SECRETS THAT WOULD GO TO THE GRAVE
3
“You’ve got to make this right,” Dylan said to himself. “You’ve got to get it together.”
He ran his hands over the surface of the red Gita. It was good to read. It stuck in his head. Better than that, it was good to touch. He’d seen old ladies with their Bibles, his Grandmother Mesda with her prayer book and rosary. None of those things did much for him, but he imagined that they must have felt the way he did now, with his father’s worn book of Hindu scripture.
Dylan looked at the cell phone in his other hand, too, and put it on the bed.
“You can’t always be calling Laurel. You can’t always be dragging her down. You’ve got to learn how to handle things for yourself.”
Because he sounded a little crazy to himself, he shifted from speaking to thinking:
He got undressed, went and took a shower. He was so tired and he felt sticky and dirty. He also felt like there was no help for him until he got redressed and left the house to repair things.
He put on jeans and a tee shirt and the white hooded sweatshirt Todd had bought him the year before. He opened the door and went to his father’s room. Fenn was sitting up on the bed, and he looked at Dylan.
“I know I’m grounded, but I have to go. Right now. I have to make things right.”
“Can’t this wait till…?” Fenn began.
He looked his son up and down. Clearly it could not wait till morning.
“All right,” Fenn said. “You need to be back in an hour.”
“Thank you, Dad,” Dylan said.
There were questions he would have asked, challenges he would have presented, offers he would have made and none of them made any sense. Whatever Dylan had to do, clearly he had to do it now. Whatever he was going to make right, he had to make right by himself. The fact was Fenn trusted his son, and more or less trusted his wisdom. He had grown up so fast, too fast, but part of that growing up meant that there was more on the boy’s shoulders, and some things he could not or should not tell Fenn.
Suddenly Dylan came back into the room and leaned over him, hugging him. And then Dylan turned around and left.
LANCE BISHOP HAD NO musical taste and wished he did. There was nothing to do, nothing to help him when he felt this way. He had cried earlier today and cried a lot, but that didn’t do any good and it didn’t make him feel any better. He went to the track field and ran laps that evening until he remembered again the pleasure of being one of the fastest sprinters, and felt the burn in his thighs, in his backside and in his arms. He came home and showered for a long time, and then he fell asleep. He awoke now and blinked at the ceiling. He could hear the sounds of the night. Down the street a too loud car stereo was playing.
Lance said nothing, and finally Dylan said, “What happened today isn’t the right way to end it.”
“I know,” Lance said. He turned away, murmuring, “I don’t even want to think about it. I get sick when I think about it. I really get sick and I…” his voice had gone high and trailed off.
“I don’t even know what we did,” he said.
“You raped me,” Dylan said simply. “And then I raped you.”
Lance trembled visibly. He looked like he was seizing, and Dylan understood because he felt it. He wanted to throw up a little too.
“I don’t want to leave you that way,” Dylan said. “I don’t want that to be us.”
The two of them stood looking at each other, and then Dylan came closer to Lance and, at that same time Lance held him. They stood like that and then Lance said:
“Can’t we have more? I don’t want the last time to be what the last time was.”
Dylan began to pull off his sweatshirt, and Lance helped him. Dylan pulled of Lance’s tank top and they began to kiss, to run their hands over each other’s arms and chests, Lance to kiss Dylan on his nipples. Dylan felt himself growing hard. Lance’s hand was down there, touching him.
“God, Dylan,” Lance said, and they both began to come out of their jeans.
Quietly, with just the smallest of stifled breaths, Dylan closed his eyes and, straddling Lance’s chest, brought Lance into him. It hurt a little, like it always did. He stilled more and more, feeling Lance inside of him, putting his hands on the smoothness of Lance’s chest. He moved on him, lightly, like a wave, trying to feel Lance in his deepest places and, lightly, Lance moved his hips with a whimper. They moved like that, their hands clasping together, Lance’s eyes shining, small whimpers escaping his mouth.
They did everything they wanted, hands and mouths remembering, hands moving to touch the incredible softness of hair, of lips, of the inside of thighs until they came, nearly as one, buckling and shaking on the bed, a little damp, a little amazed, a little shaken.
Their thighs were linked together, their bodies pressed close, and Lance’s mouth was pressed to Dylan’s scalp.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” Dylan told him after a while.
“But you’re leaving me. For him.”
Dylan shook his head.
“It isn’t like that. It’s not him.”
“Then, I don’t…”
“I’m not leaving. I’m just not your boyfriend. And it’s because we don’t work. Not really. And we should work. It shouldn’t be an issue.”
Lance pulled Dylan close and began, catlike, rubbing his body against Dylan’s. He wanted to sleep like this. He wanted to be connected to him all night.
“Lance,” Dylan said, fighting it and pulling away. “I am too young to be this old.”
He climbed out of bed.
“It’s about…” Dylan said looking for his underwear, “how if I keep this up I’ll be a senior citizen at thirty.”
“Were you waiting up for me?” Dylan said when he came in through the living room.
On the sofa, Fenn yawned. “Yes.”
“I’m back in time, right?”
“Yes.”
Dylan looked at his father.
“I broke up with Lance. I mean…”
He came and sat down beside his father.
“I told him I loved him, but I told him that I’d be so old if we kept this up. I don’t even feel like a kid anymore. I hate feeling like this. It’s so heavy and… there’s other stuff to be worried about. Not… relationships and stuff. And…”
Dylan looked at his father, “And I’m making you old. I can see that.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Fenn sat up.
Dylan grinned. “I didn’t mean it that way, Papa,” he said. “I meant… you look sadder than I’ve ever seen you look before.”
“Oh, Dylan! Be quiet and go upstairs.”
“It is not your job,” his father told him, “to worry about me. Go upstairs and go to bed. You are grounded after all.”
Dylan nodded and went up, but he stopped midway at the landing.
Fenn was picking up his blanket and turning off lights.
“Dad,” Dylan said. “One day I’m going to take care of you the way you do me and then you’re going to see…” Dylan seemed to not be able to figure out what Fenn was going to see.
“Good night, Dad.”
Dylan went up the steps and Fenn yawned, wondering just what he would see when that day came.
The Strip was quiet at this time of night as the car came down it and, before reaching the Meijer and the restaurants, turned into the parking lot in front of the first of the business hotels that sat between Main Street and the Strip.
Paul Anderson climbed out of the car and, dusting off his trousers, he closed the door, slung the small bag over his shoulder, and then went in under the short awning and into the lobby.
“I’m looking for Bobby Butter,” he said to the concierge. “He’s expecting me. I’ve signed the room out with him.”
The concierge looked approving and said, as his finger slid down, “And you are?”
“John Mellow.”
“Yes,” said the concierge. “That’s Room 218.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Paul said, turning on his charming smile, and heading down the lobby toward the elevator.
The carpet upstairs and down was blue with a grape pattern, and the walls of the hotel were a warm yellow. On either end of the corridor were large windows so Paul could see the blackness of the night. He re-shifted the bag on his shoulder and tried to settle into the stillness of this night.
There was the room 218, and now he tapped on the door, and then a moment later he heard the soft padding of feet and there he was. There was Noah, looking more sober than he ever had in jeans and a dress shirt.
“Paul,” he croaked, breathless with surprise, “you’re here.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “Why am I trembling? Why am I so nervous?”
Noah pulled the door open more and Paul came in. Noah shut the door behind him.
They both stood, nervous, facing each other. Paul let the bag slide to the ground and looped his fingers through his belt.
Noah reached up and held Paul’s face, feeling the plains of his cheeks under his hands, looking up into Paul’s eyes.
“You’re here,” he rejoiced.
