by Jerry Cole
“That’s still true, it just so happens that we have some friends in common.”
“You’re killing me,” Simon moaned.
“Are you mad?”
“No, I’m—” What? Nervous? Pissed off? Constipated? What? “I’m not mad; I just wasn’t expecting this on top of everything else.”
Simon walked out into the bedroom where Sparkle had laid his clothes out for him on the bed. Apparently, Simon was not allowed to choose his own underwear anymore because his trusted favorites didn’t give him the right silhouette and support. Whatever the hell that meant. As far as Simon was concerned, as long as Sparkle was happy, it wasn’t worth fighting over.
“I’m finished with Gina’s makeup, and your clothes are just there, so if you give me a minute, it shouldn’t take me long to finish,” Sparkle said, avoiding eye contact as he rushed around the room.
“Gina? That’s the neighbor, right?”
“Yup.” Sparkle slowed down momentarily to kiss him on the cheek for remembering, before resuming his rushing around.
“We’re early; you don’t have to rush.”
“If you don’t get there early you won’t get the best seats,” Sparkle said, skipping into the bathroom quickly. Simon’s routine was always to arrive as late as can be tolerated and leave at the first sign of a lull in the action, which could be hard to spot in these stuffy, black-tie affairs.
He knew better than to try to derail Sparkle Jones once he put his mind to something. If he was going to arrive early, he was going to need a drink. Unfortunately, his stomach couldn’t handle it. He would have to face the music sober tonight.
Simon dressed quickly and shoved a new roll of flavored antacids in his pocket as Sparkle stepped out of the bathroom.
“How do I look?”
Sparkle did a little spin, letting Simon get the full effect. Everything, from the way his hair was swept up into a neat ponytail to the slim cut of his tuxedo, was perfect. Simon had expected Sparkle to choose something outlandish, in an unconventional color or bold print. Instead, he went traditional, with a slim-cut tux in black and a bowtie with a satin finish. The flashiest parts of his outfit were the delicate watch he wore, the patent leather wedge-soled shoes in black, and the nude lip-gloss. Even his makeup was barely there, softening his already delicate features until he could easily be mistaken for a tall, flat-chested girl in a tux.
“Beautiful,” Simon whispered, tracing Sparkle’s eyebrow with his thumb.
“You thought I was going to come out looking like Little Richard, didn’t you?”
“No, I—”
“Don’t lie,” Sparkle teased, wrapping his arms around Simon’s shoulders and kissing his chin.
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
“Women’s—”
“Intuition,” Simon finished, nodding. “There is only one problem with that, dear. I’m not into women.”
“Then you’re in luck,” Sparkle leaned in close, “because I’m not a woman. I just happen to be an exceptionally good-looking man.”
“And modest, too,” Simon smiled, kissing Sparkle deeply. What started as a warm moment of affection quickly threatened to turn into a full-blown blaze.
“Let's get out of here before we miss my big moment altogether,” Sparkle said, pulling himself away from Simon’s embrace and dragging the reluctant hero out the door behind him.
As soon as they arrived, Sparkle spotted “the best seat in the room” directly under the central chandelier, right in front of the stage. The table seated six, which was perfect for Sparkle’s purposes.
“Don’t you want to mingle?” Simon asked as Sparkle prepared to camp out in his spot.
“I will, once everybody else arrives. I told Jerrod and Aaron that they had no choice but to come since they stiffed me last year,” Sparkle argued, snagging a flute of champagne from a passing waiter.
“Okay, then I’ll stay with you,” Simon took a seat, looking almost regal as he crossed his legs. He passed by the champagne for water. His stomach was still giving him problems. Simon chalked it up to nerves and waited, chatting amicably with the other attendees. Sparkle was right about one thing. It was the perfect spot, not just to be seen, but to see what was going on all over the room. Without having to move, Simon had already greeted a dozen city officials, introducing Sparkle as “my partner, Sean Jones.”
“Oh, there they are. It’s show time!” Sparkle stood up and waved his hand, catching the attention of Jerrod, Aaron, Aaron’s tailor, Morty, and his neighbor Gina. The foursome looked shocked as Sparkle made his way across the room, strutting like it was his last runway in Paris.
“How did you get here so fast?” Gina asked in amazement.
“If you want good seats, you have to get here early,” Sparkle said with a smile.
“But you did my makeup first, and it still took me forever to get dressed,” she marveled.
“Oh honey, I do three costume changes a night in a dark little room under the stage. This,” Sparkle indicated his outfit, “is nothing.”
“So, who is the mystery man?” Aaron interjected.
“Come on. I want you all to meet him. Just, please you guys, don’t embarrass me. It’s still a little new, and we are both still in the awkward stage.”
“Where did you meet this guy anyway?”
“Would you believe at one of those creepy old bathhouses that I swore I would never go to? I mean, I will never go back, but it was worth the trip,” Sparkle said, blushing.
Jerrod and Aaron stopped dead in their tracks as Simon stood to meet the group.
“Simon Burns?” Aaron said in disbelief.
“Good evening Jerrod, Aaron,” Simon said, nodding in Aaron’s direction and giving them his one hundred kilowatt smile.
“Good to see you again, sir.” Jerrod was the first one to recover from the shock.
“Oh, no need to be so formal, Jerrod. We’re all family here, aren’t we?”
He said it like a rhetorical question, but his expression told everybody that it was a request—a plea for understanding and acceptance. Jerrod gripped his extended hand in a firm handshake.
“Yes, sir. We’re all family here.”
Sparkle finally stopped holding his breath and escorted his party to their seats, playing host even though it was not his party.
“You know we have to talk later,” Jerrod whispered into Sparkle’s ear.
“Of course, but what do you think? No too shabby, right?”
Jerrod looked at Simon, chatting with Aaron and an account executive from one of the multi-national corporations that partnered with Taft.
“Not bad at all, kid,” Jerrod said, winking and nudging Sparkle with his shoulder.
Two hours later, they were all enjoying dinner together like old friends. Simon looked around the table and felt that he was truly among friends. People who would accept him for who he was instead of who he appeared to be. They were a ragged bunch of misfits, but a lifetime of meeting all the right people in all the right places had left him lonely. This was much better, and to date, this was the best black-tie affair he ever attended.
Simon got up from the table and excused himself to the bathroom. The dull ache in his stomach had bloomed into a sharp pain. Something was terribly wrong. He could feel it.
Twenty minutes later Sparkle’s cell phone rang.
“I need your help.”
“Simon?” Sparkle immediately got up from the table and excused himself.
“Can you help me get out of here? I’m in the bathroom. I think something is wrong.”
Sparkle hung up and jogged to the restroom, where Simon was doubled over by the sinks. His face was pale, and he had broken out into a cold sweat. It was clear that he was not okay.
“What the hell? You need an ambulance!”
“No, don’t call one now. It’ll be all over the news. Just help me get to the car and we’ll drive to the emergency room.”
“Simon, how can you be worried about those
kinds of things now? You need medical attention!”
“And I’m going to get it. Just do things my way for right now, okay? Please. Help me.”
“Okay,” Sparkle agreed, supporting most of Simon’s weight as they walked back to the car. Sparkle slid him into the passenger's side seat and took the wheel, peeling out of the parking lot and flying down the city streets towards the hospital emergency room.
Chapter Eighteen
Sparkle sat in the hallway waiting for the hospital staff to wheel Simon out and take him into surgery. It wasn’t life-threatening, they said. Not yet, at least. In all likelihood, the combination of antacids and changes in his diet had allowed him to get this far without trouble.
Sparkle took out his phone and called Jerrod. “Hey,” he said weakly.
“Hey, what happened? Is everything okay?”
“I’m at City General. They’re about to take Simon for surgery. He has a perforation. Apparently, the idiot had a nasty ulcer that he refused to take care of,” Sparkle answered, sounding less worried than he felt.
“I’m on my way,” Jerrod hung up the phone before Sparkle had a chance to stop him. He didn’t bother to call him back. He didn’t want to be alone.
“Miss Jones?”
“Mister,” Sparkle corrected the nurse.
“Oh I am so sorry about that,” she giggled nervously. “I hope you weren’t offended.”
“Not at all, sweetheart,” Sparkle answered sweetly.
“Your boyfriend would like to see you,” she said, smiling brightly.
Sparkle nodded, taking a deep breath before he opened the door and walked into the room where they were prepping Simon.
“You’ll do just about anything to get out of slow dancing with me under that fabulous chandelier,” Sparkle said, charging into the room with his hand on his hip.
“You got me,” Simon said weakly. He was already wearing a cloth cap and had leads for IVs and EKGs protruding from his skin. He looked sick. Not at all like the robust man who Sparkle paraded in front of his closest friends just a few hours ago.
“We gave him something for the pain,” the nurse whispered.
“Oh, Julie, this is my boyfriend, Sean,” Simon announced, looking slightly glassy eyed.
“They gave you the good stuff, didn’t they?” Sparkle sat on the edge of the bed and grasped Simon’s free hand. “Did you need something?”
“I just wanted to see you. You are so gorgeous. You looked so nice tonight. I ruined it. I’m old. Old men ruin everything. My old man ruined everything. I’ll ruin everything.”
“What are you talking about? It was perfect. You were perfect. As soon as you are better, we’re going to the gala, and it’s going to be perfect,” Sparkle stroked his cheek and kissed the back of his hand.
“Don’t lie. I’m getting old, and you are so…” tears filled Simon’s eyes as he tried to focus his hazy mind. “You are so, everything. Just everything. And I would have had it. I would have had everything, but I was late. I was late, and you still sat here with me.”
“I’m going to stay here with you until you get better. Don’t worry. Just get better, okay?”
Simon didn’t say anything else. Sparkle held his hand until the anesthesiologist put him out and they wheeled him away. When Sparkle walked back out into the hallway, Jerrod and Aaron were there waiting.
“Are you okay?” Aaron walked over and threw his arms around Sparkle. Though the two men could easily have been rivals, they had formed a unique bond over the last few months. They united around their mutual love for Jerrod, sappy romance novels, and fashion.
“I’m okay. They say he has a perforated ulcer, which is why he was in so much pain. It won’t kill him, but it will lay him up for a while,” Sparkle reported.
“How are you?” Jerrod handed him a paper cup full of black coffee.
“I’ll be okay. He scared the crap out of me. Do you know how long he must have been dealing with this for it to perforate? Why didn’t he tell me? We could have fixed it together.”
“You don’t know Mr. Burns very well if you have to ask,” Jerrod said. Sparkle glared at him.
“He isn’t the kind of man who would want to seem weak or needy in front of others,” Aaron offered, softly.
“I’m not others. I’m his boyfriend. We practically live together.”
“All the more reason why he may not want you to see him as weak. He’s a wealthy and well-respected man. When he speaks, men listen. Maybe he isn’t ready to let you see him at his worst.”
Sparkle thought about the Simon Burns he met, strolling through the bathhouse like it was his private kingdom. The man made a week’s worth of plans happen in a few days to bury his mother. That was the same Simon Burns who worried that his illness made him old, that his age would ruin everything, that nobody would ever truly love him for all that he was.
“Stupid,” Sparkle spat out.
“Also true,” Jerrod said, smiling. “So what do you need from us? A change of clothes? Are you hungry?”
“It’s a shame I didn’t get to stay until the end. I looked good tonight,” Sparkle sighed, sipping his coffee.
“You did. I wish I could pull off a suit like that, but I just don’t have the body for it,” Aaron sat beside him.
“You look pretty snazzy yourself. I see Morty hooked you up, especially here through the shoulders,” Sparkle replied.
Jerrod watched as the conversation devolved into mutually praising each other for being the most handsome men on the planet. When Aaron went to get snacks, Jerrod sauntered over and gave him a grave look.
“Tonight, is the easy part. The hard part is trying to help somebody else stay strong as they recover,” he said.
“Simon is strong. He will be okay.” The words sounded so cliché, he hated saying them.
“The strong ones are the hardest,” Jerrod said, nodding with certainty. Sparkle fell silent and let the words sink in. When it came to dealing with human frailty, Jerrod had the inside track. Growing up with a mentally-ill mother taught him a lot. Sparkle could only hope to do half as well as Jerrod had.
***
Simon woke up feeling like he’d been skewered with a red hot iron. His insides ached, though his body didn’t show any signs of trauma. Somebody held his hand, though it took him a moment to realize that his companion had fallen asleep on duty. Simon watched Sparkle sleep, his face pressed against the mattress. Judging by the gray haze outside his window, it must be early in the morning, and exhaustion must have overcome him.
Simon never took the time to just watch. Sparkle had changed his clothes, trading his tux for a cream sweater and camo-print pants and replacing his makeup with silver earrings. The effect was perfectly neutral. Neither formal nor casual. Neither masculine nor feminine. But somehow, it was perfectly Sparkle. Try as he might, Simon couldn’t imagine the man being any other way.
“This guy loves to play in the margins,” Simon mused.
His body ached, and his mouth was devoid of any saliva, but he didn’t bother to push the call button on the edge of his bed. He didn’t want to disturb the man sleeping so soundly next to him.
Overriding all of his aches and pains was a warmth that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. The feeling of being cared for, genuinely cared for, was so unfamiliar to him that it took his breath away. More and more, every day, Simon had been asking himself how he had been living these last years. How had he gotten so inured to the relentless beat of isolation? How had he forgotten how to care and be cared for? Why did he wait until now to end his self-imposed seclusion?
It's easy to convince yourself that you’re happy when your “love life” features an endless conveyor belt of fresh young faces. And as the years went on, the faces kept seeming younger and younger, until he needed them to feel anything. When he looked at them he could see himself as the man he once was and always thought he would be.
With Sparkle, it was different. Sparkle showed him the man he could one day be, in all
its awesome and frightening detail.
Sparkle stirred, seemingly disturbed by Simon’s silent musings.
“You woke up?” Sparkle sat up and stretched.
“Can you call a nurse? I feel like shit.”
“No problem,” Sparkle kissed Simon on the lips, quickly, before wandering out of the room to find a nurse.
Simon habitually avoided thinking about his age. He was a firm believer in being as old as you feel. As he sat in the hospital bed, nursing an ulcer, he suddenly felt old. He was far from a senior citizen and youthful by anybody’s estimation. But, the years were beginning to show. The threadbare spots in his patchwork of money, charisma, and arrogance were finally showing themselves. It would only be a matter of time before he would be “that guy.” The one who was too old to be out late carousing, and too old to be bedding a twenty-something artist with gender fluid fashion sense and an ass that made men weak in the knees.
If he was only as old as he felt, today he felt geriatric.
“Mr. Burns, I’m Anastasia. How are you feeling?”
“Like you filled my belly with molten lava. Can you give me something for the pain?”
“Sure can. You took a little longer than normal to come out from under the anesthesia, so we held off on some of the painkillers. It looks like everything went well. The doctor will be in momentarily to give you some instructions.”
“Can you get me a cup of water as well?”
“After the doctor speaks with you I’ll bring you something to drink,” she said with the kind of smile that means no, even if her words sounded like yes.
Simon frowned. He hated to be managed.
“And how long will that take?”
“I already paged him; he is on his way.” The sharp edge in Anastasia’s voice was as effective as an eye-roll in communicating her impression of the cranky businessman.
“Thank you so much for your help, Anna,” Sparkle said, walking into the room and smiling brightly. Relief was etched into his face as he looked back and forth between the two adversaries.
“No problem. You be sure to go home and get some rest, too. He is going to need you at your best,” Anna said, nodding her vote of encouragement as she passed Sparkle.