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Phone a Friend
Dimitri shouldered his way out of the restaurant and felt cold air hit him in the face much harder than he was prepared for. It was nowhere near as cold as it had been on Monday or Tuesday, but it was still enough that he wished he had brought a scarf with him. The thought made him frown. Had he ever seen Issac with a scarf before yesterday? Yes, he had to… Surely, he had seen Issac with a scarf before.
It had been below freezing Monday night. He remembered offering Issac a ride home no less than five times throughout the day because the minute the sun went down the temperature was going to plummet. He had refused and refused and- It has to be a lie, Dimitri thought as he walked down the sidewalk away from the restaurant, vaguely aware of three people standing near the doors behind him. The Italians knew they were fucked and fabricated the whole thing so they wouldn’t lose the Cat. They had to be lying. There was no way Dimitri wouldn’t have seen-
He stopped in front of a butcher shop with a row of ducks hanging from hooks in the front window. Bits and pieces of things Issac told him over the years filled his mind, always vague but enough that Dimitri had no reason to ask more questions. He pulled out his phone and pressed the missed call with fingers that trembled from more than the cold.
“Hello,” Issac’s voice said, that familiar distracted tone he always had when you asked him something while he was deep in his studies, even if it sounded a bit odd through the speaker.
“Hey,” Dimitri said, forgetting how to breathe for a moment at hearing Issac’s voice after being ignored all day. He realized suddenly that he hadn’t actually planned for Issac to answer the call. “Um, you busy right now?”
“I’m studying,” Issac said shortly. “What do you want, Dimitri?”
“I- I was hoping you could help me with the citations for the sources we need for Young’s paper,” he said, grabbing hold of the first excuse he could think of. “Can we meet up tonight?”
There was a silence long enough that Dimitri pulled the phone away from his ear to make sure he hadn’t lost the call. “That’s not due until Sunday night,” Issac said reproachfully.
“I know,” he said quickly. “But I was trying to get it done earlier since I have that thing on Saturday I was telling you about and I’m really stuck on it. You know I’m awful at his citations.”
“I don’t have the means to go anywhere,” Issac said, still tight and annoyed. “I don’t have a car. You know that.”
“I’ll come get you,” he said, trying to sound brighter than he felt. “Just text me the address and I’ll-”
“Stop,” Issac said with such a firm command in his voice Dimitri felt like someone had grabbed his throat to silence him. “I know you are not working on your homework right now, Dimitri,” he said, unhurried and no less commanding. “You are in Chinatown with your dad, brother, the Don, the Cat, and however many extra people it took to even out the table.”
Dimitri stiffened and glanced back to see Fritz, the Dog, and the Italian who had been sitting across from Fritz all smoking as they leaned against the wall. The Dog and Fritz were both openly watching him on his phone call while the second Italian was a bit away, his smile lit up by his phone.
“So please,” Issac continued, “stop insulting my intelligence and tell me the real reason you are calling.”
Dimitri swallowed slowly, turning away from the men to face the empty street ahead of him. “Is it true?”
“Is what true,” Issac sighed. “You are going to have to be more specific. I can’t read minds through a phone.”
“You told me,” Dimitri said, thinking about the sheet of paper with Issac’s familiar signature for a Saint Something-or-Other Shelter for Men, “that you live in the Districts. That’s where you are right now, isn’t it? That’s where you live?”
There was a dull thudding sound followed shortly by the sound of someone knocking on wood. “I’m fine,” Issac called, away from the speaker. He was inhaling deeply as he put the phone back to his mouth. “No,” he said emotionless. “I never lived in the Districts. I just told you that so you could drop me off when you wouldn’t accept no and I didn’t have the energy to argue.”
“But I’ve dropped you off,” Dimitri argued. “You went inside! I saw you go!”
“You saw me go around a corner,” Issac said firmly. “I would just wait there until you drove away, then go find a place to sleep. Their pool deck chairs are rather nice in the warmer months, to be honest. Sometimes I’d go there to sleep even when you didn’t drive me.”
Dimitri opened his mouth then closed it again. He didn’t know what to think. He suddenly felt incredibly stupid for believing all the lies Issac had told him and deeply hurt that Issac hadn’t trusted him enough to be honest with him. What could he have possibly done to make Issac think so little of him that he wouldn’t ask Dimitri for help?
“You’re making the fish face, aren’t you,” Issac said after a few moments and Dimitri flushed.
“Why didn’t you just tell me,” he asked instead. “Why all the lies?”
Issac didn’t answer right away and Dimitri thought he heard things moving through the speaker. Then he sighed slowly. “People always think the truth is easy,” he said evenly. “It’s not. The truth comes with a history, baggage, stories, other people. Lies are easy. Lies require nothing but the moment and the forethought to remember it.” He paused again. “Don’t take it personally, Dimitri. People lie all the time. Mine seem big but they aren’t. It’s just a bunch of little ones put together.”
“That- that doesn’t make any sense,” Dimitri said, desperately trying to understand. “You didn’t have to tell me everything right away! You just had to say you didn’t have a place to live and I would have helped you!”
“How,” Issac said and Dimitri swallowed. He knew that tone. It was one he used a lot when he was tutoring Dimitri when they first met. The one that meant Issac knew the answer already and was just making Dimitri say it himself.
“I-I don’t know,” he said, knowing he was lying. There was a guest bedroom in his family’s home, not to mention a little shed that Adrian fixed up to be a tiny house for their men to stay in when they needed to lay low or occasionally quit an addiction cold turkey. Both would have been good options right off the top of his head. Papa wouldn’t have liked it, but Dimitri could have even moved out to stay closer to the college if Issac needed a roommate to share the load.
“The thing about good liars,” Issac said, in that same calm, cool voice, “is that they are able to spot lies being told to them. You know what you would have offered me if I told you I had no place to go once I was out of the dorms. You would have offered it without a second thought because you are a good, honest man-”
Dimitri swallowed. That was the second time in the last hour he had been called an honest man and just like when the Don had said it, it felt like it wasn’t a compliment.
