you're too young & eager to love

October snippet. Sparrow references.
I always thought October needed a wonderful gay man to keep herself lightened after Sparrow's death. I also think that he would have to be, probably, her closest friend -- since I imagine she pushed a lot of people away. So, I think Sparrow would have known him well too.

Oh, my characters always inhabit some trait that matches my own. Emere my Italianness, Regina my love of that house-wife look that I could never pull off (because I actually hate wearing dresses), and October my passion for Broadway. Except I like to think October has a very lovely voice, compared to my croaking.

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You sing in the shower. Broadway numbers that make your voice shake and shiver (Papa, Can You Hear Me, What I Did for Love, And I am Telling You). Sparrow calls you a songbird, and you laugh while rinsing shampoo from your hair. You talk of equality, of a perfect match, and the invisible wings that spring from shoulder blades.

After the accident, you don’t stop singing. You’d like your voice to reach her, because it is suddenly very clear that your wings have been broken, your feathers clipped. You do not believe in Heaven, and you cannot accept that God could exist in the wake of such cruelty, but when you think of her … When you think of her, you cannot be. You imagine metal bending and skin breaking. The way blood would have looked, so garish and unnatural, on her skin, when you always hated her in red. You think of what it means to suffer and what it means to have lost. A heartbeat. A life. The ability to breath. Because you’re choking in the shower now, left gasping with the taste of lukewarm water and grief in your mouth.



Arvin makes the customary phone calls, the obligatory visits, the hand-holding, hair-stroking actions of comfort. His skin is the deep, dark leather shade of black. Soft against your fingers. You like that he shaves his head, wears tangerine silk scarves around his neck, and understands exactly which shade is mauve.

“She was a hell of a bitch.” He says one morning, making tea. The clink of the silver spoon against the cup louder than you would have liked. “But you gotta start letting her go, Streisand.”

You laugh. It’s the first time in weeks. “I used to sing her Funny Girl. If she was mad at me. Or if I’d burnt the meatloaf – again.”

“Of course you did.” When he sits down, the couch dips beneath his weight. He smells of cinnamon and something bitter, something like awkwardness. It penetrates the air, and you can taste it in the tea. Arvin wears himself so openly on his sleeve, one of those ridiculous gay men where the descriptor fabulous will always be perfect. But you know he misses Sparrow, how she didn’t complain if he crawled, drunk, into bed with the two of you, and you know he was never very good at serious comfort. He holds your hand.

You used to think that he was the type of man whose flame burned so bright that it would always keep you warm. You thought wrong.