I came downstairs from setting up the bed in the back bedroom, taking my headphones off to hear the knocking on the door for the first time. I don’t know how long the knocking had been going on. The window in the front door of the old house I was renting in Weston, Vermont, to give myself some time to settle in to the village before buying, was frosted, so all I could see was the hazy form of a fairly bulky figure out on the covered front porch. It had snowed heavily the night before and all I could see other than the bulky shadow of a figure was a world of swirling white. The knock had been strong when I first heard it, but it grew weaker, almost plaintive, as I got to the foyer. I think it was the note of defeat that evoked that made me reach for the door latch.
I opened the door. “Nick?” I said, recognizing the older man with the white hair and beard, a thick red knitted scarf swathing his neck and shoulders. I knew Nick casually from the homeless soup kitchen I’d begun volunteering at down at the parish house next to the Weston Community Church on Lawrence Hill Road. I’d started helping out there once a week shortly after I’d moved from Savannah, Georgia, before Thanksgiving. It was a small town and there weren’t that many homeless here, so it hadn’t taken me long to recognize them all.
I looked beyond Nick to take in the sea of whiteness behind him on Markham Lane. This had been a really bad time of year to move to New England from the South. The snow-on-snow world had put me in a malaise where I hadn’t been able to move beyond getting the art gallery over on the square between the playhouse and the Vermont Country store stocked and open. Boxes and furniture still to be assembled were scattered all over the living room. Wanting something more steady and less isolating in my life during this moving-in period was a primary reason for signing up to help at the soup kitchen. Interacting with the homeless there thus far provided most of my interaction with other human beings in this snow-covered landscape.
“Good morning, Mr. Crawford,” Nick said, producing a cloud of frozen breath. “I was thinking that you had been so kind to me at the soup kitchen that you might have some odd jobs or yardwork you might like to have done for a bit of money.”
I stifled a laugh, looking beyond him at the world of snow where a yard should have been. But then I saw the shovel in his hand—the shovel I’d put on the front porch with the best of intentions—and the path that had cleared from the street to the porch. He’d done this while I was upstairs, at the back of the house, listening to The New World Symphony on my headphones, purposely closing the winter wonderland of New England out of my mind.
I took another look at Nick. I remembered him mainly because of the name and his looks and because we were moving into the Christmas holidays. He was an older man, and his white hair and beard and his perpetual rosy-cheeked smile had readily connected the name Nick with Santa Claus, although he wasn’t quite as fat as I thought of Santa Claus as being. His tattered clothes included a red scarf and sweatshirt under a tired-looking black raincoat, though, which served the image.
He wasn’t dressed for the weather by any means, his clothes being too thin and worn and his sneakers having a slit in the side that exposed a hint of red socks. He wore a tattered old raincoat when something much more protective was needed in the Vermont winter weather, although it looked like he had several layers of sweatshirts on underneath the coat. His hat was more a beret than anything you would wear in cold weather. He was trembling and his skin had a bluish tint to it. He wasn’t wearing gloves.
“You come in here right now, Nick, and get warmed up. I was just about to make some coffee. Come into the kitchen and have a cup.”
“I don’t mean to intrude,” Nick said, hovering near, but inside the front door. He wasn’t resisting being inside. His eyes went to the living room on one side and the dining room on the other and he clearly could see that I wasn’t anywhere close to being moved in.
“Here, give me that coat,” I said, taking it from him as he managed to pull it off his back. I opened the foyer closet door to hang it up, and there was Warren’s red ski coat and his fur-lined boots. The warm hat with the ear flaps he liked to wear on the ski slopes was perched on the shelf above. I’d purposely put them there to have Warren with me in this move. The whole move to Vermont had been to keep in touch with Warren. He’d been my professor and mentor—and my lover—at the Savannah College of Art and Design. We were together for three years—a year beyond my graduation. Warren had an art gallery in Savannah, where he trained me in buying and selling art. I think he knew what might be happening when he sent me on a buying trip to Europe. He hadn’t told me he was having a heart operation while I was traveling. He was gone before I returned, having died on the surgeon’s table.
He loved to ski, and we’d come to Vermont in the winter each year we’d been together. He’d ski and I’d read by the fireplace. Afterward he’d lure me out of the ski resort and down into the town to walk its few streets in the snow. That’s probably when I saw that the gallery near the square in Weston was for sale. Now I’d bought it and moved to Weston. I had inherited a gallery full of art—a lot of European period art—from Warren. I could have left it where it was in his gallery in Savannah, but the memories there were too much for me. The gallery I had required here in Weston had mainly sold Thomas Kincaid fantasy village “painter of light” oils and lithographs. I had no idea if broader interest art would do well here—but this move had been for Warren. He’d always said he wanted to live in New England. I never had said that. But this was for Warren.
So, I had his winter clothing hanging in the closets around the house even before I’d assembled the bookshelves from IKEA. And I hadn’t assembled much of the furniture from IKEA yet. I just now put together the bedframe in my bedroom and raised the box spring and mattress off the floor.
Nick followed me into the kitchen and settled down at the table there. The kitchen, at least, had been made habitable. I made the coffee.
“Coffee will be ready in a few minutes,” I said. “I was about ready to fix some lunch, though. Will you join me? It’s good to have company on a snowy day.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” he said. But he looked pretty settled in at the kitchen table and added, “I reckon it’s good to have someone to chat with most any day.”
I was surprised that other than his clothes being in tatters and not showing any signs of fatigue from shoveling my walk, Nick seemed to be clean and odorless. That was one thing I’d notice the couple of times I’d worked the soup kitchen at the Community Church—shower facilities must be hard to come by for these folks. Weston was a small town—a really small town regardless of its two mainliner businesses, the major catalog business, the Vermont Country Store, and the semiprofessional theater. I’d been told there were under six hundred residents in the town. And it had just a few permanent homeless, all men, not more than a dozen of them. The town did what it could to support them, but winter here was rough for even the hardiest, well-off residents. I’d already found that out, and I hadn’t been here more than four weeks.
I fixed two melted cheese sandwiches and warmed some tomato soup out of a can. Nick didn’t complain about the basic fare and polished off all I put on his plate.
“You’ll have to let me know what you want for shoveling the walk, Nick.”
“Oh, it was no bother,” he responded, not naming a price.
“I’m glad someone did it,” I said. “Snow’s not my thing.”
“And yet you came to Vermont,” he said, with a smile. “Escaping something?”
“Aren’t we all?” I asked. I’d talked with enough of the homeless guys at the church parish hall to know that’s what most of us were doing—those serving as well as those being served. He didn’t press on that.
“It was nothing,” he said, returning, I guess, to the shoveling of the walk. It wasn’t “nothing” for me, though. I could get to the mailbox now. There wasn’t anyone I was expecting any mail from, but it was nice that I could pretend there might be. For the three years Warren and I had been together, it was just the two of us. That’s why I inherited everything from him. He’d made it easy. He’d formally adopted me. “You could pay me back by letting me do some work around here for you—a couple of mornings a week. Minimum wage, of course.” Nick said, breaking into my thoughts.
“I don’t know that I—”
“You got IKEA boxes just sittin’ in the living room, I see,” he said. “You want someone to assemble that stuff for you?”
“Yes, I guess that’s a good idea,” I said. And it was. It was a very good idea indeed. At this point in life I felt like I required assembly myself. I wasn’t up to trying to follow IKEA instructions. And it would give Nick some productive indoor time in the cold weather. “Any particular mornings a week you have in mind?”
“Tuesdays and Thursdays would fit my schedule the best,” he said. “I work next door for Mr. Dunlop on Mondays and Wednesdays.”
“Mr. Dunlop?”
“Yes. Mr. Dunlop from the soup kitchen. You didn’t know he lived next door?”
I think I must have blushed. No, I didn’t know. Andy Dunlop was a good fifteen years older than I was, pushing forty. He was a tall, slim, professor-looking man. I’d noticed him because he resembled Warren. Quite handsome. Everyone seemed to like him, but he was a reticent sort of guy. I had no idea he lived next door. There was snow on the ground when I moved in here. I hadn’t had the opportunity—or hadn’t made the effort, I guess—to meet any of the neighbors yet. There had been knocks on the door I wasn’t in the condition to respond to and pies left on the porch, but I figured I had to get moved in and the world had to thaw a bit before I got too sociable. Volunteering at the soup kitchen was as far as I’d gotten. I wasn’t an outgoing person when I didn’t have to be. If you wanted the sociable me, you had to walk into my art gallery, and that wasn’t formally open yet.
“No, I didn’t know he lived next door. Seems a nice guy. Does he have a family?”
“No, just him now. There was a young fellow living with him, but he left. An artist type. Guess he used up whatever inspiration Weston gave him and moved on. Mr. Dunlop’s been sort of sad ever since, I think. Well, I know he is. We talk a good bit.”
“You talk?”
“That’s where I’m staying for the winter. He has an extra room off his kitchen and he lets me stay there and I do some work for him on some days at his office in the village—wrapping boxes and stuff for his business.”
I didn’t ask what Dunlop’s business was. I was already being too nosy, and Nick didn’t seem to have any brakes on what he’d tell me of what he knew. And if he’d talk of such things to me, a stranger, who wouldn’t he gossip to about me?
He all but told me that Dunlop was gay and his boyfriend had left him. That didn’t bother me, though. I was gay and my boyfriend had left me too. It didn’t seem to bother Nick either, which might be an invitation to open up to him about my loneliness to having a man in my life, but I was wary of getting into this with the homeless man. The ache was more than I could bear and Nick was suggesting my neighbor had such an ache as well. But it sounded like this Dunlop guy hadn’t had to bury his boyfriend like I had to do. OK, stop that, I thought. Memo to myself: stop feeling sorry for yourself.
“So, next Tuesday morning then?” I said as I rose from the table. I was signaling that it was time for us both to be going on about our business. “You’d have to come by 8:00, though. I have an art gallery to open. You’ll be here by yourself until noon. I’ll come home and feed you lunch before you leave. How does that sound?”
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” he said.
“That’s what wouldn’t be any trouble,” I answered. “That’s what will fit right in with my schedule.”
“Well, then.” He heaved himself out of the kitchen chair and we went down the hall to the front foyer. When I opened the closet and saw Nick’s totally inadequate, sad-looking raincoat there, my heart clutched. How did he manage outside with just that? Then I looked down at his feet—at his beat-up and slit sneakers—and I wanted to cry. It was an impulse that made me bring out Warren’s ski coat instead of the raincoat. “Here. As long as you are working here, I want you to wear this outside. You need something heavier.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” he said. “And what would you wear?”
“This isn’t mine,” I said. “It’s much too large for me.” But it wasn’t too large for Nick, and he could see that quite clearly—that it wasn’t mine.
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t want—”
“And these boots, if they fit. They’re too big for me too. They aren’t mine either. I can’t let you go out again in those sneakers.” I wanted to call them ratty, and almost did, but I didn’t want wound his pride either.
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” he said, but he was already taking his sneakers off. Both the coat and the boots fit him fine.
“You know, Mr. Crawford, you’re a very nice man. That’s what I told myself when I saw you at the soup kitchen. There’s a really nice man, Eddie, I said to Eddie. He pointed to Mr. Dunlop and said he was a nice man too, and he is. But you’re just as nice. I think you and Mr. Dunlop should meet—you live just next door to each other.”
“We do meet—at the soup kitchen,” I said.
“I mean, more that.”
I don’t know what I said. I was vaguely aware that Nick might be matchmaking, and I rebelled against that. I wasn’t ready to give up feeling sorry for myself yet—if ever. I was busy hustling Nick out at that point. It had hit me that I was giving away some of the last pieces of Warren I had. The reason I had IKEA boxes in the house was because I hadn’t brought any furniture Warren and I had shared. I couldn’t face the memory of even the furniture we’d shared. But in letting his ski clothes go I had been impulsive. I had put those things in the foyer closet to hold him close to me, not to give them away. I smiled at Nick, but it was through tears, and I could get him out of the house fast enough at that point.
This had all been a mistake, I was thinking as I trudged back to the kitchen to clean up from lunch. I didn’t like snow. It was Warren who wanted to come to Vermont, not me. And I didn’t want to be selling Thomas Kincaid, paint-by-the-numbers insipid nostalgia paintings either. What if the shoppers coming to the Vermont Country Store and looking in the windows of my gallery didn’t see what they wanted—the folksy village stuff that brought them to a Vermont country village?
Was I making a gigantic mistake? I bet I’d never see Warren’s coat and boots again. Worse, I’d probably have to look at them on each soup kitchen day and have to relive “Warren and me” every time I did. I wasn’t ready to let loose yet, and at the same time, it was a jab to heart each time I remembered. It wasn’t Nick’s fault, of course. I would have to adjust. But I obviously had more recovering to do than I had realized.
Memo to self, I thought again: Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Easier said than accomplished.
* * * *
“Are you some kind of crazy, Scott?”
“Yes, I think I must be,” I answered. It was Sunday afternoon, and I had to talk to someone. I hadn’t spoken to anyone for two days and I was seriously snowed in. I was standing at the window of my bedroom on the second floor overlooking the winter wonderland, complete with a couple of does and their bambis carefully working their way into the backyard from the tree line. Jeffery was just a guy I had known in college in Savannah who, like me, had stayed on in town, working at a bookstore while continuing to develop his art, and who, like me was a submissive gay. He had been the only one I could talk to about Warren, so he was about the only one I still was talking to at all.
“You’re going to leave him alone in your house all morning, two mornings a week? Have you gotten any references on this guy?”
Nick was scheduled to come for the first time on Tuesday. I had three boxes of bookshelves to assemble ready for him on the living room floor. “He’s a homeless guy, Jeff. He won’t have any references.”
“He could steal you blind—erase that. He probably will steal you blind.”
“This is rural Vermont, not big-city civilization, Jeff. There’s nothing here worth stealing. And I’m still in boxes. He’d have as much trouble as I do finding anything useful, let alone anything to steal. And he’s Santa Claus. Santa Claus wouldn’t steal anything. It’s almost Christmas. He’ll leave me gifts.”
“Yeah, right—like his dirty laundry to wash and fold. I think you’ve lost your mind.”
“Definitely,” I said. Jeff was absolutely right. I knew nothing about this homeless guy. I should be more wary—like those deer in my backyard I was watching. One of the does obviously was on guard duty. No matter where the fawns were, she maneuvered herself between them and the house, protecting them behind her flank, and she kept looking at the back of the house suspiciously—but never up to the second level where I was standing and talking to Jeff on my cellphone. After a few minutes, they moved off to the side, into the neighboring yard, the house where Nick had said Andy Dunlop, the guy from the soup kitchen, lived. I hadn’t been back to the soup kitchen since Nick told me about Dunlop, so nothing was happening in that scene.
I saw why the deer had gone off in that direction. Dunlop had hung some wreaths from his trees that appeared to be made of some sort wildlife food. The deer had found it. What a nice guy, I thought. That had been what Nick had said about him too.
“What’s this Santa Claus crap?” Jeff was asking.
“The dude looks a lot like Santa Claus. He seems harmless enough, and if you’d seen how cold he was and how tattered his clothes were when he knocked on my door, you’d let him in too. He shoveled my walk. You have absolutely no idea how cold it is here in Vermont at Christmas or how much snow we’re already buried under.”
“Did I ask you to move to Vermont, Scott? Speaking of going off your rocker. But you have partying lined up for Christmas and New Year’s, don’t you? A couple of ski parties, I’m sure, with athletic hunks.”
“Yeah, sure, Jeff,” I said. We both knew I didn’t. We both knew I had to be at the end of my rope lonely to be calling him. “The homeless guy will be good company for lunch those days,” I said.
“You’re feeding him lunch too? You are a pushover, my friend.”
“That’s me,” I answered. But as I hung up, the neighbor, Andy Dunlop, came into mind. He was the nice guy. He was feeding the deer in winter—the deer who had enough good sense to be wary of strangers, I was forced to add.
* * * *
I was on a ladder, finishing putting decorations on the Christmas tree in the Main Street art gallery, when the bell rang and a man entered at the front. It was Andy Dunlop, my neighbor and fellow soup kitchen server, who Nick had talked about and I’d done a lot of thinking about without having formally met him yet.
“Ah, entering into the spirit of the season,” he called out as I came down the ladder. He was standing in front of the Christmas tree I’d just gotten decorated.
“I happened upon the box with the decorations at home and decided it was time,” I said. I didn’t feel much into the spirit of the season, though.
“Yes, I understand that you’re my new neighbor on Markham Lane. I’m Andy Dunlop and you are, I think, Scott Crawford, recently from the sunny South.”
“Well, at least sunnier than here, that’s for sure,” I said, laughing. “And, yes, I’m Scott Crawford, art gallery owner in Vermont, with more hopes than sales thus far, I fear. We haven’t met, but we’ve worked together at the soup kitchen a couple of times.”
“Yes, we have. It was nice of you to step right into helping with the homeless as soon as you moved here.” I gave him a smile. I didn’t think I could come anywhere close to how good he’d been in serving people—and the wildlife here. “I like what you’ve done with the shop—the art you put in. What was here before was too insipid for me—too Vermont touristy.”
“But obviously what sells well here,” I said.
“Not too well, or Stanley would still be in business in Weston.”
“Well, that’s depressing,” I said. “Maybe I won’t last as long as he did.”
“This is low season. Come spring, your business will be booming. That’s one reason I came in. Isn’t that a Margaret Francis over there? It’s caught my eye every time I’ve passed by the shop. My business is just down the street from here. I love the Impressionists, and I think some of our contemporary artists are taking a good run at interpreting that while keeping their art fresh.”
“Yes, that’s a Francis,” I said, looking at one of the more expensive works in my store, a swirl of colors in blues, yellows, and whites that only an art connoisseur would recognize as being in the Contemporary Impressionist school. “You have an expert eye for art.”
“I guess I should,” Dunlop said, “although I wouldn’t know what end of a paint brush to work with myself. I am a book publisher—art books. AD Publishing, that’s me. Just down the block from here.”
“AD Publishing. Yes, I’d heard it was located somewhere around here. I didn’t know it was right in Weston, though. I was planning on trying to find your offices when the snow left.”
Dunlop laughed. “That will be some time away.”
“Yes, I’ve gathered that. I wanted to find you for more than curiosity.”
“I’m surprised you’ve heard of my publishing house.”
“I graduated from SCAD in Savannah. Your publications are well known there. Knowing your business was somewhere in Vermont was one of the incentives for me to come North. I hadn’t associated your name with the AD in the publishing house title, though. How amusing that we wound up living next door to each other.” Dunlop was visibly pleased by that. “We’re essentially in the same business and I was thinking we might combine our sales, at least here in Weston—unless you have a shop of your own in Weston, I could sell some of your books here.”
“That sounds like a splendid idea,” Dunlop said. “We put out a magazine of new available works. I could give your shop a page in each edition of that. Your outreach could go beyond Weston, and beyond Vermont, for that matter.”
“We’ll have to discuss the logistics of that,” I said, hoping that he’d suggest we go for coffee and do that now.
“Yes, we will,” he answered with a smile, but he added, “So, you wanted to find me for business. I rather hoped it would be for another reason.”
Time stopped and our eyes met. It probably was only for a couple of seconds, but it seemed like forever.
“I’m sorry,” Dunlop said. “That was forward. But Nick has told me a lot about you. He’s one of our homeless men. He does work for me and I give him a room for the winter.”
“Yes, I know Nick,” I said. “I was happy to hear that he had somewhere warm to go to at night in the winter. That’s very generous of you.”
“The possibility of combining of forces on art is a good one, and that’s the second reason I came in here,” he said, retreating to a safer subject. We were into two steps ahead and one step behind. It was tedious and tentative, but at least it was progress. “The two businesses would go together well,” he added.
“Yes, I’m sure they would.” I now was considering more merging than that. Our compatibility and shared interests were screaming at me. So was the look of him. I hadn’t been this aroused by a man since Warren. “We’ll have to discuss that further. You said that was the second reason you came in. What was the first?” Was he going to say he was interested in me sexually? Nick had given more than a hint that the man was gay and dominant. I had every reason to believe that Nick had same the same to Dunlop about me. I hadn’t been wrong about Nick’s gossiping—and likely not about him trying to be a matchmaker, as well. I couldn’t resent him for that, though.
“I mentioned it already,” he said. “The Margaret Francis on the wall over there. How much is it?”
“I have it marked for $8,000,” I said, “but as a gesture of a new sales partnership arrangement, I could let it go for $7,500.”
“I’ll take it,” he said without batting an eyelash. “It would be valued above the $8,000 in catalogs, I’m sure. How about $7,750 plus my treating you to coffee over at Sally’s Place sometime?”
“How about now?” I asked, with a laugh. “My treat to seal the art deal.” He gave me a big smile.
We talked a little about business over coffee, although that was settled in theory quite quickly. We went on to sharing our “how we met and he took us over” stories of Nick, which led us deeper into revealing ourselves to each other. Nick had not only discerned a lot about each of us and our individual recent losses and resulting loneliness and sense of drifting but also of our sexual natures and interests. I have no idea, at least for my part, how Nick had been able to ferret that out about me, but he had been uncannily accurate.
“I wanted to meet you even before Nick told me about you,” Andy admitted after we’d sat down in the front window at Sally’s Place and remarked on the typical snowy Vermont country village scene spread out in front of us and each admitted the appeal of the Thomas Kincaid-type village scene art to others than ourselves. “I’d watched you from my living room window as you were moving in. I brought you a pie as a welcome—store bought, of course—but you didn’t come to the door. That’s when I suspected that you were at the same emotional place I was. You were letting yourself be snowed in over there. I shoveled your path to the street as a gesture of—”
“Wait? You’re the one who shoveled my walk? Not Nick?” I said in shock. “Why that sneaky old man.” We shared a laugh during which Andy touched me on the forearm, which sent a surge of electricity through me.
And that’s how we got into discussing Nick and realized he had been talking about each of us to the other—promoting us to each other. And that got us into talking more intimately of ourselves, with both of us acknowledging we were gay and had recently suffered separation from a lover—Andy by desertion and me by Warren’s death. Somewhere in this discussion he’d put a hand on mine on the table and I hadn’t taken mine away.
“Yes, I was devasted when Jason left me,” Andy said. “I should have known, though, that Weston was too remote and provincial to hold his interests. That was asking too much of young, citified man.”
“So, he’s put you off of younger men?” I asked, perhaps letting too much of what I was thinking surface.
“Not at all. I much prefer younger men.” He gave me a pointed look. We obviously were heading in the same direction, although the dance at this point was a delicate one. “Nick tells me that the man you were with in Savannah, the man who died, was much older than you were.”
“He was.”
“Listen. This may be too soon for you, but perhaps—”
“Yes, I think it’s a bit too soon for me,” I said, my thoughts going to how I had felt when I’d given Nick Warren’s coat and boots and unexpectedly had the loss pierce my heart.
“Yes, well, I see that we both need to get back to our businesses,” Andy blustered, taking his hand off mine, pointedly drinking off the last of his coffee, and scrunching up his napkin. “We need to talk in more detail about that art book shelf in your shop. And this coffee shop is so conveniently located between our businesses, we should meet regularly here for breaks—at least until the world thaws out and business picks up.”
“Yes, I’d like that,” I said, suddenly wanting to keep whatever rescue lines that had been thrown between us today secured. I regretted cutting off something further—yet.
As we stood, I blurted out, “You’re a good man, Andy Dunlop.”
He looked at me in surprise and I did what I could to recover. It had been on my mind to note anyway, but I grabbed at it in desperation.
“I saw that you have put wreaths of wildlife feed out for the deer and the birds in your backyard. That’s a very nice thing to do. I have wanted to know where you get those wreaths. I should do the same.”
He laughed. “I get them right here in town. They have them at the Vermont Country Store.”
“And you work well with the homeless at the soup kitchen. I just want you to know that I find that attracting about you.” I wanted to say “arousing,” but the look he gave me, his sudden more sunny smile than when I had parried what might have been a proposition, told me that he understood what I meant.
“Coffee tomorrow?” he asked, a smile returning to his face and lighting the room up. “Same time, same place?”
“I’d like that,” I answered. “I’ll have the Margaret Francis wrapped and ready to go then.”
“I’ll bring my checkbook.”
We stood awkwardly for a few seconds. We obviously were contemplating shaking hands but each wanting more contact than that. It ended with Andy smiling broadly, saluting, and leaving the coffee shop ahead of me.
It had started snowing again when I left Sally’s Place and trudged across the street to the art gallery. I didn’t care, though, for the first time since I’d come to Vermont, I was feeling the spirit of the season.
* * * *
“The shelving looks great. I’ll have to find the book boxes now,” I said as I set the ham and cheese sandwich and canned chicken noodle soup in front of Nick. It was the second Thursday in December; he’d worked here alone during the mornings three times, and I hadn’t discerned anything being missing. Except now, the boxes from the IKEA bookcases. “What happened to the bookcase boxes?” I asked. “I don’t see them in the living room and I’ll need them when I find a place to buy and want to move again.”
“They’re in the basement,” he said amid the attack on his food, “stacked neat enough out of the way for you, I hope.” What I hoped was that the way he attacked his food was a sign that he liked my simple cooking rather than that he wasn’t getting enough to eat. I couldn’t stop being worried how he was making it through a Vermont winter.
“I have a basement here?”
He laughed. “You sure are dragging your feet getting settled here, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I don’t really like this house.”
“But you like the neighbors, I hope.” He was addressing a “butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth” gaze toward the wall across the kitchen, the wall in the direction of Andy Dunlop’s house.
“Yes, I like the neighbors,” I admitted, with a wary sigh.
“And one of them in particular, I hope.”
I didn’t answer that. I fully realized that Nick was hard at work on the matchmaker thing. I turned back to the stove to get my lunch. He’d have his wolfed down before I sat at the table, but I didn’t care. He’d linger with his coffee while I ate and we’d have a chance to chat. These Tuesday and Thursday chats with Nick were becoming something I needed—not to mention that so much of what we discussed was Andy Dunlop.
“Good,” he said.
I didn’t pursue what he meant by that. Good that I didn’t like this house enough to put down roots here or good that I liked being next door to Andy? Either of those weren’t something I wanted to get into deeply with Nick. I had the feeling that anything I said favorable to Nick about Andy went right back to Andy. It was clear to me what Nick would like something to happen between Andy and me. It was equally clear to me what I would like to happen with Andy, but, although we were meeting for coffee every working day, he hadn’t pressed me for something more yet. I was painfully aware that that was probably because he had started into making a suggestion and I had closed him down.
If he did make the suggestion now, would I go with him? I had already decided on that. I would. Friends who had been with Warren at the end while I was in Europe—sent there by him so I wouldn’t fret through the operation he didn’t tell me he was having, the operation he didn’t wake up from—had passed on Warren’s wish that I move on if he didn’t come out of the operation.
But Andy hadn’t brought it up yet—hadn’t made the move. I was a submissive; he was going to have to be the one to make the move if something was going to come out of a relationship here. We had a relationship—both business, with his shelf of art books now in the gallery and doing well, and friendship, with comfortable discussions on coffee breaks and working well together at the soup kitchen. It just wasn’t sexual—yet—and I now ached that it reach that level.
“You don’t have a Christmas tree,” Nick said. “Ten days to Christmas and you don’t have a tree up.”
“I have an artificial tree somewhere—in the boxes somewhere—but I haven’t found it yet. I did put up a tree at the gallery.”
“An artificial tree in Vermont?” Nick snorted. “That’s sacrilege. We need to go cut you a tree.”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” I said. “I did find the box with the decorations and I used them on the tree at the art gallery. I can celebrate my Christmas there. This place still looks like a storage shed. It will be better now that you have book cases together. If I find the book boxes, do you think you can get the books on the shelf in some sort of order?”
“I should be able to. I owned a bookstore once,” Nick said. And that was another tidbit I was learning about Nick. Slowly, he was beginning to unravel his life to me. Someday he might even tell me why he was homeless. I already figured out that he was an educated man. I was close to offering him a job at the art gallery. I just didn’t know if that would turn him away from me—whether the homelessness was a strong choice rather than a life tragedy. I didn’t want to lose him. He was the best friend I’d made in Weston—well, other than Andy. I looked in the direction of the house next door. Nick saw me do that and knew why. You couldn’t hide anything from Nick.
“Nick,” I said. “I won’t have a tree here, but I could use company on Christmas Eve. Would you like to come and spend the evening with me? The TV is out of the box and running. You could put together a couple of the IKEA armchairs next and we could watch something on TV on Christmas Eve.”
He didn’t answer right away and I looked at him, catching the tears in his eyes, and then looked away so he wouldn’t know the vulnerability I’d seen—or that his reaction was causing me to tear up as well.
“Thanks Mr. Crawford—Scott,” he said. “That means a lot to me that you’d ask, but that reminds me of something I was meant to ask you.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Mr. Dunlop already has asked me to his place on Christmas Eve—and he asked me to ask you if you’d like to come over for that evening too—that he’d cater in a proper meal. He has his Christmas tree up already and I’ve brought in a couple of loads of wood for his fireplace.”
It was my turn to look away to hide the tears in my eyes. “Sure, Nick. You can tell him I’d like that.”
* * * *
Andy met me at the door, wearing a red silk robe and not much else that I could discern. I immediately was propelled into the Christmas spirit. I could see into both the living room and the dining room from the front entry. Everything was warm and inviting and impeccably furnished. A comfortable-looking sofa faced a fireplace, with fire going, in the living room. A majestic balsam fir tree, decorated in red and gold, stood in the corner. The lights elsewhere in the room were dim, Christmas music was on the record player, the smell of pine and apple pies permeated the room. The dining room was decorated for Christmas too. Expensive paintings covered the walls of both rooms and the foyer. The Margaret Francis painting he’d bought from my gallery hung over the dining room buffet. Pinpoint track light picked out the more important paintings in both rooms.
The table was set for two.
“Where’s Nick?” I asked. “He said he’d be here.”
“Did he?” Andy asked and laughed as he took the bottle of wine I’d brought with me—the bottle that didn’t get opened that evening. “That guy. Never stops playing the arranger, does he? Nick is over in Ludlow—spending Christmas with his daughter and grandchildren over there.”
Another Nick tidbit dropped. I got the distinct impression Andy knew I thought Nick would be here and Andy knew he wouldn’t be. I didn’t care, though. I was more than ready for this.
“I swear he must be Santa Claus for real. He’s left a present for you over on that chair, by the way. Quite a big box. Go ahead and open it now.”
I opened it. The box contained Warren’s coat and boots that I had given Nick weeks previously. There was a note too, in elegant handwriting. So, on top of everything else Nick was a calligrapher.
“Thanks for the loan, Scott,” the note said. “You’re one of the good guys. You deserve to be happy. I’m returning them because I know they have meaning for you. Do treasure what has been, but don’t let it prevent what can be.”
“Oh, no,” I said, which brought Andy over to me. “Nick has given the warm clothing I gave him back. He must be freezing.”
“He was bundled up in new clothes when he left here. His daughter brought him a new coat and boots when she came over from Ludlow and picked him up here.”
So, no worrying about Nick now. I could go back to wondering when and if Andy was going to make a move. Right away, it transpired.
He fucked me in the living room before we feasted on a catered meal and then moved to his bedroom for the night. We sat on the sofa, looking at the fire and the tree and did the schmaltzy Christmas Eve thing, listening to Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Julie Andrews, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on vintage records, while Andy unwrapped his Christmas present—me—and I shrugged the red silk robe off his back to get to mine. He lay on top of me across the sofa and we kissed as he pressed the heel of a hand under my balls and entered me with two fingers, the fingers moving in and out, in and out, searching for and finding my prostate. I arched my head back, hooked an ankle on his shoulder, and moaned deeply.
I didn’t play hard to get. I didn’t even pretend to give a second thought to what we were doing.
He kissed down my body, playing with the small silver ring in my left nipple and then the one in my navel, murmuring his pleasure at each discovery, and, eventually, with the one in my taint under my balls before swallowing my cock and giving me head. I held onto his cheeks, pulling him close into me, and panting and moaning.
“It’s been so long,” I murmured, as he moved up my body until, hands pressed into the sofa arm over my head, his cock was level with my face and slipped between my lips and then was moving in my throat. I slid my hands down his muscular torso and held his hips between my hands, rubbing the crease between his underbelly and thighs on both sides with my thumbs as I sucked his shaft. He had a great body for a man his age—even better shape than Warren had maintained with a lot of gym work.
“It won’t be as long until the next time, unless you don’t want to continue giving yourself to me,” he said.
“Yes, oh yes,” I whispered, coming up for air, pulling off his cock to stroke it a few times with my hand before lightly scraping the sides of it as I throated the cock again.
We moved to the proverbial bear skin rug in front of the fireplace, without any thought to this being a cliché. Both naked, we sixty-nined on the rug and then he moved into the missionary position, putting his arm under my waist, kneeling between my thighs, and raising my pelvis to him. I cascaded my torso back on the rug, allowing my arms to stretch out in a sacrificial position, letting my eyes roam around the room. This is the home I had wanted. Everything here was perfect. Andy was perfect.
I grimaced and began to pant as he entered me and entered me and entered me, long and thick, thicker and longer than Warren had been. I shook my head, wanting to forget about Warren for at least the next several minutes. Thinking only of Andy inside me and the two of us working together for mutual pleasure. I pressed the heels of my feet into the nap of the bear skin rug and jutted my hips up into his pelvis, taking him even deeper. He groaned and began to pant too. And then he moved—in, back; in, back—and I moved with him, using the leverage of my feet. In, back; in, back—picking up speed and vigor.
I wanted us to come together, even the first time. I took my cock in my hand and stroked to the rhythm of the fuck. In, back; in, back; inback; INBACK. Hold, tense, jerk. CLIMAX to a harmony of low cries.
“It will be better next time,” he whispered in my ear.
“How could it be any better?” There would be a next time. My spirits soared.
“We’ll last longer. I’m glad we came together, though, the first time.”
“The next time?”
“In about fifteen minutes,” he said. “No time even to leave you. That is, if you want—”
“Of course I want you again. No, don’t leave me,” I whimpered. And, indeed, I could feel him hardening again. I moaned as he began moving inside me once more. But then he stopped.
“What?” I asked, suddenly afraid.
“I want you every way,” he whispered. “Shall we try—?”
“Yes, whatever you want; however you want it.”
“I think like a dog. Let’s see if I can turn you without . . . yes, I can.” And he could. He was long and thick enough and reengorged enough to turn me on the cock without dislodging and put me under him on the rug, on my knees and elbows. He nuzzled my throat with his lips, and I groaned and began to pant again as he mounted and penetrated and moved on top and inside me. Would it be like this the whole night into Christmas Day?
Yes, it would. Christmas in Vermont. Home at last.
