Soon

   His body entered the water slowly and was soon covered in foam that smelled of vanilla. He sat down on the edge of the enormous Jacuzzi and just closed his eyes and pulled his head back. Adam was trying to relax after the party he had thrown, a luncheon in honor of all the donors that had decided to give money to the hospital his foundation ran. They were all nice people, always smiling and nodding and shaking hands with one another. Adam knew most of them really well, from other events and from social encounters, and he knew most of them wee awful people.

 He took advantage of their guilt to fuel his philanthropic endeavors with all the money they had to give which was a lot. They were owners of huge companies and brands and taking a thousand dollars out of their bank account was almost unnoticeable. Their guilt came from the fact that most of them were always doing something behind close doors, whether it was having an affair, or having links with organized crime or having some sort of sickness or condition that they didn’t want anyone to find out about, among other reasons.

 It’s not like they knew Adam knew but rather than they used any social service available to atone for their sins and guilt. For Adam, who was a young businessman and also the owner of several companies, that had to be taken advantage of, instead of potentially loosing that money to other “causes” like prostitutes or alcohol. He didn’t have to threaten or to convince anyone, they just did what he expected them to do and that had always been the case even when his father was alive.

 It had been five years ago that his father had died and had left him in charge of every single one of the companies he owned and also in possession of most of his estates. Of course, his siblings had attempted to fight this will but he soon clarified no one would be kicked out of nowhere and there would be no fighting among family members. He distributed the estate and was sure everyone was represented in the various businesses they had. That way he earned his family’s trust and also the respect of their community of wealth.

 In time, with his keen eye for business, he managed to win the respect of every single company owner in the country and was able to prove to them that his young age was not a downside of who he was but rather and interesting and potentially key characteristic. After all, his father had died when he was just twenty-seven years old and many in the companies and among his family thought he wasn’t mature enough. He had an older sister and his dad had partners who were more experienced. But the will of his father was respected and he ended up being what they all needed in order not to let everything be lost.

 However, he wasn’t perfect himself. It was not that Adam had any obvious flaw but rather that he had too much interest in his rivals and friends. He had many of them watched by private investigators, forming kind of a team that revealed to him every little dirty secret they all had behind close doors. This gave him the advantage in every business negotiation because, although he would never blackmail anyone, he knew how to use those secrets in his own advantage. He was truly obsessed with getting to know everything about a person and wouldn’t let his investigators rest if they hadn’t found anything meaty.

 In that luxurious bathtub, he would often have a bath, as he would check all the files on his investigations. He was very adamant that if there wasn’t any interesting discovery in the first month, he normally left the person alone unless it was a current rival of sorts. He didn’t want to be using all of that to be a rat. Business was business and that’s what it was all about but personal things, very personal ones were just out of bounds. He had discovered, for example, how some people he investigated were HIV positive or had cancer. This for example was never used against them and the files he had were destroyed because that was personal.

 What he liked to find was something like a love affair, like some weird transaction with the mob or something like that. Both those things made people feel very guilty and guilty people are not good for business. It was very easy beating them in that arena where he had learned to excel from a young age, thanks to the tutoring of his father. He used those really silly secrets to make them tremble in their pants and from there his victory was already settled.

 The fun thing about it all was that Adam tried to be the contrary of all those rivals. First of all, he wasn’t stupid enough to do something crooked. He had all kinds of advisors and people working for him that would tell him if he was making a mistake or how to achieve something without the need of dirty money or cheating. If he didn’t saw an honest way to do something, he simply didn’t do it. He was rich enough so it wasn’t that bad not to win more money. He wasn’t driven by money because he had learned to control his thirst for power.

 Besides, he was very open about his life, both personal and in business and was always very clear that he didn’t answer to any one in his personal decisions and that only his family mattered in his business ones. That was it so he wasn’t the best media character, even if some news outlets loved to show some pictures of him hugging beautiful models, kissing men and women or having luxurious holidays in some faraway hotspot.

 Adam was not about settling, that was true. He wouldn’t marry any women because he thought that kids would come soon and he didn’t wanted children not to have a father. Because he was always away for business, was always focused on that and had only a few very well defined moments during the week when he could just relax. He didn’t think a wife and kids deserved that, even if it came with all the money and privilege he had to offer. His mother insisted that he got married to continue the line and have someone inherit all of it when he died. And she was right but he had no idea how to accomplish that.

 He had also thought of the option of marrying a man but that had the same problems, minus the conceiving part that would be replaced by the whole process of adoption or by them using a surrogate mother, which was his favorite option of the two. Any way, he wouldn’t have time for them and he wanted to be able to share everything.

 The bottom thing was that he needed to love someone and that didn’t happen. He had sex often enough and went into dates and was charming as a man could be, but no one had really made him think about them as a potential wife or husband. He was very nice and a complete gentleman with them but he needed someone that gave him something he didn’t have, that made him feel unbalanced but, at the same time, that made him feel like everyone with that person was worth it.

 Adam was not very big on the concept of love. He thought it more like an alliance of sorts were two people realize they have to be together because they work much better as a team. He knew many people like that, friends and family, and he had the image of his parents, who had always loved each other just like that, helping each other and being the best partners one could ever see.

 With the soothing sound of water around him, Adam realized that some day he would want children, that one day he would want to wake up and find someone he loved to smell next to him. He was only thirty two years old and thought that maybe it could happen the next day or in a couple of years but he was sure it would happen because, sometimes, he felt that need but it wasn’t as strong as it could be. He knew it wasn’t strong enough yet.

 He then stood up and walked naked towards a wall, where some wind blowers dried him up. He had to stand there like the Vitruvius man, feeling the soft caress of all that wind. Then, his mouth began to feel dry and the world around him started to get distorted. He felt dizzy and tried to hold on to the well but he just fell to the ground, a marvelous granite floor.

Our nature

   Alex had come to the lake before many times. His dad brought him and the rest of the family for fishing or camping or long walks to breath fresh air. His father had always loved the outdoors and it was one of the most important things he passed on to his son. Alex loved to be outside, not really getting why so many people stayed inside with their computers and other machines. He also had a computer and a cellphone but he could disconnect easily in order to enjoy the world outside. Normally, his day would include a visit to the park; at least a shot one, to feel less stressed and just relax for a while. But a park in the city still had pollution around and filth and he decided one day that his next holiday would be spent in the lake of his memories.

 He told his family he would go, hoping they would go with him but that didn’t work out as he planned: his mother did not like to leave home and she had never really been the kind to love dirt, so she passed but asked him to take many pictures. His siblings had similar answers, only less precise about why they denied his request. Something about the children, their jobs, a meeting… He decided it wasn’t his business and that, if they decided to come, he would be there. Alex planned to stay a three-day weekend, in order to really explore and live again those days where his father and him would walk for hours in order to photograph rare animals or find “new” places in the forest.

 The weekend began and he arrived very early on Saturday, leaving his car in the small parking lot that the national park had available for campers. There, Alex saw the first thing that had changed since the days of his father-son trips: the parking lot had been expanded and a lot of people were already there, mainly from the neighboring towns. Apparently they had all thought, like him, that camping was a nice plan for the weekend. He grabbed all of his equipment and was about to begin walking when a ranger stopped him and asked him if he was going to camp. That was a very stupid question, seeing what Alex was carrying but he decided to just nod. Apparently, spots were now assigned.

 He began walking, now with a map provided by the ranger, in which he could see the exact spot where he had been authorized to camp. His father would have been furious, as he had always liked to camp wherever he wanted, sometimes by the lake, other times by the river. But Alex decided not to complain and just thought of visiting his father’s camping spots later that day. When he arrived to his spot, he found out that at least five other tents were already up in that area. It was outrageous as in the past there were never more than two tents next to each other, and not only because of attendance but because of safety issues. But there was no one to complain to and going back to the entrance would be lost time so he just dealt with it.

 Putting on the tent was no easy task. He had forgotten that, back when he came with his family, his parents were the ones to do all the chores previous to the proper camping experience. Alex and his siblings would just play around the area until it was all magically done and they never really asked if they could help or how it was done. Alex tried for a whole hour to put up his tent but all the little sticks and the stakes and the proper tent were too complicated for him. He didn’t get the diagram that was in the instructions, that at least existed, and had no idea what to do next. But suddenly an older man from a neighboring tent helped him out without saying a word. In a few minutes the tent was up and the old man gone.

 He waited there, extending his sleeping bag in the ground, but the older man did not come out of his tent again. In the silence, Alex could hear the sound of a radio and realized his noise putting up the tent must have distracted the man from some game and that’s why he had gotten that much needed hand. When everything was in order, he decided to go back to the entrance and ask for another spot but he realized the number of cars in the parking lot had doubled and that would mean there were no good spots left. At least his was near the lake. He decided to go there next and hoped it hadn’t changed as much as the rest of the park. He even felt the trees were different, if not fewer.

 His jaw dropped the moment he reached the edge of the lake. Back in the day, only a handful of people enjoyed fishing and swimming there. The water was very cold so it wasn’t like many people cared for a swim. But now, somehow, everyone was in the mood. There were at least a hundred, if not more, people in the water. They were playing with beach balls and squirt guns, laughing loudly and eating all kinds of fast foods along the shore. Alex was surprised he didn’t see any vendors around, with the amount of people eating. Something he noticed was the absence of boats so he decided to ask a couple that was close about it. According to them, fishing had been banned in the park.

 So now, that was gone. He had brought his old fishing rod but now it was useless, as well as his binoculars in order to find birds. He had noticed no chirping or any kind of bird noises in the whole area he had walked through. He decided to go to the edge of the park and hope for a better perspective on things. He couldn’t get off the smell of ketchup and mustard and the images of fat kids crying and playing in the lake. That must be discriminative in some way but he didn’t mind. He was just hurt to see that a very dear memory of his childhood was being destroyed slowly by what was supposedly called progress.

 He reached the area that his father and him had explored so many times and he was happy to see it just like he had seen it all those years ago. No yelling and crying of children and adults here. Not the sound of music or cars. This place was the real forest, the thing for which he had come to this place. He walked around, taking some pictures with a small camera he had recently bought. He was even able to spot a couple of birds and was certain he had seen a deer but maybe it had been his imagination. Suddenly, he remembered a day with his dad in which, after a particularly long walk, they had discovered a small cave by a cliff. The place was beautiful, having a great view over the forest and a cooler environment in the summer. So Alex tried to locate it.

 He walked for hours, just like back then, trying to remember the trail from his childhood. After a couple of hours, he realized he was probably lost. He had found the cliff but not the cave and realized that it would soon be night. He decided to look for the cave one more hour and if he didn’t find it he would come back later. Then, he heard something. At first he thought it was the wind but then he realized they were human voices. Maybe someone was in danger; maybe they had an accident and needed care. He tried to follow the noises and only realized what was happening when he stumbled to the ground, twisting his ankle and looking at the entrance of the cave he had known as a child.

 But they were no children or parents there, only a couple of teenagers having sex. They stopped right when they saw his face on the ground. They screamed as they pulled up their pants and, from nowhere, the same ranger that had assigned him his spot appeared running. He told them to stay still and to walk in front of him back to the entrance. They took a while but they finally got there just as the sun was setting. The ranger and the others entered his small office and he asked what had been going on in the cave. The teenagers said Alex was a pervert that was watching as they kissed and Alex said that was bullshit, because they had been fucking and not kissing. The guard asked him if he had been looking at them for long.

 Alex realized the ranger was on their side, as he looked at him with disgust. He told the truth, stating that he had been looking for he cave because his father and him had discovered it many years ago and that he had stumbled to the ground because of a rock. His ankle was hurting very bad. But the ranger did not appear to believe what he was saying. He told the teenagers to leave and never to go back to the cave again as it was off limits. As they left, he stood up and went for a nurse’s kit, and tried to fix Alex’s ankle but it was already swollen and hurting more. As he tried to do anything, he talked, implying that he did believe Alex had fallen because of a rock but also because he had been too busy nosing around the cave.

 Alex stood up, inflicting a lot of pain onto himself. He told the park ranger the park had gone to hell as no one even respected nature, every single fragment been taken for tents and a lake full of fast food. The place had been a natural beauty and now it was just a shame, as it was his conclusion of blaming it all on a guy wit ha swollen ankle and not on the two kids that had taken the cave as a brothel. Alex forced his foot out of the office and, fortunately, he had his car keys with him. He just drove off, leaving his tent and other things behind. They were just a memory he wanted to erase and never go back to again.

Citrus fruits

   The fields of oranges were huge, covering many square kilometers. The best part though, was the smell of the whole place: it felt like it opened the nostrils and entered strongly into the body, making you feel more alive than ever. Here and there, workers picked up the oranges from the trees and let the ones that were in the ground for the eventual animals that came and ate them. Many machines existed to pick up the fruit but this farm kept with the usual method of using people, which were more careful. They had even go one more step further by hiring only women.

 It was funny to be at the gates of the farm in the afternoon, when the shifts ended, and seeing all those women come out, like a horde of soldiers coming back from a particularly tough battle. And it was exactly that as many times, the climate was particularly harsh. The sun was always a bother but they also had to deal with various animals such as bees and wasps, that every so often tried to make a hive in the area. The women had learned how to deal with them long ago and they rarely sent someone to the main house to ask for help. They could deal with it themselves.

 In the house there was only a first processing plant for the oranges, which selected the best of the best. But the curious thing was that rarely any oranges were thrown out because of their state. Those that were, however, were transformed into compost to feed the plants that existed all over the farm. The owner of the emporium was called Archibald Kostas. He was an English but with a Greek father and a German mother, an uncommon but effective combination as he had inherited all the good traces of both cultures.

 Archibald had been born in London. His family lived there because of his father’s work and they were happy it was that way because they way all of this differences would make him a better person and a more intelligent one. His mother was always very strict but loving and his father was the kind of man that always brought a gift for their children when coming back from work. Archibald had a sister called Athena, who was also an English citizen. His father worked in a company that owned many shipyards across Europe and that’s why they always moved and why they loved the sea. They had always lived close to it and they wouldn’t change that for anything.

 When he was a bit older, just before college, Arbchibald traveled Europe with friends and discovered how much he really loved the sea and what nice warm climates made for his body and normal behavior. When he visited the Alps or the cities along the Danube, he was miserable. Not only because of the lack of ocean but because the environment didn’t made him feel good. Some people said it was the altitude and other that he was too used to the same thing that he had lived all of his life but it didn’t mattered. He discovered what he loved and decided to pursue it. In the end, most people had no idea what they liked so young in life, so he guessed it was good it happened to him.

 Archie, as his parents and friends lovingly called him, received his degree in agronomy and decided, when he was only twenty-two years old, to fly down to Greece and settle there. Because it was the birthplace of his father, he knew the country very well and how the people were and what they liked. So with help from his dad he bought a good piece of terrain north of Athens and began exploring what would be the ideal crop to plant there.

 There were a lot of options but Archie wanted one that would employ many people of the region and also be good for them. He wanted the farm to be completely ridden of any chemical agents or strange artifacts that were used in the huge farm of Europe and North America. He wanted something big but more relatable, close to the people. Citrus fruits were a great option and most of them were cultivated the same way so if the farm got really big he could mix things up by having many kinds in one same place.

 He started with the basic citrus fruit, the one that everyone loved and that he knew would sell beautifully in the region: oranges. It took some time to have all the trees giving fruit but, when they did, he decided to hire workers from the region to help with the harvest. It was like that that it all began, with just a bunch of trees and some hands. Today, the farm spanned various hectares of not only orange trees but also other citrus fruits like lemons, tangerines, grapefruits, limes and many others.

 At first, the farm sold only the raw fruit but when his father visited the farm for the first time, some months prior to his death, he advised his son to also process the fruits in another plant and turn them in to juice. People love all those natural flavors, rid of the chemicals that most brands put on their liquids and it was time people had another option. They could start by selling some bottles on the local market and then see if people actually like it. If they did, they could began expanding to bigger cities and then the whole country.

 Archibald had achieved exactly that some five years after his father’s passing and, in his honor, had put a plaque next to the main gate of the farm to inform people that his father had always been a visionary, although frequently in the shipyard business. He had also been a great father and Archie would always thank him for being such a great guy, so relatable and supportive. Eventually, the juices that he sold all over Greece got the name of his fathers, Kostas. Every person in the region loved driving past the Kostas farm because of the smell that invaded the body and refreshed the environment nicely.

 Archie, however, had not inherited his dad’s ability to form a loving and caring family. The owner of such a great enterprise was also a lonely man after three divorces and the death of one wife that surprisingly showed no signs of wanting to leave him until she died in a car crash not very far from the farm. From those relationships, he had gotten two sons and one daughter but they rarely visited him, after living with their respective mothers for a long time. Those women hated him too much to tell anything good about him to their children and it was clear they all resented Archie, for no apparent reason.

 He invited them every summer, to the farm; in order to try to connect with them one more time but it was all a waste of time. They just didn’t like anything that he did, anything that he said. The only time he felt they were a bit sympathetic was when his mother died after a long and painful disease. He was broken and more alone than ever and seeing them in the funeral and staying some time in his house was comforting and he even go to think it would last but it didn’t. They were just being “nice” but they couldn’t keep up forever so they left and rarely came back.

When turning sixty, Archie had decided to stop looking for love. It had brought him nothing but trouble and preferred to live in peace in his farm, surrounded by helpers and workers that liked his company and that sometimes talked to him about the problems they had or about general issued that everyone had on their mind. Of course, he still liked to look at women but he had no intention of taking any of them as a bride. Anyway, he thought his looks had passed, being a thing of his early days so even if he wanted; looking for a companion would be very difficult.

 The thing that made him happier than anything else was walking his farm, seeing the workers do their job and feeling the scent of so many fruits. He would take a small bag with him and walk to the edge of the farm, which now reached a cliff overlooking the sea. He would sit there and take out of his bag a bottle of orange juice and picture of his parents. He always remembered the first time they came here and knew how proud they both were of what he had done with his life. The way they looked all over was like seeing children in a candy store, in a really huge candy store.

 He realized that precisely was the greatest achievement of his life. Not the farm itself, not his children or the millions of dollars won with the fruits and the juices, not even all that he owned. It was the fact that he made his parents proud and happy. It should be every son or daughter’s goal to make their parents smile and he knew he had achieved that. Unfortunately, he would never get to be proud of his children, as he didn’t even know them. He regretted it for a long time but then, he just didn’t care.

Birthday party

   Preparing a birthday party is always difficult and it get even more difficult when the person you are organizing it for is the least of your concerns. Friends and family. They are the real targets, the ones to please. Jim knew that Ari would like anything for his birthday but as it was the first one they celebrated together, he wanted to make it special. That why he had decided to invite every single meaningful person in Ari’s life and, of course, that meant inviting the parents and childhood friends.

 Now, they all knew about him being gay but some were surprised to know their friend was living already with a man. The phone conversations had been long and difficult but now everyone was invited and Jim just had to wait for them. They had to arrive just before Ari got from work in order to surprise him. Jim was a bit unsure about this, since it was likely that his boyfriend would not like the surprise. He was the kind of person that doesn’t like to mix business with personal, family with friends and so on. But being the special occasion it was, Jim thought that it was a good idea to have everyone be there for him, in one room, at least once.

  Jim, being as organized as he had always been, decided to organize every detail from early morning. Just after kissing Ari goodbye in the morning, he jumped into the shower and then called to a Spanish restaurant, where he had asked to have paella for at least twenty people. They confirmed his order and then he decided to go and pick up the cake and accompanying cupcakes to a pastry shop Ari had loved when he was a boy. There, a very nice lady gave some extra cupcakes to Jim and even gave him a cookie an some milk, to eat right there. He did exactly that, in order to please the lady and left fast after that.

 He then went to a wine store and bought six bottles of the same one but also some champagne, the same one they had taken at a recent new year’s party. He paid for that and returned home because it did not felt right to drive around with a load of bottles in the back seat, with the cake and at least fifty cupcakes. Jim organized everything in the dining table and was about to go out for some party supplies when the phone rang.

  At first no one talked and Jim was to busy thinking so he hung up immediately but the phone rang again and he answered it. This time someone talked: it was Ari’s father. Jim went white and cold in a matter of seconds and wasn’t able to say anything. There was silence for a while until Ari’s father spoke again and told Jim he wasn’t going to be able to go to the party. He said he was busy that day, helping some friends with some handiwork. According to him, he had committed to it days earlier so it was going to be impossible to assist. Then, not even waiting for Jim to say anything, he hung up.

 The sounds of the phone’s tone made Jim comeback to reality. He had always been afraid of Ari’s father and that’s why he hadn’t been able to say anything. Besides, it was obvious he was making up excuses, because he seemed to be coming up with things as he was speaking. Towards the end of the call, he wanted to say something, to demand for him to be there for his son, but he knew couldn’t just do that. He had tried to contact Ari’s father before but Ari himself had asked him not to do that. Ari’s parents were divorced and he had been estranged from his father since then.

 Ari’s mother was much more fun to be around. She had had several boyfriends after leaving Ari’s father and that seemed to have given her a new way to look at life. She was now very open and often asked them about advice, even in very intimate areas. Jim always laughed at it but complied and advised her the best he could. Lena, that was her name, had told him once that she only felt like a housewife when living with her former husband. She never complained because she loved taken care of her son and her husband but she did want more from life. According to her, that was the real reason she left him. That and the affair she had discovered he was having with, as he put it, the “neighborhood’s whore”.

 Jim was already in a store choosing plastic cups and plates when is cellphone rang. It was Ari. He was having lunch with his work buddies and had decided to call him in order to organize his birthday surprise. For a second, Jim thought Ari knew everything about the party but then he realized Ari was talking about their special time together that they always had in special occasions. Ari started telling Jim everything he was going to do with Jim on the phone. He only smiled and said nothing because in every aisle there was some other buyer and it would have been strange to start having “phone sex” right there.

 After hanging up, Jim realized he still lacked napkins and the candle for the cake. He was looking at some funny candles when someone pushed him against the display area. Some candles fell to the floor and Jim rapidly turned to the man that had pushed him and told him to fuck off. The man turned around and Jim realized he had seen him before but couldn’t quite remember whom he was or where he had seen him.

 The man got near and Jim was already clenching his fists. It was the man that hit first, right on Jim’s nose. Hurt and disoriented, Jim threw a punch and was lucky enough to hit the man’s stomach. He dropped his basked and started punching the guy and the guy punched him until some store clerks came in and stopped them. But of them had bloody noses and marks all over their faces. Jim had even ripped the guy’s shirt on the sleeve. Both men had no breath in them when they were stopped and separated. The police came and each one of them explained their version to the policeman who decided to let them go with a warning. Jim got to pay for his stuff and left right for home. He had no idea if he had anything else to do but he wasn’t in the mood.

 Driving back home, he remembered why he knew that guy in the store. He had been Ari’s former boyfriend, the one before himself. Jim had met Ari first when he was still with him but nothing happened between them then. It was only when they met again in a party, when Ari had already ended the relationship that their relationship started.

 He remembered the guy from that time so long ago and now they had gone into a fistfight in a party shop. The man had pushed him hard and Jim knew it was because he had recognized him. Apparently the guy knew about him and Ari and was jealous that someone was with his former boyfriend. Besides, it was obvious he had anger issues because who does that to another person in a public place? Jim knew he had thrown punches too but he felt nothing would have happened if the guy hadn’t turned around.

 Putting all the party stuff on the table, he reminded himself of the crazy look in the guy’s face. At one point, he even thought he wanted to kill him and Jim thought he was ready to do exactly the same for him. It had been a very animal like fight. After putting everything on place, he looked at himself on a mirror and realized he had a black eye and his lips had cuts. Besides, his nose was bleeding a bit. He found some glasses in order to divert attention from his eye and put some toilet paper in his nose. On the lips, only lip balm to make them look less crooked.

 Just then, people started pouring in and, luckily enough, no one noticed anything strange. He started hanging out wine glasses and just then the paella people arrived. The pan that they had brought was huge and it smelled delicious. They just had to put lemon on it and it would be ready. Most guests arrived early but Jim realized almost all of them were their friends or close relatives who they knew very well. All others, Ari’s college buddies and cousins were not there. The last person to arrive before Ari was his mother who had brought her best friend, a cute short blonde woman.

 Then, after 7 PM, the doorbell rang. Jim turned off the lights and people hid behind the furniture or just crouched to the ground. Then, the door was opened and Ari was smiling like a small child, happy to see so many friendly faces in his home. The last person to greet him was Jim, who gave him a big kiss and a hug. Ari noticed is bruises but told him he wasn’t going to ask anything that night. They kissed again and the party formally started. From then on, everyone ate paella and rank wine and chatted their ears off for several hours until it was time for the birthday cake, which was shaped like a big planet Earth because of Ari’s passion for astronomy.

 They were handing out pieces of cake when the doorbell rang again and it was one of the doormen. Jim gave him a piece of cake and the man thanked him but said he had come to give them a package a man had left earlier. He had being adamant about giving it later in the evening, so the doorman had complied. Jim received the package, a box and thanked the doorman. He went back to the table and gave the package to Ari. Everyone looked in silence as he took off the rapping paper. The box was a toolbox and inside was a toy, a Batman figurine. Ari’s eyes were watery but he laughed and kept opening presents.

 That night, when everyone left, Ari confessed to Jim that that gift had been from his father. He knew it because he had given him that Batman when he was a boy, in order to protect him when coming from work. Jim kissed him to comfort him and Ari did the same, just by the black eye which hurt and made them both laugh in their bed.