Return to Sender

by Ashlyn Kane

  Jonah had been to cities before, had even lived in Houston when he was younger, but that was a lifetime ago. The concrete buildings seemed to stretch out forever, reaching for the sun like cold, lifeless parodies of Emerson’s mother’s sunflowers. What the hell was he doing, moving across the country on a whim? What kind of stupidity was that? He should get right back on that bus and go home and beg his parents not to kill him. He should go to college in Austin with Emerson and pretend he’d never seen him and Justin kissing in the yard. He should—

  A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, startling him from his internal lecture. “You look like you could use some directions,” Daniel said, coming up beside him.

  “Understatement,” Jonah admitted. He had no idea where he would stay or how he would keep himself safe, let alone feed and clothe himself. He knew he could always go home, that his parents would welcome him back and that Emerson would eventually forgive him for ditching their standing date. But if he came home now, they’d be wondering every time they looked at him what had set him off, how long it would be before he disappeared again.

  “Come on,” Daniel said. “I’m taking you to the Y. We’ll get you set up with a room and some food, and then I’ll take you to Pastor Ken.”

  Daniel had been on the bus for the last nine hundred miles or so and had ended up in the seat next to Jonah’s. He was easy to talk to—almost too easy—and Jonah had found himself explaining the whole sordid situation almost before he could consider it. Daniel had left home a few years earlier for reasons he hadn’t explained, but Jonah figured that since he’d just been visiting his parents, things had worked out okay for him in the end.

  “I don’t need religion,” Jonah protested feebly. “Or charity,” he added, since that seemed like it was the other option. Not yet, anyway, he amended mentally, his stomach twisting.

  “No, but I’m thinking you’ll probably be wanting a job,” Daniel said dryly. “I’ve been where you are, remember? And I’d still be on the street if it weren’t for Pastor Ken.”

  Well, in that case. “Okay, you’ve convinced me.” Jonah located his duffel in the pile beside the bus and waited for Daniel to grab his rolling suitcase. It was much, much nicer than anyone else’s luggage. “Why do you take the bus, anyway?” he asked before he could stop himself. “I mean, you could obviously afford to fly.”

  “I have to fly for work,” Daniel said with a shrug, extending the handle on his bag and dragging it along the sidewalk behind him. “I love my job, but I really, really hate flying. There is not a strong enough word.”

  “Oh.” That made sense. “Lucky me, I guess.”

  Daniel laughed. “Reserve judgment ’til after you’re situated at the Y, okay?”

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn’t far from the bus station, and Jonah dropped off his bag, grabbed a quick shower and change of clothes, and picked up a key before buying a pass for public transit. Three stops later they were in front of a high-rise building, housing everything from lawyers’ offices to a main-floor pastry shop, and Jonah was shifting from foot to foot with anxiety. “We want the basement level,” Daniel said as they got in the elevator, and Jonah pushed the button and waited for the doors to close.

  “Why is Pastor Ken in an office building basement?” Jonah asked on the ride down.

  The doors dinged open before Daniel could answer, and he led the way out into the lobby area of a clean, if somewhat run-down, gym. “Because he likes to eat, I imagine.” Daniel smiled at the girl behind the counter. “Hey, Chrissie. Is Ken in? Got a recruit for him.”

  The girl, Chrissie, looked Jonah up and down, assessing, before smiling. “Sure. He’s in his office. You know where it is.”

  Jonah shot Daniel a sideways look. “Come here often?”

  “Like I said, Pastor Ken’s an old friend.” Daniel smiled. “Plus, this is my gym. I work upstairs. It’s convenient.”

  Right. Wait—so Daniel was, what, a lawyer? He’d gone from street-kid-slash-runaway to lawyer? Did that really happen? Or maybe he worked in the bakery? But that would hardly explain needing to travel for work.

  Before Jonah could speculate further, Daniel led them to a door in the far back corner of the building and knocked.

  “It’s open,” came the answer, and Daniel pushed open the door and ushered Jonah inside.

  Pastor Ken was… not what Jonah had been expecting. With his long, dark hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, short-sleeved dress shirt revealing bulging muscles, and the tattoo Jonah could see peeking out from under the band of his watch, he looked more like a biker than a member of the clergy. He stood up as they came in and greeted Daniel with an enthusiastic handshake. “Danny! Long time no see. How was Virginia?”

  “Good,” Daniel said with a small smile. “Good. Much better than the last time I visited.”

  “Glad to hear they’re coming around,” Ken said sincerely, patting him on the shoulder as he turned to Jonah. “And who’s this?”

  “This is Jonah,” Daniel introduced, and Jonah automatically stuck out his hand. Ken took it, his grip firm but not crushing. “He’s one of us.”

  One of…? Surely Daniel couldn’t mean what Jonah thought he meant? A gay clergy member? But it would have been impolite to ask, so he kept his mouth shut.

  Then Ken said, “A runaway, huh?” and Jonah understood.

  “I’m not—I left a note,” he said with a blush. “It’s—I do plan on going back someday. I just… need some time.”

  Ken gestured to the chair in front of his desk, and Daniel made his way toward the door. “I’ve got to get going,” he said. “But Jonah—I’ll catch up with you later. You can check at the front desk at the Y for messages, okay?”

  “Um, sure,” Jonah said, nervous now that he was about to be left alone with a complete stranger. Not that Daniel was much closer than that, now that he thought about it. “Thanks again.”

  “No sweat. See you later, Ken,” Daniel called as he closed the door behind him.

  “Have a seat,” Ken said, and Jonah finally lowered himself down to sit across from him. “So, where are you from?”

  “Um, Tennessee originally,” Jonah said. “But we’ve been living in Texas since I was eight or so.” This was not at all how he’d expected the conversation to begin.

  “I’ve got relatives in Texas,” Ken said with a nod. “Whereabouts?”

  “Hudson Bend, just outside Austin.”

  “Nice city. My people are in Houston. So, how old are you? Are you finished school?”

  “I graduated at the end of the school year. And, uh, eighteen. My birthday was a few days ago.”

  “Oh, well, happy belated, then.” Pastor Ken leaned back in his chair and put a foot up on the desk. He was wearing sneakers. They didn’t really go with the dress pants. “So, you left home. You want to talk about that?”

  “Um.” Jonah had thought the answer would be no—he’d really only opened up to Daniel after the first five hundred miles or so. But Pastor Ken’s friendly, casual conversation had him completely disarmed. “So I found out that my best friend is gay and has a boyfriend and that I’m kind of in love with him. Sort of all at the same time.”

  Pastor Ken didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Bummer.” He did reach into his desk drawer and pull out a snack-sized Kit Kat bar, which he tossed at Jonah. “Have to smuggle these in past the health Nazis at the front desk, but it’s worth it.”

  “Thanks,” Jonah said, finding himself wanting to smile for the first time in days.

  Ken waved him off. “Don’t mention it. So, while you’re in town I’m assuming you’re going to want a job. I can help you with that.”

  “That would be awesome,” Jonah said with feeling, looking up from where he was halfway through unwrapping the chocolate bar.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Ken said wryly. “We still have to figure out what you’d be good at. Why don’t you tell me about your school, what your favorite subjects were, if you did any extracurriculars.”

 
; Looking longingly at the chocolate bar, Jonah reluctantly set it on the desk, still in its wrapper, and focused on the task at hand. “English and the so-called soft sciences—psychology and sociology—were probably my best subjects. I always thought I’d end up as a writer, but until that pans out for me I’d like to be able to eat.”

  Ken chuckled. “When I was a kid I wanted to be a race car driver. ‘Writer’ sounds pretty down-to-earth.”

  Jonah flushed. “Thanks. Um, I was pretty good at P.E. too. Captain of the boys’ volleyball team. And I did track.”

  “Volleyball, huh? I’d have said basketball for sure.”

  “Everyone does,” Jonah sighed, but he wasn’t about to hold that against Ken when he was going out of his way to help Jonah out.

  “How much can you bench?”

  The seeming non sequitur threw him. “Uh.” They’d done a unit in the weight room at school back in May, but he wasn’t sure he could still lift that much; he hadn’t exactly kept up with it during the summer. “One seventy-five, maybe one eighty,” he hedged.

  Ken nodded. “Not bad. In terms of hours you’re available to work…?”

  “Days, nights, weekends, holidays, whatever,” Jonah said quickly. “I’m not picky. I usually go to bed late, like after three, but I’m eighteen. It’s not like I ever have trouble getting to sleep.”

  “Okay. Any previous job experience?”

  Jonah sighed. “Just cutting people’s grass. And I did some community service cleaning houses and doing some minor home repairs for people who were recovering from surgery and stuff.”

  Ken nodded again, dropping his feet from the desk and leaning forward again. “Okay. Here’s the deal. Normally I’d ask around my congregation and my clients here and see if anybody had a use for you, but that takes some time to pan out, and I have something else in mind anyway, if you’re interested?”

  Oh, God, Jonah hoped he wasn’t about to agree to do something stupid. “I’m interested. I think.”

  Seeming to catch on to Jonah’s train of thought, Ken laughed a little at himself and covered his eyes with one hand. “Sorry, sorry, I forget sometimes that not everybody knows my reputation in the community. I’m the head of human resources at this gym, you see. And we need a night maintenance guy. Some cleaning the showers, some changing light bulbs, that kind of thing. It’s just minimum wage and only about twenty hours a week, though.”

  “That’s good with me,” he said quickly, eager to get any work, especially given the economy. Even if that did sound kind of awful. “I mean, it sounds great.”

  “But there’s a position for a personal trainer opening up soon,” Ken continued. “One of our guys just graduated college and will be starting a new job as a physiotherapist. You seem like you get along with people pretty well, though we’ll have to stick you with the ladies until you bulk up some, and of course you’ll need first aid training and the rest. How does that sound?”

  “I—” Jonah suddenly couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat. He swallowed hard and settled for merely nodding his head, mortified that his eyes seemed to be filling with tears.

  Mercifully, Pastor Ken didn’t comment, just opened his desk drawer again and shoved a box of Kleenex across the top. Jonah took one and dried his eyes as discreetly as he could. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Jonah nodded again, taking a deep breath and finding his voice. “This is… I mean I can’t thank you enough. But why are you being so nice to me?”

  Ken raised an eyebrow and pointed upward at the small, unobtrusive cross adorning the wall behind his head. “Kind of in the job description, kid.”

  “But….” Jonah frowned. His parents weren’t overly religious, but he’d grown up in Texas—plenty of other people were. “I thought, you know. God hates fags and all that.”

  “God doesn’t hate people,” Ken said, his voice suddenly hard. “People hate people. They just like to use God to justify it.” Then he paused, seemingly embarrassed. “Sorry—pet peeve of mine.”

  “Uh, no, it’s okay,” Jonah said, overwhelmed and a little stunned. “I… appreciate the sentiment. You know. Coming from where I do.”

  Ken gave him an assessing nod. “Tell you what,” he said. “Finish your chocolate bar, and I’ll take you on a tour, okay? Then we can get the paperwork filled out and set you up with some training. You got a place to stay?”

  “Daniel took me to the Y,” Jonah said around a mouthful of chocolate before remembering himself and swallowing. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  “Not permanent, though,” Ken reminded him. “I know a couple people who were looking for roommates come September—students and the like. I’ll ask around for you.”

  “Thanks.” Jonah tossed the wrapper in the garbage and brushed off any remaining crumbs. “I’m ready when you are, I guess?”

  Ken gave him the grand tour, starting with the pool in the very basement and working his way around. “There’s a ladies-only area through that door,” he said, pointing, “but they always warn the girls when someone has to come in to do maintenance or whatever. Since you’ll be on nights, at least at first, you probably won’t see too many people anyway. They won’t give you any trouble.”

  Jonah nodded in understanding.

  “Janitor’s closet,” Ken said, nodding with his head. “Keys are at the front desk. That’s where you’ll find the screwdrivers, mop, ladder, cleaning agents, that kind of thing. Just make sure to put things back where you found them in case the day people need them.”

  They went past a row of tanning rooms—“Hypocrites,” Ken said with a knowing smile. “They won’t even have a Coke machine because pop has too much sugar, but giving yourself cancer is apparently totally cool”—before taking an escalator up a level to the main gym.

  “Kickboxing, dance, Pilates, yoga, jazzercise—those all take place in one of those two classrooms.” He motioned to his left. “You probably won’t need to worry about those, at least not for a while. But you should sit in on classes when you can so that you can sub if necessary. The instructors get paid better.”

  Jonah made a mental note to make friends with all the instructors, even if he couldn’t exactly see himself so much as saying the word “jazzercise” with a straight face.

  He was familiar with most of the machines from the weight-lifting unit at school, though some of the configurations were new. He paid special attention to how to properly adjust the machines for height so people didn’t hurt themselves. Ken introduced him to a few of the other staff—mostly personal trainers and one assistant manager—before declaring the tour officially over.

  They adjourned to Ken’s office so Jonah could fill out some paperwork, chatting intermittently. He dug out his wallet so he could fill in his social security number, but when he placed it on Ken’s desk, a photograph fell out. Ken picked it up before he could stop him.

  “This is your family?”

  Jonah filled in the last digit and looked up, seeing Ken smooth down the edges of the creased picture. “Yeah,” he said. “Mom and Dad and Nat.”

  “Your sister?”

  Jonah nodded.

  Ken looked at it for a minute before passing it back. “You’re sure you want to stay here and not go home?”

  “I want to go home,” Jonah said before he could stop himself. “Just not yet.” It was difficult to explain, but Ken had done a lot for him already and didn’t even know him; he owed it to him to try. “I need to get my head on straight, figure out who I am when nobody else has any expectations. Plus, if I go back now, they’ll all just be waiting for me to leave again.” He traced the edge of his mother’s face, preoccupied.

  Ken nodded absently, then said, “It’s a nice picture—good composition,” and Jonah fought the urge to sigh miserably.

  “My friend Emerson took it,” he explained. “He’s a good photographer, painter, cartoonist….”

  “Your best friend Emerson?” Ken clarified.

  Busted. Jonah nodded.

&n
bsp; “Well, he certainly captured your good side,” Ken quipped. “All set with that?”

  Jonah looked down and found that he had somehow managed to complete all the required forms. “Yeah, actually.”

  “Good!” Ken clapped his hands. “How about dinner?”

  §

  Dear Emerson,

  If you’re reading this then I guess you’re not still mad enough to tear up my letters, so that’s good. I wouldn’t blame you if you did, so. Thanks?

  I’m sorry that I left without saying goodbye. There were some things I had to work out by myself, and I guess I figured that the sooner I got started on that, the better. Please don’t ask me to explain. I don’t think I understand it myself. I know we always planned to go to school together and be roommates and get shitty college student jobs together, but that just isn’t me right now.

  How is college, anyway? I called home last week, and they mentioned that you had started. You always were the smart one.

  This guy I met on the bus up to Boston got me a job at a gym. The hours suck, but there are some opportunities, so I might stick around for a while. We’ll see.

  Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.

  Jonah

  §

  Jonah,

  So you’re alive.

  YOU ARE AN ASS OF EPIC PROPORTIONS!

  How could you just run off without saying goodbye!? For a week we all thought you were dead in a ditch. And that crappy message you left at one in the afternoon when you knew your parents wouldn’t be home didn’t do much to make anyone feel better!

  How could you just disappear? Didn’t you think we’d miss you?

  Emerson

  P.S. College is fine. My roommate, Zack, is pretty awesome. He’s a musician, and he introduced me to his friend and band mate, Greg. I’ve been going to their concerts at the local bars. I’ve met lots of new people there and in my classes. I’ve no complaints.

  §

  WRITTEN on the back of a flyer for half off a psychic reading: