“So,” Kevin said, breaking our silence. He looked at me sideways and smiled, and it was easy to offer a small smile back.
“So,” I said.
“You’re looking good today.”
Kevin was handsome in a black short-sleeved shirt and gray slacks that were perfect for his coloring. I hadn’t seen him yet not looking good, including without his clothes. I wanted to reach over and rub my hand over his half-a-beard, to know the rub of bristles against my palm, but I wasn’t ever going to succumb to doing anything in public that could expose me, not even on the highway with the nearest vehicle seventy feet away.
“You too. How has your week been? Busy at the bank?”
We talked about his work for the next fifteen miles, and it seemed that with every mile further away from Gunning, I was able to breathe just a little easier. I couldn’t release my perfectly reasonable fears, but it was possible to smooth them down to a manageable level. Maybe it was an automatic reflex, tied to my infrequent trips for weekend sex. Distance equaled safety in my mind. Or maybe it was the company I was keeping.
This was the first time, really, that I’d heard much about what Kevin did every day. The quality of his bank’s portfolio rested on his shoulders, as he was in the process of establishing new lending standards, given the mess the economy was in. Plus the bank examiners were coming within the next few weeks, which was why he’d been putting in extra hours and couldn’t get over to help out with Rent. When Kevin talked about his work, he got serious, his voice a bit deeper. Surely depositors and borrowers alike were impressed with him, and I could understand why he’d been hired. He knew the banking business, he was smart, he expressed himself well, and he was good-looking. They would have been missing out on a sure bet if they hadn’t taken him on.
Most important of all, what I knew and the bank didn’t, he liked men. He liked me. I was still having trouble wrapping my mind around that.
I asked him what kind of office he had and he told me, “A glass cage. Set off from the teller’s row but where everybody can see me. I can’t pick my nose except in the men’s room. Thank goodness I can get out and make sales calls.”
“Better you than me. I can’t imagine walking into some company and asking for their business.”
“And I can’t imagine standing in front of a bunch of sixteen-year-olds and trying to keep their attention for an hour, much less teach them anything.”
“It’s not hard. I like it.”
He clicked on his turn signal, got out into the outer lane, and accelerated past an oil tanker. “How’s the play going? Any more problems? Any more eggs?”
I hadn’t talked to anybody about Robbie, though I had found his locker and had made a point of walking by Friday morning. But nothing had been going on. He’d seen me, frowned, and turned away as if he didn’t want me there.
“What?” Kevin asked. “If there’s something going on that might affect Channing, I want to know about it.”
“No, nothing like that. There hasn’t been any more vandalism. I did find out that Robbie’s been having some trouble at school with kids getting on his case. But I think it’s more about him being, well, the way he is than the play.”
“Kids can be vicious to each other.”
“A reflection of the human race as a whole.”
“How’s Robbie taking it?”
That had been on my mind a lot lately. Robbie did seem to be fine. As fine as he could be, being a widely assumed gay senior in a conservative town’s high school, playing a gay character on stage. It boggled my mind that he was handling it. Boggled my mind that he’d auditioned for the role, accepted the role, and told me he was determined nothing would stop him from playing Angel on stage.
How did he do that?
“Tom? Is it confidential or something?”
“No,” I said slowly. “It’s not that. I’m… thinking about it. He’s okay, I think.” Though I didn’t know how or why he was okay. Was there a secret to it that I didn’t know about? “Anyway, there’s nothing going on with the play to worry about. Channing’s doing fine. She’s good onstage.”
“That’s good to hear. Maybe being in the play will steady her. And, by the way, she was pretty happy with the mark she got on your latest test.”
“Do you talk to her much?”
“Yeah, a couple times a week. And she comes over to the house every now and then. You gave her a B plus.”
“She deserved it. She wasn’t one of those who cheated. You can pretty much tell which ones do.”
“Is that a big problem?”
“You wouldn’t believe. Lately the kids have been taking pictures of the test with their cell phones. They sell the questions or text them to a friend sitting in the school commons with the book open to find the answers.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope, I’m not. If there’s a way to cheat, they find it. I do what I can to stop it, but I know they get around me. It’s not like I was some angel when I was in high school, but they take it far past the corners I tried to cut.”
“There’s a lot of pressure on some of these kids to get into good colleges, you know.”
“That’s always the excuse, but it doesn’t hold for most of them. They’re lazy. They don’t care.”
“Not like you. You give a damn. You really care about the subject.”
“Learning, yes. History, yes. We’re doomed to repeat mistakes if we don’t learn from history. But mainly I care about….” Abruptly, I shut up.
“What?”
“You don’t want to hear this.”
“Sure I do.”
Who else did I have to say things like this to? Had I ever said any of it to anybody? Maybe Grant, my long-suffering older brother, who kept me company one night of every visit I made to the ranch, staying up late with me while we drank our way through bottles of wine. I’d talked like this to him.
I caught Kevin glancing at me. His expression was open, inquiring. He really did want to hear what I had to say.
“Okay, you asked for it. Coming up: stupid mini-lecture on ethics from Thomas Ibsen Smith, nerd asshole supreme.”
Kevin flashed what I was coming to recognize as his Kevin-smile. “Hold that thought. Let me say something.”
“All right.”
“You have a very sexy asshole. Not nerdy in the least. Okay now, return to what you were saying. A lecture on ethics, remember?”
“Devil,” I said, meaning it. My hole seemed to contract all on its own. I wasn’t sure I liked being teased. But the teasing had been going on for days, hadn’t it?
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.
“What I wanted to say,” I said deliberately, “is that I care about trying. That’s it. I hate half-assed effort, and half-assed people don’t appeal to me either.”
Kevin was nodding. “That makes sense. No mulligans.”
“That’s it. No do-overs in life, so live it all the way. Even if that means staying up late, studying for a test. At least try. I know people have different life challenges, and some of my students work thirty hours a week in convenience stores helping their families make ends meet. I don’t mean them. We all make compromises, and the older we get the more compromises we make, and I understand the contradictions between what I’m saying and the way I live, so don’t give me shit about that.” I ran out of breath and paused.
“I won’t. I was thinking it, but I won’t say it.”
“Good. The main thing is I hate to see these kids starting with a ‘whatever’ attitude. And don’t even get me started on the drug use.” I pulled the seatbelt forward to loosen it and then let it slide tight again. I could feel his eyes on me. “What?”
“You are so fucking sexy when you get wound up. It’s a shame it’s not ten o’clock at night already.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Then it would be dark.”
“So?’
He pointed as we drove by a pull-over for a historical marker, “I could stop r
ight there, and we could screw right here in the truck.”
Right away, two things happened. My cock throbbed and lifted, that little bit that said given half a chance it would get hard in a hurry, and I glanced over at the side mirror. Compulsively, I looked as if to check whether the people in the vehicles close behind could hear us, or could read my mind and know how next-to-impossible it was for me to sit next to Kevin and not want to duck down to his zipper, slide it down, and suck on his dick. A burst of saliva coated my tongue, equal parts anticipation—I would do that soon, in a few hours—and what I had to admit was irrational paranoia.
I tore my gaze from the mirror and told myself how ridiculous I was being to worry. We were safe, miles away from Gunning. No one was going to see me and recognize me, or even know why I was with Kevin. And… and didn’t I deserve this evening? I did. I did. All over the world, people would be with their lovers tonight. Or… or their sex partners. Whatever Kevin was to me.
I searched for the thread of our conversation again and came up with, “Oh? Is screwing in the backseat of a truck your idea of a hot date? Is that what you did with those women you took out in Louisiana?”
He tapped with his index finger on the steering wheel cover. “Listen, Tomboy, those women thought I was the ultimate gentleman because I never tried to get into their Victoria’s Secret undies.”
“Or maybe they thought you were still pining after your wife.”
“After a year of marriage and umpteen years of divorce, I doubt it.”
“You think you really fooled them?”
He licked his lips. “Me using them for a cover really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any right to judge you.”
“Maybe not. But like you said about the way you live, you’ve been carrying on your own deception, haven’t you?”
“I know. That’s just the way it is. I can’t imagine….” I looked out the window at the world traveling past us. That was the way to think of it, wasn’t it? We were separate from the limitless landscape of Texas, the cars and trucks around us, and the people who judged us. They were moving, but Kevin and I were unchanging. My trips to Houston, they’d been propelled by a need that no amount of resolve had been able to destroy. The need was real.
I swallowed. “Can you imagine what it would be like if we could be honest?”
He took a breath that I could hear over the road noise. “I think the activists can. They must be able to see it somehow, and that’s what drives them. Thank God for them. I don’t have their strength. Or maybe the men who live in a gayborhood can see it, who can walk down the street holding their boyfriend’s hand and nobody cares. Have you ever done that, ever visited a place like that where we can be free?”
I turned to look at him. “Kevin. I’ve never had anybody I wanted to hold hands with, much less had the chance to visit the Castro or the Village.”
The arch of his eyebrows showed his surprise. “Nobody? You’ve never, you know, had a boyfriend?”
I couldn’t talk about Sean, not even to myself. Besides, he didn’t count. “No.” I resettled myself in the plush leather bucket seat. “No, not like that.”
“You could. Somebody like you shouldn’t have any trouble finding whoever you’re looking for.”
“Oh, yeah, right, I’m Mr. Universe over here.”
“There you go again, putting yourself down.”
“There you go again, talking nonsense.”
He gave me a sidelong look and then an impish grin that made me think of leprechauns. “You found me, didn’t you?”
“Through the most unbelievable set of coincidences.”
“That’s true, Mr. Universe. But I don’t mind. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be looking at spending the night away from that big house of mine and—”
“That big, beautiful house,” I interrupted.
“That big, beautiful, lonely house. I’d much rather be here on the road. With you. Looking forward to the evening.”
“Beggars,” I said solemnly, “can’t be choosers,” and it was good when he laughed.
Our conversation flowed naturally, the way it had when we’d gone to Brennan’s, that dinner-out-of-time that stood clearly in my memory. When, years before, I’d accepted the offer of a job from the Gunning School District in the aftermath of everything that had happened after college graduation, I’d gone underground even to myself. The pickups who gave me sex didn’t give me conversation or company or any way out of the hole I’d dug to bury myself in, but Kevin did. As more than an hour passed, our talk was alternately serious and lighthearted, and under it flowed a long, steady wave of my gratitude. Kevin was an extraordinary man. I was with someone generous-hearted and quick to forgive. I didn’t have to pretend in front of him. He thought I had a sexy asshole, for God’s sake. I really hoped he was going to have a closer acquaintance with it in a few hours.
I looked over at the sharp, defined profile of this very masculine man, and need unfurled in my stomach. Then a little more. And more again. As difficult as it had been to force myself to drive to Kenneton and begin this evening, as much effort as I was expending to put aside my worries that I was making a terrible mistake, still this time was delicious, both the moments now and the anticipation of sex soon. My first evening like it, first date with a man I liked, whom I wanted to spend time with in and out of bed. That one person turned right then to face me, his expression telling me without doubt he was thinking of our bodies together, our hands on each other, and that he was pleased with my company too.
Fifteen minutes later Kevin asked, “How about a few drinks before dinner?”
The opening was too good to ignore. “A few drinks? Are you trying to get me lubricated?”
He groaned as we drove by a sign that said Abilene: 37 miles. And under it Springrose: Next Exit. “Oh, that’s awful. And the man has a sense of humor after all. I knew it. Yes, I’m trying to get you lubricated, in more ways than one, honey.”
We exited, and it became clear that Springrose was a tiny place, probably boasting no more than a thousand souls, the kind of west Texas town where the wind was strong and belief in the literal meaning of the Bible was even stronger. We pulled up in front of the Heritage House Tavern, a two-story, gabled Victorian house.
Kevin turned the key in the ignition and then stepped on the parking brake. “Is this okay? Are you comfortable stopping here?”
Of course he’d noticed my discomfort. Kevin was one perceptive guy. But I really didn’t want to be a Nervous Nellie, tiptoeing through the evening, especially when compared to him. Or compared to Robbie. Lord, couldn’t I have the balls of a teenager? “Sure,” I said, trying to tuck my unease in an imaginary back pocket. It’s not like we had We’re out on a date together tattooed on our foreheads. “No problem.”
We got out of the Silverado and stood together on the graveled lot. The building was on its way to being transformed into a bed and breakfast, but with scaffolding all around there wouldn’t be any sleeping customers for a few months at least. A sign promised five sleeping suites within easy driving distance to Abilene, Coming Summer 2008, which meant there’d been a small delay in their plans. Maybe the noisy gas station with a few roaring diesels going next door had something to do with it.
“No way you just happened to stumble across this,” I challenged. “Admit it.”
The smile he tried to capture made him look like a five-year-old stealing from the cookie jar. “I might have noticed a refinancing package submitted the other day.”
“I thought so.”
“Credit’s dried up from the larger banks,” he said, trying to defend himself. “It’s only small banks like mine that will take a chance on this kind of project. I might have thought it was a good idea to check it out.”
There were three other pickups in the lot, all dusty vehicles used every day for work. We had to walk up a set of wooden steps to a large porch to get inside. Half the house was painted in gleaming white with green t
rim, but the other half, like the steps themselves, probably hadn’t seen a paintbrush in several decades.
The bar spanned one side of the house in two rooms, with creaking wood floors and oddly brilliant white paneled walls. Big windows would have let in the harsh glare of the setting sun but for shades that muted the light. It was about as different from the kind of bar I expected in a small town as it was possible to be, except for the three good ol’ boys in place, hunched over their drinks in a row along the counter, and the relic of a jukebox that was currently playing Emmylou Harris.
Three genuine cowboy hats were tipped to us as we found our places on stools up by the bar, and the bartender asked, “What’ll it be?”
“I think I’ll live dangerously tonight,” Kevin said, folding his hands in front of him. “Do you make a decent Manhattan?”
“Sure do,” the barkeep said. He had a military man’s bearing and the buzz cut too. “On the rocks or straight up?”
“I really prefer it with the rocks.”
Kevin certainly didn’t look at me, but I knew that had been said for my benefit. Rocks, family jewels, testicles.
“And you, sir?”
There was no way I was going to play the same game, so I didn’t get what I really wanted. “Bourbon straight up, please.” That was almost as bad.
“Jack okay?”
I couldn’t expect much else here. “That’s fine.”
We appreciated the alcohol, watched a little of the college football game on the TV, and listened to the locals talk about how low the country had fallen, because the Democrats might get into office if that Obama fellow won the election. I sipped the bourbon better than the way it deserved and settled in to a radically different version of Good Times, finding I could do it even with Kevin next to me. Or maybe because Kevin was next to me.
Two of our fellow drinkers left and three more came to replace them, and then two couples sat down at a table behind us, and after them came a family with two kids who couldn’t even be kindergarten age. I was aware of them all. The family made a beeline for the table in the bow window up front, and the kids pulled out crayons and coloring books like they were veterans of the place. Our bartender, who we now knew was named Ernie, didn’t say anything about kids not being allowed but brought over peanuts and chips with dip as their parents ordered beers.
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