Chapter 4

The day seemed to drag, that Sunday that held so much hope of distraction. I'd just locked up, abandoning the shop after closing for the evening. That's what it felt like, even after five years: abandonment. Each time I walked away, it was like dropping a five-year-old child off for their first day of preschool. I had created it, filled it with product, knew it like the back of my hand. How could I simply leave it? It would sit empty for hours, lonely in its stagnation. But maybe it appreciated the downtime. Perhaps a leave for the night did it good, recharged its batteries so it could thrive for another day. Lending the shop its own emotions, thoughts, and feelings felt indulgent but necessary. An inanimate object could not experience such loneliness, I tried to tell myself. But the admission served no use. It was my baby, and it could feel as it so desired.

It had been a busy day, and pleasant, except for that short, surprise phone call from Nate. He did everything he could to keep me around, to keep me in his life for the sole purpose of having a willing participant he could control. It had taken me years to wise up to that toxic behavior, but I wasn't going to let him play me anymore. I had set boundaries. Or maybe I built walls, walls initially erected to keep Nate from scaling but walls that effectively served to keep everyone else out as well.

Regardless, closing at the end of a workday could also be a cathartic experience. All the bad moments and the stress of hustling could be washed away with the mop water, unpleasant memories wiped away as the dirty floor became clean again.

On my way home, I popped into the bodega on Tenth Street to pick up a six-pack. My night out had caught up to me, and I was looking forward to hanging out on the couch in front of the TV with a beer. With Maestro by my side, I cruised past the busy patio at XO, teeming with drunk guys in tank tops and short shorts, ending their weekends strong with a Sunday Funday outing. The music was loud, and the crowd was messy, to put it nicely. I tried to avoid that place on Sundays when possible, but it was two doors down from the shop and on the most direct path to the bodega. As a formality, we stopped to say hello to a few guys I knew from my building and a couple of my customers, chatting briefly with them over the waist-high brick wall that separated the patio from the sidewalk along Grove Avenue.

Just across the street, the slightly smaller crowd at Terrace was less boisterous but just as tipsy. We sped by quickly and quietly, arriving at the front door of the bodega unnoticed. Technically, dogs weren't allowed inside, but the owner made an exception for Maestro.

"Fayed! What's good, bro?" I called out to the small-statured Middle Eastern man with the stoic expression who sat idly behind the counter for what seemed like twenty-four hours a day, selling cigarettes and packs of chewing gum to the rowdy bar hoppers of Midtown. Even though I ran into him almost daily, I knew very little about Fayed, him not being the type to hold lengthy conversations. He was from Egypt. He immigrated to the States with his folks as a teenager. His folks ran a market in the Old Fourth Ward. That was the extent of what I knew. Who was I to judge though? It wasn't like I was forthcoming about my past with everyone I met. But he was friendly with me, his expression softening to a welcoming smile when he realized it was me walking into his store.

"Brandon! How are you, boss?"

"Good. I just left the shop and need a little something to help me relax tonight."

"That shit's illegal, man. But I got a guy," he joked. "Bad day?"

A stifled laugh escaped me. "Nah, just… long."

As Maestro and I traversed the small shop, zigzagging through an aisle to the back cooler to fish out my desired beer for the evening, a couple of guys walked in, and Fayed's expression immediately turned stoic again. I didn't know if it was some kind of intimidation tactic he used to boost sales or if he was actually nervous about people shoplifting from him, but the guy never smiled at anyone he didn't know. He didn't have any competition within the compact intersection that made up the core of the gay village and for at least three blocks outside of it, so I figured he could run his shop however he saw fit.

I made my selection and stepped on the line behind the guys who'd followed me in, both barely legal and intoxicated, one of them purchasing an ill-advised pack of cigarettes and a pink plastic lighter. That thought—that snap judgment—crossed my mind without any irony as I stood there with a six-pack of beer cradled in the crook of my arm. Both boys flipped their hair and turned to walk out as the one with the pack of cigarettes began slapping it repeatedly against his open palm. That packing maneuver sparked memories of long nights out, of running the streets and illegal parties, but it had been fifteen years since I'd had a cigarette, and I couldn't stand the thought of smoking now.

Stepping up to the counter, I set the beer down and dug in my back pocket for my wallet. "You have a good weekend?"

"Yeah." Fayed's somber expression eased back into one of familiar camaraderie. "You know the nice weather, it brings the people out to the park, to the bars. It keeps me busy."

"That's good to hear." I slid my credit card into the reader.

"You need a bag?"

"Nah, I can carry it like that."

"Okay. Stay good, my man."

"You too, Fayed." I grabbed the six-pack from the counter by the cardboard handle. I wasn't a big people person, but I enjoyed these little encounters with other business owners and my customers around the neighborhood. It made me feel like I belonged, like I was a part of something. With as much shade that could be thrown around Midtown, there was still a sense of community amongst the locals, the ones you ran into at the bustling intersection of Tenth and Grove, not just on Saturday nights but on Wednesday mornings.

Maestro and I sped past the bars and arrived safely on a quieter stretch of Tenth Street, where we could drift at a more leisurely pace without being accosted by a tipsy, talkative neighbor or intoxicated passerby who felt it necessary to interact with a random dog. Maestro looked for a spot to do his business while I took in the scenery. The early evening sun, still a couple of hours from setting, reflected off the glass windows of the high-rise condo buildings that saturated Midtown and lit the leafy trees that lined the streets below. The air was warm and humid, and while the muffled thump-thump-thump of the music and the raucous laughter and yelps of bar patrons could be heard down the block, there was a peaceful serenity that blanketed the area on Sunday evenings. A cool breeze picked up out of nowhere and sailed down the street, rustling the leaves, briefly cutting through the dense air, providing a momentary respite from the heat.

I took a deep breath as we meandered, relaxing as we passed a few people on their way to the bar and another out on a jog. Sometimes, I had to take in the essence of my surroundings to remind myself that I was alive. I closed my eyes for a moment as Maestro pulled me home, opening them just in time to keep myself from bumping into a stranger whose dog, a black-and-white husky, had yanked him across the sidewalk to meet Maestro.

"Oh, shit!" I'd been startled by the sudden encounter. "Sorry."

The stranger laughed at my surprise as the dogs sniffed each other between us, oblivious to our exchange.

"No problem," the stranger replied, an amused smile lightening his expression, softening his features. He spoke with a slight accent, one that was probably much thicker at one point but had been masked by years of assimilation. Those three quick words didn't exactly clue me in as to where it might have originated though. The dog looked vaguely familiar, like I'd seen him in the shop earlier that day, or the day before, or maybe weeks ago. I sometimes recognized dogs before I did their humans, a hazard of the trade.

"He is very friendly," the stranger continued, using his face to motion to Maestro.

"Yeah. He's used to being around other dogs. He's social," I confirmed, continuing the familiar cadence of small talk among dog owners that regularly takes place during chance encounters on the sidewalk.

"Yes, I can see that," he said, Maestro initiating a playful romp with the husky, dropping his chest to the ground and leaning into his front paws before leaping, attempting to gently nip at his new friend's face. The husky returned the gesture, matching my dog's good-natured, mischievous demeanor.

The stranger and I laughed at the carefree display of dalliance that could only be committed by canines or adolescent children fresh from under the thumbs of watchful parents. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a jogger heading our way, so I pulled Maestro into a wide opening between two large hedges in the flower bed of the condo complex we stood next to. The stranger followed my lead, and as he did, I got my first real look at him. I'd been so focused on the dogs and my own surprise that I hadn't given much thought to the man standing in front of me. I swallowed hard when I finally did. He was well over six feet tall, a height that suddenly seemed to tower over my only slightly shorter frame. His salt-and-pepper hair was buzzed short on the sides, fading up into a simple abbreviated style on top, coiffed to look unintentionally tousled. His green eyes had this tired, inviting look about them. A few slight creases that appeared on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes when he smiled gave him a kind of sexy daddy vibe. He looked to be in his early forties.

As I scanned further down, I studied his appearance. A relaxed but tailored look complemented his frame: a fitted light blue V-neck T-shirt, casual gray shorts, and gray Chuck Taylors. He was in shape—not a bodybuilder, but his arms and legs were toned, and his chest really filled out that T-shirt. A soft, silvery patch of hair crept out of the pointed collar, making the five o'clock shadow he sported somehow seem even more masculine.

Shit. Where was I? What happened? I had to tell myself to close my mouth, to stop staring while I instinctively shifted my stance to ensure I wasn't sporting a visible erection while our dogs roughhoused in the flower bed. He smelled of bergamot and cedarwood. I wouldn't have been able to describe those notes if asked, but of his clean, rugged, woodsy scent, I was certain. I was certain I liked it, certain I wanted it near me.

"How old is he?" the stranger asked, still smiling, shifting his gaze between Maestro and me.

Suddenly, we were interrupted by a truck from the fire department across the street blaring its siren as it slowly pulled out of the station and stopped traffic before turning and beginning its journey down Tenth Street. The sound of the siren bounced from building to building as it rang, rippling off each one, echoing from a hundred different surfaces, seemingly louder with each jump.

The stranger turned himself to focus on the truck, and without thinking, I looked at his ass, perfectly framed by those shorts. I remembered the man I saw that morning walking down Tenth Street with the husky, the one I thought I recognized but couldn't exactly place. It was curious that I would have run into him, almost coincidental. So many people wandered the streets of Midtown at any given moment. Could I have been so lucky?

"What?" I asked, the volume of my voice slightly elevated, attempting to compete with the commotion of the truck.

Get it together, Brandon. I cursed that damn fire station. Six, seven, eight times a day, the sirens rang throughout Midtown, interrupting everything, every event, every conversation within earshot. The sirens that blared on those trucks seemed so much louder than they needed to be. I understood the need for the station, but I couldn't help thinking what a terrible location it was, on one of the busiest streets in the neighborhood, surrounded by everything—everything that might require a team of firefighters at some point. As busy as Midtown had become, there were still isolated pockets on blocks that at one time housed small factories and warehouses long relegated to the suburbs by zoning restrictions and skyrocketing property values. Why couldn't the firehouse reside on one of those blocks instead? It would have made this conversation much easier, I laughed to myself.

Once distance muffled the noise from the siren, the stranger turned to face me, continuing, "How old is he?"

"Uh, nine, I think. He came from the shelter, so I'm not sure. And yours?"

"He's a shelter dog too. I got him four years ago. They told me he was two, so I guess he's six now."

"He's really handsome."

"Thank you," he answered sincerely. "Why is your dog used to being around other dogs? Do you take him to the dog park?"

"Nah. I mean, yeah. I do," I corrected myself. "But I have a pet supply store around the corner, and we do grooming and dog walking and… well, he hangs out with me there most days, and there are always other dogs there and…" I nervously rambled, doing my best to avoid an awkward silence, ironically making our conversation more awkward. I wouldn't have minded a little awkwardness had this stranger been anyone else, but my entire perception of our interaction had changed once I realized how hot he was. Fortunately, the stranger interrupted me.

"Oh. That's your shop around the corner?" he asked, pointing in the general direction of City Paws.

"Yeah. For almost five years now." I grinned, embarrassingly remembering how long it had been since Nate and I had the bright idea to open a business together. "Have you ever been in?"

"No. We walk by often but have never stopped in."

I noticed him looking directly into my eyes as we spoke, ignoring the world around us. It was odd behavior for a guy in Midtown. Typically, the eyes of those you conversed with shuffled between your own and the space directly over your shoulder, just in case something better came along, just in case someone slightly hotter walked by.

"You should come by sometime. Bring…" I hesitated as I casually pointed to the husky, realizing I never asked his name.

"Hugo," the stranger replied, casually dropping the H sound before self-correcting and pronouncing all the letters, an attempt to sound more American, perhaps.

"Yeah. Bring Hugo by."

"Okay. I will do that."

By that time, the dogs had lost interest in each other, and Hugo seemed to be eager to get on with his walk. The stranger and I held each other's attention for a moment before I spoke again, "Alright. I guess I'm gonna take this one back home and have a drink on my balcony."

I lifted the six-pack in my hand for emphasis. The one I'd forgotten about until just a moment ago.

"Okay. Enjoy your evening," the stranger offered, flashing me a half-smile, one that seemed casual and friendly. And interested.

We turned to walk away before I realized we never exchanged names. Not that unusual for a random encounter on the street, but there was something about this one that didn't seem so random. I pivoted on my heel, spinning myself around, confusing Maestro a bit. The stranger was only fifteen, maybe twenty feet away. I called in his direction, "What's your name?"

The stranger turned around, pulling Hugo with him. "Matti." The volume of his voice was elevated to make up for the distance between us, a hard emphasis placed on the T in his name, leading me to believe his accent may have been French.

"I'm Brandon," I replied as casually as I could.

"Until we meet again, Brandon." He offered me a lingering smile, sweet and sexy. I hesitated a moment before turning to head home. Maestro and I took just a few steps before I swiveled back to catch another glimpse of his ass, and as I did, I caught Matti doing the same. An embarrassed laugh pushed from my lips. A knowing smile graced his.

On my balcony, Maestro curled up on the cool concrete slab at my bare feet, a half-empty beer on the small table next to me. Each unit in the building had a balcony. Some, like the one protruding from my unit, shared the same concrete slab, separated from the neighbor's outdoor space by a rigid wall, a lengthier slab climbing the entire height of the building. I gazed across the courtyard at the North Tower and wondered to myself what everyone else in the world was doing at that moment. The dueling towers of my building didn't actually have names—North Tower and South Tower was how the residents referred to them in order to differentiate which structure someone lived in or where an event was being held.

It was still too light outside to see into anyone's unit, so I had to imagine, make up stories about people I hardly knew, people I didn't know at all. It was a cheap form of entertainment that satisfied a feral curiosity in me. There was a guy a couple of floors up, advanced in age, who occasionally stepped out onto his balcony wearing nothing but a leather harness around his shoulders and a lightweight bath towel draped loosely around his waist. He would place his hands behind his head and stretch just long enough for a gust of wind to push through and blow his towel open for the world to see before walking back inside like he hadn't just flashed half the neighborhood. What was he up to? I cocked my head to the right and looked up. His balcony was empty. He could have been tied up in a dungeon somewhere with someone's arm halfway up his ass or sitting quietly in his condo knitting a scarf. People surprised me with how they behaved when they thought no one was looking.

For instance, there was a younger woman whose place butted up against the pool deck on the seventh floor who always looked very professional when I passed her in the lobby, wearing a business suit or a fashionable skirt with heels and carrying a briefcase. She was always put together, always made up, never a hair out of place. She rarely said hello or made eye contact with anyone. If I had to guess, I would have said she was in her late twenties and probably some kind of attorney. In public, she seemed busy and self-important. She didn't strike me as a rule-breaker. In fact, I assumed she was probably quite anal-retentive at work. Whenever I saw her on her terrace though, she'd wear ill-fitting pajama pants and chain-smoke cigarettes. Sometimes, on the weekends, she'd have people over—other straight twentysomethings—and they would be excessively loud as they passed joints around and tossed back too-full glasses of red wine.

The most interesting thing I would see, however, was a middle-aged, mixed-race, straight couple that slow-danced in their living room almost every night of the week. I actually knew their names—Chet and Dawn. They introduced themselves to me at the pool not long after I moved in. I didn't often visit the pool at Stratus. It just happened to be one of those rare days I'd taken off work and hardly knew what to do with myself. Chet and Dawn were nice and filled me in on some of the dos and don'ts of my new building, informed me of events the homeowners association hosted—holiday parties and wine-down Wednesday mixers. Everyone knew Chet and Dawn as staples of the building, but I wondered how many had witnessed their love, the romance they shared as they slowly swayed and twirled around their unit after dinner each night. What type of music were they dancing to? Was there any music at all?

And then there was the mystery man on the thirteenth floor who'd captured my attention as of late, who wore business casual until he didn't. The man who rarely wore clothes at all and didn't seem to care who saw. The man who'd helped me get off more times than he hadn't over the past few months, whether he knew it or not. Where was he? The sun was slowly setting, and every minute shed more light—well, clarity—on the actions of my neighbors across the courtyard. The lights in his condo weren't on, so I assumed he was out.

Grabbing the bottle and bringing it to my lips, I took a long, slow sip as I focused on the wall of glass that shielded his condo from the world, imagining him standing there at the window, just as he'd done the night before, his masculine frame silhouetted by the moonlight, begging for my attention. I wondered what he saw when he looked out. What struck his fancy as he stood there unknowingly putting on a show for me, giving me my jollies? What scenes caught his attention? Did he care about what anyone else was doing in their unit? Or was he looking out to the skyline, over the city, beyond the horizon?

My natural curiosity begged to know more about him, and as much as I didn't want to be caught lusting after him, I wanted him to notice me in some way. I wanted him to want me just as much as I wanted him, or at least the picture of him I'd created in my mind.

Even if I didn't consider myself lonely, my growing obsession with that beautiful stranger didn't seem healthy. Did I even find him attractive? He was far enough away and the light dim enough every time I saw him that I might not even be drawn to him in real life. His body appealed to me, but the rest of him was obscured by twilight and illusion. And pretense. He wasn't actually there, after all. He could have been at the gym or out partying. He could have been at his boyfriend's place or, worse yet, his girlfriend's. The thought of that made my heart sink. Why did I have to get so wrapped up in my daydreams?

Then, I remembered my earlier run-in with Matti and wondered to myself where he was from. Where did he grow up, and how did he get here? It wasn't odd to meet someone with a foreign accent in Atlanta, but Matti's was distinct, even if it was barely noticeable. It also wasn't uncommon to stop and talk to another stranger walking their dog in Midtown, but there was something more to that conversation than the superficial small talk usually shared between dog owners, even if it didn't present itself verbally: the lingering gazes, the playful smiles, the look-back as we parted ways. Could there have been something there? Was that a real connection? I was so out of practice. Maybe I'd imagined all of it.

It was probably time for me to become social again—to get back out there, as they say. Not that I never dated, but since Nate and I had broken up, none of the people I'd gone out with had worked out. It was easier to hook up, get my rocks off, and go home. With tricks, there was never any expectation to be someone that I was so clearly not. To present myself as more affluent, more cultured, more ambitious than I actually was. There was a simplicity to one-night stands that made more sense to me than what seemed to be the constant charade of happy relationships thrown in one's face, only happy in presentation while underneath lay a hidden back room full of judgment and infidelity and passive-aggression. Jealousy and betrayal in place of romance and support. One-night stands had become easy and convenient, jeans and a T-shirt versus a three-piece suit cutting me at the neck with an unnecessary tie or crippling my feet with uncomfortable shoes.

That was part of the reason I'd left my job in retail and gambled on opening my own business in the first place. I'd been making good money, but there wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel. Keeping up appearances was the game, pretending to have as much money and live the same lives as the wealthy clients who bought six-thousand-dollar handbags and threw out thousands of dollars' worth of last season's fashions—some of which had never been worn—to make way for the next season's colors and styles. None of it mattered. It was superficial. Other than my quarterly bonuses, I got no satisfaction from selling people things they didn't need.

I needed something to look forward to other than retirement. Yeah, I needed a paycheck just like everyone else, and since Nate had expensive taste, one that displayed a number similar to what I'd already been making. But there came a point at which it became much too much. I had to take off the dry-clean-only leather and cashmere and pull on the worn denim and stretched-out cotton, something I could actually throw into that high-end washing machine Nate made us buy.

Hookups were fine. Meaningless, but fine. Empty, but fine. I knew I was looking for something more than a fling these days, but the process of finding substance seemed overwhelming. In a way, I had given up on love. I'd experienced a form of it with Nate, and it took so much from me. Alex and Patrick seemed to have something good, and it hadn't taken them a great deal of effort to achieve it, at least it seemed, but they were an anomaly among the people I knew. Besides, there was always infatuation, obsession, desire, and longing from a distance, the unrequited variant of love I was used to. It drained me emotionally but required no social effort. My investment in it could easily be pulled and recouped, if necessary.

Maybe I was a bit of a spinster, but I got laid from time to time. My friends could tell stories about my shenanigans with guys in more detail than I experienced them. They joked about my inability to commit, even though Calvin wasn't great at it himself. But I was the flake among us. Not because I was naturally noncommittal but because I'd grown hesitant and doubtful after Nate. No one's intentions seemed sincere. Life to him was a game of winning, showing off the spoils of his victories to competitors or anyone at all who was willing to have a look. There had to be something better out there. In fact, I knew there was. But I couldn't make myself believe I was worth anyone's goodness anymore. It just hadn't worked out in the past.

Another spring breeze slithered in between the towers of my building, shaking me from my bubble of self-pity as it rattled the umbrellas on the pool deck below, whipping at the fabric. I snapped back to reality just as dusk crept over the neighborhood. Muffled music from the bars had either quieted or stopped altogether. The clear sky had turned that impossible-to-replicate shade of blue between steel and sapphire, a few dim twinkles of light peeking through the curtain above, waiting for their cue to approach center stage. The nearly full moon sat off to the east as it always did this time of night, this time of year, preparing to illuminate the city below just enough for shadows to chase behind anything that dared to move. There seemed to be a magic that danced above us all as we approached midsummer nights.

Maestro had passed out at my feet. He'd need a quick stroll around the block before bed, but he was happy to be in for now. Maybe I'd have another beer and make some pasta for dinner. A chill night in seemed like a good idea. As I stood to head in, I noticed the light switch on in the mystery man's condo below, illuminating his living quarters. Maybe he didn't have a girlfriend after all. I couldn't see him, couldn't tell whether he was alone, but he was home. Biting my bottom lip in curiosity and anticipation, I turned to step through the balcony door on a path to start dinner. I'd give him the night off, I thought.