Drawn Together

by Z. A. Maxfield

  Yamane gave a little wiggly-fingered wave. And smiled, damn him. “Holy crap,” said Brian, whose daughter echoed it like a broken record. “Crap, crap, crap, crap.” Asia giggled. “Daddy’s funny.”

  “Brian!” said Amy, covering Asia’s mouth with her hand.

  “Sorry, love.” He picked up his daughter. “Okay, there’s a story here…” Rory began to tell it, with constant interruption from Yamane.

  16

  Once at Brian’s parents’ home, Rory and Brian decided to take a quiet walk where they could talk.

  “Well,” said Brian. “I hardly know where to begin.”

  “Will I be disowned by your wonderful family now, do you think?” asked Rory lightly, but the thought caused him so much pain he could hardly hide it.

  “Of course not. Don’t be stupid. I can’t believe your Snoggs girl turned out to be a guy.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Dang,” said Brian. “You’re the last one I ever figured to go over to the dark side.”

  “You and me both, brother. But thinking back…”

  “Are you sure you’re not just switching sides because of the ‘war’? Like a prison romance or something? It’s not fair to him if, when the dust settles, you suddenly start looking at the centerfold in Playboy again.”

  “I never!”

  “The heck you didn’t. I know what you were like; I baptized your best friend. Really, have you thought this through for the long haul?”

  “I don’t think I ever really told myself the whole story. In retrospect, certain things now make more sense,” Rory said quietly. “I can never look at anything else when he’s around. I think I just…belong to him. Ever since the first time I saw one of his drawings. ’Course, I thought he was a woman. But I can assure you, he’s not any kind of disappointment as a man.”

  Brian said nothing. Rory felt no condemnation in his gaze, just the same caring friendship he’d always felt. He leaned over and hugged Brian tightly.

  “You are the best man I know.”

  “You heathen,” teased Brian. “You’re a good guy, and I’m proud to call you my friend. Let’s go back -- Yamane’s probably worried we’re deprogramming you or something.”

  Later, Rory and Yamane were left on the patio alone.

  “I never knew people like that existed,” said Yamane. “How amazing.”

  “Brian’s been like a brother to me, which is weird. I still don’t think he’s given up on me, but he never makes me feel bad. That’s what it is; when I’m with him, I always feel good about myself. That’s probably what made me head here. I’ll get the sleeping bags from the car. And no messing around tonight.” Rory reddened. “Okay?”

  “Are you telling me or you?” asked Yamane.

  Rory grinned. “Hell if I know.”

  Yamane woke up the next morning in a sleeping bag on the family room floor sandwiched between Asia and her four-year-old cousin, Jacob. They squatted on the ground, one on either side of him, gazing at him with unabashed adoration.

  “Mr. Yummy want pancakes?” asked Asia around the thumb she was sucking.

  “What?” He tried to shake off the sleepy stupor he was feeling.

  “She asked you do you want pancakes, Mr. Yummy? Grandma says if you want pancakes with faces you have to come now.”

  “Pancakes with faces?” he asked, but the children were long gone. He got up and took his toiletry kit to the bathroom. When he arrived in the kitchen, more or less presentable, he found Katherine Olsen pouring happy faces of pancake batter onto a huge griddle, where they would brown a little. Then she poured a pancake around them so when they were flipped the happy face showed up darker than its surrounding pancake.

  “That is so ingenious. I’ll bet you could do designs and animals and names if you did lettering in the negative --”

  “Rory and the kids are on the patio,” Katherine said, and Yamane suspected she was hiding a smile. Yamane went to the window to see what Rory was up to. It took him a minute to realize that they were doing the happy pancake dance.

  “Hey. They’re doing --”

  “Yeah, that’s right; that’s yours, isn’t it? Nobody eats a pancake in this house without it. I’ve watched an awful lot of Snoggs, Yamane.”

  “Yeah. No kidding?” Something in her face told him maybe a little too much. “Sorry.”

  Katherine walked to the patio. “Hey, kids, Mr. Yamane can draw the Snoggs. Why don’t you ask him nicely if he’ll draw you one?”

  “Mr. Yummy, Mr. Yummy.” Jacob ran at Yamane for a hug and smacked him right in the groin with his head.

  “Ooomh.” Yamane resisted cursing.

  “Please draw some Snoggs for us.” Jacob looked up with pleading eyes.

  Asia ran to her grandmother and pulled on her apron. “Grandma, make Mr. Yummy draw!”

  “I have something much better than Snoggs. I drew a picture of a pretty princess named Asia last night. I’ll go get it.” Yamane hurried to the family room to get the sketchbook out of his messenger bag. When he returned, he showed it to the children. “Look, this is from last night. I drew all of your family there. See if you can tell who is who.”

  The children plopped on the family room floor with the sketchbook between them, occasionally shouting out a name as they turned the pages. When it was time to be seated and eat breakfast, the blessing was observed, with Rory doing the honors. Yamane took his sketchbook back to keep it from getting covered in maple syrup and signed and dated the cover.

  “Katherine,” said Yamane. “I would like you to have this. Thank you very much for your kindness.”

  He gave her the sketchbook with a formal bow.

  “Thank you, Yamane,” she said, opening it carefully. “This is magnificent. What a treasure for our family. Allen, look at this.”

  She and her husband looked it over while the grandchildren ate.

  “Mr. Yummy,” said a deep southern voice that never failed to make a shiver run up his back. “Thank you for your kindness to my friends.”

  Yamane smiled at Rory. “I’m really glad I got to meet them,” he said. “I feel privileged. Are you really going to make me camp? Will it be just tenting, or must I kill my food and prepare it too?”

  “Just tenting. I’m planning on eating in restaurants along the way and then stopping to sleep.”

  “Oh, thank heavens.”

  “Because human food lures out the hungry bears,” teased Rory.

  Yamane considered this. “But essentially, aren’t humans a kind of bear food?”

  “Well, yes, I guess so.”

  “So what does it matter if something else smells tasty?”

  “I don’t know. Ask Brian; he’s the Eagle Scout.”

  “Okay, where is he?” asked Yamane. “I’ll ask him right now.”

  “He’s going to meet us at eleven thirty at Camping World. I think he thinks I’m going to buy Barbie tents and sleeping bags now that I’ve gone ‘over to the dark side.’”

  “He just wants to see you off. He likes you,” said Yamane quietly. To Katherine, he said, “Do you have a notepad? I’m going to formulate a list of questions for Brian when I see him.”

  Katherine raised her eyebrows but left the table and came back with a yellow legal pad.

  Brian looked at his watch for the thirteenth time. It was two thirty, and Yamane, holding court among a number of Camping World employees and interested bystanders, was still pelting them with questions ranging from safety, sanitation, and points of interest on Interstate 80. Brian retrieved the cell phone from his pocket and ducked out to make another call to his boss.

  Rory waited till Brian was off the phone to say again, “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Don’t be,” said Brian. “It’s a little scary camping if you’ve never done it.”

  Rory rolled his eyes. “The thing is, he’s got ice water in his veins when he’s really in danger, but when he imagines something that frightens him, he overreacts. You should have seen him fac
e down Amelia. He sat there eating a piece of fruit when she reached out and stabbed him through the hand with a fork.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do if something like that happened to Amy.”

  “Sure you do. At least, you know you wouldn’t sit there like an idiot and let her get away with it,” said Rory, the bitterness like acid on his tongue.

  “Hey. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You couldn’t possibly know room service would attack your friend.”

  “I should have killed that bitch while I had the chance. I’m sorry if that offends.”

  “I’m not offended. If I didn’t have Amy and the kids to worry about, I’d be going with you.”

  “I love you, bro.” Rory grabbed his hand and pulled him into a rough hug.

  “Back atcha. Let’s put a stop to this, shall we? I’ve got to go back to work so my kids can eat.”

  “Want some money? I won a bundle.”

  “You and your dirty, tainted money.”

  “I swear to you, I never won like I won in Vegas just now. Your Guy up there must love Yamane, because I was doing it for him.”

  Brian raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  Rory had to laugh when he finally caught up with Yamane, who was writing down another helpful tip on his legal pad.

  “Okay, I think that’s enough for today.”

  “But wait,” said Yamane. “We’ve got bears covered, but you never told me about snakes. What do you do for snakes?”

  “Yamane,” said Rory, in the voice he used on traumatized children and attractive undergraduate girls. “Do you or do you not trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you, but --”

  “Then trust me. Thank you very much for your kind attention, but I’ll take it from here,” he said to the men and women who had been helping.

  Yamane allowed Rory and Brian to load the gear onto the conveyor at the checkout as he studied his legal tablet in frosty silence.

  As Brian and Rory placed the gear in the car, Yamane continued to read his notes. “It says here to bury all fecal material. Did we buy a shovel?”

  “Got it.” Rory tried hard not to laugh.

  “But if you bury toilet paper, isn’t that like littering?”

  “You don’t use toilet paper, you use pinecones and then bury them too,” said Brian with a completely straight face. “That way more trees grow.”

  “Shit.” Yamane stomped his foot. “Who thought of that? You’d think if they could put a man on the moon they’d have a better system by now.”

  “Is he for real?” whispered Brian.

  Rory was doubled up in the hatchback of his car almost in pain from trying not to laugh out loud. “Oh, I hope so, Brian. I really, really hope so.”

  17

  They said their good-byes and Brian waved as they headed out of the Camping World parking lot. They got a later start than Rory planned, so by the time they pitched their tent it was full dark even though the sun didn’t set until quite late. Rory and Yamane sat in front of a campfire in a secluded area of a standard RV campground, which had showers, a laundry room, a minimart, and even a gift shop.

  The irony of this was not lost on Yamane.

  “So this is camping? This isn’t camping! This is just the worst motel we’ve been to yet.” He drank a sip of his cocoa. “You must think I’m such an idiot.”

  Rory pulled Yamane’s chair closer, then drew a homemade quilt over the two of them. “No, cher, I just thought for your first time we’d take it a little easy is all.”

  Yamane’s mouth went dry.

  “Oh,” he said. “I see. Starter camping.”

  They sat together like that while they finished their drinks.

  “This is kind of nice out here.”

  “Rest here awhile and look at the stars. You don’t see those in the city. I’m going to take a shower.” He got his toiletry bag and a towel and draped a change of clothes over his arm.

  Yamane sat in the firelight, listening to other people’s television shows and the clink and jingle of someone doing dishes. Laughter floated on the air—three or four young boys playing with a glow-in-the-dark soccer ball. He began to see the attraction of this kind of travel. Between a primitive fascination with fire, the smell of the night air, and the stars, he began to like it very much. Especially when he saw Rory walking toward him on the path, bare-chested and still wet, shaking his head like a dog. The little droplets fell on Yamane, who liked the sensation.

  “My turn,” he said. “I’ll grab my things.”

  “It’s pretty deserted,” said Rory. “Maybe I’d better go with you just to make sure that you’re okay.”

  “Stop treating me like a child. I’ll be --”

  Rory shoved him back through the tent flap and fell on him with a kiss. “You’re five feet six inches tall and weigh what, one-thirty? I’m not treating you like a child. I just want you to be cautious.”

  “I understand.” They kissed until Yamane was breathless.

  He knelt, eyeing Yamane’s flushed face and aroused body. “Just keep an eye on your surroundings, okay? This isn’t like summer camp.”

  “Like I ever went to summer camp,” said Yamane. “Anyway, why don’t you take your own advice? You’re beautiful, and yet you went alone.”

  “I’m a little bigger than you are, cher.”

  “And yet, you’re helpless against me.” Yamane took his things and left the tent.

  Rory crawled after him, “Hey, little sweet thing, wait up, I’ve been on the road a long, long time…”

  “Dirty man.” Laughing, Yamane turned and pushed him over backward with his foot.

  Once Rory was down, Yamane spun around and walked down the path to the showers.

  The bathrooms reminded Yamane a little of the bathrooms in public pools. They consisted of a little dressing space and a shower with a curtain. Not a lot of light filtered in there. Yamane sat down to take off his clothes. He gratefully inspected the shower shoes Rory and Brian insisted he buy.

  Yamane took a more thorough shower than usual, as he had been doing since he met Rory. It wouldn’t do to greet him with his dick hard as a baseball bat or to jump on him and lick his face like an overeager puppy, both of which he’d been tempted to do time and time again. He left the shower feeling clean, and if not virtuous, a little less likely to disgrace his ancestors.

  When he returned to the tent, he sensed immediately that something was terribly wrong. Rory stared at the computer, only looking up at Yamane after the third time he called his name.

  “Rory, what is it?”

  Wordlessly, Rory turned the computer around. On it was an e-mail from his grandmère.

  Dear Rory,

  I hope this finds you well on your travels. I cannot believe your car is still going. I thought it would have died in about Santa Fe, and I lost a bet to Grandpère Claude. He is still up to his usual tricks, and the sheriff stopped by to tell me that if Claude gives pot to another one of the people from his cancer survivor group he’d have to do something about it. Wait till he finds out his daddy was one of Claude’s fellow potheads before he passed, and everything will hit the fan, for sure.

  Your friend Amelia came by too. She said she has tickets to a concert for you and her and Yamane for Saturday night, and that she’s counting on you being there. I told her I could not make any promises, but she insisted that you would not want to miss the fireworks show afterward. She seemed a little pushy, if you ask me, and a little too old as well. Since she asked about Yamane too, I hope she is her friend, because I could not like her and I am sure you could do better.

  Grandpère and I miss you and long to see your joli beau visage, mon ange,

  Love, Grandmère

  “Shit,” said Yamane.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” said Rory.

  18

  “That bitch!”

  “Rory, I am so sorry.” Yamane sat with his head bowed. “I am so sorry.”

  “I have to think!”

  Yamane laid hi
s hands over Rory’s. He tried not to wince when Rory clutched at them, but he couldn’t help it; the pain shot through his left hand right to his toes.

  “I’m sorry, Yamane.” Rory brought Yamane’s injured hand to his lips for a kiss. “I forgot.”

  Yamane reached out and stroked his hair. This seemed to soothe Rory, so he kept it up. Eventually the computer went into sleep mode and what light they had was gone, except for the flickering of the fire outside.

  Someone was making a kind of shushing noise. Once Yamane realized the sound came from him, he stopped.

  “There are three people in this world that I would die for,” Rory said at last. “And that bitch is messing with all of them. Does she expect me to choose?”

  “I can tell you from experience that she only wants you to think you have a choice. She already plans to destroy everything you love just when you think you’ve saved the day. Kind of freeing, isn’t it? Knowing that?”

  Rory looked up at Yamane as if he’d gone crazy.

  “I expect the logic hasn’t seeped in yet,” Yamane continued. “At first I didn’t understand either when it happened to me. But the fact is that knowing nothing you do will keep her from destroying everything you love is a kind of relief. Hope disappears, leaving in its place a kind of rational, bitter ability to think logically about losing everything on your own terms.”

  “Yamane?” Rory spoke into the darkness. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I could use a smoke and a drink.”

  “I was saving this—” Rory rummaged in his duffel and produced a fifth of bourbon. “—in case it got cold. Or hot, if you know what I mean.”

  “Thank you.” He twisted the cap off, breaking the seal. He took a drink, screwed up his face, and baring his teeth. “Whoa. Okay, that’s better.”

  He gave the bottle back to Rory.

  “Thank you.” Rory sipped from it. “You were saying?”

  “Oh, yeah. Now, correct me if I’m wrong”—Yamane took another drink—“but if Amelia is in Louisiana with your grandparents waiting for us to come, that means we no longer need to hide, right?”