Billy's Bones (6 page)

Tom had grown used to Kevin oversharing. He also remembered the way he’d been three years ago in the therapy session, casually tossing out disturbing details like that. Tom was convinced it was a form of misdirection—keep people too shocked to ask the right questions. Maybe even make them so uncomfortable that they’d back off.

But it didn’t work on Tom. Not anymore.

“Tracy told you she was pregnant the night before,” he commented, “and you took the first chance you got when she left you alone in the house to kill yourself—or try to. But you insist you didn’t do it because she was pregnant.”

Kevin’s smile faded, and now he was the one who looked uncomfortable. “I wanted the baby. Maybe not as much as she did, but I wanted it.”

“I believe you. But that was the trigger, regardless.”

Kevin’s expression had turned to stone, though Tom could see something deep in those hazel eyes, something fearful. Kevin quickly turned away. “Enough of this bullshit. I need a beer.”

O
NCE
he had a beer in hand, Kevin seemed to relax again. He took Tom on a short tour of the trailer—a cookie-cutter affair with a large bedroom at the front, followed by a living room and a kitchen, then a short hall with a small bedroom and a bathroom off to one side, and another bedroom at the far end. Tom had lived in one that looked nearly identical to this when he was a kid. Even the linoleum and the fake wood paneling was the same. Now that Kevin was living in it by himself, he’d spread his clutter into every room. The small bedroom in the hall was packed full of miscellaneous junk, and the bedroom at the far end had been turned into some kind of electronics workroom, full of old radios and TV sets and electronic toys that Kevin seemed to be fixing or soldering together into Frankenstein creations.

The back door of the trailer, coming off the hallway, opened out into a backyard, but it was so overgrown that small birch trees had taken root here and there among the high grass, and it probably wouldn’t be long before the woods reclaimed it.

The hibachi was on the front porch, where Kevin also had a couple of folding lawn chairs. Tom settled into one while Kevin busied himself cooking the burgers. They’d been chatting about the trailer and Kevin’s work and where Tracy was living now—at her mother’s—during this entire time, but as Kevin settled himself into the other lawn chair, freshly opened beer in hand, he asked one of the questions Tom had been anticipating since he arrived: “So when did you first know you were gay?”

It was part of the song and dance Tom went through with nearly every straight man who found out he was gay—the curious prodding about things that were really none of their business, always the same questions, always the same answers. He’d grown used to it, and he didn’t really mind—not even when the questions were offensive (“Do you have AIDS?”) or far too personal (“Doesn’t it hurt when some guy fucks you up the ass?”).

“I’ve always known I was gay. Even before puberty, I had a crush on my best friend—a boy.”

“So you never kissed a girl, then?”

“I was dared to kiss a girl in fourth grade. But not since then. And please don’t ask me how I can possibly know I wouldn’t like it. It will spare us both from me challenging you to kiss a man.”

Kevin smiled at that and took another swig of beer. “So what am I allowed to ask about?”

“If we’re going to be friends,” Tom said, jabbing at him with the tip of his beer bottle, “you’ll have to get used to treating me like a regular guy, not a sexual circus freak.”

“Am I treating you like a freak?”

“I’m just saying if you want to ask me about being gay, go ahead and get it out of your system now. Anything you want to know: favorite position, penis size, do I swallow? But after today, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Penis size?”

“Six and a half inches.”

Kevin laughed. “Dude, I beat you by a half inch.”

“Good to know.” Not quite as large as it had been in Tom’s dream, but nice. And the less Tom was reminded of that dream, the better.

Kevin emptied his bottle and then sat there for a minute, blowing across the opening, trying to make it whistle. Once he managed a single, mournful note, he stopped and said, “I guess I don’t really need to know any of that shit.”

“My turn to ask you questions, then.”

“No more psychoanalyzing.”

“Fair enough. Did you grow up here?”

“Yeah.” Kevin shifted in his chair and used the tip of his empty bottle to point up the road. “My parents had a house down that way until my mother went into a home.”

“Your father has already passed away, I take it?”

Kevin gave Tom an odd sideways glance. “Oh, he didn’t just ‘pass away’. He was too
important
to leave quietly.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm. “He offed himself when I was thirteen, just after I was sent to Hampstead. Something for you to chew on, counselor.”

It was. But Tom gave him a wry smile and responded, “You made me promise not to psychoanalyze.”

“You’ll do it anyway. I just don’t want to hear about it while we’re trying to relax and shoot the shit.”

“Is your mom still around?”

“Yeah. She’s over at Riverview.”

Riverview was an assisted living community a little down the road from Groveton, toward Lancaster. Tom had dated one of the nursing staff over there a few years ago. The gay community in the area was
small
.

“What about you?” Kevin asked, getting up to go poke at the burgers.

“Me? I grew up in Berlin, but my parents hated it as much as I did—still do. They’re living out in New Mexico now. My older sister moved out there to be near them.”

Kevin grunted—some kind of acknowledgement, perhaps—as he pulled one of the burgers off the hibachi and placed it on a bun. “I don’t have any sisters or brothers. Probably for the best.”

“You keep saying that,” Tom pointed out.

Kevin snapped back, “Stop analyzing me, dickhead.”

He didn’t really sound angry. The insult was just more of Kevin’s ribbing, so Tom didn’t mind, but he took the not-so-subtle hint. He’d ruined friendships in the past by overanalyzing everything people did. There was no point in sabotaging this friendship before it even got off the ground.

T
OM
stayed there until after sunset, basking in the comfortable chat and good-natured teasing he’d come to expect from Kevin. Admittedly, he wasn’t as comfortable surrounded by the clutter and debris of Kevin’s lair as he would have been at his own house. The bathroom was particularly bad and could probably be classified as a biohazard. He’d been forced to venture in there once during the afternoon, and he felt emotionally scarred from the experience. Fortunately, the rest of his “business” for the day could be conducted standing in the bushes behind the garage. His host didn’t seem to have a problem with that since that’s what he did himself.

It was after he’d come back from the bushes a third or fourth time and leaned across Kevin to get another beer—they’d switched to Kevin’s favorite brand, a local Vermont brew called Magic Hat #9—that Kevin said, “Hold up.”

He reached up with both hands and placed one on the side of Tom’s neck, while he picked something off Tom’s collar with his other hand. The heat from Kevin’s hand against Tom’s bare skin and the gentle way his rough fingers cradled his neck caused Tom to freeze for a moment. He knew he had to be misinterpreting it, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out what else Kevin could be doing besides making a pass. Then Kevin released him and held up something brown and wriggling, pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

“Tick,” he said.

Tom shuddered and stepped back so Kevin could get up and toss it into the hibachi. “Lovely.”

“Welcome to the country. You planning on getting pets?”

“A dog.”

“I can see you with a dog,” Kevin said, smiling in a way Tom knew meant he was about to get jabbed. “A little yip thing with painted nails and a pink ribbon.”

Tom opened his beer and flopped back into his chair, realizing he was pretty far gone already. “No, asshole. A big dog like a German shepherd or a Labrador. Not one that drools a lot,” he amended.

“Well, you can expect ticks, then. And fleas.”

“I can’t remember what it’s called, but there’s stuff you can rub into their fur to kill all that.”

“When are you going to get some furniture?”

“Jesus. It’s not like I have to do this all at once, you know.”

“You’ve been living there for weeks, and you don’t even have a goddamned bed! I know a guy who sells antiques. I could get you a deal.”

Tom leaned back and closed his eyes, his beer wedged in his crotch, cool against the underside of his balls, even through layers of denim and cotton. Now that the night had settled in, peepers were busy having noisy sex somewhere nearby, and mosquitos were setting off the bug zapper by the garage door. “Sure. When do you want to go?”

“He’s open tomorrow, if you want.”

“Okay.” He really could use a bed. And maybe a few chairs. A table too.

How much beer had he had? He was no longer certain. He just knew he was floating, and he didn’t want to get out of this chair for a very long time. Possibly never. Kevin let him sit quietly for a while until Tom became aware someone was snoring. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought it might be himself.

“All right, counselor,” Kevin said, sounding far, far away. “You’re staying here tonight.”

Tom was too fuzzy now to resist as Kevin put his arms around him to lift him up out of his chair. He drew one of Tom’s arms around his shoulders to half lead, half drag him into the trailer. The heat of his body against Tom’s felt good, but being vertical didn’t—it just made everything spin. He worried for a moment that he was going to be dumped on the couch in the living room, where he’d seen Kevin’s dirty laundry piled earlier, before he felt himself being lowered into a sitting position on what felt like a mattress.

He opened one eye to see Kevin kneeling and pulling one of Tom’s sneakers off.

“Do you think you’re gonna puke?” Kevin asked him.

“No, I just wanna lie here.” He watched Kevin finish pulling his other sneaker off, wondering just how far he would go. Apparently the answer was “Not very far.” Kevin laid him back onto the bed fully clothed and wedged a pillow under his head. Then he went back out onto the porch for several minutes, while Tom lay there, pissed off that the light was still on but too drunk to get up and turn it off.

Eventually, Kevin came back into the room. Tom’s eyes were closed as he began to drift off, so he didn’t see what Kevin was doing, but the light went off after a couple minutes, and he felt Kevin climb into the bed and under the covers. Tom was still lying on top of the blankets, but he was warm enough in his clothes, so he drifted off to sleep.

He woke later in the night, cold. Kevin was sound asleep, breathing slowly and evenly, so Tom fumbled around until he was underneath the top blanket. Then he fell asleep again.

T
HE
first thing Tom was conscious of in the morning, besides the hateful sunlight coming in through a gap in the curtains, was the smell of dirty socks and stale charcoal smoke. The smoke smell, he quickly discovered, was coming from his own clothing. Unfortunately, the dirty sock smell was coming from everywhere else—the room seemed permeated with it.

He turned his head and found Kevin sleeping beside him. Tom was surprised by this, but though the exact sequence of events last night was a little fuzzy, he vaguely remembered Kevin putting him to bed and crawling into the bed with him. The fact that Tom was fully dressed told him nothing more exciting than that had happened, although he was curious what exactly Kevin had worn to bed. His shoulders were bare and so was one leg, jutting out from under the blanket. Did he sleep nude? Probably not, but it was nice to contemplate.

Tom slipped out of the bed as quietly as possible and went outside to take a leak. By the time he got back, Kevin was awake and sitting up.

“Hey,” Kevin said sleepily. “I thought you’d taken off.”

“Not yet. But I should head home. I need a shower and a change of clothes.” Thank God he really did need a change of clothes, since his reeked of sweat and smoke. Otherwise, Kevin might offer to let him shower in that terrifying bathroom of his.

Kevin got up out of the bed, and Tom was disappointed—though hardly surprised—to discover he was wearing underwear. Even so, Kevin in tighty-whities was fucking hot. Tom had seen most of his body already, but not quite this much. And Kevin had a morning erection he didn’t seem worried about hiding. Tom had to force himself to look up into the man’s face.

“Did you still want to look at Mike’s antiques this afternoon?” Kevin’s sleepy “bedroom” eyes were, in fact, really sleepy bedroom eyes this morning, and Tom had a nearly overwhelming desire to kiss each of those heavy eyelids.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, swallowing to moisten his dry throat.

“I’ll stop by in a few hours to pick you up.”

Seven

“H
E
PUT
you in his
bed
?” Sue asked incredulously.