The Rare Event

by P D Singer

  “You do not get to sleep in my bed, stronzo.” Ricky dragged a disoriented Edgar out to the living room, where a newly blank wall stared down on the couch. “Out here is good enough for you.” He threw the dented pillow into Edgar’s face and returned to his room, where he could only be grateful that the bed was so large that only half of it was warm. Sleep was a long time coming.

  RICKY emerged onto the main trading floor, thinking he might send someone out for sandwiches for those who hadn’t already left to find lunch. The stocks he’d shorted had dropped a little further today, inspiring a generosity tinged with guilt and a bit of horror that he’d been long those same companies, all from looking at historical data and not at changed conditions. Jon had left already. Now there was a man who should be looking at current circumstances and not past history when it came to his love life.

  But everyone else was gone, some farther than others. Geoff was out of the office again; some things didn’t change much, although his reasons were better this time. He’d gone to Florida to handle some further renovations on the yacht, remove it from market, and set up the December staff cruise. That was going to be awkward this year if Jon wouldn’t bunk with Ricky.

  A figure partially obscured by bulk showed hazily through the frosted glass door; Ricky opened it to see what cast such an odd shadow. A delivery man, his arms full of an elegant flower arrangement, stepped through to ask the worst possible question.

  “Where can I find J. Hogenboom?”

  Ricky’s hunger dissolved in this stomach-churning announcement. “He’s out, and his office is locked. I’ll take it.”

  The delivery man frowned, no doubt seeing his hope of a tip evaporate. Ricky reached for his wallet. “It’s that or come back.” He handed over a bill and signed a receipt, imagining an idling van double-parked on the street below. The man disappeared, and Ricky perched the arrangement, a florist’s masterpiece of cymbidia, alstromerias, and bare branches, on Pramiti’s vacant desk.

  Careful not to destroy the clear cellophane wrapper, Ricky extracted the card from its little envelope on a trident spike. It was blank, containing only the florist’s business information, unmarked by declarations of affection.

  The baseball nestled at the base of the branches said everything.

  No. This was not possible, this could not be happening. Davis might possibly have dinner with Jon at Allegra, but that was an obligation, Jon had said so! Ricky struggled to remember what Jon had said about the Friends of the Opera fund-raising auction, that Davis had bought him, that Jon had wanted to take Ricky there for dinner—but this—no. Davis could not be allowed to turn the evening into a date. He could not start wooing Jon hours before they’d be seated. No.

  No one else was around to see this hateful gift, giving Ricky time to hide the evidence. Not the trash; the flowers would be terribly obvious, and to stuff them down the trash chute in the corridor he’d risk being seen. Not his office; flowers there would destroy any credence in his celibacy that Ricky might have built up in Jon’s mind. He’d have to hide them in plain sight. Ricky looked for hiding places, his heart pounding that someone would come in and the truth would be out. The tiny envelope with the incriminating name hit the shredder—how dare flowers arrive marked J. Hogenboom if Ricky hadn’t sent them? Not that he’d ever sent any.

  Writing with his left hand to render the letters unrecognizable, Ricky inscribed the back of the florist’s card Miss you already—G, and worked the bare card back onto the trident. The baseball he abstracted into his own pocket, the hateful sphere weighing down the front of his jacket and his heart.

  He could leave this reworked gift on Pramiti’s desk, but Kate had left her door unlocked. Perfect. He placed the blooms and branches carefully in the center of her desk and retreated to the sound of the glass doors opening. Someone would be happy today, but it wouldn’t be Ricky.

  Half an hour later, the office rang with happy squeals. “Oh, that’s gorgeous!”

  “That’s so sweet.” Pramiti.

  “Very pretty.” Jon looked at the flowers, and didn’t glance aside to Ricky.

  “He’s never done anything like this!” That was Kate, and no, Geoff hadn’t sent flowers to the office when he left on his “due-dillies.” Ricky should have warned his unwitting partner in crime and could only hope that Geoff would just smile and take credit when Kate thanked him. If her thanks were like her joy in a profitable trade, talking wouldn’t be a large part of it. Maybe Geoff wouldn’t get a word in edgewise during the phone call—Ricky’s heart sank—that Kate was dialing.

  “Oh, darling, they’re beautiful, thank you, mwah! I miss you too, and get another couple of sets of fins, masks, and snorkels—I think we left some on Sanibel Island—gotta go, something’s on about NorthAm Air.” Nope, not one incriminating word. Ricky decided he could breathe again.

  Jon did give him a curious look but said nothing as they dispersed to their work.

  The redirected flowers aroused nothing but compliments to Kate for the rest of the day, and Ricky was pretty sure he’d gotten away with his little subterfuge.

  And then Davis showed up.

  Ricky refused to look up from the Bloomberg where he and Dwight were checking for news on housing. The ABX had tilted downward to ninety-eight, and Ricky was considering increasing his short position in shady lenders.

  “Business casual is okay for Allegra?” he asked Jon, who’d come out of his office to greet his guest.

  “Perfect,” Jon agreed. “Good night, Kate.”

  She’d come out with her crocodile pumps swapped for sneakers, her purse over her shoulder, and the bouquet in her hands. Setting it down on Pramiti’s desk, she turned to lock her office.

  Davis went paper-white. “Didn’t you like them?”

  “They’re gorgeous.” Jon tilted his head. “What’s not to like?”

  Ricky held very, very still.

  “Geoff went out of town and surprised me with these.” Kate ran a hand over the cream-and-yellow-flecked petals of the small lilies massed below the stalks of velvety white orchids. “Wasn’t that sweet?”

  “Very,” Davis croaked out. “They’re beautiful—when did they come?”

  “At lunch—good thing Ricky was still here for the delivery.” She stroked the petals again, her face softer than Ricky had ever seen it.”I do love that man.”

  Ricky was quite sure in that moment that no one meant love for him—Davis looked like he’d just swallowed half a lime, and wrinkles grew on Jon’s forehead. “He’s very lucky.” Davis got his face rearranged before Kate looked up again. “I like alstromerias too. I’d hate to spoil the line of the arrangement, but do you think I could filch a couple of the little blooms off the sides or back?”

  “Sure, if you want.” If Kate had just winked at Jon, Ricky’d reprogram every channel on her Bloomberg to something she’d never traded, like pork bellies. Except she’d become an expert in that. He glowered under his brows at her, not lifting his head.

  Very delicately, Davis pinched off two blossoms and thanked her.

  “Oh, that’s hardly noticeable! Good night, Jon, and er, well, night. See you tomorrow, Dwight; good night, Ricky!” Kate waved and left the train wreck behind her, her arms full of flowers.

  Davis strode over to Ricky and Dwight. They both stood, Ricky to meet his opponent and Dwight to flee with muttered greetings. Jon also marched over, and Ricky couldn’t decide from his face what he was thinking.

  “So, Ricky, is that a baseball in your pocket, and are you really not glad to see me?” Davis’s eyes were hooded, threatening.

  “Exactly.” Ricky challenged him to say more—Davis shouldn’t have upped the ante with flowers.

  “Baseball?” Jon said, and now his face was only too readable—the hand Jon put out, palm cupped to catch, was far too clear. Stunned by this betrayal, Ricky froze, his hand at his pocket. Jon twitched his open hand with insistence. Wishing Davis had done something twee and dramatic that would irritate Jon, like wr
iting Play with me on the ball, Ricky handed over the baseball that he’d caught at Yankee Stadium and gifted to Jon once before. Ricky placed it in Jon’s palm, and he died a little inside as Jon first examined, then pocketed it.

  “What did you want to do, Davis?” Jon asked evenly, not looking at Ricky. “We have a couple of hours before our dinner reservations.”

  Davis took a moment to affix one of the flowers in the bound buttonhole on Jon’s lapel, the other in his own, and drive the stake through Ricky’s heart. “Let’s go check the progress on the loft.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I’M TRYING to think more like a New Yorker,” Davis said lightly once they’d boarded the elevator. “I’ve figured out a walking route and how to get there from here via subway—it’s an easy commute. I think.”

  “It is,” Jon agreed, his mind more on the blossom in his lapel. He could piece together exactly what had happened with the bouquet and the baseball from Ricky’s perspective. But— Ricky had to have been right about Davis, and Jon hadn’t wanted to see it. The flowers were a huge change—a push, shove, or swirlie he’d know how to respond to better.

  Either something had changed, or—nothing had changed. Except that Davis wanted to talk about things that Jon had spent a lifetime keeping hidden from himself.

  “You were kind not to enlighten Kate; she was so happy.” Jon caressed the petals on his impromptu boutonnière. “And thanks for not punching Ricky.”

  “Thanks for not punching Ricky yet.” Davis’s words were tightly clipped. “I won’t cause a brawl in the office, but he’s cruising for a bruising. If I keep tripping over him, it will happen, sooner or later.” They passed the lobby fountain with its forest of bamboo on the way to the street. “But not where you’ll be involved.” Davis chuckled. “Hey, remember that time that we got into it with Spencer?”

  Jon remembered that incident only too well. Three strong teenage boys scuffling, rolling across the barn floor, yelling, punching, one against all, and in the middle of it, Jon had been struck, as sharply as with a fist, by the smell of Davis. On his feet, the better to pounce on the other two, Davis had loomed over Jon, who had Spencer pinned to the barn floor. Saddle leather, sweat, and underlying it, the healthy, heady scent of young man, and it had frozen Jon in midswing. A fatal moment of inaction—Davis’s fist had connected, bringing him down to drive a knee into Spencer’s belly, whose booted foot popped up in reaction to meet Davis’s nose, even as Spencer swung at Jon from below. They’d broken apart to assess their damages, but the worst had already been done.

  “I didn’t know a nose could bleed that much.” Jon let Davis pick the route up Nassau Street, past the Federal Reserve building.

  “Nothing that couldn’t be stopped by stuffing a couple yards of gauze in there.” Davis rubbed the offended proboscus. “Do you even remember what we were fighting about?”

  “No.” Jon had spent the rest of the afternoon with a piece of steak against his eye, counting the bruise a punishment for his reaction, cut short by the pain, but real and never to be allowed again. Not for someone who might as well have been his brother.

  Twenty minutes’ brisk walk brought them to the converted warehouse, where Davis let them in. “All the electrical work is done downstairs, and upstairs should be finished tomorrow. Then all this drywall”—he waved at the tall stacks of white boards on pallets lying in the middle of the vast expanse—“can start going up.”

  “Are you sure that’s enough?” Jon eyeballed the stacks, trying to imagine them upright and spread out.

  “Not a lot of interior walls in here.” Davis stepped around the thigh-high stacks of the twenty-four-inch square tiles meant for the kitchen and bath to plug an industrial floodlight into a socket installed in the floor.

  “Yeah.” Jon shivered a little. “Like there should be bowling pins lined up at the far wall.”

  “It’ll be gorgeous. Unbroken line of sight from kitchen to the windows. Except for the occasional bit of furniture.” Davis surveyed his space, doing a slow turn.

  “That’s a long way. I kind of like room-sized rooms.” Jon still felt the industrial origins of the place and wondered what sort of trade had been done here.

  “Fine time to be mentioning it.” Davis turned with some exasperation.

  “What? You’re the one who has to be happy with the space.” But Jon had caught sight of the small yellow lily on Davis’s lapel.

  “We both need to be happy with the space. It’s home.”

  Jon spoke slowly, choosing each word with care. “Davis, you are way, way ahead of me here. I knew you meant to change things—there’s no other reason to send me flowers, but—we’ve never even kissed each other.”

  “Sad but true. Let’s fix that.” Davis advanced on him, an inviting smile playing at the corners of his lips.

  “Let’s hold on a minute.” Jon backed up but was brought to a halt by a stack of drywall.

  Mercifully, Davis halted a few steps away, puzzlement on his face. “Why, Jon? Haven’t we waited enough?”

  From behind the barricade made of years of denial, a small voice whispered, Yes. The barricade remained strong—Jon had to clear his throat and grope for what to say next. “We’re like family, Davis, and that means something to me that I can’t just… ignore.”

  Davis closed his eyes briefly, snorting. “Yeah, we grew up together, yadda yadda. Spencer’s my brother, you’re Jon, who I’ve been dreaming about since I learned to pull my pud. I know the difference between you.” Suddenly suspicious, he demanded, “Did Spencer threaten you again?”

  Jon collapsed in on himself. “Hardly. He gave me—us—his blessing, if you can believe that. I can’t. I mean—I’ve spent so much of my life jumping at his shadow that he would even think I had any corrupting influence on you that the turnaround is—too much to process right off.”

  “Kissing me would help you process.” Davis’s face lit with invitation. “And it’s certainly not corruption—I may have been dreaming of you, but I did pick up some practical experience along the way. Probably nothing in Ricky’s lea—” He bit off the word unfinished.

  Jon swallowed hard. Ricky had handed over the baseball and watched Jon be claimed with a flower and leave with Davis. He’d blazed with wrath but had done nothing once Jon had put his hand out, impotent to stop them, much as Jon had watched before. Ricky has to be hurting now.

  “Damn, you probably aren’t over Ricky yet, are you?” Davis’s shoulders dropped.

  “Hell, Davis, I’m not over Cam in some ways.” Jon started to reach out in comfort but dropped his hand, finding that he had little to offer. “We—Ricky and I—were together for two years; a month doesn’t heal that.”

  “How much time do you think you’ll need before you can really look at me?”

  “I don’t know, Davis. Maybe a lot.”

  Davis held out his hands, palms up, beseeching. “Jon, I’d give you that time, I would have spent the next year letting you get used to the idea of me, the idea of us, of us here, but—some other things have happened, and it’s forced my hand.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “All that stuff you were talking about, bad mortgages and the cutbacks in lending—I think it’s part of what happened today. My firm found out that the big project they wanted me to lead has been put on indefinite hold. And another got canceled outright. They’ve got enough staff for the project we just presented to the client, so—they laid me off today.” Davis sat down on the cases of tiles, as if all the strength had left his legs. “There’s a severance package, and an apology for dragging me to New York and then stranding me, not like the apology helps or that two weeks’ pay is going to make me or break me. But still—”

  “It’s a shock.” Unbidden, the image of Ricky marching out of Wolfe Gorman Equities, head high, came to his mind, and Jon smothered his curiosity about whether Davis had managed his news as well. He sat next to Davis on the tiles, so close that their shoulders touched. “In fact
, that really sucks.”

  That got a sideways look and a small smile. “Funny how there’s ‘sucks’ and then there’s sucks, and that they’re completely opposite.”

  Jon slapped Davis’s thigh lightly. “Don’t change the subject.” He probably had managed his layoff with dignity. “Have you thought about what to do next?”

  “Been thinking of nothing else, but it all depends on you.” One corner of Davis’s mouth lifted. “I can look for another job in New York, but somehow I don’t think this project-cancelation problem is going to be limited to one firm.”

  “If it is, it will be temporary. High-quality borrowers will always get money at a price, but they might not like that price.” Corporate borrowers didn’t apply at the lenders Jon had bet against, but the entire lending atmosphere would inevitably change when the chaos started in earnest.

  “And I’ve got this place now. I can’t leave the project in the middle—who’d buy it half done?” Davis picked at a loose flap of cardboard on the tile case beneath him.

  “You don’t leave it half done; you finish it. It will be a showcase, everything you wanted.”

  “It was supposed to be everything we wanted. Why did you think I asked for your input on closets and bathtubs?” Davis leaned against Jon’s shoulder. “I should have asked how you felt about lofts in general, I suppose. Your little high-rise apartment should have been a clue.”

  “Not really. I bought it when I was hurting, after Cam. I won’t be in there forever.” Though he might be there a good long time, since he’d used all his available capital to buy a hedge fund that could take a while paying off.

  “So, I finish this and we go looking for something together, planning on pleasing us both?” Hope flickered across Davis’s face. “In a pre-war building?