"Probation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mendicino Tom)

Meet the Wilkinses

“You’ll like them. I know it.”

I’ve never been a big one for socializing. Alice had to drag me out of the house kicking and screaming. This time she was insistent.

She was right. Why wouldn’t I like them? They were probably lovely people, great folks, exactly the type of neighbors we were hoping for when we bought this splashily designed, poorly constructed, and wildly expensive town house in the most exclusive gated community in the Triad.

“Give them a chance,” she said.

Alice wanted to cook dinner for them. No, I said, willing to give in only so far, we’ll meet at a restaurant. She wasn’t sure, wanting to avoid the awkward moment when the check was presented. No problem, I said, I’ll give my card in advance and, at the end of the evening, I’ll slip away from the table and discreetly sign. She finally conceded, knowing I really did not want to meet the Wilkinses.

I started to relax as the waiter uncorked the second bottle of wine. The evening was going well, better than expected. In fact, it was an unqualified success. The Wilkinses, unlike most of my professional acquaintances, gave every indication they knew how to read. There was plenty to talk about; there was a lot of laughter. Driving home, Alice asked what I’d thought of Nora. The question took me by surprise. I was having a hard time remembering her face.

“She seemed kind of quiet,” I said, assuming shyness was the explanation for her failure to make an impression on me.

“Andy.” Alice laughed. “She talked a blue streak all night!”

Hmmmmm.

“What did you think of Brian?” she asked.

I wondered if that was a trick question.

“Seems like a nice guy,” I said, cautiously.

“You two really seemed to hit it off.”

Did we? I felt a strange sensation in my chest. Good God, I thought, it sounds like an old cliché, but did my heart skip a beat?

“What did you talk about?” she asked.

“I dunno,” I said, suddenly becoming inarticulate.

What did we talk about? Work, obviously. Our wives, certainly. It was easier to remember what we didn’t talk about.

Golf.

Cars.

Power tools.

“Swimming,” I finally said.

“He’s a swimmer too?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You guys ought to swim together sometime.”

“Yeah, he mentioned something like that,” I said, sounding nonchalant and noncommittal. “He said he’d call to set something up.”

Two days later, she was slipping on her Levi’s while I cradled my foot, engrossed in a virgin blister on my heel. She asked if something was wrong. It must be the new shoes, I said. No, I don’t mean that, she said. I’d thought she was blissfully unaware of my barely concealed agitation, of the nervous twitch I’d developed whenever the phone rang, of my impatient interruptions to ask who was on the line, and of my disappointment when the call was not the one I was so anxiously awaiting.

Wednesday night was close, but no cigar.

“It’s Nora Wilkins,” she said. “She wants to know if we’re free for dinner Saturday night.” She expressed our regrets, telling Nora we were visiting my parents this weekend.

“Wait, wait one minute, Nora. Andy’s trying to tell me something.”

I was waving my hands furiously to get her attention.

“Nora? Andy says they cancelled, that they’re going out of town this weekend. Thanks for telling me, mister,” she said, laughing. “We’d love to.”

I needed to square this little white lie with my mother, pronto, before she called and told Alice they were looking forward to seeing us this weekend and she’d gotten tickets to the garden show for the two of them.

I got a fresh haircut Saturday afternoon and bought a new shirt that brought out the color in my eyes.

“I’ve been meaning to call you all week, Andy, and make a date to go swimming, but the days just got away from me,” he said.

“Oh, I’d forgotten all about it, to tell you the truth,” I lied.

“This week definitely.”

“Not good for me. I’ve got a sales meeting with a distributor in Atlanta.”

“Damn. Soon, then.”

“I’ll be back Wednesday night,” I blurted.

Alice and Nora finished the house tour.

“Andy, you must see it,” Alice said. “The Wilkinses have the most beautiful things.”

If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought Alice had a bit of a crush herself. Nora was so self-assured, a take-charge blonde, slightly butch in a female golf pro sort of way. I made it a point to be more conscious of her, notice her mannerisms, memorize one of her offhand remarks. She was bossy, but in a way that was more brisk and efficient than aggressive, as if she’d already considered and rejected all the alternatives to her way of doing things before you had an opportunity to propose them. She must have reminded Alice of her sisters, which explained why she was so immediately comfortable with her.

“Brian, it’s time to light the grill. Andy, you go with him.”

Aye, aye, sir…er, ma’am.

Central Casting would never have selected Brian Wilkins as the catalyst for my downfall. Hollywood ’s idea of a seducer was everything short, fair, and nearsighted Brian Wilkins was not. That’s not to say Brian wasn’t attractive. Years earlier, he might have been voted Cutest Boy by his high school graduating class. Best Looking would have been a classmate with a more classic profile, better bone structure, and features that would only improve with time, unlike Brian, whose chipmunk cheeks were thickening even before middle age.

A minor inferno erupted when Brian tossed a match on the charcoal. His hand flew up to my chest and he pushed me back from the flame.

“Someday I’ll figure out how much lighter fluid is too much.”

I drank a little too much that night, enough that Alice insisted on taking the wheel to drive home. And the more I drank, the less I’d cared that it was obvious our wives might have been dining in another solar system for all the attention we gave them.

“I told you you’d like them,” Alice said triumphantly as I rolled into bed. “I knew it.”

Brian called the next morning. He was wondering when we might get together for that swim. Too bad this week didn’t look so good. Hey, how about today? This afternoon. It’s clear for me. How about you? We can burn off some of that alcohol. Let’s make it two o’clock. Give me the directions. I’ll find it.

That’s how easy it was. Alice ’s Sunday was committed to yet another shower-either bridal or, more often those days, baby. Her forced cheeriness at the breakfast table meant, yes, definitely, it was another celebration of the imminent arrival of Joshua, if it’s a boy, Sarah, if it’s a girl. She was genuinely delighted for Becca or Susan or Shelley, the glowing mothers-to-be, a happiness untainted by envy. Only once did her armor crack, when her friend Carolyn announced that she and her husband had settled on the name John for their son, after his father’s father. Sure it was old-fashioned, but they were going to call him Jack. We still have lots of time, I consoled her. We can start trying to get pregnant again, as soon as she was ready. Yes, she agreed, soon, sometime soon. Little did we know that a low sperm count would turn out to be a minor obstacle compared to the events set in motion that perfectly ordinary Sunday afternoon.

I hadn’t expected him to be so nervous. He dropped his lock twice, fumbling through the combination. He turned his back to me when he stepped out of his briefs and into his trunks. His shoulders were wide without being impressive. He coughed and bent down to swipe the soles of his bare feet. He finally turned to face me, red in the face and stammering.

“Andy, I’m really sorry about this.”

“Sorry about what?” I asked, truly confused.

“I’m a terrible swimmer. I should have told you up front.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I wanted to come swimming with you.”

His forwardness made me self-conscious. I knew then why I had impulsively chosen to bring a pair of baggy gym shorts instead of my usual racing trunks. I was conscious of my naked chest and limbs as we walked to the pool. I took long strides, moving quickly, forcing him to keep pace, anxious for the protective cover of warm, chlorinated water. I chose my lane, dove quickly, and swam away.

He wasn’t a bad swimmer; not in my league, but, of course, I was a former state high school champion in the breaststroke, the rare high point in an adolescence distinguished mainly by my ability to achieve new standards of awkwardness. He’d taken the next lane and I passed him many times, coming and going, always averting my eyes and immersing myself in my laps. Half an hour passed. When I pulled myself out of the pool, he was waiting on the deck, his arms wrapped around his knees and his toes inches from my nose. He had huge feet and, before I could censor my thoughts, I wondered if the old wives’ tale was true-big hands, big feet, big everything.

“You’ve got a beautiful stroke,” he said. “I could watch you all day.”

Barely thirty, Brian Wilkins was progressing on his March to the Sea. He’d started in the tiny market of Rochester, Minnesota, fresh out of school, as associate producer of the ten o’clock news broadcast; he’d made his way south with an unbroken string of triumphs at small stations in the heart of the Midwest. The network had taken notice when he drove our local Greensboro affiliate’s eleven o’clock newscast to first place in the ratings in nine short months by dumping the venerable local anchor for a former drum majorette with big tits and a blazing white smile of after-dinner-mint teeth. He knew it was his certain destiny to command network operations in the District of Columbia, finally capping his career in Manhattan as executive producer of a national broadcast.

Brian was self-effacing and falsely humble and always positioned himself so that his rivals and enemies would underestimate him. His work ethic was legendary. His instincts for what sold in the broadcast journalism market were remarkable. The fortress of his personal life was unassailable. His Valkyrie wife excelled at fulfilling the responsibilities of corporate wife and was willing to overlook his lack of interest in conjugal intimacy in exchange for a seat on the rocket launch to the top. They’d already accomplished one daughter, and a little brother or sister was scheduled to be in development in the near future. There was only one slight problem and a potential pitfall Brian Wilkins was determined to avoid. Brian had certain needs that none of his successes could satisfy. And so he chose me as the successor to my predecessors abandoned in Rochester and Springfield, Illinois, and Lincoln, Nebraska, all of us married men with too much at stake to risk indiscretion and potential exposure. Later, when he told me he’d accepted the network’s offer for the number-one position at the Pittsburgh affiliate, I asked him how he’d known to pursue me.

“It was easy,” he said, his smile almost a sneer. “You’re smart. You figure it out.”

I’d kept my mind a blank slate when it came to homoerotic attraction and proclivities. I would immediately extinguish the occasional, no, frequent, disturbing thoughts before they had an opportunity to reveal their nature, before they could identify themselves as attraction or desire. Brian Wilkins must have caught me in that split second before I put the fire out, my eye lingering a second too long before I blushed and looked away.

And so it began.

It was just waiting for the right opportunity, which was not, of course, going to be there and then, on the wet pool deck of my swim club, trunks around the ankles, writhing and moaning in the face of appalled exercise buffs. In the open shower, it was my turn to keep my back turned, feeling like I was back in high school and couldn’t trust my defiant penis. We shook hands in the parking lot and I ignored it when he scratched my palm with his middle finger, not yet knowing the secret signals between closeted homosexuals.

“We should get together soon for drinks,” he said, making it obvious that he meant alone, not with our wives.

“Give me a call,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the nerves in my voice.

“Didn’t you say last night you’d be back Wednesday?”

I told him I had a late-afternoon flight out of Atlanta after my lunch meeting with the distributor. Great, he said, telling me where to meet him that evening.

That night I attacked Alice enthusiastically. Once wasn’t enough. Twice didn’t satisfy me. Long after midnight, Alice pulled the twisted sheets between her legs and sipped a glass of wine.

“You ought to exercise more often,” she said.

A week later, she waited for a reprise. But that night I fell asleep during 60 Minutes, not to awaken until seven the next morning. Everything had changed in those seven days.

I’d called home from the airport Wednesday afternoon and left a message on the machine, complaining that I’d missed my flight, that it was ridiculous to get routed through Columbus, Ohio, and the next nonstop didn’t arrive until after midnight. Don’t wait up. Love you. Miss you.

I thought his choice of a bar was a little odd. The Tara Lounge at a Holiday Inn on the outskirts of Winston-Salem? His briefcase was in plain view and he’d placed a thick ratings book on the table, evidence of a pure business purpose in the highly unlikely event someone who knew him stumbled upon us in a dark corner in the empty lounge in that tacky backwater. We started with beer and moved quickly to bourbon, straight up. It wasn’t long before enough alcohol had flowed to excuse his shins touching mine under the table. I didn’t pull my leg away and he pressed lightly, just enough to confirm it was intentional.

“How long have you and Alice been married?” he asked.

“Eight years.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Longer, really. We met in college. Freshmen. Been together thirteen years.”

“Hard, isn’t it?”

“What?”

He went to the bar for another round, and, when he returned, he kept his legs tucked beneath the seat. I slid my foot across the floor until it nudged his shoe. He put his hands on the table and looked me in the eyes.

“What do you think?”

There was a key, Room 206, between us on the table. I panicked, admitting I’d lied to Alice, told her I’d missed my flight, she might call Nora and find out I was not far from home, meeting him for a beer. He laughed so hard the bartender looked away from the television.

“Are you fucking crazy? Nora thinks I’m in D.C. and won’t be back until tomorrow night.”

I called Alice at six in the morning, creating some preposterous explanation as to why I’d been forced to wait for a morning flight. See you tonight. Let’s go out to dinner. Your choice. Miss you. Love you. I was never that careless again.

I learned a few things that night. First, big hands and big feet do not necessarily mean big everything. Just as well. Christ only knows how I would have reacted, what flashbacks would have overtaken me, if he’d unzipped his pants and pulled out a long red snake. As fate would have it, Brian Wilkins was the proud owner of a short brown snail. Second, I learned how my body could respond to a touch I truly desired. And, for the first time, I felt the fissures in the fault line of the life I’d created and the potential of my dry heart to crack and split.

Years of hindsight have taught me it wasn’t love I felt for Brian Wilkins. I didn’t know better at the time. What else but love could cause me to despair when I didn’t hear from him for days, constantly debating the pros and cons of calling to break the silence? What else could explain the physical rush of elation whenever I picked up the phone and heard his voice? Only love could have inflated Brian Wilkins like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon hovering over my every waking moment while shrinking Alice, like her namesake, to a two-dimensional shadow to be accommodated, gently, during the intervals between my secret rendezvous. Yes, hindsight brings wisdom. I know now it wasn’t love. It was fear, an absolute, abject fear, that, without him, I’d be back in the box, snapped shut, sealed tight, labeled HUSBAND, and returned special delivery to WIFE.

He tried hard to appear sad the night he told me he’d got the transfer to Pittsburgh. But the sex was bad, hurried, obviously one more chore before departing, like registering a change of address with the post office. We had a last supper together, the four of us, their last weekend in North Carolina. I tried to make eye contact over the table, hoping to pass secret signals, looking for some sign of regret. But Brian was having none of it, never letting the conversation drift from market demographics, advertising revenue streams, and the necessity to adapt to survive against the threat of the cable news networks. I waited a week to call him at his new station. His secretary put me on hold for ten minutes after I gave her my name. Great to hear your voice, he said, sounding distracted and, worse, irritated. He told me he’d stay in touch. I never heard from him again.

The box couldn’t hold me for long. It took a while, six months, until one night, alone in a hotel room in Dallas, the King of Unpainted Furniture safely snoring in a suite on a different floor, I called a cab and gave the driver the address of a bathhouse where many hands touched and stroked me before the sun came up.

The urge would lie dormant for weeks, months, only to rear its ugly head when I was stranded in a room in a budget motel, not because the King of Unpainted Furniture scrimped on the expense accounts but because moldy carpets and damp bedspreads were the best the town had to offer. The voices on the television at the foot of the bed sounded as distant as a conversation in a different state. I’d stand in the shower, listening to the eleven o’clock news, hoping the hot water would induce drowsiness and dreams.

Still wide awake, I’d log on to my laptop, find a chat room, and send my room number to aging lonely hearts, down-on-their-luck hustlers, even the occasional hunky college boy with too many hormones charging through his bloodstream. Or I would put on a clean shirt and navigate the rental car through the side streets of the seedy section of a town I didn’t know. I’d debate myself-go back, stay here, go back-until a beat-up Honda or Toyota vacated a parking spot a stone’s throw from the entrance to the “Buddies” or “Players” or “Side Traxx” in every town or small city with a dealer for Tar Heel Heritage pine furniture. I’d chug the first beer, chase it with a shot of tequila, drain another bottle, not relaxing until the room was in soft focus and I found the nerve to light the cigarette of the man sitting next to me. I’d struggle to make conversation, waiting for an indication of any possible interest. If I found it, I’d rush, growing anxious because the clock was ticking away, desperate to seal the deal, dreading driving back to my motel alone.

There was no turning back, not even when Nora Wilkins called to tell us that Brian had passed away, stricken by a pneumonia from which he never recovered. Nora had left Pittsburgh and was back home in Minnesota. She and Alice made a vague promise to see each other soon, a sentimental gesture appropriate to the moment.

“I don’t think she was telling me everything,” Alice said later that night. “At first she said yes, when I asked if he went quickly. Then later she said he hadn’t been well for a while. I guess we’ll never know.”

I knew. Immediately. There’s only one kind of pneumonia that would strike down a man in his prime. A man who was having sex, lots of it, with other men.

I wandered outside, needing a cigarette, my hand shaking when I tried to strike a match. Jesus, please God, I pleaded, sucking smoke deep into my lungs. Please, please let me be okay and I promise I’ll do anything you want.

It was divine retribution for the baby. I deserved whatever I got. I could live with the consequences. Take me, I begged, trying to redeem myself through noble sacrifice. Just let Alice be okay. She doesn’t deserve this. Don’t punish her for little Jack. She’d be bouncing him on her knee today if it hadn’t been for me.

I spoke to God on an hourly basis while I waited for the lab to report my results, promising, pleading, negotiating. And after the test came back negative, no nasty little HIV antibodies to report, the Good Lord must have sat by the phone like a jilted lover, incapable of accepting that my ardent pursuit and seduction could end so suddenly. I’d been ridiculous to worry. Leave it to me to turn the simplest story into a melodrama, infusing Puccini and Verdi into every nursery rhyme, creating a crisis out of every small problem. What the hell had I been so worried about? How many times had I been with him? Five, six at the most? But I’d learned my lesson.

“What do you think I am, some kind of fag?” he’d protested, insulted when I dared to question whether I should slip on a Trojan before I shoved it up his ass.

I’d never be so naïve again.

“I made a memorial contribution for Brian Wilkins today,” Alice said a few weeks later over dinner.

I looked down at my plate, unnerved to hear that Brian Wilkins was still lingering in her thoughts.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “These potatoes are awesome,” I declared, trying to steer the conversation in different directions.

“Yeah, I really didn’t know where to send it so I made it out to the Horticultural Society. Nora and I volunteered there together. I didn’t really know him,” she said. “Can I be honest? I didn’t really like him.”

“Really?” I said, squirming in my chair.

“You seemed to cool toward him at the end, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling the tension in my shoulders.

“I don’t know. There was something about him,” she said. “Full of himself. I think he had a mean streak.”

“I bet he could be a prick,” I said, thinking back to the afternoon I locked myself in the john at Tar Heel Heritage, the water running full blast, crying my eyes out after I hung up the telephone, knowing I’d just finished my last conversation with the man I was sure that I loved.

“Are you going to finish your potatoes?” I asked, closing and locking the final door on Brian Wilkins.