Where The Boys Are (21 page)

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Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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“Come sit by me?” It’s a question, not a command. I oblige. I sit down next to Lloyd again with a long sigh, dropping my head onto my chest.
“It was nice that he brought you flowers,” Lloyd says.
“Whatever.” I squint up at him. “Has she tried to get into your pants yet? ”.
Lloyd seems to blanch a little, but ignores the question. “I wish you would come see the house. It’s coming along really nice. We plan to be open by next month. I hope you’ll at least come for the opening party.”
Mr. Tompkins has wormed his way between Lloyd and me. He settles his front half over Lloyd’s left thigh and his back over my right.
I sigh again. “Lloyd, I thought it was clear when I came down last time. I can’t put myself in a place where I’m going to get hurt once more. I’m not going to get my hopes up only to find you can’t make a commitment.” I pause. “At least with me. You had no problem making a commitment with Eva.”
“I miss you, Jeff,” he says simply.
I make a sound of annoyance. “You
can’t
just come knocking at my door like this.” I look at him. “Especially not with
her
in tow.”
“Why don’t you like her, Jeff?”
I laugh. “It’s not about liking or disliking. She’s obviously threatened by me and tries to neutralize me any chance she gets.”
Lloyd huffs. “Well, maybe
you’re
feeling threatened, too. Otherwise you wouldn’t react so strongly.”
I look at him.
“Don’t.
Don’t start playing Dr. Freud with me. You know I hate that.” He sighs, resting his head on the back of the couch. “Besides, what’s to feel threatened about? You have your life; I have mine. ”
“I guess you do.” Now it’s Lloyd’s turn to sound a little piqued. “Who’d have thought some guy you met on New Year’s Eve would
still
be here?”
I shrug. “I’m surprised myself.”
Lloyd scoffs. “I have never in my life known you to put up with someone in your space. It took you
two years
to get used to
me.
What’s changed, Jeff? Why do you let him stay?”
I don’t know the answer. Part of it may be that I’m not writing, so I don’t feel the need for privacy the way I used to.” Back in the days when I toiled over my computer banging out freelance articles in our second bedroom, I’d needed silence to hear the muse sing. Now it doesn’t matter when Anthony turns on MTV first thing in the morning. I just flop down next to him on the couch and we watch that cute gay kid and his military boyfriend on
The Real World.
“There’s just something about Anthony,” I say. “Something that intrigues me.”
“Well, he’s very attractive,” Lloyd says, sighing, as if that were the reason.
“No. I mean, yes, he is, but that’s not what intrigues me.” I pause. “Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten kind of hooked on finding out more about him. He’s like an assignment, in a way. Who is.he? What’s his story? Where’s he from?”
Lloyd looks at me dumbfounded. “You mean you
still
don’t know?”
I shake my head. “No. Just a few clues here and there.”
“Jeff, he could be an
ax-murderer,
” Lloyd says.
“Yeah, he could be. But I bet it’s something more interesting than that.” I lean in close to Lloyd. It feels good to be this near him, even with all the issues between us. “He’s a mystery. Once a week he goes out and doesn’t come back until the next day.”
“Have you asked him about it?”
“At first. But I didn’t want to seem like I was prying. He’s paying rent now—just a token, really, but he buys his own food. So he doesn’t have to report in to me.” I run my hand through my hair. “Early on, all he’d say is that he’d gone to see a friend. Now he says nothing at all, and I don’t pursue it. But as far as I know, he has no friends in Boston other than me and Henry and a few of the other guys. And he’s not seeing them.”
Lloyd makes a face. “Sure he’s not sleeping with Brent? It would be just like Brent to want to keep that a secret.”
“I thought of that, but I don’t think so. Anthony can see through Brent. He’s told me so.”
Lloyd strokes the back of Mr. Tompkins’s head. “So what else makes him mysterious?”
“He never talks about his past. No relationships. No jobs. No family. He’s admitted to coming from a suburb of Chicago, and once he said his father was an asshole. Another time he said something about not doing well in high-school algebra. But that’s it. That’s about all I know.”
I don’t tell him about the laminated photograph of Robert Riley. I just can’t. I still feel guilty about going into Anthony’s wallet. I’ve been wanting to dig further, maybe try to find where the photograph came from, but something stops me. I just can’t do it.
Lloyd looks at me with concern. “Do you think he’s hiding something?”
I sigh. “Hiding, running away, covering up—I don’t know. Something.”
Lloyd takes my hand in his. “Jeff, if you’re living with him, having any kind of relationship with him, you
should
know all you can about him.”
“Oh?” I raise an eyebrow. “And are we following our own advice?”
He backs off a little. “That’s different, Jeff.”
“How so?” He’s given me the perfect opening; I’m not going to let it pass. “Maybe I only knew Anthony a few hours before I let him move in, but how much longer had you known Eva? A few months? Come on, Lloyd. Isn’t Eva as much a mystery to you as Anthony is to me?”
He shakes his head in that stubborn, obstinate, superior way of his, the one that used to drive me mad when we lived together. “Jeff, I know a lot about who she is,” he insists. “
Too
much, sometimes, even.” He pauses. “Though I’ll admit that a friend of hers tried to tell me something, but I cut him off.”
“Why would you do that?”
He looks at me as if the answer is obvious. “Because she’s a
friend.
And I don’t like talking about friends behind their backs.”
I lean in closer to him. I can smell his aftershave. I’ve missed that smell. Part of me just wants to kiss him and forget all this. Suddenly, in my mind it’s eight years ago, and Lloyd and I are vacationing on St. Croix, and we haven’t a care in the world and man, he looks so hot in that bright-blue Speedo. We dive into the water, splashing each other. We make love on the beach. But I catch myself. I have to say what I’m thinking.
“Lloyd, I’ll be blunt with you. I think Eva is far more likely to turn out to be an ax-murderer than Anthony is. I think she’s unstable. I get the sense she could go a little loco on you if you don’t live up the image she’s got in her head.”
“Oh, please, Jeff...”
“I mean it, Lloyd. It’s
you
she wants. Not a guest house in Provincetown. You could be opening up a
laundromat
together and she’d be just as into it.”
His face grows stern. “Jeff, I meant what I said. I appreciate your concern, but I’m not comfortable talking about her behind her back.”
Oh, if this isn’t so typical Lloyd. “So you think I ought to be running around doing background checks on Anthony, but it’s not okay for you and me to discuss
Eva!”
“Jeff, the two situations are very different.”
“Come on, Lloyd! You’re—”
The door opens. We turn to look up at Anthony and Eva coming back inside, their cheeks rosy. They’re smiling and laughing together.
“The store was closed,” Eva says, “but what a wonderful time we had throwing snowballs at each other!”
“She’s so much
fun!
” Anthony exclaims to Lloyd, who just smiles tightly.
“I felt like a teenager again,” Eva gushes, hugging Anthony around the waist.
I stand and walk into the kitchen. This is all just too far out. Why the fuck did Lloyd come here today, anyway? He messes up my head with those damn flowers and then pulls back yet again, all hands-off, when I dare to talk about Eva. God, I
hate
her.
But I hate even more feeling so petty.
I turn around. Anthony has come into the kitchen behind me.
“Jeff,” he whispers, his face all red and shiny from the cold, “if you and Lloyd want to be alone, I can go stay somewhere else tonight.”
“No, no.” I look from him over at the flowers he brought me, sitting on the top of the refrigerator. “Lloyd’s not staying. They’re going back to Provincetown tonight.”
Anthony smiles. “Well, I’m glad. I have to admit I feel a little jealous. I know that’s stupid, but I do.”
My heart melts. Damn, it sure has a habit of doing that.
“It’s not stupid at all,” I tell Anthony. “And hey. I really appreciated the flowers.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Anthony says. I smile.
When we get back to the living room, Lloyd is putting on his coat. “Do you want to have dinner with us?” he asks. “After we get back from Pottery Barn?”
Eva takes my hands in hers. They’re icy. “Oh, I’d so love for you to join us,” she says, looking up at me with those eyes, as if I hadn’t been nasty to her earlier, as if she were really being sincere. “You and Anthony both.”
I look from her over to Lloyd. There’s no question I would like to spend Valentine’s Day with him. No question I’d like to sit across from him at a restaurant with a bottle of wine. No question I’d like to be with him tonight, so many happy Valentine’s memories living between us. But not with
her
along. Not with her going on and on about all they have to do and all the plans they’re making.
They, they, they.
“Thanks, but I promised Anthony we’d go out,” I say at last. I feel awful, especially when Lloyd looks away in disappointment. But in exchange I see a small, grateful smile creep across Anthony’s face.
“Are you
sure?”
Eva’s asking, busy with her gloves. “Oh, well, some other time, then. You must come down and visit us soon, Jeff. I’ll cook a marvelous dinner!”
Anthony extends his hand to her, but she moves in for a tight hug instead. “Thank you so much, Anthony. I so enjoyed spending time with you. You
must
come with Jeff when he comes down to the Cape.”
Lloyd comes over to me. We embrace. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Cat,” he whispers.
My throat is too tight to reply.
After they’re gone, I let out a long sigh.
“I think Eva is going to write to you,” Anthony says as he heads into the shower.
I look after him, puzzled. “Write me? Why?”
“I don’t know. She asked for your E-mail. I hope it’s okay that I gave it to her.”
Whatever she has to say, I’m not sure I want to read it. My heart feels all melted down to nothing. I press my face into Lloyd’s daisies, inhaling their tangy fragrance. From the shower I can hear Anthony singing:
“I’m naked without you
...”
His voice seems to dislodge Mr. Tompkins from the couch. The cat jumps down, stretches, then walks over to the door from which Lloyd has so recently departed. Plopping down his enormous body, he completely obliterates the doormat. As always, he’s determined to wait there until Lloyd has returned.
A Few Hours Later on Route 3, Forty Miles South of Boston
Lloyd
“L
loyd,” she’s saying, “I haven’t given you my Valentine’s gift yet.”
I grimace. It’s dark, and it’s started to rain, slightly, a slushy, snowy mix. The wipers are having trouble keeping the windshield clear. I’m certainly not in the mood to be opening up Valentine’s trinkets while trying to keep my eyes on the road. Besides, I’m still in a bad mood from the visit with Jeff. Yet again I’d gone to see him, made the effort, trying to get us back on track. I even brought him daisies. But he remains so intractable, so stubborn about accepting my venture with Eva, irrationally jealous of her and making outrageous claims.
Sure, I have my own worries about Eva, but
unstable?
Just
who’s
unstable here? Who’s the one who took in some unknown stray who keeps his past a deep, dark secret?
That’s
not exactly the most stable act, in my opinion. Once more, Jeff has gotten caught up with a trick, just as he did with that Eduardo kid a few years ago, completely blind to what it’s doing to
us.
Us. Maybe such a construct no longer exists. Is it
over,
then? The thought hits me like a physical force. Could all those months of reconnection really have been leading nowhere? Is Jeff really so—
“Lloyd?”
I turn. Eva’s leaning in closer to me, holding something in her hand. She switches on the overhead light. It’s a small package wrapped in a piece of silk.
“Eva, I can’t really...” I gesture with my head to the road in front of us.
“Oh.” She nods. “Of course. Here, let me unwrap it for you.”
I sigh. “Eva, you shouldn’t have done anything. I didn’t get you a gift. I’m sorry.”
Part of me had, of course, expected her to do something. Part of me knew she wouldn’t just let Valentine’s Day pass without offering some token of her affection. It’s sweet, it really is—and I truly believe that gift-giving is about the giving. If she
wants
to give me something, then she should. But still I feet awkward being empty-handed. True, I paid for dinner, but that didn’t come wrapped in silk.
“It’s okay, Lloyd,” she says softly, reassuring me. “I didn’t expect anything.”
She unfolds the silk wrapping to reveal a small wooden box. “Hang on,” I say, aware that I’m not fully participating in the romantic mood she’s trying to set up. But there’s an eight-wheeler coming up fast on my ass, and I really don’t want to get us killed. I switch on my signal and more over to the right lane. The road is getting slushier. The wipers squeak across the glass.
“What’s in the box?” I ask, a little reluctantly, even a little petulantly.
She lifts the lid. I can’t see right away. “What do you think?” she asks.
“What is it?”
She holds the box up in front of my face.
“Eva!
Please!
I’m trying to drive here!”
She withdraws the box quickly. “I’m sorry.” She makes a little sob. “It’s just that this
means
something to me. And you seem as if you don’t even
want
it.”
I sigh. “Let me see it again.” She holds the box out in her hand. It’s a ring. A ring with a green stone. “What—what is that?”
She smiles weakly. “It was Steven’s. I bought it for him on our fifth anniversary. It’s an emerald, Lloyd. To match your eyes.”
I’m flabbergasted. “Eva,” I say slowly, “I can’t accept that.”
“Of course you can!”
“No, I can’t. It was—yours and Steven’s. You should keep it!”
“Oh, darling,” she says, leaning over toward me again. “I want to give it to you. For all you’ve given to me.”
“First of all,” I say, my eyes in the rearview mirror, “please don’t call me ‘darling.’ Second of all, I can’t accept it because it’s just too much. Too intimate. Too much like we’re lovers, and we’re
not,
Eva. We are
friends.
We are
business
partners. We are not lovers and
that
is a lover’s gift!”
There’s silence, except for the steady squeaking of the windshield wipers. I reach up and switch off the overhead light.
“Eva?”
No response from the darkness.
“Eva?”
Suddenly she bursts out with an enormous sob. As if all at once she’d been stabbed with a spear up her gut. I jump, grabbing tight onto the wheel, trying to keep the car steady. I catch a quick glimpse of her as we pass under a streetlamp. Her face is contorted, her mouth open. It looks as if she’s baying at the moon.
“Eva, please!”
“Stop this car!” she demands. “Stop—this—car!”
“Eva, I can’t stop—”
“Pull into that rest stop there! Stop this car!”
“Eva, I’m not—”
“
Stop this car!”
I swerve all at once, feeling the slushy road under me, praying to God we won’t skid off the road. Slamming on my brakes after pulling into the rest stop, I turn, ready to tell her to stop being so crazy, that she almost caused us to have an accident...
... when she opens up her door and runs off into the night.
I sit in stunned silence.
What the fuck just happened here?
I feel the cold and dampness from the open door. I sit staring at it for a few seconds. Finally I reach over and pull it closed.
I will not enable this behavior, I think. I will not go running out there looking for her. That is what she wants me to do. I will sit here and wait for her to come back. It is cold and rainy and she will come back in eventually. Hell, I should just drive off and leave her. That would
...
Ahead of me several yards there’s a car parked. I watch as the driver’s-side door opens, momentarily lighting up the interior. A man steps out, pulling a baseball cap far down onto his head. He slams the door and the light goes off. I hear a beep sound. An automatic security device. I think I can discern the man walk into the woods on the side of the rest stop.
Where Eva has fled.
Holy Jesus, I think. I can’t leave her out there now, with some guy...
I take a deep breath and open my car door. It’s just above freezing, thank God, but it’s still cold, especially with the rain-snow mix sliding down the back of my jacket. I step through the slushy mess up onto the grass. “Eva!” I shout. “Where the fuck are you?’
I can’t believe this is happening. I take a few steps toward the woods and call her name again. Nothing. No sound. No sight of her.
I venture past the first thicket of trees. In front of me stands an aluminum chain-link fence. A section has been cut from it, enough space for a person to pass through. I suddenly realize why, and
who
has done it. Men stop here and go into the woods to blow each other. Javitz used to tell me all about places like this. Jeff’s recounted a few escapades here himself.
Oh, Christ, I
think
. That’s what that guy from the car was looking for. He saw someone run in here. Wait’ll he finds out she’s a woman!
I push on ahead. “Eva!”
I hear her before I see her. A low, wracking sob. I make out a figure huddled beside a tree. I approach her. She doesn’t even look at me. She just keeps crying softly to herself.
“Eva, come with me,” I say gently, taking her by the shoulders. She doesn’t protest, just allows herself to be led away passively. On our way out, I spot the man from the car lurking in the bushes.
God, even in the snow and the rain they come,
I think with disbelief. “Sorry, buddy,” I say under my breath as we pass. “Nothing here for you.”
Though right now I’d gladly hand Eva over to him.
Once we’re back in the car, I look sternly at her, though she keeps her eyes averted.
“Eva, something like this can never happen again. Do you understand?”
She turns her big round eyes up at me. “I know you slept with Tyrone. Were you never going to tell me?”
I don’t know how to respond right away. I open my mouth but say nothing.
She unlatches the glove compartment and withdraws a Kleenex, dabbing at her eyes. “Oh, Lloyd, forgive me for being so silly. My behavior was atrocious.
Of course
it will never happen again.”
I still don’t say anything, pulling back in my seat instead to watch her carefully.
“It’s just that I felt you and I were friends. Good friends. When you didn’t tell me about Tyrone, I felt as if you didn’t trust me. I was worried about a pattern starting between us.” She looks at me suddenly, as if
I’d
been the one to misbehave, as if
I
were the one who needed scolding. “A pattern of deception, Lloyd. I can’t tolerate that. If we’re to have an honest, healthy relationship, there can be no deception.”
“No deception,” I repeat back emotionlessly.
“There needs to be one-hundred-percent honesty.” She takes a deep breath to calm herself. “I suppose it’s been building inside me. That’s why I reacted so outrageously just now. I am sorry, Lloyd. It was so unlike me.”
I wonder.
“Of
course
we’re not lovers.” She gives a sudden laugh and looks over at me. “What gave you the idea we
were?
I certainly don’t think of you in that way, Lloyd, and I’m sure
you
don’t think of
me
that way, either!” She sighs dramatically. “You see, my emotions have just been on edge. I wanted to give you that ring not for any other reason than to express my gratitude to you for giving me this new lease on life. I’m not sure if you can understand just how important that’s been for me.”
“I know it’s important, Eva.”
She reaches over and pats my hand. “Do you know why it mattered so much? Today, of all days? Not only is it Valentine’s Day, but it’s”—her voice chokes up again, and the tears return, though a bit less noisy this time—“it’s also Steven’s and my anniversary. We were married on Valentine’s Day. Today was always so special for us: all the little gifts he’d leave hidden around the house for me; all the little sweet things he’d do”—she covers her face in her hands—“oh, Lloyd, I miss him so!”
I hesitate for a moment, not wanting to do it, but I do anyway. I put my arm around her. I can’t help it. I’m such a sucker. Too softhearted for my own good, Jeff often says. I’m taken in by every sad story anyone ever wants to tell.
But she
can’t
be lying. Not about
this.
I know how much she loved Steven. Running out of the car is still unacceptable, but I guess I can understand her grief. There are times I still feel like running away, as far and as fast as my legs can take me, and it’s been
four years
since Javitz died. My heart softens toward her and I tighten my arm over her shoulders.
“Please take the ring,” she says in a broken voice. She’s retrieved it from the floor. “You don’t know how happy it would make me.”
“Eva, I’m not Steven,” I say as tenderly as I can. “You can’t turn me into him.”
Her hands grasp my face. “Oh, darling, Lloyd. Of
course
you’re not. You’re
you.
I don’t want you to be Steven. I want you to be
you,
the wonderful man who’s given me so much.” Our faces are only a couple of inches apart. I can smell her breath, slightly stale. I can feel the rush of her blood still thudding through her body. “Please accept this gift from me.”
I sigh in resignation. She removes her hands and finds the ring in her lap. She slips it onto my finger. “There,” Eva says. “It fits you perfectly.”
“Thank you” is all I can say, softly and without emotion. I turn and grip the steering wheel. The emerald flashes in the glare of a passing truck. I turn the ignition.
It’s going to be a long drive back to Provincetown.

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