I gasped quite loudly. At the same time, I felt myself drawn in ever more deeply, and closely. She spent. I spent. And all the while I had one hand on her manhood and another upon her womanhood.
In that same instant the partition shook and splintered and Jonathan Darrow himself, wide awake and bulging red with drink thundered, “Must you? Must you? Must you yet again?”
His complaint was stopped by the vision that even a vat of ale and a decanter full of Scots Whiskey could not undo: the vision that is, of ourselves, standing before him in flagrante and possessing not two but instead three sets of genitals!
“What then,” he stammered. “What demons be ye?” he added, doubtless quoting lines from some play we knew not. And fell over the partition and onto the bed alongside us.
My companion pulled free of me and leapt to the bit of floor where clothing was tossed all about until some semblance of costume was put on. I stood there I fear in great astonishment, clad as I was the minute I was born. Old Jonathan rose in his fusty bedclothes and lurched toward me. I fought him down and rushed out the ’van following my partner who, now dressed, had alighted and stood in a defending posture, looking like Achilles in those prints by Mr. Flaxman.
Roused by the great noise, Billy and Suzie and even Amy had looked out of their curtains just as Jonathan tumbled out of the ’van after me and lunged toward me, only to be stopped by a perfectly aimed and quite powerful full-fisted blow to the nose by—not I—but my lady transformed into man.
He howled in pain, and soon those in the pub’s inn chambers nearby had thrust up their window sashes and the scene was there for all to see.
My hermaphrodite pushed past me once more into the ’van and thrust my clothing at me where it fell upon the cobbles, and in a minute she—or he?—had run to the front exit, leapt onto one of the old bays kept there unshafted, and roused it with a kick. Minutes later we witnessed our fifth actor riding upon it, bareback as any American Indian or Amazon warrioress, off across the square of Croydon and rapidly into the frosty night.
By this time the entire plaza and surrounding streets were lighted up as I pulled on my trousers. Folks were shouting and calling jibes at us, and throwing down objects upon our heads.
“Damn your hot blood!” Billy Darrow shouted and rushed out at me. “Didn’t I tell you not to?” Luckily he stumbled in his ill-timed charge at me.
In short time I was up and inside, past Suzie and gathering my belongings and hidden pay. I was upon the ground again in time to hear Billy railing, “You’ve ruined everything. Everything! Everything!”
Still not fully clad, I pushed on my shoes as best I could, blew Suzie a kiss and then I, too, sped off on foot in the direction of the most surprising lover of my life. Although toward where exactly, and what I expected to find, I could not say.
CARVER COMES HOME
Rob Byrnes
Carver DeMaris guides his rental car off I-76 and makes a right at the intersection a few miles from the house he lived in for the first seventeen years of his life. Twenty-one if you count intermittent breaks from college. He only counts the first seventeen.
He passes familiar sights. The high school, with a sign out front still congratulating the seniors who graduated months earlier. The post office, one lonely car parked next to the flagpole. Cookley Park, the grass short and brown in the August heat.
He turns left onto a wider road. A succession of signs dominate the view: McDonald’s, Arby’s, Dairy Queen, Village Inn, Sonic, Burger King. They used to call it Fast Food Alley. Maybe they still do.
At the light past the Burger King, before the traffic backup waiting to enter the Walmart parking lot, Carver makes another turn. A half-mile down the road he passes a peeling sign—“Welcome to Patience: It’s a Virtue”—and the car bumps over a set of railroad tracks poking through crumbling pavement.
There’s no need to slow down. Patience—in the flat eastern plains of Colorado—hasn’t seen a train for a long time.
A few more turns and he spots the white clapboard house. The hedges are overgrown.
He’s home.
His sister’s Lexus is in the driveway, so new it still bears dealer plates from a Denver auto showroom. He parks behind it, grabs a small suitcase from the backseat and walks toward the rear of the house. Three wooden steps lead to a side door—there’s also a front door no one ever uses—but he passes them and continues to the backyard.
The lawn needs attention, but his mother’s marigolds look healthy, vibrant even, in the growing shadows. There’s not a lot about Patience to miss, but he’ll miss those marigolds.
Carver lets himself inside the house through the unlocked door into the kitchen. He lets his eyes adjust to the light, taking in familiar objects in the gloom of early evening. Ceramic bears on the stovetop with SALT and PEPPER printed on their bellies. An inspirational calendar held to the refrigerator with magnets. A wicker basket on the round table, overflowing with circulars from the Patience Price-Cut Market. The crucified Christ, arms extended across the wall beneath a clock that was never set to Daylight Saving Time.
He’s home, but he’s not. This really isn’t home anymore.
A click click click approaches, hard heels against hardwood.
“I thought I heard someone down here.” His sister Julie flicks the light switch and gives him a brief welcoming hug. She takes after their father, dark and short. He’s their mother’s son, fair and tall. “Carver DeMaris has come home. Let the party begin!”
He smiles at her irreverence and glances at the ceiling, in the vague direction of his mother’s bedroom. “How’s she doing?”
Julie shakes her head. “Dr. Hamilton gives her another day or two.”
“Dr. Hamilton? He’s still alive?”
“Tick tock.”
Carver glances back at the ceiling. “Is Mom awake? Can I see her?”
“She’s sleeping. But when she’s awake, she’s alert. Well, alert enough to know you’re there.”
“Do you think she’ll wake up again tonight?”
“Who knows? This can wait, though, right?”
“Maybe not.”
Julie’s left eyebrow arches. “Can’t it wait until she’s feeling up to it?”
He leans back against the linoleum counter. “She’s not getting better than she is right now.” She nods, but won’t make eye contact. “I need to talk to her before she goes.”
“Drama queen.” Julie says this almost under her breath, but not quite. He’s sure she wanted him to hear.
“What was that?”
Finally, she can look him in the eye. “I don’t need any more drama, Carver. I’m stressed to the max as it is.”
He clears his throat. “Speaking of that ‘queen’ thing…”
Julie has always had an uncanny ability to finish his unspoken thoughts. It’s clear she isn’t happy. “Suddenly it occurs to me that this is what you desperately have to tell our mother.”
He looks away. His eyes find the salt and pepper bears. “We have some unfinished business.”
“Don’t. I don’t need this. And she’s probably past the point of understanding.”
“But…”
“What are you trying to accomplish here, Carver?” She looks around distractedly until she spots her purse on the counter between the toaster and a cutlery block. “I need a cigarette. Want one?”
“Of course not.”
“Then come outside and watch me.” Julie picks up the purse and walks out the side door and down the three steps to the driveway, not waiting for Carver to answer. He follows. He always does.
“Bad habit,” says Carver.
“I didn’t ask you. Better people than you have told me that, and I didn’t ask them, either.” Julie inhales and exhales immediately. “So, Mom’s about to die and you really think this is the best time to come out to her?”
He shuffles his feet against the blacktop. “There isn’t going to be a better time, is there?”
She inhales ag
ain. Smoke curls from the corner of her mouth. “That’s very selfish. Let her die in ignorance.”
“Without really knowing me?”
“Mom knows what she needs to know.”
It gets dark. Back in the kitchen, Julie turns off the overhead light. The only illumination comes from the range hood over the stove.
“It’s been a long day.” Her yawn is exaggerated. He knows it’s a hint. “I should get some rest. I’m going to need a lot of strength over the next day or two.”
“We’re going to need strength,” he corrects her, and she surprises him with a tight embrace.
“Yeah, little brother, we, not me.” She tightens her hold on him and sighs into his ear. “This sounds horrible—I know it does—but I just want it to be over. For her. For me. For you.”
Before she can leave the kitchen he asks, “Does Tom Melvin still work at Gus’s?”
The question seems to annoy her. “You’ve been home for less than two hours, our mother is dying upstairs and now you want to organize a reunion with your high school buddies?”
“I’d just like to see him. To say hi.” This much is true enough. Also true, but unsaid, is that he has more unfinished business.
She frowns but hands him a key to the side door. “Don’t stay out too late. I’m tired of doing this alone.”
Gus’s service station is across the street from the Sonic on Fast Food Alley. It’s known locally for quick, honest auto work and cheap cigarettes and beer.
Tom Melvin manages the mini-mart, and Carver sees him through the window when he pulls the rental car into a space next to the air hose. He wonders if Tom will recognize him when he gets out of the car. He’s a different Carver DeMaris—fancier clothes and fancier hair than the young man who left Patience all those years ago—but he supposes the façade won’t be hard to see through.
The door chimes when Carver enters the mini-mart. For a few moments he glances around, transfixed by the overlit rows of Doritos, Slim Jims and stacked twelve-packs of Bud Light.
Then he turns, faces Tom and smiles. “Long time, no see.”
Tom’s expression is distant, his eye contact tentative. Carver thinks maybe he doesn’t recognize him, until Tom finally speaks.
“How you doin’, Carver?”
“Hanging in there, I guess.”
Carver hasn’t seen him in years, but Tom hasn’t changed. Dark hair cropped short, broad shoulders, tight waist. He looks good. Better than ever.
Tom nods. “Heard about your mom. Sorry.”
At the reference to his mother, Carver’s face flushes and he looks away, down an aisle toward a stacked tower of Pringles canisters. “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Julie says she probably has a couple of days at the most.”
“Damn, man, that’s rough.” During the long pause that follows, Tom starts restacking a pyramid of snack cakes next to the register. He’s still stacking when he finds his voice again. “Too young. What, sixty?”
“Sixty-three. Yeah, too young.”
“Well…sorry.”
Long seconds pass. Carver stares at Pringles canisters. Tom restacks snack cakes.
Finally, Tom clears his throat. “So can I get you anything?”
Carver looks at him for the first time since he discovered the Pringles Tower. “I’m good.”
“Slim Jim?”
“Nah.”
“Hot dog that’s been on the grill since last April?”
Carver laughs. “No, thanks.”
Tom pauses. “So if you don’t want anything, what brings you out tonight?”
There’s an uncharacteristic quaver in Carver’s voice. “I came to see you.”
Tom’s eyes narrow. It makes him even harder to read. “Well, you found me.”
Carver knows he can’t leave it at that. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the old days. High school.” He pauses, not sure he can finish the thought. But he does. “I wish things had turned out differently. I wish I’d handled things better.”
This is something they’ve never really talked about, and it sends Tom into another long silence before he speaks again.
“We were kids,” he says generously. His cheeks dimple when he smiles. “It happens. And, you know, the thing with your mother.”
“Yeah. That.” Carver can’t look Tom in the eyes, so he looks at the floor.
“Things turned out okay for you, so no regrets. You’re living in New York now, right?” Carver nods at the floor. “And it looks like you’re doing well in—whatever you do.”
Carver looks up. “Real estate.”
“Cool.” Tom’s smile falters. Left unsaid is that he earns his paycheck managing a mini-mart.
“I came out.” The shift in Carver’s voice is abrupt. “When I moved to New York I didn’t want to live a lie anymore.”
Now Tom’s smile has vanished altogether. “Are you out to your mother?”
“No. But my sister knows.”
“Close enough, I guess.”
“And, uh, you? Are you seeing anyone?”
Tom shakes his head. “Slim pickings here in Patience, Colorado. Sometimes I get away to Denver, but nothing serious.”
“So…” says Carver.
“So…” echoes Tom.
Carver’s discomfort returns. He knows why he came here, but he’s not sure what he hopes to accomplish.
“I guess I’d better get back,” he says finally.
Tom extends his hand. “Good seeing you again, Carver. And I know your mother had a problem with me, but I’m really sorry. I’ll say a prayer.”
As Carver is leaving, he looks back. They catch each other stealing one final glance.
They chuckle, but it’s an awkward moment.
***
Carver climbs the stairs to his mother’s bedroom. An old song is playing softly on Julie’s iPad.
“Mom. It’s me. It’s Ben. I’m here.” His real name sounds foreign to him. They started calling him Carver in middle school, after some neighborhood kids discovered his hobby of soap carving. The hobby lasted two weeks; the nickname stuck.
His mother breathes shallowly but doesn’t open her eyes.
Julie’s iPad, propped on the nightstand, repeats the song.
“So, Jules, what’s the deal with the song you’re torturing Mom with?” Carver asks his sister in the morning.
Julie’s eyes are puffy and red rimmed. She sets her empty coffee cup in the sink and rinses it. “You mean ‘Goody, Goody?’ I know. But it’s the only thing she’ll listen to.”
“Nonstop?”
Julie picks up the ceramic cup and drops it. It lands with a loud thump that shuts him up.
“Listen, Carver, I’ve been handling this situation alone for months. A visiting nurse every now and then, but mostly it’s just me. I know what she wants, and she wants ‘Goody, Goody.’ So let her listen to whatever she wants to fuckin’ listen to.”
He’s too shocked to put up a fight. “I just thought maybe a little variety…”
She shakes her head. Makes it clear that, to her, he’s just another visiting nurse who knows nothing. “For weeks, every time I’m within twenty feet of her room, I have to hear that damn song. Over and over and over again. But you know what? She’s the one who’s dying, so she gets to hear it.” Julie does the coffee-cup-drop thing again. The unspoken sibling communication they share tells him she means business and her little brother had better watch his ass.
She grabs a cigarette from the pack and motions to him. He’s afraid not to follow.
“Here’s the deal.” She waves the cigarette for emphasis. “We’re talking dementia, not just cancer. Dr. Hamilton thinks it’s because of the drugs, but I don’t know about that. She’s been forgetful and confused for a while. If ‘Goody, Goody’ helps keep her grounded, I don’t give a damn.”
Carver tries to recover. “Sorry, Jules, I didn’t realize.”
“That’s because you’re never around. Lucky me! I’m the one who only moved to Denver, so I’m always
a few hours away. Ninety minutes if I ride the gas pedal.”
He looks past her to the marigolds in the backyard. “How long has she been, uh…?”
Julie shrugs. “A couple of years. It wasn’t bad at first, but after the diagnosis she really started slipping.”
“Sorry.” He knows he sounds weak.
Julie doesn’t seem to hear him. She takes a drag from her cigarette, blows the smoke away from the house, closes her eyes tightly and says, “It always has to be ‘Goody-fuckin’-Goody.’”
And then she starts crying. Crying and smoking. In the driveway of a house that’ll soon be one more stop on the Patience Death-and-Desertion Vacancy Tour.
“I’m sorry,” she says, rallying. “I’m just so tired.”
Carver sort of hugs her. Julie blows smoke away from his face and sort of hugs him back.
Later, when she’s more or less back in control, she says, “Who’d ever think our god-fearing mother would get hooked on a recording by a guy who died of a heroin overdose fifty years ago?”
“What’s that?” he asks.
“She’ll only listen to one version of ‘Goody, Goody.’ The one by Frankie Lymon. Put another version on and she freaks.”
Carter appreciates the irony. “He died from an OD?”
“Back in the Sixties. Only twenty-five years old.”
“A year younger than I am now,” Carver says.
She points at him. “That song might be the DeMaris Family Curse.”
Later he takes a butter knife from the utensil drawer and uses it to pry up a floorboard in his bedroom. He’s done this before, but this time, like that last drive into Patience past the high school and post office and Cookley Park and Fast Food Alley, is notable. This will be the Last Pry.
The floorboard finally pops up. The manila folder is still there, coated with dust.
He brushes off the folder and opens it to the top sheet of paper. It’s a poem. A love poem. Flushed with embarrassment, he stops reading after two lines and tucks the folder full of bad poetry and unmailed letters into his suitcase.
Best Gay Romance 2014 Page 10