Chapter 8

I'm not sure what would be of Calvin today had Alex and I not been at Avenue that night. I don't look back on that night with some misguided savior complex or delusional etchings of megalomania but with more of a mangled curiosity. Some obtuse, ominous need to prove to myself that not everything I touch becomes defective. I don't accept that we did anything other than what we had to, Alex and I. Anything other than what we would have expected someone to do for us. Our actions that night resembled an instinctive obligation to someone who meant nothing to us then but represents nothing less than family now. Someone who completes us. The unrealized urgency of that night cemented the thick of our souls and rendered us inseparable in spirit. Maybe it was fate that drew us to him.

I think back on that night and wonder what would have happened had we left the club when Alex suggested instead of getting one more drink, had we not decided to pop into the bathroom for a piss at just the moment we did. Where might Calvin be today if our paths hadn't crossed that night? Homeless? Dead? I guess we never know what might become if only we'd done this or done that.

Alex had been in Atlanta for only a couple of months, and per usual on a Saturday night—Sunday morning—we were out partying. The club was packed like it was every weekend, but it wasn't one of those unforgettable nights that one reminisces about. The music was good, and I'm sure we'd been chasing some chemical high, but nothing up to that point had been particularly memorable.

2002

"What time is it?" Alex asked as we aimlessly hung by the bar, fresh off the dance floor, shouting over the driving beat of the music, the pounding of the bass in our chests.

Flanked on all sides by the usual suspects—shirtless bears, yammering twinks, well-muscled pretty boys wearing too much cologne and hair gel—I pulled a flip phone from my pocket and thumbed at the button on the side. The tiny, digitized screen illuminated in the darkness, a neon greenish glow pummeling my dilated pupils. "Almost two."

"You wanna take off?"

I scanned the room, taking in a sea of sweaty bodies dancing and drinking, laughing, taking bumps from tiny brown bottles they carried in their pockets. Poppers weren't my thing. I'd used them when I was younger, but they made me dizzy, like I needed to sit down and wait for the room to stop spinning. What was the fun in that? Where was the kick, the euphoric aftermath? The excitement and abandon of a postnasal drip, bitter and acerbic? I no longer understood the appeal. No one in particular stood out to me, and there wasn't much of a jovial vibe in the air, but after my stressful closing shift at work, I wasn't ready to call it a night.

"One more drink?"

Alex looked around the space, a half-hearted attempt at justification. A boy caught his eye, a ginger type that looked far too young to be out. He leaned against a dirty wall near the hallway that led to the bathroom, empty-handed and adrift. When I realized what he saw, I zeroed in as well. The kid was cute, but the lack of companions, the baggy jeans and baseball cap, the shifting eyes, they all gave me pause, relayed to me that he was either a straight boy selling drugs or a lost boy looking for some.

As a fixture at the clubs in New York, I could easily get a feel for who the hustlers were. I just hadn't figured out who was who in Atlanta yet. The boy was out of place, sober, inept.

A man of maybe fifty approached him with a plastic cup—crushed ice and a bright, pinkish substance. Probably a vodka cranberry. I recognized the man as a regular at Avenue, but I didn't know him. He was tanned, muscled, and wore only a pair of frayed, faded jeans, loose threads fanning out at the pockets, the knees, and the ankles. He looked like he'd been around the block a few times, a lifer on the Avenue, if you will. A body for the gods and a face sunken in and marred by pocks, a victim to the dark side of meth. One too many nights of partying just a little too hard. He carried a plastic cup for himself as well, only ice and clear liquid. The boy took the drink, and they conversed. Were they together? They seemed like an odd pair.

"Sure," Alex confirmed as he focused on the exchange across the room, a cautious curiosity about him.

I turned away from the interaction and toward the bar, ordering another round. The nerves of the bartender nearest me seemed stretched thin as messy queen after messy queen approached to shout their orders, another vodka soda or tequila shot or bottle of water. I'm not sure what it was about going out back then, but even if I wasn't having the greatest time, I never wanted to leave. Not really. Something, whether it was the music or the lights or the rush of all those people in one place, the attack on my senses, something always dragged me back. Possibility lay just around every corner, and it seemed foolish to neglect my chances.

Drinks finally in hand, I passed one to Alex and noticed the odd couple across the room had disappeared, hopefully not a casualty of bad judgment.

The frantic, undeviating beat that spewed from towers of speakers and swirled around the club suddenly dropped out, silence finding a home as the dance floor went dark, a thick fog and the raucous cheers of a thousand voices filling the void. A hollow kick drum and a steady, tribal bass beat crept in slowly, gathering steam, getting louder and louder, lasting for minutes. An edging for the ages. New tracks, new sounds layered in bar after bar, incremental elements sating the need for more. Those bouncing synths. The dance floor filled to capacity with clumsy movement, with seething anticipation of a vocal arrival. There it was, just a taste. A Deborah Cox anthem. A Hex Hector remix. It had to be. It was unmistakable. One could feel it approaching. When the vocal finally dropped, it would be brassy and raw and laced with the unrelenting emotion of another broken heart. The crowd would go crazy.

"C'mon," I announced, grabbing Alex's arm. "Let's dance."

Alex followed behind me as we pushed our way to the nucleus of that swirling mass, the sweaty core, surrounded by platforms of varying heights, barely able to accommodate the friends and strangers that haphazardly gyrated atop them. Even more speakers hung from the towering ceiling by chains, decorating each corner of the space while oddly shaped black boxes seemed to dance between them, producing vibrant displays of light: green, blue, red, purple. Scaffolding crisscrossed high above, a giant X that supported those lights, those machines, that giant disco ball that bounced tiny white beams of light in every direction as it rotated. It was the centerpiece, a dangling wrecking ball that could have killed us all at any minute, rattling, shaking with the vibrations of the bass.

Fifteen, twenty, thirty more minutes of dancing—thirty more minutes of sweating—passed before Alex and I finally decided to head out, leaving on a high note. But before we could make our exit, I needed to use the bathroom. Five blocks wasn't far, but I was bordering intoxication. Best to go before leaving, I thought.

That infamous, sparsely decorated hallway was lined with tweakers waiting for an empty bathroom stall, some forgoing decorum altogether and boldly taking their bumps in public view, sick of the wait. We quickly stepped around them, approaching the graffitied wall of urinals adorned with fat-tip-marker tags and wrinkled stickers for record labels and competing nightclubs, three of the four toilets unoccupied. The door closed behind us, dampening the blare of the music.

I quickly unzipped my pants to relieve myself. Alex stepped up to the urinal next to me and did the same. The release felt nice, almost relaxing after a couple of drinks and a bottle of water. The thought of going home seemed more appealing than it had thirty minutes ago. But as I peed, a rustling in the stall just next to Alex drew my attention. Then, an ugly groan. I shifted the upper half of my body to glance over Alex's shoulder, only to notice a pair of legs stretched out on the dirty tile floor, the upper half of the body concealed by the toilet. The angle and the frame of the stall, that off-green metal enclosure tagged with black marker and key scratches, made it difficult to see, but it was clear that whoever those legs belonged to wasn't in great shape. I tapped Alex on the shoulder, directing his attention to the mess just next to us.

"Oh, shit," he started. "You think he's alright?"

"I don't know." I tried to pinch back my stream so I could investigate. I raised my voice. "Yo, you good in there?"

The muffled sound of the music, combined with the hushed attempts of the pair in the other stall cutting lines on the back of the toilet, allowed me to narrow my focus to what I didn't hear: a response from the pair of legs.

Quickly, Alex and I zipped up and stepped over to the stall, knocking on the door. The cokeheads paid us no mind. Again, no answer. I gently pushed against the door, and it opened to expose the kid in the baggy jeans and baseball cap we'd seen earlier, the kid who looked out of place. His eyes were closed, and the baseball cap had almost fallen off his head while he hugged the toilet. His face now visible, I could see how young he looked: fifteen, maybe sixteen.

There was a nervous innocence about him, the way he bent himself inward, almost wrapping himself around the base of the toilet for protection. Had he not been sedated, unconscious, he could have told us stories about his life, about how he ended up at Avenue that night. He could have told us his name or where he lived. A few damp spots, maybe stains from sweat or piss or vomit, dotted his T-shirt. The floor was littered with puddles from spilled drinks and who knows what else.

The kid didn't seem that intoxicated when we saw him earlier, and thirty minutes was not nearly enough time to waste oneself on drinks at Avenue. I looked at Alex knowingly. An aura of subdued concern set in around us. He read my mind, returned my glance, shared my worry. The kid had been drugged.

"We gotta get him outta here before whoever did this to him finds him," Alex said, not getting too worked up.

"I'll get his arms. Can you steady his feet so he won't slip?"

"Yeah, I got 'em."

He didn't appear to be that big, his baggy clothes obscuring his solid, compact frame. But picking him up was much easier in theory than it was in reality. His body felt lifeless, like dead weight, and he provided little assistance in carrying himself upright. But we were able to get him standing eventually, wedged between us, one arm wrapped around Alex's shoulder and the other around mine. In the light of the bathroom and damp with perspiration (I hoped), his short locks shifted hues, wavered between brown and red. I pulled the baseball cap back over his flattened hair. His head slung down in front of him, bouncing slightly on his neck as we walked him out of the bathroom and toward the exit.

"You see who he came in with?" I asked the doorman as Alex took the kid's full weight on himself and walked him through the door, out to the parking lot.

"Nah, but I'm just covering for someone on break." He spoke with sincerity but a lack of empathy. Surely, he saw this sort of thing all the time; some dumb kid drinking himself silly, dragged from the club by friends. We'd all been there at one point in time, in one role or another. Only that wasn't exactly what was happening. This wasn't a stupid mistake. It was intentional and predatory.

"Thanks," I replied, defeated.

Assuming the culprit for his wobbly incoherence was too much GHB, a visit to the emergency room seemed like overkill. His heart was beating. He was breathing. I had hoped to get the kid back to his friends or whoever it was that he'd come out with, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen. I stepped out into the warm night air to take the brunt of the kid's weight back on my shoulder and made a split decision. Alex had found his own place a few weeks back, no longer sleeping on my couch, so the kid was going to crash at my place. Just for the night. I'd figure out how to get him home tomorrow.

"Think we can drag him to my place?" I asked, flinging the kid's arm around my neck, hoisting him up with my shoulder.

"Better yours than mine," he laughed. His apartment was a studio and a few blocks further away.

We hobbled along, occasionally tripping on broken pieces of pavement and old tree roots that had grown through the sidewalk, stopping just outside my building to shift the kid's weight around on our shoulders. Without any notice, he threw up. The stream of liquid vomit that violently escaped his body missed both Alex and me, instead painting the concrete slab of walkway in front of us. The kid's T-shirt mopped up the remaining strings of bile that hung from his lips. The urge was sudden and foul, but at the very least, some of the chemicals that had been messing with his system had been expelled. And better yet, it didn't happen inside my apartment. What worried me was that there didn't appear to be any food in his stomach. The shock of the jolt caused him to stir.

"You alright?" Alex asked.

A muffled groan pierced his lips.

"He'll be fine," I replied assuredly.

Of course, I couldn't be sure of that. But I'd been in his position before. The difference was that it was my own doing that put me in such an inebriated state.

Alex helped me get him up the stairs, into my apartment, and laid out on the couch, head turned to the side, gently resting on a plush throw pillow. His baseball cap was placed neatly in front of him on the coffee table next to a small garbage can I retrieved from the bathroom. It was unlikely he'd use it, but if he had to throw up again, he'd have something.

I sent Alex on his way, assuring him there was nothing else he could do, promising I'd meet him for brunch the next day. I'd had every intention of getting a good night's sleep, but I got no further than removing the kid's well-worn sneakers and wetting a washrag with cold water for his forehead before slumping over into the armchair next to the couch so I could keep an eye on him. I turned the TV on to some late-night garbage, the volume low, and vaguely remember fading in and out, trying to keep my wits about me. I wanted to make sure the kid was alright, but I didn't want him waking up and robbing me blind while I slept either.

Five hours of fitful, uncomfortable sleep later, the sun was out, shining brightly through the window that served as a focal point for my living room. My eyelids peeled themselves awake. The kid was sleeping soundly, his breathing deep and regular. He'd shifted himself around, his legs drawn in and his face toward the back cushion. I stretched my legs, arms reaching high above my head, a wide yawn overtaking my face, before finally gathering the energy to get up, brush my teeth, and brew a pot of coffee. My muscles immediately loosened as I remembered that I had the day off and eased into a relaxed version of my morning routine.

The coffee brewed, and I wandered into my bedroom to change my clothes. The rags I'd been wearing all night smelled of sweat and the stale stench of cigarette smoke, the muted scent of a night out lingering on my shirt, doing nothing for me. I needed a shower, but I'd get to that later. Digging a pair of comfortable jeans and an old T-shirt from my closet, I quickly dressed myself and returned to the kitchen.

I lumbered about, grabbing a mug from the cabinet next to the refrigerator and stumbling a few steps back to where the coffeepot sat on the counter, doing my best not to disturb the kid on my couch. It was no use. In my daze, not asleep but not quite awake, I poured the liquid brew into my mug and attempted to return the pot to the cradle, missing the mark and slamming the glass carafe into the front of the stainless-steel machine, a jarring racket echoing through the Sunday morning quiet.

"Shit," I whispered.

I looked over my shoulder, and the kid had startled awake, lifting his head from the pillow, his eyes meeting mine. We stared at each other for a moment, him not sure where he was and me not sure what to say. There was a fear that dashed through his gaze, making me uncomfortable, awakening a deep sympathy in me. I understood what he was feeling. I had been in his shoes, lost and uncertain. He appeared even younger than he had last night, like a boy that had ventured into the wild to find it much colder and lonelier than expected. Like he'd lost the last bit of innocence he was sure he'd shed years ago. Like he'd become a man overnight and hadn't the foggiest clue how to act like one. I knew what he was experiencing at that moment, and I didn't want that sickening feeling to last any longer than it needed to.

A smile grew across my face as I drew the mug to my lips, taking a sip of hot coffee, that bitter, caffeinated nectar that seemed more necessary than air. "How ya feelin'?"

He didn't move. The silence between us was penetrable. I spoke again, attempting to quickly explain his current situation. "I'm Brandon. You fell out at Avenue last night. Me and my boy, Alex, we couldn't find your friends, so we brought you back here."

"Where's here?" he asked, a nervous pitch dotting his voice, groggy but alert.

"Don't worry. You're still in Midtown. Sixth and Dumont." He quickly glanced around the room. I continued. "Just a few blocks from the club."

"Did we?" he started to ask.

"Nah," I interrupted. "You were barely conscious."

"But I only had one drink."

"Yeah…" I trailed off, pausing for a moment. "The guy that bought you that drink? I think he put something in it."

"Who was he?"

"I don't know. I've seen him around, but I don't know him. Me and Alex, we just happened to see him hand you a drink last night. We thought you were there with him until we found you passed out in the bathroom."

His wheels began to turn. He tried to put the events of the night together like a thousand-piece puzzle, a futile endeavor.

I took a step toward him, and he flinched, so I stopped, frozen in midstep. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I swear."

I tried to think back on my experiences waking up in strange places. How could I get this clearly terrified kid to trust me? Ah… ID. I could show him my ID. He still may not trust me, but at least he'd know I was who I said I was. I spun around and walked back to the kitchen, where I'd tossed my belongings the night before. My wallet, my keys, a pack of gum, an unopened condom, it was all there. I grabbed my wallet and retrieved my ID, still displaying the seal of the state of New York. I hadn't bothered to change it.

I turned back to face the kid. "My ID. Ask me anything you want."

Again, I approached him. He was more at ease this time but still cautious. Taking the piece of plastic from between my fingers, he examined the photo and the information printed in bold, black typeface.

"Brandon O'Leary," I confirmed.

"You're from New York City?"

"Long Island. But yeah, I lived there for a while."

"Date of birth?"

"Seven-six-seventy-six."

He looked at me again, his expression softening as he relaxed, dropping his forehead to the palm of his hand and rubbing his temples. I'm sure his brain felt like it was pounding against his skull.

"You want some coffee?"

We sat in silence on the concrete slab that hung from the side of the building, just off my living room. A few months after I moved in, I bought a couple of patio chairs and a small circular table with a glass top. They didn't match the rusted wrought-iron railings or the reddish-brown corrugated aluminum shade that covered the space, or even the red brick that made up the fa?ade of the building, but none of that mattered to me. The building was old, and the rent was cheap. I had never had a private outdoor space to myself. A couple of potted plants decorated each corner, greening and growing by the day and giving the overall feeling that the place was an extension of the landscape just beyond, a continuance of the Garden District. Two large oak trees grew in the front yard, the foliage almost blocking the view of the houses across the street, but not quite.

Erykah Badu's tinny, soothing voice softly crooned from a CD player boom box nestled just behind me. The kid and I stared out over the quiet street below, not much of anyone out and about so early on a Sunday. A few early risers popped into the bodega just across the street, emerging moments later carrying black plastic bags full of what I could only assume were eggs and milk and bread and boxes of cereal adorned with colorful cartoon figures.

"I'm Calvin," the kid eventually said, his eyes focused on the small brick ranch across the street, rainbow flag hanging from a pillar on the front porch, gently lifting and settling with the breeze. "I don't think I ever told you my name."

"Nice to meet you, Calvin," I offered, extending a hand.

He offered his to me in return. His palm met mine over the table, and with a brief shake, his discomfort seemed to fade. His hand was warm, sweaty. A slight curl at the corner of his pale lips opened up, giving way to a comfortable smile.

"Do you need to call your friends and let them know you're alright? You can use my phone."

He snickered dismissively, and I wasn't sure why, but I didn't question it. "No. I wasn't out with anyone. I don't really know anyone here." A distinctly Southern accent rolled off his tongue as he spoke his first full sentence to me, an emphasis on the first syllable of certain words, sometimes dropping the last letter from others, drawing out the vowels in between. It sounded more rural than I was used to hearing.

"You new to Atlanta?" I pried.

"Yeah. I guess you could say that."

"How long you been here?"

"Just a couple days."

Calvin's answers to my questions were succinct, bordering on elusive. I wanted to know more. I felt like I needed to know more about the stranger sitting next to me, the stranger who'd slept on my couch last night.

"So," I started. "Where'd you move from?"

"Um, Forsyth," he answered, shifting his eyes as he took a quick sip from his mug. "You heard of it?"

I hadn't. "Nah."

"I'm not surprised. It's a little town."

"What brought you to the big city?"

Calvin paused. I could tell he was juggling how to respond. My question seemed like a simple one, but if I'd come to learn anything from meeting new people, the details of their backstories were never that simple.

"Uh," he stalled. "I guess I just needed a fresh start."

I scoffed at his vague explanation. I didn't mean to. It was a knee-jerk reaction that I wanted to retract.

"What?" he asked defensively.

"Well, no offense, but you seem kinda young to need a fresh start. How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"Bullshit. Let me see your ID."

He tried to wave me off.

"It's only fair," I reasoned. "I showed you mine."

Calvin looked at me for a moment, trying to gauge the level of trust he could place in me before pulling his wallet from his back pocket and removing his identification. As he handed it to me, he turned away, hanging his head. I studied it, reading the name, address, and date of birth.

"Calvin Foley. This says you're seventeen."

"I'll be eighteen in a few months," he clapped back, sneering. "So what?"

"So, what's your story? The real one, this time. You owe me at least that much after I peeled your ass off the dirty bathroom floor last night."

He took a deep breath, rolling his tongue over his front teeth inside a tight-lipped grimace, calculating his approach, wrestling over how to begin. "I just," he started, then stopped, thinking for a moment. "I had a fight with my folks. They thought I was doing drugs or something, so they started going through my room and all my stuff. They found a magazine under my mattress."

"What, like a porno mag?"

"Yeah. And they freaked. Kicked me out."

"Wait," I started, trying to wrap my head around his story. "They kicked you out for having a porno mag under your mattress. Not even any drugs?"

"No. They kicked me out for having a gay porno mag under my mattress. It was all guys. I never even done any drugs."

"Shit," I announced in disbelief, taken aback by the actions of his folks. I wasn't quite sure why. My coming out, if you could call it that, didn't go much better. But I'd had time to process it, to shift it around in my brain until I found a suitable hiding place for it. I pressed further, "So, what… They just told you to leave?"

"Basically. They said they weren't gonna have no queer living in their house. Told me I was gonna have to go somewhere to get my mind right."

"Like where?"

"I don't know. Some camp that turns gay people straight, I guess."

"What did you say?"

"I told 'em they could suck my dick. So, my daddy slammed me against the wall and pinned me there while my momma went through all my shit, tearing my room apart, looking for other gay shit, I guess. But I didn't have any. I swiped that magazine from a store in Macon two years ago."

"What happened when they didn't find anything?"

"Nothin'. Tempers were high, so nobody said nothin' else. They were mad 'cause I backtalked them. I wasn't gonna go to no camp, so when they went to bed, I packed a bag with some clothes and a toothbrush and just left. I had some cash from working at my daddy's garage all summer, so I used it to catch the early bus to Atlanta."

I was floored, but I didn't want him to think I didn't understand because, to an extent, I did.

"Where've you been staying?" I asked. "You said you don't know anyone here." That prompted an extended moment of silence. I pressed further, "Calvin, where are you staying?"

"Just down the way. Not far from here."

"On the street?"

"It's fine," he said, trying to downplay his lack of living arrangements. "I found a safe place for my stuff, and I got enough money for food until I can find some work."

I tried to imagine myself at seventeen without a roof over my head. A bleak picture.

"And what are you gonna do if it rains? Or when it gets cold?"

"I've been wet before. I've been cold. I can figure it out," he said as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be a homeless teenager.

I had a decision to make. Some cosmic force had decided to charge me with being responsible for this kid's well-being, for whatever reason. I couldn't very well let him continue to sleep on the street. It wasn't safe, especially not then. I briefly thought about renting a car and driving him back to Forsyth, trying to reason with his folks. But when I thought about his possible future, a stunted life of celibacy and self-loathing, I had a change of heart. It wouldn't be the first time I had someone crashing on my couch.

"I'll tell you what," I started. "Why don't you get cleaned up and take a shower? There's an extra toothbrush under the sink in the bathroom. We'll go pick up your stuff, and you can stay here until you get on your feet."

Calvin seemed shocked. His mouth hung open while he tried to find the words. "No. I can't. You were already too nice by bringing me here last night."

"That wasn't nice, Calvin. That was the human thing to do. But you can't sleep out on the street. It's not safe. So, I insist."

He paused to think, then spoke. "Alright. Fine. But I want to contribute. Pay you rent or whatever."

"We can talk about it later. Go get ready. We're gonna have brunch with Alex at noon. Towels are in the linen closet just outside the bathroom. And grab a T-shirt from my closet. The one you have on is covered in piss and vomit."

He laughed, his eyes welling up as a smile overtook his face. The rays of the morning sun kissed his pale cheeks, painting them red. His voice trembled a little as he spoke. "Alright. Thanks, Brandon."

"Have you been sleeping here?" I asked in bewilderment as we pulled up to a vacant lot in the Old Fourth Ward nestled between two old houses with boarded-up windows on a quiet side street. It was a sketchy area, no place for a small-town kid to be living without the luxury of a roof, a friend, some sort of protection. But he hadn't lied when he said he'd found a safe place to stay. The hollowed-out nook that had served as his home for a few days, his bed for a couple of nights, was buried in a growth of bushes and trees, decently obscured by vines and leaves. Unless someone had specifically known about it, they wouldn't have thought to give it a second look. But it wasn't a home. He needed four walls and a working shower, a kitchen, some kind of protection from the elements, from the darkness of the cold streets.

"It hasn't been that bad. There's a cat that's been coming by and keeping me company at night," he chuckled, again downplaying the severity of the predicament in which he'd recently found himself. That seemed to be a habit for him, seeing the good in the bad.

"Grab your bag," I groaned, disdain in my eyes. Calvin's inability to take his situation seriously frustrated me.

I didn't have a car, so I'd called a cab to make the trip. Calvin had an old gym bag, the brand name on the side peeling off and faded with what appeared to be years of use, and a backpack that I assumed was used for transporting textbooks to and from classes before the course of his life changed a few days back. On the one hand, I thought he'd made a terrible choice, running away from home and leaving school behind. It would surely wreak havoc on his professional life down the road. On the other hand, if he had stayed, he might not have been going to school anyway, instead locked away at some institution, failing miserably at having the gay shocked out of his system, depressed and suicidal. It was six of one and a half dozen of the other.

Calvin and I met Alex for brunch later that day, and he started to open up, to take comfort in the fact that he had a safe place to stay, a respite free from judgment. He became a more relaxed, forthcoming version of the kid who woke up frightened on my couch that morning. In the months that followed, the three of us hung out often, bonded in a way that was organic and necessary. We were all we had, and we somehow understood one another. Calvin's folks never tried to track him down, or maybe they did, but the cops never came knocking at my door.

I set him up on my couch, where he slept for the next few months. He always did the dishes and cleaned up the apartment while I was at work. He found a job at a coffee shop a couple of weeks later and started chipping in on rent and food. I didn't need the help, but he scoffed at my refusal to accept his money.

When he turned eighteen, we enrolled him in a GED program. He got his degree. I set him up with a better-paying job at a store in the mall, just down the corridor from me. I knew the manager. We bought him some nice clothes. He learned how to sell clothes. He learned how to sell himself. I co-signed a lease on a Garden District carriage house for him. He worked his way through college, into a high-paying job, and somehow still managed to run a side hustle. We partied on the weekends, Alex, Calvin, and I, seamlessly rolling our way from Saturday nights into Sunday morning sunrises, abandoning judgment and decency for the sake of fun. We looked out for each other though, and when the situation called for it, we fought like brothers.