by Jay Quinn
Rhett had even gone so far as to cultivate Robin’s friendship. In the year Kai had lived with Robin, Rhett would appear every couple of weeks or so with some small gift: deer meat from a hunting trip down in Tyrrel County, a case of beer when his current girlfriend had him drive her to Sam’s Club up in Virginia Beach, and occasionally a quarter bag of good sensimilla when the opportunity presented itself. Kai appreciated his father’s attention and grew confident enough in it to treat Robin as his de facto partner in his presence, though only once did he admit he was sleeping with him.
Kai knew his mother and father still communicated and more specifically, they communicated about him. He fully expected to be greeted by some embarrassing questions from his mother when he came home for Christmas, but she never brought the subject up and neither did he. Kai made it through the ten days’ separation from Robin with the help of a score of painkillers he’d gotten from one of his buddies. It wasn’t his first experience with the painkillers, but it was the first time he considered going off his medication and using the pain medication exclusively.
Arriving back to the trim little cottage in Wrights Shores, he found himself profoundly glad to be coming home to Robin. In the winter months that followed, their relationship deepened. For the first time in his life, Kai began to see some other place than his mother’s house as home. Buttressed by Robin’s unconditional love and support, he found himself drawing again after more than a year’s disinterest in his artistic pursuits. In love for the first time in his life, and in a kind of love that was returned rather than only reflected, his brain chemistry was flooded by the endorphin, dopamine, and serotonin rush that is a physical fact of the state. He began to skip his meds until by late spring, he wasn’t taking them anymore at all. Of course, his naturally- elevated brain chemicals were enhanced by a particular abundance of painkillers on the drug scene. Stealthily his indulgence turned into a habit. By summer, he was an addict.
Kai’s work had begun to pick up long before Memorial Day. The large, expensive houses that he specialized in trimming and fitting out had begun construction in the fall of the year before. The small, routine work he did for the company Robin worked for picked up as the builder rushed houses to completion for sale or rental for the tourist season. Robin’s work picked up as well. While they had spent from Christmas to Easter comfortably cocooned in their own little world, both of them had to get up and back to work as the days grew longer and the sun hotter.
With the warmth came the return of the increasingly pointed taunts and jests from the guys Kai knew. Suddenly he found “that little faggot realtor” to be more of an issue than he had before. Summer season was on and the opportunities to delve into the sexual surfeit of tourists became a constant topic of conversation. As Kai found himself defending his comfortable and deepening relationship with Robin, he also found himself staying high on painkillers. The drug took away a lot of his old inhibitions and also gave him a false feeling of safety. These factors grew together to the point where they intersected with a girl named Linda.
Linda was the best friend of Kai’s dealer buddy’s girlfriend. In Linda, Kai found a way to kill two problems with one stone. By starting to publicly date Linda, most of Kai’s harshest tormentors about Robin were silenced. As a bonus, Linda had a steady supply of heavy pain medication and she was delighted to share with Kai, as long as he fucked her first. Linda was a local, born and bred. She knew who Kai was, and truth be told, she had her eye on him for a long time. She wasn’t deaf to the rumors that he slept with Robin, but that just made the game more interesting to her. She was an addict herself and she knew what she was looking at when she saw Kai. Not only was he good-looking enough to be gay himself, but he was also known to be a hard worker and quite a catch for a girl who had a good job and wanted to settle down. As far as she was concerned, her painkillers were more than a trump for any gay boy, no matter how cute he might be.
What neither Linda nor Kai took into consideration was the fact that Robin genuinely loved Kai. Robin knew Kai’s whole story, the demons in the night, the years on medication and treatment for the bipolar disorder. Robin was also astute enough to see clearly his place as the little faggot realtor. No one knew better than Robin how that colored everybody’s perception of him. Robin also knew how many painkillers Kai was taking. Kai’s legal medication sat in untouched bottles on Robin’s bathroom vanity. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to read the refill dates on the bottle and know Kai had gone off his meds. Then too, it was usually his bed that Kai lay sleepless in and his kitchen where Kai chain smoked, uncommunicative in the three A.M. darkness. All of this Robin saw as he tolerated Linda and waited and watched.
Kai didn’t fight. When Linda or Robin began asking questions that hit too close to home, he simply got up and left. Robin wanted him badly enough to stop asking questions he knew Kai wouldn’t or couldn’t answer. Linda pushed and as the summer dragged on, she pushed harder. Winter was coming and Linda had every intention of bringing Kai to live with her by fall.
On Labor Day, the traffic on the bypass and the beach road didn’t trickle off, it simply stopped. The summer, usually a riot of excess and sunburned faces, hadn’t quite been as frenetic as usual. High gas prices, high real estate prices and high living stopped the party as swiftly as a pulled plug. Robin and Kai felt it first. Housing sales and starts dried up. While the fact that there would always be a class of people who could want and afford second or third homes assured Robin he’d have a job for the winter, it wasn’t enough of a population to warrant Kai’s employment. All around them, the loose talk turned to the coming of a tough winter.
Rhett stopped by Robin’s house and found Kai there alone one day. Kai invited his father in for a beer and a bong hit. Rhett accepted both, then he followed Kai out onto Robin’s back deck and looked south to the Wright Brothers’ Memorial. “Son, I know it ain’t none of my business…” he began.
“Oh hell,” Kai groaned. “Whenever you start out a sentence by calling me Son, and telling me it ain’t none of your business, I know some real bullshit is about to follow.”
Rhett took a long hit off his beer before looking Kai in the eye and saying, “What I’ve got to tell you ain’t bullshit, and if you got any sense you’ll listen to what I have to say.”
Something in his father’s tone warned Kai not to be flippant, but to listen. He reached in the side pocket of his cargo pants, pulled out his cigarettes and lighter and lit up. Blowing smoke through his nostrils, he looked out, following his father’s gaze, and studied the marble monument in front of them. “Go ahead, then. I’m listening.”
Rhett sighed and said quietly, “Robin’s company is going to lay off all sub-contractors at the end of the week. I don’t know about Robin, but they’re laying off sales people too.”
Kai nodded and took a hit off his cigarette, “I heard. Robin’s safe. He’s, like, their number two seller. I’ve got a house up in Duck that’ll see me through mid-October. Other than that, the phone hasn’t exactly been ringing off the hook, but I’ve got some money stuck back. We should be okay.”
Rhett shook his head and turned to face his son, “That money won’t last long the way you’re going with your pill problem.”
“Oh yeah?” Kai asked rhetorically. “And what makes you think I’ve got a problem? Has Robin been whining about me to you?”
“No. I haven’t seen Robin lately,” his father said truthfully. “I got other ways of hearing things. Like I happened to hear that girl you’ve been dating is looking mighty interesting to the Dade County Sheriff’s Department. You better watch your ass, son. You’ve been playing both ends against the middle all summer.”
“And that means what?” Kai asked defiantly as he took another hit off his cigarette before turning to put it out in an ashtray on the picnic table behind them.
“All I’m saying is you better open your eyes and take a look around. If Robin kicks you out you may not have any holes to hide you,” Rhett told him bluntly.
Kai nodded finally before he turned to look at his dad and said, “I appreciate the advice, but there’s always one place I can go no matter what.”
“You can’t get there if your ass is in jail,” Rhett said hotly. “And what makes you think your mama wants you back? She’s been dating someone pretty seriously since you’ve been gone. She don’t want you coming home with your tail between your legs.”
“Mama said I’ve always got a home if I need one,” Kai replied with the same amount of heat. “She’s never told me I’ve worn out my welcome.”
Stung by that, Rhett pushed himself away from the deck’s railing and turned to leave. Before he did, he said, “Take it from somebody who fucked up every good thing in his life, don’t make the same mistakes I did. Figure out who loves you and just hold on to that.”
“Yeah? Well, the apple never falls too far from the tree, does it?” Kai replied.
Rhett shook his head and stepped through the sliding glass doors back into the house. Kai stood on the back deck and waited for the sound of the front door to close behind his father before he left the deck and went into the house himself. He walked to the bookshelf he’d built for Robin over the winter and reached high to the books on the top shelf. Standing on his tip toes, he pulled out the first three books and reached into the blind space behind them and pulled out the empty Valium bottle that held his stash.
The bottle was full. There was another one hidden in the laundry closet as well that was only half-full. For the past few weeks, he’d been helping himself to Linda’s stash whenever he had the chance. So far, she hadn’t called him on it, but he figured she knew. If she didn’t she was either over-confident or didn’t care, he didn’t know which. Kai took a single pill from the full bottle and promptly chewed it up and swallowed it before he replaced the bottle and books. Then he went back out on the deck and eased himself into a lounge chair. He lit a cigarette and began to think.
Now, Kai sat at the end of the trail those thoughts had led him down. He looked behind him once more and checked the microwave’s clock. Another hour had passed while he was sunk in memory. Heidi lay in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room with her chin on her crossed paws, asleep and dreaming. The radio hummed with a jaunty sax figure that sounded like Kirk Whalum to Kai. In his glass, the ice had melted to small bits which hung in the watery remains of his tea. The ashtray in front of him was full. From what he could tell, his buzz was still strong, despite the fact of his dredging up the past to chew on once more. He stood, and emptied his ashtray and glass before opening the bay windows to let out some of the smoke in the house. Then he concentrated on making himself another glass of iced papaya tea before he resumed his place at the table, once more picking up the threads of the past.
The night following his father’s visit he fucked Robin like he’d never fucked him before, desperately, lovingly until they both were spent and the moonlight coming through the skylight over their bed showed tear tracks creeping out the corners of Robin’s eyes. Kai had licked the tears from the sides of his face down to his hairline before kissing him gently and turning on his side to try and sleep.
Two days later, Linda was arrested. Today was six weeks gone by.
Kai hesitated a moment, then stood and walked over Heidi’s sleeping form on his way to his bedroom. Once he was inside, he took another pill from his stash and chewed it up before swallowing it. Then, he found his cell phone plugged into its charger on his chest of drawers. He unplugged it and flipped the top open. He found Robin’s number in memory and pressed the digit to dial the number. After three rings, Robin answered. “Hey,” Kai said gently. “What are you doing?”
“I’m on the beach road between Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills,” Robin said with a quick throb of happiness in his voice. “What are you doing?”
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” Kai said helplessly.
For a moment, Robin didn’t reply. Kai heard his car’s radio in the background for a moment before Robin said, “Please don’t do this to me, Kai. I miss you so much. This doesn’t make it any easier.”
Kai felt a stab of regret as sharp as if he’d cut himself on broken glass. There was a searing then a profound sense of separation where there shouldn’t be any. “I’m actually calling you to tell you something,” Kai said beseechingly.
“Okay” Robin replied tentatively.
“I talked to Mom. I’ve been thinking… could you consider coming down here for Thanksgiving? Mom’s looking forward to meeting you and I miss you a lot. I thought it would be easier on us both if we had something to look forward to,” Kai said in a rush.
Again, Robin answered him with a pregnant pause before he said, “Kai, won’t this make it worse?”
“I have something else to tell you,” Kai said quickly before Robin could continue.
Robin sighed, then asked, “What else?”
“I’m quitting. Cold turkey. Tomorrow, I’ve set the day. I saw my psychiatrist today. He’s put me back on my psych meds. I start tonight,” Kai told him urgently.
“What did your psychiatrist say Kai?” Robin asked with concern.
Kai laughed. “He mainly wanted to talk about you. Everybody wants to talk about you. You’re the only person I’ve ever been in love with. Nobody thinks you’re real.”
“Oh, I’m real enough,” Robin said ironically. “Are you really going to quit, Kai?”
“Yes. Spit swear. Double dog swear,” Kai said easily.
“And you’re going back on your meds?” Robin pressed.
“I’m looking at them,” Kai said as he turned to see the brown bottles lined up on the table by his bed.
“Kai, what difference is it going to make if I come down there for Thanksgiving?” Robin asked him genuinely without a trace of frustration or bitterness.
“A lot,” Kai answered honestly. “I’ll be thinking straight for the first time in over a year. I’ll be clean and not crazy.” He took a deep breath and let it go slowly before he continued. “I’ll be back to the me I was when we met.”
“Let me see what I can work out,” Robin told him. “I have clients who may be coming Thanksgiving weekend.”
“Then come the week before,” Kai said without realizing how needy he sounded. “Just get down here, please.”
“Okay. Look, let me get back to the office and make some calls. Can you call me tonight?” Robin asked.
“Nine o’clock. Sharp,” Kai said happily.
“Okay, cool,” Robin said and laughed. “You are crazy, you know that?”
“I know I still love you,” Kai told him seriously.
“Kai, don’t,” Robin told him in reply. “It’s not enough to tell me that anymore. You only say it because you know I want to hear it.”
“Then I’ll show you, you little brat. Just get your ass down here, I promise,” Kai said and laughed.
“I’ll let you know tonight,” Robin said firmly. The he said, “I love you too,” and disconnected his phone.
Kai looked at the screen of his phone and noted how long they had spoken. Just a minute and a few seconds, but it had been enough. He turned his phone off and sat it down on his dresser. Suddenly he felt his buzz intensify. He felt as if he stood on a cushion of air and he stayed, swaying there for a moment before he moved once more to his spot in the kitchen. There was so much to plan and do as soon as this buzz wore off. He would get through tomorrow somehow, but right now he just wanted to be happy for just a little while.
Kai returned to the kitchen and refilled his drink and collected a fresh pack of cigarettes from the carton he kept in the cabinet with his mother’s canned food. All that accomplished, he sat once more and lit a cigarette. Heidi stood, shook herself all over, then trotted over to him and nudged his forearm with her nose. Kai put his cigarette in the ashtray and shifted in his seat so that he could take his dog’s head in his hands. Gently, he smoothed back Heidi’s long ears and scratched her neck. “Robin’s coming, girl,” he said softly.<
br />
The dog took two steps away from him and turned to look toward the foyer. “Yes!” Kai said happily. “Robin!” Heidi barked and began to run for the front door, her claws scrabbling on the kitchen’s tile floor. Kai watched her dash away, her sharp barks echoing in the still house in Sawgrass Estates. He felt guilty for getting Heidi all jazzed up, but he felt much the way she did. He only wished he could follow her and open the door to find Robin on the other side.
“I might as well go on and admit it,” he said aloud miserably. “I’m a fag, a drug addict and a mentally ill person.” He listened to Heidi scratching at the tiles at the front door and put his forehead in one hand and picked up his cigarette with the other. He sat up, squared his shoulders and stiffened his spine. “At least by this time next week I’ll just be another crazy queer.” That said, he took a long hit off his cigarette and savored his deepening high, knowing all too well what he’d committed to accomplishing.
Chapter Seven
CONSIDERING THE DAY Maura had at the office, she was grateful that Kai had insisted on cooking dinner for Matt. With her Wednesday spent putting out administrative fires and assorted other minor crises, Maura didn’t even take time to eat lunch. She’d had only a can of V-8 juice at her desk, and breakfast was no more than a half an English muffin and a quick cup of coffee. In a way, she was glad her day had been so hectic; it left her no time to think about Matt’s return to her house and his first meeting with Kai. She knew she didn’t really have anything to worry about; Kai wasn’t socially inept, no matter what his mood, and Matt was clear that he was looking forward to the event. When he called at about three, he told Maura he’d be there by seven that night, so she’d called Kai in turn to let him know.
When she called, Kai sounded upbeat and cheerful. He’d been to the grocery store for dog food and dog cookies and he told her he’d come across the Cuban Mojo marinade for pork that he’d always loved. It had been a long time since he’d tasted those flavors unique to South Florida and he told her to expect a pork roast marinated in the Mojo sauce with rice and black beans and maduros, the sweet fried plantains. Maura had responded that the dinner would please Matt, who had a fondness for Cuban food as well. Relieved after the call, she’d plunged back into work and hardly had a chance to lift her head from her computer screen until it was time to leave for the day.