Page 170

She gives him a price in pesos that works out to maybe ten dollars. Don gasps as if she has demanded a kidney.

“Honey, no. I’ll give you two bucks.”

She laughs. “Seven.”

Don clutches the hats to his chest. “In this economy?”

The woman smiles but probably doesn’t understand his hyperbole. I turn away because I’m already laughing.

This is one of my favorite things about Don. He barters like an old woman at a yard sale.

“I’ll give you three,” he says, already placing a few bills on the table. “And you’ll know you made two dogs extremely chic.”

The woman protests, but not with much urgency. Don turns away with the hats, triumphant.

She takes the money and mutters something filthy in Spanish.

Don stops, delighted, then spins around. “¡Te quiero! ¡Te quiero!”

The woman bursts out laughing.

He marches back, hands her another ten dollars, and blows her a kiss.

“You overpaid,” I say as we continue down the beach road.

“It’s all about the experience. Being called a cheap motherfucker in a foreign tongue gets me all tingly.”

Don decides he needs a new snakeskin wallet because his current one “smells like an actual dead snake,” which I suppose is different from the scent he had hoped for. We keep walking.

The road is already busy, sun high enough to make everyone squint and warm enough to turn patience into a limited resource. Vendors call from open storefronts. Tourists drift in slow, sunburned herds. The occasional flashy object catches my eye, but I keep moving along with Don.

For a few steps, with the ocean bright beside us and Don swinging tiny hats from one finger, the morning almost feels simple.

“So. How was drunk straight boy?”

“What?”

“Last night. Your little rescue mission.”

“He’s not straight.”

I hear myself a second too late.

“I mean—no, of course he’s straight—or I don’t know what he is, but... I misspoke.”

“Mm.” Don nods as we walk. “Care to give that another shot?”

I sigh. “He’s fine. That’s all I meant to say.”

I don’t mention the impossible g-string bulge brushing against me in a bathroom doorway that didn’t really have to be a squeeze. Or the way Clint’s hangover gaze drifted over me the way mine probably drifted over him.

“It was fine,” I repeat, without being asked.

Which is true, if incomplete.

Fine doesn’t include the weight of Clint’s arm over my shoulder in the cab. Or the way he folded into the couch once we were home. Or the strange quiet after, when I stood in the living room with one of his socks in my hand and felt something in me spark so sharply that I went straight to my studio.

I painted until my wrist cramped. I slept three hours and woke hungry for color.