Moonspun

Moonspun

Lee Benoit

Moonspun Copyright © September 2010 by Lee Benoit All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions. eISBN 978-1-60737-858-7 Editor: Antonia Pearce Cover Artist: Anne Cain Printed in the United States of America

Published by Loose Id LLC PO Box 425960 San Francisco CA 94142-5960 www.loose-id.com This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author‟s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Warning This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC‟s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

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Dedication For Trewin, who loved Moonspun into existence; and for Syd and Mami, who loved it into shape.

Acknowledgement I gratefully acknowledge my editor, Antonia Pearce, Treva Harte, and the Loose Id staff whose imagination, skill, and vigor have helped make Moonspun as good as it can be.

~*~ “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” ~ William Blake

Chapter One Jamie wrestled his bike out of the rack on the front of the city bus, waving his thanks as cheerfully as he dared to the grimacing driver. How was he supposed to know the ride would be so short? It had probably taken longer to get the bike onto the flat rack and then off again than for the bus to carry him to this part of town. He‟d been in Sister City less than a month, and most of that he‟d spent acclimating to his position as artist-in-residence at a downtown theater and trying in vain to write a new play rather than exploring his new town. Jamie bounced his bike up over the curb and started walking, wiping his face with a mostly clean bandanna as he searched for the right address. He passed a number of the colorful Queen Anne Victorians that got the city written up in architecture journals and wondered briefly what it would have been like to live in one of the elaborate “painted ladies” before they were broken up into apartments for students and immigrants. Jamie blinked away the fantasy of a more gracious life in a simpler time and cursed when he realized he‟d walked too far. He backtracked to a break in the Victorians occupied by a block of businesses, all one storied, glass fronted, and ugly. Had they not been as run-down as everything else he‟d seen on the city‟s south side, they would have looked completely out of place. As it was, they stood as mute testimony to a long-ago postwar building boom whose visionaries saw more dollar signs in small-business incubation than in historical preservation. Jamie sighed and wiped his face again. He tried not to resent running errands for Belinda, the theater manager, and truly, his guilt over his lack of writing since arriving was enough to make him hold his tongue. After all, his grant covered the production of two plays, including one new one that he just couldn‟t seem to write. But being lost and sweaty brought his pique to the fore. He was an

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award-winning playwright, after all, not an errand boy, even if that award had been for a student piece three states away. Jamie tugged his soaked shirt away from his skin, trying to cool down, and wished he hadn‟t drunk the last of his water as he tried to work out the Spanish on the shop signs. His high-school French didn‟t help much. Number 129 was obviously a fish store, thanks to the amateurish painting of a giant fish and an octopus fighting or maybe dancing. A more restrained image of scales held aloft by a blindfolded woman on the window of number 131 signaled a law office. Number 133 had a cross and a bunch of African-looking masks arranged around the words “Botánica Santiago,” and Jamie assumed the place was a storefront church. Number 135 was the place he was looking for. Its window was dark and undecorated, and the only indication that the place was occupied at all was a small, hand-lettered sign on the door that read “Telaraña.” Since he was here to pick up an order of drapes for the production of his student play, Jamie figured the word meant something like “tailor” or “seamstress.” He tried the door. Locked. Jamie sighed and huffed a mild curse. Belinda‟s heart was in the right place, but it would be just like her to send Jamie to a shop that wasn‟t even open. “Looking for love, mi amor?” Jamie jumped. He hadn‟t seen the woman come out of number 133. She was dressed all in white, from her elaborately wound headscarf to her low-heeled sandals. The only color to her came from strands of heavy-looking beads that drooped at her throat and wrists, and her skin, which was the same orangey brown as ginger. Jamie glanced at the cross on the window of her shop. She didn‟t look like a minister. “I, uh…” He gestured vaguely toward the tailor‟s shop. “Ah, you seek the spider‟s magic, not mine?” Jamie could have sworn the woman was pouting. He stared. She had to be his gran‟s age!

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The old lady smiled and raised her eyes to the patch of sky visible between the tall houses and crumbling public library across the street. The afternoon sun came through at a slant, and Jamie could just make out the pale half-moon setting behind a used car dealership. NO CRÉDITO? NO PROBLEMA! When the woman‟s attention returned to Jamie, he waved lamely at his Tshirt, which was easy to read because it was plastered to his sweaty chest. Sister City Repertory Theatre. “Uh, no, ma‟am, no magic. I‟m from the theater downtown.” “What you seek is here,” she said, more statement than question. The lady‟s gaze flicked over him, and Jamie withstood the scrutiny with some impatience. If he didn‟t start getting some real writing done, he‟d never have an excuse to refuse these production-assistant errands. And if he didn‟t stop running errands, he‟d never get any writing done. Neither of those things would happen if he spent his afternoons loitering on city sidewalks with old ladies who spoke in riddles. Jamie puffed himself up just a little bit and said, “If the tailor isn‟t open, I‟ll have to come back. Do you know his hours?” It seemed a little late in the day for a siesta or whatever. The lady smiled enigmatically and fingered the blue beads around her neck. “Oh, I know his hours.” There was flirtation in her voice, and Jamie wished again that he‟d found a way to refuse this errand in an unfamiliar part of town. The lady fixed him with her brown eyes and muttered something under her breath that sounded like Spanish. She took a step toward him. Jamie stood his ground and tried to quell her advance with a look. Undeterred, the woman reached out and wrapped her hand around Jamie‟s wrist. In his experience, nothing good came of people grabbing him, not even old ladies, so Jamie pulled back sharply. The woman tugged, and Jamie felt her fingernails scratch his skin. Alarmed, he doubled his effort to pull away and succeeded, only to find a string of red and white beads encircling his wrist where the old woman‟s hand had been. She reached out again and patted his wrist. “He is within. The door is open for you.”

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“Who? I mean, it is?” Jamie forgot the bracelet in his confusion. The door was locked. He‟d tried it himself. He pressed the wobbly latch with his thumb. It gave, just as the woman had promised it would. Surprised and not a little freaked out, Jamie still remembered his manners. “Um, thank you, ma‟am,” he said. But the lady had already returned to her church. A bell tinkled dully above his head as Jamie pushed open the door. The lateafternoon sun penetrated only weakly, illuminating a shop crowded with teetering piles of folded fabric and phalanxes of upright bolts arranged along the three interior walls. A wide table bisected the room, a bulky industrial sewing machine mounted at either end. There was no one there, but a rhythmic noise reached his ears from beyond a curtain in the far wall. “Hello?” Jamie took a step or two into the room, stopping at the table, reluctant to intrude. “Um, hola?” he called, exhausting his command of Spanish. “Pasa, pasa.” Jamie heard the voice over the thunking noise. He moved farther into the room, taking the words as an invitation to proceed. He drew aside the curtain, but the room beyond was even darker than the front of the shop, so Jamie couldn‟t get a full impression of it. He didn‟t see anyone, but the voice spoke again. “There is a chair just beside you. Please sit.” Jamie felt more than saw a small armchair just to the right of the curtain. “Belinda from Sister City Rep sent me over to—” “A moment, please. Have a seat.” The voice was male, soft, but brooked no argument. The rhythmic clacking never ceased. Feeling more out of his element than he had even with the old minister lady, Jamie sat. He waited more than a moment, and as the sun dropped and the shop darkened even further, Jamie spent minutes nurturing his annoyance over being here when he had a long list of other things to do, not the least of which was writing to justify the grant that paid his modest stipend. Besides that, he needed to find a place to live. The theater had set him up in temporary digs near the university with a couple of grad students working on their Master of Fine Arts degrees. The price

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was right, and Arno and Ben were nice enough when they weren‟t taking turns holding forth on critical theory and the impact of post-structuralism on identity and art. But they rutted like caribou in springtime, and Jamie wasn‟t getting any writing done. No, it was more than that. Arno and Ben were gayer than anyone Jamie had ever met. They represented the life Jamie had imagined when he left home to take this position. So far, his courage had failed him, and he hadn‟t even come out to his housemates. It seemed he was no better a gay man than he was a playwright. Sharing space with Arno and Ben was lonely, and Jamie had decided he‟d rather be lonely alone. It felt like a choice that way. Jamie‟s thoughts slid sideways from pique to funk and led him to worries over his grandmother‟s health, and that last, spectacular fight he‟d had with his Uncle Griff before leaving for Sister City. Whatever machine ran in the back room provided a lulling rhythm for Jamie‟s thoughts, so he was startled when the noise stopped abruptly and a sudden light illuminated the edges of the heavy curtain that separated the two halves of the shop. The curtain swept aside slowly to reveal a room dominated by a huge wooden loom. Silhouetted in the curtained doorway was a man‟s shape. The man stepped forward into Jamie‟s space as if he couldn‟t see well, and Jamie jumped up from his seat to get out of the man‟s way. The curtain dropped behind the man, who reached above his head and pulled a string that lit the shop‟s lights. In the sudden brightness, Jamie finally got a look at the tailor and felt so light-headed he sought the chair again. The tailor was easily the most beautiful man Jamie had ever seen.

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Chapter Two Spider felt the moonset in his mind and body the way he imagined a beach felt the tide. He blinked in the gloom of his shop‟s rear room. Outside, the afternoon was still bright, he knew, though there were no windows in his workshop. Today he finished weaving a few minutes later than yesterday, and a few minutes earlier than he would finish tomorrow. Soon he would spend a few nights in total darkness if he didn‟t remember to light a lamp before sitting and facing the loom. “Puesta de la luna,” Spider murmured to himself as the last of the pressure to weave, weave, weave left him. The moon had set. He resisted the urge to stretch and groan like his grandfather always had at the end of a moon cycle. Spider was still young. How had Abuelo done this work into his extreme old age? Spider moved to the shop side of the loom without looking at the day‟s weaving. He never did. He knew what he would see. Then he remembered that he had a visitor. He always closed and locked the shop during the moon‟s time. Could he have forgotten today? He doubted it, but otherwise how had the visitor entered? Spider swiped the curtain aside along with his trepidation, faster than he normally did, and stood momentarily blinded by the brassy rays of the summer sunset. The man popped up with a huff of breath, as if he were impatient or perhaps relieved. Abuelo had always said it cost nothing to think the best of people, but Spider wasn‟t so sure. It was often safer to be wary. He blinked away the sun dazzle and tried to look into the man‟s eyes, but all he could see were the shadows around them. He yanked the string that controlled the shop‟s lights, and the man sat again, abruptly. Spider worried that he was unwell.

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Belatedly, Spider remembered why the man had said he was here. He hadn‟t given his name to the woman from the theater who had placed the drapery order, and he surprised himself by offering it to the man. “My name is Tomás. Most call me Spider.” The man recovered himself enough to stand again, and Spider took a half step backward to accommodate him. “James Cowan. Jamie,” the man said and gave a perfunctory American handshake. Something made Spider hold the hand a moment too long and rest his left hand on the back of Jamie‟s right. Spider had watched Abuelo greet his closest friends with a similar two-handed grasp, intimate but restrained. It was an oldfashioned gesture, almost courtly. Even so, Spider knew he took a chance touching the man for longer than was socially expected. Jamie pulled his hand back but smiled at Spider, and all at once the colors in the room shifted into a clarity the setting sun couldn‟t deliver. Jamie was young, no older than Spider, and fit, not in that vigorous American way, but fit like a man who eats little and burns it all up. His curly hair was sweat damp, as were his clothes, but his smile was open and tidy as sheets on a clothesline. Spider felt himself smile back and resisted the urge to touch his fingers to his lips to confirm the expression. There had been a time when he smiled more often. Spider realized he‟d been too busy staring and smiling to respond to Jamie‟s introduction, and opened his mouth to correct his rudeness, but Jamie spoke first, gesturing at the closed curtain behind them. “You‟re a weaver too, huh?” His English sounded odd to Spider—American, but not local. Spider wanted to listen longer, try to discover the secret of Jamie‟s voice. Spider indicated the bolts of cloth surrounding them. “I am a weaver always. The stitching, it is only my livelihood.” He wondered how his voice sounded to this stranger. He knew his English was only slightly accented, but imagined it came across as oddly measured, deliberate.

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After the deep gloom of his workshop and the loom‟s dark requirements, the shop‟s brightness and Jamie‟s presence conspired to disorient Spider, as if by stepping from the workshop to the front room, he‟d stepped back a few hours in time. Or forward. Spider resolutely avoided looking at Jamie—he feared he‟d get caught looking and suspected that, once caught, he wouldn‟t seek escape. Spider might not be worldly, but he knew enough to understand that many men, even Americans, didn't relish such attention. So instead he began moving about the shop gathering the completed draperies. Abuelo had always teased Spider about separating completed orders for shelving. Spider had always derived satisfaction from the order of his color-coded spectrum, which lined the walls beginning with reds to the left of the entry door and running through the colors of the rainbow around the shop‟s perimeter to finish with purples on the right-hand side of the door. Neutrals, blacks, and whites were relegated to the back of the shop around the curtain to the workshop. Since Abuelo‟s death, maintaining the shelving practice brought the old man and his teasing to mind every time Spider gathered a client‟s order. If Jamie noticed the unorthodox method, he didn‟t say anything, and Spider still wasn‟t looking. When he had all the parts of the order together on the cutting table, he crouched to pull several sheets of rough brown paper from the shelf under the sewing machines and bundled the drapes with twine from a dispenser mounted on the ceiling. From the corner of Spider‟s eye, Jamie appeared singularly disinterested in examining the drapes, and Spider shrugged; they were exactly as ordered. Remembering his grandfather‟s advice, Spider chose to believe the other man wasn‟t indifferent, but rather ignorant of the nuances of stage sets—he was only fetching the order, after all. Bundling nearly finished, Spider straightened and watched Jamie more openly as he paced back and forth across the front of the shop, looking out the plate windows and tapping his fingers on the sides of his thighs. Leaning against the plate glass of the front window was a bicycle Spider assumed was Jamie‟s.

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The sunset lit Jamie‟s curls an impossible orange color, but Spider refused to succumb to speechlessness. “You may bring your bike inside if you are worried, but I am almost finished with your order. Anyway, Caridad is watching, so no one will disturb it.” Jamie turned abruptly, as if interrupted while daydreaming. “Caridad? Oh, the minister lady?” Spider hid his sudden grin by bending over for more paper, starting on the final package. “Minister? No, Caridad is not a minister.” Abuelo would have added that she was no lady either, but Spider didn‟t. He knew his quiet manner made others, particularly Americans, nervous. He was unaccustomed to having anyone to talk to besides his grandfather, and now Caridad, who had been an unexpected comfort since Abuelo died. She shared his grief and understood his silences. She knew about the weaving and its strange necessity, and she also knew the other reason for his solitude, though they had never spoken directly of his desire for men. He wondered, if she were here, whether she‟d notice his interest in Jamie. He wanted to open the door to this nervous young man, so he gave in to his impulse to offer something of himself besides his name. “I made you wait,” he said. “I apologize.” Jamie stopped fidgeting and faced Spider. “It‟s okay. I mean, I wasn‟t expecting to have to come here, and I have a lot to do today.” His eyes got wide enough for Spider to see their color, a honeyed hazel, and he clapped one hand over his mouth. “Oh gosh! I‟m sorry! That was rude. I didn‟t mean to rush you or anything.” He looked like a little kid caught pissing in a swimming pool, and Spider resisted the urge to reach out and ruffle his hair to let him know it was okay, the way his grandfather would have done. Spider didn‟t reach out, but like he always did when flummoxed, he relied on his memories of what his grandfather might have said to set people at ease. “Young people are always in a rush. So American.” Spider knew he sounded ridiculous. He

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ducked behind the growing stack of bulky paper parcels to hide. He‟d never be as good with people as Abuelo had been. To Spider‟s surprise, Jamie responded. “We‟re the same age, yeah? Anyway, sorry, man. I don‟t know why Belinda sent me, except that I wasn‟t really being useful around the theater, and I‟m trying, you know?” The plea had nothing to do with Spider, but Spider felt pulled to respond. “You are new at deliveries?” Jamie hung his head. “I wish. I‟m the new playwright in residence, but I‟m blocked. I have to run lines with the lead actor so he doesn‟t sound like an idiot, and I have to find a new place to live. I don‟t even have a car, and no one told me there would be this much to carry.” With a sigh, he bent at the waist to lean across the sewing table. “How am I ever going to carry all this on my bike?” Jamie resumed pacing and ran his hand through his hair over and over until it stood up, and Spider wanted nothing more than to smooth it for him. Caridad would laugh at him for such an impulse, but he‟d endure her derision for a chance to help Jamie. Help Jamie? It wasn‟t like him at all, but watching the nervous, distressed man before him, Spider wanted to try. Spider gave a warm chuckle, another of his grandfather‟s tricks, and Jamie brought his head up sharply. “You‟re laughing at me! Never mind, I‟ll manage.” With that, he hefted the topmost package and nearly toppled backward. Though Spider and Jamie were of a height, to Spider Jamie looked slight, almost translucent, as if Spider could see every color through him. Spider wasn‟t used to feeling so solid. Spider rushed around the sewing table and steadied the package as best he could without touching Jamie. “Careful,” he said. “Listen, I know nothing of your work, but I‟d like to help if I can. Running lines sounds athletic and tiring, and I know nothing of writing drama. I don‟t have an apartment up my sleeve either.” He rested the package back on the table, enjoying the feeling of solidity he got from stepping in to help. Maybe that feeling was a sign that he was on the right track, or

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maybe it was a coincidence, but Spider wanted to keep feeling strong and reliable. “Please, I was only teasing before.” He sought and found Jamie‟s gaze and spent a long beat enumerating the colors he saw in Jamie‟s eyes. “If you allow it, I will help with what I can.” Jamie looked back into Spider‟s eyes and nodded. “If it‟s no trouble,” he said. Spider smiled, his own smile and not one of his grandfather‟s resurrected ones, and ushered Jamie out of his shop, locking up behind them and leading the way next door to the Botánica Santiago. The look Caridad gave him was just as gloating as he‟d expected. He never brought people over, didn‟t have any real friends, never dated. He wasn‟t an ordinary man, yet Caridad never tired of reminding him he could try, could pass if he made an effort. When Jamie faltered in front of him upon entering Caridad‟s shop and Spider got a whiff of his body, he felt any effort would be worth the cost to have a chance with the young playwright. The smell of Jamie's sweat—part nerves and part effort, Spider guessed—rushed from Spider's nostrils right to his groin. This was even more of a surprise than his smile earlier. Caridad tilted her plump cheek for a kiss, which Spider dutifully gave before stepping back to introduce Jamie. “So, our arañito has caught himself a nice mosca, eh?” “Ignore her,” Spider said to Jamie. “She‟s teasing me, not you.” “Arañito means Spider?” Jamie asked. “Anyway, I can‟t imagine anyone ignoring Miss Caridad.” Caridad beamed at Jamie. “Arañito means little spider, so you don‟t have to be afraid of him,” Caridad said. “And you‟re the nice juicy fly he‟s caught. Tell me, Jamie, how did he do it?” Jamie didn‟t respond but looked as trapped as Caridad claimed he was.

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Spider would have loved to reach out with his hands to soothe Jamie, but he settled for reaching out with his voice. “Don‟t worry, Jamie. You don‟t have a chance with her. No one does. Auntie Caro gets all our secrets in the end.” When Spider spoke, Jamie recovered enough to ask, “So do they call you that because you‟re a weaver?” Caro interrupted Spider‟s reply by towing Jamie through the shop. “Everyone has always called Spider by his nickname. No one remembers when it started.” It was enough that Spider remembered. Perhaps, on a day like today, it was too much to remember and not enough to forget. Spider wanted the whole thing dropped. “It doesn‟t matter, Auntie. My name isn‟t why we‟re here.” “I might beg to differ,” Caro replied in the cryptic way that used to make his grandfather call her a bruja, a witch. Spider followed, watching Jamie visibly try not to gape at the jars of twisted roots, the glass columns of devotional candles, the luck sprays, and the money incense. Spider experienced a flash of jealousy. He‟d grown up around all these trappings of Santería, but some of this stuff still creeped him out. He watched Jamie‟s studied non-reaction to a glass jar full of desiccated moths and wanted to be the one to explain it all. Caro was so delighted to have a new victim that she played up the strangeness of her botánica. Spider followed her and Jamie into the back room and reflected that no one resembled a spider with a fat fly more than Caro at that moment. By all the saints, Spider prayed fatalistically, don‟t let her strong-arm him into doing a reading for him! Caro sat Jamie at the table. It was decorated for readings, with several colored candles and a deck of cards, but in truth it was more often used to entertain guests. Spider reminded himself Jamie didn‟t know that and went to stand protectively behind him. “So, Spider brought you for my help?” Caro purred. “The help of the orishas?” Jamie‟s wide hazel eyes snapped to Spider‟s, and Spider was so caught in the look that he almost forgot to rush to his rescue. “Ah, no, Auntie,” he said, never

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taking his eyes off Jamie. “Jamie needs a ride back downtown with his bike and draperies for his theater. I hoped I could borrow the truck and take him there.” Caridad‟s disappointed moue was only half put-on. She did love having a new victim to toy with. “Pepe‟s truck? He‟s finishing that job over by the park. He‟ll be back soon.” The spider in her made a fresh appearance. “Plenty of time for a cafecito, to get to know your new friend. Spider, make coffee, won‟t you?” Spider cringed. He didn‟t want Jamie to feel trapped like a fly after all, but how else could he help? He moved to the little freestanding range top Caro kept and set about fixing the coffee while he listened to Jamie‟s dutiful answers to Caro‟s grilling. “Where are you from?” “Maine, um, Calais. It‟s—” “So far! You mother, she misses you very much.” “No, Miss Caridad, she died when I was little. I guess my gran misses me, but she doesn‟t remember me so much anymore.” Spider‟s fingers stuttered, and he spilled coffee grounds. Jamie was like him, alone and so lost. Spider suspected he might be romanticizing, but he didn‟t care. He and Jamie had things in common, even if they were sad things. Caro hadn‟t stopped to dwell on Jamie‟s losses, however. “And you are here, not in your home, taking care of your grandmother?” Jamie‟s eyes darkened, and his brows lowered. The look shouldn‟t have inspired a lustful clench in Spider‟s belly, but it did. “My uncle takes care of her. After I finished school he, um, he didn‟t want me to stay.” He looked down at his feet. Spider gave him privacy by peering intently at the cafetera. Caro wasn‟t so delicate. “You do have much in common with Spider,” she said, and Spider wondered, not for the first time, if there was more to her psychic act than she let on. But what

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she said next demonstrated that she wasn‟t sucking thoughts out of Spider‟s brain, but Jamie‟s. “Why would your uncle want you gone? Inheritance? No. Jealousy? I doubt it. Estar maricón, it‟s not easy, no?” She sat back, triumphant, while Jamie blushed furiously. “I know that word,” he whispered. Spider waited for the storm, but it didn‟t come. Instead Jamie looked Caro right in the eye and said, “How did you…? I mean, no, it‟s not easy being gay. At least not where I come from.” Then he stood, and Spider feared he‟d leave, but instead he took the two steps across the room and reached for Spider for the first time since their handshake back in the shop. With a hand on Spider‟s shoulder, Jamie looked into Spider‟s eyes and said, “I‟m not used to people knowing. I thought I was ready for people to know…that about me. But I‟ve been here a month, and it‟s no easier. I guess I‟m not ready after all.” The look in his eyes and the weight of his hand on Spider‟s shoulder begged understanding. “Fah!” Caro broke the spell. “Ready, not ready. You will be what you are. Spider knows this, and you should too. Spider, pour the coffee.” Spider held his breath before moving to obey, waiting for Jamie‟s reaction. Would he wonder about Spider‟s secrets, about what he was—besides queer—that he couldn‟t avoid? Caro hadn‟t actually told Jamie that Spider was attracted to men, but Spider found that was one secret he didn‟t want to keep, not from Jamie. Everybody else seemed to know just by looking at him. He leaned into Jamie‟s space as if drawn by a filament, and for a brief, splendid moment, he felt the air around him warm as Jamie leaned back. Naturally, that was the moment the back door flew open to admit Pepe, Caro‟s husband. As usual, Caro met her husband with a fresh cup of coffee and a barrage of questions. “Did you give Estela the candles? Did Marina like the chair? Where are the chickens for tonight? Are mis nietos coming for supper? This is James. He is Spider‟s new friend. They need your truck.”

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Jamie stood and offered his hand respectfully. “James Cowan. I‟m from a theater downtown.” “José Gallego. Joe, please.” Pepe handed the keys to Spider without another word. Those four pretty much filled his hourly quota, at least when Caro was around. While Caro plied everyone with biscuits, Spider asked, “Did Marina like the fabric I wove for her chair, Pepe?” “Yes, Tomás,” was the terse reply. “You do upholstery work, sir?” Jamie asked with what Spider took to be frank curiosity. Caro jumped in. “Oh, he is the most amazing cabinetmaker. Had his own shop, back in Santo Domingo. Such things as you never saw. But here? We are poor folk, little mosca. People cannot buy the fine pieces, so my Pepito repairs, refinishes, reupholsters.” She fluttered her hands as if shooing away the shame of reduced circumstances, and the bracelets on her wrists rattled drily. At the sound, Jamie‟s hand went to his own wrist and Spider noticed for the first time the beaded bracelet Jamie wore. He caught Caro‟s eye and raised an eyebrow. White and red? Changó‟s colors. Caridad winked. “My gran always says real talent fixes what is broken and renews what is worn. My people don‟t buy new furniture either, ma‟am.” Jamie‟s words were for Caro, but he looked right at Pepe when he said them. The older man winked and gave a small bow, and just like that, Jamie was part of the family. The glow that gave Spider would have burst from inside him if he let it, so he kept his lips hard. Spider watched Jamie draw out his laconic uncle for a few minutes and felt the lust and excitement deepen into a feeling of genuine interest. Jamie sipped coffee and nibbled a biscuit and answered Caro‟s questions some more. Predictably, she was appalled at his living situation, especially when she learned he was a playwright.

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“What stories you will tell us!” she enthused. “But not without somewhere to write properly.” Jamie demurred. “Where I am is all right. I used to be able to write anywhere, but lately I‟m not sleeping well, and my roommates are…distracting. I‟m sure I‟ll find something.” “Fah, you are lost and alone,” Caro pronounced. “You need somewhere quiet, to receive your muse in tranquility. Arañito, there is the cobertizo, no?” Spider almost choked on his biscuit. The cobertizo was a large outbuilding on Spider‟s property, but he couldn‟t have anyone there! His secret required solitude and, like Jamie‟s work, tranquility. The idea of having Jamie nearby was definitely not tranquil. Doubt scratched a ragged fingernail at the door, rending his interest and letting panic infect him. “Oh, Auntie, no. That old shed is falling down. No place for an artist.” He could never allow an outsider to know the secret of his weaving, though for the first time in his life, he wanted to share it, wanted to be sure of someone, sure of Jamie. “You know best, I‟m sure,” she replied airily, but with a pointed look. Spider squirmed under that look and received a sympathetic look from Pepe and a worried one from Jamie. “Don‟t worry, ma‟am. Like I said, I‟m sure I‟ll find something.” In a bid to save everyone from this awkward conversation, Spider stood, quickly and clumsily enough to rattle the coffee things, and said, “We must go. Jamie has many things to do.” He drained his cup to the bitter sludge at the bottom. Jamie finished his coffee in quick sips, as if it were too strong to bolt down all at once. He stood and offered his hand to Caridad, who tilted her cheek, mutely demanding a kiss, which Jamie gave. He solemnly shook Pepe‟s hand again and thanked him for the loan of his truck. Somehow, before they cleared the door of the botánica, Caridad had extracted Jamie‟s promise to come for supper Sunday evening.

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Chapter Three “Thanks for the ride, Spider,” Jamie said once the truck was loaded and rumbling toward the theater. He spoke more to break the awkward silence that had descended once they were alone than from any sense of gratitude, though that was as genuine as his shyness. As overwhelmed as Jamie was to be thrown in with this odd family, especially Caridad and her canny insights, he was more flummoxed by the way he and Spider had been gravitating toward each other since meeting. He‟d been honest when he told Spider that he wasn‟t ready to be out. But he hadn‟t declared he wasn‟t interested. That would have been a lie. Spider drove intently, as if unaccustomed to it, yet Jamie figured his own eyes on the road were redundant, so he watched Spider from the corner of his eye so as not to distract him. Spider kept both hands on the wheel and spoke quietly. “You mustn‟t feel obligated to come for dinner. I will explain to Caridad. I realize she can be…overwhelming.” He nodded, apparently satisfied with the word he‟d found. “My grandfather called her a force of nature.” He chuckled, and the sound was so sad Jamie almost missed that Spider had given him a way out of seeing each other again. Jamie studied Spider‟s eyes. They were so dark the pupils were only visible in strong light, like that coming through the pickup‟s windshield. And they looked old, at once impenetrable and deep as an oubliette. Jamie had always thought of himself as a good reader of people, but Spider defied that kind of literacy. If only Jamie knew the language, so to speak, he‟d know whether Spider was letting him off the hook for Sunday dinner because he wanted to be nice or because he didn‟t want to see Jamie again.

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“It‟s okay,” Jamie said. “I mean, she is definitely, um, formidable, but it‟s been a long time since anyone fussed over me like that. And you‟ll be there.” Jamie took a breath and forced the next words out on the exhale. “So I‟d like to come.” He wasn‟t flirting, he told himself, but he knew better. Sure, he‟d told himself he‟d explore his true self when he moved to Sister City, but he hadn‟t done anything about it. Now he could imagine the expedition, but only with Spider. He toyed with Caridad‟s bracelet at his wrist and waited to hear Spider‟s response. It wasn‟t what he expected. Spider‟s eyes left the road for a split second to take in Jamie‟s hands. “I should warn you,” he said, with another of his sad smiles. “Auntie Caro is matchmaking. She thinks you and I should be together.” Jamie knew he needed all the help he could get, but help from a card-reading Dominican yenta wouldn‟t have been his first choice. He let his head thump dully against the cab‟s rear window. He might not be ready to be out, but it seemed he had no choice, at least where this little family was concerned. And it didn‟t seem to matter. “I guess I should be happy. For once an old lady‟s trying to set me up with a guy. Gran spent all of my teens trying to set me up with wholesome farm girls,” he muttered. Spider heard him. “Caro and Abuelo never had such illusions about me. Their only illusion was that I should not be alone.” Spider did seem to be a self-contained system, which was cool, but boded grimly for any dating. Jamie didn‟t know what to say, so he changed the subject. “You called Caridad „Auntie.‟ Is she your grandfather‟s sister? Will I meet your grandfather Sunday? If I come, that is.” “No and no.” Spider dropped the matchmaking thing with depressing alacrity. “Caridad and my grandfather were neighbors in the Dominican Republic. They grew up together, closer than family. And Abuelo died last winter. You will not meet him.” Oh. Maybe this was why Spider seemed so sad. Jamie reached out without thinking and rested his hand on Spider‟s shoulder, like he had back in Caridad's

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freaky shop. Like then, the gesture came unbidden, and like then, the touch fizzed from Jamie's palm to…other places. Spider's shoulder felt both rigid and frail, like a steel butterfly. “I‟m sorry, man. I know I‟m going to lose my gran someday soon, and she‟s so out of it I feel like I already have sometimes, but at least she‟s still alive.” Jamie‟s forthrightness surprised him. He‟d revealed more of himself to Spider and Caridad in an hour than he had to the folks at the theater in a month. With his darkest secret revealed, unburdening himself of the worry over Gran felt natural. He was caught, and no mistake. And Spider had yet to respond to Jamie‟s flirtatious salvo. Usually implied rejection was all the deterrent Jamie needed, but his gut told him not to back off. Spider‟s shoulder flinched under Jamie‟s hand, but the steering wheel remained rock steady as he reached up to take Jamie‟s hand gently in his. Jamie let him, in case the touch distracted Spider as much as it distracted Jamie. Spider kept his eyes on the road but caressed the beads of Caro‟s bracelet, nervous and quick as a baby bird, before dropping Jamie‟s hand to the bench seat between them. “Do you know what this is?” He gestured toward the beads but didn‟t touch again. Jamie remembered the first thing Caro had said to him, about looking for love. “Some kind of love beads?” he teased, not flirting, honest. Oblivious, Spider said, “They are a prayer of sorts. These colors, red and white, they represent Changó. What do you know of Santería?” Jamie had suspected something like this based on the weird stuff in Caro‟s shop, and Spider‟s words drew a small chill up his spine. “You mean, like voodoo? No wonder you said she wasn‟t a minister!” “Voodoo and Santería are related, yes. Changó is an orisha. That‟s, um, a manifestation of the divine, I guess you could say. His dominions are thunder and war.” Spider paused as if about to deliver bad news. “And virility.” One dark eye met Jamie‟s for the briefest of moments, the brow above it cocked wryly. Jamie hoped Spider had a sense of humor about this, because he couldn‟t stop the laugh that bubbled up. “I can‟t believe this. Your aunt wants to set you up with

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a warrior, and she picks me? I‟m sorry, Spider, but I think your aunt read me very, very wrong.” Spider wasn‟t smiling. “Do you, uh, believe all this?” Jamie finished with another nervous, breathless laugh. “It doesn‟t matter,” Spider said. “It is real, whatever you name it.” He took his hand off the wheel again and waggled his hand until his sleeve rode up his wrist to reveal that he wore a bracelet too, beaded red and black. “Elegba. Messenger between spirits and humans. I was crowned—pledged—when I was small.” Jamie wondered whether the messenger and the warrior were complements. “You‟re kind of freaking me out here. Does this mean I‟m pledged now too?” Spider shook his head and for the first time Jamie noticed that the hairs at his nape were the undersides of hair tucked into his cap. Jamie‟s finger itched to learn how long that hair was. Spider was something else, if his curly nape hairs could distract Jamie from this conversation about exotic religions claiming him. “No, of course you‟re not pledged. Caro is simply trying to draw Changó‟s energy and attention to you. The warrior‟s or the lover‟s, probably both, knowing her.” Something twisted in Spider‟s face, and Jamie had to curl his finger to keep from touching again. When the truck rattled to a stop at a red light, Spider turned and looked fully at Jamie. Jamie looked back, caught in those oubliette eyes and letting everything he was feeling—his fear and incredulity, even his desire—show plainly. Spider ran his fingers over Jamie‟s bracelet. “Look, Jamie. You don‟t have to believe any of this, and you don‟t have to do anything about it. I want you to, but not because some foreign god demands it of you. But it‟s probably not a good idea. Don‟t come to supper Sunday. Just forget all about it.” The soft urgency in Spider‟s voice confused Jamie. “What if I wanted to see you again—just you and me? No family, no orishas.” The light changed, and Spider turned his gaze back to the road. “I should tell you it‟s impossible,” he murmured so low Jamie couldn‟t be sure of his words. “It is

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impossible,” he declared more clearly, almost sharply. He looked into Jamie‟s eyes again as he pulled up in front of the theater. “It must be.” Disappointment muted Jamie, and they began unloading the truck without speaking. Honestly, he told himself sternly, he shouldn‟t even be disappointed. He had enough to do, more than enough distractions, without picking up creepy voodoo tailors. But Jamie had to admit he didn‟t find Spider creepy at all. He was curious and attracted to the mysterious weaver. The botánica qualified as creepy, sure, and Caridad was intimidating, but even she seemed more busybody than voodoo priestess. For all she was tiny and dark, she reminded him of his big, rawboned Gran, all bustling activity and managing people. They finished unloading the truck and piled the thick drapery packages onto a bench by the box office. Jamie dragged his bike off last and walked it to the open driver‟s side of the cab where Spider stood regarding Jamie with those unfathomable eyes. “I am sorry.” Spider‟s voice was low, and Jamie wasn‟t sure what he was apologizing for. “You don‟t have to be,” Jamie replied. He wanted very badly to touch Spider's shoulder again, or his hand, or those intriguing little hairs escaping from his cap. But Spider had changed his mind, if he'd ever been interested in the first place, so instead of touching him, Jamie turned to go into the theater and didn‟t watch as Spider pulled away. He listened, though, until he could no longer hear the labored engine noise of the old truck. Then he hefted the first package and shouldered his way back to work.

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Chapter Four Spider returned Pepe‟s truck, declined with difficulty Caro‟s invitation to supper, and went home to sleep. Next morning, as usual, he went to Telaraña and stitched his way through another workday, refusing to acknowledge the little adrenaline pricks along his ribs every time the door chimed to admit a customer. Likewise he shook his head at the dip of disappointment each time the entrant wasn‟t Jamie. He reminded himself sternly that there was no reason for the young playwright to return, especially not after Spider‟s curt farewell at the theater. As he often did, Spider broke for lunch and ate it with Caro among her saints‟ candles and luck sprays and jars of youth cream. She rewarded his inattentiveness with sharp looks and terse advice. “Time, I think, to do things a little differently, arañito.” Like most people on the receiving end of the santera’s prescriptions, Spider was forced to admit its pragmatism. So much in his life could benefit from changes. He shrugged and went back to work. As moonrise approached, he decided not to weave in Telaraña‟s back room that evening. He closed the shop early and was home in time for salida de la luna, moonrise. He prepared some food and drink and set them on the rickety table near the sofa where he sometimes napped when he ended his weaving time too tired to find his bed. With a little thrill he refused to examine too closely, Spider drew the heavy canvas cover off his grandfather‟s hand-tooled loom. His habit of weaving at the shop had nothing to do with preferring the more ordinary, modern loom there and everything to do with the beautiful old loom reminding him painfully of his Abuelo‟s recent death and of Spider‟s bereaved loneliness in the task at hand. His grandfather had warned him over and over as Spider matured that his peculiar

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talent would separate him inexorably from other people, but until he died, Abuelo was living proof that Spider wasn‟t alone. Now, in the implacable absence of contradictory evidence, Spider faced the loom knowing how alone he was. He had thought for a bright moment the previous afternoon that Jamie might become a companion, like Abuelita had been for Abuelo, one who accepted the requirements of his life and understood or at least tolerated them civilly, which, he had to admit, was as far as his grandmother had ever been able to go. Dejection and resignation followed each other like hoofbeats through his mind as Spider replayed Jamie‟s reaction to the bracelets. They were nothing more than emblems, their power only kindled with the tinder of faith. To one like Jamie, who dismissed Santería as so much exotic piffle, the more…stringent…aspects of Spider‟s votive service would be incomprehensible, intolerable. There was no point in pursuing a flirtation—and Spider had spent enough time around his bluff and charming grandfather to recognize playful mutual interest when he saw it—when the outcome would be disheartening at best and devastating at worst. Spider had never trusted anyone new with his secret. This was another of his grandfather‟s lessons. Abuelo himself had only apprised his wife of the full nature of his work when she was expecting their first child. Caridad understood, perhaps better than Spider himself did, but that had more to do with her own arcane pathways to knowledge than with Abuelo‟s trust, though Auntie Caro certainly had that as well. After stretching to limber up for his hours of sitting, Spider bound up his hair and wound a new warp, all of the customary black across a weft of white, noticing with faint surprise that there was almost no dust at all on the old loom after more than six months of neglect. He felt the moonrise well and truly, a drawing pressure in his gut. He slipped off his shoes, sat on the leather-padded bench before Abuelo‟s loom, and let the bone-deep familiarity of tromping on the treadles, shooting pick after pick through the shed, draw him in. He stood occasionally to make adjustments, for his height and reach were not identical to his grandfather‟s, but did nothing that wasn‟t connected to the weaving while the moon was high.

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Hours later, the moon set, taking the last of Spider‟s energy along with its negligible light. Spider leaned heavily against the breast beam for a moment, coming back to himself slowly. He stood and stretched out his kinks and turned to leave the murky room. An impulsive, if weary, curiosity prodded him to turn and look at the day‟s weaving—another something different to satisfy Caro‟s recommendation. His weavings had all been identical since Abuelo died—a lone figure with its arms and head drooping, standing amid a field of black. The figure, mostly white, had a tight knot of color low in its abdomen. It had been years since Spider had first been entranced to discover that his lunar efforts before the loom spun color from black and white yarns. His wonder at the unexpected, unplanned patterns he wove diminished almost to nothing after Abuelo died, as each weaving emerged identical to the one before it. Still, remembering what Caro had said, Spider looked. What Spider saw caused his pulse to speed and his breath to shorten. The standing man‟s tangle of colors was looser than Spider had seen it in any of the several finished tapestries he‟d completed since Abuelo‟s death. If the colors were a storm, this one would be spreading, like a hurricane gathering strength. Spider examined the half-finished work more closely. The unrelieved black was disturbed by a silvery shadow off to one side. Spider knew better than to try to interpret unfinished weavings, but to him, the shape resembled a man lit as if by the moon.

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Chapter Five Arno and Ben were sprawled on the disreputable living-room sofa when Jamie came home from rehearsal two afternoons after saying good-bye to Spider in front of the theater. They had the A-M volume of their beloved two-volume dictionary—the one they insisted on calling Big Dic—open on the coffee table. Jamie groaned inwardly and tried to sidle by, unnoticed by his housemates or their nasty pet. “Nobody loves me,” the parrot moaned, with alarmingly human inflection. Evidently, Jamie‟s luck was at low ebb. “James! Come play!” Arno sang out. “Strip Fictionary!” “And very fine cheap wine!” Ben chirped, waving his glass. They couldn‟t have been playing all that long, because they both still had their shirts on. Jamie sighed. He felt out of his depth playing this game, just as he felt trying to keep up with the sparkling staccato of their conversation in general. Coming up with convincing bogus definitions for abstruse words was not the only problem—although Jamie had to admit his definitions were pretty transparent thanks to his relatively classical schooling; there was also the specter of semipublic nudity. Jamie‟s comfort level with shared private nudity was negligible; even solitary private nudity carried frissons of shame and tripped the overweening modesty of Jamie‟s upbringing. For a kid who‟d come up on a farm, Jamie was pretty sheltered. Gran and Uncle Griff espoused none of the earthiness of their less upright neighbors. Rutting goats and in-season mares might have their place in other farm kids‟ sex-ed curricula, but not on the Cowan place. They raised soybeans and feed corn, not consciousness. Their priggishness, combined with the hermitlike single-mindedness of the scholarship student Jamie became, made sex and bodies

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one more area Jamie associated with urban sophistication and therefore beyond his ken. “Thanks but no, eh?” Jamie got a modest kick out of playing to Ben and Arno‟s stereotypes. They expected his rural background and Scots heritage to manifest in quaint regionalisms. “But lemme have a peek at that second volume.” Jamie reached for the closed N-Z of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary—nothing but the best when Arno and Ben set their minds to verbal acrobatics. He thumbed to S and found Santería. The definition was little help: An Afro-Cuban religious cult with many elements. Ben crowed as Arno wriggled out of his shirt, reminding Jamie of the third reason he avoided Strip Fictionary—other people‟s semipublic seminudity. “Uh, you guys know anything about Santería?” “Mexican beer?” ventured Ben. “Nah, silly.” Arno rolled his heavily lined eyes. “It‟s like voodoo, right? Only in Spanish.” Nothing more than what Jamie already knew, Arno‟s answer was still more helpful than Belinda‟s rhapsody on “cultural dialectics” and “religious syncretism.” She‟d probably tossed in “capitalist hegemony” and “postcolonial resistance,” because she usually did, and Jamie had ended the conversation with a slight headache. Maybe he should hang on to Big Dic for a bit. Or, his pragmatic preuniversity rearing nudged, just maybe he should go right to the source. Jamie had tried to put the mixed messages of his encounter with Spider out of his mind, but every time he saw or touched the beads at his wrist, the memory of Spider‟s fathomless eyes and quiet magnetism flooded back, and not only to Jamie‟s mind, but other parts as well. The slight weight of the bracelet represented a connection to Spider, and that felt serious somehow. Sure, Jamie felt ambivalent about the religious meaning of the beads, but their weight and the dull clicking sound they made when he moved reminded him of Spider, so he continued to wear them.

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Jamie imagined playing Strip Fictionary with Spider, and even the idea felt silly. He doubted he and Spider would need a game to make things happen between them. Jamie shook his head to clear the images that invaded. Something had stopped Spider from accepting Jamie‟s tentative offer to see each other. Maybe Jamie simply hadn‟t been forceful or obvious enough, but he suspected there was something more, something darker, that had stayed Spider‟s hand. As curious as Jamie was about Santería, what he really wanted answers about was Spider himself. He thunked the heavy volume back onto the coffee table and crept past the illtempered parrot on its perch by the stairs. Avoiding glancing at his now topless housemates, he beat a retreat to his little room, where he kept his clothes on. Safer that way. He even slept fully clothed. It was two more days before Jamie‟s free time coincided with the will to investigate Santería in general and Spider in particular. He locked his bike on the bus stop sign outside Telaraña and tried the door. Locked. He turned, fingering the red and white beads at his wrist. As if summoned by the touch, Caridad appeared at the door of her botánica, all in white and smiling serenely. “Our northern mosca has returned! Pasa, pasa. Come in!” She gestured expansively, the myriad beads circling her own wrists sliding together and clacking. “Oh, hello, ma‟am.” Jamie stalled, making no move to enter the murky shop. “I just came to see Spider, but he‟s not here.” “No,” Caridad agreed. “He is weaving at home today.” She smiled enigmatically. “He needed a change. You must go there.” “I couldn‟t,” Jamie said, Gran‟s injunction against calling on people without an invitation firm in his mind. “Tonto. Silly boy, you must go. The moon will set in another few hours. You will not have long to wait.” She passed over an address as if she'd known Jamie would come by, and began rattling off directions.

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The temperature felt like it suddenly dropped ten degrees as Jamie turned off Broad Street onto a tree-lined side street bordering River Park. The renovated Victorians set amid brightly landscaped lawns so strikingly contrasted with the bustle of the main artery that Jamie had to strain to hear the syncopated beat of the bachatas and cumbias blatting from the tinny speakers outside the music stores and nail salons. Even the envíos and colmados seemed to have speakers mounted over the doors, but the cacophony fell away as Jamie neared, then turned into the driveway of a huge, gracious old house. Surely this couldn‟t be the right place? This wasn't at all the sort of place Jamie‟d imagined Spider lived in. Jamie swung to a stop in front of the gingerbreaded carriage house. “Hello? Halloo the house!” Jamie grinned to himself at the mileage Arno and Ben would get from such rusticity, but it was the wise visitor who made a lot of noise when he approached a remote neighbor‟s house or barn back home. No sense seeing or hearing what wasn‟t meant for your eyes or ears, after all. Silence answered Jamie‟s call, but in the stillness the clack-thunk-swish of Spider‟s loom reached out from inside the carriage house and pulled at Jamie, minutely easing the heavy restlessness he‟d felt for weeks. The carriage house had a wooden sliding door, and Jamie had to put his back into getting it open enough to squeeze through. For all his mannered upbringing, it never occurred to him not to enter. “Um, hi, Spider. Your aunt said you‟d be here. She said I should come.” Spider didn‟t answer right away, and when he did his voice was slow, almost dreamy, and more heavily accented than Jamie remembered from their first meeting. “Ah, another something different.” Spider‟s voice came from the other side of a huge loom, heavier looking than the one at his tailoring shop. High windows all around the building let in mellow purple light, and the last rays of the westering sun filtered through dusty windows set high in the cupola.

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“I‟m disturbing you. I should go.” But Jamie didn‟t move. He watched the wooden crosspiece—he didn‟t know what it was called—travel toward him and away, the only evidence beside Spider‟s voice that Spider was actually there. “You do not disturb me at all,” came the dreamy voice again. A soft chuckle followed, and a muttered “mentiroso!” as the rhythm of the loom stuttered for a moment. “I should say you do not disturb my work. Your presence disturbs me in the nicest way. But I must continue for a time. You are welcome here. Wait, if you will, and we will talk. I prepared some refreshment. Do you see it there?” Jamie didn‟t know what to say. He just had some stupid questions. Well, stupid questions about Santería and scary questions about Spider. He turned to leave, about to say he‟d come back some other time, when he saw an old sofa set under one of the high mullioned windows. Standing next to it was a tarnished brass floor lamp, the kind with a jointed arm so the light could be swung back and forth. Beside the lamp sat a sturdy-looking low table, upon which a sweating pitcher and two glasses were crowded with a plate of fruit and sliced bread. Could Spider have been expecting him? Caridad could have called while he was on his way over, but he had the distinct impression nothing, and certainly not a phone call, would draw Spider away from that loom before he meant to leave it. Jamie ignored the ridiculous prickle of jealousy he felt at that thought. He could sit and mope here as well as anywhere, he figured. And the provender was more inviting than what he‟d find back at the flat. So was the company, he conceded with a wry smile, even if Spider didn‟t say another word all night. Especially so. Jamie sat. He poured himself a glass of what turned out to be very sweet lemonade. It was cold, though the pulpy bottom and watery layer on top suggested it had sat awhile. Jamie ate half the fruit and half the bread. He cleared his throat to offer Spider a glass of lemonade and something to eat, then figured if Spider wanted any, he‟d have set the plate near the loom. The idea that Spider had set these things out for Jamie made Jamie's chest tighten. Perhaps Spider's dismissal at the theater

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that day was reversible after all. Jamie hoped so. He finished the rest of the bread and fruit. All the while the loom was in motion, and Spider was silent. Insisting to himself that the lumpy old horsehair sofa was comfortable, admitting to himself that he had nowhere to be anyway, and chiding himself that he was really interested in whatever Spider had to say, Jamie stayed. After a while, he pulled his little notebook from a cargo pocket in his pants and a pen from behind his ear and began to write. He started something trite about a boy who left his family farm to find love in the big city, frowning that it was just like the play they were producing at the Rep, minus the tragedy. He scribbled over the pages and turned over a blank one, staring at it while the muted thud of the loom overtook his brain. Something about being here with Spider made the itch to write—the itch he hadn‟t been able to reach for weeks—something accessible. He started writing again, barely paying attention to the words, barely thinking except to turn pages as he filled them, recognizing the quiet flood of inspiration like a subtle drug. It was full dark when he stopped to pour another glass of now tepid lemonade. Spider was still weaving. Hadn‟t Caridad said he would leave off sooner? Jamie grimaced; the sweet stuff was better cold. He was sleepy; he should go. But the loom clacked on, and it felt natural to switch off the lamp, curl onto his side, and sleep.

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Chapter Six Spider was aware of Jamie‟s presence while he wove. Ambivalent as he was about opening up, Spider welcomed Jamie with surprisingly little effort. As the moon set late that night, he rose and stretched, then stretched again. Then he sat again and wove until dawn. By the faint, flat early-morning light, Spider examined his newest work. That emerging second figure no longer shocked him. He examined the shape. Silvery filaments extended from its head toward the figure in the center of the piece, the lonely man Spider assumed represented him. With a glance over to the sofa where Jamie apparently slept, Spider thought he might begin to understand. Spider stepped around the loom and looked at Jamie, smiling as he noticed the empty plate and pitcher. He thought about going to the house to fetch a blanket for Jamie but decided against it. He had spent many an hour trying to sleep on that sofa while his grandfather wove, and he remembered all too well how long it took to loosen the cricks. He crouched beside the sofa and touched Jamie‟s hand where it was tucked near his chest, curled around a spiral-bound sketchbook with a pen clipped to the cover. Gently Spider moved the book to the tray, carefully keeping it out of the little puddle of lemonade sweat. He took Jamie‟s hand again and squeezed softly. This was no handshake. “Wake up, Jamie,” he whispered softly enough that unless Jamie slept with one eye open, the sound would not disturb him in the least. Spider looked at him, held his hand, and wondered what he should do. The man had come to him for a reason, he was certain. He sought answers to questions about Santería, but that

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couldn‟t be the real reason. Those questions, Jamie could answer with a quick Internet search or a visit to Caro. What Spider did at the loom between every moonrise and moonset had nothing to do with Afro-Caribbean spirituality, no matter what Caridad believed. No, Jamie was here because of the weaving, all right, even if he didn‟t know what to ask directly. The orishas and their beads and their stories were no more than a trail of breadcrumbs. The longer Spider watched Jamie‟s sleeping face, the surer he felt. Jamie had the same questions that plagued Spider, and Spider suspected Jamie had come to press for answers. The thought made the hair rise on his nape and caused his heart to trip. Jamie‟s eyelids twitched and fluttered, and his limbs stretched. Spider had never in his life watched another person awaken. He watched with even more wonder than he felt watching the new weaving materialize. Jamie's face in sleep was soft, innocent, and that innocence didn't disappear from his waking face. But a layer of something like wariness or self-protection drew across the innocence like a dark curtain over a clear window. The darker look on Jamie's face incited a new, protective feeling in Spider, and he squeezed Jamie's hand more firmly. “That you, Spider?” Jamie mumbled, blinking at him in the low light. Spider allowed that sleepy people‟s stupid questions were worth answering. “Yes. You fell asleep.” Spider was sleepy too, and tired from work. He hoped Jamie was tolerant of weary people‟s statements of the obvious. “Mm. I was writing,” Jamie‟s fingers came together as if around his pen, only to find them gripping Spider‟s hand instead. Spider blushed. “You‟re holding my hand.” “Yes. I was thinking about waking you.” “Thank you for the food.” “I hoped you would come.” “Your aunt didn‟t call you?”

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“If she did, she did not speak to me.” Spider waved his free hand toward the loom. “I was here as soon as the moon rose.” “I thought you would be done sooner. Caridad said you would be.” “Midsummer night I weave straight through, no matter when the moon rises or sets.” “What‟s with the moon and your weaving?” Spider shook his head a little and made to drop Jamie‟s hand. Jamie held on, his fingers surprisingly strong. Spider thought about what to say. How could he explain about himself? He wove and he sewed and he could not need anyone. He would have to be enough. Abuelo had taught him that, though the old man might well have been dismayed to learn how well Spider had learned the lesson. “It is not easy to explain.” “Is it to do with the beads?” Jamie shook his wrist a little, and his red and white beads clacked against Spider‟s red and black ones. “Caridad would say so.” “But you wouldn‟t.” It wasn‟t a question. “I would agree to a point. My weaving has no more to do with Santería than it does with the African animism and Roman Catholicism that bred it. No more to do with mystic Judaism or Shinto or snake-handling Pentecostalism. No more, but also no less.” “You‟re losing me, man.” Jamie yawned and sat up, rubbing his face and hair vigorously, reddening the one and disordering the other and making Spider smile. He held out his hand again. “Coffee?” Spider offered so he wouldn‟t succumb to the temptation of kissing Jamie. He wanted to, very badly. “My hero.” Jamie batted his eyelashes, then blushed. Spider chuckled to cover the answering heat in his own face. He picked up the tray and waved his elbow at the heavy slider.

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“Your turn to be my hero,” he ventured to tease. Jamie levered open the door and waved Spider through with exaggerated gallantry. “Now we‟re square, eh?” Then he headed to the side door of the house to open that as well. Following more slowly, Spider shook his head ruefully. “No, James Cowan, I fear we will never be square.” If he revealed his secrets, he would be in Jamie‟s debt forever.

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Chapter Seven The side door Jamie held open led to a short narrow stair that gave out onto the kitchen. Glass-fronted cabinets reached the high ceiling, and a huge red and white enamel stove squatted along one wall. The early sun sluggishly penetrated none too clean windows to illuminate none too new linoleum floors and scarred wooden countertops. Jamie thought he could take a sit-down bath in the deep porcelain sink, its white finish worn through in spots to the black iron underneath. It was the sort of kitchen that hadn‟t seen updating since plumbing and gas lines were run indoors. Jamie decided he liked it better than the charmless out-of-date modernity of his gran‟s farmhouse kitchen with its electric-coil stove and avocado fridge. Spider set the tray by the sink and started running water into a two-tiered coffeepot of battered aluminum, something Jamie had only seen in French and Italian movies of a certain age before the similar one Spider had used in Caridad's shop. It was definitely more atmospheric than Gran‟s sputtering automatic drip coffeemaker and more approachable than the intimidating espresso machine Arno and Ben adored. Spider‟s narrow back was to him, and Jamie watched as he gently tapped powdery coffee grounds into the center chamber. The grayish sunlight lent Spider‟s black-black hair a silvery cast. Jamie saw that, outside its cap, it didn't cascade the way he'd imagined it would, but was gathered in what appeared to be a long ponytail folded over on itself several times and bound tightly by a woven band. Jamie itched to touch, to unbind, to lose himself in the feel and smell of it. The idea of freeing it now was even more compelling than the thought he‟d had in Joe Gallego‟s truck about popping off Spider‟s cap to let it tumble down. He was still staring when Spider turned to set the coffeepot on the stove, striking a thick wooden

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match and lighting the burner with a blue whoosh. Spider raised his eyes. Then he lowered them with a self-deprecating shake of his head. “I am a poor host. Too used to my solitude.” “No worries, Spider. Only, where‟s the bathroom?” What a stupid thing to blush over, Jamie thought, forbidding his hands from rising to cover his cheeks. Spider appeared no less discomfited. What a pair they were. “There is a small one just here,” he said, toeing open a narrow door in the corner of the kitchen by the sink. “The full bathroom is upstairs.” “This is fine,” Jamie assured him and slipped through the door, closing it softly behind him. The fixtures were of the same vintage as those in the kitchen. Jamie peed and washed his hands in short order, returning to the kitchen to find Spider setting the small table. He had thrown a bright cloth over it. Jamie watched him for a moment, admiring the slender whipcord arms. What would those arms feel like wrapped around him? Jamie wondered. “Sit, please. Relax while I fix some avena.” Spider pulled out a heavy wooden kitchen chair to show Jamie where to sit, then returned to the stove, where he was stirring something in a saucepan. Jamie wondered what “avena” was, but Spider didn‟t seem inclined to talk, so after a moment of awkward sitting, Jamie stood, retrieved his notebook and pen from the tray Spider had carried in, and began to read what he‟d written before he fell asleep. He flipped past the pages of tripe he‟d scribbled over and started to read what he‟d written later. His handwriting had the flattened, rushed quality Jamie associated with inspiration. What he read confirmed the promise. As he read, he recognized the words and the story that took shape, but he had no idea what came next until he read it and recognized it as his own. Jamie inhaled deeply. This was the first real writing he had done since arriving in Sister City. He read on with Spider hovering at the edge of his consciousness but not intruding as Jamie was swept away by the story of a little girl who woke up one day as a boy.

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Chapter Eight “Huh.” Jamie finished his reading and sat back in the chair. He shoved his hand through his sleep-disordered brown curls and shook his head. Watching Jamie carefully, Spider slipped a little steaming cup and saucer between Jamie‟s notebook and the table. Jamie didn‟t look up but did sip and sigh. “Huh,” he said again and started flicking pages backward. Spider ventured, “Are you pleased with your night‟s work?” It was not a question Spider had ever thought to ask himself, but he found he was curious about Jamie. He wondered if Jamie‟s writing was at all like his own weaving, something unsought but purely necessary. Spider had been watching Jamie‟s hands and the notebook; he hadn‟t noticed Jamie shift his attention to Spider. Those caramel eyes on his woke Spider in a way the coffee couldn‟t. “I‟m…I don‟t know, really. It‟s…not what I expected.” Spider nodded, unsurprised. Jamie‟s voice was dreamy, as if he wasn‟t consciously planning his words. That more than anything convinced Spider that Jamie felt about his new writing the way Spider felt about his new weaving. Jamie was still speaking. “I barely remember writing it, but every word is completely mine.” He shook his head as if he‟d said something silly. Spider‟s hand moved to soothe, to stroke Jamie‟s loose curls, but pulled back at the last moment, hovering. He forced himself back to the stove and took a deep breath. He was probably projecting his own feeling of kinship to Jamie, reading more into his new friend‟s words and manner than was truly there. Spider tried and failed to dismiss

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the panic sparking in his chest. What if being around him had somehow…infected Jamie with a compulsion not unlike Spider‟s moon weaving? The very thought shortened Spider‟s breath, and he sought to reassure Jamie. “I think I understand. If I had the words, I would describe my weaving exactly like that.” Jamie smiled faintly and raised the notebook. “You want to read it?” He blushed and covered the little book with his hand protectively. “I would be honored to read it, Jamie.” He poured thin, sweet oatmeal into a mug. “May I read while you have your avena?” At Jamie‟s puzzled look he translated, “Oat porridge.” Jamie gave the mug a skeptical sniff. “Cinnamon and vanilla. Mmm. Same as Gran‟s. Only you could stand a spoon in hers.” He tipped a wink in Spider‟s direction and slid the notebook beside Spider‟s coffee and mug of breakfast. Spider relaxed fractionally. If Jamie wasn‟t alarmed by what he‟d written, Spider would only make things worse by voicing his suspicions. Spider started to read and soon forgot Jamie was watching him. He let his avena go cold and grimaced but drank the thick cooling coffee. As he read, his suspicions flooded back, full force and gaining strength. When he finished reading he raised his eyes to Jamie‟s. The innocent expectancy there rattled Spider—Jamie clearly had no idea of anything amiss. “What did Caridad tell you of my family?” he asked, his voice sharper than he‟d intended. Jamie blinked. “Nothing. Why?” Spider stood and gestured. “Come with me.” He walked to the parlor without glancing to see if Jamie followed. He opened the heavy drapes with the hand that wasn‟t clutching Jamie‟s notebook, then turned and looked at his guest.

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Jamie turned in place, taking in the room. Spider fancied he saw it through Jamie‟s eyes. The heavy brocaded furniture, numerous layered carpets, scarved occasional tables, even the piano, all looked like a daguerreotype of Victorian bourgeois America. It probably wasn‟t what Jamie expected. Spider went to stand by the mantel framing the wide fireplace of whitewashed brick. He moved the heavy wrought-metal screen aside so he could stand closer and beckoned to Jamie. “These are pictures of my family,” he said. “Most were taken before we left the Dominican Republic. My grandfather had them framed here.” Many of the photos were unevenly faded and showed creases or cracks from their time tucked in the bottoms of chests and boxes. Some were pocked by water damage. One or two even showed signs of close encounters with fire. He reached for a largish frame and passed it to Jamie. “There is a picture of my grandfather,” he said quietly and held his breath as Jamie‟s hands closed on the heavy frame. Jamie took the photo from Spider and examined it closely. As he had when they entered the room, Spider imagined he saw the portrait for the first time and through Jamie‟s eyes. Three children were grouped formally. A boy in short pants and another looking proud in long pants flanked a little girl in what had to be Sunday best. “Is your grandfather the big brother or little brother?” Jamie asked. Here it was. Spider drew a breath before answering, but his voice had a breathless quality when he said, “My grandfather is in the middle.” Jamie examined the photo again. “Was this long enough ago that boys and girls were dressed the same until they were older?” “No, this was later than that.” “Then why is your granddad dressed up like a girl?” “He was a girl.”

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And then Spider saw the first flicker of comprehension dawn in Jamie‟s open face. “It‟s like my new play, isn‟t it? A girl magically becomes a boy as she grows up. It seemed a little like Twelfth Night to me. Only without twins. Or comedy. I had no idea where it came from. What are you telling me? Your great-grandparents disguised their youngest son as a daughter? Why?” Jamie closed his mouth and looked embarrassed, as if he feared Spider would take his curiosity for intrusiveness. Spider answered Jamie‟s question with one of his own. “What do you know of machiembras?” “Nothing.” “Guevedoces?” “Nothing. Spider! What are you telling me?” “When I say my grandfather was a girl, I mean he was born a girl-child, reared as a girl-child. She was called Tránsito. When the time came for her to grow breasts and bleed, she did not. Instead a pair of balls emerged, and her woman-lips fined down to reveal a little cock. After that she was called Tomás. That‟s what it means to be guevedoces.” Spider held his breath while he waited for Jamie to respond. Finally, frowning skeptically, Jamie said, “Must‟ve been hell on her folks.”

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Chapter Nine Painfully aware of Spider‟s dark eyes on him, Jamie examined the photo closely. Spider had to be joking, fabricating a story that reflected his new play. Spider didn‟t look like he was suppressing a laugh, though. Spider passed Jamie a smaller photo, this one of three teenaged boys together, the youngest the match of the little girl in the first picture. Spider mutely led Jamie through his grandfather‟s life, pointing to wedding pictures and paterfamilias pictures—some including a spindly, serious little-boy Spider—and even a framed newspaper clipping describing a civic award his grandfather received several years ago for his relief work on behalf of his home province after Hurricane Georges plowed through the Greater Antilles. Jamie pretended to read the entire short piece, just to have some time to sort through the thousand questions swarming his mind. Something of his confusion must have shown on his face, for Spider began to explain. As he did, his hand came to rest on Jamie‟s wrist, right over the beaded bracelet from Caridad. Skin to skin, even that little bit, distracted Jamie enough to stop trying to resist Spider‟s words. “Such transformations were not unknown in their village, so everyone accepted the new boy. He did not suffer. He went to school and church, apprenticed as a weaver, served in the American Army during the war, married. It was more unusual that he was able to sire children—most guevedoces cannot reproduce. His only son was my father. The most remarkable thing he did as far as that small village was concerned was emigrate before the coup.”

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“I‟m beginning to see why reading my notebook unsettled you.” The pages Jamie had written overnight were spooky in their parallels to the elder Tomás‟s early life. “I was named for him. Tomás Tejedor de Luna” Spider finished. “Luna means moon, right?” High school French to the rescue again. “And tejedor means weaver.” “Moon weaver, huh? Wow.” Jamie turned his wrist, which Spider still held, to entwine their fingers. Like Spider‟s name, they fit. Spider must not have felt the same way, because he dropped Jamie‟s hand, passed the notebook back to Jamie, took the photo from him to set it among the others above the fireplace, and wandered back toward the kitchen. Jamie trailed him, smiling when Spider did just what Jamie would have done in the face of a difficult conversation—he set about deliberately reheating the coffee. He waggled the pot of avena at Jamie, offering more, and Jamie shook his head. Evidently Spider didn‟t feel like eating either, for he placed the pan in the sink. He motioned Jamie to sit and joined him at the table with two fresh coffees in his hands, sliding one over to Jamie just like he had earlier, back when the notes in Jamie‟s book were nothing more than an interesting new idea for a play. Now, clearly, they were something more, and Jamie needed to understand. He didn‟t know where to start trying, though, so he alternated sips of coffee with quick glances at Spider, who seemed unduly fascinated with the pattern woven into the tablecloth. Finally, Spider took a deep breath and began to speak. “Let me tell you, Jamie, I was unsettled by your writing, but in the way of excitement, not fear or anger or shame. I was very surprised to see something like my grandfather‟s story told in your notebook. I was not expecting that, though if you had heard his history from someone, I could understand it being fascinating to you. To anyone, really, but to a writer especially.” Jamie nodded and drank. “But you believe me that no one told me about that, don‟t you? I really don‟t know where it came from.”

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Spider nodded. “This must be difficult for an outsider. I am not used to talking about these matters.” Jamie bit back the ingrained polite response that Spider shouldn‟t feel obligated to share anything with him. Instead, he reached for Spider‟s hand again and was rewarded by the same delicate play of fingers as in the living room. He wanted to encourage Spider to speak without making demands. “Why not try to start at the beginning?” Spider‟s fingers tightened a bit as he complied. “When I met you I felt drawn to you, and I thought it was because you are beautiful to me and quiet like me and Caro seemed to think we belonged together.” Those fingers passed over and over their two bracelets with hypnotizing repetition. All of a sudden, Jamie had even more questions. “You‟re losing me,” he confessed. “How is all this about us being attracted to each other?” Pleasure that Spider no longer seemed to be denying their mutual attraction warmed Jamie, though confusion and curiosity definitely dominated his emotional state. He was very close, he thought, to learning the reason Spider held himself back from a relationship. But what if it wasn‟t any relationship, but a relationship with him specifically, that Spider shied away from? “Forgive me. I am a little shaken. I will try again.” Spider paused, sucked in the last of his coffee, and tried again. “What you have written makes me think you are like me. It is more than sharing a solitary temperament and a preference for men. You asked me about my weaving and the moon. Have you wondered why I am always at the loom while the moon is up?” “Well, sure. I‟d guess that‟s just your preference, except it seems more significant to you than ordinary preferences, like how you take your coffee—too sweet, not that you asked—or how long your hair is.” Jamie thought for a beat or two that he would like to unbind Spider‟s hair, find out just how long it was. It would be a good distraction from what was becoming a very weird conversation.

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“This is true,” Spider said after a slightly too long pause. Maybe he wished for the simpler bob and weave of flirting too. But his expression was dogged. “Weaving while the moon is risen is not my preference, it is a necessity. When the moon rises again this afternoon, I will be at my loom, here or in the shop, no matter what else I might prefer to do.” The way Spider looked at him spoke volumes—quiet, tentative volumes—about what Spider might prefer to do after moonrise that day. Then Spider‟s matter-of-fact words sank in. “Are you telling me you have no choice? You make it sound like some kind of slavery.” The thought was too unbelievable. Then another possibility occurred to Jamie. “Or is it…magic?”

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Chapter Ten “Magic?” Spider murmured, tasting the word. “Perhaps it is magic. I‟ve never thought of it that way. I was taught to weave by my grandfather. He made the same vow I have made. To weave faithfully from every moonrise to every moonset but one.” “So even magic moon weavers get a day off?” “Midwinter‟s night.” Spider was still stuck on the idea that his weaving could be magic. He‟d always tried to think of it as just a…specialized skill like masonry or computer programming. “Shortest night of the year. That makes sense.” Jamie‟s grip on Spider‟s fingers never lessened. All in all, Jamie seemed to be taking all this rather better than Spider had seen fit to expect. He smiled, he hoped disarmingly. He wasn‟t yet finished with his tale, and he wanted to keep Jamie‟s sympathy. It felt important. In the pause his smile caused, Jamie spoke again. “You said you vowed. To whom?” Here was the part where Spider feared he‟d start to sound crazy, assuming that moment hadn‟t come and gone already. He took care with his words. “I don‟t know, to be honest. I think of it as a great skein of energy or spirit or something when I think of it at all.” He‟d never told even Abuelo that. He‟d never asked his grandfather what the power was that drew their service. He missed the old man acutely in that moment. Abuelo could explain air to fish, but he‟d never adequately explained moon weaving to Spider.

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“You‟re telling me this is a religious thing? Like the beads?” Jamie skimmed a forefinger across his bracelet, then Spider‟s. Spider wanted so badly to take Jamie‟s other hand—bind them together—that he almost forgot to answer. “Religious? Yes, I think so. But not like the beads.” If Spider hadn‟t been so pleased that Caro‟s beads made manifest the connection between him and Jamie, he‟d have grumbled, for they got in the way of his story. “The beads are a token of faith. I told you that before, yes?” Jamie nodded. “It is probably easiest to think of them like Catholic rosaries or Jewish tzitzit. Material objects that remind us of the truths of our faith or of someone‟s prayer for us.” “Okay, I think I finally get it. The beads are Caro‟s prayer for us to be together? For the qualities of these two orishas to influence our lives?” Jamie rotated his wrist so that it rested fully within Spider‟s hand. “What were their names again?” “Changó and Elegba.” “Oh, right. The warrior and the messenger. I‟m starting to see that for you. But I think Changó‟s the wrong choice for me.” “Don‟t forget Changó also is a lover.” Spider would have covered his blush, but that would mean releasing Jamie‟s hand. “Caro would tell you she was guided truly, that the choice was not hers to make.” “Whatever,” Jamie said, easily shrugging away the orishas and their arcane qualities. “I‟d rather hear about you.” Jamie leaned forward, all eager little boy hearing for the very first time the story that would become his favorite. If it was possible to fall for someone based on a look, that would be the one for Spider. “I will try to express it clearly. I never have tried before. My service is not unlike what I have read about among monks or nuns.” “But you‟re not a monk, right?”

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It took Spider a few seconds to work out that Jamie was thinking of Catholic monks and their chastity. Jamie was teasing him. Flirting. “Not all monks forbear earthly delights.” Spider could tease back. He could even be crude. “Some sects even fuck their way to enlightenment.” Jamie laughed and held up his hands to surrender the point. “So what did you mean about being like a monk?” Jamie asked once his chuckling subsided. He reached for Spider‟s hand as if he, too, needed to be connected for this talk. Spider took a slow breath, buying time. “What I meant was that, like the tasks of a monk or nun, my weaving is supposed to have a purpose, to be meaningful.” “Like gardening or meditating or feeding orphans?” “Yes, in fact.” “So what is your purpose, then?” Spider looked narrowly at Jamie, but his demeanor was curious, not challenging. “I don‟t know for sure. My grandfather didn‟t know either. He just always taught me it was very important and that one of each of our family‟s generations was chosen for this purpose.” “You‟re telling me that you weave every night without fail, and you don‟t know why?” “Technically, the moon may rise or set at any time; I do not always weave at night.” Jamie huffed exasperatedly. But his hands wrapped more firmly around Spider‟s. “You know what I meant, Spider.” Then he paused. Spider anticipated his next question and answered it before Jamie spoke. “I don‟t know why our family was chosen, nor how I was chosen within it, though I suppose it must be because I‟m the only member of my family in my generation. Or maybe it's because I prefer men to women. But I don‟t know who or

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what did the choosing. Abuelo was an obvious choice as the first in our family to be chosen, given his very special childhood.” “Seems it was more a very special puberty,” Jamie muttered, and Spider could almost imagine he heard capital letters on the last three words. “Now you are being sarcastic. Abuelo called that verbal violence. Said it was very American and hated it.” Jamie looked shamefaced but smiled sheepishly. “You know, my gran says something very similar. Used to make me eat a peppercorn every time I did it. No fair just swallowing, either; she watched while I bit it. I‟m sorry, Spider.” “All is forgiven.” Spider spread his hands expansively, making Jamie laugh again. Spider tried not to notice how the laughter lent his eyes a honeyed flash that matched his hair. And right on the tail of that thought, Jamie leaned across the small table and kissed him. Once on each cheek and once, light and brief, on the mouth. “Thank you, Spider.” They sat looking at each other. Spider would have said Jamie looked a bit smug. Spider imagined himself looking startled and elated. He forgot to try to keep either sentiment off his face. The smug look on Jamie‟s face slipped a little, and he whispered, “Forgive me again, Spider,” and he leaned close. Spider‟s second kiss was just as chaste as his first, only longer, and his heart beat like a rockslide at the thought that he might ever forget even the tiniest detail. This time, Spider remembered to kiss back, and when he did, Jamie‟s mouth opened against Spider‟s in a gasp. Spider thought he‟d do anything to earn more of those, so he kept kissing. When Jamie pulled back, he said very decisively, “I want to see your weaving.” “Then I will show you.” The rockslide feeling didn‟t let up as Spider led Jamie back out the door and through the bright morning to the carriage house. It was dim

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inside, though syrupy shafts of light puddled here and there. Spider noticed all of a sudden that Jamie‟s hand was still clasped with his own, and he used it to pull Jamie around to the far side of the loom. Jamie looked and looked, pulling Spider by their joined hands from one side of the bulky machine to the other. Spider watched Jamie‟s free hand reach out and stroke the two figures, first the moonlight man and second the man with the colored filaments. Spider was breathing sharply the whole time. “Spider, I think this is the loveliest thing I have ever seen.” And Spider felt Jamie‟s lips on his cheekbone, which took him by surprise because he‟d been looking at the weaving, trying to see it the way Jamie must. “Usually there is less to see, and I only started this one recently. Last night was long. It took days for the silver man to take shape.” He‟d forgotten Jamie wouldn‟t know what he meant. “What do you mean, there‟s usually less to see? Are your weavings usually just colors and patterns?” “Since Abuelo died, they‟ve been very black, with only the lone figure at the center. The silver man is new. He arrived in the middle of this weaving. His presence seemed to brighten the colors.” He pointed to the rainbow of filaments spinning out from the center man. “These are usually just a clot at his middle.” Jamie leaned closer to the loom. “So you really don‟t decide what the weavings will look like?” Spider realized with a jolt that he‟d never finished telling Jamie all about himself. But he also realized, with another jolt, that the avalanche feeling from their kiss was still happening, so he decided to be brave and finish. “I only decide how big they will be, by the way I set the yarns. The images and the colors come from…” He realized he couldn‟t finish the sentence. But Jamie could. “From the force you made your vow to?”

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“I think so.” Spider hated how weak his voice sounded. “Every moonrise I sit before a loom set with a warp and weft of black and white, and I weave images in color. It was not much at first, just a few short strands coming from that figure. The colors are stronger and longer since the silver man came, as if they‟re reaching out for him. He is the first real change since I took over the weaving from Abuelo.” Abuelo‟s weaving had been so vibrant, each one unique. “Are you saying all your weavings have looked the same, for all these months, until…” “Until I met you.”

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Chapter Eleven “Until you met me?” Jamie felt like his rabbiting brain had burned away any acuity lent by the strong coffee he‟d drunk. “Yes. The silver man is you, I think.” Spider looked so bashful, as if he feared his speculation would offend Jamie, that Jamie felt compelled to reassure him with a kiss. Third time was the charm, and their third kiss brought Jamie the tiniest taste of Spider‟s tongue. Coffee and cinnamon and vanilla masked something wild underneath, and Jamie deployed his own tongue to investigate more deeply. He might not be ready to be out, but he was definitely ready to be in whatever this moment was with Spider. It about killed him to pull back and ask more questions, but he sensed those answers were as important as the kisses. “So the man with the colored strands, he‟s you?” “I suppose so.” Spider was touching his fingertips to his lips, and Jamie wanted to kiss them too. But wondrous as kisses were turning out to be, Spider‟s words aroused Jamie‟s immediate curiosity. “Your weavings tell the future? Told you I was coming?” “No. I mean, they never have before. After Abuelo died, until the silver man, all my weavings told was of my solitude.” Insane as it was, the picture was coming clearer to Jamie. “I get it,” he said. “That was your interpretation of the image.” Spider looked away, so Jamie hastened to add, “I think that makes sense. But what about your grandfather‟s? Did his weavings tell future things?” A spark of something like fire lit Spider‟s eyes. “I showed you my weaving. Now I think I should show you his,” Spider said, turning to go back into the house.

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Jamie‟s arm slid around Spider‟s waist, showing he was ready to follow wherever Spider led. Through the kitchen and up the back stairs, Spider hauled Jamie, who never lost contact with him. Their bracelets clacked together, and Spider‟s fingers tightened so much they almost hurt. Jamie didn‟t understand Spider‟s urgency, but he found he shared it. His breath came faster. The upstairs of the house was furnished much like the downstairs, as if someone‟s maiden aunt had been granted an unlimited antiquing budget and a Midas touch with aspidistras. Spider stopped in a huge parlor, whose decorations should have clashed with the heavy furniture and layered carpets but didn‟t. Nary a contiguous foot of wall space showed through the many hangings. All of different sizes, even of different materials, the weavings clamored with color. Despite the staggered lines the medium demanded, the figures upon them seemed to pulse with life and purpose. Spider led Jamie around the room, pointing almost reverently to the one common element in weaving after weaving. A figure of a sturdy man, usually small in the scale of each piece, stood or sat or danced in the pictures. His back was to the viewer; he appeared to focus on each scene. “Your grandfather?” Jamie asked. Spider nodded. Jamie was immediately excited. “Oh, wow! That‟s College Hill! Look at Design Beach!” He‟d been puzzled by the tiny patch of ground that, in any remotely habitable weather, was crowded with art students with self-conscious hair and semiconscious attitudes. Arno and Ben had dragged him there once, shortly after he‟d come to Sister City, and a month later he still cringed with the discomfort of the memory. He had no talent for seeing or being seen. He‟d known he‟d never fit there and had felt almost guilty for not wanting to try. But he was delighted as a child to recognize a place he had visited. “Your grandfather was very skilled.” Jamie looked over at Spider, who was staring at a scene of the delta port, complete with stevedores and streetcars.

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Spider‟s nostrils flared as if he smelled—or was trying to smell—diesel and salt. Jamie wanted to lick those little arches. He‟d stopped himself back in the carriage house when he‟d wanted to kiss Spider‟s fingers, fearful of being too pushy. He couldn‟t possibly take such a liberty as licking Spider‟s face. Instead, he leaned closer and inhaled alongside Spider. He didn‟t smell the port. He smelled Spider— wool and spice and that something wild again. Jamie pressed into Spider‟s side, feeling stripling muscles and delicate bones. An unbridled, giddy feeling spiraled through Jamie, and he imagined it was his own spirit answering what he sensed in Spider. Spider kept very close to Jamie as they circled the room. The tapestries‟ arrangement seemed haphazard, ordered by neither color nor age nor size nor subject. Here was a crowded bodega bursting with squared-off fruit; there was a dance hall pulsing with vigor and libido. Here was a man playing a guitar, there a woman smoking a pipe, another nursing a baby. In them all was the image of Spider‟s grandfather, his back to the viewer, not shutting him out, but leading him in like a priest at an altar. In some scenes, the stout man was accompanied by a smaller, lithe figure, a boy with colors springing outward in short spirals. Jamie looked closer and saw the colors connected the boy and the man. “Why doesn‟t he have colors coming out of him the way you do in the weaving on the loom?” “Abuelo‟s colors were everywhere in the weaving, you see? They did not stay within him. Or perhaps he did not hold them to him. I don‟t know.” “What‟s this?” Jamie brushed his finger over a ragged patch in a large weaving. The weave itself was as regular as everywhere else; it was the colors, the pattern, that seemed to stutter, disrupting the harmony of the picture. Spider frowned at the place, thoughtful. “It is, how do I say, the gate. More a legend than anything else. Without this imperfection the weaver would be trapped in the image. Perhaps I am not saying it well?”

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By that point in Jamie‟s very singular day, Spider could have been speaking in tongues and Jamie would have insisted he made perfect sense. Jamie really wanted to touch Spider more intimately. Spider‟s hands had an unusual smoothness, probably from the oils in the wools he worked, and Jamie wanted to feel them on his body. Jamie longed to kiss Spider again too, but just then Spider stepped away from him. He shouldered aside a heavy, dusty-looking drape and rolled out a wooden step stool, the kind libraries have for reaching the uppermost stacks. “Here, Jamie, look all you like,” Spider said. “Maybe after I shower I can explain more clearly.” He made a head-spinning gesture with his hand. “I mean, I can try. The more questions you ask, the less I seem to know.” He shook his head and smiled, a little wryly, a little ruefully. “Oh! Soy malcriado! I‟m behaving badly. It was a very long night. Would you like first turn?” Jamie shook his head mutely, swallowing a giggle at Spider‟s self-deprecating attempts to be a gracious host and thrilling at Spider‟s assumption that Jamie would bathe here. Spider crossed to an interior door and went through it, leaving it mostly ajar behind him. Jamie understood immediately that it was not an invitation to follow—they'd barely kissed; they weren't anywhere near showering together. Spider merely wished to avoid the appearance of shutting out his guest. Jamie circled the room twice, toeing the rolling stool along before him, looking at all the weavings, touching some, not thinking about why Spider had skittered away from him. Spider seemed to suffer none of the qualms Jamie did at being out of the closet, but Jamie sensed that this…whatever…that was happening between them was all new for Spider. Jamie‟s favorite of Abuelo‟s weavings was of a ship at sea, its crew visible as little white-hatted dots. The square man—Spider‟s grandfather—watched from atop an upturned lifeboat. The expanse of colors, the blue sky, the ship‟s gray hull, the ruffled sea, extended all the way to the edge of the weave, no black, not even a border. Jamie was mesmerized.

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“That was the first weaving Abuelo did after coming to the States.” Spider‟s voice came unexpectedly beside his ear, and the steamy warmth and soapy tang of Spider enveloped Jamie. “It‟s so…hopeful.” Jamie trailed off as he turned to look at Spider. He was fully dressed, but his hair was down, arrayed in damp ropes around his face and shoulders, darkening his shirt to the elbows. Jamie reached out and caught a few fast-cooling droplets from the ends of Spider‟s hair. Then, feeling stupid for not knowing how to extend or repeat the gesture, he stuck his wet fingers in his mouth. Spider‟s new-moon eyes were intent on Jamie. “You said you don‟t know why you must weave, but it seems to me the weavings tell the stories of the weaver‟s life.” Spider‟s lips curved down speculatively. “I think that is true. Every weaving here shows something my grandfather witnessed. But he was not always involved, do you understand? Many of these depict things and people and experiences beyond himself.” “He was an observer? A witness.” “Perhaps.” “Which ones show the future?” “None, now.” At Jamie‟s narrowed eyes, Spider smiled and relented. “I don‟t really know. While I was old enough to watch his weavings emerge, many would show an image that was puzzling but whose story would seem obvious by the time Abuelo tied off the warp ends.” “So they tell stories?” “You, a writer, would understand it that way. The clearest Abuelo ever explained it was to say he believed the weavings brought past, present, and future together in a special way, so we could understand. You already put better words to it than I expected.” “What did I say?”

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“You said what you wrote last night was a complete surprise, but that you recognized every word.” “That‟s how it felt.” Suddenly Jamie wanted to talk about that, about the strange familiarity of it. “That‟s how the weaving feels, even if all you know is how to be alone.” “You‟re not alone now,” Jamie ventured, then held his breath for Spider‟s response. “I think we are both less alone than before. In you I have found another like me.” For the first time since they‟d met, Spider initiated a kiss, and Jamie welcomed it with openmouthed enthusiasm. The coffee-and-cinnamon taste of Spider was replaced by anise-flavored toothpaste, but that wild undertone hadn't changed. Jamie decided that must be all Spider. Their tongues met, bowing and stroking, and Jamie dared to slide his fingers into the wet mass of Spider's insanely long hair. The warm feeling in Jamie's middle arrowed right to his groin and settled there, beating heavy and new. His body wanted to do more, right this very minute, but Jamie‟s lifetime of living in his head won out—for now. He and Spider had kissed enough for Jamie to let go of the worry that this would be the last one, so he gently drew away, inhaled, and asked his next question. “You said that before. You mean my writing is like your weaving, that the stories it tells are important? That I don‟t really have any control over it?” Jamie wasn‟t at all sure he liked that notion. “Your skill, my skill, animates the work we do. If there is a metaphysical power to what we produce, it is possible only because of our talent and our commitment to being true to the art and the craft, both. Do you see?” Jamie did see. “I don‟t know, Spider. I‟m used to thinking of my writing as an act of will.” Jamie‟s MFA was a triumph over poor preparation and indifferent support from family and state—that was the truth he clung to when his native doubts stage-whispered in his waking ear or bansheed through his sleeping mind. “My play, the one they‟re producing at the Rep, is the best work I‟ve done. It flowed

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out of me like blood, clotting on the way into a story I had to tell, but what I did last night felt different. Maybe because I was with you?” “Perhaps you should try writing while the moon is up. When you're not with me. As an experiment.” Spider‟s voice was more forceful than Jamie had heard it, and the vehemence scared him a little. What if Spider was right about him, about his writing, all of it? “I always did my best work at night. Now, with the production schedule and sharing space with Arno and Ben, I‟m too tired to do anything but sleep at night. I‟ve got nothing done.” “Nothing?” “Well, not much, and nothing good. Not until last night.” “When you wrote well before, was it always at night? Or only when the moon was high?” Jamie shot Spider a gobsmacked look. He shook his head and changed the subject. How could he know that without going back in time? Another thought occurred to him. “After you showed me the weaver‟s way in and out of each weaving, I looked for it. Found it in every one. If I‟m really like you, why doesn‟t my writing have something like that?” He tried hard to convey curiosity and not skepticism. Spider smiled as if about to confirm something improbable like geocentrism or the existence of merfolk. He leaned forward and steadied himself on the point of Jamie‟s hip. Jamie gasped and didn‟t move, as if that would keep Spider‟s hand there longer. Spider snaked his hand down Jamie‟s leg—Jamie held his breath— and pulled Jamie‟s notebook from the cargo pocket of his pants. He flipped to a random middle page, passed it back to Jamie, and pointed with his thumb. Just like every entry, the one Spider indicated began with the dates and times of the writing and included places Jamie had been as he wrote, the way oldfashioned letters had done. Theater lobby, Number 22 bus, fire escape, Yeast West café, Thai House. It was a little tour of Sister City, through the eyes of a stranger and a creature of habit.

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Jamie hoped Spider was attracted to gobsmacked. Spider seemed about to say something more, but instead ducked his head and murmured, “Why don‟t I show you the bathroom? You can shower before you leave, if you like.” Even though Jamie could shower just as easily at the flat, and even though he‟d just get all sweaty cycling back up College Hill, Jamie‟s ears and neck heated with the counteroffer in his mind—Can’t I shower before I stay? It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, but Spider tugged Jamie toward the door with a grin that looked almost gleeful. “You‟ll like the bathroom. It‟s un divertissement particulier.” “You speak French?” Jamie hoped his surprise wasn‟t insulting. “I went to school too, you know. Grad assistants from Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone taught me, if not well, at least with enthusiasm.” “You‟re full of surprises, you know.” Jamie laughed as Spider pushed open a door painted a glossy Delft blue. “Oh, man! Look at this!” The bathroom was something straight out of a museum. Blue and white porcelain tiles with pastoral themes alternated with glossy white ones and ran floor to ceiling in the largest bathroom Jamie had ever seen. The brass-fixtured pedestal sink, like the more utilitarian one in the kitchen, looked big enough to bathe in. Spider drummed his fingers on its broad lip, producing a hollow marimba sound. He gripped Jamie‟s hand, wrapped them together, and turned on the hot-water tap. After a moment, warmth tickled up through the cool iron and ceramic, making Jamie‟s hand convulse. “What the…?” Spider showed Jamie the pipe that ran under the rim and sent hot water through. “The man who plumbed the house was a fat banker who toasted his big belly while he shaved. Made up for his cold heart, maybe. The tub has the same arrangement.” He waved casually at a tub under the window whose capacity could have doubled the Titanic‟s survival rate. “He hired the same plumber as the town fathers up the hill but had to pay almost double to get the man down off the Slope and out here to the hinterland. Come on! You haven‟t seen the best part.”

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Spider‟s usually precise, economical movements gave way to a tour guide‟s flourish as he drew back the shower curtain. The elliptical alcove rested atop two swaybacked porcelain steps and was easily as big as Gran‟s goat pen. The blue and white tile motif was repeated all round the cylinder and a bewildering array of taps and levers clumped at hip height on one wall. Streaky copper pipe spiraled all the way around and up, turning back on itself like ivy to accommodate the arched entrance. A giant green-pocked copper showerhead protruded from the domed ceiling. “Why would someone go to all the expense of building this thing and then leave the pipe exposed?” Jamie wondered. Spider grinned as if he‟d been awaiting that very question and flipped one lever after another. Water jetted from holes pierced along the length of the pipe, sputtering upward to pound from the showerhead. Jamie yelped and jumped back to avoid the spray coming right at him from the rear wall. “Damn, Spider!” Jamie hollered in surprise. Spider‟s head was tipped back, and he was laughing hard, the sound ringing brightly off all that tile. Impulsively, inevitably, Jamie kissed his throat, just under his ear, before Spider sprang away to avoid getting wet. “Take your time, Jamie. Abuelo called it El Huevo—the egg—and swore anyone who bathed here emerged reborn.” Jamie watched him leave the bathroom and wondered if Spider had meant more than he said.

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Chapter Twelve While Jamie showered, Spider went downstairs, tidied up the breakfast things, and thought. Jamie was a wonderful surprise, and Spider wished his new friend didn‟t have to go back to his apartment. He could write here, couldn‟t he? And the two of them could explore the connection of the moon to Jamie‟s writing. Spider shook his head and smiled—they could explore this amazing spark between them too. If only he would stay. “Tonto!” If Spider hadn‟t been wrist-deep in soapy dishwater, he‟d have slapped his forehead. This was his house. He forgot that sometimes. He could invite Jamie to stay the rest of the day, maybe even for a few days. In his house. With him. The thought brought a tingle to his lips and a throb to his penis, just like Jamie‟s kisses had done. Spider smiled again, proud of his idea. When Jamie appeared, enthusing about the wonders of El Huevo, Spider‟s resolve threatened to crumble, so he interrupted, blurting, “Stay a few days! Please?” Jamie looked startled but, Spider hoped, pleased. “We could maybe figure out what‟s going on, huh?” Jamie said. “About your writing, yes,” Spider agreed, relieved they were on the same page. “That‟s not all I meant,” Jamie said softly, coming close enough that Spider could smell his own soap and shampoo. Those scents on Jamie were unexpectedly erotic. “I‟m glad,” Spider replied and sealed the deal with a kiss, toothpaste slick and blood warm.

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“I‟ll run home and pick up some things, then be back. There‟s no rehearsal today,” Jamie said. “Do you have to go to your shop?” Spider shook his head. He always took the day off work after Midsummer. “Can I come too?” “It‟s a pit,” Jamie hedged. “You‟ve seen my place,” Spider returned. Jamie smiled. “Then I guess I‟ll give you a ride.” Spider grinned back. For a guy with apparently as little experience as Spider himself, Jamie‟s tone could be filthy. Spider loved it. Within minutes, they were underway. Balanced precariously upon the seat of Jamie‟s bicycle as he labored up College Hill, Spider marveled at the sweat that darkened Jamie‟s shirt and seemed to suck the fabric into the shallow trench of his spine. His hands rested lightly on Jamie‟s tight waist, and Jamie pedaled standing up. Peering side to side, Spider took in the design school with its convex brick edifice and the old houses that lined the hill, their front stoops and lower stories wedge shaped to hug the incline. What would it be like to fly down the sharp hill on the back of Jamie‟s bike? The idea was thrilling, but today would not be the day to test it. To Spider‟s surprise, Jamie didn‟t stop at the top of the hill, but kept pedaling, his calf muscles round as apples. They passed Landmark Tower with its four clock faces, none of the three Spider could see showing the correct time as they passed. Rolling gently downhill, Spider got a peek through the ornate Soldier‟s Arch into the separate world of the old university. The gracious avenues around the university gave way to the river side of the neighborhood, and things looked less foreign to Spider, the triple-deckers, tatty liquor stores, and Laundromats not unlike the South Side where Telaraña was. He tried to read the signs, but most were in Portuguese, which Spider reflected was not as similar to Spanish as everyone assumed. Another short uphill, and Jamie coasted to a stop in a Mill Point driveway. Spider could smell the river, like the ocean only more rotten.

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The driveway, evidently, did not belong to the house Jamie shared, as Jamie swung the bike into a narrow alley between the corner house and the one behind it. The coolness of the dark place made Spider shiver. It must have been that and not the regret of having no more excuse to keep his arms around Jamie‟s middle. “Bus comes in thirty minutes,” Jamie panted as he leaned the bike against the house. “Let‟s be quick.” The terseness of his words was softened by an eager grin, and he opened the door. The little house was all one room on the first level, bisected by a narrow stair in the middle. Voices came from the living room side, but Jamie tugged Spider into the kitchen and poured two glasses of water, handing the first to Spider as he washed a second. Spider sipped his water and watched Jamie‟s throat convulse to draw down the full glass in four hard gulps. Jamie refilled his glass and drank that down as well. He set the glass down and exhaled deeply. “Better.” He wet his hands under the tap and ran them over his face, drying them by rubbing his fingers through his hair. It was very dark near the scalp. Spider helped himself to a quick lick of the skin at Jamie‟s hairline, making Jamie laugh. “You had to work very hard to bring us here,” Spider ventured. Jamie shrugged. Spider tried to remember if honey changed color when it was heated. Jamie‟s honey-toned eyes certainly did. “You are very strong,” he said next. He wondered if his own eyes signaled his admiration the way Jamie‟s did. Jamie laughed again, still a little breathless. “Maybe I was showing off.” “For me?” Spider found that suggestion delightful. “Only,” Jamie said, and Spider waited for the rest of the sentence. When Jamie didn‟t speak again right away or look him in the eye, Spider decided it was a declaration, not an opening. He smiled. “Come on.” Jamie tipped his head in the direction of stairs. “Won‟t you introduce me to your housemates?” “Oh, I don‟t think they‟re home.”

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“There are voices in the parlor.” Spider couldn‟t have explained why he was pushing. “Oh! That‟s just the radio. They leave it on to keep the parrot company. Here, I‟ll introduce you to him.” An outsized gray parrot with a black beak and feet perched sullenly on a stand near the sofa. The floor around the stand was drifted with seed hulls and ground walnut shells. “Careful,” Jamie whispered. “He bites.” “Nobody loves me.” The parrot fixed a yellow eye on Jamie, then Spider, and edged closer along his perch. “Nobody loves me,” he moaned again. “He‟s not very upbeat,” Jamie said. “His name‟s Onan. Onan, this is Tomás.” Spider repeated the name. “Onan? Are you sure?” Jamie smirked. “Arno and Ben say it‟s because he spills his seed upon the ground.” He crunched his toe through the mess on the floor, keeping well out of beak range. “Old Testament, I think.” “No, Dorothy Parker apocrypha!” Spider was delighted to know something literary that Jamie didn‟t. Jamie shot Spider an astonished look. Spider crossed his arms and looked back. “I know,” Jamie said finally. “You went to school too.” Onan edged closer to Spider, clacking his beak and sticking out his black tongue, and Spider edged closer to Jamie. “Encantado, Onan.” “I love you,” Onan declared in a voice so sad Spider almost returned the endearment. As they left the room, Onan chanted, “Nobody loves me,” over and over. There was nothing in Jamie‟s little room but a narrow bed, a shelf of books, and a fat backpack. “There was no bureau, so I never really unpacked,” Jamie explained.

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“Makes things easier today, then, yes?” Spider replied brightly, the need to reassure someone strong after Onan‟s moroseness. Jamie nodded. “Bus comes in fifteen minutes. Spider, are you sure about this?” Jamie stood in the center of the miserable little room, hands full of books. He looked so uncertain that Spider took a step toward him. He berated himself for hesitating, reminding himself harshly he‟d just spent an hour touching Jamie as they rode over. He‟d just licked sweat from Jamie‟s face for goodness sake! He closed the distance and reached out, brushing Jamie‟s forearm. “I‟m sure.” And he was. He couldn‟t have put words to his expectations, though they were legion, so he simply sealed his statement with a kiss. Overbalanced by his heavy pack, Jamie rocked against him and for a shocking, delicious second their groins kissed too. Spider moved more of the same higher up his list of hopes for the next few days. Outside once more, Jamie hitched his heavy pack onto his shoulders, catching his bike on his hip, and glanced at Spider, who balanced the box of books. “Bus should be along any minute,” he said. Spider nodded. “Will you miss your housemates? The parrot?” “Arno and Ben? No. They‟re decent guys, but we we‟re not really friends, you know? They have each other. They only let me stay as a favor to Belinda, the Rep‟s manager.” Then he shook his head, grinning. “And that parrot is just too nasty for words.” Spider frowned. The parrot was tatty, to be sure. “Maybe he could come anyway? For a visit?” Jamie shook his head, frowning himself. “He bites and only says two things, and he‟s older than dirt.” Spider couldn‟t have said why he persisted, except that he never could bear to see an animal in less than ideal conditions. “He would be company, yes? While I weave.”

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“I‟ll be your company. That‟s the idea, right?” Jamie‟s reminder made Spider feel sheepish—he was more assertive about Onan the parrot than he‟d been in his invitation to Jamie. Spider tried to salvage the moment with a wicked little smile. “But will you tell me you love me?” Jamie grinned and blew a kiss over the box of books, appearing as giddy as Spider to be teasing like this. “He couldn‟t come anyway. He belongs to the house. He‟s even written into the lease. Whoever lives there is stuck with him.” “Poor thing.” The bus growled up, and Jamie was occupied in wrestling his bike onto the front rack. Spider carried the books up the steps into the diesel-fumed airconditioned interior of the bus, paid for them both, and found a pair of seats for their journey together.

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Chapter Thirteen Walking from the bus stop to Spider‟s house, Jamie wondered what Spider made of the fact that Jamie packed all his worldly possessions for a visit of a few days. Maybe he‟d have the balls to ask when they reached the house. Jamie wasn‟t sure how to understand what was happening with Spider. His feelings for Spider as a friend were all tangled up—how could they not be?—in his feelings for Spider as a man. And then there were Caridad‟s bracelets and the Santería connection, which Jamie was beginning to see was a whole separate issue from Spider and his moontime weaving. And finally, most puzzlingly, Jamie had yet to sort out what he thought of the possibility that his writing was, like Spider‟s weaving, something mandated by the rising and setting of the moon. His scribbling from overnight had revealed something pretty spectacular about Spider‟s grandfather, something Jamie couldn‟t have known. The weavings in the upstairs gallery told, or had once told, of future events. Spider‟s weaving seemed to narrate his current state of mind and experience—and how freaky was it that Spider thought the new figure in his weaving represented Jamie? “We should have some supper,” Spider was saying, and Jamie blinked away his musings to see that they‟d arrived at the kitchen door of Spider‟s house. “Sorry, Spider. I was woolgathering.” “The moon rises a little past five this afternoon. We‟re home in time, but only just.” Setting his things in Spider‟s living room felt rash and right and not a little frightening.

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Spider was reheating chicken and rice from a storage container when Jamie joined him in the kitchen. “Tomorrow, we can settle your things in the cobertizo, the little garden house,” Spider said. “It‟s set up with a worktable, though not a desk. We can bring a bed out there for you.” Jamie didn‟t want their first fight to be about the sleeping arrangements. He counted several heartbeats before replying. “I came here to work with you, well, near you anyway. Can‟t I write in the carriage house while you weave?” Spider‟s brows drew down like a railroad-crossing gate. “Abuelo used to say that there were others like us. He had never met one, besides the man who taught him, who swore there were others. He would have been so excited to meet you. Abuelo, I mean.” Spider hesitated, then went on. “I never believed him. And now I do.” Jamie accepted his plate of food but was no closer to knowing what to say. He‟d hoped—expected—that his visit would be the beginning of something more than lodging in Spider‟s garden shed. He followed Spider‟s lead and leaned one hip against the counter to eat. Spider‟s voice dropped, and he raised his eyes to meet Jamie‟s. “I am making it sound like I want you here for him, for the weaving.” Jamie found his voice. “If it‟s true that my writing is like your weaving, then we could do our work together, couldn‟t we? Spider, if you‟re right about me and the moon and my writing, I could really use your help, you know?” Those brows beetled again. “You don‟t understand. We can help each other, yes. And I don‟t wish to pressure you. But I want you here for me.” “You want me?” Jamie had pushed the words out on a failing breath. “I didn‟t want you to leave after your shower.” Spider shrugged in that selfeffacing way of his and shyly stroked Jamie‟s middle. “So I don‟t have to sleep in the shed?” Jamie ventured.

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Spider blushed but shook his head. “I don‟t want to seem pushy. I know you might not be ready for…” Spider trailed off and waved his hand between their two bodies. Jamie opened his mouth to protest that he really, truly might be ready after all. He turned toward Spider to say so and found his mouth full of Spider‟s questing tongue. There was nothing demanding in the press of lips or the glide of tongue; Spider‟s mouth was just there on Jamie‟s, as if the opportunity to kiss and the kiss itself were no more separate than one breath and the next. Jamie opened his mouth wider, enthralled with the sudden reality of a soul-deep kiss. He and Spider wanted the same things, and so far they seemed pretty compatible in how they pursued their desires. Any conflict about where Jamie would stay was averted before they drew apart, breathing heavily and sharing the same air. The kiss had sealed a covenant of sorts, Jamie felt. They were together, whatever that would mean going forward. That was enough for now, so Jamie didn‟t seek another kiss, though the idea crossed his mind insistently while he and Spider returned their attention to their meal. Spider and Jamie finished eating and walked together to the carriage house. By the time the moon set in the wee hours of the morning and Jamie rolled off the horsehair sofa, his back and hips were popping like an old man‟s. He couldn‟t wait to show Spider what he‟d written. Spider had finished the mostly black tapestry of the two figures and tied it off before they went inside to catch a few hours‟ sleep. “If I make the next one smaller, perhaps the story the weaving tells will emerge more quickly.” There was no discussion about sleeping arrangements. By unspoken agreement, Jamie followed Spider to his second-floor bedroom and fell onto the duvet beside him, fully clothed and too tired even for kisses. Next morning, over coffee and avena, Jamie read the new bits of his play to a rapt Spider. Though it was his own work, Jamie had to admit that he, too, was on tenterhooks to find out how the story unspooled. In this part, the young soldier

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Tomás, Spider‟s grandfather, was stationed in post-war Okinawa and befriended a silk weaver. “Do you think they‟ll get together, the soldier and the weaver?” Jamie wondered. Spider looked shocked. “By the date in your play, my grandparents had already met, though they weren‟t yet engaged.” “Don‟t be so stuffy,” Jamie teased. “Maybe your grandfather had a fling, or maybe this part of the play departs from his real life.” Spider sipped his avena and appeared to consider the idea. “The silk weaver must be the man who taught Abuelo about moonweaving, though their friendship ended before my grandfather understood all about it. So if there was no fling in real life, that would be the only part to diverge from reality. I don‟t know of any romantic attachments Abuelo had besides his marriage to my grandmother.” Jamie checked the rooster-shaped wall clock. “I have to go! Rehearsal today. Don‟t be upset, okay? I‟m sure there‟s an explanation.” He made a mental note to stop in at Caridad‟s shop soon. Maybe she had more…salient information than Spider did about his grandfather‟s love life. Jamie retrieved his bike and pedaled away with the taste of cinnamon, coffee, and Spider‟s good-bye kiss flavoring his smile. Rolling back to Spider‟s just before moonrise that evening, Jamie was greeted with a sullen, “Nobody loves me.” Somehow, he was unsurprised that Spider had found a way to bring Onan the parrot home. Jamie shook his head and replied, “I love you.” Damned parrot.

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Chapter Fourteen Jamie startled Spider by pounding into the kitchen. Until now, Jamie‟s comings and goings had been marked by the polite hesitancy of a houseguest. Spider smiled to think that Jamie felt enough at home to stomp up the steps and slam the door. Before Jamie entered the kitchen, however, Spider banished the smile from his face. He had a feeling he knew what was coming. “Spider, why is that mangy parrot in the carriage house?” He slung his backpack onto a kitchen chair and faced Spider with his arms crossed and eyes blazing. There was challenge in his voice, and Spider thought perhaps a resigned amusement, but Jamie didn't seem truly angry. “Do you hate the poor animal that much?” Spider asked. He flattened his lips against the smile that tugged at them. He suspected his deflection of Jamie‟s question would annoy his friend. Jamie huffed. “I don‟t hate him. He‟s just…depressing to have around.” “Perhaps his personality will improve with proper care,” Spider answered equably. “That‟s not the point,” Jamie said. “It isn‟t?” Spider hated himself for it, but he realized he was baiting Jamie in the same way he‟d seen his grandfather bait his grandmother. He also realized he didn‟t want to argue with Jamie frequently and explosively as his grandparents had when he was a child. “No, Spider, it isn‟t.” Jamie paced between the stove and the sink. “That parrot wasn‟t yours to take. Ben and Arno will think he‟s been stolen, and the property manager will go ballistic.” Jamie abruptly stopped pacing. “Oh man, what if they

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call the cops? We could get in so much trouble!” With a groan, he resumed his agitated path back and forth across the kitchen. When Jamie added agitated tugs on his hair to his pacing routine, Spider couldn‟t help but take pity on him. He intercepted Jamie‟s path in the middle of the kitchen and wrapped his arms around his friend‟s wrists. “Tranquílate, Jamie. Calm down.” He released Jamie‟s wrists and hugged him close. Jamie stood stiffly in Spider‟s embrace, and Spider felt a tiny twinge of guilt for prolonging Jamie‟s distress, but the man just felt so good pressed against him. “I know it‟s your house and all,” Jamie said, “but you did this without asking me, and it was a terrible risk and I‟m afraid—” Spider reached for Jamie‟s hands and squeezed, he hoped reassuringly. “There was no risk, I promise. I didn‟t break into your old place, and I didn‟t steal the parrot.” Reluctantly, he disengaged from Jamie and crossed the kitchen to the table, where he picked up a long sheet of legal paper. “I called the management company and negotiated a sale. The manager met me and took me to the house to get the bird. Here is the bill of sale and the transfer of ownership. Onan is rightfully my parrot.” He paused and took a breath. Jamie was staring at him with his mouth slightly open, which made Spider think of kisses. “And yours too, for this is not just my house anymore. I hope you agree.” Jamie‟s gaze flicked from the paper to Spider‟s face, and he shook his head slowly. “I can‟t believe it,” he said finally. He crossed the room almost as noisily as he‟d entered it, but Spider understood Jamie‟s stomping now signified haste rather than anger. Spider widened his stance to take the force of Jamie‟s momentum when their bodies crashed together. It was an ungraceful way to begin a kiss, hampered by stumbling feet and bumping chins, but Spider wouldn‟t have changed a thing, not even the sting when their teeth came clumsily into play. “Oh, Spider,” Jamie said during a pause for breath. “It‟s such a surprise.”

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“The parrot?” Spider asked during the next pause. He knew perfectly well that Jamie‟s ardor had little to do with acquiring a pet bird. “Why would you be surprised that I think of this as your home too?” Jamie flexed his fingers strongly around Spider‟s shoulder blades and hummed sweetly against Spider‟s lips before pulling far enough away to murmur, “I never felt at home at Gran‟s, and I don‟t remember a home with my parents before they died.” He closed his eyes. Spider filled the pause by kissing Jamie‟s eyelids, which made Jamie smile and open his eyes. They welled with tears that didn‟t spill. “It‟s a big deal for me, is what I mean.” Jamie‟s voice was a rough whisper. Smoothing his palms over Jamie‟s curls, Spider replied, “It‟s a big deal for me too.” Then he closed the distance between them to seal his declaration with a kiss. Jamie sucked gently at Spider‟s tongue before saying, “Anyway, I‟m sure I‟ll get used to the parrot. Again.” They continued kissing around relieved laughter. They‟d gotten their first fight out of the way before they‟d even seen each other naked. Later that night, after moonrise, Jamie slid a small plate of orange wedges, cut tiny and speared with toothpicks, onto the breast beam before Spider. Spider smiled distractedly. It wasn‟t necessary, but Jamie was making peace. More gratifying still, Jamie was taking care of him. Spider was used to passing the moonlit hours without respite or refreshment, tethered securely to his loom by what Jamie called his “warped trance state.” Jamie found himself amusing. Since Jamie had come to stay, Spider had become used to Jamie‟s physical presence, yes, but also to quick unobtrusive touches, sudden rough affection, and kisses. Jamie‟s personality, mild as it seemed, pervaded the kitchen and carriage house until Spider wondered if he‟d ever again cook a meal or weave without periodic murmurs as Jamie tried out a bit of dialogue or muttered over a plot turn. He could scarcely remember weaving without Jamie nearby, couldn‟t reproduce in

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his mind the sound of the loom without the ticking of laptop keys in the interstices of treadle thumps and shuttle whispers. But Jamie hadn‟t intensified the level of physical contact between them. For all they shared a bed during the early morning hours after weaving and writing all night, Spider began to despair. He‟d counted on Jamie to lead in that dance. Spider, to his everlasting surprise, began a campaign of seduction. While Jamie spent moonset hours at the theater preparing for the premiere a week hence, Spider raided attic and basement for things to make Jamie comfortable. A small oaken desk with an ink-sheened well set in, a swivel chair, several lamps, and some pillows and blankets all ranged in a crescent around the loom. Spider even bought a surge-protecting power strip for Jamie‟s laptop computer. It occurred to Spider that he was building a nest for his crush. A nest, or perhaps a web. The idea made him grin. Jamie paced a lot, took a lot of breaks, but never interfered with Spider‟s work. Spider thrilled every time he found himself the beneficiary of Jamie‟s restless habits. He bit into a segment of Jamie‟s peace offering and made a soft, happy sound at the bright flavor. Spider‟s smile grew as he considered the ancillary fact that Jamie was tentatively, delicately inserting himself into Spider‟s life away from the loom as well. He popped by Telaraña when his play wasn‟t rehearsing with pastries and fruit and temptations of outings on the bike. If Spider was busy, Jamie wandered next door to say hello to Caridad, always returning with coffee and supper invitations. The coffee he gratefully accepted; the invitations he graciously declined. Spider wanted Jamie all to himself, and he was delighted that Jamie seemed to feel the same. Perversely, Spider worried that their fragile alliance would tear like moth‟s wings under even the friendliest observation. “I should call home tonight,” Jamie said one night as he helped Spider make supper. His version of help, Spider had learned, consisted of company and enthusiastic offerings of “interesting” ingredients Jamie discovered during his days

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out and about Sister City. Today it was tiny hard limes from a Vietnamese street vendor. “Aren’t they pretty, Spider? Let’s have them with dinner!” So supper was chicken with a sauce of coconut and lime, white zest simmering away, leaving bright rings of rind clinging to the chicken. “Your uncle should have your new address.” Spider agreed with what he hoped was not too smug a smile. As it was, Jamie didn‟t appear to be in any hurry to return to Arno and Ben‟s, and Spider wouldn‟t raise the question—as far as he was concerned, Jamie lived with him now. “Do I have time before we eat?” Jamie deferred to Spider in all things culinary. “Table‟s set.” “Of course, mi amor.” Spider was curious about Jamie‟s family. Jamie dialed and then paced the kitchen while he talked. “Yes, sure, Uncle Griff, it‟s a good place. Thomas is a good friend.” Spider wondered at the English inflection of his name and continued to listen in. “He works for the theater, commissions.” “No, he owns the house.” “Um, well, we‟re still working that out.” “I don‟t have to answer that. You shouldn‟t have asked.” Jamie stalked past the kitchen door, twisting his hair with his fingers. “Gran wouldn‟t have asked. How is she? Does she ask for me?” “There‟s no need to be sarcastic. Gran hates that, you know.” “Look, Uncle Griff, I didn‟t call to argue. I just wanted you to have the address and phone here, in case. In case.” Jamie‟s voice flattened as he rang off. Hearing how deflated Jamie sounded, Spider turned the heat down under the chicken, pulled the tortillas out of the oven, flipping them into the warmer without a thought. Supper would hold for a bit.

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He followed Jamie‟s voice as it ended the call to his uncle. Jamie had stopped in the front parlor, staring at his reflection in the speckled glass of the mirror over the mantel. Spider approached carefully, feeling outside of something important, just as he had when he was a little boy and Abuelo would conduct his rapid-fire conversations with the family back in the D.R. It surprised Spider that he understood

Jamie‟s

one-sided,

despondent

conversation

better

than

his

grandfather‟s, which had careened from so animated it sounded angry to so sentimental Abuelo would flap his hand desperately until Spider filled it with a cloth hankie. He watched Jamie‟s reflection from behind him until Jamie shifted from watching himself to watching Spider watch him. Then he leaned back until their shoulders touched. “There‟s no love lost between my uncle and me,” Jamie offered tentatively. “So in the absence of love there is anger?” Spider ventured to run his hands up and down Jamie‟s arms. He‟d been looking for a way to deepen their connection, and he decided he wasn‟t above taking this opportunity. Besides, comforting Jamie came as naturally as steaming tortillas. “He doesn‟t waste even that much energy on me.” Jamie appeared to struggle for a way to explain. “Between us there is an excess of…chagrin.” Spider didn‟t know what to say. “Hungry?” “Smells good. Those limes were a find, eh?” Spider did not reply that Jamie‟s “finds” had already propelled him into a terra incognita of the culinary map; he wanted the strange little gifts to keep coming. His mind lit upon a gift of his own, the perfect way to take Jamie‟s mind off his troubles with his uncle and accomplish the seduction Spider wanted so very much. “Come. Eat. Then I will show you something.” It was late for supper, even by Dominican standards. The moon would rise before too long and they would work until well after sunrise, when the moon set. Spider didn‟t question Jamie‟s easy acceptance of Spider‟s habit of eating his main meal just before each day‟s moonrise. It made sense to him to eat well before the day‟s turn at the loom—or the laptop—began.

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As they ate, Spider dared to ask more about Jamie‟s family. “Your grandmother, she is well?” “Well enough. She doesn‟t ask for me. At least, so says Uncle Griffin.” “He would lie?” “He might. He tried to prevent me from going to university by lying about the date for the entrance exam. When I called him on it, he claimed my help on the farm was necessary and I couldn‟t be spared.” Jamie snorted. “When I did leave after all, Gran hired a half-time hand who did twice as much in half the time.” “He was no replacement for you.” “To hear Griff tell it, that hand was the second coming. Solid churchgoing type too,” Jamie finished with a smirk. Spider raised an eyebrow. “Unlike you?” “In all the best ways.” “I can‟t imagine anyone better than you.” Jamie‟s eyes did that melting-honey thing Spider loved. “Didn‟t you have something to show me?” “Dishes first, mijo.” Jamie groaned. Spider laughed, and they got going on the washing up. “Gran was proud of me, of my degree, you know, before she got poorly. She never knew about the other thing, about me, about why Griff hates me so. She would never forgive me.” Jamie shook his head. Spider answered with the words his grandfather had used when Spider had been fifteen and miserable. He had begged Abuelo‟s forgiveness for a nature he scarcely understood. “She might not understand or even approve, but she would accept truth. There is nothing to forgive.” “Thanks, Spider.” Jamie shook his head again as he dried his hands on a wornsoft linen dishtowel. “Time for your surprise,” Spider beckoned. “Come upstairs.”

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“What‟s up here?” Jamie asked as Spider opened a narrow door to reveal a steep stair. Spider grinned his excitement. “It is my favorite place in the entire house.” He sidestepped up the skinny steps, moving to one side so as not to obstruct Jamie‟s first sight of the turret room. “Spider! This is fantastic!” Spider beamed at Jamie‟s enthusiasm, and Jamie beamed back. “This was my refuge when I was a child. I found I could not let it go when I grew up.” Jamie wandered across the small space to test the hammock strung cleverly from the joists and ribs of the glassed dome. “There is not much of a view except of the park, but at night you can see the stars.” Of course, Spider didn‟t have to clarify that on those nights he spent time here, the moon would have set before the stars appeared. “Will it hold two?” “I‟ve never tried.” “Try with me?” Without a word, Spider toed off his shoes and eased his hip over the edge of the canvas sling. The hammock swung crazily for a moment as Jamie grabbed his waist and pulled him toward the middle. The eyehooks creaked a little but held. Spider‟s heart swung as crazily as the hammock. Jamie kicked off his shoes to thump loudly next to Spider‟s. “This is nice, Spider.” “It is yours.” I am yours. The thought came unbidden but welcome. “Thank you.” Jamie stretched his leg gingerly out of the hammock, splayed his long toes against a dull patch in the paint of the window casement that Spider had used for the same purpose forever, and set them gently swaying.

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Spider was shocked by the sudden full-body contact. He had known Jamie scant days, and they had kissed, yes, but besides the intoxicating kisses, all their touch had been tentative and fleeting. There was a weight to this touch that went far beyond its degree. From shoulder to hip to knee, their bodies were pressed together by the scoop of the hammock. Spider slid his foot up, so it rested between Jamie‟s ankles. Jamie let his head roll closer, so his chin fit alongside Spider‟s nose. Spider thought he‟d never felt more totally content than when Jamie kissed his forehead with a firm pressure that made Spider‟s head whirl as the hammock rocked. Jamie kept kissing. Spider‟s nose. Spider‟s throat. Spider‟s chest. Spider‟s breastbone. Even through his clothes, Spider responded to the pressure of Jamie's lips. When Jamie tried to curl down to kiss Spider‟s belly, the cant of the hammock and the sweep of sensation threatened to undo Spider. “Stop!” Spider surprised himself by having any breath left to grind out the word. Jamie‟s head popped up. “Eh?” Spider tugged on Jamie‟s shoulder until he came to rest beside Spider again. “Why‟d you make me stop? Was I too—” Spider cut him off. “You were about to tip us out of the hammock, is why I stopped you. And I was having trouble breathing,” he admitted. Jamie‟s quiet grunt only escaped smugness by the addition of an embarrassed little chuckle. He stretched out along Spider's body again, balancing them more securely in the hammock. Now, though, Spider's memory of those traveling kisses kept his dick half-hard. The answering rise in Jamie's loose pants did nothing to dispel Spider's arousal. For a brief, reeling moment, Spider considered acting on his body's excitement but decided he wasn't brave enough to risk spoiling the perfection of this sweet, swaying moment. He smiled into Jamie's hair. Jamie seemed to have forgotten his tense conversation with his uncle, and Spider's campaign of seduction had advanced, all thanks to the web of hammock, starlight, and kisses.

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They breathed together in the now dark room, pointing out constellations they knew, teaching each other their names in English and Spanish. Certain Jamie didn‟t realize it, Spider reflected that Jamie had landed kisses from the top of his head to the dip of his navel, honoring each of the points on Spider‟s body from where the colors spiraled in the weavings. Well, all of them but the last, newest point. The one that had appeared in the latest weaving. The one that seemed to spring directly from the figure‟s—from Spider‟s—loins. Even without contact there, and even though they still had all their clothes on, this time in the hammock was the most intimate experience of Spider‟s life. “Let‟s go down to your bed,” Jamie murmured against Spider‟s temple. “I wasn‟t finished.” Spider assented by leading him there.

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Chapter Fifteen Moonrise was imminent. Now that he knew how to recognize it, Jamie felt the pressure, like a tide or a rising wind that demanded he write. He was frustrated that there wasn‟t time for more with Spider, but he wondered if writing while hard and so very awake to Spider‟s body might not be a sort of adventure on its own. He had his answer when the moon set the next morning, well after sunrise. Spider had started a new piece, a smaller one that he could finish faster, and it was now far enough along to see forms and images. The familiar black background was brighter now, closer to the silvery tone of the figure that represented Jamie. The color-spinning figure was bound to the moon-touched figure by cords of color that started out very bright near the dark figure and gradually paled to silver by the time they reached his companion. Jamie gazed at the new piece in wonder, feeling a throb of desire when he noticed that the connecting points along their bodies were open, as if to admit more of…whatever it was that uncoiled between them. Their bodies bowed with the force of the connection. “Wow,” he said, and Spider nodded against his shoulder. “Wow,” Onan repeated from his perch by the door. It was the first thing he‟d ever said that wasn‟t self-pitying. But the revelations didn‟t end there. Over breakfast, the time when Jamie and Spider took turns reading Jamie‟s newest work, they discovered that Jamie had a talent for frankly smutty prose. “I can‟t forget that it‟s my Abuelo you‟re writing about,” Spider said and turned the laptop so Jamie could read.

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“And I can‟t read this unless I forget that,” Jamie countered. To him, the Tomás who fell in love with an Okinawa silk weaver was a guy his own age, with desires Jamie understood and shared. The Tomás in the journals wasn‟t anyone‟s grandfather. He read out a bit more about the forbidden passion between the Dominican soldier and the Japanese silk weaver. So many details were true to what Spider had shared of his grandfather‟s history—he‟d even shown Jamie some of his grandfather‟s early work, work that he‟d done in Okinawa. But there was nothing in those apprentice pieces that told of a silk weaver‟s love for a confused and unsettled soldier who learned the art of the loom during stolen off-duty hours. “You don‟t think he really did these things, do you?” Jamie asked. Spider shrugged, palms up as if to sift the truth from the very air. “We could ask Caro, I suppose. She might know.” He waited a beat and fingered his Elegba bracelet. “Or she might seek an answer in her own way.” Spider gathered up their breakfast things while Jamie shut down his computer, and they set about their day. Jamie was still worked up from their activities the night before, and his and Spider‟s moon work stirred him up further. But Spider had a shop to run, and Jamie had final rehearsals to oversee. His play would premiere in less than a week, and Jamie found that the more time he spent with Spider, the easier it was to make friends at the theater. They knew without Jamie saying anything that his and Spider‟s connection was intimate, and Jamie felt sheepish that he'd been so anxious about coming out to his colleagues. The friendlier he became with his colleagues, the more anxious he was that the play do well. He worried less and less about hiding his true self or looking foolish. Even with the first performance looming, Jamie‟s time away from the carriage house was more flexible than Spider‟s. That day he went out of his way to visit Telaraña just so he could watch Spider dealing in his formal, diffident way with customers. He observed from the doorway, then strode over as the transaction wound down, as Spider made change and wrapped the purchase. He hadn't planned on staking a claim or anything, but being close to Spider meant touching him, so

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Jamie didn't question his impulse to sling a proprietary arm around Spider‟s waist. The customer, a lady about Caridad's age, smiled shyly at Jamie and Spider. “Your friend is very handsome, Spider,” she said. “I think your grandfather would be happy you have someone.” Jamie was so surprised, he simply stared at her, so he didn't see it coming when Spider pressed a kiss to his temple. Turning instinctively, they shared their first public kiss, the thrill of it nearly unbearable. When Spider pulled away, Jamie darted an anxious look at the customer, but she was still smiling. “I am luckier than I deserve, Señora,” Spider said, keeping Jamie's hand firmly around his waist. “In both my friends and in my customers.” He disengaged from Jamie to help the lady out the door, and Jamie watched him, his heart pounding with equal parts pride and terror. If this was what it felt like, being open about who he was and whom he loved, Jamie felt certain it would become as comfortable as writing after moonrise. But today, the feeling was heady and new, and Jamie had to wiggle a bit to get his dick to stop pressing painfully into his zipper. Determined, Jamie continued to show affection in the shop, and it became a game between them. Whenever Jamie bluffly embraced or kissed him in Telaraña, Spider would squirm a little and remonstrate, “Tonto, I am working, you know.” He would apologize solemnly to his customer, who would, more often than not, wave a hand to dismiss any offense and smile in the way of grown-ups with high-spirited children. If Telaraña lost any business because of Jamie‟s behavior, Spider never mentioned it or seemed upset. Being out was nothing new to Spider. After rehearsal one day close to the play‟s premiere, Jamie pedaled to Telaraña, but Spider was busy with a fabric supplier and waved Jamie next door. As she usually did, Caridad seemed to know Jamie was about and hovered in the doorway, the white robes that signified her devotion to her faith letting through enough light to limn her broad hips and chunky legs. Jamie bestowed exaggerated kisses on her hands and face and acted stricken when she shoved at his chest.

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“Tonto,” she accused. Then she narrowed her eyes and really looked at him. “You need something from me.” It wasn‟t a question. Jamie loved that Spider and his family accepted him well enough to call him “silly” in Spanish. He thought about teasing some more, but the look in Caridad‟s eyes sobered him. He explained briefly about the new writing and the turn it had taken. “So I was wondering if you knew anything about Abuelo Tomás‟s time in Japan. If Spider‟s right and my writing is moon driven like his weaving, then we figure there might be something…true in what I‟ve written so far.” “Coffee,” Caridad proclaimed and turned to lead Jamie through the botánica. “You make it. I have something for you.” She pointed him into the back room and disappeared. Coffee sounded reassuringly material and not hocus-pocusy, so Jamie followed with a lighter step. In his time with Spider, Jamie had learned his way around a cafetera, so the coffee was no problem. He even added sugar to the cold water in the bottom chamber the way Caridad liked it. Caridad entered the botánica‟s back room carrying a battered leather airline bag, the kind jet-setters used to tote before the term “carry-on luggage” became common. Jamie poured the coffee and joined her at the little table. She passed over the bag without a word. Unzipping the old bag, Jamie smelled leather, of course, but also cigar smoke and ink. The inky smell drew him in. Inside the bag were bundles of letters and a small number of thick books. When Jamie took one out, he saw that they were— “Tomás‟s diaries,” Caridad supplied. “I believe all of them are there, from the early days in the DR to when he married Dolores, after his military service.” “So his time in Japan…?” Jamie flipped through one of the journals. All the entries were in Spanish, and he was unaccountably disappointed. “His journals from Japan should be there.” She shrugged, and Jamie wondered if Caridad was the model for Spider‟s eloquent shrugs. “I haven‟t looked at them for years.”

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“Why hasn‟t Spider seen these?” Jamie asked, trying to keep any note of accusation from his voice. “I don‟t think he even knows they exist.” Caridad refilled her cup. “To be honest, little mosca, I didn‟t remember I had these until you asked me your questions.” Jamie smiled; there was no big conspiracy of silence, then. “My Gran used to say she‟d forgotten more than I‟d ever know.” “Smart lady,” Caridad said. “Caridad, I can‟t read these. Would you…?” “Spider‟s Spanish is just as good as mine. Deciphering Tomás‟s miserable handwriting will give the two of you something to do when you‟re not weaving.” She smirked like she knew perfectly well what sorts of things Jamie and Spider did to fill their time. “Now, run along. I‟ll tidy up here. You want to show Spider what you‟ve found!” Still blushing, Jamie hurried next door where he narrowly missed crashing into the fabric vendor as the man exited Spider‟s shop. The moment the door clattered shut behind him, Jamie vaulted to sit on the sewing table. “Your aunt knows about us,” he announced, blushing anew. Spider glanced up from the sewing machine without interrupting the forward motion of the dress he was hemming. “She knew about us before we did, mi amor.” Jamie shook his head. “I mean, she knows what we… Oh forget it.” He hoisted the airline bag onto the wide tabletop. “Look at what she gave me.” He opened the bag and angled it so Spider could see inside. “Diaries and letters. They‟re all your grandfather‟s.” The whir of the old industrial sewing machine stopped abruptly. “Caro had these? She never told me.” “Said she forgot.” Jamie pulled out the oldest-looking journal. “This one has dates in the late forties, but beyond the years, I can‟t read any of this.”

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Without a word, Spider took the little book and flipped back and forth, a wondering expression on his face. He seemed to forget Jamie was present and got lost in one entry. He read on while Jamie tried his best not to break in and demand to know what the words said. After long minutes, Spider looked up and met Jamie‟s eyes. “You were right, Jamie. Abuelo had a lover in Japan. A male lover.” Jamie‟s heart leaped, and he couldn‟t have said whether it was because he‟d been right or because his being right confirmed for him that his writing was moon mandated. Or, he thought fleetingly, maybe his heart leaped to know that someone close to Spider had sought and found the same kind of love Jamie and Spider were crafting together. “Dios mío, Jamie. You‟re writing the past.” Lots of writers did that, Jamie thought. There was no reason what he did was so special, unless he considered that no one he‟d ever met or heard of knew this story. He was writing a past he had no way of knowing. “Holy shit, Spider.” The significance of it all hit him in the solar plexus. Spider stood and turned off the sewing machine, leaving the dress caught under its steel foot. “Come to the back room, mi amor. You need to hear this.” He turned and ducked behind the curtain. Jamie, still breathless, slid off the table, grabbed the bag, and somehow thought to lock the shop door before following Spider. Joining Spider in the big chair he remembered from his first visit, which they‟d dragged into the weaving room for Jamie to sit in during those times Spider wove at the shop, Jamie listened as Spider read segments from his grandfather‟s youth. How different he seemed from Spider. Even in his most private thoughts, he came across as brash and ebullient. Jamie liked him immensely, but then, he reflected, he already had—the Tomás character in Jamie‟s new play was much the same, and Jamie loved him. “I can barely read this,” Spider said. “It‟s so…”

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“Intimate?” Jamie guessed. Spider nodded and then read on silently for a long moment. “No fair, Spider.” Jamie nudged him in the ribs. “I can‟t read along.” In a halting voice and with many pauses to find the right English translation for words he seldom used, Spider read out a long passage about Tomás‟s first experience with oral sex. When he‟d finished, Jamie gave a low whistle. “That was so…” “Intimate?” Spider supplied with a sidelong glance at Jamie. “The way he described it. Tasting a man.” He shook his head. “Are you excited, Spider?” Jamie asked. He remembered how unsettled Spider had been by Jamie‟s writing about Tomás‟s love life. “Despite myself, I am.” Gently, Jamie took the journal from Spider‟s hand and set it out of danger. Then, as unthreateningly as he could, he pounced. The chair was big, but not big enough to contain the two of them doing anything but sitting. Jamie‟s intentions for the next few minutes did not include sitting. Since they‟d met, Jamie had been fascinated by Spider‟s hair. He‟d seen it unbound, of course, but he‟d yet to indulge in the kind of exploration he desired. Now, as Jamie knelt before Spider, Spider unwound his hair without being asked. He seemed to know Jamie wanted to start there. Maybe it was Tomás‟s descriptions of his lover‟s silk loom that had Jamie craving the silk of Spider‟s hair. Jamie reached up as the sable curtain unkinked and fell over Spider‟s shoulders, wrapped his fists in ribbons of the stuff, and used the hold to balance himself as he raised himself up. Spider seemed to offer his hair as a gift, and Jamie accepted it humbly and with boundless gratitude. “God, Spider, you smell so good.” Jamie burrowed his nose under Spider‟s hair to breathe deeply at his neck. He smelled of honest sweat and fabric sizing and cumin.

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“You‟re like a little dog, sniffing at me,” Spider laughed. “You think so?” Jamie shot back as he slid down Spider‟s body to kneel on the floor again. Under the shadow of Spider‟s big loom, Jamie wrestled open Spider‟s pants and took his first breath of Spider‟s crotch. The sizing and spice smells were gone, overtaken by the wild drug of Spider‟s sweat and musk. “I can, can‟t I, Spider?” Jamie asked, mouthing the front of Spider‟s oldfashioned broadcloth boxers. “You‟ll let me.” “Could I stop you?” Spider asked. His voice was thin, as if pushed past some obstruction. Jamie drew down Spider‟s boxers and stared. Silky hair feathered around Spider‟s hard cock. Somehow, it didn‟t occur to him to touch with his hands. Instead, he opened his mouth and wrapped his lips softly around the sleek head of Spider‟s erection. The taste was silvery, like blood and moonlight, and Jamie lost himself in exploring up and down the shaft. He gave scant thought to his own insistent arousal and forgot about it altogether as soon as he'd freed his cock from the placket of his pants. Spider's slender, long erection deserved all Jamie's attention. By the time he finally got around to a tentative suck or two, Spider‟s English had fled, and a steady stream of Spanish flowed over Jamie. Balls! The smell of them was darker than anything else so far, and Jamie used both hands to lift and weigh and roll them. As he did, fat drops of precum burbled from Spider's dick onto Jamie‟s tongue. Those drops were so delicious Jamie sucked harder. The sounds Spider started to make became nonverbal, and Jamie chuckled. When he did, he felt Spider‟s hips roll, and all of a sudden Spider was coming, messily, all over Jamie‟s lips and chin. “Man,” Jamie said. “I wanted to swallow.” Spider panted for a few long seconds before replying. “It couldn‟t have been better if you had.” Jamie reached down to take care of himself, mildly shocked to discover he‟d shot all over Spider‟s shoes. He raised his hands and rested them on Spider‟s knees.

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Looking thoughtful, Spider trailed one finger over the beads around Jamie‟s wrist. “Perhaps Caro was right about you after all. You are a wonderful lover.” Even in the dimness of the workroom, Jamie‟s blush was obvious. “I‟m no fighter, though.” He shrugged and stood, offering Spider a hand up. By the time they set themselves to rights, it was too late to get home before moonrise. Leaving Spider wrapping a new project on the loom, Jamie jogged to the neighborhood bodega for some tamales and pop. He felt like he could have flown.

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Chapter Sixteen One night, after weaving—Jamie and Spider had both begun to call it that, for Spider insisted plays could be woven just as cloth could—Jamie brewed tea while Spider fixed supper. Tonight‟s delicacy was an oily fish Jamie had bought on a River Road street corner from an ancient Azorean whose station wagon was crammed with plastic coolers and stank of the delta. Cleaned and filleted with much goodnatured grumbling from Spider, the thing was baking wrapped in banana leaves. Supper sorted, Spider sautéed the fish entrails and head and tail and skin for the stray cat that had begun coming round to visit—or perhaps to hunt—Onan. The stench of this project overwhelmed the delicate smell from the oven, and Spider grinned unrepentantly when Jamie ducked his nose closer to the jasmine aroma of the tea. “Tell me again why an alley cat needs its offal cooked with adobo?” Jamie groaned. “The adobo is for your supper. And that is no alley cat, Jamie,” Spider admonished with his best attempt at wry humor. “For all you know she is my muse, or your guardian spirit, or the reincarnated Celia Cruz.” Even Caridad teased Spider for his old-fashioned taste in music. Jamie snorted, but he braved the smell from the skillet to insinuate his arms about his lover. He nudged a kiss up under Spider‟s hair, not seeming to mind how humid Spider was from cooking. Jamie followed Spider as he went out to the driveway to call the cat. “Negrita, mi negrita linda, there you are. Such a pretty one. So sleek and clever. Reina de los gatos, yes, you are. Queen of kitties.”

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“What do I have to do to get you to talk to me like that?” Jamie teased, but his eyes glimmered like sunsets. Spider stood and closed the distance between himself and Jamie with a wicked little smile. “So, papi needs petting and sweet words?” He flattened one hand on Jamie‟s belly and worked the other into Jamie‟s hair, scratching behind Jamie‟s ears. Jamie arched into both caresses, just like the cat had done. “Yes, just like La Reina there, all you need is a bit of supper and your tummy rubbed.” “Not necessarily in that order,” Jamie replied, losing his lighthearted tone to a telltale huskiness. Spider sucked in a breath and spoke his mind. He figured he‟d better do it quickly, because if Jamie kept up his nuzzling Spider‟s last brain cell would go belly-up on a tide of bliss. “You know, the silver man and the rainbow man are holding hands now. They have joined forces.” The reference to his newest weaving was his trump card, and he played it shamelessly. “As we have, love.” Jamie slid the hand from Spider‟s hair down his arm to grasp his hand, as if to demonstrate their connection, their likeness to the figures in Spider‟s tapestry. Spider angled his face for kisses, but Jamie kept talking. “I want it to be real. I want your colors to wrap around me. I want you to fill all the open places.” The weaving Spider had completed that night showed seven umbilici spinning color from the rainbow man toward the silver man, who had small bright apertures in the same seven places from the crown of his head to his groin. Around their clasped hands swirled a nimbus of intense color shot with liquid silver. Spider was quiet. His hands were still, but he did not break contact with Jamie. After a breathless moment he nodded decisively. “Come, mi amorcito. We will eat, and then we will see about everything else.” They‟d had a no more bouts of oral sex since that day in Telaraña, with Spider as the recipient. He wanted to offer that same joy to Jamie but hadn't known how to ask.

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The bubble of promise popped when the phone rang. Jamie grunted an inventive curse and trotted into the living room to answer it I want it to be real. That‟s what Jamie had said, and Spider was confused. There had never been anything so real, Spider thought, as Jamie‟s smile, his impulsive kisses, his body heavy and warm in the bed or the hammock. Nothing had ever been as real to Spider as the moon weaving they did together. Spider wondered what Abuelo‟s counsel would have been. Spider grinned in the heat from the open oven, his eyes tearing a little at the roiling steam and spice. Abuelo would have laughed and grasped him roughly by the shoulders in that way of his that always startled Spider, even in memory. He would have said something metaphorical and shocking about sewing machine needles or loom shuttles. He would have advocated seduction. “Te busco volando en el cielo…” Spider sang under his breath as he moved supper from the kitchen table to the dining room. Seductions should be staged, no, like one of Jamie‟s plays? Spider shook his head at his foolishness, but he didn‟t shift supper back to the kitchen. No, he lit a pair of hurricane lamps and wrestled a record onto Abuelo‟s ancient turntable. “Te busco perdida entre sueños…” Spider was singing along with Celia Cruz now, rocking his hips as he rolled up soft linen napkins and made flowers of them in the water glasses. He was so, so lost. If Jamie wanted the physical consummation of their union, Spider most certainly had no objection; he had been following his own rhythm and now must consider Jamie‟s counterpoint. “Spider?” Jamie‟s voice came from the living room. “En el comedor! Ehh, in the dining room.” When he‟d first met Jamie, Spider had been very careful of his speech. He was as comfortable in English as Spanish, but the more he relaxed, the easier his skin fit, the more he spoke Spanish. Until Jamie, Spanish had been the voice of his more fraught emotions, his fears, his grief. Spider turned, hips still swaying to the bolero on the record player, and stepstep-slid over to where Jamie stood shadowed in the living room door. It wasn‟t

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until he wound his arms around Jamie‟s waist and tried to pull him into Celia‟s bolero that he realized how tautly Jamie held himself. Spider stopped dancing and gripped Jamie‟s belt to steady himself, confused by Jamie's resistance to dance with him. Had he misread Jamie back there in the kitchen? “Jamie?” Jamie didn‟t relax, didn‟t respond. “Jamie? Papi? Dímelo, mi amor. Jamie, you are scaring me.” Did I do something wrong? “That was Griff. Griff called.” “Your uncle. Did you argue?” “Fucking hoser should have told me. Should have told me.” Jamie‟s voice wasn‟t right. “Something has happened?” And in that instant Spider knew. “Ay, papito. Tu abuelita se murió. Eso es, no? Ay, lo siento de mucho, mi vida.” He didn't bother to translate his guess that Jamie‟s grandmother had died—Jamie‟s devastated look confirmed what had happened. “More than a week ago, Spider. She…died…right after the last time Griff and I spoke!” Spider remembered Jamie‟s last conversation with his uncle, almost two weeks earlier. It had been tense, yes, but there had been no mention of a threat to Mrs. Cowan‟s health. Spider dug down deep and found his English. “Surely it must have happened suddenly, yes? She was no worse than usual last time you spoke.” Jamie‟s breathing was shallow and rapid. His hands were fists at his sides. “It was two days after that. „Acute cerebrovascular accident.‟ I had no idea fucking Griff knew so many big words. They buried her without me, Spider. Said Gran didn‟t need „no fucking fag‟ at her funeral.” Spider ducked his head, trying to catch Jamie‟s gaze, which was fixed someplace on the threadbare runner beneath their

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feet. He was almost sorry when he succeeded, for Jamie‟s eyes were stricken, fury and grief flashing in them like a television caught between stations. As so often happens when one is hurt and another shows compassion, Jamie crumpled before Spider‟s sympathy. He tried to pull his body away at the same time his arms flew up to twist awkwardly at the shoulders of Spider‟s shirt. Spider tightened his hold on Jamie‟s waist and pulled him, pushed him, turned and tilted crazily like some nightmare perversion of the smooth bolero he‟d tried earlier, until they landed on the deacon‟s bench by the buffet, rocking it back on two legs and banging the wall. “Spider. How could he?” “He should have let you say good-bye.” Spider recalled, bittersweetly, the abundance of time during which he and Abuelo had been aware of the old man‟s decline. They had never said good-bye. What a stupid thing to think of doing. But there had been the excruciating knowledge that this was the last time they would visit Caridad, the last time they would weave together, the last meal, the last kiss good night. Through it all, Spider never doubted his grandfather‟s affection for him, and he believed Abuelo had known Spider loved him with all his heart. Almost as if it were answering for Jamie, his body went as limp as it had been tight before. “I said good-bye. I said it every way I knew, before I left for Sister City. I expected to go back, but not for her to remember me. I said good-bye.” He shook his head and knuckled his eyes, which were dry. “Then you are not shocked at the loss of your grandmother, but you are angry with your uncle for being the same comemierda he always has been?” Jamie looked at Spider. “You must think I‟m heartless.” “I think you are angrier than you are sad. Soon you will be sadder than you are angry.” Spider winced at how pompous he sounded. He tried again to hug Jamie. Jamie pushed back but didn‟t break the embrace, as if he were trying to displace himself into Spider‟s body.

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“We were going to have such a wonderful night. You made it so pretty in here. I‟m sorry.” Jamie sniffled a little. “Cállate, mi amor. No te preocupes.” Spider huffed a little and tried again. “Hush, Jamie. There is nothing to worry about. We will make love another time.” Jamie made a little sound of protest, and Spider amended, “Soon. We will make love soon. Tonight you must…” Spider couldn‟t think of one single thing Jamie must do. “What if I still want to make love with you?” Jamie‟s voice was almost piteous. “So you shall. But not on the night of your grandmother‟s death.” Spider was reluctant to let western psychology remind him about sex and death, affirmation of life force. “But Spider…” “Hush. For you, this is the night she died.” And as soon as the words met air, Jamie started to nod, grinding his skull painfully into Spider‟s sternum, and to cry. These were not the angry tears of a helpless man, but the full-bodied sobs of a bereft child. Spider‟s heart broke, and he wept too, a profane baptism. Spider held Jamie until his sobs relaxed into uneven breaths. Once or twice, Jamie tried weakly to get up, his movements those of a drunk or an invalid. Spider slowly became aware of sensations other than Jamie‟s tears cooling on his shirt, Jamie‟s tortured voice in his ears. The arm of the deacon‟s bench was doing objectionable things in the region of his kidneys; he felt hungry and tired. One thing he didn‟t feel was the pull of the moon. As the summer advanced, the moon rose later by almost an hour each night. Tonight, they would have until almost midnight. That thought birthed two others in Spider‟s mind. How would Jamie write tonight? And there was time, time to heed the desire—to comfort, to claim—that Spider couldn‟t prevent from asserting itself. They might not make love tonight, but they could love, surely, so the next time Jamie tried to struggle up, Spider used the momentum to drive them both to their feet and upstairs. He

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wrestled an unresisting Jamie out of his clothes and into the bed, where he climbed in and wrapped Jamie as securely as he could in arms and legs and blankets. “Mmm, Spider. So pretty.” Jamie was carding his fingers clumsily through Spider‟s hair, which had come loose from its club sometime during their moments on the deacon‟s bench. “Moonlight makes it silvery. Like me. Like me in the weaving.” Spider murmured and petted and told Jamie he should sleep. Now that Jamie was calmer, Spider's body responded predictably to Jamie‟s nearness. With both hands occupied in comforting Jamie, Spider resigned himself to a night of sexual tension. “Must mean you‟re mine,” Jamie mumbled as he fell deeper into sleep. “Moonlight says so.” Spider sighed and tightened his hold on Jamie. He kissed Jamie‟s shoulder and settled his forehead in the curve of Jamie‟s nape, matched his breathing to his beloved‟s, and slept.

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Chapter Seventeen Jamie woke to bright sunlight bludgeoning his eyes. He screwed his eyes shut and burrowed his head deeper into the pillow. Slowly, he became aware of Spider‟s voice pattering quietly on the phone in Spanish, those long fingers twining in Jamie‟s hair. He waited until Spider clicked the phone off, then cracked one eye open to find Spider peering down at him. “Que bonito eres, mi amor. Sol y miel.” “Eh?” Fully awake Jamie was not. But he adored waking up next to Spider. Sometime during the early morning, they‟d got round to sleeping nude. It felt foreign, being so frank about touching each other, and no matter what they‟d done or not done together, Jamie still found Spider‟s body a wonder, his touch thrilling. “Your hair catches sunlight, looks like honey, feels so soft.” Spider dug his fingers in against Jamie‟s scalp, rubbing, then tugged the curls through his fingers, letting them bounce back one at a time. “Tickles,” Jamie grumbled but couldn‟t stop the smile that curled his lips. He flattened out on his stomach so Spider could lie more fully atop him. “My throat‟s sore.” He felt Spider nod against him. “You wept a great deal last night.” It all came back in a rush—Gran‟s death, Griff‟s duplicity, Spider‟s anxious care. He rolled over with a groan to face Spider. “You‟re good to me. Thank you for last night.” Jamie felt hollowed out by Gran's death, but somehow being here, in bed naked with Spider, made the hollow feeling one of clean hope instead of raw grief. “There is nothing to thank me for,” Spider said with a sad smile. “I made breakfast. Will you come down, or would you like breakfast in bed?”

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“Breakfast in bed sounds heavenly, but only if you join me. Who was on the phone?” Spider tilted his head and smiled. “I took a great liberty and arranged a…velatorio? I am sorry. I do not know the word in English. French either. It is what we do to say farewell when someone dies.” “A funeral? For Gran? They already buried her, Spider.” “Not a funeral. A time to remember, to celebrate the person.” Spider‟s hands never left Jamie's hair, but they stilled, perhaps in apprehension. “A wake? Gran‟s people did that. Kept the body in the front room. Lots of beer.” Jamie preened a little under Spider‟s fingers to get them moving again. Spider chuckled. “A…wake? What a strange way to say it. We will not need to worry about her body. And we can have beer if you like. There will be lots of rum.” Spider dropped a kiss on Jamie‟s nose and wriggled out of the bed in that way he had that didn‟t let any cool air under the covers. He shrugged into a Japanesestyle yukata robe and disappeared downstairs. Jamie‟s waking brain boggled as he pulled on a cotton robe identical to Spider‟s. No one in Sister City knew his gran. Who on earth would come to a wake for her? When Spider returned with a breakfast tray, Jamie said, “You don‟t need to do this, you know, Spider.” “Abuelo used to tell me that the way to help a friend in trouble was not to ask what you could do. Simply find something you could do and do that. I found this.” “I really did say my good-byes to Gran. I‟m going to be okay.” “I know you will be okay. There are those who wish to share in your memories of your gran. We will show you your family didn‟t die with her. Then you will be better than okay.”

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Jamie wasn‟t sure how spiced fish cakes rated as breakfast in bed, even if it was closer to lunchtime, but he wasn‟t about to complain, and there was fruit and plenty of coffee. Spider was nothing if not diligent about coffee. “Shower time for me,” Jamie declared, suddenly wanting the gritty dried-tears feeling off his face and hands. “There is not time for two showers before work,” Spider replied. “May I join you?” Something about his formality and the tentative set of his shoulders moved Jamie right down to his toes, making a short, thudding detour at his prick. “Yes, love. Join me, please.” There was nothing like a shower in El Huevo, and the idea of sharing it with Spider was erotic, to say the least. Once in the big bathroom, Spider shed his robe, and Jamie followed suit. Spider trailed him up the steps and into the huge shower. Dozens of jets sprayed, some crooked or weak where the holes were limed or rusted, as unpredictable as whatever might happen next. Jamie turned around and around to get wet, then faced Spider with open arms. “I don‟t know what to do,” he said, and his voice echoed. “I don‟t know what you want.” Spider had never initiated a new degree of intimacy before, and now Jamie thought he understood that Spider‟s reticence wasn‟t motivated by lack of interest or lack of experience, but by a reluctance to offend or perhaps even by fear. He wanted more than anything for Spider to feel like whatever he wanted, whatever he did, was okay with Jamie. More than okay. Being wet and naked in El Huevo banished any of Jamie‟s doubts, and he wanted Spider to feel the same confidence. “I want so much.” Spider looked stunned and very vulnerable, naked and young with his hair plastered to his head and shoulders. “I never truly wanted…anything…before.” “I want you,” Jamie said simply. He didn‟t know what else to say, so he put his hands on Spider‟s waist and kissed him. They had kissed many times, gentle,

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affectionate kisses, even a few openmouthed explorations in the hammock. They were really good at kissing, and Jamie hoped he‟d get good at sucking Spider's cock too. Now Jamie let his gratitude, his steep need, his love drive his actions. He repeated I want you with his lips and tongue and teeth, and Spider said it back. Jamie ran his hands up Spider‟s arms and into his hair, and he grunted in surprise when Spider‟s arms wound tightly around his waist, pulling their wet bodies together from the chest down. “Look, mi amor. Look at us.” Spider‟s voice was reverent in Jamie‟s ear, and Jamie leaned his upper body away from Spider to follow Spider‟s gaze downward. Being the same height brought their cocks together perfectly, and there they nestled, equally hard, their tiny piss holes side by side, peeking up like the eyes of a surprised gopher. Jamie laughed out loud, and the movement pressed them harder together briefly. “Oh,” Spider gasped. “Oh.” His eyes flew up to meet Jamie‟s and something in their dark, dark depths seemed to shatter. “Que locura!” The crazy surprise of frottage overtook Jamie. He scarcely noticed how the water poured over their shoulders and the lateral spray tickled and stung their spines and buttocks. Spider leaned in for another kiss, and this time Jamie realized how tightly controlled Spider had been before now. Spider moved against him like something wild, his kiss fierce. Jamie could feel the soft points of Spider‟s nipples, the shift of Spider‟s abdomen, the soft slap of two pairs of balls hanging low in the warm water. Jamie had wanted more from Spider for weeks now, but it had been a vague sort of wanting, born of his longing for a lover, his exasperation with a virginity that had persisted, in his opinion, beyond all reasonable duration. He loved Spider, admired him and desired him, and had wanted his friend to be his first lover. Their one experiment with oral sex had been a resounding success, in Jamie‟s humble opinion. Now, though? Jamie lost his powers of reflection as Spider‟s desire so easily matched his own.

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Spider‟s thumbs pressed into Jamie‟s armpits; his tongue dug a furrow along Jamie‟s throat. Jamie couldn‟t copy the motions with his head flung back as it was, so he snaked his hands around Spider‟s hips and curled his fingers under Spider‟s round butt. He squeezed and pulled and lifted, and when that did astonishing things to their pricks, he did it some more. He tried to pull Spider right inside him, and he screamed his frustration when they remained two separate bodies. Spider was back to kissing Jamie, swallowing the shouts, humming deeply as if they tasted good. Their hips ground and slid. And Jamie wanted to watch, but he wanted Spider‟s kisses more, so he closed his eyes and bit at Spider‟s lips and pictured their cocks rubbing madly. Spider‟s hands still roamed widely over Jamie‟s body, and Jamie‟s bid fair to make their clutch on Spider‟s ass permanent. But Spider seemed to have other ideas. He grunted wordlessly and disengaged from Jamie to slide down before him. His smooth hands ran up and down Jamie's legs, and Jamie wondered how the hair on his thighs could possibly be an erogenous zone. Every part of his body seemed to respond to Spider‟s touch. Jamie coasted on the swirling feeling of Spider's hands until Spider finally reached the apex of Jamie‟s thighs. Spider pressed his hands together in an attitude of prayer and angled both hands between Jamie's legs. A quick study, Jamie widened his stance and keened as Spider cradled Jamie's balls, weighing and rolling them mercilessly. Jamie didn‟t take his eyes off the sight until he heard Spider whisper, “Please?” As if Jamie could deny Spider anything! He breathed the word back to Spider and nearly lost his balance when Spider stretched out his tongue to lap delicately at Jamie's cockhead. “Oh, fuck!” Jamie cried, grabbing two of the spraying pipes in his effort to stay upright. Spider‟s breath as he chuckled drove Jamie crazy. “I thought this was „suck,‟ mi amor.” Jamie didn't have enough breath to laugh in answer, so he simply stood, puffing like a bellows and trying to keep his feet while Spider did wicked things

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with his tongue. When Spider sucked gently, Jamie gave a ragged shout and came most inelegantly all over Spider's face. Jamie hauled his lover up for a cum-flavored kiss, and before his heart slowed they were smearing each other and laughing and whooping for air. Jamie reached down to grasp Spider‟s dick, intending to finish him off, only to discover that Jamie wasn‟t the only one who got off by sucking cock. They leaned against each other for breathless moments and forgot to kiss and say “I love you.” Jamie had a hard time washing himself with his fingers all cramped from their grip on El Huevo‟s pipes, so Spider did it for him, their seed and the soap mingling before rinsing away. When his fingers stopped prickling with pins and needles, Jamie washed Spider‟s hair with eager hands while Spider arched and moaned and tipped his head this way and that to get Jamie‟s fingers where he wanted them. They were dazed and clumsy and slow, which they paid for when the water went cold. They rinsed, yelping, and jumped out of El Huevo as quickly as they dared— the floor seemed to have gotten wetter than usual. Spider flipped a clean towel in Jamie‟s direction, and they stood and stared at each other with dumbfounded expressions while they dried off. “Fuck,” Jamie finally managed to say, wincing at how stupid he must sound. For such a placid man, Spider looked positively wolfish. “Not just now.” He grinned. “After the velatorio, perhaps.” Then he slipped on his trousers without underwear, slipped his arms into his shirt, and left the room without bothering to button it. Jamie flexed his fingers and got dressed too. He left his undies on the bathroom floor, and his groin warmed at the thought that his prick would spend the day that tiny bit closer to Spider‟s. Jamie rolled his bike out of the cobertizo and caught up with Spider outside feeding Onan bits of fruit trimmings. Jamie stood out of range of the bird‟s beak and claws and looked at Spider, whose open shirt billowed a little in the morning breeze. “I love you, you know.” Jamie‟s nerves zinged when he said it aloud. Spider nodded. “We will be everything to each other.”

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“We will be.” “Nobody loves me,” moaned Onan, his black tongue pulling in a piece of melon rind. Spider laughed, and it was bright and beautiful and Jamie‟s eyes filled. “Yo te amo a tí, mi lorito loco,” Spider assured the crazy bird. Onan sidled along his perch to peer at Jamie. Spider looked at Jamie too, and the curiosity in his gaze made it seem as though he was mimicking the parrot. He asked, “These are happy tears, yes?” Jamie nodded, embarrassed. “I thought I‟d lost the only person who really loved me.” “You did not know what love could be.” Spider sounded as though he was speaking for himself, but he couldn‟t have expressed Jamie‟s own heart any better. “I thought sex would be….” Jamie waved his hand helplessly. “Not love?” “Other than love.” Spider leaned across the crossbar of Jamie‟s bike. Jamie leaned in for their now customary farewell kiss. It was a lot like all the sweet, affectionate kisses they‟d shared, but this kiss remembered what had been hatched in El Huevo. They wished each other good workdays, and Jamie pushed off down the driveway. Before he turned onto the street he called, “Hey, Spider?” “Yes, mi vida?” “I‟m not wearing underpants either.” He heard Spider‟s laughter all the way to the first corner.

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Chapter Eighteen Spider hefted a tray of tostones shoulder high, balancing the sauce—his secret recipe—in his free hand. The dining room table was covered with food, and Spider appealed to the room in general to make space for one more dish. Belinda rushed forward and moved aside the funny pale pasteles she had made. Caridad‟s sancocho prieto presided regally in the center of the table, and Pepe, who almost never cooked, had brought his special asopado. Spider set his twice-fried plantains in the space Belinda had made and watched as Jamie sucked the meat off a joint of chicken from Pepe‟s humble and hearty soup. “You‟ve got it bad, my friend,” Belinda said gravely, laying a heavy hand on Spider‟s arm. “These are great,” she continued, biting into a tostón. “Fab sauce. What‟s in it?” “That‟s top secret,” Caro called from the second table, arranging the salsas and chips and sodas and cheap wine the boisterous young theater people had carried in. Spider figured every bowl and platter he owned had been washed and pressed into service. He had asked Belinda to invite Jamie‟s colleagues, and they‟d all arrived wearing subdued clothing and somber expressions; even Belinda had made an effort, pairing a Mao jacket with a plaid kilt that could have come from a Catholic school‟s rummage sale. Caro moved around the table and put a sympathetic arm around Belinda‟s shoulders. “Spider is the only living soul who knows the recipe. Even I can‟t charm it out of him.” “I find that hard to believe.” Pepe smiled as he saluted his wife with a glass of something the students had brought. Whatever it was, it made Pepe positively loquacious.

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“C‟mon, Spider. I‟ll trade you my pierogi recipe,” Belinda wheedled. So that’s what those white pasteles were! Spider pretended to consider the trade, then shook his head regretfully. Belinda laughed. It hadn‟t taken too long before the celebratory air of a Santería velatorio had penetrated the dourness of the Anglo guests. A summer shower had driven everyone inside, including Onan but not La Reina, but there were not so many people that the big old house felt overcrowded. Jamie had taken a couple of plates of food into the front parlor for the two fellows with guitars who had sidled in shyly behind Pepe. Cousins of some degree, newly arrived from the rural DR to judge by their clothing, Spider thought. He watched his lover intently, hoping the festive atmosphere wasn‟t putting him off. Jamie sat and watched the guitarists trading riffs, absently munching tostones, licking the sauce off his fingertips. From time to time he fingered the notebook in his pocket. He‟d been very quiet about what he‟d written during their weaving session the night before, as if it had surprised him and he didn‟t know what to make of it. A few weeks ago, that would have been true of anything Jamie wrote under the influence of the moon. But the fact that something had surprised Jamie pricked Spider‟s curiosity. All Jamie had said when Spider asked was that last night‟s writing hadn't been about Tomás. Spider lost himself for a few moments in contemplating Jamie. He looked very alone, though not aloof, sitting in the Louis XVI-style hooded chair, bobbing his head gently to the quiet music. One of the players broke off, laughing selfdeprecatingly, and Jamie looked away from them, catching Spider‟s gaze across the room. His smile eliminated all of Spider‟s worry. He held his hand out, and Spider crossed to him. Jamie said he‟d dreamed of having a lover and claiming him publicly. Spider had never dared wish for such a thing, but now that he had it, he‟d hold on with both hands. Caro‟s voice followed him from the dining room. “If everyone has satisfied themselves with food for the moment, let us gather in the parlor.”

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Her voice had taken on the commanding tone Spider recognized from his younger days; it had been a long time since he had witnessed Caro officiating. Spider reached for Jamie‟s hand and sank to the floor at his feet. Jamie leaned down for a brief kiss, pulling away with a question in his eyes. “We will remember your grandmother now,” Spider explained. “You must do that for all your family here.” Jamie nodded as if he‟d been expecting this, though Spider had said very little about the ceremony, and Jamie hadn‟t asked. He pulled out his little notebook and looked expectantly at Caridad. “Jamie, my little mosca, will you tell us of your abuelita?” And Jamie started to read. If this was what he‟d written during the moon time last night and this morning, it was the first he‟d written since meeting Spider that didn‟t feature Spider‟s Abuelo. Jamie‟s voice was soft at first, and people leaned forward to catch his words. “I was born at home, on my father‟s farm, in the middle of winter and the middle of my family.” Jamie‟s voice was his own, but the words were another‟s. His grandmother‟s. Spider‟s fingers closed over his prickling palms. No wonder Jamie had been quiet since they had left their weaving. The words spoke fragmented memories. A foreshortened girlhood, but one filled with simple wonders and a healthy respect for the vagaries of nature. A brief education. A move, at once momentous and commonplace, from her father‟s farm to her husband‟s. Births, children—fewer of those than births—turnings of seasons, pains and pleasures great and small. Losses too awful to bear, the bankruptcies and crop failures and livestock plagues. And death. Expected ones like her parents‟, sudden and shocking ones like those of her adult son and his young wife, the long descent her husband made into madness and mortal despair. Where, in such a life, were the wonders of the brief wildflowered childhood? They came late, unlooked for, and as it happened, not abiding enough, in the person of a small curly-headed boy. An extraordinary boy, wildflowers in his eyes, early pain disjointing him from

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everyone. It was the boy the woman first noticed herself forgetting, and so she anticipated the ravagement of her memory, tried and failed and failed and failed to grasp the flowers slipping through the frozen fingers of a treacherous mind. At the end, all that was left to the woman was a muzzy sense of betrayal and a desire for something beautiful where beauty meant nothing. Spider realized Jamie had stopped speaking when he felt Caro‟s rough fingers on his damp cheeks. She brushed away Jamie‟s tears in the same no-nonsense way. Then she stepped back from the hooded chair, raised her hands shoulder high, and let her head fall back. No one else moved or spoke until one of Pepe‟s cousins traded his guitar for a drum. It had a deep voice for its small size, and Caridad began to chant. He knew Jamie wouldn‟t understand the words, so he looked up to Jamie‟s face. Jamie smiled down and, with a little shake of his head and squeeze of his hand, made clear Spider didn‟t have to bother translating. Spider absently rubbed the devotional beads at his wrist as Caro invoked Elegba, guardian of the gateway between spirits and mortals. Spider knew Caro believed his ability to weave true things was connected to this orisha, but Spider had never been sure the moon weaving wasn‟t an ability that transcended people‟s systems of understanding. It simply was. He imagined Caro would say the same about the power of Santería. She moved on to call Oyá, guardian goddess of the underworld, to guide the spirit of Jamie‟s grandmother across the metaphysical threshold. The drum got louder, its beat faster. Spider heard Caro‟s voice change as she entered her trance state. He looked over at Pepe, who was leaning in the doorway, smiling his usual mild smile. What did he think, Spider wondered, about his wife‟s vocation? Caro had begun to sway, and Spider wasn‟t surprised to see others doing the same. His own body was still, though he wasn‟t unaffected by the music and the trance. He felt a deep thudding along his body. When Jamie‟s legs shifted, making Spider look up, he saw Jamie rubbing his chest, throat, belly agitatedly. He wasn‟t used to the tug of the drums, as Spider was.

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Pepe‟s other cousin drew out a little trumpet and started to play. It did not take long for the wild things from the theater to start to dance. The trumpeter led everyone through the house and out the kitchen door, sending La Reina up a tree. They wound through the yard, around the cobertizo, and onto the street. They pounded into River Park and down to the water and back again, with feet muddy and hair sodden from the rain. Everyone stomped and wove up the driveway, and the musicians followed them back into the house. The dancing slowed and the music quieted until all that remained was that first low drum. People broke apart and ate and drank and remembered, not Jamie‟s gran, but their own departed ones. When most of the people left, it was very late, almost time to begin weaving, and by the time Caro and Pepe and the young cousins put away the last of the food and freshly washed bowls and went home, it was later still. Jamie said very little, and as they gathered drinks and snacks to bring out to the carriage house, Spider asked how he felt. “I wish I knew how much of what I wrote for today was real.” “You believe some of it was not?” “I‟ll never know, I suppose. Writing it felt like trying to pin down floating feathers. All these images just kept drifting into my head.” “The life was very like your gran‟s, no?” “Yeah. It was. But I never knew she felt all those things. She never said, you know?” “She never told you she loved you?” “It wasn‟t her way. She did things. I‟m the one who said things.” “I think she must have loved you for it.” “I don‟t mean I felt unloved. I like to think she understood me as much as it seemed tonight. That we were kindred and not just kin, you know?” Jamie held the door with an elbow while Spider carried Onan‟s stand into the weaving room. Jamie

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looked beautiful, luminous in the dark room. His moonlight lover. Spider laughed at the sentiment. “So how do you feel?” Spider poured them each drinks and settled on the weaving bench. He was tired, to be sure, but ready to weave. His new piece would be small, even smaller than his recent ones, because he was trying something new— tonight, he would begin his first silk weaving. The warp and weft threads were almost as fine as Jamie‟s hair, and Spider wanted to do right by them. He couldn't wait to see what pattern emerged. “Damp. Tired. Drained.” Jamie‟s voice snapped Spider out of his contemplation of his new work. “I smell like a wet dog who‟s been rolling in garlic. Is that what‟s in the sauce you made?” “Wet dog?” Spider leaned in and gave an exaggerated sniff. He grinned. It was so wonderful to play. “Perhaps I will show you how to make the sauce for tostones. Anyway, to me you smell good. Like rain and sweat.” “Ew.” Jamie laughed, and Spider put his hand on Jamie‟s belly to feel the laugh ripple and jump. Spider slid his hand lower, to Jamie‟s hip. With a reluctant groan, Jamie angled away. “Moon is up already. Can‟t you feel it?” Spider could, but he feared messing up the delicate silk threads while his hands shook with arousal. He resisted the pull for another few minutes. “Come on, Spider. I want to find out if Tomás and his lover tricked the MPs into letting them into the base pool after hours.” Spider scowled, but with a smile in his heart, and sat. “Promise me, Jamie. Tomorrow afternoon when the moon sets, we spend the rest of the day in bed.” “That‟s an easy promise to make,” Jamie replied and opened his laptop.

*** “Are you nervous? About tonight?”

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Hours later, in the early afternoon of the next day, Jamie‟s hand cupped the back of Spider‟s and pressed it into the soft valley between his hips. Spider mentally cursed the pajama pants Jamie wore. “Opening night? I should be, I suppose, but there‟s nothing I can do now.” “It will go how it goes, yes?” Opening night, like the silk weaving, was new and exciting but relied on prior effort and hard-won expertise. What Spider wanted right now was to gather expertise in an entirely new field. He wriggled his hand into Jamie‟s soft pants and carded gently through Jamie‟s pubic hair. “Yes. Love me, Spider?” Jamie‟s voice importuned, his double meaning clear. “Oh, I do. I will. Yes.” Spider agreed to everything. He shifted farther down the bed so he could rest his head in the cradle of Jamie‟s hips. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to press a kiss to the head of Jamie‟s phallus. “Spider!” Jamie started to laugh, making his cock jump under Spider‟s lips. Spider turned his head to look up Jamie‟s body. “I wasn‟t expecting that.” “Expect more, mi amorcito.” Spider raised up a little way and shook his hair out so it slithered all over Jamie‟s belly and groin. “Spider!” “You keep saying that.” “Am I boring you?” Spider kept up the sweeps with his hair, and soon they were both laughing. Jamie‟s reply didn‟t qualify as words. Spider flipped his hair sideways, so it flicked Jamie‟s nipples, and rested his head where it had been before. When Spider tried another kiss, Jamie‟s cock pulsed eagerly, though he couldn‟t move his hips much with Spider‟s weight on them. Spider wrapped his lips under the crown and ventured a gentle suck. Then Spider hummed. “Spider, ah!”

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Spider pulled off and wet his lips, then returned to his task with more confidence. This felt different, more focused, outside of El Huevo's spray. He introduced his tongue and ran a hand down to pet Jamie‟s balls, marveling at their strange softness. He pressed his thumb between them and found the very root of Jamie‟s cock. He sucked some more. There was no rhythm, no plan, and certainly no finesse. Jamie tried to buck. Spider pulled off and moved to kneel between Jamie's legs. Jamie looked confused. “You stopped.” “You think so?” And he spent some time examining his lover‟s parts. He rolled the balls, stroked the fine skin of the shaft, and got rather absorbed in bending Jamie‟s cock this way and that, lifting the balls and watching them settle again. Jamie lifted his knees, and suddenly Spider had a whole new playground. “I wish I had three hands.” “You have a mouth.” Jamie reminded him. Spider was grateful for the nudge. “So I do.” He had no idea what to do with it besides kiss and suckle, but Jamie had only complained when Spider stopped. Spider leaned his head on Jamie‟s bent knee and kissed his way down to his groin again. He let his hair curtain his head, dragging over Jamie‟s exposed skin, catching on leg hairs and pubes. He nibbled the skin around the base of Jamie‟s prick. “You are so hot here.” “Hot,” Jamie repeated. Spider was content to explore, making a vee of his fingers and pressing them into the skin between Jamie‟s cock and balls. The pressure brought a groan from Jamie and an answering pulse from the corresponding place on Spider‟s own body. He gasped. This was Jamie‟s very root, the place whence the final band of color emerged! The heel of his hand rested over Jamie‟s hole, and he pressed harder.

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“Jamie?” Spider wondered if Jamie felt the pull of that connection. “I think I need you inside me.” “Let me know when you are sure.” “Spider!” The sound of his name cried in that mix of outrage and desire stiffened more than Spider‟s resolve to make Jamie feel amazing. After a little more exploring—one of his fingertips might have slipped inside Jamie‟s ass—Jamie ground out, “Tomás Tejedor de Luna, are you going to fuck me tonight or not, eh?” “Perhaps I would prefer if you entered me.” Por Dios! This was fun! “Spider!” “No, mi amor, I think you will be very sad if you miss the fun I‟ve been having.” And Spider, feeling naughtier than he ever had before, swung his body around and suspended his dangly bits above Jamie‟s face. Jamie hugged Spider‟s hips and pushed with his bent legs. All of a sudden Spider was under Jamie, his arms pinned by Jamie‟s ankles. “Fun, you say? You‟ve been driving me crazy!” And with that Jamie ran his tongue up the entire length of Spider‟s shaft. “Jamie!” Spider pushed back until they toppled onto their sides. “Now you‟re beginning to understand. Hold still.” Spider held still. For about half a heartbeat. If what he had done to Jamie was even remotely as shocking as what Jamie was doing to him, Spider was content with his skill. Jamie was giving Spider very little time to adjust to each new sensation, so that when his finger wiggled into Spider‟s anus, Spider was still struggling to come to terms with the feeling of one of his testicles in Jamie‟s mouth. The wiggly feeling was one worth sharing, so Spider mirrored it, easing his finger back inside Jamie and drawing one plump ball into his mouth. He rocked his finger, rocked the ripe ball back and forth on his tongue, and flushed with excitement when

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he figured out how to wrap his free hand around Jamie‟s cock. Everything was wet with saliva and the delightful beads from Jamie‟s slit. Jamie‟s light brown pubic hair was dark with it. It should have been impossible to concentrate on sucking and fingering Jamie when Jamie was doing the same things to Spider, but Spider found that sex had a trance fugue, almost like weaving did, and he slipped into that state as easily as breathing. Long, intense moments passed while Spider suckled at Jamie‟s prick. When Spider finally focused on the uncoiling spring of his own arousal, it was too late to consider holding back, so Spider welcomed Jamie‟s command of, “Come for me, Spider.” The words should have been easy to miss amid all the slurping and moaning, but Spider heard them as if Jamie shouted them into his ear. It was Spider who shouted as Jamie‟s mouth dragged, quick and harsh and not entirely without teeth, down the length of his shaft to meet his fist around the base. The fingers behind his balls pressed over the same place the finger within was rubbing, squeezing Spider‟s gland. Spider screamed and froze and shot and panted. Jamie was squirming beside Spider, and Spider recovered enough to address Jamie‟s shaft. He fumbled a bit, finding his finger far farther up Jamie‟s ass than he‟d intended. He crooked and twisted it and squeezed Jamie‟s balls and cock together with his other hand. He licked and sucked his way up the big vein underneath Jamie‟s cock. He stopped at the crown, still panting, and dived down. He forgot to stop himself with his fist and ended up with Jamie‟s cockhead lodged in his throat. Spider‟s inadvertent gusto was all it took, and he found his mouth flooded with ejaculate. It took all his concentration not to gag, so he also forgot to swallow. Most of it ran down his chin. “Spider!” Jamie had his head nearer the pillows, so Spider shifted to lie alongside him. “You made a mess,” he said, presenting his sticky face for kisses.

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“Don‟t care.” Spider got kisses and a clumsy hand ineffectively swiping a corner of the sheet over his face. There remained a few hours before Jamie had to be at the theater. “Sleep, mi amor.”

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Chapter Nineteen “You purloined our parrot, knave! We demand satisfaction!” Jamie shook hands with the theater critic from Sister City Arts Beat and turned to hug Arno and Ben. “Thanks for coming, guys. And get over it about Onan—Spider‟s attached.” Arno raised a blond eyebrow. “To the parrot? Where is he?” “Spider? I don‟t know. He was supposed to be here.” Jamie didn‟t want to get into that right now. He was overwhelmed with the after-party swirl that followed the first performance of his play. Jamie was dismayed Spider hadn‟t shown up. They‟d made plans to meet just before the show, to sit together in one of the box seats, away from the rest of the audience, to watch the performance. Instead, Jamie had sat there alone. “So what did you think?” Jamie asked his former housemates. Ben raised his plastic cup of wine and intoned as if reading from a review, “Sister City Repertory‟s playwright in residence shows great potential and unexpected maturity for one so young. Shoestring production does Sister City theater scene proud.” “Thanks, Ben.” Ben and Arno could become good friends, Jamie saw. He felt much more comfortable with them than he had when they were all sharing space. This postperformance reception was another matter. Jamie was feeling out of his depth and eyed the exit with longing. “Jamie.”

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The deep voice made Jamie turn. “Joe! You came! Caridad too?” “Somewhere. Talking to the mannish girl from the velatorio.” “Belinda, the theater manager.” Jamie craned his neck around to see Caridad deep in conversation with Belinda and a dapper older guy he‟d never seen before. “Arno, Ben, this is Joe Gallego, Spider‟s uncle.” Handshakes circulated. “So, Joe, what did you think of the play?” Arno asked. “There was much truth in it. Our Jamie makes us proud.” Jamie flushed right to the ears. He‟d never have anticipated such praise from Joe. Being claimed with pride rocked Jamie deeply. “Joe, did Spider come with you?” “He is not here?” “No. Should I be worried?” “Why are you worried, little mosca?” Caridad had made her way over, towing Belinda and the little dapper man. “Spider‟s missing. I‟m Ben, this is Arno, and Spider stole our parrot.” With a look of awful patience, Caridad extended her hand, bangles clacking. “Caridad Gallego. And that miserable bird went willingly, mijo. Now, please get an old lady some of that.” She pointed to Ben‟s wine. Ben grabbed Arno‟s arm and slouched away, freeing Caridad to turn her attention fully on Jamie. “Spider is not here? Have you tried to call him?” “I will. I‟m sure he‟s fine. I was talking to a reporter from the local alternative paper. But I‟ll call now.” “There is more than one local paper, you know.” The old guy with Belinda extended his hand. “Raúl Flores. Voz Hispana.” As Jamie shook the man‟s hand, Belinda said, “Señor Flores is the theater critic for all the Spanish-language papers in the region. Caridad invited him.”

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Caridad

smiled

smugly.

“Will

you

consent

to

an

interview,

Señor

Dramaturgo?” “Of course, Miss Caridad.” Jamie turned to Señor Flores. “Thank you for coming, sir. I hope you enjoyed yourself.” Having assured Caridad that Spider must be all right, Jamie felt awkward refusing the interview. The little man nodded, smoothing his tie. “Oh, yes. Caridad tells me your newest play has a Dominican theme. Our readers will be interested.” “Yes, well, I don‟t know when it will be finished or whether”—Jamie cast an anxious look in Belinda‟s direction—“it might be produced.” Belinda jumped in, looking strangely at Caridad. “You let me worry about that. You go have your little chat.” She waved him away, taking Caridad‟s and Joe‟s arms to steer them to where the rest of the company had gathered by the wine and cheese table. Jamie offered Señor Flores a seat. Jamie‟s mind was on Spider, so he almost missed the man patting the seat beside him. “I think you will find I do not bite, Mr. Cowan.” Jamie wanted to go and find Spider immediately, but he also recognized his responsibility to the success of the play. He sat. “This is your first play?” “Yes, the first one professionally produced, anyway.” Jamie dutifully answered Flores‟s questions until one brought him up short. “And the sets? Most unusual. I have never seen drapes used to convey so many settings. Farmland, city skylines, dreamscapes. Your producer said they were not the art director‟s idea.” “Um, no. The art director took a suggestion from a local textile artist. Spider— er, Tomás Tejedor de Luna—he‟s Caridad and José‟s nephew, sort of. He‟s my partner. Um, well, he wasn‟t when the sets were commissioned, but then we met and…” Jamie dropped his head into his hands. “I‟m sorry, Mr. Flores. I‟m botching

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this, aren‟t I? This is only the second interview I‟ve ever given that wasn‟t to one of my buddies on the school paper, and I don‟t know what to say about Spider‟s sets, except that I think they‟re amazing, beautiful, but I‟m biased and…and I can‟t seem to finish a sentence. Can we start over, please?” Señor Flores, to Jamie‟s chagrin, laughed. A small, wrinkled hand landed on Jamie‟s shoulder. “No, my boy, we don‟t need to start over. I will just keep your more incoherent babbling off the record.” Jamie stared, but the man‟s eyes were twinkling. “I don‟t know what to say,” Jamie said. “Thank me for my impeccable professionalism and tell me how you came to write plays, Mr. Cowan.” As charming as Señor Flores was, Jamie was relieved when the interview concluded. He raced to Arno and Ben to beg a cell phone and called home. No answer. There was no phone in the carriage house, and Spider didn‟t have a mobile either, so if he was weaving… But why would he be weaving? The moon wouldn‟t rise until almost one in the morning. Jamie had left as soon as the moon set that afternoon, and Spider had assured Jamie he would join Jamie after a short stint at Telaraña. Deep down, Jamie knew nothing would have kept Spider away from the play Jamie had worked and sweated over since before they‟d met. Something must be wrong. He really had to go. He didn‟t want to take the time to ride his bike all the way. He rushed over to where Caro and Joe were mingling with the cast and crew. “Caro? I hate to ask, but do you think you and Joe cold drive me home? Spider didn‟t answer the phone.” “You didn‟t make your speech,” Belinda protested, then relented when she saw the look on Jamie‟s face. Helpless outrage, if Jamie‟s reaction showed on his face. “Go on.” “It‟s not like everyone doesn‟t know what I‟ll say, anyway.”

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Caro took his hand. Her fingers found the Changó beads under the cuff of his dress shirt. “Time to go, I think,” she said. The three of them squeezed into the cab of Joe‟s truck, and went.

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Chapter Twenty Spider was angry. He couldn‟t stop weaving. He should be able to stop. He‟d felt the moon set hours ago. Jamie‟s play was important. The play had brought Jamie to him, so it was important all by itself. But it was also a moon weaving, and Spider had never seen one made by anyone other than himself or Abuelo. And it was important to Jamie that Spider be there. Spider leaned back from the loom, took his hands off the beater. Something deep inside him wrenched and tugged. From the crown of his head to the core of his groin and several points in between, there were swirling points of pain. It was hard to think. Spider‟s whole body ached, so he leaned back and started weaving again. His arms were tired. Spider was almost grateful for such mundane soreness. It kept him grounded in a body that was starting—in sensation, anyway— to resemble the image of himself in his weaving. He could almost feel the skeins of color spinning out from open portals along his body. But mostly, Spider was angry. He wove and wove and waited for Jamie.

*** Caridad insisted on coming into the carriage house while Joe kept the truck running. Jamie hated her for it—it meant admitting something could be the matter with Spider. There were no lights in the house and none in the carriage house. La Reina was standing sentinel at the carriage house door and scooted inside when Jamie slid it open.

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“There he is,” said Caridad, relief evident in her voice. And there Spider was, lit by the diffuse yellow light from the streetlamp and the headlights from Joe‟s truck. He was weaving. “He got lost in it,” Caridad said. “His grandfather was the same way, losing track of time, forgetting appointments, all to finish a weaving.” She clucked and shook her head. Jamie suppressed a flare of irritation at Caridad. Spider‟s weaving had very little to do with a work ethic or artistic temperament. How could she not recognize the same sort of trance state Jamie had witnessed in Caridad herself just the previous night? Caridad was still yammering away. “Well, the moon has been down for a long time. He will stop soon, and you can have your lover‟s spat and make up, yes?” Jamie didn‟t dignify that with an answer, though he did, with ill grace, return Caridad‟s hug and walk her out to the brighter driveway, helping her into the pickup and waving to Joe as they all rolled away. “Spider?” Jamie called quietly. He walked over to the weaving bench. “Jamie. Mi amor.” Spider‟s voice had the dreamy quality it usually did when he was weaving. Jamie coaxed Spider from the loom with difficulty. Spider came and sat on the sofa, but Jamie felt the fine muscles of his chest and back yearning toward the loom. Jamie looked down and saw Spider‟s feet moving like a cat‟s kneading something impossibly soft. To the casual observer this might look like a gesture of restlessness, a nervous tic. But Jamie was not a casual observer, and in the sinuous splaying and relaxing he recognized the repetitive motion of treadling. Jamie led Spider back to the loom—if he was honest with himself, he would have said he let Spider go, then followed him—and forced himself back to the sofa. If he could not arrest Spider‟s obsessive weaving, at least he could bear witness. He opened his sketchbook to a blank page and neatly wrote the date and time and place in the top corner. He did this mindfully now, knowing it was his way in and out of

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the writing, a signpost for his mundane life from the sublimity of the lives and images he set down on paper or encoded on his computer. He nibbled the end of his pen, depressing the button with his tongue over and over to make the point retract and advance, awaiting inspiration or, at the very least, a lifting of the panicked haze that smothered every word he remembered. Jamie didn‟t know what else to do. La Reina seemed bewildered as well, winding around Jamie‟s feet, then Spider‟s, avoiding the treadles with dainty steps and chirrups that should have made Spider laugh. Jamie realized something suddenly. The cat was behaving as she did just before Spider fed her. “Spider, have you eaten?” Usually Jamie made sure they had snacks at the ready before the moon rose, but anything he‟d left out during the moon‟s height the day before was long gone. Spider didn‟t answer right away. Jamie moved back to the loom and sat on the bench, repeating his question into Spider‟s ear. “Jamie. I am hungry.” “Then come inside and eat something.” “I cannot stop.” “Try.” “For you.” For the second time since coming home, Jamie tugged Spider up from the bench. He threaded their fingers together and started walking. Spider followed reluctantly. It was like dragging a smart dog to the vet. “Spider, come on!” He was used to the trance, but this degree of detachment was unfamiliar and frightening, and the fact that it had hold of Spider when the moon was down was unsettling to say the least. “Jamie. Jamie? Jamie, I‟m scared.” Jamie felt something inside break loose at the forlorn tremble in Spider‟s voice.

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“Spider! Listen. You just have to stop! Come inside and stop. The moon is down. It‟s like every other night.” During weaving times Jamie talked to Spider as he normally did, even if Spider didn‟t always respond in kind. Jamie figured his own trances were lighter or that he stayed more conscious of the world so his writing would make some sense. “No. Special night. Play.” Though he hadn‟t thought it possible, Spider‟s voice sounded even more distant. Was the trance deepening? “It‟s okay, Spider. Okay. I‟ll guilt-trip you later, eh? Just please come inside now.” “I want to, Jamie. My Jamie.” If he didn‟t know better, Jamie would have sworn Spider was high on something. His words were slurred, his movements disjointed. Jamie wrapped his arms around Spider and pulled him toward the side door of the house, the agitated cat threatening to trip them up at every step. “Ay!” A mere few steps from the door, Spider‟s body went rigid, as if he were in sudden pain. With a jerk, Spider wrenched out of Jamie‟s grasp and hurtled back toward the carriage house and the loom. Jamie followed. Spider was pushing the shuttle through the warp threads before his butt even hit the bench. His hair was disarrayed, and sweat beaded his forehead and upper lip. His hands shook. Jamie tamped down his shock and anger at Spider shoving him away like that. Spider wasn‟t refusing to stop. He wasn‟t rejecting Jamie. He was not choosing his course of action. A gelid dread cramped Jamie‟s gut. “Spider, why can‟t you stop?” Jamie approached his lover, his heart thudding, and rested his hands as heavily as he dared upon Spider‟s shoulders. The fine tremors there made Jamie want to scream. “I don‟t know.” “But you want to.” Jamie knew Spider only half remembered conversations from his weaving time, but he had to try, had to get through. “I want to,” Spider confirmed in a monotone. “My arms are tired. I am hungry.” There were tears in Spider‟s voice, though his eyes were dry and staring.

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Jamie ran his hands up and down Spider‟s arms, rubbing, soothing, trying to draw Spider out of this appalling state with touch. He squeezed Spider‟s shoulders, walked his fingertips along the corded muscles of his neck. He unbound Spider‟s hair from its disordered club and began to comb it with his fingers. He worked his way up from the ends, gently worrying free the few snarls he found. He tunneled his fingers in against Spider‟s scalp, ran Spider‟s hair through his fingers, and marveled at how much cooler the silky hair felt away from the skull. “Jamie. Good to me.” In spite of himself, Jamie‟s cock responded to the murmurous tone in Spider‟s voice. And that gave him an idea. He kissed the top of Spider‟s head, then down his spine, as far as he could reach without crawling under the weaving bench. He pressed lips and fingers into those points he knew so well, the points that joined the rainbow man to the silver man in each of Spider‟s weavings. He followed his route back up, mirroring his kisses with touches to his own body. Spider arched and Jamie tingled. Jamie wanted to remind Spider of their connections, and his words had failed him. “Hungry, Jamie.” “Hungry for me?” Maybe it was working! “Hungry.” Oh. Jamie felt a twinge of guilt for losing himself even a little bit in the pleasure of their bodies, but if he hadn‟t eaten for more than twelve hours, Jamie admitted, Spider‟s priority was probably not sex. He straightened up and kissed Spider‟s cheek. “I‟ll bring you something, love. Don‟t go anywhere.” It might have sounded funny, as it appeared Spider couldn‟t go anywhere if he tried. But Jamie was terrified that Spider could go further into his daze. Too far to return. Perhaps it was melodramatic, but Jamie paused at the door to the carriage house and looked back at Spider, fixing him in his mind so that if he were left alone with memories, they‟d be clear ones. “Come on, Queenie, let‟s fetch supper.”

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Once in the kitchen, Jamie found that Belinda‟s pierogis made excellent cat dinner. While bits of this and that from the night of the velatorio heated up, Jamie delivered leftover fruit salad for Onan, assured him he was well beloved, and returned to the kitchen to fill a pitcher with mango nectar cut with ice-cold water, just the way Spider liked it. A gentle tug in Jamie‟s gut told him the moon had begun to rise. Reluctantly, Jamie admitted to himself that it would be a long night, so he set the coffeepot on the stove and turned the heat up as far as it would go. He was anxious to get back to the carriage house. When the coffee was halfway done, he poured himself a cup, set the percolator back on the flame, and continued stirring the leftovers. As he sipped, he considered his options. It didn‟t take very long. Though he could pull Spider away from the loom using physical force, force alone wouldn‟t keep him away. Breaking Spider‟s thrall was the solution, but if the setting moon didn‟t release him, what else would? Jamie felt thoroughly outclassed. He downed the rest of his coffee like a shot of rum, the way Spider and Caridad and Pepe did it. Then he wrapped his arms around his middle and sobbed his fear and frustration.

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Chapter Twenty-one Food. A slow hand spooned warm food into his mouth. A straw held to his lips delivered mango sweetness in a cold burst he felt all the way to his belly. Jamie. “Mil gracias, mi amor. Que rico.” “Tastes good, eh? Eat up.” Brief silence and more food. Brief thudding weaving sounds. “Estoy cansado, papi.” So tired. “I know, love. How do we stop this?” “Never.” “We can never stop this?” Panic in the rising voice. Spider shook his head fiercely. “Never saw this before.” “This is something new? Who can help us?” “No one.” “What would your grandfather do?” Shuttle, beater, treadle, shuttle, beater… “Spider! Answer me!” Hard fingers. Hurting his arms. “Amorcito, sore there.” Soft hands, kisses. “I‟m sorry, Spider. You went a little further away from me. I got scared.” Shuttle, beater, lean, kiss, treadle… “‟S‟okay, Spider. Just help me, eh?” “Caro.”

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The warm body moved away, even though Spider‟s spirit reached for it. The door ground open; brutal afternoon light flooded in. “Jamie?” There was no answer. Spider wasn‟t angry anymore. Hijo de puta, he was fucking terrified.

*** Spider‟s new weaving was done in silk thread, and Jamie‟s exhausted eyes watched the black and white threads yield bright colors and silvery accents. Deepest black formed the merest border of a scene of two men embracing. The one, awash in color, was enfolded by the silvery arms of the other. It was a most peaceful image, very still yet quietly joyous. Jamie stood behind Spider, staring dully at the small weaving that held his lover captive. The image was only half done; Spider had explained that the fine silk was very difficult to weave, that such weaving took a long time, even for a small piece. It was beautiful, and Jamie hated it. He dashed inside to call Caridad. “Jamie?” The quiet voice was not Caro‟s. “We‟re in trouble, Joe. Spider can‟t stop weaving. He says we need Caridad.” “Caro‟s at the hospital,” Joe said. “A cousin‟s delivery is going badly, and Caro is needed. I‟m sure she will come when she can.” There was a pause on the line. “I will come now.” When Joe arrived, he took in the scene with muted alarm. Jamie spread his hands to frame Spider‟s tense, moving form and the endless, endless weaving. “Do you think you can help?” “He won‟t stop?” “He can‟t. He tries. He wants to. He can‟t.” Jamie suspected he sounded like a crazy man. He looked at Joe and Joe looked back, his heavy-featured face kind and sad. “The weaving will be finished sometime, yes?”

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That made logical, technical sense, even if a silk weaving took much, much longer than a wool or cotton one. “What if it isn‟t?” Jamie voiced a new fear. “What if he can‟t stop even then?” After all, Spider sometimes finished or started a piece during moon time. When the silk weaving was done, would he just plow forward into a new trap? Joe looked steadily into Jamie‟s eyes. “I am a simple man, mijito. I know nothing of these things.” “But you know about the weaving?” “I know it was for Tomás a kind of prayer.” “Was he ever trapped in it like Spider?” Joe shook his big head slowly. “By the time I married Caro, Tomás was a master weaver. He was very controlled.” “I thought Spider was in control of this. His grandfather trained him. I thought Spider would have the answer, but I can barely get him to talk to me. Will you try?” Joe nodded and knelt beside Spider‟s little bench. Even kneeling, the man‟s head topped Spider‟s slumped shoulders. “Tomás. Listen to me, hijo mío. You must try to come back to us. We stand ready to help. Me, Caro, your amante. Can you not tell us what to do?” Joe stroked Spider‟s neck and back and kissed his hair, which Jamie had braided loosely when he couldn‟t reproduce Spider‟s elaborately wrapped club. “Joe?” “Spider!” Jamie couldn‟t keep himself quiet; it had been hours since Spider had spoken to him. Joe carried on, stolid and sure. “Sí, cariño, sí. Soy yo. I am here. Let us help you.” Spider‟s head shook wearily. “Nothing is broken, Tío.” The beater bar made another muffled thump.

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“How can he say nothing is wrong?” Jamie hated the thin wail in his voice. “Listen, Jamie.” Spider‟s voice was little more than a sigh. “Tío, help him to hear.” “I‟m listening, Spider. Joe and I, we‟re listening. Something is broken, Spider. It must be, or you would be able to come back to us. To me.” Jamie felt Joe‟s hand heavy on his own. “Tranquílate, Jamie. How can you listen when you make so much noise?” There was a warm chuckle in the man‟s voice that made Jamie grit his teeth. Nothing about this was funny. “I‟m so worried for him, Joe. Don‟t laugh at me.” Jamie‟s frantic thoughts slowed somewhat under the warm pressure of Joe‟s hand, enough so he heard Joe‟s voice break into them. “You should eat, Jamie, and so should Spider. Go. I will keep watch.” Jamie knew Joe was right. He wouldn‟t be any good to Spider if he collapsed, and Spider could easily become dehydrated with the heat in the carriage house and his constant motion. The thwacking of the loom stopped for a moment as Spider used his fingernails to smooth the black threads of the unwoven silk. They were ridged, filed to comb through the impossibly fine fibers just like Abuelo had described his teacher‟s nails in the journals. The moment he remembered that detail, Jamie had an idea. “Abuelo‟s journals! Joe, Tomás learned to weave in silk from a Japanese friend. It was after the war. He taught Tomás. Maybe there‟s something different about this kind of weaving.” Food and fatigue forgotten, Jamie pelted into the house and upstairs into the parlor where he and Spider kept Abuelo‟s journals and letters alongside his gallery of weavings. Jamie snatched up the journal that included Tomás‟s account of learning to weave, forgetting for a moment that he couldn‟t read the Spanish. Panic gripped him, and Jamie paced the room furiously, glaring at Tomás‟s lively tapestries, certain these gentle, joyful works never would have hurt their creator as Spider‟s weaving was doing. Jamie‟s eyes came to rest on his favorite of

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Tomás‟s pieces, the maritime scene, and he took comfort from it, as if the old man he‟d never met reached across a valley of time to soothe his grandson‟s lover. In the brief peace and quiet of the feeling, Jamie remembered that Joe could read the journals perfectly well. “I‟m an idiot,” Jamie muttered and rushed back to the carriage house. When he returned to the carriage house, he found Joe staring at the image that rolled with planetesimal speed over the loom. “It‟s very beautiful,” he said. “It is.” Jamie had to agree. “It‟s us, you know, Spider and me.” He passed Joe the journal. Joe took it absently. “Yes, I see the pair of you. It is perfect.” “Perfect?” “I can see no flaw, but I am not the artist Spider is.” No flaw? A thought niggled at Jamie‟s brain. “Nothing is flawless,” he said. “This is.” Joe sounded so certain. “You brought the journal?” Jamie froze. “Jamie?” Jamie spun and faced Joe. “You‟re right, Joe. There‟s no flaw! It‟s fucking perfect.” Joe blinked at Jamie‟s vehemence. Jamie turned again and grabbed Spider‟s shoulders. Ignoring Spider‟s groan of protest, Jamie shouted into his ear. “Spider, that‟s it, isn‟t it? The weaving‟s perfect. You didn‟t weave a way out!” Spider nodded, his neck bending too far, his head bobbling weakly. “Joe! There‟s no weaver‟s pathway.” At Joe‟s minute shrug of incomprehension, Jamie slapped his hand on the journal‟s cover and explained. “Traditional weavers put a deliberate flaw in the early section of a new weaving. So much of their spirit goes into the piece, it needs a way out when the weaving‟s done. There isn‟t one here.” He fluttered his fingers over the upper part of the weaving to show what he meant. It‟s perfect, like you said. Spider‟s spirit is trapped.”

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Joe‟s face brightened. “So, you can help him now?” Jamie crumpled. “No. I thought knowing why…” Joe‟s hand was still on him, but he was speaking to Spider. “What now, Tomás? Jamie understands what is happening but not how to stop it.” Spider‟s voice sounded even more distant. “Salida de la luna.” “Moonrise.” “What time is it, Joe?” “Past one.” “Could you fix us some coffee, please?” Joe nodded and plodded out of the carriage house. The moon was rising, and Jamie would write. He had no idea how that might help Spider find his way out of the weaving, but writing while Spider wove would bring Jamie closer to his lover. Maybe in that closeness, in a mirror of their feelings for each other, lay the key. It sounded lame even in Jamie‟s mind, but it was all he had. The disappointment of knowing why Spider was trapped but still not being able to save him was acute. Jamie dragged a straight-backed rocker close to the weaving bench and flipped open his notebook.

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Chapter Twenty-two Spider felt the moon rise again. He felt it as a caress in his bones, a gravity in his muscles. As tired as he was, as frightened as he was, weaving during the moon‟s transit was right. He stopped fighting. How long had he labored before the loom? Spider registered, distantly, when Jamie began to write. It was like a hearth‟s warmth in winter, or shade in summer—just what he needed. Spider smiled, and the play of muscles ached. “Tell me, love.” It was still hard to speak, like pushing his voice through cotton batting, but with Jamie there with him, weaving with him, the distance to cross was narrower, the effort less. “Read to me.” Jamie began to read what he was writing, and what Spider heard brought hot tears to his eyes. They coursed, cooling, down his face and fell on the breast beam of the loom, soaking into the dry wood.

*** Joe pressed avuncular kisses to Spider‟s and Jamie‟s heads and left cups of strong coffee at their elbows. Jamie acknowledged Joe‟s leaving with a vague salute of his demitasse. He knew Joe wouldn‟t go far, not until Caridad arrived. Jamie had already slipped into his writing place, having carefully marked his starting point with the date and time and very precise location, including ZIP code and phone number. Jamie was not going to get lost in his writing, not with Spider trapped in his weaving. If it was up to him to write Spider out of this predicament and himself as well, it wouldn‟t do to be careless about the details.

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Why had Spider neglected his training and the habit of years? Jamie suspected, with a nauseated twinge, that it might be his fault. He‟d been so anxious about the opening night of his play and might have done a dozen different things to distract Spider. And then there was the sex. That had been distracting. In fact, as Jamie cast about for something to write, he felt his face heat and his groin tighten at the memories of kissing and rubbing and sucking—dreams not only come true, but surpassed. Discoveries made together, powerful, undeniable. Jamie flipped past the pages filled with notes for his new play. Somehow, something new was required. “Spider is my first lover,” he wrote. And then he read it aloud. He looked over at Spider and saw Spider‟s head come up, those burntsugar eyes narrowed in a tired smile that started and ended without touching his mouth. Jamie sipped his coffee—ugh, already cold. Jamie reread what he‟d written. The words were true enough, but they didn‟t ring quite right. Jamie frowned, frightened he‟d screw this up. Spider‟s voice reached him from across the room. “You write the past, Jamie.” Of course. He switched tenses and continued. “I wanted Spider the moment I saw him stand up from his loom. I didn‟t know how to talk to him, but it almost didn‟t matter.” “I wanted you, too, mi amor.” Spider‟s voice sounded faint in the vaulted space of the carriage house, but Jamie smiled to hear it. Jamie‟s story was brief, and he knew it wasn‟t terribly original, but he wrote every detail he could remember, and he read every word to Spider. The moon tracked across the sky, and Jamie didn‟t have to see it. He felt it and he felt Spider weaving. The terrible intimacy of it overwhelmed him. He reached the end of the story with careful details about the shuddering aftershocks of his last orgasm with Spider. He looked over at Spider. The only change was that dark circles had appeared under his eyes.

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Jamie deflated. “What now, Spider? There is no more to say, and the moon is still high.” His own story, his own love, hadn‟t been enough to lead Spider back to him. “My story, Jamie. It‟s my story too.” So Jamie began again. Date. Time. Place. “Jamie is pale and fine, made just for me,” he wrote, feeling horribly conceited and self-conscious as he described himself the way he imagined himself through Spider‟s eyes. He read it out, blushing riotously. “Sí, sí, mi vida.” Spider‟s voice drifted over from time to time, reassuring Jamie that he had it right. “As I watched Jamie leave for the theater, pride in my heart and love in my soul, I knew I would join him there to share with many his talent and promise.” Jamie finished writing, and Spider wove on. Jamie tossed the notebook down and checked his watch exasperatedly. Two hours to moonset. He flipped back to the notes for the Dominican play and found himself uninspired to continue. He paged over his night‟s work and found nothing left to say. He stood and stretched, the popping of his joints almost comical. The loom clacked on and on, and his pulse beat with it steadily. “God, Spider,” he said, not bothering to hide his frustration. “Is this working? Can you come back to me?” He stalked over to the weaving bench and sat close enough to Spider to impede his movements. Jamie didn‟t care. He slid his arm around Spider‟s waist and tugged him close. He ran his tongue over Spider‟s ear and down his neck. “Is it true, what I wrote, Spider? Am I yours? Are you mine?”

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“It is the truest thing, Jamie.” “There are still two hours of moonlight, Spider. I don‟t know what to do.” “Read it again.” Spider‟s voice was breathy, so tired. “Will it work?” Jamie‟s voice sounded angry to his own ears. “How should I know?” Spider‟s voice matched Jamie‟s anger, but weakly, a moon shadow. Jamie got up and paced, reading as he did. “Spider is my first lover.” He flipped to the pages in Spider‟s voice. “Jamie is pale and fine.” Back and forth Jamie paced, and back and forth the pages riffled. Jamie despised the panicky note in his voice, but he kept on, back and forth, like the loom‟s bar, weaving his and Spider‟s stories together. Three, four steps to the corner of the loom, reading Spider‟s lines. Turn. Three, four steps to the bench, reading his own. Again. Again. Was it his imagination, or were the passes of the shuttle timed to his steps? The thumps of the treadle syncopated with his words? He sipped cold coffee, offered sips to Spider, which he mostly ignored. He paced and read and watched the loom. The entwined figures in the weaving grew so very slowly. Finally, finally, the moon began to set. For the first time, Jamie could feel it the way Spider said he did. He felt the grip of the words loosening. For the first time, he tried to hold on to them. If he let go and Spider wove on, what would he do? The possibility was appalling. He decided to finish with flair. “Spider is my love,” he added to the end of his words. “Spider and the moon and the weaving and the writing are all the life I want. We were each the other‟s first lover. And we will be each other‟s last.” He made the vow consciously, on his behalf and Spider‟s. Unbidden, another truth demanded voice. “Jamie is my love. He is my brother under the moon and my lover under the sun. The weaving means nothing without the sunlight respite,

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without the loving and living while the moon hides behind the earth. The loom stories are but lies if they are woven by a slave.” Jamie stopped pacing, dropped next to Spider, and grasped a limp hand in his. Spider‟s free hand stayed busy combing silk threads. In his own voice, a fierce whisper, Jamie declared, “Spider is his own, and he is mine. Let him go!” And then he repeated, over and over, his own weaver‟s mark: Date. Time. Place. He kept hold of Spider‟s hand while he chanted those three simple facts again and again, repeating them so often Onan took up the chant with him. He listened to his voice, thick with exhaustion and fear, as if from a distance of time and space. And then he felt the moon set. Jamie held his breath for heartbeat after heartbeat until he was light-headed. His fingers began to loosen their hold on Spider.

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Chapter Twenty-three The moon sank and set, and Spider felt it. He also felt his freedom from the terrible thrall of the loom. His aching hand convulsed around warm flesh and bone, not the hard breast beam, and a sobbing gasp reached his ears. How many turns of the moon had he sat before the loom? His voice was barely strong enough to carry the question. “Three, Spider. Three days. I was so scared.” “I, too, alma de mi vida.” My soul, my life. “Is it done, Spider?” Spider stood, tugging Jamie with him, reluctant to let go. The loom didn‟t tug back. “Sí.” Jamie‟s eyes were bloodshot and teary, bright like candlelit whiskey. So beautiful. “Fly me to bed, angelito.” Jamie‟s laugh had a rasp and a hiccup in it. “How ‟bout we just walk, Spider?” “That is how fallen angels would get there.” Spider tried to sound sage, but there was a giddiness swirling in his chest. It must have infected Jamie, because he started laughing, doubling over with the force of it. Tears streamed down both their faces, making their faces skid when they kissed, which only made them laugh more helplessly. They shoved the carriage house door open, startling La Reina, who chirped interrogatively and stalked off without waiting for an answer. Spider thought that

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was just as well; he was too breathless to speak. They crossed to the house with Onan‟s chanting as a soundtrack. When Spider would have turned for El Huevo at the top of the stairs, Jamie steered him forcefully toward the bedroom. “We have fifteen hours until the moon rises again, and I intend to spend the first fourteen of them in bed with you,” Jamie said. “I stink, and I‟m gritty.” “I‟ll lick you clean.” Spider wrinkled his nose and bit back a comment about La Reina and dirty kittens. Jamie wouldn‟t be swayed, he could tell—the man hadn‟t slackened his grip since Spider stopped weaving—and so he toppled obediently onto the bed. Jamie followed him down, mouth open, hands everywhere. “Fuck me, Spider.” It wasn‟t what Spider had expected Jamie to say, but he couldn‟t deny the way his cock leaped at the ungentle demand. Spider didn‟t refuse, but he‟d seen the silk weaving. The silvery filaments spun out from the moonlight figure and penetrated the central figure‟s rainbow core. If that central figure represented Spider, then Spider knew how his lovemaking with Jamie must play out. Clothes were unceremoniously shed, and Jamie tugged the elastic band off the end of Spider‟s braid, digging his fingers in and scrubbing the hair loose. The beads of his bracelet caught for a painful moment on the long strands, and Jamie made a small sound of apology, the frenetic hands frozen while Spider disentangled himself. “My Changó,” Spider whispered, fingering the red and white beads, teasing the last few hairs free. “You fought so well for me.” Jamie‟s eyes widened, then crinkled at the corners. “The pen is mighty, eh?” Spider tried to keep his face serious, but the hilarity that had overtaken him on the way into the house sparkled at the edge of his voice. “Changó is also a lover, mi amor.”

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“Yeah, both my swords are mighty, huh, Spider?” Spider frowned as sternly as he could while his belly quivered with suppressed laughter. “You are taking all the reverence out of the moment, Jamie.” “Fuck reverence,” Jamie snorted. “I‟d rather you fuck me,” Spider said and lost it completely. He threw back his head and howled while Jamie shook his head and chuckled softly. “You‟re insane,” he said, peppering Spider‟s shaking chest and belly with nibbling kisses that found their way to Spider‟s mouth and swallowed the last of Spider‟s sobs. When they were both calmer, Jamie looked Spider in the eye. “Spider?” “Mmm?” Spider pursed his lips, hoping for more kissing. “If Caro‟s right and you‟re some sort of bridge between worlds, why couldn‟t you cross back to me?” Spider considered. “The weaving, your writing, our service to the moon, they are separate from the men‟s worship. I think the weaving tells the world‟s stories in a language beyond what men invent to explain things.” He tilted his head sideways to look at Jamie, whose head was cradled on Spider‟s chest. “So Caro‟s orishas are something people came up with to answer impossible questions, but the moon weaving, however it‟s done, is purer?” “Unbent to the will of men. Yes, perhaps.” “So I‟m not really an incarnation of Changó, warrior-lover extraordinaire?” “I am not certain,” Spider replied, seeing his opportunity and pouncing like La Reina on a sluggish bird. “You might have to demonstrate your amazing powers of seduction before I become a believer.” Jamie smirked. “And I thought you had a one-track mind while you were weaving.” He seemed to hear his own words belatedly and sobered. “Whatever it was, Spider, I don‟t ever want that to happen again. I can‟t imagine what would happen if you really couldn‟t stop weaving.”

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“You would write my way out, mi amorcito. But I will try very hard not to get trapped in my own web again. I will attend to my flaws.” “Promise?” Spider looked into Jamie‟s eyes and promised. Then he smiled. Being naked in bed together was still so new as to capture most of his attention. “Anyway, it looks like I have caught a juicy little mosca in my web this afternoon.” “Gonna suck the juice right out of me, Spider?” “It is a spider‟s way.” Spider leered outrageously and reached for the lube. The miracle of being free made him giddy, and he felt sure he could suck Jamie dry as he had before, but he wanted to stake his claim so that there could be no doubt. While Jamie watched with honeyed eyes nearly dripping with heat, Spider knelt up and reached around his body with lube-slick fingers. He‟d never penetrated himself before, though like any boy he was no stranger to pleasuring himself. No, Jamie‟s finger had been the first thing ever to breach Spider‟s body that way. Spider groaned with the feeling of opening himself up, so overcome that he closed his eyes. When he opened them a heartbeat later, Jamie was no longer before him on the bed, but behind him, biting at Spider‟s hand and ass, begging entry with his own, stouter fingers. “It‟s like holding hands inside you, Spider,” Jamie rasped, and Spider tried harder to grip his lover‟s fingers with his own. The awkward caress stretched Spider open faster than he could have anticipated, and soon four fingers weren‟t enough. “Doble, doble, mi amor,” Spider pleaded. “Turn around, please. I need you inside me.” Jamie‟s answer was to whimper and comply. He flattened out under Spider and between Spider‟s legs. Jamie‟s body was paler than Spider‟s and fascinatingly furred between his pecs. Spider leaned down to suck on Jamie‟s shy pink nipples, pressing them flat with his tongue and enjoying the slight pressure as they hardened for him.

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“You‟re stalling, love,” Jamie accused, though his eyes were smiling. Spider didn‟t deny it. They were about to do something irrevocable. “I wouldn‟t hurt you for anything,” Jamie promised. Spider forced himself to find his voice for Jamie. “I know, mi amor. You saved me.” Jamie frowned, the expression incongruous when his pupils were blown with desire. “But that‟s not why you‟re doing this, right? Say it isn‟t.” Jamie ran his hands up and down Spider‟s spread thighs in a caress Spider imagined was meant to reassure him. All it did was stiffen his resolve. He leaned back, never taking his eyes off Jamie‟s, and grabbed Jamie‟s dick clumsily. Jamie sat up in a way that caused the head of his prick to nudge hard at Spider‟s hole. It didn‟t enter, though; Spider was too new, too tight for that. “Look at me, Spider,” Jamie demanded. He wrapped his hand around Spider‟s dick and squeezed gently. Jamie definitely had all Spider‟s attention. “Whatever we do, whoever fucks who first, I have to know we‟re doing this because we love each other.” Jamie punctuated his words with another squeeze to Spider‟s cock. Spider breathed through a wave of sensation that threatened to render moot any points about fucking. When his orgasm backed off to a manageable roar at the base of his spine, he said, “I have wanted this almost since we met, Jamie Cowan. No obligation between us, only love.” Jamie‟s grip on Spider‟s dick backed off, and he leaned forward to share an openmouthed kiss. Spider bent his legs so he was more or less sitting in Jamie‟s lap, renewed his hold on Jamie‟s dick, and pressed. “Ah!” There was pain—there was no denying it—and the angle of entry probably wasn‟t the smartest for Spider‟s first time, but he couldn‟t give up Jamie‟s mouth. He forced himself down, taking more and more of Jamie‟s sturdy prick until he‟d gone as far as he could.

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He lapped messily at Jamie‟s mouth, which was open and panting. Could their joining have hurt Jamie too? Spider started to ask, but Jamie interrupted him. “Tell me when I can move, love. You‟re burning me up. Please. Won‟t move until you say. Promise.” Spider couldn‟t understand how Jamie could possibly string all those words together, but he supposed that‟s why Jamie was the playwright and Spider the textile artist. English and Spanish both were distant memories, so Spider answered the only way he knew how. He moved. And as he did, the pain diminished. So he kept moving, weaving their bodies together as surely as warp and weft. Jamie moved too. At first, he only rocked his hips in little waves, but as Spider‟s confidence grew, Jamie wrapped one arm around Spider‟s neck, under his hair, and the other around his waist, his hand coming to rest on Spider‟s hip. They moved like that, the sweat of their efforts slicking their bellies where they met, their lips sliding with more love than skill, and the place where Jamie‟s cock disappeared into Spider‟s ass the slipperiest of all. Even Jamie‟s words fled before long, and his voice, hands, and hips stuttered to a finish Spider watched with rapt attention. The first time Jamie came inside him was something he‟d always remember. It didn‟t take too long to catch up, even though Jamie was too busy gasping and saying “Oh, wow, Spider” over and over to be much help. Spider grinned as he used his weight and position to topple them both back on the bed. Jamie could help out next time.

*** Downstairs in the carriage house, Caridad regarded the silken image of Jamie and Spider. With great care, she unhooked the delicate weft threads one by one. It took a long time, for the silken strands were very fine. Then she cut the warp threads with scissors. Shushing Spider‟s parrot as she passed by, she carried the weaving into the house. Spider and Jamie were well; otherwise they‟d still be locked in their struggle in the carriage house. Caridad knew she shouldn‟t intrude, that

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Jamie and Spider needed each other and their privacy. But she bore the weaving through the house anyway, coming to a stop outside Spider‟s bedroom door. All was silent, so she entered. The two lay entwined on the bed in exactly the same posture as the figures in the silk cloth, their skin shades of gold in the late afternoon sunlight. Before drawing the shades and leaving them alone in their triumph and exhaustion, Caridad covered their interwoven bodies with the perfect tapestry.

Lee Benoit Before dawn and after dark, Lee Benoit is a writer of queer fiction, some contemporary, some speculative, some historical. During the daylight hours she is a professor of sociology & anthropology. In the old days, Lee traveled the world doing field research. Nowadays, she lives in the middle of a New England hayfield where being a two-spirit single parent provides more than enough excitement. Lee also paints watercolors, bakes wild-yeast sourdough bread, and shares her bed with a pair of cats and an abjectly adoring hound-retriever mutt. Whenever she gets itchy feet and misses the world of research and advocacy, Lee invents a new world in her head and takes notes on what happens there. Find out more about Lee at http://leebenoittales.com.