The Importance of Being Kevin

by Steven Harper

  Mr. Dean followed us into the house. “You should have taken—”

  “The back way, I know,” Peter finished. “I don’t need you in here. You can go write a brief or something.”

  Mr. Dean nodded and whipped out his cell phone. “Larry? Yeah, I need an update.” And he walked away.

  The house had a different feel to it. Before, I hadn’t seen much of “the help,” but now men and women in black and white zipped around with serious looks on their faces. A tight feeling hung in the air. Peter ignored all of them until a woman in a white apron hurried up.

  “Do you need anything, Mr. Peter?” she said.

  “No, Vicky. I don’t—wait.” Peter turned to me. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

  He was going to order food from that kitchen. You’re supposed to say No, I’m fine, when people offer you food, but Peter had said he was hungry, and I was always hungry, and anyway, screw it if I was going to turn down free food from a billionaire’s kitchen staff.

  “Starving,” I said.

  “Send some sandwiches and pop and stuff up to my room, please,” he said. “And bring me a house cell phone—a blank one.”

  Vicky bustled away.

  “You didn’t want to text the kitchen?” I said as we climbed the stairs.

  “She asked, I told.”

  Peter and I went straight into his room. It was as humongous as I remembered. The minute I shut the door behind us, Peter flopped onto the bed.

  “Shit,” he said.

  I sat next to him, careful as a cat and trying not to be pissed off about the guy at the door. “Everyone looks freaked out down there. Is that because of you?”

  “Yeah. They’re all trying to look busy because Mom is on a rampage.” He rolled over onto his back. “The whole family is going torpedo ballistic. I guess I can’t blame them.”

  “Guess you can’t,” I said.

  A long moment stretched between us like a rotting rubber band. I had no idea what to say next.

  “Kev,” Peter said finally, “I absolutely didn’t do it. You have to believe me.”

  I couldn’t stand it anymore, not with him sitting next to me looking so scared and handsome and… so Peter. I touched his hand, then grabbed it. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I told you once.”

  “Tell me again,” I countered. “With more detail.”

  He paused and then nodded. “But you can’t repeat any of this,” he said in a dad kind of voice. “I’m not supposed to talk about this stuff to anyone but my lawyer. I could get in big legal trouble.”

  “Even though you already told me.”

  “That was… before.” Peter’s green eyes were dark and serious. “But I’ll tell you everything anyway, if you promise not to tell.”

  For some reason that made me feel a little better. He was putting himself in danger by talking to me, and who would lie in circumstances like that? I crossed my heart and held up my right hand.

  “Be serious, Kev.”

  “I am serious.”

  He told me. He talked about driving up to Les’s craphole apartment, about pounding on the door, about knocking Les down, about the look of surprise and fear on Les’s face. When Peter got to the part where he was pounding the shit out of Les, my heart was racing around my rib cage.

  “Les was lying there on the floor, groaning,” he finished. “I think his nose must’ve been broken, because it was bleeding pretty bad, but he was definitely alive, Kev. I said I wanted to kill him, but after I hit him a few times, I realized I didn’t. Not really.”

  Peter swallowed, and I grabbed his hand again. His big, bruised hand that was so much larger than mine. “Okay,” I said. “Then what?”

  “I grabbed his phone and took off. It was unlocked, so I could disable the security. I needed to delete the video he said he had, but I didn’t want to hang around to do it. When I got home, I found the video and wiped it. That’s all.” Peter swiped at his eyes. “But I guess someone saw me and my car, because the next day, Detective Malloy arrested me. I don’t want to go through that shit ever again.”

  “What did you do with the phone?” I asked. It wasn’t what I’d meant to say. The words just popped out.

  Peter pointed. “It’s in my desk drawer.”

  “Did you tell the cops about it?”

  “Fuck no. Not even Mr. Dean or my other lawyers know about it. I put it in airplane mode and shut it off in case there’s a GPS on it or something. I’ll throw it in the river later.”

  “Why didn’t you do it already?”

  “I haven’t had the chance,” Peter complained. “After I got home, I spent like an hour finding that video. I didn’t want that to get out, you know?”

  Because Peter was over eighteen and I was only sixteen. Jesus, we had to be so careful. That didn’t seem fair. It was only a difference of three years. But the thought of the police coming for me like Les said they would clenched my stomach up like a nest of snakes.

  “I was going to give Les his phone back at rehearsal,” Peter went on. “But I forgot to bring it. Thank god I did! I would’ve been fucked if Malloy had found it when she arrested me. Since then I haven’t had the chance to sneak it out of the house without someone noticing.”

  “Let me see it,” I commanded.

  Peter gave me a look, then went to his desk and slipped it out. The phone was an ordinary smartphone, though a bunch of cracks spiderwebbed the screen.

  “Don’t turn it on,” Peter warned. “If the GPS activates, the cops might be able to find it. It’s still in airplane mode, but no reason to take a risk.”

  “Okay.” I turned it over. The dark spiderwebs shattered the reflection of my face into a thousand pieces. “You’re sure the video is gone?”

  “Completely,” Peter said.

  I sighed and let myself feel a little relief. “It’s bad enough you’re up for murder. I don’t want you to get in trouble for kissing a minor.”

  Peter blinked at me like a confused cat. “What?”

  “The video showed you and me kissing in the park,” I said, confused that he seemed confused. “I’m only sixteen, and you’re nineteen, so it’s statutory rape or something.”

  Now Peter faced me on the bed. “That’s what you’ve been worried about? Our ages?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Aren’t you? I mean, we have to keep everything so quiet between us, and—”

  “Kev”—Peter grabbed my shoulders—“age of consent in Michigan is sixteen. Once you’re old enough, you can do whatever you want with anyone you want. It doesn’t matter if the other person is male or female, sixteen or sixty. I asked one of my lawyers, and she told me.”

  “What?” My mind was a little mouse running in circles inside a cage, and the phone slipped out of my grip. “How can that be right? Les said… he said….”

  “Les lied, Kev.” Peter took both my hands. “He wanted to control you, so he lied.”

  Les lied. Even when Les was dead, he lied. That lie had chained me up, kept me quiet. I couldn’t get my head around it. It seemed like I should feel relief, a sudden wrench as a bunch of tension disappeared. Instead I felt black-hole dread. I couldn’t let go of the idea that Peter and I had done something illegal. Wrong. Les had dumped a burden on my back that had bent my body until I forgot how to straighten out.

  “If it’s not illegal,” I said around the nonexistent weight, “why did you want the video so bad?”

  “Are you kidding? Kev, we’ve been over this. My family doesn’t know about me—about us. Marriage is legal, but that doesn’t mean my family approves. My dad uses the word fag all the time, and Mom lets him. It’s top-down policy at Morse that gay people get fired.”

  “Now that’s illegal!”

  “Not in this state. Marriage is equal, but you can still toss someone out of their job for being gay. The saying around Morse is ‘Married on Sunday, fired on Monday.’ The law is stupid that way. So are my parents.” Peter looked away. “That video could wreck me
.”

  “How… how can we be… you know—” I was hesitant all over again. “—together? If your family hates people like us?”

  “When I turn twenty-one, the trust fund my grandpa left me comes under my control,” he said. “It’s enough to live on in decent style even if my parents throw me out. We have to look like just friends until then.”

  “Twenty-one?” I squawked. “That’s two whole years!”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve been waiting to turn twenty-one my whole life.”

  He leaned in and kissed me. The kiss was warm and nervous at the same time. Hesitantly, his arm went around me. Peter’s kiss seemed to rush over my entire skin. It teased at my hair. He slid his tongue over my lips in a sensitive trail.

  “Nine,” he said in a husky, sexy voice.

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything.

  “Are… are we okay?” Peter asked finally.

  I thought for a long moment. The scared look on Peter’s face made me want to run and hide. “I… want to be.”

  “But you don’t know.” Peter pulled away. “Sure. Fine.”

  “Peter Finn!” I said. “Don’t even!”

  He blinked at me. “Don’t what?”

  “This is a shitload of… shit for you to dump on me,” I said. “It’s scary, okay? I don’t know what’s going on with me or what’s happening next or who I can talk to about anything. You can’t make me sort this out all at once.”

  “I guess.” I could tell he wasn’t happy about it, but what else could I do? “Tell me something,” he said abruptly.

  My breath tightened a little. “Sure.”

  “Why do you call me Peter Finn?”

  “Do I call you that?” Little pause as I thought about it. “I don’t know. You said your family calls you that. I guess it’s who you really are. Not Peter Morse or Peter the actor. Peter Finn. I guess I kind of fell into it.” Another pause. “Do you want me to stop?”

  Peter touched my hand. “I like it.”

  “Okay.” I was little embarrassed for some reason, so I tried to lighten the mood. “Maybe we need to come up with your nickname for me.”

  “Hmm.” Peter frowned. “Kevkev?”

  “No.”

  Peter stroked the back of my hand in a way I liked very much. “Sugar buns?”

  “Definitely not.”

  He raised my fingers to his lips. “Mr. Big?”

  “Dude!”

  We were saved from more conversation by a knock at the door. Peter jumped a little and dropped my hand, then pulled away from me and straightened his clothes. It was quick and automatic. I didn’t like being pushed aside like a potato-chip bag. The anger tiger glowered, and my jaw clenched. But what was the other choice? Let the help come in while I sat on Peter’s lap and stroked his hair? Hell, I was barely willing to think about Peter in my own head, let alone have other people think about it. I would have pushed him aside at my house. Dad knew about us, but I didn’t think he’d be good with me and Peter kissing in front of him. It’d be too weird. So how could I be mad about Peter pushing me back?

  Everything was so mixed-up and messy. I thought when you grew up, you know what to do when shit happened, but the older I got, the less I could figure out.

  Peter called out, and I stuffed Les’s cracked phone into my pocket. They wouldn’t see it. Fuck Les. Fuck them.

  Vicky and two other women entered with heavy food trays. I smelled ham and roast beef and mustard and cheese, and my mouth watered. Okay, not so mad anymore. The second woman’s tray had bowls of sweet pickles and salty olives and home-made pita chips and onion dip. The third woman’s tray had a sweating pitcher of pop, which must have been difficult to balance. I wondered why she even used the tray, then remembered how, in rehearsal, Iris always made Lane—Jack’s butler—put everything on a tray. Huh. The women set everything up on a table in Peter’s sitting area while I waited uncomfortably. Should I say something to them? Make conversation? Peter seemed to act like they weren’t there, but he didn’t talk to me either, kind of like the way you stop talking at a restaurant table while the waitress refills the glasses. I followed his lead.

  When they were done, Vicky set a glossy black smartphone on Peter’s nightstand. Les’s phone felt heavy in my pocket. “There you are, sir. Will there be anything else?”

  “Thanks, Vicky. That’s all.”

  They left, and Peter picked up the phone. It was brand-new and still had the factory’s plastic coating over the glass.

  “What’s a house cell phone?” I asked, though my full attention was on the food across the room.

  “Dad set it up. The family and the people who work in the house use these phones. We even have our own app. I can use it to create a food order and send it to the kitchen or have my car brought around or tell the stable to saddle up the horses, but half the time it’s faster just to text someone directly.” He grinned. “Still, Dad likes tech, so he made the app. Anyways… here.”

  He handed the phone to me. I looked down at it, bewildered. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m giving it to you, dork,” Peter said. “It’s yours.”

  “Mine? Peter Finn, I can’t take this.”

  I tried to give it back, but he folded his arms.

  “You’re insulting me, dude,” he said. “I want you to have it.”

  I was a little out of breath. The sandwiches were far away and forgotten. “It’s too expensive. This is the newest one.”

  “Kev, look.” Peter’s hands closed over mine with the phone in them. “Think of it as me being selfish. I’m tired of not being able to reach my boyfriend. Now I can.”

  “But it’s too expensive.”

  “That’s relative,” Peter said. “If you gave me a present that cost a dime, would it be too expensive?”

  “No,” I said, though I honestly didn’t have a dime.

  “Okay, then. To me this cost a dime. Seriously, Kev—have you seen me? Just take the damn phone and say thanks.”

  “Uh… sure.” I took it. “Thanks. But just because I have it doesn’t mean I’ll answer it every time you call.”

  “No.” Peter gave me a small smile that set off tiny fireworks in my head. “But I can leave you a message. And protect you.”

  “Protect me?”

  “If Les had seen you with a cell phone, maybe he wouldn’t have attacked you.”

  “Hmm.” I gestured at the trays. “How about we eat?”

  We leaned against each other on his couch while we tested my new phone and ate the thickest, tangiest sandwiches I ever had in my life. His warm skin against mine felt so fine, so perfect. I found myself half lying in his lap, and I never wanted to be anywhere else. As a joke, Peter fed me an olive. His fingertips brushed my lips and generated an electric wave that tingled down to my soles by way of my crotch.

  Peter said in a low, urgent voice, “Want me to adjust that for you?”

  I glanced down and flushed. It was really embarrassing that Peter had noticed, but at the same time, it was… freeing. He had seen and thought it was great.

  Then my heart beat quick and my mouth went dry. For half a microsecond, I was lying in Les’s lap with Les’s arms around me instead of the guy who had killed him.

  Who hadn’t killed him.

  I sat up and shoved my new phone into my pocket like nothing was wrong. My fingertips touched where I was hard and made me shiver. “Uh… maybe later. There any pop left?”

  I could tell Peter was hiding his disappointment. “Sure. How about—”

  A scream came from somewhere outside the room. It was a long, high wail that scraped fingernails across my eyeballs. Peter shot to his feet, his eyes wide as semi tires.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Who was that?”

  Another scream. “Shit,” Peter said and rushed out of the room.

  He left the door open. I only waited half a second before following. Peter was already running down the wide hall. He rounded a corner with me ri
ght behind him. A pair of house workers, a man and a woman, were grappling with a girl about my age. The girl had black hair like Peter, but her body was softer, almost overweight, and she was throwing a world-class tantrum. She snarled and struggled with the two people who held her arms. Her face was radish red, and spit flew from her lips. She screamed a third time. All the hair on my arms stood up. I didn’t know what to do. The people fighting with her made me think of the police, of being put in handcuffs, but they weren’t police. I couldn’t tell if they were hurting her or not. I wanted to help but had no idea what to do.

  The girl wrenched an arm free from the woman and punched the man in the face. He staggered back, holding his nose. Blood spattered the floor. Without a trace of fear, Peter rushed up to the girl.

  “Em,” he said. “Emily! It’s me. Calm down. It’s okay.” He wrapped his arms around her. The woman let Emily go and checked on the man, whose nose was still bleeding. “Em, it’s all right.”

  “Peter Finn!” Emily’s tear-streaked face calmed down. “Peter Finn! They gave me Wednesday shoes!”

  “It’s okay,” Peter soothed. “We’ll get you Thursday shoes. Can we go back to your room? The rules say you have to go back to your room.” He turned to the woman. “Is Mom or Dad here?”

  “Mr. Morse is at headquarters, sir,” she said. “Mrs. Morse is on her way now. Would you like me to call one of them?”

  “No. Just make sure Mom finds out when she gets home. Get some ice for Allen’s nose.” He kept one arm around Emily and led her down the hall.

  Uncertainly, I followed. Emily, I remembered, was the name of Peter’s sister, the one he wouldn’t talk about. Was this why? What was wrong with her? Peter kept up a steady stream of chatter in Emily’s ear as he steered her through the open door of a bedroom.

  The bedroom was as huge as Peter’s, but where Peter’s room was done up in early American bachelor, this room had your basic bed, your basic desk, your basic wide-screen TV, your basic couch. But two sets of floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with comic books, those black-and-white ones from Japan that you have to read from right to left—manga. The walls were covered with drawings of manga characters, some in color but most in black-and-white. They were good, like they’d come straight from the artists. Most of them were girls in short skirts with long braids and samurai swords, or boys in armor who cast lightning bolts from their hands. I don’t read manga much, so they all looked the same to me.