The Handyman's Dream (2 page)

The weather was still rainy and gloomy Wednesday afternoon. Ed settled in on his old sofa, a hand-me-down from his mother. He pulled the curtains back just enough to see out the window. The phone rang. Ed groaned, again debating whether he should answer it. Surely Norma wouldn’t call to bitch about his sister two days in a row. Then again, Ed realized, she just well might. The phone rang on, six, then seven times. He finally got up and answered it.

“Ed? I need you to come over right away and look at this lamp my daughter gave me.” The caller was Mrs. West, one of his most elderly clients, a bit of a character who was given to making mountains out of molehills.

“What’s the matter with it?” he asked, his eye on the front door.

“Well, I went to turn it on and it gave me a shock!”

Ed waited. She didn’t say anything more. “Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough? I want you to come over and make sure it isn’t defective. The last thing I need is to get electrocuted.”

Mrs. West lived in mortal fear of electrocution. You’d think someone had once threatened to send her to the chair, Ed often thought.

“Okay. I’ll be over later this afternoon.”

“Ed Stephens, you know very well that I get my hair done every Wednesday afternoon at four. You need to come over now.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. It’s so dark with all this rain I need to turn a light on in here. Goodness me, I depend on you to take care of these things for me. What would your mother say?”

Aw, crud, Ed thought. It wasn’t beyond Mrs. West to call his mother and complain, so he knew he had no choice. Norma already thought he was acting oddly, so he didn’t want to give her any more ammunition.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he said, and sighed.

Ed shrugged his jacket on and headed out the back door. Once in his truck he went out of his way to drive down his own street, looking for the mailman. Sure enough, Mailman Rick was just a block away from his house. Ed slowed down, watching him walk with that casual, easy stride. Oh, he is so sexy. Ed almost drove into the curb, his eyes on the mailman. He jerked his eyes, and the steering wheel, back to the left. Oh, well. Surely he’d see him tomorrow, and under no circumstances would he answer the goddamned phone.

That night Ed restlessly paced off the rooms of his house, from the kitchen, through the living room, and into the bedroom at the back of the house. He even went upstairs, something he seldom did, as he used the one big room on the second floor mostly for storage. He sat down on the battered brown hassock from his boyhood room in his parents’ house. He gazed at the odds and ends scattered around the room with the sloped ceilings, and pondered his life and the silly plan he had to meet the new mailman.

He wasn’t at all sure why the idea of having a boyfriend, or a lover, had taken such a serious hold on him. Oh, he’d always hoped he’d meet someone nice someday, but he didn’t carry on about it, the way Glen or some other guys he knew did. Despite his fondness for all the romantic songs he heard on the radio and played over and over again on his stereo, he’d been more content all these years to simply dream about a wonderful guy, the Dream Man he’d conjured up while still in his teens. His practical nature being what it was, he never really thought he’d meet the Dream Man, who was just something to think about in the lonelier hours when Ed had nothing better to think about. He’d always assumed that some day he would meet a nice guy, and hopefully something good, and maybe even permanent, would grow between them.

That had all changed the moment he first saw Rick. The new mailman simply was the Dream Man, and for the first time Ed allowed himself to believe that a Dream Man—if not Rick, then some other guy—actually existed. Ed, who’d always made the best of what life had offered him, suddenly began to believe that maybe, just maybe, dreams sometimes come true.

He stood up and began pacing the room, dodging the boxes he’d moved from his parents’ house to his. He paused at a box of his father’s things, given to him by his mother after Tim Stephens’s death. He rummaged idly through the items in the box—a bowling trophy, an old photo album, the Alistair MacLean books his father had enjoyed reading—and thought about his parents’ marriage. Despite their personality clash—Norma, autocratic and sharp-tongued, and Tim, gentle and easygoing—it had been a good marriage.

Ed had never really thought of himself as getting married, as straight people did. He didn’t know if he carried a residue of shame over being gay that kept him from thinking about such a relationship between two men, or if he’d simply never met a guy who seemed a likely partner. He was thinking about it now, though. All those pop songs on the radio, filled with all kinds of yearning, were hitting Ed’s ears differently these days. Whether the desire for a relationship was ignited by turning twenty-eight or by seeing the Dream Man, Ed realized it was something he wanted very much for himself: to grow older in the company of another man, to jump off the sexual roulette wheel of the gay bars.

A thought occurred to him suddenly. Perhaps the reason he’d never given serious thought to leaving Porterfield was because all this time he did unconsciously desire the same kind of relationship his parents had enjoyed all those years.

“Jesus,” he mumbled to himself. “I’ve been brainwashed by Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Ozzie and Harriet.And Porterfield. Some great gay liberationist I am.”

He shrugged. Maybe wanting a conventional relationship wasn’t the trendy, gay way to be in 1980, but he was relieved to realize he now knew himself a little better than he had before the new mailman had arrived on the scene. If Mailman Rick wasn’t available for a guy like Ed, at least now he knew what he was looking for.

* * * * *

Thursday morning was blessedly quiet for Ed. He didn’t have any appointments scheduled and the phone didn’t ring. That gave him plenty of time to prepare for the mail delivery, and to be a nervous wreck.

He felt as though he was dressing for a date. He shoved clothes around in the closet, tried on several different shirts, and fussed over which pair of jeans made his ass look its best.

“This is so dumb,” he kept muttering to himself, looking at the rejected outfits thrown on the bed. “This could be this dumbest, biggest waste of time in your whole life.”

Still, even if Mailman Rick turned out to be straight and completely immune to Ed’s charms, Ed decided he might as well look his best. In some way, he thought, it really was a date. He just hoped he wasn’t dressing to impress Ralph Graham.

By one o’clock Ed was sitting in a chair out of sight of the front door. He anxiously flipped the pages of a magazine. He didn’t want to give the appearance of expecting a knock on the door. He looked at his watch, riffled through a few more pages of National Geographic, and thought about going to the bathroom. The anticipation seemed to be doing a number on his bladder.

The mailman hadn’t appeared by one-thirty. By this time Ed really did need to pee, so he tossed the magazine aside and was about to get up when he thought he saw some movement on the sidewalk. He gripped the arms of his chair, took a few deep breaths, and told himself to calm down.

A few moments later Ed heard a knock at the front door. He closed his eyes and prayed: Please don’t let it be Ralph Graham! He got up and opened the door. Relief flowed through him. Mailman Rick looked up from the letter in his hand and smiled.

“Mr. Stephens?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

Oh, my God, Ed thought. Rick was just as handsome up close as he was from a distance. Although the guy would probably never be asked to model for a magazine ad, the simple and direct masculinity in his face completely appealed to Ed. He had guessed correctly, as Rick’s eyes were indeed a dark shade of brown. They were direct, friendly, and looking right at Ed.

“Certified letter for you, Mr. Stephens. I need to have you sign for it.” He held up an envelope with a postal service form of some sort attached to it.

Ed reached for it, along with the pen Rick offered, noticing Rick’s strong-looking hands and thinking that the dark hair on his hands and wrists hinted at much more to be found under Rick’s well-fitting uniform. Hairy, too. Can ya believe it?

“Sure,” said Ed. “Won’t you come inside for a moment?” He had rehearsed that line over and over.

The mailman nodded and stepped inside. Ed put what he hoped was a friendly grin on his face. He took a few steps to an end table and laid the letter down, looking for the signature line.

Rick reached from behind Ed and pointed. “There’s where you need to sign.”

Ed was so overwhelmed to have the guy that close to him he wondered if he could manage to write his name. Willing his hand not to shake, Ed carefully wrote Ed Stephens on the form, then turned to hand it back to Rick. He was about to say thank you, but when he looked into Rick’s face the words died in his throat.

Glen often claimed certain gay men knew when they were in the presence of another gay man. Ed told himself it was just wishful thinking, but nonetheless, whatever sensitivity to this he happened to have was tingling.

Rick was looking directly into Ed’s eyes, and Ed forced himself to look back. A shot of what felt like electricity ran through his body. If I was Mrs. West, I’d be calling an ambulance. With his own brown eyes locked on Rick’s darker brown eyes, Ed handed the letter to him.

A faint smile appeared above Rick’s beard. He detached the form from the envelope, then handed the letter back to Ed. “Thanks.”

“Thank you,” Ed said. His mind raced as he tried to think of something else to say.

And then the damned phone rang.

He broke his gaze with Rick and turned to the phone, glaring at it in frustration. Rick, who had been standing still, looking back at Ed, seemed to come to life.

“Well, I should let you get that,” he said, moving toward the door.

“Uh, yeah,” Ed muttered, watching Rick’s retreat.

The mailman pushed open the screen door, paused, and turned back to Ed with a smile. “You have a nice day, okay?”

“Oh, yes. You too,” Ed said, a bit too brightly.

Rick nodded, letting the screen door close behind him. He walked down Ed’s front steps, but suddenly stopped halfway down the walk and turned around.

“Hey,” he called. “I forgot to give you the rest of your mail!”

He hurried back up the steps. Ed opened the screen door, and the mailman handed him two envelopes and a grocery store circular.

The phone continued to ring as Ed and Rick once again looked at one another. Rick glanced at the still ringing phone, smiled, then headed back down the front walk. Ed let the screen door slam and turned to the phone, wishing he had something other than two envelopes and a grocery store circular to throw at it.

“Aw, crud!”

* * * * *

Ed moped around the house that night, endlessly replaying his scene with Mailman Rick in his head. He pushed leftover pot roast around his dinner plate and saw Rick’s face in the potatoes and carrots. Is he or isn’t he, he wondered. Am I crazy, or did he really look at me like I looked at him? He scraped most of his dinner into the garbage, unable to work up an appetite for food.

He worked hard to convince himself his wishful thinking had misread the mailman’s interest. Rick was merely a hardworking government employee doing his best to keep the customer satisfied. Ed could think of lots of ways that satisfaction could be achieved with this particular customer, but doubted they were included in the postal regulations.

He shuffled through his records, looking for something to play that would not make him think of Rick. The thing was, he realized, declaring an end to the whole thing would have been easier if Rick had been brusque or unfriendly in any kind of way. If he’d been obviously straight, wearing a goddamned wedding ring or something, Ed could have dismissed the mailman from his mind once and for all and hopefully looked elsewhere for companionship. He flipped over a Carpenters album with “Please Mr. Postman” on it and groaned. Nothing in his record collection was helpful. The only song he could think of that seemed appropriate was “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”

He knew he had to call Glen, but kept putting it off. Telling Glen what had happened would be easy enough, but he knew Glen would encourage him to make another move, and Ed was so torn by indecision that he couldn’t see himself doing anything Glen might suggest.

That awful phone rang. Figuring it would be Glen, he reluctantly answered it. “Hello?”

“Well?” Glen said impatiently. “What happened?”

Ed let out a deep sigh. “Nothing,” he lied. “The guy’s totally straight. But at least we tried. Thanks, Glen.”

“Oh. Well, shit. I’m sorry, Ed. I was really hoping you were on to something.”

“Me too. But, hey, this is Porterfield, right?” Ed’s laugh was rueful. “Maybe I should move, right? That’s what you keep telling me.”

“Aw, Ed, don’t get bummed out. You tried. That’s more than some guys would do. And don’t worry. You’ll meet someone one of these days. And when you do, it’ll just be that much sweeter.” Glen paused, then changed gears. “Hey, tomorrow is Friday. Why don’t you come into town? Mike and I have plans for most of the evening, but we might hit Carlton’s later on.”

“Thanks, Glen. I just might do that.” Why not. It’s not like I have anything better to do.