The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (10 page)

“I told you it didn’t matter, Vin.”

“I didn’t think about it at the time because I didn’t have
any experience with coming out, you know? But there are so many ways you could’ve
handled that situation. You could’ve said any of the fifty things I was afraid
you might say. You were a borderline saint and I didn’t realize it until too
late. And I don’t know— How do I ever forgive myself for that?”

“I was no saint,” he said. “Not even a borderline one. All I
was was your friend. You should’ve trusted me more.”

He went back to bed a little while later. I stayed up until
I was sure he was asleep, then joined him.

S A T U R D A Y

The phone ringing woke me up. I couldn’t move. I
was pinned. Griff was lying on my arm. I yanked myself free and fumbled with
numb fingers for the receiver.

“Hello?” I croaked.

“Sorry if I woke you. It’s me.”

“...Mm?”

“Zane.”

“Oh, Zane.”

“Zane who?” Griff mumbled.

“I nee—” Zane began. “Not your boy, huh?”

“No, he’s not.” I looked over at Griff. His shoulder was
stamped with the pale imprint of my right hand. “We aren’t together, Zane.”

“What are you, then?”

“Friends,” I said, although that didn’t feel quite right to
me either.

“Social revolutionaries,” Griff mumbled, and pulled the
pillow that was between us up over his head.

“Whatever,” Zane said. “Anyway, I need my keys. I have to
open the store.”

There was no question in his voice, not even the sound of a
tip-toe around one. I knew now that I hadn’t fired him because he hadn’t gone
along with being fired. Zane, while maybe not naturally as confident as he came
across (he’d likely been up all night rehearsing this conversation), had an
amazing ability to project it. I found this talent more attractive than if it
had been natural and not a disguise. It meant there was hope for the shy.

“It’s Saturday,” I said, but was suddenly not quite sure of
the day. It felt like a week since Griff showed up. “Right?”

“Yeah.”

“So Marissa is supposed to open.”

“Marissa’s neighborhood has no electricity and she hasn’t
been able to shower. She called me yesterday and asked if I’d cover.”

Griff pulled the pillow off his head and leaned close to
eavesdrop—a snooping spoon. His skin wasn’t quite touching mine, though his
chin was hovering right near my shoulder.

“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?” I said, hyperaware
of the knee that just bumped my thigh.

“You would’ve just covered it yourself,” Zane said, “and I
needed you to need me to not be fired.” I could picture him working through the
accuracy of that sentence in the pause that followed it. “Yeah.”

“Tricky,” Griff said, laughing right into the phone. “He knows
how to work you.”

“Where are you now?” I said.

“In front of the store,” Zane said. “I just finished shoveling
the walk. The whole walk.”

“Awwh,” Griff cooed.

“And I sprinkled sand,” Zane added.

“You sprinkled sand?”

“Yeah. I salted.”

“All right. Come get your keys.” I hung up the phone and
looked at Griff. “Happy now?”

“Yeah.”

Fifteen minutes later there was a knock on my front
door, which meant Zane drove way too fast.

“Coming!” I pushed down the covers and sat up.

“God!” Griff groaned, yanking them back up. He’d dozed off
again while waiting for Zane. “No exclamation points before noon. Wasn’t that
in our original roommate agreement?”

“This is my house now, pal.”

I got out of bed and went out to the living room, rummaged
in my coat pocket for the keys. I opened the door just a few inches against the
cold. Zane was standing on the stoop, his hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans.
He wore a floppy blue hat with an orange pompom. His cheeks were rosy.

“Thank you for covering for Marissa,” I said. “And for shoveling.”
It was my apology. I held out his keys.

“Thanks for not firing me and stuff.”

I shrugged and told him I overreacted—but I added
quickly, “Not that it should ever happen again.”

“It won’t.” He slid the keys onto his carabiner and went
back down the steps. “Hey Vince,” he said, turning around as I was about to
shut the door. “Whatever you guys are, he’s cute.” He smiled a chapped, kind,
maybe resigned smile that caught me off guard, waved once, and walked back to
his car.

I closed the door and moved the curtain aside to watch him
through the big picture window. Most of it was covered in frost but I could see
him get into his beat-up Mustang and back out of the driveway.

I stood there with my forehead touching the glass for a
minute after he’d gone, then I realized I was freezing. I adjusted the
thermostat and walked on curled toes back to the bedroom, eager to get back
under the covers. I could almost see my breath. Griff was facing away from me
again, the way he’d slept all night.

I laid back down thinking,
I just got into bed with Griff
. The feelings that came along with
that hovered in a weird space between sad and exciting. Heat crackled off him
and, like a backyard mosquito light, zapped my goosebumps one by one.

“He get his keys?” he said. It startled me. He rolled over
onto his back, folded his hands on his chest. A patch of curly brown hair
filled the shallow groove between where his pectorals would’ve been if he
weren’t so thin. His ribs showed beneath his skin like the ripply sand at the
edge of the ocean; the sheet lapped his belly like waves. If only a riptide
would just pull me in and take me deeper into the bed with him, I’d never have
to come out again.

“Yeah,” I said. “He thinks you’re cute.”

He sighed. “If only girls were as into me as guys seem to
be...”

I smelled the faint bitterness of his breath and felt
suddenly self-conscious of my own. “You don’t seem to have any trouble,” I
said, trying not to exhale. My voice came out monotone.

“C’mon, I have nothing
but
trouble,” he said. “Anyway, he thinks you’re cute too.”

“What?”

“It’s obvious.” He rubbed his exposed forearms, pulled them
under the covers and yanked the blanket up to his chin. “Is the heat off?”

“How’s it obvious?”

“Well, last night when he acted all aloof about that guy,
and then how he looked at you to see if you were jealous. It’s obvious to me.”

“He didn’t care if I was jealous, though.”

“He did, though, definitely.”

He rolled over again and jerked the covers away from me. I
pulled them back and we lay still. I watched the branches of his joshua tree sway
with the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. Sunlight came through the edge
of the blue checkered curtains and cast a warm yellow beam across our legs.

“You must’ve seen the naked guy at graduation,” I
said, glancing over at Griff and then looking again at the street in front of
us, “the one who pulled up his robe when he was getting his diploma?”

“Shit, I forgot about that!” he said, letting go of the
steering wheel long enough to clap his hands. “Yeah, I saw him. More than I
wanted to!”

I laughed. “That took some balls to do that, though,” I
said, “to streak at graduation.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it a streak,” he said. “But yes it
did take some balls—I saw them very clearly.” He stopped us at a red
light and I realized I liked him driving my Jeep. “Man, Vin, it feels good to
talk about this stuff with you. No one’s as good at nostalgia as you are.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll reminisce more when you’re done work.”

He turned into the Golden Age lot, which looked like the
surface of one of the moons in his sci-fi—full of ruts and piles,
unnavigable in anything other than a moon buggy. The Jeep bounced around in the
ruts and he parked us alongside a pick-up with its bed full of snow.

“Thanks for the wheels,” he said.

“Sure. No problem. I trust you.”

“Awh. Really?”

“I don’t trust other drivers though. Be careful. People like
totally forget how to drive when there’s snow on the ground.”

“That’s true. So do you think it’s going to be weird?”

“What?”

“With Zane. At work.”

“It’s been weirder. No. It’ll be fine.”

“All right. Hey,” he said, “what time do I pick you up?”

I told him 8:15 but I’d call if anything changed. He told me
he’d be there.

For an absent-minded moment I felt like leaning over to kiss
him goodbye. That’s what happened at this point in these exchanges, right? We
shared a bed last night. We had cereal together this morning. It’s what I did
with Melanie. But Griff was drumming his fingers on the wheel and I pushed the
door shut. He waved with a lift of his chin, backed away and rejoined the creeping
traffic.

The walk was shoveled with sharp sides and crisp
angles, the pavement sprinkled evenly with sand—the very model of perfect
shoveling. Zane must’ve thought of each scoop as an apology. I walked to the
door hoping, maybe, to find the sign turned to CLOSED, as Zane had a habit of
forgetting to flip it. But it said OPEN in bubbly yellow letters. Everything
was as it should be.

The bell jingled above me. There was one customer that I
could see, browsing the Vertigo trades. Zane was at the counter hunched over a
crossword.

“Nice job on the walk.”

“Hi, thanks,” he said. “
Franny’s
brother
. Five letters.”

“Um.
Zooey
.” I
stood in front of the counter with my hands in my pockets.

“Doesn’t fit.”

“E-y?”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s right.” He scrunched his nose and filled
in the blocks. “You’re smart.”

“Slow today?”

“Not bad.” He twiddled the pen between his fingers like that
magic trick that makes it look like the pencil is bending. “Two people came in
to pick up their pulls. A handful of browsers.”

“I thought it would be slower,” I said. “All the snow.”

“Don’t underestimate the dedication of the fanboys and
fangirls.”

“Haha. True. So.”

“So. Where’s your shirt?”

“My—?” I looked down. I was missing my Golden Age
uniform. “Oh.”

“Griff wearing it?” Smirking.

“No.”

In the back room I took off my coat and grabbed my
coat-hangered spare at the back of the closet. The t-shirt was black; on the
front was the golden
O
word balloon
logo from the sign, overlaid with the store’s name in white hand-lettered text.
I rubbed my hair in a mirror push-pinned to the wall and went back out front.

The lone customer’s eyes were wandering, a sure sign he
wanted some help. I obliged and he left a few minutes later with a half-dozen
issues of Simon’s least-favorite title.

“
Majestic
is
selling well, huh?” I leaned with my back against the checkout counter; Zane
was behind it. I crossed my arms and looked out at the street.

“He’s a better Superman than Superman lately,” he said. “As
far as writing goes.”

“Don’t let Simon hear you talk like that. He’d do more than
take your keys for that kind of blasphemy.”

“Probably,” Zane said, “but that would mean he’d have to be
here. And you know how likely that is lately.”

“Come on, I like Patti.”

“She like runs his life.”

“She’s good for him.”

Simon got married the spring before, and his wife, a local real
estate kingpin we didn’t know how he reeled in, seemed to be weaning him off of
Golden Age. His schedule kept shrinking. Supposedly he was writing a book, a
definitive history of comic books, and Patti was being very encouraging, but
Zane and Marissa felt like she was stealing him away. But that meant more of
Simon’s responsibilities were falling to me.

“She’s good for
you
,”
Zane said.

“You’re off ten minutes ago,” I reminded him.

“I’ll just chill for a while,” he said. “If that’s OK.”

“You must have more exciting places to be.”

“Just doing homework.”

“Hanging out with Jeremy.”

“That’s over,” he said. “Thanks to you.”

The bell jingled and a boy walked in, five or six with red mittens
tethered to his sleeves, an old man trailing behind him. The boy reached
immediately for the
Spawn
figures.

“Those are ugly,” the man said. He looked at Zane and me and
shrugged, smiled. “He says,
Let’s go for
a walk
, and when I’ve got my hat on he says,
Don’t forget your money
.”

“Kids are sneaky,” Zane said.

“But he shoveled all the steps, so a deal’s a deal.”

Zane gestured to the plastic demon in the boy’s hands. “If
you’re in the market for something less satanic,” he said to the grandfather,
who nodded, “we have some new
Spider-Man
figures in.” He looked at the boy. “Want to see?”

The boy clutched his grandfather’s leg and mumbled yes into the
old man’s coat. Zane came out from behind the counter and took a figure down
off the hooks.

“This guy’s a nasty villain,” he said to the kid, describing
the figure. He didn’t change his voice the way most people do when they talk to
kids—he spoke to the kid, not to the nearby adults, haha, via the kid. “He’s
got these tentacles you can wrap people up in and stuff. And he comes with
slime, which is pretty cool.”

The kid scrunched his face and shook his head.

“Is that... what’s his name?” The grandfather was pointing
to the line of figures on the top row. “I remember him...” The figure wore a
metal helmet and had wings on his shoes. A blue cloud covered the front of his
bright yellow shirt.

“Matt Morrow,” I said. “Protector of the future.”

“Ah, not Tom Morrow?”

“Tom was a few Morrows ago now. He got killed off in, I
think, 1983.”

“Ha! Shame. I used to read that magazine. I sold newspapers in
Boston when I was a boy back in the forties.” It sounded like
fotties
. “The first thing I’d do with my
pay was I’d go to the drugstore and buy it. They were a dime back then—if
I remember right. Which is less and less likely to be the case.”

The boy had selected an action figure and he stood on his
toes to push it onto the counter. The grandfather pulled out his wallet and
then, as an afterthought, reached up and took the Matt Morrow figure off the
hook.

“I’ll get a man too so they can battle,” the grandfather
said, putting his down on the counter. The boy looked up at him and laughed,
laughed without really opening his mouth. A spit bubble formed on his lip,
popped.