A More Perfect Union

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  He caught Jay’s eye as he said, “The owner of the house in Rockford wants to sell us the house.”

  Jay’s eyes went wide.

  “Yes,” Rowan said. “For the amount you last offered. Are you still interested?”

  The way Jay was grinning now pretty much answered that question for Wallace, but he asked suspiciously, “Why? What changed his mind?”

  “Christmas.”

  “He was visited by three ghosts who told him to stop being a dick?”

  “I wish. No. They already bought another house down in Georgia. The cost of maintaining two houses, plus all the added expense of the holiday, convinced him he needed to unload the place. You two were his best option.”

  “I’m tempted to bargain him down to the original offer,” Wallace said uncharitably.

  “I wouldn’t recommend that,” Rowan said. “His real estate agent told me she had to agree to a lower commission to make up the amount he feels he’s losing.”

  “Nice.”

  But he and Jay still wanted the house, so there was no point in dragging it out. He gave her permission to make the deal. Then he took Jay out to dinner to celebrate.

  THE DEAL didn’t go through smoothly. The banks gave them trouble in the final phases, delaying the transfer of funds for no reason at all, until they missed their closing date. Then there was a mad scramble to get both banks to agree to accept closing on the next business day and get the funds transferred in time. Judging by Wallace’s experience buying the house in Derry with his friends and the horror stories he’d heard from coworkers, this wasn’t all that unusual. For some reason banks seemed determined to sabotage house sales.

  But by the beginning of May, the house was theirs.

  Wallace moved in the day after closing. He had no furniture, but he brought a sleeping bag, a mat to lay it on, his pillow, a lamp, and some books. The house was his, damn it! His and Jay’s. And he was claiming it before anyone could try to take it away from them.

  He regretted not having a flag to plant in the front yard, but he did have a plaster wall hanging of the Green Man. He hung it in the entryway.

  Jay’s lease wouldn’t end until June, but they packed up his apartment and arranged for a professional moving company to transport all the boxes the forty miles from Dover to Rockford, as well as hauling them into the house. The movers were young guys in their early twenties who seemed to enjoy working shirtless and showing off their muscles, so Jay and Wallace couldn’t complain about the cost. They even bought the guys pizza.

  After the movers left, Wallace looked around the rooms full of boxes in dismay. He hadn’t been interested in keeping any of his old furniture, and the boxes of books and other things he owned had been brought over in a few carloads. Jay, on the other hand, owned tons of shit. He hadn’t bothered with much furniture, except his futon, but he owned books and DVDs—literally thousands of them—and box upon box of dishes, models, puzzles, paintings, art supplies… you name it. And of course he’d brought three cats with him, along with their litter boxes and everything else they needed.

  Wallace had no idea where to even begin unpacking and sorting through everything, but Jay calmly retrieved a blanket from one of the boxes and ordered him, “Strip.”

  “Huh?”

  “Take your clothes off. All of them.”

  Jay set the blanket down a moment so he could remove his own clothing. Wallace obeyed, stripping while it gradually dawned on him that they were about to have sex. He didn’t object, of course. But the timing seemed odd.

  When they were both completely naked, Jay pulled him close for a lingering kiss and a bit of naughty fondling. Wallace quickly grew hard in his hand and reached down to explore Jay’s body. But Jay pushed him away, giving him a coquettish smile.

  “Not here.”

  “Where?”

  Jay picked up the blanket again and said, “Come on.”

  He led Wallace downstairs through the cellar and out the side door. A low wall on one side of the hot tub blocked the view for anyone who happened to pass by the end of the driveway, and they were able to walk unseen into the backyard. Here there was nothing but a small patch of lawn with forest all around it. Jay spread the blanket on the grass and stretched out on it.

  “This is all ours now,” he said, stroking himself while he looked up at his lover. “Let’s claim it.”

  Wallace looked down at him, enjoying the view, and smirked. “Not the house first?”

  “We’ll claim that tonight. I want to do this in broad daylight, right here—because we fucking can.”

  That somehow seemed appropriate to Wallace. So he knelt between Jay’s spread legs and took his hard cock into his mouth.

  Chapter Thirteen

  HOW ADRASTIA talked them into visiting the local SPCA, Jay had no idea. It wasn’t that he and Wallace didn’t want a dog. They’d talked about it several times, and they were both in agreement—a big dog, something they could wrassle with and snuggle up to on the couch. Maybe a Labrador or a German shepherd, but they weren’t particular about the breed. Except Malamutes and other breeds with a ton of fur that had been bred for northern climes. They didn’t care about dog hair on the furniture, but they’d feel too guilty in August, when the temperatures were in the nineties.

  At any rate, they’d only just bought most of their furniture and gotten most of the boxes unpacked or put in storage. One of their friends was a carpenter, so they’d contracted him to build peninsula bookshelves in the room they were converting into a library. When he was done with that, he’d be starting on a small building near the hot tub—a replica of a Viking longhouse that would hold some replicas of the Norse goddess, Freyja. They belonged to Wallace, and he’d always wanted to put up a proper altar for them. Jay had persuaded him to go “whole hog” and build a small temple of sorts. That way they could host rituals now and then.

  With all of this going on, it seemed a bit early to think about adopting a dog. But they’d taken Adrastia with them on a trip to a furniture store in Stratham, searching for sturdier kitchen chairs. They’d already managed to break two of the spindly things they’d picked up a month earlier from IKEA.

  On the way back from ordering four chairs—they’d have to wait ten days for the stain and finish they wanted to be applied—she pointed from the backseat and said, “Pull in there!”

  Jay took the turn automatically before he realized where they were. It was the local SPCA shelter. “Um… what are we doing here?”

  “You said you wanted to get a dog.”

  “Well, yes,” Wallace said from the front passenger seat. “At some point. Not immediately.”

  Adrastia waved her hand dismissively. “It won’t hurt to check the place out.”

  With a growing feeling of trepidation, Jay parked the car. He glanced at Wallace, but his lover merely shrugged at him. The three of them got out of the car and went inside.

  The first thing that greeted them was a room full of cats. Near the entryway was a glassed-in kitty playroom with carpeted platforms of varying heights. The kittens were adorable, but Wallace grabbed Jay firmly by the elbow and steered him away.

  “We have three cats as it is, and one of them already tried to kill me.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t know you were sleeping when he knocked the book off the bookcase.”

  “He dropped a book of hermetic philosophy on my head. A facing-page translation!”

  Jay merely rolled his eyes. They were there to look at dogs. And he had enough trouble keeping up with the litter boxes as it was.

  They spoke to someone at the front desk, who took them back into the kennel. “If you see a dog you’d like,” she told them, “just ask, and we’ll put a leash on it so you can take it outside in the yard a bit.”

  Jay saw Wallace glance at a large, brightly lit area near the door. It was glassed in and had a bench for someone to sit on and a dog bed, with several toys strewn around. It was empty, but a cardboard sign read “Raja.”

&nbs
p; Their guide noticed Wallace’s line of sight and stopped a moment. “That area is used to showcase a dog for the day—one who hasn’t been getting much attention. People can go in and sit with the dog, play with him a bit. It looks like someone has Raja out in the yard right now, though.” She turned to gesture toward the rest of the room, where rows of dog crates were lined up against all four walls. “Feel free to walk around and look at the dogs. Again, if you see one you like, come get me, and I’ll put him or her on a leash for you.”

  As soon as she’d gone, they ventured out into the room. Seeing all the eager, hopeful faces staring out at them—some frantic with excitement and yearning, others more timid but still pleading with their eyes—Jay realized this was going to be emotionally draining. How could he pass by a single one of these poor puppies? How could he leave them to a fate that might ultimately end in them being put to sleep, never having found the person meant to love and care for them? Every dog that whimpered at him made him want to burst into tears.

  There were several dogs he liked—and were supposedly okay with cats. Most of them were a bit smaller than he and Wallace had been discussing, such as the female border collie named Sacha who looked up at them with sad eyes.

  It broke his heart when Wallace said, “She’s nice,” but didn’t really seem taken with her.

  By the time they’d gone around the room, with Adrastia offering her opinions of each dog but Wallace seeming withdrawn, as if he didn’t even want to be there, Jay just wanted to get out. He wanted to rescue them all, but that was impossible. And any dog they took would be conditional upon his or her behavior with the cats. Jay didn’t want them bullied in their own home. They were stressed enough just trying to adjust to a new house.

  As they walked out, Wallace came to a sudden stop. His eyes were fixed on the showcase area, where a large black Labrador retriever stood near the glass, wagging his tail and looking directly into Wallace’s eyes. Unlike many of the other dogs, Raja didn’t look sad. He was brimming over with joy at the possibility of another human to play with.

  Wallace placed a hand on the glass, and Raja tried to lick it. “Let’s see if we can take him outside.”

  Adrastia went to find the woman who’d brought them in, but Jay knew this was just a formality. Some things were destined to be, and from the light that had suddenly flickered to life in Wallace’s eyes, Jay knew Raja was going to be their dog.

  “DO YOU own your house,” the woman at the front desk asked them, “or do you rent it?”

  “We own it,” Wallace replied. Technically, he thought, the bank owns it. It wouldn’t really be their property until it was paid off. But he knew what she’d meant.

  “Oh good! Too many people adopt pets without thinking about whether they can really keep them. Often their landlords have ‘no pet’ clauses in the lease.”

  “You wouldn’t have let us adopt Raja if we were renting?”

  She shrugged. “Not necessarily. We would have required a signed note from the landlord saying it was fine for you to own a large dog.”

  He supposed he was glad to learn they were being diligent. She’d already given them Raja’s history. The poor pup—he was only a year and a half—had been in an SPCA shelter in Indiana for a year, and nobody had wanted to adopt him. The shelter had finally shipped him to the shelter in New Hampshire when a space opened up. If that hadn’t happened, he might have been put down.

  Wallace shuddered to think how close it had come to him never seeing this wonderful dog. Raja had proven to be affectionate and friendly when they took him out on the leash. He hadn’t shown any aggression toward other dogs, and supposedly he was good with cats too. The latter they’d simply have to find out when they took him home.

  It had been agony to surrender him back into the care of the shelter employee. But Wallace and Jay were filling out the paperwork now. It would probably just be a matter of days before they’d be allowed to take him home.

  When they’d finished with the paperwork, however, the woman who looked it over surprised them. “Are you ready to take him now?”

  “Now?” Wallace asked, tapping the nonexistent glasses on the bridge of his nose.

  “If you want.”

  “Um… maybe we should wait….”

  “We’ll take him now,” Jay told her firmly. He turned to Wallace and pleaded, “We can’t take him out and play with him, get him all excited that someone might want him, and then just leave him here!”

  “If you need some time…,” the woman began, but Jay rushed on.

  “What do we have to have for him? Food and water dishes? A dog bed?” These were all things they could stop and grab at the Pet Life store just down the road.

  “Don’t forget toys!” Adrastia interjected. “Lots of them.”

  THOUGH THE cats had their affectionate moments and had more or less warmed up to Wallace by now, slipping into his lap when he least expected to find a cat there, they were still somewhat aloof. They were, after all, cats.

  But Raja was another matter entirely. The family dynamic shifted radically when a seventy-five-pound black Lab with attachment issues became part of the household. He needed affection—a lot of it. He was always there, cuddling between Jay and Wallace on the couch, curled up on the foot of the bed, watching them intently as they ate. Having sex was a challenge. It wasn’t so much that they were bothered by Raja watching them—or at least they got used to it—but that he wanted to participate. He seemed to think it was playtime. Wrestling, perhaps. And he kept trying to climb up on the bed. They tried closing him out of the bedroom, but he then proceeded to whimper in the hallway, just outside the door, and totally kill the mood. Eventually they managed to train him to stay in his dog bed on the floor. But they had to be careful not to look at him, or he’d assume his banishment was over and try to jump back up on the bed.

  The worst, though, was when Jay and Wallace had to go to work. Their shifts were at different times, so they didn’t have to leave him alone for eight to ten hours, but with Wallace gone from eight to six and Jay gone from noon to nine, that was still six hours he had to be alone in the house. Since the kitchen had a door that could be closed, they cleaned everything off the table and counters he might be able to reach, gave him food and water, and closed him in there while they were gone. But he broke Jay’s heart every morning when Jay closed the kitchen door, by sitting on the other side of it and looking through the glass. He didn’t whimper, but his sad puppy eyes seemed to say, “I tried to be a good dog. Why couldn’t you love me?”

  Fortunately he went into paroxysms of ecstasy when either man came home. All was forgiven. Until the next time.

  “What do you want us to do about it?” Wallace asked when Jay told him how hard he was finding it to leave each day. “There isn’t a doggie daycare in town.”

  Jay shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose I could look into one near where I work….”

  But Wallace wasn’t fooled. They were lying in bed together, Raja sleeping peacefully on the foot of the bed, now that they’d allowed him back up.

  Wallace ran a finger languidly along Jay’s naked hip. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “I need a little recovery time,” Jay said with a smirk. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  “Nobody’s as young as they used to be. Who thought up that silly expression? Anyway, that’s not what I meant.” Wallace kissed him gently on the shoulder. “You want to work from home. Writing, that is.”

  It was true. Jay hated being in tech support. He’d loved it when he was in his twenties, but it had grown old. Now it felt as if most of the job was soothing customers who were rightfully frustrated by buggy software—being forced to lie by telling them development was working on it, when he knew their backlog made it unlikely they’d get to the issue for months, if at all. And since the bubble had burst in 2000, he’d been forced to take a twenty thousand a year pay cut. It wasn’t worth it anymore.

  “My novel didn’t do that well,” h
e hedged.

  “It sold four thousand copies. That sounds pretty good to me.”

  “That’s not enough to live on.”

  Wallace kissed him tenderly on the mouth. “I’ve already run the numbers. As long as I stay employed—there is always that risk—we can afford for you to take a couple years off from corporate work and see if this is likely to be a career for you.”

  Jay felt excitement welling up in him, but he tried to stamp down on it. “You’re just in a good mood because you got laid.”

  “True.” Wallace laughed. “But I’m serious. You’ll have to wait until after the wedding, though. That’ll set us back a bit.”

  Jay gasped. “The wedding!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  WENTWORTH BY the Sea was a Victorian grand hotel built in 1874 in New Castle, New Hampshire. In its heyday it had been splendid, resembling the Grand Hotel in the film Somewhere in Time—one of Jay’s favorite romantic movies—though somewhat smaller, and had hosted the negotiation of the treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. It had been closed in the early eighties, and by the late nineties, it had fallen into such disrepair it was used as the scene of a murder in the 1999 film In Dreams. But then it was mostly demolished and rebuilt from scratch, with only the original grand ballroom, the hotel restaurant, and the hotel lobby remaining of the original structure.

  But it looked as it had in the early nineteen hundreds, and it was where Jay had always fantasized about getting married.

  “This is going to be insanely expensive,” Adrastia commented as they walked from the parking lot to the entrance.

  They were walking because Wallace had been uncomfortable with the idea of handing off his car to a hotel valet. It felt too… aristocratic. The entire hotel—along with the marina and golf course that surrounded it—felt a bit rich for his blood. He’d grown up poor and was proud of it.