Work Text:
Your partner’s shoes are in a perpetual state of distress. You cannot help but notice this, as they spread like creeping vines across the floor, obscuring the linoleum of the entryway and toppling from the shoe rack onto the hardwood floors you stripped, sanded, stained, and polished yourself, even though this is a rental. You are a man who must live surrounded by imperfect people, and you vent your frustration by perfecting the objects that surround you.
AUTHORITY: sometimes you vent your frustration by attempting to perfect the people too.
EMPATHY: we’re not trying to perfect them, we’re…giving everyone involved an outlet for their complicated feelings about control, service, discipline, and punishment.
Anyway. Harrier’s shoes drive you crazy. No matter how many times you stack them on the shoe rack, by the end of the week—sometimes the end of the day—they’re everywhere again, covered in dust, laces tangled, leather starting to crack where his foot bends at the ball. He takes them off like a kid, heel-to-toe, and puts them on the same way. The counters and quarterlinings are warped and peeling from his abuse. Most of his shoes are cheap and flashy, found in jumble sales, charity shops, or dumpsters. A few pairs are nice, but neglected. The collection is an absurd excess that reflects his character.
You wear brown boots on patrol: oil-tanned leather, because it hides scuff marks and mud. It will never take a shine, so you never need to give it one. You have one pair of trainers for the gym, and a set of stiff black patent leather oxfords that came with your RCM dress uniform.
You’ve got another pair of boots for nights off. They’re as shiny as the dress shoes but only by dint of hard work and elbow grease. And it’s a better shine, anyway. The patent leather is cold, artificial. The black calf takes on a deeper color and a softer glow. Its texture has a supple, inviting warmth.
BLACK LEATHER MOTORCYCLE BOOTS: All the boys want to touch me. Lick me. Hump me. They want me to crush their balls.
But tonight isn’t one of those nights. Tonight you’ve just gotten home from patrol, on which you were nearly stabbed by a fourteen year old meth head, flashed back to working juvie, had to be rescued by Harrier, and then responded to three domestic violence cases in a row. You are exhausted but impossibly keyed up. And when you walk in the door you trip over a pair of snakeskin boots.
HARRIER’S SNAKESKIN BOOTS: Hi Kim! Hi! Hi!
Your quiet curse isn’t exactly aimed at him, but he’s right on your heels with a sack of curry and flatbreads from the hole in the wall around the corner, and he overhears you.
“Sorry Kim,” he says, sheepish and sweet and not sorry at all. You sigh deeply, and pick up the boots. While he’s in the kitchen dishing out dinner, you retrieve the battered old toolbox you picked up from the informal “free stuff” spot in the lobby of your building. While Harrier fiddles with the radio, you take his shoes and your kit to the bathroom and set it all down on the toilet lid.
“You coming?” he calls, when he has the dial settled on the jazz station you can pick up out of Grand Couron.
“Start without me.” Work still has you too wired to eat. This will settle you down.
REPURPOSED TOOLBOX: Used to be red, now mostly rust and dents. Sturdy handle though, and the catch still works. There’s a little shelf that folds out when you open it. Inside is everything you need to make a pair of shoes beautiful.
The saddle soap foams up around your brush, salty and sour-smelling. You’ve never really liked this part of the ritual. Something about the soap reminds you of low tide on the Esperance: dead fish, rotten algae, and other things there’s not much point in thinking about. Still, you can’t put polish on a dirty boot. There’s probably a metaphor in there.
This is silly. They aren’t even your shoes. You shouldn’t care how they look. But as you rub your brush in circles across the snakeskin and see the vibrant green come out from under the mud, you think of Harrier on the karaoke stage, Harrier squaring off against Wild Pines.
SARTORIAL SEMIOTICS: You’re Kim and Harry. Orange and Green. Pissfaggot and Fuck the World. He’s your partner. It matters. He should look good.
EMPATHY: This is an act of care.
“Kim!” says Harry. “It’s getting cold!”
You wipe the foam off his boots and set them on the edge of the tub to dry.
#
You have the morning off but leadership in the forty-first is still testing the limits of Harry’s newfound sobriety and seriousness, so he’s out on another patrol— “Look ma,” he said, leaving the flat that morning. “Back to backs and no speed!”
You linger over your bad coffee and the newspaper, which is worse, until your toast is cold. Then you take out Harry’s boots, dry and free of dirt, and set one in your lap. You don’t have green polish—who does?—but the neutral shade, pale honey gold and nearly transparent, will work. It won’t go on invisibly, but no polish ever does. Each coat builds a patina, soaking in and rubbing off at different rates where the leather wears differently. To use something is to change it. To care for something is to change it.
SOFT ANIMAL: When was the last time you let someone care for you?
VOLITION: You’re perfectly capable of caring for yourself.
SOFT ANIMAL: And look at the ways you’ve changed. Do you like who you are? Do you like living this way?
SELF-PRESERVATION: It’s not about liking it. You’ve changed in exactly the ways you need to, to survive.
INTERFACING: Not to interrupt, but we are in the middle of something right now…
You lay the newspaper flat on the table and set Harry’s silly green boots over the glaring headlines and grisly photos. Time to get to work. You pop the tin and get a face full of turpentine and beeswax. Sweet honey and scouring pitch.
RULES AND REGULATIONS: Turpentine's vapour can irritate the skin and eyes, and cause damage to the respiratory and central nervous systems when inhaled.
[-1 Health]
[+1 Morale]
You open the living room window for ventilation. The draft is wet and cold and smells like diesel. Not much healthier than the shoe polish, but it’s the thought that counts.
SELF PRESERVATION: Sometimes doing things for the appearance will save your life. Sometimes, appearance is all.
It isn’t really about the shoes. You know some guys like that—you’ve stepped on some guys like that. For them it’s all about the shoes. For you, it’s about the power. The shoes—the jacket, the gloves—are all a message for men who know how to read it. When you take care of your leather you are taking care of the part of yourself that those men desire: the mean part, the strong part, the part that takes no shit. This is a part of you the rest of the world doesn’t want to believe in.
SARTORIAL SEMIOTICS: Polishing your boots is a rebellion.
Something you love about shining shoes: when the polish goes on it doesn’t look like much. It darkens the color, fills in the scuffs, leaves everything clean and matte. It isn’t until later, under heat and friction, that the shine comes out.
There’s a metaphor in there too.
You spit-shine them like Harry will be expected to pass inspection for a military parade: a thin coat of polish, then a pass with a damp cloth. Another coat, another pass. Another, and another. In between coats you tidy the apartment, putting away the dishes in the drying rack, emptying the ashtray, picking up the detritus hurricane Harrier leaves in its wake.
Everyone at the precinct acts like you’re either insane or Innocent for putting him up. They know left to his own devices he’d be back in the gutter in no time, but none of them can stomach the thought of taking him on. You’re not crazy, and you’re not a saint. You just like fixing things. Putting in the elbow grease. The Kineema. Your clothes. Your bike. Your apartment. The world. Harry is something you can fix, if you’re patient and methodical and uncompromising. He’s like old leather, soaking up the polish under your hands and taking on a shine.
Fixing things is, for you, also a little bit about the power.
Now that Harry’s sleeping on your sofa there’s a softening of the edges in your tidy home. A dirty dish in the sink. A pile of laundry you haven’t sorted. Shoes cluttering the vestibule like puppies eager to trip you up when you come home.
When you finish the snakeskin boots, you set them on the shoe rack in the midst of Harrier’s hoard.
HARRIER’S SNAKESKIN BOOTS: Yippee! Disco! Thanks Kim!!
The boots look so nice, they just make everything else look awful by comparison. And unlike the green snakeskin, most of the others are reasonable colors. Colors you keep in your toolbox.
VOLITION [easy: failure] - Well, that’s one way to spend your morning off…
#
Harry brings home dinner. Pita and falafel tonight: you can smell the garlic in the white sauce, the spices burnt in oil. You never learned to cook, and if he ever did, he’s forgotten how. He pauses in the vestibule, greasy paper bag held high as he looks beneath it at the shoe rack, where everything is tidily arranged in rows.
“You’ve been cleaning my shoes,” he says, in the tone of voice reserved for revelations about mundanities everybody else has long grown used to. Such as: they make pants with elastic waistbands? and, they let you borrow books from the library for free? It’s a tone of voice that sometimes makes you jealous, and sometimes moves you: how must it feel, to find so much wonder in this fucked-up world?
“They needed it.” You reach over from your spot in the armchair and turn down the volume on the radio—qualifiers for TipTop, which you’ve been listening to while you work.
SPEEDFREAK: Hey, we were listening to that!
SELF-PRESERVATION: Yeah, but nobody needs to know.
SOFT ANIMAL: Do you think he would care?
VOLITION: We don’t want to get into bad habits.
“Kim,” he says, and it’s the first time you notice that he uses the same voice for your name. “Wow. They look great.” He sits cross-legged right there on the linoleum, cradling the falafel in his lap, to get a closer look.
SARTORIAL SEMIOTICS: No! The greasy bag! That’s his only pair of work-appropriate trousers, and you just did laundry!
“Detective,” you say. “You’re getting oil on your pants.”
He laughs.
COMPOSURE [legendary: failure] – You love the sound of his laughter.
“Come on,” you say. “Let’s sit at the table at least.”
He’s awkward getting to his feet—the bullet wounds aren’t that old. You’re halfway out of your chair to help him, but then he’s upright and kicking off his filthy patrol boots. They leave streaks of Jamrock gutter mud on the linoleum. One falls on its side, laces lying in loose curls. He catches you watching him and cringes, half-comical. “Sorry, Kim,” he says, and sets his muddy boots into the last empty space on the shoe rack, which you left for exactly this purpose.
“Sorry doesn’t sweeten my tea,” you say, sounding prim.
LOGIC: Like the nuns who raised you.
AUTHORITY: You learned a lot from them.
SPEEDFREAK: Yeah but you don’t use it like they did.
Harry grins at you and slides across the floor in his sock feet, bag of falafel held high. “I’ll make it up to you. Why don’t you teach me? How to polish shoes, I mean. I don’t remember.”
“You probably never knew in the first place.”
He shrugs. “Probably. But teach me, and then I’ll clean yours.”
SPEEDFREAK: I’ll do you and you do me?
EMPATHY [medium: success] - He doesn’t realize this is kind of a sex thing for some people.
SOFT ANIMAL [godly: failure] - is it a sex thing for you?
VOLITION: Definitely not this time.
AUTHORITY: And you won’t let him find out it ever is, for anybody, ever.
“Dinner first,” you say, and jerk your chin toward the kitchen.
He tells you about patrol—bad, it’s always bad, but Harry is almost always cheerful about it—about his weekly check-in with Vicquemare and Pryce, about Judit’s kids coming by the station after school. Locked out again, and their dad off who knows where.
“I worry about her,” he says, frowning, and a part of you–
SOFT ANIMAL: That’s me.
–envies his tenderness. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to be hit in a vulnerable spot. You know it must have happened to him. He knows it must have happened to him. But he doesn’t remember how badly it hurts.
BUZZ-KILL: He’ll find out.
VOLITION: Not from you.
SPEEDFREAK: Except maybe in a fun way?
VOLITION: Absolutely not.
SPEEDFREAK: ...but you’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?
VOLITION: Only actions have moral valence.
Falafel finished, trash binned, table wiped, you clear your throat. Putting this off would only be an admission of discomfort. And you’re not uncomfortable.
SPEEDFREAK: Yeah, that’s not the word I’d use for it either.
“All right,” you say. “If you’re still interested.”
“About the shoes? Sure. Lemme at ‘em, Lieutenant.”
The rank doesn’t usually get you. Plenty of guys have a thing about it, but that’s their business. With Harry, though…when Harry calls you Lieutenant it doesn’t have all the baggage of Juvie and Kimball and the grinding, unending misery of fighting uphill at the fifty-seventh. Working with Harry, you’re doing the work you always thought you would do, feeling the way you always thought you would feel. When he uses your rank, you feel two inches taller, straight in your spine, solid across the chest. You feel the way those guys imagine you.
Until about five seconds ago, you thought this feeling was professional pride; you thought it meant you had a good relationship with your partner.
SPEEDFREAK: Nah bro, that was repression.
SELF-PRESERVATION: Sorry. I was trying to help.
RULES AND REGULATIONS: Chapter four, section C of the RCM code of conduct requires you to disclose any romantic or sexual relationships with other members of the force to your superior officer.
SPEEDFREAK: We have to tell Pryce about this? He’ll blow a fuse.
SELF-PRESERVATION: We don’t have to tell anybody because we haven’t done anything!
VOLITION: And we aren’t going to.
“So, uh,” says Harry. “What do I do first?”
Right. “Well. I’ve done all of yours, so…it will have to be my boots, I suppose.”
Harry trots to the shoe rack, to your oil-tanned patrol boots.
“No,” you say, not in the voice you meant to. You need to get a hold of yourself. That’s the voice you use on the guys who like to call you lieutenant.
SPEEDFREAK: Harry likes to call you lieutenant.
RULES AND REGULATIONS: Because you’re coworkers! In an organization defined by rank!
You clear your throat. “Those don’t take wax polish,” you say, in the calm, collected, tone you use on the clock. “I’ll go get my other boots.” They’re in your bedroom, which means you have a private moment to regain your cool. You take three deep breaths and open your closet.
VOLITION [easy: failure] - shit.
BLACK MOTORCYCLE BOOTS: Hello, Lieutenant.
They’re exactly where you left them, and they look good. No mud, no dirt, no scuffs of road salt or unmentionable filth. You haven’t gone out since before Martinaise. Still, it’s not good for leather to sit a long time: gathering dust sucks the moisture out of it. Your boots don’t need the polish, strictly speaking, but it can’t hurt. Besides, you have that restless feeling. Maybe after Harry goes to bed, you can let yourself out and head down to the toilets at Memorial Park. You’re not above a little quick cottaging. Sometimes you used to see this guy, this thick-set guy with a handlebar mustache and a formidable gut–
PERCEPTION: Do I need to butt in and point out the obvious?
SPEEDFREAK: You do have a type, Lieutenant.
Taller than you, thicker, covered in hair. Heavy and solid, fat over muscle. That’s the kind of guy you like to pick up in a bar, on a corner, in a public restroom, because you like when they look tough and could take you down but instead they turn soft and pathetic and say “yes, sir.”
PERCEPTION [formidable: success] - Somehow, you have lied to yourself for weeks about what you feel for Harrier DuBois.
SELF-PRESERVATION: Again! I was trying to help!
SOFT ANIMAL: Maybe you should stop trying.
VOLITION: Do not stop.
SPEEDFREAK: I don’t say this often but: you should definitely stop. Hit the fucking breaks, put it in park, and toss the keys in the Esperance.
BUZZ-KILL: What you should do is pick up the shoes and go out in the living room and finish what you started. It’s getting late and you have work tomorrow.
EMPATHY: Plus Harry is starting to wonder if you’ve forgotten him out there.
He’s on the sofa when you come back out, hands pressed between his knees, leaning forward to read a magazine you left open on the coffee table. Outrageous Tales, last week’s issue, the one with the horrible half-naked lizard lady on the cover. You asked for a paper bag at the news kiosk so you didn’t have to carry it home tits out. Harry’s lips move silently as he goes through the lines. You clear your throat and he looks up.
“This is really good,” he says. “Can I borrow this when you’re done?”
It is really good, in spite of the lizard lady. You would never admit this; you would characterize your interest in science fiction and pulp as a guilty pleasure, emphasis on guilt.
SOFT ANIMAL: You never cut yourself a break.
SELF-PRESERVATION: You’ve never been able to afford it.
“I’m already finished,” you say. And then, against your better judgement—back-footed by your moment alone with the boots, your realization, by the subtle movements of Harry’s lips and the way his facial hair brackets his smile—you tell him: “The Michel Meertens story on page six was my favorite.”
“Cool.” He flips the magazine shut so the lizard lady flashes you both, but Harry is already turning away from her scaly allure toward you, looking up, expectant. “All right, professor. Whoa.” He notices the boots in your hand. “Kim, where have you been keeping those?"
“In my closet,” you say dryly.
Harry reaches out with both hands—gimme!—and you remand the boots to his care. You should feel misgivings. These are one of your more treasured possessions.
SARTORIAL SEMIOTICS: They’re two tough pieces of your soul.
But Harry holds them on his knees with care, one thumb idly rubbing the slick metal surface of a speed hook, and you don’t worry that he’ll scratch them, or even put the polish on too thick. The way he holds your boots makes you want to trust him. The way he holds your boots—
He glances up at you, shrewd, and suddenly he’s your patrol partner, the human can opener. You think of the way he blurts out secrets he seems to skim from everyday objects, from the wind, and you wait for him to say something compromising. Something that will make it impossible to work with him, to look him in the eyes. But instead, after an unsteady moment of eye contact—
PERCEPTION: His sclera is slightly jaundiced, crazed with veins. The irises are surprising in the midst of all that mess: a clear, watery blue, insubstantial. Ghost eyes, like you see sometimes on stray dogs with a little bit of shepherd in the mix.
AUTHORITY: The eyes of something too intelligent, attention fixed, waiting for commands.
—Harry gives you double finger guns and says, “put me to work, chief!”
Spell broken, you sit beside him on the sofa and open your toolbox, pulling out clean rags and a tin of polish. “Go get a glass of water,” you say, not realizing until he’s gone that you didn’t say please, that you didn’t even make a request. You take a deep breath and let it out, trying to center yourself. To get your head in the game. Or maybe out of it.
SPEEDFREAK: This isn’t a game. This is a thrill ride, and you’re already strapped in.
“This good?” Harry is back, sloshing over his knuckles. It’s one of the little custard dishes the previous tenant left behind, exactly what you would have used, and not what anybody would describe as a glass.
“Perfect,” you say, and in spite of your best efforts the word has a certain timbre. Something subtle shifts in Harry’s posture and you wonder if he’s noticed. You are trying to un-notice. “Now, we’ll start with—”
He sets the custard dish on the coffee table with a clack, and plops down at your feet.
“Harrier,” you say, hands up and empty like he’s pulled a gun on you. “What are you doing?”
“I think I remember shoe shiners at the train station,” he says. “With the fancy chair and the little footrests? They sat down here, on a stool.”
“Yes well.” You flex your fingers and set your hands cautiously on your knees. “I’ve always managed perfectly well with shoe trees.”
“Come on,” says Harry, looking up with those stray dog eyes. “If I’m going to do this let me do it right.”
EMPATHY [challenging: success] - Maybe he does know this is a sex thing?
VOLITION: Abort! Abort!
SPEEDFREAK: No way, man. That’d make it weird. And you don’t wanna make it weird do you?
VOLITION [godly: failure] - N…no? No. Let’s not make it weird.
You clear your throat. “In that case. I guess I’d, uh…Better put on my boots.”
RULES AND REGULATIONS: This is a shoes-off household.
SPEEDFREAK: Dolores fuckin’ Dei, not now.
You’re in sock feet: white athletic socks, red bands at the ankle, careful darn at the right big toe. It’s silly to darn these mass produced cotton socks but you hate to throw things away if they could still work with just a little care taken, a little time.
Harry is holding out one of your boots, the tongue pulled down, the laces loose.
BLACK MOTORCYCLE BOOT (RIGHT FOOT): Like an open throat. A hole for you to fill.
SARTORIAL SEMIOTICS: Bootblacking does involve a lot of transference. A lot of subtext. A lot of symbolism.
SOFT ANIMAL [easy: success] - it is a sex thing for you!
You slide your foot into Harry’s grip, and he shifts to take the pressure. Your heel presses past the well-worn counter with a suggestive amount of resistance. Barely audible, Harry grunts.
VOLITION: This feels weird.
SPEEDFREAK: Baby, we can get so much weirder.
BLACK MOTORCYCLE BOOK (LEFT FOOT): Don’t threaten me with a good time.
When Harry holds up the second boot the flush across his face is hotter than usual. The thin pale blue of his eyes is eaten up with black.
EMPATHY: This is definitely a sex thing for him too.
AUTHORITY: We weren’t supposed to let him find out!
VOLITION: We didn’t! We didn’t, right?
SOFT ANIMAL: It isn’t outrageous to assume this situation developed organically, you know. You don’t actually control every element of your experiences, and certainly not the people around you.
SPEEDFREAK: Except when they want you to.
EMPATHY [medium: success] - Harry absolutely wants you to.
When you put your left foot into the second boot you press hard. Harry isn’t ready and the leather slips. The sole of your boot is very close to his fly.
PERCEPTION: You are not the one who closes the gap.
“Take the laces out,” you say. You don’t apologize for the ridges of rubber pressed into his crotch.
The aglets snap as he whips the laces free from the first pair of holes. “Slowly!” you snap, more to see him jump than anything. Those stray dog eyes flash up, not quite trusting, so you let it drop for a moment and nod at him: patrol nod, partner nod, the nod that means you trust each other to ask the next question, to take the next step.
His thick fingers work with more deliberation now. The flat is quiet except for the waxed cotton zipping through the eyelets, the slight whistle of Harry’s breath through his nose. When he finishes he wraps the laces in a neat loop around his palm and sets them aside.
“Good.” You lean forward and push your glasses up your nose. “You know what comes next?”
He shakes his head, gaze locked on yours.
“Soft cloth for the dust,” you say. “And get in all the cracks.”
There isn’t much dust on them, but that doesn’t keep Harry from taking his time. He cradles your foot in the crease of his thigh, sole against his zipper. You’re fairly certain the shoe shiners down at the station don’t do it like this.
SARTORIAL SEMIOTICS: The shoe shiners down at the station are trying to make a buck. They’re not trying to create an intimate connection via the medium of wax polish.
Harry sets the rag aside and clears his throat. It doesn’t steady his voice at all when he asks: “Um. Polish next?”
You nod, and take the tin from your toolbox. Popped open, it floods the room with the sweet-sharp scent of honey and solvent. Harry takes a big huff.
“You can put it on with the cloth,” you say, and he reaches for the polish, but you pull back. “Or.” You don’t like to do it this way. It leaves a black crescent under your nails for days. But you’ve had it done for you, and that’s much better.
PERCEPTION: You’re going to be seeing that black crescent under Harry’s nails at work tomorrow. And it’s going to make you think about this.
“Some people,” you say, swiping two fingertips across the surface of the polish, “do it like this.”
He stares at the slick of pitch across the pads of your fingers, the edges of his teeth showing past his parted lips as he breathes. “Yeah,” he says at last. “Yeah, that’ll work.”
You hand him the tin and he’s about to get to work, but you grab his chin. Bristles, beard, stubble on his neck. Hot skin, his fast pulse beneath your thumb.
- SELF-PRESERVATION [impossible] - Don’t do it.
- VOLITION [impossible] - Don’t do it.
- SPEEDFREAK [trivial: success] - Do it now.
You wipe your two black fingers on his cheek.
PERCEPTION: His eyebrows rise. His breath hitches. But Harrier doesn’t flinch.
BUZZ-KILL: He has total retrograde amnesia. He’s probably forgotten the dozens of trauma and stressor disorder triggers that have stacked up during his years in the RCM.
EMPATHY [easy: success] It’s not that. He trusts you.
SELF-PRESERVATION: Do you trust him?
- RULES AND REGULATIONS [trivial] - He’s my partner. I would take a bullet for him, and he would do the same for me. I trust him with my life.
- SOFT ANIMAL [godly] - He’s my friend. And maybe something more. I trust him to take care of me.
- SARTORIAL SEMIOTICS [medium: success] - I mean, I’m going to let him do my boots.
You can tell how hot his fingers are by the way they melt the polish. He touches it and it turns smooth and shiny, blackening his skin. It’s going to get all over his hands. His wrists. He’ll forget and wipe the sweat you can see beading at his temples and he’ll smear it on his face. You’re going to find smutches on his clothes in the laundry, on the ceramic taps of the sink and tub. Like the black crescents under his nails, they’ll remind you of the sight of him on the floor with your boots between his knees.
Something you love about getting your boots blacked: having somebody below you, beneath you, serving you. If you think about it too much you become uncomfortably aware of why you like that feeling, and all the ways the world has expected your servility, every way it has made you feel low. And that’s not hot, so you try not to think at all.
SPEEDFREAK: You can’t overthink this shit, man. It ruins your reflexes. Overthinking is how you crash.
Focus instead on Harry’s hands on your boots, his fingers rubbing slow circles across the leather until the streaks of his fingerprints fade, sucked into the calfskin. He climbs from the steel toe up the arch to your ankle, then back down the other side. You relax into the steady strength of his hands, watching the curve of his shoulders and the waves of his hair shift each time he moves.
SOFT ANIMAL [challenging: failure] - are you…being cared for?
When Harry comes up for air he wipes his forehead with the heel of his palm and you were right, the polish makes a gray streak in its wake. You examine his work, one boot at a time—the leather is matte black, the layers of polish even, no dry spots in the stitching at the welt.
“Good,” you say, which makes him swallow hard. Carefully not thinking, you add: “Now, spit.”
It’s amazing to watch. Like you’ve short-circuited his already scrambled brain. He blinks—wet, fast, watery, those blue eyes flickering like light in between the frames of a film reel. His focus skitters between the boots, your face, the boots again.
EMPATHY: He wants to know if you’re serious.
RULES AND REGULATIONS: Saliva isn’t technically necessary for a spit shine.
INTERFACING: This is why you had him go and get that glass of water, which is now sitting abandoned on the coffee table. He’s supposed to use one of the clean rags for this part.
SPEEDFREAK: We’re way past all that now, if you haven’t noticed.
“Harrier,” you say, your ass settling deeper into the cushion, your knees falling farther apart. Your pants aren’t as tight as his, but. "Spit."
It splashes across the leather, and where it strikes, it glistens.
SPEEDFREAK: Hot damn!
EMPATHY: This is a man who will match you freak for freak.
BUZZ-KILL: So will a lot of guys. He’s not special.
RULES AND REGULATIONS: Belay that. He is Harrier DuBois, your partner at the forty-first. He has saved your life before and he’ll do it again. You’ll save his.
SOFT ANIMAL: He remembers your take out orders. He can’t remember the first forty-four years of his life but he remembers you like extra white sauce on your falafel.
PERCEPTION: You both have garlic breath.
SOFT ANIMAL: You suddenly want to laugh.
EMPATHY: So does he.
“Rub it in,” you say instead, and this time you don’t try to fight yourself. You use the same voice you use in the public toilets in the park, the corner in the back of the bar.
SOFT ANIMAL: The cruelty of your tone belies the truth: to speak to Harry like this is to be vulnerable before him.
SELF-PRESERVATION: You could expose yourself to ridicule!
SPEEDFREAK: You could expose yourself in other ways, too. If you wanted.
When Harry starts to make soft circles with the cloth, you can feel the motion all the way up your leg. “Harder than that,” you tell him. "Harder."
The muscles in his arm stand out, slabs of them under the fat: bicep, tricep, deltoid, all the intricate tangle of the forearm under a thatch of wiry hair. Even inside your boot you feel the heat of the friction. The shine starts to come up across your toe.
SARTORIAL SEMIOTICS: This stage of a spit shine is called “the release,” in case you were wondering if this could get any more homo-erotique.
SPEEDFREAK: Is that a challenge?
He spits and shines, spits and shines, until the overhead light is reflected in the calfskin, twin full moons. The boots are done. You can both see that. But Harry is still holding your foot, still circling your ankle with one hand and idly caressing the vamp with his thumb. You are suddenly, wildly jealous of your boots.
BLACK LEATHER MOTORCYCLE BOOTS: You should be.
The numbers on the clock radio tell you it’s past time for bed. You have work in the morning.
BUZZ-KILL: All right pal, pack it in. No excuses. It’s late and we’re done here.
- VOLITION [godly]: Get your shit together and say “Thank you Harrier, that’s enough.”
- SPEEDFREAK [medium]: We’re not done. Your dick is still in your pants and so is his.
- SOFT ANIMAL [impossible]: Fall asleep like this, with your feet in his lap. He will carry you to bed, even though it hurts his leg. Maybe he will join you.
“Thank you Harrier,” you say. “That’s enough.”
But he’s watching you with those eerie eyes, he’s reading a note pasted to your forehead that you can’t see. The human can opener. The spooky cop.
“Is it, Kim?” he asks. Not sarcastic, not cruel, not even sympathetic. Just curious. He wants to know if you can keep living like this, and if so, for how long.
- SELF-PRESERVATION [easy] - As long as you have to.
- VOLITION [medium] - Maybe forever.
- SOFT ANIMAL [formidable] - Not one second longer.
He knows what you’re thinking before you do. He reads it in your soft exhale, the shiver of light across your glasses as a lifetime of tension leaves you. And then hurricane Harrier makes landfall: a storm surge of affection barreling up between your knees, grabbing your face, kissing you like no man in a public toilet has ever kissed you, if you let them kiss you at all.
Shoe polish on your cheeks and neck in the shape of his hands. Mustache scratching the tip of your nose. The soft warm pressure of his belly against yours. Beeswax, garlic, turpentine, cologne. You’ve closed your eyes.
SELF-PRESERVATION: No! One eye open! Always!
SOFT ANIMAL: But when will you rest? You deserve to rest.
In the warm red darkness behind your eyelids, you feel something enormous gathering, cresting. A revelation so beautiful your instinct is to deny it, abjure it, turn away. But Harry is holding you fast, his fingers hot against your scalp, his lips on yours and his breath in your lungs. You cannot escape what’s coming.
PROFOUND AND INESCAPABLE VISION OF THE FUTURE: The same apartment. The same familiar light through the kitchen window, golden and syrupy—early autumn, then, still warm, the window cracked—but new curtains. A spider plant hung from the ceiling, its clutch of pups tumbling down toward the sill. Harry, there, a mug in his hands. He’s doing dishes in an undershirt, old jeans, a woman’s flowered apron. Gray in the hair on his head, and on his chest where it curls over the bib of the apron.
The same apartment, but somehow from the backsplash and the counters and the new linoleum you understand the building has gone co-op. With two salaries (and after your promotion) you can just afford it, and the work of your hands has made it beautiful. Both of your hands, on electric drills and sanders and circular saws from the local tool library. Paint samples, paint stirrers, paint cans. Paint on your nose, on your cheek, on the seat of Harrier’s pants. A hammer that slipped. Your purple nail. Heating a needle on the stove and the red bead of your blood, the scent of burning hair. The hot wet circle of his mouth as he sucks away your pain.
You couldn’t afford builders. You wouldn’t have hired them if you could. The work you did was an act of care. To care for something is to change it.
SOFT ANIMAL: And you have let yourself be changed.
PROFOUND AND INESCAPABLE VISION OF THE FUTURE: Harry finishes washing the mug. The percolator on the stove is chuckling to itself, full of the coffee he always makes too strong. In a moment, he will pour it into the mug he has cleaned, set it on the table, and press a kiss to the place on your head where the hair is just beginning to thin.