A Tale of Two Trucks (9 page)

It had been a favorite daydream of mine (call it a fantasy) when I was young: that my dad would come find me, marry my mom, and all four of us—including Gramma, of course—would live in his huge mansion. He’d be rich and famous, maybe a professional baseball player, maybe the president of a huge company, and he’d play catch with me every day. He’d also see my drawings, recognize my talent, and send me to Paris to study art. I used to daydream about him coming to my school in a limousine, rushing into my classroom to meet me for the first time, making all of my friends and classmates jealous.

Of course, I’d have to water down the story and make it much more boring for the guys to believe it. Maybe he could be a traveling salesman, recently divorced and trying to find some meaning in life, like me. That might work. The other part I had to figure out, though, was how to die without Joe finding out. I’d always thought people who committed suicide were selfish—even if they didn’t leave a mess, who was going to find their body? And how could you put someone you knew through that kind of trauma?

So, first of all, I had to go someplace where nobody would find me. Maybe the woods in a state park, but in another state, so that even if a park ranger happened to stumble across my body, the news wouldn’t be seen by anyone around here. I’d get a biodegradable sleeping bag or something, dig my own grave, and take an overdose of sleeping pills to slip away in cozy comfort. I couldn’t very well bury myself, but if wild animals ate my carcass, at least I’d be doing
them
some good, and anyway I’d be dead so I wouldn’t feel a thing. My body would become a part of nature, and my soul—if there is such a thing as an afterlife—would be with Gramma, I hoped; maybe even my mom would be there. It sounded like a win-win.

I started making a mental checklist:

(1) Help Rick find another job.

(2) Tell Joe I was moving away and help him move his stuff back into his own house.

(3) Put my house up for a short sale and figure out which charities I was going to give my money to. Also, pack up my stuff and donate it.

(4) Research state parks and find one suitable for my final resting place, preferably on the other side of the country.

(5) Finish my current work projects and tell my regular clients (like Fred Thornton) I wouldn’t be available anymore.

And that, really, was it: my life wrapped up in a tidy little package. Once I’d decided on my course of action, I felt relieved and strangely calm. It seemed like the logical thing to do, and knowing I had a way to escape the doom of my miserable life, I felt capable of facing Joe—even a Joe bursting with happiness from having found his True Love—with a cheerful smile on my face.

That would be my one act of selflessness: Joe would never know. He wouldn’t know how much I loved him or how desperate he’d made me by the simple fact that he couldn’t love me back. After all, it wasn’t
his
fault. I’d known all along he was unattainable, off-limits, but I couldn’t help falling for him. It was my own stupid fault for letting myself get involved with him at all. Or else it was Fate. From the moment I’d met him in that lot at the car dealership, I’d been fated to end my life this way. So be it. I had no regrets, despite wishing with all my heart that things could have turned out differently.

Having settled all this in my mind, I started picking up the tissues I’d strewn around the living room floor. Had I actually cried so much over a situation that simply couldn’t be helped? I laughed at myself, albeit hollowly. How stupid! Now I was going to look awful tomorrow (or rather, even worse than I already did) and for what? I could’ve saved myself the trouble!

I’d just made a pile of the tissues and was about to get up to bring the wastebasket over when I heard the front door being opened.
Joe
? It had to be, since he was the only other person with a key. Startled, I looked up to see him burst through the door, panting. As soon as he saw me, he fell to his knees to join me on the floor.

“Mike! Are you all right? I-I… I’m so
sorry
,” he gasped, glancing at the little pyramid of spent tissues and, I realized, his shirt that I still had draped over my shoulders.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked back, since that was the first coherent thought that popped into my head.

“I… I took Faith to the bar after the movie, ’cuz she said she wanted to meet the guys, and you weren’t there, and Hank yelled at me. He called me a dumbass!”

I simply stared at him. I couldn’t process all that he was saying, let alone Hank calling him names!

“He was right,” Joe continued, sounding so disheartened that I wanted to put my arms around him. “It’s just… I-I never even
considered
…. I mean, I’d just always assumed, y’know, that… that you were only interested in… guys that were, y’know… like
you
. But they all ganged up on me, and Hank said I was the meanest son of a bitch to dump you and go off with some broad, especially after all you’d done for me, a-and he said… he said….”

Here his voice faltered, and I saw that his hands were trembling. He sniffed, staring at my pile of tissues.

“He said I had to come to you right away, because y-you were prob-probably… bawlin’ your eyes out….”

Well. So much for my best laid plans. I expected the world to come crashing down on top of me, but amazingly, it desisted. (For the moment, at least.) But having met with my Worst Case Scenario and still being alive despite the mortal embarrassment, I took a deep breath and tried to formulate my answer.

“It’s all right, Joe,” I said as persuasively as I could. “I’m okay! Really. I just… I needed to get it out of my system, I guess. I knew right from the get-go that you weren’t… well, that you weren’t one of
us
. I shouldn’t have expected anything else. And I
didn’t
—not really! It’s just…. I’m a selfish person, Joe. And I… I just wished things could’ve been different. That’s all.”

There was a moment’s pause, which felt to me as though everything had come to a standstill. Not a pause, but the end. Like the end of an old VHS movie, when all the credits and music are done and you have nothing but blackness and silence.

“But, Mike,” Joe finally managed, breaking the silence, “I… I can’t stand to think… that you’re so miserable… on account of
me
. I… I want you to be
happy
!”

I smiled, and it was genuine, if somewhat sad.

“Thanks, Joe. I know you do. But it’s not like you can do a whole heck of a lot about it.”

He shook his head, rather violently.

“N-no, you don’t understand! Mike, I realized, tonight, that… that it wasn’t any
fun
, being with Faith. I kept thinking about what
you
would say about stuff we saw, and wishing you were there… ’cuz it’s always
fun
when I’m with you. Mike, I want to be with
you
!”

He looked me straight in the eyes as he said that. And I must have believed him, because the next moment, I fainted.

Chapter 14

W
HEN
I came to, I was warm and comfortable, but it felt like there were two ice picks wedged into my skull, right behind my eyes. I groaned and immediately someone’s hand smoothed back my hair.

“Mike? You all right?” came Joe’s voice from somewhere above me.

“Ungh…. I need… Excedrin!” I moaned.

I heard him go downstairs rather noisily, as though in a hurry, and meanwhile I curled up into a tighter ball. Apparently, I was in my own bed. I was somewhat disoriented, but right now my main priority was to get rid of this migraine.

Joe came back with water and two pills—O blessed Excedrin!—and after holding me up so I could swallow them, he carefully laid me back down.

“Thanks,” I croaked. “It’ll kick in in about half an hour.”

“You scared me there for a moment,” he said, his voice subdued.

“What happened?” I asked in an equally low voice. My whole head was throbbing.

“You passed out on me in the living room. You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

I thought for a moment. My mind (the whole pounding monstrosity of it) was blank.

“I can’t remember….”

I honestly couldn’t remember, for the life of me, what I’d been doing before I’d woken up in this abject misery. Even trying to think hurt, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open since the light pierced them like knives. I must have looked as pathetic as I felt since Joe sighed and didn’t press me.

“Anything else I can do?”

For a wild moment, I wanted to ask him to be my teddy bear, but I didn’t have the guts, even to put it in the form of a joke.

“Could you get me a cold washcloth?” I asked instead. He immediately went to my bathroom and came back with a wonderfully cold, wet washcloth, which I folded and placed over my eyes and forehead. “Ahh! Much better, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was something odd about his tone, like he wanted to say more but was holding back. I was grateful, though, since I was in no shape for coherent dialogue.

“Anything else?” he asked, still with a hint of that unmentioned mystery. I tried to focus enough to reply.

“The light—would you please turn off the light? It hurts my eyes,” I moaned. In a matter of seconds we were plunged into wonderful darkness, which I could tell even through the washcloth and my eyelids. “Thanks!” I said with relief.

“Mike….” Joe began, then paused.

“Yeah?” I responded, feeling somewhat more human now that my eyeballs weren’t being assaulted.

“I’m sorry.”

This only confused me.

“For…?”

“For… everything. For being a dumbass. Being insensitive. For leading you on, only to let you down like this.”

Something about the term “dumbass” jogged my memory, and the events of the night came rushing back at me like a freight train. I whimpered involuntarily, unable to withstand the whirlwind of emotions.

“Hey, I… I’m sorry,” he whispered, much closer now. I opened my eyes a crack, pushing the washcloth up an inch, and could just make out Joe’s face in the darkness. It was almost right in front of mine, like he’d knelt down on the floor next to the bed. He was waiting patiently for me to say something, so I took a deep breath (hoping I wouldn’t throw up) and tried to go over what he’d said earlier, downstairs.

“So… the guys knew?”

“Yeah. They all did, I guess. I was the only one too dumb to see it.”

I winced inwardly.

“You weren’t
supposed
to find out.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. But why, Mike? Why didn’t you
tell
me?”

If I’d been feeling normal, I might’ve shrugged, but I didn’t dare to right now.

“What for?” I responded. “It’s not like it would’ve made any difference. You can’t help being straight, any more than I can help being gay.”

He pondered this for a moment.

“I still wish you would’ve told me,” he finally said. “You could’ve given me the chance to try.”

His words rolled around in my head, like so many bowling balls set loose in a giant pinball machine, but I couldn’t grasp their meaning as a coherent whole.

“Huh?” was the best I could manage.

“If you’d told me,” he said slowly, as though to a child, “I would’ve at least
tried
, y’know!”

Did that mean what I thought it did? Or was I twisting his words to make them mean what I wanted them to? Or was this entire conversation just a delusion, brought on by a booze-induced coma?

“I mean, I’d still like to give it a try,” Joe was saying, in a voice so kind and gentle that I dared to open my eyes again. As though on cue, his hand reached out to stroke my cheek, very tenderly, with the backs of his fingers.

“Y-you mean…,” I mumbled, feeling my heart start to thump out of control.

“Yeah! I wanna at least give it a shot—give
us
a shot.”

Even in the darkened room, I could sense the electric tension passing between the two of us, like an experiment I had seen in science class: two electromagnets alternated in attracting the magnetized rotor until it set the rotor spinning. My heart was racing like that rotor right now.

“Look, since I’m the amateur here,” Joe began, sounding slightly embarrassed, “why don’t you tell me where to start?”

My reply sounded outrageous, even to my own ears.

“Will you be my teddy bear?”

“Huh?”

“Just… snuggle up behind me,” I said, since that was what I wanted most—what I’d dreamed of, literally, ever since I’d gotten to know him.

He walked around to the other side of the bed and slipped in, molding his body around mine. He slid his right arm underneath me, cradling me in a wonderful, warm, comforting hug. I sighed in satisfaction, and felt his chest move against my back as he breathed.

“This is nice,” he said quietly in my ear.

“Yeah,” I murmured, hoping I would never wake from this dream. Because it had to be a dream, of course. Joe was lying in my bed, his arms wrapped around me, burying his nose in my hair. His warmth was welcome against my body, and I could feel my heart rate slow down as I got used to feeling him there. We were a perfect fit, as I’d long suspected.

“I could get used to this” were the last words I heard him say before I drifted off to sleep.

I
N
the morning, I was feeling well enough to take stock of my situation: Joe was still sleeping, curled up around me, proving that it hadn’t been a dream or hallucination. My headache was gone, thankfully, but my face was all puffy, as it usually is after I cry. Oh, well—I would take what I could get!

Joe stirred, as if sensing that I was awake, and startled me by nipping the back of my neck with his lips.

“Good morning,” he chuckled, amused to feel me jump.

“And good morning to you,” I responded, willing my heart to slow down and get back into my ribcage—out of my throat, where it had lodged itself—without much success. I had to swallow hard before I could manage to say, “I hope you slept well?”

“Like a log,” he replied. “And by the way, in case you were wondering… I think this is gonna work.”