Figures, he thought. That was the way these conversations usually went. “You want to?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I thought you thought he was kind of a jerk.”
“Well, I did. But you find something redeeming about him, and you’re a halfway decent person.”
“Thanks,” Ben said wryly.
“Besides, I love a good secret.”
“This isn’t really a good secret,” Ben said.
“Well, whatever it is. I’ll get it out of him.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“Easy. I’ll get him drunk.”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. He and Ilona were friends now—that much was clear—but they always hung out just the two of them, and he wasn’t sure what it would mean to mix her in with the other parts of his life—especially right now when Tyler was such a mess.
“Don’t be such a try-hard,” Ilona said. “I’m not going to interrogate him or anything. We’re just going to get together and have some drinks, and if this big secret of his comes up, well then, so be it. If he doesn’t want to talk about it, I’m not going to bring it up.” She held her hand against her chest as though she were being wrongly accused. “Besides, the guy totally reached out to you. He wants to tell you what’s going on.”
Ben shook his head. “Why do I think this is a bad idea?”
“Because you’re a pessimist,” Ilona said. “Besides, it wasn’t my idea, or your idea. It was Tyler’s idea.”
“I guess so,” Ben said. There was another part of his reluctance to include Tyler in his activities with Ilona: a creeping feeling, a dark and shameful fear, that she might prefer Tyler to himself.
Chapter 23
It was Friday night, and they were sitting on Ilona’s bed, well into Ben’s tattered copy of The Return of the King. He had a nice leather-bound set that his parents had given him on his thirteenth birthday, which he left at home because he knew Ilona would enjoy making fun of it as much as she did the monogrammed initials on his backpack. He was reading the scene before Minas Tirith goes into battle against the forces of Sauron when Ilona busted out laughing.
“What?”
“Read that last part again.”
“It’s the deep breath before the plunge,” he read—Gandalf’s words to Pippin the Hobbit. But Ilona just kept laughing.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” she said while gasping for breath, “that this book is the gayest thing ever?”
“Shut up.” He rolled his eyes and shut the book.
“Oh, come on,” Ilona said. “Don’t get all pissy about it. But I mean, seriously. Sam and Frodo are off on this quest together, which is basically a lovefest, and then Golem, like, comes between them so they break up for a while. And where are the lady Hobbits? Or the lady wizards or whatever? There’s like one girl for every thirty guys in this book.”
“It’s not a romance book,” Ben said, annoyed that he was even entering the conversation to defend Tolkien. “They’re fighting to save Middle-earth. They don’t have time to stop and talk about girls.”
“Or maybe they don’t care about girls. Maybe that’s why Sam follows Frodo into, like, the eye of hell. Because he loves him?” She raised her eyebrows suggestively.
“He does love him. But not like that.” His voice was rising now, and the more irritated he got, the more entertained Ilona seemed. “Don’t corrupt my favorite book of all time with your stupid feminist theories,” he said, slamming the book down.
“Homosexuality is not corrupt, Ben,” Ilona said condescendingly. “It’s a perfectly good way to get off.”
“I don’t have anything against people being gay,” Ben growled. “I just happen to think that this is not a book about gay people.”
“Okay,” Ilona said, “suit yourself. Are you going to keep reading or not?”
He scowled at her lying on her bed wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a squirrel playing the drums on it. She was sucking on a Ring Pop. “Where did you get that?”
“I don’t know. Judy brought them home from the grocery store. These and frozen waffles, iceberg lettuce, and a big family-sized bottle of blue cheese dressing. I told you; she’s crazy. Now are you going to read or not?”
“You can be very irritating sometimes,” Ben said.
“Yeah, yeah. Read the book, monkey boy.”
He opened up the book and flipped through it, trying to find where he’d left off. He was coming to one of his favorite parts before the battle for Minas Tirith. Gandalf tells Pippin not to be afraid because all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. At least, it used to be one of his favorite parts. Now it seemed sort of oversimplified. Maybe it was simpler when you were going to war.
Suddenly Ilona sat up. “Wait a minute,” she said, pulling the Ring Pop from her mouth with a resounding popping noise. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
“What?” Ben asked nervously.
“This thing with Tyler. This is a gay thing, isn’t it? Oh, wow. Is he in love with you? Did you guys hook up?”
Ben couldn’t speak. He couldn’t speak because he couldn’t possibly deny all the things she was saying at once. But they were all wrong. They were all wrong, weren’t they? And Ilona wouldn’t stop talking. “Wow, this explains why you are so uptight about everything with him. I get it now. It’s not that big a deal, you know? I mean, to me it’s not.”
She wouldn’t give him a chance to explain what had happened. He could feel his face reddening. His cheeks were burning hot and almost tingling. Now Ilona was standing up on her bed. She was jumping up and down. He couldn’t even hear what she was saying because of the racket her bed made when she jumped on it. There were wheezing springs and clunks from the iron frame rocking against the wooden floor.
Finally she stopped. She stopped because someone was shouting stop. He was shouting stop. She gave one last jump and landed next to him. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright and her collarbones seemed impossibly pronounced. And he realized as he slammed the book down over his lap that he was completely sprung. A moment ago he was shouting at her, and now there was nothing but silence and the soft sighs of the down comforter settling. He stared at her glowing face and the dusting of freckles on the tops of her cheeks. How could he be seeing her like this just now when she was suggesting that, in fact, it was Tyler he was in love with?
“That’s not what happened,” he said. And then he told her everything.
“Huh,” she said when he finished explaining.
“What?” He was already regretting his honesty and fearing all sorts of horrible repercussions.
“Well,” she said slowly. “I just didn’t think guys really did that. I mean girls do, like, practice on each other and stuff.” Ben stared down at the book in his lap, wondering if he could just pick it up and go back to Middle-earth—just pretend none of this had ever been spoken. “It’s not that big a deal,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” How could it be such a big deal to Tyler and not to him? Did his lack of horror at the whole thing mean something more? Like being gay? He felt pretty sure that wasn’t it. He was a part of this thing that had plagued and threatened to destroy his best friend, and it hadn’t bothered him. Or was there more he wasn’t willing to face?
“But it is to Tyler,” Ilona said.
The doorbell rang.
Chapter 24
They had planned it this way; they were all going to hang out at Ilona’s house. But still, it was different to actually see Tyler standing on the porch looking up at the outside light with its purple and orange Halloween bulbs lingering months after the holiday. Tyler followed Ben who followed Ilona down the hall toward the kitchen. “It’s weird in here,” Tyler said. Ben thought he caught a whiff of something on Tyler’s breath.
“Are you drunk already?”
“Nah. Just warmed up a little at home. So what’s the plan?”
Ben panicked. The
re was no plan. This was what he and Ilona did. They just kind of hung out, got buzzed or high and, well, just hung out. He should have picked up a movie. This whole thing was too forced and way too awkward. He took a deep breath, but before he could speak, Ilona said, “Dance party?”
Tyler got a strange kind of twisted half-smile on his face. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?” It didn’t surprise Ben that Tyler would go along with this idea. It was more surprising that Ilona would suggest it. When he did catch her eye, she gave him a funny look and a shrug of the shoulders. Then again, he didn’t really know what kinds of things Ilona did with her other friends, when she had them.
Ilona searched around in the cabinets under the sink. She came up with a 750-milliliter bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila and a half-gallon jug of Fridays restaurant margarita mix. “I think Judy was trying to hide these from me. She should know better than that.” She placed the two bottles on the counter and opened the freezer. She pulled out seven empty ice trays and lined them up on the counter. The trays contained a few chips of ice and bits of brown freezer detritus. “Ew,” she said.
Tyler unscrewed the cap to the tequila and took a swig. He chased it with a swallow of the margarita mix, grimaced, and burped loudly. “Margarita in my mouth.”
“Not classy,” Ilona said, “but very functional.”
“Where are we going to have this party?” Tyler looked around the room.
Ilona shrugged. “Did you have something in mind?”
“What’s in there?” Tyler asked. There was a tall five-panel wooden door off the kitchen that led to some other part of the house Ben hadn’t been in before.
“That was Grandpa Chapin’s room,” Ilona said. “Judy’s father used to live here with us. It was his house, really. So I guess you could say we lived with him. Whatever. He never let any of us into his special room when he was alive. Judy kind of left it the way it was when he died. It’s just a bunch of books and stuff.”
“Cool,” Tyler said. “Let’s go in there.”
Ilona stared at Tyler. She didn’t look bothered by the idea of partying in her Grandpa’s old reading room, but there was something else in her eyes. “Cool,” she said, without looking away. “We need outfits.”
Tyler reached over and took another swing of tequila. He passed the bottle, and Ben knocked back a large sip that burned down the back of his throat.
“Sure,” Tyler said. “What do you got?”
“Haakon’s got some stuff. Follow me.” Ilona took the bottle from Ben and took a big sip without flinching. They followed her up the stairs.
“Who’s Haakon?” Tyler whispered.
“Her brother,” Ben said, glad to have an answer for something. “He doesn’t live here though.”
Haakon was really into either fencing or medieval Renaissance fairs, or possibly both. His closet was filled with capes and weird suit jackets made from various shiny fabrics, with long draping sleeves or exaggerated pointy collars. There were a number of unusual-looking animal masks and several wooden weapons—heavy swords and a mace. Ben flipped the light switch on the wall several times, but nothing happened, so they had only the light from the hallway to guide them in their search. Ben grabbed what he thought was a soft brown jacket. It turned out to be dark red velvet with a black satin collar. Tyler pulled out a black cape with silver studs covering the shoulders. He giggled a bit as he threw it over his shoulders. Propping open the closet door was a small stone gargoyle statue with huge ears, fairy wings, and a pointed tongue sagging out of its stone maw.
“I’m taking this guy with us,” Tyler said, tucking the stone figure under one arm.
They stepped out into the hall, and there was Ilona. She was wearing silver. Her entire outfit was silver. Was it a pantsuit? Ben wasn’t even sure. There was a ruffle of fabric over one shoulder and a section cut out in the middle that showed her stomach. And the legs were short. They came only to the middle of her calves. The more Ben looked at her, the more he thought that wasn’t intentional.
“What is that?” Tyler asked.
“Ice-dancing costume.”
“You’re an ice skater?” Ben asked.
“Ice dancer,” she said. “From when I was five until I turned thirteen and quit.”
“Wow,” Tyler said appreciatively.
“I know,” Ilona said. “Come on. Let’s go start a fire.”
Ben thought she was kidding, but as soon as she pushed open the wooden door into her grandfather’s room he realized she wasn’t. The room was unheated, with bare wooden floors and threadbare furniture that might have been nice when it was new—about two hundred years ago. There were two small lamps, one by a tall wingback chair and the other on the mantle of a large fieldstone fireplace. His shoulders shook with the cold, so he reached for another pull of tequila.
Ilona handed them a canvas wood carrier and gave them vague directions to a woodshed in the backyard. When they came back loaded down with the driest and least moldy pieces, she had a small fire going with twigs and some crumpled paper. When the blaze began to take, she fed it with pieces of a torn-up cardboard box before adding the first of the logs. Ben squatted down by the hearth and looked around the room.
The upholstery on the chairs and couch was sagging and faded, but the wooden legs were carved with elegant designs and edged with brass studs. The walls were bookshelves floor-to-ceiling, some aching and bending under the weight of the enormous tomes they held. All the spines were dark colors with letters that glinted in the flickering light. There was a long narrow marble-topped table near the windows that was covered with even bigger books: atlases and what looked like art books. The heavy curtains—dark green or blue; it was hard to say which in the dim light—had a Swiss cheese–array of holes in them, from age or maybe actual moths.
Once Ilona had the fire going and giving out a respectable amount of heat, Ben edged away from the hearth and leaned against the legs of one of the wingback chairs. Tyler did the same so that they were in the space but not fully inhabiting it—which seemed respectful to the dead man whose possessions and spirit seemed to linger. Ilona produced three amber-colored tumblers from a tall glass-front cabinet and set them down in front of the bottle of tequila. Ben tried not to think about the fact that a dead guy might have been the last one to drink from them. He knew from Bio that most viruses and bacteria couldn’t survive more than a few minutes away from a host, and he hoped the tequila would kill off any other disease-causing interlopers.
They drank the tequila straight, taking periodic swigs from the bottle of margarita mix—the cloying sweetness of which seemed to fade the more liquor they consumed. “Where did you get that?” Ilona asked Tyler, pointing to the stone goblin sitting next to him by the fire.
“Your brother’s room,” Tyler replied.
Ilona reached back onto a shelf behind her and pulled down another figurine—this one wooden and shaped like a small totem pole. “Here’s a friend for him,” she said. But the wooden figure didn’t want to stand in its place, so Ilona held it in her hand as she drained the last of the tequila from her glass. “Drink up, bitches,” she said.
That was when Ben gave up any hope of staying in control on this particular evening. Usually he liked to pace himself and stay just a bit more sober than whomever he was drinking with. But he knew Ilona well enough to know she would never let that happen. So he raised his glass, clinked it with Tyler’s, and drank down the rest of what she had poured. Then he placed it on the floor for Ilona to measure out their refills.
Before she handed them their second drink she said, “You can crash here if you want. Judy won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“My parents think I’m staying at Tyler’s,” Ben said.
“And mine don’t care,” Tyler added. “I just told them I’d be out.”
“Huh,” Ilona said. “My kind of people.” Midway through their third or fourth round—Ben was losing track as the walls began to spin when he turned his head—Ilona lifted the wooden figurine to
her mouth like a microphone and said, “What is Tyler Nuson planning to do after high school? Inquiring minds want to know.”
Tyler scowled. “I thought this was a dance party.”
Ilona tossed the wooden figure back onto one of the couches. “Have it your way,” she said easily. Ben was oddly pleased at his evasion of the question, and not just because it was one he himself hated so much. He was glad that Tyler wasn’t going to open up so easily. “Check this out,” Ilona said. She was standing next to a tall wooden cabinet. She pulled, and it creaked and moved on wheels a bit farther out into the room. Ilona opened the top of the cabinet, and Ben stood up to get a better look. The room tilted a bit. He was looking at a really old record player.
“Does that thing work?” Tyler asked.
Ilona nodded and opened the lower half of the cabinet to reveal rows of records. “At least it used to.”
She pulled a record out and shook the large plastic disc out of the cardboard sleeve. The record player crackled to life and made a noise like fabric ripping as the needle swung into place. The song that came on was warm and full of horns. The melody was vaguely familiar, but Ben couldn’t place it. “What is this?” he asked Ilona.
“This, you miserable excuse for a human being, is the late, great Otis Redding.”
“Was he famous?” Ben asked.
“Legend.”
“I don’t know if you can dance to it,” Tyler said.
“Then you’re not drunk enough,” Ilona said.
Tyler raised his eyebrows and then his glass. Ben pulled himself to standing and then flopped back down onto one of the couches, sending a plume of dust up around him. He ignored it and stretched out, propping his feet up on the worn wooden arm. The music wasn’t exactly danceable, but his feet were moving with the melody. Tyler was sitting on the floor, his feet spread out in front of him like an old puppet splayed out and useless without someone to manipulate him. “Why’d you quit skating?” he asked out of nowhere.
Wired Man and Other Freaks of Nature Page 16
