It's Not Shakespeare (3 page)

“I still think you’re wrong,” she muttered as he came out of the standard little room and shut the door, locking it behind him. “I still think the human race would show more tolerance toward a species that has no outwardly hostile tendencies than they did in the Vinge book.” She was dressed for spring today in black basketball shorts and a black T-shirt that said,
I’m being totally brilliant up here and you’re missing it!
in white letters across her (ample) chest.

James grimaced. “I’m not sure the native culture of any continent on the planet would agree with you,” he said and watched as a general sort of disappointment clouded Sophie’s eyes.

“God, that’s depressing. Do you really think we haven’t learned anything since then?”

Shrug. “I don’t know, Sophie—it just seems like the more civilized we think we are, the easier it is to find a subgroup to shit on. The worlds in
Catspaw
and
Tower of Glass
were perfect examples—their races had all been well integrated, but in one they found the telepaths and promptly fucked them over, and in the other, they actually
created
their own race to shit on. And then it staged a revolution.” Oh God. Her eyes were getting big and round, and her pierced lower lip was actually starting to quiver. The toughest, meanest intellectual bastion of bitterness at South Placer Junior College, and he’d just made her cry. Fucking aces.

He patted her shoulder. “You know—maybe you’re talking to the wrong guy here, hon. I’m old. I’m bitter.” I got taken for my life savings in a relationship that I thought was a marriage that really wasn’t. “I’m sure if you had enough time, you could find an example that sets me on my ear like you usually do.”

Sophie smiled at him—actually smiled. “You’re not as bitter as you think,” she told him grandly, and for a moment, he almost remembered how to hope.

“Sure I am,” he told her, grinning. “I’m a bitter, misanthropic angel of misery. And I’m ordering you to get your nose out of a book and get out into this glorious spring day!”

Sophie wrinkled her nose. “I have allergies,” she said, with enough sincerity to make him grimace. The Sacramento valley was a
horrible
place for allergies! He spent a lot of his spring pumped up on Claritin and Zicam himself.

But he’d depressed her, and he’d always sworn that, no matter how life smacked him down, he wouldn’t be one of those tiresome adults who were always telling students that life would only wear them down and break them. He owed it to her to make her smile. “Well then, what are you waiting for? Go get stoned on some Benadryl and have your fun that way! And it’s legal!”

That made her laugh, and he grinned, feeling better about himself, and that was when the underwear model returned.

He stalked down the hall, this time in a tight T-shirt, cargo shorts, and flip flops, and even Marlowe sat up and whined for attention when he saw Sophie and headed their way.

“Yo, heifer—you ready to go or not?” His voice was casual, almost reedy, with a distinct Latino lilt. It was something that James hadn’t heard often on the east coast—usually your average white man had to go into New York City to hear the lingual strains of racial diversity, but not in California. James found he rather liked it—it was like crisp music.

“You got someplace to be, Rafi?” Sophie’s voice changed, James thought. He looked at her carefully and didn’t see any Latina in her features, but it was as though she had known her underwear model long enough to switch her language codes when she was speaking with him.

“Got nowhere, but nowhere witoutchu way better than nowhere witchu!”

“Shut up, bitch. You love me and you know it.”

“I love you to move your fat ass, you flat-footed breeder. Let’s motor!”

“Shut up and gimme your keys, bitch!” She looked at James with a sly, sideways smile, and he looked at the two of them with wide eyes.

“Whatchu want with my keys, heifer?” The underwear model called “Rafi” asked, and Sophie just looked at him with a flat, no-bullshit stare. Rafi rolled his eyes and laughed. He threw the keys, jangling in the air, and Sophie caught them one-handed. He looked at James too, as though inviting him to share in their banter, and James smiled, feeling lame. They were funny—their inflection and their easy smiles softening the insults, making them amusing and not mean—but he suddenly felt miles old for this particular fantasy.

“I’ll letchu know in a minute,” she said, turning to leave. She paused for a moment. “Professor Richards, what were you planning this evening?” And like that, her voice was back to the slightly surly, uninflected NorCal accent he’d heard from her in class. The switch was surprising enough that he found himself stammering and blushing, looking surreptitiously at Rafi to see what he thought of Sophie’s weird old English lit professor with the nice dog.

“I’m, uhm… Marlowe and me, we’re going out to the dog park. Nothing too exciting.” He smiled winningly at her and tried not to make eye contact with her underwear-model friend.

Rafi’s friendly smile forced his eye contact, though, and James knew he was flushing all over. “Doesn’t sound too bad—time with dogs, that’s quality time right there!”

James’s smile relaxed a notch, because he agreed. “Marlowe thinks so,” he said eagerly. “He lives for the dog park—he’s very social.”

Rafi’s fathomless dark eyes were suddenly very concentrated on James’s face. “What ’bout you? You very social?”

James forgot to breathe. For a moment, he was so lost in Rafi’s black-brown eyes with their intensely long, black lashes, that he barely registered Sophie’s chuckle as it faded down the corridor.

“Not lately,” he said, feeling a little faint. “I’ve sort of been an isolated hermetic bastard lately.”

Rafi’s grin was slow and lazy—and appreciative. “Well, you know, even hermits, they’ve got to come out of their cave sometimes. Pretty soon, they be talkin’ to animals and shit, and Marlowe looks pretty smart and all, but I’m not sure he’s that kind of dog.”

James couldn’t help it; he smiled like a little girl. “He talks,” James said. “He talks. But he only sticks to things that he knows.”

Rafi nodded, as though he totally understood this. “Maybe he should get out more. The dog park, it’s a start, but really, maybe you should go see a movie or something, go to a dance club. Drive to the mountains.”

James’s flush had receded, but as Rafi spoke, he had sudden visions of himself and ohmigod underwear-model Rafi, doing all these things together, and the wave of color just rolled right under his skin again.

“Marlowe can’t come most of those places,” he choked, and Rafi’s raised eyebrows indicated that it was a pretty weak excuse. He looked about to answer James’s dumbass excuse when his pocket buzzed, and he pulled out his phone and then looked to his right, where Sophie had just stood.

“Yeah, heifer—where you at wit my keys!” James noticed that Rafi code-switched when he was talking to Sophie too—he wondered exactly how long they’d known each other, and then what Rafi was saying really registered.

“You’re
what?
You
bi-itch!
How the hell am I supposed to get home?”

James gaped at him, and at their feet, Marlowe stood on his hind legs, perking up at the excitement in Rafi’s voice. Suddenly, Rafi was looking at James with a bit of grudging appreciation, and some sincere irritation.

“He’ll take me home?”

James knew his eyes got
really
wide at that.

“
After
he takes the dog for a run?”

Well. That was at least considerate of her.

“No, I won’t be there in the morning, bitch, ’cause I ain’t that easy. And no. I won’t give you details, because this is a fucking imposition…
on him,
heifer! Yeah, I know I don’t got shit to do—that still don’t mean I was gonna visit my moms tonight!”

Rafi sighed then and pinched the bridge of his nose. The look he sent James was… hunted. “Look, Sophie—I know you got a heart as big as the fucking world, but it’s not like no nice white boy is gonna wanna take no brown hoodrat to the fucking dog park—”

“I wouldn’t mind,” James blurted into the phone conversation, and then was so surprised at what he’d said that he blinked and looked around the now-deserted hallway to see if someone else had walked by and said it.

Rafi was looking at him blankly—and with an appreciative smile on his face. “Yeah?”

James wondered if he was still blushing, or if he’d just gone all unattractively blotchy. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “If you don’t mind taking Marlowe to the park, I’ll take you home. Where do you live?”

“My folks live out by the old part of Lincoln—out by one-ninety-three.”

James brightened. He lived out in the new part of Lincoln, by Stanford Ranch. It wasn’t
too
far, especially not from the dog park. “Yeah, sure. It’s no problem.”

Rafi brightened, then spoke harshly into the phone. “You are one lucky bitch, you know that? Yeah, you can get your own fucking ride home from now on.”

There was a squeal from the other end of the line, and Sophia’s underwear model sighed and his face went fond. “Yeah, yeah, love you too. Fine. I’m your chauffeur until the end of goddamned creation. I hear you. Jesus.”

He snapped his phone shut and looked at James, shaking his head. “Man, I’m sorry about this.”

James shrugged. “I’m sorry too. She looks like such a hard case. Who knew she was making me a special project.”

Rafi looked at him and grinned. “You? You think she’s doing this for you? Nah, she knows I got a white-boy kink. This is because I lied for her to her moms and she thinks she owes me.”

James looked at him in awe, because lying to someone’s “moms” was so out of James’s entire life experience that it was almost like he got to take James Dean on a trip to the dog park. “Yeah?” he asked. “I, uhm,
really
want to hear that story, uhm, Rafi.”

That smile… oh God. It came fully loaded, white teeth, grooved cheeks, dimples popping out on the high cheekbones and damned near power steering and a computer GPS. Wow. It was like the luxury class of smiles, and James just wanted to fall into those padded pillow lips and purr.

“Actually, she calls me Rafi because we practically grew up together, but everyone else on the planet calls me Rafael. Rafael Ochoa. That okay with you?”

Purrrrrrrrrrrrr. “James. Uhm, James Richards.” He shifted Marlowe’s lead into his briefcase hand and went for the classic handshake. Rafael shook firmly, with a body-builder’s grip and not an underwear model’s.

“Anyone ever call you Jim or Jimmy or Jack?” he asked, and James shook his head.

“Not once in my entire life,” he said, somewhat bemused.

“Well alright then, Jimmy-Jack, let’s get this show on the road! I’m betting your poor dog there has to take a dump, you feel me?”

Marlowe looked up, his tongue falling out of his mouth in a doggie smile, and James bent down to scratch his head.

“No, but I’m sure Marlowe is.” That was enough for Rafael, apparently, because the three of them started off toward James’s fifteen-year-old Volvo, with the dog park as their destination.

Chapter 2

Marlowe in the Park

“S
O
,
UHM
,
have you known Sophie long?” James asked. Marlowe seemed to be trotting more slowly than usual as they made their way out to the newly added parking structure. The little dog kept looking over his shoulder at Rafael as though trying to establish that yes, this person really was a friend of James’s, and yes, he really
was
coming along for their private time in the park. James couldn’t really blame Marlowe—he kept looking at Rafael the same way.

“Our parents live on the same block,” he said with a shrug. “We grew up together.”

The campus at SPCC was tree shrouded, and everything was blossoming in the windy sunshine and covered in yellow powder. “She’s younger than you,” James observed, and it was true. Sophie was graduating with her AA and transferring to a State University in June, but she was, by her own account, not even twenty. Rafael, on the other hand, was at least… what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?

“Yeah, I was like, ten years old when her moms brought her home. She’s got an older brother, but he’s sort of a flake-o-saurus so I got to babysit.” Rafael laughed for a moment, and it was a really
warm
sound. “When she was five she told me that she was going to marry me and I was going to be her prince and she would be my princess.”

“
Sophie
said that?” If James had thought about it, he would have thought that Sophie would have been allergic to pink as a child. He had sort of a vague notion of a little girl who had cut the gum out of her blonde hair (he’d seen her roots when she’d forgotten to dye) wearing black overalls and a T-shirt.

That warm laugh again. It sort of curled up in James’s tummy and purred, making James’s whole chest warm and sweet and soft.

“Yeah! But see, by then I knew that I was looking for my own Prince Charming, right? So I was honest. I told her that we’d need to find a Prince Charming for her and then one for me, and she said that she could probably find her own damned Prince Charming but that I’d need help, because I was a boy and not everyone would know that’s what I was looking for.” Rafael shook his head in a sort of exasperated wonder. “The little shit’s been looking for my Prince Charming ever since.”

James stopped at his car—a racing-green Volvo, aged just long enough to be tacky and not vintage. Rafael looked at it skeptically.

“I don’t trust these,” he said frankly. “Their transmissions are for shit. Haven’t seen something that falls apart that much since a 1976 Pinto.”

James shrugged. When he’d arrived in California, he’d had enough cash to buy a house and not enough credit to buy a decent car. He’d had to go for a Used Whatever, and a Used Whatever was what he drove.

“It works for me,” he said, feeling lame and apologetic and deeply, deeply uncool. “I, uhm, take it you know cars?” He opened the uncool door of his uncool car and watched as Marlowe hopped up and ran to his accustomed place—the passenger seat.