Hosts

by F. Paul Wilson

  8

  Kate stared at the man sitting across the table from her. Jackie… her little brother… though he was hardly little anymore. She supposed she should start calling him Jack now.

  They'd come upon a place called The Three Crowns that Jack had said looked good. A fifty-foot bar ran down the right side, a row of booths with green upholstery along the left, all of it oak. Oak everywhere. But not too crowded. The patrons seemed a mix of straight couples and gay males of varying ages, par for the course in Chelsea. The lights and the sound from the TVs over the bar were low and they'd found an empty booth in the rear. No table service, so Jack had made the trip to the bar and just returned with a gin and tonic for her and a pint of Harp for himself.

  She quickly downed half her drink, hoping it would help dull the shock still vibrating through her. Jackie! Of all people! And worse, she'd mentioned "my friend" and the cult on his voice mail. She couldn't let him know about her and Jeanette. Nobody could know. Not yet.

  Jackie… Jack. A part of her wanted to hate him for the pain he'd caused everyone. Well, not everyone. Tom was too self-involved to worry much about anyone a few inches beyond his own skin. But damn, she and Dad had gone half crazy with worry over Jack.

  Yet she looked at him now and felt an urge to smile, to laugh aloud. This might be a terrible time to run into him, but despite everything that had happened—not happened, actually—between them, she couldn't deny this heart-swelling joy at seeing him again. Jackie… she'd helped feed him and change him when he was an infant, read him stories and baby-sat for him into her teens. And look at him now. Lord, how he'd changed. He'd been a boy the last time she'd seen him—a senior at Rutgers, one semester to go, but still a boy. A dark and brooding boy after Mom's death.

  She still sensed a darkness in him, but he seemed comfortable in his skin now. And how he'd filled out that skin. Jackie had been so skinny as a kid, now she could sense sleek muscles coiling under his shirt. But was that a healing laceration running from the edge of his hairline into his right frontal scalp? Yes, definitely. It looked about four weeks old. She wondered how he'd got it.

  He'd said this was his city and she could believe that. He seemed to belong here, moved so easily down its streets. She couldn't tell whether it had adopted him, or he'd adopted it. Whatever the case, they seemed made for each other.

  Little brother or not, she had to keep this brief. One drink, promise to keep in touch, then get out of here. Keep the talk on the family, the good old days when Mom was still ruling the roost, keep it off Jeanette and the cult. Kate would find another way, sans little brother, to deal with that.

  So they talked.

  Actually Kate found herself doing most of it. Mostly about Kevin and Lizzie; she touched—a very glancing touch—on her divorce from Ron, mentioned a few details about her pediatric group, and then ran out of steam.

  "See much of Tom?" Jack asked after a lull.

  She shook her head. "No. He's a judge in Philly now, you know."

  "I'd heard."

  "He's on his third wife now. Saw him briefly over Christmas. I didn't see it when you were younger, but you and he look amazingly alike. Put on ten years and twenty pounds, add a little gray to your hair, and you could be twins."

  "My big brother," Jack said, frowning as he shook his head. "Of all things, a judge."

  Wondering at Jack's tone of chagrin, she raised her glass for another sip but found only ice cubes.

  "Time for another," Jack said, taking it from her.

  Before she could protest he was up and moving away from the table.

  Moves like a cat, she thought as she watched him go.

  Time to change the subject. So far the conversation had been pretty much a one-way street. Now it was his turn.

  "So," she said as he set the second drink before her. "Enough about me. I need some answers from you. Most of all, I want to know why you simply disappeared from our lives. Was it what happened to Mom?"

  Jack nodded. "Indirectly."

  I knew it! Kate thought. Knew it, knew it, knew it!

  "We were all devastated, Jack, but why—?"

  "You weren't there in the car when that cinderblock came through the windshield, Kate. You didn't see the life seep out of her, see the light fade from her eyes."

  "Okay. I wasn't there. Neither was Tom. But Dad was and he—"

  "Dad didn't do anything about it. I did."

  "I don't understand," she said, baffled. "Did what?"

  He stared at her a long moment, as if weighing an important decision. Finally he spoke.

  "I found him," he said softly. "Took me a while, but I found the guy who did it."

  "Who did what?"

  "Who threw the cinderblock off the overpass."

  The words jolted her. Jackie had gone out looking… hunting… by himself?

  "How come you never said anything? Did you tell the police?"

  He shook his head. "No. I took care of it myself."

  "What… what did you…?"

  Suddenly it was as if a mask had dropped from Jack's face. She looked into his eyes now and for an instant, the span of a single agonized heartbeat, she felt as if she were peering into an abyss.

  His voice remained low, flat, as cold as that abyss. "I fixed it."

  And then the mask was back in place and an old memory flashed though Kate's brain… a newspaper article about a dead man, battered beyond recognition, found hanging upside down from a Turnpike overpass not too long after Mom's death, and she remembered wondering if it might be the same overpass, and if so it should be torn down because it must be cursed.

  Could that have been the "guy" Jack said he'd tracked down? Was that why the body had been hung from that particular overpass?

  No… not Jackie… not her little brother. He'd never… he couldn't kill. It had been someone else hanging from the overpass. And this man he'd mentioned… Jack had simply beaten him up.

  Kate wanted very much to believe that. She turned her mind from the other possibility, but it lingered like a shadow across the table.

  "Did… what you did solve anything? Did it make you feel better?"

  "No," he said. "I'd thought it would, I was so sure it would, but it didn't do a damn thing for me. And after I… afterward nothing seemed to make much sense. College seemed particularly pointless. I had to get away before I exploded. I dropped out, Kate—way out. Spent years in-a blind rage, and by the time I'd blown off some of it and locked up the rest, I'd burned too many bridges to go back."

  "Maybe you told yourself that. Maybe that made it easier for you, but it wasn't true."

  "It was. And is. My life and your life… they're different worlds. No way you'd understand."

  "Understand what? This repair business of yours? Just what is it you fix?"

  "Hard to say. Situations, I guess."

  "I don't get it."

  "Sometimes people have problems or get themselves into situations where the legal and judicial system can't help, or they're involved in something they can't bring to the system. They pay me to fix it for them."

  An appalling thought struck her. "You're not some kind of… of hitman, are you?"

  He laughed—a real laugh, the kind you can't fake—and that reassured her. A little.

  "No. Nothing so melodramatic as that."

  "Do you pay people off?"

  "No, I just sort of… it's hard to explain. And not the sort of thing I can advertise on a billboard."

  "Is it legal?"

  A shrug. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no."

  Kate leaned back and stared. Who was this man across from her? He'd said he lived on a different world, one she'd never understand, and she was beginning to believe him. He was like a stranger from a faraway planet, and yet in many ways he was undeniably still her little brother Jackie.

  First Jeanette, now Jack… her own world, never a comfortable place these past few years, now seemed to be crumbling. She felt unmoored from her life. Wasn't there anything left she c
ould rely on?

  Jack said, "Now can you see why I thought it best for all concerned that I keep to myself?"

  "I don't know." Earlier tonight Kate would have said no—nothing you could have done would have changed the way we felt about you. She wasn't so sure anymore. "Maybe."

  "I think Dad has scoped that I'm hiding something. Know what he asked me last time we talked?" Jack grinned. "Wanted to know if I was gay."

  Kate gasped. She couldn't help it. She felt as if someone had just dashed a bucket of cold water in her face.

  * * *

  "It's not all that bad," Jack said, seeing Kate's shocked look.

  He wondered at that. As a pediatrician she must have run into her share of teenagers who thought or knew or feared they might be gay. Maybe that was still a big deal in Kate's white-collar, middle-class-citizen world. Around here it was no deal at all.

  "He flat-out asked you?" she said, her eyes still wide. "Just like that? When?"

  "Couple of months ago. It was when he was planning to come up from Florida and visit you and Tom. I was trying to deflect him from including me in his itinerary."

  "What did he say? Exactly."

  Jack wondered at her sudden intensity.

  "He said something about how he realized there might be aspects of my life I didn't want him to know about—which was dead-on right—and then he said that if I was gay…" Jack had to smile here. "He could barely get the word out. Actually he said if I was gay 'or something like that'—he never got into what the 'something like that' might be—it was okay."

  "He said it was okay?" Kate couldn't seem to believe it. "We're talking about our father, the Reagan Republican, the Rush Limbaugh fan. Dad said it was okay?"

  "Yeah. He told me, 'I can accept it. You're still my son.' Isn't that a killer?"

  Not that it changed a thing. His father might be able to accept a gay son, but he'd never accept how Jack made his living.

  He saw tears in his sister's eyes and asked, "Something wrong?"

  She quickly wiped them away. "Strange how some people can surprise the hell out of you." Eyes dry again, she looked at him. "Well, are you:

  "What?"

  "Gay?"

  "No. Strictly hetero."

  "But you never married?"

  "No. I kicked around a lot when I was younger, but I'm pretty much settled with one woman now."

  "Pretty much?"

  "Well, I'm settled, but let's just say she's got some issues about my work. How about you? I'll bet a lot of guys came around after the divorce. Seeing anyone?"

  "Yes." A little nod, a little smile, but very warm. "Someone special."

  "Are we going to hear wedding bells again?"

  And now a sad look. "No."

  Strange answer. Not at all tentative. Unless she was seeing a married guy. That didn't fit with the straitlaced Kate he remembered, but as she'd just said: people can surprise the hell out of you.

  He'd never thought of his sister as a sexual being; she'd always been just… Kate. But smitten enough to be making it with a married guy… a sure recipe for hurt. He hoped she knew what she was doing.

  "So much of what we do comes down to sex, doesn't it," he said. "Sometimes too much, I think."

  "How so?"

  "I mean it's a part of life, a really wonderful part of life, but not all of life. There's work, play, food, mind, spirit—lots of things. But I tell you, I run into so many people who seem to define themselves by their sexual preferences." "'So many'?"

  "Let's just say I don't hang with too many members of the middle class, and no members of the upper class. So yeah, many of the people I know do not have what might be considered 'normal' lifestyles."

  "'Normal' being within two standard deviations from the mean?"

  "Sure, why not. Everything's a bell curve, right? I'm talking about people on either fringe of the curve."

  "Give me a for-instance."

  He thought a moment, then remembered Ray Bellson.

  "I did a fix-it for this guy once who was totally into bondage. Always wore black leather, had a belt made out of handcuffs, paintings of tied hands and feet on his walls, furniture made out of chromed chain… it went on and on. You'd sit and talk to him and he'd be tying and untying knots in this piece of cord he always carried around. It had completely taken over his life."

  She sipped her G and T, then said, "Where do you think I'd fall on that curve?"

  Weird question for his big sister to ask her little brother.

  "Never thought about it, but I assume somewhere right in the middle. I mean, I don't see you squeezing into black vinyl and brandishing a whip."

  She laughed—her first real laugh tonight. "I don't see that either. But I'm just wondering what qualifies someone for 'normal' on your bell curve."

  Jack shrugged, not comfortable with pigeonholing people. "How did we get on this subject anyway?"

  "You brought it up."

  "Actually Dad brought it up."

  "How did you feel when he asked you if you were gay?"

  Jack noticed her eyes fixed on his, as if the answer were very important.

  "I remember being sort of glad he wasn't wondering if I was a rapist or a pedophile."

  "But you've never been attracted to a man?"

  "Never. I'm as attracted to guys as I am to sheep, goats, and chickens. Which is to say, not at all. Zero chemistry there. In fact the idea of getting cozy with a guy—blech!

  "But you're not a gay basher."

  "I figure everybody's got a right to their own lives. You may own nothing else, but you own your life. So if you don't tell me how to live mine, I won't tell you how to live yours."

  "You've got no problem with lesbians either?"

  "Lesbians are cool." He tried to draw out the c like Beavis. Or was that Butthead? He always got them confused.

  "Really." An amused smile played around her lips.

  "Sure. Look at it this way. I've got a number of things in common with lesbians right from the get-go: we both find women attractive, and neither of us is interested in having sex with a man. Now that I think about it, I've got definite lesbian tendencies."

  "You know many?"

  "A few. There's a lesbian couple who're regulars at this bar where I hang. It's a workingman's place and a couple of the guys weren't exactly welcoming at first; but these gals weren't about to let that stop them, so they kept coming back and now they're part of the family. Anybody tries to hassle them now will find himself nose to nose with those very same guys who gave them a hard time at first. Carole and Henni. I sit with them now and then. I like them. They're brainy and funny, and you can, I don't know… relax with them."

  "Relax?"

  "They know I'm not coming on to them, and I know they're not the least bit interested in me. Take sex off the table and a lot of games disappear."

  "So being with them is sort of like being with the guys."

  "Not quite. Guys have a whole different set of games. No, it's more like… like sitting here with you."

  Kate's eyes widened. "Me?"

  "Well, yeah. We may have a lot family baggage between us, but neither of us is trying to slap a move on the other."

  She narrowed her eyes and gave him a sidelong look. "You're absolutely sure about that?"

  "Hey, don't go weird on me, Kate," Jack said, laughing. "I'm the family weirdo, and one is enough."

  "You still haven't told me where you think I fit on your curve."

  "You're not going to let this drop, are you?'

  "Not until you tell me."

  "Okay. Let me ask you a couple of questions first. You can have love without sex, and sex without love, agreed?"

  "Of course."

  "What if you had to choose between them? What if you had to live the rest of your life with either no sex or no love? And by no love I mean loving no one and no one loving you. Which would you give up?"

  Kate barely hesitated. "Sex."

  "There you go. That's normal."

&nb
sp; "That's it? That's your sole criterion for normal?"

  "Not mine—yours."

  "I never said it was mine."

  "You chose love over sex, and the very fact that love is your choice makes it normal, because you're one of the most decent, honest, normal people I've ever known."

  "That's not just circular reasoning—it's spherical."

  "Works for me, Mrs. Wife-mother-pediatrician."

  "Ex-wife."

  "Which is probably even more the norm these days. Hey, if I'm wrong, prove it."

  Kate opened her mouth, looked as if she was about to say something, then closed it again. She glanced at her watch.

  "I've got to go."

  "But what about your friend and the cult?"

  "I'll work something out."

  She seemed afraid. Of what? What was she hiding?

  "Is your friend into something illegal?" He couldn't believe Kate would be involved with someone who was but… you never knew. "Because that's okay. Most of the people I know—"

  "No-no, nothing like that. She's recovering from cancer therapy and she's acting strangely. It's more psychological than anything else."

  "Some of these cults can play rough if you interfere."

  "It's nothing like that, Jackie… Jack. Really. I was upset when I called; now I think I was overreacting. I don't think I need to get you involved."

  "Involve me," he said. "I'm here for you." Before she could put him off again, he grabbed a cocktail napkin and said, "Got a pen?"

  "I think so." She fished one out of her shoulder bag and handed it to him.

  "I'm putting down my number and the numbers of two people I've worked for recently—both women and, coincidentally, both doctors.

  Before you write me off, you call them and see what they say. If you still don't want my help, I won't like it, but at least it'll be an informed decision."

  She took the napkin but didn't promise to make the calls.

  "Come on," Jack said. "I'll walk you home."