Miguel Linan

Miguel Linan is a Filipino immigrant living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He is currently pursuing a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing.

Celebrities

The heat tints everything sepia, like an old Western. Everything is just another shade of sand and brick.  The sweat from my forehead boils, and my shirt clings like a thousand thirsting leeches, sopping wet. Even through my jeans, the heat of the stoop reminds my skin that it’s there. Ant sits behind me. It’s hotter inside our one bedroom flat, so we make do out here. At the end of the street, a group of kids are trying to break a fire hydrant open, seeking refuge from the oppressive heat. All the little boys take their shirts off and wipe their brows while the girls fan themselves with their collars. The biggest one out of all of them—this kid with the curliest, most beautiful head of hair—he’s on his knee working the hydrant with a wrench while the other kids watch and holler. The hydrant stands resolute, choosing not to budge.

      “Bob.” There’s always a pause after he says my name, like he doesn’t bother to finish forming the sentence in his head before he starts saying it. “You ever thought about getting on TV?”

      I never look at him when he speaks to me. He’s always taken issue with that. Anthony takes things like that personally. It wouldn’t be so bad if he isn’t always using it as a reason to swing at me. He isn’t big or anything like that, at least not physically. I’m a good four inches taller, but he’s three years older and has a voice that sounds like gunfire. He doesn’t have any trepidations about hitting first, either. He always taunts me with that, too. He says he took all of mom’s testosterone when she was pregnant with him so when it was time for me, she didn’t have any left to give. He says that’s why I’m such a pussy.

      “Ant, it’s too hot to mess around asking questions.”

      “All I did was ask a question.” He slaps the back of my head. I already knew it was coming and know better than to stop it. The last time I tried to duck, he said I was fighting back—disrespecting him. He punched me in the mouth for it. My upper lip was swollen for the better part of a week. That was around the time our mom started working nights, so she didn’t have the energy to stop it. She just called out from the kitchen and told us to quit fighting. I’m not even sure she knew what Ant did to my mouth. He made me hide it from her.

      “Man, that hurt,” I yelp out. I palm the back of my head and rub it in small circles. I still don’t look at him. My eyes are stinging, and I don’t want him to see.

      “Quit being such a faggot. I didn’t even hit you that hard,” he tells me dismissively, swatting the air. “For real, you ever think about being an actor on TV?”

      This makes me look. “What makes you ask?”

      “I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it,” he says to me. “I think I can make it out in Cali, maybe do the acting thing after graduation. I don’t think it’ll be too bad.”

      I look down and put my hand over my mouth. I chuckle once or twice. He falls quiet and I follow suit. The kids at the end of the street are the only sound I could hear. My ears are shrieking fire, but not because of the heat.

      “Something funny, faggot?”

      Time stops, and my throat goes dry. He hasn’t hit me yet, but all the same, the taste of copper wets my tongue.

      I try to sound as unafraid as I can. “Nothing, man, you just caught me off-guard.” I can tell he’s clenching his fists behind me on the stoop. I know he’s doing it—clenching his fists then spreading his fingers, ad nauseum behind me, like a threatening stretching exercise. He does that when he’s mad. I see it a lot more than I want to.

      “Quit laughing then, bitch.”

      “Dude,” I start and stop.

      “What?” It sounds more like a bark than a question, and I feel him lunge forward behind me. I try not to, but I flinch. He’s looking for his excuse, a way to say I started it. That if I would just respect him more, he would do the same for me.

      “What, faggot? You said something?”

      I take a breath before speaking. My body tenses without permission, desperate not to buckle. My shoulders rise up and I hunch forward involuntarily like a gargoyle on our stoop, trying to protect my neck. The impulse to shield myself jumps from synapse to synapse, nerve to nerve from my brain to my arm, but it lies dead across my knee like it knows to do.

      Ant goes for the back of my head a lot, but he would never admit it. When we were younger, we were in the neighborhood grocery store that our cousin used to steal from, and Ant shoved me into a wall. I hit my head on a fire extinguisher and I bled. Not much, but it was enough that we both noticed. Ant told me it was my fault; I should’ve had more control over my balance. He took me to the bathroom and wiped my head tenderly, and I promised not to tell.

      “I just want you to stop calling me that. I’m sorry.”

      “You going to do something? Turn fifteen last week, acting like you can take me.” He’s starting to talk louder, faster, and I catch some of the kids down the street looking at us. The kid with the wrench cranes his neck to look. “What, you think you can take me now?”

      I try to say no, but the way my voice shivers in my throat lets me know that it’ll break. I shake my head instead. The air between us sizzles in wait.

      “Fuck you, Bobby. I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want,” he says after a pause. He huffs, and I feel him shift back into a recline. “Say that again and see what happens,” he says under his breath.

      A few minutes pass in tense silence. I want to go back inside our apartment, but Ant is between me and the front door and I don’t want to face him, so I stay where I sit like a soldier pinned. I remove myself by watching the kids working away on the fire hydrant. Every once in a while, one of the girls tells the kid with the wrench something loudly— a suggestion, a question— and I hear how they’re progressing. Something about the wrench not being tight enough, it’s too rusted. One of them leaves the group and walks back to his house—the dull orange one with the chain fence and tied-up dog. He probably left to get another one. Maybe he got bored of the hydrant and isn’t coming back out.

      “You never answered my question,” he finally says. I smell the hesitation in the corners of his syllables. He’s been wanting to ask again for some time now, I can tell.

      “What?”

      “About being on TV. You ever think about being on TV?”

      I think about it for a moment, turning it over in my head. “I haven’t really thought of it, man, to be honest with you,” I tell him measuredly. “I mean, I think it’s good work if you’d get it, but I don’t think I want to act.”

      “No, not acting. Maybe like a talk show or something. Like the ones at night.”

      “I get nervous talking to women, Ant.”

      He scoffs. “Big fucking surprise. ‘Bobby Sanchez is going to die a virgin.’” I just shake my head and wait for him to say something—something hurtful and unwarranted, but he doesn’t. “I don’t think they’d cast me in the parts I want, Bob.” He pauses, like always. “I don’t think so, now that I think about it.”

      I tiptoe around my words like a thief on broken glass. “What made you think that?” I look around to see his face finally, and he has this sad expression that he gets when it’s the first of the month and mom has a calculator. He stares at the kids at the end of the street. They’re making progress with the hydrant, but the kid that went home isn’t back yet.

      “Just…” he trails off and sighs. “Anyone ever tell you that you should be in movies?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “Okay, well, anybody ever ask you what a dog tastes like?”

      It takes me a long while to answer. “Yeah.”

      “Yeah,” he says more to himself than to me. “Yeah, that’s why I think that.” He turns his head towards me, but he keeps his gaze on the kids from the corner of his eye, like they’re some looming threat waiting for the right time to hurt him. I want to look away from his face—the one that looks like mine and my mother’s—but I don’t. I make sure not to this time.

      “Bobby.” Our eyes finally meet in fleeting recognition, like seeing a friend’s face stretched over a stranger’s. “Guys that look like you and me? We don’t get top billing.”

      I understand.

      He turns back to the kids like nothing’s been said, and the distance between us once again grows and falls still. I marvel at the fact that he spoke to me—not just saying things but talking.

      “Comedy.”

      “What?”

      “That’s the thing, Bob,” he says, pleased with himself. “Comedy. That’s how I get in.”

      A loud plunk and the sound of rushing water pull our eyes to the street corner. The kid with the wrench got the cap off the hydrant, but the other children aren’t showing cheer. They’re all just fighting through their resignation for the front of the hydrant, taking turns getting wet with dirty city water. If they’re happy, they don’t look the part. They just look relieved and impatient and ungrateful. One of them cuts in line in front of the kid that opened it, shoving his way through.

      “Yeah,” Ant keeps on, “the side kick gig. Class clown bullshit. Good money still, probably.” Nodding, he says, “I’ve done worse for less.” I know what he means.

      “Ant,” I say, “y’know, there’s a process to show business, right? You have to have agents and fuck old men for parts, that type of thing.”

      “Shut up, Bobby. You don’t know shit.” I don’t know why, but I look at him. I expect him to be glaring, but no. He has his head back, his throat points at the sky, eyes  closed. He looks so at peace. He looks like my brother.

      I look back at the kids on the street corner. The one who got the hydrant open is wet now, but he’s not in front of the spray, just looking at the smaller kids. He’s standing with his hands on his hips and his head to the clouds, looking relieved that he got it over with. To his right, the kid who left earlier walks up with a big wrench, obviously struggling with the weight, looking dismayed that he went through the trouble.