by Gregory Ashe
Tucker wasn’t a particularly big man—not as tall or as muscled as North, for example—but there was something monumental about Tucker’s anger. Normally, the anger lay under a thin gilt foil, and when you first saw Tucker, all you saw was the sparkle. That’s how it had been in college, especially the first two years. Back then, maybe that layer of glitter hadn’t been so thin. Or maybe they’d all just been too young to know what was happening. But there had been signs. There had been brawls at frat parties. There had been fistfights outside dive bars. There had been screaming bouts that had extinguished one friendship after another. There had been Trace Montenegro’s dorm room and Tucker’s riddle about an oxymoron—What’s the only literary device that can win a fistfight?. Trace hadn’t liked the answer; Tucker had demonstrated, and it had left Trace with a broken nose. But those things had never happened with Shaw, and never with North, and rarely with Peter and Paul and Rufus, so Tuck was allowed to stay in the group through grace. Until the summer after sophomore year when Tuck had spilled a plastic cup of Bud Lite down the front of the Tommy Bahama shirt he was wearing (worn ironically, he had told everyone as loudly as he could), and Joey Manakowski had laughed.
Tuck had punched him so hard that there was actually this popping noise like Joey was a balloon animal, and Joey went down on his knees. And it didn’t stop there. Tuck took off his driving moc, pushed Joey forward, and beat the shit out of him. With his shoe. While everyone watched. Everyone except North. North intervened. North dragged Tucker out of the house, and then Shaw drove Joey Manakowski to the hospital for treatment for an orbital fracture.
There had been criminal charges. And a civil suit. And with traditional waspy magic, Tucker’s parents had made both go away. And, as far as Shaw knew, that had been the turning point. Junior and senior year had been different: no more drunken fistfights, no more screaming. It might have been a million different reasons. Maybe Tucker had gotten therapy. But for Shaw, the answer had crystallized that spring night at the end of senior year when he had sat on the Sigma Sigma roof and listened through the window as Tucker asked North, “God, please tell me you haven’t been out there blowing Shaw.”
Now, with Tucker advancing on him in the office, all those thoughts went through Shaw’s head like a stormcloud, but the one that lingered was the way Tucker’s hand had crumpled the driving moccasin, the way the suede had folded under the heel of his hand, and the clapping noise it made when he brought it down on Joey’s back.
The tape dispenser, Shaw thought. I’ll put the fucking tape dispenser in his eye if he keeps coming.
And then, to Shaw’s total surprise, Tuck’s whole body bucked, and Shaw realized that he was trying to keep from crying.
“Tuck? Tucker?” This was the second man who had started crying in Shaw’s office that day, and it was throwing off Shaw’s whole universe.
“Is North having an affair?”
Shaw was shaking his head automatically, mechanically, but his mind was racing. It was like someone had touched a match to a trail of gasoline. And he was shocked at the ferocious heat of his next thought: Please, please, God, let North be fucking somebody else.
“Are you and North sleeping together?”
“What?” That snapped Shaw back to reality. “Jesus Christ. Of course not.”
“Who? Who is it, Shaw?” Tuck still hadn’t broken into tears, but he wiped at dry eyes, and his whole body continued to be racked by those dry sobs. “What piece of alley ass is he out there fucking while I’m home, worried sick—”
“Tuck, he’s not cheating on you. Honest to God. He’s not.”
“He came home late last night. Way later than usual, and all he’d say was that he’d been working, but I could smell booze on him, and—”
“We were working. That’s the truth. We went to Allure because—it’s a whole thing, ok, and I can’t tell because of client confidentiality. But it’s a bar, and we had to get some info, so we had a few drinks while we chatted up the bartender.” Tucker eyed Shaw like he was checking a fresh twenty for counterfeiting. “Tuck, North isn’t a cheater. He’s not. He loves you—”
Tucker barked a harsh, seal-like laugh and scrubbed his dry eyes again.
“—and he wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Then why wouldn’t he say anything else? Why wouldn’t he just tell me all of that, about the bar and the bartender and a few drinks? Christ, he knew how much he was hurting me, and he wouldn’t even tell me what he’d been doing. Just work. That’s all he would say.”
“Look, I don’t want to get in the middle of you and North, but maybe he felt like that’s all he needed to say. Maybe he wanted you to trust him.”
Tuck seemed to be settling. He pressed his hands to the hot spots in his cheeks. He looked wild and totally undone, and the transformation had been so sudden and so intense that Shaw’s adrenaline was still pumping. When Tuck spoke, his voice was soft and broken. “Did he tell you that? Did he say he doesn’t think I trust him?”
“What? No. Christ, look, I’m not getting in the middle of you guys. If you—”
“You already are.”
Like a splash of cold water. “What?”
“Come on, Shaw. We’re all adults. You and I, we’ve never talked about this. I didn’t think we had to. But maybe we should.” Tucker braced himself, squaring his shoulders. “Do you still have feelings for him?”
“Oh my God. No.”
“Because you did. In college, you were crushing on him pretty hard.”
“It was just a crush. A long time ago.”
“Shaw, come on. It was more than a crush.”
“He loves you. He married you. North and I are friends, really good friends, but that’s it. There’s nothing beyond that.”
“Would you tell me if it were more than that? Would you—would you be honest about that, Shaw?”
Shaw thought about the mixture of Irish Spring soap and American Crew gel that he smelled every day, his first sign of North before he even saw him. He thought about the sound of the Red Wings on the house’s old floorboards. He thought about the night Marvin Hanson had pushed him down a flight of stairs in a parking garage—not that he remembered much of it after the concussion—and the glow of a sodium vapor lamp ringing North McKinney with a halo, like Shaw’s own personal avenging angel. He thought about those strong fingers working his neck this morning.
“Of course. And I promise it’s nothing like that. I swear, Tuck.”
“Ok.” He drywashed his face again. “And you were telling the truth earlier? You don’t know where he is?”
“I just know he went out to try to get some more information for this case. I can’t tell you any more than that without—”
Tucker waved him off. “Without compromising client confidentiality. Right. I get it. Do you think I’m a total lunatic now?”
“Not anymore than I already did.”
With a grin, Tuck said, “Fair enough.” Then the grin went out. “Are you going to tell him?”
“Tuck, if you guys are having problems—”
“Please don’t tell him, Shaw. Please.” Tucker took two huge strides, his hands clutching at Shaw’s shoulders—not angrily, but desperately. “Please, he’s already mad at me about last night, and if he knows I . . . I went ballistic-level jealous, he’ll be so pissed. If he knows I came down here, if he knows I asked you, please, he’ll kill me.”
“I think he should know that you guys have some issues to work out—”
“Shaw,” Tucker moaned.
“—but it’s not my place to be the one to tell him. I told you: I’m not getting in the middle of this.”
“So you won’t?”
“I won’t.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Shaw. God, you have no idea how much better I feel.” Tucker gathered himself, moved toward the door, and then glanced back. “Are we cool, Shaw? You and I? Because we never talked about, well, about how North and I—I mean, I
don’t know if I’m supposed to say I’m sorry or something.”
“It was a crush, Tuck. It’s not like you stole my boyfriend. And you guys are great together. I’m glad you make North happy.”
Tuck gave one of those waspy, orthodontically perfect smiles. “I hope I do.”
“I know you do.”
“Thanks. Oh, and how did the date go with Hank? I was going to call him—”
“Good, good, good. Really good. Listen, my client’s waiting out there, so I’d better—”
“Right. Thanks, Shaw.”
And with that, Tucker was gone. A moment passed, and Matty poked his head through the doorway.
“Come on in,” Shaw said. “Sorry about that.”
“No, it’s ok. I kind of calmed down, and I think—I don’t know. I guess I don’t know why I came here.”
“If you say you saw those guys following you, I don’t want to ignore that. Were they cops?”
Matty rolled his shoulders and shoved his hands deep in the pockets of the sagging cardigan. “I did see them. I know I did. But I don’t know who they are. They didn’t look like any cops I’d ever seen. It’s not like I can hide out in here forever, and—” He cast a glance at the darkening windows. “And I guess maybe I should go buy a can of pepper spray or something before going home.”
Shaw chewed the inside of his lip. Adrenaline was running out of him, leaving him exhausted and nauseated and feeling like he was twenty-one again and having his best friend shatter his heart with a sledgehammer. But the thing was, the honest truth was, that even after that night on the Sigma Sigma roof when Shaw had heard Tucker ask, “God, please tell me you haven’t been out there blowing Shaw,” even after he had heard North’s dry laugh and his answer, “He’s sweet, but a little too soy boy for me,” even after he had rolled onto his knees and peered through the window and seen Tucker advance, take North around the waist, and say, “Good, because I’ve been thinking about you for four years,” even after the kiss, even after watching the two of them suck face, he still hadn’t been able to get past North. And here he was, twenty-six years old and still hung up on a boy from freshman year of college.
Maybe it’s time, Shaw thought, and he wasn’t sure why the thought was both liberating and gut wrenching. Maybe it’s time.
Matty was looking at him, waiting. Matty wanted to touch him. Matty wanted to hold his hand. Matty wanted his help. It was more than want; it was need. And Shaw had never felt needed, not like this, not by someone so beautiful and vulnerable and present for him.
“Maybe I should go back to your place with you,” Shaw said, and his throat felt like it was packed with crumbled saltines. “You know, to make sure it’s safe.”
Matty’s head came up, and his smile was so open, so genuine, so full of surprised hope that it went through Shaw like a laser: just this perfect hole drilled straight to his heart. “Really? I didn’t want to ask because it seemed, I don’t know, forward.”
“Forward?” Shaw asked, and he actually laughed when Matty ducked his head in embarrassment.
“You know what I mean.”
Shaw thought he did. He was starting to think North was right. He was starting to think he’d been missing a lot of signals, wasting a lot of years, letting so many wonderful things slip through his grasp because he was too stupid to know when a game was over and lost and the teams packed up and gone home.
The front door to the office opened again, and footsteps moved through the inner office.
“I’m looking for Shaw,” came the voice.
“Sure,” Pari said. “Great. Fantastic. We’ve only had one million people in here today. Go on through. This might as well be—” Her voice rose shrilly as the footsteps moved toward the office. “—the Paris Peace Convention of 1946!”
It took a moment for Shaw to place the pretty face in the doorway. Then he remembered the taste of the whiskey sour. “Hey, Jake, right?”
“Jack.” He grinned, blushed, and jerked a thumb back at the front office. “Is it ok—”
“World Civ 2,” Shaw explained.
“Uh, right. Listen, I—oh. Sorry. You’re with somebody.”
Matty shifted, putting himself behind Shaw, his hand coming up to rest—not quite taking hold, just fingers brushing—on the back of Shaw’s arm.
“This is—” Shaw wasn’t sure why his face was heating, why he was suddenly stumbling. “A client. I’m sorry Jake—”
“Jack.”
“Did I—did my partner—”
“Oh, yeah. He just told me to pick you up around now for dinner.”
“He did?” And somehow, that clinched it: the fact that North felt so sorry for Shaw that he was sending strangers to their office made the decision final. Shaw was going to do what he wanted to do. He was going to take care of Matty.
Jack stared for a moment, and then he shook his head. “Oh my God, you didn’t even know.”
“Look, there was some kind of misunderstanding. I’ve got to help this client—”
“Oh my God,” Jack said again.
“You seem really nice—”
“Why did I think this was a good idea? Ok. I’m out.”
“Please don’t cry—” Shaw had already had two criers today; he couldn’t handle a third. “You don’t need to—” The front door slammed. “Cry.” When Shaw glanced over his shoulder, Matty was fighting a smile. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“It’s just—it’s cute.”
“What? Watching me break hearts?”
Matty lost the fight and leaned forward, burying his face in Shaw’s shoulder and laughing.
That was when Pari chose to appear in the door, a mammoth textbook splayed open, her finger pointing to a bolded section of text. “He stormed out of here,” she announced. “Just like the Finnish ambassador on the thirteenth day of the Paris Peace Convention of 1946.”
“Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed, please help me,” Shaw said, catching Matty’s arm and tugging him toward the door.
Chapter 13
Shaw followed Matty—the boy drove a snappy blue Volvo, which meant that RiverChurch must have been doing pretty well—to an apartment in Soulard. The neighborhood was a mixture of incomes and degrees of gentrification, but Matty lived in a newly remodeled loft inside what had once been a shoe factory. The exposed brick and steel and concrete didn’t really fit the churchboy, but the building’s front entry had two secured doors, and when Shaw examined the door on the loft, it passed inspection.
“Just don’t open it for anyone you don’t know,” he said, tapping the peephole.
Matty grinned, playing with the cardigan, stretching it away from his long, lean form.
“Is that a totally stupid thing to say?” Shaw asked.
“I’m not that naive.”
“You’d be surprised, though.” Shaw moved into the loft itself. “It’s an easy mistake to make.”
Shaw found some of what he expected from the son of a pastor, and he found some of what he expected from a boy who had repressed his sexuality too long. The line of demarcation between those two categories was clearly in flux. Religious paintings that must have once dominated the walls were now leaning together in a pile, while the only thing to take their place was one of those color-pop photographs of the San Francisco skyline in black and white, with two spots in color: the bridge, and then, tucked into the corner, a rainbow pride flag.
“Is it too on the nose?”
Shaw grinned and flipped through the paintings that Matty had taken down. They were all fairly standard prints that could have come from any Christian bookstore or website. Nothing of particular artistic merit. Nothing too strongly theological, although Shaw supposed that the days of artwork as another battlefield for the vicious struggle between consubstantiation and transubstantiation might have passed, oh, five hundred years ago. Some of the prints still had price tags on the back of the canvases, whi
ch made Shaw’s grin widen. It looked like Matty Fennmore wasn’t very detail-minded—or maybe he just didn’t care enough to peel off the tags.
“No. It’s nice.”
“You hate it. It’s ok. You can tell me you hate it.”
“I said it’s nice. What are you going to do with these?”
“I just bought them at the church gift store. They’re not anything special.”
“They were special to you.”
Matty’s grin dripped off. His hands, buried in the cardigan’s pockets, balled into fists. “They’re just pictures.”
Nodding, Shaw let the canvases fall back against the wall. He checked the bedroom. He checked the closet. He checked the bathroom. No sign of intruders. No sign of anything except a young man who didn’t own enough hangers and who hadn’t bothered to push his suitcase under the bed all the way.
Shaw moved across the loft to the bank of windows that ran the width of the room. They must have been original, the glass warped and bubbled. Beyond, the last of the sun shattered on the far bank of the Mississippi, throwing red and orange chips of light across a crescent of muddy water. Everything else was in shadow. The muted thrum of traffic marked the end of rush hour.
“Do you like living here?”
“It’s ok.” Then, after a pause, “I have coffee at the farmers market every morning they’re open. That’s nice.”
Shaw leaned closer to the glass; he liked the way his breath fogged the window. He kept waiting.
“They’re not just paintings, ok?” Matty came up behind Shaw, and a hint of something spicy—his cologne? his sweat?—came with him.
“Why don’t you tell me what they are?”
“They’re—” He grimaced. “They’re the whole fucking problem.” That word, fuck, sounded like it jammed sideway in his mouth. “Those paintings? My dad likes those paintings. My dad gave me most of those fucking paintings. And I’m so fucking sick of looking at those fucking paintings that I could—I don’t know. Scream. Slash them up. Throw them into the river. Burn them.”