Lone Stars

by Justin Deabler

  The goth girl shot a look at Ben from the driver’s seat.

  “I didn’t get your name,” Julian said to her. “In the hall earlier?”

  “Chastity.” Ben grinned.

  “Shut up!” She floored the car out of the lot.

  “She goes by CiCi.” Ben patted her hand on the stick shift. “We don’t choose our names, babe.” He lit a joint and took a religious hit. “And you’re Julian Warner.” He handed it back, eyeing Julian in the rearview mirror.

  “No, thanks,” he replied. “More of a drinker.” Ben passed it to CiCi. The whole ride they smoked and gossiped and ignored Julian until they turned into Sherwood Lanes, the only subdivision cheaper and more depressing than Julian’s. “Where we headed?” he asked.

  They stopped at a tiny peeling box of a house. “Home,” Ben sighed.

  “Later,” CiCi waved as Julian crawled out of the car.

  “Just the two of us.” Ben yanked open the screen door. “The parents won’t be back for hours.” He led Julian into a cramped but tidy kitchen. “Drink?”

  “Beer if you got it,” Julian said, some super-butch spirit passing through him.

  Ben handed him a can of lemonade. “The parents are Mormon.”

  “Oh. Does that—Are you a Mormon too?”

  “I’m a fuckup. It’s my own special cult.” Julian followed Ben into a dim room, blinds closed in the high small window and musky from a bottle of Drakkar Noir lurking in the dark. Ben switched on a lamp with a blue bulb. A massive stereo system colonized one wall. The rest were covered in posters for Kate Bush, Siouxsie and the Banshees, other bands Julian didn’t know but looked dangerous.

  “Fuckup?” Julian said. “Like, no colleges picked out? You’re a senior, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben said as he loaded a CD changer. “The Art Institute, if I can scrape up the cash.” He picked a song and flopped on his bed.

  “Whoa.” Julian’s nose wrinkled reflexively. “Is that a water bed?”

  “Fuck yeah.” Ben made an aqueous pat beside him. “Take the plunge.”

  Julian lowered himself cautiously to the frame. Ben nudged him, and he splashed backward. The wave rocked them, and on the rebound Ben’s T-shirt rode up to reveal a pale white six-pack. “Julian’s a sophomore, right?” Ben said. “Not a fuckup. What else is he?”

  Julian grinned. “I’m a master debater.” Ben stared at the ceiling. “And Royalwood’s North Houston candidate for the Ten Pillars speech contest.”

  “Wait.” Ben grinned. “Those nut jobs with the Old Glory flyers a while back?”

  “Nut jobs?” Julian objected, laboring to a sitting position. “Is it nutty to protect the freedom of every American? The free markets that allowed that stereo to be produced in a factory, and transported to a retailer, and sold to you for a fair profit?”

  “Freedom’s what we do with what’s done to us.” Julian stared at Ben, rapidly trying to place the words. “A little Sartre for the master debater.” Ben smiled and rolled on his side, closer to Julian. “Do you get downtown much? Like, the bars in Montrose?”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “Oh. You sounded like a big drinker, so I thought—Rich’s? Heaven? The gay bars?”

  “I know what they are,” Julian mumbled.

  “Mine Shaft’s the best,” Ben announced. “Speaking of markets—it’s a meat market there. Live shows. Dildos the size of your arm? S-and-M daddies? But older guys are kinda my thing. Guys my age? Boyfriends?” he said with a condescending whine. “Whatever.”

  “So.” Julian bit his lip. “You’re, like—”

  “Gay.” Ben smirked. “If you say a word enough it loses its meaning. Gaygaygay.”

  Julian felt the shiver of goose bumps sprouting. It dawned on him that the sensation since he’d splashed onto the water bed, dizzy and pulsing, was sex in the air. Sex could happen. Julian stole a look at Ben and realized how handsome he was under the alt-rock trappings. Then the memory of his own image swept over Julian in crushing detail—round hoot-owl glasses, the acne, Gumby arms and legs—and he turned his face away from Ben.

  “I gotta go.” Julian struggled to his feet.

  “Relax.” Ben laughed.

  He grabbed his backpack off the floor. “I’ve got a speech to—”

  “Shit.” Ben cocked his head and listened. “Yeah, go. Out the window.”

  “What?”

  “What the fuck is he doing home?” Ben poked his head out the door of his room and slammed it shut again. “My dad. Trust me, go out the—”

  “It’s too high,” Julian protested, “I can’t—”

  “I’ll help.” Ben yanked up the blinds and opened the window. He knelt and clasped his hands. “Come on!” Once Julian had his chest through, he felt Ben’s arms wrap around his legs and lift him over the edge. He peered back into the house after he was out. “Let’s meet again,” Ben whispered. “Your place?”

  “I can’t. My mom.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” He gave Julian’s hand a fleeting squeeze and was gone.

  From that point on, Julian thought of nothing but Ben and their future. How Ben would come with him to Harvard and do unspecified things in Boston, where they’d live in a loft and make spaghetti and have sex. After school let out, Julian met Sam to go over his speech before the semifinal contest. She listened inscrutably as Julian recited it from memory. Somewhere in the middle, he realized Ben was artistic and would need a big-screen TV and one of those VCRs with two tape decks. He ended his speech with the usual power nod. Sam smiled. “Everything OK?” she asked. “You seem distracted.”

  “Should I do it over? I’ll do better.”

  “You’ll be great. There’s a twist to the format tomorrow. After each speech, there’s a question from the audience. Just stick to the rules in the Ten Pillars, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Who’s the audience?” Julian asked.

  “The North Houston Rotary Club!” Sam said, and laughed. He waited for the punch line. She pursed her lips. “Julian, our movement has a lot of parts. Our center is what you call the brains. A neuron, connected to think tanks and policy makers around the country. But a movement’s got to have muscle. Bodies for the brains to direct. And tomorrow you’ll meet some bodies. I talked to the principal and got your pass. I’ll pick you up at eleven thirty, OK?”

  The next morning Sam idled at the front entrance in a gleaming black Mercedes. The whole drive down Beltway 8 they had a great conversation. Sam was fifty-six and ran half marathons. Her expensive clothes fit. She had a career as a geophysicist, like her husband, before their daughter was born. She asked Julian hard questions about where he saw himself in ten years. It wasn’t like talking to his mom, he thought as they chatted, more like talking to a fellow adult—a colleague he could brainstorm with about his future and professional things.

  “Twelve years,” Sam said at one point, when Julian asked how long she’d worked for the center. “It’s been my life since my daughter left home.” She turned to Julian. “Saved my life, you could say. But we’re saving the country, so it’s an even trade, right?” She smiled. “I’ve seen a lot of kids in that time. Hundreds. Most I don’t coach, or drive to contests. But I haven’t met a man like you since we found Ted. You can go all the way, Julian. You can go far.”

  He smiled. The blue-lit memory of Ben’s bedroom hit him, the heat of Ben’s leg against his. And in an act of will undetectable except around his nostrils, Julian put Ben back in storage.

  Sam exited onto the feeder road, passed a Jiffy Lube and an Arby’s, and turned into a Best Western that had seen better days. “We’re in the ballroom,” Sam said as they crossed the baking asphalt. “Tighten that tie, and smile now!”

  In the lobby Julian sighed at the smell of mildew. Sam waved and hurried to her board members in their fancy suits. The rest of the men milling around the event room—not a woman there but Sam—wore khakis and clip-on suspenders, windbreakers with plumbing and electric logos, an occas
ional Astros cap or VFW beret. A man with tinted glasses and a gut sat alone at a table smoking a cigar, waiting for lunch. Across the room Sam punched a Rotarian on the shoulder. Julian caught her eye. She tapped her watch and motioned to his name placard at a table draped with patriotic bunting.

  Waiters brought out plates of chicken and white lettuce. Sam stood at the lectern and made apocalyptic remarks about freedom. The contest began. At each mediocre speech, Julian’s body hummed with adrenaline. His rivals fumbled softball questions about unions and taxes. When it was his turn, the hunger to win reached a trancelike state. Julian stood before the crowd at a cheap hotel, but it was a classroom at Harvard, too, and the floor of Congress. He owned them with his words, finishing to applause beyond that of any other speaker. A radiant Sam passed the microphone to the smoker with the gut.

  “Before my question,” the man drawled, “I got to say, the passion this young man has? Am I right, y’all? American passion!” The room clapped. “I salute your views on free markets. But conservatives don’t stop there. We protect the Christian family. Now, President Clinton”—he paused for effect—“and today I’m saying something nice, y’all. He just signed the Defense of Marriage Act, but is it enough to protect from the homosexual agenda? Boys growing up with no mother and father? Predators recruiting our youth? That is their plan. Don’t we need more than a law, Mr. Warner? Shouldn’t God’s word be right there in the US Constitution?”

  “Well, sir.” Julian’s neck beaded. He knew the answer, had the words on his tongue, memories of the caterwauling preachers on the local access shows. He just had to say them. “I think,” he continued, “the Ten Pillars we’re talking about—they advocate less government in our lives, not more. James Madison described, in Federalist 39, this great laboratory of federalism, so Congress passed its act, but if we leave it to the states to work out, before taking more federal action, I think that lines up more with what our Founders meant.”

  The man stared at Julian, confused, and looked down. A fork settled on a plate at the back of the silent room. “Thank you,” Sam said into the microphone. “We’ll let our speakers get a bite to eat while we tally the votes. Let’s give them one more round of applause, y’all.”

  * * *

  Sam talked less on the drive back to school. Julian answered with a word here and there, unable to explain the complex lacerations he was inflicting within. When Sam got to Royalwood High, she put the car in park and turned off the ignition. “You’re two hundred fifty dollars richer than you were this morning,” she said. “And third place goes to the citywide finals, too.”

  “It wasn’t my speech,” Julian said. “It was my answer. I stuck to the Ten Pillars and that book on the Constitution you gave me.”

  “You were the best man up there,” Sam said, stretching her fingers on the steering wheel in exasperation. “I want my favorite student to win. I’ve been talking you up for weeks.” She sighed. “We are the leaders of this movement, Julian. But sometimes, to make the changes you want, you have to give the people what they want. Understand?” She straightened the lapel on his baggy blazer. “You’re a work in progress. I’ll see you next week, before the finals.”

  Inside Julian trudged to his locker. When he opened it, a note fell out with a drawing of stars above a forest path, and a message written in extravagant calligraphy—

  Greenbelt trail by my house. Midnight. Xoxo B

  Julian stuffed the note in his pocket and looked around, confirming no one saw it. His cheeks burned and his temples pounded. He longed to see Ben, and touch him. But the thing inside him that was Ben, them, two boys’ hands brushing on a window frame, there were laws against it to run it out of good homes. There was the day Greg Louganis said he was HIV-positive, and the news kept running the clip from the Olympics when he hit his head and his blood spread in the pool, a crimson monster that had to be cleansed. Julian knew the meaning of that blood. He had a weakness, a defect he couldn’t talk about, because speaking made it real. Was that who he was? Who was he anymore, and what was he supposed to be? Today he was a third-place finisher. And he didn’t like it.

  When Julian got home that evening, his mom waited cross-armed in the foyer. He stood in the doorway as she stared. “When were you planning on telling me?” she asked gravely.

  “Tell you what?” His body rocketed into high alert.

  “Where were you?”

  “Debate club.”

  “Earlier today, during lunch? Driving off with a woman I don’t know?”

  “You mean the chaperone for a school-sponsored club?”

  “Why do I have to find out from the principal that you left school?” She threw up her arms. “Who just happened to mention it, thinking I knew.”

  “News flash: I’m leaving sooner or later. Sure as hell not staying here.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’re in a new club? What do you know about these people? These political types, with their philosophies and—”

  “Philawsaffy?” he snapped, aping her twang. “What’s yours? Lacy’s Big Philawsaffy. Let’s hear it.” He gestured that the floor was hers. “Please, enlighten me.”

  She searched his face. “I think.” Her eyes welled up. “Every person deserves someone to love. Whoever it is. And they should take care of that person.”

  Julian’s blood ran cold. “Right.” He snickered. “Real philosophy there.” He stepped around her and slammed his door without saying good night.

  At a quarter to midnight, Julian stuffed his comforter and slid out his bedroom window. He ran the mile to the bike trail near Ben’s house, scanning each block for cops with no higher purpose than to collar a kid out past bedtime. His heart sank as he approached the wooden entrance sign and saw no stirring of life.

  “Warner!” a voice whispered past the pink haloes of the street lamps. A face leaned out from the trees. Julian followed Ben down the trail, a few paces behind. On either side, back-porch lights carried faintly over fences and through the dense pines. Julian was studying the cling of Ben’s sweatpants when he turned around. Delicately he took Julian’s face in his hands, like a glass full to the brim, and kissed him. Their tongues searched wordlessly. The vibrations of the crickets engulfed them, bending time to their rhythm.

  For three nights they rendezvoused on the trail. Each time Julian’s hands journeyed deeper into Ben’s clothes, to the small of his back or a nipple that, rubbed lightly, made him exhale in crisis. On the third night, Ben lay Julian on the path and pressed on top of him. Julian felt gravel bite into his calves and Ben’s hardness astride his own. They rocked on the ground, clothed and unhurried, bestowing kisses like precious gifts. Until a branch snapped nearby. “Who’s there?” a man’s voice boomed. A beam of light angled through the trees as a hand waved a flashlight over a fence. The boys ran for the trail entrance.

  A few blocks away they slowed down. “This is crazy,” Julian fretted, trying to catch his breath. “We can’t come here anymore.”

  “So.” Ben looked straight ahead. “Let’s go on a date.” Julian studied his feet. “I’d be making an exception,” Ben added. “You’re on the young side for me. People go on dates.”

  “Yeah,” Julian mumbled, “but where?”

  “I don’t know. Homecoming? Are you more a Beauty or a Beast? I don’t care.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it.” Ben ran his hands through his hair. “Applebee’s? Our amazing planned community’s got two. Take your pick.”

  “What about the Cheesecake Factory in Humble? We could borrow CiCi’s car. Oh!” He grabbed Ben’s elbow. “I heard about a place in Kemah where they don’t card and—”

  “Across town.” Ben yanked his arm free. “Halfway to Galveston. I get it.”

  “We can’t keep doing this!” Julian snapped. “Maybe this is you, but this is not me.”

  Ben took a step backward and watched him. “Come to my window tomorrow night.” His voice hardened. “We’ll finish what we started.”

&nbs
p; “What about your dad?”

  “Come or don’t. I don’t care.” He walked off.

  The next night Julian tapped at Ben’s window. Excitement made him nimble as a cat burglar as he climbed inside. The stereo lights twinkled in the dark. He opened his mouth, but Ben put a finger to his lips and pointed at a chair angled under the doorknob. “He has a gun,” Ben whispered. He yanked down Julian’s jeans and shoved him onto the bed. Before the shock had worn off, Julian felt Ben’s lips at his navel, then down, swallowing him whole. Julian’s hips moved with the bed waves. A tiny moan escaped, and just before he came Ben clamped a hand over his mouth. The room exploded in light. Instantly Julian understood the pain in his crotch lately, a tension to propel him here—a white nothing outside the world, past secrets and time and the endless scrabble to make something of himself.

  “Turn over,” Ben grunted and twisted his shoulders.

  “Why?” Julian mouthed.

  “To fuck you, what do you think?”

  “No,” Julian whispered, but Ben tightened his grip and flipped him over. “No!” he cried.

  Ben’s eyes bugged out at the sound. He crept to the door and returned. “What the fuck did you come here for?” he hissed, towering over Julian. “Get out.”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “Go. Don’t come back.”

  Julian got dressed. He waited for an assist to the window frame, but Ben wouldn’t look at him, first fumbling with the stereo and then wiping his face on his T-shirt. Julian caught a glimpse of a large dark bruise on his side. “How’d you get that?” he asked.

  “I said go.”

  Julian went out the window and turned to look for Ben’s face, but it wasn’t there.

  After that there were no more notes in Julian’s locker. He’d never really seen Ben at school, but now he was nowhere to be found. For days Julian was late to sixth period, trolling the hall where he’d run into CiCi, but he never saw her either. Every night he ran to the bike trail and returned home alone. He couldn’t sleep. His gawky frame shrank to bones. A week into his suffering, Julian found Ben’s number in the phone book and called his house, but he always got the same redneck voice twanging, “Who is this?” Then one evening the phone picked up on the first ring. “I wish you were never born,” Ben hissed. “We’re done, got it? Stop calling or I’ll call the police.”