Talker (4 page)

“What did he say?” Virginia asked.

“That it was too bad I wasn’t gay, because then it could go somewhere.” Brian had groaned in mortification. He’d never told a girl he loved her—except Virginia, after that day with the porn on the computer. It had been the one time the words hadn’t felt like a lie.

“Uhm, did you mention the gay thing?” she’d asked, giving him a big glass of water and a couple of Tylenol.

“I thought that was implicit in the ‘I love you’.” Brian scowled at her. Wasn’t it?

Virginia had raised her eyebrows and chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “G uess not,” she said at last. “Maybe you can’t really sel the ‘I love you’ to the guy unless you sel the ‘I’m gay’ to everyfuckingbody else.”

Well, it made sense. Tate was so flamboyant—makeup, glitzy, glittering shirts, rainbow earrings in his pierced lobe—all of it was designed to make people look at his gayness, and not at the vulnerable human underneath al the trappings of it.

“Besides,” Virginia said softly, “I’m not sure if it’s even real to you yet.”

Brian thought about Tate, standing at the counter, doing dishes and singing a song from Repo: The G enetic O pera in his frenetic, tone-deaf way.

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“It’s real,” he said, remembering the way Tate would close his eyes and bob his head as his hands were on autopilot over the cheap plastic plates.

“Yeah?” Virginia’s voice was edgy again, and he snapped his attention to her instead of his wayward, wistful memories. “Besides random party-guys, who in your life knows you’re gay?”

“There’s not that many people in my life, Virginia,” he told her honestly. “Just you, Tate, and my Aunt Lyndsey. The people I work with, I guess, but, you know, I’m not tight with them. Why do they need to know?”

Virginia sighed and ruffled his hair. “O migod, Brian—no wonder you didn’t recognize your own closet. You’ve lived in one all your life.”

Brian glared at her. “What does that mean?” G od! Virginia, Tate—why did he seem to like people who made him feel stupid?

Another sigh. “O kay. O kay okay okay okay okay. Here’s how I’m reading it. I think that you didn’t want to admit you’re gay because it would have meant needing more than absolutely necessary. I mean… seriously. Brian—you’re used to living on no money, with hardly any family, and just enough college preparation to make you feel total y stupid when you’re actual y in your classes….”

“I was homeschooled!” he protested, and she rolled her eyes.

“By an artist—and I know your aunt is bril iant, but you weren’t ready when you got here. Anyone could see it.”

“It’s not her fault I’m stupid,” he protested, because anything that sounded like a slam on his Aunt Lyndie just had to have another explanation.

Virginia shook her head then and made a horrible, strangled sound. “It’s a good thing we’re not together anymore,” she Talker |
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muttered, “because you are breaking my goddamned heart. Look, babe. Here’s the deal.” They were sitting on the ugly plaid couch, and she squared herself to face him, those dark brown eyes serious and unrelenting. “It’s like I said: he’s not going to buy it unless you can sell it. So, like, how ’bout you selling it, okay? Think about it. Next time a pretty girl flirts with you, tel her straight up you don’t swing that way. If it’s a guy, tel him you’re in love with another guy. If the subject of gay rights comes up in a conversation, actually open your goddamned mouth and talk. You make sure the whole damned world knows who you are, and maybe Tate wil see it in you.”

Brian looked at her blankly. “G irls flirt with me?” They must, he thought belatedly, because he’d ended up bedding more than his fair share, but he couldn’t remember how it had happened. O ne minute he’d be talking to a girl and enjoying her company, laughing at her jokes, smiling at her happily because he was having a good time, and the next minute, she’d have her tongue down his throat.

There hadn’t been any rhyme or reason to it, it just was. C ome to think about it, the boys that he’d kissed had been the same way.

The look of blank despair on Virginia’s face made him feel stupid al over again. “I’m at a loss,” she said, almost to herself. “I’m at a complete loss. You and me together? It was like me thinking I was in the kiddie pool when I was real y in Loch Ness. Sweartagod, it’s just no goddamned fair at all.”

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P a rt V

Wherever You Want To

BRIAN stil didn’t know what she’d meant by him being Loch Ness, but he’d kept it in mind. The problem was, he real y didn’t talk to anyone but Tate. He’d managed to put one girl off with “I’m sorry, but I’m actual y gay,” and she had shrugged and said it was too bad, but it didn’t feel like an earth-shattering personal moment.

Maybe he had to do it until it didn’t make his hands clammy, but he wasn’t sure that was ever going to happen.

And that wasn’t something that was going to be fixed right now. What needed to be fixed right now was Tate, and the terrible, stomach-churning fear that every time his roommate went into the bathroom to bring some stranger off, he’d be sel ing a little piece of his soul that would be nearly impossible to recover.

Brian had never felt so helpless about something so important in his life.

And that was what penetrated his confusion. He was helpless.

There was one person in his life who could help him when he was like this. It was the person who had arrived at the hospital when he’d been six with a suitcase of his clothes and his favorite toys and said, “C ’mon, baby. Let’s get out of here, okay? It’s you and me, and I hate this place.”

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Lyndsey C ooper was Brian’s only living family. She made a thin living off her paintings, and lived in a small, three-room cabin on a friend’s property in G rass Val ey. The day she’d come to pick Brian up from the hospital, she’d been wearing a loose, flowered dress and wore her hair in bleached dreadlocks. At home, she wore jeans. In public, it was pure flower child. Although the hair had changed, the clothing had not, and when Brian had asked her about it once, she’d replied with a shrug.

I’m just dressing the part, baby. The world expects certain looks from certain people.

And now, thinking about his Aunt Lyndie, Brian felt the beginnings of a plan knitting with tiny stitches in the pudding of his brain. He pulled out his cel phone and dialed Lyndie’s number, hoping she wouldn’t worry because he was cal ing three days after his usual Sunday call.

“Hey, baby, what’s shakin’?” Lyndie always sounded happy to hear from him. He should have known better than to worry.

“Lyndie,” he said with a swal ow, “I… I need to come up today, is that okay?”

“Absolutely. Is anything wrong?”

Brian blinked, and realized that this was what Virginia was talking about when it came to announcing stuff to the world. “Well, I’ve got something to tel you, and some advice to ask you, and I need some help. But mostly, it’s about my roommate, and….”

“And it’s a long story. No worries. See you in an hour, okay?” It was at least an hour to G rass Valley.

“Make it two,” he said, relieved and happy just to hear her voice, making it sound like there was nothing they couldn’t handle together. It was how she’d gotten him through his childhood, how he’d made it through his teen years—every laid-back, Talker |
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nonjudgmental, quietly optimistic fiber of Brian’s being, he owed to his Aunt Lyndie’s unconditional love.

“Two?”

“Yeah. I’ve got some shit to do in the meantime.”

The first thing he had to do was get the night off work. He made some calls—one of his coworkers had a new baby and was constantly broke. Brian knew for a fact that Tuesdays were Ray’s usual day off, and Ray was grateful for the extra shift.

“What’s the deal?” Ray asked over the phone. “G ot a hot date?”

“Naw,” Brian mumbled, his palms sweating already. “Just boyfriend troubles.”

“Bummer,” Ray said, his voice unsurprised. “Wel , good luck there, buddy.” There was a cry in the background—but close enough to the phone to give Brian the image of a baby being rocked by Ray Ruiz, the closest thing he had to a friend at work. “At least you not going to end up with no baby-makes-three!” he said, his voice rising as the noise escalated.

Brian laughed politely and rang off, wishing Ray had been able to talk for a minute. E ven though Brian was horrible at small talk, he wasn’t looking forward to this next part of his plan.

If you want him to buy it, you need to sel it.

I’m just dressing the part, baby.

Two of the people he cared about most were talking in his ear, and he couldn’t shout them down. Besides, he thought miserably as he stood in front of the mirror with the clippers that Tate kept in the bathroom for daily touch-ups, it’s only hair.

It was only hair—but it was his hair, and he liked it, and he even liked it long, although he usual y kept it that way because Talker |
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haircuts were expensive and it was easier to get it cut short and go a long time between them than it was to keep them up. As he took the clippers, set at three, cleanly along the side of his head from his temple to his nape, and then along the other side, he tried not to whimper. Long swaths of wheat-colored hair fel into the sink, and his face emerged from the fal of it, stark and rectangular, with an angular chin and a lean mouth. Too exposed, he thought, shivering, and he looked dolefully at the hair. As he cleaned it up, he consoled himself with the idea that, when this was over and he’d made his grand romantic gesture, he’d fix it. When Tate was all right, he’d let it grow out on the sides and treat himself to a nice, conservative wedge-cut.

He grabbed some of Tate’s smal black elastic bands and put the remaining long strip of hair from his forehead to his crown in a punky-looking ponytail, and took stock.

It wasn’t enough, he thought dismal y. He was definitely going to need Aunt Lyndie’s help. But first he had to come clean—and maybe not with his secret alone.

The drive up to G rass Val ey was real y long without Tate plugging his iPod into the cassette player and talking Brian’s ear off. The last few times he’d been up to see Lyndie, Tate had been by his side, excited about getting out of Sacramento, since, short of the col eges they went to on their track meets, it was the only town he’d ever known.

Lyndie was working in her garden, wearing a pair of man’s workout shorts and a man’s sleeveless tank top, both of which were full of holes and bleach stains, and Brian wondered if Lyndsey hadn’t been raiding her neighbor’s G oodwil castoffs again. She’d done it when he was a kid, with impunity and no remorse. As Brian had grown, most of his “play clothes” had come from the castoff pile that got put out with the trash three times a year. The neighbors Talker |
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had seen him in their clothes after a bit and started just leaving the good stuff on Lyndsey’s porch. She was grateful enough to paint them a lovely little watercolor of their house in the sunshine, down the red-dirt hil and surrounded by pine trees. The neighbors had been impressed enough to start throwing in some new clothes in an appropriate size for Brian—and he’d managed to make it through his weekly visits with the homeschooling cadre without too much ridicule.

He’d been grateful enough to mow their lawn whenever he mowed his aunt’s, and the cycle of being good neighbors and resourceful human beings had continued. It was a part of his upbringing he’d always be grateful for.

As was Lyndsey’s enthusiastic, no-holds-barred hug as he stepped out of his twenty-year-old green Toyota.

“Hey there, baby!” she said sweetly. Her hair—which should have been gray right now—was dyed a solid, raven’s-wing black, and it hung down her back from a band at her crown. Her face showed her fifty years, but her smile was just as young as that hair.

“The haircut’s new—you going to keep it?”

Brian shook his head. “It’s sort of a statement,” he said, quirking his lips. He threw an arm over her shoulder and realized for the first time how fragile she felt. Tiny and small-boned she had always been, but maybe it was Brian’s new sensibility to Tate that left him reeling with his aunt’s mortality and vulnerability here in the hills alone.

He would definitely visit more often, he told himself firmly. If nothing else, he knew she’d share vegetables from the garden with him, and Tate always liked fresh tomatoes.

Aunt Lyndie took him into the kitchen and poured him some iced tea into one of the jelly jars that were so old, they were actually glass. She was good at tea—had always had at least two dozen Talker |
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types in her cupboards, and knew the uses for everything from chamomile to rose hips. Today’s blend was a mix of both of those, actual y, and Brian added a liberal dose of sugar and lemon and sipped appreciatively while Lyndie poured herself a glass and sat patiently at the small, hand-carved wooden table and waited for him to speak. (Much of what was in Lyndie’s home was either hand-carved or hand-me-down. The artist community in Placer C ounty was close-knit and believed very firmly in utilizing resources to their fullest.)

“So, baby,” she prompted gently after a moment, “what’s the matter?”

Brian sighed. Sell it to the world and maybe he’ll buy it. “I’m gay, Aunt Lyndie—but that’s not actual y the problem.”

Aunt Lyndie blinked and frowned a little, as though trying to put together a puzzle. “So, al those girls you were with, growing up?”

Brian shrugged. “Yeah—I don’t know how that happened.

They just….” He flushed. “They wanted me, and, you know, they were nice, but they weren’t… weren’t….”

“Weren’t what you wanted.” O h G od. Aunt Lyndie knew. He should have known she’d get it.

Brian swallowed thickly. “Yeah.”

Lyndie smiled and patted his hand. “Well, if it makes you happy, I’m okay with the gay thing—you should know that. I’m happy you found that out for yourself, and I’m real y glad it’s not a problem,” she said sincerely, and took another sip of her tea.