The biker flipped up his sun visor and smiled. Two travellers meeting on a lonely road. He leaned down to unstrap a water bottle from the bike frame. “Is this the way to Pottery Road?” he asked, taking several long gulps.
“No,” Dan said, breaking his pace. “This way heads down to the lake. You probably just passed Pottery Road. Didn’t you cross a roadway a few minutes back?”
The biker laughed softly and admitted he had.
“That was Pottery Road. If you head back and turn right under the bridge, you’ll hit Broadview. A left would take you to the Bayview Extension.”
The man nodded. He seemed to be checking Dan out. “Are you Dan Sharp?”
“Yes,” Dan said, perplexed. He usually had great recall for faces. Maybe it was the helmet. “Have we met?”
“Oh, you don’t know me,” the man said. “But I’ve heard of you. You date Bill McFarland, don’t you?”
Dan cocked his head curiously. “Yes.”
The man gave him a thorough once-over. “I saw you in a video. You’re pretty sizeable.”
Dan shook his head. “Who showed you a video of me?”
The man laughed like it was a private joke. “Bill did.”
The path extended in both directions, giving a good vantage to oncoming traffic. They were alone on a windy hill.
“Would you like a blow job?” the cyclist asked. “There’s no one around.”
Dan clenched his teeth. “No, I don’t want a blow job.”
The cyclist persisted. “I’d love to get my lips on it.”
Dan’s hands went out palms-first, pushing him up against the wire fence. If he could, he would have pushed him and his bicycle down the hill and into the bramble. Fucking Bill, he thought. How fucking dare he? Dan held a fist in the man’s terrified face. “How would you like your lips on this?”
“You’re a fucking madman!” the cyclist choked out.
Dan relaxed his grip and the man slid down the fence to the pavement. “Pottery Road is that way,” Dan said, pointing. He took off at a trot.
Dan heard a match being struck on the other end of the phone as he tossed a shoe into a corner. Sweat ran down his chest under his nylon trainer where he lay sprawled in the living room chair. The dampness in his crotch was making his balls cling to his shorts. He’d started by recounting the incident on the trail, followed with a review of the events of the weekend, and ended with a full confession about his bare-backing tryst with Sebastiano. He tossed the other shoe into the corner and waited.
“Tell me you didn’t just say that,” Donny said.
He’d sympathized with the story about the lustful biker and listened respectfully as Dan detailed the events leading to Daniella’s death, but now he was angry. Quietly angry. “Okay, I really don’t want to know any of this, but it’s too late because you’ve already told me.” All this in a calm, cool voice. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.” He took a drag on the cigarette. “Do I have to list all the men we know who are no longer alive because they did something like that — just once — and paid for it with their lives?”
“I know. I know how stupid it was.”
“Good. Glad to hear it. But what I’m wondering, what I’m dying to know, is what you’re going to do about it. And by ‘it’ I mean that piece of shit you’ve been dating for the past year.”
“Let’s not get — okay, okay — I suggested counselling a couple times, but he’s not interested.”
Donny made a strangled sound. His tone was pure exasperation. “Of course he’s not interested! It’s a perfect arrangement — for him. He gets all the sex he wants and keeps you hanging on hoping for more. But the man is not capable of more. Meanwhile, he makes videotapes of the two of you having sex without your knowledge to show to his locker room buddies and god knows who else. And just so you know, those counselling things never work. Jamie and I tried it just before we broke up.…”
“I didn’t know that. What happened?”
“We ended up sleeping with our counsellor. Then we broke up.”
Dan pressed a forearm across his eyes, shutting out the light. His post-jog endorphin high was fading and the fatigue setting in. “So what are you suggesting?”
He heard another drag followed by a quick exhalation — important things needed to be said. “I’ve given you my opinion on that one a dozen times already. Get rid of him. Bill treats you like a rent boy because you let him. Ask yourself this: with all his wonderful bedroom acrobatics and his classy townhouse and rich friends and artfully dyed but rapidly thinning hair — does he feel anything for you?”
“Even if he doesn’t, how does that make me a rent boy? I always pay my own way.”
Donny harrumphed. “It makes you a rent boy because he’s interested only in one piece of your anatomy … and it isn’t your heart.”
“How do I know what he feels for me? Maybe Bill doesn’t even know what he really feels.”
“Does he know your middle name? Has he memorized lines from your favourite movie? Does he make camp references to your mother’s side of the family in public or whisper your secret nickname in stirring undertones during sex?”
“Well, the latter, at least.”
Donny paused. “Really?”
“I’ll never tell you what it is, so don’t ask.”
Donny snorted. “As if I need to ask.”
“You might be surprised.”
“If it’s not ‘Beercan,’ I will be.” The cigarette noises started in earnest again. “Remind me — how long have you two been dating?”
“A little over a year.”
Donny whistled. “A little over a year! And how many times has he slept over at your place in that time?”
“You know Bill doesn’t sleep over.…”
“So therefore none.” The tone said it would brook no opposition. “And in that time you’ve slept over at his place, what … twenty-five, maybe thirty times?”
“Something like that. Maybe less. It’s only on the weekends when Ked stays at Kendra’s place....”
“There are fifty-two weekends in a year … you see what I’m saying?”
“No, I don’t actually.”
“I’m saying that out of consideration for you he could have split the difference and stayed at your place some of those nights.”
“It’s not important to me.”
“Apparently not. Out of curiosity, how long was your last relationship?”
“With David Bonner?”
“You tell me. I don’t keep track of your boyfriends.”
“Three … maybe four months.”
“Right. I seem to recall he was CEO of some import firm. Very successful, too. What happened to him?”
Dan lifted his arm from his face and looked out. Rain clouds had gathered. “David was insecure. Apparently my size bothered him, because he felt I was out of his league. I told him size didn’t matter but ...”
“The second gay lie!”
“What’s the first?”
“Take your pick: I’ll love you forever or I won’t put this on the Internet. Ba-dump. What happened to him?”
“I got tired of telling him it was all right. It was such a drama just to get him into the bedroom. I eventually stopped returning his calls.”
Donny made a flushing sound. “What about before that? Who came before David?”
“Perry Donaldson. That only lasted a month.”
“I remember him — the accountant. Also very successful. Nice guy, but a terrible pianist. What happened there?”
“Perry had a huge hang-up about his mother. He could never see me on Fridays because that was their night to speak on the phone. She hated that her only son was gay and he was tormented by guilt over it. I told him if he wanted to see me then either he had to set his mother straight or stop complaining about her to me.”
“And he didn’t?”
“No and no.”
“So he got the big flush too?””
/> “Yeah … I guess so.”
“And what about Gordon, that nice banker in Rosedale?”
“I never dated him.”
“No, but you were friends. Good friends, in fact. Why haven’t I heard you talk about him in a dog’s age?”
Dan hesitated. “We don’t really … talk anymore.”
Donny jumped on this. “Why?”
“It got too difficult. He was always too busy to do anything.”
“I think you said you saw him flirting with Bill.”
“That too. It pissed me off. I don’t think that’s acceptable behaviour from a friend, no matter what anybody says about the gay moral code.”
“And I say you’re right. No one should flirt with your man in front of you. Behind your back’s another story, but I’m not telling that one right now. Are you seeing a pattern here, Danny Boy?”
“No — should I?”
Donny sighed. “I’ll say. You date these highly successful guys or become friends with them till they piss you off, then they all get the royal flush and you withdraw your affection. It’s how you punish people who get close to you.”
“I don’t think that’s — am I really that complex?”
“No, you’re that simple.”
Dan felt the sting. “Well, what would you suggest?”
“Get some loyal friends and a lover without hang-ups? I don’t know.” Donny exhaled impatiently. “Did you ever get close to any of them? Close enough that you thought you might have been in love?”
“Not really. But I was fond of them.”
“Ah! The big revelation — you were fond of them. How sweet.” Donny was silent for a moment. The cigarette started up again. “Just out of curiosity, will you tell your therapist about your Brazilian weekend adventure?”
“No! Are you crazy? I tell him I dream of cuddly bunnies, not urges to kill myself. I want out of those fucking sessions.”
“Can I assume that if you lie to your therapist, then you probably don’t trust him?”
Dan tried for a confessional tone. “You’re the only one I trust,” he said, but Donny resisted the efforts to pacify him. “I hope you realize that’s a compliment.”
“Oh, I do! And I’m sure you’re fond of me, too.”
“I resent that ...” Dan began, but Donny cut him off.
“And now for the question du jour, Mr. Sharp. Apart from that little mishap on the boat between Bill and his dear friend Thom, do you still cling to the pathetic fiction that you have an exclusive relationship with Miss Doctor?”
Donny had never pushed him this far before. He seemed to be going for broke. Dan’s voice hardened. “I don’t hold proprietary claims to his body, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It is what I’m asking and, no, you don’t, because if I told you the places I’ve seen him in, and the positions I’ve seen him in, and the men I’ve seen in him....”
“Okay, okay!” Dan interrupted. “Just tell me you haven’t had him.”
“I’m not that low that I’d steal a friend’s lover. Or that desperate that I’d fuck someone I despise.”
There was another pause followed by a long, slow inhalation. Dan could almost hear the nicotine seeping through Donny’s lungs and into his bloodstream. He wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a response.
“You want to know what I’m thinking?” Donny said at last.
“No, actually I don’t, so I should probably hang up….”
“No — you’re right. You don’t want to know.” The voice remained cool, smoke trapped in ice — there was no stopping this boy. “But I’m going to tell you anyway. What I’m thinking is that maybe you like it this way.”
“Like what?”
“Your relationships. You date high-class losers to make yourself feel better. It’s why all your relationships are at arms-length. You don’t trust anyone and you don’t let anyone get close to you. And sooner or later, either they leave you or you dump them.”
Dan felt the lump in his throat. He felt flattened, as though his heart had been run over by a garbage truck. “Is that what you really think?”
“It is.”
Dan affected a lighter tone, but the strain came through. “What are friends for,” his voice cracked, “if not to beat up on you and tell you how screwed up you really are?”
“Well, then I hope you’re listening, Daniel, because I am your last friend.”
It was true. Dan thought of all the people he’d pushed away, ignored, or abandoned in the past few years alone. He thought of his father and how he’d cut off contact between them for the final decade of his life. He wouldn’t be surprised if the line stretched back through his entire existence. He felt annihilated.
Dan wanted the conversation to end, for the combatants to remove their gloves and shake hands, to prove themselves simply worthy opponents, neither with a desire to destroy the other. But Donny’s voice had taken on an edge.
“By your own admission, you seem to have run everybody else off. How do you like your island, Mr. Crusoe?” Just as suddenly, his tone softened. “You know, I keep waiting for you to snap on me and shut me out. I thought this little talk might do it, but I guess I haven’t crossed the line yet. Or dare I hope I’m exempt from your anger?”
Dan shut his eyes and leaned his head against the chair. He wasn’t willing to admit how close to home Donny had hit. “You’re too amusing for me to get rid of,” he said.
“I think it’s very clever how you avoid answering the real questions. Still — I think you like it when I challenge you, because everyone else is too scared to tell you off. Am I right?”
“Everyone but you and Ked,” Dan said, his voice too far gone for a joking tone. He pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyes, making the darkness sparkle under the lids.
“The kid’s got balls the size of grenades. He’d have to, with a father like you.”
“Okay, enough!” Any farther and he’d say things he might never be able to take back. “I have to go,” Dan said, but kept the phone to his ear.
“Will I hear from you again?” Donny asked quietly. “Or is this the big flush?”
Dan felt the ice running in his veins, a dead cold that made him want to strike back. He wanted to put distance between them. There were things even friends shouldn’t say.
“Do you hate me now?” Donny asked.
“Why would I hate you?”
“Just answer the question.”
Dan opened his eyes, the sparkles slipping into a lacy-edged nothingness. “Maybe.” He waited. “And maybe I’d be justified if I did.”
“Justified.” Donny sighed. “I think you do hate me right now, even though you won’t admit it. You hate me for telling you the truth about yourself. I can hear that detached tone you WASP-y folk get in your voices when you talk about the people you don’t talk about any more.”
“I’m pretty angry about some of the things you said just now.”
“Good — anger’s fine. It’s okay. You can toss it right back at me. You’ve pissed me off plenty too. But I don’t want to lose your friendship, Dan. I respect you and, yes, I love you too. I really love you. And that’s the bottom line for me.” Donny took a drag and exhaled. Dan heard the sound of a cigarette being stabbed out with finality. “I just hope you know that.”
Silence stretched between them. Donny was right. How could you not hate someone who exposed your lies and contradictions, and left you defenceless against your carefully constructed fictions? “Thanks,” Dan said, politeness being the makeshift best he could do.
“For what? For pissing you off?”
“For challenging me. Maybe I needed someone to say those things.”
The haughty tone came back into Donny’s voice. “I guarantee you needed it. But if I have to,” the tone shifted again, “I’ll take back everything and we can just pretend I never said a word of it. So we can still be friends.”
“No. Don’t do that. Just give me time to think it ov
er.”
“Okay.” Donny waited. “Talk to you soon?”
“Sure.”
“You call me or I’ll call you?”
“I’ll call you.”
Dan put the receiver down and stared at the wall. The room had shrunk over the last few minutes. He tried to ignore the nameless sorrow under his skin, the gnawing doubts that mocked his hope that life could be a fine thing or that happiness was possible. An acid loneliness came pouring in — the same loneliness that enticed him to drink and told him he had no friends except the one on the table in front of him.
He wished he knew someone he could talk to about the ache that never went away. Not just for the things Donny had said, but for all the times he’d given his best and life had short-changed him. All the times he’d wished for things to be different. And while he was wishing, why not wish for a partner who cared about him the way he, Dan, cared about others? He wished he could phone Bill and pour his heart out and make things right between them, but Bill was only interested in repairing hearts, not soothing or reassuring them.
Fifteen
Services Rendered
Saylor called again the following week. Given his increasing involvement in the case, Dan wasn’t surprised to hear from the Picton cop a second time. He listened patiently while Saylor updated him. He was exhibiting all the symptoms of over-zealous determination, including tracking the girl’s whereabouts before her death. The long arm of the law reaching out beyond the grave.
“By the way, are you still talking to those people?” Saylor asked.
“The Killingworths?”
“Those would be the ones.”
“No — I’ve left off with that.”
“Very interesting, what I’ve come up with.” This apparently was Dan’s cue to ask him to elaborate. When Dan said nothing, Saylor continued. “The girl had actually been in the country almost a month before the wedding, which is curious when you consider that she was here with her husband and not her brother. It gets more interesting though. That pregnancy?” Dan’s ears picked up. “She was booked into an abortion clinic in Montreal.”
Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery Page 18
