At this point Luis paused.
‘I know you have a lot of questions, Danny, and I’m taking the scenic route.’
What a cute phrase, Danny thought, appreciating that Luis didn’t want to sound lawyerly and business-like, but lyrical and loose. He leaned forward, placing his hand on top of Luis’s.
‘Tell me anything you want, any way you want to.’
The truth was that Danny was quite delighted by the way Luis was talking. After speaking Spanish for such an extended period Luis’s voice had changed, the way he spoke English sounded faster and more fluid, the words rolling into each other rather than standing on their own. Danny had always loved the sound of Luis’s voice, but now even more so.
‘The professor was visiting a town called Cali, in Colombia, where there’s a festival called the Cabalgata which derives from the verb cabalgar – “to ride”. Residents bring their horses onto the street. Since the land around Cali is mountainous with farms, many people own horses, not only the rich. The professor—’
Danny dared to interrupt, ‘What was his name?’
Luis nodded at the question, acknowledging there was an intimacy between them.
‘His name was André. He was staying with relatives who loaned him one of their horses in order that he could experience the carnival as a participant rather than as a spectator.On the day of the festival, he was one among many thousands of riders. And it’s a carnival, not a parade. He was drinking viche, a spirit brewed from sugar cane, mixed with fresh mango juice or pineapple pulp, sweet and strong, and in the sun, you’re drunk in an instant.’
Danny quipped, ‘How about we order two?’
Luis nodded.
‘You know, when I was young, I used to ride horses. Wild ones, which roamed the countryside outside of town.’
Danny had no idea. He pictured young Luis riding horses in the wild.
‘My grandfather taught me. We would head into the countryside. He would catch them, and I would ride them. He said I had a gift. They were always calm around me. I was never scared. I miss that young man, without fear.’
Conversations had always been this way between Danny and Luis, tangents and diversions, sometimes so many the pair forgot the initial subject of their conversation. Danny would happily have talked about wild horses and sugar cane for the rest of the evening, but he gently returned Luis to his original point.
‘So – this literature professor who I’ve never met was drinking viche, a drink I’ve never heard of, in a town I’ve never visited.’
Luis smiled at the summary.
‘By late afternoon André was drunk. Of course, no oneorganizing the festival was concerned about safety. And by the evening André was so drunk he was in danger of falling off his horse. To stop this from happening he slumped forward and wrapped his arms tight around the horse’s neck, which startled the animal. The horse broke into a gallop. All André could do was hold on to the mane. The horse bolted through the town, through streets André had never seen. It ran and ran until eventually, exhausted, the horse came to a stop and André slowly sat up, with no idea where he was. There were three young kids staring at him from a window, laughing at him.’
Luis tapped the table.
‘That is me, Danny, clinging to a career, galloping faster and faster, trying not to fall with no idea where I was going or why. When you proposed to me – I stopped. And I looked around. I asked myself, where am I? What am I doing? Who am I?’
Danny asked, ‘What was your answer?’
Luis sighed. ‘You were right to say that part of me has remained in the closet. At first, I bristled at the idea that I wasn’t “gay enough”. That I hadn’t marched enough or signed enough petitions. But I realized that wasn’t what you meant. I haven’t been myself enough. I haven’t given you all of myself because I didn’t have all of myself to give. I am a well-crafted presentation of a man because I was told I could never be a real one.’
The orange cloudberry sitting in the clear spirits of Danny’s glass recalled to his mind the brightly painted hammers in glass boxes on trains or the tube. Break in an Emergency. Using his fork he fished the berry free, putting it in his mouth. And waited.
Luis said, ‘I quit my job.’
Danny felt a sense of panic, that instead of creating something beautiful with his proposal, he had broken everything, including Luis himself.
‘Luis, I never wanted you to quit your job. It was never a choice between us or your career.’
Luis agreed.
‘That’s not what this is. I was a man for other people. I’ve always been a man for other people. But to marry someone, you need to offer yourself. You cannot do that if you don’t know who you are.’
Having listened for almost thirty minutes, Danny sat up straight and explained, ‘Luis, before we go any further there’s something I need to tell you. On New Year’s Eve I kissed Matt. The nurse. From the Olympics. There was a party. We were high. I was lonely and I fucked up.’
Luis stared at the fern on their table.
