Tigers on the Way

by Sean Kennedy

  “When do the results come in?” he asked, changing tack. Maybe he’d seen the dead look in my eyes.

  “Probably not until Monday or Tuesday, thanks to the weekend.”

  “Should you even be in here?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve got my donut cushion.” I patted my bag. “I just need to blow it up. And I suck at blowing things.”

  “Poor Declan,” Coby said automatically. Then, “Wait, what?”

  “A donut cushion. So my balls are protected.”

  “Okay, maybe that was too much information.”

  I rolled my eyes. Everybody was practically begging me for information until they got the gory details. And not even the gory details. As soon as balls were mentioned, guys immediately freaked out because they imagined the same thing happening to their balls. For such little things in reality, they were cannonballs in a guy’s mind.

  “Are you sure?” Coby asked. “Dec said I could make Will come up and help me with stuff if I needed it.”

  Something broke through the withered centre within me. “Dec said that? You’ve been talking with Dec about me and what I should be doing? Was there a strategy meeting?”

  “Don’t start, Simon. Of course we have. He’s worried about you, and he wants to make sure as little as possible stresses you out.”

  “Well, it stresses me out when people start going behind my back and arranging things on my behalf when I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself.”

  I didn’t wait for his response. I stormed away into my office and slammed the door behind me.

  Then opened it again and yelled out, “Do you really think Will could do my job? If so, let’s just call up the local day centre instead of a temp agency!”

  Fuck, that was childish of me. Especially to Will, who was the nicest guy and always helped people, usually way beyond what he should have. In fact, he had probably been popping in to see how I was and if there was anything he could do.

  I really hoped he hadn’t heard me. But I didn’t like people taking things off my hands because they thought they were making it easier for me. That was my decision to make. It was my fucking business after all, even if Dec and Coby had shares in it.

  In fact, that made it feel worse. Like they were preparing for the possibility that I would no longer be around, and they had to make sure the business kept running.

  I knew they had a right to be worried, and that it all came from a place of worry and love for me. I also knew I had a right to be angry that people were taking agency on my behalf.

  I was still stewing when Coby entered without knocking, two cups of coffee in his hand. He set one before me and then took a seat.

  “It wasn’t going behind your back,” he said.

  “Feels like it.”

  “And Dec wasn’t saying Will should come up, just if I needed it. He wasn’t saying you should leave work, or anything like that. And he wasn’t casting aspersions on my abilities either, in case you were wondering.”

  I hadn’t been, but, fine.

  “You know what he’s like. He worries, and he wants to take care of everybody.”

  And I loved Dec for it. But I loved it more when he was doing it for other people, but not for me. How fucked-up was that?

  “Drink your coffee,” Coby implored.

  I picked it up and briefly closed my eyes as I took the first sip. The man knew how to make a good coffee. It was why I had kept him around for so many years.

  Okay, there was him being a friend and all as well.

  “Calmer?” Coby asked.

  I shrugged. “A little.”

  “Let Dec look after you,” he advised. “Stop stressing yourself out and just let people do these things for you. They’re showing how much they love you.”

  “I feel like I’m being babied,” I admitted. We were back to the consequences of toxic masculinity again.

  “You know that if you questioned any of Dec’s decisions, he would immediately change them. He’s just trying to take the weight off. And don’t you dare tell me you wouldn’t be doing the same for him if it was Dec with a tumour in his balls.”

  I glared at him.

  He quickly changed the subject. “And it might be good to have some eye candy around the office if Will does temp work here.”

  “Eww, Coby, he’s, like… sixteen.”

  “He’s twenty. But I’m joking, he’s like a little brother.”

  “And you have a partner that you’re very happy with, even though it stumps me.” I never could resist a dig at Jasper, even though any kind of heat behind it was long gone.

  “Don’t be mean about Jon.” Only Coby ever used his real name. I had always known him as Jasper Brunswick, and he would be so until the day one of us died. I was going to ensure it would be him. “He’s very worried about you.”

  “Oh God,” I said, the full weight of that statement sinking in. “Don’t let Jasper start being nice to me, or else I’ll really think I’m dying.”

  “Don’t worry, he won’t. He knows the two of you have a facade of mutual hatred to keep up.”

  “Why change what has worked for ages?”

  Coby gave a wry smile. “It’s kind of cute how you’re now friends but still try to make everyone think you’re enemies.”

  “Lucky for me he still prints the occasional fucked-up article to get mad over.”

  “I can tell things have changed,” Coby laughed. “You said occasional.”

  “Or I can just remember how he wrote a book of lies about Dec. That always gets me going again.”

  “Technically it wasn’t a book of lies about Dec,” Coby pointed out. “It was a book about Greg Heyward, with a chapter of lies about Dec.”

  “Chapters,” I accentuated.

  “Still not a whole book.”

  I set my coffee down, unfinished. “Anyway, I’ll give the man his props. I guess he’s improved slightly.”

  “You keep going this way, he’ll ask you to be his best man.”

  As if! If I had to be part of the wedding party, I would be Coby’s best man, if his brothers weren’t taking all of the roles. And if part of my duties was to protect him from an undesirable marriage when the civil celebrant asked if anybody had any objections, well, so be it.

  Oh crap. I wouldn’t even do that. I would let Coby and Jasper ride off into the sunset together, knowing that despite my past with Jasper, he and Coby truly were in love with each other. Ick.

  I picked my coffee up again, ready to drain it and get a refill. “The way the government’s going, we’ll all be dead before I have to worry about that.”

  Now there was heat behind the humour. Coby only knew too well the brutal sting of being denied the right to marry the man he loved. When he and Jasper, and Dec and I, had gotten engaged around the same time a couple of years ago—and I hasten to add Dec and I did it first, no matter what order the announcements were made—we had foolishly hoped there would soon be some swing in governmental opinion or even a change of government that would see the ringing in of gay nuptials across the continent. But things seemed to be getting even more sluggish and despairing, especially with the government trying to force a national plebiscite on the issue where we would be subject to a needed approval by the majority of the voting public.

  We were all trapped in a dystopian novel except with less cannibalism. Give it time, though; the widespread cannibalism seemed much more likely to happen than gay marriage at the minute.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Coby said. “Nyssa rang just before you got in.”

  I flinched, and my coffee rolled over the top of my mug in a tsunami of heat that made me yelp in pain. “Nyssa! We forgot about Nyssa!”

  NYSSA COULDN’T contain her tears. In fact, it was hard to make out what she was saying, as her words were punctuated by strangled breaths, deep sighs, and nose-blowing. Through the FaceTime window, she was an emotional wreck, her shoulders heaving and her hair wild.

  “How could I not see this! I thought everything was pe
rfect timing!”

  She had made the very generous offer to become our surrogate when she had started feeling “something in my waters.” This apparently was our future baby calling out to her across the sea from Melbourne to New Zealand.

  Living amongst so many sheep had made her become even more of a hippie than she originally was. Or maybe she had watched Lord of the Rings too many times and, inspired by the scenery around her, had actually started to believe she was Gandalf.

  She hadn’t changed much, really.

  “It’s not your fault,” I told her. “It’s just a random transformation of healthy cells that decided to chuck in the towel against invading forces.”

  Nyssa sniffed and sounded calmer. “That’s a unique way of looking at it, Simon. But I’m so worried about you.”

  Dec finally spoke up, and his hand gripped my waist even tighter. “The cells haven’t chucked in the towel. They’re fighting.”

  “Well, we’ll know soon,” I reminded him.

  “I’m coming over,” Nyssa said. “Just let me check flights—”

  Dec and I talked over each other as we told her not to worry and stay put.

  “But we need to figure out what we’re going to do about the baby,” Nyssa said.

  “That’s kind of off the cards for the minute.” Dec looked resigned.

  “We didn’t decide that,” I told him.

  “No, you’re right.” Nyssa nodded. “We shouldn’t even think about it right now. Even if….” She trailed off, lost in thought. I could tell she was still thinking about the “perfect timing,” and the thing was, it was true.

  She and her partner, Paddy, had already had two kids and decided that was the right number for them. One of the rules of surrogacy was that you believed your own family to be complete. We were using donor eggs, so they wouldn’t be her children biologically, even though Nyssa had once scared us by saying there would be so much less red tape to go through if we did it all ourselves. But even she had realised that was a step too far, imagining how difficult it would be to know she had children in another country that she wouldn’t be able to raise. So that was all of a two-second decision. Donor eggs; our swimmers.

  Except that wasn’t the reality now either. It would have to be Declan’s swimmers. Once again a decision taken away from me.

  That slow anger was bubbling away within me again. “Hello, I’m here, both of you. I’m part of this. I’m out of the equation for the IUI, but that doesn’t mean Dec still can’t go ahead.”

  “We haven’t even discussed this yet,” Dec reminded me.

  “Oh, really? Then why are you making the decision to stop?”

  Dec glared at me. His hand had dropped away from my waist.

  “Maybe I should speak to you guys later,” Nyssa said, clearly uncomfortable.

  “No.” I turned back to the screen and said a little more calmly, “No. Nyssa, you’re part of this. We wouldn’t even be able to contemplate having kids right now if it wasn’t for you. So please don’t go.”

  “Okay.” She still didn’t sound convinced.

  I looked at Dec but tried to include Nyssa in my little speech. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but that goes for everything. One of us could go out to get milk tomorrow morning and get hit by a bus.”

  Heated exclamations came at me from both sides, one sounding a little tinnier, as it was coming all the way from New Zealand.

  “Seriously,” I continued. “If people put off having kids because of uncertainty about tomorrow, then the world’s population would have died off centuries ago. Especially when you lived in fear of being eaten by a dinosaur. And okay, I know humankind did not exist at the same time as the dinosaurs, but I had to think of an allegory on the spot, and I’m flustered, okay?”

  They both gave subdued assents, but I could tell the war was ongoing despite my victory today.

  I just had to hope it would all turn out the way we wanted it to.

  “So we’ll speak later and arrange details, yes?” I asked. It was more of a statement than a question; I expected my soldiers to fall in line with me, and they did so.

  I had one more thing to ask Nyssa before she signed off. “Hey, Nyss?”

  She blew her nose one more time. “Yes?”

  “Try and consult your waters for me, okay?” I was serious. “See what’s up ahead?”

  “I can’t turn it off and on, Simon,” she said. “I’m not a tap.”

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see Dec stifle a laugh.

  Her tone softened. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you. Love you.”

  She kissed her hand and touched it to the screen. “I love you both. Dec, take care of him for me. I know you do, but just a little bit extra, okay?”

  “Of course,” Dec said. “Love you too, Nysa.”

  So many “love-yous.” The antithesis to Annie Lennox, who couldn’t give any more.

  The call ended, and Dec and I sat there, staring at the blank screen that now reflected us in shadow.

  “YOU’RE MAD at me,” Dec said. “You have been all night.”

  We were getting ready for bed. I was exhausted, and Dec looked just as bad. And the truth was, I hadn’t actually been ignoring him. I was just quiet. And quiet me always worried people or made them think I was pissed about something.

  “I just want to go to sleep.”

  He looked vulnerable standing there in his boxer briefs, folding up his clothes and placing them on the chair. I was filled with a mix of anger and undying love for him. I wanted to hug him and push him out of the window onto the rainy street below.

  “You have got to stop making decisions for me,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “What, I don’t have a say?”

  “Of course you have a say.” I got into bed and patted the space next to me. He joined me, and we huddled under the covers, a typical Melbourne winter’s night making me wonder if we should have left the heater on a bit longer. “But you have been gung-ho about making them for the both of us at the moment.”

  “I just want to make things easier for you.”

  “I know, but you’re stressing me out when I feel like my free will is gone. One of my balls may have been literally removed, but I don’t need both of them to go metaphorically as well.”

  I was rewarded with a brief snort of laughter.

  “I don’t think we’ve ever talked about your balls so much,” he said.

  “Why not? They’re beautiful balls.”

  Another laugh! Success!

  “They’re okay,” he said. “But I like what they’re attached to better.”

  “My dick?” It wasn’t like him to be so… so…. Quite frankly, I was flabbergasted. And turned on.

  He looked mortified. “I meant you! The whole package!”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I guess that’s okay too.”

  “More than okay.”

  “I’m lucky you think like that.” I kissed him on the tip of his nose. “So let’s not put the brakes on the IUI just yet.”

  “That’s one thing I can’t agree with you on.” He was resolute, and I could see the fire in his eyes. He was not going to back down off this one no matter what I said.

  “Dec, I just asked you—”

  “Don’t you understand?” he blurted out. “I don’t want to have kids if you’re not around to raise them with me!” With that, he looked horrified; he even clapped his hand over his mouth, totally stricken.

  It tore through me as well, but I couldn’t let him see that. “I’m not dead yet,” I reminded him. “We don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”

  “I’m so sorry I said that.”

  “No, it’s what you feel. And I’m kind of touched that you can’t envision a future without me.”

  He pulled my pillow from under me and whacked me with it. “You fucker, stop making a joke out of all of this!”

  “While you’ve got that,” I said, slightly muffled w
ith a mouthful of pillow, “do you just want to press down and end me before you break out the window and run into the wild like the Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”

  “You really have a movie for every situation, don’t you?” He left the pillow where it was.

  “That’s why I did film as a major at uni.” I wondered how long he would let me lie there like this.

  His face swam back into view as he removed the pillow from my face. “You annoy the shit out of me sometimes.”

  “Only sometimes?”

  “Don’t be cute.”

  “I’m not.” I took the pillow from him and plumped it back into shape. “If this were the other way around, I wouldn’t want to think about you….”

  “See?” Dec was strangely satisfied. “You can’t even say it.”

  It was true. I had survived twenty-seven years without Dec in my life, but I didn’t know then it was only surviving. The prospect of a world without him was worse than any postapocalyptic book or movie where people dressed in rags and ate each other or fought each other to the death in some kind of public arena for entertainment. “Okay, maybe I can’t. But this is happening to my body. If it was happening to you, I’d try to support you in the way you would choose. So I have to deal with it like this, sometimes even dismissively, or else I’m not going to get out of bed in the morning.”

  “Can I stay in it with you if you can’t?”

  “I’d love it.”

  He got under the covers, and I joined him. As he pulled me closer and tugged gently at my hair before kissing me, a single tear fell from my left eye. I blamed it on the angle I was currently lying, as it had forced it out when I had been so successful at keeping them in. Luckily Dec didn’t notice, as he now rested his forehead against mine.

  “The thing is,” I whispered, “we never know what’s going to happen. What if Nyssa had conceived and then we found out about me? You can’t take the kids back. And I’m going to be around here ages enough to annoy you.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Because I’ll hold you to them.”

  “If you’re there to enforce them, then I’m sure I’m sticking around. I’m not that easy to get rid of. You should know.”