Good Bones (10 page)

And then he was twenty-seven, an age when his straight friends were getting married and his gay friends were beginning to talk about civil unions and domestic partnerships—and Dylan had never yet had a real boyfriend.

Until Andy walked into Bleachers.

Dylan, lonely and feeling left behind in the game of life, had been starry-eyed over such a beautiful man choosing
him.
And the sex that night had been mind-blowing. So when the next morning dawned and Andy was still gorgeous and the sex was still red hot, Dylan hadn’t uttered a word of complaint when the virtual stranger basically moved into his place. In fact, for the first time in his life he’d thrown caution to the winds, calling in sick for several days running and spending his days and nights fucking on every surface in his house.

Until the night of the full moon.

Not that Dylan realized the moon was full that night. He didn’t pay attention to that little matter back then. But whether he knew it or not, the moon was indeed full, and Dylan awoke from a postcoital doze to the sounds of muffled screams. He had rushed into the living room—still naked—and what he saw froze him in his tracks.

His lover was turning into a wolf.

Which was impossible, of course. Dylan had pinched himself, suspecting it was a dream, or maybe a hallucination. Perhaps Andy had slipped some kind of drug into his mochaccino. But the creature was there, as big as life on his Ikea rug, twitching and growling and… changing. Dylan was still standing there and goggling when the wolf climbed to its feet and swung its head to stare at him.

Dylan gathered enough wits to run.

He was aiming for the back door but made it only as far as the kitchen when the beast caught up with him. It leapt, sinking its huge fangs into the meat of his left calf. Dylan shrieked and tumbled to the floor. He would have been done for except that, as he fell, he knocked his Le Creuset French oven off the counter. Dylan had rarely used the pot, but he liked the way it looked on the stovetop. The pot banged onto the bamboo flooring and bounced, startling the wolf enough for it to release its grip. Dylan grabbed the pot, used it to bang the wolf on the muzzle, and then fled. But the floor was slippery with his blood and he doubted he could make it to the exit, so he dove instead into the butler’s pantry and slammed the door shut.

The pantry hadn’t been original to the house. Dylan added it when he reconfigured the kitchen. And because he was an eco-friendly kind of guy, he’d repurposed the discarded entry door from a reno project at work. Fortunately, the door was steel, and it withstood the animal’s repeated bashing.

Dylan spent the night cowering in his pantry, naked and bleeding.

The next morning, Andy was gone. Dylan went to the ER and made up a story about a dog attack while he was jogging. He sat through stitching and bandaging and multiple forms. Then he returned to his silent, empty house.

Such was the history of his one and only stab at a lasting relationship. Well, unless you counted what happened when Andy reappeared four weeks later. But Dylan really didn’t want to think about that, and it was with considerable relief that he parked the Prius in the underground garage at work and shut off the engine.

D
YLAN
’
S
boss wore designer jeans and black turtlenecks, even when meeting with clients. He had thick gray hair and John Lennon glasses, and he liked to talk about Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein as if they were his boyhood pals. Everyone—even his wife—called him by his last name, Stender.

Stender was sitting in his Eames chair in front of the glass-topped desk that was empty except for his MacBook, and he was smiling. “You did a fine job with the Maywood Drive project, Dylan. The clients were very pleased.”

“Thanks.” Dylan had to fight not to grin like an idiot. Stender didn’t hand out praise very often. But the morning had gone well. The clients loved his plans, and they were especially pleased at the way he’d designed the deck around some of the big trees on the property.

“To be honest, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of you telecommuting.
I know you’ve agreed to come in for meetings, and you’ve always been good about deadlines, but I thought it might be a bad thing for you to be working out of this environment. Away from the creative wellspring.” Stender could talk about things like creative wellsprings and keep a straight face. “But it seems that the wilderness has inspired your muse, if your latest work is any indication.”

“It’s… quiet there. I can think without a lot of interruptions.” Aside from sexy neighbors.

“Well, and I suppose the grandeur of nature herself suggests balance and flow and sustainability.”

“Right,” Dylan said, not pointing out that at the moment the grandeur of nature mostly suggested mud and moss.

“Good then.” Stender slapped his palm on the glass. “I have a new project I’ve selected especially for you. It’ll give us a chance to see just how well this arrangement is going to work.”

Dylan’s stomach twisted. Stender had initially been fairly agreeable to his new work schedule, and it hadn’t occurred to Dylan that there would be some kind of test. What if he failed? Then he’d be forced to choose between giving up his farm or quitting his job. “I’ll do my best,” he said.

“I don’t doubt it.” Another slap on the desk. “Matty has the files, and she can fill you in on the details.” He stood and offered his hand, which Dylan shook.

Dylan and Matty decided to have a late lunch. They took her car to a little sandwich place near the approach to the Fremont Bridge. The tables were made of knotty planks, and the seats were long benches. The walls were hung with old produce crate labels. You had to order and pay at the counter and then fetch your own food when they called your name. But the roast beef was piled densely atop homemade herb bread, and the corn chowder was thick and slightly spicy.

“This is great, Matt,” he said, swallowing an enormous bite.

“I know. I bet you haven’t been eating like this out in the sticks.”

“Um… no.”

But maybe he blushed a little, because Matty’s eyes narrowed, and she tilted her head a little. “What’s up, Dyl?”

“Nothing. I gutted the kitchen so, yeah, not much cooking.”

“That didn’t take you long.”

“Not much to distract me out there.”

“Hmm.” She slurped at her Mr. Pibb. “So is that all you’ve been doing? You haven’t met any handsome lumberjacks or anything?”

“No, Matt. Paul Bunyan hasn’t knocked on my door yet.”

She still looked slightly suspicious, so he decided to change the subject. “So what’s with this new thing Stender has for us?”

“Stender has for
you
, you mean. You’re supposed to be idea boy. I just go along with the flow, boss.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“More than. Wait ’til you see this one.”

There was that knot of worry again. He put down his sandwich. “Why?”

“The clients are a pair of old hippie types—lesbians—who apparently stopped toking up long enough to make a small fortune off magic futons or something.”

“Oookay….”

“They’re big into alternative everything and Gaia theory and universal energies and… I don’t know. All that stuff. And they want to build a big honking house in Beaverton.”

“Beaverton?” That was a suburb more suited to the minivan-driving, mall-shopping, gym-going set than hippie millionaires.

“Yep,” Matty replied smugly. “Oh, and they have dogs. Don’t forget to design for the dogs.”

Dylan was tempted to bury his face in his arms. The firm did get occasional eccentric clients, but they weren’t usually routed his way. He got the West Hills yuppies and the Lake Oswego mini-mansions. People who wanted good design and high quality, but nothing too radical or eccentric. His clients were the type who hyperventilated at the thought of violating zoning ordinances. Stender must have sent this one his way either in some misguided attempt at tapping into homosexual solidarity—the clients were, after all, lesbians—or because he wanted Dylan to fail.

Dylan must have groaned, because Matty patted his hand. “You’ll do fine. We’re supposed to meet with them in two weeks, and they want rough plans then.”

He tried to smile at her, but really he was calculating how long he could live off his savings if he ended up unemployed and what the job market was like for washed-up architects in rural Oregon. Of course, he could always move back into town and reinforce a spare bedroom again. And hope he always made it home on time. And never again experience that wonderful feeling of freedom and power when the moon was full.

His appetite was gone. He watched as Matty finished her lunch, and then they walked back to her car. He stopped in at the office only long enough to pick up the files. He didn’t even look at the contents, other than to glance inside to see what the site address was. As he shuffled back to the Prius, he decided to ignore the job entirely for now, aside from scoping out the location on his way home. As originally planned, he’d spend his afternoon with the considerably less intimidating prospect of choosing his kitchen furnishings.

Several hours later, his cabinets and countertops were on order, and his mood had improved. He’d also picked up enough paint for the kitchen—Fernwood green—along with the necessary painting supplies. He was looking forward to that particular task. He loved the smell of fresh paint and the way just a couple of gallons of the stuff could transform a room so completely.

He ended up driving around Beaverton for twenty minutes in the dusk as he searched for the job site. Finally he found it—a large, flat lot in a neighborhood where all the streets had cowboy names. The neighboring houses, all unremarkable ranches and split entries, had been built in the ’70s and early ’80s. He couldn’t imagine why the clients had chosen this particular location. The empty space was a little like a blank sheet of paper, with the topography and surroundings giving few hints for his design. He could put anything there. The question was whether he could draw something to satisfy the clients and his boss.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds, let loose a deep sigh, and turned the Prius toward home.

Chapter 9

T
HE
pounding at the back door startled Dylan enough that a little coffee splashed out of his mug. He swore under his breath and stomped across the floor, and was then relieved to find Chris on the doorstep, half grin in place. “Mornin’, sunshine,” Chris said. He was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt advertising Coors, a thick plaid shirt apparently serving as his coat.

Dylan leaned in the doorframe. “I thought you were busy today.”

“My secretary found an opening.”

They both waited in a sort of stubborn détente until Dylan yielded, moving out of the way so Chris could enter. “Coffee?” he asked.

“Nah, I’m good.” Chris looked around and spied the supplies Dylan had bought the previous afternoon. “Paintin’ today?”

“That was the plan. Unless… do any of those piles of rust behind your house actually run?”

“Sometimes. Why? Plannin’ to run away?”

“Just as far as the nearest home improvement store. We could buy tile today.”

“Sure,” Chris said with a grin. “Road trip.”

Fifteen minutes later they were climbing into an ancient Chevy truck that roared and grumbled like an angry dinosaur. “Radio don’t work,” Chris announced as they bounced down the gravel road. “Heater don’t work neither, but the engine’ll warm us up pretty good.”

Dylan was warm enough already with Chris only inches away on the bench seat. Inside the cab of the pickup all the smells Dylan had come to associate with Chris were very strong: soap, cigarettes, oil and gasoline, denim, sweat.

“Allergies?”

Dylan looked at Chris in confusion. “Huh?”

“You were sniffin’.”

Turning his head to hide his blush, Dylan said, “Just an itch, I guess.”

Although the sky was a leaden gray, it wasn’t raining. Chris was humming again—something by Lynyrd Skynyrd—and Dylan realized that, apart from his little lunchtime jaunts with Matty, it had probably been years since he was a passenger in someone’s car. It reminded him of when he was a little kid, squabbling in the back seat with Rick as the family drove to the coast for the weekend.

“How about if I buy you lunch?” he said out of the blue. “Before we buy the stuff.”

“Sounds good.”

They didn’t speak again for a long time, but Dylan slowly crept his hand across the seat until his pinky was almost but not quite rubbing against Chris’s pants, and he watched the way Chris’s hands moved on the steering wheel and the way his blue eyes scanned the road before them. Eventually the fields and woods gave way to subdivisions and strip malls, and when they turned off the highway Dylan directed Chris through city streets.

“What’s this place?” Chris asked suspiciously when they climbed out of the car.

“Brewpub. It’s good.”

“I figured we’d just end up at Burger King or somethin’.”

“Hey, you’re the chef. You know we can do a lot better than that.”

Dylan had been here before and knew it was slightly upscale, as brewpubs went, but that their casual clothes wouldn’t be too out of place. The hostess smiled pleasantly at them, but when their waiter arrived he practically plopped himself in Dylan’s lap. Chris scowled as they ordered fish and chips and pints of ale.