Well, not anymore, he supposed.
Oscar’s phone shook him out of his trance. It was hard not to think about Papa today of all days. He would have come with Oscar, would have been sitting here next to him. He would have been smiling, more lines now around his eyes, if they had been allowed to grow, to deepen, if he had been allowed to age.
His Papa hadn’t. He and Oscar had barely made it out ofthe barber shop together that day when he’d stiffened beside him and dropped to the ground, clutching his chest.
“It’s alright, Spike. You’re alright.” Those had been his last words before he’d lost consciousness.
Oscar hadn’t been able to make the emergency call. Someone else must have called. It didn’t take long for the ambulance to come, but it was too late for Oscar’s father. The suit his father had bought him for the dance lay crumpled in its plastic bag, discarded on the sidewalk beside Papa’s corpse.
Oscar wore the suit to the service instead, ignored his mother’s screaming about it being ugly, about it being shameful, about it being too blue for a funeral.
“Papa bought it for me,” Oscar had said.
He never heard a word of that ugly hour they spent in the church, the pastor speaking about what a kind man his father was. If only they knewhowkind. If only everybody else could know what a good papa he’d been to Oscar and his little sister.
But Oscar didn’t have the power to stand up and tell them. Power was a cold hard thing, and Oscar couldn’t grasp it. It slipped through his fingers every time he tried to reach for it, and all he could think about was that he’d never even told Papa his real name.
Now, sitting in the waiting room, Oscar opened Lina’s text message.
When are you home from the clinic? I made some of Papa’s lentil soup for you. Do you have a ride?
Papa wouldn’t have asked if Oscar had a ride. He would have been here. Maybe Oscar wasn’t being fair. At least she’d texted. At least his sister had offered to feed him. To visit. They’d told him in the other appointments that he’d need all the help he could get. It was his fault that he hadn’t told her.
Maybe Oscar was a little too proud, proud enough thathe’d taken the rest of the savings his father had put together for him and spent them on a nurse to come and help him sit and eat and do literally anything for the next few weeks.
Or maybe it was just his way of pretending that if Papa paid for it, then some part of him must be here, lingering in the small sum he’d been able to split between Oscar and Lina, just enough to turn him into the person he wanted to be, the person he was. Always fixing him up.
“Which doctor is doing yours?” the man sitting next to him asked.
His voice wasn’t as deep as Oscar’s had become, but he had more hair on his chin than Oscar did. Papa had never really managed to grow a beard either. Maybe Oscar had inherited more than his brown eyes. He saw it now, that warmth, reflected in this other man, the same curve of the mouth, the same gentleness. He looked about Oscar’s age, too.
“Schwartz,” Oscar replied. “Who’s doing yours?”
“Zimmerman.” He banged his head against the wooden panels of the wall. His short brown hair glinted red as it caught the lamplight.
Oscar liked that the clinic was lit up in yellow, that the chairs were orange, that there was a small bookshelf lined with queer novels, the same that filled his own shelves back home. He liked that it didn’t feel so much like a hospital.
“When do you have to go in to prep?” the other man asked.
“Soon. They made me take a pregnancy test.” Oscar laughed. It was a bitter thing, cold and hard as the sewing scissors his mother now kept in a locked drawer. At least she had up until Oscar left home four years before. He wondered whether she would scream if she saw what it was Oscar was cutting from his body now. “Because I’m getting laid left, right, and center. Look at all the lovers fighting each other to bring me to surgery.”
“Felt.” The other man’s laugh sounded more genuine to Oscar, but everybody in the world sounded more genuine to his ears. He neverhadquite managed to become the image of his father. “I didn’t have anyone to bring me either.” He shrugged. “My friends live out of town, and I don’t really talk to my family.”
“You’re paying for the nurse, then? To take you home and feed you soup?” Oscar arched an eyebrow at him.
“Honestly, in honor of having these removed today, I think it’s appropriate to say that they’re milking me dry for this.” He had a gorgeous smirk, too, lopsided, with lips that disappeared into his mouth, cheeks that turned pink, eyes that crinkled.
“That’s actually a good one.” Oscar slid his phone back into his pocket. He could respond to Lina before they took his phone away. “My gaming friends aren’t even in the country, actually.”
“Maybe it’s fate, then, that we met each other today of all days.” The other man fiddled with a loose thread on his blue jeans. He shrugged. “Feels like it, anyway.”
“Yeah.” Oscar had never really been good at this part of being human, the small talk, making friends. He wanted to be. How many days and nights had he yearned to be able to text someone and head out for a cup of coffee or a trip to the bookstore? “Do you like books?” Oscar hadn’t felt this brave since he’d lopped off his bangs that one evening thirteen years before.
“I’m scared,” the other man said at about the same time. “Areyou?” He looked up at Oscar, smiling again, eyes a little wide. “Sorry, what were you about to say?”
“I’m terrified, actually,” Oscar replied. Maybe this was a more pertinent topic of conversation than whether or not the two of them liked books. Oscar hoped someday he could sit with someone and talk about frightening things over coffee. “But it’s alright. You’re alright.” Oscar could only hope that he sounded half as warm as his father would have, saying the same words. Papa had said them to him so many times. It had kept him alive for so long.
“You think?” the other man asked. “I’ve wanted this a long time.”
