It was 4:45 PM, 15 minutes to Jake’s memorial, when the raw, pungent stench of stale beer and garbage caught up with him. A bar, including a gay bar, would have an alleyway that stank like that. Following the claustrophobic, grimy alley that beckoned to him nasally seemed a better prospect than Ian or the police finding him crying beside the poster of Jacob Monk’s improbable but surely evil twin. On Autumn of My Discontent, his weekday 2:00 PM guilty pleasure, all his favorite characters had evil twins at some point. He couldn’t wait to watch tomorrow while he prepared Ian’s dinner, then did more cooking at the restaurant.
He held onto the hope that tomorrow would be garden-variety if he kept safe. The layers of aggressive graffiti that scarred the damp brick walls didn’t reassure him. All traces of the salt air and smoky, sweet street food of the boardwalk were long gone. He crawled his way down this alley and that, hoping to spot anything familiar. Something that said Fantabulous! All he saw were more Wesley Abbot posters, as if Jake’s phantom insisted on haunting him. Every corner he turned, he was there and there.
“I give up,” Ricky whispered as he snuck past more overflowing dumpsters. It was his punishment for taking for granted the hospital sterility and order of Ian’s home. It was his home for three years as well. He’d forgotten to be grateful. Dear Santo Niño, Baby Jesus, this was his atonement! Crawling on his last leg through Venice’s less-than-glamorous underbelly. Thrown out literally with the trash.
As if an answer to his prayer, he saw it beside the bin farthest from where he stood. He was a good Catholic boy, after all. A good son who never forgot his mama. Heaven would overlook that he loved another man. Slept in the same bed. Ricky cried tears of joy as he spotted the unmissable halo of a rainbow disco ball with Fantabulous! spelled out in multi-colored letters underneath.
It was a poster from Jake’s bar with a map at the bottom. But something else stood in his way. Someone. A boy, who looked barely in his teens, pointed a can of red spray paint at Ricky’s saving grace. Probably his only way to the bar and to Ian. He angrily scrawled a bloody OOL over the Fantabulous! Kid or not, he had to be stopped. He growled, startled himself, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Surprised, the boy dropped his spray can, so it made a hollow bang. All he saw was a flash of baggy clothes as he sprinted away deeper into the alley, where Ricky refused to follow further. He’d seen enough. OOL was also crudely, unmistakably tattooed in black on the kid’s wrist. What did the three letters stand for that the poster needed to be vandalized? Salvation that Jake himself or his chosen family gave so desperate souls like Ricky could find the way there. Whether real or not, why was it etched on that child’s skin? He cursed whatever adult pushed the boy on this dark path.
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