Guys on Top 02 - Guys on the Side (3 page)

Thinking of Stewart, he went to the kitchen and looked out the back window, spotting Doug, still outside, loading his bucket and car washing items back into the garage.

Corey pulled up the window and leaned into the screen. “Hey!” he shouted.

Doug stepped out of the garage and peered upward, using his hand as a visor over his eyes. “Hey,” he shouted back. “Where were you this morning? I thought we were gonna workout.”

“Zach ambushed me,” Corey said. “Gave me his own workout.”

Doug grimaced and waved his hands in front of his face. “TMI, Corey.”

Corey cackled. “You want to have a beer with me?”

Doug shrugged. “It’s a little early.”

“But it’s Saturday! And I need to talk to someone who isn’t trying to blow me or fuck me all the time.”

Doug laughed, shaking his head. “Well I certainly qualify for that. Come down in a half hour, I want to shower.”

“Okay.” Corey shut the window and moved down the hall to his meditation room.

He set up his candles and incense, and sat down on his cushions, closing his eyes. He could at least get twenty minutes in to sort his head out. Meditation, then beer. Lots of beer. Then maybe he’d be able to purge Zach’s chaotic energy from his own, where it merged and lingered like clingy little balls of subatomic stress.

It should do the trick, at least until Zach came back from work later. That was another thing. Zach had been staying at Corey’s nearly every night. He wasn’t sure how to tell him he needed space, that he wished Zach would stay at his own apartment once in a while. It would surely lead to another argument.

Corey tried to be hopeful that Zach would change, as he’d promised. But he suspected it was only a matter of time until the whole crazy jealousy cycle started up again.

And then Corey would have a very hard decision to make.

Chapter Two

Angelo Nardovino pulled up outside his Uncle Leonard’s house and parked his vintage Corvette next to the sidewalk. He glanced around at the neighborhood, gauging whether or not the car would be safe here.

It wasn’t the worst neighborhood he’d ever seen: old two and three story houses converted into apartment buildings, urban and weathered looking but not rundown. He spotted a pair of college students wheeling bikes out the front door of an apartment next door, and decided that was a good sign. But he also spotted a grubby looking older guy across the road, strolling down the sidewalk with a 30-pack of Budweiser, and decided that was a
bad
sign. Clearly a mixed bag of characters around here. But the Vette had an alarm, and he’d be just inside, hopefully not for very long.

A young Asian man in his twenties passed by him on the sidewalk, and stopped to examine the Corvette. He appeared startled when he saw Angelo sitting in the driver’s seat— clearly he’d thought the vehicle was empty. “Nice car!” he said.

Angelo gave him a smile and a wave, and the kid moved on. Angelo wondered if he’d have done so had the car been empty.
Stop freaking out over your car like an elitist prick, your uncle needs your help, and family comes first.

Still, he was hesitant to leave it on the street. The Corvette was the one thing he’d splurged on when he finally started making real money, a boyhood fantasy he’d allowed himself to indulge in. He had insurance of course, but that wasn’t the point. He loved his fucking car, material possession or not.

But he had to go inside and quit dicking around out here on the street. He kind of wished he’d dressed more casually—he was still in his suit pants and shirt and tie from work, but that couldn’t be helped. His cousin, Tommy—Uncle Leonard’s son—had called him late in the day and insisted he needed his help with his father, urgently, so Angelo was forced to cancel his later appointments and come straight here. Tommy hadn’t given him many details, but he’d sounded worked up, so Angelo told him he’d come by and help however he could.

He and his cousin Tommy had grown up together in the same neighborhood, like brothers more or less, though Angelo didn’t see Tommy much these days, and the truth was they’d become very different people in adulthood. But the golden rule still applied—family comes first, and if they call? You drop whatever other shit you’ve got going on.

He loosened his tie and took it off, stuffing it in the glove compartment, then undid the top buttons on his shirt. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Angelo tried to muss up his black hair, but it was extremely short, just a bit longer than a crewcut, and there wasn’t a lot he could do to change his look. At the last minute, he decided to remove his glasses. He only needed them for distance and driving anyway, and figured he’d look less like a rich douche without the designer frames.

He got out and locked the car, then gazed up at the tall, green apartment house. It was still weird to think of his uncle living in an apartment, and not in the big white house with his wife, Angelo’s Aunt Sherry. But Angelo had heard the gossip through the family grapevine. It made him wince a bit, hoping Tommy hadn’t called him here to give his father therapy or something. It would be a conflict of interest, firstly. And secondly...well, sure, family was family, but Angelo didn’t ask Tommy to fix his car for free simply because he was a mechanic. But Angelo being a psychiatrist, he couldn’t imagine he was here for any other reason. He hoped that wasn’t the case, because Uncle Len’s problems sounded ugly, and though he loved the guy to death, Angelo really did
not
want to get involved in this one.

From the recent reports via the gossip mill—which consisted of his mother and his other aunts—Leonard was doing much better now, and had managed to land a decent job again after a dry spell that lasted months. It wasn’t more than a year ago that Leonard had been a high-earning manager at a financial corporation downtown, and living happily—or so it seemed—with his wife of thirty-plus years in the suburbs. That all ended when Uncle Len was caught in the locker room of the corporate fitness center getting a blowjob from a young guy who worked in accounting. For Angelo’s very Italian, very
Catholic
extended family, it was the scandal of the century. Angelo had managed to stay out of it thus far. But as he climbed the wooden porch and rang the bell to Leonard’s apartment, he feared that was all about to change.

Footsteps approached, then the door opened, revealing his cousin Tommy, dressed in jeans and a black, long-sleeved Lynyrd Synyrd tee shirt bearing a skull in the center.

“Hey ya fuckin meat head, get in here!” Tommy grabbed Angelo as he stepped inside, catching him in a hug, then slapping his cheek. “Look at you, still beautiful, you son of a bitch.”

“Hey, Tommy.” Angelo slapped his shoulder. “How you doin’, man?”

Tommy grabbed Angelo’s bicep and squeezed. “Look at you, fucking monster.” Flexing his own arm into a muscle pose, Tommy lined it up next to Angelo’s. “How do you manage to have bigger guns than me when you sit on your ass all day, bastard?”

Angelo shoved him playfully. “It’s called a gym, and you’re not exactly wasting away yourself there.”

“Yeah, I’m a fucking toothpick compared to you. Come on in, Dad’s in the living room.” Tommy moved down a hallway, waving for Angelo to follow.

Despite his self-deprecation, Angelo’s cousin, Tommy, was a fairly well-built guy, and walked with a swagger that said he knew it. While they shared some familial similarities—the olive skin, high cheekbones—they didn’t really look alike, with different eye color and facial structure. Angelo’s nose was a bit shorter and thicker than Tommy’s prominent honker. ‘
I have a Roman nose,
’ Tommy would say. ‘
It’s roamin’ all over my face!
’ Tommy wore his thick black hair long around his ears, and with his heavily lidded brown eyes and long dark lashes, Tommy looked more the quintessential goombah of the two of them.

Angelo on the other hand had inherited the pale blue eyes of his Irish mother, his mug rounder than Tommy’s, and despite a solid bone structure, wide brow and thick chin, his family still called him ‘baby face’ sometimes, a childhood nickname that wouldn’t quit.

Angelo followed his cousin into a cozy living room, where he spotted Uncle Leonard, seated on a recliner, watching golf on television. Leonard looked up when they entered, his tired brown eyes widening. “Angelo!” He stood, absentmindedly running a hand over his scalp to smooth his somewhat disheveled, thinning dark hair. “What are you doing here, kid? Come here, give me a hug!”

What am I doing here?
Great, whatever Tommy’s plan was, he hadn’t bothered to share it with his father. Angelo was not keen to be part of an ambush. He stepped into his uncle’s warm embrace, slapping his back affectionately. “Uncle Len, so good to see you.”

Leonard wore polyester pants with black socks, a short sleeved checkered shirt untucked on one side. As he pulled back from the embrace and smiled, Angelo could see the stress in his uncle’s eyes, the dark circles and droopy flesh—he’d aged considerably since Angelo had last seen him. It broke his heart a little, as Leonard had always seemed invincible to him, vibrant and full of life.

“Look at you all cleaned up and handsome,” Leonard said, lightly slapping Angelo’s cheek the way Tommy had done when he arrived. “Tell me you’ve got some gorgeous girl and you’re gonna get married soon. We could use a wedding in this family, it’s been too long.”

Angelo chuckled. “No girlfriend right now, sorry. Been working a lot, that’s all.”

“You can’t wait too long to start a family,” Leonard said, pointing at him. “You’re not gonna stay young and beautiful forever, you know. Look at me! I’m fallin’ apart here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Uncle Len, you look great,” Angelo lied.

Glancing at Tommy now, Leonard’s expression darkened. “I hope you boys have plans and you’ve come to take my son out of here, he’s been harassing me all afternoon, and I’m more than sick of listening to his shit!”

“Oh I bet you want me to leave,” Tommy said, approaching his father. “Then you can go off to your little
massage
appointment, right?”

“No, you ruined that for me, didn’t you? I had to cancel. Ah.” Leonard waved a hand at his son and moved back to his recliner, plopping down with a scowl.

“Why don’t you tell Angelo about this so called massage therapist you’ve been seeing? See what he thinks about it.”

Pointing a finger at Tommy, Leonard said, “Your sister shouldn’t have told you about that. This is what I get for confiding in my kids. Angelo, do you hear the disrespect I get here? In my day, kids respected their father!”

“In my day, fathers didn’t leave their wives after thirty-five years and ruin their families! Angelo, talk some sense into my dad.”

“Can it, Tommy,” Leonard said. “You and your sister need to accept I’m never going back to your mother. And that I’m—”

“Don’t you say it,” Tommy shouted, cutting him off. “Don’t you dare say it, Dad. Angelo, tell my father that people don’t suddenly turn gay at sixty-one fucking years old. He had a nervous breakdown or something, he’s just confused, right? Tell him.”

“Uh...” Angelo’s head swiveled back and forth between them like he was watching a tennis match. “Tommy...it wouldn’t be right for me to counsel Uncle Len, he’s family, it’s a conflict of interest. I can recommend someone good though if he wants to do some therapy sessions.”

“He doesn’t need therapy,” Tommy shouted. “He needs to go back with my mom, she’s heartbroken.” He turned and pointed at his father. “And he needs to go to confession!”

“Bah!” Leonard waved him off again. “What I need is for you to shut your trap. I can handle my own problems. I don’t need some priest or some fucking shrink—no offense, Angelo—telling me how to live my life.”

“Oh, but you need
this?
” Tommy pulled a small white business card out of his pocket and waved it in his father’s face. “Throwing your money away on some conman? Yeah, Dad, you’re right as rain, you don’t need
any
help from anyone.”

“Leave Corey out of this,” Leonard said. “He’s helped me get back on my feet and make peace with my situation more than anyone else the past year. Sure as shit more supportive than my children.”

“Who’s Corey?” Angelo asked softly.

Tommy went silent for a moment, glaring at his father, who ignored him, eyes back on the television. Letting out a sigh, Tommy turned to Angelo. “Come on upstairs with me for a minute. You want something to drink?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Dad, Angelo and I are going upstairs for a bit, you need anything? You hungry?”

“Oh, now you care what I need?” Leonard said without turning his eyes from the TV. “In case you forgot, this is my house you barged into. I know where the food is if I want something.”

“Whatever,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “Come on, Angelo.”

Offering a last glance at his uncle, Angelo sighed and followed his cousin up the stairs. Once they’d entered an office at the end of the hall, Angelo closed the door behind them and lowered his voice. “Tommy, you called me out of work for this, I’ve got clients I had to cancel. Your dad seems fine, so what the hell is going on?”

“Come here for a second.” Tommy pulled out a chair and sat at the desk in front of an open computer. He tapped at the keys, and moments later, turned back to Angelo. “Pull up that chair over there.”

Dragging the chair in the corner over to the desk, Angelo sat down next to Tommy.

“This.” Tommy pointed to the screen. “
This
is the problem.”

Leaning in, Angelo gazed at the screen. “Corey Stengel. Holistic Massage.” His eyes scanned the website, finally focusing on the photo in the top right corner, a head-shot of an exceptionally handsome blond man with hypnotic gray eyes and a perfect smile. “Who is this guy? Why you showing me this?”

Swiveling in the desk chair, Tommy faced his cousin, brown eyes hard and focused. “Fiona stopped by to see Dad last week, and she actually got him talking. He told her some fucked up shit. He’s been going to see this guy.” Tommy tapped a finger on the screen.

“So your dad gets massages. Big deal. He’s been stressed out, Tommy.”