ass.

“You got to pay the toll,” he called.

“Nice fuggin neighborhood,” said Randy.

Tim knew better than to open the window, but he yelled back, “Move it, or I’ll drive.”

The thug in the baseball cap eased forward—did he realize the extent of what was happening up in Greenwich Village? How could he, with the cell towers overloaded, the subways jammed and the radio playing weather reports? Tim put a foot on both the gas and the brakes and lurched forward to show he meant business—and four more guys with baseball bats peeled out from between the parked cars and converged on the truck.

“You got to pay the toll,” the thug said, with mock patience.

“What toll?” Tim yelled.

The thug looked to his pals on either side—damn it, one of them had a gun—and said, “A hun’ret dollar.”

Tim fumbled out his wallet. “I have twenty. I’ll give you twenty.” He had twenty-three, though he didn’t suspect the three would sway the guy one way or the other. Besides, he figured he should leave himself at least that much leverage.

The main thug cocked his head toward one of the guys holding a baseball bat, and
bam
, the left headlight was history. “A hun’ret dollar.”

“Does anyone have some money?” Tim called, although he couldn’t say if a hundred dollars really would call off the wolves, or if they were likely to be dragged from the vehicle and beaten to death whether they paid it or not.

“He’s got it.” Marianne shoved Javier aside and threw herself into the cab, against the center console. She jammed her hand into Randy’s pocket, pulled out some Tic Tacs which she threw aside, stuck her hand in the other and came up with a crisp, new bill. She pressed it into Tim’s hand and said, “Pay the man. I’ve gotta pee.”

“Hey—” Randy said.

Well…at least it wasn’t his own money. Tim rolled down the window two inches and stuck the hundred through. The thug with the gun took it, smiling around the stump of a cigarillo. “A’ight,” he called to the big guy with the baseball bat, who backed off a few steps, then stood aside with a smug “after you” gesture.

Tim’s heart pounded in his throat as he rolled past them. He was under no illusions that they could very well have just been carjacked. Maybe they would have, if the retired moving truck had been something the thugs would be caught dead in.

His heart was still hammering as he turned left, turned again, and approached his building. The dingy parking lot with weeds sprouting up between the cracks where he paid three hundred a month to park was open, too. He’d been expecting it to be full of strangers’ cars, tourists’ cars, given the rioting. But somehow the battered
Private Parking
sign had managed to do its job.

Even though the rest of the neighborhood had apparently gone straight to hell.

The block Tim lived on was mainly residential, with Mom-and-Pop businesses on the first floors of the old brick four- or five-story buildings, and apartments or condos above. His apartment was two floors above a Clip House franchise that gave twelve-dollar haircuts, no appointment necessary. He’d never had the same stylist more than three or four times, but at least it was convenient to keep his hair from getting to that annoying stage where it hung in his eyes. It was a good neighborhood. Not pretentious, but not too shabby.

But now Clip House was dark, and the
Closed
sign on the door was turned over. Closed. In the middle of a weekday afternoon. Other stores were closed, too. The coffee shop. The music store. The little boutique that sold “natural” cosmetics in flecky brown packaging that were made with the same ingredients as any other soaps, shampoos and perfumes, though they had much “greener” names.

More people were loitering around on the sidewalk than was usual for a weekday afternoon, too. Not walking somewhere, like people usually did. Just…standing. People he didn’t recognize—all of them male. They lurked in entryways and beneath awnings, smoking, or listening to headphones, or scowling at the sleet. Waiting. For what, Tim didn’t know. But he dreaded it.

“Go to the entryway to the right of the Clip House,” he told his passengers as he pulled into his spot. “Don’t stop. Don’t talk to anyone.” It might have been overkill, but Tim didn’t care. He’d seen enough at the protest to err on the side of caution. Nelson Oliver was the last out of the truck. He stumbled, and Javier caught him on one side, Marianne the other. “What’s wrong with him?” Tim asked.

“He’s out of it,” Marianne said. “He took some meds.”

Meds? He was staggering like a drunk.

“It’s fine,” Javier said. “We’ve got him. Let’s go.”

While it might have been overwhelming to think of fitting four other people in his small efficiency, Tim had to admit he was glad to be part of a group while he made his way from the truck to the entryway—even if one member of that group was a petite young woman, and another needed to be dragged—since his Mom-and-Pop neighborhood suddenly didn’t feel much like its usual self.

Their five pairs of feet sounded loud on the stairwell, but even the steady tramp of stairs being climbed didn’t drown out the distant sound of sirens. Tim unlocked his door and sized up his apartment. He had, at least, straightened up; he’d been expecting Javier. The trash had been disposed of, the clutter stashed away, the sheets changed.

“Get in. Come on. Hurry.” He hustled everyone into the room that was his living room, office, kitchen—the room, in all its ten-by-twelve glory, where he kept everything he owned but his bed.

Javier leaned Nelson against the wall so Marianne could strip his coat off. “He needs to lie down somewhere dark,” she said. Nelson didn’t seem to notice all the commotion. He was busy staring up at the light fixture. Tim followed his gaze. He saw the globe held at least a dozen long-dead flies, their wings and spindly legs clearly visible through the milky glass.

So much for his housecleaning skills.
 

“There’s a bedroom, through that door.” Tim wasn’t about to let the opportunity to get closer to Nelson slip through his fingers. He edged Javier aside and ducked his shoulder under Nelson’s arm, touching him.
 

He felt thinner than Tim expected. Lighter. Nowhere near as tough as he’d seemed during the riot. There was no room for Marianne to bring up Nelson’s other side, but she followed them into the bedroom anyway.

Tim sat Nelson down on the bed. Nelson’s sleeve was hanging open, baring his scratched shoulder. A tattoo, some barbed-wire tribal thing, peeked out from under the torn seam. There was blood on his damp clothes. It wasn’t quite dried, given that everything Nelson had on was soggy from the sleet, but it had probably set. His wet hair stuck to his forehead and cheeks.

“He’s shivering,” Marianne said. “Let’s get him into something dry.”

Tim would have thought he’d resent Marianne’s presence, when in fact, he realized he was actually so intimidated he wouldn’t have even thought of changing Nelson’s clothes himself. Marianne got down on one knee and began to take off Nelson’s shoes. Tim reassured himself she couldn’t possibly know his attraction to Nelson had him practically paralyzed, and he dug up a mismatched set of sweats.

His hands were trembling as he slipped off Nelson’s tie and unbuttoned his ruined shirt.
 

“I hate this shirt,” Nelson slurred. “Fucking hate it.”

Even incapacitated, he had a fighter’s spirit. It really was for the best that Marianne was there, otherwise Tim would have been tempted to strip him down and warm him by climbing on top of him to share body heat. And wouldn’t that be an awkward conversation come morning?

Marianne straightened up and perched on the bed to help take off Nelson’s shirt, so Tim couldn’t exactly ogle like he’d wanted to. Chest hair? Yes, some…just enough. A shade darker than the sandy hair on his head. More tattoos on his chest, his other arm. Strange symbols. His physique didn’t seem very gym-sculpted, and any definition in his body was due more to his leanness…and yet there had been that open-handed punch he’d done during the protest, the hit he’d landed like a striking cobra that felled the guy attacking Marianne.

Nelson Oliver was a mystery. No two ways about it.

Marianne reached for Nelson’s fly, and Tim needed to check himself from knocking her hands away. “Didn’t you want to use the bathroom? I can take it from here.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not compromising his virtue.” The zip of the fly as she tugged it down was ludicrously pronounced. “He won’t care what I see—he’s totally gay.”

Tim needed to remind himself how to breathe again as Marianne dragged Nelson’s pants off.
 

“Underwear’s dry enough,” Marianne said, “but his socks are wet. Get him a dry pair of socks.”

“Not just partially gay,” Nelson chuckled to himself as Marianne pulled off his damp socks. Tim paused and pressed his palm to the sole of Nelson’s cold foot. He held it a moment, stroked it. “You can suck my toes, if you want. I don’t think I’m into that…but I’ll try anything once.”

 
Tim pulled the sock on without comment.

Marianne said, “Remind me to never start getting migraines. Not if this is what the medicine’s like.”

Together, they wrestled Nelson into Tim’s too-big sweatpants and tucked him into bed. He rolled to face the wall, murmuring, “Watch it, that last step’s a doozy.”

As Tim pulled the blanket up over Nelson, marveling at the way he would never have imagined his clean sheets being put to this particular use, Marianne stepped past him and pulled the cord on the miniblinds.

“Don’t—”

The blinds clattered into a misshapen snarl, bunched together on one side.

“There’s a trick to it,” he sighed.

“Shit. It’s really not my day.”

“Go pee,” he said, not unkindly. “I got it. And you should put something on your ear. There’s a first aid kit in the medicine cabinet.”

“Oh, man.” She hastened out of the room, clutching her torn earlobe and hobbling on her broken heel.

Tim began the process of untangling the blinds. “Do you know where you are?” he asked Nelson.

“Must be your place. I don’t hear my roommates complaining.”