If (4 page)

In the midst of this thought passing through my mind for the hundredth time, my phone rang.

“Hey,” I said wearily. It was already one in the morning, and I knew I would have some explaining to do.

“What the hell happened? Your voicemail scared the shit out of me.”

“I don’t want you to worry. But I saw someone being mugged and I tried to step in and . . . I was attacked, too.”

“What? Attacked? Where?”

“On the way home.”

“In the cab?”

“No. On fifth.”

“You were supposed to take a cab . . .”

“I know.”

“Dammit Bird! Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t want you spending money on me.”

“Well, apparently it was! What were you thinking?”

I remained silent. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I just didn’t think that would happen to me. Jordan sighed. “You said you were okay in the voicemail. Are you really?”

“Yes, just a bruise.”

“So what happened?”

The fear refreshed as if it was happening all over again, and my eyes glossed with tears. I cleared my throat. “Like I said, I was walking home on 5
th
, and I noticed something suspicious, like someone was being hassled. I didn’t think and I butted in.”

“God sometimes your heart is bigger than your brain,” he said. “And you’re smart, so that says a lot.”

“I’m not sure if I should be saying thanks to that or not.”

“Well, what happened next?”

“One of the guys came up to me, pulled me off the street into the alley.”

“Oh god,” Jordan murmured.

“But the guy, the one I helped, he went all ninja-mode. He punched the one who was holding him and then kicked him in the head.”

“Ho-ly shit.”

“And he wrestled the other one, who then stabbed him. The cops found them both.”

“Whoa. Is he okay?”

“I don’t know. I have to find a way to get to the hospital. I can’t just let him be there alone. Not after what he did for me. I was hoping you could come with me.”

“Of course. Trevor is picking me up. I’ll get him to take us.”

“It’s late. I feel awful making him our chauffeur.”

“Let me take care of Trevor. Don’t worry about anything. I am still pissed at you for lying by the way, but I am so glad you’re okay.”

“I know. I’m sure I’ll be hearing about it forever.”

“You will. In fact, I am going to randomly barge in while you’re in the shower to remind you daily,” he said.

“As if you needed any more reasons to barge into my place. Sometimes I wonder if this gay thing is all an act so you can see me naked all the time.”

“You wish, princess.”

BIRD

By the time we arrived at the hospital, my mystery guy was gone. The nurses wouldn’t give me any information. They only said that he was not obligated to stay and that he was not dead. I was relieved but also upset. Had he thought I just accepted his help and then forgot all about him as soon as he had been wheeled into the ambulance? I felt deeply indebted to him. He saved my life. It made me physically sick to think about what could have happened had he not stepped up. He shouldn’t just be in the streets, forgotten. I wanted to help him, befriend him, maybe find him a job. I wanted to do something to pay him back, but he had vanished so quickly.

Trevor insisted on treating us to a late-night meal at a diner. Trevor, unlike Jordan and I, was not a dancer. He had a steady job as a local assistant news producer. Jordan also wasn’t as poor as me, not even close. That’s why he could be so generous, but it made me feel like a charity case. Jordan worked at the club to supplement the income he got from teaching and choreography. His club gig paid better and he actually got dance work. The downtime from dance gigs was becoming shorter, but his faith in the entertainment industry was slim and until he had zero downtime, he refused to quit.

They were a beautiful couple. Trevor, blonde with deep blue eyes and a smile the stuff of teeth-whiting commercials. Jordan had smooth skin the color of a cocoa bean, and he had a beautiful strong body, sculpted from dancing since early childhood. His teeth were perfect too.

And there I was, sitting across from these beautiful men. Maybe from a distance someone might think I was beautiful, but up close, the reality became clear: I was deformed.

“Okay, Bird. That’s it, you’re not ever walking home alone at night. Between Jordan and I, you will have a male escort with you at all times when coming home from work,” Trevor proclaimed.

“Male escort?” I flirtatiously asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Back off bitch,” Jordan said, and we all laughed.

“Guys, that’s just not possible. I’ve lived here for over a year and a half, this was just a freak thing that happened. The attack was personal, and I’m sure those guys will be in jail for a while.”

“She’s so fucking stubborn,” Jordan rolled his eyes as he addressed Trevor.

“She’s right here,” I called out, pointing to the top of my head.

“You kind of are,” Trevor chimed in. I yanked a French fry from his plate and threw it at him. It bounced off his chest onto his plate, and he fed it to Jordan. Sometimes they could be so cute, it triggered my gag reflex.

“Trevor understands you’re my non-sex wife. My mental stability relies on your existence. So he’s in this with me. And we can be just as stubborn. No late night walks home. End of discussion.”

“Yes, Dad,” I said. Jordan was one of the first people I met when I moved out to LA. On my first day of work at our dance school, he came right up to me and introduced himself. You ever meet someone and instantly feel that click? That’s how it was. Five minutes into our conversation and I knew we would be real friends. At the time, I was living in a spare room in a three bedroom apartment otherwise inhabited by a single mother and her two kids, and Jordan was the one who helped me get my current apartment, across the hall from him.

I think Jordan felt like I was his responsibility, and Trevor, being his boyfriend, became an extension of that. They knew I was alone out here and they felt it was their duty to watch out for me, like two older brothers.

“Well, it’s good he’s okay. I know you wanted to visit with him, but at least you know,” Trevor said, bringing the conversation back to my failed mission of the night.

“He’s in the area often. I’m hoping I’ll see him around. I just feel like I need to help him. Part of me thinks I made it worse with my heroics. He could have just run, but he put his life on the line for me.”

“How do you know he’s around often?” Jordan asked.

I realized I had sort of given away my little secret: that I had noticed him for months before the incident.

“I’ve seen him around. I just noticed him. I don’t know why,” I said, fumbling with the contents of my plate so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact. But I did know. Because there was a presence about him. Something that made me want to know his story. And it made me feel like a bit of a bitch. What made it okay for me to walk past dozens of other homeless people and relegate them to human fixtures on the street, but made this guy worth the extra thought? Was it his striking sage-green eyes? His mysterious brooding? The fact that I felt him watch me? Or was it because he was young and homeless and had my life turned out slightly different, if I hadn’t hit the adoption jackpot as an infant, I could have turned out like him? In a way, I was relieved this had happened, because it both justified and awakened my latent curiosity.

“You know . . . this would make a really great human-interest piece at the station. Girl saves homeless guy, homeless guy saves girl. I bet we could raise some funds for him. These things tend to go viral pretty easily.” Trevor now had his producer hat on.

“I’ll think about it. I’m not sure I want to be on the news.” While I wanted to make my living in the spotlight, I didn’t want my face plastered on TV. In the first case, my dancing would be the focus of attention, but in the second my face would be filling a screen. “Maybe we could just feature him.”

“We could. Just think about it. It could really help him. And if we did it, the reporters could help you find him.”

The proposal was tempting, but I wanted to see if I could find him on my own first. From what I could tell, he was kind of withdrawn, and I wasn’t sure if he’d take well to being dug up by reporters.

BIRD

Trevor had to get ready for work, so he dropped Jordan and me off and went back to his place. We both had a second wind and I settled onto my futon while Jordan dropped the needle on my record player and marked some dance moves as he spoke. Draped in a sunburnt orange blanket, the futon was the only substantial piece of furniture in my studio apartment; it served as my guest seating during the day and unfolded to become my bed at night.

“It’s going to skip.”

“That’s why I like to use it. It forces me to be light on my feet.”

Jordan did a high arabesque, his muscles contracting as he fully extended his long limbs, his toes pointing perfectly. He was a sublimely gifted yet effortless dancer. His physical proportions were created to be admired in fluid motion. When we practiced lifts together, his sheer power made me feel like I defied gravity. Watching Jordan move distracted me from the anxiety still coursing through my body.

“So, we’re doing Thanksgiving in your place right? You know my place is a hot mess.” I appreciated Jordan trying to reestablish normalcy with routine holiday planning.

“I guess, but you have so much more room,” I insisted. “Have you considered, ya know, tidying up?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Even if I cleaned up, my shit is just cluttered. I might have more square footage, but you have way less furniture and one big open room.”

“Trust me, I am not a minimalist. This lack of furniture is called poverty. But, sure. I’m happy to host. I don’t have a table though.”

“We’ll just drag mine across the hall,” he said, while doing a sequence of turns across the floor.

“And we’ll have to cook most of it in your kitchen, my oven is tiny and the place gets so damned hot when I use it. It’s just going to be me, you and Trevor, right?”

“Yup. That’s perfect, we can cook in my place, eat and hang out in yours. Combining our apartments is almost like having a really small house.”

And it was. We fluidly moved from his apartment to mine. Our doors faced directly across a narrow hallway and we had keys to each other’s places.
Run out of toilet paper? Coffee filters? Almond milk? Just scoot over and raid Jordan’s stash.
And I can’t count the number of times Jordan would just barrel through my door to show me a funny YouTube video (even if I was in the shower), as if it were a matter of national security.

“So there’s a guy I want you to meet,” he said as he moved his arms from first to second position and back.

“A guy?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard him.

“Yes, his name is Javier,” he said, punctuating the sentence with a pirouette. “He’s handsome, he’s straight, he has a delicious accent. He’s a set designer. I thought I could set you two up on a da—”

“Hell no,” I said before he could finish.

“Bi-i-ird,” he stretched out my name, like a nagging child.

“I don’t do blind dates.” I would never say why aloud, as I assumed he knew my reasons.

“Then we could go out. You, me, Trevor, Javier. It wouldn’t be a blind date.”

“It’s still a date. I don’t want that pressure.” The truth was, I didn’t want to put the pressure on anyone else. If he didn’t like me, then he was a jerk, because he wasn’t giving the girl with the messed up face a chance. It had to happen organically and, unfortunately for me, organic hookups were extremely rare. Most guys looked right past me to other girls with flawless skin.

Jordan leaned onto the wooden arm of the futon. “You are young, and you work so hard. I just don’t want you to miss out on these years. You would be in college right now meeting guys, dating, enjoying your early twenties, but you don’t have that campus life. So you have to get out there! All you do is work, audition, and sleep.”

Jordan had a point, but rejection was already part of my daily life with dancing, and I didn’t need any more of that in the dating world. I was used to being passed over. It’s not that I hadn’t ever had interest, but the interest was always fleeting. I was the girl in high school who was a friend, always the confidant. When I did get the guy, it was short-lived because he would either move on or he would care what people might think. It made for an embarrassingly lame track record with the opposite sex. Translation: I was still a virgin.