Shy (8 page)

Sounds like shyness, you say. Well, yes and no. The main difference between simple shyness and a thundering case of social anxiety is that the shy person is able to function. He may not be comfortable doing it, but he can hide his shyness well enough not to stand out in a crowd. He does not suffer the physical symptoms that a person with SAD suffers.

He does not, in effect, turn into a blob of quivering, quaking Jell-O and pass out flat on the floor. Or, if gay, slap his hand to his forehead and swoon like Aunt Pittypat in
Gone with the Wind
. Usually, he doesn’t feel compelled to drink himself silly either. Like Frank and I.

And now that Frank and I had finally arrived at the dreaded PARTY (every time the word PARTY entered my head, I heard maniacal laughter booming from the wings like in some cheesy horror flick), I was forced to accept the fact that all the drinking we had done had not helped at all. It fact, it made things worse. Now I was not only worried about being judged a moron by the people around me, but with the room spinning the way it was, I was also worried about falling flat on my face even
before
I passed out from fear.

I nervously poked my way through this jabbering tossed salad of humanity looking for Frank, but all I saw were strangers, with maybe a few recognizable acquaintances scattered about like croutons. A few people said hello as I passed but I blithely ignored them. All I could think about was rescuing Frank. I had no idea how he could have slipped from my grasp so quickly or what horrors were being visited upon him by this uncaring mob of strangers.

Someone stuck a drink in my hand, and I sipped it while I searched. Then someone else took hold of my elbow, and I turned to see Jerry’s face three inches from my own.

“I’d offer you a drink,” he said, shouting to be heard above the crowd, “but I see you already have one. Maybe that should be your last, what do you think? And what the hell is going on with you and Stanley’s brother? You looked awfully cozy out there on the street, drinking and schmoozing and cuddling in front of the neighbors.”

“Thanks,” I grumped. “A slut offering lessons in moderation and morality. Love it. Where’d he go? Where’s Frank?”

“Stanley is introducing him around.”

“I’ll bet. Why hasn’t Frank been invited over here before now? He’s been in town for three days.”

Jerry looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, you know how it is. Stanley and I were busy with work, and what with one thing and another—”

“Oh please. The poor guy’s broke and alone and far away from home, and you two left him to dangle in the wind for
three days
. He had to use up all his money for a hotel room just because you guys couldn’t be bothered to put him up for a couple of nights. I can believe it from Stanley, he’s such a dick, but I thought
you
were nicer than that.”

“I
am
nice.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a Stanley-in-training. Pretty soon you’ll be a full-fledged dick yourself, which is one step up from slut. You can have another party to celebrate the promotion.
Where’s Frank?
”

I was trembling I was so mad. Or maybe I was trembling because I was throwing a hissy fit at my ex-lover while surrounded by a bunch of strangers who didn’t know me from Adam but who were hanging onto every word I sputtered like I was the Dalai Lama throwing a tantrum at the UN. Who knows? The only one
not
hanging onto my every word was Jerry, who had walked away shaking his head. I always hated it when he did that. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had left his birthday present in the cab. Oh well. I’d rather the cabbie drank it anyway.

“
Where the hell is Frank?
”
I screamed at Jerry’s retreating back. The secret to throwing a good hissy fit is to mean it. Sincerity. That’s the key to a good hissy fit. And ignoring any audience you might inadvertently acquire.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a jubilant Stanley tugging a horrified Frank through the crowd like a pull toy. Frank’s eyes were as big as dinner plates, but not in a good way, not like he was having the time of his life or anything. But Stanley obviously was.

“What’s all the hubbub?” Stanley asked, all grins and forced camaraderie, winking at a guest here and there as if letting them in on the joke, all the while heading straight for me. “And what’s all the yelling about? Oh, hello, Tom.”

Stanley was a handsome guy, dammit. I had to admit that. But likeable? No. I’ve seen spores that were more congenial. He wasn’t
nice
handsome like Frank, either. He was more
bad boy
handsome. Like Satan in a clingy pair of slacks and a tight shirt, with his barbed tail flopping around behind his head. Sleek and sexy, but apt to bite, like a cranky Doberman. That was Stanley. And tonight I noticed a smear of white powder on the tip of his nose. Coke. Uh-oh. Everybody on this side of the Mississippi knew what an ass Stanley became when he snorted cocaine. No wonder Jerry was looking a little out of sorts.

Stanley looked me up and down and gave his head a sad little shake. He turned to face the roomful of partiers who were watching every move we made like the leery opening night audience of the latest Broadway flop, thrilled to be in on the disaster but appalled they had actually paid good money to attend. Knowing grins were passing back and forth among the crowd as they eyed me and eyed Frank and hung on Stanley’s every word as if to say, “Good old Stanley. What a card.”

Frank cast a humiliated glance in my direction as Stanley dragged him around to face the crowd.

“Everybody, this is my brother Frank! Fresh off the farm in Indiana! Let’s give him a rousing cheer, what’dya say?”

There were a few choruses of “Hello!” and “Hey, farm boy!” and somebody off in the back of the crowd yelled “Where the hell’d you get those pants, Frank?”

Frank’s face turned so red he looked like a stoplight. He looked at nothing but the floor even while Stanley held his arm up over his head like he had just won the Heavyweight Crown. If there had been a hole in that floor, I knew Frank would have happily done an Alice in Wonderland and dived through it without a moment’s hesitation. And I would have dived in after him.

“If anybody needs any yard work done or chickens plucked or pigs castrated, then Frank’s your man!” Stanley boomed out. “Looking for work is good old Frank. Wants to live in the big city like his favorite big brother. Ain’t that sweet?”

I seemed to sense a couple of tics of sympathy for Frank in the crowd now. But there was still plenty of laughter there too. Laughter at Frank’s expense. And that pissed me off mightily.

“Gotta warn you, though,” Stanley blathered on, sniffing now and then to keep the drugs up inside his nose where they belonged. “Bro seems to have a bit of a drinking problem. So I wouldn’t give him the keys to the house or anything. But as long as he’s just trimming the verge or mucking out the stables he should be reliable enough.”

There were a couple of sympathetic grumbles in the crowd now, and even Jerry seemed to think Stanley had gone far enough. He pulled Frank’s arm out of Stanley’s hand and led him back to me. I heard him muttering apologies to Frank as he dragged him along.

But Stanley wasn’t finished yet. Now he came after me.

“You all know Tom,” Stanley announced, grandly sweeping his arms in my direction like Vanna White introducing the letter R to a rapt world. “I hope you’ll all try to make him feel welcome. He’s afraid of crowds, you know. Scared poopless of being the center of attention is poor old Tom. Maybe nonentities always feel that way. Who knows? Anyway, let’s try to make him feel like a normal person, okay? And try not to mention the fact that he’s plastered. He’ll sober up eventually. I think.”

My eyes met Frank’s. We gazed at each other and something clicked between us. We turned back to Stanley and gave him an appraising stare, like he was a new exhibit at the zoo. Maybe a two-headed anteater just discovered on the Argentinean pampas. I turned back to Frank with a questioning look, and with an evil little smile and a wink, Frank nodded. We were obviously sharing the same wicked thought. And that thought was a doozy.

Together we walked up to Stanley and with no hesitation whatsoever, both our fists shot out at the same moment. Mine caught Stanley just below the right eye. Frank’s made contact smack with the bridge of Stanley’s drug-packed nose. Stanley went down in midsentence like a head-shot deer. Coke snot flew everywhere.

Jerry let out an unmanly scream, embarrassing really, and flung himself over Stanley’s prone body. He tried to revive Stanley by kissing Stanley’s forehead ten or twelve times. When that didn’t work, he gave Stanley’s cheek a dainty slap. Stanley moaned but he didn’t look like he’d be waking up any time soon.

“Slap him harder,” Frank suggested, biting back a giggle.

“Much harder,” I agreed with a grin. I hadn’t had this much fun since I won two thousand bucks on the lottery. (Of course, immediately after that I flew off to Vegas where I managed to turn my two thousand bucks into ninety-five cents in less than three hours, but that’s another story.)

The sympathetic noises from the party crowd were meant for Stanley now. Not Frank. In fact, Frank and I seemed to be pretty unpopular all of a sudden. Not that we cared. We were finally having fun. It was about time, too. Up until the moment Stanley’s head hit the floor, the party had been a real drag.

When Jerry shot dirty looks in our direction, I was appalled to see tears in his eyes. Geez, what a wuss. He was making Aunt Pittypatt look butch.

Frank snuggled up next to me happy as a clam as we looked down at poor Stanley who was sprawled out on the floor, arms and legs akimbo, with his nose dribbling blood and cocaine and his eye turning black even as a near-hysterical Jerry slapped him progressively harder and harder, first on one cheek, then on the other, in an attempt to wake him up. It was a lovely sight to see.

“You were worried about me,” Frank said, ignoring the hostile murmurings of the crowd around us, centering all his attention on Jerry bitch-slapping the tar out of Stanley in a vain attempt to bring him round.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“So you were trying to rescue me.”

I nodded again. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Like a white knight.”

“Well, more like a drunken banker.”

“Still—”

Frank stuck his hand down my back pocket in a proprietary sort of way and left it there.

After that, SAD or no SAD, Frank and I found the party rather enjoyable. While Stanley lay snoozing and moaning and looking pathetic on the living room floor, Frank and I mixed and mingled and had another drink. Jerry had sprung for a disc jockey, so Frank and I were just about to partake of a slow dance together when Stanley woke up. Embarrassed, he staggered up off the floor, wiped the snot and blood off his face with his shirtsleeve, and with a nasty glint in his eyes, beckoned for us to follow him.

I didn’t figure Frank and I were about to be awarded a coffeemaker as the door prize for being named the evening’s Most Congenial Houseguests and I was right.

Stanley held a cold compress to his nose that somebody had handed him and he none too politely escorted us to the front door after he screamed at Jerry to call us a cab. Between threats of legal action and a possible change of wills, as if Stanley really had a will, and as if he would have really left Frank anything in it if he had, he pulled Frank aside with a growl just before he tossed us out on our ears.

“What the hell are you doing in California, Frank? Be honest. What do you want from me?”

Frank still had his hand in my back pocket so I was close enough to see the whites of his eyes when he answered. “I just need a little help getting on my feet. Maybe a place to stay until I find a job and get some money set aside.”

Stanley snarled like a rat. “Yeah, right. That sounds like a euphemism for ‘permanent houseguest’. Or maybe ‘sponge’ is a better word.”

Jerry joined us, shuffling his feet and looking uncomfortable as hell. “We’ve got room,” he said, trying to ease the tension. “We could put him up for a couple of weeks in the spare bedroom.”

Stanley all but snapped his head off. “Stay out of this, Jerry. This is between me and my brother. Did you call the fucking cab?”

Jerry gave me a shamefaced look and turned away to stare at the street. “Yeah, I called it,” he mumbled.

Stanley checked his compress to see if he was still bleeding. There was a meanness in his eyes I had never seen there before, although I had always suspected he had it in him. “What I’ll do, Frank, is give you the money to get the hell back home. That’s what I’ll do. A one-way bus ticket to Indianapolis. Take it or leave it.”

Frank opened his mouth to answer (God knows what he was going to say), but I didn’t give him a chance. “Frank doesn’t need your money,” I said. “And he’s staying.”

Stanley spun on me like a striking rattlesnake. “What was that, Tom?”

“I said he’s staying.”

Stanley laughed but there wasn’t much humor in it. “And how’s he going to manage that? Sleep under an overpass with the rest of the bums?”

Frank’s eyes traveled to me, then to Stanley, then back to me. He looked like he was at Wimbledon, trying to figure out the game from the cheap seats.

“Tom, I—” Frank began.

Never taking my eyes off Stanley, I held my hand up, cutting Frank off. “He’ll be staying with me.”

Stanley smirked. “He will?”

Frank blinked. “I will?”

Jerry jumped like someone had poked a knitting needle in his butt. He spun around to face us. “Say what?”

I detected a glimmer of jealousy in those two tiny words that I found highly amusing.

“What about money?” Stanley asked, ignoring Jerry. Ignoring Frank too, for that matter. All his attention was now centered on me.

“I’ll help him find a job,” I said.

“You will?” Frank asked, a bemused smile twisting the corners of his mouth, offering a glimpse of those incredibly white teeth which I still wanted to lick.

“I will,” I said. “Happily.”

Stanley tenderly patted his sore eye. I was sorry I wouldn’t be around to see the surprised look on his face when he checked a mirror and saw how black and puffy that eye was getting. His nose was getting bigger too, swelling up like a fat beefsteak tomato. Stanley wouldn’t be too happy about that either, but I thought it was pretty funny. He was starting to look like W. C. Fields. Not exactly a looker in
anybody’s
book. I figured good old Stanley wouldn’t be snorting any foreign substances up
that
nose for a while. Too tender. Stanley flung the old bloody compress into the hedge beside the front door and spat a little blood onto the sidewalk, trying to look butch but not quite carrying it off, since butch people don’t usually look so damned beat-up.