by Damon Suede
“A chick? Sheesh.”
“A dol, she is. Beth does primarily editorial and fashion photography. But she has a sideline in beefcake calendars, and she has a real eye for artistic nudes.
She wil, no doubt, swoon when she sees you in your glory. She wil be made to understand that your face, name, and any identifying features wil never be associated with HotHead-dot-com or the pictures themselves.”
“Dante wil kil me if he thinks this is charity.” Griff turned the idea over and over in his head. “Worse, he’l be pissed you didn’t ask him. He’s crazy vain and he’s the one who needs the fucking money.”
“Then you should discuss it with him first. Along with… other things. Yes? Talk to him.” Alek unfolded pages with single-spaced legal crap on HotHead letterhead and waited for Griff. His brown eyebrows scrunched over kind eyes, as if they were old friends chatting. He understood Griff and vice versa, so in a way they were.
Crazy.
Griff didn’t know where to begin. His mouth tried to get words out, but nothing came. Was this for real?
“And do not think I’m letting you off easily. A three-day shoot can be quite exhausting. You wil earn every cent of my costs of kiling those videos.”
“Why?” Griff finaly formed an inteligent thought, rubbing his hands on his thighs and standing up so he could pace like a caged bear. Nothing is this easy.
“Again, Mr. Muir, you ask the right question.” Alek seemed pleased, like it had been a test. He watched Griff pace the carpet, and as he had the day they’d first met in this room, the Russian counted off his reasons on his fingers. “Because you may be able to fulfil a crazy fantasy for me about hot men in uniform.
Because I saw whatever rare thing burns between you and your Dante. Because I once felt something similar and let it die. Because people should not be punished for loving and hoping and holding their hearts open.”
Griff felt himself smile and nod, stupid with gratitude. Thank you, thank you, thank you. He wiped his cheek with a rough hand. In this room where everything had changed between them, he could almost feel Dante’s leg pressed against his, like they were together on the loveseat.
“What is funny?” Alek seemed perplexed by his reaction, but stil pleased.
Then Griff did laugh, his face warm, his relief so strong it felt like whiskey in his veins. “Open heart. Someone else said something similar to me a while back.
A lady who’s known me a long time. Huh.”
“Wel… we are both right.” Alek held out a hand, waiting for an answer.
Suddenly, Griff hoped Tommy was okay in his hospital room. That someone had gone by. He’d go visit in the morning before his tour. He wondered if Dante would go. He wondered if either of them was brave enough.
He took a breath, weighing the offer. What was the right thing?
Outside the November daylight had cooled into a powder-blue evening. Inside the studio, in the failing glow, it was almost dark except for a warm ring thrown by one fake floor lamp next to the fake loveseat on the fake carpet in the fake living room. A little island in the middle of the cold blue November sky. The fake room, the fake art, the fake porno world, and Alek just holding the exit open for him, for Dante… the world waiting.
Griff sighed, eyes closed and happy. He could feel Alek’s eyes resting on him with patience he didn’t deserve. For a split second, the smal flickering fantasy of the set almost felt cozy. A place to hide, and a place to find answers for al the curious people in the world who had no place else to ask or dream.
“Okay.” Griff shook Alek’s hand firmly, like a promise. “I’l talk to him.”
GRIFF drove from HotHead to his best friend’s ramshackle house ready to hash everything out, ready to lay his guts on the table. He didn’t even rehearse what he needed to say. He already knew.
I love you; yes, like that.
His heart was slamming against his ribs like a chimp in a cage.
When he got there, the sun had gone for good. The front door was wide open to the winter air, and music was pouring out into the lamp-lit street: the Carpenters.
Mr. Anastagio had to be here. He loved al those gloopy Muzak singers of the seventies. He loved them so much that after about fifteen minutes of listening to him hum along and feel the hokey lyrics, you started to love them too.
It was probably better that Griff leave and come back when he could talk to Dante alone about Alek and the offer and, oh yeah, his feelings. This was going to be complicated enough without getting Mr. A. involved. He’d just say helo and head to the firehouse a little early for his tour.
Griff stepped inside the front hal and took off his jacket to hang it on a peg.
“Helo?”
No answer. Not surprising. With Karen Carpenter crooning “Top of the World” at that volume, a bomb could go off down here before the Anastagio men noticed.
Inside, windows were open al over and the house was chily. As Griff entered the parlor, he could hear Dante’s scratchy baritone singing along with his father’s rough, tuneless bass. He smiled at the sound. Were they out back?
Dante’s voice sounded like it was coming from the kitchen or the dining room, but up high.
Walpaper! Griff remembered now.
Father and son were walpapering Dante’s bedroom with rols Mrs. A. had found up in the family attic—a pattern of diagonal bronze stripes that looked expensive and sexy. She’d puled a bundle of antique roled paper out at Sunday dinner, and Dante had swooped in to claim it instantly. Flip was furious, but his house was a rental, so he couldn’t realy argue.
They al knew how much Dante had poured into this crazy dump. Besides, Dante had waited and waited to paint the master bedroom, chipping away at al the other repairs until just the wals were unfinished. Mrs. Anastagio’s bronze stripes would be the final piece on the first complete room in Dante’s house.
That his mother had found the paper, that his grandparents had bought it and brought it from Italy, was gravy. His father had volunteered to come help, and that was perfect too.
Griff stepped smiling into the dark dining room. Their singing came from a shadowy gap in the ceiling about the size of a door. This was too far back to be under the master bedroom where they were working. He was standing under the unfinished office that looked over the back garden. Al the doors were open to let the paste set up and dry.
Upstairs the CD ended, and Griff opened his mouth to shout a helo up at them, crack a joke about instaling a backsplash behind the bed. He took a breath to speak—
And in the short silence of Dante walking across the floor, Griff heard something that shut his mouth. It echoed back to the dark hole over his head.
“Have you confronted Griffin?” Mr. A.’s voice sounded upset. “Asked him?”
The smile turned to ice and melted on Griff’s face. He took a step closer, looking up at the hole. Their voices bounced off the bare sheetrock wals in Dante’s room. Griff felt like a ghost hovering down there in the shadows.
“No, Pop.” Dante sounded like a scared teenager. “How am I supposed to ask something like that?” Griff tried to get closer to the voices back at the front of the house, but away from the overhead gap, they were muffled. He went back to the dining room gap and they were stil talking.
“… know your mother wil take it hard. She loves Griffin like her own. You’re ready to expose him to that kind of bulshit?” What the fuck had happened?
Dante sounded upset. “I gotta fucking know, though.”
“Griff is wide open. Open heart. Open eyes. Saying something could—”
“I know! I fucking know, Pop.” Dante sounded like he was almost crying.
Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck. Griff could feel his life burning and faling around him, the rubble crushing the breath out of him.
“You could leave it alone. Do you care that much? I mean if he says you’re right, are you gonna do anything you wouldn’t do normaly?”
“I was so stupid. I mean, I been so stupid. He was trying to help
me because—”
— because I love you I love you I love you—
“I made him. It wasn’t him. It’s me.”
Griff felt the whisper escape his mouth. “No.” He had to go up and stop this. If there was blame, he’d take it.
Mr. A.’s voice was almost inaudible. “Kiddo, it’s the two of you.”
Griff rummaged franticaly through his mind trying to figure out what could have happened. The only thing he could come up with was….
The goddamn website!
It was too late. They were busted. Everyone knew. Everything was lost. The solution that Alek had offered was worthless now. They would lose their jobs.
They were gonna wind up kicked to death in a filthy gutter with their friends pissing on them.
The breath rushed out of Griff’s body like someone had dropped a cinder block on his ribs. He slid down the wal under the hole in the dark.
“Maybe you’l have to take a break. Maybe he needs to be somewhere that’s away from you.” Griff hugged his knees. He’d been so happy coming in the door, and now they were talking about him like he was a fucking sex offender. Um, duh? He didn’t know which was worse—his other family trying to figure out how to handle him or the fact that he was guilty of everything and more. He had to get out of here.
Mr. A. didn’t say anything for a long time. Griff could almost imagine him chewing an unlit cigar into mush and sweating in his undershirt while he brushed milky paste onto the wal. But he couldn’t figure out the man’s face.
When Dante’s pop spoke, he sounded resigned and something else. Was he pacing? Pissed? Ashamed? “Dante, you’l make the same mistake. Your whole life, huh? We al do. Everything each of us does is one long mistake. Whatcha gotta do is look for your solution.” Dante digested that before he spoke again, his words echoing in the house. “And what if I’m wrong?” You’re not wrong.
“Then you’l know. He’l know. And truth is the only way anything starts or anything ends, kiddo.” Mr. Anastagio’s voice faded as he walked back toward the front of the house.
There was a scraping sound across the ceiling of the front parlor as the Anastagios shifted something heavy in Dante’s bedroom.
Griff hauled himself to his feet and out the open front door. Hopefuly they hadn’t seen him, but if they had, it wouldn’t change anything.
Chapter 15
MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL. Just like always, only it wasn’t like anything ever.
Nearly a week had passed since he’d overheard Dante and his dad talking about him as if he were a leper.
Griff had buried himself in bulshit to hide, avoiding everyone. Ostrich city, baby. He had worked a crazy double at the station and then a night at the Bone that had ended with someone being thrown through a plate-glass window. Grease fires and frat boys had kept him in a rotten mood. Then, to steer clear of Dante, he’d taken two sick days. No one had said anything about the website, and there was no way to find out who had spiled the beans.
Tommy was better. His wife had thrown him out and filed for divorce even before he’d woken up. The neighborhood knew what he was and acted like he’d died. But he had healed; he could talk now and walk some. Griff went and sat there most nights. Just so he wouldn’t have to be alone. And ’cause the hospital was a safe place to hide. No one could find him there.
Dante had been out of sight himself, avoiding Griff for probably the same reason, even if he didn’t know it. He was stil on medical leave with his possible concussion. With time off and the wad of cash from that last HotHead shoot, he had been replastering the third floor of his crazy house.
Griff knew that they needed to talk, but they were both gun-shy. How do you end a friendship that had lasted your whole life? He’d broken down and started looking at apartments in Staten Island, and he’d started looking into transferring to a new firehouse. He had to be ready. Tonight with the guys would be one last taste of things back to normal.
Yeah, right.
From the minute Griff walked through Dante’s door, they were hyperaware of each other. He hadn’t known how to act or how his best friend would react.
Apparently they were going to be on pins and needles for a while, until one of them spoke up. Neither of them was rushing in where angels feared.
The house was the same: motorcycle parts in the front halway, door off the hinges of the downstairs john, the massive “SportsCenter” sectional that the guys had al been watching games on since 9/11. But Dante was completely different the second he answered Griff’s knock.
Actualy, the knock started the weirdness. Normaly, Dante’s door was open and there were a couple guys smoking on the steps and someone taking a piss in the toilet as you passed the front hal. Griff was used to hearing guys laughing and shouting at the TV, Dean Martin singing from the boom-box in the kitchen, and Dante teling a dirty joke while he poured a quart of salsa into a bowl for the crew.
Not tonight. Tonight it was like coming to a galows in the rain.
The door was closed; the house was stil; the windows were dim. For the first time ever in his life, Griff actualy knocked on the door of Dante’s rambly brownstone. The action felt alien, like his hand was made of wood. Rap-rap-rap on a brass knocker he’d never noticed because he couldn’t ever remember seeing the door shut like that on a game night. Maybe it’s not Monday? I must’ve mixed up the—
But Dante puled the door open and he was dressed like always—hockey jersey and sweats and big bare feet. That was normal. He grinned and that was normal too. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Griff held up the cases of beer he always brought, and Dante nodded, chewing a mouthful of bread before turning back into the house. So far, so good. Except tonight, he could feel the heat that poured off Dante. Even his feet were handsome, the fucker. Walking down the hal, Griff could imagine Dante’s muscles shifting under those old clothes and smel the light musk of him under the whiff of tomato sauce and flour.
“I got a baked ziti to throw in the oven. Take two secs.”
Once Griff was inside, he realized that the rest of the guys weren’t there. The fuck? The ESPN announcers yacked quietly from the flat screen in the living room—the only other voices in the enormous house.
“I was gonna cal you. Ernie is having his bachelor night and I forgot.”
Dante wiped his hands on his pants and scooped up one of the cases, turning back to the kitchen and the smel of sun-dried tomatoes.
“It’s just us.” Dante had stopped walking and looked Griff right in the eye, so suddenly that Griff stopped walking.
Griff chewed on that.
“That okay?” Dante asked him, like he thought Griff might bolt for the exit.
Griff could tel he felt nervous . Duh. Of course he did.
“Yeah, D. It’s great. Kinda nice to have a quiet night after the last couple weeks.” He’s gonna confront me. He got me alone.
Ducking into the kitchen, Dante tossed him a beer and bobbed his head in agreement, like they’d bargained over something and agreed to it.
Griff felt like they were both waiting for something to happen. “Your head’s better?”
“For sure: shit shape, shit shape. Bad as new.” Dante knocked gently on his noggin and grinned.
Griffin looked around at the cluttered counters helplessly and opened his powerful hands in front of him to take something, anything, into the other room.
“Anything I can do?”
Dante shook his head, waving him toward the living room. “Nah. Just eat what I serve you and don’t gimme any lip. Go park it. Food’s like five minutes away.”
His dark eyes crinkled up, smiling sadly again at Griff, who got the hel out of there before anything got said. He steered himself to Dante’s big old sectional, a ful 10 feet across and 4 feet deep, and hunkered down. He toed off his shoes and rubbed his hands over his face trying to gauge Dante’s plans for the night.
He wanted to cal 911, except, of course, an emergency crew was already there.
“GRIFF, you
want more?” Dante was standing in the door with the half-eaten pan of ziti and a deep spoon. Griff was sprawled out on the sofa. He shook his head and patted his stomach, a hard wal of pasta and ricotta under his abs.
“I’d puke. That was great.”
“What’s the score?” Dante caled over his shoulder as he took the tray back to the kitchen.
No fucking idea, that’s what. Cock one, brain nothing. Griff squinted at the numbers until Dante’s voice echoed from the kitchen.
“You want another Guinness?”
Yes. No. Maybe.
Dante shouldn’t be drinking anyway, with his head, although part of Griff wanted to get him blasted and ravish him until he surrendered completely. Stop that. He shifted his half-erection toward his hip so it wasn’t quite as obvious.
Come to think of it, clean and sober seemed like a good idea for him as wel, with Dante’s cock swinging in those sweats, inside loose boxers.
When Dante leaned back, Griff could see his semi bulging under the cotton and his huge bals bunched against the thigh. He knew what they looked and smeled and felt like.
He felt like the worst kind of pervert, scoping his best friend, but after what they’d done it was natural that he’d… pay attention, right? He wasn’t a freak, but he kept thinking of things from that day in front of the cameras. Even knowing what Dante had said to his father. Was Dante thinking the same thing?
What are we waiting for?
“Couldn’t hear you but I figured you said yes.” Dante stepped over his extended legs and planted a bottle on the table in front of him, waiting for him to reach for it. Griff laughed and gave in, clinking the beers together. Dante stared intently at him, but not at his face; actualy he hadn’t looked at Griff’s face beyond the minimum for the past half hour.
At first, Griff had thought he was being paranoid, but Dante kept watching his hands as he popped open a beer, as he drank, as he cut bread, as he speared pasta with a fork.
When they had eaten, he’d thought Dante was not paying attention to him, but al the attention was on his meaty paws. Dante didn’t even seem to be aware of it, but he seemed hypnotized by Griff’s scarred hands, the wide knuckles, the faint coppery hair at the wrist.