Gold Standard

by Kyell Gold

  “Good,” Samaki said, his grin just visible through Kory’s protective fingers. “Don’t look at me.”

  “You look fine.” Kory squinted at the black figure, opening his eyes wider. He could see where some of the white fur was matted and disheveled. As he grew used to the light, he saw soft grey lines of irregular patterns in the black fur, too. “You look great,” he said sincerely.

  “You,” Samaki said, “look fine. I look like I just woke up.”

  “You did,” Kory pointed out.

  “I know,” Samaki said. “But I don’t like looking this way.” He grinned and put his shirt back on, as Kory did the same. “Help me get the mattress up? It’s harder than coming down.”

  “Sure,” Kory said, and as they were hefting the mattress, he heard noise from the kitchen and realized that this might be their last private moment. “I had a really good time,” he said. “We should do this again.”

  The fox’s smile reached all the way up to his eyes. “Me too,” he said. “And you’re welcome anytime. Or.I’d love to have a swim in your pool.”

  Kory grinned. “Sure! I’ll talk to my mom. Maybe we could go to a late movie and you could stay over. There are some neat small artsy theaters close to me.”

  “Cool. I’ll check the listings.” Samaki’s tail wagged. “Now, ready? Heave!”

  They dragged the mattress up the two flights of stairs, with only one minor incident when Samaki’s grip on the mattress slipped and Kory had to skip down a step quickly. When they’d heaved the mattress up onto the loft, Samaki said, “Bathroom’s free. I’m going to duck in and straighten up.”

  Ajani and Kasim were already in the living room watching cartoons, so Kory climbed up to Samaki’s loft, watching the light spread over the city outside the window. It was a nice view, and a nice room, he thought, an ingenious use of little space to allow three boys to live here together. Compared to Sal, who lived in a huge two-story house with two rec rooms, five bedrooms, and a hot pool and water slide in addition to the main indoor pool, Kory had always thought of his family as poor, or at least not well-off. Samaki’s family would be much better suited to Sal’s house, and yet they had less than even Kory and his family did, and they thrived.

  He glanced at the pile of Samaki’s papers, and levered himself over to peer at the one on top. It was an article by Samaki about a gay teen support center in downtown Hilltown whose funding was being reviewed, written from the perspective of one of the teens it had helped.

  “Hey,” the fox called some minutes later. Kory hadn’t even heard him come in. He put the paper down guiltily, but Samaki was smiling. He’d not only brushed his fur; he’d changed into new clothes, or at least a new shirt, and Kory noticed then that the wardrobe was open. He hadn’t heard that, either.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It was right on top. And you did read my poem.”

  “It’s cool,” Samaki said. “The article about the Rainbow Center?”

  “Yeah. That’s really neat. You went there?”

  The fox nodded. “I’ll tell you the whole story sometime. Not enough time now.”

  “I’d like to hear more,” Kory said as he clambered down. “Do you still go there?”

  “In summer.” Samaki walked downstairs with Kory. “Helping other kids, doing projects.”

  “You’ll be good at it.” He grinned at the noise from the living room. “Cartoons for a while?”

  “Yeah. Breakfast first?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Down in the kitchen, the smell of eggs and sausage filled the air. Mrs. Roden bustled from stove to sink and fridge, and back, and greeted Samaki with a kiss and Kory with a hug. “I’ve got scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, some potatoes, and orange juice. Anything else you’d like, Kory?”

  “No, that sounds amazing.” Kory patted his rumbling stomach.

  They helped themselves to heaping servings of fluffy eggs, crispy sausage patties, and browned potatoes with onions. After the black fox had sprinkled Tabasco sauce on his eggs and potatoes and Kory had declined it, they thanked Mrs. Roden and trotted back upstairs.

  “We can eat in the living room,” Samaki said with his muzzle full. “The good cartoons are about to start. I don’t get the Digimon type ones.”

  Kasim cut him off. “This is Yu-Gi-Oh,” he said, and he and Ajani exchanged superior looks.

  “Whatever,” Samaki plopped down next to his brother and ruffled between his ears. “I can’t get into those. But they still run Looney Tunes at 8:30 and I make them watch before I head off to work.”

  “I love those,” Kory said, and for half an hour the four of them watched Bugs Bunny and Friends together, the otter and black fox occasionally sneaking looks at each other and smiling. Kory tacked one more interest up on the list of things they shared, and that thought made his tail thump against the back of the couch. When Ajani, next to him, turned around, he covered by poking the cub in the side with his tail’s tip, and this delighted the cubs so much that Kasim pushed over to get his share of pokes, and they ended up in a giggling heap in the middle of the couch when Samaki joined in and started tickling their paws.

  At the end of the half hour show, Mrs. Roden walked in from the dining room. “Sammy, you should get going,” she said. “We’ll take care of Kory `til his mother gets here.”

  The clock in the hall read 8:59. “She’ll be here in a minute,” Kory said confidently. Indeed, just as Samaki opened the door, his mother’s car was pulling up to the curb.

  And just like that, the visit was over. He gave Samaki a handshake and a friendly wave as the fox walked off to work, while his mother introduced herself to Mr. Roden and gave Mrs. Roden some recipe she’d apparently promised to bring. Kory was glad to see that. He wanted his mom and Mrs. Roden to be friends, because that would make it easier for him to see Samaki. And then he was in the front seat of his mom’s car, they were pulling away from the house, and he was back in his own world.

  He told his mom that it had been no problem for him to stay there, told her about the house, and asked if he could invite Samaki over again. His mother, of course, agreed, since they had let him stay over. She said that she liked the Rodens, but “I’m sure you’ll be glad to get in the shower.”

  That dampened his spirits. He didn’t respond, and he did not head right for the shower when he got home. He walked to Nick’s room.

  Nick held the little CompactFlash card gingerly in his paw. “You want me to copy it and give it back?”

  “Nah,” Kory said, “you can keep it.”

  “Really?” Nick’s blue eyes widened. A moment later, they narrowed, as he searched for the catch, and then relaxed as he tilted his head curiously. “Hey, Kory... uh...”

  “Yeah?”

  “You already make a copy?” That obviously hadn’t been the first question he was going to ask.

  Kory turned around and sat on Nick’s bed. For a minute, he fought with himself about what to say. To talk to Nick would make it more real, harder to deny. That was a big leap. He thought about the high dive at Caspian, standing on the edge looking down, knowing it would be fine once he jumped. It would be a relief to talk to someone other than Father Joe, and Nick was probably the best one to talk to. “Go ahead and say what you were going to.”

  “Oh.” Nick fidgeted. “You think you’re...you know...I mean, do you not like girls any more?”

  “Any more?” Kory forced a grin.

  “I don’t know. You went out with Jenny for like a year, but you weren’t ever really happy.” He held up the card. “And giving this away...man, I’ll never get rid of this. Then you wanted to stay overnight with Samaki.”

  He looked back at his brother’s curious, astute eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Nick patted his arm. “Cause it’s cool, you know. I mean, I won’t tell Mom.”

  “She’d freak out.”

  Nick laughed shortly. “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “But you? I mean, if.”

  Nick considered only for
a moment before nodding. “Sure. You’re my brother, right? So, whatever.”

  “Thanks, Nick.” He wrapped an arm around the younger otter’s shoulder.

  “It’s no big deal, really. There’s a kid in my class, he’s, uh...” He looked quickly at Kory. “A couple kids give him a hard time sometimes, but they only do it if nobody’s around `cause if other people see it they get mad.”

  “Like teachers, you mean?”

  “Nah, just other kids. It’s pretty stupid, picking on someone for that, don’t you think? Jerry Tucker caught Stewy Marchand making a comment one time and told him to shut up or he’d paste him one. Robby’s pretty cool. Everyone likes him, except Stewy and his buddy Frank.”

  Kory sat back on the bed. “He’s thirteen and he knows?”

  Nick shrugged. “I know I like girls.” He kissed the CF card. “Don’t worry about it. Except with, like, Mom and some of her church friends, nobody really cares.”

  “I think people care. I care.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I guess so. I’m not sure you’re right.” But Father Joe had said essentially the same.

  Nick got up and put the card down over by his computer. “Well, I dunno. All I know is it doesn’t matter to me. Samaki seems pretty cool. And you seem to like him a lot.”

  “Yeah.” Kory had just been thinking the same thing. “I do.”

  He swam back to his room, doing extra laps under the water, reflecting how odd it was that his brother was so close and so far. They had a great bond, and he knew Nick would always be on his side, just as he would be on Nick’s. Then there was the question of being gay, where somehow Nick had acquired an even perspective that Kory could only characterize as mature, more mature than even he had. Was it possible for four years to mark such a drastic shift in attitudes? Or had Kory kept himself insulated from the world around him, taking his cues only from their mother?

  He sent an e-mail to Samaki, telling him again what a good time he’d had and including the next four weeks of Friday night movies at the theater near him. He hadn’t expressed a preference for any one of the four, but the movie scheduled three weeks away fell on Memorial Day weekend and it was an old science fiction classic, Forbidden Planet, one Kory had seen a long time ago, with his father. He felt sure that Samaki would zero in on that one, and sure enough, when the fox popped onto IM that evening, that was the movie he picked.

  The month of May passed in a blur. He met Samaki every Sunday, once at the pool and twice just at Starbucks. Sal dragged Kory into helping with prom preparations, once Kory assured him that he wasn’t upset to be missing it. He was somewhat amazed at the amount of money Sal was willing to spend on the prom, until he finally figured out that it was not to impress Debbie-who, after all, was already sleeping with him-but to impress his classmates.

  Nick took his grounding well, so well that their mother was almost suspicious about the amount of time he was willing to spend in his room. Kory suspected that his digital camera, the one he’d loaned Nick that read CF cards, had a lot to do with it. He didn’t need the camera; he no longer felt ashamed to call up his memories of the black fox as he lay in bed at night. That didn’t mean he was gay. After all, he wasn’t doing anything regular teenage boys didn’t do, no matter what images he held in his mind when he did them.

  Memorial Day fell at the onset of finals, two weeks before the prom. Normally, Kory would have spent every waking moment studying for exams, but even before he left to meet Samaki at the bus that night, he was too keyed up to focus on his books. His mother had made up an old air mattress with sheets and set it up on his floor, and every time Kory looked at it and thought of the fox lying there, he couldn’t even sit still.

  At quarter to seven, he threw on a short-sleeved shirt and waved to his mother, then ran out into the hot spring evening. He spent seven minutes at the bus stop pacing, until the bus pulled up and the black fox stepped down.

  He was wearing a white t-shirt that was a little too tight for him, and shorts that showed off his thighs and bare calves. As he stepped to the pavement, he slung his old backpack over his shoulder and clasped Kory’s paw. “Hot one tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Kory agreed, and bounced excitedly on the balls of his feet. “The theater has A/C, though. And it’ll be cooler when we get out.”

  “It’s already cooler here,” Samaki said, falling into step beside him. “It was 95 at my house when I left.”

  “Wow.” Kory shook his head. “With that black fur, I don’t know how you manage.”

  “I wear lots of white and I stay indoors.” Samaki brushed ruefully at the long fur on his arm. “Actually, it’s not so bad once it gets short, long as I keep my tail moving. That fur doesn’t molt. Stays long all year round.”

  “So I see.” Kory swung his own tail over to brush the fox’s playfully as they walked. Samaki brushed back, and they played tail-tag all the way to the theater.

  Samaki had never seen Forbidden Planet, a fifties adventure in which a spaceship of adventuring wolves discover a planet where an old rabbit scientist and his daughter live, apparently alone. At night, the wolves are attacked by a huge monster crackling with energy, and they must discover its secret. Kory had seen it years ago, and was happy to find that Samaki loved it as much as he had.

  Some parts of the movie were genuinely creepy, and as their arms were adjacent on the armrest, Kory found his paw entwined in Samaki’s about halfway through the movie. That seemed comfortable enough, and they happily squeezed each other’s paws during the creepy parts.

  “Great movie,” Samaki said, panting as they stepped back out into the barely-cool evening. “Wow.”

  “I’d forgotten a lot of it,” Kory said. “Whew! Glad you liked it.”

  Samaki looked up at the marquee as if fixing the name in his mind. “I see why it’s a classic, all right. When did you see it before?”

  “Seven years ago. With my father.”

  “Oh.” They walked on for a few steps, and then Samaki said, “How about Leslie Wolfson? A serious role, too.”

  “He was good, too!”

  “No kidding.” Samaki’s tail brushed Kory’s and Kory swung his tail back. They chatted all the way home about the movie, and when they got back, Kory’s mom made them banana splits and they told her about the movie all over again.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said finally. “Samaki, I made up the air mattress in Kory’s room. Do you need anything else?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Hedley,” Samaki said. “Oh, just a towel?”

  “Kory knows where the spares are. You’re going to swim?”

  They both nodded. “Samaki wanted to try the pool,” Kory said. “Just a short swim.”

  She glanced at the clock. “Wait another twenty minutes, all right? Good night, boys. God bless.” She disappeared down the hallway.

  “Your mom’s really nice,” Samaki said.

  “I guess.” Kory scratched his ears. “She didn’t have to tell us to wait twenty minutes. I know that.”

  “She just cares about you.”

  “Your mom is cool.”

  Samaki laughed. “You should have seen her when I broke the living room window. Oh, I thought my ears were gonna fall off.”

  “How did you break the living room window?”

  The fox looked sheepish. “Just horsing around. Kande was outside and I wanted to get her attention. I poked the glass a little too hard.”

  Kory snorted. “You need to make that a better story. Like you were practicing karate too close to the window and put your fist through it.”

  The fox stroked his muzzle. “How about. I threw my little brother through it?”

  “Now you’re talking.” Kory grinned. His paw found its way to rest on the fox’s tail again, almost without his guiding it.

  Twenty minutes later, they walked around to Kory’s bedroom. Samaki changed in the bathroom while Kory changed into his swimsuit in the bedroom. He didn’t usually wear his suit in the home po
ol, but with Samaki there he felt he should. He wasn’t sure he was quite ready to swim around with the fox in just underwear, and definitely not anything less.

  When Samaki came back in his swimsuit, his ears were half down and he wore a silly grin. “This feels funny. I never swam in someone’s house before.”

  Kory felt funny, too, but it wasn’t from being in his swimsuit. He took in the black fox’s body, the slender runner’s muscles, the fluffy tail, the white patch on the chest and the other one spilling out of his swimsuit. All familiar, but here in the privacy of his room rather than the public pool, his thoughts felt more intimate. “Let’s, ah, go ahead,” he said, and slid into the water.

  Kory led Samaki outside first, where they bobbed side by side and looked out at the dark yard. “Cool,” the fox breathed into the warm night. “Don’t you worry about people getting in through this?”

  Kory shook his head. “The yard’s pretty secure, and that doorway there?” He waved down into the water behind them. “There’s a gate that slides down. I’ll close it before we go to sleep.”

  “Nice.” Samaki looked up at the moon and the stars. “Pretty night.”

  “Yeah,” Kory said.

  “Somewhere up there is a Forbidden Planet,” Samaki murmured.

  “Hm?”

  “You ever think that? Somewhere out there is everything we’ve dreamed about and invented.”

  “Yeah,” Kory said. “In an infinite universe.”

  “Everything exists somewhere.” He paused. “Like the search for the Second Foundation, that just led back to themselves.”

  “But there really was a Second Foundation out there,” Kory said. Their eyes met for a moment, bridged by moonlight. Then Kory said, “Come on. I’ll show you the basement. Take a deep breath.”

  They surfaced in a dark chamber. Kory turned on the light to reveal piles of sealed boxes and bags. He swallowed to pop his ears and saw the fox’s flick as he did the same.

  Samaki looked around. “There’s no other way out?”

  “Nope. Just through the water.”