The Real World - Part 2

When Kendall returned with beers, he and Todd moved to the swing on the front porch. Behind them arched a ravel of roses, the plump buds just tearing open into their small, pursed wounds. Crickets creaked, and the scent-laden humidity weighed on everything, like dew.

“So cold it hurts,” Kendall exclaimed quietly, meaning the beer.

“Thought you were drinking wine,” Todd said.

“Putting me to sleep.”

The stillness amplified their words so that they spoke in almost a whisper. From an elm down the street floated, distinct as a question, the mournful refrain of an owl. Hidden among the boughs, it whimpered the same three notes: Who, oh, who? Who, oh, who?

“What’s the latest on Don?” Todd asked. “Where is he anyway, asleep?”

“No, with Buddy.”

“Tell me about this Buddy,” Todd said, accentuating the boy’s name. “A colleague got him the other day, was working on his case till he jumped the fence. Who is he?”

“Who is he?” Kendall repeated, turning the question over. “Just a boy. Lacking a certain polish, to be sure,” he added drolly, “but just a boy who, when sixteen, I think, dropped by. Living in a shack in that alley up there,” Kendall said, nodding toward a big, crowd-like clump of oleander.

Todd stared toward the corner where, above the shrubs, the street light blazed like a moon. From the foyer, the quarter hour rang.

“Who knows how it began?” Kendall asked rhetorically. “Bet even Don doesn’t remember. I imagine he was sitting here one night, like us, when Buddy walked by and Duke started barking. Don’s trained him, you know.”

Todd chuckled. “Don’s dog doesn’t do tricks. It fetches them. Don does them. Where’s Duke?”

“Next door, with the spinsters,” Kendall said.

Behind them, the rose bushes clung to each other, bleeding their musky fragrance into the air.

“At any rate,” Kendall said, “Buddy’s father was always in jail or the hospital for alcoholism. I’m sure he’s wandered over your way once or twice. And his mother took on a new man who didn’t get along with Buddy. They were forever fighting and threatening each other with knives. That story. At any rate, he moved in.”

“Don Agnew’s Boarding School for Horny, Wayward Boys,” Todd mused musically.

“Yes, quite a number have filed through here, some for quite a vacation, some for a night.”

“And some for as long as it takes,” Todd added cynically.

“I’m the only one who’s lasted,” Kendall remarked, “because we’re just friends.”

“Lovers don’t last?” Todd asked, pressing Kendall’s wrist. “Or should I say love?”

“Love doesn’t like to be grasped,” Kendall aphorized, “just felt.” Then he added, “Your hand’s cold.”

“The beer,” Todd said, removing his hand. “Laboratory studies show that when mice are sexually sated with one partner, they still become aroused with the introduction of another.”

“What about love?” Kendall asked. “Is there a study of love among mice?” When Todd appeared to be seriously considering the question, Kendall added, “As I said, love doesn’t like to be—”

“Grasped,” Todd said, a question mark in his eyes.

“At any rate, Buddy moved in, when eighteen, I think, and you should’ve heard him. I don’t know where he grew up, but you could barely understand a word he said. He had some weird accent, and he was so tense he talked a blue streak. Half the time when you could make out the words, he didn’t make sense. But Don corrected his pronunciation—not that Don’s any elocutionist—and got him to compose himself a little. Sent him to East Baton Rouge Tech to work on a GED. Got him a job as a plumber’s helper. Opened him up a checking account.”

“And taught him how to write checks.”

“Don did him good,” Kendall said, “a lot of good. Every cent Buddy paid him rent he put in savings for him. He undersigned a Jeep. When Buddy tired of that, he undersigned a Chevy. And bought him guns—Buddy liked to hunt—and a gun cabinet on his last birthday.”

At times Kendall seemed oblivious of Todd, as if with a simple mental step he could leave the scene. Blink, he was blind to the present. Blink, he could see again.

“How old is he?” Todd asked.

“Twenty-one,” Kendall said.

“Well above the age of consent.”

“Consent at any other age is still consent,” Kendall remarked. “But for the longest time, Don didn’t want anyone to know that he and Chester—Buddy’s real name—were lovers. Said they weren’t, pretended they weren’t, maybe even believed they weren’t, outside the bedroom. Of course, he had to. But he pretended even with me! And there I was, lying in the next room, listening to them. Everyone knew.” Kendall appeared to have just remembered the beer in his hand. He took a long draft. “Buddy was different in two ways. The joke about Don is that he likes ’em young and dirty with tattoos and a prison record.”

“Surprised he hasn’t gotten himself killed,” Todd marveled.

“Me too,” Kendall agreed. “Scruffy hitchhikers and all. But the worst I know is some stolen checks. Well, Buddy was still unlicked, let’s say, and, I guess, grubby enough.”

“But he didn’t have tattoos,” Todd interjected.

“Nor a prison record.”

Kendall widened his eyes as if to wake up. A cool breeze rustled the silky trees along the street. From the blue green leaves, a chorus of locusts rose to sing, answered by the chirping lawns.

“The other whale of a difference,” Kendall said, “is that Don has just one fetish, blow-jobs. So I thought I must’ve heard wrong.”

Todd turned to stare at him quizzically.

“Downstairs,” Kendall said, “all you heard from Buddy was ‘I’m gonna kill me a deer.’ He eventually got on third shift at the mill. Guess that’s what he heard all night. Well, downstairs it was Jeeps and work boots and deer. But upstairs—”

“He was the deer,” Todd overlapped, gazing into the leafy dark. “Damn! A mosquito.”

A mosquito had bitten his lower lip.

“Put some beer on it,” Kendall suggested. He fanned his left ear. “Now it’s after me.”

“It’s swelling.”

“What do you want me to do?” Kendall asked. “Kiss it?”

“Can’t think of a better cure,” Todd said seductively.

They smiled through the dark, their faces new-blue, papier-mache masks in the streetlight.

“Where are Don and Buddy?” Todd asked.

“At the hospital,” Kendall answered mysteriously. He pushed the floor with his foot, nudging the swing into a skew, squeaky motion. “That’s the best part. Buddy stabbed himself in the stomach. I couldn’t do it. Imagine driving the knife all the way in. Seppuku Southern style. Last summer Buddy accidentally shot himself in the hand with one of his many guns. Accidentally,” Kendall breathed. “So we thought. Cleaning a rifle. I wasn’t here.”

Todd, pensive, touched his lip. Inside, the clock struck, confirming the time.

“Said he’d slipped in a slug and forgot,” Kendall said, “then dropped the gun. When he picked it up by the barrel, it fired. Said he knew he’d shot himself, but it took a while to figure out where. Said he didn’t feel a thing, maybe a new kind of numbness. Then his hand began to blow up like a balloon, and he saw the hole through his palm. Said you could put your finger through it. Don was sitting in the den with a couple of friends when they heard the shot, then Buddy wailing, ‘Oh, my God. I’m dead, I’m dead.’” Kendall was staring blindly through the air’s deep aquamarine. “Don ran upstairs. Buddy was standing in the middle of the room—his hand painted red. Don, I’m told, had the strangest reaction. More concerned with blood dripping on the rug than with Buddy. ‘No, Buddy can’t wear a good shirt to the hospital. No, they can’t take the Cadillac. Take the Buick. The upholstery’s vinyl.’ They wrapped his hand in a towel, then helped him downstairs and onto the porch, but while they stood here arguing about whose car to take, he passed out, folding into a neat pile on the steps. But something else about it,” Kendall said, cracking an odd smile. “The next day, smoking a cigarette, he managed to set the bandages on fire. Had to slap it out. Imagine the pain. But that was just the top of a long list of mishaps. The hand took forever to heal. It had to be broken again in the right place, then heal, and on and on.”

Todd winced.

“For months,” Kendall said, “he had a steel rod rammed through the first four knuckles so that when he worked his one good finger, he could work them all.”

“Which hand?” Todd asked.

“His left,” Kendall answered, faraway. “It eventually set, but will never work as well. Reminds me of a prosthesis. What’s the sign for prosthesis?”

“You could spell it,” Todd said, his face bent on the question. “Or you could make this sign, then point to the part.”

Todd flicked his nose with the index finger of his right hand, the sign for false.

“Over the years,” Kendall said, “Don had been none too faithful. In fact, when Buddy was at work, a virtual rogues’ gallery tramped through here. Let’s put it this way. Whenever he could, he would. I doubt if there’d been any formal agreement between them. If there were, it was unwritten. But, no,” Kendall decided, “there wasn’t one. Downstairs, Buddy said he didn’t care. He was going to go out ’n’ git ’im some snatch. He couldn’t admit he did care. Wouldn’t face it. But upstairs, he was eaten up with jealousy, insecurity, hate. It was as if he were living in two worlds, first the world as we know it, then the real world of the bedroom. They began to argue violently. One morning Don was showing some punk out the front door just as Buddy was ambling in the back. I talked to him to stall him. The mornings he’d roar in early to catch Don in bed with a trick naturally were the ones there wasn’t one. Some nights Don would announce that a friend would be ‘staying over.’ The next morning Buddy would bang around downstairs, conspicuously grim till Trick left. ‘Who was that?’ he’d ask. ‘You know who that was,’ Don would say. A cat-that-ate-the-canary-grin. ‘Y’all do anything?’ Buddy would ask, his hands in his lap. Sometimes the exchange took place while Buddy brooded on the couch, passionately staring at a cartoon on TV. Buddy would hold out to get even. ‘Don’t you want to sleep in here tonight?’ Don would call from the dark. From the hall, you had to walk through my bedroom to get to Don’s. ‘No,’ Buddy would grunt. Don, like a reflex, would just reel in another trick. I don’t know where they all come from. How do you say trick?” Kendall asked. “So the person’s the same as the act.”

Todd had splayed the middle and index fingers of each hand, graphically bumping the heel of his palms.

“It’s not that Don loved to torment him,” Kendall said, “but he did, even when women dropped in. One night I even wound up Don’s henchman in a quarrel. When Buddy wouldn’t go into Don’s room, Don came into mine. Buddy, on cue, yelled from the wings, ‘Just what are y’all doin’ in there?’”

They floated in the swing, barely moving, a raft on a still pond. From the elm, the owl cried, Oh, who, who, who? Oh, who, who, who? Kendall was peering through the sallow sheers of a window of the dimly lit living room. He looked as if he were spying on some lurid scene.

“Buddy trusted me,” he said, drifting back. “But I did have—”

“Fantasies.”

“Yes,” Kendall confessed, breaking into a smile. “There’s something pitiful about him that invites rape, not compassion. I sense the same passive quality in Peter.”

“Quality in Peter,” Todd mused. “Funny that the quality in Peter is pain. Peter Pain.”

“I’m not really into Buddy’s red hair and pale skin,” Kendall admitted.

“Try red neck.”

“Scars lace his hand,” Kendall said, “and if he lives, he’ll have a scar stitched across his stomach. At the rate he hurts himself, he’ll be scored with scars before long. Funny,” Kendall reflected. “He’s still not sure I’m gay.”

“Are you?” Todd joked.

Kendall cocked an eyebrow. “Not even after he’s seen me with Mark.”

“Why aren’t you with Mark tonight?” Todd asked. “It’s Mardi Gras. Or was.”

“Why aren’t you with Randy?”

“Touché.”

“After the shooting incident,” Kendall said, picking up the story, “Buddy ‘accidentally’ took too many pain killers. Or the wrong combo. Maybe he had a drug reaction. In any case, they made him sick…unto death, almost. He froze, he said. He couldn’t feel a thing. His next, quote, suicide attempt, unquote, was a handful of slash marks across his chest. Don had finally told him that he was more trouble than he was worth, that he’d have to move. Buddy, instead of coming about—as he should’ve, if he wanted to stake out a claim on Don—only heated things up by trying to shame Don with his suicide routine. When self mortification failed, he downed a bottle of sleeping pills. This time it was a little harder to determine whether or not he was willfully trying to kill himself—”

“Or just claim attention.”

“The mill held his job while his hand healed,” Kendall said, “but the first night back he cussed out the boss and was fired. Naturally, he didn’t tell Don. That week he also wrecked the Chevy, lost control and slid sideways into a telephone pole. Or was this just another ‘accident’?”

The clock clanged one forty-five.

“He couldn’t lie about the car,” Kendall said, “and pissed from that, Don guessed about the job. The following night, a night I was here, he made the mistake of staying out late. When he came in, Don had piled his clothes on the floor and pinned a note to them, ‘Get out.’ I was half asleep and didn’t know what was happening. Later I learned that since he’d threatened to overdose again, Don had taken away his pills and hidden the booze. On top of everything, Buddy had some critical pancreatic condition from malnutrition as a child. His doctor—”

“Who Don paid for.”

“Yes, his doctor said if he drank, he’d die. In any case, the lights went out. A few minutes passed. A tomb couldn’t have been more quiet. Buddy’s light came on, and I heard him in the hall, unlocking the gun cabinet. As you know, when lovers break up in a big city, it usually means a trick or another lover. In a small town, a knife or a gun. Buddy was loading the shotgun. I’d always wondered what night some strange piece would murder Don, then have to murder me. Lately, with the Christian right, I’ve been thinking it’s time to get the gun out of the closet. But I never meant what Buddy was up to.”

“We certainly aren’t doing ourselves any good here,” Todd commented, “turning the gun on each other.”

“On ourselves,” Kendall said.

Todd smiled, tapping the hollow can on the arm of the swing. Kendall was staring deep into the shiny blotch of a hanging fern. A light breeze stirred the willow oak near the curb. Drops of water, like meteors, showered the street.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like staying in this house alone,” Kendall said.

“Stay with us,” Todd suggested.

“That would be cute,” Kendall smiled. “You and your lover and your—”

“What?”

“You tell me,” Kendall replied. “What’s the sign for me in your language?”

Todd stuffed the can in his crotch, then signed as he said, “Let’s just say you’re what Randy thinks is his greatest threat.”

“Thinks, huh?” Kendall swigged some beer, then pushed off the swing. “Upstairs, you can’t hear a thing downstairs. You’d never detect anyone breaking in. And dark! Two crossed swords hang on the wall in Buddy’s room. Nights when I’m alone, I stand one against the wall by my bed. I’m afraid some scared, dope-crazed kid will enter the house to rob or kill Don and kill me by mistake. I picture waking up just in time to realize he’s slit my throat. But, no, I thought, a knifing wasn’t to be it after all. I’d die from a gunshot wound. Or be maimed. Why Don bought him or let him buy those guns I’ll never know.”

“What’d you do?” Todd asked.

“I just lay there under the cover,” Kendall said. “You feel just that much more vulnerable undressed. Not that a thin layer of clothes would help. I surprised myself, though. I was ready to die. I mean, if I had to.”

Kendall seemed to be gazing into the scene he evoked. He was actually gazing at what looked like a small, green firefly, the doorbell of the house next door.

“Don’t ask me why,” he said. “I simply wasn’t spooked. By dying, that is. Maimed was another matter. If he didn’t finish me off with the first shot and I still could speak, I would’ve begged him to shoot me again. It struck me all the blood and screaming I’d suffer if he missed.”

“After all,” Todd quipped, “it would’ve been a shot in the dark.”

“I just lay there,” Kendall said, the smile fading into his face, “trying to listen, trying to see over the blanket. I thought of hiding between the bed and the wall or under the bed, bolting for the stairs if I got the chance. Then I thought a smoothbore discharged in the corner or under the bed would be worse, would hit me in some awkward position. So I just lay there and watched Buddy, naked, load the gun and snap it shut and lug it, straight out from the waist, through my room into Don’s. I braced for the blast, the flash, the roar of pain or panic that would come. Imagine what Don must’ve thought.”

“Or felt,” Todd added.

“But, no, he hadn’t lumbered in there to kill Don. He’d gone in there to show Don the gun loaded and cocked, to tell him he was going to kill himself.”

“The ultimate denial of self,” Todd commented.

The gloom, falling like a seed through the story, all at once shot up around them as the rose’s thick, black foliage.

“I had another knotty question to untie,” Kendall said. “If Buddy shot himself—it still flashes through my mind: the blast, the tongue of fire, the cry—would I stick by Don, who for the first time would really need me, or would I get out of there? I’m up for tenure.”

“You decided to do the right thing,” Todd surmised.

“Besides,” Kendall said.

“The cops would trace you.”

“He stalked back into his room and lay on top of the gun in bed. Don had to talk him off it. Imagine lying on a loaded shotgun, the barrel under your chin. He really could’ve killed himself.”

“By accident.”

“A cough could’ve triggered it,” Kendall said. “Wonder if, in fact, he knew how close he came to blowing his face off.”

“Doubt it.”

“Later he threatened to shoot himself downstairs,” Kendall said, “which was fine with me, if he were actually going to do it. Then he threatened to do it in the car.”

“Even better.”

“Then on the levee.”

“Even better.”

“What had appeared to be a life-and-death situation,” Kendall said, “had degenerated to farce—Don, awake, lying in the dark in the next room, Buddy, bare-ass, wandering around the house, singing nursery rhymes.”

“His imitation of a lunatic,” Todd inferred.

“If he were trying to act crazy, he was doing a great job,” Kendall said. “Near dawn he fell asleep, too late for me and Don to get any rest. Should’ve seen us. Don’t get me wrong. Buddy is more trouble than he’s worth. But I might actually have sympathized with him somewhere along the line if he’d only dropped that gun-deer-Jeep-boots act. For me, it had slowly evolved into a game of seeing how long it would take for him to break, to admit who he is.”

“What he wants,” Todd said in refrain.

“Peter denies reality to deny himself,” Kendall said. “Buddy denies himself through self mortification. Two roads to the same dead end.”

Kendall pursed his lips as he glared at the floor. Soft, gold light from the door, like the glow from a seaside bar, blended with the hard, blue gloss of the streetlight, like moonlight, on the rolling, sea-gray boards of the shiny porch.

“I’ll get us another,” Kendall suggested, drifting back to the moment.

“Got to get rid of this one first,” Todd responded, meaning he had to pee.

They rose, and as they entered the house, a car passed. Thumbing over his shoulder, Kendall asked, “Was that Peter?”

“A couple of months ago,” Kendall said, “Don noticed the vodka was low.”

They were roosting on the swing, drinking beer, picking up the story where they had left it.

“At first,” Kendall said, “he thought Buddy’s father was out of jail and had been coming over. Buddy never drank, or so we thought.”

“Because of his father.”

“Because of his pancreas” Kendall stated. “But one day Don came home from work and caught him reeling around the den. Again, he tried to kick him out, but Buddy wouldn’t go. He stayed and drank, begging to be committed like his dad, and Don would say, ‘Go ahead. Get really drunk so you know what it’s like.’ Buddy yelled, ‘I want to be locked up!’ He even banged his head against the wall.”

“Like a lunatic,” Todd yawned. He looked tired, vulnerable, forlorn.

“How’s your lip?” Kendall asked.

“Doesn’t itch anymore. Guess I’m numb from the beer. What happened?”

“He signed himself in,” Kendall said. “You know, he could’ve been all yours, your patient.”

“Glad someone else got him.”

A breeze woke the potted plants—a philodendron, a schefflera, a caladium—at the end of the porch.

“He got to see some real crazies,” Kendall said, staring into space, conjuring up the ward. “The next day Don asked him if he wanted him to sign him out. ‘No,’ Buddy snapped. ‘Just bring me some clothes.’ But before Don could—”

“He jumped the fence.”

“A group of patients, clients, whatever you call them, was sunning in the yard. Now this,” Kendall said. “A butcher knife. Strange, not because a twenty-one-year-old hillbilly tried to stab himself to death. Strange enough. But I left out a passage. You might read it as a psychosomatic problem, his guts. When Don did finally pry him loose from the house, he moved in with his mother, dropped by at times to mow the lawn for a five or a quickie, but came down with stomach cramps. When he belched blood, we knew he wasn’t kidding, unless, of course, he was doing something to himself. He couldn’t keep anything down, from time to time had to go to the hospital for glucose or tests, for which Don paid,” Kendall stressed. “I actually thought he was going to die, that he wanted to die and so would. It was diagnosed as a benign tumor. They gave him a drug to dissolve it. But I like to think that he was carrying Don’s child.”

“Conceived orally,” Todd joked. “So you think he willed the tumor.”

“That’s why I find it strange he’d stab himself there,” Kendall said. “How could he—after all that pain, that trouble—plunge a knife in the very spot?”

“Is he going to live?” Todd asked.

“Buddy’s like Peter,” Kendall said. “No beginning, no end. Sure, he has every sign of dying out slowly. He can’t go on killing himself every chance he gets. But he’s like a chord that won’t damp out. Don’s struck a minor chord,” he punned, “that won’t damp out. I wonder if they ever do, all the way…out. Or do the vibrations, let’s say, we set in motion go on forever, alter and thus become a part of everything?”

“Like tripping,” Todd added. “Maybe we never really come down.”

Kendall stretched his leg to nudge a rocking chair into motion. The chair looked as if someone invisible were rocking in it.

“Don says Buddy thought they’d just stick a patch on him and send him home,” Kendall said. “That is, when he was still in his right mind. Half the time, he’s delirious on drugs.”

“Love’s better than smut,” Todd observed.

Kendall nodded. “Think Buddy’s crazy? I mean, actually bonkers, not just balled up and insecure?”

“Don’t ask me,” Todd declared. “The only thing between me and my patients is the desk.”

“At times,” Kendall said, “Don sees a boy named Wally, Buddy’s best friend. Of course, each doesn’t want the other to know. Buddy’s middle brother also drops by, and there’s an even younger rosebud yet to bloom. So what about Don? Is he crazy, too?”

“I told you,” Todd replied. “The only thing between me and my patients—”

“Is the desk.”

The swing slowly floated to a halt, suspended like a flying carpet. The humid air clotted with darkness. Only the pulsing chirp of crickets resisted the late hour’s painting-like spell.

“Know signs when you met Randy?” Kendall asked. “What’s the sign for Randy?” he inquired, needling him. “Does he have his own sign?”

“Yes and no,” Todd said, gesturing as if scratching his chest. “This is also the sign for horny, which is highly appropriate.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“Miami.”

“Beautiful boy.”

“I know,” Todd confessed. Then he faced him and said, “I feel as if we’re alone in the world. Don’t you?”

Except for the crickets, the world, to all appearances, was sleeping.

“What are you giving up for Lent?” Kendall asked, changing the subject.

“Griping,” Todd said. “My job,” he explained. “I want to be licensed to set up a practice in New Orleans.” He drew out the syllables New Or-le-ans as if savoring them. “Randy,” he began. “I’m tired of keeping him up. Why I got him the job in Denham Springs. Why I talked him into taking the spesh-ed class.” He crumpled his beer can. “And what are you giving up for Lent?”

“Mark probably.”

The quarter hour tolled resonantly.

“Infidelity?” Todd inquired.

“When he’s out,” Kendall said, “I get phone calls. None of the voices sound familiar. No one leaves a message, which, I guess, is within the realm of possibility. After all, it is his place, but in another sense, it’s ours. Never easy to mark the boundary between his and ours, between what’s real between us and what’s only in my mind. You know those pegs surveyors use to stake out property. They’re harder to find.”

“Together how long?” Todd asked.

“Two and a half years,” Kendall said. “I can’t put my finger on it. Something’s different about him, like noticing something odd in a room, an article missing or a slightly new arrangement of the chairs. He tells me I’m paranoid, which only makes me that much more suspicious. If you can’t trust your lover, who can you trust?”

Todd gazed toward the small square of yard.

“Once I made the mistake of picking up on an extension,” Kendall said.

“What else?”

“Nothing really,” Kendall sighed. “Except maybe his briefcase, which lately he keeps locked. Afraid to make a point of it. What if he opened it and there were nothing in it? Then he’d turn the whole situation around. If he were unfaithful, then it’d be my fault. He thinks like that. I keep waiting for him to leave it unlocked when he’s out.”

“By then,” Todd said, “he will’ve removed whatever he’s hiding. Or so you think.”

“Perhaps if we hadn’t entered the relationship with a certain understanding. Why lie?” Kendall asked, obviously disappointed. “Like tennis. You toss the ball up. You serve.”

“Maybe he couldn’t’ve reeled you in without that understanding. Maybe he meant it at the time, then changed. People do.”

“We’re apart a lot,” Kendall said. “Take, for example, this festive occasion. And we do live in the Quarter, the worst place in the world for a couple.”

“Or the best,” Todd countered.

“If that place can’t untie the knot,” Kendall said, “it’s tied. If he’d broached the subject with me in the right way, let’s say, for kicks, maybe I would’ve endorsed whatever he seems to’ve hidden in that briefcase brain of his. Maybe I’m mature enough or secure enough to be more, for lack of a better word, flexible. Can’t say I haven’t been tempted, can I?”

“You’ve had a golden opportunity.”

“We were in love, Mark and I,” Kendall insisted. “I remember lying in bed way back at the beginning, in a crummy little flat way out in Gretna, and he smiled and started to say something. I said, ‘I think I know what it is. I’ll say it, too. You first.’”

“And he did.”

“Yes,” Kendall stressed, a trace of heat in his voice. “Later he’d throw it in my face that I had made him say it first. Now the most I can drag out of him,” he said bitterly, “is that we must take one day at a time.”

“You can’t reasonably ask much more,” Todd remarked.

“But the fact, if it is, that he’s cheating on me is constantly gnawing at me. No, not that really, but the fact, for sure, that I can never know, for sure, if he is. All that’s sure lately is that I’m not sure, at least about that, and it drives me wild. How does anyone function, let alone be happy, if he can’t be sure of the one crucial step in his life?”

“I don’t know,” Todd said. “Maybe faith. You have to go on, and so you have to take the next step, blindly, yes, but with hope. Ah, yes, you say, the stepping stone was there.”

“Or,” Kendall stated.

“Yes,” Todd admitted. “Or. What’s he supposed to be doing tonight?”

“Going to a costume party.”

“Costumes,” Todd mused. “Sometimes I think Mardi Gras is the only time people don’t wear costumes.”

All at once, the yard came alive with a host of desultory fireflies. They rose from the grass like fish from deep water.

Todd faded into the dark. Kendall lingered at the steps. Absentmindedly, he dug in his pockets and, reminded of the chain, pulled it out to sift like sand from palm to palm. He slipped it back in his pocket, picked up the cans, but, turning toward the door, paused, glancing toward the oleander. Except for the fireflies, the evening was caught in oils.

He entered the house, letting the screen door close gently. After setting the cans on the lowboy, he closed, locked, and bolted the door. He slipped the key from the lock, noticing, to his left, that the copy of Rembrandt’s Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer was crooked. He straightened it, switched off the light, and, forgetting the cans, ambled down the foyer, his head to the side in thought. Near the den stood a tall, wrought-iron stand with a brass ewer balanced on top, the stand so narrow the ewer seemed to be floating. Just as he was about to drop the key in it, the doorbell rang.

Irritated, he pivoted and started back up the foyer. He flipped on the porch light and peered through sheers at a bleary, sallow vision of Peter. Then he sighed heavily, drew the sheers, and said, “Peter, what is it? I was turning in.”

Peter swung the screen door open and touched the glass.

“I’ve got to talk to you, Ken. Please. Please don’t send me away like this. I just couldn’t stand it if I thought you hated me.”

Biting his lip, Kendall studied him. Peter looked scared, wild, terminally jaundiced in the yellow bug light, his fingertips pressed white against the glass, as if it might burst.

“All right,” Kendall said, though he knew better. He turned on the overhead light, unlocked and unbolted the door, and opened it. “But will you?” he asked, his voice flat. “It’s late.”

“I know,” Peter said, stepping into the room. “You don’t hate me, do you?”

“No, I don’t hate you,” Kendall said, and then, out of the blue, he granted him the following reprieve. “I even forgive you for whatever you need to be forgiven for.”

Peter winced. He looked as though Kendall had, though he did not know how, insulted him.

“Been thinking it over,” Peter began, swiveling from Kendall, his hand outstretched as if gripping an invisible hand. “You know, I’ve always itched to settle down with a family. What I plan to do eventually.” He glanced at Kendall, who riveted him with another blank stare. “I love kids, working with kids. I want to have kids. Gays can’t have children,” he announced with a tense smile.

Again, Kendall’s fixed, glassy stare.

“Doris went to that gay church in New Orleans, the NCC,” Peter said, “and talked to them about what they felt about not being able to have children.”

“MCC,” Kendall said. “The Metropolitan Community Church. Who’s Doris?”

“MCC,” Peter repeated, pulling his nose. Then he seemed to drift into a fog.

“Peter,” Kendall said, putting the question to him again, “who’s Doris?”

“A lady in sociology,” he said. “That’s what she did her paper on.”

“Why didn’t you go with her?” Kendall asked.

“I don’t know,” he trembled. He thrust back his hair with his hands. “She said they drank at their service,” he explained. “I don’t believe in that.”

“What do you believe in?”

“I don’t know,” Peter admitted. “Not that. Drinking in church,” he said, faking a chummy laugh. “Whoever heard of that?”

“Do you believe in drinking at all?” Kendall asked.

“N-no,” Peter stuttered, squeezing his nose.

“Peter,” Kendall began with a sharp edge to his voice, “how do you expect to meet gays in this town if you don’t perch yourself at a bar and have at least a glass of wine, just an excuse to be sitting there? Besides,” he added, “from the looks of things, a glass of wine, hell, a bottle of wine’d do you good.”

“I don’t drink, Ken!” he stressed.

“Why?” Kendall pressed.

“I don’t know,” Peter whined, thrashing about. “It’s a sin. My preacher tells me not to. It’s not good for me, he says.”

“Do you always do what everyone tells you?”

“You give me advice. You used to.”

“What does your preacher think of all your drugs?” Kendall asked. “Aren’t drugs worse than wine?”

“Drugs?” Peter asked, ill at ease. “My medicine? Why, I have to take that, Ken. Who knows what state I’d be in?”

“Just look at the state you are in.”

Peter flumped onto the staircase, brooding, head in hands.

“My doctor tells me I’m not gay,” he fretted, more plaintive than peevish. “It’s just a symptom.”

“Of what?”

Peter gaped, pale, visibly stumped.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he cried, burying his face in his hands. “My preacher tells me I’m not gay, too, that I’ve just gone astray. I can find my way back.”

“Don’t you like men?” Kendall asked.

“They thay I’m not!” Peter wailed.

Without changing expression, Kendall asked, “Don’t you like men’s feet?”

Peter shivered, uttering a deep, primitive grunt.

“How’d you know?” he demanded.

“Remember?” Kendall asked slyly. “You brought up the subject not two hours ago. Besides, you asked Don to drop by the porn shop. Wanted him to pick up something with feet.”

“Oh,” he said, massaging the side of his face.

“Where’d you acquire this taste for feet?” Kendall asked.

“Huh?”

Peter, calmer, suddenly seemed to notice Kendall’s.

“Women don’t have feet like that,” Peter explained, nodding toward Kendall’s. “They look strong,” he confessed. “All muscles and bones and veins. And th-they—”

“What?” Kendall coaxed. “Do you like the way they smell?”

“Y-y-yes,” he stammered, fidgeting. “Yes!” he exclaimed, obviously hypnotized by Kendall’s feet. “Nothing smells like that, don’t you see?”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Kendall asked, “that maybe it’s their maleness that turns you on, that it all boils down to what’s standing on them?”

“No!” he blurted. “It’s more than muscles and toenails and….” He broke off, entranced. “We walk around on them. Without them, we’d have to stand in place like a tree,” he grinned. “We run with them.”

“Away,” Kendall muttered.

“Something about them,” Peter sighed, “makes me feel wild all over.” Then he acknowledged, chagrinned, “They’re the part farthest from my head, from the small voice.”

“Small voice?” Kendall asked curiously.

“The voice I hear when I think,” Peter explained. “Sometimes I think of it as living in my head, looking out through my eye-holes, listening to everything through my ears. It’s like my head is a shell, and it’s backed up in there. But if any part’s a stranger, they are. Feet. And they don’t read newspapers. They don’t worry about grades. In fact,” he stated, “they’re blind and deaf and dumb.”

“They only feel,” Kendall deduced. “A blind, deaf, and dumb stranger that you love,” Kendall summarized. “What kind of love is that, Peter?”

“Don’t know,” he blushed. “Can’t figure it out.”

“What do you think of yourself, Peter?” Kendall asked point-blank. “What makes you want to throw yourself at someone’s feet?”

“Don’t know, I told you,” he sulked. “But you can tell a lot from a guy’s feet,” he said, dropping his scowl. “I know I can tr-trust you, Ken.”

“What makes you think that?” Kendall asked.

“Your feet,” he claimed. “They’re perfect.”

“What do my feet make you want to do?” Kendall asked clinically. “Touch them?”

“Yes!”

“What else?”

Peter looked him straight in the eye. “Oh, you know.”

“Look,” Kendall said, shifting from foot to foot, “I have to go to the bathroom. Then I’m going to have another beer. Want one?”

Peter gave him a sidelong look. Kendall stalked off, squelching across the floor. The clock raised another three-quarters hour.

When Kendall returned, Peter was standing near a console table, fingering the wick of one of the wooden candles in a pair of gilt, plaster-of-Paris holders.

“I thought they were real, Ken,” Peter marveled.

Kendall responded with a slightly mystified look.

“They look real,” Peter said.

“Don has a penchant for the bastard.”

“Huh?”

“The silk irises, the marble eggs, the plastic fruit,” Kendall enumerated, indicating them with a tilt of the beer can.

Peter scuffled to the chest of drawers to study the vase of purple flowers, touching, with a shaky finger, a bright orange, pipe-cleaner stamen.

“Sure you don’t want one?” Kendall asked, nodding at the beer.

Peter glared, then changed expressions. “What’s this?” he asked, opening a Limoges toilet box.

“Don’t know,” Kendall said. “A knickknack.”

“What’s this?” Peter asked, childlike, lifting a roach clip from the box.

“Peter, sit down,” Kendall ordered, “and unwind for God’s sake.”

Obediently, Peter replaced the clip, shut the box, and sat on the couch. For a moment, he seemed happy, if high-strung, grateful for the somber hour with Kendall.

“You know,” Kendall said, leaning on the newel, “that’s all you really need to unwind. A drink—” he faltered. “Tranquilizers help, sure. But they only relieve the symptoms, if that. You have to yank out the angst by the roots.”

“Angst?”

“Sex is a great tranquilizer,” Kendall said. “First, it makes you hard. Then it makes you soft all over.”

Again, Peter glared, as if slapped, but scared to strike back.

“It’s the truth, Peter,” Kendall declared, “whether or not you admit it. Probably scared you’ll incriminate yourself. Peter, you’re as gay as—” He hesitated. “You can stretch a rubber band just so tight. Then pop. You probably are better off jerking off at work.”

Although Peter had appeared to be mentally taking down Kendall’s every word, he obviously had not heard the last statement. His eyes had strayed to Kendall’s feet.

“Sex,” Kendall said, “as far as I can tell, is the root of your problem.” He was now only vaguely aware of his audience. He was spent and a little drunk, lost in the self-importance of his words. “You don’t have any friends,” he said frankly. “If you don’t have gay friends, people with whom you can share your secrets, then you don’t have anyone with whom you can relax.” He gestured as he spoke. “You need people with whom you can be yourself, with whom you can be comfortable being yourself. Give yourself a chance for Christ’s sake. Try yourself out. You may even like yourself. Who knows?”

Peter kept sneaking glances at Kendall’s feet.

“Isolating your problem,” Kendall said, “magnifies it, the one white in a room full of blacks. You won’t slit, I mean, sit in a bar,” Kendall slurred, “and have a drink with me. You won’t drive to New Orleans to attend one service of the MCC. Who knows? You may like it. You may meet someone you like.”

“I can’t go by myself,” Peter claimed. “I drove Mr. Currant down once, a blind man from my church, to a blind man’s convention and got lost.”

“Doris went,” Kendall said. “You had to do a paper, too. Why didn’t you go with her?”

“Mother wouldn’t let me go to no gay church,” he sulked.

“That’s another thing I’d like to say something,” he burped, “about, Peter, shour mom. Don’t you think it’s about time you two got divorced?”

Kendall was having trouble keeping his thoughts on track. Peter grew agitated, staring now straight ahead, now at Kendall’s feet, clutching, then releasing the couch. He resembled a schoolboy about to wet his pants.

“How old are you, Peter, twenty-five?” Kendall asked. “And still living at home?”

Peter flinched as if Kendall had cursed him.

“Why,” Kendall said, “you’re as jumpy as a squirrel in a tree full of cats. Your mom says you’re not gay. Your preacher says you’re not. Even your shrink says no. Right? But I say—” Kendall leaned forward and whispered in a coarse, guttural rasp, “You are! Don’t take my word for it. Ask yourself. Ever dared to think for yourself once?”

“W-what d-d-do you mean?” he asked, rocking back and forth. Some alarm had gone off in his voice.

“Ever slept with a woman, huh?” Kendall asked with a wide sweep of the beer.

Peter jerked as if grabbed by the shirt, and Kendall chuckled. When Peter looked at him, Peter’s left iris, like a marble, began to slowly trundle into the inner corner of his eye.

“Then would you tell me, please,” Kendall insisted, “what it’s like for you just to be with one? Ever feel as cozy as you do with me, I mean, with men?” Kendall left the newel, closing in on Peter as he squirmed, pinned to the couch. “Come on, Peter,” Kendall demanded. “Tell the truth. Does it feel as good with a girl as it does with the boy at the store, as it does with—” He hated to say it. “Me? Huh? Say it. Spit it out. For your own sake, tell the truth!”

Peter, eyes clenched, sat on his hands, tottering on the edge of the couch. He shook his head no.

“Then you are gay, aren’t you?” Kendall asked. “Come on. Say it. Say it. Now!”

Tears streamed down Peter’s face, and he squalled, “I want to sleep in the arms of my bride. I want a family, kidth of my own. I don’t want to be gay. I don’ wanna, I don’ wanna. It’th thin, the Bible thayth. My preacher thayth it ’th thin! I don’ wanna burn in hell.” Then he turned on Kendall the way wind changes direction. “You are gay, aren’t you, Ken? You are, you are,” he snarled. “You just want me to be l-like you!”

“To hell with you,” Kendall stated, suddenly composed. He loomed over him as from a great tower. “Get out.”

“No, pleath,” Peter begged, flinging himself at Kendall’s knees.

“You think life’s waiting for you to sort out all this preacher-teacher-shrink stuff? Hell, no. It could care less.”

They had sailed into a calm.

“I’d take you to a bar or the church myself,” Kendall said compassionately, “if I weren’t up for tenure. I just can’t. I just can’t risk my job. You’re so crazy, Peter, or I’d lay you myself.”

“Tenure?” Peter asked, clutching Kendall’s legs. Slowly, his head rolled back. His mouth fell open.

“This is the year,” Kendall explained, “the department decides if it wants to keep me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” Kendall said, amused. “Everyone runs up against it.”

“Oh,” Peter said, resting his head against Kendall’s thigh.

Kendall glanced at the tousled hair, then took a swig of beer. “All you need,” he decided, “is a hit of poppers and a big dick up your ass.”

The clock recited all the notes of Big Ben, then ominously banged out three more.

“Butt-fuck me, Ken, please,” he pleaded, his forehead pressed into Kendall’s groin.

“I can’t,” he said gently. “I’m…quite happy, Peter, just the way I am.”

Peter clung to his waist and sobbed, “You got a lover, don’t you?”

Kendall just stood there. “No, I don’t.”

“To hell with you!” Peter cried. He grabbed the loops of Kendall’s jeans, submerging his face in their blue. “I know you do!” he claimed, wallowing in Kendall’s crotch. “Don told me. You’re lying! Before, I didn’t know what to believe. Now I do!”

Kendall reached to set the beer on the lowboy, then tried to free himself.

“No, no, no,” Peter begged. “Thith wouldn’t have happened,” he sobbed, “if you’d—” He began crying uncontrollably. “You’d,” he gasped, “just talked to me that night.”

“What night, Peter? Get up. What are you talking about?”

“Thix yearth ago.”

Kendall rested his hand on Peter’s head as Peter, shuddering, mashed his face against his stomach.

“You’re probably right,” Kendall said, his expression blank. “You’re right,” he admitted. “It wouldn’t have.” He peered across the couch into the yellowish, shadow-streaked sheers. “I pretended I didn’t know why you were here. Whenever you actually broached the subject, I changed it, as if whatever you said had never been said at all. Guess I’m the one who cut out the tongue of the gay inside you. I wouldn’t hear him. Didn’t want to. And look who’s filling in for him. I’ve created a—No wonder you—” He stared down at him. “It’s just no wonder. What can I do? I’m sorry. A part of me’s genuinely ashamed, but I have to admit another part’s not. I have my own life to live, my own problems. I can’t be bothered with this emotional rape. There. Now you know I’m a bastard, a real bastard. I can’t help you, Peter. Never could. I don’t want to.”

“Juth let me be near you,” Peter implored. “Let me. Let me, pleath. Ith that tho much to ath?”

Kendall’s gaze hardened, then softened.

“Have a heart, Ken, pleath,” Peter pleaded. “Have a heart.”

“You don’t need to beg me, Peter,” Kendall said, affectionately ruffling his hair. “Or anybody. I tell you, there’s a rich vein of gay men running through the world. You can overdose on ’em if you want. A lot of ’em just like—just right for someone like you.”

“I’ll pay you,” Peter whispered. “I got money. Thee?”

When Peter released him, Kendall stepped out of reach, and Peter pulled out his wallet, emptying it on the carpet. Then he pulled his pockets inside out, scattering keys and change.

“It’s all yourth,” he announced, his arms spread wide in a spiritual gesture.

“For what?” Kendall asked.

“Y-your—y-y-your—” Peter stuttered timidly.

“My feet,” Kendall figured, following Peter’s gaze.

“Just to lay my head,” Peter entreated, “near y-your f-f-feet. Just to look at them, to touch them,” he sang, his eyes squinched in a grimace of bliss. “To kiss them, to—”

He clenched his fists as though seizing someone’s shirt.

“No,” Kendall said. Then he burst out laughing. “‘And how did you spend Mardi Gras, Kendall?’”

Peter gradually sank onto his heels.

“I’m sorry,” Kendall said, rubbing his eyes. “Didn’t mean—It’s late. I’m tired. I’ve had a few beers.” Then he sighed, “You’ve worn me down.”

“I’ll save myself for you,” Peter said, collecting the money.

“What?” Kendall gulped.

“Long as it takes.”

“Peter,” Kendall protested. “You know, you are crazy. I had my chance to do something for you once, and I botched it. A moment of carelessness. I created a monster in a moment of carelessness. And now it’s too late. You have to do something for yourself now, Peter. You have to save yourself, all right, but not for me, for you. Saving yourself for me is stupid,” he smiled. “You have to stop playing everybody’s clown. Get over me. Do yourself a favor, Peter. Forget me. Forget you ever saw me. The only way, I tell you. Find someone else, someone your own style.”

Kendall’s eyes betrayed a flash of utter indifference. Peter stuffed his wallet in his pocket, then rose.

“Someday,” Peter said, “when you’re old and no one else wants you, Ken, I’ll be here. I’ll be here, waiting for you, and you’ll want me then.”

It was hard to tell whether this last statement was a lover’s promise or a killer’s threat.

“Shit, I will,” Kendall snapped.

Peter moved to the door, but stopped.

“Go home, Peter,” Kendall sighed wearily. “I can’t stomach much more. You’re about to drive me crazy, too. Unreal. Your distraught mother’s probably called the cops, and I don’t want them to find you here.”

Peter pushed the screen door open inch by inch, then stopped again.

“Go home, Peter,” Kendall repeated firmly. “I don’t hate you. Never did. Go home.”

Peter stepped onto the porch, letting the screen door pop. All at once, like a wind-up toy, he hurried down the steps, disappearing into the night. Kendall promptly locked the door.

“He’s come back to haunt me,” Kendall marveled, leaning against the door. “My monster of guilt has come back to haunt me. Man!”

Peter followed Kendall’s car, turning onto St. Ann, immediately losing himself in the ancient labyrinth of the streets. Kendall circled the blocks near Ursuline at Bourbon. Someone pulled out, and he swerved into the space, switching off his lights. Peter slowed to a crawl, dimming his lights, then swung into a space, blocking a drive. Buildings pitched toward and away from the street as if viewed through a warped lens.

Kendall emerged from his car and disappeared around a corner. Peter leaped from his, but held the handle so that the door closed gently, hardly making a sound. He slipped between cars and raced along the sidewalk, past obscure stoops and windows. Rounding the corner, he slipped on dog shit, slamming his hip against the pavement. He rose, whimpering, and hobbled after the puppet-like shadow dangling in the distance. He pursued it around another corner, then, near the end of Bourbon, lost it.

“No!” he moaned abjectly, lurching down the street.

At the intersection, he limped in a circle, straining to see some sign of Kendall. He lurched back down the block to circle the other intersection. The houses looked vacant, and a strange, utterly dead silence had settled on the Quarter. A hurt, brutal cry slipped from his throat as he bent to rub his hip.

All at once, he lunged toward a gate, which clicked open, squealing on its hinges, revealing a long, moon-bright alley. He edged along the passage till he came to a set of windows, where he peered in, shading his eyes, through a slit in the sheers. At first, all he could make out was his own short shadow zigzag across the bed. Then a woman stirred, defining herself as well as the man on top. Peter backed away, his hands up as if fending off the pair. He bumped into a wall, gasping, then fled the cry from the room.

In the street, he squinted in one direction, then the other. In front of him lay a basketball court ringed by seesaws, swings, and a jungle gym, all within a lotus-studded wrought-iron fence. He cast a frightened glance over his shoulder, then lunged through a gate. Pier-like scaffolding jutted from a ground floor window, and he flung himself—between that and a sandbox—into a dark corner, at first pressed into the angle, then sliding down the bricks till he slumped on the ground. He drew his legs against his chest and, embracing his knees, buried his face in his arms. Then he started to twitch as if chilled.

A cloud drifted across the moon, and when he glanced up, the walls around him dimmed to an even darker, womb-like red. He sniffed twice loudly, grunted a vehement, revulsed grunt, and began kicking violently as if trying to kick off his feet. Then he stopped, slouched forward, staring into space. The cloud retreated from the moon, sharpening shadows. The basketball court glittered with mica. The jungle gym glistened as if coated with ice.

He held out his fists as if offering them, then wept, dropping his arms. Slowly, his head rolled back, and he gazed straight up through the watery depths of the night. Stars flickered on the surface. He wept, and his head rolled forward, resting on his chest as if bobbing to some dreamlike ebb and flow. He wept, and slowly his head rolled back, and his mouth fell open. Clouds like seaweed drifted through the sky, and the moon was a buoy whose bell he could not hear.

 

© 2006 Ken Anderson - Contributor's Bio