A Scarcity of Condors

Copyright © 2019 by Suanne Laqueur

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or trans-mitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Suanne Laqueur/Cathedral Rock Press

Somers, New York

www.suannelaqueurwrites.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Design by Ampersand Book Interiors

Cover Design by Tracy Kopsachilis

A Scarcity of Condors/ Suanne Laqueur. — 1st ed.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Author's Note

Dedication

Epigraph 1

Epigraph 2

Prologue

Jude the Obscure

The Verb

The Chain Link Fence

The Widow

The She-Wolf

The Nouns

The Social Power

The Airport

Cleón

The Ragtime

The Drama

The Social Pyramid

The Show Must Go On

The Picnic table

The Ethnicities

The Kings of Death

Cleón

The Fondue Pot

The Gun

The Witches of Killarney

Cleón

The Silence

Saint Jude

The Aplogy

Cleón

The Sober Jude

The Orange

The Visual

The Rule Ever Since

Cleón

The Worst Sister

The Outcome

The Sears Catalog

Cleón

The Poor Man's Reuben

The Deliberate Cruelty

The Elephant

Cleón

The Only Entertainment

The Other Cheek

The Hundredth Time

Cleón

The Border of Divine

The Weight in My Lap

The Firing Squad

Cleón

The Ceiling Goddess

The Beggarly Question

The Geography of Pain

The Locker Room

Cleón

The Crossed Arms

Hey, Jude

The Garden

The Night Before

The Hollywood Moment

Cleón

The Locks

The Haven Within

The Prunes

The Names

Cleón

The Same

The Shape

The Brothers

El Cóndor

The Shame in Her Veins

Cleón

The Tower

The Seahorse

Cleón

The Execution

The Landscape

The Lonely People

Cleón

The Other Jude

The Boring Everyday Things

The Infant

Cleón

The Last Name

Epilogue

Recipes

About the Author

Also by Suanne Laqueur

It is estimated that between 1973 and 1978, approximately 4,500 people from diverse backgrounds passed through the Villa Grimaldi detention center in Santiago, Chile: leftist militants, workers, students, men, women, girls and boys.

The first to pass through the gates were Baptist Van Schouwen Vasey, a surgeon, and Patricio Munita Castillo, a law student at the University of Chile. Both men were kidnapped on December 13, 1973. As of this writing, Van Schouwen Vasey remains disappeared. Castillo’s remains were identified by the Servicio Medical-Legal.

A Scarcity of Condors is a fictional novel, based on historical events. Cleon Tholet’s torture and interrogation in the Villa Grimaldi compound is a composite of actual testimony by detainees. His being imprisoned in November of 1973 is an intentional anachronism on my part. This, along with any other historical inconsistencies in the book, was taken with poetic license, and written with the utmost respect and regard for all of Chile’s victims, survivors and Los Desaparacidos.

—SLQR

Somers, New York

September 30, 2019

For Moony, the river on which this boat sailed.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

—Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII

"Desaparecidos were not just murdered, but attempts were made to convince the whole world that they did not exist. This almost drove some families crazy. Legal documents were manipulated to the point that individuals really did disappear. Not just that their whereabouts were unknown, but that they didn’t exist at all in the records…

The attempts of families and friends to find the missing were portrayed as desperate attempts by crazy people to destroy the country through their lies. They were transformed into pariahs of society through the disappearance of the victims. Families looking for desaparecidos were seen as dangerous and problematic, not because of their political beliefs, not for their own values, but merely because they insisted in the existence of people that ‘did not exist.’

—Marisol Intriago, director of the Special Unit of Forensic Identification at the Servicio Medico-Legal, an institute under Chile’s Ministry of Justice, which advises the courts on medical and legal matters.

Servicio Medical-Legal

Santiago, Chile

July 2010

Isabella Eberhoff smiled above the report on her desk, her gaze caressing the page as if it were a beloved child’s artwork or the revealed physique of a new lover.

The STR analysis revealed a very high degree of allele sharing among the two male profiles, heretofore known as I-14307 and I-29742. This degree of allele sharing suggests the individuals are closely related.

The Sibship Index (SI) was calculated by determining the likelihood ratio of two hypotheses:

Hypothesis-1: I-14307 and I-29742 are siblings;

Hypothesis-2: The samples belong to two unrelated individuals.

The SI was determined to be 5.6 million in favor of Hypothesis-1. In other words, the DNA evidence is 5.6 million times more likely that the individuals are siblings, rather than unrelated individuals.

Isabella turned the page and tucked her hair behind her ear. The siblings being male gave the lab an advantage. The Y-chromosome replicated itself exactly when it passed from father to son, leaving a trail of genetic pebbles through generation after generation.

Anticipation rising in her chest, her eyes scanned the next section, which summarized the DNA profile of Lot 97-M: nineteen male bone fragments exhumed from a mass grave in 1991. The comparison of this DNA to I-14307 and I-29742 could put a forty-year mystery to rest.

We generated a 17 Y-STR loci profile using DNA from Lot 97-M, I-14307 and I-29742.

We observed an exact match between all three males over all 17 markers. The loci are:

DYS456 (16 repeats)

DYS389I (13 repeats)

DYS390 (24 repeats)

DYS389II (29 repeats)

With the likelihood ratio being 6.1 million times more than if these samples were from unrelated individuals, it is the conclusion of the team that Lot 97-M is the biological father of both I-14307 and I-29742.

Isabella drew in and exhaled a long breath, then checked her watch. It was close to seven o’clock on the west coast of the United States. Nearing ten on the eastern seaboard. Two brothers on opposite sides of the continent, each unaware of the other. Unaware that she, from the other side of the equator, could reunite them.

In case I-14307 was an early-to-bedder, she opted for the brother on the west coast. Her heart thudded as a connection was laid from Santiago to Seattle. Her stomach prickled as the phone rang. These were the last seconds of I-29742’s life as he knew it. A touch of his finger to the screen of his phone would change everything.

The smile curved up her mouth as she patted the report’s pages. You could guess at the truth. You could hypothesize, you could hope, you could pray, or you could believe the hunch in your gut.

Isabella Eberhoff, director of the Special Unit of Forensic Identification, wasn’t in the business of hunches found in the gut or hope found in the heart. She was in the business of the truth found in bone matter.

And at the end of the day, the bones never lied.

I-29742 answered on the fourth ring. ¿Diga?

Buenas noches. ¿Es Jude Tholet?

Sí.

It’s Isabella Eberhoff with the Medical-Legal Institute in Santiago. I have news…

"The beggarly question of parentage—what is it after all?

What does it matter, when you come to think of it,

whether a child is yours by blood or not?"

—Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

The contents of Jude Tholet’s wallet were what you’d find in any man’s daily essentials kept folded in back pocket. Driver’s license, credit cards, insurance card, two condoms, an emergency $20 bill. His green card, of course, in accordance with Section 264(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. He was a rule-follower by nature, but being the child and grandchild of refugees, his chromosomes had an extra be-prepared gene. An inherited propensity to keep his eyes on the exit signs, ready to make a run for the border at the first sign of trouble. He had zero cause to worry about his permanent residence status, but he was never without his papers and a plan.

In a secret slot of his wallet, Jude carried something slightly unique. A slip of folded paper, born of a page torn from a paperback copy of Scott Spencer’s Endless Love. Now cropped to the first half of the first sentence of the first chapter, its active verbs underlined in red pen:

When I was seventeen and in full obedience to my heart’s most urgent commands, I stepped far from the pathway of normal life and in a moment’s time, ruined everything I loved.

Below, in fine black pen, Jude wrote his revision:

When I was seventeen and in full obedience to my heart’s most urgent commands, I was stepped far from the pathway of normal life and in a moment’s time, everything I loved was ruined.

Jude Tholet learned a hard lesson about physical grammar at age seventeen: the noise of breaking bone was made distinct by the verb being transitive or intransitive.

I broke my leg made one sound. My leg was broken made entirely another.

If you broke a bone, it became an experience.

If your bone was broken, it became your identity.

Jude grew up knowing his father walked with crutches and occasionally used a wheelchair because he’d broken both legs. But it wasn’t until his early teens that he learned Cleon Tholet didn’t trip down some stairs, or slide into home base, or ski off a trail or foolishly jump off a roof to a swimming pool below. Cleon had no ownership in the verb. He did not break his legs.

His legs were broken.

While a political prisoner in Chile, Cleon endured six weeks of interrogation and torture in the Villa Grimaldi detention center. He was then thrown onto the streets of Santiago from the back of a military jeep. The soldier driving ran him over, breaking every bone in his legs.

Cleon’s bones were among thousands broken in detention centers where Chileans were tortured, beaten, maimed and murdered in the vicious tornado of government upheaval later known as Operation Condor. By fourteen, Jude knew that thousands of people in Chile did not disappear under General Augusto Pinochet.

They were disappeared.

Jude possessed an exact replica of his father’s Y-chromosome. The sound of intransitive breakage and disappearance coded into every cell of his body from birth. What happened to Cleon wasn’t doomed to happen to Jude. But happen it did. Instead of being thrown into the street, Jude was held upright against a playground’s chain link fence. The code name for an operation was replaced by a Chilean thug with the nickname el Cóndor. And this neighborhood bully didn’t wield a jeep as a weapon, but a baseball bat.

Jude read Scott Spencer’s novel while his broken leg healed. He tore out the first page of Endless Love with its provocative first sentence and edited the verbs. Both to mirror his experience and remind him none of the actions taken were his.

I was stepped far from the pathway of normal life and in a moment’s time, everything I loved was ruined.

Vancouver, British Columbia

October 2009

Jude sat on a picnic table, staring at the chain link fence surrounding a playground in Vancouver’s Central Park. Forest green diamonds stretched taut between the iron uprights.

In his high school days, the playground was enclosed by a dilapidated, rusty barrier with more gaps than links. It made a tired, saggy twang as Jude’s body bounced off it, the night he was stepped far from the pathway of normal life. The metal went on complaining as he wrestled in the grip of two senior jocks. A third boy called Juan-Mateo Díaz stood looking on. A six-foot-five champion pitcher whose arm span earned him the nickname el Cóndor. His Louisville slugger was tucked under one mighty wing and a cloud of cigarette smoke circled his head.

Feet planted wide on the bench, elbows on knees, thirty-six-year-old Jude stared down the new fence around the old memories. He slid off the table and walked the few steps to the approximate place where his best friend Fernando Paloma had sprawled that night, unconscious after Juan-Mateo bunted his head.

Jude’s foot moved through the dry leaves and litter, looking for…

What? A sign? An artifact? Some fragment of forensic evidence they missed?

He walked to the fence and put his back against it, bouncing a little. His hands went to fists and shoved deeper in his jacket pockets, resisting the urge to extend along the chain links. Re-enact how the Condor’s lieutenants had pinned him like a butterfly in a tray, holding him wide open.

He closed his eyes, remembering.

I’m gonna kill you, faggot. Juan-Mateo spoke Spanish, which Jude understood perfectly.

I’m fucked, he thought, right before the Condor’s fist smashed into his cheekbone. His brain exploded in yellow stars.

A punch to the stomach, making Jude double over, winded and nauseous.

Your people should’ve stayed in Poland to burn, Jew-boy.

Son de Austria, hueón, Jude said through his teeth.

They’re from Austria, asshole.

He snapped his buckling legs together to narrowly avoid a knee to the balls. Juan-Mateo put a few more punches into his ribs and head, punctuating his threats.

"Why don’t I finish the job they started on your old man? They broke his legs? Should’ve broken his skull, then his fucking cola son would’ve never been born, po?"

Jude’s labored, heaving breaths froze in his lungs as Juan-Matteo picked up his bat and took a few practice swings.

You like being on your knees so bad, faggot? Let’s see if I can put you there permanently. Hold him.

Hey, man, that’s enough, one of the goons said, his voice shaking.

Basta, Cóndor, the other cried. This is out of hand.

Shut up. The air whistled around the slice of the bat and terror flooded Jude’s body. He knew exactly what was coming and only these two wingmen could save him.

Don’t let him do it, he said between heaving breaths.

"I said fucking hold him."

Jude left himself. His consciousness seized its papers and fled for the border of his body. From far above he watched el Cóndor feint a swing at Jude’s head, then pull back and come in low instead. He heard one of the henchmen give a garbled heave at the visceral, crunching thud of the bat against Jude’s left shin, followed by his own scream echoing across the empty park.

He would always claim, truthfully, that he didn’t remember the pain of the moment, but he never forgot the sounds. The whistle of air around the bat. The gag. The scream. And the distinct noise made by intransitive breakage. The two guards dropped his arms and he crumpled to the ground, shrieking in a way he didn’t know was possible. Moaning and vomiting as Juan-Mateo advanced, tapping the bat in the palm of his hand.

"Hey, cola. How’d you like this woody up your ass?"

Jude dug fingers into the cold dirt and tried hard to die. At the hospital, nurses would discover four of his nails were torn down to the quick and embedded with dirt and blood.

I want to see you deep-throat this baby, Juan-Mateo said. You’ll suck dick even better after I take your teeth out.

As Jude tried harder to will himself out of existence, his blurred vision focused an instant on Fernando, still sprawled in the leaves. Jude was sure he was dead. If he’d known today would be the last time he’d kiss and touch Feño, he would’ve made more of it. Said more. Did more.

Had more.

Twenty years later, the adult Jude opened his eyes and looked toward the parking lot, from whence came his salvation that horrible night. A husband and wife walking their dog, innocently passing through the park just as the Condor hit his grand slam. They could’ve sensed the altercation, heard the shouts and screams and hurried away, minding their business, not wanting to get involved because technically the park was closed and they were trespassing. Instead, the good neighbors investigated. They crossed the parking lot and called, Everything okay?

Obviously nothing was close to okay. The Condor and his fledglings took off. The wife went running for a payphone. The husband yelled louder, "Hey," and then, in an extraordinary and fortuitous turn of events, he let the trained German Shepherd off the leash and gave a terse command.

Jude didn’t hear the order. He only saw a barking, snarling streak of tan-and-black fur jump the chain link fence and barrel at the Condor, taking him down like a linebacker.

Going into shock, Jude thought it was a wolf. His mother’s name was Penelope, but all the women of the Chilean ex-pat community called her Lupita. The little she-wolf. Through the narrowing tunnel of his vision, Jude saw the endearment made manifest, coming to his rescue with a jaw full of snarling teeth and…

He woke up ten hours later in the recovery room of Burnaby Hospital, his lower leg pinned and screwed back together. Feño had a severe concussion but was expected to recover. The Condor was in custody and two police constables from VPD were waiting to talk to Jude.

It was over.

Or rather, that part of the ordeal was over.

Jude’s mother liked to say parenthood was constantly trading one set of problems for a new set of problems. Jude was released from the hospital and another pair of crutches came to live in the Tholets’ house, along with a new set of problems.

Neither he nor Feño went back to Killarney Secondary School. Jude was home-tutored while his leg knitted. Feño’s family whisked him away to boarding school in Victoria—an elegant euphemism for a Christian mental health facility that specialized in conversion therapy. He wasn’t allowed to call or write Jude, wasn’t allowed visitors.

All that long, lonely summer, Jude stayed ensconced behind locked doors and windows as the civil suit against Juan-Mateo Díaz grew more contentious. The conservative, Catholic community slowly made the Condor’s crime into Jude’s character flaw. The contention turned to violence and the Tholets finally left in August, fleeing not only Vancouver but the country. Putting an international border between them and the ordeal. Starting over in Seattle.

Feño emerged from the facility in Victoria a converted man. To his credit, he came to Seattle to formally break up with Jude in person.

Jude never saw him again.

His leg healed and his gait smoothed out, but stress and anxiety liked to manifest in his left shinbone, making him limp when he was upset.

He never went back to Vancouver.

Until today.

He pushed off the chain link fence and walked toward his car, favoring his left leg.

The sun streamed through the stained-glass windows of the church, splashing over the preponderance of wood and emitting the dry, baked aroma of a sauna. It mixed with the sickly-sweet smell of the lilies and carnations heaped on Fernando Paloma’s casket. A pregnant woman in the pew ahead of Jude’s finally slipped out for fresh air, a tissue pressed to her mouth.

The priest droned. Feño’s stepfather read the eulogy. Communion was taken. A hymn warbled. Jude sat tight and still in his pew.

You can go, his conscience told him. The record reflects your presence. You don’t have to stay any longer.

But some stubborn resolve sat in his lap, determined to see this through to the end. Committed to finishing strong, Jude flung his ego on the altar of mercy and went down the receiving line after the service. He shook the widow’s hand and introduced himself, adding, Feño was my best friend in high school.

The entire line went silent.

I told you to go, his conscience reminded him.

Oh, you’re Jude, the widow said. She was a California blonde, her red-rimmed eyes the thin blue of an early spring day. Cold and sullen on top of the unspoken question: So you’re the one who used to fuck my husband?

Yes, I am, Jude said. I’m so sorry for your loss.

Move along, Tholet, Feño’s stepfather said in Spanish.

No Paloma offered to shake hands as Jude moved along. The eldest son, Hernán, ignored him. Middle son Patricio did some macho posturing, muttering loudly, You got some nerve showing your face here, cola. The woman next to him put a calming hand on his arm, glaring at Jude for this intrusive disturbance. Jude murmured his condolences down the rest of the line and exited the church, limping a little.

Made it.

Done, his conscience echoed. You don’t have to do this anymore.

This time, he believed it.

Jude?

He turned to see a woman in a black dress with a piece of black lace pinned to her hair.

Jude, is that you?

He raised a hand, brows furrowed at the name dangling just out of his reach.

I’m Feño’s cousin. Brenda Salazar. I mean Brenda—

Ronco, Jude said, as a seventh-grade taunt elbowed him in the back.

Brenda Ronco. Rhymes with bucking bronco.

A tired shame winced behind his eyes, remembering Brenda was one of the few decent members of the Paloma clan. She gave him a plump, warm hug. Her hand rubbed a firm circle on his back and her presence restored order in the world. Even her perfume evoked a common-sense compassion.

Eau de Just Be Nice.

I haven’t seen you since… Her hand turned over in the air.

Since the time of which we will not speak?

Give or take a few days.

I haven’t been back here, no.

At all?

Well, once or twice to sign legal paperwork. You know. His own hand made a circle in the air.

She switched to Spanish. But you came back for Feño.

For closure.

She sighed. As you can see, forgiveness runs deep in my extended family.

I did nothing that warrants forgiveness, Jude said, a little too sharply.

I know.

Sorry, Bren. That wasn’t directed at you.

I understand.

Emotional day.

Of course, she said, touching his arm. They treated you like shit in there, and for what purpose? Feño is still dead. God, what a fucking waste.

Mm.

Some people are incapable of evolving, Brenda said, with a glance over her shoulder. Emotional Neanderthals banging rocks together.

It’s all fear-based, Jude said. Gay cooties in the presence of the children. And I guarantee at least one macho prick in there got a hand job from a buddy in college and liked it.

Brenda’s smile cringed.

Sorry, he said again. I think I left my filter in the pew.

Except you’re right, she said. "I mean, I don’t know about the hand job thing, but it’s definitely fear-based. It takes so much effort. Good lord, the time and energy spent hating, they could… I don’t know, build houses or something." Another big sigh and she bit her lip, hesitating.

What? Jude said.

Where are you living now?

Seattle.

Do you still play piano?

I’m a company pianist with Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Oh, that’s great, she said. You were so talented. Are so talented, I mean. I left my brain in the pew.

He laughed. The game I used to have keeps getting better.

I remember the best parties were always at a house with a piano and you would play and play. Everyone gathered around like it was an Irish pub, shitfaced and singing.

Again, Brenda’s face twitched, hesitating around something she obviously wanted to say.

What is it? Jude said.

Feño was never the same after the conversion therapy.

A bitter chuckle snorted out his nose. I think that’s the purpose of conversion therapy.

Her face flushed.

Would you knock it off, he chided himself. She’s being kind and you’re throwing it back in her face.

He always struck me as a man on autopilot, Brenda said. "Like he could take it or leave it. Even when he went into remission those couple of years, he had none of the life-is-short-embrace-every-minute attitude. When he relapsed, he could’ve participated in a clinical trial for a new drug regimen. He chose hospice instead. He was just done."

It’s hard work being straight when you’re gay, Jude said.

God, man, would you just shut up?

Brenda took his hand. I’m so sorry.

Jude was helpless to answer. He could only nod, lips rolled in tight.

Nobody in there will say it but I will, Jude. You were the love of his life.

He squeezed her fingers. Thank you.

He came all this way and if he was going to do it, he might as well do it. So he left the church and drove past Killarney Secondary School, which was fat with new wings, sleek with renovations and depressingly unrecognizable. He went down Ormidale Street to see his old home. A spot at the curb beckoned, so he parked and got out to get a good look.

Butter yellow in his day, the house had faded to a tired buff, its white woodwork shabby and peeling. A low, wrought iron fence surrounded the yard and within, all Penny Tholet’s beautiful gardens had gone to grass and weeds. Jude looked up over the porch’s gable to his bedroom window, peering through the curtained glass to his youth.

Can I help you?

Jude jumped in his shoes and spun to face a woman walking a dog, her brow pulled tight and her posture defensive. He moved quickly away from what was obviously her front walk.

Hi, he said. I used to live here. I was just looking and remembering.

Oh, she said, still wary. Long time away?

Twenty years. It looks smaller. I think because those trees are bigger.

She smiled now. And you’re bigger.

That, too. Do you mind if I take a picture to show my parents?

She didn’t, and obligingly took his phone so he could pose in front of the house. She didn’t invite him in, and if she had, he would’ve politely refused. Nothing he needed was in there.

All clues are on the ground, he thought, walking down the sidewalk a few steps. He looked back to ascertain the woman had gone inside, then reversed course, eyes sweeping the curb, searching for the exact place his father’s car had been parked one ordinary morning. Or rather, the new ordinary: Cleon taking Jude to physical therapy instead of school. Jude being schooled at home because he’d been outed by el Cóndor and now he had a broken leg and a target on his back. His house transformed into a bullseye’s center circle and rare was the day it didn’t take a hit. Death threats in the mailbox. Promises by phone to break Jude’s other leg. Bricks through the windows. Tires slashed. Swastikas spray-painted across the driveway. Homophobic slurs in English and Spanish left on the garage door.

No fresh graffiti was visible on that newly ordinary morning. Only the merest trace of royal blue letters power-washed away by Cleon. A whispered faggot echoing off the concrete.

Cleon opened the passenger door and took Jude’s crutches. Jude sat sideways, then pivoted and eased in his casted left leg, then his good right one. Cleon shut the door. He opened the back door, put the crutches on the seat, shut the door. He came around to the driver’s side and got in, easing his own bum legs behind the steering wheel and stowing his cane. He started the engine. Because it was humid, he turned on the A/C. Because it was rainy, he flipped the wipers. Because the glass was grimy with damp pollen, leaf matter and bird droppings, he pulled the wand to spray some washer fluid.

And then the windshield was covered with blood.

¿Qué pasa…? Cleon pulled the wand again. More blood spurted. The wipers scraped arches through the viscous red and flung it aside, splashing it onto the hood, the sidewalk and the street. Still not understanding, Cleon pulled the wand a third time and now Jude shouted, "Papi, stop."

He went on crying out. He couldn’t stop saying stop. The word rolled over and over in his screaming mouth as he fell sideways in his seat, curled on the armrest howling and sobbing, arms over his head and hands clawing at his temples, yanking at his hair. Beside him, Cleon hunched over the wheel, fists pounding the rim in time to Jude’s Stop…stop…stop.

Stop, Jude thought, frozen on the sidewalk. You don’t have to do this anymore. You’re done.

Just stop.

The police lab determined it was pig blood. Not human. Not infected with HIV, as a note taped to the inside of the hood attested. Detectives couldn’t pick up any fingerprints from the note or the car. It was a clean, dirty job.

Jude’s eyes searched the street, the curb, the walkway, but he found no traces of blood or spray paint. A combination of time, rain and scrubbing had erased the evidence from the ground.

He got back in his car and took a last look down the street through his clean windshield. His fingers hesitated around the control wand, then he gently pulled it forward, exhaling as clear wiper fluid sprayed onto the glass.

All gone, he said softly. You’re done.

He drove through the housing co-op on School Avenue. The unit where Feño lived was completely concealed by trees and shrubbery. Nothing to see here, it told him. He turned down the street where his friend Hewan Bourjini once lived. Trees had been cut down on the property and the house begged to be noticed. Jude slowed the car to take a picture, which he texted to Hewan:

Greetings from 666 Memory Lane.

She replied with a picture of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, her head twisted backward and spewing green vomit.

My sentiments exactly, Jude replied.

Are you OK? she wrote. Tell the truth.

I’m all kinds of OK. Promise.

He smiled as he typed, drawing joy from best friend’s solid, dependable presence. When the Tholets fled Vancouver, the sole backward glance Jude gave was at Hewan, his devoted beard and fiercest advocate. He still had shoeboxes of letters they wrote during his first year in Seattle. None were less than ten pages, handwritten on both sides. They did their college searches together, visited University of the Pacific together, applied together and each promised not to accept unless the other was. They both got in, suffered two lowerclassmen years in separate dorms before reuniting in an off-campus apartment. After graduation, they both went back to Seattle. Work and commitments and relationships reduced the time they spent together, but not their bond.

Heading into a meeting but call the shit out of me tonight, Hewan texted. I want to hear all the pukey details. Love you, miss you, want you.

Jude got a milkshake at Tomlinson’s Café because it would be illegal not to. With the thick icy taste of chocolate in his mouth, he drove back to Central Park, locked the car and took a certain trail into the woods. He had one last thing to check off his list.

Walls of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar closed in. Taller, thicker and denser than he remembered. He skirted clumps of blackberry bushes and waded through sword ferns. His hand trailed across rough bark while his eyes scanned the trunks. His ears full of Feño’s wicked promise: I’m going to make you come against every one of these trees.

After each conquest, Feño took his pocketknife and carved J/F in the bark.

He was your dear friend.

He was never the same.

You were the love of his life.

And he was done.

Jude searched and searched for their memorials. Just when he thought they’d all been culled or swallowed up, he found one.

Hey, he said softly, feeling his smile stretch wide and true. Here you are.

His fingers traced the letters, now twenty rings farther from the tree’s center. He started to speak again. Stopped. His narrowed eyes circled the woods, making sure he was alone. He drew a breath and pressed his palm against the trunk.

It’s all right, he said. Nobody in there would say it. But Brenda would. And I will. You were the love of my life.

He set his forehead against the bark, imagining it was Feño’s brow. Branches morphed into tree-spirit arms, gathering him close. The little forest leaned in. Sighed. Remembered how it felt to be young and wild and in love. Remembered the anxious exhaustion of keeping those enormous feelings a secret.

No more hiding, cariño, Jude thought. You’re free. You don’t have to live a lie or be afraid anymore. Neither of us do.

We can both go back home and be ourselves now.

We’re free to move on.

I still love you, he said. Part of me will always love you. But that part stays here among the trees. You guard it, cachai?

He glanced around again, then kissed the carved initials on the trunk. He started walking away. Spun back and pointed a finger. "But when I see you on the other side, you’re in a world of deep shit. Think about that for the rest of my life, hueón. I’m gonna spank your ass."

He winked, because it always made Feño blush. He licked his lips, because it always made Feño crazy.

Then he left, not knowing at all how Feño felt about it.

He crossed the border, then stopped in Blaine to get gas and text his mother.

All is well and uneventful, he typed. Safe on this side again.

Thank you for letting us know, Penny replied. Do you still want to come for dinner, is it too much?

No, not at all. I want to.

Come around seven then. Drive safe, querido. I’m proud of you for going.

Jude slid behind the wheel, put in his earbuds and dialed his therapist’s number. He got Phil’s voicemail and left a message as he pulled back onto the road.

Just checking in, he said. As promised. I’m on my way home. Alive and intact. Got some token shit from the family, which I’m not taking personally. Got some unexpected kindness from an old classmate, which I’m taking with me. So… Honestly, it was all kind of anti-climactic. I came, I saw, I brooded. I visited all the proverbial graves. I feel all right. Pretty good, actually. But you know me, my most intense emotions run on a forty-eight-hour delay, so I will still see you Monday morning. As promised. Ciao.

He turned on the radio. The miles fell away behind him and he felt more than pretty good. A warm peace had coiled up in his chest, both strange and familiar, like a classmate whose face you knew but name you’d forgotten.

He breathed in deeply, positive the oxygen was reaching new parts of his lungs and stomach.

I feel good.

The exhale was tight with anticipation.

I feel ready.

It’s time. Let’s go. Let’s do it.

His eyes glanced to the empty passenger seat, imagining a travel companion. His fingers drew along his thigh, conjuring a hand to hold. He thought about a face to go with the hand and for once, it wasn’t Feño’s face. Or any of the boyfriends who came in and out of Jude’s life, leaving no impression and making no difference. He drew another deep breath, exhaled, and suddenly thought about the iconic news footage from the fall of the Berlin Wall. A crane lifting out a section of the notorious barrier and opening up the world. Hands reaching across, bodies slipping through. One story ended and a thousand new ones begun, because the winds of change blew and it was time.

It’s