“Oh, hell yes,” I said.
But I didn’t. The rest of it just happened naturally.
13
We ate the pizza downstairs and Brett read the newspaper and I read part of a Western novel and thought it was pretty good, even if the author did talk about starting his herd with two steers; that didn’t exactly endear me to his Western lore or his grasp of basic biology, but the story was all right. Then there was a knock at the door. I went to the curtain and pulled it back and looked out. The glass was fogged over from the cold outside. I had to wipe it a bit, and then I could see Leonard standing by the door, looking toward the curtain. When he saw me he lifted a hand.
I let him in, and felt the air blow past. It had really turned chilly.
“Winter’s here,” Leonard said. “My nuts have frozen up to the size of raisins.”
“Now, don’t brag,” I said.
Brett got up from her chair and came over and hugged Leonard, said, “We still got some pizza, baby, you want it.”
“No thanks,” Leonard said. “Well… how much pizza?”
“Couple of pieces?” Brett said.
“I can do that. And then I could maybe have some of those cookies Hap got for me and some of the Dr Pepper he got me special too.”
“I like that stuff myself,” I said.
Leonard winked at me. “You are so cute,” he said.
I sat at the kitchen table with Leonard while he ate and Brett went back in the living room to finish reading the paper. When Leonard finished eating the pizza and was ready to start on the cookies, I put a pot of decaf on, said, “Okay, what’s going on?”
“What?” Leonard said.
“Why are you here?”
“Because you’re my bestest goddamn buddy in the whole damn world. My brother. My doppelganger. My —”
“Yeah, but why are you here?”
“I always come over.”
“And you’re always welcome. But where’s John? Why haven’t you mentioned him? You know better than to jack with me, Leonard. I know you better than anyone in the world. Better than you know you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Leonard pushed a vanilla cookie around on his plate. “John and I aren’t doing so good.”
“Could it have anything to do with you crappin’ in the bed?”
“I was mad.”
“You? Oh, say thee not such foul lies about your own sweet self.”
“I said some things.”
“Another surprise.”
“I’ve sort of been staying somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Motels. I get off the security job, I been picking a different one each night. Quite the thrilling experience. One of them, it has one of those old-time beds where you put a quarter in a machine and the bed vibrates. … Course, it doesn’t work. But the mechanism is still there, and you can’t imagine how the nostalgia comforts me. Hey, and there’s this one cheap motel, the sheets, they got shit stains on them. I stayed there twice, two different rooms, shit stains on blue sheets. I guess it saves on laundry soap, leavin’ them like that.”
I got up and poured us some coffee and got some sweetener and cream. We fixed our coffee. I stirred mine longer than was necessary. I said, “Have you tried to talk to John?”
“I have.”
“And what’s the sticking point?”
“He doesn’t like me.”
“Bullshit. What’s going on?”
“The queer stuff.”
“You’re both queer, Leonard.”
“Really? Well, that puts some things in perspective.”
“So, John feels guilty about being gay?”
“John’s brother hates him because he’s gay. He tells him he doesn’t have to be gay. He’s telling him God doesn’t want him gay.”
