Xylophone (9 page)

had gone south and his balls had paled, so to

speak, from blue to whatever the hell their natural

color was. Moreover, he’d resigned himself to

writing off Jonah Day. Any negativity about his job

was a deal breaker. He didn’t need the label
white

trash
slapped on him—not on top of all the others.

Scrubbed free of makeup and dressed in his

comfortably shabby street clothes, Dare pushed

open one of the Sugar Bowl’s heavy front doors.

The air outside was a brisk blessing. Steeled by

righteous indignation, or at least trying to convince

himself he was, Dare strode to the employee

section at the left edge of the parking lot.

“Dare!”

He spun toward the voice. Shoes slapped

softly on the asphalt. A few cars crawled toward

the exit, lamplight glinting off their shells.

“Wait!”

Jonah emerged, breathless, from a swatch of

near-darkness. He stopped a foot away from Dare.

At his back, beyond the frontage road, the muted

growl of freeway traffic had thinned.

It was close to eleven.

“I’m sorry,” Jonah said, looking directly into

Dare’s eyes. “I didn’t think before I opened my

damn mouth.” Nervously, he ran a hand through his

ruffled hair. “What I said at the bar—it has more to

do with me than with you.”

“Really?

How?”

Beneath

his

frigid

skepticism, Dare was impressed. Men had waited

for him in the parking lot before, but never this

long, and never to apologize.

“I know it sounded like I was….” Jonah’s

forehead crimped. His gaze darted away from

Dare’s face. “Like I was put off, like I was passing

judgment. But, see, the thing is—”

“You don’t have to explain. A lot of people

would react the same way.” Remaining aloof, Dare

kept pushing, pushing, testing Jonah’s limits. He

hadn’t liked himself when he’d done it before, and

he didn’t much like himself for doing it now. But

he felt driven to.

“
The thing is
,” Jonah repeated sternly,

raising his voice to demand attention, pushing

back, “I admire your self-assurance. Envy it,

actually. I’ll admit I was stunned at first, maybe for

reasons I don’t….” He closed his eyes for a

second, then switched tracks. “You put yourself

out there, all the way. And you’re good at what you

do. Very expressive and agile and….” He licked

his lips. “I thought you were gorgeous on stage.

More than gorgeous. Extremely hot. And so at

ease. You know your body and you take pride in it.

I’m sorry if I….” Groaning, flustered, Jonah

looked at the starless sky. After inhaling and

exhaling, he continued. “You’ve got your act

together, Daren. And I don’t mean your stage act—

which, by the way, had me mesmerized. I mean

your acceptance of yourself.”

Dare stared at him. The son of a bitch had

done it again. Without a single blessed clue how to

be manipulative, how to be anything but

awkwardly honest, Jonah had alternately charmed

and bulldogged his way through Dare’s defenses.

“Don’t admire me,” Dare said quietly. “I’m a

shitty role model. My stage act is the
only
thing I

have together. I’m surprised you haven’t figured

that out.”

Jonah shoved his hands in his pockets and

stared at the lamplight pooled around his feet.

“And I’m surprised you haven’t figured out that

I’m not too good at figuring things out.” His wan

smile, when he glanced up, was just as self-

effacing as his words.

Again, Dare was disarmed. “It’s getting kind

of chilly out here. You want to sit in my car?”

“You haven’t said if you accept my apology.”

“Obviously I accept it. I didn’t ask you to sit

in a car with me just so no one’ll hear you scream

when I slap you around.”

Another smile, delighted instead of self-

deprecating. “You’re not meeting anyone? You

don’t have a date?”

“Jonah, I don’t think I’ve
ever
had a proper

date.” Dare resumed walking toward his vehicle. It

wasn’t as new and spiffy as Jonah’s, but it was

closer.

“That’s surprising. I would’ve thought you got

propositioned plenty.”

“I do. But a proposition usually results in a

hit ’n’ quit, which isn’t a date. And I don’t even do

those
anymore.” The driver-side door made a

cracking squeal as Dare swung it toward him. “Not

often, anyway.” He got inside and opened the

passenger door.

“Well, you can afford to be picky, that’s for

sure.” Jonah settled into the seat.

Dare felt a shiver of excitement as he recalled

Jonah’s declarations just minutes earlier: that he

thought Pepper Jack was gorgeous and hot and

found his act mesmerizing. But it was the aborted

statement that intrigued Dare the most.
“I’ll admit

I was stunned at first, maybe for reasons I

don’t….”

Don’t what? Want to admit? Dare decided not

to bring it up. Not yet, anyway.

He pushed the seat back as far as it would go,

lowered the backrest to a more relaxing angle, and,

stretching out, linked his hands behind his head.

Jonah watched him. It seemed Jonah had been

watching him a lot. Dare thought he must’ve come

across as a curious creature indeed to a teetotaler

who wore suits and sold crop hail policies to

farmers.

“I want you to know,” Dare said, facing him,

“that being provocative is part of my stage

persona. It isn’t part of
me
.” He realized that

wasn’t entirely the truth. “Okay, so maybe it is, a

little, but not all the time and not in the way you

think.”

“I realize that now. It was insensitive of me to

imply… whatever I seemed to be implying

earlier.”

“That I’m a slut.”

Avoiding Dare’s gaze, Jonah murmured, “I

really am sorry.”

“Do you mean that? ’Cause if you don’t, if

you’re just trying to be all mannerly and shit—”

Through with being abashed, Jonah looked

him square in the eye. “I mean it. What I told you

out there is the truth.” He surely knew what Dare

was getting at.
I can’t confide in you about the

most horrific episode of my life if you think I

initiated it.
“May I ask you something personal?”

Dare chuckled. “I don’t think we need to get

permission from each other anymore. Our whole

acquaintance is based on asking personal

questions.”

“It
is
pretty bizarre, isn’t it?” Jonah said. “We

haven’t even made it to the friendship stage.”

Dare angled to face him. “I don’t know.

Maybe we have. Or we’re at the doorstep. What

do
you
think?”

“I’d like to think you’re right.”

Beyond the cozy enclosure of the car,

occasional laughter and shouts echoed through the

parking lot as more patrons entered and left the

Bowl. The clubby dance hall called Crystal was

open now, and the go-go boys were doing their

thing. Some customers came just for that; others

didn’t care to hang around when the evening turned

manic between the hours of ten and two.

“By the way,” Jonah said, “I don’t drink

because I’m a recovering alcoholic, not because

I’m a prude.”

It took Dare several seconds to realize his

mouth had fallen open. “Oh.”

“Bet you weren’t expecting
that
.”

To say the least. Dare was stymied. Just when

he thought he had this guy figured out, his

assumptions were smashed.

“But you’re so young.” It was the first and

only thing that popped into Dare’s overtaxed brain.

Lame
, he thought.
Lame, lame, lame
.

Jonah didn’t seem to notice. “I actually

started drinking while the stuff with Clayton

Wallace was going on. My mother always had

beer and wine in the house, sometimes hard liquor,

too. Then I really ramped it up once Clay was out

of my life and more stuff happened, which

eventually landed me with GG. She’s the one who

finally got me into rehab.”

How calm he was! “Holy shit. How’d you get

through high school?”

Jonah shook his head and shrugged. “Sheer

pigheadedness, I guess. I had something to prove to

myself. Maybe to my mother, too. Wallace had

made me feel spineless. Damned if I was going to

be a
total
loser. So I was a binge drinker at first. I

restricted my partying to weekends and holiday

breaks. It didn’t become a fulltime thing until after

I graduated.”

“Then how’d you make it through college?”

“I almost didn’t make it
in
. Even after I did, I

dropped out after a few months. If I hadn’t been

with GG by then and she hadn’t pushed me into that

program, I would’ve boozed my way into

oblivion.”

“Did you, uh, discuss the abuse in rehab?”

The cold night air seeped more noticeably

into the car. Jonah wrapped his arms around his

ribcage. “No. I wasn’t ready to. It was hard enough

just admitting to my drinking problem and the

promiscuity.”

“Oh, so
that’s
what you meant when I asked

if you were gay. First you said no, then you said

you didn’t know, then you said something about

having been too fucked up to figure it out.”

The color in Jonah’s cheeks seemed to

deepen. “Yeah, that’s the time I was referring to.

I’d get blasted and have sex with anything that

moved, then at some point I’d black out. After

rehab I just avoided the whole issue. I had to focus

on staying sober.” He gave Dare a sidelong glance.

“That’s why I admire you. You
haven’t
avoided

the issue. You didn’t let—what was his name?

Howard?—turn you into some simpering, growth-

stunted eunuch.”

“Hey.” Dare give Jonah’s thigh a light shake,

just enough to secure his attention. “First of all, it’s

perfectly understandable how that experience

twisted your self-image out of alignment. You

were only eleven when that prick got a hold on

you. You were like Silly Putty. Second, I’m not as

well-adjusted as you think I am. And third,

although I can’t speak with absolute authority on

this”—Dare managed a smile, but it felt too tense

to be jocular—“I’ll venture to say you’re not a

eunuch.”

Jonah’s left leg began to bounce, rapidly, his

heel tapping against the floor mat as if a muscle

spasm had seized his foot. He glued his gaze to the

dashboard. Just as Dare began to think, despite

how loony the thought was,
Oh shit, maybe

something happened to him and he actually
has

been castrated
, Jonah abruptly stopped jiggling

and spoke. To the windshield. As if Dare were

sitting on the hood of the car.

“I realized something at the Zandt Pavilion,

even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I

was attracted to you. And tonight I realized

something that rattled me even more. You really

fuckin’ turn me on, Dare. And it scares the hell out

of me.”

Chapter Ten

THIS was not supposed to happen. This seemed

like a boxcar full of wrong for all kinds of reasons,

not the least of which was their reason for getting

together in the first place.

Jonah had excused himself and bolted from

Dare’s car after his confession—he never did get

around to asking that “personal” question—and

Dare had pretty much obsessed about it all the way

home and halfway through the night. The following

morning, as he prepared for his Sunday gig with

the Polka Doodles, his nerves squirmed.

Sure, he’d entertained some lewd thoughts

about Jonah Day. But they’d been harmless,

divorced from any intention to act. He’d had

similar fantasies about a lot of guys.

Why couldn’t Jonah have kept his damned

desires to himself, as Dare had been doing?

“Get my tie on straight, would you?” he asked

Carver, who’d just come out of the downstairs

bathroom.

Carver made a lazy U-turn and shuffled up to

Dare. Staring at the tie, he scowled. “It’s a fucking