Original: "The City." Slash.
Summary: Dom just wanted some gelato. But he got something a lot sweeter instead.
Warnings: Lots of PG-13 Italian swearing. Best enjoyed with its inspirational song. Happy Easter, youse, if that's your thing.
a/n: So I'm sorry I didn't think of this earlier, but, er...I'll do it in the first place, next time. It's paper-writin' season and I'm a bit low on fun ideas. So, deal is, first person to call what city "the city" is can request a prompt? I don't know if that's actually motivational, but if you can figure out it without googling the street names (there are other incredibly unsubtle clues...), have at! -m
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So. True story. I was heading east on the El with the usual clown car of characters. Your screaming ma, your screaming kid, the drunks, the scenesters, the bums, the convenience store employees, the suburban college students, the local kids scowling in a corner seat. And then there’s me, seat closest to the door. Under the transit map where the tourists sit, but me, I was an air cast. I just wanted a gelato.
But no. It’s like the Voice of God came down from the speaker system, telling me to shift it. By all accounts I was on God’s short list for smiting, so I sure as hell hauled ass. Gimping comically across the abyss between train and platform because, big surprise, our engineers can’t do basic math, and you could drop a medium-sized dog through the gap. 11th Street. Thanks, God. Two extra blocks on my walk, with my foot wrapped up like fresh salmon.
Stairs and more stairs. Underground transit. Great plan, me.
But lo and behold, waiting at the endless light on 10th and Market, was Jimmy. “Jimmy!” I hollered, not because I was too worried that the light’d change anytime in the next Carbon age, but because Jimmy’s liable to get bored and wander off. “Jimmy fucking Chae!” There were some folks in robes on a platform in front of the Gallery, hopping up and down like they’d got sunburn on their feet and howling into a portable microphone about who-all was or wasn’t the descendent of Shem. You couldn’t hear yourself sneeze over ‘em but luckily Jimmy was transfixed. I tottered over fast as I could and Jimmy startled at me like I was the Second Coming Of Christ.
“Dom!” he gawped. “What’re you doing here?”
“What am--aren’t you supposed to be up north, for that job?” We might not have parted on great terms, but I was hurt he hadn’t told me he was visiting or whatever. Really hurt.
“I came back,” he said simply. Anyone else might’ve been obfuscating, but Jimmy was for real. He didn’t need a reason to do shit. He just did it. No compunction at all on that one. And didn’t I know it.
“I was going to get noodles at Nan Zhou,” he continued. Discussion closed on Jimmy’s Great Life Change. “Wanna come?”
“Nah. I’m headed for gelato,” I said stupidly. “On 13th. Don’t want to walk too much.” I wiggled the air cast.
“OK.” And off goes Jimmy, 13th-bound. Oh, yeah, Jimmy, it hurts a lot but I’m doing better, thanks for asking.
I’d Googled the exact address because I didn’t want to spend any more time waddling around than I had to. 13th Street: Midtown Village, the website said. I mean, the fuck is that? Apparently some developer’s idea for re-baptising the area. It’s now “a unique enclave of independent, open-minded boutiques, restaurants, and lofts.” Otherwise known as the Gayborhood. I mean what the hell else do they think that describes? You can’t just go re-naming someone else’s home. Suburban crapbaskets.
You see, Jimmy Chae grew up around 69th Street, and I gestated on Passyunk with the other Castelluccios, but about four years ago Jimmy and I outpaced our ethnic stereotypes with another, and finally met rightabouts 12th: the Gayborhood, not some fucking Midtown Village. One night I saw Jimmy Chae across the dance floor, flailing like he was having a Goddamn fit, and I knew then we were gonna be friends, who-the-fuck cares where we came from. Anyway, I wouldn’t be doing much dancing anytime soon, and Jimmy was supposed to be in some bumfuck, nowhere up north, but here we were, putzing along in perfect time to the gelateria. Go figure.
“You’re not living on 11th anymore,” was Jimmy’s stunning opener. Guy had the nerve to look wounded.
“Course not. Couldn’t afford it when youse fucked off. I’m living out by 46th now.” Yeah, in a little brick oven. I could start a pizza business on my floor. Family’d be so proud.
“Dom.” Jimmy frowned a little, turned sharp to make the light across Market, and steadied me when I wobbled on my doctor-approved moon shoes. “That’s not safe. How d’y’get back at night?” You dumb fairy, he didn’t add.
“Nowhere’s safe,” I countered, because I can obfuscate, and also ‘cos I didn’t want to say it’s moot when you’re too down on life to go out anyway. “When’d you get in?”
“This morning.” Jimmy had to catch me again when I rocked to a stop mid-sidewalk. “I can’t believe I ran into you right off. What?”
“This morning? Where’s your stuff?” He didn’t look like someone who’d just spent eight hours drooling germs onto a Greyhound. You live with someone for three years, you know what he looks like mussed. Jimmy looked fresh as a daisy.
“With ma. C’mon. You’re holding up traffic.” As if. The crowd poured around us like we were nothing. But when he tugged on my sleeve, I followed.
“Why didn’t you call?” And there they went, my hands, flailing like I was directing my own personal symphony of grumbling Eagles fans.
“I dunno.” And Goddamn, Jimmy Chae looked bashful. Lord, take me quick. “I wanted to surprise you, I guess. Anyway, I only decided to move back yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” I shrieked, and this time Jimmy stopped. “You decided to move yesterday? You’re a lunatic.” But I wasn’t really surprised, not when it was Jimmy we’re talking about. He’d do something like that, all right. He could be on a rocketship to the moon and decide halfway there he’d rather go grab a Starbucks. But we had our parts: Jimmy was impulsive and blithe, and I was mulish and excitable. If I’d been all, Oh sure, Jim, that’s nice, he’d’ve had a real, actual cow on the sidewalk. Or been disappointed. And I couldn’t take that.
“Let’s talk about this after we’ve got some gelato in you,” he smiled, and hustled me along.
The gelateria was crowded. Like me, everyone had their panties in a twist because the sun’d come out. A medium bowl of respectable Stracciatella later it was just me and Jimmy and his two scoops Rosemary Honey Goat Milk and Avacado. “Sounds interesting, right?” Jimmy grinned, digging into the side that looked like something I’d found under my desk in the 1st grade.
“Jimmy,” I said, “what gives.”
“What happened to your foot?” he countered.
Well, there was not a snowball’s chance in hell I would tell him I got it run over crossing the street, because I was too busy texting like a little girl to look where I was going. Composing a plea, in fact, begging him to come back, which thank God ended up on the wrong side of a Highlander’s tires. “Some jackass rolled through red,” I said, honestly, although we both knew that lights south of South are popularly considered stoptional. “Why’re you back, Jim?” I insisted, fully expecting him to say, I wanted a cheesesteak.
“I missed you,” he said, and I spat my tiny-ass spoon all the way across the room to the feet of some startled hipster with a bike lock wrapped around him like bondage gear. “Oops,” went Jimmy.
“What now?” I felt tired.
“We should get our place back. Or, ya’know, same building.”
I’d taken to just drinking the gelato and nearly spat that out, too, in his stupid perfect face. “What, you got shit for brains? I can’t break my lease. And don’t we need to talk about this?” I wasn’t walking into are we, aren’t we again, and I definitely wasn’t going to survive some platonic shit, not anymore.
“OK. I can deal with your place for awhile.”
“No! God, no. Stay with your ma, Slim Jim. There are porta-potties bigger than my place.” Excuses, excuses.
“You said it yourself,” Jimmy grinned around his stupid gelato. “I don’t take up much space.”
”Go home, Jimmy.”
“Where’s home?” He touched my palm with his sticky fingers, and I kind of wanted to go wash my hands and I kind of wanted to grab his and hold him still til we fused together. “I don’t care. Wherever you’re going.”
“I ain’t going anywhere,” I said crossly, because I wasn’t, not like Jimmy. Jimmy was brave. I just wanted my same bar and bookstore and El train and gelateria and Jimmy, if I were honest.
“OK,” Jimmy said. “Then I’m not either. There are plenty of places I can go right here. Oh, Dom, don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying,” I tried to sniff, “it’s allergies,” but he’d already leaned across the table to kiss me and shut my stupid trap. And it was our place, our safe corner of the world, so that was OK, and all the hipsters and queers flowed around us like we were nothing. And he tasted like heaven so I figured maybe next time I could try something new, or maybe that sweetness was just Jimmy. And I figured I’d find out.
True story.