3: Cicero spends the night
“To be clear, I’m just here to check out the room. I’m not committing to renting it.”
“Oh, spare me the pleasantries,” retorted Gabriel with a dismissive wave. “You haven’t passed the bar, no need to speak like one of those scoundrels.”
A loping stomp brought him up the stairs, and the door unleashed the stench of rotting fruit onto the sidewalk. Cicero was hurried inside and greeted by stale air in the foyer. As his eyes adjusted he found the source of the smell: a bunch of bananas, black with yellow spots, were melting into the countertop like an abandoned snowman.
“Are you gonna throw those out?”
“I’m making banana bread this weekend.”
“Right.”
Oak-wood floors stained in indiscriminate splotches came into view, then a sectional couch with each cushion sunk in on itself. Gabriel fell onto it, and it deflated further in defeat.
Cicero waited before venturing, “So… the room?”
“Ah!” He said with a sharp breath and a pained gesture. “Down the hall. We’re running a see-try-buy motion. Make yourself at home, spend the night, and come find me in the morning if you want the place.” He closed his eyes and started rubbing his head back and forth on the back of the couch, smearing in fresh pomade grease.
Cicero, concerned, wandered down the hall and opened the first door to his left. A staircase headed down, book-ended by another door, and a strange warmth and the distant sound of rap—is that Trippie Redd’s Hellboy?—drifted up from the room. He took a step down, mesmerized the thick heat emanating from below…
Two big hands landed where his shoulders connected to his neck and slammed him sideways into the wall. The stair railing connected with his hipbone and he yelled in pain, his front foot slipping on the slick stair. Gabriel’s wet hair was on his shoulder, his mouth hovering over his ear, breath hot like the room below.
“Wrong room. You don’t go down there. You’re across the hall.”
He was released with another shove, collected himself, briefly considered the fact that $900 rent wasn’t worth living in fear of a lunatic, and headed for the door without a word.
“Well, don’t leave yet—you haven’t met Ezzie!” Gabriel’s voice had regained its assertive humor.
“I’m not interested.”
“EZZIE!”
He waited for a second, then bellowed again: “Ezzie! The cis boy is here!” and looked over grinning.
“Or I can call you sissy, if you prefer. Sissy’s good.”
“It’s Cicero,” he said, immediately regretting speaking at all.
“Well, offer’s pulled. Cis it is. Cicero’s a name you earn, champ.”
One foot was already outside when angelic voice from above sang, “Coming!” He turned imperceptibly; Gabriel perceived it.
“Damn, just the voice? Most people cave when they actually see her.”
She appeared at the top of the staircase at the back side of the living room, an evergreen with curls of redwood hair pouring down the sides of a portrait-perfect face. What struck him most was how much information she transmitted in a dozen steps, defying entropy. She moved with the grace of a classical pianist; she exuded the warmth of an old wood fireplace with a cast-iron grate; she carried herself with a divine disposition, the kind which made everyone feel as though they had only to keep on, precisely as they were, to earn her respect and attention. And he had the sense that anybody who had ever met her would, under duress of nature, be forced to admit precisely the same things.
“Hi! I’m Esmerelda,” she said in that voice which ordained every word.
“Cicero.”
They shook hands.
“Well—I’m sorry I wasn’t there to welcome you in. Gabe’s not the best of hosts. But he told me you’re here about the extra room. Would you like a tour?”
“Yes! I’d love that.”
So off they went. She showed him the living room and the kitchen, where the stains and the smells now seemed to denote a home deeply loved. She pointed out Gabriel’s bedroom with a cordial “I’ll spare you the details”. They wandered up the staircase, which opened to another hallway run with a beautiful rug in deep maroons and burgundies. Paintings of ships and horses hung on the wall in beautiful bronze frames. At the end of this hallway was another door, to Esmerelda’s room, which “is always open, if you need anything”. They walked past the windows where the serpentine houseplants grew from beautiful ceramic pots, and they were vivid green and the soil was wet with care.
Back downstairs, they entered another bedroom. A light wooden twin bed frame sat squarely in the center of the room, with a thin mattress and a folded pair of sage green sheets. A few feet of space stretched along each side of the bed, with a small cabinet on one side. The only other furnishing was an old mirror with a dented frame, balanced precariously in a corner.
“You’ll sleep here on the main floor, in between us! If you want the room, that is. Gabe and I were talking about it earlier today, and we thought you could spend a night—to try it out—and let us know sometime tomorrow if you’d like it? There’s one more place upstairs I’d like to show you before you decide,” she said. The crows scattered as they stepped onto the balcony moments later.
“I like to come here in the mornings,” she said, leaning out over the creaking railings.
“I see why.”
Down below the Panhandle paths carved through grass like a river through a canyon, the people little rocks.
“Gabe’s a little crazy, but it’s worth it in the end,” she said suddenly.
That was all the assurance he needed.
“I’ll try out the room.”
She smiled warmly.
Later that night, Cicero looked at himself in the stained old mirror. Once-blond hair and once-bold ambition had both matured into the pale browns of adulthood. All that running and all that cycling, and still his body remained wanting for any description beyond the vague impression of having solidified into its current form from a more viscous material. Still his mind felt like the bananas downstairs: mush. What did he have to lose? He made the bed thoughtfully, crawled under the covers, and fell asleep.
Six o’clock the next morning found Cicero still fast asleep; Esmerelda walking the familiar curves of the Panhandle, her hands clasped behind her back, watching a family of song-sparrows peep their heads around a tree; and Gabriel sauntering along the same path as Esmerelda, in the same direction as Esmerelda, but in a deeply darkened and disturbed state of mind.
His ears were ringing from the music they played at Madrone, from which he had been forcibly removed from minutes earlier. He wore his standard going-out fare: dark jeans, a tattered black varsity jacket, a dying cigarette, a simple gold wedding band. The gloom cleared from his eyes when he saw, walking not ten yards in front of him, a beautiful young woman looking at some birds.
He looked down at the empty bottles of beer he was holding; they would not do for an introduction of this sort, but a quick glance about yielded no trash can. What to do? To the right, a homeless man slept on a bench. The decision was made, then rationalized: as he passed the bench he discreetly flicked one of the bottles behind him. It indiscreetly shattered.
The shattering startled the young woman, who turned about and cast him into the fire—it was Esmerelda! How did I not recognize her? He cursed, thumbed the wedding ring into his left hand, removed the dying cigarette with his right hand, and shoved both deep into the pockets of his jacket.
“Ezzie!” he shouted, opening his arms wide in her direction.
“Gabe,” she replied, walking towards him.
He brought his arms together and folded them across his chest—unfolded them—pointed at her—and finally returned them to his pockets.
“Fancy seeing ya-up this earrrly!”
She smiled softly, then glanced at the smoke billowing from his pocket.
“Oh this?”—he removed the cigarette—“I know you don’t like the smoking, it’s just—tough morning and all that.”
“You’ve got to stop.”
“At least I keep the damage to myself,” he commented derisively with a gesture towards the broken glass at the feet of the stirring man.
“John has been sober for several years.”
“Oh, god. And I thought he was just another run-of-the-mill homeless drunk in the neighborhood. You’re telling me he’s recently relapsed?” He sighed, then added: “how do you know his name?”
“I talk to him,” she said.
This was a foreign concept to Gabriel.
“Like, conversations?”
She let this question hang in the air as they continued walking back home.
As they arrived at the front door, Mrs. Franklin, out for her morning circumnavigation of the neighborhood, turned the corner with her German Shepherd. The dog caught the distinctive scent of generous pomade and stale cigarette smoke, cocked his head, and barked.
“Oh, Arthur! Bless you. Bless you!” said Mrs. Franklin.
Arthur barked again, viciously, and took off at a full sprint. The leash whipped tight and pulled Mrs. Franklin in a tumble to the ground. Gabriel crouched, raised his remaining bottle high above his shoulder, and screamed primally.
“Stop!” cried Esmerelda.
It was the particular sound of her voice, which had already staked a claim deep in his subconscious, which interrupted Cicero’s idyllic sleep. He groggily wandered downstairs and opened the door to a great spectacle:
There before him was Gabriel, swinging a glass bottle back and forth in lumbering jerks like a great dancing balloon outside of a discount gas station, tired tentacles of hair whipping about. There was an elderly woman, strewn on the sidewalk like a discarded cigarette. There was Esmerelda, mortified. And there was a great big German Shepard, leash flailing behind, teeth bared, bounding towards Gabriel at full speed.