The Two-Bear Mambo

Chapter 12

We got our suitcases and sandwich makings out of the car, got soaked to the bone again. It had grown so dark outside, it seemed as if it ought to be bedtime.

Inside, we changed into dry clothes and sat on the floor by one of the stoves and made sandwiches of meat and bread and no fix­ings. We balanced the food on our knees and ate slowly and drank soda pops. Outside, the storm grew stronger and squealed like a pig having its throat cut.

When we finished eating we put the goods in the refrigerator, which was a filthy sucker and had a smell that refused to blend with the burnt dog, burnt wall, and pissed-on carpet. Its aroma was well sorted from the others, and equally overpowering.

The rest of the afternoon we sat by the fire with used paper­backs we had brought, and read. We were sharing some old books written by Michael Moorcock under the name Edward P. Bradbury. They were pastiches of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and they were fast and fun and pretty mindless.

Except for the odor, and the fact that over-forty-year-old bods have a little trouble sitting on the floor for an extended period of time without back aches and the legs going to sleep, it really wasn't, all things considered, too unpleasant. It had been some time since I had just settled in with a book and read, especially books like these, and my mind and emotions were just right to believe them, eager to get away from crack houses, a Chief of Po­lice with swollen balls, and a missing woman I had once loved, and maybe still did a little.

When I was a kid, I read a book like this, I became the main character, and the characters I liked were big and strong and fearless and always got the babe. I thought my life would go that way when I grew up.

It hadn't.

But for a few hours I was away from what my life hadn't been. Away from worry and reality. I was on another planet, fighting monsters with my fine, sharp sword. And I was winning.

The pleasant feeling didn't last. I finally fell out of the book and hit reality. I thought of Florida. I wondered how she was, and feared I already knew. The rain quit being pleasant. It had gone back to making me feel cold and wet and sad.

When I looked up from my book, Leonard was looking at me. He said, 'Hungry?'

'Didn't we just eat?'

'About three hours ago.'

We ate again, more out of boredom than anything else, then tried to read some more, but I had lost it. So had Leonard. He found a couple of blankets in the bedroom, put one over the couch itself and took the other for cover. He took the old worn cushion off the chair and tried to make a pillow out of it. He stripped down to his shorts and covered up and lay there and blew out his breath, which frosted and made a fast dissolving cloud. He said, 'You know, it's kind of funny, Raul not being around. I'd grown accustomed.'

'I'm sorry, man.'

'Me too. I reckon, thinking on it, I was kind of a jackass.'

'That's hard to imagine.'

'Ain't it? How do you put up with me?'

'Guess 'cause you put up with me.'

'Thing throws me is how we can be so close, and yet I can't put together a relationship. You and me, we been through thick and thin. Been mad at each other. Gotten each other into shit— Naw, now that I think about it, it's you gets me into shit.'

'You're probably right,' I said.

'But here we are, two guys, friends, one straight and one gay, and we get along better with each other than we do with our chosen sex partners.'

'Maybe it's the sex throws a wrench in things. Soon as you start doing the two-bear mambo, like those bears on that special, it falls apart.'

'I don't know, those bears looked pretty happy.'

'Yeah, but way it works in nature is the male bear loads the female bear with sperm, then he heads out, leaving the female bear to raise cubs by herself.'

'That's not nice.'

'No, it isn't.'

'A little secret, Hap. When two guys fuck, neither of them gets pregnant.'

'What I mean is, sex, one way or another, complicates things. I don't know how, but it's always in one way or another the turd in the stew.'

'So you want to give it up?'

'I may not have a choice, way things are going, but no, I don't want to give it up. It's been so long for me now, the bear on the National Geographic special got the right look in her eye, I'd mount up.'

'So, except for determining that you'd fuck a bear, we're no

closer to solving the mystery of human and animal relations than we were five minutes ago.'

'Maybe our friendship works out okay 'cause when I get tired of your shit, I go to the house till I get over it. I don't feel obli­gated to be with you, and I don't feel I'm deserting you if I go home. I have no sexual interest in you.'