“I’m really sorry, Dick,” he said. “I didn’t know this was going to happen. I—”
“No problem, babe,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure what I could do to entertain someone I’d never met before, but it wasn’t a major issue.
Joshua was standing on the front porch with Estelle Bronson, one of the day care owners, when I arrived at five after four. I’d have been there ten minutes earlier had the city not been digging up exactly the same three-block section of the street they’d dug up the year before and, naturally, a major intersection was involved.
Seeing me pull up, Joshua bounded off the porch and headed full gallop for the thankfully closed front gate. Estelle’s call drew him up short, and he stood stock-still until she caught up with him and opened the gate as I leaned over to open the passenger door.
“Bye!” Joshua called to her as he clambered onto the front seat. Estelle and I exchanged a quick greeting, and then, seeing Joshua was safely seatbelted—admittedly not the best of fits—she closed the door and headed back to the house.
“Where’s Uncle Jonathan?” he asked as we pulled away from the curb. Though it was not at all unusual for me to pick him up when Jonathan couldn’t for one reason or another, he always asked.
“He was busy,” I explained, as I explained every time it happened. Joshua’s response was always the same, too.
“Oh.”
The ride home was largely taken up with a detailed and dramatized accounting of his day at “school,” accompanied by the requisite gestures and facial expressions. Although he still had not totally mastered the concept of linear thought, he was getting much better at it, and I had gotten pretty good at stepping over the chasms and seeing around the corners of his narrative. This one centered on the Bronsons’ acquisition—whether permanently or on loan wasn’t clear—of a rabbit and a tortoise. It seems they had been the basis of a story about a race, which he related to me in detail, omitting only the moral of the tale.
As soon as we got home, I turned the oven on and waited for it to heat. We’d bought a good-sized pork tenderloin the last time we were at the store in anticipation of Eric’s visit, so all I basically had to do was put it and the potatoes in, which I held off doing until the first commercial break in the evening news. To forestall the possibility of Joshua’s starving to death before dinner, I gave him a large plum and a small glass of milk after he’d helped me set the table.
At six twenty, the door buzzer rang, announcing Eric’s arrival. I opened the door to find a rangy, reddish-blond about Jonathan’s age and height. He had freckles and the kind of almost impish face that always reminded me of a leprechaun—in his case, a very tall leprechaun.
We shook hands and did the mutual introductions, and I showed him in. Joshua, as always upon hearing someone at the door, had come bounding out of his room so as not to miss anything.
“Joshua, this is Eric,” I said by way of introduction, and when Eric smiled and said “Hello, Joshua,” and extended his hand I noticed an uncustomary moment’s hesitation on Joshua’s part before he took it. As soon as Eric released his hand, Joshua moved close against me, leaning against my leg, which also struck me as a little odd.
I explained that Jonathan would be a little late getting home.
“And I’m a little early,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. I’m afraid I’m always so worried about being late that I always end up being too early.”
“A man after my own heart,” I said, offering to take his light jacket, which he removed and handed to me with thanks. I in turn handed the jacket to Joshua. “Would you take this into our room for me, Joshua?”
He gave me a slightly resentful look, then took it and went toward our bedroom.
“Make yourself at home. Can I get you a drink?”
“Sure, that would be nice,” he replied, moving to the couch to sit down. “Whatever you’re having.”
“A Manhattan okay?” I asked. I’d held off having mine awaiting his arrival.
“I love Manhattans!” he said. “You’ve obviously got good taste.”
As I excused myself to go into the kitchen, Joshua followed me closely.
“I want one, too!” he said. He knew I always gave him a glass of soda whenever I had my evening drink, so I was a little puzzled by his demanding attitude.
Then I recalled that lately, whenever Jonathan spoke of Eric, as he often did, and with the enthusiasm of someone with a new friend, Joshua had been reacting in a way far out of character for him. It struck me now that he may have felt threatened by Eric’s entrance into Jonathan’s life.
I fixed the drinks and carried them into the living room, grabbed a couple of coasters, handing one to Eric with his drink, gave Joshua his soda—he insisted on two maraschino cherries in it rather than his usual one—then sat in the chair closest to the couch. Joshua settled in my lap.
Ooooo-kay. We have a little problem here.
“Jonathan told me he had a lot of fish and plants,” Eric commented, nodding toward the aquarium, “but I didn’t realize he had this many.”
“Jonathan operates on the theory that if some is good, a lot is better.” I took a sip of my drink. “So, I understand you’ve been with the chorus from the very beginning.”
“Yep. And I’ve only missed four rehearsals. Sometimes I think I really need to get a life of my own. But I can’t imagine one without the chorus.”
“I think I can understand that,” I said. “I know Jonathan really seems to enjoy it. I appreciate your being his buddy.”
Joshua squirmed on my lap.
Eric grinned. “Yeah, Jonathan’s a great kid. We get along really well. He’s got a lot to learn yet, though.”
I was mildly amused by his referring to Jonathan as a “kid” when he couldn’t have been more than a year older, if that. And I had no idea what his last sentence meant.
“Like what, other than the music?” I asked.
Eric looked at me closely and gave me a rather enigmatic smile. “Nothing, really. Only, sometimes, I think he might be a little too nice for his own good. I hope you don’t mind my saying so. I’ve told him several times.”
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“He’s still at the starry-eyed stage,” he explained. “He likes everybody and accepts anything people say, and that’s not always a good idea. Roger is always telling us that when we talk, we’re human; when we sing, we’re angels. Well, we do a lot more talking than singing, if you know what I mean. There are a few guys there who’d as soon cut your throat as look at you. I don’t think Jonathan has realized that yet, and I don’t want him to get hurt.”
I didn’t know what kind of hurt he might be referring to, but knowing Jonathan, I suspected it wasn’t so much a matter of his not realizing what was going on as not wanting to think ill of anyone until he had specific reason to.
Joshua handed me his empty glass. “I want some more,” he declared.
“We’ll be having dinner soon,” I said. “I don’t want you to fill up on soda and spoil your appetite. Why don’t you go play with some of your toys?”
He shot me a dirty look, hopped off my lap and hustled to his room, returning with his large block of Lincoln Logs, which he proceeded to empty on the floor and begin to build a house.
“Jonathan tells me you’re the peacemaker of the group,” I said, trying to ignore Joshua’s actions. “That can’t be easy.”
He shrugged. “It’s not, always,” he said. “Usually, it’s a lot like third grade, with little cliques and minor rivalries and feuds. Roger hasn’t got the time to do everything and, besides, he’s the director. But every now and then things come close to getting out of control, like it’s been doing since Grant came on board. And that really worries me.”
“Crandall Booth’s nephew.”
Eric grinned. “Riiight. ‘Nephew.’”
I clearly heard the quotes around
nephew
.
“You don’t think they’re related?” I asked, though I’d already come to that conclusion.
Eric gave me a calculated, raised-eyebrow look. “Puh-leeese! Crandall’s got more money than God, and Grant wants to go to Broadway. Grant comes to rehearsals in a baby-blue Porsche. Crandall’s family came over on the Mayflower, and Grant’s got a mouth like a truck driver. You figure it out.”
That Grant drove a Porsche didn’t surprise me, since I knew a large chunk of Crandall Booth’s money came from his ownership of several luxury car dealerships.
“What does he do for a living?” I asked.
“Other than Crandall, you mean?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Grant claims he has a business degree, but if he ever even finished college, I’d be surprised. Crandall gave him a job in the central accounting department for all his dealerships. To hear Grant tell it, he practically runs the place, but a guy I know works there and say’s Grant’s just a glorified gofer. I understand he’s always running to Crandall bitching about how the department head runs the place. How in hell Crandall puts up with it, I’ll never know.”
“So, what’s Grant’s problem with the chorus?”
Eric sighed. “Look, if he’d come in like everybody else, it would have been fine. But he acts like he owns the place. And he thinks he’s God’s gift to men—he comes on to everyone, especially the guys he knows are in a relationship. Like I said, there’s already enough bickering and jealousy going on. It’s not always pretty and can get downright mean sometimes, but it’s all sort of like family.
“Grant isn’t family, and makes it obvious that he doesn’t want to be. But that doesn’t stop him from playing his games and starting his own little clique. He’s a real manipulator, and if some people are two-faced, Grant’s got at least a dozen. He doesn’t give a damn about the chorus. He’ll say or do whatever he thinks will help him get what he wants.”
“And what does he want?”
“Aside from everybody else’s boyfriend? Well, at the moment, among other things, he wants the solo in ‘I Am What I Am,’ which will be the biggest showstopper at our next concert.”
“
La Cage aux Folles
!” I said. “Jonathan said you were doing it and you’re sure right about its being a showstopper. Some friends of ours in New York saw the show and immediately sent us the cast recording. We must have listened to it a hundred times, and ‘I Am What I Am’ grabs me by the throat every time. Talk about gay pride!”
“Well, Grant wants the solo on it, though Roger’s given it to Jim Bowers, who has a fantastic voice. He’s a bass and Grant’s a high baritone. Either one can do it, but Jim is perfect for it and he has the presence. When he sings it, he means it. I don’t think Grant has a clue what the song means. But he badmouths Jim every chance he gets.”
“I gather you don’t care much for him.”
“You could say that. He reminds me a lot of my brother.”
“He looks like him?”
He shrugged. “Sort of.”
He didn’t follow up on that, so neither did I. But I thought it was an interesting statement, and was the first specific reference to his family I’d heard him make.
The conversation, frequently interrupted by Joshua’s insisting I look at and approve the progress of his Lincoln Log project, gradually segued into the general exchange of information that inevitably passes between two people who’ve just met. Eric seemed fascinated by my being a private investigator and having my own office.
“I’d love to come down and see it sometime,” he said, and I assured him it was hardly worth the trip, but that he was welcome.
Jonathan had told me Eric worked at the distribution warehouse for the Home ‘n’ Yard hardware store chain and had a small apartment on the East Side. When I did ask about his family, I was surprised to learn that his parents and older brother had been killed in an accident when he was fourteen.
“It was the Fourth of July,” he said casually, and I detected a note of irony in his voice. I was, of course, curious and expected him to elaborate, but when he didn’t, I didn’t press him. I wasn’t sure whether he had simply been able to accept their deaths and move on or if he didn’t want to or couldn’t deal with it on other than a casual level.
Jonathan arrived home just as I’d gone into the kitchen to check on dinner and to make Eric and myself another drink. The minute he came in the door, Joshua jumped up from his project, destroying whatever it was he’d been building, and ran for a welcome-home hug.
As Jonathan moved across the room to join Eric on the couch, followed closely by Joshua, I stepped to the kitchen doorway to ask if Jonathan wanted a Coke.
“I want one!” Joshua declared, and I was truly puzzled by the undertone of belligerence I detected in his voice. This certainly was
not
Joshua.
“I told you we’ll be eating soon, and you’ve already had your drink. We don’t want you to get drunk. Those cherries are pretty potent.”
Jonathan gave me a puzzled look and I gave him a raised-eyebrow “later” signal.
But Joshua was not about to give up. Turning to Jonathan, he pleaded, “But I’m thirsty!”
Jonathan, still puzzled, looked at me again.
“Okay,” I said, caving in as I far too often did, “but only half a glass, and no cherries.”
When I brought the drinks into the living room, I noted Joshua had planted himself firmly between Jonathan and Eric, and was sitting as close to Jonathan as he could get.
He’s jealous!
a mind-voice said, pointing out what should have been obvious to me from the minute Eric came in. And I realized for perhaps the first time how insensitive I tended to be when it came to not recognizing how everything that went on in Jonathan’s and my lives also affected Joshua.