I arrived at The Stuff of Life about fifteen minutes before the lunch shift, planning to tel Vicki about my bizarre meeting with Roger Folds. But as I walked through the door, my cel phone rang. It was my father.
I went into an empty office to take his cal.
“So,” my father began, “if you don’t mind my asking such a thing, what was your mother’s car doing racing down our street at midnight last night?”
“Oh, you saw?” I asked.
“The whole neighborhood saw. At least no one else recognized her. For this, we should be thankful.”
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said.
“You can start with why you were in a tree peeping into Mrs. Kubacki’s window.”
“She saw me?”
“She saw someone. And it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that your mother didn’t haul her fat, excuse me for saying, ass up that tree.”
I told my father about my mother’s suspicion that he had been visiting Dottie that night.
“Oy. That woman. She drove me to it.”
“Drove you to what?”
“To Dottie, of course. What do you think?”
I was glad I was sitting down. “You mean, you real y are having an affair with Dottie Kubacki? You told me nothing was going on.”
“Wel, what’s ‘nothing?’” he said to me. Then, after a moment, “And I wouldn’t cal it an ‘affair.’ I’m not, pardon the expression, having the intercourse with her. It’s not physical.
“But your mother, you may know this already, is driving me crazy. She doesn’t let me live. She nags, she lectures, she doesn’t let me get a word in edgewise.
“But Dottie. Dottie listens. I tel her about the war, about my parents, about my dreams, and she sits there with her chin in her hands and she looks at me like I’m the most interesting person in the world.
Then, she makes me a glass of tea and homemade apple cake and it makes me feel like a man again.
“When you’re as old as I am, that’s a good feeling, son.”
I have to admit I was moved listening to my father talk. He was right; he did deserve a moment in the sun. At the end of days, don’t we al?
“So, do you want to leave Mom?” I asked.
“Leave?” my father asked. “What are you, nuts too? I love your mother. She drives me crazy, but she’s stil my wife. I just have a friend. A lady friend.
She makes me tea and every once in a while I change a lightbulb for her. So what? The world has to come to an end because I have a friend? What is this, Nazi Germany?”
Suddenly, I understood what threatened my mother so much about “that bitch” Dottie Kubacki.
She knew perfectly wel that my father wasn’t having sex with Dottie. But my mother also knew how difficult she could be. She was afraid that if my father had someone with whom he could compare her, that he’d realize it, too. As if he didn’t know.
My mother recognized that, measured against Dottie, she might, in some ways, look bad. And if there was anything my mother couldn’t stand, it was looking bad.
“OK,” I said, “listen. We’re gonna fix this, OK? I know you want Mom back home…”
“Let’s not get carried away,” my father said.
“Dad.”
“No, you’re right, she belongs here. The house, and I know you may find this hard to believe, is kind of quiet without her. Empty, too. Plus, she must be driving you coo-coo. Before you know it, she’l be putting up curtains.”
“You’re going to have to do something,” I told him.
“Something romantic. Something that shows her that she real y is the most important person in the world to you. Can you do that?”
“Like maybe I should send flowers?”
“Bigger.”
“Chocolates?”
“Too ordinary.”
“One of those guys who come to the house dressed like a policeman and then takes his clothes off like a crazy person? She saw that once on that View show and loved it.”
I thought I might enjoy that, too, but it didn’t seem entirely appropriate. “We’l have to come up with something better than that, Dad. I’l think about it.”
“You’re a good boy. So, tel me: Dottie says that whoever was looking through her window saw her naked. Is this true?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“And…” my father asked.
“And what?”
“How was it?”
“How do you think it was?”
My father paused for a moment. “Epic.”
“Yes,” I said, “but not in a good way.”
“No,” my father said, “I wouldn’t think so. The woman has a heart of gold, but it’s surrounded by, and you’l excuse my French, a shitload of lard, isn’t it?”
After my shift at The Stuff of Life I went to the gym, had a protein drink, and then headed off to a date with a client who paid five hundred dol ars to play
“salesman.”
His fantasy was that he worked at The Gap, and I asked to have my inseam measured. He took a measuring tape, put one end at my shoe, extended the rest up the side of my leg until his hand was just under my bal s, gave them a quick, surreptitious squeeze, and then ejaculated into his pants.
The entire thing took less than five minutes, four minutes of which was him explaining what he wanted me to do.
Sometimes, I loved my job.
I got home at 4:00 to find Tony outside my building.
“Hi,” he said, looking great in his standard blue slacks and white shirt. No tie today.
“Is this a stakeout?” I asked.
“I was just in the neighborhood. Rang your bel and when no one answered, decided to wait awhile.”
I took out my cel phone. “You could have cal ed.”
“I could have.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I wanted to see you.”
I extended my arms. “OK, you’ve seen me.”
“You’re going to make this hard for me, aren’t you?”
“Didn’t you tel me two days ago that you didn’t want to see me?”
Tony cocked his head to the side and gave me his most charming smile. He arched one eyebrow and shrugged. “I have conflicting feelings.”
I couldn’t help but smile back. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
“Can we talk?”
Because of my attention deficit disorder, I often get lost in the details and forget the big picture. That was happening here, too, I thought. I real y didn’t want to talk to Tony. What else was there to say?
Just this morning, I spent time talking to Marc with whom I’d had a lot of sex, but never real y spoken. It brought us a lot closer.
Now, here I was with a man who I’ve been talking to for days, but we haven’t had sex in years.
If we did it, if we final y made love again, would it bring us closer together, too? Or would it be the end?
Wasn’t it time I found out?
I thought of my to-do list. What was the last item?
Oh yeah, “fuck Tony.”
When I wrote it, I meant it in an angry way.
Standing here with him now, on a steaming city street with him looking cool and so handsome and smel ing faintly of freshly-mowed grass, I decided it would be OK to mean it in the other way, too.
What did I want?
What was I afraid of?
Focus, Kevin, focus.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said. “Are you drunk right now?”
Tony looked quizzical. “No.”
“Under the influence of any drugs or other mind-altering substances?”
Tony rol ed up his sleeve. “See? No track marks.”
“So, whatever happens, you’re ready to take responsibility for it?”
Tony saw what I was getting at. He pul ed me towards him. “You mean, right now? In the middle of the afternoon? No more talking?
I just had sex with Marc Wilgus a couple of hours earlier, but I suddenly felt as horny as I ever have. I kissed him. He kissed me back.
This time he didn’t hold back, and the kiss made something inside me expand and explode into a mil ion little pleasures.
“No more talking,” I said. “But feel free to cry out in ecstasy.”
CHAPTER 16