by John Inman
Down at their feet, Chaucer lay sound asleep, drooling on Wyeth’s sneaker. He had never been on a train before, either, but it didn’t seem to impress him much. The same could not be said for his master.
“This is wonderful,” Wyeth said. He tore his eyes away from the window and stared down at Deeze’s bare knee brushing up against his newly tanned one. His own legs looked like someone else’s now, and he realized for the first time that with a little color they didn’t look half-bad. Of course, they were nowhere near as beautiful as Deeze’s. He noticed suddenly that Deeze’s hairy forearm was brushing against his too. He suspected that, from those two small points of bare-skinned contact alone, he could close his eyes and imagine the two of them sitting there naked. That was such a monumental thought, and such a stunningly terrifying one, he didn’t dare try it out.
“Unless the ticket guy back at the station was a cousin of yours and this is another family freebie, I’ll pay you back for the train fare,” Wyeth said.
“No, you won’t,” Deeze said. “This day is on me. And train tickets are cheap. Don’t worry about it.”
Wyeth sighed. The guy was impossible. “At least tell me where we’re going.”
“No. You’ll find out when we get there.”
“Supercilious much?” Wyeth mumbled to himself, making Deeze erupt in a snort of laughter.
There was nothing else he could do, so Wyeth settled back in the seat and stared once more out the train window. At that moment, the Coaster car was passing a string of weathered beach cottages. Out past the cottages, Wyeth spotted wetsuit-clad surfers hunched over their boards, paddling like crazy, waiting, watching, eyeing the swells for that perfect wave.
Quietly, barely over the hum of the rails, Deeze leaned in and said, “Do you surf?”
Startled, Wyeth stared at him. “I was just thinking about that. No,” he said. “I-I don’t even swim. It’s something I’ve never learned.”
“A Californian who doesn’t swim is like a hooker who doesn’t screw.”
Wyeth narrowed his eyes. “What a profoundly philosophical thing to say.”
“Thanks. Would you like to?”
“Would I like to what? Swim or screw?”
“I think if I try to answer that the way I’d like to answer it, I’ll be in a whole lot of trouble. Although I should point out that if you choose screwing, you’ll have far less chance of drowning.”
Wyeth laughed. “Or being ravaged by a shark.”
Deeze eyed him shrewdly. “Oh, you’d be ravaged, all right.”
Wyeth’s ears burned. Just joking about sex with Deeze was enough to rattle him. But it was a rattling he kind of enjoyed. And that rattled him too.
He was sifting through his head for something noncommittal to say when Deeze beat him to it. “You didn’t grow up here, did you? Unless I’m mistaken, there’s a Midwestern twang in your voice. I think I’d peg you for being from somewhere around the Corn Belt. Iowa? Kansas?”
“Indiana,” Wyeth said. “And you get one of your kiddygarden gold stars. I thought my accent had disappeared.”
“Not quite, and that’s a good thing because I like it. What brought you out here?”
“An overly religious family. Growing into a lifestyle I knew they would never accept. A brother who outed me when I was sixteen. An allergy to corn pollen. Take your pick. Those are the true reasons. If you’d like to hear the reason I usually use when impertinent strangers ask me, it’s because I wanted to go to college here, which isn’t a lie. It just isn’t the whole truth.”
Deeze slipped his fingers over Wyeth’s on the armrest. “I’m sorry. I mean because of the reasons you’re here, not because I’m impertinent.”
“I get the impression your impertinence is beyond even your control.”
Deeze clucked his tongue. “Pretty much.”
“I thought so,” Wyeth said around a grin. Then he shrugged. “Anyway. I’m better off here than I ever would have been there.” He brightened, if only for a second. “I’m happy here. I can be myself. Well, usually.”
“What does that mean?”
Wyeth refused to answer. He merely shook his head, avoiding the question completely. Using a gambit he was pretty adept at after long practice, he turned the conversation back to Deeze.
“I get the impression you were born here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose you surf and swim.”
Deeze nodded. A twinkle lit his eye. “And screw. Yeah.”
Wyeth decided it would be safer to ignore that remark. He turned his eyes away to stare through the window for a moment, then twisted back around to study Deeze’s face. “Why are you doing all this?”
“All what?” Deeze asked, although he was clearly hedging. He knew what the question meant as well as Wyeth did.
“All this. Everything you’re doing for me. The tan, the train ride, the secrets. The sweetness.”
Deeze pointed to the window on the opposite side of the car. “Look,” he said. “The Del Mar Racetrack!” He glanced at his watch. “The horses will be running later.”
Wyeth stared out across a small expanse of chaparral to the two perfectly groomed ovals of the racetracks in the distance, one inside the other, one green, one dun. Grass and dirt. The grandstands were empty at the moment, but he could imagine the screaming crowds that would fill them later. He had seen snippets on the news. The Del Mar racing season was a big deal in San Diego. “I’ve never bet on a horse in my life,” Wyeth said, somewhat wistfully.
Deeze didn’t seem surprised by that revelation, but he refused to comment on it. He clearly still had other things on his mind. As the train trundled on past the racetrack, and later through the colorful seaside city of Del Mar, his eyes softened as he watched Wyeth’s face. “Am I being sweet? Is that what you said?”
Wyeth’s eyes skittered away from the window, and he turned to Deeze, exasperated and rebellious. “You know you are. It’s unnerving.”
“My being sweet is unnerving to you?”
“Yes.”
Deeze slipped around in his seat to face Wyeth head-on. Even as he did so, he never released Wyeth’s hand. Wyeth was hypnotized by the feel of Deeze’s leg hair scraping through his own as Deeze wiggled around for a better vantage point.
“I like you is all,” Deeze said, his face somber. There was no laughter in his eyes. “I want you to like me back.”
“But why?”
Softly, Deeze answered, “That question says more about you than you want me to know, I think. Why is it so wrong for me to want you to like me?”
Wyeth tried to free his fingers from Deeze’s grip then, but Deeze wouldn’t let them go. Even when a woman came down the aisle, glanced down at them, and smiled, Deeze wouldn’t release Wyeth’s hand.
“Sorry I asked,” Wyeth said, shaking his head and hating the feeling of his ears getting hot.
“Are you really sorry?” Deeze asked. “Or are you just too embarrassed to pursue it? I’ll tell you, you know. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Wyeth tore his eyes from Deeze’s and stared out the window. The light faded and the train grew suddenly shadowed as it slipped through a tunnel of trees enveloping the tracks. Wyeth closed his eyes, happy for the dimness to shield him from Deeze’s gaze, even if it was only for a moment. Too quickly, the train shot out of the leafy tunnel, and the light flowed back in, baring all.
“That’s what scares me about you,” Wyeth said, keeping his voice down so no one else in the car could overhear. “Your lack of boundaries. Your unhesitating openness.”
To Wyeth’s surprise, Deeze lifted his hand to stroke Wyeth’s cheek. “I refuse to back off because you’re afraid of honesty, Wy.”
“Wyeth. You’re supposed to call me Wyeth. And stop that.”
Deeze just smiled and continued to stroke his cheek. “Wy works just fine. Stop being so picky. I have other battles to wage.”
“What battles might those be?” Wyeth asked, but he w
as immediately sorry he did.
“You,” Deeze answered, pulling his hand from Wyeth’s face and laying it back on the armrest, reclaiming Wyeth’s in a gentle grip. “You’re the battle. Getting you to open up. Getting you to like me.”
“I’m… I’m not a battle, Deeze. I’m just me.”
“Okay, my mistake. You’re not a battle. But neither am I, Wy. I just want to be friends. It’s no biggie. Honest. There’s nothing underhanded about it. Friendship is a pretty basic human condition.”
Wyeth blinked. “I’m not good with friends. I never have been. I’m better with books.”
Deeze gave an uncharitable chuckle. “Yeah, I was beginning to get that impression. So you can practice your humanity skills on me.”
The train began to slow. Before Wyeth could argue any more, Deeze pointed to a sign outside the window. Solana Beach.
“Our stop,” Deeze said.
“Why? What’s in Solana Beach?”
“The best Mexican food this side of Puerta Vallarta. Please tell me you like Mexican food.”
For some reason, Wyeth felt himself blushing. “I do,” he said. “I love Mexican food.”
“Then good. Grab the dog.”
Still gripping Wyeth’s fingers, Deeze tugged him from his seat. Two minutes later they were standing outside the rustic Solana Beach depot while the other departing passengers scurried off this way and that. Deeze pointed north.
“We’re going that way.”
Still a little stunned by the way the day was turning out, Wyeth worked his fingers a little more tightly between Deeze’s and followed him from the station.
On the way out, Chaucer tried to hump an ATM machine.
THEY LUNCHED on steaming bowls of albondigas soup on a terraced cafe overlooking the beach off Cedros Avenue, the main Solana Beach thoroughfare. Afterward they strolled through a farmers’ market and picked up fresh peaches, which they ate while ambling along the sandy shore barefoot, their shoes and sandals tied together and draped over their shoulders to free up their hands. From this vantage point, Wyeth could not only see the surfers much closer than he had from the train, but he could also hear them happily calling out to each other as they bobbed among the swells, paddling this way and that, occasionally catching a wave just right and rising up to balance gracefully on their boards and skim along the foaming crests of surf with gleeful whoops and bellows.
Wyeth laughed and pointed at their antics, while Deeze had eyes only for the redheaded man beside him. Peaches eaten, they rinsed their hands in the surf and sat in the sand, gazing seaward. It was high noon, and the sun was hot on their skin, but the cool breeze flowing in from the water made it bearable. Unlike San Diego Harbor, with its reek of fish and the raucous cries of sea gulls screaming overhead, here the ocean smelled clean and crisp, and the air was alive with the sigh of surf pulsing against the shore like the gentle breath of a sleeping beast.
Deeze wiggled his toes in the sand and smiled to himself when Wyeth did the same beside him.
“You have pretty feet,” Deeze said.
Wyeth blushed. “Oh, shut the hell up.” Then he relented. “Thanks for bringing me here. It’s lovely.”
“You’re welcome,” Deeze said, fighting back a smile once again at Wyeth’s formalities. “With your new tan, you look like any other Southern California beach rat, sunning himself to toast. You belong here.”
Wyeth wedged a hand across his brow to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare while he stared out once again at the surfers in the distance. “A fake tan doesn’t make me suddenly belong, Deeze. It might make me less noticeable than I would be as a paleface, but belonging has to come from inside. I’m not much of a belonger, if you want to know the truth. I never quite feel like I’m in the right place at the right time no matter where I am. Instead of fitting in, I always seem to—intrude.”
Deeze shifted around in the sand to better face Wyeth, folding his legs beneath him and reaching out to lay a hand on Wyeth’s knee. He slid his fingers through the hair there and studied Wyeth’s blue eyes when they dropped to watch Deeze’s hand on his skin. When Wyeth didn’t pull away, Deeze felt as if he had scored a victory. Still, Wyeth’s words bothered him.
“I guess it’s hard when you’re shy,” he said.
Wyeth’s eyes slid from the hand on his knee and focused on Deeze’s face. There was a look of quizzical uncertainty in their depths. “Is that what I am? Shy? Or am I just the polar opposite of you, Deeze? You seem to fit in everywhere you go. Nothing intimidates you. You’re never an outsider. You own every situation you’re in. I envy you that. But it isn’t me. It never will be. I’m just not as social as you are.” A weird little smile twisted his mouth. “Actually, Deeze, without a little pharmacological help, I don’t think many people are.”
Deeze ignored the jibe and continued to study Wyeth’s face. “I don’t believe that. Being social is just a matter of practice. The secret is to not let yourself care what people think.”
“Yes,” Wyeth said, his smile still in place, but his overall expression resigned. “And that’s a concept a few of us struggle with every day.”
Deeze’s fingers had never stopped moving over the hair on Wyeth’s knee. Sliding a little closer across the sand, he cupped Wyeth’s calf muscle in his hand and was surprised by the bulge of it. There was substantial muscle there. And the skin felt like heated satin against Deeze’s palm.
This time when he moved his hand, caressing the back of Wyeth’s leg, Wyeth blushed. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “There are people around.”
Deeze shook his head. “I don’t care.”
“What if I care?”
Not only did Deeze not remove his hand from Wyeth’s leg, but he placed his other hand there as well, all but claiming full ownership. He slid both thumbs across the now-golden skin, and he thought he saw Wyeth reacting to the touch, whether he wanted to or not. His expression mellowed. He no longer gazed at the other people on the beach. Instead, he focused his eyes solely on Deeze’s face. The innocence in those azure eyes with their long, pale lashes made Deeze suddenly aware of his own softly thundering heart. He was enchanted to see that in the short time they had been in the sun, it had already brought out a spray of freckles across Wyeth’s nose and cheeks. Even his eyes looked bluer.
“The sun agrees with you,” Deeze said.
At that moment, a little boy ran past. A few paces farther on, the child skidded to a stop, kicking up a cloud of sand, then turned and walked hesitantly back toward them. He couldn’t have been more than five. He had a shaggy mop of brown hair, dried into ropy tendrils, clearly styled by the sun and wind after a dip in the surf. He was coated with sand and smeared with mud, and he wore a baggy pair of swim trunks that were perilously close to sliding off his slim little hips. He stared slack-jawed at Deeze’s face.
“Mr. Long?” the boy squeaked. “What are you doing here?”
Only then did Deeze turn toward the boy.
“Jake?” Deeze asked with a broad smile. “Is that you? And how did you get so dirty? You look like you just crawled out of the primordial soup.”
“Whatever that means,” the kid said around a goofy grin. He shuffled from one foot to the other for a moment, then apparently made up his mind, and hurled himself into Deeze’s arms. Deeze caught him with a bray of laughter while Wyeth looked on, amazed.
While man and boy hugged each other, Deeze saw Wyeth watching and shot him a wink, which confused Wyeth even more. Deeze finally gripped the kid under the armpits and stood him back on his feet in the sand in front of them.
“You here with your folks?” Deeze asked.
The boy ducked his head in shame, like someone caught up in circumstances far beyond his control or liking. “Yeah,” he grumped, clearly not happy about it. “They’re over there sitting under that stupid umbrella.”
Both Deeze and Wyeth looked in the direction Jake pointed, and saw a young man and woman sitting on tenterhooks after apparently witnessing their five-y
ear-old son throw himself into the arms of a total stranger.
Then Wyeth saw the two relax and exchange words. They obviously had recognized Deeze. The mother waved and called out, “Hello, Mr. Long!” To her son, she bellowed, “Jake, give the poor man his privacy. He’s stuck with you five days a week. That’s more than enough for any human being.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Mom thinks she’s funny.” His little chin suddenly puckered up like a sieve as he pointed to his knee. “Lookit.” He sighed forlornly. “I fell down.”
And sure enough the kid had scraped his knee. It wasn’t oozing blood, but it did look kind of nasty.
Deeze offered him a sympathetic pout in return and started fishing around in his shorts pocket. “Let me fix that,” he said, hauling out a Band-Aid. While Jake smiled and Wyeth stared in amazement, Deeze tore the wrapper off the Band-Aid, removed the sticky covering on both ends, and after carefully blowing the sand from Jake’s knee, slipped it over the scratch. When he was finished, he gave the knee a gentle pat and asked, “Better?”
Jake beamed, admiring his bandage. Jake and Wyeth obviously both noticed the Band-Aid had little rocket ships on it. In unison, man and boy said, “Cool.”
Jake turned to stare at Wyeth for the first time.
Deeze leaped in to make introductions. “Wyeth, this is Jake. One of my students. He has a bad habit of throwing spit balls, so don’t turn your back on him. He also has an inexplicable knack for falling down every time he stands up. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The boy grinned, and two deep dimples bored holes in his cheeks. He tugged at his cowlick, looking thoughtful, and said, “I think maybe if the world was flat I wouldn’t fall down so much.”
“From the mouths of babes,” said Deeze.
Jake had discovered the dog by this time. He squatted in the sand with his face buried in Chaucer’s fuzzy belly and giggled, “I’m not a babe. My mom’s a babe. That’s what Daddy said, although I don’t think I was supposed to hear it.” Without looking and with his face still smothered in dog hair, he extended his hand to Wyeth, who accepted it in a shake. Wyeth smiled as the itty-bitty hand, gritty with sand, burrowed inside his own.
