Night Kites (13 page)

I turned back around and opened the door. I heard her say the rain had stopped, good, I wouldn’t get wet. She snapped on floodlights.

When I was halfway down the walk, she came running toward me from behind, and I stopped when she called, “Erick? Wait!”

“What?”

I turned around and she caught hold of me, and we sort of spun around and around, hanging on to each other, laughing, then not laughing. “I hate for you to go!” she said. We stood there in the bright lights like people onstage in a play.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

I closed my eyes, holding her as hard as I could, and when I opened them, I saw the Mustang, stopped just at the drawbridge. He must have been on his way up the road when he spotted us.

“Jack,” I said. “It’s Jack,” and I watched him back up, then turn around and take off.

T
HE SCHOOL WEEK BEGAN
with a letter from Dill, taped to my locker.

Dear Erick,

Jack came by last night, and I guess I don’t have to tell you what we talked about. Since you didn’t even call to see if I was back from Massachusetts, I guess what Jack saw at Kingdom By The Sea says it all. I’ve known since we came back from New York that something was wrong that something happened there to change you. I guess it’s boring to be stuck with someone who doesn’t put out, right? Well, you knew what to do about that, didn’t you? The thing I can’t get over isn’t even what you did to us by running off to her, it’s what you did to Jack! I might have forgiven you for going behind my back to make out with someone like her, if that’s what you did, but I could never, ever forgive you for going behind Jack’s back, going after the only girl he ever cared anything about. If that’s the kind of friend you are, then how could anyone trust you?

I don’t want anything more to do with you. In a way I’m glad this happened senior year, since I can now go on to Wheaton (if I get in, and it looks good!) and not have anyone from the past to keep me from enjoying the future. I hope you enjoy yours, Rudd, but if I were you I wouldn’t sleep well nights … but maybe sex with The Slut will help you sleep.

Dill

That was the strangest week I ever spent at Seaville High.

Overnight, Nicki and I became an instant couple, but we were like the two new kids in some school where we didn’t even know anyone’s name, left to ourselves as word spread like a fire through dry grass that I’d taken Jack’s girl away from him.

On the one hand, I’d see Dill pass me in the halls as though I wasn’t there, and Jack looking everywhere but at me, and I’d feel this incredible loneliness, like I was the invisible man.

On the other hand, I’d see Nicki coming toward me, wearing one of her goofy, great, beautiful outfits, a yellow lace dress, say, with that nutty black-leather-fringe jacket, the traffic accident on its back, and she’d be smiling at me, and she was mine, so none of the rest of it mattered. But it was definitely a high/low game, and I tried to think of it as a game, though it was so intense sometimes I’d catch my breath, and long for the old familiar routines of senior year, being tight with one girl and one crowd, and having a long history with both, instead of all of it being new.

And always, there was Pete on my mind. Always the thought that if I ever needed Dill and Jack, the main ones in my life who knew what Pete was to me, it was then.

So it was back and forth, and I was down so low sometimes I felt like a complete stranger to myself, then
up,
soaring, lost somewhere with her, too high to care about the rest of it.

Nights when I wasn’t working, I was out at Kingdom By The Sea, for as long as I could stay, in Dream Within A Dream, or swimming down in City By The Sea—a wave to Cap Marr, a word or two exchanged between us … and I remembered the first time she’d introduced me to him, he’d grinned and said, “A new one, Fickle Pickle? Well, what’s your name? … Rudd? Don’t let her make your name Mud, Rudd,” laughing.

“This is different, Daddy!” Nicki told him. “So don’t scare him off, hmmm? I’m not a fickle pickle anymore.”

If anyone wasn’t going to scare me off, it was her father. He was like this large, overgrown kid, cuddling the Siamese cats in his arms, giving them the run of the bar, strolling around in his Help Feed The People T-shirt, with the visor cap tipped forward hiding his eyes. There were always girls years younger than he was nursing tequila sunrises on tall stools, while he watched sports on the TV up on the shelf over the bar, or talked with Toledo, who’d scare anyone off, he was so bad-tempered and big.

If a kid could dream up the perfect father for the girl he was dating, Cap would win hands down. He was mellowed out like someone with a horrendous pot habit; nothing seemed to ruffle his feathers, not our skinny-dipping in the pool, not my presence in her bedroom.

“He’s in the midst of a major nervous breakdown because we’re losing so much business?” Nicki said. “See, major disappointments make him real sweet.”

“Maybe you’d have more business if you got rid of Toledo.”

“Toledo looks worse than he is. It’s just that fags get to him. He said seeing a fag walk in the bar was like seeing the first maggot crawl onto a dead body, like it was the end here. Toledo’s been with this place since we started, so it’s like his place, too. We’ve always had motorcycle guys, like Ski, or fishermen. It’s always been a macho bar.”

“Do fags bother you?” I asked her.

“
Me?
I’d love to make love to one. Change him? I bet I could!”

“What if he didn’t want to change?”

Nicki laughed. “I’d let him dress up in my clothes. I’d help him be a real queen like Boy George. I’d play him
The Age of Consent
.”

“I don’t know
The Age of Consent.
”

“It’s Bronski Beats album. They’re this Scottish trio who’re gay. They all wear pink triangles like the ones homosexuals were forced to wear by the Nazis. They have this song ‘Smalltown Boy,’ about a gay kid who has to get away from his family and his town.”

“But what if a fag isn’t swishy; what if he looks like any other guy?”

“Then that’s such a waste,” Nicki said. “That’s just a waste of manpower, isn’t it?”

I let the subject drop there.

That Friday afternoon when I got home from school, there was a SAAB 900 Turbo in the driveway, with JJSCIFI on the license plate.

Mom met me at the door to tell me Jim Stanley and Pete were in the living room having coffee. She said Oscar’d been put to sleep.

I ducked into the kitchen to get control of myself. I blew my nose and got a Coke from the refrigerator. I was standing at the sink, trying to keep back the tears, when Pete came in.

“Why didn’t you at least let me say good-bye to him?” I said.

“We got here at two,” Pete said. “The vet closes at four…. You knew I was going to do it this week.”

“I didn’t know when. I guess I’m not grown-up enough to be told that, either.”

Pete ignored that. He said, “I thought it was
my
responsibility, Ricky.”

“Yours and Jim’s?”

“Ricky, Jim was just kind enough to drive me out.”

“God, Pete, he was my dog, too!”

Pete looked thinner every time I saw him. I felt rotten for shouting at him.

He put his arm around my shoulder. “I held Oscar while he got the shot. He went very peacefully.”

“Poor Oscar Wilde.” I smiled up at Pete. “I’m sorry I blew up at you.”

“Forget it. Come on in and see Jim. We can’t stay for dinner.”

Pete had on a herringbone tweed jacket, gray flannels, a white shirt, and a striped tie.

“Why are you so dressed up?”

“I stopped in to see Reverend Shorr. Mom’s going to need some support, eventually.”

“You told him?”

“That’s why I went to see him.”

“Does Dad know you told him?”

“Just you and Jim know. Mom doesn’t even know. I want somebody outside of family to be ready to help Mom.”

“What did old Snore say?”

“He said how fond he was of Mom. Then he started talking about the way homosexuality was treated in the Bible. He said something about anyone who reaches back four thousand years and pulls forward a law code written for nomads in the desert, and claims it applies here and now, isn’t being honest with the scriptures.”

“Then he’s not against it?”

“He’s certainly not for it,” Pete said. “He was treating the subject intellectually. You know Snore. He was quoting Leviticus and what Paul said in Romans, questioning the interpretation.” Pete sank his hands into his trousers and said, “Ricky? Mom always acts like she’s solid as a rock, like nothing surprises her, but there’s a lot of stuff coming down she doesn’t even imagine.”

“Like what, Pete?”

“Okay. I had to make a deal with Southworth. Legally, they can’t fire me because I have AIDS. But I knew they wouldn’t want me around. I need my medical benefits, and I’ve earned them. So I offered to take a leave of absence with a month’s notice. They accepted the offer, providing that I left that day.”

I started to say something, but Pete held up his hand. “Wait, there’s more…. I told a friend of mine in the apartment building. At least I
thought
she was my friend. I’m going to lose the sublet. She’s circulating a petition to get me out. It’s not my apartment, so I can’t fight it…. I’m a little like a leper, pal. I’m a lot like one.”

“God, Pete, I’m sorry.”

“It’s just the tip of the iceberg, I’m afraid. You’ll see soon enough, and I’m sorry as hell I’m bringing this down on the family…. There’s something else. I’m not going to San Francisco with Jim.”

“Did Dad talk you out of it?”

“No. Jim’s deal came through for the TV series. It’s not a good time for him to chase off to San Francisco, or for me to go to the coast. I’m going to put myself in Phil Kerin’s hands.”

“Good, Pete! Dad says he’s the best!”

“So I’ll be around. Here.”

“In Seaville?”

“In Seaville,” Pete said. “‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.’ Five dollars says you don’t know who wrote that.”

“Dad?”

Pete laughed and mussed up my hair. “Come on in and see Jim.”

J
IM STANLEY STOOD UP
and shook my hand.

One of the things I’d learned about Nicki was that she was never happy until she figured out what celebrity you looked like. She said I was a curly-haired version of singer Roddy Frame from Aztec Camera, but I’d never seen or even heard of Roddy Frame…. Jim Stanley, Nicki’d say, was a younger Richard Chamberlain. He was one of those really poised guys, with all the right, polite gestures, the type any mother’d love her daughter to bring home and meet the family.

But Pete had brought him home.

I don’t know what the guy could have done right under those circumstances. I know I didn’t like him calling me Ricky (only Pete called me that), and Mom looked away every time he gave Pete an affectionate nudge or tap on the knee, and every time he said “we” this and “we” that, which was a lot of times.

The touching got to me, too. Jim Stanley was a toucher. It looked like the same innocent contact Jack and I had had together back when we were still speaking, but somehow it bothered me. I kept wishing they’d sit farther away from each other on the couch, too.

For a while we sat around talking about the new series Jim was writing for NBC.

Mom said, “Erick wants to get into film work, too.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“N.Y.U. has a great film school,” Jim said. “Joel Coen went there. He and his brother did
Blood Simple
and
The XYZ Murders.
Great stuff!”

“I doubt that Dad’s going to approve of film school,” said Pete.

“Ah, yes,” Jim said, “there’s Himself to contend with.”

Mom gave him a look. She said, “Mr. Rudd’s always been open to suggestion.”

“Just like the Pope is.” Pete grinned.

Both Pete and Jim thought that was pretty funny, but Mom didn’t like it. It was okay for Pete and me to kid about Dad, but Mom didn’t want an outsider joining in on the joke.

I was remembering when we were kids, and Dad was laying down the law, Pete called him “O Infallible!” I was so much younger than Pete, I didn’t even know how to pronounce “infallible,” much less, what it meant. It came out of my mouth “O Full of Bull.”

Pete must have read my mind. He looked over at me and said, “O Full of Bull’s pushing hard for Erick to get an M.B.A.”

“Pete?” Mom said. “Why don’t you get Jim another cup of coffee?”

She wanted to change the subject, get it off Dad.

Jim said no thanks, but he thought Pete could use a sandwich.

Mom was about to get up when Pete said he couldn’t eat anything.

“An eggnog then,” Jim said. “How about an eggnog?”

“Nothing. Thanks, anyway.”

“Pete?” Jim said in a scolding tone.

Mom looked out the window.

“I don’t think I can get anything down,” Pete said.

“I’ll make it the way you like it,” Jim said, “not too sweet, with a jigger of rum. Mrs. Rudd? You have eggs, vanilla, milk, and a little light rum?”

“Yes, I’ll make it.” Mom started to get up, but Jim was on his feet.

“I know how he likes it,” Jim said.
“Moi, jai pris charge.”

“Fais ce que tu dots,”
Pete said, which only meant “do your duty,” but Mom looked like she’d been insulted. That had always been her little game with Pete, the quips back and forth in French. Her crossed leg was swinging the way an angry cat’s tail flailed the air.

“I’ll help you find the rum,” Pete said, and he got up and followed Jim toward the kitchen.

After they’d gone, I said, “How come Pete’s not going to the coast?”

“Jim shares an apartment with a friend. The friend doesn’t want Pete there.”

“Because of AIDS?”

“That’s probably why, yes.”

“Is Pete upset about it?”

“Stop asking me how Pete feels, Erick. I haven’t a clue. Jim tells me more than Pete does—more than I want to know, too. About everything.”

“Like what?”

“Pete’s had things before. Hepatitis.”

“A lot of people get hepatitis.”