Lone Stars

by Justin Deabler

  The phone went dead. Julian stared at the receiver as though it might tell him more. Then he shut his eyes, curled up in bed, and cried himself in and out of sleep.

  * * *

  “You feeling well enough to drive, Jules?” his mom asked the next morning on the way to school. She interrupted her regularly scheduled broadcast of chatter and watched him.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look tired.” She pulled over before the main entrance and smiled at him. “I could call in sick and drive you down there. I could watch your speech. It’s your last one, isn’t it?”

  “I can drive myself,” Julian mumbled and slammed the door.

  At lunchtime he got his mom’s keys from the secretary and pulled out of faculty parking. Nothing seemed real as he tore down the highway, not the trucks blaring their horns or the domes of the megachurches. Near 610 the skyline rose like a glittering fortress, and for the rest of the drive Julian ran through the speech he hadn’t practiced since the Rotary lunch. He got off at Sam’s exit and pulled over to study the directions to River Oaks. The entrance to her street had fancy metal gates. He turned into a row of mansions and parked the minivan in front of Sam’s. The front was stone and brick in a pattern Julian had never seen. Sam waved at a window.

  “Julian!” she said, opening the door. Her smiled faded. “Are you sick?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “You sure? Come on in. I’ve got some Blue Bell. We need to fatten you up!”

  “Your house is beautiful.”

  Sam took in the wainscoted foyer. “Mr. Monroe works very hard. I’ll grab my keys and we can head out.”

  “What does he do?” Julian asked as he studied the family pictures on the walls.

  “He’s in management now at Mobil,” she called from another room. “Always traveling.” Sam popped back into the foyer. “The center, and our friends in energy in Washington—we take care of our own. Maybe you’ll have a house like this someday.”

  “Is that your daughter?” Julian asked, pointing to a photo of a dark-haired girl.

  Sam hesitated. “Yes. That’s Abigail.”

  “Does she live in Houston?”

  “No. Abi left for UT, and then to San Francisco of all places. She doesn’t like airplanes or the telephone!” Sam smiled, disappearing inside herself. “We can’t have that brain drain with you,” she said when she reemerged. “Go to Harvard, but come home. Texas needs her boys.” She held him with her gaze. “I see you, Julian, the good in there. You can win this and go all the way to the Koch Foundation. Remember what I told you? Give them what they want?” He nodded. “Follow me,” she said. “The hotel’s about fifteen minutes from here.”

  They drove to a Ramada this time, with a room full of chamber of commerce men. There were five other contestants, but Julian noticed little around him. He was sleepwalking, numb from the cold place inside where Ben used to be. He gave his speech when Sam called him, and waited for the microphone to reach the questioner. A bald man with wild eyes thanked Julian for his remarks. “Now,” he continued, “I have to ask how our government, in the name of ‘choice,’ allows our women to murder the unborn.”

  As the man carried on about abortion, Julian found Sam’s face in the crowd. Her brow furrowed anxiously. He thought of how she listened when he talked on their long drives, and the look of disappointment on her face when she fixed his collar in the car. The coldness inside him caught fire. He hated Ben. A guy who tried to flip him over and hurt him, a freak who almost ruined his chance at an internship and amazing future.

  “It’s simple,” Julian said when the man finished. “If Congress can’t overturn Roe v. Wade, what it can do is use the power of the purse to stop the butchering of the unborn. There are actually times when a libertarian invites government action. And with precious life at stake? Today’s speeches are about free markets, but markets don’t sell miracles. They come from the Creator. And we either respect His miracles, or we reap what we sow.”

  Julian felt the caress of applause again. Sam’s face flushed with pride.

  When the speeches were done, Sam hugged him and promised to call when the judging was over—and she had a good feeling. “Reap what we sow.” She chuckled at him.

  He got stuck in traffic on the drive back, inching along until he passed a cluster of wreckage on the highway. By the time he reached Royalwood, school was over, so he went home. He heard a gasp when he opened the front door. His mom flew at him, gripping him frantically. “Where have you been?” she cried.

  “There was an accident on 59. I didn’t go back to school.”

  “I know you didn’t! All afternoon I was looking for you, everywhere, in the—”

  “Why?” Julian wriggled away from her. “What’s with you?”

  “I couldn’t find you! There was an incident at school. A senior was attacked. Benjamin Cross. He had problems with boys in gym class.” She watched Julian. “Calling him a fag. He stood up to them. He said he was gay, and they—did things to him. He’s in the hospital.” She seized Julian’s head. Her eyes were fierce. “I love you. You got a problem, tell me. Somebody bothers you, tell me.”

  The phone rang. They froze.

  His hand quivered as he picked up the receiver.

  “Julian? It’s Sam. You did it! You’re our winner! I’m holding a check with a lot of zeroes here, and soon I’ll have a ticket to Washington! Ready to take our fight to the Capitol?” She waited. “He’s speechless,” she said away from the receiver. “Julian? Hello?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Congrats! What do you say? You ready to be our new voice for American freedom?”

  Julian turned to his mom, watching him by the sink with her hands clasped around her waist. He studied her careworn face, the one he had always known.

  He hung up the phone.

  8

  Let’s Get Baked Tonight

  “And then he threw up on the carpet and started walking circles around his mess, and I called to him, Muffin! Muffin! but he kept circling, so now the vet thinks maybe he’s deaf on top of the cataracts and irritable bowel, because Westies are prone to—”

  “Uh-huh,” Julian said, the phone dangling precipitously between his shoulder and ear. “I mean, if he’s that sick maybe the compassionate thing to do is—” He leaned forward to check his desk clock. “I gotta go. I have to grab dinner before a meeting across the Yard in ten.”

  “Oh. For a student group?”

  “Yeah. BGLTSA. I have an idea for campus activism. A big one.”

  “Interesting. You want to talk about—”

  “No, Mom, I gotta go.”

  “Okey-doke. There’s only one Julian Warner! Knock ’em dead, sweetie.” She sighed faintly. “Love you. Same time tomorrow?”

  His mom’s last words hung in the air like melancholy music as Julian bought a wrap from the snack bar and hustled to Boylston Hall. If it wasn’t one thing on their nightly calls, it was another. In the three weeks since Julian started college, his mom groused about the cable going out, the kitchen faucet leaking, and lately every call about his dog, Muffin, who was totally fine when he petted him goodbye in August. Julian hurried across campus, past buildings that caught the sunset more beautifully than the poster in his room back home. It was the way she rambled during their calls that bugged him—different somehow from her chatter in high school, the white noise he tuned out every day. On the phone, far away, he could hear her voice pure and clear. And as much as he loved her—more than anyone in the world—it turned out he didn’t want to see the sad, lonely things inside her. Or know what to do with them.

  Julian stopped at the statue of John Harvard and wondered if students really peed on him. He thought of the meeting ahead. Where there would be boys, yes, maybe cute nice boys, but so what? He stared down the statue and reviewed the opening lines of his speech. The idea came to him in the cafeteria when he smiled at a butch woman working the lunch line, and they started talking. The hardest part of Harvard was ge
tting in, people said, so why not draw attention to inequality, rile up the school, get his name in the Crimson as a freshman? He had the whole protest planned, the demands, the change he would make, and the glory. And suddenly, in the midst of his fantasy, came a flicker of doubt. He wondered if he could pull it off. Not wilt in front of the group, convince them he could do it. He should run it all by his mom first, Julian thought as he turned back to the path. But then he remembered he’d just hung up with her.

  * * *

  On a balmy night still perfumed with summer, Philip Rosenblum thought about sex as he crossed Harvard Yard. The usual stuff, nothing exotic. He itemized his own history, which by sophomore year amounted to making out with three girls and wiggling his fingers on a breast. He thought of dicks and how he liked them, or the idea of them, dropping momentarily into a Freudian black hole. He thought of straight people and the pass they got for bad behavior. Their strip clubs, Hooters, Mardi Gras tits for beads—sex so comically bankrupt it left him scratching his head, but if it ends with a few shrieking kids down the road, all is forgiven, right? His mind raced the whole way to Boylston Hall, where he stepped into the landscaping. He hid behind a manicured spruce and watched students go into the building. Philip hated the fact that his internal conflicts manifested as psychic conversations with his mother, a fact all the more excruciating when the conflict was sex. But he had made a decision and would see it through. He stepped from the bushes and, eyes lowered, made his way into his first BGLTSA meeting.

  He held his breath as he entered the lounge. A hundred heads, or maybe twenty, turned in telepathic vampire unison. “Hi!” said a blue-haired girl with a clipboard. He sat in the back. Across the room, Philip spotted two guys with bloodshot eyes whispering about him. He’d overheard them in the Science Center at lunchtime, joking about the annual tradition of getting high and hitting the first gay student group meeting of the year, to scope out hot freshmen. Let’s Get Baked Tonight, they called it. For the rest of the afternoon, Philip judged them and mulled over whether to hit up the meeting he had studiously avoided the year before. In the evening he fortified himself at his desk, studying econ. But when the clock struck 6:55, in one frenetic burst he stuffed a joint in his pocket and a condom in his wallet and ran for the Yard.

  And there, somewhat to his own surprise, he was.

  The meeting began with introductions by the officers. For a terrible moment Philip thought they were going to go around and say their names, but the discussion turned to fall activities. He stole glances around the lounge. Not a single guy jumped out as an option—too skinny, or fat, or dressed to the Wildean nines on a Tuesday. He wondered if he was one of those asexuals in practice, or if asexuals were really a thing. He was stuck in his head again, any chance of getting laid doomed by the feedback loop of real-time analysis. He sighed and plotted how to exit unnoticed. It was the summer that drove him to this meeting, he thought grimly, a shitty summer at his dad’s bank, around vulgar douchebags who talked sex 24/7 like it was Chinese takeout and frayed his nerves until he figured he should just do it and get it over with. So he came. He saw. He got depressed. Because no matter what words his mom used to theorize it—intersubjective recognition of the blahdiblah—at the end of the day he was pretty sure that there was no Santa, and sex was just fucking.

  “I have an idea.” A sharp voice broke through his thoughts. A guy Philip hadn’t seen stood up—an elf-boy who looked all of fifteen, with olive skin, runway cheekbones, huge dark eyes flecked with something lighter, greens or golds. His hair was shaggy and copper in the lamplight. Israeli? South American? Definitely southern by his voice. “Has anyone seen the college’s domestic partner benefits policy for staff members?” he asked. “That’s where same-sex marriage and income inequality are intersecting in our own backyard. I did an interview with a food services worker, and I think Harvard’s got a problem. Can we add that to the list of fall projects? I’ll take the lead.”

  “Great!” the president said, jotting on her clipboard. “And your name is?”

  “Julian Warner.”

  He said it, surname and all, like he was branding the collective mind of the club. He wore faded jeans and a black T-shirt. A revolutionary look, as much as any kid in the dorms looked like a revolutionary. But the low, piercing voice as he talked, and kept talking, the hang of his shirt on his boyish frame, they sent a chemical pulse through Philip that was one hundred percent not asexual. For the rest of the meeting he snuck looks at Julian, chubbing in waves, and fingered the edge of the condom. It occurred to him it might have expired. Condoms expired. He hadn’t checked the date on it, and now was a sleazily conspicuous time to try. He made a mental note and adjusted himself. When the meeting ended, Philip waited for the progressive whiz kid to hoist his backpack in departure mode, and left a few minutes ahead of him, darting outside and stationing himself in the dimly lit courtyard.

  “Julian?” Philip called when he exited. Julian squinted in his direction. “Sorry,” Philip stepped into the light and smiled. “I liked what you said in there.”

  “About what?” Julian said, blank-faced and oddly provocative.

  “About pushing the school to—we should know if Harvard’s treating all couples equally. I’m Philip.” He held out his hand. “Are you a freshman?”

  “Yeah.” He stared at Philip’s hand a moment before shaking it. “Hi.”

  “Are you headed somewhere?”

  “Widener,” Julian said. “I’ve got a date with a study carrel.”

  “Did you eat already?”

  “I don’t have time.”

  “To eat?” Philip asked. “You’re not eating dinner tonight?”

  Julian patted his backpack. “Falafel. While I study. I’ve got a system.”

  “Wow. Could I come to the stacks and watch you? Learn secrets to a productive life?”

  “I could give you some tips. What’s in it for me?”

  “Tonight, what’s in it for—” Philip watched Julian, who stood impassive and unusually hard to read. “Well,” he continued, “I know Cambridge top to bottom. I can show you around. An unforgettable night on the town.”

  “Good to know in advance what’s unforgettable. I’m from Texas,” Julian drawled. “Things are slower there.” He ran his eyes unabashedly over Philip. “What’s your go-to place to impress? On the town?”

  A surge of heat rose from Philip’s lower chakras. “You want to go?”

  “Is it impressive?”

  “Follow me,” he said, motioning gallantly toward the wrought-iron gate.

  Julian hesitated. “Where are we going, Mr.—?”

  “Rosenblum.” He couldn’t stop smiling. “Philip Rosenblum.”

  * * *

  Julian’s brain hurt from listening. In the weeks since school started, as long as two lifetimes, he felt terror, ecstasy, a million things about the world pulsing through Harvard. How much bigger than he dreamed! The wealth and ambition, new classmates who already seemed to know things and one another. In lecture halls and dorm rooms Julian told himself to listen, listen before you speak like his mom always said. But when the unknowns got him too keyed up, he’d fall into old habits and start talking like the state champion debater he was—with total certainty and a contrary flair. He was used to being an outsider. Gay in the rhinestone buckle of the Bible Belt. President of the three-member Royalwood High School Democrats. It was a role he knew how to play. A tough one, at times, turning up enemies where maybe there were none. But with each natty freshman he met from Exeter or Trinity, the more that chip snuggled comfortably back onto his shoulder.

  When he heard his name outside Boylston, after the BGLTSA meeting, Julian looked around with his guard up. Philip came out of the shadows. Julian read the situation. A closet case, and a handsome one, but who has time for that? Julian had seen it all—brave people hurt, liars walking free—and he only had space for truth in his life. Yet something about Philip held him there, drawing him in as the library receded to the back of his
mind. It wasn’t the dark, loose curls or his muscles, though Julian noticed both. It was his easy confidence, and warmth. An urge to connect that Julian sensed might come from kindness.

  He listened while Philip led him from the Yard and gave a walking tour of the Square over to a hotel by the river. Inside he waved at the concierge and guided Julian to a restaurant. “Rialto,” he said, opening the door. “Purveyor of cocktails that may or may not impress.”

  “Um,” Julian whispered, “do they card here?”

  “Philip!” the hostess called.

  “Beth,” he purred, touching her lightly on the arm.

  “How was your summer?”

  “Great!” He gave her a blinding smile. “I was back home working for my dad.”

  “How is he? We haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “He’s great. Is that round booth free tonight?”

  The hostess grabbed menus and winked. “Your favorite?” She waved them into the restaurant. It was low lit and airy, with white brick walls, a gleaming bar, sheer draperies that rippled elegantly to the central air. The hostess stopped at a booth upholstered in plush sage fabric, a three-quarter circle in the middle of everything, yet shrouded, intimate.

  “Could we start with that champagne-elderflower cocktail?” Philip asked as they slid in. “Two of those, if my friend Julian doesn’t mind?”

  Julian nodded maturely. “Nice place,” he said when she left.

  “We’re off to a good start, then.” Philip ran his hand along the curving wall. “I like this booth. Nice and private.”