Boys of Summer

by Steve Berman

  He’d printed out a photo of Huey, Dewey, and Louis in their basket and put his home phone on tags along the bottom. It had been three days since he’d posted, and no one had taken his number.

  “Oh, that smells much better,” Mrs. Anderson said, walking past with a pile of books in her hands. “No takers yet on your puppies, eh?”

  “I wish I could keep them,” Sean said. Because all three were adorable, and he hated the thought of them being split up or taken in by people who wouldn’t love them. Too bad his mom was allergic to dogs. She broke into sneezing fits whenever he took them into the house.

  Mrs. Anderson elbowed open the door to her office. “Whoever left them in that Dumpster should be arrested for animal cruelty.”

  Louanne had found them after her shift one day at the Li’l Conch Cafe. Three small, trembling animals in a soggy cardboard box. Now, a month later, they had somehow become Sean’s responsibility to feed, play with, and find new homes for. Which was unfair, but that was just the way things went when you were a jet-setting teen heartthrob.

  Robin called for help from the front counter, where one of their local customers had brought in a box of books to sell. After that, things got really busy. Sean didn’t have time to check his notice again until just before closing time. No one had ripped off his phone number, but someone had left a yellow sticky tacked to the side of it.

  “Whoever said you can’t buy happiness forgot little puppies.”—G. Hill.

  Sean was perplexed. Hadn’t he put the word FREE in a big, bold font? He underlined the word with a pen and threw the sticky note away. It was time to go home, feed the dogs, and pretend he had a social life like every other kid on the island.

  *

  The next day, Sunday, was his day off. He was supposed to be doing his summer biography on Ernest Hemingway but decided to procrastinate even more than he already had. He walked the puppies down to Beaker’s Point, where no one cared if you let them off their leashes to play in the white sand and clear blue water. It was well past eighty degrees and he stripped off his T-shirt to get some sun. For the umpteenth time he vowed to start bench-pressing and working out. Being gay didn’t mean he had to be scrawny, after all.

  He started to do some push-ups right there in the sand, but they were too tiring. Soon he was throwing sticks for Huey, pulling stinky seaweed from Dewey’s mouth, and rescuing poor frightened Louis from some tiny sand crabs. All three puppies piled on him and rewarded him with sloppy kisses.

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “I’m a god among dogs.”

  “I was looking for a local deity,” said a dry voice behind him. “Good thing I found you.”

  Sean sat up and squinted against the sun. A teenage boy his own age was perched on a battered blue bicycle. Not just any teenage boy. This one was tall and thin, with curly blond hair and a suntanned face. He wore jeans and a Rush T-shirt and was definitely a tourist, because Sean had never seen anyone in the Florida Keys with eyes that green and alluring.

  “I’m available for baptisms, weddings, and bar mitzvahs,” Sean replied, feeling a flush in his cheeks. “But mostly I pick up dog poop and get my shoes chewed up.”

  The kid cocked his head. “Cute puppies.”

  Sean brushed sand from his elbows. “They’re not mine. I mean, right now they’re kind of mine, but I have to give them away. Want them?”

  For a moment, longing flashed in the other boy’s eyes. Sean knew that feeling: wanting what you couldn’t have. Wanting it so keenly that it was a like a knife, stabbing quick and ruthlessly. But the gleam was gone as fast as it had appeared.

  “Can’t,” the boy said. “We’re just passing through. I’m Rob.”

  “I’m Sean. Passing through to where?”

  “Good question,” Rob said. “No good answers. That’s why a deity would come in handy. I was going to sacrifice a rubber chicken or get my palm read.”

  Sean pretended to consider the matter seriously. “Deities don’t read palms. We delegate it to fortunetellers and carnival workers. But I have a friend who does tarot card readings. How about that?”

  Huey barked. Dewey peed on a piece of driftwood. Louis, who’d scampered off at Rob’s appearance, poked his head out from behind a palm frond and eyed the situation with trepidation.

  “Tarot card sounds cool,” Rob said. “When and where?”

  Sean was surprised. And delighted. But not foolish enough to start gushing about it, for fear he’d scare him off. “There’s an ice cream place at the end of the island called the Dreamette. How about high noon?”

  A woman’s voice called out from the campground park behind the trees: “Rob-ert! Rob-ert!” She sounded shrill, maybe kind of desperate.

  Rob grimaced. “I’m supposed to help my mom today. How about six o’clock?”

  “Okay,” Sean said. “Sure.”

  With a nod and a last longing look toward the puppies, Rob mounted his bike and pedaled off on the concrete path.

  Sean watched him until he disappeared around the bend and then grabbed his phone. His boring Sunday suddenly seemed a lot brighter. Supernova bright: bright enough to blot out the sun and make him feel warm from head to toe. All he had to do now was find someone who could read tarot cards.

  *

  “This is stupid,” Robin said from her side of the picnic table. “What if he actually knows something about these things? I’m going to look like an idiot.”

  Sean studied the ornate, colorful cards spread on the worn wood. They’d borrowed a deck from the Bookmine and had been practicing for two hours, but there were seventy-eight cards and nowhere near enough time for Robin to memorize them all. She’d already told him how much she detested superstition, astrology, witchcraft, and any kind of magical thinking. He’d had to promise to take her down to Key West for a foreign film series just to get her out of her house, where she’d been Skyping with friends on how to overthrow student government this year.

  “He doesn’t know anything about them,” Sean promised. Which was probably true. Maybe true. “Keep practicing.”

  Just before six o’clock, Rob pedaled up on his old blue bike. He wasn’t alone, though. “This is my brother, Andrew,” he said, as Andrew parked his own rusty bike at the end of the bench. Andrew had the same curly hair and lanky build but was a little shorter, his hair an inch longer.

  “Are you twins?” Robin asked.

  Andrew plopped down on the bench. “Irish twins.”

  “I’m Irish and I don’t know what that means,” Sean said.

  “Born nine months apart,” Robin said mischievously. “Your parents were busy bees.”

  “Nine and a half.” Rob sat down and eyed the cards curiously. “So, Colman-Smith, huh? I haven’t seen one of these decks in a while.”

  Robin kicked at Sean’s leg under the table.

  Sean ignored her. He was busy noticing the bruise on Rob’s face. It was long and pink, right cross his cheekbone. It hadn’t been there before. “What happened?” he asked.

  Rob put a hand to his face in embarrassment. “Fell off the stupid ladder.”

  “Because he wasn’t watching where he was going,” Andrew added. He eyed the Dreamette shack, where a cluster of kids from the middle school were buying scoops and sundaes. The old-fashioned sign from the 1950s glinted in the sunlight. “How’s the ice cream here?”

  “Best in the Keys,” Sean said.

  Andrew glanced at Rob, who shook his head. Sean had seen the Anderson twins do that kind of silent communication before. It was sometimes fun to watch, and sometimes a little creepy. Andrew said, “Be right back,” and headed to the counter.

  Robin scooped up the cards and shuffled them. “So, did Sean tell you? Ten dollars for a reading.”

  Sean glared at her. “Five.”

  “Inflation,” Robin said.

  “How about seven?” Rob asked.

  With the price agreed upon, Robin banished Sean from the table. “I do all my work in private,” she insisted. Sean was forced to r
elocate to a bench closer to the water’s edge, where he could see traffic crossing the modern bridge and watch fishermen on Flagler’s old, outmoded bridge. The salty breeze off the Atlantic was nice enough but chilly for this time of year. He wished he’d brought a sweatshirt, or a blanket, or a blanket that he could share with Rob under the stars.

  “Butter pecan,” Andrew announced, returning with a scoop nestled in a chocolate waffle cone. He sat down opposite Sean. Now that Sean was really paying attention, he could see that Andrew’s face was fuller than Rob’s, and he had more freckles sprinkled on his nose. Andrew asked, “You live here all the time?”

  Sean replied, “Since forever. Where are you from?”

  “North Carolina. Near Raleigh. But we haven’t been there in a while. Mom’s a travel writer. She’s always driving us all over America, chasing stories.”

  “What about school?” Sean asked. “We start tomorrow.”

  Andrew took a big lick from his ice cream. “Homeschooled. Works out pretty good. I’m sort of in eleventh grade, and Rob’s taking his GED next month.”

  Sean glanced over at Rob, who was studying the tarot cards in front of him with an intent expression. It was hard for Sean to tell if the reading was going well or not. “Don’t you miss it?”

  “Nah. I always hated school. Too many rules. You like it?”

  “It’s okay.” And most days it was, except around Valentine’s Day, or around prom time, or anytime there was a party that Sean had to go to alone or with Robin because there weren’t any alternatives. He liked English class and history, too, because they were full of stories. Math was like torture, though. And this year he was scheduled for physics, and he thought he might have to prop his eyes open with paper clips to keep from falling asleep.

  Andrew licked more ice cream. His tongue was long and pink. “What grade are you in?”

  “Starting eleventh.”

  “So if we stayed here permanently, you could show me all around,” Andrew said with a smile.

  “It’s not that big of a school,” Sean said. Then he sat up a little straighter, because that smile wasn’t maybe just an ordinary smile. Maybe it was an I-want-to-get-to-know you smile, which meant Sean had been focusing on the wrong brother. Where was his gaydar when he really needed it? “Are you staying here?”

  A trace of wistfulness appeared in Andrew’s voice. “Probably not. But this is the nicest place we’ve been in a while. Trust me, the suburbs of Atlanta are not as exciting as they sound.”

  They didn’t sound exciting at all, actually, and Andrew had several funny stories to tell about how desperately bored he’d been while his mother wrote her last book. Sean laughed out loud more than once, earning him a sideways glare from Robin as she tried to concentrate. But Andrew was very witty, and he kept licking his ice cream cone with that quick tongue, and Sean was almost annoyed when Robin and Rob finished their session and joined them at the water’s edge.

  “How’d it go?” Sean asked, hoping Robin hadn’t totally screwed it up.

  “Totally worth seven dollars,” Rob said.

  Robin actually blushed. Which was so rare that Sean almost snapped a picture. “I think it’s on the house. You know a lot more than I do.”

  Rob didn’t argue. He knocked his elbow against his brother’s shoulder. “We should get going.”

  “There’s no place we have to be,” Andrew replied, his voice firm.

  Sean studied them both. That silent communication thing was going on again, and Sean couldn’t decipher what was being said. Rob’s gaze shifted from his brother to the ocean and the flat white clouds darkening in the east.

  “Get some ice cream,” Andrew suggested, and after a moment of contemplation Rob wandered off to the counter.

  Robin got herself a milkshake, and Sean finally caved in to get himself a double scoop of chocolate fudge. The four of them lingered on the picnic bench as the sun went down. Andrew told more stories about Atlanta and Knoxville and Tallahassee. Robin offered up scathing satires of Fisher Key High. Sean tried to compete with stories from the Bookmine—the crazy customers, the horrible bathroom messes—but he felt entirely outmatched and in danger of just sounding silly.

  Rob was the quietest of them all. His eyes stayed on his ice cream or the ocean. Sean noticed that he didn’t have a cell phone to fidget with, or else was too well-mannered to haul it out and start tapping like everyone else would.

  Eventually the sun went down. The kids around them drifted home, everyone either excited about school tomorrow or dreading it with all their hearts. Andrew and Rob had to bike back to the campground in the darkness. Sean worried about the traffic on the highway. A lot of drivers weren’t safe around bikes.

  “We’re used to danger,” Andrew said, flicking on a safety light on his rear bumper. “See you around.”

  Rob just nodded and followed his brother across the conch shell divider toward the road.

  Sean swung around to Robin. “What did you guys talk about? He’s hardly said a word since you did it.”

  “Client-attorney privilege,” Robin said. “Or is that priest and penitent? Anyway, I can’t breathe a word.”

  And she was serious about it, too, stubborn as a rock. Sean wouldn’t be able to crack her open even with sticks of dynamite. He changed subjects.

  “Do you think he’s gay?” Sean asked.

  “Which one?”

  “Rob,” Sean said. “Or Andrew. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know, either. Maybe they don’t know.” Robin watched the bikes recede and made her voice low and ominous. “Maybe only the tarot cards know.”

  “You’re no help at all,” Sean said, and snatched the deck from her hands.

  *

  Sean stayed up past midnight to finish his report on Hemingway. By the end of it, he was completely sick of Papa and bullfighting and fishing in Cuba. In the morning he turned his cell phone alarm off twice before staggering out into the cool morning to free Huey, Dewey, and Louis from their temporary kennel in the yard. He walked them around the community baseball field and bought himself a giant cup of coffee at the Gas’n’Go.

  “You don’t know how lucky a dog’s life is,” he told the puppies.

  Huey sniffed at the coffee cup, Dewey rolled over to have his stomach rubbed, and Louis cringed as a motorcycle rode by.

  The first day of school was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Sean saw the same old faces he saw every year, plus one or two new kids who looked ridiculously heterosexual. He desperately missed his bed and pillows. As he dragged himself from class to class he envied Rob and Andrew. How nice it must be for them to sleep in, set their own schedule, and live a life unencumbered by bells and teachers and a cafeteria that served unidentifiable lumps of alleged food.

  “I hear you made some new friends,” said Denny Anderson as he poked his fork at burned squares that were supposed to be chicken nuggets.

  “Rumors of my improved social life are greatly exaggerated,” Sean replied, though he was secretly pleased to be the subject of even the tiniest amount of gossip. He picked disgusting pepperoni off his pizza slice. “What did Robin say?”

  “That maybe one of them is gay.”

  “And?”

  Denny chewed one of the so-called nuggets. “And one of them is kind of New Age-y and flaky.”

  “Flaky!” Sean said. “Not at all. There is no flakiness.”

  “He likes tarot cards. He knew more about them than Robin did.”

  “Everyone knows more about tarot cards than Robin.”

  “Not me.” Denny gave up on the inedible chicken nugget and spat it into a napkin. “Is the flaky one gay or is it the other one?”

  “The jury’s still out,” Sean said. He wished Denny would just come out and admit that he was gay, too, and maybe he could add in that he’d had a lifelong secret crush on Sean, and hey, they could be boyfriends for the rest of their high school careers. Because that would be the culmination of years of Sean’s daydreams.
/>   “Why are you staring at me?” Denny asked, eyebrows lifted.

  “Nothing,” Sean said.

  It was a miracle that Sean made it through the rest of the day without a heavy-duty nap. After school let out, he wanted only to go home and sleep forever in a nice soft bed. Unfortunately he was scheduled to work three hours at the Bookmine. No one had taken a tag for the puppies but another yellow sticky was clinging to the notice.

  “Money will buy you a pretty good dog, but it won’t buy the wag of his tail”—J. Billings.

  Sean scowled. He took it to the counter, where Mrs. Anderson was trying to replace the receipt roll in the cash register.

  “I don’t think this person understands the dogs are free,” he said.

  She read it carefully. “I think someone’s flirting with you.”

  “What? No.” Sean studied it. “Really?”

  “Really,” she said, jamming the paper roll into place.

  With her help, Sean made his own sticky note and put it up:

  “All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog.”—F. Kafka.

  For three hours he kept watch on the bulletin board, hoping to catch his canine correspondent. No one even looked at it. The next day Sean wasn’t scheduled to work at all, but he swung by just in case there was a response. His sticky hadn’t been disturbed at all. Maybe he’d been trying to sound too erudite. On the bright side, two of the phone tags were missing.

  Mrs. Anderson said, “I think Principal Bradshaw took one,” and Sean almost shuddered. Principal Bradshaw ruled Fisher Key High like a despot. He’d probably kick any dog he owned, or keep it imprisoned in a crate, or use it for lab experiments in his continuing quest for world domination.

  Mrs. Anderson laughed. “Don’t make that face, Sean. He’s the sweetest man on this island.”

  “You say that because you only know the Jekyll part of his ferocious split personality,” Sean grumbled.

  With plenty of light still left in the day, he took the puppies to Beaker’s Point and into the Sunset Harbor campground. Only a dozen or so campers were parked under the scrappy palm trees. In the farthest lot from the entrance was a rusty trailer that was probably twice as old as Sean. A picnic table and some old plastic chairs sat out under a green canopy. Rob was perched atop the table, stringing fishing line in a rod.