“I forgot she was staying here,” Tony said. “What are you doing about that?”
“I’m working on it,” I said.
Tony put his hand on his gun. “My offer stil stands.”
“Thanks, but I think I’l save that as a last resort.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, strapping on his holster.
He pul ed me against him. I liked the way my naked body felt against his clothed one.
“Aren’t you going to get dressed?” he asked me.
“I’m going to grab a shower before I head over to meet Freddy,” I said.
“I could use one, too” he said. “Although maybe I’l go to bed with your scent stil on me.”
Inside, I swooned.
“This was great,” Tony said. “Thank you. I’l cal you tomorrow, OK?”
“You better,” I said.
“OK.” He kissed me again. “I guess I’l be going now.”
“OK,” I said, kissing him back. We inched lip-locked toward the door.
“Bye,” Tony said, stil kissing me.
“So long,” I said, not stopping.
“See ya later.” He smiled through our kiss.
“Al igator,” I completed the rhyme.
After a few more minutes, I had to push him away.
“OK, OK, I get the hint,” he said.
I opened the door. “Talk to you tomorrow,” I said.
“I…,” Tony began. “Thank you.”
I thought he was going to say something else.
I closed the door.
I realized that I had forgotten. Forgotten what it was to be purely and total y joyful. To be happy and hopeful and ready for love.
I felt my frozen heart thawing faster than the polar icecaps in an A1 Gore movie.
Oh Lord, was I smitten.
I looked down at my feet. Yep, they were stil on the ground.
But it didn’t feel that way, did it?
I felt like shouting, dancing, and running down the street naked after him. I felt like singing “Don’t Let the Parade Pass Me By” from the back of a steamer ship.
Tony fucking Rinaldi!
I was trying to play it cool. To keep my feelings and expectations low. But now that I had lain in his arms again, now that I thought we might real y have the chance to get back together, I had to admit it: Damn, I loved that boy!
A knock at the door.
He was back!
I was just about to open the door when I realized the knock was coming from inside the apartment.
From my mother’s room.
My room, damn it!
“Is it safe to come out?” she asked.
“One minute!” I yel ed. I kicked my underwear into the closet, hid the lube, and threw a towel around my waist. “OK.”
My mother came out in a red velour robe with matching slippers and a turban. Cleopatra of Long Island. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” she said.
“He was just leaving.”
“Naked?”
“Wel, he was getting ready to leave.”
My mother made her way into the kitchen. “I need some tea. I am tel ing you, you could use Hannah Rosenberg’s bean dip for cement.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. Al I could think was: Tony Rinaldi!
“And her cookies! They could deflect bul ets!”
“Yeah.” His hair was even softer than I remembered. It felt like strands of silk when his head traveled down my bel y.
“So, you’re real y crazy about him, no?”
“Hmmm, interesting.” His biceps were like coiled steel covered with rubber and when he came he made the most sensual…
My mother walked over to me and yanked my hair.
“Ow! What’d you do that for?” I said, rubbing my head.
“You haven’t been listening to a word I said.”
Had she been talking? “That’s no reason to make me bald.”
“You think I didn’t see that same look in your eyes whenever Tony came around the house? From the time you were eleven, twelve years old? I should have told you that you were gay then and saved you the soul-searching.”
She took my face in her hands. “Baby. That kind of love, it’s not always a good thing, you know? We al think, ‘wow, love.’” She widened her eyes comical y.
“The movies tel us love is such a great thing that we can’t have too much. But you know what? You can. You real y can love someone too much. That kind of love can kil you, you know?”
I nodded.
“I saw what you went through the first time with Tony. Flow you suffered. Oh, I saw it al. You think a mother doesn’t know?”
She put her hand on her heart. “A mother knows, Kevin. Whatever pain you’ve felt in your life, I’ve felt double-triple.
“I don’t want to see you hurt that way again.”
That makes two of us, I thought. “I know, Mom. I’l be careful.”
“You’l be a lot of things,” my mother said, “but you won’t be careful.
“You see, I know you think I’m a crazy lady. But why do you think I’m here? Because I love that old man I’ve been married to for forty years so much that I refuse-refuse! — to share him with anyone else.
“When he wooed me-oy, he was the most romantic man I’d ever known. At night, after my parents had gone to bed, he’d throw pebbles at the window to wake me. Then he’d sing to me, love songs, and I’d yel down ‘shhh!’ but he wouldn’t listen.
Final y, we’d see the lights go on in my parents’ room, and he’d run away, and I’d be standing there by the open window thinking I wished I could just go down and run off with him.
“I know what it is to love too much, Kevin. I’ve been careful with my money and careful with my children, but I’ve never been careful with my heart.
“Not even once.
“And I think, maybe in that way, you’re a little more like your mother than you know.”
I don’t think that I’ve ever heard my mother talk so honestly. If I weren’t so fucking happy at that moment, it might even have sunk in. But as it was, her words fel on me like rain on hot pavement, there for just a moment before evaporating into the air.
I kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for caring, Mom. I love you. But I have to go. Freddy’s waiting for me.”
“There’s another one waiting?” she asked.
“You know Freddy,” I said. “We’ve been friends forever. There’s nothing between us.” Wel, nothing worth mentioning, I added to myself.
“Whatever. Just mark my words-don’t let that Tony Rinaldi break your heart. Although,” she added mischievously, “he does have a great tush.”
CHAPTER 17
I took a quick shower, threw on my cutest underwear (black N2N square cut with a generous pouch), cargo shorts, a white tank top, and high-top sneakers and grabbed a cab to a nondescript building in the meat packing district by Greenwich Vil age. The building had no sign but those-in-the-know knew it as Sexbar. I was twenty minutes late.
I was stil so strung out on Tony-loving that I felt I could have flown there. Which was probably why I was singing “Oh My Man I Love Him So” to myself the whole cab ride down there and why I tipped the driver ten dol ars.
“Hel o!” Freddy cried as I got out of the car. “Tardy much?” He hoisted his bag of flyers and condoms over his shoulder and walked towards me. “You know how many men have missed out on some quality AIDS education while you were off doing who knows what?”
“Sorry,” I said, trying to keep the sil y smile off my face.
“Aw, don’t worry about it.” Freddy waved his hand.
“This place won’t get busy til about midnight anyway.”
“I wore cute underwear.”
“Thattaboy,” Freddy winked and gave me thumbs up.
Then he cocked his head and squinted his eyes.
“Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Let’s go in.”
He put a hand on my chest. “No, wait a minute.”
He looked me up and down quizzical y. “There’s something different. You seem a little strange.”
I tried to walk past him, but Freddy’s arm was solid like a tree trunk.
“What is it?” he said, more to himself than to me.
“It’s nothing. Come on, you said it yourself, we have work to do.”
“Not so fast, Junior.” He brought his face close enough to mine that I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “You look…” he blinked twice. “You look happy!”