by Jay Quinn
Bruno had been on five trips since they’d last gone away together, all five of them to New York. Rory marveled at his need for condoms and KY when they never used them, and beside that point, Rory himself had never accompanied him to Manhattan even once. It wasn’t really a marvel. It seemed to be a planned for and expected need. Rory dropped the antacids into the leather bag and gathered the condoms in his fist. At first he wanted to throw them into the trash until the thought registered that Bruno’s intended partner could be a woman who might get pregnant, or a man who might propose a different kind of serious risk to Rory’s own well-being.
With a suddenly sure hand, the condoms promptly followed the antacids into the dop kit. Then, he picked up the tube of lubricant and felt its sticky surface with a revulsion so intense it made him instantly nauseous. Fighting back the urge to vomit, he checked to make sure all Bruno’s toiletries had made their way back into the dop kit before he laid it back on the clothes in the suitcase in as close an approximation to it’s original location as he could muster.
Only then did he walk to the bathroom. Once inside, he turned the hot water tap on the sink to hot, full blast. He couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. He didn’t want to see his own face in a state of such bewilderment and pain as he was feeling. When he was sure the water was hot, he rinsed his hands in the scald and lathered them with soap. He rinsed them for a long time, wondering at how much he could really hurt; wondering if Bruno’s lovers were men or women; wondering if they were different each time or long-standing, ongoing affairs.
After he dried his aching hands, he returned to the bedroom and folded Bruno’s underwear imagining unknown hands slipping inside them to cup his scrotum, to squeeze his ass. He folded Bruno’s T-shirts, imagining unknown hands tugging the hems free from his pants, running under the material and up Bruno’s back, urging the bottom hem up his sides. After he’d completed the task and left them in neat stacks by the suitcase, he walked out the bedroom’s sliding glass door onto the pool deck.
The moon was near full. It reflected in a thousand silver refractions on the canal’s surface. Each ripple seemed sharp and cutting to Rory’s eye. Everything hurt, everything gave pain with the evidence of Bruno’s infidelity placed so simply, scattered so casually, in front of his face. Rory turned away from the hurtful view of the water and found his way to a chair by the table where Bruno kept his stash box and Rory left his cigarettes. He found the pack and lit one, drawing the burning smoke deep into his lungs and holding it until his eyes watered. But no other tears came. So he sat, and watched the clouds, pinkish in the suburban darkness, that drifted over the water, and wondered why it took him so long to be sure of something he’d imagined for so long.
5160 ST. MARK’S COURT
MEG FOUND AUSTIN sprawled in his worn-out recliner in the loft. Looking around the nearly bare space, she wondered why Austin and the boys chose to spend all their time there. The space was nothing more than two slightly offset rectangles that provided the transition space between the boys’ bedrooms, the guest room, Austin’s office, and the large master suite. The windows let in light, but very little view, as they were mostly an awkward assortment of small openings never intended to be more than architectural accents to balance the windows on the outside of the house. The spaces were furnished with a hodgepodge of furniture. The boys did their homework in one rectangle, each claiming a side of a worn, heavy folding table of the type often seen in church basements or cheaply furnished offices. They sat there for their lessons, in cast-off kitchen chairs from a dinette set Meg and Austin had scavenged from a condo yard sale when they first moved to Florida.
In the rectangle off the master bedroom, Austin had pride of place in front of the elderly television with his beat-up recliner. The boys contented themselves with beanbag chairs picked up on the cheap at Wal-Mart. The beanbag chairs wept tiny, pearly balls of Styrofoam. Austin’s chair bled stuffing from the torn seams under the rolled arms. The television, VCR, and DVD player each sat on an improvised system of mismatched plastic milk crates Austin had stolen from behind a supermarket back in his college days.
The boys had attempted to cheer up the walls with soccer and movie posters. Their efforts were more successful in enthusiasm than in lining up the images on the square. The brightly colored pictures tilted with astigmatism. The push tacks barely held against their curling corners. To Meg, the space seemed unwelcoming and askew. She hated coming up the stairs and making her way through the loft to go to bed, or picking her way through its clutter, dressed for work as she was, so well put together, in a space that seemed chaotic and defeating to her morning’s firm resolve.
Yet, her men seemed to love the space. They never spent any time downstairs in the generous family room. Even though it was furnished with the best of the things from the house they’d lived in before, it remained abandoned most of the time. Austin, Noah, and Josh used it only as a through-way to the pool deck and the backyard beyond. Meg had put some serious thought into the room she’d furnished and financed from Ethan Allen. For everyone in the family but her, it had lost its appeal long before it was paid off.
Meg liked to imagine her family relaxing in the tasteful family room as she prepared meals in the kitchen. She saw the boys happily doing their homework, grouped around the generous coffee table. She saw Austin watching the news in his stocking feet, settled into the deep comfort of the expensive wingback and matching ottoman she’d chosen for him. Instead, she spent most evenings alone with her laptop at the farmhouse kitchen table, with its chairs upholstered to coordinate with the springlike lavenders, yellows, and pale green stripes of the family room. While upstairs, Austin and the boys lounged around in their new boxer shorts on ugly furniture in a room that made her feel unwelcome and unsuccessful.
Austin looked up at her from his spavined old chair and smiled. “Are you ready for bed?” he asked.
“I’m exhausted,” Meg admitted. “And, just looking at this loft makes me more tired.”
“I made the boys pick up before they went to bed,” Austin said defensively.
“Well, it is neat,” Meg said in an effort to placate him. “But that’s about all you can say for it. Where are the boys?”
“Josh was in bed reading Harry Potter and Noah was asleep when I checked about an hour ago.”
Meg nodded tiredly. “I should check in on Josh, but he’s probably given in to sleep by now. He’s better off in his room than out here.”
“Meg, I’ve been thinking…” Austin began.
“Why do you guys stay up here?” Meg interrupted. “There’s a perfectly nice family room downstairs.”
“We like it up here,” Austin said simply.
“Why?” Meg retorted. “It’s about as gracious and welcoming as something furnished by the Florida Department of Corrections.”
“The boys like doing their homework together so they can share the computer,” Austin said gesturing toward the boys’ computer on the top of the sway-backed folding table. “I like being near them when they’re working and watching TV.”
“But I don’t understand why you all can’t do that downstairs,” Meg insisted.
“It isn’t comfortable,” Austin said quietly. “Besides, it was you who designated this part of the house as the boys’ domain.”
“Yes, I did. But I never intended for it to become a boys’ club.” She looked around the loft and shook her head with disgust. “I’ve just not had the time to think about designing this area.”
“Would you consider letting me and the boys do it?” Austin asked.
Meg snorted in reply.
“No, seriously, Meg. I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it today. Tonight, I looked through this catalogue and asked the boys’ opinion about some of the stuff… desks and things. We have some ideas.”
“Well, this should be interesting,” Meg sighed. “Where do you intend to install the Coke machine?”
“You know, Meg. You’re not the only one who lives he
re,” Austin replied, hurt.
“Well, I don’t intend to live in a house that looks like a bunch of guys went wild at Rooms To Go,” Meg countered firmly, ignoring the hurt tone in Austin’s voice.
“Can’t I even show you?” Austin pleaded. “You’re not being fair.”
“Okay. Show me,” Meg demanded.
Austin leaned over the edge of his chair and searched through a pile of magazines and old newspapers stacked at its side. When he found what he was looking for, he stood and walked to the clean end of the folding table and placed a catalogue on it. “It’s Pottery Barn, not Rooms To Go, he said with great dignity.
“Their stuff is way too expensive for what you get,” Meg insisted. “And the shipping charges will eat us alive.”
“Will you at least look at it to see what we’re thinking about?” Austin replied.
Meg walked sulkily to the table to look and listen as Austin showed her a pair of hutchlike desks for either side of the boy’s rectangle and a small dining table with matching chairs that would sit between the desks. Then, he turned the pages to a large sectional sofa with a huge square ottoman and an entertainment center to go in the loft’s rectangle off the master bedroom. Austin’s voice grew excited as he explained that he’d measured to see if it could all fit, and the loft’s area could comfortably accommodate all the pieces. Meg had to admit to herself that the dark wood tones and cheery rust color of the upholstery went well together. The furniture Austin and the boys had selected looked good, and though it hurt her to admit it, it was what they wanted, without her input. “Well, you certainly did put a lot of thought into this,” she grudgingly admitted. “But, where do you intend to get the money to pay for it?”
Austins enthusiasm visibly drained from his face. “Meg, we can swing it,” he said miserably. “We paid off all our consumer debt in order to get into this house. We could use the emergency Mastercard. It’s clean and it has more than enough in its credit line to buy this stuff.”
“At 23 percent interest?” Meg asked incredulously. “Have you gone crazy? You know how long it took us to get that card paid off.”
“I get offers in the mail every day for cards with 6.9 percent or even less,” Austin pleaded. “Couldn’t we get one of those and use it just for this?”
Meg looked at him. He looked like a little boy pleading for a toy. Harsh things came to mind to counter that pleading look, not the least among them how long it had been since he’d earned a commission on a sale of any sizeable amount. But she didn’t say those harsh things. Something in her warned that her reaction had more to do with her own taste and self-designated place as their home’s interior designer than it did with the money. She couldn’t argue with Austin’s logic. She couldn’t really even argue with the necessity of the expense. Instead she simply saw herself sitting alone downstairs with her laptop and a cold mug of tea, her dreams of family togetherness supplanted by Pottery Barn furniture and a clubbiness from which she’d always be excluded. “Just do whatever you want,” she said and turned toward the master bedroom door.
“I want you to like it too, Meg,” Austin said with a naked need for approval.
She stopped and turned around. “You’re a grown man, Austin. You’ve done your homework. What can I say? If you want that catalogue crap, go for it.” With that, she turned back and went into the bedroom closing the door behind her.
Austin stood stunned for a moment. He felt Meg’s dismissal as sharply as a slap. Then there was only anger. He felt his back pocket and reassured himself his wallet was in place. Satisfied it was, he picked up the catalogue and stomped into his office. Once inside, he resolutely closed and locked the door behind him. He removed his wallet and searched through its many plastic offerings until he found the card he was looking for. Then he sat down in front of his computer.
With an economy of clicks, he found himself at the Pottery Barn Web site. It was amazingly easy to navigate and use, and he clicked his way through ordering all the furniture he’d pointed out to Meg, also clicking through several thousand dollars in the process. Every click gave him back a piece of his role as head of the house. Every item he added to his shopping cart reinforced his notion that he’d pay it all back with his own money, and Meg could kiss his ass. By the time he clicked on the efficient place order button, he felt clearer and stronger than he had in many months.
The panic didn’t set in until the order confirmation e-mail arrived in his in-box. He leaned back in his office chair and looked out over the canal. He checked his panic over the money he’d spent with the fact that he could apply for a new credit card in his own name and take advantage of the low-rate interest for balance transfers any of them proffered. By the time both his anger and his elation subsided, he simply felt tired and sad. Austin knew, but didn’t want to admit, that his own vision of family togetherness increasingly accommodated the reality of Meg’s absence in her late nights at the office or her need to do work once she was home. Still, his thoughts insisted, that was Meg’s choice. If she wanted to sit downstairs at the kitchen table with her laptop for company, it was fine with him. It was her idea, he reminded himself, to move them all to this ridiculously large house when everything had been fine at the old one.
Still, he’d won. And there was a small victory in that. He’d put together a pretty cool space he and the boys would be comfortable in. He couldn’t wait to tell Rory. He’d picked out the sectional sofa for his loft because he liked the one at Rory’s so much. As far as he was concerned, Meg could keep her prissy striped furniture and her goddamn picture lamps downstairs.
With Rory on his mind, he swiveled in his chair to look down on the pool deck next door. Surprisingly enough, he found Rory sitting there, smoking and deep in thought. It amazed him how someone so self-assured could manage to look so lonely and abandoned out in the moonlight. Austin felt a flash of concern. Rory was smoking, and he’d admitted he only smoked these days when he felt nervous or claustrophobic.
Austin watched him below and wondered what was going on next door that would force Rory to sit outside and smoke. He wondered if Bruno had said or done something to hurt him, or if he was simply nervous about the audition he would be going to the next day. He wondered why he cared, then grudgingly admitted he did care, he cared a great deal.
Austin watched as the bedroom door slid open and Bruno stepped out onto the pool deck. Rory didn’t turn or acknowledge his presence. Bruno stepped toward Rory, but suddenly looked up into Austin’s window. The moonlight outside caught Bruno’s face with enough illumination for Austin to tell he was looking straight at him. The look turned into a challenging stare. Austin watched as Bruno finally broke off his stare long enough to walk over to Rory’s still form. He bent over Rory and kissed him gently on the top of his head, then, placing his hands under Rory’s arms, he lifted him to a standing position. Without looking back, Bruno put his arm over Rory’s shoulders and steered him into the bedroom. The only indication he gave Austin that he knew he was watching was a raised hand, the middle finger well-extended.
Guiltily, Austin turned off his desk lamp. Somehow, in the past hour, he had managed to piss off two people he’d really rather not piss off at all. But, when he’d had a chance to think about it, he decided he didn’t care. He didn’t really care about Meg or Bruno one bit. To his mind in that moment, they might as well be the same person. He hoped Rory was okay. As for himself, he was just fine with everything, thank you very much.
Smug in his defiance, he watched the rectangle of light that shone from Rory’s bedroom. For many minutes, it betrayed nothing, not even a shadow. Then, he caught a glimpse of Rory as he moved to his side of the bed and sat down. Before he could get the T-shirt over his head, the light went off abruptly and Austin was left staring hopefully at a rectangle of deeper darkness than the moonlit pool deck.
Austin was disappointed. After he’d seen Rory and Bruno making love, he kept vigil at his window on the nights he found himself alone in his office late at night.
He was remarkably honest with himself about his curiosity. He justified it by thinking that if Rory and Bruno made love with their light on in a room without drapes or blinds, they must not care if anyone looked.
Rory had explained and apologized for their activities that afternoon. While Austin was uncomfortable with the conversation at the time, that was one thing. His harmless voyeurism, he felt, was quite another. He even took some pleasure in the fact that Rory might be wondering if Austin was there, like a silent witness at the window, watching as they did the things men did to each other. Austin could admit to himself without shame that the sight of it turned him on in a deeply male kind of way. Their activities didn’t disgust him. They were personal, just as his interest was personal. It was something that was his alone, and he was coming to like the freedom and assertion he felt when he had something that was his alone.
Tonight, he was disappointed by the blackness at Rory’s door. But his curiosity grew. His dick, warm against his leg in his boxer shorts, had priorities of its own. When the light never returned to Rory’s door after many minutes, Austin swiveled his chair back to face his computer. He pulled down the menu of Web sites he’d recently visited and smiled to himself when Pottery Barn was listed at the top. A little further down was his favorite search engine. He highlighted it and was rewarded with its home page nearly immediately. He clicked the cursor into the search box and typed “g-a-y x-x-x,” then clicked search. Within an instant, he saw a map to a million places his curiosity could take him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It’s all about give and take
THE EXODUS OF any morning traffic out of St. Marks Court had finished by the time Bruno stepped out of his house and walked to the end of his drive promptly at seven thirty. Bruno noted the winter’s sunlight hadn’t even made it over the tops of the houses on his side of the canal yet. So he stood beside his still street, glad of his suit coat in the chill, with his briefcase and suitcase waiting by his feet. The car service was behind schedule, but not yet late enough to give any cause for alarm. Still, he undipped his cell phone from his belt and looked at its digital screen to make sure he hadn’t missed any calls saying the driver had been delayed. Bruno hated this in-between time of travel, this waiting to get going, this stasis before leaving home and Rory behind to join the world of work and larger concerns.