—What?
Chase gripped the door, preparing to slam it in my face. His eyes and cheeks were clear, but I knew his face wasn’t the prime casualty when he was upset. And sure enough, when I looked at the knuckles on the hand holding the door, they were fat and red from whatever he’d been punching.
—Errol’s a prick, I said.
—Feeling guilty? I knew you gave him the idea.
—Are you gonna let me in?
He watched me a moment, then turned back inside. He left the door open.
I hadn’t been in the apartment since the night we went to Stefan Knows last November, and I saw that in the past ten months he’d replaced much of his perfectly good furniture with newer, even pricier stuff. This saddened me, but not half as much as the photographs of Sadie, which still hung on his refrigerator.
I took a beer from the fridge and sat on the couch next to Chase. He was watching the last NFL exhibition game of the preseason, San Francisco versus Chicago. The Bears had Brian Urlacher, a six-foot-four, 258-pound sneer with a barbed wire tattoo on his right biceps. The second quarter was beginning, and Urlacher was subbed out of the game so his backup could get some reps. The camera followed Urlacher as he jogged to the sideline and took off his helmet.
—I might get one like that, I said, meaning the barbed wire tattoo. Cornelius says the guy he got his from would give me a discount.
—Who, Fabrizio? Chase asked.
—I don’t know his name. Corny just said the parlor was downtown.
—That’s Fabrizio. There’s a lady named Rouge in Hillsborough who charges half as much. She’s the one who did Devonté’s.
Devonté’s tattoo was the consensus best on the team. It was modeled on the Gothic cross that thrust up from the nave of the King Chapel, and was so finely drawn I would find myself standing behind him in the shower line and discovering details I hadn’t noticed before, like the exquisite shading that fell on the right side of the cross, or how the top edge of the top shaft was slightly crumbled, just like the one on the real cross. It was kind of Chase to tell me.
—You kind of look like Urlacher, I told him.
—I look like a mean penis?
I laughed, and Chase allowed himself to grin. He was resting his cold beer bottle on top of his swollen knuckles.
—Are you and Sadie still talking? I asked.
—Not since November.
—Why are the photos still on the fridge? He shrugged.
—Might as well be something up there. It’s not like I’m gonna have any other girl’s photos anytime soon.
—There are, like, three thousand girls at King, Chase.
—You find one that wants to be with an ugly retard, you let me know.
—You’re not—
—He’s a fucking gargoyle, Chase said, gesturing at the TV screen. You know the only reason a girl would wanna be with a guy who looks like Urlacher? Because he’s an NFL player. I bet he gets a marriage proposal every time he steps out of his house. What would they get from me? An ugly retard who played at a losing program and never even started? Sadie didn’t want to be with me—she moved to fucking Boston so she didn’t have to be anywhere near me. I call and call and this robot says the number’s no longer in service, “Cannot be completed as dialed.”
I watched him, waiting to see if he’d realize the slip he’d made about Boston; but he was too upset to understand what he was saying.
Chase stood suddenly and bumped the coffee table, spilling my beer.
—I’ll get a—, I began, but he brusquely brushed past me into the kitchen and returned with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of cleaning fluid. He knelt to mop up the mess, and I stood behind him, watching how carefully he cleaned. I had stayed too long already, and knew I shouldn’t have come here in the first place. And wasn’t this what Chase deserved? Hadn’t he practically imprisoned Henry while they’d been together?
But “imprisoned,” that was Thao’s word, one that seemed off when he’d used it that summer, and which seemed even more wrong to me now. Because, for how interwoven their lives were, Thao and Chase had met just the one time, during that disastrous night at Stefan Knows. Otherwise, Thao’s sole knowledge of Chase had come from whatever Henry told him. Thao didn’t know, like I did, the Chase that Henry had fallen in love with, the Chase you could only get in moments like this, the vulnerable, sweet, self-despising child who kept up sham photographs of an ex-girlfriend so he could have a reminder of the boyfriend he’d lost.
And was that fair? Didn’t he deserve something better, something more?
And didn’t I have some responsibility to help him? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had someone I could talk to about what it was like to be a gay kid on the team? Someone who could understand my life in a way that Thao, no matter how much I told him, never could?
—Hey, I said, tapping his shoulder. Chase—
SEVEN
My first chance to tell Thao I had come out to Chase was in Carsonville, around midnight. Like I said, the honesty Thao inspired in me was what made our adventure so exhilarating, and as I used the key he’d left in the mailbox to let myself into his
