The first time anyone called Alonzo a fag was when he was 6 years old. His mother had shooed him out of the house so she could clean, and he’d wandered into the park, picking dandelions and collecting them in the neckline of his shirt. He’d stuffed in so many that bees were starting to buzz around him curiously, and one of them landed on his throat. When he’d tried to pick it off, it had stung him, and he’d cried out more from surprise than pain.
Finger in his mouth, he’d started running back home, flowers falling out of his shirt as he did so. But when he reached the gate, a gaggle of slightly older kids blocked his way.
“Where do you think you’re going, mariquita?”
He popped his finger out. “Not a bug,” he retorted.
The kids laughed. The biggest one stepped forward. “Why don’t you suck on this?” He grabbed his crotch. Alonzo stared uncomprehendingly but with dawning fear.
“Leave me alone.”
A hand reached out to grab him, but he ducked and bolted past, not sparing a glance behind him. The laughter faded off in the distance, but he could feel its echo all the way home.
“Qué es una mariquita?” he asked his mother as she ran his hand under the cold tap.
She paused. “Un insecto.”
“No. Algo más.”
She turned off the tap. “Un insecto,” she repeated firmly, and that was that.
He found out on his own later, at eleven years old, sharing a cigarette with a kid from school by the gas station dumpsters. A woman had passed by – tall, broad shouldered, stubbly-faced. She smiled at them. Alonzo had smiled back.
After she passed, his friend had spat on the ground. “Fucking mariquita.”
Alonzo wiped the smile off his face.
Un insecto.
---
“Hey.”
The raspy voice invades his half-dream, cutting across the years to pull him reluctantly back to his body, back to Oz.
“Hey. Torquemada.”
Alonzo stirs slightly. “Mmm.”
“You awake?”
“Mmm. No. Yes.”
A light touch on his cheekbone, fingertips dragged over to the bridge of his nose, then tracing their way down to his lips. He reaches up reflexively, catches a hand, opens his eyes.
Miguel is standing by the bed, inches from his face. Alonzo smiles warmly, kisses the fingers in his grasp (the hand goes rigid, but doesn’t pull away – just hangs there uncertainly).
“You mad at me?”
Alonzo laughs softly. “Why would I be mad at you, baby?”
No answer. In the darkness, he can’t see Miguel’s eyes, but he knows if he could they would be black pools. Destiny in full effect, now. He lets go of Miguel’s hand, which drops like a dead fish, slithers down over his chest and onto the mattress.
“Why are you, uh” – Miguel gestures to the way he’s laid out, pillow laid on the end of the bed where, below, Miguel’s feet would normally rest – “like this?”
Alonzo taps his eye. “Need to be able to see out the door.”
“Oh.” He wavers, hesitant. “So it’s real.”
“Hmm?”
“Your eye.” Miguel mimics the tapping. “Some of the guys were saying it was just contacts.”
Alonzo snorts. “In Oz?”
“Man, you got drugs. Music. Suits. Why not fucking contacts.”
“Is this what you woke me up for? I’m disappointed, querido.”
“No.” He steps back from the bed and sits down, perched on the edge of the toilet. “I dunno. I’ve been thinking.” He looks down at his hands, twisted up in each other. “And I feel like maybe I understand shit now.”
A faint warning bell goes off in Alonzo’s head, but he ignores it. It could mean anything. He turns his body towards Miguel, props his head up on his elbow. “Tell me.”
“Well, it’s like...I dunno if you know this, but I, uh...I lost a kid. Back when I first got into Oz.”
“Mmm.”
“When he was sick, I was going crazy about it, like...trying to think of anything I could do to save him. Like, this baby, man – he was the most beautiful thing, and he was dying, and I couldn’t figure out why, other than, you know. It had to be my fault.” He swallows hard, looks up to stare off into the distance. “And I thought, like, maybe I could make a deal. With God. To show him I was sorry and all that.”
“Mmhmm.” Alonzo doesn't really give a shit, but he isn't going to interrupt - this is the longest he's ever heard Miguel speak.
“So I –” He laughs suddenly, a short barking sound. “Man, it sounds crazy, but it don’t feel crazy, you know. Like, afterwards I could see that it was crazy, like objectively or whatever, but I never actually thought like, ‘oh yeah, that was stupid, that never would have worked’, you know. Anyways, I took a shank, and cut,” he traces the line of his scar, “my face, since that’s what I did to get in here, I cut some old guy. Like, as a blood offering. That’s in the Bible or something, right?”
He glances at Alonzo, who nods, uncomprehendingly but encouragingly.
“Well, it didn’t work.” Miguel sighs heavily. “And he died. And I kept thinking, like, why. What could I have done different. I ain’t never stopped thinking about it, not once, since I been here. And when I walked out of that room today with Ruiz, I was thinking the same thing, like, why, God, what did you want from me, what could I have done different. But now I think I get it.” He looks directly at Alonzo now, and smiles. “There ain’t nothing I could’ve done. Ever. Because God,” he points up, “fucking hates us.” He laughs. “He fucking hates us, man. You and me. And all these motherfuckers. You know how, like, sometimes you just look at someone and think, man I just don’t fucking like you? And he ain’t done nothing to you, and it don’t matter what he does to you, you just don’t like him no matter what?” He nods to himself. “That’s what God is like, man. He looked down at Miguel Alvarez and said, fuck you. You’re nothing to me. Your shit means nothing.”
He pauses, just long enough for Alonzo to think maybe he’s done, then says, “So fuck him back. God’s a piece of shit too.” He pauses again. “You got cigarettes too? Reina de la noche?”
Alonzo tilts his head to the wall where his suit jacket hangs. “Left side, inner pocket.”
“Cigarettes, drugs, music, suits. No fucking contacts.”
“That’s right.”
“Fucking crazy.”
He watches Miguel take out a cigarette, hold out the pack. Alonzo declines, and Miguel stuffs it into the band of his sweatpants.
Usually he finds it interesting, the different effects that drugs could have on different people, but right now, Alonzo admits to being a little bit underwhelmed. Rambling about God was not the direction he had been hoping any of this would go.
Still. It could be worse. He thinks about Guerra, ripping out his own throat under the fluorescent lights of the laundry room, screaming incoherently as the hacks took him away.
“Fuck, I feel like –” Miguel lights the cigarette. “I feel like, so fucking amped. I’m like, God ain’t shit, but I feel fucking amazing about it. Because like – now I don’t gotta worry anymore, you know? I don’t gotta feel bad about shit anymore. It’s just, you just live.” He takes a long drag. “You just do whatever, you know, and whatever happens happens. And it’s alright. Like, whatever. You know.”
“Uh-huh.” It's just nonsense. Underwhelmed graduates to bored.
“So what.” Miguel jabs a finger at him. “You think I’m fucking crazy too?”
“No,” Alonzo lies smoothly. “But I think maybe you’ve got God figured out all wrong.”
“Oh yeah? How’s that.”
“Well.” He hops down from the bed to join Miguel in leaning against the wall. “I think God’s not so bad.” He plucks the cigarette from Miguel’s lips and takes a drag of his own. “Since he put me in here with you.”
Miguel snorts. “Yeah, God didn’t do that. McManus did.”
Alonzo exhales. “There’s a difference?” He opens his eyes wide, innocent, and is rewarded with a quiet laugh. He passes the cigarette back to Miguel, who fumbles it and drops it on the floor.
“Shit.”
Miguel leans down to pick it up, and Alonzo moves in ever so slightly, so that when he straightens, their faces are inches from one another. “What were we talking about?” he purrs.
Miguel doesn’t pull back, just blows smoke directly into Alonzo’s face, making his eyes sting. “So what about you?” he asks.
“Moi?”
He gestures to his eye. “What happened?”
“Ah. Long story.”
“I got time.”
“Mmm. Not a very nice story.”
Miguel laughs. “Mine was?”
“Well, I like listening to anything that comes out that pretty mouth.”
“You got a fucking one-track mind, dog,” but he’s smiling, swaying slightly back and forth.
“Whatever you say, hermoso.”
Miguel reaches up suddenly to lightly touch the side of Alonzo’s face, next to his dead eye, and it takes every ounce of self-control not to flinch. “Tell me,” he says.
“Why do you want to know so bad?” Alonzo replies, stalling. Not bored anymore, but not interested either.
“I told you about mine. It’s your turn.”
“What’s it worth to you?” Alonzo traces the line of Miguel’s scar, from his cheekbone to his lips. He hears the end of the cigarette drop into the toilet and extinguish with a quiet hiss. “What'll you give me for it?”
“What do you want?”
“Already told you what I want.”
Miguel’s hand is still caressing his face, likely without Miguel’s full awareness – another common side effect. One that Alonzo had hoped would be a little more prevalent than the talking, but he isn’t going to complain now. Miguel looks up at him, eyes wide in the near-darkness, and Alonzo starts to lean in slowly –
A sudden loud rap on the glass makes them both jump. Officer Murphy shines a flashlight at them, makes a “move apart” gesture, locking eyes with Alonzo specifically.
Alonzo takes an exaggerated step back and blows him a kiss. Murphy rolls his eyes and moves on. Alonzo sighs heavily.
He doesn’t need to look at Miguel to know the moment – if there had been one at all – has been lost.
“What happened to me is a piece of glass, about this big.” He holds his index finger and thumb apart, a little over 2 inches. “Doctors told my mother if it had penetrated any further, I would have died. If God hated me, I would have been banished from his earth then and there. So I, at least, must be here for a reason.”
He turns to face Miguel, whose swaying has grown more pronounced, too high to process even half of what Alonzo’s just said – as expected.
Alonzo smiles.
“Ven aquí. I got something to show you.”