Games Boys Play (31 page)

He twisted his hands on the steering wheel, his brain playing his thoughts through.

Dylan taking off to Boston, New York, San Francisco. Big cities he could get lost in. Slipping into bars, arranging trysts through eye contact, throwing back a shot before meeting a guy in a bathroom, an alley, a cheap hotel somewhere. Brian could see it, as vivid as the sky beyond his windshield: Dylan’s mouth on some other guy’s, some guy’s hands on him, shoving, grabbing, stripping off clothes.

Jealousy, desire, hate, anger.

They stirred inside him. Lifted and took flight, whipping around like a tornado.

He hit the steering wheel with his palms, then gripped it, fingernails digging into leather. Eyes clenched shut. He didn’t want to picture Dylan’s mouth on some other guy’s, but it wouldn’t stop playing on the big screen in his head.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Not back yet?” Brian’s gaze swept the spot Dylan’s bed had been.

“No. It’s been nearly an hour,” Patty said. “I hope they didn’t find something wrong.”

“Something
more
wrong, you mean,” Kelsey said. She’d taken the one chair and sat hunkered over her phone.

“Something more wrong. That’s all I’d need. Are you all right, honey?” Patty asked.

“Yeah,” Brian said.
I just sucked your son’s dick earlier. No big deal.

“Hey, look at this.” Kelsey held her phone toward him.

“What am I looking at?”

“Little knitted you and Dyls. Someone posted it to the Facebook page today.”

In light of that info, the two peach-colored cylinders with what looked like painted cardboard guitars hanging in front of them did kind of resemble him and Dylan, Dylan’s having dark, unruly hair made out of embroidery thread and Sharpie’d-in sideburns. No cigarette, though—and then Brian spotted it sticking out from the between two “strings” on the headstock of the guitar. His own stuffed effigy had lighter brown hair, thick on top, short on the sides, and his eyes were two little lines of embroidery floss with marks at the corners showing they were squeezed shut. If the fan had knit the cylinder with its head bent, they’d have had him to a T.

“Cute,” he said, passing the phone back.

“It’s sweet what your fans do,” Patty said. “Do you think I have time for a cigarette? You watch—the second I turn the corner, they’ll wheel him back.”

“We can call you if they do,” Kelsey said without looking up. To Brian she said, “Should I post something about the accident? It doesn’t look like news has leaked yet, but, you know.”

“After he gets back, when we know how bad the leg is.” He was glad Kelsey was comfortable with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all that shit. She’d turned it into a business where she handled social media not just for them but for a local ice cream company, a record store, and a bookshop as well.

“I need to get pictures anyway. How fucked-up does he look?”

“Wait till they get his leg bandaged,” Patty said. “No one wants to look at pictures of that.”

“No, I’m pretty sure they do,” Kels said.

“I wish they’d bring him back here already.” Patty pulled on her fingers.

“Go have that smoke,” Frank said.

“I really need one. Remember when they used to have places you could smoke in the hospital?”

“No,” Kels said.

“
Call me
the minute anything happens.”

“So,” Brian said as she left, his fingers pushed into his pockets. “How’s business, Uncle Frank?”

“Getting better. Not back to the way it was yet, but a lot less scary than it’s been. I’m looking at buying a cleaning business, though.”

“A cleaning business?”

“The economy tanks, people stop building, but their clothes don’t stop getting dirty, do they? Patty’s on me to retire from construction anyway.”

“She’ll be on Dylan to take over Denault Construction next,” Kelsey said.

“Not gonna happen,” Frank said. “Don’t think he’d be any good at it anyway. He’s a hard worker—I wish I had ten more like him—but he don’t want to run nothing, not nothing like a construction business, having to be around every day, show up at the sites, deal with the customers, deal with the crews. He’s got his band; he comes to work for me sometimes; he’s happy.”

“Maybe you can run Denault Construction, Kels,” Brian said.

“Denault
De
struction, more like,” Kels said. “Besides, I already have my business, one I can do from the comfort of my couch in my air-conditioned living room.”

“How’s the band doing these days?” Frank asked.

“Good.”
On the verge of breaking up
. A sourness crept into the back of his mouth. “We’ll probably start working on the next album soon.”

“Well, he’ll be laid up for a bit, won’t be working for me. You might start on that album sooner’n you planned.”

“Yeah.”

“If he’s not too doped up,” Kels said.

I was sucking his dick earlier. He’s been fucking guys for years. Did you have any idea? I didn’t have any idea. I didn’t have any idea at all.

“Is he back yet?” Patty said, her cheeks flushed from speed-walking up the hall.

“Yeah,” Kels said. “Unfortunately, the X-rays made him invisible. Watch out. You’re stepping on his toe.”

“Always the smart one, her.”

“Hello, you must be the family?” said a woman as she appeared in the opening of the curtain, a hospital ID clipped to her shirt.

“Dylan Denault, yes,” Patty said. “Where is he?”

“Great. He’ll be just a little longer yet—”

“What’s happening? Is everything all right?”

“He’s fine. They’re going to go ahead and take care of his leg. If you’ll follow me, there’s a waiting room you might be more comfortable in.”

Brian and Kelsey tagged behind, Kelsey not taking her nose out of her phone as they headed down the hall. That was fine with Brian. He watched the toes of his boots as he walked along, till the group of them turned and spread out into a room with plastic blue chairs and a television bolted to the wall.

“These are some prescriptions for him. If one of you would like to get them filled, he’ll be able to go straight home when he’s finished.”

“Sure,” Frank said, taking the slips of paper.

Brian dropped into a seat and slouched down, his head tipped back, his hands on his thighs. There was this kid in summer camp, he remembered, back when he was in fourth grade. He’d had a sort of platonic hero crush on him. He’d just thought the kid was the coolest guy he’d ever known and couldn’t believe he’d chosen Brian to be his friend for those four weeks. He’d imagined them writing letters back and forth after camp, meeting up again next year and the year after that, but camp ended, the one letter Brian sent was never answered, and the following summer, he’d stayed home playing video games with Jimmy Russell. And that was fine because Cool Guy probably hadn’t gone back to that completely uncool camp anyway.

“Brian, who’d you get in a fight with?” Patty asked.

He looked up and over, his mouth open, the gears in his head slipping teeth as he tried to turn them. “Uh, just some guy at a bar. He was being an asshole to a couple women.”

Patty shook her head, but she was smiling. “I bet you got some phone numbers out of that.”

“A couple free drinks.”

“I remember this one time at a bar in Salem…” Uncle Frank started.

Brian dug his fingers into his thighs and looked down at the polished floor. There was the guy who’d made a pass at him when he was thirteen—or was it fourteen? The older brother of one of the guys he was hanging out with at the time. Nate, that was the brother’s name. He was in high school, had a car, was hardly ever around, except during this pool party Carl had had, about a dozen kids, guys and girls, and Brian, in his swim trunks, probably dripping water on the Shultzes’ carpet, was headed for the bathroom, but someone was using it. Nate said to go use the one in his parents’ room; nobody’d mind. When he came out, Nate was sitting on the end of the parents’ bed, saying,
“Come here.”
Saying,
“Take a look at this,”
waiting till Brian got close before he reached into his unzipped fly and pulled his dick out. Brian had said something like,
“I need to get back outside,”
and had gone straight out there, not saying a word to anybody about it.

He hadn’t thought about that in years, probably not since around the time it happened.

Why him? he wondered now. Of all the kids at the party that day—was it just the dumb luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

“Terri!” Patty said.

Brian looked up to see his mother coming through the door with her usual oversize purse bulging against her hip, a tray of Dunkin’ Donuts coffees in her hands.

“I’ve been all over. They finally sent me in here.”

“They’re taking care of his leg, they said.” Patty took the tray from her.

“I didn’t know how long we’d be here. They’re probably cold by now. Where’s Frank?”

“Getting Dyl’s prescription filled.”

“Brian, do you want one?”

“No, thanks, Mom.”

“Aren’t you glad he got rid of his bike already?” Patty said to her.

“He didn’t ride it much anyway. I guess Dylan’s bikeless now too, isn’t he?”

“Little shit was talking about buying it back from the insurance company if they total it.”

His mom ruffled his hair as she took the seat beside him. “Are you doing all right?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to your face?”

“He beat up a guy that was bothering some girls,” Patty said.

“Oh dear.”

“They took Dylan off to X-ray an hour and a half ago,” Patty said.

“Not
that
long,” said Kels.

“You weren’t even there. How would you know?”

Brian slumped down in his chair and tuned out the chatter.

He’d had a little bit of the hero worship thing with Dylan too, when they first met: two years older, smoking, the do-whatever-the-fuck-I-want attitude, the way he’d talk back to Patty and how she hardly minded. The
band
. Brian had had a bass he’d bought at a yard sale a year earlier, but as Dylan pointed out the first time Brian brought it over, just because he put his fingers in the right places at the right times didn’t mean he was doing anything worth listening to. Dylan had sold his drum kit already—he’d been banging on things since they’d put his first rattle in his hand—and bought the guitar that he was playing in a band he’d started with three other guys. They’d even played local gigs.

Fueled by wanting Dylan to take him seriously, Brian had learned how to
listen
to music and to listen to his own playing and to play so other people would want to listen to it too. The effort he put into it impressed Dylan, but what might have tipped the balance in their relationship was Dylan’s discovering Brian could write lyrics, though at the time he’d been thinking of them more as poems. He was trying to be Charles Bukowski. He’d written short stories too, foul and sour and purposefully short on punctuation and capital letters. And probably really, really bad.

He and Dylan were in high school at the same time for just one year. Then Dylan was working on his dad’s crew and playing in his band, and Brian made friends outside of Dylan’s circle and started his own string of bands.

By the time he and Dylan got together to form Attack from Space, they’d been friends two years, and Brian considered himself to be as badass as his cousin, if not in exactly the same ways.

And he’d been accused by girlfriends of being married to his band.

Of wanting to spend more time with Dylan than them.

“You sure you don’t want a coffee?” his mom asked.

“I’m good.”

“You didn’t have any shows coming up soon, did you?”

“No. We probably need to get to work on the next album, but we don’t need to be anywhere.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped. He gnawed at the inside of his cheek.

They’d shared beds when it was four or five guys to a cheap motel room, and Brian hadn’t thought anything of it. Had Dylan? Had he ever lain awake in the early-morning hours thinking about guys? About
him?
Had he gone to the bathroom and jerked off, hot from lying next to his best friend?

They’d shared a bench seat in a van for a short New England/New York tour. One time, it had been zero degrees out, and Brian, exhausted, trying to get some sleep, kept being disturbed by Dylan moving around—disturbed because he was trying to lean against Dylan for warmth, and Dylan kept shifting away. Dylan had finally gotten up and pulled the side door open.
“Going to take a piss,”
he’d said, his words white puffs against the darkness. The other two guys, up front, had hardly stirred. Brian fell back to sleep alone on the bench seat. When he’d woken later, when it was getting light out, Dylan was pressed into a ball on the floor in the space between the bench seat and the front seats, with just his leather jacket draped over him.

Frank came back with a paper Walgreens bag, and Patty asked him how much it was.

“Not bad. You know, with the insurance,” Frank said.

“You’re quiet tonight,” his mom said to Brian.

“Tired, I guess. Dylan and I were up all night.”

“Do you think he was tired when he was on his bike?” Patty asked.

“I don’t think it would have mattered,” Frank said, “from the way he described the accident.”

“No, not if the car drove into his back wheel,” his mom said.

“Maybe
you
shouldn’t drive tonight,” Patty said to him.

“I’m okay. I got some sleep. I was sleeping when you called.” A couple beers, two shots of vodka, and a sleeping pill, and the whole sordid mess of the morning had eventually given way to empty, welcome blackness.

Plus, also, I think I’m in love with your son—because thinking he might be dead nearly killed me.
He massaged the back of his neck, hiding his face behind his elbow.
And he’s gay, by the way.

I don’t know about me, though.

I’m not sure I know anything about anything right now.

Most of his bondage fantasies involved men. He had
sex
fantasies with women. Breasts turned him on; sliding his cock into the hot grip of a pussy did a fine job of getting him off. But when it came to the bondage stuff, unless he got self-conscious about it and made himself stick a woman into the aggressor role, his abductors, hostage takers, and torturers were always men. And while there hadn’t been any sexual attraction or kissing involved in the fantasies, a forced sexual component wasn’t unheard of. Or even rare. It was a turn-on, the fantasy of having his mouth forced open, forced to take a cock, or being held down and fucked—and not necessarily with a dick. He’d imagined broomsticks, hammer handles, all kinds of things, wielded by the men who controlled and abused him.