The Man From Milwaukee

by Rick R. Reed

  He banished these thoughts, and the laughter behind them, to an empty room of his mind, the one with the sign on it reading “later.” He stood and, like the well-mannered young man he was, extended his hand for Emory Hughes to shake.

  Without meeting his eyes, Emory gave Tyler one of the weakest handshakes he’d ever experienced, outside of his mother’s Tuesday afternoon luncheon and bridge club when it was held at their house. “Hi, I’m Tyler Kay.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Emory responded in a voice just above a whisper. Tyler had to lean in to hear him.

  Jennifer swept her long bleached-blonde hair over one padded shoulder and eyed them. “I’ll let you two get acquainted. Emory, why don’t you take Tyler around and introduce him to everybody. I’ll see you both in my office around noon.” She grinned. “I’m taking you both out for lunch.”

  Emory watched her walk away. He turned back to Tyler. “She’s too thin, drinks and smokes too much, and she is not your friend. Watch everything you say to her because she can and will use it against you someday. She keeps a journal called A Day in Transition, in which she catalogs all of our shortcomings.”

  Tyler took a step back. “Okay, then. And what are her good points?”

  Emory rolled his eyes. “Don’t be silly. Those are her good points. I’ll save the bad ones for later, maybe after lunch. She’ll take us up the street to Mr. Beef. I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”

  Tyler shook his head. “Carnivore.”

  Emory smiled. “I like that.” He moved into the hallway outside Tyler’s cubicle. “Let’s get these introductions over with, so I can go back to work. Jennifer will expect me to meet my quota, regardless of my mentoring duties.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Tyler said, hoping he was being helpful. He had a suspicion Emory was as much of an introvert as he. “I mean, I’m sure I’ll meet everybody on my own in the next couple of days anyway.”

  “No, you don’t get it. I do have to do this, unless I want Jennifer to write me up for insubordination, which she will.” He gestured with his hand for Tyler to precede him.

  “We’ll start in Underwriting.”

  Tyler followed, taking note of Emory’s stoop-shouldered walk. There was something nerdy and sexy about the man. There was also something that reminded Tyler of Ichabod Crane.

  *

  After a pained lunch brightened only by the amazing Italian beef sandwiches they wolfed down, Tyler was granted a brief reprieve from his new boss, when Jennifer announced she was taking a cab back. “There’s room for all of us,” she said, when she saw the yellow cab heading north on LaSalle. She moved toward the street, skinny arm aloft.

  Emory spoke up. “Okay if Tyler and I walk back?”

  “In this heat?” Jennifer shook her head and pursed her bloodred lips. “It’s a sauna.”

  “I don’t mind the heat so much.” Emory glanced over at Tyler, who stood next to him. “You don’t mind, do you, Tyler?”

  “Not at all.”

  Jennifer glanced down at her watch. “Well, if you get back any later than 1:15, you’ll need to make up that time. I’d prefer you do it today before you clock out.”

  Emory smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. And neither would Tyler.” He elbowed him. “Right, Tyler?”

  “Right.” Truth be told, Tyler would have been happy to have taken the cab. The heat and humidity were oppressive. His clothes would wilt. His hair would curl. He just might melt into the pavement. But, at the moment, Emory was the one he wanted to impress, or at least be agreeable toward, so he didn’t want to argue.

  After the cab took Jennifer away, Tyler began the walk south with Emory at his side. Now that they were alone, Tyler couldn’t think of anything to say, which wasn’t unusual. Jennifer had chattered on and on at lunch, about a new diet she was on, the TV shows she’d set her VCR to record, her cat Miss Marples, and how she and her “damn feline hunger” never let her sleep past 4:00 a.m.

  Tyler actually preferred self-centered, loquacious people like Jennifer Vidovic. They took the pressure off him to say anything. He could relax. Because, unless he had a script, Tyler’s mind often went blank when called upon to speak.

  They’d walked for several blocks before Emory finally spoke. “You follow the news?”

  Tyler shook his head. “Not much. I like to read.”

  “Newspaper, then?”

  “Mostly novels. Right now, I’m rereading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture—”

  Emory cut him off. “How do you get your news, then?”

  Tyler shrugged. “I don’t, I guess. I figure it’ll get to me if I need to know about it.”

  Emory said nothing for another block or so. They were almost to their building.

  As they headed toward the pair of revolving doors, Tyler figured he had nothing to lose, so he grabbed hold of Emory’s arm. Emory stopped suddenly, just short of the revolving doors and looked down at the hand on his arm and then up at Tyler. His mouth opened and closed, as though he were about to say something; then he went silent.

  Emory pulled his arm away.

  The reaction made Tyler think twice about proposing what he was about to put out there. But, damn it, he was pretty sure this guy was gay, and Tyler was lonely. All his friends from high school were either clueless as to Tyler’s “true” identity, or they were away from home, chasing after advanced degrees or the good life in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, anywhere but Chicago.

  Emory, weird as he seemed, might just be a good match.

  So, mouth dry, and feeling a little shaky inside, he asked Emory, “Hey.” Tyler swallowed, determined to see this through. “You, uh, wouldn’t be interested in maybe grabbing a drink with me after work tonight?”

  Emory looked at him as if he’d just proposed jumping off one of the downtown bridges spanning the Chicago River.

  “Or another night if tonight isn’t good.” Tyler glanced down at the toe of his Florsheim loafers and then back up at Emory. He felt like his smile came out more on the sheepish side than the welcoming one.

  Emory shrugged. “I’ve got a sick mom at home. Let me check in with my sister and make sure she’s home to see to her. If the coast is clear, why not?”

  Tyler felt a sense of relief. It wasn’t a no, after all.

  *

  At the end of the day, Tyler had just hung up the phone from an interview with a man who’d moved down to Florida after winning his state lottery. He felt more than heard someone standing behind him.

  He swiveled in his chair to find Emory, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Hey!” Tyler called. He stood to look out at the bright July sky. “Did you talk to your sister?”

  “What?”

  “You said you needed to be sure she’d be around to take care of your mom? Just wondered if you could join me for that drink.”

  Emory nodded. “Yes. I think that would be nice. You ready?”

  Tyler nodded. Most of the office had already headed out, but he could see Jennifer still in her office on the perimeter of their work space. She had a door and a window and everything. Her back was toward the door as she hunched over her desk.

  Emory picked up on the glance. “Yeah, we better get out of here before she sees us. I guarantee she’ll run up to one or both of us.” Emory then spoke in a high-pitched, surprisingly good imitation of Jennifer’s voice. “Oh, could one of you boys be an angel and do this one tiny thing before you head out for the night?” He then shifted back to his normal, velvety-soft voice. “And then we’ll be stuck here until seven or eight o’clock. Trust me.”

  Tyler laughed and grabbed his sport coat off his chair back. “Let’s go. I know just the place. And we can walk.”

  *

  They were on State Street, just north of the river. Tyler was a little young for Sing Hallelujah, whose patrons were mostly middle-aged and older men, but the bar was the closest one to their office. Closest gay bar, anyway. Sing Hallelujah was also near the Grand Avenue su
bway stop. Tyler knew, from their conversation at lunch, Emory took the L home. Tyler was considering doing the same. The L subway was a lot cheaper than the Metra commuter train—and would certainly have more interesting characters to contemplate on the long journey home. Fodder for his stories…

  “Well, here we are,” Tyler halted in front of the bar’s unpretentious entrance, a simple green-painted door in a weathered redbrick façade. Sing Hallelujah shone in neon script from one of its black-tinted windows. “A piano bar. I know it’s a little corny. Showtunes and singalongs and all that. But they make a great G & T.”

  Emory eyed him and Tyler read suspicion in his gaze.

  Tyler smiled. “Is everything okay? We can go somewhere else—”

  Emory cut him off. “This is a gay bar.”

  Tyler felt heat rise to his cheeks. Had he misread the guy? He was usually good at picking up the signals. You had to be, these days. He let out a little laugh. “Is that a problem?”

  “I’m not gay.” Emory’s expression was one Tyler had trouble reading, other than understanding his new coworker was not happy with him.

  Tyler tried to lighten the mood. “Oh, that’s okay. They’ll let you in anyway. No judgment here!” He chuckled.

  “I don’t want to go to a gay bar.” Emory started to move away.

  “Wait! We can go somewhere else. I just wanted to have a drink, get to know each other a bit outside the office, you know? This was close and, and…my sister comes here.” Tyler didn’t know why he’d added that last part. Susan had never set foot in this bar, far as he knew. Susan had never set foot in a gay bar, period. Not that she had anything against them, of course. She’d always been on the side of her “homo little brother,” but then she liked the same things Tyler did—hairy chests, big dicks, broad shoulders, and jaws sculpted from granite. Because she was unlikely to lay hands on any of the above at an establishment that catered to “the gays,” she’d never patronize one, unless Tyler dragged her in.

  And he’d yet to try that. He didn’t need his sister cockblocking.

  “Is your sister gay?”

  Tyler scratched his head. “Uh, no.”

  “Then why would she come here?”

  Tyler felt a little sick to his stomach. Emory seemed suddenly confrontational and pissed off. “I dunno. She likes how strong they pour their cocktails and appreciates a good Sondheim tune?”

  Emory cast his gaze down at the sidewalk. Tyler had hoped he’d at least laugh, but his little joke seemed to sail right over his head. When he looked back up, he asked, “Are you gay?”

  That caught Tyler up short. What if the guy was some homophobe? He was his mentor at work, for Christ’s sake. Tyler castigated himself internally for his rush to judgment about on which side Emory’s bread was buttered. And what should he say now? How could he make things right? “Um, we could head on up to Rush, if you want.”

  “Where all the singles clubs are?” Emory grinned, but there was something unkind in it that chilled Tyler despite the heat surrounding them.

  “Yeah.”

  Emory cocked his head. “You still didn’t answer my question.”

  A long pause followed. And, although he moved in a world that wasn’t exactly welcoming or even friendly to his kind, Tyler had never hidden himself from anyone, not even his own conservative family. It was a matter of principle. So he forced himself to meet Emory’s gaze and said, “Yeah, I am. Gay as a picnic basket. I could be the love child of Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly.”

  Emory didn’t laugh, as Tyler had hoped he would. “Wait. Do you have a problem with people like me?”

  If he did, that would be that, Tyler thought. He’d make the best of their time together at work, knowing Emory’s mentoring gig wouldn’t last forever. And, hey, he at last felt—if Emory had a problem with who he was, then that was his problem. Tyler had no reason to hide from anyone, including this guy. He wasn’t ashamed.

  After a long pause, Emory shook his head. “No. I get it. You can’t help yourself, right?”

  Tyler wondered if he should be offended. But the truth was—no, he couldn’t help himself. “Well, no more than I can help having blond hair or being five foot ten. I am who I am, Emory.” He exhaled a long breath. “Look. I read things wrong. I apologize.”

  He was about to go on when Emory raised his hand. “Wait a minute. You thought I was gay?”

  Tyler sensed a yes to that question wouldn’t be the wisest answer. “I don’t know, Emory. I didn’t really think about it. I just picked a place I knew of that was close to work. It’s not a cruisy place. It’s a singalong piano bar, friendly to everyone. Now, we can go in and have a drink, get to know each other a little better. Or we can head off in separate directions. It really doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t mean to shake you up. And bringing you here wasn’t, in case you’re worried, some master plan to seduce you.”

  Emory’s mouth opened a little.

  To reassure, Tyler hastened to add, “I have no master plan. I just thought we could be friends.”

  Emory nodded. He looked up at the sign in the window. Just when Tyler thought he was about to turn and walk away, he said, “Okay. What the hell?”

  Tyler didn’t move.

  “Are we going in?” Emory prompted.

  “Sure.” And Tyler opened the door for him.

  *

  Tyler hurried back to the high-top table where they’d planted themselves. It was next to a high-up, rectangular window. As he set their drinks on the scarred surface of the little round table, Tyler noticed Emory checking things out through the dusty window. He wondered if Emory worried about being seen. “They’re all tinted, so we can look out, but no one can look in. No worries. Okay?”

  There was a Tanqueray and tonic for him and a coke for Emory.

  “I don’t drink,” Emory had told him as he headed off to the bar. Tyler wondered for only a second why Emory had agreed to come out to a bar. Why not suggest they go out for coffee, instead? But what Emory drank or didn’t drink really wasn’t Tyler’s concern, beyond his wish that the guy would loosen up a bit.

  “Thank you very much.” Emory traced a finger along the side of the glass, damp with condensation. He leaned in to sip through the straw.

  Tyler took a big swallow of his own drink, taking note of the fact that the bartender poured his drinks strong. He was an affable, fiftyish guy named Vern with thick black-framed glasses, sporting an orange and cream caftan. Tyler had to hold his breath to keep from choking. Old Vern must have only whispered the word tonic into the glass. Tyler would need to go very easy on the cocktails if this first one was any indication. He felt awkward enough as it was.

  Now that they were here and settled, Tyler found he had little to say. After all, he’d only known Emory for eight hours or so, and almost all of their exchanges had been about the work they both did.

  Yet, after their confinement in the stultifying office environment, the last thing Tyler wanted to do was talk more about work—even if it was juicy gossip—so he turned to Emory and asked, “So…what you do you like to do for fun?”

  Emory sipped his coke. “Fun. What’s that?”

  Tyler laughed but stopped when he realized Emory wasn’t even smiling.

  Emory shrugged. “I’m sorry, Tyler. I shouldn’t be such a stick in the mud. It’s just that lately my life has revolved around my mother. She’s very sick and, even though my sister doesn’t work, I somehow have ended up being her caretaker. I don’t want her alone in some AIDS ward—” Emory stopped himself short.

  Even in the dim light of the bar, Tyler watched his cheeks redden, read the desire to take back what he’d just said. He rushed in to be supportive, compassionate. “Your mom has AIDS?” Tyler cocked his head. He reached out to cover one of Emory’s hands with his own, but Emory flinched and pulled away.

  Emory nodded. His face had paled, and he looked…well, how could Tyler describe it? Deflated? Numb? “She does.” He took another sip of his drink. “You wan
na know how she got it?”

  Tyler felt a little sick to his stomach. “You don’t need to share that.” He wondered if there was a story about a drug addict mother or one who slept around. “I’m so sorry to hear this. Is she getting treatment, being helped?” He’d heard about AZT and how it was working for some people, but knew little about it. Tyler would admit, even if only to himself, that he had his head buried firmly in the sand when it came to the twentieth-century plague. He was always careful, of course, even to the extent of sometimes asking his partners to “double bag” before they fucked him, but he’d yet to get tested himself. He didn’t see the point.

  And, to be honest, he was more than a little afraid of what the result might be.

  Emory shook his head. “We tried AZT, actually. For four days. Four days of diarrhea, vomiting, and horrible nausea. It was making her sicker than she already was.” He smiled sadly. “And that was really, really sick.” He drained his coke and asked again, “You want to know how she got it?”

  Hoping maybe an interruption would change the course of this conversation, Tyler stood and grabbed both glasses from the table. As he moved to the bar, he noticed the vintage disco and video playing. A bunch of dancers gyrated in tight red shorts on the big screen mounted above the bar. That’s what I wanted to come out for. Just a little fun. Some lightheartedness. He set the glasses down, and Vern came over after making change for a guy with a frosted pompadour across the bar who was trying, Tyler thought, to make eyes at him. He looked up again at the video—Sylvester on the screen, belting out how someone made him feel “mighty real.”

  “Two more, please.” He was about to ask Vern to tone down the amount of gin but decided against it. The way things were going, he might need the liquor a lot more than the restraint.

  When he settled back in on his stool, shoving Emory’s coke across the table, he could see that Emory waited for him.

  “She had a car accident. Mother.” He leaned in again to sip from his straw. When he looked up again, tears shone in his eyes, but there was no hitch in his voice when he spoke, no trouble with his breath. “It was a few years ago, on Lake Shore Drive. Up at the curve? Where it turns into Sheridan?”