Fire Raiser (13 page)

“So why is any of it your fault?”

“We all share the fault!”

Jamey drew back. “Those of us who stay closeted betray those who don’t, is that it? And every time one of us gets caught and disgraced—or sent to Straight School to be tortured into heterosexuality—”

“—and the rest of us scramble to shore up the pretenses that allow us to exist in this society. Yeah. Think about it, Jamey—think about it realistically, not the way you want it to be. Why does it never happen that the newspapers say, ‘Bill Jones, a thirty-nine-year-old heterosexual, robbed a liquor store last night’? A straight man can beat the living shit out of a gay man and get away with it by saying the queer was coming on to him. A lesbian can get raped and that’s actually doing her a favor because it shows her what real sex is like! And all the hysteria about ‘recruitment’ of young boys—has anyone checked the statistics? By far the majority of child molesters are straight men who go after little girls!”

“What does this have to do with
us?
” Jamey shouted. “What does any of it have to do with what we feel for each other?”

Cam clenched both hands in the pile of papers and bent his head, trying not to be physically sick. A warm hand stroked his back, and in spite of himself he calmed a little—like a skittish colt responding to the touch of the man who was gentling him.

“Listen to me,” said the soft voice. “That’s an ignorant, self-righteous, terrified minority—”

“—who sit in boardrooms, and state capital buildings, and the United States Congress,” Cam interrupted thickly. “They’re on school boards. They run city governments. They’re cops and firefighters and the girl who makes your cappuccino and the guy who delivers your mail. And they hate us, Jamey. They don’t know anything about us, and they hate us.”

“So make them know who we are.”

“ ‘We’re queer and we’re here’?” he quoted, shaking his head. “You’re still not getting it. You come out, and that’s what your life is about for the rest of your life. You’re gay. You don’t get to do or be anything else. Nothing else you say or do ever matters.”

“It matters what we do as men.”

“As
gay
men.”

After a few moments’ quiet, Cam said, “What are you doing to me, Jamey? What do you think is going to happen? We can settle for less than we want and less than we dreamed, and less than we could be—”

“—in order to have each other. So we make a trade. I’d do it in an instant, you know I would. To be with you, I’d—”

“You haven’t even gotten a taste of what you can become.”

“So we wait a while.”

“How long? Five years? Ten? We establish ourselves in the lives we always wanted, and then what? You think people will look at you and still think, ‘Hey, potential Senator here’? You know they won’t. They’ll think, ‘Hey, look at the queer who thinks he can be a Senator’—and then they’d either laugh themselves into a coma or start looking around for bricks to throw.”

Jamey searched his face long and hard. Then: “I’ll live the lie for you, Cam. If that’s what you want.”

He shook his head. “Denying what I feel for you isn’t a lie I could tell.”

His eyes shone silver, like—like moonlight, Cam thought helplessly, knowing he should never have said what he’d just said. It wasn’t fair to either of them. It trapped them both. “No,” he warned, taking a step back as Jamey started toward him. “Not gonna happen. Not any of it.”

“You can’t say something like that and then expect me to just—Cam, I’ve been waiting forever to hear you say it, not just since the day I met you—”

It was exactly as he’d originally thought: in love with falling in love. Cam told himself that that was all it was, that he’d been convenient, that it could have been anybody—

“I didn’t actually say it, though, did I?” He made himself smile, felt the unnatural curling of his mouth quiver through his nerves. “And I won’t. Ever.”

“That’s not a promise you can make.”

“Try me.”

Another slight pause. With more insight than he’d expected, Jamey said, “If you hide what you are, if you hide from
me
—aren’t you doing exactly what these people wanted Morgan to do? What if we told the truth? Heterosexual kids grow up with examples of good and bad marriages all around them—they learn what they want and what they don’t want—why can’t it be the same for gay kids? Why can’t they see Lucy and Charlotte down the street, who have a tree-decorating party every Christmas? Why can’t they grow up next door to—to Cam and Jamey, with their adopted kids and backyard barbeques for the whole neighborhood? If same-sex couples got the same dignity as hetero marriages—if there were gay couples to demonstrate that it
can
be done, and done with love and loyalty—”

“And you want it to be us.” He couldn’t decide if Jamey was insanely brave or just insane.

“It has to be somebody, Cam. Why not us? How do I live with myself if I wait for somebody else to step up and do what I know has to get done—not when I’ve got the chance to do it—”

“You have no idea what you’re saying, do you?”

“I just want to live my life, and live it with you. Out in the open. Not have to hide how proud I am that it’s me you want. Me you love.”

“I never said that.”

Jamey smiled. “You will.”

“I can’t. Jamey, I’m so sorry. I’m scared, you’re right, and I pretend, and I lie, and I wish by all that’s holy that I wasn’t gay. I accept it—but I don’t have to let it define my whole life.”

“You’re letting other people define you. What kind of life will you have if you refuse to admit so much of what you really are?”

“I don’t know.”

“What you want,” Jamey said slowly, “is something no one can give you. Cam, there’s this whole elaborate game you’ve got going, this stage show where you play the straight guy consumed by law school, and when you’ve got your J.D. you’ll play the straight guy consumed by work. You spend so much time and energy pretending that being gay doesn’t exist—you don’t think I could possibly love you—what was it you said that time? That you won’t let me mess up my life over someone like you? What does that
mean
? Why do you think that?”

“You don’t know what it’s like to be Cam Griffen.”

“I know what it’s like to love Cam Griffen,” he retorted. “How do I get you to see what I love in you? How do I get you to respect who you are?”

“You don’t. You leave, and let me get on with my dismal little psychodrama,” he jeered.

“Maybe you ought to stop lying!”

“And maybe you oughta grow up!”

Jamey gave him another of those long, vivisecting looks. “It just got cold in here again,” he said, and turned, and left.

Cam sat and stared down into his coffee mug for a long time. Then he got up, put on coat and gloves, and made his way through the dirty snow to the practice rooms on campus. This one thing went right for him today: there were two pianos available, and one of them was unreserved until eight the next morning. So he shut himself in a room with a scarred black Steinway and played long into the night, played all the pieces he hated, pieces that spiteful teachers had made him learn. Played until his fingers and forearms ached and his shoulders were stiff and his whole body hurt as if every muscle had been individually bruised. Because as much as he needed to escape into music and his own exacting musicianship, he couldn’t bear to play any of the music he loved. If he did, he would forever associate it with today.

The next weekend he went home to Virginia. Lulah was throwing a party at Woodhush to celebrate the publication of Holly’s first book, which was excuse enough for a tactical retreat from New Haven as far as Cam was concerned. That this excuse had nothing to do with his reasons was nobody’s business but his.

Holly was in full-throated Holly-ness. She flung her arms around him, called him “Peaches,” told him he’d lost weight, ordered him not to read a single word of her book until he had his J.D. in hand, and asked whether he wanted his graduation briefcase to be black or brown. He hugged her tight, told her to
please
not call him “Peaches,” said he wouldn’t be caught dead reading her book—J.D. or no J.D.—and warned her that if she gave him anything so trite as a briefcase he’d hex all her underwear and she’d never know which pair would give her hives.

“Ha!” she scoffed. “Empty threat!” All at once she squinted up at him, and her fingers lifted to stroke his cheek. “Cam? What’s wrong? Do we need to talk?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said with a smile. “Well, maybe talk a little, and maybe later. I’m proud of you, Freckles. Where the hell’s the beer?”

They didn’t talk until late Sunday afternoon on the long drive to Dulles for their flights out. Eventually surrendering to her loving, well-meaning, maddening interrogation, he managed a truncated version of events. He didn’t tell her about Morgan, knowing it would bring on the kind of ranting and raving that would give her indigestion for a week. He didn’t tell her Jamey’s name, either, just that there was this guy, and it was mutual, but it wasn’t going to work out, and he’d be okay.

“I won’t have time to breathe, let alone think, for the next couple of months, so I’ll be over it before I know it.”

She looked for a minute as if she was going to pull over, stop the car, and demand to know every single detail. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry, Cam,” was all she said.

Grateful, he shrugged and nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.”

A few miles later: “You should talk to Alec and Nicky.”

Cam chuckled. “What, the two guys who ruined my life? They’re why I can’t do the casual sex thing. After so many years of seeing what they have with each other, I can’t just jump in the sack and wave good-bye the next morning. I gotta be in love, and it’s all their fault.”

“Oh, I see,” she said with acid sarcasm. “Condemned to a lifetime devoid of promiscuity and unsafe sex. Whatever will you do?”

“Anybody ever tell you how adorable you are?”

“Thousands. You think you’re the only one corrupted by Alec and Nicky’s example? I want a marriage just like theirs—”

“Except with kids. Yeah, me, too. The marriage part, I mean. But with kids.”

“Cam, they’ve got twenty kids! We’re
all
their kids. And I’ll lay odds none of us can just get laid.”

“Ooh, wordplay! You’re not, like, a writer or anything, are you?”

HOLLY STAYED SILENT on most of the walk back to the Westmoreland Inn’s front entrance, concentrating on not sinking into the grass up to her ankles.

At length, Cam observed, “You’re not ranting.”

“Would you like me to?”

“Not so much, no.” He hesitated, then asked, “He never said anything?”

“About you? Not a word. Does he even known we’re related?”

“He might.”

They walked toward a wisteria-swathed pergola, silent, until Holly said, “The first time Evan brought him to the house for a working dinner, he did the sweetest thing. He asked my permission before he picked up Kirby.”

“That’s just politeness. Never touch somebody’s kid unless they’ve said it’s okay.”

“No, that’s not what it was—I mean, that’s not the only thing it was. He said, ‘You know I’m gay, right? I promise you have nothing to worry about, but I’ll understand if you don’t want me near your kids unless I can prove it.’ I think I fell a little in love with him then,” she mused.

“But you did know he’s gay.”

“Of course. I knew about
you
probably before you did,” she smiled. “Or at least long before you admitted it. And you never
would
have admitted it, and I never would have said anything, if I hadn’t felt it necessary to have the Safe Sex talk with you that I knew very well Uncle Griff wouldn’t have done if somebody’d held a gun to his head.”

Cam groaned elaborately. “Can we please not mention that talk?”

“Mentioning it and then watching your face turn that color is the only way I can be sure you were listening.”

“Stop acting like I’m still sixteen and you’re twenty and pretending to be such a woman of the world it made me want to puke.”

She unstuck a stiletto heel from the lawn and stepped onto the gravel drive. “Get this grass and mud off my shoes, and I’ll consider it.”

“Why didn’t you just take ’em off?”

“Because my stockings would get muddy and that would be even worse. They’re nylon and you can’t do anything about them. Hold still,” she commanded, and steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder while sliding off her shoes.

“I’ve never understood how women wear those things,” Cam marveled. “Let alone why.”

“ ‘How’ is practice, and ‘why’ is inherent masochism and the lunatic whims of their husbands,” she retorted. “Ouch,” she said as the gravel grew teeth and tried to bite a chunk out of her left big toe. “Well? Do something.”

He glanced around to make sure no one was watching, took each sandal by a strap, muttered a few words to himself, and the accumulated muck slid neatly from the shoes to the driveway. “Damn, I’m good,” he grinned as she used him for balance again while she put the heels back on.

“Not to mention modest.” Looking down as she fastened a strap, she murmured, “I never knew who it was. I never knew his name. That party Lulah gave when
Queen’s Tapestry
was published—you were in love with him then and you still are.” Shoes secured, she took a step back and searched his face.

He snorted. “
That
stupid I’m not.”

“I think you’re that stupid and then some.”

His gaze shifted as if trying to find an escape. He’d always done that when he felt cornered or threatened. Holly watched as his lips pulled tight and his jaw clenched, and was about to say something to reassure him when the restless eyes fixed on her. She would never have believed him capable of the cold look he gave her now as he said, “I’ve asked you not to meddle. Now I’m telling you. Leave it alone.”

Holly caught her breath on a gasp of surprise. The warmhearted little boy, the gawky teenager, the young man still slightly baffled by his own exceptional mind—her crazy, funny Cam was all grown up. She couldn’t provoke him anymore and expect to get away with it unscathed.

But in the next instant he proved that her Cam was still there. He made a rueful face, wrapped his arms around her, and whispered, “Sorry. I just need you to take it a little easier, okay?”