by K. Z. Snow
“Have I ever heard you sing?” I asked as I poured a glass of orange juice from a pitcher.
Booker sat down. “I don’t know.” He dug into his breakfast.
“Do you sing?”
“Yeah, I guess I do. Once in a while when I’m working or I’m in the shower. I’m not really aware of it, though.” He turned his eyes to me. The sight of them in certain light was still a stunner. “Why do you ask?”
I filled my fork with egg and ham. “Just a dream I had. It was nice.”
“About me?”
“Yeah.” I slid the fork into my mouth. “Like I said, it was nice.”
Booker cleared his throat, then grabbed something from the table with a pair of tongs and tossed it in front of me. “Look but don’t touch,” he said.
It was a small plastic bag with a smaller, rectangular packet inside. I curled over to peer at it. There appeared to be a cluster of yellowish chunks inside the packet.
My gaze snapped up to Booker’s face. “What the fuck?”
He continued eating. “I scoured the house after I got up. My visitor last night didn’t take anything. He left something.” Booker pointed his butter knife at the bag. “I found it in the tornado.”
He must’ve meant the sculpture on the table. I glanced from him to the funnel to the bag. “What is it?”
“Crack, I think. I’ve never used the shit in my life, so I’m not sure.”
I fell against the back of my chair. That explained everything. Why Kenneth had been over here, why he hadn’t stopped to see me, why he’d been so desperate to get away—both from Booker’s property and Rick Pavlic’s place. He’d planned on being able to slip in and slip out without being seen by anybody, but his plan had been foiled by Booker’s return.
“It looks like Karl sent someone over here to plant drugs in my house while I was gone,” Booker said. “I’m guessing he had the guy on stand-by. First he wanted to see how our meeting would go. When I made it clear I didn’t want anything to do with him, he excused himself to make a phone call. That must’ve been when he gave his goon the go-ahead.” Booker didn’t sound surprised, although he did seem to be suppressing some understandable outrage.
“Uh…” I scratched at my forehead. “His goon was his own son.”
Booker’s jaw slowed as he chewed. “Your squeeze? Are you serious?”
“‘Fraid so. And please quit calling him that.”
“You recognized him?”
I nodded. “Last night, yeah. I just didn’t have a chance to tell you.”
“Do you think Karl knows about the connection?” he asked. “I mean, between you and me and what’s-his-name.”
“I don’t know. I have a feeling he doesn’t. But I think Kenneth was more than willing to help his father, even though I’m sure he didn’t let on why he was more than willing.”
“And why was that?” Booker asked quietly, his gaze trained on my face.
I couldn’t look at him. “Kenneth was jealous the minute he caught me staring at you, when you went for a swim last Saturday. And if his father mentioned to him that you’re gay, or that he’d seen us together, Kenneth probably figured it was because of you that I’ve … been cool toward him.”
Booker set down the piece of toast be was about to bite into. “What happened isn’t your fault, Charlie. And, really, I don’t think he intended to hurt me. I think he just panicked.”
Reserving judgment, I leaned forward and started eating. My appetite had pretty much flown, but I needed the fuel. I was facing nearly four hours’ worth of driving and one explosive confrontation.
“I’ll be having a little talk with Kenneth today,” I said. “While I’m gone, you might want to download whatever our cameras caught.”
* * * *
A Thermos of coffee and radio music kept me going. It was nearly two hours to Kenneth’s condo. I didn’t bother calling first, so he wouldn’t have a chance either to flee or dream up any bullshit. Since it was a Sunday, I was almost certain he’d be home and he’d be there alone. He’d told me Kris wouldn’t be with him this weekend.
Booker was adamant about not getting Kenneth arrested—unless, of course, the cops showed up at his cottage and turned it inside out looking for drugs. As long as he was left alone, though, he was willing to let bygones be bygones. I got the impression he felt sorry for my soon-to-be ex, although he was vague about why.
I had no thoughts or feelings as I approached Kenneth’s residence. I wasn’t apprehensive or irate. My urge to pummel him had been swallowed into the blank, hollow space I reserved for people I found unworthy of acknowledgment. I just wanted to make some things known and then get him out of my life.
The door to Kenneth’s condo opened almost immediately after I rang the buzzer. His expression soured into a look of contempt as soon as he saw me. We stood there for a moment, as if facing off.
“Did you come to have that talk?” he asked bitterly.
“Yes.”
I stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. Kenneth had no sooner pushed the door closed at my back than he slapped me, hard, the way women slap men in old movies. Men who get “fresh” with them. Men who stray.
Dames, I thought irrelevantly. They’re called dames. Then, without transition, I thought of Booker’s screen door smacking against its jamb.
I resisted the urge to put my hand to my face.
Kenneth’s chin quivered. Tears gleamed in his eyes, and the brown beneath them wavered like water-lapped, shifting sand.
“You went after him; I know you did,” he said in a strangled whisper. “You couldn’t wait for me to get the hell out of your way so you could chase down some fresh dick. And now—surprise, surprise—you want to ‘reevaluate’ our relationship. You conniving prick.”
My head seemed off-balance and my cheek stung, but I suddenly felt bad for him … and inexpressibly sad. “That isn’t how it happened,” I said quietly.
“Bullshit. For all I know, you got it on with him the night before I showed up.”
“No,” I whispered, searching his face. All I could see was a stubborn, rancorous determination to believe what he wanted to believe. “Why did you do it?” I asked, thinking of that oar slicing through the darkness and being stopped all too abruptly by Booker’s body, thinking of that bag of crack tucked into the sculpture he loved. “Why are you trying to blame an innocent man for what’s wrong with us?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kenneth said sharply. “I didn’t do a goddamned thing. And I didn’t even know there was something ‘wrong’ with us until a few days ago.” He was defying me to prove his guilt. A tear leaked from each eye. Angrily, he palmed them off his cheekbones.
“I assume you rented Rick Pavlic’s cottage for the weekend. That must’ve been his boat you were in.”
Kenneth’s breath came hard through flared nostrils. Delicately, his whole body quaked.
“You could’ve crippled that man,” I said. “You could’ve killed him.”
Kenneth glared at me. When he spoke, his voice was like a snake hiss. Or an ejection of venom. “I don’t give a shit.”
The words jammed a tube in me and sucked the pity right out. Fisting my hands into Kenneth’s shirtfront, I shoved him backward. “You’d better give a shit. Do you realize how easy it would be to have your miserable ass arrested?” I shoved him again. He did a clumsy turn and stumbled to his living room, where he dropped onto the leather couch. I followed and stood over him. “Do you?” I shouted.
He didn’t look at me.
“We have you on video, sneaking into Booker’s house and dropping that bag into the sculpture. You didn’t make any kind of clean getaway, either. Two people, including me, saw you in that boat, saw you swing that fucking oar. And Rick Pavlic can verify that you were at his cottage yesterday.”
“If you could put me away so easily,” Kenneth mumbled, “why am I still sitting here?”
I sighed and briefly closed my eyes. “I don’t k
now. Maybe because I once cared about you. And you have a son. And I feel bad and Booker feels bad because you have the issues you have … and we have each other.” I shouldn’t have spoken for my lover, but I had a feeling my assumption was accurate.
“You condescending little whore.” Kenneth’s bleary gaze turned up to my face. “What you have, Charlie boy, is a sexually deviant, ex-con stalker who’s been harassing my father and needs to be behind bars.”
His descriptions of me and Booker were so incredible, they left me dumbfounded for a moment. Kenneth was the one who’d been blithely sleeping around, but I was the whore. And what kind of garbage had Karl Bollinger spewed about Booker to enlist his son’s help? This parolee I once treated at Reese-Houghton, he won’t leave me alone. But he hasn’t been overtly threatening, so the cops are powerless. I’m afraid something bad is going to happen if he isn’t put away again. He’s an addict. He’s imbalanced. Yeah, it must’ve been something like that. But the jig would be up soon enough.
“You’re so wrong,” I said firmly, allowing no room for refutation. “And I hope for everybody’s sake you didn’t call the cops and pretend to be some kind of informant. I hope to Christ you didn’t phone in some anonymous ‘tip.’ Because even though that bag of whatever-the-fuck you planted is gone, I swear, Kenneth, if you stirred shit with the law in addition to—”
He shook his lowered head. “I didn’t.” For the first time since I’d arrived, he sounded meek.
I didn’t bother asking why he hadn’t made that call and probably didn’t need to. Kenneth must’ve gotten spooked after Booker caught him on the property and especially after he whacked Booker with the oar. The whole scheme had gone terribly awry, which was one of the reasons he’d beat such a hasty retreat from Cloud Lake.
Studying him, I smoothed back my hair. He still hadn’t raised his head. “You’d better be telling the truth, man.”
I’d had enough. Turning away, I strode to the front door and paused with my hand on the latch. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us. But at least you’ve made it possible for me to walk away without a single regret.”
I couldn’t see him, but I heard his final words.
“Get out, Charlie. Get out of my life.”
* * * *
I came in through the backdoor and tossed my keys onto the kitchen table. “Booker?”
No answer. Maybe he was in his shop or down at the lake. Then I spotted a note impaled on the tornado. I lifted it off. Charlie ~ Had to pick up some stuff in town. I downloaded the recording. Play it while you wait.
I touched his handwriting. It looked like a seismographic printout, all aggressive, vertical lines with sharp peaks. Very artistic.
Slipping the note into one of the pockets of my jeans—intending, I guess, to save it for some vague, sentimental reason—I ambled into the living room and sat at the desk. Our cameras lay on top of it. The computer was on, its disc tray taunting me like a stuck-out tongue. I pushed it into the drive and lowered my face to my hands. For some reason, I didn’t want to see Karl Bollinger. Not yet, anyway. Maybe it was because I’d just seen Kenneth. Maybe I didn’t want to envision the guy groping Booker. I don’t know; I just couldn’t bring myself to look at him.
The recording began with a few minutes of silence interrupted by sounds I couldn’t identify. Then I heard a muted thumping and rustling, and then a voice.
“Why is it you wanted to see me, Hosea?” Bollinger’s tone was studiously neutral, as if he were forcibly reining in a whole host of feelings he had difficulty controlling. I found it blood-curdling.
“I need to understand some things,” Booker replied. “Things you’ve never bothered explaining to me.”
“Is that why you’ve been stand-offish? You’re confused? I suspect I did explain whatever has you befuddled, but perhaps you didn’t grasp what I was saying.”
Slick bastard, I thought. To someone unfamiliar with the situation, Bollinger would’ve sounded like the hallowed voice of reason.
Wisely, Booker didn’t directly answer his question. “Tell me why you picked me out of the adjustment group at Reese-Houghton, why you got me into those private sessions with you. Tell me, Karl.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No, I don’t. You never gave me a straight answer. I was no different from the other nine guys.”
“Ah, but you were, Hosea.”
“How? I was just another inmate trying to adapt. That’s all.”
“That’s not all. I could tell you had problems accepting your sexuality, and those problems were exacerbated by the environ—”
“Bullshit!” This eruption of disgust was the loudest Booker’s voice had been. He immediately dialed down the volume. “I’ve known who and what I am for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never once had ‘problems’ with it. In fact, I’ve enjoyed it. So just cut the crap once and for all and get to the real reason.”
“You might think withdrawal and depression are ‘crap,’ Hosea, but—”
Again Booker interrupted him, this time with a groan of “Oh for God’s sake.”
“All right,” Karl said. “I’ll phrase it another way. You’re a beautiful and vital young man, with a great deal to offer. I wanted to help you realize your potential. I have much to offer, too. I knew we could help each other. I knew we were simpatico.”
Keep talking, I thought. Bollinger was starting to slip up, to make things personal.
Booker, too, obviously picked up on this. “’Help each other,’” he repeated, highlighting the phrase. “You know, there were a lot of aspects of your therapy that made no sense, and that’s one of them.” Before Bollinger had a chance to double-talk his way out of it, Booker again spoke. “Why have you been coming to my house at the lake?”
The question must have caught Bollinger off-guard. “Because we developed a bond!” he cried. “And it should be nurtured so you can fully overcome your trust issues!”
I thought I heard Booker snicker. Maybe he was thinking what I was thinking. If it weren’t for your sick ass, there wouldn’t have been any ‘trust issues.’
“Karl,” he said, “believe me, there was no bond. All I did was take my cues from you. I’d never been in prison or in therapy before. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. So I tried to please you by doing whatever you expected of me.”
I nodded in approval. It was Booker, now, who’d donned the mantle of reason. He’d regained his self-possession. Bollinger, on the other hand, kept baring his smarmy motives.
“And you did please me, Hosea. You did. And that strengthened my commitment to you. Do you really think any other man is capable of investing in you the way I have? Appreciating you? Guiding you? No. The others who’ve been in your life … all they’ve wanted is physical gratification. They don’t give a damn about your inner self, your growth, you future. You can’t depend on them to be supportive of you. They’re nothing but self-involved pleasure seekers.”
“If you put so much stock in a person’s inner being,” Booker said levelly, “then why did I have to expose my body to you? Why all the touching?”
There was a pause before Bollinger spoke. I could only imagine what his face conveyed in that short silence. “Touching is … is part of intimacy,” he finally said in a self-conscious, faltering way. “It’s a way to express caring for a person and build that person’s self-esteem. Not all communication is verbal. Surely you know that.”
Booker sighed. “I’m sorry, Karl. It didn’t feel right when I was locked up and it doesn’t feel right now. None of it. That’s why you have to leave me alone. You need to find a partner some other way. I never wanted a personal relationship with you. Couldn’t you see that? Can’t you see it now?”
“And what better is in store for you, Hosea? Do you really think you have a chance in hell of getting beyond superficial, meaningless, ephemeral encounters?”
“Yes,” Booker said with quiet conviction.
“Oh really. How, pray tell?” Karl
asked snottily. “Are you deluded enough to think some runaround pretty-boy will ever truly love you? Be true to you? Stand by you?”
“Maybe. If I do the same for him.”
“‘Maybe.’ You’re going to throw away a sure thing for a maybe?”
“I don’t want the sure thing that you’re offering.” Booker was starting to sound weary. “Just let me live my life, Karl. Maybes and all. Please leave me alone. I don’t know how many more ways I can say it.”
There was some thumping and clattering. “Excuse me for a moment,” Karl said stiffly. “I need to check my voice mail.”
I didn’t hear anything for a while except faint, obviously distant noises. Booker had told me over breakfast they ended up talking at a picnic table in a county park. Karl approved of the privacy it afforded, and Booker was glad to sit across from rather than next to his admirer.
Suddenly I heard Booker murmur, “Hi, Charlie. I miss you.”
My face broke into a broad, spontaneous smile.
When Karl again spoke, his voice was even colder, starchier. I imagined him standing over Booker like a tin soldier. “Well, Hosea, is that your sincere and final wish, then? That there be no contact between us whatsoever and I … completely disappear from your life?”
“In a word,” Booker said, “yes.”
Another pause in the conversation. When Karl’s voice sounded, it was farther away. “You’ll be singing a different tune in a very short time, Mr. Booker. I guarantee it.”
I winced when he said that, my eyelids jumping together for a second. The words were assaultive. They were essentially a declaration of war.
Nothing else worth listening to was forthcoming, so I ejected the disc and wandered outside.
For the most part, I was grateful to be back here. Even the lake looked pretty to me. Pure and fresh and placid, it was blessedly devoid of the twisted motives that often sully human interaction. Water was never destructive on purpose, never had selfish hidden agendas. I felt a little silly about it, but I wanted to express my appreciation.
