Unhinged

by Reed, Rick R. ;

  “So I did. I willed those feelings down just as hard as I could. I concentrated on making Gloria happy, being a good dad.” He shook his head, and Carter wished he could touch him because he could see the ineffable sadness engulfing his features. “They had no idea. No one did. And that’s what made life so awful. That’s what made me down one too many highballs on the weekend—to escape the fact that no one knew me. I wore a mask. And in my darkest hours, I would think that if people did know me, my family, my mom and pop, my sis out in Omaha, the whole slew of aunts and uncles and cousins, even my coworkers and friends, I thought if those folks knew who Bill really was, they wouldn’t hold him in such high regard.” He shook his head once again, staring down at the thin and stained carpet.

  He whispered, “They wouldn’t love me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” Carter wished he could tell the man, the ghost, how much had changed since 1962.

  And then he thought about Tony and about how much it hadn’t.

  Still, he wished he could offer Bill some kind of succor, so he said, “You would have still been you. You aren’t just the sum total of your urges. Those people loved you for lots of reasons, reasons that wouldn’t change. You loved them, too, you know.”

  Bill looked over at him, and Carter was surprised to see that ghosts could cry real tears. “Nice try, buddy.”

  Bill fell silent then, and Carter wondered if he would simply vanish and the silence now present in the room would disappear along with him to be replaced by car exhausts, horns, and sirens.

  Would he wake up?

  But Bill spoke again. “You probably have no idea why I showed up here.”

  Carter smiled. “Um…yeah.”

  Bill let out a breath, almost like a sigh. “One thing I’ve learned over here on the other side, is that we ghosts stick around for a reason. Usually it means we have to work something out, and for a long time, I didn’t think that was my purpose. But now, I’m beginning to see that what I thought of as my purpose plays right into working something out for me.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be confusing. I’m here to help you.”

  “Help me?” Carter didn’t want to say it, but how could this relic from the closeted past help him?

  “Yeah. I want to tell you the rest of my story and how it plays into the Galaxy Gold Motel.”

  Carter swung his legs up on to the bed and placed his arms behind his head, reclining. “Shoot.”

  Bill chuckled. “I like you.”

  And Carter surprised himself by saying, “I like you, too.” He realized he really did, absurd as the notion was.

  “As I was saying, I fought my attraction to other fellas like Cassius Clay boxed, fiercely, only stopping throwing punches when I fell asleep. And even then, my dreams usually had a thing or two in store for me. How did I know Denny was gonna come into my life?”

  “Who was Denny?”

  Bill’s eyes grew wistful and a smile whispered across his face. “Denny was the love of my life.

  “Every summer, the CPA firm I worked for would have an accounting major in from the University of Washington to work as an intern. Most of these guys were hired on after they graduated. Denny was coming up on his senior year, and he was sharp as a tack. We all knew that, once next summer came around, he’d be full-time.”

  Bill sucked in a breath. “You should have seen that boy! All the gals in the secretarial pool were gaga over him. They’d all giggle when he walked by. Tall, tan, black hair, and blue eyes. A cleft in his chin just like Kirk Douglas.

  “I didn’t want him to be assigned to work with me. He made me a little weak in the knees. He caused other things to happen to my body I didn’t like either. I got tongue-tied around him even though he was almost a decade younger.” He shook his head.

  “I had had urges before, like I said, but they passed. I’d look at a handsome fella out of the corner of my eye or take a gander when I thought he wouldn’t notice. Sometimes, I’m ashamed to admit, I’d store the memory away to bring out later to give myself some kind of release.” Bill’s gaze met Carter’s. “I know you know what I mean.”

  Carter nodded.

  “But Denny was something more. At first, I told myself, embarrassing as it was to admit even in the privacy of my own brain, that it was just a crush. It would pass. But it didn’t. Not only was Denny a swell-looking guy, he was funny. He made me laugh. He used to make up these stories about one of the secretaries and the sick shit she would get up to on the weekends. You have to understand this woman was probably fifty and had grandkids and was the sweetest, most church-going lady you’d ever want to meet. I think they invented that phrase ‘pure as the driven snow’ for her.” Bill laughed. “She made Doris Day look like a floozy.”

  Carter said, “I get it.”

  “Anyway,” Bill continued. “It got so I stopped paying attention to Gloria and the kids most nights, I was so eager to get to work the next morning so I could see Denny.

  “It went on that way for most of the summer. Sometimes we’d exchange a look, you know? Our eyes would connect for just a second or two longer than what was proper. But I told myself it was my imagination, sick wishful thinking. Or…or our hands would brush against the other’s and it would send a charge of electricity through me. And Denny would smile, like he knew what was going on in my head—and farther south.

  “It was August, I remember. Denny and I stayed late to finish up on the books for a local paper products company, and we had ordered some burgers in.” Bill stopped for a moment, unable to continue. His breath caught, and he leaned forward like he wanted to lift one of the blind’s slats and peer outside.

  “You know what happened, don’t you?”

  Carter nodded.

  “Those looks, those touches. I didn’t imagine things. Denny felt the same about me. The office was empty. It was a Friday night, and everyone had gone home to their families. I barely thought of Gloria and the kids.

  “Even though Denny was younger, he made the first move. I don’t know if I could have ever done it. But we were looking over some ledgers and he leaned over me, and I could smell his aftershave—Old Spice. He looked down at me, and there was this impish grin playing about his mouth, color had risen to his cheeks.

  “He whispered, ‘You want it bad as I do, don’t you?’ I couldn’t pretend. I didn’t even try to lie. I couldn’t talk anyway!

  “And just like that, he leaned down and kissed me. It was the first time I had been kissed by a man, and I think there were alarms going off inside me. I think I levitated off the ground for a second or two. I do believe my heart stopped, for just an instant.

  “It was like something released, uncaged. I grabbed him, grinding my face into his, my tongue halfway down his throat. I had been starving and didn’t even know it.

  “I was rough with him, but he didn’t seem to mind. Not at all. We ended up in this very motel, in this very room.

  “And so began a very long affair. We would meet on weekday afternoons, on our lunch hour. The time was all too brief, but I know you understand what two men can get up to in an hour if given the right motivation.” Bill raised one eyebrow, staring at me. I grinned and nodded.

  “We did everything. It was as though I was blind and suddenly my vision was 20/20. All these years I had gone, subsisting on a diet of bread and water when I never realized there was a feast waiting for me. I couldn’t get enough of Denny…and he of me.

  “At first, it was just fucking and sucking. I’m sorry to put it so baldly, but it’s the truth. I had held my feelings in check for so long that, once I released them, I was like an animal. And that Denny? He took everything I could dish out. And he taught me a whole lot more. That kid was insatiable.

  “But then things started, along about the time he was due to go back to school, things started to turn a little more serious. We both realized that somewhere along the way, with all the sucking and fucking, we had fallen for each other. In love.

  “I didn�
��t know what to make of it. See, all along, even in my darkest hours, I had thought my feelings for other men were simply all about sex. I didn’t even entertain the notion that I wanted something more. I didn’t even think there was anything more.

  “But there was one August afternoon I recall so clearly. We had done what we normally did and both of us were sticky with sweat and, well, come, and I was holding Denny in my arms, the way I used to hold Gloria. I stroked his hair and realized how nice it felt, how natural.

  “But it couldn’t be natural, could it? Not when everyone in the world I knew of, my friends, family, the church all told me it was wrong, it was sick, deviant. What I now recognized as my kind needed help, treatment.

  “Denny didn’t seem as bothered. He started talking about our future, how we could get a little place together, tell people we were just a couple of bachelors, sharing expenses. No one would have to know that our second bedroom was just for show.

  “Talk like this thrilled me. It scared the shit out of me.

  “I would go home to Gloria and the kids and feel the guilt rushing in, pressing in like a heavy weight on my chest. How could I hurt them? It was easy for Denny, or at least easier, because he didn’t have the ties, the commitments that I did.

  “Still I couldn’t help but dream how sweet it would be to come home to him at night, to make dinner together in some little kitchen with the radio on while we cooked. I couldn’t help but see Denny’s face as we sat beneath our Christmas tree and him opening up the presents I had got for him.”

  Bill blew out a prolonged sigh, and Carter could hear the despair in it. “The tension became unbearable between what I wanted and what I knew I needed to do, to try to be.

  “I had to end it with Denny. There was no other way. I might be miserable for the rest of my life, clinging to the crumbs he would leave me, but I was a family man, I had responsibilities I had to live up to. Men just didn’t play house together. I needed to get rid of that notion. The ones who did were fruits.

  “And in spite of it all, I wasn’t a fruit, not like that Jimmy who cut my wife’s hair. Neither was Denny.”

  “Did you end it?” Carter asked, his heart aching for this man who saw no way to love the person he truly cared for. Today, they could probably work things out. Or could they? Carter wondered, thinking of Tony and his wife.

  “Of course I did. I think it broke both of our hearts. We were standing there at the door, getting ready to leave, and I remember how blinding the sun was. Denny said, ‘I can’t bear this’ and he grabbed me and kissed me, right there with the door open. And God help me, for those few moments, all I could think of was the feel of his lips on mine, the crush of his body pressed close. I thought I needed to hang on to the feeling, because it would have to sustain me for a long, long time because I knew I could never put myself through this turmoil again.

  “When we broke apart, that’s when I saw him. Racing away on his bike like someone had lit his tail on fire.”

  “Billy Junior?” Carter asked. “Red hair? Freckles?”

  “How did you know?” Bill shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Yes, my little Billy. He had seen everything, and I think the poor kid was so broken up and confused by what he had witnessed that he rode right into traffic.”

  Bill stopped, and his head slumped to his chest. Carter knew he was unable to go on. There was a stillness in the room, and Carter thought he could see, dimly, the outlines of Bill’s form shimmering, as if he was getting ready to vanish.

  “Bill?”

  Carter thought he heard something, a voice from very far away, and he could see Bill’s mouth moving and noted how his face was alive with terror.

  Carter strained to hear the words. “Billy! Stop!” was what finally came clear to him.

  The room came back to a kind of reality, and Bill was once more before him, sharp as a real person. He looked right at Carter and said, “He didn’t stop.”

  Outside, there was the sound of squealing brakes and a muffled scream. Carter turned his head to the sound.

  When he turned back, Bill was gone. Carter shook his head, as if he could dislodge the images that had just been there. He got up and peered through the blinds, looking for some evidence of the squealing brakes, an accident perhaps, but traffic sped by on the busy road as usual.

  Carter surveyed the room once more, assuring himself that it was, indeed, empty.

  He sat for a long time in silence, in the murky half-light, waiting. For what? He wasn’t sure. For Bill to come back to him? For the red-haired kid to knock on the door and make some obscene remark? For the roar of Tony’s pickup?

  At last, he got up and gathered his wallet and watch from the nightstand. He slowly pulled himself together, checking his appearance in the mirror. Then he opened the door to leave, casting a brilliant rectangle of light on the opposite wall.

  And there it was, no mistake. The shadow of a noose, gently swaying. Carter sucked in a breath of air, staring, one hand raised toward the black oval and its tragic message. “No,” he whispered, and then, “senseless.”

  Carter hurriedly closed the door and plunged the room back into dark. When he opened the door again, the shadow was gone, but he understood that Bill had returned to this room one final time back in 1962—alone. Carter shook his head, a lump forming in his throat from the waste of it all.

  Carter stepped outside, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand and knowing that this time, here in room number nine, was his final time. He would never set foot in the Galaxy Gold again.

  Not for any reason.

  Not for anyone.

  It took him a couple of days to make the call. Carter spent those days thinking, pining, and wondering if what he had seen in the Galaxy Gold Motel was real. If it was, then he thought Bill was sending him a powerful message.

  If it wasn’t, then he thought Bill was sending him a powerful message.

  Either way, it was a message that couldn’t be ignored.

  As he walked along the beach at Golden Gardens Park, watching the sun set over the Olympic Mountains, he pondered that message. Boiled down, it told him that what he and Tony were doing had been wrong.

  No, no, no, not the fact that they were two men coupling in a sleazy hotel room. That might have been in poor taste, but the act itself wasn’t wrong. Carter hadn’t felt guilt about having sex with another man since he was about sixteen years old and, even then, the shame was fleeting, pushed out by another wave of lust and a desire for more.

  No, it was wrong because he and Tony were hiding their love. They were living a secret life. And secrets signified shame.

  The only shame Carter could see, and it was a very real shame, was that he and Tony both were going behind the back of Tony’s wife. He knew nothing about the woman, but he did know this—she didn’t deserve to be cheated upon. She didn’t deserve to be in a marriage where a man could only give her half his heart.

  No one deserved to be lied to.

  One day, Tony would no longer be able to sustain the tension of trying to live his real life and a secret one. And when that day came, it would end in one of two ways. First, Tony could follow Bill’s path. His actions could hurt people and that pain could drive him to make the ultimate sacrifice.

  Or, he could end the tension by owning up to who he was and what he wanted. Carter hoped for this second scenario, and he prayed that what Tony still wanted, when and if he came to this realization, was him, Carter.

  Carter sat down in the sand. He removed his Keen sandals and dipped his toe into the surf, which was frigidly cold. He drew his legs back, pulling them up to his chest and encircling them with his arms. There was a nip in the air that foretold autumn.

  For Carter, autumn meant new beginnings. Sure, many people thought the same of spring and maybe it was just being conditioned by years of school starting in autumn that made him feel this way, but for Carter, autumn equaled a new start.

  He knew people would get hurt when Tony owned up to who he was
and what he wanted—no, what he needed. What was natural for him. His wife would probably be devastated, especially if she had no idea about Tony, which Carter thought was unlikely.

  There were always signs.

  Still, even if she did have an inkling, it wouldn’t lessen the pain. Sometimes, Carter thought, wondering if this was true of Tony’s wife, we make it very easy to turn our heads from what’s staring us right in the face.

  It would be hard for Tony, too. One thing he’d always gotten when Tony talked about his wife was that he loved her. Once upon a time, Carter would have thought such a thing impossible—a gay man loving a woman. But love came in many different forms, and one could be just as powerful as the next.

  Yet, but through the pain of this separation, Carter thought, could come the potential for real healing, honesty, and hope. For all of them.

  He got up and brushed the sand from the back of his cargo shorts. He spotted a couple, two older guys, one with silver hair and cool retro glasses and what was obviously his partner walking beside him. The other man had salt-and-pepper hair and a little goatee. Their hands were loosely linked, and Carter could see about them the comfort of years together. They weren’t talking, but it was obvious they were together. A little dog, a Boston terrier Carter thought, trotted along just ahead of them, looking back every so often to make sure her pack was still close behind.

  Carter wanted that.

  When he got to his car in the parking lot, the light had almost faded behind the mountains. In the sun’s wake, there was a lovely striation of color: tangerine, yellow, pale blue, violet, and at the very top, an almost navy blue. The first stars were beginning to blink on.

  He leaned against the car and groped in his pocket for his cell phone. He pulled it out and texted Tony. How have you been?

  And Tony immediately responded with a sad face and the words, I’m alone. It’s okay to call. If you want.

  Carter touched the screen to connect. In a second, Tony’s voice came through, that rich baritone Carter had come to love.