BAD MATH ROBIN PARKS

"Love the sand in my toes, how 'bout you?" I glanced over at Jacinto, who was already taking off his shoes. We had just gotten back from a trip to the beach, to Jacinto's uncle's restaurant, La Playa. My relief at being back home in the desert was tainted by the ongoing argument. I straightened out the blankets in the back of the pickup while Jacinto stretched his legs.

We sat in our favorite spot on the desert floor, between two Joshua trees, each with prickly limbs pointing in different directions. I studied Jacinto's reaction to my suggestion, knew he was thinking hard about it. I ached with longing for Jacinto, his graceful form perched on the boulder, the severe blue of California sky a backdrop to his black hair. I prayed to the trees to make Jacinto agree: no test. Never.

While Jacinto thought it over, he poked at the sand with his finger. A little gust of wind lifted a feather of his hair. I knew Jacinto was trying to envision the future, his sloe-eyed vision of the possibilities, but more importantly, the pitfalls, the dragons, the strangers with guns and arrows. If he had one at hand, I knew, Jacinto would at this moment be gazing into a crystal ball, his bottom lip trembling, the Fates and Furies circling madly.

I pressed my palms to Jacinto's cheeks, caught his dark, steady, worried gaze. I could feel his muscles tense, his jaw tighten.

"It's simple enough, Hyacinth. Do the math. Suss the proof. Line up the eggs in the basket."

Jacinto nodded, rested his forehead against my chest. "Say it again, Sam?"

I knelt on the ground and took Jacinto's bare feet into my hands. "It won't make any difference. At least, the kind of difference you think it might. Which is the whole point."

"But—"

"Because it's all the same thing, Jack." I massaged his instep, brought his feet onto my lap, pushed down. "A mere process of elimination. You've got two cowboys, right? One's got the blue hat, one's got the pink hat. Just kidding. The other one's red."

"Lavender," Jacinto smiled.

"You traffic in the shopworn, my dear. Anyway, two guys, two hats, one blue, one lavender. That's door number one. Then you've got two guys, two hats, but they're both blue. That's door number two. Then you've got two guys, two lavender hats. Door number three. See?"

Jacinto shook his head. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

I sighed heavily. "It does not matter what color the hats are. It does not matter who is wearing what. You've still just got two guys with two hats."

"Just? I'm crushed. And I still don't know what you mean. I am one of the guys, right?"

"Of course. That's what I tell all my friends. I say, hey, see my lover over there? Hyacinth? He's just one of the guys."

Jacinto reached out and I pulled him up into my arms, nuzzled.

He whispered, "Let's just get it over with, Sam. Quit chewing on it. Let's just get it done. Now, can we have safe sex? As in now?"

"Can we? Ah, such irony. Such pithy repartee." I kissed Jacinto's neck. "We may," I murmured. "We might. We ought to."

"Jesus fucking Christ, do you ever stop talking?"

I dragged Jacinto into the truck bed, onto the sleeping bag and crawled on top of him, covering him with my burly shoulders, my oversized hands and thick legs.

"Only when there are better things to do."

•

I walked toward the corner of the boulevard that led past the strip, past Delgado's Family Mexican Restaurant, home of my newly adopted career: waiting tables. Good enough for Jacinto and his family, good enough for me. I loved swaggering up to the table full of ladies in polyester, winking and nudging them toward the fish tacos, "crunchy in all the right places."

The afternoon was cooling, only 78 the digital bank sign blinked as I waited for the light to change. I leaned against a lamppost, trying to look sexy but missing, I imagine. Too many hours at Delgado's today, too many for this 45-year-old rapidly aging self.

I gazed down the boulevard, thought again about the miles barren of vista and feeling. Or so I had thought when the doc recommended getting away, far away. Palpitations, breathlessness, your heart is getting weak the doc said, and I drove my SUV away from Utah, away from the marriage and my regular life, to this arid town.

The street was filled as usual with passersby, tall and busty drag queens, hoards of touring families, an entire genteel class of closeted gay men and wealthy Republicans, although I still could not sort them out, thought perhaps they all—queens, families, left and right—had come, like me, to this scorching desert having followed some mythical signage in the queer shapes of prickly trees. Such a strange place, so quiet, so quiet, once out in the desert. I loved the dry windswept cholla-choked hills, the heat, the sun. And I loved Jacinto, was in love for the first time in my life.

I crossed the street and entered the blinding darkness of Tony's Pasta and Steak, sliding into my regular booth near the bar. I nodded toward Lou, the bartender, who poured bourbon neat and brought it over to me.

"Louie Louie, oh baby." I feigned a punch to Lou's shoulder.

"Knock it off." Lou lumbered back to his bar.

Jacinto was taking an order from five overly-tanned men swilling scotch. I admired Jacinto from behind, how the white apron strings crossed his narrow waist and dangled down his beloved backside, how his shoulders seemed like a single two-by-four, so straight across were they. That pain came, then, in the middle of my chest. I knew exactly what it was. Just a muscle sore from its workout. Ain't no cure, I hummed, ain't no cure.

"My friend, Samuel," Jacinto was telling the men, who were wringing him for insider tourist info, "we go together to the Sunday market." He was plying his version of a Mexican accent, though he was Puerto Rican and mostly a deserter. I loved the show, knew Jacinto was putting it on just for me.

"Samuel, my friend? He loves the Joshua trees."

The men knocked back their scotches, asked about golf.

"Oh, if you stay long, you will see many women golfers, all good friends of Dinah Shore."

The men liked this, thought they would get lucky. I hoped they would leave Jacinto a drunken pile of ten dollar bills.

While Jacinto strode back and forth across the dark, garlicky restaurant, I flipped through the brochure I had brought. The Ramona Pageant was coming soon, first week of April. It would be one year from the day we met, and I wanted to return to the scene of the luscious crime. It would be our anniversary present. Take our minds off things for a day.

Latex, latex. How crazy to end up like this, the paradise of heat locked inside a boundary, the worthless boundary. No boundary in the history of the world ever stopped anything. In fact, my awkward fumbling with the condom seemed to fuel Jacinto's desire, and he had more than once—to my childlike gratitude—ripped the thing from my fist.

Lou set another double in front of me, and the alcohol filled me with an unbearable sense of well-being. Fuck the fucking test, who cared? But Jacinto had insisted, bawled like a hungry baby, said it was not an option if we were to continue on, had to get tested, had to know.

I downed the bourbon, burning my throat. I had meant to keep it to myself, what finally, stupidly, occurred to me, occurred to me right in the middle of the fight: that only one test was needed. And what it would test was not reducible to a mere human virus. No, it would test the tensile strength of our bond, this past mid-life empyrean I had lifted into the moment I had spotted Jacinto at the soft-drink stand at the outdoor melodrama of Ramona. Spanish dancers twirling skirts, I wandered aimlessly while the pageant took a break, the tragic Ramona and more tragic Allessandro reapplying makeup in their tents, and there he was, a sinewy square-shouldered black-haired god, sunglassed and sipping a date shake. A little boy in a sombrero sat next to Jacinto. I took the place next to the boy.

All my life I had only considered this option in fevered, half-remembered dreams, and yet, while all else fell apart behind me—my marriage, my construction company failing in Utah—I knew, instantly, that Jacinto was the one. Small talk with the little boy, one of five of Jacinto's nephews, about family, about Jacinto being out his whole adult life, and soon it was only the two of us, heat like flame licking between us. I had believed when I was a child that Joshua trees pointed the way to heaven in every direction. Now as I walked among them on Saturdays, holding hands with Jacinto like stupid teenagers, I touched their spines to see if I would bleed, if I were still walking on this earth.

I shook the ice cubes in my glass, savored the cold in my mouth. The argument had been a bad one, probably the worst one. It was Jacinto's fear that started it. I could hardly stand the patent unfairness of my gentle and steady lover falling beneath the weight of such dire predictions, such bad math. I had raged on and on until Jacinto all but slugged me. I finally said it. "Only one test, Jack, me or you. Do you understand?" Did he understand?

Jacinto waved at me, his shift over, just some sidework to be done.

"Let me see," Jacinto slipped into the booth next to me. "Oh, Ramona. I didn't realize it was so soon." He put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed hard, then read the brochure.
" 'America's oldest outdoor drama.' Our anniversary, Sammy. Thank you."

•

We had decided at last it would be me, for no other reason than to end the fighting. So three times that week I walked up to the door of the family planning clinic, and three times turned and walked away, because each time I could not shake the illogic of getting tested at all. If I were to test positive, it would be an almost certainty that so would Jacinto. Latex would then magically disappear from our lives. Adios. But if I were to test negative, well, I had nothing left to protect so what did it matter? My heart was already colonized; nothing could part me from Jacinto's side. The immensity of the safety issue was nonsense: love was the most dangerous equation in the universe and I was so awash in the incendiary heat of love I could actually feel, every night, the earth swoon away from the sun.

•

Tuesday, enchilada night at Delgado's. While I waited for Jose to put up my orders, I surveyed the boulevard from the plate-glass window. The clinic was across the street from Delagado's.

"Order up," Jose called out, and when I turned to pick up the platters of food, I spotted Jacinto coming out of the clinic.

My palms broke into a sweat. Just stay cool. One platter at a time, one thing on your plate at one time. As Jacinto came across the street, I set the food in front of a party of three women. The door opened. The bells tinkled as Jacinto entered.

I swallowed hard. "Busy day, I see."

Jacinto fixed his gaze on me and for a moment, neither of us spoke. I heard the sound of the fryer, the click of fork to plate, smelled the cilantro, felt the floor beneath me, but nothing, nothing was more blood-filled and real than Jacinto's presence before me.

Jacinto nodded slowly. Then one of the women said, "Excuse me?" and I tore himself away from my lover's hypnosis.

Jacinto sat at the table along the wall, read the newspaper while I worked my shift. By the time I turned the sign on the door to cerrado, my pounding heartbeat had finally subsided and I felt I could reasonably sit across from my lover, who had actually entered the clinic across the street and put us both in harm's way.

But when I finally sat across from Jacinto, this beautiful man who had now pulled us both too near the flame, I felt sick with rage. Before I could speak, before I could say, do you not understand the concept of risk? Jacinto said, "Bad news, Sam."

And suddenly I felt nothing, my heart still as death. I did not even feel hate. I folded a napkin, pressing my fingertips into the folds. "Not possible. Global warming? That's as bad as news can get."

Jacinto grabbed my hands. "Listen to me, please? You were right. All along."

"You seem to be saying something significant, Jack, but just exactly what it is eludes me."

He sighed deeply, ran his fingers through his glossy hair. "Look," he turned the newspaper toward me. "The Joshua trees are dying. It's the drought. The friggin' endless drought."

The newspaper lay on the table before me, and I would have read the news if my eyes weren't filling with tears.

Jacinto pulled the newspaper back, pushed it aside. "They are being eaten from inside out. By thirsty rabbits."

"Don't make me laugh." Jacinto grabbed my hands again. I felt my heart contract, but resisted the urge to press it. "Thirsty rabbits? That's pretty funny, Jacinto. I must be rubbing off on you."

Jacinto smiled. "From day one."

"Ah, Allessandro."

"No, Sam. I'm Ramona. You never get that straight."

"I never do."

"Thank God," Jacinto said with an uncharacteristic irony.

"I do, dear. Every single blessed day."

•

That night, I could not shake the newspaper image of the trees—their bark flayed, the colonizing animals sucking the life from their limbs, the way the trees seemed to be toppling in slow motion, like me, like the crazy shift of sand beneath the boulevard, shifting, swallowing lives whole. I lay in the dark trying to steady my breathing. That pain, that familiar jolt to my heart, ever present.

"Sam, listen. Wake up." Jacinto was sitting up. "We should talk."

"No."

"Please just let me speak, Sam."

I rolled onto my back, knowing I could not stop myself from touching Jacinto's face, the swell of his mouth, the warm rise of his chest. "I'm sorry. It's—."

"Quiet, Sam, okay?"

I wanted to shut my ears to what Jacinto would say, because I knew it would be less than he meant it to be, knew that there was always too much life between the skin and the cells, between the bark and the moisture, to be uttered to the one person who needed to hear it most. Jacinto was speaking but I could not make out the words. All I could think about was how lost we had gotten. Where were the trees? Where?

I pulled Jacinto down around me. "The trees," I blubbered, "the trees."

"But Sam, one hundred years. Only one hundred years and they will be back. Can you last that long? Will you last that long for me? Por favor, my favorite cowboy? I will for you, I swear to God, Sam."

In the pitch dark, I felt Jacinto curl his body around me, slender legs beneath my heavy ones, fingers pushing under my back, head heavy on my chest, until I could see nothing, hear nothing except the pounding of my own heart, its stunning routine holding out hope, one beat at a time.