“Yeah, wel, they were pretty easy to hate,” I answered.
“They al did it, you know. The creepy, fruity one, the sexy but crazy older brother, the hag from Hel, they al did it. It’s like Murder on the Orient Express.
But the old movie, not the shitty television remake with, God help me, Meredith Baxter Birney. The guys probably knocked Al en out, and that bitch threw him over the balcony.”
Freddy was being ridiculous, but something he said caught my interest. “You thought Paul was fruity?”
“Oh, please,” Freddy said. “Sister was a step away from wearing hot pants at Gay Pride. Definitely a closet case. I mean, Prada shoes? Hel o!”
“I’m sure some straight boys wear designer footwear,” I answered.
“Yeah, but he also couldn’t take his eyes off you, or didn’t you notice?”
“Wel, I caught him looking once, but I thought he was just giving me a dirty look.”
“Oh, they were ‘dirty’ al right.”
I’d have to think about that. “So what about Michael?”
“I don’t know. What was with al that crazy shit anyway? ‘Death-style?’I thought you told me he was running some kind of psychiatric treatment center.
He sounded more like a preacher than a doctor.”
“I thought so, too,” I answered. “But, you know, when people start mixing religion with therapy, they get pretty nutty.”
“I think we better visit that place of his, don’t you?”
I put my arm around him. “Why? Do you want his
‘help’?”
Freddy pul ed me closer. “He did say there was stil hope for us.”
“Amen,” I laughed.
“Speaking of ‘us,’” Freddy said, “what was Al en talking about when he said he thought we’d be spending a lot of time together?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“You didn’t tel him we were a couple, did you?”
“No, why would I?”
“Because, that’s not what you want, right?”
I was suddenly aware of the size and strength of Freddy’s arm around me. Of his slightly sweaty, musky smel. Of the heat coming off his body on this already hot day.
“Of course not,” I said a little too quickly. “I mean, that’s not what either of us wants, right?”
“Of course not,” Freddy answered hastily. “I mean, why fuck up a good friendship, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Right,” Freddy said.
We were both quiet for a minute.
“Although,” Freddy continued, “now that Al en’s left you a fortune, maybe I should marry your ass.”
“I don’t think I’m rich,” I said. “But maybe I can go to graduate school earlier than I thought.”
“And maybe,” Freddy said, “you can stop being such a big whore.”
“Hey,” I said, “it worked for Alana Harrington!”
CHAPTER 7
I walked Freddy to his office and took a cab back to my apartment. I put the air conditioner on high and checked my messages. Just one. “Tony.
Cal me.”
One crisis at a time, I thought. When Tony visited the other night, I did a casual sweep of my porn. With my mother, Snoopy McSnoopy staying over, I had to real y hide it.
I also had to cal the only man who could save me.
I put on my headset and dialed. He answered on the first ring.
“Dad,” I began, “what the hel is going on?”
“Kevin, I have some rough news for you,” he said.
“Are you sitting down?”
“No.” I was, in fact, pul ing dirty magazines out of my dresser.
“Sit down.”
“Dad!”
“Al right, it’s your funeral. So. Your mother. I have to tel you: She’s nuts.”
“That’s your news?”
“She’s real y lost it this time, Kevin. She has it in her mind that I’m making the whoopee with Dottie Kubacki.”
“So I’ve heard.” As I listened to my dad, I piled four Honchos, an Advocate Men, and my Kristen Bjorn DVD col ection on the floor.
“I mean, Dottie Kubacki? How? Have you seen how large that woman is? Could a person even find her, excuse my French, vagina? Do I look like Jacques Cousteau to you?”
“Wel, why is she upset?” I was under the bed trying to reach an old issue of Freshmen.
“Why? Who knows where that woman gets her ideas from? Cal those people from that CSI show, they can solve a murder based on some toilet paper and a toenail. Maybe they can figure her out.”
“Al right, wel, you have to work this out with Mom.
She can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Dad!”
“Listen, you know how she gets. Give her a week, she’l find something else to be nutty about.”
“A week!” I found an old Playgirl in the back of my nightstand.
“Maybe two.”
It takes a lot of drama to be heard in my family.
“I’m going to wind up in the loony bin if she stays here one more night. Do you know what it is to lose a son?”
“Please,” my father asked. “Don’t rush me. I’m just beginning to enjoy losing my wife.”
Before I hung up, I got my dad to promise to cal my mom at work before the day was over. I fil ed a backpack with my lubes and condoms and stuck it as far back as it would go in the cabinet under the kitchen sink.
The phone rang. Cal er ID told me it was Tony.
Did I want to pick up? Yes.
“Hey.”
“You didn’t return my cal,” Tony said.
“I just got in.”
“Where were you?”
“What are you, my keeper?”
“Just concerned.”
“Oh.” That sounded nice coming from him. “I’m fine. You should have tried my cel.” I told him about the reading of Al en’s wil.
“Huh,” Tony said, “they sound like the family from hel.”
“It was pretty grisly.”
“If you go to the funeral, you’l have to see them again,” Tony said.
I told him that there wasn’t even going to be a funeral.
