home
all writing
about me
contact
guestbook
links
Heaven’s Mouth was stretched out before them like a long scar. It was vulnerable and it was beautiful, and most importantly, it was theirs.
Tenoch didn’t say anything for a long, long minute. His hair was in his face when he stared out at the humps of the green-grass hills, and the sand was hot between his toes. He hated Julio for leading him into this in the same way that he loved him desperately and dearly. This had to end. This beauty and this lust and this adventure had to suddenly grind to a halt, as would Heaven’s Mouth meet with a peninsula or a bay and abruptly change into something different – something that was just sand and sharp grass and bitter air. The beach became paved streets became neighborhoods became boring, bland nothing.
“It’s just like I imagined,” Julio finally said. “You know; the kind of thing in books and movies.”
“Saba should move here,” Tenoch joked, but felt self-conscious. Julio didn’t even acknowledge he had said anything. “He could smoke up all day.”
Finally: “We should move here.”
Tenoch shrugged, thinking of his home: plated glass windows and the satin covers on his bed and the massive bright-blue rectangle of pool. The tower with a view over half of the town. His mother’s linen suits and her constant overpowering reek of incense. His father’s suits and briefcase of European leather.
“I wouldn’t like it here.”
Julio choked on his next breath. “What do you mean you wouldn’t like it here?”
Tenoch tried to remember his father’s irate face and shouted, angry words. He tried to remember that he was going to have to take Economics in college: fucking bullshit. Bullshit. He only wanted to write. Supply and demand made him want to vomit. He tried to remember his mother’s coddling overbearing presence like the smell of incense on her clothes but all he remembered was sitting stretched out on the sofa, doing schoolwork, the windows open, smells and sounds drifting in, music loud, Leo absentmindedly humming over the sound of his homemade rave, the smell of bread and chicken and chocolate and Saba’s harsh, sticky marijuana.
Tenoch crouched down and ran his hands over the sand-like-silk, amazed as it coursed over his fingers in miniscule grains. It was cool and sweet like Luisa’s smile, warm underneath.
“It’s beautiful anywhere, you know?” he mumbled to Julio. “Anywhere. Not just here. We only think it’s beautiful because we’ve never seen it before.”
“Fuck you, Charolastra,” Julio laughed, kneeling beside him and fisting sand into the back of Tenoch’s swimming trunks.
Tenoch jumped up, yelping and laughing. Welcome distraction – Julio could always be counted on to provide one. Julio didn’t do ‘awkward.’
Julio cackled: “You sound like Ceci when she’s on the rag! Stop being so sentimental. Just enjoy it.”
Tenoch shrugged, still smiling. “I miss being a kid, when I could do that, and I didn’t have to justify everything.”
“So does everyone.”
“No one misses it like I do.”
Julio looked like he was about to say something but then he just shook his head. “I miss it, I guess, but it’s all part of growing up. Whatever.”
They were sitting on the sand together, soaking up sun, side by side. Tenoch could feel the silken sand getting into his skin: between his fingers and toes and in his hair and behind his ears and on his thighs.
“Charolastra,” he sang. The word crested his wave of breath and made Julio giggle happily.
“Race-you-to-the-shoreline!” Julio crowed, forcing it all into one rushed, giddy syllable. “Last-one-there-has-to-suck-me-off!”
“What if you’re last?” Tenoch cried breathlessly, running down towards the glossy line where the water met the sand. It molded under their feet, so helpless, and it made Tenoch feel powerful and king-like. I could rule Heaven’s Mouth, he thought. I could be king here, on a throne of knife grass, and Julio could be my queen.
Tenoch splashed to a stop in an oncoming wave, washing away all the sand and shrieking with victory. Julio came in second place only a few seconds later, slamming his lean body into Tenoch’s and throwing them both down into the lukewarm water.
“I won!” Tenoch yelled, spitting out water and rubbing it from his eyes. “I won!”
Julio smirked. “I let you win, asshole.”
They stood panting like dogs only a few feet from each other. Their eyes met and held and Tenoch wondered how the blue of the water reflected so well in the hazel of Julio’s eyes.
Julio dropped to his knees in the water and it lapped at his hips.
“Charolastra,” he murmured. “I love you.”
He reached for the tie on Tenoch’s swimming trunks. They dropped, Tenoch stepped out of them, and they drifted away on the surf.
“We can live here forever. We can rule here. This is all ours. This is all ours, Charolastra. And you are my queen.”