Almost Like Being in Love

by Steve Kluger

  ARGOSY ENTERTAINMENT

  Literary Representatives

  LOS ANGELES

  NEW YORK

  TORONTO

  LONDON

  To build your character. Now it’s built. Give me a goddamned love story.

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF

  Travis Puckett

  Up until the Magic Moment, it was a day that had disaster written all over it. First the laundry was delivered with one sock missing, which is enough to throw me off balance for at least a month. (Do you get rid of the other one too, or just let it lie there mocking you every time you open the drawer?) Then came breakfast when I discovered that Gordo had not only invaded my half of the kitchen again but broken the Paper Towel Rule on top of it. (“When we get down to three rolls, buy more. I don’t like eating into the buffer.”) Finally, there was lunch with Andrea Fox and the dean—a last-ditch effort on our part to convince him that (a) the Alexander Hamilton book proposal was worth the $30,000 grant, and (b) I’m really not pathological. By the time the entrees had arrived, Andrea had almost succeeded in the former and was establishing a beachhead on the latter when she caught me lining up the ends of my asparagus and stabbed me in the thigh with a fork. None of this was lost on Dean Koutrelakos, who decided instead to use the money for fifteen new toilets in Bovard Hall. Which means I get to finance the book myself on $941, a T-bill I’m not allowed to touch, and two Happy Meal coupons from Denny’s. Thank God Gordo’s rich.

  GORDO:

  Kewl. I never had a kept boy before.

  TRAVIS:

  If you’re going to put it that way, just drop it. Nothing’s worth a word picture like that.

  So it was in my Scarlett O’Hara “As God Is My Witness I’ll Never Go Hungry Again” mode that I reached into my campus mailbox and found it—squished between an American Express statement, a third payment notice for a barium enema I never had, and my May issue of the Advocate.

  UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  UNIVERSITY PARK • LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007

  Doheny Library

  Faculty Research Request

  DATE: April 23, 1998

  FROM: Travis Puckett

  DEPARTMENT: History

  BUILDING/ROOM: VKC/223

  MATERIALS NEEDED

  Your phone number.

  SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS

  You couldn’t begin to guess.

  Travis, this is your last warning. I’m only human—and even though you’re not exactly a hunklet, on a Cute Scale of 1-to-10, you’re an easy 12. So don’t push me. You really don’t want to go there.

  Naturally, my next two classes were hell. I named Philadelphia as one of the thirteen colonies, I couldn’t remember what the War of 1812 was about, and I referred to James Madison’s wife as Dolly Levi. If I’d kept it up for another fifteen minutes, their final exams would have ended in a mistrial. But it was worth the anxiety attack when I pumped up the steps to Doheny Library two at a time and made it to the reference room three minutes before he went off duty.

  I was out of breath—and he was waiting for me.

  PERSONNEL OFFICE

  CONFIDENTIAL

  Julian Eric Brennan

  d.o.b. February 14, 1970, Dubuque, Iowa

  Ht. 5'10", Wt. 161; Eyes: Blue; Hair: Lt. brown

  Position: Assistant Librarian

  Location: Doheny Library Reference

  Hours: Monday–Friday 8:30a–4:15p

  (The penalty for Xeroxing confidential staff information is swift and merciless—but if they really wanted to enforce the rule, they wouldn’t keep the records room unlocked.)

  Evaluation

  Dubuque is practically around the corner from Field of Dreams, and he was born on Valentine’s Day. (Good.)

  He likes Starbucks cappuccino and he wouldn’t let me pay for our cookie. (Very good.)

  The first book he ever read was Valley of the Dolls. (Not so good.)

  He hates baseball. (Bad.)

  He prefers “older men.” (Ouch!)

  Okay. This is what’s called a 50-50 shot. Either we wind up spending the rest of our lives together or else it ends the way it always does:

  * * *

  REAL LIFE vs. THE MOVIES

  Breaking Up in the Movies

  Boy #1:

  This isn’t working out, is it?

  Boy #2:

  Sort of not, huh?

  Boy #1:

  You can’t say we didn’t try.

  Boy #2:

  We sure did. Besides, we’re still best friends.

  Boy #1:

  Forever.

  Boy #2:

  This is terrific pasta.

  Breaking Up for Real

  Boy #1:

  Are you asleep?

  Boy #2:

  Does it sound like it?

  Boy #1:

  I’m sorry about the tuna fish.

  Boy #2:

  It isn’t the tuna fish! It’s the last six months!

  Boy #1:

  You’re an asshole.

  Boy #2:

  Let go of my cock.

  * * *

  Make that 60-40.

  3

  Craig

  CITY OF SARATOGA SPRINGS POLICE DEPARTMENT

  POLICE REPORT—MINOR CHILD

  Date April 24, 1998

  Page 4

  NAME:

  Noah Kessler

  SEX:

  M

  ADDRESS:

  Unknown

  AGE:

  10–11

  Investigating Officer’s Comments

  At 2:26 A.M., we received a radio dispatch advising that the night manager of the downtown Greyhound terminal had reported a small child traveling alone after midnight.

  We found the boy in the waiting room, wearing a Utica Blue Sox backpack, a Utica Blue Sox cap, and a Utica Blue Sox jacket. (After that, the bus ticket to Utica came as no surprise.) He attempted to cover his tracks by claiming that his mother was in the ladies’ room; however, on checking out his story, we located only a cleaning woman and a Franciscan nun. So we brought him down to the station.

  He gave us no information whatsoever, although an ID tag on his GameBoy identified him as Noah Kessler. He cried just once—when he thought we were taking away his bus ticket—and then stated he wanted to speak to his attorney. In fact a call was placed to Craig McKenna, of McKenna & Webb, at an unlisted home telephone on Loughberry Lake.

  McKenna arrived at approximately 3:41 A.M., and the boy was remanded to his custody.

  MCKENNA & WEBB

  A LAW PARTNERSHIP

  118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

  SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

  MEMORANDUM

  TO: Craig McKenna

  FROM: Charleen Webb

  DATE: April 24, 1998

  SUBJECT: Calendar and Other Matters

  * * *

  Craig:

  Judge Costanzo granted the Pioneer Scouts’ motion to dismiss when he found out you were suing them (again) for lighting matches in a state park. His telephonic ruling: “Jesus H. Christ, Charleen! That’s what makes them pioneers!” This is the third time, Craig. What were you expecting—a toaster?

  Your mother called from St. Louis. She says to tell you that Alma Colson’s son just opened his own practice. He’s a urologist. She wants you to come home for the holidays and have dinner with him because she’s convinced he’ll sweep you off your feet. What does she think you and Clayton have been up to for the last twelve years?

  I have a 2:30 deposition in Lindborg vs. Bluecover, but I need to be out of here by 5:00. If it runs over (and it will—according to Martindale-Hubbell, defense counsel hasn’t stopped talking since 1946), can you cover for me? Derek is taking me to a white-collar crime seminar (orchids are obviously optional) on what’s destined to be both our fourth date and our last. Once he’d reenacted his allegedly hilarious moot court trial (he misplaced an interrogatory and Bunny Bixler stepped on a ping pong ball), there was nothing le
ft to talk about. Oh, well. Ex-boyfriends are essentially useless, but at least they prove you haven’t wasted your entire life.

  No offense, but you look like shit. Have you been fighting with Clayton? Are you having an illicit affair? Did you chain yourself to another of Harvard’s libraries? Were you able to make friends with the SWAT team this time? Or were you chasing Noah Kessler all over Saratoga Springs again?

  Lunch. Sweet Shop. 12:30. Bring the Hoskot transcripts. Sexual harassment lawsuits are as close as I get to romance these days.

  MCKENNA & WEBB

  A LAW PARTNERSHIP

  118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

  SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

  MEMORANDUM

  TO: Charleen

  FROM: Craig

  DATE: April 24, 1998

  SUBJECT: Calendar and Things

  * * *

  Charleen:

  I didn’t chain myself to Widener Library on purpose. It started out as a simple rock concert that turned into a routine protest—the riot wasn’t my fault. Did you expect me to keep my mouth shut? Harvey Milk was dead and nobody was doing a damned thing about it. And by the way, that was twenty years ago. Get over it.

  I concede that the Pioneer Scouts loyally uphold the Constitution of the United States—that yellowed piece of parchment in the National Archives that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that this country was invented for rich, white, upper-class, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, heterosexual men. Everybody else needed an amendment. The Saratoga Springs Scout chapter contains no African Americans, no Latinos, no Jews, and no Democrats. Furthermore, when they found out that one of their 14-year-olds had a boyfriend, they bounced him out on his ass and took back all nine merit badges. But they’re protected by their nonprofit “go fuck yourself” status, so the only thing I can actually prove is that they were lighting matches in a state park—which by the way violates four municipal codes and two federal statutes. If I have to drag in Bambi to nail their asses to the wall, I’ll do it.

  My mother claims she didn’t raise her son to settle down with a construction foreman who operates his own hardware chain. Even with the M.B.A. from Harvard. But it’s not really the blue-collar thing that crawled up her ass. She and Clayton haven’t agreed on anything since she found out he makes more money than she does.

  I’ll handle the depo, but the party for your windbag ends at 6:00 P.M. on the button. Clay’s got something up his sleeve tonight that I’m not supposed to know about. I think he’s going to give me the wedding ring that you probably helped him pick out. Judging by the travel brochures he keeps hiding from me, he’s planning a honeymoon in either Denmark or Canada or one of those other arsenals of democracy that’ll allow us to register as groom and groom. (It won’t mean shit to the IRS when we come home, but at least we’ll be legal somewhere.) So how come it always makes him edgy whenever I organize a teensy little Freedom to Marry march on Washington?

  It’s Noah again. This time I found him down at the Third Precinct after they’d caught him at the bus station with a one-way ticket to Utica in his pocket. Evidently his mother and her new husband went to Germany for eight weeks to spy on the Mueller automotive plants (I didn’t realize he was that Mueller), leaving him with a Teutonic housekeeper on loan from the Luftwaffe who’s clearly more preoccupied with strafing London than keeping her eye on an 11-year-old runaway. So I brought him home with me and we called Jody in Utica, who didn’t seem to mind that it was 4:00 A.M. on a game day. Once he’d gotten Noah to stop crying, I put the kid to sleep on the couch in the den. (We still have his pajamas with the Martians on them, left over from his Continental Airlines caper last month.) This morning we made him pancakes with chocolate syrup and then he challenged Clayton to an arm-wrestling tournament. Clayton lost.

  Charleen, this boy belongs with his father and everybody knows it. Even Judge Costanzo. So what are the chances we can swing a custody reversal in Kessler vs. Kessler?

  Today is Barbra Streisand’s birthday. After you dump Derek, go home and watch Funny Girl.

  MCKENNA & WEBB

  A LAW PARTNERSHIP

  118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE

  407 SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

  MEMORANDUM

  TO: Craig

  FROM: Charleen

  DATE: They Call Me Second-Hand Rose

  SUBJECT: Noah

  * * *

  You’re forgetting Mueller Electronics and Mueller Shipyards and Mueller Communications and Mueller Entertainment. Craig, you don’t seem to appreciate the kind of money we’re dealing with here. Did you ever see their house lit up at night? The first time I drove by, I thought it was Syracuse.

  The chances of a reversal? You’re joking, right? The mother wears Halston originals, drives a Bentley, owns a Da Vinci, and plays the market. The father wears a jockstrap, drives a scooter, owns a Shell station, and plays first base. Relatively speaking, Craig? Dim. So count me in—but on two conditions: (1) You’re not to leave me alone with Jody Kessler. He makes me very nervous. And (2) Go easy on Judge Costanzo. He’s not going to be thrilled about this.

  Ch

  P.S. Clayton turns edgy whenever he’s afraid you don’t need him any more. The rest of the world learned that in 1979. Where were you?

  MCKENNA & WEBB

  A LAW PARTNERSHIP

  118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

  SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

  MEMORANDUM

  TO: Charleen

  FROM: Craig

  DATE: Color Me Barbra

  SUBJECT: Noah

  * * *

  In addition to being a terrific father, Jody’s responsible, intelligent, kind, redoubtable, loyal, cavalier, hunky, and moral. I can see why that would put you off. Especially when he pulls degenerate stunts like leaving red roses under your windshield wiper.

  All right. If it’ll keep Costanzo happy, I won’t sue the Pioneer Scouts again until July. Early July.

  In 1979, I was asleep in Clayton’s arms.

  Craig McKenna

  Attorney Notes

  Things to Do

  ___ Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

  The only up side to the kind of day where you should have blown your brains out at 8:00 in the morning is driving your Miata through the sleepy elms that ring Loughberry Lake, knowing that in about ninety seconds you’ll be pulling into the driveway of the two-bedroom-with-den that you’ve shared for twelve years with your very own Lancelot, who at this precise moment is waiting to fold you into his heart, kiss your troubled brow, and tell you that everybody in the world is wrong except you.

  But he isn’t there. The lights are still off and his Bronco is gone. So you fight off the disappointment, you remember how much you love him, and you take it in stride. Fuck you! You’re an asshole! I want a divorce!

  Then you find the note on the dining room table, the champagne glass with the forget-me-not in it, and the box containing a wedding band that had to cost at least three million dollars.

  CLAYTON’S HARDWARE

  serving Saratoga Springs since 1988

  Honey:

  You might as well go ahead and open this now. I wanted to give it to you in front of a fire, but I’ve gotta work late.

  You’d better like it. I paid retail.

  C

  This is what we call romance, Clayton-style. And it comes in many flavors: When he popped for my thirtieth birthday trip to France, it was only to keep me from booking us on a cruise instead. (“I’m not gonna spend fourteen days watching three hundred horny guys look at you.”) When we nearly got into a fistfight in the Ikea parking lot after I’d tried to buy us a king-sized mattress and he’d insisted on a double, his reasons turned out to be deceptively simple. (“The one place I’m not gonna lose you is in bed.”) And when neither of us could afford the five days in Greece but we went anyway, it didn’t have anything to do with the wonders of the Ancient World. (“I always wanted to make out with you in the Acropolis.”)

  One thing I lea
rned a long time ago. Nobody argues with Clayton and wins.

  * * *

  “There’s this new judo-kind-of-thing called tai chi. I’ve got a class in twenty minutes.”

  “Clayton, tai chi has been around for four thousand years.”

  “Bullshit. I only heard about it in October.”

  * * *

  Clayton wouldn’t admit until our first anniversary that he’d begun scoping me out a solid two weeks before I’d ever set eyes on him without his football helmet. Not that I’d have noticed him anyway, since I already had my hands full trying to convince the Harvard athletic department that the 5-foot-8 walk-on wasn’t a practical joke—and once the shock had worn off, they were actually willing to let me stick around until final cut, sort of as a consolation prize (not, however, with a straight face). That lasted until our third scrimmage, when I was lying on the bench working out a kink and an interior lineman accidentally sat on my head. (“You’re easy to miss,” he said by way of apology.) So when I claim that my career was cut short by a football injury, I’m telling the truth. As long as wounded pride counts.

  What I hadn’t learned during my four years as a Beckley gridiron celebrity was that, in the real world, they have a term for a player who’s at least a foot and a half shorter than the rest of his squad: “lunch.” Recreationally, I was a moving target; therapeutically, I also turned out to be terrific exercise for any jock who needed to stretch his rotator cuff by tossing me across the 50. So in both practice and theory, there was no reason to expect that I wouldn’t eventually be removed from Soldier’s Field in a Baggie—except that nobody ever got the chance. Instead, I’d find myself tearing toward the 10 with the ball under my arm and three pairs of pounding feet closing in on me like a pack of velociraptors that hadn’t eaten since the Cretaceous Era, when suddenly—coming from the right—I’d hear an unexpected CRUNCH! and a SOCK! and a POW! and a “Get lost!” in rapid succession, and seconds later I’d turn up in the end zone—free, clear, and not bleeding. Though this happened a good half-dozen times, I never actually learned the identity of the tackle who’d appointed himself my own Han Solo—because in full uniform, he was indistinguishable from the Prudential Tower.