Significant Others (14 page)
“Amazing. After … how many years of marriage?”
He smiled. “Almost two.”
She laughed. “C’mon.”
“We were next-door neighbors for thirty years,” he explained. “We were married to other people, but … they died. So it made sense.”
“Were you in love when you were still married to the other people?”
“We aren’t in love now,” he said.
She nodded. “But she’s still your significant other.”
He gave her a blank look.
“Your spouse and/or lover and/or best buddy.”
“Somewhere in there,” he said.
They laughed in unison, creating a momentary intimacy which seemed to unsettle him as much as it did her. “Actually,” he said, shaking his drink, “I was closer to her husband.”
“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow at him.
“Nothing like that,” he said.
She aped his expression, looking stern and jowly. “No, of course not.”
“He was in my camp,” said Booter, “down at the Grove.”
Wren gazed down at the distant swimming platform, conjuring up the happy couple, genial and spider-browed, stretched out platonically on the gray wood.
“He was a good man,” Booter added.
Wren nodded.
“He died about ten years ago. He brought a mistress here himself. He told me so.”
“I’m not your mistress,” said Wren.
“No,” said Booter. “I meant …”
“That her first husband fucked around too.”
“Yes,” he said meekly.
“Does she know?”
He shook his head.
“Did your first wife know?”
“No.” He looked decidedly uncomfortable. “This hasn’t been a regular thing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s just that … when I saw you—”
“I know,” she said, cutting him off, “and I’m the kinda gal who takes that as a compliment.” He gave her a hapless look.
“Lighten up,” she said. “We understand each other.”
H
ONEY-BLOND MEADOWS FLEW PAST THEM IN A BLUR
as the VW left the freeway and headed west toward the river. Michael and Brian were in the front seat; Thack was in the back. This unromantic arrangement had been Thack’s doing, since he had climbed in first, but Michael had chosen not to take it personally.
“Well,” said Brian, out of the blue. “Mary Ann wasn’t exactly thrilled.”
“About what?” asked Michael, playing it safe. As agreed, he’d said nothing to Thack about Geordie.
“This trip,” said Brian. “I didn’t give her much notice.”
“Oh.”
“I’m gonna miss
Entertainment Tonight.”
Michael didn’t get it. “Can’t you tape it?”
“No, I mean … I’m gonna miss being on it.”
Thack leaned forward. “You were gonna be on
Entertainment Tonight?”
“You didn’t tell me that,” said Michael, even more impressed than Thack.
Brian shrugged. “She was gonna be on it. I was just gonna be there. Part of her goddamn persona.”
“Hey,” said Michael. “Ease up.”
“That’s what she said.
Persona
is exactly the word she used.”
“Well …”
“Your wife is in show business?” asked Thack.
“She’s got her own talk show,” Michael explained.
“That’s great,” said Thack, turning to Brian. “What sort?”
“The regular sort,” said Brian. His tone was colorless, bordering on hostile.
“She’s good,” said Michael, trying to keep it light. “She got some major dish out of Bette Midler….”
“What about here?” Thack pointed to the side of the road.
“What?” asked Michael.
“We’re off the freeway. Let’s put the top down.”
“Oh … right. Good idea.” Michael swung off the road into the dusty parking lot of a fruit stand.
“I could use something cold,” said Thack. “How ‘bout you guys?”
“Sure,” said Michael. “Apple juice or something.”
“Yeah.” Brian nodded. “Fine.”
“I’ll get ’em,” said Thack. “You get the top.” He slid out from behind Michael’s seat and strode toward the fruit stand.
Michael turned and looked at Brian. “You O.K.?”
“Yeah.”
“This was a rotten idea, huh?”
“No.”
“Well, you don’t seem to be having a good time.”
“Would you be?” Brian wouldn’t look at him. “This was gonna be our time, man. I mean, this guy is perfectly nice, don’t get me wrong….”
“I’m really sorry,” said Michael.
“Don’t be. I can handle it.”
It didn’t look that way to Michael. “I thought this would work out great. He likes you, Brian … I mean, he seems to. And you seem to like him.”
“C’mon. He likes you a helluva lot more than he likes me.” He threw up his hand in a gesture of resignation. “That’s cool. I’m a fag hag. I can handle it.”
Michael laughed. “Stop it.”
Brian offered him a game smile. “I just don’t wanna be in the way.”
“C’mon.”
“Well, you guys are an item.”
“Says who?” asked Michael, nursing the faint hope that Thack had told Brian as much when he, Michael, had run back to the house for his sunglasses.
“Well … I just assumed.”
“We don’t
all
go to bed with each other, Brian.”
Brian shrugged. “This one looks like he might.”
“How can you tell?”
Another shrug. “I can tell with you guys.”
“Oh, yeah?” It amused him that Brian considered himself an expert on fags—prided himself on it, in fact. “Wrong again, Kemo Sabe.”
“We’ll see.”
“This is strictly brotherly.”
“O.K.”
“Maybe even sisterly, for all I know.” There hadn’t, after all, been so much as a peck on the cheek the night before.
Thack returned with the juice. “Nice job,” he said, handing them the bottles.
“Of what?” asked Michael.
“Taking the top down.”
Michael grimaced. “Oh, fuck.” He set down his juice and reached for the chrome clamps at the top of the windshield. “We started talking and …” Standing up, he pushed back the accordion roof until it fell into place of its own weight.
“Sunshine,” said Thack, vaulting into the back seat.
“Hey,” Brian said to him, “why don’t you let me get back there?”
“I’m fine,” came the reply.
“You sure? It’s kinda cramped, isn’t it?”
“No. Really. It’s great. I can stretch out and look up at the redwoods.”
“It’s not much further,” said Michael, disassociating himself from Brian’s effort to remedy things.
When they reached Guerneville, Michael announced: “Here it is, boys—our humble tribute to Fire Island.”
Thack, who’d been recumbent in the back seat, sat up with telling suddenness and scanned the men along the main drag. Seeing this in the mirror, Michael felt some distant cousin of jealousy, nasty but manageable, like a paper cut on the finger.
“I came up here once,” said Brian, “to the jazz festival.”
Michael turned and smiled at him. Sterile or not, this man was breeder through and through. “Best of Breeder,” he had called him once. Surely there were gay men somewhere who revered jazz, but Michael didn’t know any.
“Do they get good people?” asked Thack.
“Brubeck,” said Brian. “I saw Brubeck here.”
“No shit,” said Thack.
Brian said: “Tell Michael how good he is. Michael hates him.”
“I don’t
hate
him,” said Michael.
“He hates him,” said Brian.
“I like tunes,” said Michael. “Call me crazy, but that’s the way I am.”
Thack kept his eyes on the sidewalk. “This is a nice town.”
“It’s too much like Castro Street,” said Michael, mouthing the stock criticism. It wasn’t really true, but he resented the place for consuming so much of Thack’s attention. “I’m glad we’re gonna be out a ways.”
“Where is Casanova?” asked Thack.
“Cazadero,” said Michael. “We follow this road along the river until we get a few miles past Monte Rio. Then we hang a right and follow Austin Creek for a few more miles. We’re at the mercy of Charlie’s map.”
“We’ll find it,” said Thack.
What they found was a smallish, newly built structure in the redwoods along Austin Creek. Its siding was plywood, the front door was aluminum, and the main room was paneled with the sort of pregrooved faux walnut used in rumpus rooms the world over.
Michael’s heart sank. The yawning stone fireplace he’d envisioned had been usurped by a hooded atrocity built of shiny orange metal. There was a comfortable sofa (herringbone corduroy, obviously late seventies) and a decent bathroom, but the place was nowhere near the stuff of fantasy.
And nowhere near big enough.
“Where’s the bedroom?” asked Brian.
“Let’s see,” said Michael, his depression mounting.
“You’re lookin’ at it,” said Thack. “That sofa converts, I think, and there are two studio couches.”
Brian gave Michael an accusatory glance. “Did you ask Charlie whether …”
“Yeah,” said Michael, “of course. He said he was sure it had at least three rooms.”
“Uh-huh,” said Thack. “This room, the kitchen and the bathroom.”
“Shit,” said Michael.
Brian looked around. “We can put a studio couch in the kitchen.”
“Oh, sure,” said Michael.
“This’ll be fine,” said Thack. “There’s plenty of room for all of us.” He peered out the aluminum-frame window. “There’s a great view of the creek.”
Michael looked over Brian’s shoulder. “Yeah. It’s really … close.” Even closer were a rusting pink trailer and another prefab cabin, slightly more soulless than theirs. “I fucked up, guys. I’m sorry.”
“Hey,” said Brian.
Thack just shrugged it off. “We’ve got a fire,” he said brightly. “A place to swim. Big trees. Good company. I’m happy.”
They unloaded the car in silence. Then Brian stretched out on the sofa while Michael and Thack made an exploratory trek to the edge of the creek. When they returned, their roommate was fast asleep and snoring.
“Hey,” whispered Thack. “Let’s take some beers to the creek.”
“What beers?” asked Michael, increasingly disturbed by Thack’s chatty-fratty demeanor.
“Check the fridge,” said Thack.
Michael did; there were two six-packs of Oly inside. A minor consolation, but a welcome one.
Back at the creek, Thack said: “Hunkering.”
“What?”
“That’s what this is called in the South.”
“They still call it that, huh?”
“Oh, yeah.” Thack kicked off his loafers and rolled up the cuffs of his khakis. “I know lots of gay boys who are hunkering fools.”
Michael followed Thack’s example, doffing his Adidas, finding a flat place on a sunny rock, sliding his pale feet into water which was surprisingly warm.
Thack handed him a cold Oly. “It isn’t officially hunkering until the beer is in the hand.”
“Right,” said Michael.
From neighboring rocks, they lifted their bottles in unison. “To the woods,” said Thack.
“To the woods,” said Michael.
The beer and blazing sunshine lulled them like a finger on the belly of a lizard. After a long silence, Thack said: “How did you two meet?”
“Me and Brian?”
“Yeah.”
“Well … he used to live in my building. Him and his wife both. I’ve known them since they were Swinging Singles.”
Thack smiled. “What’s she like?”
Michael thought for a moment. “Perky. Sweet. Ambitious. Too serious about the eighties.”
“Oh.”
“It doesn’t bother me. She was just as serious about the seventies.”
“Are you friends with her?”
“Oh, sure,” said Michael. “Not as much as I used to be, but … well, I see her off and on.” He trailed his fingers in the water.
Thack skinned off his T-shirt. His chest was white-skinned and pink-nippled, distractingly defined. Michael caught the briefest whiff of his sweat as the T-shirt went over his head.
“Something’s bothering Brian,” said Thack.
“Why?”
“Well … I think I must rub him the wrong way.”
“No, you don’t. He likes you. He told me so.”
“He did?”
“Yes.”
Thack took a sip of his Oly. “I like him too, actually. I wish there were more straight guys like him.”
“He’s fighting with Mary Ann,” said Michael, telling a medium-sized white lie. “He gets a little weird when they fight.” That was certainly true enough. “He’s a great guy most of the time. Funny, generous …”
“Hot,” said Thack.
Michael felt the sting of that paper cut again. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
“Well, I’ve known him such a long time. We’re more like brothers or something. I know he’s good-looking, but I really don’t think of him that way.”
He was jealous, he realized suddenly. He was actually jealous of Brian.
D
RIFTING BACK INTO CONSCIOUSNESS, BRIAN STIRRED
on the sofa. The corduroy gave off a faint aroma of mildew, which tingled in his nostrils. He could hear a noisy bird behind the house and Michael’s laughter down by the creek.
He wasn’t sure whether he’d been there for thirty minutes or three hours. The headache that had nagged him on the road had subsided somewhat, but the spot in his gut was still burning. He was hot all over, in fact, and his mouth tasted foul.
His tongue made its usual rounds, searching for raw spots that hadn’t been there earlier. Finding nothing, he propped himself up on his elbows and gazed out toward the creek. Michael and Thack were still sunning on the rocks.
Brian found his shaving kit and dragged himself into the bathroom. He splashed water on his face, then brushed his teeth, then examined his face in the mirror. His grinding fatigue had made itself known in charcoal smudges under his eyes.
He left the house and walked down to the creek. The guys didn’t see him approaching, so he hollered: “How ‘bout some grub, men?”
“We gotta go shopping,” Michael answered.
“That’s what I meant. I’ll do it. Tell me what you want.”
Thack sat up. “Great.”
“Take the car,” said Michael.
“Nah,” said Brian. “I need the exercise. Whatcha want?”
“Hot dogs,” Thack replied, “and baked beans and nachos … and stuff for a salad.”
“And Diet Pepsi,” Michael added. “You know where the store is?”
