by Mark Roeder
Tristan, Tim, and I sat down at the table Shawn had received as a birthday present from the Selbys. The scent of oregano wafted through the air as Shawn placed a huge bowl of spaghetti in the center of the table. He also put out cooked apples and garlic bread. My mouth watered just looking at it. We all helped ourselves.
“This looks incredible,” I said.
“It’s called cooking on a budget,” Shawn said.
“It’s called delicious,” Tristan said. “This sauce is incredible. My mom is going to want the recipe when I tell her about it.”
“I just doctored up some sauce out of a jar,” Shawn said. “I added a little barbeque sauce, some onions, green peppers, and some extra oregano. Apples were on sale at the grocery, so I thought I’d try cooking some.”
“I love it,” Tristan said.
Everyone did. It was mostly silent for the next several minutes. Everyone was far too busy eating to talk.
I watched Shawn and Tristan as they sat across from each other. It had taken Shawn a long time, but he’d reeled in the boy of his dreams. I knew that look in Tristan’s eyes. If he didn’t already love Shawn, he was at least falling for him. I was glad Shawn had managed to get Tristan. There for quite a while, I thought he was going to pine away for him. Tristan was beautiful, but it almost seemed their roles were reversed. It would’ve made more sense to me if the intellectual guy was obsessed with the jock. It was so much easier for Tim and me. We fell for each other on the spot.
Shawn made us hot tea and coffee after the supper things had been put away. He also brought out chocolate-chip cookies he’d baked. I had no clue that Shawn had such a domestic side. I’d never pictured him cooking and baking before. My mental image of him was as a jock: tough, strong, athletic, and virile. I was quickly beginning to realize he was more than that. I wondered if he’d been so all along or if Tristan was bringing out previously hidden qualities. It was kind of cool that he could kick ass on the football field and bake, too, especially when his cookies were so incredible!
“Why don’t we play Rook?” Tristan asked after we’d been talking and munching cookies for a while.
“Because we don’t know what you’re talking about?” Tim asked.
“It’s a card game. My parents liked to play it when they visited Taylor’s parents. Taylor was really good at it, too. I brought a deck of cards, if you guys think you want to learn. It’s not difficult.”
“Well, if it’s tougher than Old Maid, I doubt Shawn can keep up,” Tim said. “He still hasn’t quite mastered Candy Land.”
“Don’t make me kick your butt in front of your boyfriend,” Shawn said.
Tim merely grinned in response.
“Here, I’ll show you,” Tristan said, spreading the deck face up. “There are four colors of cards: green, black, red, and yellow.”
“The yellow looks like orange to me,” I said.
“Me, too,” Tristan said. “I don’t think true yellow would be very easy to read on the white background. Anyway, each color has cards numbered from five to fourteen. There is also one Rook card. It’s the one that says ‘ROOK’, and it has a picture of a big crow on it holding a hand of cards in one of its feet.
“Okay, let me deal a round to show you how to play. I’ll deal the cards face up just to demonstrate. When you’re dealing, you hand out all the cards. Five cards, however, are placed to the side. Those cards are known as the widow. I don’t know why they are called that. The game starts with bidding, but we’ll get to that in a minute. I just want to show you how to play first.
“The game is played by partners. Shawn and I will be partners, and Tim and Dane are the other team. I dealt the cards, so you get to play a card first, Dane. The idea is to take the trick by playing the highest card.”
“Okay, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I have a fourteen, so I’ll play it,” I said.
I put my green fourteen in the center of the table.
“Okay, Dane played a green card, so everyone else has to play green as well, unless you don’t have any green cards. Then, you can play any color you want.”
Shawn played a five, Tim a twelve, and Tristan played a ten.
“Okay, Dane won that trick because the fourteen is the highest card, but I want to explain a few things before he picks the cards up. Some of the cards are worth points. Fives are worth five points, tens are worth ten points, and fourteens are worth ten points. The Rook is worth twenty. The goal of the game is to get as many points as you can and keep the other team from getting points. In this hand, Dane won twenty-five points. I didn’t want Dane to get my ten, but as you can see, that’s the only green card I have, so I had to play it. Okay, Dane, since you won that hand, you get to lead again. Pick up the cards and place them in a pile near you, face down.”
“Um, I’ll play my green thirteen, then.”
Shawn played a six. Tim sat thinking, since he was out of green cards. He placed a red ten on the table. I put down a black eight.
“Okay, Dane won that hand, too. Tim made a smart move. Since he was out of green, he could play any color, and he gave his partner a ten. As you can see, I’ve got a black ten in my hand, but I don’t want Dane to get it, so I played a different card.
“Now, here’s where it gets a little unpredictable. During every game, one color is the trump. Let’s say red is trumps. Any red card will take any card of any other color. For example, a red five will take a black, yellow, or green fourteen. The Rook still beats everything because it’s always a trump card, no matter what color is trumps. Okay, Dane, it’s still your lead. Play another card. Stick with green, because I want to show you something.”
I played a green eleven, Shawn a seven, Tim played a red five, and Tristan played a red eleven.
“Now, I won this hand because I played the highest trump card.” Tristan said. “Tim and I could play trumps because we don’t have any green cards. You see how it gets a little unpredictable? You may have the highest card in a color, but someone else may trump in.
“Okay, now let me explain bidding. I told you about the point cards. There are 120 points total in the deck. At the beginning of the game, each player bids how many points he thinks he and his partner can take. Whoever bids the highest, gets to play first and gets to name the color of trumps.”
“So, if I have a lot of black cards and I bid the highest, I can name black trumps?” Tim said.
“Exactly, which is why you want to be the high bidder if you can. The catch is that if you don’t make your bid, that bid is taken away from your score. For example, let’s say I win the bid at eighty-five, but Shawn and I only manage to get seventy-five points. Since we didn’t make my bid, eighty-five points are deducted from our score.”
“So you don’t get the seventy-five points you made?” I asked.
“No. If we made eighty-five points or more, then we’d get those points. The other team gets whatever points it makes, because it doesn’t have to match a bid.”
“What about the widow?” I asked.
“Okay, whoever gets the bid each game, also gets to pick up the widow. If any cards in the widow are better than those in your hand, you can trade them.”
I picked up the widow which I’d dealt face down and turned it over.
“As you can see, the Rook card is in the widow. That happens sometimes.”
“So, if I had the top bid, I could take out the Rook and those two black cards in the widow and play them?” Tim asked.
“Exactly. You could take out whatever cards you wanted and replace them with your worst cards.”
“Cool.”
“So, the advantages of winning the bid is getting to name trumps and getting to look through the widow. Of course, sometimes the widow doesn’t have any good cards at all. You never know in advance. Everyone, throw in your cards. I’ll deal again. This time, don’t let anyone see your cards, and we’ll bid.”
Everyone but Tristan made a lot of mistakes the first few hands. I forgot about trumps and played a
black fourteen only to have Shawn trump it with a yellow six. His victory was short-lived, however, because Tim played a yellow eleven, and Tristan couldn’t play a higher trump because he still had black. The game was kind of like a battle. A lot of laughing, taunting, and teasing went on. I was glad Tristan was teaching us how to play. I thought I might even get good at it eventually.
The game lasted until one team reached 500 points. Shawn and Tristan won the first game. The final score was 520 to -110. Yeah, that’s right, Tim and I had negative 110 points. We didn’t make our bid a few times and had our bid deducted from our total, which Tristan said was called “getting set.”
Tim and I actually beat Shawn and Tristan the next game, and we rubbed their noses it in. We played three games, which took about two hours. It was a blast!
“We have to play that again sometime,” I said at the end of the evening.
“You’re just saying that because you won the last game,” Tristan said.
“No, I’m saying that because I intend to win the next game.”
Tim walked me home in the moonlight. We held hands, and he kissed me as we stood on the doorstep. I walked inside, perfectly content. I didn’t even think about Jacob as I fell asleep in my comfy bed.
Shawn
“Shawn. Shawn! Would you answer the question please?”
“Uh, Churchill?”
Laughter erupted around me in my first-period U.S. History class.
“A noble effort, Shawn, but incorrect,” Mr. Pennington said.
I could feel myself turn slightly red.
“Can anyone else tell me about Truman’s involvement with the war effort during the final months of F.D.R.’s administration?”
“F.D.R. kept him out of the loop even though Truman was the Vice President, so his involvement was minimal,” said Jennifer, Brandon’s girlfriend.
“That’s correct. Truman was rather frustrated by the situation. Here was the man who would be leading the country if President Roosevelt died or was incapacitated, yet F.D.R. kept him largely out of the loop, as Jennifer put it. Shawn, can you tell us why this was a particularly bad policy?”
I knew Mr. Pennington would be getting back to me, so I’d been paying attention.
“Because Roosevelt was in very poor health, and he knew it. It was very likely that he would die before the end of the war, and he did.”
“That’s right…”
I began to drift off again, although I kept paying as much attention as I could manage because I knew Mr. Pennington might fire another question in my direction. I usually paid attention in my classes, especially history. Some of this World War II stuff was kind of boring, but I was interested in the whole F.D.R./Churchill thing.
The rest of the class passed without incident, as did the next, but then Brandon stopped by my locker after second period.
“Great job in U.S. History,” Brandon said then laughed.
“Does Jennifer tell you everything?”
“Only the most important stuff. Let me guess, you were off in lala land thinking about your dream boy.”
“Um…yeah,” I said.
“I knew it! You homos are so pathetic!”
“So why do you hang around us?”
“You have great entertainment value. It’s the same reason I hang out with Jon.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.”
Brandon only grinned and went on his way.
Word had spread about Tristan and me. In VHS, if you were spotted holding hands with someone, a lot of assumptions follow. When you’re a guy holding the hand of another guy, that’s especially juicy news. VHS either has more than its share of homos or more of us are out, but either way, Tristan and I were a topic of the rumor mill. It would have been a bigger deal if I was the first football player to openly date a boy, but Brendan and Casper had already been there and done that.
A few guys gave me some shit, but it was just rude comments and name-calling. I didn’t let on, but even those hurt. When someone calls you a cocksucking faggot, it doesn’t exactly raise your self-esteem. It’s more the way it’s said and the belligerence behind the words than the words themselves that hurt. After all, it’s true. Not only do I suck cock, I love sucking cock, and I’m good at it! I am a faggot, although I much prefer the term gay or even homo. Calling a guy like me faggot is like calling a black guy nigger. It’s a putdown. I don’t like being called a cocksucker, either. I mean, I wouldn’t call a hetero guy a pussy-eater, even though that’s probably an accurate description of most heteros. So yeah, the names and slurs hurt, but I don’t let on. I just glare back, flip the asshole off if a teacher isn’t around, or even give the jerk a shove.
I’m well aware that the situation could be much worse. When I think of the shit that was done to Mark and Taylor—like when those guys beat Mark up so bad he had to be put in the hospital. Then, there were the things Dane had told me about his old school. My past wasn’t exactly a fairytale, no pun intended, but I was damn lucky to be living in Verona.
***
Tristan walked into Café Moffatt and took a seat in a booth. He looked so very handsome in his jeans and a black, long-sleeved pullover. I walked over as soon as I’d finished topping off the ice water for my tables.
“Hey, I don’t get off for another fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, I know. I hear this place has hot busboys. I thought I’d check them out.”
“Watch it,” I said. Tristan smiled.
“Hey, can you get me a cup of hot tea?”
“What do I look like, a waiter? Oh, yeah…”
“You are such a goof.”
I fetched Tristan’s tea and made my rounds to make sure all my customers were happy. A large part of my pay came from tips, after all. Besides, I did want to do a good job. Being a waiter isn’t exactly prestigious, but being a crappy waiter is worse.
At the end of my shift, Tristan and I headed out the door.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” I said.
“Shawn, we’re going to the library, not into battle.”
“Libraries make me feel stupid. There’s so much knowledge there, so much I don’t know.”
“Shawn, no one knows everything in all those books. You aren’t stupid. When are you going to realize that?”
“I’m kind of stupid.”
“Shawn, quit putting yourself down. I mean it. The only thing stupid about you is that you have yourself convinced you’re stupid. We talked about this before. Everyone has their own type of knowledge.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, but quit putting yourself down.”
I knew Tristan was a little pissed at me, but I guessed that was just because he liked me. I knew I had self-esteem issues in the intelligence department, but knowing and doing something about them were two different things. How could I just start thinking I was intelligent when I thought of myself as kind of dim for so long? I guess it was something I’d just have to keep working on.
We entered the dreaded library. I hushed my fears that I wouldn’t be able to understand whatever book we picked out for me to read. An even bigger worry was that I just couldn’t get into it. I’d tried picking out something before, and I couldn’t even come up with something that halfway interested me.
“So what interests you—other than football?” Tristan asked in a quiet voice.
“There are books on things besides football? Why?”
Tristan raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, okay, um…I kind of like history now. I used to think it was boring, but Mr. Pennington makes it kind of cool.”
“Hmm,” said Tristan.
We browsed around for several minutes without saying much. None of the titles caught my eye. A lot of them made no sense to me.
“Alexander the Great,” Tristan said after a while.
“What about him?”
“I think you might like reading about Alexander the Great.”
“Maybe.”
; “He’s extremely interesting and not just because he conquered most of the known world in his time. If he lived now and was our age, I’m sure he’d be a football player.”
“Is that a dig?”
“No. Alexander was big into competition and doing things that had never been done before. The more impossible the task, the more he was obsessed to complete it. He actually came to believe he was a god. He was also gay.”
“I’ve heard he was gay, but is that true?”
“At the very least he was bi and more than likely gay. He had a lover named Hephaestion and other male lovers as well. He nearly went insane when Hephaestion died.”
“Okay, he does sound interesting.”
In a couple of minutes, Tristan had located the section that included Alexander biographies. I was surprised there were so many!
“Here,” he said, handing me one at last. “I’ve heard this one is the best. It’s not been out long, either, so it will include the latest discoveries.”
“Latest discoveries? Didn’t Alexander die 2,000 years ago?”
“Yes, but new archaeological information is always being discovered about Alexander.”
I just nodded. I had no idea.
I read the back cover of the book.
“I think I would like to read this,” I said to Tristan. What’s more, I meant it.
“I told you we would find something. You are in great danger now, however.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think you’re going to read just that book, but by the time you’re finished you’ll want another one. You’ll get interested in the Ptolemies of Egypt or Greek History, and you’ll pick up a book on that, which will get you interested in something else and so on.”
“Oh, so it’s like you’ve tricked me into taking a bite of a magic apple or something. Thanks a lot.”
Tristan grinned. “And you thought I was a nice guy.”
Tristan picked up a couple of books before we left: a biography of William Shakespeare and The Trees by Conrad Richter.
“I’ve heard of Conrad Richter before,” I said. “Where?”