Deportees
by Walter Lawn
“I just so much wanted to kiss you,” Morgan said using a more intimate word, when they met once again a year later in the hotel bar. After several drinks it was clear that no amount of alcohol was going to comfort either of them.
“And what do we do now?” Cameron asked.
Neither one had an answer.
What had started then as drinks after work, a half-guilty respite from the usual rush to be good parents and spouses, had surprised them both with an unexpected surge of lust. They had known it would be a betrayal of both their spouses. They had sensed, too, it would be a betrayal of their friendship: the sapping of a foundation of trust, shared tastes and distastes, and a certain amount of wit and charm, by the introduction of the uncertainties of sex and romance. Anticipation, fear, affection, lust, and guilt in uncertain quantities are an acquired taste, and neither Cameron nor Morgan had been sure it was one they would ever come to like. Nor had they been sure they wanted to give it up.
Either fortunately or unfortunately, then, both their phones had rung before they had so much as kissed. Gabriel and Deiondre, both coming home from picking up kids, both sorting through the stack of ads for restaurants, repairmen, and day spas, both opening the government envelope to find deportation orders with their names on them. Not their spouses’ or children’s names, just their own: Gabriel. Deiondre.
At the hotel bar, Morgan and Cameron had barely paused to say goodbye.
The year following was a marathon for which neither of them was in training, but they ran it together. The habits of friendship served them well.
Phone: “Laurie says her lawyer got her husband a stay. And he’s willing to do pro-bono work.” “For people like us with jobs?” Silence.
Coffee shop: “What is this?” “Samizdat. How to find the right embassy official and how to bribe him.” “Do you think it will work?” “Doubtful.”
Phone: “They’re called ‘Documentation Fees.’ When you go to the courthouse, bring at least $500, better $1,000. Cash is best.”
Phone: “Keisha’s only four, and what do I tell her?” “The truth, I guess. That’s what I’ve tried to do with Beth and Donnie.” “They’re older. And even so, how much can they really understand?” “I can’t really understand.”
Coffee shop: “There’s an Assembly of God church with a mission to pray for people under deportation orders. I’ve given them Gab and Deiondre’s names.” “Have you come unscrewed?” Tears, and eyes lowered in shame.
Cameron and Morgan abandoned their friendship, becoming instead partners in a startup whose sole product was to be the stay and reversal of the deportation orders for Gabriel and Deiondre.
They never got to market. Their company went bust.
Denied visas, they could not leave with their spouses. Each one, nominally a good citizen here, was persona non grata there.
When Morgan and Cameron met again in the hotel bar on a summer Saturday, Deiondre and Gabriel were months gone into the silence that separates countries planning war. Their children, variably with age, sex, and time of day, were depressed, angry, tearful, and acting out.
Morgan and Cameron were much the same, and when Morgan said, “I wanted to kiss you,” Cameron snapped.
“And what do we do now? Drink? I at least want our friendship back.” Cameron set the empty glass on the bar. “I can’t lose you too!”
Morgan signaled the bartender for a refill.
“How can I ask you to trust me,” Morgan said, “When I’m not sure whether I could have worked harder, thought smarter, maybe just stayed up a little later each night? Maybe I gave you a disastrous bit of advice. Maybe you did to me.”
Cameron called for the check. “We used to enjoy complaining to each other about people who back their cars into angled parking spaces, or stop to read their iPhones in revolving doors. Now all we think about is injustice. You can’t build a friendship on passion.”
Of years’ habit, Morgan and Cameron split the tab. They walked out of the dim-lit bar and through the lobby.
“If we’d been lovers we at least could break up,” Morgan said.
Their eyes met askance. After a moment, they both smiled. Neither was yet ready to laugh.
“Wit,” said Morgan. “Or a stab at it.”
“And charm will follow, god willing,” Cameron added.
“They’re a start.”
A bit unsteadily, they passed through the outer door and stood blinking and sneezing in the unexpected light.
Walter Lawn writes poetry and short fiction. His work has been published in Lily Poetry Review, Every Day Fiction, and River Poets Journal. Walter is a disaster recovery planner, and lives outside of Philadelphia.