Stunning

George gushed about his elopement with Martha while Elliott stifled his impulse to pop him one. Seated at the conference table in the office while Elliott took notes for the new will, trust, health care surrogacy, etc. documents, George jumped up and down in his seat like a little boy who'd just eaten a pound of jelly beans. Settle down, Elliott wanted to tell George, it's just a marriage. No matter how beautiful Martha might be, you’ll start complaining about her in a few months. And likely as not, it'll end up in divorce court and you'll be asking me to keep the BMW 650 convertible, the Hamptons house, the Warhol, and the Kandisky out of her two-timing, tennis-pro-screwing hands.

It's all downhill from here, George.

But yes, George's wife had died three years ago, leaving him with twin girls who needed a new mother ... else they’d turn out like the twins from “The Shining” who kept chanting Redrum, Redrum. As it was they were turned into sarcastic brats by the Range Rovers, boarding schools, European vacations, and caviar. So what if one of them had won the New York State spelling bee and the other had broken the state record for the 200 meter butterfly? Twisted sisters.

Elliott couldn't imagine why George had married that Martha, even she was a stunning brunette with a narrow waist and Mona Lisa eyes. Certainly Elliott preferred playing the field, like with Della from purchasing last Saturday or Linda at the White Castle the previous Sunday. He had second dates with both of them, Linda tonight and Della tomorrow – but he’d drop them after the magic number, 12. That was his rule – except with Sharon back in ’04, and she’d tried to trap him into marriage. He’d learned his lesson after the fake pregnancy scare.

Elliott stifled the urge to tell George, Martha’s marrying you for the money. You’re fifty-one, she’s thirty-two, figure it out for yourself, isn’t it obvious. Maybe it’d work out, but Elliott knew better. He’d done too much business with the other Long Island barons who'd capered over their 45-year old body's prowess in attracting a 25-year old knockout, only to become a 48-year old schmuck who'd just signed over fifty percent to a 28-year old plastic surgery victim who'd just run off with the pool boy. The details never varied. After Lisa died, Elliott had thought George would've been smart enough to choose a middle-aged widow, but then you could never tell when a man's brain would get caught in his zipper. And now George was on that one-way train heading for the brick wall.

How could I have known?

"Oh, my God!" I thundered aloud, not believing what I read. How could I have known, and yet I should have.

Two weeks ago, three days before Girard made his little announcement, I'd sent him this e-mail I was now re-reading, no idea what was brewing in his mind, telling him where the money was. The retirement accounts, bank accounts, investments – phone numbers to call the firms, the respective account numbers. I must be ruined by now, and today was Saturday. Everyone was closed except for the 800 customer disservice numbers. Eighteen hours I’d have to wait.

I should've figured it out when Girard suggested we get married, after five years of saying he wanted flexibility in relationship. Sure, he wanted to get married – but he kept the “flexibility.” Not long after that, the infidelities began, and then he got Rachel pregnant. I didn’t find out about that until after he made that horrible announcement – while I was driving a car down the I-280 – that he wanted to break up. All the Google money I’d worked so hard to save – and he’d get half of it. Girard, who never saved a penny in his life, would get half of it in the divorce. And he’d waste it away in just a couple of years on cruises, trips, botox, booze, and Xanax.

I should’ve known. I should’ve known the relationship was over when he asked me to marry him.

Bureaucratic

“May I use some extra towels, please?” Jonathan said at the Hampton Inn counter.ç “We only provide towels to registered guests, sir,” the young woman said, her lips pursed and her eyes like marbles.

“I’ll pay for them. It’s an emergency. I’m driving from Dallas and my cat soiled the cage – and himself. I need to clean up the mess.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, her expression like stone. “We have no way we could sell you some towels. They’re for our paying guests.”

“How much is a room for a night?”

“Would you like to make a reservation? You will need to call our reservations hotline and use our automated customer service menus.”

“You can’t make the reservation directly for me?”

“I’m afraid not. Company policy, you know. The number is 800-SCREW-YOU.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jonathan had a reservation for a king-sized non-smoking room with free Wireless Internet at $82.99 per night plus tax and fees. He went back to the front desk.

“All right, I have a reservation for a room. I’m checking in.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman said. “Check-in isn’t until 4:00 p.m.”

“But that’s only twenty minutes away. Do you have any rooms available?”

“Let me check with housekeeping,” she said, picking up the phone. Ten minutes later, she hung up. “Yes, we have a room at the far end of the top floor.”

She checked him in and then handed him the keys. “But of course, you do know, we don’t allow pets in the rooms.”

Thanksgiving Day

Back in ’04 it had snowed in Truckee on Thanksgiving Day. Andrew looked forward to driving out there for the holiday every year since starting at Berkeley.

“Be careful of that truck in front of us, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Seth said as they made their way up the mountains.

“It’s only a light snow, don’t worry so much,” Andrew said. “The way you’re talking, it’s a blizzard.”

“Whenever it snows in the Sierras, it’s a blizzard.”

“Quiet down, honey, Be still!”

“You wanted to drive the Z4 out here. Can’t think of a worse car for driving in the snow. What ever possessed you to buy it?”

Seth had clearly forgotten about those sunny days driving across the bridge and up to Napa Valley with the top down.

“Oh, no,” Seth yelled. “That truck is about to slide into a ravine –“

“No, he’s not. Just pipe down. We’ll get there in one piece. I’ve done this drive a thousand times.”

Just then a Jeep Grand Cherokee came barreling past them and the truck up front.

“See,” Andrew said. “That Jeep is driving just fine. And the truck has chains on it.”

“I don’t know. We’re gonners, I’m sure of it. Now I know how the Donner group felt.”

When they reached Truckee an hour later, Andrew’s mother asked them how the drive had been.

“No problem at all,” Seth said. “Couldn’t have been more smooth.”

Andrew laughed and looked at Seth. Never unpredictable. He kissed him on the left cheek. “Happy Thanksgiving, honey. Happy Thanksgiving.”

Serendipity

Andrew’s smartphone chirped “Camptown Races” at him. Another text message, who could that be? He was folding the coloreds and had to be out the door in fifteen minutes for therapy with Melinda.

Andrew sighed and went over to the kitchen counter and looked. He saw the picture of Lucy and Ethel, their two Chihuahuas – the icon he’d selected when setting up his Google contacts. It was Seth. Of course; who else would bother him when he had a million things to do?

He’d read it later. Why on earth should he interrupt his schedule to read a text message from his ex? He went back to the laundry and finished the jeans and the t-shirts. He looked at the clothing. He’d bought it after he and Seth broke up and he’d lost a few pounds and added some muscle. Free advertising, why not?

He was out the door with a few minutes to spare and made it through therapy. He heard his phone chirp again in the middle of therapy, and then again toward the end. But he and Melinda were talking about being co-dependent and the type of men that attracted Andrew – and how to break the cycle.

He’d be driving up I-280 to get back home, so he’d check Seth’s texts then. And then he’d call Liz about dinner at Café Noe this evening.

Just after he drove past the San Andreas fault, he read the texts. Bad news – Seth’s mother died. Lilly had a stroke. They found her on the floor of Seth’s kitchen. She’d been holding a jar of mayonnaise and there was relish on the countertop. A nice tartar sauce for the fish, apparently.

Andrew pulled over to the side of the road and stared at the brown grass in front of him. So pretty this time of year, and yet so empty. He stared at it for at least ten minutes, doing nothing. Seth was the sixth friend of his who’d lost a parent this year. What was it about 2014?

He picked up the phone and went to Seth’s contacts. Lucy and Desi were such fun dogs. At least their last years had been happy, living with Andrew and his mother. He touched the icon to call Seth.

“Hi, Seth,” Andrew said. “I got your message just now. I’d been folding the darks and having therapy when you texted me. I’m coming right over.”

Seth had always hated it when Andrew called it folding the coloreds.

Out of left field

“Whoa,” Samuel said. “Where did that come from?”

A dead pigeon had fallen from the sky. Must be bad luck, especially at a baseball game, to have a dead bird fall in your lap. He was in for it, and not that he needed any more bad omens for this worst of all possible years.

“Get that off, Sam,” Samantha said. “That’s freaking me out. Let’s go wash up. I feel dirty all of a sudden.”

“No argument from me, Sam,” Samuel said. He stood and the bird fell to the floor. He’d tell someone to clean it up, but he wasn’t going to do it.

Sam and Sam walked up the aisle and just as they were to reach the exit, they heard the bat meet the ball. And then the crowd around them roared and jumped to their feet. And then – the ball came flying in their direction. Sam and Sam turned around in time to see the ball fly right toward them and hit Sam in the head. Sam dropped dead at Sam’s feet.

So which Sam got nailed by the ball?

In the middle

Okay, I’m going to be brief today. I’m in the middle, you see. It means that someone is on my left and someone is on my right. It means that someone’s on top of me and someone’s below me. It means I’m fighting with a leftist liberal and a right-wing nut job. It means I’m the white frosting in an Oreo cookie. It means I’m the ham and cheese in a sandwich with really old and mold bread. It means I’m the fussy second son of three who doesn’t like tomatoes and broccoli. It means I can’t make up my mind whether to fire an employee or give him a raise. It means I’m sick of the whole rat race. And it means that I’m totally fed up with all those extremists, I don’t care if I agree with one of them or both.

I’m going to shut up, but only if I knew how. You see, I’m a chatterbox. But I suppose that’s what happens when you’re in the middle. All those oldest siblings get all the respect, all the babies get coddled and pampered. But we middle kids ... we get the shaft. But we go about our lives every day and mind our own business. And if no one pays much attention, we do okay.

I guess I like being in the middle. Now was that brief? Of course not.

Counting

“Come now, Mother Limerick,” Siobhan said. “Surely you can appreciate how expensive this household is. I mean, really – think about how many times the butcher’s made deliveries just this month. You can count, I hope.”

“I had eleven children,” Annie Kate said, producing a wry smile that could cut cheese. “Everything I did was counting. And don’t you be forgetting, Siobhan, when I was in the fields of Ireland, we made do. But all this stuff and nonsense about cutting corners when we don’t need to. We’ve got plenty now. Even if the Depression reduced the fortune, it’s still a fortune.”

“We have to save for Agnes and Patrick’s weddings.”

“Hogwash, there’ll be plenty. Now go back to your beef stew. I’m going to knit a shawl for Agnes. Off you go, now.”

A trade-off

“If you come with me to break the fast,” David told Jim, “I’ll go with you to the circuit party next weekend.”

“Hmm, I’ll consider it. Would you empty the dishwasher during the week while I shower after the gym?”

“Only if you walk the dog in the morning,” David said.

“But if I walk the dog in the morning, then you’re going to have to come to my brother’s law school graduation next May. He’s earned it, David,” Jim said.

“Oh, all right, but only if you agree to cook your spaghetti dinner for Bubby. You know how she loves it, especially with those mushrooms and peppers.”

“That’s not spaghetti, that’s pasta primavera. And she always licks her fingers after that. You need to tell her to stop licking her fingers in front of me.”

“But if I do that, she’ll never speak to me again. So you’re going to have to be extra special nice to her. You know how she loves you!”

“Ah, yes, she’s a nice lady. But if I’m nice to her, then I can’t go with you to break the fast.”

“And then I’m not going to the circuit party …”

“And I won’t walk the dog …”

“And I’m not emptying the dishwasher …”

“Forget about going to your stupid brother’s graduation.”

“And you can kiss pasta primavera goodbye. As well as being super nice to Bubby.”

David ran out of anything to say.

Jim stood there silent – for a moment. “Wanna have sex instead?” he said.

“Okay. Last one naked has to take out the garbage.”

“Last one in bed has to clean up from dinner.”

Hidden

“He sat alone on the bed, nothing to do but stare at the ceiling. He remembered his mother and father, all the years they’d used this bedroom. Saturday mornings with egs and bacon, Sunday with waffles or pancakes. There was the time he’d thrown up on their orange shag rug and there was the time the dog had died in the chair over by that window. He looked over at the window.

“And out that window, he gazed, he saw the back yard sloping down to the forest, the valley beyond it, and the view of neighboring Farleigh Drive where they’d lived when he was born, all those years ago,, in that tiny flashbulb of a house. He could remember sledding down that hill with his brothers, he could remember playing croquet in the bottom, the only flat segment of the lawn. And he could remember dodge ball with his boyhood buddies.

“And what remained of the house today? None of them lived there any more, just those strangers wandering the downstairs rooms and coming upstairs to sleep at night. They were all gone now, his parents, his brothers, and their ghosts remained hidden from view.

“He got up from the bed and knew it would soon be his time to leave, too. The people downstairs didn’t know he was there, even when he walked among them in this house. They went about their business, unaware he was watching them, living their boring lives. And he went about his business.”

George took a break from talking. It was tedious, speaking aloud, when there was no one there to listen. But it was a lot better than the silence.

The fight

Marshall and Jacob faced off like two prize fighters in the ring. Marshall stood in the kitchen corner wearing an apron and holding a sauce spoon for stirring the soup. Jacob stood across the apartment at the dining room table, setting china and silverware on the placemats and cloth napkins.

The Wedgewood made for a festive appearance on Thanksgiving Day, Jacob thought. Granny and Grandfather Whitley had set their table in just the same way every year when they’d made the long trek from Main Line Philadelphia to Shaker Heights in Cleveland.

He’s going to ruin my recipe, Marshall thought. Every time he tried to get something right with the food, Jacob would interject something about flowers and china. Well, phooey on him – let him worry about that stuff. He cared about all that stupid china and silver he’d inherited from those damned dead relatives. He cared more about those dead people than he did about him.

Jacob felt a dull pressure build from behind his eyes. He began to snap the forks and knives down on the table. Marshall could be so insensitive. He had no understanding of what real family traditions meant, or at least what they meant to Jacob – but of course, he’d grown up in a family that’d gone all sorts of separate ways. Why, none of them even had the same last name anymore. And Marshall had changed his.

Marshall began to stir the pot a little too quickly, banging the spoon against the sides. Screw Jacob, he didn’t even care if the guests noticed the strain between them. What did Jacob know of real life? He’d grown up with every privilege in the world that Marshall had never had. Marshall looked over at Jacob, busy with the forks and knives. He spit into the sauce pan. That’d teach him.

Jacob looked over at Marshall, busy with his sauce. He spit into Marshall’s water glass.

A bridge

Karen walked into the living room and overheard Gary speaking into the phone –

“I’m going to shoot her,” he said, his voice quiet and low. “As long as she doesn’t know it. She always makes a big scene out of things, carries on like you-know-what.”

Karen feigned to hear what the other end of the line was saying.

“No,” Gary said. “Karen doesn’t suspect a thing. And if the girl doesn’t cooperate, I’m going to redo the scene and have her cross the bridge. Watch that thing collapse …”

Karen shuddered and she felt an icicle stab her in the chest. But then she looked down and, no – no icicle.

“Buy, Charley. I’ll let you know how it goes. Course, you’ll hear about it in the trade papers. Her people always publicize the hell out of everything.”

Karen hid herself behind the high-backed chair and peeked out. Gary fiddled with the desk – something inside, she imagined. A gun! He would shoot her then. And if he didn’t, he’d take her for a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, and that’d be the end of her, or –

“Karen, honey, what’re you doing behind that chair?”

Her throat froze up and she couldn’t say a word. What does a girl say when her husband’s trying to kill her? The old story, and this was Karen’s time.

“Anyway, I’m going to the studio. I have to shoot a scene with Carmina del Aranta. The diva’s been nothing but trouble in this movie. And tomorrow we’ve got to shoot that scene on the San Luis Rey bridge. She’s no Pollyanna, that one –“

Karen exploded in laughter.

Once I loved

His hands shook as he reached for the pen, He had some correspondence that Grace had prepared for him. So many letters, so many official documents to sign, would it never end? It had been a long twelve years, and he so wanted to lay his burdens down. But, he knew, there would be another three years before he could retire.

“Here you are,” Grace said, and placed a page on his desk in front of him. His heart raced and he felt light in the head. “The first draft of your speech.”

“Thank you, child,” he said, his voice sounding distant. Grace stood over him, a soft expression in her eyes. At once she looked immense to him, but then she shrank and looked small.

“Our correspondence is done for the day,” she said. “May I have the afternoon off? Lucy and Elizabeth will keep you company.”

“Of course, my dear, you may have the afternoon off. Make the most of this beautiful April day!” he said, his cheer restored at the mention of Lucy.

He’d been sitting for his portrait. Elizabeth had done one before, and he’d liked it immensely – even his wife had liked it, which had surprised him. And as the painter set up her easel, and he relaxed into his chair, comfortable in the knowledge that he only needed to proofread the speech, he settled his gaze on Lucy, on the settee with a pair of knitting needles.

She looked back at him, that gaze he so remembered from when they were young – ah, those years that would never come back to them. She’d married and lost a husband since then, and he’d gone back to Eleanor and they’d settled into an armed truce – but nothing had ever been the same.

And then a terrible pain seized both sides of his head. He raised his arm to his head, closed his eyes, and lurched forward onto the desk. “I have a terrific headache,” Franklin Roosevelt said.

I have loved

Griffin stared out at the empty apartment. Outdoor light shone across the white porcelain tiles in a way he’d never noticed. The columns separating the kitchen from the dining room cast their shadows down the living room and toward the front terrace. And for the first time, Griffin could hear the low hum of the refrigerator. He’d never known it was there. He supposed it’d been drowned out by the constant pattering of the dogs and cats around the apartment.

He sighed. “One last walk-through before leaving. One last walk-through.”

He walked into the kitchen and opened each drawer and cabinet. Ah, yes – this is the cabinet he’d opened to get the coffee. Coffee for William each morning. “Honey, the coffee’s ready, just as you like it.”

He winced when he opened the utility drawer – empty, when in past years it’d been cluttered with William’s endless keys, his watch, little pieces of paper with reminders and phone numbers. For years, Griffin had found those tiny bits of paper with information on them, scattered everywhere.

He walked upstairs to the den. Empty, except for all the paperwork in the built-in cabinet Griffin was leaving for his new tenant. He looked inside, made sure it was all there. Yes, and the cable remotes, the thermostat batteries, and the fireplace starter. Ah, the fireplace – William’s pride and enjoy. Griffin had never known how to start it.

He went into the bathrooms. Check, they were clean. That impossible limestone tile that William had ordered, so difficult to maintain, so tedious to squeegee down after every single, solitary shower. But showering felt like being in a spa ...

He dared not look in the master bedroom, where they’d spent most of their time. Thank goodness, the movers had managed to detach the bed from the wall unit. At least he could take his own mattress with him.

Griffin looked around one last time and then turned out the lights. He’d best be going. He had just enough time before his flight to Pittsburgh to visit the cemetery.

I love

Emily knocked on her new neighbor’s door.

“Who is it?” came the shrill voice from the other side of the door. Emily heard dogs barking – high-pitched terriers, she supposed.

“It’s Emily, your next-door neighbor, Mrs. Palmgren.”

The door opened. Mrs. Palmgren was dressed for a day of shopping, Emily guessed – a lovely navy blue dress, pearls, make-up, and lipstick. She had sallow gray eyes, thinning white hair, and wore orthopedic oxfords. But her smile carried with it something of the little girl – a little Mary Jane, a little Barbie, and a little wry with one corner down and the other up.

“Won’t you come in, my dear. Meet the loves of my life.”

Three West Highland terriers barked their way up to Emily, and two Siamese cats meandered their way around the living room.

“Here we’ve got Teddie,” Mrs. Palmgren said. “She’s a female, by the way. And there’s Chester and Lilly over there. Chester’s the fat one. And the kitties, they’re Agnes and Petunia.”

Emily looked around the apartment. There couldn’t be anything here that didn’t harken back to World War II – probably World War I, given Mrs. Palmgren’s likely age. Tons of old family photographs, but not a single one in color.

“I see you’ve noticed my family collection. All dead, ever so long,” Mrs. Palmgren said. “Call me Mildred. Please.”

Once I saw

Years ago that woman came into the bar, her three-inch stilettos clacking on the worn hardwood of Woody’s floors. She wore a Veronica Lake peek-a-boo, dark brown and thin flat lips that never smiled, not once, even when she was being serviced by the men in the bar. She’d go over to them, look them in the eye, put a hand on their crotches, and say, “Come with me,” or “Get lost, sucker.”

The guys in Des Moines ate it up. She’d walk out the bar, her stilettos leading the way with the puppy dog in her trail, go back to his place, screw his brains out, and then leave – not even saying goodbye. And somehow, a week or so later, she’d walk back into the bar, pick out another, and it’d start again.

Until she met Johnny, poor Johnny with a mild overbite which she took for being good at fellatio. So the story we all heard was this. She’s riding him on top, starts slapping him, telling him to hit her hard, real hard like he means it, and then in comes this other guy with a gun, they fight, and Johnny ends up shooting the guy.

Johnny was the last one she had. After that, we heard she went back to Chicago or something like that. Johnny spent five years in hard labor.

And me? I had a small dick, so I stayed out of it.

I have seen

“Praise Jesus, Amen,” the crowded roared in unison.

“And Jesus said to the people –“ here Bobby R bit down on his lower lip, cast his eyes down, and squiggled his right cheek so as to allow a tear to escape from his eye, “—suffer ye the little children so that my kingdom may be saved!”

“Hallelujah, saints be praised,” the crowd chanted, lifting their arms over their heads and clapping to the sky of the glass-domed cathedral. “Hallelujah, Pastor Bobby R!”

Bobby R walked over and stood by the altar. He buttoned his jacket – after all, Lillie May Sue was sitting in the front pew and her blouse was cut low, after all, couldn’t risk an embarrassing incident like at that Waco revival last year with Pastorine Rita – and pursed his lips, flared his nostrils, and looked straight into the center of the crowd.

“But let there be sinners among you,” he said. “Let there be sinners among you who defile the beauty of God and this church, and know that hell fires dawn before you … because I have seen, my children, I have seen the light and ye shall all be saved from the workings of the devil and the San Francisco Democrats!”

“Save us, Lord, oh yes, save us our Lord from ye sinners!”

Bobby R glanced at Lillie May Sue’s low-cut blouse and saw the little tattoo of a fleur de lys on her left bosom. Praise God for two things … Bobby R’s buttoned jacket and Lille May Sue doing the collection plates today. He’d give her the peace of God – ah, the piece of God.

I see

“May the light of day be with you,” Father Thomas said and made the sign of the cross on Aaron’s forehead. Aaron felt his heart still and his pulse subside. The dull weight in the pit of his stomach eased up, and he felt his dry mouth ebb, ever so slightly.

“Father, thank you for the blessing,” Aaron said. He wasn’t even Catholic – raised Jewish by his long-gone parents, who’d both have fits if they knew their son had consulted with a priest. And not just any priest, but an Irish Catholic priest. Ida and Harold would scream in agony at the betrayal. Oy vey.

Aaron sat back in the pew and looked at the priest, his double chin resting on his clerical collar. The eyes were soft, but penetrated right into Aaron, as if he saw every facet of his person – the good and the bad, the strong and the weak. But Aaron didn’t feel discomfort in the lengthy gaze. He felt his pulse slow even further, and a tingling sensation surrounded his scalp, as if a phantom were secretively massaging his scalp.

Oh, how he missed Marty now – just the thought of his warm hands running through Aaron’s hair, massaging the scalp while they watched old reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. If only he hadn’t met Luis after their falling out, he might be alive today. But no – we can’t turn back the clock.

“Where will you go next, young man?” the priest said.

Aaron didn’t consider himself young any longer, not at thirty-seven, the age when youth yields to middle age, half of seventy-five. Not when he’d just lost his lover of a dozen years, the man he never had the chance to reconnect with. And here stood this priest, his eyes like two soft candles, looking after him, calling him a young man. If only he knew.

But Aaron looked in the eyes again and realized, he knew everything.

What do you want?

She started dusting the bookcase and came across Atlas Shrugged, a novel Alexandra had bought and read a few months before Harold died. She’d raved about it, but Charlotte had no wish to read about a self-involved businessman who thought he was better than everyone else. She picked up the book, wondering if she might understand Harold a little better, but she detested everything she’d ever heard about Ayn Rand’s philistine politics. When she put the book down, she tore her left index fingernail on a bare hook. She pulled the loose end off and drew blood. Her finger throbbed.

Why hadn’t she trimmed these last week? She’d been preoccupied with work, Sean, and the household, of course. She washed her hands and resumed dusting. But she couldn’t concentrate. What about her job? Her move? What about Alexandra and Sean, how would they react? What about the children? What about the dog? Too much to resolve, really. These days her brain was a jumble of mixed emotions. Nothing organized, nothing added up, nothing made sense.

The telephone rang and her nerves jumped. A quiet moment gone, an opportunity wasted to reach some sort of decision – any decision, really.

“What is it?” she answered at the kitchen desk. “What do you want?”

Maria’s scratchy alto came from the other end. “Has someone kidnapped Charlotte? She doesn’t answer the telephone like that.”

This is too much

Chester stared Giles down. Really, they’d been living together seven years, and he didn’t understand when Chester was being sarcastic? Giles seemed to be lost in his own ego. Giles smiled and turned to leave. He was riding in the afternoon and needed to get dressed and get to the stables. Lady Elizabeth would be riding with him.

Chester enjoyed the solitude. It was a pleasant but cool October afternoon, and on days like this when Chester sat reading, he’d open the window and feel the light breeze make its way up from the ocean, with just a hint of salt in the air. He could hear the distant roar of the waves as they crashed on rocks, and he could smell the leaves burning. Frank would be handling that down at the estate’s farm.

He pictured Frank with the jug ears and thick neck – as always, the image aroused Chester. Frank had a smooth, alabaster physique. They’d only fooled around that one time in the stable, when Giles had gone riding on a Sunday – and since then, Frank had avoided Chester’s gaze. Ah, well, he’d have time to convince Frank to have an encore.

Chester got to Giles’s next chapter about the steel baron who bought a ranch and brought his boyfriend to Butte. Odd, the scene Giles was depicting took place in a stable. And there was the boyfriend, all hot and bothered, climbing up a ladder with the ranch foreman, a man with a thick neck, jug ears, and smooth alabaster skin. Chester turned the page – and found a steamy sex scene.

Now how had Giles found out? This was just way too much.

The best part

Chester rolled his eyes but went back to reading on the sofa. Giles stood at the door to their den. The pressure inside Giles’s head reached its limit and he had to ask. He just had to ask.

“How do you like it so far? Is it everything you expected.”

“That,” Chester said, bringing his eyes out from the book and looking up at Giles. “And quite a bit more.”

Chester groaned as he sat up on the couch and assumed a huddling position – as if to advise him in a professorial manner, Giles thought. If only Chester could be a little more himself, which meant being the unemployed waiter with a book of poetry exactly nineteen people bought. Two hundred eighty-one copies sat in the guest bedroom closet.

“Oh, I’m so glad you love it, Chester. I worked so hard on the story and had it critiqued and critiqued and critiqued. What was your favorite part?”

“Giles, I’d work a little more on the dialogue. Make another pass on the dialogue. And the setting doesn’t work for me. Why’d you set this store in Butte, Montana?”

“Where else would you set a story about gay men who have sex addictions?”

Chester chuckled a little. “Well, the scene at the inn when James has sex on the bar with the African-American Jewish transsexual quadriplegic while the cowpokes look on, don’t you think that’s a bit far-fetched?”

“Oh, Chester,” Giles said. “It just leads into the grand finale! The best part is yet to come!”

Chester rolled his eyes again and lay back in the couch. “I’m lactating, I’m so excited.”

Smaller

“Oh, Jason,” I said. “I can’t join you for the movie tomorrow evening –“

I thought about what would come next. I’d decided on a white lie, that I’d be working on getting the apartment ready for my next tenant all day long, I’d be too tired, let’s play it by ear … and we all know what “let’s play it by ear” really means, don’t we? It means no, but I’m too co-dependent to come right out and say it? Or I could say that I needed to visit my mother in the nursing home in the late afternoon and didn’t want to make any evening plans – but not. Lies like that bothered me, and I’d had enough. After all, there was nothing wrong with –

“And the reason is,” I said, taking a long breath and swallowing, “I have a friend coming in from New England. I haven’t seen him in four years, and he’ll only be here this weekend –“

“Oh,” Jason said, “so I’m not as good as this friend of yours?”

“—and I likely won’t see him for another few years, and you and I can go out to dinner any time –“

“What about my surgery next week? Maybe I won’t survive?”

“Oh, you’ll survive,” I said and laughed a little. Jason would live to be a hundred, I knew it, the way he took care of himself. “You’ll live to a hundred.”

“I don’t know,” he said and shook his head. Such a yenta. But I still felt pretty small. I didn’t tell Jason that the friend would be around for several weeks. Truth be told, I felt very small.

Hammering

Michael looked at his watch. The lunch hour was only 15 minutes away. “Yo, bud,” he said to the guy drilling holes into the two-by-four. “I’m going over to the entrance to hammer nails. See you after lunch, dude.”

He walked around the corner onto Lexington Avenue. Street vendors marked every intersection for as far as he could see – Chinese, burritos, hot dogs, subs, you name it. Perfect place for his setup. He wiped the sweat from his brow – good, his skin would be moist.

He began the hammering. It’d keep him busy right through the lunch hour – good, another good sign. The nails were four-inchers, so each one took a while. After six nails, he’d sweated right through his shirt.

It was time.

He looked out the corner of his eye across the street. Yes, they were all there – the ladies on their lunch hours, looking across the street while they waited in line. Slowly he crossed his arms, grabbed his t-shirt by the tails, and pulled it up over his head. He swiveled his hips a little bit – not much, really – as the shirt came over his head. He turned his chest out toward Lexington Avenue as he did this, making sure his armpits showed and – when the shirt had cleared his biceps – he pulled his hands down just a little bit, so he could flex the biceps for the ladies. And then the shirt was all the way off, and with his left hand (because that was on the far side of his body, he didn’t want to hide his chest from the women) he took the shirt and wiped the sweat off his chest, ending with the left pectoral and then the armpit.

If only he could’ve thrown the shirt into the middle of Lexington Avenue, the ladies would’ve bolted from their lines and pounced on it. Why couldn’t they stop traffic for his performance?

He gave himself a little smile; the ladies had noticed. A few had whooped it up from across the street. He could hear it. And then he turned back to his nails, making sure that his triceps flexed with every hammer.

An island

The waves washed ashore with the pulsing tenor roar. The palms swung left to right in the treetops like the locks of a teenage girl. Dry and hot, white sand shifted patterns as if they were sheets on a slept-in mattress. The sky, blue and pockmarked with cotton candy clouds, not a trace of rain in them.. Transparent, weightless crabs scurried from side to side on the beach in synchrony with each other, as if they were a school of fish, a flock of flying birds. And high above, in the distance, a lone man stood, naked but for his white bathing suit, in his tai-chi position, his eyes closed, breathing in the salt air and feeling the warm rays of the sun on his shoulders.

Lying in his Baltimore bed that sleepless November morning, the steady patter of rain on his slate roof drumming its beat, Charlie did his best to transport himself into paradise, to take himself out of himself, to slow his racing heart, to lubricate his dry mouth, the salve the dull nausea that consumed him, to squelch the incessant refrain from Carmen in his head, and to take his mind away from Michelle and her straight, blonde hair, vanished since February.

From one second to the next, transforming himself to paradise, he waited for thoughts of Michelle and Carmen to evaporate, for the cold Maryland rain to stop, for his anxiety to abate. But Charlie knew they were stronger than he.

Broken net

It seemed to Arnold, no one understood. He had to get to Mayville, and it had to happen next Monday. And yet Mr. Murrow stalled in making a decision. Would he keep his job? Would he get the job in Erie?

“Excuse me, Margaret,” Arnold said on the telephone, calling his secretary. “I wondered … I wondered if Mr. Murrow had come into the office yet this morning?”

“No, Arnold,” she said. Arnold heard a flat alto in her voice – the voice of someone who didn’t know how important this was to his life. “Arnold, he’s at a leadership retreat all week and won’t be issuing a decision for at least a week. Probably not until the end of next week.”

A rush of heavy air filled Arnold’s stomach and his eyeballs stung. Arnold thought for a moment, how best to reply.

“Arnold,” Margaret said. “Are you still there? You’d best be getting back to work.”

“Margaret, if you could tell Mr. Murrow that, with all due respect, I do need to know as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it.”

Margaret huffed on the other end of the line. “If I’m going to disturb him on his retreat, I need to know why. Why is this so urgent that you can’t wait a week? I mean, it’s not as if the job won’t be there in another month or two. Just hold your horses.”

“All right,” Arnold said. “I guess that’s best.”

He hung up. He’d have to figure out another way to get to Mayville. Back to the drawing board. He went outside and played tennis with the pro, but all he could do was hit balls into the net. It didn’t help.

My neighbor

Frank cast a sidelong glance at the gentleman in the window seat across the aisle. He noticed the thin lips that turned downward only a little on one side, the upper lip a little more prominent than the lower – which along with the dimpled, jutting chin, caused Frank’s heartbeat to quicken, The man had dark hair, receding in the front, but not yet enough as to be characterized as bald – no, it was a well-shaped forehead of golden brown, to match the skin. The hair on his forearms was a lighter brown than in his head. Frank noticed the smooth, straight hair patterns. And he wondered what the man’s skin felt like. Smooth and soft, yet with the warm roughness of hair. Like a frozen custard, soft on the inside but rough on the outside.

Frank looked at the window at the farmlands below. He sighed. He wished he didn’t have to make this trip back home to close on the apartment. Why hadn’t Marshall save the closing documents when they’d bought the place? Well, it’d be a short trip, and he wouldn’t really have to say anything to Marshall at the closing. Just nod and sign the paperwork. It’d been enough that they’d split everything up when Marshall left and moved in with that thing. But Frank – he’d just get the trip over with as quick as he could.

He looked back over at his neighbor, across the aisle, wondering what crossed his mind. What lurked behind those eyes? Frank thought the man might’ve been startled when their eyes met – but couldn’t be sure. Maybe he’d be at baggage claim. Frank could position himself across the conveyer belt. Perhaps they’d make eye contact and then share a taxi … but no. Frank hadn’t checked his luggage. But the man didn’t know that.

Loud!

Schuyler walked into Club Metro to dazzling lasers of blue, red, orange, and pink, the beat of Sylvester singing his way through You May Me Feel Mighty Real, beefcake boys twirling around poles in tighty-whities, and bearded muscle men in black tank tops and Ray-bans. There must’ve been a thousand men in this cavern under the Wells Fargo building – all for an AIDS benefit of some sort.

They were always throwing AIDS benefits in those years. Any excuse for a party to take drugs, drink liquor, and have sex. Schuyler wondered just how many more infections happened at those parties to raise money to prevent more infections.

“Hey you, there, bud, you’re kinda cute in that Izod. Nice tight jeans, too – love your bubble butt.”

Schuyler turned around and looked at the shirtless man – thick beard, Ray-bans covering his eyes. He looked at the guy’s torso. Nipples almost a half-inch long and a quarter-inch thick. He’d definitely worked them over … or somebody had. Nice stomach, though, and narrow hips. Maybe he’d give him a night.

“Love your hairy chest, man,” Schuyler said. “What’s happening?”

Schuyler cringed at the small talk. Why couldn’t they just get to the chase? So do you want to have sex tonight, buddy? That’s what was really happening.

“Just checking the place out. Have a good evening, bud,” the man said, and turned around and swigged his beer.

Over and over

“If I have to tell you once,” Martha said, breathing in between each word like a track runner after setting the quarter-mile record, “I have to tell you a hundred times. If you’d just listen to me and do it the way I told you, it would’ve turned out right. But no, you have to do it your own way and that’s when things start going wrong.”

George’s chipmunk cheeks sagged with the corners of his mouth. “But I try, I try and do my best, and you got to give me credit for that. And you can’t exactly do it right now, Martha. Not in your condition.”

“My condition has nothing to do with this. This is all about your incompetence and complete inability to follow instructions. Now fetch me a gin and tonic, and this time, it’s one-third gin, two-thirds tonic, and a teaspoon of lime juice. Now hop to it, George!”

“Oh, all right,” George said. He went over to the bar and looked for the gin – and there it was, the Gordon’s. So he mixed Martha’s gin and tonic, made one for himself, and sampled both to make sure they were right –

“Who ever told you to sample my gin and tonic? I’ll sample it, George,” Martha said. “Again … not following instructions, George. Not following instructions.”

“Hey, what’s going on in here?”

George and Martha looked over at the hallway – there stood their son, arms out in a question mark.

“Oh, pooh,” Martha said. “Your father can’t follow instructions and he’s made a whole tempest in a teapot. And now he’s sampling the cocktails. Would you like a cocktail, son – one that your father sips before giving to you? Honestly, George.”

“What’d Dad do that’s so terrible, Mom?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. When he emptied the dishes, he put the dinner forks in the salad fork compartment and the salad forks in the dinner fork compartment. I mean, can you believe this man?”