by Tal Bauer
The courthouse, as always, was bustling, and Mike kept one shoulder just in front of Tom, his marshal’s duty to protect. Tom smiled at the side of his head and kept close. He was making sure he wouldn’t lose Mike in the crowd. Or so he told himself.
The sun was warm as they pushed out of the Annex and turned onto C Street. Across from them, DC’s Metropolitan Police headquarters gleamed, and behind them, the U.S. Capitol rose over the Prettyman Courthouse. A cloudless sky, blue like tropical waves lapping against a postcard shoreline, wrapped over DC.
“How did your questioning go yesterday? You were following up on the online threats, right? You thought it was just them shooting their mouths off?” He probably should have waited for Mike to officially brief him on the situation, since it was an official threat made against him. But, work, at least, was something for them to talk about. He was scraping the bottom of the barrel for conversation topics that weren’t about the weather, sports, or something completely lame.
Mike laughed. “Okay, you’re not going to believe what happened…”
Mike was back beside the bench for the afternoon, stuffed full of ribs and coleslaw. He groaned the whole walk back, complaining that he’d fall asleep for sure during the afternoon session. Tom promised him that he’d charge him with contempt of court and sentence him to perform a song and dance routine on the bench if he heard one single snore.
Mike’s flush stained his cheeks a deep rose, and he couldn’t look at Tom as they climbed the stairs back to the fourth floor.
He did bring his laptop into the courtroom, and Tom spotted him running background checks on each of the people behind Lincoln, sitting on the side of the defense in the courtroom.
No snores, though, and they wrapped up at four, recessing until nine the following day. Tom promised the court he’d be on time.
Half of the court laughed.
Mike again escorted him back to his chambers and then took up position in the center of Tom’s office, his briefcase slung over one shoulder. He waited while Tom took off his robe and hung it behind his door.
He was different than this morning, that was for sure. He was back to his relaxed self, and had a small smile, the same tiny grin he always seemed to wear, curving up his lips. His eyes were back to their laughing glint, the blue in his gaze just a touch lighter than the sky had been at lunch.
A day away from his phone, and whoever had been trying to hurt him, had done him a world of good. Still, Tom reached for his desk drawer and tugged it open. Mike’s phone glared up at him, the flashing light pulsing as if accusing Tom of holding it hostage. He half expected it to buzz again.
But the phone was silent.
“Here you go.” He passed it across the desk to Mike. “I hope everything is going to be okay. I know it’s not my place to ask…” He trailed off. He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t have gotten involved. He wasn’t Mike’s friend. And he wasn’t Mike’s dad, either.
God, that thought. He just barely stopped himself from cringing.
Shrugging, he shoved his hands in his suit pants pockets. He had to salvage this, somehow. “If you need to grab a beer and vent, I’m always happy to listen.”
Mike nodded and stared at his phone, not even listening to Tom. He seemed to hesitate, his thumb hovering over the dark screen. He swiped it on, and then whistled. “Two hundred and seventy-two texts.”
“Wow.”
“I think that qualifies as bat-crap crazy.”
Tom barked out a quick laugh. “Well, in my official judicial opinion, I’d say you’re correct.”
Mike scrolled through his phone, breezing past the messages, lines and lines and lines of text that Tom couldn’t make out. There were some pictures, but Mike angled the phone away, holding it closer to his chest, and frowned. “Well… it’s definitely over.”
Tom didn’t know what to say. Anything that came to mind sounded trite. He tried to smile, hoping it came out sympathetic. He probably looked like he had gas.
Mike swiped to a new screen and pulled up a picture. He looked at Tom, as if weighing whether or not to show him. He took a deep breath. “This was my boyfriend,” he said, turning the phone to Tom.
Tom froze.
Only his years of being a lawyer kept him from falling to the floor, from stumbling and tripping over nothing, from looking like a gobsmacked clownfish gulping air and floundering. He kept his jaw closed through force of will alone. If he wasn’t so controlled, his chin would be scraping the carpet.
Mike liked men?
He blinked and forced his gaze to the picture on the phone. Mike and his now-ex.
The picture was sweet, Mike beaming with his cheek pressed against the face of a tanned man—younger, in his early twenties, if he had to guess—in sunglasses and a pastel polo with a popped collar. Mike had beard scruff and a backwards ball cap on. His ex-boyfriend had perfectly manicured eyebrows and a hint of lip gloss. The ex-boyfriend’s smile wasn’t as wide as Mike’s, and seemed, to Tom, to have an edge to it.
What the hell was he supposed to say? Mike had just come out to him. Granted, those kinds of things weren’t such a big deal anymore—for most people—and the revelation of a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend should be as nonchalant as talking about the weather or the Nationals game the night before.
But, a big part of him was still stuck in 1991, still reliving the moment when—
“Looks like a loser.” God, he hoped that was the right thing to say.
Mike laughed. Relief swept through Tom, enough to make his knees practically wilt.
“He’s an asshole, that’s for sure.” Mike flinched and apologized in the next breath. “Sorry, Your Honor. I didn’t mean to curse.”
“Please. He made it to ‘bat-crap crazy’. I think you’re allowed to call him an asshole.”
Mike ducked his head, smiling, and turned back to his phone. He scrolled through the photo reel, picture after picture of him and the ex, moments in time, kisses shared and hands being held. “No reason to keep any of this.” A swipe of his finger and the pictures vanished. Deleted.
“You deleted all your photos?”
“If I could, I’d delete him from my memories.”
Tom whistled. “That bad?”
“I came home and found him with another man in my house. I put all his stuff on the curb, and this morning, he went thermonuclear. I think he shot into orbit for a minute there. Threw his coffee at me, started screeching his head off. And then blew up my phone, telling me everything he ever thought about me. Oh, and sent pictures of him and his new boyfriend having sex.” Mike shrugged. “Yeah, I’m deleting all his photos.”
“I… don’t blame you. I’m…” God, what should he say? He was an idiot, fumbling for words. He was a lawyer, a judge, for Christ’s sake. Words were his tradecraft. Speech was his profession. “I’m sorry it ended that way.”
“Honestly? I’m glad it’s over. It was bad for a while, but I kept deluding myself. I’m good at that.”
And then, Mike sobered, going still as he tucked his phone into his pants pocket and schooled his expression back to the stern seriousness Tom always saw in court. “Thank you, Judge Brewer, for what you did today. This morning. And, with the phone. I really am sorry about being late. And for having this personal drama interfere with the court.”
“It’s fine, Mike. I understand. You don’t have to apologize. Some days are just really shitty.”
Mike nodded, and his smile crept back. “Thank you.”
“I’d say anytime, but…” Tom tried to smile. “Your next guy better treat you right.” He hissed after he spoke, drawing a breath reflexively, as if he’d been stabbed and was sucking against the pain. Hopefully Mike wouldn’t notice.
He didn’t seem to. “I don’t think there will be a next guy for a while.” Mike straightened, gripped his briefcase, and took a step back. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of in my office. If you need anything, Your Honor, I’ll be down the hall.”
“I’m g
ood. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“On time. I promise.” Mike headed for the door and disappeared out into the hallway.
As the door shut behind him, Tom slumped sideways against his desk, resting his hip on the dark cherry wood as he curled forward and let out a whoosh of air, breath he’d held since Mike’s last smile.
He closed his eyes, and wished, for a moment, that he could erase Mike from his own memories.
Chapter 3
Tom set down his glass of wine on his kitchen counter, obsessively twisting the stem until it was in the perfect meridian on his slate-gray granite, exactly between the two edges of his expansive kitchen island. He was surrounded by French provincial décor, cream and ivory cabinets and deep gray granite, and fragile blown glass bucket lights that hovered over his island. They were the only lights on in his house, three little pools of light that barely stretched to the counter’s edge. His wine glass sat on the outside of the circles of light, untouched. Unexposed. Unilluminated. He’d come home and grabbed a glass of wine and sat, and hadn’t moved.
In the living room, a clock ticked, the soft tocks as loud as a shotgun blasting through his silent home.
His silent, empty home.
Perfect, in a catalog decorator’s way. He’d poured his time and money into his house over the years, giving his weekends and his evenings into fashioning the perfect home for himself.
And, for Etta Mae. Etta Mae, his six-year-old Basset Hound, snored softly on his sofa, spread-eagled and flat on her back. It was her post-dinner nap time.
But other than Etta Mae and him, his home was as warm as a haunted house. And as lived in as a Hollywood set, a cardboard cutout of a surface-level life. His life was practically scripted in its routine and repetition, but who would want to see something so boring? Laundry for one, done every Sunday, socks and undershirts and boxer-briefs that he collected in a little plastic basket in his closet and that Etta Mae liked to ransack. His dry cleaning, picked up every Wednesday like clockwork. Cooking for one every night, except Tuesdays, when he ate out before teaching his adjunct law class at Georgetown.
A single chicken breast. A lonely salad. A glass of wine, occasionally a second. Tonight, he’d had at least three. But a bottle could last him a week, sometimes.
He was utterly, completely, alone.
He rolled his wine stem again, watching the burgundy cabernet shiver in his glass. He’d chosen this. He’d chosen to be alone. It had been his plan.
Ever since 1991.
1991. The Moral Majority had successfully united the Christian far right with the Republican party the decade before, and their firebrand religious purity defined the national attitude toward gays. Freddie Mercury died that year. He died of AIDS, of “Gay-Related Immune Disease”, of “gay cancer”, according to the press, and society, and every terrible headline that screamed the news. The Reverend Jerry Falwell called it a “gay plague” sent to cleanse the world. The World Health Organization had only stopped listing homosexuality as a disease the year before. In Washington DC, Congress had disallowed the District from repealing the sodomy law. The U.S. Congress had forced DC to keep the sodomy laws on the books, criminalizing homosexuality.
Criminalizing him.
ACT-UP protested across the nation. AIDS ravaged the community. Fear clung like cloying perfume, choking everyone, an oppressive humidity made from millions and millions of fallen tears, the cries and wails of gay men dying all alone, dying in fear, dying in rage. Dying for no reason at all.
There were only two gay members of Congress then. The Democrats had only added support for gay rights to their platform in 1980. Terry Sweeney defined gay men on Saturday Night Live, and was widely regarded as a national laughingstock. Gay men and women on TV were relegated to the tragic roles—dying of AIDS, dying of violence, dying of drugs, dying because that’s what gay people did; they just died—or to the comedic roles, where they were slapstick sidekicks, or inconsequential buffoons, never to be taken seriously. A whole swath of people, written off as a momentary tragedy or as inconsequential frippery.
Was it any wonder that society followed?
1991. He was a brash and brazen twenty-one-year-old, with one semester left before he graduated college. His grades were rock solid, and there were four years of stellar pre-law under his belt. He had acceptance letters for all his top choice law schools: NYU, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard.
His last semester, and he had time to burn. He was young, dumb, and full of come. He was invulnerable and fearful at the same time, rebellious and cautious, needing to live, to love, and to be loved.
He wanted the world to be the color of his dreams, wanted to paint in primary colors. He wanted to stride away from fear, and build the world that rang out in the protest marches, in the calls to action. He wanted the future, and wanted it in his hands.
He went looking for life in all the wrong places.
Long nights dancing, partying. Running from the cops when their bars were raided. Meeting Peter, and falling head over heels for him. Wild days and nights and days again of seemingly never-ending sex, smoking cigarettes out of the window over Peter’s bed, refusing to detangle long enough to pull on shorts and head outside. Alcohol-fueled adventures, and living life so fast, so raw that he felt like his nerves were exposed to the sky.
And, one day, his professor’s voice, still as blaring, still as distinct, still as stunning as a crash of cymbals in the center of his chest, even twenty-five years later: “I didn’t know you’d chosen the homosexual lifestyle. This will seriously hurt your career. Are you hoping to work for the gays and their organizations as some sort of legal counsel? There’s no money in the work, but… you won’t work anywhere else.”
He didn’t know what to say.
His entire life, his entire plan for his whole existence, struck down in a handful of sentences.
He’d stumbled, fumbled. “What are you talking about?” he’d finally muttered. “I want to be a prosecutor—”
“Not with that lifestyle choice, you won’t.” His professor had handed back his legal brief, a giant D written on the front. His first. “Your law schools have already been notified.”
“What?”
“You’re not going to be a serious attorney, Tom. You might not even live long enough to graduate law school, what with your lifestyle. Why waste the slot on you?”
1991. He’d spent the rest of his final undergraduate year in a daze. Days and nights blended together, a smear of shame and self-flagellation. He blinked, and a month passed. Peter disappeared.
He built a wall around himself, removing every part and piece of him from the public eye. He sent letters to Cornell and Columbia, Harvard and NYU, declining his admission to their law schools. His professor seemed smug, radiated smugness, seemed to live in a swirling maelstrom of it, secure in his knowledge that he was right about Tom. He was oh-so-right.
1992 came and went. He worked as a paralegal in DC, working 80-hour weeks and living in the basement sublease of an older couple with three yippy dogs. They growled at him every time they saw him.
He had no time for a life. No time for fun.
And he built his wall higher.
His plan restarted then. He’d always had a plan, and he’d always followed it. He was going to be top of his class in high school. He was going to get into a prestigious undergraduate school. Graduate top of his class, and earn acceptance to the top law schools in the nation.
He never planned to be outed by his professor, painted with stripes of shame like he was a criminal, like he should walk around with a scarlet letter on his clothes. A pink H, perhaps? Or go all the way back and bring out the old pink triangles.
He was labeled a homosexual and his future was ripped from him.
So he relabeled his life. Refashioned his identity.
If he couldn’t have the life he planned and be gay, then he couldn’t be gay.
A year later, he was accepted into Georgetown Law, and a prim, proper, and pe
rfunctory Tom Brewer strode up the steps. He planned to graduate top of his class. Planned to work as a prosecutor after clerking in the DC federal courthouse.
Nineteen years as an AUSA for the DC federal district. He had the life he’d planned.
His nomination to the federal bench caught him by surprise.
That was unexpected.
He’d leapfrogged over Dylan Ballard, the United States Attorney, the lead prosecutor appointed by the previous president for the DC federal district. He’d never seen eye to eye with Ballard, but his appointment—over Ballard, instead of Ballard—had chilled their relationship to near-arctic temperatures. They still hadn’t spoken, a full year later.
After five rounds of vetting, more paperwork than he’d ever seen, and a background investigation by the FBI that kept him awake for a solid six weeks, he got the call that the Senate had confirmed him and twelve others as brand new baby federal judges across the U.S.
And not a word was spoken of his deepest, darkest secret.
Who knew anymore, though? His old professor, a bitter, nasty man, had died. He’d hung onto life for ninety-eight miserable years and refused to die just to keep raining spite on the world. He taught until the month before he died, full of vinegar and malice to the end.
And Peter, his one boyfriend, his one lover ever, had disappeared. None of the men he danced with ever bothered to learn even his first name. And, thank God he was young and dumb before the advent of cell phones and social media immortality.