Marianne would laugh at him if he ever admitted to looking at men. She’d say it made sense for him to be bisexual, too; he was the only one of their high school friends to turn out straight.
The waiter came back out and Kevin wasn’t quick enough to look away. Their eyes met, and he swallowed, feeling heat in his chest that he couldn’t blame on the food yet. The waiter gave him a quick, puzzled smile before turning toward the kitchen.
He dragged his eyes away from his retreating back.
Kevin’s brain pushed up the image of the mailman’s dimple again, and Kevin closed his eyes for a moment as he let the warmth in his belly spread. Was he ogling the guy? Was he attracted to him? Was Marianne right about him? Had he somehow missed his own sexuality for sixty years?
Well. Maybe. But that was something to consider after lunch with Ray and Kathy. They were good friends of nearly forty years, but they weren’t the sort of friends he could share that kind of revelation with.
Come to think of it, he didn’t know if he had any of those kinds of friends. Besides maybe Marianne, but that was a weird thing to discuss with your ex.
And of course that was when he heard Ray’s booming voice greeting Jo and Natasha as they passed the bar. He shook his head a little to clear it, then rose to shake Ray’s hand and kiss Kathy’s cheek, pushing his new personal realizations down to deal with…later.
“How’ve you been, honey?” asked Kathy as she sat across from him around the small table. Ray settled beside her, throwing an arm across the back of her chair.
“Retirement is overrated,” he said with a smile. “Just a warning.”
“Oh come on,” said Ray. “You can’t tell me you’re out of episodes of Law and Order already.”
Kathy slapped him gently on the shoulder. “Ray, you know Kevin’s not one for sitting around.” She grinned at Kevin. “That’s why he’s going to outlive us all.”
“It’s not that I miss working.” Kevin wasn’t sure he could explain it. “I don’t know what it is.” He smiled at Charles as he walked up to the table—not the red-haired man, who seemed to be handling the other side of the restaurant, bicep flexing as he lowered a tray to a stand. Charles had to be nearly twenty, now. God, that kid grew up fast. When the Kapoor family first moved to Swanley in the eighties, his dad had worked in the bakery for Marianne’s dad. Now they owned Masala, one of the hottest restaurants in town. Those thirty years had flown by without a break, seemed like. Sometimes it felt like he was the only person stuck in the past, everyone else growing up and moving on. Marianne was dating, the kids had all moved out, and everyone on the first city council he’d served on back in the day was dead. He’d been twenty years younger than the youngest of them, but still. Made a man think about his mortality, when colleagues started dying en masse. And he was getting morbid. He smiled at Charles as Ray finished his order and asked for his usual mixed grill plate and a beer.
*
PJ’s was smaller than Awais recalled from his hazy memories, but it was cozy and cute, all dark wood and brass fittings, a series of booths on one side and a long bar down the other with a wider back room behind it. It looked like a thousand bars he’d been in over the years in the dozen towns he’d lived in since moving out. He vaguely recognized a few of the people drinking at the bar—the Black guy from the courthouse, the older white couple who lived in the skinny brick house on the corner of Winchester and Tremont, the clerk who had checked him out at the supermarket the other day—but nobody he’d had more than a ten-word conversation with. Even the bartender looked vaguely familiar, dark-skinned and heavyset with wide cheekbones. But he didn’t know anyone. And that was fine. All his joking about picking guys up aside, he really needed to get out of his aunt Fatima’s house for an evening.
Although if that silver fox from Washakum Avenue showed up and started flirting, Awais wouldn’t turn him down. He did appreciate a distinguished gentleman.
As he sipped his beer, he thought about what Maurice had said about Swanley. Queer communities were common in the Boston suburbs and the towns just outside them, and it was something people in the area seemed to take for granted. Awais had spent eight years in the military, mostly stationed in South Carolina. He didn’t take his liberal hometown for granted anymore. Massachusetts had plenty of problems with him—racism, Islamophobia, to name a few—but his queerness hadn’t been an issue yet. That was a nice change, at least. And Swanley in particular seemed welcoming. He hadn’t realized how welcoming when he’d been a kid, barely out to himself and nowhere near ready to join any organized queerness, but he was glad of it now.
An older woman, maybe ten years older than him, sat down two stools away, smiling at him briefly before catching the eye of the bartender. She seemed familiar somehow, her bearing and her face, but he couldn’t place her. The bartender came over as he pondered, handing Awais his beer. “Here you are,” she said. “Marianne, what’ll you have?”
The woman shrugged. “What I want is a margarita. What I’m going to have is a Corona.”
The bartender smiled sympathetically. “Rough week? I’ll put in a lime.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Tish.” The woman—Marianne, Awais supposed—let her eyes fall closed for a moment as Tish turned away.
“You all right?” Awais asked, unable to keep himself from butting in. “You sure you don’t need that margarita?”
She opened her eyes. “I’m fine,” she said. “And I’ve got to be up at five, so a margarita is probably not a great idea. Tish would make me one if I asked them, but I’d regret it in the morning.”
Awais noted the pronoun and filed it away. “What’s got you needing tequila on a Thursday evening?”
She turned on her stool slightly, meeting his eyes. Hers were warm and brown in a round, pale face, laugh lines tracing the corners. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh,” he said. “I know where I know you from! You work at that bakery, the one on Main Street!”
She smiled slightly. “That’s my bakery,” she said. “You’re a customer?”
He held out a hand. “Awais Siddiqui. I’ve delivered your mail a couple times.”
Her smile warmed, crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Oh! I didn’t recognize you without the uniform.” She considered him for a moment. “Wait, you’re Fatima’s nephew, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “I forget everyone in this town knows everyone else,” he said ruefully. “Except me, these days. I grew up here, until I was twelve or so. So there’s a lot of kind-of-familiar faces.”
“I knew you back then,” said Marianne. She shook his hand. “Marianne Windmere. I babysat you a few times, way back when. I knew you looked familiar.”
“Really?” Awais laughed. “I’m sorry, I can’t say I remember.”
“Well, you were maybe four, so I’m not surprised.”
Awais pulled out his wallet, putting a ten on the bar. “I’m buying your beer, then, since I’m sure my mother didn’t pay you nearly enough to deal with my nonsense.”
She laughed. It was a nice laugh.
“You want to talk about what’s up?”
Marianne sighed. “Just a rough couple days,” she said as Tish set her beer in front of her, a thick slice of lime in the neck of the bottle. “Bad election, weird bureaucratic issues, awkward romantic problems.”
He winced. “All at the same time?”
She raised her beer in a salute, pushing the lime down into the bottle so the beer fizzed.
He tapped his against it. “Well. Here’s to a better weekend,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy my last two days off before Christmas. It’s not going to get any quieter before then.”
“Doris says it’s getting bad over there.”
He shrugged. “It’s this way every year, at every office. But you never really get used to it. Definitely getting my steps in every day, I can tell you that.”
“And Swanley does itself up for Christmas, I’m warning you now,” said Marianne. “But I open up the bakery in
the afternoon on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, if you’re looking for someplace to be that’s not all green and red. Fatima usually stops by.”
“Thanks,” he said, touched.
She sipped the last of her beer and sighed, glancing at the clock. “Nine o’clock,” she said. “Baker’s bedtime.”
“Hey,” he said as she stood. “It was nice to meet you. Again, I guess.”
She smiled. “You too, Awais. Welcome back to Swanley.”
Chapter Two
Kevin was retired. No, really, he was. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a lawyer or a member of the community anymore–he still had his fingers in a couple of pots. When his mail carrier for the last fifteen years, Doris, mentioned her sister was in danger of eviction, he had to help out. Pro bono, of course, because, as he mentioned frequently, he was retired. So he’d been fighting with the management company for a few months, trying to get her security deposit and last month’s rent back after she’d been kicked out for breaking her lease and letting her best friend stay on her couch. And to make things worse, the owner of the building had just been elected to the state House of Representatives. Power was not on Tabitha’s side. He couldn’t let it slide, so he’d walked her through her options.
Add to that, the fact she was both an immigrant and a trans woman, and it made the whole situation a mess. Kevin hated mess. Especially mess that was mostly due to people not showing basic human compassion. The only reason Eleanor had been staying with Tabitha was that her ex-boyfriend had made threats. A lease stipulation saying no subletters didn’t apply to guests not paying rent. At least, that’s what Kevin was encouraging her to argue. Once she got a lawyer who wasn’t retired. Once he finished his email to Tabitha, he closed the program and shut the computer down.
His apartment felt very empty, though, and neither of his daughters were picking up when he tried calling them. He knew better than to try to call Jacob in December; between school and his postal job, it was a nightmare of a month for his son these days. At least Rosh Hashanah had been early this year—Jacob had made it home for a few days, just barely overlapping with his sisters’ visits. When the kids all visited was the only time he missed their old house on West Springfield Drive: Anna and Janie had stayed with Marianne and Jacob with him, and he’d missed having them all together. The kids, anyway. He loved Marianne as a dear friend and family member, these days, but they could never share a house again. The divorce was amicable but not that amicable.
Sighing, he headed out the front door, grimacing at the Christmas display on the bookstore next door. Three days until Christmas. They’d celebrated it halfheartedly most years when they’d been married, a nod to Marianne’s cultural roots, but she was so solidly atheist that it had felt a little silly. His Jewish faith had felt more important to him, and they’d raised the kids very secularly Jewish. The way the town went all-out for Christmas annoyed him in a niggling way, like an irritating splinter. He’d considered raising a fuss while he’d been on the city council, but it had never seemed worth the effort at the time. At least he’d be able to call Marianne on Christmas morning, and maybe Fatima or Doris or the Shapiros would want to have dinner. Swanley did have its share of non-Christians. They should really start up some kind of not-Christmas brunch tradition. He’d have to ask Marianne about that. Maybe she and Rana could cater it together, make it a multicultural thing.
It was strange, thinking about Rana and Marianne, he thought as he pushed open the door to PJ’s and waved a greeting at Tish behind the bar. Marianne was so confident in her sexuality—her bisexuality. She had been for decades, since before it was a thing people talked about. And now he was wondering— Had he missed his own mind giving him signs? Had he been so preoccupied with her difference, so stressed out by the idea that he might not be enough for her, that he’d ignored something so fundamental about himself?
There had been clues over the years. Men he’d been close to and he’d desperately wanted to be closer. Men who he found fascinating, who he could spend a whole day golfing with and still be disappointed when they parted ways. The boy he’d met at summer camp in the midseventies, when they’d laid down side by side in a field for hours, shoulders brushing and talking in hushed voices while staring at the stars, filled with bottomless, formless yearning.
So maybe he was bisexual. Huh. He’d have to think about that. That was—big, maybe.
“Mr. McNamara!” The voice surprised Kevin out of his thoughts, his hand knocking into his tumbler of whiskey and nearly sending it flying. A slim, tanned hand caught it before it could go over the edge of the bar and Kevin looked up into smiling dark-brown eyes.
The goddamn mailman. With the beard, and the eyes, and the shoulders, the one who’d sent him into this panicked spiral in the first place.
Of course it was.
*
Awais set the glass of alcohol back on the bar, clapping the guy from Washakum Avenue on the shoulder. “Careful, man,” he said, feeling the smile spread further across his face. The guy was so dapper in his suit, shirt collar unbuttoned, cufflinks glinting from the edge of his suit jacket sleeves. Like a retired James Bond, or a movie president. Just deliciously presentable.
Except that Awais seemed to fluster the hell out of him. Which made it even better.
“Hi,” he said. “This seat taken?”
“Um, no,” he paused. “And call me Kevin.”
“Awais.” He held out a hand and Kevin took it, shaking it firmly. His hand was warm and dry, his shake strong but not that kind of squeeze men sometimes gave him, trying to prove their masculinity. Awais didn’t hide his identity; he knew he didn’t look straight, with his fitted, colorful oxford shirt and slim jeans, and the dark metal studs in his ears. That freaked a lot of men out. Especially ones who were obviously attracted to him, like this one. And ones who were obviously very confused about that attraction. Because, his a-little-bit-femme style aside, Awais was definitely a man. Beard, broad shoulders, all that jazz; closet cases couldn’t resist him, but they also couldn’t justify away their attraction by saying it was because he looked girly.
This guy didn’t seem to be doing that. He was watching Awais closely, eyes steady, even if his cheeks were the slightest bit pink. “So, I haven’t seen you around before,” he said finally. “Are you new to the area?”
“I transferred from Providence,” said Awais. “Came up to help out my grandma. And I heard Swanley was a good place to be.”
Kevin smiled. “It is,” he said. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
“I spent a few years here when I was younger.” Awais glanced over to catch Tish’s eye, and they nodded and started toward them.
“You’re back,” they said, smiling. “Good to see you again. What’ll it be?”
Awais turned to Kevin. “What’re you having?”
Kevin’s eyebrows shot up his forehead, his blue eyes widening. They really were a striking shade. “Scotch,” he said. “Glenfiddich. Why?”
“I’ll have what he’s having,” said Awais. “And another for Kevin, on me.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Kevin looked puzzled.
“Hey, I haven’t met many people outside of family friends,” said Awais. “You’re doing me a favor, letting me hang out with a local.”
“How long have you been back in town?”
“About six weeks.” He smiled his thanks at Tish, taking the glass from them. “My grandma mostly knows friends from the mosque, though, and most of them are—” he winced. “Well. They’re not my generation. She’s ninety-eight.”
Kevin laughed. “I see. You’ve got a problem with older folks?”
“Hey, I’m almost fifty! But I need a little more excitement than history walks and shuffleboard. Natasha–I don’t know if you know her, she’s Doris’s wife?”
“I do know her,” said Kevin. “She’s Tish’s sister.”
From the other end of the bar, Tish looked up and waved a hand.
Awais stared at t
hem for a moment. “I forget how small this town is. Well, she’s introduced me to some of the younger people in the community, but I’d love some friends who don’t report back to my grandmother. I’m a little too old for that.”
“That’s fair.” Kevin took a long sip from his drink, his tongue running over his lower lip as he pulled the glass away. “My grandmother was born in the eighteen nineties, so she probably wouldn’t approve of much I do.”
Okay, so Awais didn’t like to make assumptions. He was treating this like a regular, not-flirty encounter with a customer and neighbor until he got a really clear sign otherwise. He didn’t want to mistake politeness for interest and make things really awkward the next time he had to deliver to Kevin’s building. But he just couldn’t help it. He was getting some signals. “What do you get up to that she wouldn’t approve of?”
Kevin hesitated. “Well.” He took another sip. Awais could almost see him gathering his courage. “I’m divorced, first of all. Not something she would have been a supporter of. And I don’t go to services nearly enough for her tastes. But she knew about that when she was alive.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound too bad,” said Awais.
“She hated football,” he continued, glancing up at the screen. “She was a rabid Dodgers fan, back when they were in Brooklyn, and didn’t understand why anyone would watch any other sport.”
“Not a lot of Dodgers fans in Massachusetts.” Awais sipped his own drink. He wasn’t usually a whiskey drinker, but it went down more smoothly than he’d expected. The taste lingered on his tongue, and Kevin’s eyes followed the movement of the glass as he raised it to his lips again. “I’m guessing she wasn’t a Swanley native.”
He swallowed. “No. No, she was born in Russia. Came here in her teens and met my grandfather. They got married and moved up here in the thirties. That’s how I ended up a Patriots fan, to her eternal dismay.”
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