While Paul slept beside him, carefully, Brian rolled himself out of bed and, pulling on his briefs, rounded the bed to rummage through Paul’s jeans. When his hands hit the shiny coolness of the cell phone he smiled to himself and then, with it, tiptoed out of the dark bedroom flipping it on.
“Um…” these things all worked so damn differently!
“There,” he whispered, satisfied. The address book.
With a grim look of accomplishment, Brian crossed his living room and sat at his desk copying out one address and murmuring, “In East Carmel, Indiana.”
Then he went through the address book again.
“Not there…” Brian murmured.
He sat with the cell phone hanging from his hand, feeling a little put out. And then he sat up straighter and grinned brightly.
Well, he’d just have to deliver that himself.
“SEE,” BARB AFFREN said, turning it around in her hand. “That’s why I love this little baby so much, because you can put it in your purse and it’s silent when you fire it.”
Milo and Kenny walked into the kitchen and Barb discreetly tucked the gun under the tablecloth.
“Hey, grandma!”
“He kids.”
“We’re just looking for a snack.”
“We got Fritos up in that cupboard over the fridge. And have some manners.”
“Hi, Mr Houghton!” said Milo.
“Mr. Houghton, Mr. Phillips,” Kenny said. He pulled down the bag, and then they headed out of the kitchen with a pitcher of Kool-Aid.
The door swung shut and Barb continued:
“Now as I was saying: This will be just the thing for you to have for the next few days until we take care of that son of a bitch.”
“Now… when you say take care,” Fenn began.
“Oh, honey,” Barb pushed her glasses up, “I always send Bob out for a few new sacks of quicklime just in case we ever need it.”
“I hate to be the one to point this out,” his sister said, “but we’re outselling you.”
“No, actually sis, your lot isn’t,” Kirk Hanley differed, pushing up his glasses. “Not when you do the math.”
“I guess that’s that new math they’re talking about,” Sheila said with a smirk. “You better watch out little brother. Love is making your sales go down.”
“Love?” said their cousin Peter.
“Oh, yeah. Not a bad looking guy either.”
“I forgot about that,” Peter said.
“You can save your look of disgust for someone who cares,” Kirk told him.
“Hey!” Peter put up his hands. “Whatever floats you, Cuz. Personally, I don’t know how you could possibly be attracted to a man.”
“Well, if every man looked like you,” Sheila told her cousin, “that might be a valid thing to say.”
Kirk chuckled and said, “I’d love to fight with the both of you, but I gotta go across the street and do some business.”
“Praying for a customer?” Sheila said.
“Hellll no!” Kirk told her. “He called. I got an appointment with him for eleven. Wants to take a Cherokee on a test drive.”
“Gas guzzling bastard,” Sheila shouted at her brother’s departing back. “He’s killing the planet, and we’re helping him!”
Kirk shook his head and chuckled, jogging out of his sister’s lot and down to his where he came through the back door and tunneled through the little offices to the show room. A bell had just rung, and in came a tall, handsome and slightly cold looking—but who was he to judge—man.
The man gave him a half smile, and approached offering his hand.
“You must be Kirk Hanley.”
“Yes,” said Kirk. “And you must be my eleven o’clock, Brian Babcock!”
“Todd, can I ask you a question?”
“Hum?” Todd turned from his editing.
“I…” Paul edged into the office. “Maybe it’s my imagination. But it feels like you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Nope,” Todd said, turning away.
“Todd?”
Todd turned around and said, “Kirk’s a good guy.”
“I know he’s a good—I really like Kirk.”
“Then why are you sleeping with Brian?”
Paul opened his mouth.
“I know you are. I was out the other night and I was trying to surprise you, and… never mind. But, when I saw Brian come out of that apartment… God, Paul! Brian!”
“He’s not a bad person.”
“He’s a hurt person,” Todd said. “He’s a fucked up, wounded, potentially vicious person. And you’re not helping. You’re… how could you do this? It would kill Kirk. He thinks you’re so innocent. He doesn’t know anything. He thinks you’re afraid of sex. He thinks you’ve never dated and you’re afraid to make love to him.”
“I am,” Paul said.
Todd looked at him.
“The way I feel around him…” Paul began. “All of the feelings... I want him.”
“But that’s good.”
“But it’s not,” Paul shook his head. “I’ve… never made love. Never. I don’t even know how to. I’m… So… I just get terrified. And then something in me rushes back to do the old thing. To be what I was. Every time I’m with Kirk I get so scared. There’s that moment when I feel so soft, when I feel so…”
“In love.”
“Yes. And I don’t know what to do. Or who I am. And then I’m so afraid he’ll find out who I am, who I really am.”
“But, Paul, you’re you. You’re exactly who he knows.”
“I’m Johnny Mellow. That’s real.
“For almost ten years I was Johnny Mellow, and I went places—parties, weekend events and shit, pride parties—full of all these queens who made me feel like I was the biggest star in the world, like I was someone really great.
“But I come back here, to Rossford. And to Kirk. And I realize that there wasn’t a guy I met, who cheered for me, who told me how awesome I was, that I would have ever thought seriously about. Maybe fucked, but that’s about it.
“And then Kirk shows up and I’m just someone who whacked off in front of a camera, and… who has no education cause he was busy blowing fat queens on Rodeo Drive. I’m… If he knows that part of me. If…”
“Paul, you can’t keep this up. Dating him, screwing Brian. It’s not fair… to anyone.”
“I know.”
Todd nodded.
“I just… I just don’t know how to tell him.”
“Brian can I talk to you?”
Brian’s eyes were daggers.
“Todd, I don’t plan to be dressed down by you again,” he said.
“No,” Todd said, quietly. “It’s not that. Not that at all.”
Brian’s face changed.
“All right?” He scooted over in the pew, and Todd sat beside him.
“I… when I was younger something happened to me that I thought was my fault. I’m sure I had something to do with it because… well, I’m human and I wasn’t completely a child. See, I was a teenager, and I was having an affair with an older man.”
Brian looked at him.
“He was part of our family.”
Brian looked at him again.
“Not incest. Not really. He had married in. I…”
“I heard once,” Brian said, “that Nell divorced her husband because she found him in bed with you.”
“That’s it,” Todd said, turning red.
“It’s not common knowledge,” Brian said. “Don’t worry.”
Todd nodded.
“Well, since you know that… You should also know that I felt… ashamed. I felt like I deserved to be punished.”
“You were a kid. He was a grown man.”
“I know that,” Todd said.
“But it felt good. Even when it felt scary. I went to him because I wanted to. That’s the thing about abuse is you’re not quite sure when it’s abuse. Not all the time. I felt like I was a truly awful person, like I deserved the worst.
“And so over and over, pretty much until Fenn, that’s what I gave myself. Now, I’m not saying a sex life isn’t good. I think it’s great. I think being… amorous… is the shit. But there’s a difference between enjoying the spice of life, and intentionally screwing your way through the worst people you can, just turning yourself into some sort of… slut, who gets used and broken, and disrespected.”
“Todd, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, this, Brian. I hated you. When Tom and Fenn broke up. I blamed you. And I think you blame yourself. I think… and maybe I’m out of place, that you think God is punishing you. But you… us… we don’t need God to do it, we do it ourselves.”
Brian didn’t say anything, so Todd continued.
“I think that the reason you’re in this thing with Paul, and with Tom. And with whoever else, is because you think that’s what you deserve.”
“You do?”
“Yes, Brian, I do.
“I think you think you’re a bad man. But you’re not. I used to think you didn’t care about the things you’d done. But they eat you up. I see it. And you can’t even see the good parts of yourself. The theatre couldn’t do a show without you. You set up that program between it and the college. You keep this church running, and the choir too. That’s all you. So… you should quit doing all this shit to yourself.”
“What…?” Brian began, “if I told you I don’t know how to stop?”
Todd took a breath. He opened his mouth, not sure of what to say. But before any sound could come out, Brian said, placing a hand on Todd’s shoulder:
“Todd?”
“Yeah?”
“What if you don’t have any idea how bad a man I really am?”
“What the… Well, I’ll be goddamned! Noah?”
Guy McClintock let him in, saying, “We’re going to start shooting in a few days. Do I have you on for another pic?”
“Naw,” Noah said looking around.
“Not yet at least.”
“I heard you were doing some work down in Florida?” said Guy.
“And there was this little amateur of you and Johnny. Or so I heard. Is it true?”
“Yeah,” Noah said, nodding. “I got bored. I thought we should make one.”
“Noah, the director. You still have plans in that direction?”
“Maybe,” Noah sounded stupid and slightly vacant to himself, but then he imagined to Guy he’d more or less always sounded stupid and a little vacant.
He said, “You heard from Johnny?”
“I heard that he was out aways in Rossford, doing what they call serious acting.” Guy affected a British accent. “I sent a message his way asking if we wanted to get back in the business, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. It’s a shame,” Guy shrugged. “He was good.
“I think that kid’ll be alright at whatever he puts his head too.”
Noah nodded.
“And so will you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“I don’t know,” said Noah. “I thought I was on my way here, to your place. To do something. But my family’s around here, and Pau—Johnny’s around here. We sort of became friends. I think I should look him up.”
“Yeah,” Guy said. “Well you know, feel free to take a room in su casa for the night before you start back out. I got Jorge back. If you all feel like fucking later on that’d be an interesting little vid, and a little money in your pocket.”
Noah was about to say he didn’t need money in his pocket. Only by now he almost did again, and he didn’t want to give anything away.
“That was excellent,” Guy said, turning off the camera. “Now, I’m gonna fix this up a little bit, and you’ll have yourself a little paycheck in the morning, Noah my friend. Whaddit I tell you, Jorge? Tightest little ass this side of the Rio Grande!”
Jorge was a little man with a barrel chest and an enormous penis who only nodded as Guy exited the room.
Turning on his side, Jorge turned off the light and said, “And the next time will be hotter, Pretty. Cause it will be just for us.
“Ah,” Jorge ran a warm hand over Noah’s side. Up his body. “All this milky body. You are perfect.”
Noah found himself giggling, because that was the only thing it made sense to do. It sounded pompous to say, “Why thank you.”
“You leaving the next day?”
“Yeah?” Noah said lying on his back in the dark.
“To they say east? Rossford?”
“Um hum.”
“What is in Rossford? So many people going to Rossford… Never heard of it before until a few days ago.”
“Well… whaddo you mean?” Noah said, turning on his side. “Who else is going to Rossford?”
“I was fucking this skinny Italian the other night,” said Jorge. “Little thug. He said he was headed there, would show up in a few days.”
“Really?” said Noah. “What’s his name.”
“Eh… Willy. William. No…”
A low groan rumbled in Jorge’s chest as he tried to remember.
“It is Joe. Joseph Callan.”
“I’m here because I don’t know where else to be,” Kirk said when he entered his sister’s apartment.”
“I’m not sure…” Sheila began, “that that’s the kind of greeting I want from my brother.”
“Sheila.”
“Shit!” Sheila looked at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I… Look at this.”
Kirk sat down on the sofa and put his brief case down on the steamer trunk Sheila used for a coffee table. He pulled out a movie case and handed it to her.
“Godshit,” Sheila murmured. “What the fuck is this? Well I mean, I know what it is. And hey, if it gets you off. But…”
“Sheila,” Kirk, took the movie from her and pointed to the man on the cover.
“This guy. This… Johnny Mellow… fellow…”
Sheila took it back, shrugging. “He’s kind of cute, you know? I never understood why someone would go into that, though?”
“He’s Paul!” Kirk said. “He’s Paul. The guy I’m seeing.”
“Shut up!” Sheila said. “You’re out of your head. How’d you get it anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Kirk said. “I… This morning, after talking to you guys, after my eleven o’clock, I came back and I was rummaging through my desk.”
“That messy surface?”
“Yes. And under that messy surface there was a little envelope that read: ‘For you’.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” said Kirk. “And in it was the movie. So… that’s how I know it’s got to be Paul. Why else would someone do that?”
“But who would do that?” Sheila demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“Sheila, I broke off a date with him tonight. I… I told him I needed space. He looked so hurt. But… All I could think of was this.”
Sheila was quiet. Then, after awhile, she said, “Well… should we watch it?”
“No!”
“Look,” Sheila said, opening up the movie. “It could be total bullshit. It could be a joke. I’m putting it in. You don’t have to watch, but I will.”
When Claire came back in the house she sorted through the mail and frowned because the acceptance letter hadn’t reached her yet. If it was coming. She trusted it was. But then she smiled at her present. There were two gifts, though. One for her mother, both in thick U.S. Postal Service envelopes, addressed to their house in the same hand.
Claire shook it and shouted, “I’m home.”
“Dinner’s in the microwave,” Marilee said. “There’s mail for you.”
“I see it. Thanks Mom.”
Claire reheated her foot, slapped Matty on the back of the head, and then went up with her package, opening it.
“I’m coming to get you!” her brother shouted up, playfully. She heard him coming up the steps.
Claire stood still in her bedroom a long time, her food steaming on the bed. She didn’t care if the cat ate it.
“Claire, what’s up?” Matt said, seeing her as he came down the hall.
“Is it your acceptance letter?”
“It’s… a video. From a school.”
“Let’s see.”
“Uh… in a minute. Let me get undressed. All right?”
Then Claire said, “Actually, I’m really tired. Uh… we can watch it later. All right?”
“All right. Later, Sis.”
“Could you close the door?”
“Sure,” said Matt.
The movie had already been opened. One DVD said Pizza Slut. The other was homemade and written in permanent marker across the silver disk was the phrase: “For you.”
Mom had one of those. Claire put the movie down, and then she put it under the bed, and she trotted downstairs and dug through the mail. There it was. She took it up. Whatever the hell was on the second disk, the first disk alone, her son half naked on the cover of a porno, would kill her.
