Code Switching by Lee Benoit

	CODE SWITCHING For four years, Haven and his dancer-lover Tadeo have been living their happy-ever-after, raising their son and making a discreet home in Sister City. When a friend and patient dies of a rare pneumonia, their secure life is thrown into disarray. Attacks -- and support -- emerge from unexpected quarters as Nurse Haven Tucker returns in this story set at the dawn of the AIDS crisis.   CODE SWITCHING is a sequel to HAVEN.
CODE SWITCHING is part of Torquere Press' Charity Sip Blitz, a collection of 22 stories celebrating the theme of "Changing Lives" and benefitting The Matthew Shepard Foundation. Stories are available singly or as an entire collection. Buy the e-book Buy the entire collection
Visit Lee Benoit's GLBT Bookshelf main page Visit Lee's web site	REVIEWS Coming soon!

 Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the story:

“Tío, Tío,” a little voice shrills from behind the screen door. “Papa make pandas!”

I dredge up a smile and deny the inordinate hold gravity seems to have on my feet. I force myself to bound up the three steps to the little porch of the bungalow I’ve shared with Tadeo and Suyai for more than four years. That Suyai is truly Tadeo’s and calls me ‘uncle,’ that everyone in our neighborhood assumes Tadeo’s wife was my sister, that we never seemed to disabuse them of the notion, none of those things matter on the other side of the porch door.

Tadeo and our son have been busy -- there’s a lopsided Christmas wreath on the front door with salt-dough renderings of the three of us fastened on with baling wire. At least I hope that’s the three of us -- if they were trying to make a Nativity scene, the Blessed Virgin could really use a shave. I open my mouth to praise the decoration and find my arms full of wriggling four-year-old instead. The oak-framed screen I should have replaced with a storm door months ago slaps my butt and we nearly go sprawling.

“Where’s my sugar?” I growl through my laughter, getting myself a snootful of little boy neck, and an earful of little-boy shriek. “Is it here? No?” I drop the duffel containing my work clothes and tip Suyai over to buzz his quivering belly. He wouldn’t understand, but he’s exactly what I need after the day -- hell, the week -- I’ve had. I carry him toward the kitchen, making the most of my after-work kisses. “How about here? I need my sugar!” Suyai howls with laughter and some little bit of the wretched pain of the past ten hours tears free inside my gut.

By the time Tadeo ambles out from the kitchen grumbling about us letting the heat out the open front door, both Suyai and I are in tears. Tadeo’s dark eyes narrow, and I realize I can’t hide from him the difference between our son’s tears of laughter and my tears of grief. Our eyes meet over Suyai’s riot of curls and in an instant, my lover’s there, his kitchen-damp hands relieving me of my welcome burden and taking a quick kiss -- a promise to relieve all my unwelcome burdens as soon as can be.

“Hey, babe,” I say, relief and love and gratitude conspiring to bring fresh tears to my eyes. “I hear you’re cooking pandas in there.”

Tadeo blinks once and then catches on with a brief grin. “Empanaditas. No bears. What happened?” He adds the last in an undertone, just for my ears.

“Gregory died.” Any more than that will have to wait until later, and even then, I’m not sure how much I can bear to share with my lover. Tadeo went through enough horrors before and after escaping Argentina’s Dirty War to last any sane person a lifetime.

The MacNeil/Lehrer Report drones in the background as I catch up on Tadeo’s and Suyai’s days. Things are blowing up in Lebanon, things are shaping up in Poland, Tadeo’s dance studio is still looking for performance space, and Suyai wants to fly the Space Shuttle when he grows up. It’s normal and homely and solid and I love every minute of it. I don’t want to ruin it by talking about Gregory.

“Those have got to be the best pandas you ever made, babe. Thank you.”

Tadeo smiles. He hates to cook, which is a shame because he’s good at it, especially when he makes a dish from ‘the old country.’ I call it that to tease him.

A very messy dessert of apple slices dipped in Tadeo’s homemade dulce de leche prompts a bath for Suyai, and I clean up the kitchen, all the while thinking of other ways Tadeo and I might use the sweet stuff later, when we’re alone. The traditional one bedtime story turns into two when I join them in Suyai’s little bedroom, then three when I prove helpless against big brown eyes and a guileless “please, Tío, please?”

“You are such a sucker,” Tadeo says after goodnight kisses, night-light lighting and one-more-glass-of-watering. “And you’re stalling.” He knows me so well. Too well.

“Lucky for you, I’m a sucker for your big brown eyes, too,” I remind him. I follow Tadeo into our room, shedding clothing as I go. I try to leer as I say it, but I know I’ve failed when Tadeo fixes me with a sharp look.

“You have had many bad days at work lately, mi amor.” His voice, soft with concern, threatens the control I’d won back during supper and Suyai’s bedtime.

“He died alone, Tadeo. They wouldn’t let Dennis see him. There was no family, not even the Cadorets.” Mem and Pep Cadoret are the oldest residents of our neighborhood, and they’d adopted pretty much everybody on and around River Road that didn’t have other family. They’d adopted me and Tadeo and Suyai the day we moved in four years ago, and they’d always been friendly toward Greg and Dennis even though everyone knew they were queer.

“You told them?” Tadeo asked and I nodded. The old couple had been heartbroken.

Supple arms enfold me and I finally let loose. I sob out the story of Gregory’s strange cancer and the pneumonia that took him in the end. “He was our age, Tadeo, barely thirty. And he wasted away like an old man in a famine.”

Tadeo makes the same soft chucking noise he uses when Suyai skins his knee or misses Sesame Street. With his voice in my ear and his hands skimming up and down my back, I finally feel strong enough to admit the worst thing of all.

“Tadeo, he’s not the only one.”

© Lee Benoit

KEYWORDS: gay book, gay bookstore, gay fiction, gay literature, gay writers, gay book reviews, m/m, manlove, gay romance