by Aiden Bates
Tapeworm, Lance thinks. Some kind of bug you picked up at the airport, and now you’re hosting some alien parasite that’s going to eat its way out of you, ain’t that a bitch? He’s trying not to worry about it and keeps pressing on his stomach discretely under his clothes, trying to investigate it. He excuses himself to the bathroom when they get back to the hotel with the excuse he now wishes is the real problem, that dinner was heavy and he needs the can.
“No problem, baby,” Vinny says with a big smacker of a kiss right on Lance’s lips. “I’m pouring a drink to celebrate.”
Lance goes into the bathroom, turns on the five-bulb strip of lights in there, and takes off all his clothes. He doesn’t need the toilet, he needs answers. Should he do a couple handstands to try and raise the gas to the exit, if that’s what it is? Wouldn’t a tapeworm make him skinnier and not fatter? He’s been getting a little thicker since he started getting better, Vinny says it suits him, has started interacting with his belly when they fool around. Lance touches his stomach as Vinny comes to the door and says, “Are you feeling alright, baby? Anything you need?”
Baby. Suddenly a jolt of adrenaline strikes through Lance the likes of which he’s never felt before his cue to perform. Those silly old country legends his mother used to tell him about his father’s birth…Lance thought she was just teasing him for some reason, because Dad would smile but never speak of it, not to confirm nor deny. Mom would say, “Your father was a very special miracle. His father was the third son of a third son, as is he, as you might well be too, unless one of my miscarriages was a sister.” Mom had no filter at all, she said being polite was for strangers, not for family; family’s all about the bumps and boils, the messy stuff. “Your uncles were born of their mother, but darling, Grandma died before your daddy was born, how does that work, hmm?”
“Another Grandma?” What a world! Many Grandmas, tons of them, why not?
“That’s such a smart guess, what a bright boy you are, you remember how babies are made! But that’s what’s so special about your daddy—he wasn’t made the usual way. After Grandma died, Grandpa had no wife, and he says he was a one-woman man and could never love another, but he loved men too, do you understand?”
“Like Mike the Spike!”
Mike the Spike was another performer on the road, one of the weirder ones, for the behind the curtains crowd. He could lay on a bed of nails, and suspend himself with hooks in his own flesh, and he had piercings and scars all over his body, “bod mods” he called them, when he would do his strong-man routine and flex for the day crowd—rings the size of Coke cans in his ear lobes, a tongue split down the middle like a snake, and spikes implanted all along his forehead and on either side of his neck, like Frankenstein. Lance always wondered how he slept at night with all that between him and the pillow. He did know that he slept at night with men though, his darlings he called them. Lance knew enough to know that.
“Yes, like Mike. So Grandpa had a boyfriend after Grandma passed, another Grandpa! And that’s how your father was made. It surprised everyone, let me tell you, so much that your daddy grew up somewhere else from your brothers, because Grandpa had to leave his village. That’s not very fair, my love, but that’s why we prefer to live on the road, with people who don’t have time to judge because they’re too busy moving!”
Lance giggled and started clapping because that made sense to him; you can’t judge people when you have to pack up every other week and move to the next show! No time, too busy, just like Mom said. Dad said nothing, just smiled at his family until it was time for bed.
“Oh my God,” Lance murmurs, feeling his stomach more carefully, feeling for shapes. This really isn’t fat, now that he thinks of it. It looks like it could be, but it’s too firm under the skin, and too uneven. With both hands he starts putting a puzzle together: this lump could be a head, this lump a curved spine, and this one…it’s a goddamn foot. That’s what he’s been feeling tonight. There’s a baby in there, kicking.
“You’re not that sick are you, baby? Do you need me to run to the drug store? Do you need a doctor?”
Lance doesn’t know any doctor who could handle this, though he surely could use one. How long has this been happening? How the hell is it going to get out of him when it’s grown? How is he going to hide the bump assuming it works the same way as when the girls do it? HOW?
“Lance?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, I’m okay,” Lance says, staring around wondering what he should say, what he should do. He doesn’t want to tell Vinny and ruin the night, especially when he doesn’t want to start talking this crazy until he goes home and tells Dad it’s time to start telling some stories. But he’s so freaked out he feels like he’s melting inside. Should he say he’s sick and just fake it? But he doesn’t want to be treated like someone who’s sick. What he wants is to be held, and to forget this until he can get on that bus tomorrow and tell Vinny they’re headed to Ma and Pa Hershkowitz stat. Until then he doesn’t want to worry Vinny, when this weekend has been such a strain on him already.
Lance shuts off the light because the belly that seemed so run-of-the-mill earlier tonight now looks so obvious to him as what he thinks it is, a damn baby bump. He shuts off the lights so Vinny won’t see, and then opens the door to Vinny.
“Kiss me,” he says, wrapping his arms around Vinny the second the door’s open. Vinny still has his glass in one hand and wasn’t expecting this.
“Whoa,” he says, throwing up both arms, and then embracing Lance with the one that’s free. “There you are, baby, it’s nice to see you too.”
That nickname is killing Lance right now, but he doesn’t let it get to him. He starts kissing Vinny’s face, biting his neck, holding his own body so close to Vinny’s clothes that he can feel every button, seam, and zipper. “Take me to bed,” he says. He can’t think of anything better to distract him from this mess, even though going to bed with Vinny is clearly what caused it. He can’t take any of that back now and isn’t at all sure that he would, but it’s just too much to contemplate right now. He wants to be ravished, and he wants his Vinny back from the miserable Steubenville Vinny he’s had for the past couple of days too, and this will put them back together. That’s more important than ever right now.
“I love you, pally,” Lance says, as Vinny drags them into the bathroom so he can set down his glass on the counter and start touching Lance back, start undressing.
“I love you, too, baby,” Vinny says, kissing him deep, as deep as that sultry voice of his, and stroking his hands all down Lance’s back. “You save me, kid, you really do.”
Hearing that, Lance feels like he could weep, and instead just kisses, kisses, kisses, so hard he can’t do a damn thing else. Once Vinny gets kissed enough and naked enough, he lifts Lance up so he can carry him to the bed. Lance reaches out to smash the light switch down once they’re out of the bathroom, and so it’s only by Ohio’s dim moonlight that Vinny can see what he’s doing, which means he has to feel around to get to the spots he wants, skating his hands all over.
Part III: Miami
9. Home on the Road
Vinny thinks it’s hilarious he’s about to meet Ma and Pa Hershkowitz, why not? He got out of Steubenville unscathed again, he’s out and free and so unlike Mr. Fiorelli or his father or his ex he could just sing, he could sing for the rest of his life and never get tired of it. If you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life, that’s what they say. Maybe it’ll be true from now on for Vinny.
Lance’s mother comes to get them in a pick-up truck. His father would be there too, except there wouldn’t have been enough room for all of them unless someone wanted to ride in the back, and the back, though covered, was full of animal cages. Vinny thought he was from a trashy environment growing up? Maybe he spoke too soon. But Lance’s mother gives Lance the biggest hug when she gets out of that truck, kisses his face about a million times and he kisses her back a ton and whispers something to her that makes her stop and th
ink for a moment then nod and then turn towards Vinny.
“I know who yew are, I seen you onna TV!” she says, and Lance cracks up because apparently she’s doing a character—that’s not her accent. She gives him a firm handshake and Vinny leans in to kiss her on the cheek. “Lance has told us all about you two,” she whispers when they’re close. “You don’t have to call me Mom too, but I’d like it.”
Vinny nods, and looks over at Lance who looks like he’s just spritzed himself in the eyes with a happy drug—he’s not teary but he is shimmering. He must have had one of those nice childhoods. Vinny’s only ever heard about those.
Lance’s parents live in a trailer. Apparently that isn’t always where they live, they’re house-sitting for some aunt for a while. Sometimes they’re in a house, a tent, apparently they don’t really care too much where they sleep; like Lance, they feel like everywhere is temporary. They seem like a pretty close family, so close that the second they’re all in a room together, they get weirdly quiet, and start looking at each other like they’ve all got telepathy, and Lance tells Vinny he should really take a look outside, you know? And the mother doubles down saying the woods are beautiful, and the father gives him a look like, You better listen, I don’t know. So Vinny takes the hint and goes for a walk.
It really doesn’t bother him, it’s nice actually, that Lance has such a good bond with his parents. It’s probably what makes him so damn happy all the time, and how just being around him can make Vinny happy too, like it’s infectious. Maybe Lance was right about going back to Steubenville too, just to see how small it really is, and the weather out here today is pretty nice, with the smell of the woods around, Vinny wonders…he’s been waiting on a bit of news to come down the pipe. He hasn’t said anything about it to Lance, didn’t want to jinx the opportunity, but he met an agent who knew a guy who knew a guy doing some half-independent film down in Florida. He sent him a reel of some of his work on the show, and he’s been waiting to hear back about if they’ve got a role for him or not. It’s supposed to be about a group of Cuban guys, and it’s not like they don’t have enough real Cubans in Miami, but they also want a guy who can sing, and Vinny’s coming up in the world, he brings more attention than they’d get if they just cast unknowns and locals. Like they can’t teach him a few words in Spanish? Like he can’t fake an accent? He certainly fakes an Italian one pretty well, he’s about 5th generation or so, no one sounds really Italian where he’s from, they sound like crappy mob movies from the 50s, like caricatures of caricatures. It might be nice to pretend to be somebody else for a while.
It feels like something really momentous is about to happen, that’s why Vinny thinks of it on his walk. It feels like the chapter of New York is pretty much closed, would he really have to go back there? He feels like he and Lance are going to be moving on somehow, going further. He’s hoping he’ll be able to give Lance the good news any day now, maybe even treat him and his parents to a big meal or something, to be the man of the hour, taking care of everybody. He heads back to the trailer after about twenty minutes of wandering with a skip in his step.
He walks back in to what feels like a tribunal or something.
“What’s…the vibe in here?” Vinny asks, when he looks at everyone, ending in Lance, and gets nothing but faces like doctors who know you have cancer when you don’t.
“This is going to be weird,” says Lance’s dad, the first thing Vinny’s heard the man say. “I’ve never once wanted to talk about this, but it looks like I’ve got to now, for the sake of my boy.” He reaches for his wife’s hand and nods at Lance, who turns to Vinny with big googly eyes that usually look funny to Vinny, but none of this feels funny.
“Lance has something to tell you,” Mom says. “We can help explain it, and we can help…in general.”
Lance takes a look of encouragement from his mother and stands up. He takes off his shirt, and turns to the side, and skates his hand over that little belly he’s gotten lately, which actually looks a bit bigger than last time Vinny noticed it, and harder and rounder too.
“It’s a baby, pally. Those stories about my grandfather…they were true.”
Vinny hears what Lance says, and he sees it, he even believes it though it’s incredibly unbelievable, and then…his phone rings. And since he can’t think of a damn thing to say to this situation, he tells them, “I have to take this.” Which turns out to be true: it’s the call he’s been waiting for.
“Vinny, buddy, you’ve got the part,” says the agent he knows and now apparently is signed to. “I’ll send over all the paperwork, ASAP, just need an address, it’ll be the contract for the movie gig, you’ll sign something for my cut, then sign on with me as your agent because you want to, don’t you? I can keep these sorts of calls coming for you, and I’ll get my secretary to call you and start making travel plans. How do you feel, Vince?”
The guy didn’t even know Vinny’s name wasn’t Vince, but he was holding every ticket to every flight, every key to every door, all the things Vinny’s been waiting for . . . and his news can barely touch Vinny through the shock he just had. Too bad, apparently. Vinny can hardly feel this call he’s been waiting for.
“I’m stunned, man, I’ll sign everything, let me text you the address, I’m out in the boonies on vacation.”
“You enjoy that vacation, Vince, you’re about to be a movie star!”
Vinny nods even though the agent can’t see him do it and looks up so he can see the sky between the tree tops. That huge, vast sky looks small from down here.
Vinny hangs up, takes a deep breath, and walks back inside.
“Does this place have an address?” he asks.
Lance’s father nods, and Vinny hands him the phone.
“Do me a favor and type the address in and hit send, I’ve got some news too.” Vinny sits down and puts his head in his hands, and he starts talking. “I just got a movie deal, just now, just outside, that’s what that phone call was. I’ve got to take it, whatever’s going on here, I’ve had this in the works for a while, I...” Vinny looks at Lance, and Lance looks sad, which isn’t at all like him. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“I’m definitely surprised!” Lance says, his voice just above a whisper. If he starts to cry Vinny’s not going to be able to deal with that, he’ll have to walk outside and get lost in the woods.
“Now about this stuff, baby…” Vinny says. Lance’s face is too expressive at that nickname for Vinny to look at him anymore. He starts addressing Lance’s parents instead. “How does this work?”
“He’ll have to stay here,” says Dad, and then Mom starts explaining.
“Doctors can only be involved if there’s a serious emergency, but there wasn’t one with Grandpa—looks like we’ll be doing this the old-fashioned way. I’ll be studying up on midwifery in the coming months, see if I can’t talk to my sisters, the ones I trust to keep a secret at least, to see if they can help. According to Dad here, it’ll happen naturally, no need for any Cesareans or anything, and assuming it works the same way all babies are born, Momma can help, can’t I? I went through it myself.” She pats Lance’s hand now. Vinny sits across a coffee table from them all, and that family unity that seemed so great an hour ago, now seems like a big group hug he’s not invited to, a team huddle when he’s been benched.
“We should probably talk about this,” Vinny says, meaning him and Lance alone. Ma and Pa Hershkowitz both nod and go on their own walk, or a drive it seems like, to go to town and get supplies, vitamins. It’s time to start preparing for baby.
Vinny doesn’t look at Lance until after the sound of the truck’s tires fade to silence, and even then all he does is hold out his arms.
Lance is in his lap in a flash, and they’re kissing, they’re not talking at all. They have to talk, have to, because everything’s suddenly different for them. The nice country idyll they were honeymooning on is over: Lance is tied down to his body and his body to the only place where people know him enough to help
, and Vinny’s got a job to do, far away, not just because it’s everything he’s wanted, but because they both need someone to be at work, there’s no money in this trailer, or back in Steubenville; Vinny’s got to be successful, successful enough for three people the way Lance has to eat for two. What a day!
Lance’s hands are all over Vinny, but Vinny’s only touching one part of Lance, that bump in his belly.
“Don’t hate me,” Lance starts saying between frantic kisses, kisses that Vinny is hardly participating in, he feels pretty numb and shocked. After one kiss Lance wandered off to kiss on every bit of his face and hair and neck and shoulders, whatever he can reach. “I know this is crazy, but it’s not my fault, pally, neither of us thought those stories about Grandpa were real!”
“It’s okay, baby,” Vinny says, unsure about which baby he’s talking to. “You know I always wanted a big family, the kind of giant Italian family I never really had, just me and a brother who died years ago . I like the idea of a big, long table of kids having dinner with me, don’t you? Everybody eating out of a vat of spaghetti, me the big tough guy dad even though I never really discipline any one of them, I just can’t because they’re all so damn cute. How many you want, baby?”
“Tons!” Lance says. “I want a circus amount of kids someday, but what the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“We take advantage of your parents, is what we do,” Vinny says. “That’s what you do, rely on them, and I’ll send money from Miami. I bet the movie’s done filming just when the kid is born, right? And then we can take little Sally or Sal to the premiere somehow, say it’s a cousin, or you adopted a baby, or it’s a younger brother, or maybe I’m such a ladies man I start having a ton of illegitimate babies all over the USA, but me I’m such a man, I take care of them all, and they all have my name.”
