by Doug Sanford
“Everything?”
“Everything. I do love you, old man.”
“Funny time to mention it, but I’m glad. Come to bed.”
He did, and we slept.
We were both a bit more articulate the next morning.
“Things went really well, but it seemed to take forever. I had no idea how much about those early days I’d have to remember and go into to make her understand. Having to tell somebody else about all we’ve been through made me realize even more how weird, wonderful, and miraculous this thing we have between us is.”
“I guess that’s pretty clearly a good weird?” I asked.
“No question.”
“That accounts for your romantic declaration at the bedside last night—not that you don’t mention it other times. What was her reaction?”
“Calm and reflective. Just like her. She didn’t really say much. We sort of moved from a discussion of our past, yours and mine, into our present, yours and mine and hers, and of course, ended up in bed.”
“The hardest thing to explain to her was that I love both of you at once and the same. I don’t know how that’s possible. I just know it’s true. The sex is physically different and our histories are different, but it’s not like one is better than the other—just different. There’s no question of loving one of you more than the other—that doesn’t even make any sense to me. My feelings are the same for each of you. Sometimes in my head, it’s like the two of you are parts of one person. I know that sounds insane, but it’s really clear and simple to me.”
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you put it like that, kid. But I get it. I really do. Do you think she did?”
“I don’t know. I sure hope so.”
“Did she have any questions?”
“Almost none. She got upset at first because she thought that the reason I wanted you two to meet was to see if you approved of her, but I told her that was silly. I reminded her that I’d started the whole evening by telling her how much I loved her and that I wanted to marry her and spend my life with her. That was a decision I’d already made. I needed her to meet you not for your approval but because she had to understand who I was, who you were, and what part you played, and would have to continue to play, in my life.”
“And how did that go over—the would have to continue to play?”
“I’m not sure. At the end, when I asked her what she thought of it all, she said she’d need time to think about it. But she didn’t seem to be upset. It certainly didn’t make her any less interested in making love. But then, as I’ve told you, she’s pretty much as horny as you are.”
He smiled, but then his brow furrowed and he turned serious. “Marc, what the hell are we getting ourselves into? I know I started this, but where are things going from here? The more I think about it, the more scared I get.”
“Calm down. Let’s see how things go tonight,” I said, acting more together than I actually felt.
* * * *
I heard them drive up right at six. He’d decided to pick her up so that they wouldn’t be jockeying two cars later that night to go back to her place. As things worked out, that proved to be unnecessary.
I had the door open before they reached it, and they walked in holding hands.
“Hi, Leslie,” I said, another one of my brilliant conversational openers. As I turned to walk back into the living room, Bart grabbed my arm.
“Hey.”
He pulled me over, put his arm around my shoulder, and without letting go of her hand kissed me hello the way we did every time one of us came home.
I glanced at Leslie and stuttered, “I—we—”
“It’s all right, old man, Les knows we kiss—and more.”
“Old man?” repeated Leslie.
“I guess I left that out last night. Marc will explain. I’ll get some drinks. Red wine okay, Les?” Bart was acting jaunty, but I knew he was more nervous than he was letting on.
“Fine.”
“Red for you too, old man?” he said to me, emphasizing the old.
I gave him the finger. He smiled and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Let me give you a tour,” I said. I was nervous as well and figured showing her around the house was easier than sitting and looking at each other. For Bart’s sake, I wanted this to go well and didn’t want to screw anything up.
As we walked, I said, “How are you doing? Was last night a bit more than you expected?”
“It’s been a lot to take in. Why old man?”
“Started during one of our first phone calls. At some point I called him a kid. He didn’t like that. Said he wasn’t a kid. I told him he was a kid to me. He said something like, Okay, old man. Somehow, it stuck. That’s what we call each other most of the time. Stupid, I guess.”
“Cute.”
“Yeah, he is, isn’t he?”
“I meant—”
“I know.”
She smiled, and I relaxed just a bit.
When we got to the office, she saw the Emmy which Bart refused to keep in the living room.
“Is that what I think it is?” Leslie asked.
“He still hasn’t told you about it? He got it last year for Outstanding Younger Actor.”
“Of course I know about the soap, but he never mentioned this.”
“Does it surprise you that he never told you?”
Pause. “No, come to think about it. Not at all.”
“Have you ever watched the show?”
“I tried a few times. When he told me about it, I felt I ought to out of loyalty. I thought he was fine even though I had a hard time separating the Bart I know from the character. But then soaps are not my thing.”
“I think it’s pretty dreadful. I can’t watch it at all. We actually set up a deal with a company that does this sort of thing to record every episode he’s on and put them all on DVDs so that we’ll have a record of it, but the thought of having to sit through it is more than I can handle. Even he won’t watch it. It is odd, though, that someone who did her dissertation on Jane Austen won’t watch a soap opera.”
“So Bart told you about my dissertation. You just watch it, Mr. Marc with a c,” she said with mock anger in her voice. “You want to be careful about the way you refer to Jane Austen. She’s a whole lot more than 19th Century soap opera, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“And I see Bart told you about one of his nicknames for me. He must also have told you that I’m a big Austen fan. You know, Leslie, this whole situation is kind of strange—kind of?—hell, very strange—the two of us, never really having met, but knowing so much about one another through him.”
We smiled and walked back to the living room where he was squatting by the coffee table between two chairs, pouring the wine.
“Where have you two been?” he asked.
“I gave Leslie the grand tour. She got to meet your other girlfriend.”
Bart’s brow furrowed, and for what may have been the first time since we met, I saw him blush a bright red.
“Oh.”
“And after all you told me last night, I thought that Marc was my only competition,” she said with a smile in her voice. “Tonight I find you’re also keeping another woman.”
“Sit down,” he said, ignoring her comment. She took the chair next to where Bart was squatting, and I sat across from them on the sofa.
“To what?” I said, raising my glass.
“To the future,” said Leslie without hesitation, and for some reason, I felt a little more of the tension I had drain out of me. At least she seemed to think that the future was something worth drinking to. But how she saw that future was still not clear.
“To the future,” we both echoed and touched glasses.
Bart stood up and said, “I’ll see about ordering some food,” and then turned to Leslie. “We order out a lot. We’ve got menus from every decent restaurant within a ten-mile radius, I think. Maybe more. You’ll let me choose?”
She
nodded, and he disappeared into the office.
I looked at Leslie. “To be honest, I’ve been kind of nervous about tonight, and I have a little speech prepared. Want to hear it?”
“How could I refuse? Do you need a teleprompter?”
“No. It’s not that long.” I took a breath. “I can understand that you might be upset because Bart didn’t tell you about us sooner, but try to cut him some slack on that one. He’s probably said this already, but he never meant to hurt you or leave you out. He couldn’t have told you back in Arizona because even we didn’t know who or what we were then. But he should have told you right after he met you again here. He was just too afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“I’m sure he’s told you this as well, but he actually decided a long time ago that when he knew he’d found the right woman, he’d have to tell her all about us. With you, it wasn’t that he wasn’t sure you were the right woman, it was that he was afraid of losing you again. He had to wait until he had the courage to tell you, until he was pretty sure that you’d be able to accept it.”
I paused a second. “Obviously, he’s sure, and so am I if that counts for anything.” I smiled and so did she.
“Sure,” she asked, “that he would be able to tell me or that I could accept it?”
“Both, and also sure that you’re the right woman.”
“You know, Marc, I think it’s strange that your little speech, as you called it, seems to be aimed at keeping Bart and me together when a more normal move, should I say, on your part would be to try to separate us. I don’t mean to be flip, but aren’t you just a little bit jealous?”
“Normal isn’t exactly a word that describes my relationship with Bart as you certainly know after all he told you last night. No, I’m not jealous. I was maybe for a bit years ago back in Tucson. But not now. I was actually relieved when you came back into his life last year. He’s been happier since then—not that we weren’t happy before, but being with you again seems to have made him—I don’t know—more complete.”
She paused. “As surprised as I was to hear all that Bart had to say last night—and believe me, I was—I’m shocked to hear you say that: that he’s more complete. I came here expecting our meeting would be more of a confrontation, rather like Gwendolyn and Cecily, both thinking they’re engaged to Earnest.”
“Ha! Obviously he told you about the part Earnest played in our first meeting.”
“He did, but remember, I was taking the same class and read it the same time as he did. I even saw the same production that you two did—but I don’t know if it was on the same night. It’s one of my favorite plays—as it is yours, according to Bart. And you must admit, the analogy kind of fits.”
“I guess—but I’d have to be Gwendolyn. She’s older. Anyhow, about confrontation—I couldn’t do that to him—put him into the position of having to choose. Even if it sounds like a cliché, I want whatever is going to make him happy. I know I don’t have to tell you that. I think you feel the same way about him.”
She just looked at me and nodded.
“I’m not being noble here,” I said. “I love Bart in a way I didn’t think it was possible to love another person. But regardless of what happens in this very strange situation in which the three of us find ourselves, I know that somehow he’ll always be a part of my life, and I’ll be a part of his—even if it’s not the same as it is now.”
“Now what about you?” I continued. “Any speeches—any questions?”
“So you’re gay and Bart is bi?”
“I’m definitely gay, and Bart is definitely Bart. We gave up on labels for him long ago. He isn’t attracted to men, so he’s not gay or bi. But for some inexplicable reason, after knowing each other for only four months, he fell in love with me, he’s stayed in love with me, and we do have sex, so he’s not what most people would think of as straight. He’s just Bart.”
“From what he told me last night, that was a pretty intense four months. It doesn’t seem that inexplicable.”
“Yeah, considering it took me only twenty-four hours to fall for him, and without ever having seen him.”
“‘Is a puzzlement,’” she said with a fake Yul Brynner accent.
I looked up, startled.
“You don’t have to be gay to like musicals, you know. You people don’t own Broadway,” she said with a laugh.
“There’s only one way to respond to that: Leslie, ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’”
She laughed. “I guess I do have a kind of speech—well, a thank-you,” she said.
“A thank-you?”
“Something I realized after Bart left last night. As you can imagine, I didn’t get much sleep afterward. He’s a wonderful person, but you know that. He’s also the best lover I’ve ever had.”
“And the thank-you part?”
“I’ll never forget my first time with him. Until he told me afterward, I didn’t know that I was his first experience with a girl. He was good, but hardly great. But the second time, something had changed. It was different and better—very different and much, much better. I assumed, at the time, that it was the experience from his first time that made the second time better. But after what he told me last night, I think it was you, well, the two of you, that made the difference.”
“By…?”
“From what he said, when he came back to you after our first night together, he learned what it was like to take as well as give, sexually. Because of that, he makes love in a way I’ve never experienced from any other man. It’s selfless and caring in both a physical and emotional sense.”
“Thanks for that, Leslie.” I reached over and squeezed her hand.
Just then, Bart walked in and looked at us. “What’s all this about?” He bent down, kissed the back of her neck, and sat down on the sofa next to me, across from her.
“Where have you been?” Leslie said. “It can’t take that long to order dinner.”
“He was sitting back there waiting for some signal that it was all right to come out and that we hadn’t killed one another,” I said.
“I got bored, so I came out, and here you two sit, holding hands,” he said, pouring more wine for everyone.
“You did a pretty thorough job, kid, telling her everything.”
“You doubted me?”
“I never doubt you. Well, hardly ever.”
“Hardly ever doubt you with a big, big D?” sang Leslie.
I looked at her, startled again. “Talk about surprises—The King and I and Pinafore? Not many people would have caught that.”
Bart’s brow furrowed because I still hadn’t been able to get him to listen to much Gilbert and Sullivan, and he was puzzled.
“I’ll explain later,” she said to Bart.
“I do have a joke you’ll understand with no problem, kid.”
“Okay.”
“I got it in an email from Robin just yesterday, but I don’t think she realized its significance for us, especially now:
“A woman hears a knock on the door, opens it, and finds a young man standing there. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘I’m a Jehovah’s Witness.’ ‘Come in and sit down, young man’ she says. After offering him coffee, she sits down across from him and asks, “What did you want to talk about?’
“‘Beats the shit out of me,’ he says. ‘I’ve never gotten this far before.’”
“Is that perfect or is that perfect?” I said.
Bart was shaking with laughter, and now it was Leslie’s turn to look puzzled. “It’s cute, but I’m not sure it’s all that funny, or am I missing something?” she asked.
“Les, that guy is just like Marc and me. We’ve talked about this moment for a long time, but we’ve never actually gotten this far before. So we have no idea where to go from here.”
He continued, more seriously, “I mean it’s great that we all seem to be relaxed and laughing and holding hands and getting along so well, but I feel like I’m in a nightmare where th
e cameras are rolling and we’re live and on the air, but no one’s given me a script. What’s next?”
“It doesn’t seem that complicated to me, Bart,” she said.
“So what’s in that future you suggested we toast before?” he asked.
She looked at me, perfectly seriously, and said, “Marc, you just answered the question didn’t you? The beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“Oh, fuck—excuse me, Leslie,” I said.
“That’s okay. I’ve heard fuck before,” she answered. “It is pretty amazing that you should quote that and not see its relevance to our situation.”
“What relevance?” said Bart. “What does it mean? I mean I know it’s from Casablanca and all that, but I’m not looking for a friend. I’m looking for a wife.”
Leslie stood up with a dark look on her face. I couldn’t tell if it was serious or feigned. “Then I think it’s time you took me home and left me there.”
“Wait,” Bart scrambled. “That came out wrong. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” she said coldly.
“Yeah, how you gonna get out of this one, kid?” I asked with a smile, by now fairly sure Leslie was faking it.
“I mean, of course we’re friends, Les. But it’s even more than friendship that I want for you and me. It’s love and a home and a family.”
I looked at Leslie, “You think he did it?”
“Even more helped. Good enough for me.” She smiled at me, walked over to us and kissed him, and then sat down on his other side.
“You’re too easy,” I said to her with a laugh.
“So why can’t we have love and a home and a family, Bart?” Leslie asked.
“You and me?” Bart said. “We can. But where does that leave Marc?”
“In another room,” answered Leslie. “At least while we’re making the family. I’m not into three-ways and from what he said, neither is Marc—at least not one involving a woman. But in the same room while we’re raising the family—our family—all of us.”
I looked at her, a bit open-mouthed. Bart was still puzzled.
“You mean the three of us live together?” he asked incredulously.
“Leslie,” I said, “you really think you could do that?”