by Greg Lilly
Fascinated that he had thought so much about it, I asked, “If I left town, do you think it would stop? Everything seems directed toward me…” My words trailed off into a hazy white space in my mind; the fog parted with an image of Mark and me smiling and laughing like we did years ago, here in this town with Daniel, Walterene, Ruby, Valerie, Tim, Grandma, Dad, and even Gladys the Bitch. San Francisco, my job, Emma, and my other West Coast friends dissolved into the mist; all that remained were my family and Daniel. Could this be where I belong? In spite of the bizarre events that seemed to pop up around my existence in Charlotte, I felt anchored, like I had a stake in the actions surrounding me.
A familiar voice snapped me out of my trance. “What a surprise to see you here.” Mark stood over the table smiling at Daniel and me.
I almost shit.
Daniel stood and offered his handshake. “Daniel Kaperonis.”
“Dan,” Mark shook his hand, “no need for introductions. We’ve met before, several times.” He pulled up a chair and signaled for the waitress; she dropped off our beers and retrieved another one for Mark.
“Mark, I didn’t know you knew Daniel,” I said, checking Daniel’s expression, which stayed cool and unreadable.
“Oh, yeah,” Mark confirmed. “We’ve met before.” He didn’t look at Daniel, but kept his eyes on me.
I studied one man, then the other, waiting for either to continue. Finally, I asked, “Where?”
Mark glanced at Daniel as it to confirm a prior pledge. Daniel didn’t return his gaze. Mark shifted in his chair. “Dan has interviewed me a couple of times. So, how’s Aunt Ruby doing? I called her this morning, and she said she still has another test to go through.” He turned to Daniel to clarify, “Ruby’s our parents’ cousin, a first cousin once removed. We call her ‘aunt’ for simplicity.”
“She’s doing well. I just left her before I met up with Daniel.” I checked Daniel’s expression, which remained calm and detached. Does he not like Mark, or does he want to hide something from me? I had the distinct impression I could be the third wheel at this table, and that feeling began to piss me off. “Daniel, you’re being awfully quiet.”
“No, I was just thinking about where we might go for dinner. This place seems a little crowded.” He sipped his beer and grinned at me.
Mark, not missing a dig like that, responded, “Sorry, I didn’t realize you two wanted to be alone.”
Daniel kept quiet.
Now I felt a little sorry for Mark; Daniel could have been more civil to my cousin. “No, Mark, that’s not it. I’m glad you stopped by, but we are on our way to dinner. Why don’t you stay with us and finish your beer?”
He turned up the glass and chugged the last half of his beer. “Done,” he said. “Derek, Dan, good to see you both again.” He stood and dropped a twenty on the table, then hurried through the crowd.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Daniel, then rushed after Mark. An older man in a navy business suit had blocked Mark’s retreat and patted him on the back as they talked. I stood back until he had escaped the man’s grip and continued toward the back door of the restaurant. “Mark, wait up.”
He stopped at the courtyard patio door. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. Anyway, I need to get home.”
“You weren’t intruding. Daniel’s a bit uneasy around you, and I’d like to know why.”
He shifted his eyes back and forth, as if that helped his mind work up an answer. “You should ask him that.”
“I’m asking you.”
He sighed and let his gaze settle on me. “I think he knows about Allen Harding.”
“Who?”
“The ex-employee I told you about who’s threatening to sue.”
I couldn’t remember. “Why?”
“He said we fired him because he claimed we were slack on the building codes and paid off inspectors. He’s threatening to inform the city inspectors, if we don’t settle.” Mark ran his fingers through his hair, then paused. “Of course,” he thought for a moment, “Harding’s basically blackmailing us, so why would he trust a reporter?”
Mark’s take on the story started to make sense to me. “You think Daniel is gathering information from Harding about the company? And about Vernon?”
“Of course. Your friend Daniel Kaperonis is trying to defeat Dad’s campaign anyway he knows how, and a story about a business scandal involving Dad would suit his purposes.” He shifted his weight and leaned against the wall glancing back in the direction of the restaurant. “I just don’t get the connection-if Dan publishes the story, Harding’s threat is gone.”
“You didn’t sleep with him?” I asked, my mind more interested in the personal aspect than the political.
Horror contorted his face. “Harding?”
“No, Daniel.”
“Sleep with Daniel?” He laughed and shook his head. “No, no. Do you think I’m that stupid, to have sex with a reporter if I didn’t want all of Charlotte knowing?” He stopped laughing when he noticed my expression. “Oh, sorry.”
“Well then, why is Daniel so against you?”
“Politics, or it could be you,” Mark said. “Maybe he’s jealous. You didn’t tell him about us, did you?” His forward stance and hardness of his eyes, almost threatening, created compassion in me because he was scared, really terrified someone might know about our relationship.
“No. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, then, unless he thinks I know he’s talked to Harding, and I get the company to confront the allegations before his big story breaks,” he shrugged his shoulders, “who the fuck knows?” Mark turned to leave, then stopped. “He’s your boyfriend, ask him.”
I rejoined Daniel at our table. He sipped his beer and took a drag from a cigarette. “Is everything all right with your cousin?” he asked.
“I thought you were a little rude to him.”
“You mean the comment about it being crowded here? Sorry, but I have never really trusted Mark Harris, and I didn’t want to end up spending a lot of time with him.” He reached across the table and touched my hand. “You’re the one I want to be with-alone.”
Pulling away from his touch, I asked, “So, what do you have against Mark?”
He sighed and ground his cigarette into the ashtray. “Mark is a closet case, if you didn’t already know, and I think you do. That skinny wife of his is just a cover.”
“Why do you say that?” I felt sweat break out on my upper lip. This was Mark’s big secret; something he would kill to keep buried. Then my mind took a different direction: I thought I was the only one. “Did you sleep with him?”
Daniel smiled. “No, but I probably could have.”
“Do you know anyone who has?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Then how can you say Mark is gay if he never said it and you don’t have firsthand proof?” I sat back in the chair. “Gay men are so petty sometimes; if a good-looking man is nice to them or not talking about pussy every minute, he’s labeled gay. Is that wishful thinking, or just trying to burn a brand on people?”
“Whoa, why the defensiveness? Being gay isn’t bad, but lying is.” He watched me for a second, then continued, “I’m sorry I started this, and I’m sorry I was rude to Mark. I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “He’s family; no matter how distant we get, we’re still family and tend to take up for each other. Mark is the closest cousin in age to me, and we’ve been like brothers.” I finished my beer and pushed it toward the end of the table. “What about grabbing some take-out and going back to your place?”
WE SNUGGLED ON Daniel’s couch in front of a warm fireplace; the lights off except for the fire and a few candles, and the fragrance of garlic and butter from the shrimp scampi we’d devoured a few minutes earlier. With my stomach full, sleep threatened to take me at any moment. Safe and warm in his arms, I didn’t want to get up and drive back to Ruby’s empty house. “Would you mind if I stayed over?”
&nbs
p; “You don’t have to ask,” he murmured in my ear. I closed my eyes, with a fleeting thought of Mark, Daniel, the scratchy-voiced man, and what they all really had in common.
Chapter Nineteen
I SLEPT DEEP and warm beside Daniel, but I dreamed of Mark holding me tight and close, our bodies sweating from the mountain’s summer heat, youthful exploration beside a dying campfire. Waking beside Daniel brought security and contentment to my weary body. Physically trying to erase Mark from my mind, I shook my head, then watched Daniel sleep for a few minutes, his chest rising and falling with each breath. I edged over to him and traced the line of hair down his stomach with the tips of my fingers, waiting for him to stir. So innocently, he arched his hips as my hand traveled lower; I knew he had to be awake, so I slid my fingertips back up to his chest. He stretched his arms over his head and yawned; a smile played across his lips. I straddled his chest and pinned his arms to the headboard. “So, Mister Kaperonis, have you any last words?”
“Please be gentle. I’m new to this, and I worry that I might like it.” He almost got it out without laughing.
I slid down lower so that we pressed face to face, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, crotch to crotch. “You seem to be wide awake,” I said.
He swiveled his hips. “You, too.”
I licked his lower lip, still holding his arms against the headboard, then whispered in his ear, “Don’t move.” The sensation of my body pressed against his, skin touching skin, the heat, the rhythm of our breath, the pulsing of our hearts, bound us as one person. The silence of the night folded around the bed, so that all I knew at that moment was Daniel. Nothing else mattered, no time or place existed outside of us, no history, no threats, no deaths, no secrets, no family. “I wish we could stay like this forever.”
He pulled his arms loose from my grip and wrapped them around me. His lips found mine in the dark, and the world dissolved in his kiss.
DANIEL LEFT FOR work while I stayed to clean up after the royal breakfast I had cooked for him. With the last pan and plate stored away, I glanced around the kitchen, the place where he lived day after day. The sun glimmered through the window over the sink, catching a hanging crystal that showered the small kitchen with prism rainbows. I wrote a quick “Thank You” note for the evening and stuck it on the refrigerator door.
Entering the den, I looked around at the room. The ashes from last night’s fire lay flaky and gray under the grate; the wool blanket we had shared was still slung over the back of the couch, until I folded and placed it in the leather trunk Daniel used as a coffee table. The wall behind the couch was lined with bookshelves; I ran my hands over the spines and read a few of the titles: mythology, classic and contemporary fiction, current events, biographies of Robert Kennedy, Randolph Hearst, and the Binghams of Louisville.
The self-help books caught my eye. What would a man like Daniel need to improve on? One book on maintaining long-term gay relationships almost jumped into my hands. “Well,” I reasoned to myself, “he’s bound to have had a few relationships in the past, maybe even a couple of long-lasting ones…” I turned to look at the photographs on the mantel. Some pictures, I assumed, of his family, since the older couple and the two guys and girl with him all had the same dark handsome appearance; in fact, in a picture from the beach, the three buffed brothers stood side by side in front of the breaking waves in nothing but their swim trunks. That could be the makings of some great fantasies, I thought. “Brothers doing it,” I mocked an ad I’d seen for a porn video. “The closer the kin, the deeper it goes in.” Obviously, the other two brothers were straight, because no gay man would wear those big loose-fitting trunks; Daniel stood in the middle wearing Speedo briefs. As I replaced the beach picture, I saw another it had hidden. A younger Daniel sat on a mountaintop picnic table with a cute blond guy, both in mid-nineties grunge flannel shirts and ripped jeans. I took the photograph down for a better view. The blond looked familiar, but I couldn’t place the face. “All blonds look alike,” I snipped, and put the picture back.
Some newspapers scattered on the floor next to the bookcases asked to be straightened. I stacked them next to his desk in the corner. A file folder on the desktop got my attention. The label read: Vernon Harris.
Daniel’s private file. I wanted to read it, but the betrayal of his privacy weighed me down with the mass of unspoken suspicion. Trust him? Most of the time I trusted him, but how well did I really know him? He wasn’t family-yeah, like that would lead to trust.
I glanced around the room, then sat down and carefully opened the folder, trying not to disturb the order of the pages. Several articles, some written by Daniel, filled the file, along with handwritten notes. Descriptions of political positions and past deeds that supported them covered most of the note pages, but one page had my name on it. I read it quickly, not believing he had written the words. My head spun as I finished. Placing the file back in its original position, I pushed the chair back under the desk. I crumpled up the note from the refrigerator, shoved it in my pocket, and pulled the locked door closed behind me.
I fought tears driving back to Ruby’s house, then pulled into the driveway and hurried up the steps. Wanting to talk to someone, but with Ruby still in the hospital, and Valerie and Mark both at work, I picked up the phone and dialed San Francisco.
“Emma, it’s me.” I knew she would be at home, probably still asleep. “Did I wake you?”
“What time is it?” her groggy voice asked.
I checked the clock. “Ten, then it’s seven there. Sorry, I didn’t realize it was quite so early.”
She coughed, and I heard the click of her lighter. “Are you okay? I haven’t heard from you in over a week.” I could visualize her sitting up in her bed, smoking her first cigarette of the day, surrounded by piles of discarded clothes and fashion magazines.
“I told you about Daniel, the guy I met,” I said trying to jog her memory and giving her time to wake up.
“Yeah, the stud reporter. Excuse me, I need to pee.”
I waited, thinking she would put down the phone, but she didn’t.
“Go ahead. I can listen and pee at the same time.”
“You have the phone in the bathroom with you?”
“Yes, I do my best talking in here.”
The intimate visual was too much now. I sighed and tried to decide where to begin my story of emotional trauma; finally, I just blurted it out. “I found a folder in Daniel’s house about my uncle Vernon.”
“The idiot Republican?” She flushed the toilet.
“Yeah, but the file also had information about other members of my family, and a couple of pages on me.”
“You? Like what?” Now, apparently in the kitchen, she clanged the coffeemaker’s pot under running water.
“Stuff I had told him in confidence. Like some phone calls I had received after his article came out and Ruby’s assault.”
“Her what?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “But, he also had my sister and brother’s names written down, plus my parents.” Shock and betrayal shrouded my logic; I needed Emma to help me think, to take an unemotional view, to console me.
Emma stayed quiet for a while. “Okay, maybe he just wants to remember things you told him. You know, to keep things about you straight… No, shit, that sounded lame even as I said it. What are you thinking?”
“I want to believe he’s not up to anything, but I can’t understand why he’s keeping notes on me.” I kicked off my shoes and grabbed my cigarettes. “He has notes on everywhere I told him I’ve been.”
“What can he do with that information?” she asked, then answered her own question, “Nothing.” Cabinet doors slammed in the background, and her muffled voice came through from the phone wedged between her shoulder and chin. “I need more sugar, damn. Sorry, now the notes on you were in the file on your uncle. Why?”
I thought for a moment, my mind making and breaking connections. “Could be that the file really is about Vernon ‘s
campaign, and my notes are just to get more information about his family, which just happens to include me.” Not sure if that fit, but glad to have something, I relaxed my clenched jaw and lit a cigarette. “But, I don’t want to be used for politics. He can get his information from other places. The file must be political. You think?”
“Could be. The file didn’t have your name. God damn it! That fucking cat shit on the side of the litter box again. Lola,” she screamed, “you whore!”
Just like being there, I thought. “Hey, Emma, you leave that cat alone. At least it wasn’t in your shoe.”
“My shoes!” Footsteps and the phone ran back to her bedroom. “Good thing for her ass she didn’t get near my shoes.” Emma’s voice calmed. “When you coming back? We miss you.”
“Sounds like you and Lola are getting along better since I left.” They had been mortal enemies since Emma moved in.
“Yeah, we’re bonding.”
“Two divas in the same house will always cause friction,” I said.
“Darling,” she purred, “three divas usually occupy this place. When are you coming home?”
Home. A moment passed before I realized she meant San Francisco. Charlotte had slipped into my soul as the place of family, the place that needed me, that I needed. The idea of leaving didn’t appeal; it didn’t even seem possible, I had so much to do. Mark and I had to resolve our relationship; Valerie needed encouragement to marry and start her own family; Ruby deserved someone to watch over her; Tim had to have someone on his side, someone to trust; Dad wasn’t getting any younger, nor Grandma. Gladys and Vernon could rot in hell. But overall, the pluses outweighed the minuses of life in Charlotte.
“Hello? You still there?” she asked.
“Yeah, I don’t know yet. I’ll call you in a couple of days.” We said our good-byes, and I hung up the phone. Ruby would be released from the hospital soon, so I decided to straighten up the house, then get to Carolinas Med to bring her home.
