How to Survive a Summer

by Nick White

  I had moved to the far corner of the room opposite the door. I was watching their reflections, not them. Christopher untangled his body from Rumil’s and rolled off the bed. “You have a good shower?” he asked, and I said yes, I had, in the calmest voice I could muster. He motioned for me to come closer. His nakedness wasn’t alarming. Nothing I hadn’t seen before. His low-hanging chest and his doughy love handles were comforting, almost motherly. It was his reflections, all gathered behind him in numerous iterations, that unnerved me. The magic of quicksilver making more of him than there was. “You wanna sleep here tonight?” Christopher hadn’t sounded this nice to me all day, and that, too, was cause for alarm.

  “Of course he does!” Rumil said. He was rolling on the bed, excited. “Look at the tent he’s pitched.”

  And it was true. I was hard, my erection clearly visible through my shorts. If Christopher had taken one step in my direction, the tension would have been too much. I would have buckled and run. He must have known this because he remained at the foot of the bed, flaunting his imperfect, beautiful body like some prize, and he let me come to him. Once I was close enough, he grabbed ahold of my shirt and stabbed me in the gut with his cock. “You know what you are, Will Dillard,” he said. “You’re a lurker. You’ve been lurking around us all day. And I’m dog tired of you doing nothing but watching.” He pushed his mouth onto mine. His teeth tore into my bottom lip, chewing it like a piece of jerky. The taste of copper leaked into my mouth. I wasn’t sure if I was being kissed or bitten, or if it mattered much which it was. Love, hate—both were different shades of the same impulse anyhow. Christopher slung me onto the bed, and Rumil pounced. He helped me out of my clothes, his hands scraping across my skin. “Look at you,” he kept on saying. “Just look at you.”

  —

  I was never any good at sharing a bed. Boyfriends often complained of my restlessness, how I tossed and turned in my sleep. The one from upstate New York even joked, during one of his last visits, about tying my hands and feet to the bed frame. Once I got to sleep I became the problem, but before sleep took ahold of me, the presence of another body set me on edge. The stress of finding the right position—On my back? My stomach? The side?—frequently prevented me from drifting off right away and, arguably, contributed to my rambunctiousness once I went dormant. Sharing the bed with two bodies doubled the quandary. Christopher and Rumil slept on a California king. The mattress took up more square footage than my whole bedroom did in my apartment. But three still seemed too many for it.

  After we had finished, I assumed one or the other would want to bathe. Perhaps we could take a shower together, continuing our play. I was game. I didn’t mind the rewashing. They’d left me sore and sticky. The sour smell of sweat had returned to my skin. After coming—first Christopher, then Rumil, followed by me—we wallowed in the mess we’d made, our bodies tangled in one another and the cotton sheets. Then they, with no warning, fell asleep. When Christopher started snoring, I lifted my head. Rumil was wedged in between us, his head resting on my arm, his mouth slightly agape. I said, “Rumil.” He didn’t move.

  I remained in this position for several hours. When Rumil turned over and off of my arm, I was suddenly free, so I took my chance. Slowly, I got up. I gathered my clothes and eased out of the bedroom. It was sometime before sunrise. The venetian blinds hanging over the windows in the living room lacked the blue glow of morning, but soon enough light would eke through them and ruin everything. Here, at last, I slept.

  My hosts let me sleep well into morning. I’d wanted to hit the road early, but I’d forgotten to set the alarm on my phone. I didn’t open my eyes until a quarter after ten, to the sound of Christopher clanging around in the kitchen. I wandered in, still loopy from sleep, to find him looming over the stove top, flipping pancakes. He told me Rumil was in the shower. By the look of his damp hair and pink skin, he had just finished his. “There’s coffee,” he said, and nodded to the brewed pot on the island between us. He had already made a stack of pancakes and told me I could help myself. I asked him why he wasn’t having any, and he said, “Prediabetic, remember?”

  He focused on the circle of dough sizzling in the frying pan. The marble counter by the stove was littered with all the ingredients he’d yet to put away—the egg crate, a plastic jug of milk, a bag of flour. Portions from each had been dumped and mixed in a shiny metal bowl, which now rested on the back stove-top eyes he wasn’t using. He cooked with the same kind of intensity that he’d fucked with. It made me wonder if he enjoyed either, or if he did them because he felt it was the thing to do in the moment: At night you had sex, and in the morning you made pancakes. And whatever grudge he had put aside to fuck me last night had obviously returned in full force this morning. But I was too hungry to care. I found myself a plate in one of the glass-fronted cabinets and used my hands to shovel three pancakes on it from the platter. From the fridge, I retrieved the butter and syrup, and lathered my pancakes with each. “These are delicious,” I said, after I took the first bite. I straddled one of the bar stools at the island and dug in. Still with his back to me, Christopher asked what my plans were after I left them. “Plans?” I spoke with my mouth full. I swallowed and told him about how I needed to finish my dissertation. Using a spatula, he slid the last pancake from the skillet, a sloppy amorphous one, and placed it on the platter. Then he shoved the pan into the sink and doused it in water, causing steam to pillow up in his face.

  “So what brought you back?” he said, waving away the cloud.

  “Seeing my dad.”

  “How’d that go?”

  I swallowed more pancake. “Bad.”

  Rumil walked in, the floral scent of shampoo and body wash wafting in with him. “Glad you’re finally up,” he said. “We thought you’d decided to hibernate.” He and Christopher wore nice clothes today—athletic-cut collared shirts, trouser shorts, loafers. Rumil hadn’t returned the piercings to his face, either. I had this idea suddenly that what we’d done last night, dressing in other kinds of clothing, was something they did on a regular basis. Not drag, exactly. But a kind of escape. They never settled on one look or way of being so they’d never have to face who they really were.

  Rumil and I finished off the pancakes while Christopher drank some kind of protein shake for diabetics. “Christopher is a master chef,” Rumil said, “for all the foods he can’t have.” But conversation fizzled out when I told them my mother had been diabetic. “Oh?” Christopher looked interested, so I said, “She died—got an infection,” causing Rumil and Christopher to make shocked faces. When we were done, Rumil insisted I take a shower before they take me back to my car even though—as I tried to explain to them—I would just need another one by the time I made it back home. I was planning on driving straight through, all the way home. By the time I’d make it back, I’d just be swampy and road ugly. He was persistent, however, so I showered again and dressed in the same worn clothes I’d arrived in.

  On the way to the garage, Rumil mentioned he needed to stop off by Rainbow Ice first to pick up something. Their boat-size SUV—a silver Ford Expedition with an engine that hummed like a toy remote-controlled car—took us out of their quiet neighborhood into downtown. It was close to noon on a Sunday, and Memphis appeared to be taking a nap. Most of the stores were closed, and few people were out and about. Christopher and Rumil weren’t offering much for conversation, so I told them about my friend Suzette from long ago. “This was before the camp,” I said. “She moved here to go to some private school and I never heard from her again.” Christopher drove, and Rumil gnawed on his cuticles. I wondered if their silence had anything to do with last night. I leaned up between the seats, and said, “I had a great time, you guys, you know that, right?” Rumil grimaced. I said, “You’re acting like we’re going to a funeral.” While Christopher was parking on the street, I spotted the reason for their odd behavior through the tinted backseat window. My eyes lit on him immediately. He
sat at the picnic table beside Rainbow Ice. His hands neatly folded on the scuffed tabletop. He had on a linen suit and a beige straw fedora. He’d put on weight since I first knew him, especially in his face, but I recognized him anyway. “Larry,” I said. Christopher and Rumil were already getting out of the car. And Larry was standing to greet us. Everybody was smiling.

  Ambush. There was really no other word for what this was.

  —

  I know what you’re thinking,” Larry said. He slung words at me before I could say anything. “You’re thinking I’m the last person in the world you want to hear from, but I hope you’ll hear me out, Will, because I think we can help each other. I really do.”

  While he spoke, I pieced together the story of Christopher and Rumil, the one I had ignored during my visit so far. The clues had shown themselves to me: the quaint neighborhood, the nice house, the expensive antiques, the way they had little concern for money. Why would they? Larry had enough to go around. He had intimated as much in his e-mail to me. I saw it clearly: Christopher and Rumil must treat this man like an endowment—seed money for Rainbow Ice, then a small grant to indulge Christopher’s obsession with mirrors. It made sense, their weirdness over my remarks about their lifestyle. They were embarrassed.

  Last night, when I had asked Rumil in the taxi if he’d kept up with anybody else from camp, I had suspected Larry. Who else? Mother Maude was dead. Rick was dead. I’d not seen hide nor hair of Father Drake since he was shipped off to Parchman. Besides Sparse, there wasn’t anybody left. It had to be Larry.

  “I want to lay it all out for you,” Larry was saying now. “So you can see what I’m aiming to do.” Larry and his guilt. Larry, the widower of Rick the memoirist. The counselors. The finagling it must have taken to get him to Memphis. Probably Rumil and Christopher told him of my visit as soon as I e-mailed Rumil about stopping by. And then, as plans coalesced, Larry needed them to stall me until he could get here. They were only too happy to oblige. He had done so much for them, after all. It was the least they could do. So they let me sleep in and then plied me with breakfast until they were sure—checking their phones surreptitiously—that Larry had arrived. Hell, that was probably why Rumil wanted me to take a shower. To buy them more time. The red-eye from wherever he lived now had probably cost a fortune. I hoped it had. I wanted it to inconvenience him. A part of me wanted him to account for himself. Screw this other business about the camp. What I wanted were the details of his trip: every little slight he had encountered while he journeyed to this surprise tête-à-tête. I wanted high-priced tickets, delayed flights, long layovers. Some aggressive pat-down when going through security. I wanted him to be roughed up by a guard. I wanted him to be disheveled and a little crazed by all the travel. I wanted him to be at the end of his rope.

  He, however, demonstrated the calmness of a businessman used to getting his way. His voice was level. His suit tailored. At camp he had been a lackey to Mother Maude and Father Drake. One who followed orders. He was cheerful but couldn’t be trusted to keep us safe from the Sweat Shack or Lake John. He had no right to me or my time, and yet, here he was, talking.

  “I just know we can work something out,” he said. The four of us had moved to the picnic table in the grass. Larry sat in front of me and took off his fedora to fan himself. “I’ve forgotten the summer comes sooner down here.” He said he lived in Massachusetts nowadays, right outside of Cambridge in Somerville. “The Northeast has spoiled me,” he said. Rumil and Christopher were nodding, silently agreeing with everything the man said. Both of them kept shooting me nervous glances. Like they expected an outburst. A scene. But I kept calm. Surprised even myself with how cordial I could be. I smiled and looked interested. I let Larry have his say. I did this, in part, to confound Christopher. He sat with his arms crossed, smirking. He was, I suspected, spoiling for a fight and only getting angrier the longer I denied him one.

  Rumil told us he could open up Rainbow Ice and fix us snow cones. Larry nodded. “Do, hon,” he said, and when Rumil asked if he was hankering for any particular flavor, Larry said, “Surprise us, why don’t you?”

  “Imagine it,” Larry was saying once Rumil had gone inside the booth, “a camp in the South for gay teens, one that told them they were exactly who God had intended them to be, that they were already perfect.” I almost laughed. I wondered if he’d gotten the idea from Proud Flesh. These camps weren’t such a novel idea. I knew of several gay-affirming camps long before the movie came along. They existed mostly on the coasts. “We could remake the place into something better than it was—into something that could last, and give gay boys and girls a refuge. Built at the place where so much tragedy transpired—think about it.”

  “I have,” I said. I told him that it didn’t work out so well for the people in the movie who had similar ambitions. Larry waved my comment away. He said that he didn’t want to talk about the movie.

  “Why not?” I said. “Sparse gave us a hell of an ending.”

  Christopher said, “You can’t be serious.”

  “I think I finally understand where he’s coming from,” I replied.

  “Oh?” Christopher gave a weak laugh. “Do tell, professor.”

  “A place of inconsolable rage.”

  Larry fanned himself harder with the fedora. He said I should look to the future. “The camp,” he told me. “It all goes back to the camp—and I have the money to change the narrative. We can rehabilitate that place.” He seemed to think he needed to prove his wealth to me, so he explained how the money Rick had gotten from the memoir—“a pittance, really”—was put into other investments. Turns out, Larry had a knack for making money grow, and he wasn’t at all shy about spreading some of it around.

  “Rick,” I said. “Why’d he kill himself?”

  Again Christopher injected. “This is a good deal he’s offering, Will. You and your dad would get well worth the price for the land.”

  One of the boys from yesterday walked by on the sidewalk. It was Ray Boy, the one Rumil had threatened with calling his mother. Seeing us, he said, “Y’all open?” When nobody at the table answered, the boy said, “You think I can’t see you?” He sallied up to the service window under the awning and knocked on the glass. “Hey, Mister Rumil,” he hollered. “Let me get a medium peach with cream!”

  Back at the table, Larry narrowed his eyes. “Yes, Rick killed himself. It was ugly, Will. A damn sight. When he was kicked off the movie, he acted—I don’t know—lost. I thought it might turn around when Robert got the movie, but he didn’t want anything to do with us. Rick wrote him over and over—sent e-mails, handwritten letters, you name it. Finally got word from his agent. He said something about how Rick had had his chance to tell the story and now it was Robert’s turn.”

  Rumil stuck his head out the service window and told Ray Boy that Rainbow Ice was closed. “That there is a business meeting,” he said, pointing over at us, “and you need to run on.” The boy said he had business of his own and put down some wadded-up bills on the window ledge. Rumil gave a groan. He took the money and ducked back inside.

  Larry said, “I thought you would be more apt to help us with your daddy if you had a better sense of what I wanted to do with the place.”

  “The Neck,” I said. “That’s what the place is called.”

  We were silent while the boy waited for his snow cone. The sun at this time of day was directly overhead and left no shade for us at the picnic table. My nose and neck were blistering. Larry returned the fedora to his bald head. Over at the booth, Rumil was fast with the boy’s order and returned to the window with one medium peach snow cone topped with sweetened condensed milk. The boy raised it to us as if he were giving a toast. “Y’all have fun with your business.” He retraced his steps on the sidewalk.

  “What makes you think that I—or anybody, for that matter—would want to entrust you with kids again?” The words were easier to say
than I had imagined them to be.

  But Christopher had had enough debate. He slapped the table with his hands. “That’s not fair,” he said, “and you know it.”

  I looked at him. “Do I now?”

  “Yeah, you do.” His voice was loud enough that Rumil heard him and came rushing outside. “You owe us this camp.”

  I wished Larry well and I got up from the table. “I don’t think I can help you,” I said. “And I am done.”

  Christopher wasn’t. “You know you had just as much to do with Dale dying as anybody.”

  I should have kept on going. Doll was two blocks away on the third floor of the garage. I could be there in five minutes and on the road in fifteen. But Christopher had said his name. Dale. I said, “What did you say?” Which was ridiculous, because I had heard him clearly. I had never understood until this moment why people (usually in the movies) asked this question in anger. Now I knew the question was a dare. A taunt. I didn’t think he had the balls to repeat himself.

  Fuck him, he did. “You killed him,” he said. “Same as if you put the knife in him yourself.”

  Larry stood now, too. And Rumil had drawn closer to Christopher. Gently, he slid his arms around Christopher’s waist from behind, forming a belt around his thick middle. His touch was all it took. Christopher’s mouth screwed up into a scowl. He made the sound an animal does when it’s been injured—high-pitched and terrible.