Saffron Farm
Sergio’s lovers give him many gifts. His two-bedroom luxury apartment is a recent milestone in his relationship with Cass; he’s only lived there for a year and it has yet to feel like home, but he doesn’t complain. He knows what it’s worth. Cassie, his sweet Cass, swings through once a month for a long, languid weekend, those three-day visits when time is suspended and they don’t fight at all, even about things that matter, like COVID or the police.
The building is as old as Sergio’s grandmother and has the same eccentricities, squawks, and complaints. Over the last year, Sergio has learned that his double-paned windows shiver in their frames on windy days. The cleaning staff own two vacuums; one of them has a faulty motor that keens in a high pitch, stabbing through the foam in Sergio’s headphones. The couple upstairs brawl like enraged elephants and drop books or hand weights on the floor as punctuation to their fights. The building across the alley is residential too, and the noises of its tenants float across to Sergio. He can hear bacon frying on Saturday mornings, after the garbage truck rumbles into the alley to compress trash bags and pour bottles into its pod in a cascade of breaking glass. The neighborhood dogs take turns barking.
One night, a woman wanders into the street and screams for over an hour, her hideous voice snaking through Sergio’s wine-colored shantung drapes and penetrating his high-end earplugs. He dreams that his mother is falling from the roof again and that her swan dive takes her past each floor, hundreds of floors, such a long drop that she has time to pull out her cell phone and dial Sergio as she descends.
“I’m dying,” she croons when he answers.
“No,” he says, and though he knows she’s been dead for years, he still pleads with her.
“I can see you,” she tells him, and in the dream he looks out his window and sees her hovering for a millisecond in her pink quilted housecoat, her hair in that coral scarf she wore to keep her curls tight. One of her terrycloth sandals comes loose and floats past her, moving at a separate velocity.
He wakes up the instant she hits the ground and is afraid to get out of bed, as if putting his foot on the imported throw rug will somehow make the dream real, though it is already real, she is years dead, and he is alone and hundreds of miles from the place he buried her. He texts Cass, who is awake and in Tokyo for a real estate deal.
I miss you, they say to each other, though it isn’t true for either of them outside the moments they share. As soon as Cass is gone, Sergio knows he doesn’t exist, the way his mother doesn’t pervade his waking life anymore. He brings other men home to the apartment Cass gave him and feels no guilt about it. Their arrangement is a shared form of make believe; Sergio doesn’t ask Cass how he spends his days and nights when he’s away, and Cass is charming but minds his own business.
I dreamed about my mom, Sergio types. The bubbles appear on his screen, disappear, then return, resolving into words.
It was only a dream.
I know. It seemed real.
I’m on my way to a meeting, Cass replies, and though Sergio knows him well enough to know that he cares and would never inflict pain intentionally, he can’t help but be let down by the businesslike, brief tone. He wishes Cass would be sympathetic; if Cass were here, he might even get a glass of water from the kitchen and lay his hand on Sergio’s brow as though testing for a fever. But Cass is not here and neither is his mother, and Sergio feels adrift in the receding tide of his nightmare.
We should go somewhere together. I need a break from the city, Sergio says. It’s too loud here.
OK.
Someone screams outside all night. No wonder I can’t sleep.
OK, Cass writes a second time.
Sergio falls asleep with his phone in his hand and wakes when its cheerful alarm vibrates against his palm. In the daytime, he feels foolish about his behavior. He’s grown, yet he behaved like a child. He swipes through his apps as he makes his morning coffee and notices an email from Cass.
I’m sorry I couldn’t talk, it begins. The tone is hard to read; Sergio notices, in times like this, that although they have been intimate for some time, they do not know one another in the way he would like to be known. He wants Cass to comfort him with some magic words, but that is impossible. Cass does not know Sergio’s secrets. He understands Sergio’s needs; for a while, that seemed like enough.
I planned a getaway for next weekend, Cass continues. No city noise for a few days. The place is upstate and belongs to a friend.
Thank you, Sergio says, though he knows nothing about it. He just wants to go somewhere quiet. As he presses the blue arrow to send his message, someone starts a chainsaw in the church garden across from his building. As though in a companion piece, someone else revs a weed whacker. Sergio rarely takes his earbuds out, removing them only when he showers or needs to clean or adjust the gummy tips for a more comfortable fit. He is aware of the world’s intrusions even through the multiple pads of foam and high performance rubber. The chainsaw twangs against his eardrums, its tone changing as its teeth lacerate the magnolia at the center of the garden. Before everyone was supposed to stay inside, Sergio used to sit in that garden in that tree’s shade, picking up the massive, waxy white petals it dropped like prayers in his lap. He understands that maintenance is a form of sustainability but it still makes him angry to listen to the mechanical butchery, to imagine the tree’s limbs shaking against the vibration of the single stroke motor and whirring teeth.
Sergio accepts Cass’ calendar invite and checks the weather up by Southampton, the nearest town to where they will be going. Sun, colder than the city, clear. He works aimlessly for a few hours, clicking and dragging files into emails that he sends without thinking. He is good at his job. He does well on autopilot, when processes and tasks are clearly defined. Periodically, he selects a new music algorithm to pipe into his ears. He sings along with Diana Ross and Dusty Springfield. His voice buzzes against the plates of his skull, transmitting the Supremes across the network of his bones.
The next night, the screamer is back. This time, Sergio can make out the individual words in her shrieks. He gives up on sleep and curls up in his Siberian goose down comforter, his phone glowing in his lap like a pale blue campfire. He texts Enrique, Todd, Aaron, and Mason in order of most available to least available based on their time zones. After exchanging a few thirst traps, Aaron asks for a call.
“Tell me how you’re touching yourself,” Aaron purrs. Sergio’s hands are already wandering, gripping and stroking under the bedding. He traces his fingers over the fur on his inner thighs, the way Aaron likes to touch him, and combined with his lover’s voice, he manages to invoke the feeling that he is not alone and that his hands are Aaron’s hands. His breathing thickens.
“I’m close,” Sergio chokes, just as the woman in the street hits a new octave in her miserable aria.
“Jesus, what was that?” Aaron asks. “Did you get a cat?”
Usually, Sergio would just laugh off any interruption, turning a momentary inconvenience into something sexy. He’s playful like that; he’s become an expert at ignoring the parts of reality that are ugly or violent, especially the ones directed at himself. To reimagine the grotesque, threatening glances that inevitably come his way any time he leaves the house is a survival skill. He notices the same ability in his lovers, who pivot easily from disaster to desire, weaving their experience into a shape that is attractive, a shape anyone could love. But this woman’s screams are unbearable and too clear to shake off.
“Help,” she howls. “They took everything. My money is gone.”
Sergio takes his hands off himself and pushes his earbuds deeper into his ear canals. “It’s this woman. She does this every night.”
“Nobody called the police?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Aaron pauses, considering. “You’re right. That would be a terrible idea.”
“They only respond to life and death situations now, anyway. She’s crazy but she isn’t hurting anyone. Just making it impossible to sleep.”
The voice rises again. Aaron laughs. They both know the mood is spoiled.
“It’s like a banshee,” he says, and Sergio follows along with this new thread of conversation. He resents missing out on sex; his drive has been so numb lately, flattened by the stress of simply existing in such extreme conditions. However, he’s glad to feel close to someone and although Aaron is practically on the other side of the planet in his Oahu surf house, standing on the second floor balcony while his husband and children sleep inside on the other side of the sliding glass doors, Sergio pretends that the space between them can be folded. They reminisce about the stage production of Macbeth they saw together in San Francisco last year, when it was safe to fly. The screaming woman is like something out of Shakespeare, Aaron suggests. One of those witches.
“The only time I can’t hear her is when I’m underwater in the bath,” says Sergio.
That becomes the entry point for another fantasy, in which they share the tub, soapy hands exploring above and below the water. Sergio feels the pricking longing again, and his body responds eagerly to Aaron’s seductive narrative. This time, he finishes in messy spurts, shot into his cupped palm. He can’t help whining with relief as the release comes. He didn’t realize how badly he needed it.
“Good boy,” Aaron says, their customary ritual. “Lick it up for Daddy.”
Sergio’s mouth is chalky the next morning, but he just drinks more coffee than usual and gets his traveling case down from the closet. He hasn’t left home in ages; the idea of exposing himself to strangers frightens him. He rolls up the French poplin tie that Cass likes to use as a blindfold. As he folds the cable knit sweaters and corduroys he’ll take with him upstate, he chooses a playlist of ambient urban noise. Part of his mind wanders through Tokyo in a summer thunderstorm, taking side streets and walking under awnings that refract the pattering raindrops with startling clarity. Tomorrow, Cass will send a private, sterilized town car to collect him and drive the three hours north to the house at Saffron Farm. Sergio collects the objects that will help him give himself to Cass over the long weekend. He enjoys it, but he understands what it is he’s doing and he knows what he gets out of it.
When the towncar driver texts him that they’re downstairs, Sergio descends to the street level for the first time since February. He is wearing both sets of noise blocking gear, tortoiseshell Ray Bans, an N-95, and a hat with a veil that obscures the greasy July sunshine. His fingers tremble, so he squeezes the handle of his case tighter. The latex gloves are making his hands sweaty, but he won’t have to wear them for long. The driver takes his luggage without touching Sergio and opens the rear passenger door for him, a chivalrous flourish that serves the double purpose of making sure Sergio has no contact with any surface other than his own body. The driver’s mask obscures his face, but he nods courteously to Sergio and returns to the wheel, pulls smoothly into the street—which is almost devoid of traffic—and points them toward the interstate. As they exit the city, Sergio removes his bulky headphones. He rolls the window down a few inches and the clean, humidity-softened breeze caresses his face. His veil presses against his skin. He takes out his right earbud and drops it into his lap. The wind blows through his veil, washing him clean. He can smell the country changing as they make their way north. The industrial stink of Manhattan is replaced by the brackish scent of river land, places where birds nest and shit and hunt decaying fish among the cattails. He remembers that, outside New York, the world continues rotting and falling in love as though nothing was happening to people. Out here, there is no apocalypse.
The driveway to Saffron Farm is marked by a dented mailbox, painted white, and several tall clumps of leggy purple cosmos. Although Sergio expected something pastoral, the drive is paved and the first acre is all lawn, uniformly trimmed and so verdant that it looks like a freshly dyed rug. There are no animals or agriculture, as far as he can tell. An immaculate arbor of wisteria twines around the porch of the pale yellow house—saffron colored—and Cass is waiting on the steps with his hands in his pockets. He is unmasked and his open, expressive face looks so naked that Sergio averts his eyes, as though avoiding something obscene. He can see Cass’ midriff and bare shins and feet and is shocked that out here it is summer, too hot for long pants, and men run around uncovered as though nothing is different at all about this year, nothing is at risk.
They wait to embrace until the car vanishes back into the road. Cass’ mouth is overwhelmingly warm and damp against Sergio’s neck, making him feel as though a starfish has glued itself to his skin. He wriggles in a combination of pleasure and horror. Cass pins him with strong arms.
“You’re overdressed,” he hisses. The words bring gooseflesh out on Sergio’s neck. Sergio can feel the heat of Cass’ breath on the other side of the paper mask. His veil is pulled back, sunglasses askew.
Sergio asks the question they have never asked each other, before this, because there was no need. “When’s the last time you were tested?”
Cass snuffles against his shoulder. “You came all this way just to sit six feet away from me, wrapped up like that? I’m fine. I haven’t been sick all year.”
“This is my first time outside in five months.”
“I’m always safe,” Cass says, soothing him, and in a moment he is being stripped of his protective clothes and gear and the air is a revelation against his body, those bare nerve endings that have been swaddled in fabric for most of the year. He knows Cass is lying, and that Cass has incurred too many risks just to be there at Saffron Farm, but he decides he doesn’t care. Cass is his quiet place; when they are together, the rest of the world—its plagues and its guidelines—cease to exist. He hears the maple’s leaves crowding against each other, whispering. They are the last two people on earth, hidden in a bubble of only natural sounds. Sergio’s eyes crackle with tears. Nobody is yelling here or slamming doors or breaking bottles in the alley. Cass guides him through the house naked and his body absorbs the textures of the wood grain, its Dutch blue tiles, the linen curtains, and the endless green view on all four sides of Saffron Farm. They make it halfway up the narrow wooden staircase, which creaks amiably under their weight.
Sergio is out of practice but his mouth remembers what to do in a moment and when Cass moans, he redoubles his efforts. When Cass withdraws and kneels behind him, he whines at the sharp sting as his muscles resist the pressure of Cass’ cock. They’re hurrying, which is stupid, since they have days here, but they’re greedy and it’s been so long that they push their luck and Cass enters him with a yelp of triumph.
“Say my name, bitch,” Cass says as he begins to stroke his way deeper. “Nobody can hear you scream out here. Scream while I fuck you. Scream my fucking name.”
Sergio’s throat is raw later, and Cass brings him chamomile tea with honey in it, a concession to Sergio’s tolerance for rough treatment. He is always good at aftercare. Sergio feels as though he has been pitted; he jokes, when Cass kisses him, that he feels as though he’s been deflowered again.
“I didn’t know it could grow back,” he says.
Cass flicks his eyes at Sergio’s legs, which are clearly outlined under the Egyptian cotton throw. “You’ll be limping back to the city when I’m done with you,” he says.
“Idle threats.”
“A solid promise,” Cass says, and with a gentleness that belies his words, how savage he can be in tender moments, he lays the back of his hand against Sergio’s chest and smiles.
They bathe in the sunlight all afternoon, in the living room and behind the house, where two wooden lounge chairs with striped canvas slings wait for them. The birds sing briefly and then recede with the sun. Just beyond the hedges, less than a few hundred yards away, Sergio discerns the salty stink of the Atlantic as it roils on the sleazy shore. A brown pelican slopes by silently, beak stuffed with herring. After months cloistered in his apartment, Sergio finds the stillness unnerving. He palms his earbuds, though he doesn’t need them; he feels incomplete without them, as though they are freshly pulled teeth and his ears are empty sockets. He considers putting his headphones on, but he is mindful of Cass and their few, stolen days together. None of his other lovers know he is here, not that any of them would be curious; that is not the nature of those arrangements. Cass is different, because of the apartment; he invests in Sergio instead of just sending transient gifts.
At dinner, Sergio looks in all the cabinets while Cass cooks. The house, Cass says, belongs to some friends—work people, or distant acquaintances, not the kind of people Sergio will ever cross paths with. Cass has all kinds of loose affiliations. Rich people, Sergio notices, slush around in a near anonymous soup. They swap partners and cottages with equal carelessness. Sergio has saved for years so that he can afford to catch the virus. For him, money is an insulating wall that separates him from his origins and the basic problems of poverty, but the wall is never thick enough, no matter how many dollars he pads it with. He will never be rich, so he will never be safe. Rich people do not get sick. They do not have to think about virus loads, air circulation, or quarantine. They age comfortably, in elegant environs. They do not check their bank accounts before buying groceries. He jokes to his friends that he is just redistributing the wealth when he pays with Enrique’s credit card or lends one of Mason’s bespoke blazers for a snappy industry event. He would never be here on his own, he thinks as he reclines on the oak chair. His skin turns crispy and finally, he tires of listening to Cass read the funny parts from his Wodehouse novel and staggers toward the house.
“Leaving so soon?” Cass calls after him. “Come to me, my melancholy baby.”
Sergio ignores him and finds the medicine cabinet in the second largest bathroom. He swallows two Tylenol and a probably-expired anxiety med because his pulse is suddenly running very fast and he feels feverish. Does he have sunstroke? He looks in the mirror and tugs his eyelids in different directions, trying to see if the membranes are inflamed. His chest is tight. He has been away from the city for less than a day and there is so much quiet here that it presses on him. Even when Cass guides him upstairs and tucks him into bed he cannot rest and is rigid under the sheets. Cass watches him wriggle like a hooked trout and then gives up, flops onto the mattress, and reaches for the light.
“I’m still jetlagged,” he says. “Flying from Asia always makes me feel backward.”
Cass takes a few Ambien and rolls over, leaving Sergio alone to count the lightning bugs that flicker like faulty Christmas bulbs outside in the trees. He considers the word country, which was always used in a dismissive way where he grew up but now he sees it as a thing to be feared. The elongated vowels catch him in a honey drip and he can’t tell if it’s the Xanax or his still-climbing temperature; without the city’s soundscape, he feels like he’s in free fall, clutching at any stray rustle or creak to stabilize himself. There are no regular sounds out here, on this strange farm that is not a farm, fifteen miles from Southampton. He wishes there were frogs singing in the creek, as he recalls from one of his soothing nature playlists. He wishes it would rain.
Cass is snoring and beyond consciousness in every way, but Sergio is still afraid to risk waking him by rattling around and looking for his earbuds or accessories. He puts his fingers in his ears but that is somehow worse, as though he is sealed in a tomb and he jolts his hands away from his head in a panic, relieved to find that he can still hear Cass breathing. His throat tickles and he gulps it down, willing himself to be calm.
If only that banshee would come back, he thinks. He closes his eyes and brings to mind the woman’s ghastly voice. He can recall the phrases she shrieked night after night and though her words grated on him then, he feels his shoulders sag as he repeats them now, in the dark, like a Satanic mantra or a prayer.
All my love, he used me. The incantation seeps into Sergio’s skeleton. Although he can feel sweat beading on his forehead and slipping into his ears, he lies still, playing dead. He senses a faint vibration in his ear bones and knows that it’s his own voice, keening the words in a single pricking note, the all-important solo that completes the movement. That motherfucker. Ain’t nothing he didn’t steal from me.
Cass rolls onto his back and resumes snoring, open-mouthed. His growls are reminiscent of the morning garbage truck, and Sergio adds that note to his fantasy. Soon, he holds the whole shitty urban symphony in his imagination. He melts into the bed, lulled by his auditory vision. With his senses overwhelmed, Sergio drifts into unconsciousness. He dreams not of his lovers, not even the one who sleeps within reach of him, naked and precious, but of the magnolia in the park, which reaches to him with its white-flowered arms, murmuring, come to me, baby, come to me, come, baby, come.
Claire Rudy Foster (@crf_pdx) is the author of the acclaimed short story collection Shine of the Ever (Interlude Press, 2019). Their work appears in The New York Times, on NPR, in McSweeney’s, and many other places. Foster lives in Portland, Oregon.