Aching For It (9 page)

His arms slipped under mine and around my bac. His fingers
beneath my shoulder blades massaged me into near orgasm that was only trumped
by the mounting bliss of both our dicks, hard and hungry, rubbing together in a
knowing dance of their own. Their smacking stickiness, the comingling of our
pre-cum, declaring in loud whispers the unquenchable thirst we had for each
other, our love infallible.

“You rescue me,
Papi
,” he confessed haltingly, the
hot, sweet breath within his kiss igniting me.

“No, baby,” I confessed in turn, a tear trickling down my
cheek. “You are
my
savior.”

He cuddled with me. My penis found the warmth between his
legs.

I gently stretched him, then slipped into him slowly,
delicately. I kissed the nape of his neck. I slow-danced inside his tight and
beautiful ass. He moaned with reciprocal pleasure.

The steady motion of our lovemaking set aside for the moment
the questions that still lingered above us. For this lovely moment, he didn’t
seem to think about his father. I didn’t think about mine. We only thought
about each other. We gave this moment to us. And when I came inside him, and
he, at the same time, came in my hand, we lay still within the gentle softness
of our undistracted love.

We fell asleep that way, me still inside him, spooned
together. We fell asleep as one.

* * * * *

It was some sweet dream out of a story that put a smile on
my sleeping face. And when Étie kissed my smile, I thought I was still
dreaming.

Slowly I opened my eyes just as the touch of his soft lips
touched mine again. He then gently pulled away. His beautiful midnight eyes,
filled with a night full of examining contemplation, looked deeply into mine.

“I think I will go see him,” he said softly, brushing his
fingers over my cheek, through my dreads, informing my earlobe like a beckoning
whisper.

“Who?” I asked groggily, my eyelids weak and heavy with the
sensation of his sensual touch.

“
Señor
Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez,” he whispered,
his moist tongue probing the inside of my ear.”

“Who?” I managed to mutter, distracted and aroused.

“The fucking son of a bitch who call himself my father.”

The attendant at the information desk of Hospital General
checked her computer. Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez was in the cancer ward,
located on the third floor. Étie, unreadable, and I, trying my best to hide my
anxiety, took the elevator up and inquired at the nurse’s station.

The station nurse—her hospital badge identified her as Olga
Herrera—didn’t have to check her records when Étie coolly mentioned his
father’s name. She had sympathetic eyes that spoke more about Mr. Saldano
Jimenez’s condition than I felt she wanted to reveal. Gravity was in the air,
and medical decorum could not mask her empathy. Perhaps she was new, unused to
the everyday reality of attending to the terminally ill, the injured, the
dying. Or perhaps she had gotten to know Étie’s father, had come to find
something in this dying man that represented an impending loss that would be
mighty.

“
¿Usted es Étienne?
” she asked softly.

“
Sí, señora. Me llamo Étienne Saldano. Soy su hijo
,”
Étie responded flatly.

The simple statement caught me off guard, but not unduly
unprepared.
I am his son
,Étie had said. It was the first time I
had heard him utter those words, identifying himself as such. I found myself
grinning widely, a grin that was quickly wiped away by Étie’s stern and sudden
glance in my direction.

“He speaks of you often,” Nurse Herrera continued in
Spanish. “He will be very glad to see you.”

“
Y esto es mi amigo Jesse
,” Étie said to her,
introducing me, ignoring her gentle stab at good will. “
Hola visita de
América.
”

“
Hola, Jesse
,” she said to me, managing a polite
smile before turning back to Étie. “
Un momento, por favor.
”

She then pressed a key on the digital pad before her, waited
a moment and then responded to the voice in her headset.

“
Sí, el Doctor Iglais. El hijo del Sr. Saldano Jimenez
está de aquí ver a su padre.
”

She paused and listened again before responding.

“
Sí Trata. Lo diré
,” she then said, disengaging the
transmission. She looked up at Étie. “
El médico querría hablar con usted
primero. Será fuera en un minuto
,” she said, informing him the doctor would
like to speak to him first and would be out in just a minute.

“
Gracias, señora.
”

“
De nada.
”

As promised, Doctor Iglais, a kind-appearing middle-aged
gentleman with a bush of salt-and-pepper hair and wearing a crisp white
hospital jacket, soon appeared and greeted Étie and me. Although he possessed a
calm warmth, he wasted no time explaining to us, in English for my benefit, the
gravity of Mr. Saldano Jimenez’s condition.

“The combination of cigarette smoke and alcohol passing
through his throat over many years have destroyed the protective lining of the
esophagus and made it vulnerable to the cancer,” he explained. “Because the
cancer has already spread to his brain, I’m afraid there is not much more we
can do except make sure he is as comfortable as possible.

“The high doses of painkillers have eased much of the
discomfort, but they have also rendered him occasionally incoherent and
nonresponsive. But as he has moved in and out of consciousness, there has been
one constant, Étie. He has often uttered your name. Perhaps your very presence
will bring soothing he has not yet known in these, his last days. Who can know
for sure about these things that are ultimately left in the hands of God?”

“How much longer he have?” Étie interrupted.

“He is very weak, son.”

“How long?”

“A week at the most. Maybe a few days, if that. You are here
just in time to say goodbye.”

Étie retreated into a gothic silence. Doctor Iglais
understood.

“Come,” the doctor said as he ushered us down the corridor.
“I will take you to him.”

* * * * *

Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez was not much older than me,
but the cancer had reduced him to an ancient shell of a man. The hospital ward
where he lay in his bed, one among many terminal patients, was a depressing
reminder of life’s uncertainties. He was connected to the final days of his
earthly being by needles, tubes and IV machines. He seemed dazed and near comatose,
no doubt by the drugs that fed his feeble breathing, his skeletal body and his
mortal soul. And he was ventilated by an open cavity in the crevice of his
neck.

Javier Marcos Saldano Jimenez did not seem to have the
awareness to respond to Étie, who had approached his bed and looked down at him
coolly while the doctor and I stood back.

But a will did slowly show itself, ever so slightly, in
spite of the doctor’s grim prognostication. The near lifeless body of the dying
man did not move, but his eyes, midnight as the midnight sky beneath the
cataract-like haze of death impending, midnight like his son’s, flickered,
causing the doctor to react with gentle surprise.

The eyes moved bleakly toward the shadow that hovered above
them, the shadow of Étie that eclipsed the bleak florescence of overhead
hospital lighting. And somehow those eyes, clearly dubious in their duty, found
something familiar in the silhouette.

Doctor Iglais marveled at what was happening. The eyes of
Étie’s father squinted and strained at the sight of his son looking down at
him. I wasn’t sure what Étie’s father saw or thought he saw, a ghost or an
angel, or what Étie saw—contempt or conciliation—but their eyes met and spoke
with the awkwardness of strangers obliged by the ceremony of blood to nod as if
speaking.

“
Hola
,” Étie finally said, the intended anger in his
voice tempered by a guarded plaintiveness.

With barely the strength for the gesture, Mr. Saldano
Jimenez slowly pointed at the electronic voice box resting on the hospital
table next to his bed. Dr. Iglais moved to the table, picked up the device and
positioned it gently in his patient’s trembling hand. Mr. Saldano Jimenez then
slowly took the device and rested it on the hole in his neck.

“
Hola…Étie
,” he managed to say in a digitized voice.

There was a long moment of silence, save for the routine
sounds of hospital business echoing in the distance.

“You…look…good…” Mr. Saldano Jimenez struggled to say in
Spanish, his hazed-over eyes examining the face of his son, squinting as if in
soft sunlight.

“I wish I could say the same for you,” Étie responded in
their language without rancor or regret.

Mr. Saldano Jimenez laughed weakly, a hoarse and labored
digitized laugh.

“You are looking better today than usual, Javier,” Doctor
Iglais interrupted brightly.

“That is not saying much,” Mr. Saldano Jimenez answered
wearily, his eyes now looking off into the distance.

Although my mind was better at translating their Spanish
into English than I would have expected, the awkwardness in this small circle
of four spoke a language that we clearly understood.

“This is my friend Jesse,” Étie then said. “He is from
America.”

Mr. Saldano Jimenez slowly looked up at me, slowly examined
me.

“It is nice to meet you, Jesse,” he said.

“Nice to meet you too, sir,” I answered nervously.

“That is where I am going,” Étie interrupted before the
strain could take full hold. “I am going to America.”

Mr. Saldano Jimenez’s gaze turned back to him. His eyes—weak
as they were, as cloudy and milky and dripping as they were—managed to widen
ever so slightly.

“America?”

“
Sí.”

“America.”

“
Sí
.”

“When?”

“Very soon. Next week.”

“Then I am glad you have come to see me now, before we both
have gone.”

“I did not know you were sick,” Étie continued undistracted,
unmoved. “
Señor
Trujillo informed me.”

“I did not know you would come.”

“I did not know I would come either.”

“I could not blame you if you would not have, Étie. But I am
happy that you did.”

“Why?”

“That I am happy that you came?”

“Yes, considering that you have hated me all your life.”

“Doctor, may I talk to my son alone?”

“I am not your son!” Étie declared coldly.

“
¿Por favor, Trate?
” Mr. Saldano Jimenez pleaded
softly with the doctor into the voice box.

“Did you not hear me?” Étie declared again, emotion
betraying him, choking his words. I fought the urge to grab him, to hold him
tightly in my arms, to let him cry there, cry like I knew he wanted to.

“I heard you. I only ask that you now hear me,” Mr. Saldano
Jimenez continued his soft plea.

“Come, Jesse,” Doctor Iglais whispered to me.

“Jesse, please stay,” Étie begged gently, grabbing my arm
just as I was about to follow the doctor out. I turned to Étie with reassuring
eyes.

“Talk to him, Étie,” I said. “You’ve come this far. Hear
what he has to say to you. Ask him why. Then listen to him, okay?”

I could see the argument, the defiance in his eyes. He could
see the love in mine. Slowly he surrendered. His eyes softened then glistened.
He closed them and nodded resolutely as he let my arm go. I touched his hand.
He held mine tightly then slowly released it. At that moment, I realized how
impossibly much we loved each other.

We smiled at each other, fighting tears. I turned and saw
the doctor seeing us. He understood…again.

* * * * *

I haven’t had much experience in hospital waiting areas.
Actually I haven’t had much experience in hospitals period. The only time my
mom, healthy as an ox, was ever in the hospital was when she was delivering one
of my siblings. My dad was always there to take her to the delivery room, and
my Aunt Till, Mom’s sister and best friend, would always come over and stay
with us while Mom gave birth. All of our check-ups, vaccinations and flu shots
were usually done at Doctor Keever’s office over on San Vicente and Fairfax
across the street from the Carl’s Jr., which mom would always take us to after
our doctor’s visits.

My fool brother Craig was in the hospital twice, once when
he was nine and fell out of the avocado tree in our backyard, fractured a bone
in his foot and ended up in a cast, and then when he was eleven and tried to do
a wheelie on his dirt bike and damn near broke his neck. Well, maybe he didn’t
damn near break his neck, but he busted his lip, had a lump the size of a
walnut on his forehead and had to wear a neck brace for a couple of weeks. He
would walk around the house at night like Frankenstein, traumatizing our little
sisters into a week of nightmares, which really cracked him up and earned him a
heavy scolding and grounding from my dad.

But each time Craig went to the hospital, he was in and out;
didn’t even get a chance to spend the night and get served food in bed and ice
cream. So I never had a chance to visit him there. And even if he had stayed
overnight, I was just a kid like him, too young for hospital visits.

Dad had his heart attack at home. It took him away from us
instantly. The paramedics pronounced him dead upon their arrival at the house,
so he never made it to the hospital.

The only time I actually spent in a hospital waiting room
was when I drove my brother Andre and his wife Dee, pregnant with the twins, to
Cedars after she laughed herself into labor during a Chris Rock special we were
watching Thanksgiving night on HBO, and Andre was too panicked to drive
himself. Somehow, to hear him tell it, he was able to pull it together enough
in the delivery room to assist in the birth of his twin daughters, Debrina and
Denise, even though the doctor confided in me that my baby brother almost
fainted when Debrina’s head crested. Turns out those Lamaze classes and
smelling salts truly came in handy.

But other than that, a hospital waiting room was very
foreign to me and given the circumstances of my being there, down the hall from
where Étie’s father lay dying, down the hall from where peacemaking between a
father and son was not a sure thing, a profound bittersweetness overcame me, a
melancholy hopefulness.

I wanted them to find peace and reconciliation so that their
separate journeys would carry them across settled waters. I prayed desperately
for this, for both of them.

I didn’t know Étie’s father. All I knew of him were the
painful recollections of a tormented child. And when I heard those stories,
they often made me hate that unknown man. I hated him for the misery he had
rained upon the child who would grow up to be the man I loved.

And yes, I was indeed ashamed of the hate I felt and tried
not feeling, which is why I could certainly understand Étie’s hate, although I
wish it too were not so.

I prayed for a miracle to happen in that cancer ward down
the hall. I tried to boost it along not only with my silent but fervent words
to my Heavenly Father, but through my own vibes, my efforts, my aggressive
contribution to the situation. For God, whose image I firmly believe we are all
created in, and who I believe is capable of all things, welcomes a little
initiative. In fact He encourages it, so that we all have a part in our
manifest destinies, in the answers to the prayers we offer up to Him. I don’t
think He minds; in fact He probably appreciates a helping hand. I mean, what
true father doesn’t relish a son’s rush to the rescue of a broken fence in
summer, raking leaves in autumn, clearing snowy driveways in winter and tending
puppy litters in spring?

And so I gave it and Him my all. Mind. Spirit. Heart.

I paced from one end of that waiting room to the other and
drank cup after cup of calming Dominican-blend coffee. I stared out the window,
down toward the parking lot and the emergency entrance. I stared down at the
street traffic as it went about its merry way in situations perhaps not as life-and-death
as those in this building. And then I stared up at the sky. I realized it was
time, in spite of my assistance in spirit, to let go and let God.