The Rare Event

by P D Singer

  “Did he say anything specific?” Davis’s brow stayed wrinkled, his mouth open with bewilderment.

  “No, the only thing he said that even hinted was that somehow I’d corrupted you and didn’t even know I was doing wrong.” Jon hugged the robe tightly around himself, his stomach aching as if Spencer had punched him again.

  “Oh, Jon.” Davis’s voice held a well of pain. “It’s my fault.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “YOUR fault?” Jon blinked at Davis, who slumped forward to rest his face in his hands.

  “Mine. Sorry.” Davis spoke through his hands, then sat up. “You have no idea how sorry. But yeah.”

  “What? How?” Jon dropped into the chair, ignoring its squeak of protest. “What could you have possibly done that made Spencer think….”

  “I told myself that I was imagining it, that no one had come in that night, but… he must have. It had to have been him.” Davis swallowed hard. “Remember how our bedrooms had that Jack-and-Jill bathroom in between, and you didn’t have to go into the hall to get to his room from mine?”

  “I remember.” He and Spencer had slipped through it to short-sheet Davis’s bed, unseen by spoilsport parents.

  “After Spence and I went back to the house, I went to bed. I thought he did too. And all I could think about was you, back in the guest house, and I… I thought about you. A lot.” Davis looked at the floor. “And while I was… thinking, maybe someone came in. I was never sure, because I only remember maybe someone going out, but my main door was shut, and there wasn’t any light. But I think he came in to talk to me, saw what I was doing, and left.”

  “Why would he think I…?” Jon couldn’t fathom the connection, and too late, he realized he’d asked for details that he might not have wanted. No, Davis could not have been thinking of me like that, no, not possible…. He was young, he didn’t think about….

  “I had a toy, think it was the purple one, and it must have shown pretty clearly against my lily-white butt. And I was humping the mattress pretty hard, and saying your name…. I must have said your name about a hundred times.” Davis pinched up folds of the bedspread and then smoothed them out, a senseless, repetitive pinching, and did not look at Jon. Yeah, he’s embarrassed now, he’s past that stage, he has to be.

  “He must have thought I… but he couldn’t see.” Jon felt bile rising in his throat. “That’s why he called me a cheater, it wasn’t just you, it was Cam he thought I’d done wrong. But he must have thought I’d sneaked into the main house to….” Jon tried to will this thought away. “I would never….”

  “I know.” Davis’s voice was small and miserable. “And then you were gone. We didn’t see much of you once we all went off to university, and even less after you graduated. It took a long time to realize that you weren’t coming back. And I’ve missed you all these years.”

  “I—didn’t know.” Ricky did, but Jon didn’t. He’d made a point not to know—Davis was out of reach, it shouldn’t matter.

  “No one knew, officially, at least. I came out to the family about a year after that, and all Spencer said was, ‘Damn Jonny.’” Davis wiped a hand across his face. Jon got up for a box of tissues and kept one for himself.

  “Like gayness is catching?” Spencer, who had never wavered in his friendship until that wedding morning, blamed him for his brother’s orientation? “And I infected you?”

  “Like that.” Davis blew his nose. “Even if it’s impossible. And I’m sorry.”

  “Did Spencer ever figure out he was wrong?” And maybe he was too ashamed to reach out and admit he was wrong? A small leap in his chest reminded Jon how he’d hoped for something like that, until the hope was worn to a forlorn scrap.

  “I’m going to tell him!” Davis punched his cell phone. With his heart in his throat, Jon listened to the ringing, followed by the familiar but long-unheard voice on the speaker.

  “Hey, Davis, how’s New York?”

  “Interesting. I’m staying with Aunt Jessica and Uncle Chaz.” Davis was keeping it light, at least at first.

  “Oh, you are?” The emotional temperature dropped around thirty degrees. “Seen Jon?” The tone said, “You’d better not.” Glad for the distance the telephone put between them, Jon wiped his hands on the terrycloth.

  “I went to a Yankees game with him Wednesday. We had a lot of fun.” Davis sounded calm, curious. “What’s your gripe with him, anyway?”

  Maybe Spencer had never come up with a good official answer for that, because he only sputtered now, “Don’t. Don’t have anything to do with him.”

  “Why not?” Davis must have learned to cope with big-brother demands sometime since the days of getting pushed into the creek. “Because you’re still angry that I was thinking about him and playing with myself?”

  Jon would sputter over that bold statement if he could have talked. The sounds crackled from the phone.

  “I was alone that night, Spencer. Whatever or whoever you thought you saw, I was alone. Wishing I wasn’t, but I was.”

  Dead silence greeted that statement. Davis pushed the attack. “Except, oddly enough, for you. And now that you know, when are you going to apologize to him?”

  “I am not going to apologize to that cheating pervert!” Spencer shouted in a wrath Jon recalled all too well. “It’s all a lie you and he cooked up!”

  Jon came close enough now to the phone for his voice to pick up, biting back a mixture of anger and sorrow. Years! He’d lost years with people he loved dearly and missed bitterly, all because Spencer wasn’t friend enough to find out before lashing out. “We compared notes and figured out what must have happened, Spencer, and you do owe me an apology.” He took a deep breath and got ready to speak through the angry denials. “Remember all that silly stuff us groomsmen did after you and Davis went back to the house? Played ‘drunk poker’ and wrapped Walter in toilet paper and called it a bridal gown?”

  “Yeah, so what? They just told you about it,” Spencer spat back. “I know what you were doing, you sick—”

  “We took pictures of all of that. Have you ever looked at them?” Jon knew that if Spencer had looked, he hadn’t seen. “I’m in those pictures.”

  “No.” Spencer’s denial was flat, dead.

  “Yes.” Davis never used to contradict his brother. “Go look. You’ve had those pictures since the wedding. Go look, and then call back and apologize for being the fat-headed bigot that you are. You had a best friend, until you drove him off with your fat-headed assumptions. Apologize to him, as if that will begin to make up for anything. And be grateful if he bothers to listen to you.” Davis broke the connection without saying good-bye.

  He looked up at Jon, new lines crossing his forehead. “I never dreamed I cost you so much. I’m sorry.”

  Cam had thrown him out not long after that. Jon had always wondered what was behind the accusation of cheating. Spencer might have cost him even more than Davis knew.

  “It wasn’t you.” Jon sank to the mattress next to Davis and took another tissue. “Oh, Davis, it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I think it was.” Davis took a fresh tissue and methodically began to shred it, then smeared the shreds across his eyes and took another. “All because….”

  The irony could have been a garrote around Jon’s neck. “I see this at work all the time—bet you do too.” That got a squinty look. “All kinds of little things, nothing bad by itself, all come together, they all add up negatively, and bam! Catastrophe. Usually it’s just losing money."

  Jon scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Little things, and if any one of them had gone differently, we wouldn’t be having this talk now. Shit.” Ticking off each small seed of disaster, he choked. “If Spencer hadn’t come in for another five minutes, or if you’d been calling someone else’s name….”

  Davis’s shoulders fell another inch. “If there’d been a little more light, or if he could have just gone to bed….”

  “If, if, if. It wasn’t, and this is what
we got.” Knowing each little stupid, horrible step that had led to tragedy almost made it worse. “How long before my clothes are dry?”

  Davis took that question a little further. “You don’t have to go tonight, or you don’t have to sit with me.”

  “I’ll be there. I just need to go home for a while, okay?” No one got to watch a Hogenboom have a screaming fit. Cavernous though the apartment was, there was no place in it private enough for Jon’s grief. “I’ll wear something of Dad’s; he won’t mind.”

  “You can wear my—oh.”

  “Yeah, only if I want the pants to fall off around Sixty-Fifth Street.” Jon got to his feet, as did Davis. On impulse, he put an arm around Davis’s shoulder, much as he had when the kid was seven and had scraped half the skin off his knee. The pain in his face was much worse this time, and Jon had to reach up to do it. “It’s not your fault, Davis. If it’s anyone’s fault, it's Spencer’s for not questioning what he assumed.”

  Davis reached around Jon, lightly at first but then with the grip of the drowning. “What he saw was pretty convincing.”

  And that made Jon pull away to raid his father’s closet.

  Chapter Seventeen

  RICKY sat alone on the couch in the executive washroom. Jon had scored big—he’d have to come celebrate, he’d have to—something that awesome needed their special brand of congratulations. More than five million bucks! Jon would top for a week on a score that big, and Ricky wanted nothing so much as to show Jon some appreciation. Twenty minutes went by, but no Jon. Another half an hour went by, but no Jon. A half hour after that, someone came in, but it was Corbin, who had to use the can.

  “He left with Dwight.” Ricky hadn’t asked. “Said something about due diligence and took off, said they’d be back Monday.” Corbin passed through the dressing room to the plumbing. Ricky waited until Corbin was occupied before exploding off the couch and out of the office building altogether. He’d been left? Damn it, Jon couldn’t do that to him! He seethed all the way to East Islip on the Long Island Railroad and hurt the entire ferry crossing to Fire Island.

  The lights were on and the windows open when Ricky finally dropped his bag at the front door of the beach house. He hadn’t checked his PDA to see if any of his co-renters had planned to be out this weekend, but apparently one was. No, two. Christopher and Haden were puttering around the kitchen, drying dishes and wiping countertops.

  “Hey, Ricky.” Haden was not exactly glad to see him, and peered past him with a certain apprehension. “Where’s Jon?”

  “He’s not coming out this weekend,” Ricky nearly snarled. Would he ever get Jon out here again?

  “That’s too bad.” Yeah, it was too bad—why did the little bitch look so satisfied about it? “You two have been together for, what, a year and a half, two years?”

  Had it been that long? He’d never been with anyone even a year and yet…. A date didn’t come to mind, but it was right after Ricky’d sold off all his steel stocks…. Yeah, it had been that long. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Oh, just that it’s been a long time and we’ve never congratulated you two on an anniversary. Today’s our first.” Haden’s eyes went dreamy, resting on Christopher.

  “We aren’t exactly together.” Especially not after Jon’s declaration earlier. “Not in a ‘celebrating anniversaries’ sort of way.” Or maybe any other, but Ricky wasn’t about to say so.

  “I’m not surprised, Haden. Ricky does play the field. Did you eat yet?” Christopher inquired, frozen in front of the refrigerator, a container in his hand. “There’s ratatouille and French bread if you want.”

  “No, I’m fine; I ate something before I got on the ferry.” Truth was, he wasn’t hungry. His bellyful of thoughts made food repugnant.

  Christopher stowed the container. “You get the small bedroom,” he said. “We’re in the big bedroom already.”

  “Don’t think so.” Ricky wouldn’t let his territorial rights be preempted.

  “Know so. We get the room with the king bed.” The worm had turned: Haden didn’t usually challenge Ricky and probably only got brave from standing next to Christopher.

  Christopher turned from the fridge with a bottle of champagne in his hand. “If it wasn’t our anniversary, and if Jon were with you, we’d flip a coin.” Thought he’d taught Christopher not to argue, but today both of them felt strong enough to talk back.

  “If you’re going to drag home some stranger, you can do him on the full-size mattress. Actually—” Christopher put his arm over Haden’s shoulders. “Since it is an occasion for us, would you mind completing your itinerary at the club? ‘Happy anniversary’ isn’t going to sound quite right with ‘Squeak-a squeak-a—what’s your name again?’ in the background.”

  What a cute little united front. Ricky drew stiffly to his full height. “I’ll do my best not to disturb you lovebirds.” He grabbed his bag and marched into the small bedroom, a place he seldom slept, and threw it down on a bed that was adequate for one man to sleep on but not really for two. If Jon were here, he’d have fought harder for the bigger bed.

  No, if Jon were here, they’d be searching out a room in a guest house, because he would want to give the anniversary couple privacy. He’d congratulate them and drag Ricky out the door again in a heartbeat. If Jon were here….

  But Jon wasn’t and might never be again. There were plenty of other fish in the sea. Ricky dragged a comb through his hair, checked his pockets, and headed out to net a few.

  He tried not to notice Christopher and Haden easing the cork out of the champagne bottle, apparently a four-handed job.

  Darkness and ocean breezes had pulled some of the heat out of the night already; Ricky arrived at the club unmelted after a walk that a Manhattanite such as he would equate to three long blocks and anyone else would call half a mile. His favorite hunting grounds belched music into the air, drums beating the rhythm of the pursuit. Prey aplenty milled inside, blond, brunet, young, not so young, there was always someone to satisfy any whim he could develop. The doorman winked and waved Ricky through.

  Appraising eyes found him in his trip through the dimness. The line between predator and prey here wavered—he often liked the clash of wills when he met another like himself, but tonight none approached him. Something in his carriage warned them away, and the gentler souls turned their eyes to their drinks, their companions, the floor, anything but Ricky’s eyes, lest they invite him to partake.

  He didn’t want them anyway; an hour later he’d made a slow circuit around the room, searching for something or someone he hadn’t found. Too talky, too eager, too aloof, too clumsy, too polished, too familiar, too— A few times he’d brought men to the dance floor only to reject them once the music changed, and once he’d been thrown back as unsuitable. “Too many sharp edges about you,” the stranger pronounced and turned away to look elsewhere.

  The backroom didn’t require so much in social graces—one could watch, join, be pulled in or pushed out without personalities engaging. Ricky found the doorway and scouted the action, looking for something he refused to define. Ignoring an outstretched hand here and a blown kiss there, he prowled. Once he stared, tensing to jerk the man with the straight sandy-brown hair away from the groin of the man whose cock he sucked. Stopping himself, avoiding causing a scene by the slimmest of margins, Ricky grimaced, knowing that if Jon wanted to bestow blowjobs on strangers, he could. This wasn’t Jon, and Ricky still had no right to interfere.

  Jon had no right to interfere! Ricky cursed the man for invading his thoughts, for making it hard to choose from the bounty all around. Dissatisfied with everyone in the entire building, Ricky pushed back out into the clean night air.

  The beach was a less crowded hunting ground, though he’d hooked up more than once with a late-night walker. The stars glittered overhead, barely lighting the sand, and the surf lapped at his feet. A breeze ruffled his hair, cooling his body but not his thoughts.

  The weathered wooden stair from the
beach to the backyard of the rental house rose up from the sand ahead of him. He’d encountered other walkers, but they hadn’t moved him to approach, and now he was home, alone, angry, and unfulfilled. The times he’d blanked an evening out were so few and far between that he could barely recall the last one.

  He paused on the back deck, not yet stretching out his hand to the doorknob, distracted by movement through the gauzy curtain. The tiny bedside lamp near the king bed cast enough light to make silhouettes on the fabric that moved from the breeze through the open window.

  Either Christopher or Haden had risen from the bed and crossed the room to return with the bottle and pour into the glass offered by the other. A clink of crystal and a toast to “many more good years” dissolved into two figures sitting on the edge of the bed, embracing to the soft love words rendered indistinguishable by the sound of the water. He would not go into the house, not now, when everyone else under that roof was happy.

  Back on the sand, Ricky looked north and south but couldn’t decide which direction, back toward more people or out into the lonely gaps between the towns on the long, thin island. Suddenly exhausted, he dropped to the sand and looked out over the gentle swells that showed dappled in the starlight.

  How did Christopher and Haden decide their anniversary? Their first sex? Their first overnight together? First declaration of love? First bareback? Ricky had kept his relationship with Jon nebulous, not wanting to bind himself to anyone so tightly that a day could be set aside as theirs. He cursed Jon for a possessive stick-in-the-mud who’d probably know exactly what all those dates were. Ricky knew the last two of them: today and never.

  How long would it take the lovebirds to screw themselves into exhaustion? Ricky lay back in the sand to look at the stars and wait them out.

  He woke with sand in his body creases, dog breath in his nostrils, and wet kisses. Waving the source of the foul exhalations away, Ricky blinked in the pale dawn light. So early that the sky wasn’t quite blue yet, it was hours before Ricky preferred to rise on a Saturday, and a nasty awakening it was, all leathery nose, shaggy golden fur, and stench. The owner of the dog breath scampered back to the owner of the dog, walking a ways down the beach. Ricky grimaced and swiped an arm across his face. The walker hurried to him.