Somewhere Over Lorain Road, page 23
Don sat in a chair opposite, putting his books on the table, next to Jamie’s. “Sorry I’m so late.”
Jamie shrugged. “We’re busy people. Do you think anyone else will show?”
“I hope so.” But he didn’t.
“Where are you from?”
“Ohio. Just outside of Cleveland.”
“What does your dad do?”
“He runs an aerospace engineering firm.” Jamie gave an admiring nod, the same look the answer always seemed to elicit at Harvard. Don never clarified that his dad managed the company and wasn’t an engineer.
“Are you going back to Ohio for the summer?”
“Yeah. Are you going home to California?”
“Oh, yeah. Everyone thinks California is so glamorous. I just let them think whatever they want. My family lives in Palmdale. It’s in the middle of nowhere, almost two hours from L.A. I was born in Santa Monica, but my dad thought Los Angeles was getting too crazy so he moved us to the desert. At least we have a swimming pool.”
“Do you ever go to Los Angeles?”
Jamie laughed. “Only every chance I get.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what my old man was thinking. In Palmdale, you have to check your shoes for scorpions. There’s nothing to do, so my dad got me some weights, and that’s where I learned to work out.”
“You look like you spend a lot of time at the gym.” The comment allowed him to scan Jamie’s body without worry.
“Thanks.” Jamie looked at his watch. “This study group is cursed. It was supposed to start half an hour ago, but it’s pretty clear that nobody else is coming.”
“We could have our own group. Just the two of us.”
Jamie smiled. “Do you feel like talking about astronomy right now? I’m burned out today. Let’s talk about something else.”
Don hoped his excitement didn’t show. “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”
“Have you ever thought about working out?”
The lockers of St. Peter’s banged in his head. “I’m not much for the gym.”
“It’s not as hard as you think it is. I really don’t work out that much. If you want to be Mr. Universe, you need to work out three hours every day and jog for two more, but if you just want a nice body it doesn’t take nearly as long as everyone thinks. Just three or four times a week.” Jamie checked the door before standing, reaching behind, and yanking off his shirt.
Don inhaled with disbelief and flushed as he stared at Jamie’s torso. Smooth muscles carved his shoulders and arms. The same chestnut-brown hair fuzzed his chest and trailed away into his jeans.
“See what I mean?” Jamie said, rubbing his shoulders and arms before swirling a hand in his chest hair. “Shoulders and arms are easy. Legs are hard, though, and lots of guys skip them completely.” He took two steps, nudged the door shut, and turned. Smiling, he kicked off his shoes while undoing his belt. He held Don’s gaze as he pushed his jeans down and tossed them to the side.
“Check it out,” Jamie said, flexing and displaying his legs. His striped underwear looked like skimpy swim trunks, and the trail of hair drained into a thicket of even darker hair.
It seemed impossible to believe, but perhaps the long-awaited moment had finally arrived.
The stripes on Jamie’s underwear started to stretch and distort, and he rubbed the spot with a grin that made Don dizzy. It seemed unbelievable, but this handsome guy, one he’d lusted after for months, wanted to have sex with him. And just to blow away the last remaining doubt, Jamie pulled his underwear away and bounced into full view. Grinning, he hooked his hands behind his head to reveal the starburst hair in his armpits and said, “I think you’re really hot.”
Oh, fuck yes, I’ll say your name.
He never heard the shadow again.
Don stood, hoping his legs wouldn’t give out, and took off his shirt.
As they dressed afterward, Don’s mind spiraled with awe and joy, feeling as if he’d been born for the sole purpose of being here this afternoon with Jamie. From their first kiss, hard against each other, feeling his mustache on his lips, to the smells and tastes and the exhilarating thrill of having permission to explore at will, nothing felt awkward or forced.
“Holy shit,” Don said. The millions of shouted and whispered “faggots” filled his mind. He giggled. Thank God he was a faggot and got to do these things. He laughed. “That was fucking amazing.”
Jamie smiled, as if pleased. “It was your first time, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “I didn’t really know what to expect, but holy fuck, that was awesome.”
Jamie said, “I thought you were a newbie. You had that look about you, scared of your own shadow. It’s funny how different guys react to their first time. Some can’t even look at you. I’ve even had a few cry. But a lot of them are like you, ready to blow up the closet completely. It’s my thing. I look for guys like you.”
Don asked what he meant.
“I only get off on having sex with guys who’ve never had a little homo love before. After that, I’m not usually interested.”
Don started. “You mean we can’t do that again?”
Jamie shook his head. “Don’t worry, we can be friends. I’d like that, actually. In fact, if you want, after term I’m driving down to Fire Island for a couple of weeks before I go home. I’m renting a house with a couple of guys from Boston, and we have an extra room. You’re welcome to join us. Your share would be around two hundred and fifty dollars. We have another guy interested, so I’d need your answer soon.”
The figure loomed as an obstacle, as did a believable story for his parents, but he’d worry about all of that later. “I’ll go. But are you serious when you say we can’t have sex again?” He couldn’t believe it.
“Don’t worry,” Jamie said. His mood became breezier and relaxed, as if confident now to show himself for real. “You’re going to get a ton of action on Fire Island. You’ll be a whore in no time.”
They became tight friends, and Don drained the last of his savings account to pay for his share of the bungalow on Fire Island. He told his parents he was going to Long Island.
The dumpy beachside house disappointed Don. Jamie told him to lighten up and have fun. His first night, Don met Buck, a handsome redheaded guy from Kansas who only wanted to exchange hand jobs.
“We can’t even kiss?”
Buck shook his head. “There’s some ugly stuff going around, in case you haven’t heard.”
“Like what?”
Are you crazy? You haven’t heard about AIDS?”
“But that’s only in places like New York and San Francisco. Los Angeles.”
“No, it’s not. And even if it was, this place is crawling with guys from New York and San Francisco. Isn’t your friend Jamie from L.A.?”
Don sat back, the implications hitting him from every direction.
“Welcome to the real world, buddy. Now, do you want to start stroking or what?”
The next morning as they drank coffee on the veranda with a view of the ocean, Jamie blew off Don’s concerns. “I’m not going to let fear rule my life. Besides, you know I like newbies, and the only thing I’ll catch from a virgin is a cold.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know if they’re really virgins or not. Besides, I’ve seen you go off with guys who are obviously not virgins. We need to be careful.”
“You handle it your way, I’ll handle it mine.”
Don watched the way Jamie handled it with concern, a constant stream of men from Fire Island bars and parties, none of whom made any pretense at being a blushing newbie.
In the dark of the early morning of their last full day on Fire Island, Don escorted a guy from his bedroom to the veranda. They’d met a few hours before.
“Thanks,” the man growled at the top of the stairs. He trotted down to the narrow boardwalk, and Don watched his shadow until he couldn’t see him any longer.
Warmth softened the night. The stars shone, brilliant sparks of white against the black sweep of the cosmos. The Milky Way fogged a trail on the canvas behind them. The billions of suns looked like mist, so distant it took some fifteen thousand years for a photon of light from earth to travel across the expanse, but Don didn’t want to go anywhere.
A sliver of moon hung low on the horizon, splashing a narrow river of light across the sea that twinkled playfully, as if the waves tickled. The liquid cobalt of the ocean rolled to the shore, where it curled on the sand. The beach glowed, a pristine silvery blue, and the long seaside grasses rustled.
Don heard the voices of two men, distinct in tenor but muted with distance. They walked hand in hand on the sand. They stopped, and one silhouette backed away with a laugh before returning for an embrace and a lingering kiss. Don almost looked away from such a romantic and intimate moment, but he couldn’t. He felt a bubbling in his chest, inflating a giddy hope he would soon be part of a scene that so perfectly expressed everything he felt. He felt so distant from the angry boy thrown off-kilter by the topic of his graduation speech. Was that only last year?
With a thundering shock, he realized in a matter of hours, the sun would rise on the tenth anniversary of Eddie Tedesco’s disappearance, a decade since the dawn that changed everything. Amazingly, the flawless Fire Island morning softened the tumult of those years until he brushed it all away.
Silent tears of happiness traced down his face as he watched the men kiss. The realization came to him at that moment: I survived.
* * *
Ten years later, in 1995, Don lived in San Francisco. He’d tired of Boston after four years at Harvard and three more at Harvard Business. Ever since his valedictorian speech, the ability to get across different ideas to different people using the same words fascinated him, and he majored in marketing. He accepted a job on the West Coast at a company called Yahoo! that promised to revolutionize the experience of the information superhighway. Half his salary came in stock options. Jamie would have been proud of him, but he’d died years ago, skeletal and coughing in a Los Angeles hospital bed as Don held his hand.
Ten years later, in 2005, Don had accumulated more stock options from Google, an internet search engine that nobody had heard of when he joined. Options from Facebook and Twitter followed.
By 2015, Don could spend the rest of his life staring at the bayside view from his glassy, high-rise condo if he wanted, but he couldn’t imagine such a life, so he worked on contracts, mostly for friends who desperately needed his experience for their start-ups.
After his dad was diagnosed with cancer, he started to visit North Homestead more frequently, four or five times a year. His dad ebbed away slowly, his world shrinking along the way. It took a couple of years to reach confinement to one room, before the final phase of a bed.
Mom called. She hated to ask, but could Don afford to pay for twenty-four-hour home care? “I can’t handle it myself any longer, Donnie,” she said, tearfully. “Your brothers do what they can, but they’re so busy. I need someone here to help all the time.”
“I’ll pay for whatever you need, Mom. But I’ll come home and help.”
“How long can you stay?”
“I’ll stay to the end.”
“Are you sure? I’d much rather have you here than strangers. I know your father feels the same way.”
“Yeah. I want to.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Don took Chief Tedecso’s Navy SEAL insignia medal to a frame shop in nearby Fairview Park and explained the requirements.
“I don’t want to spare any expense,” Don said to the shop owner, gleefully remembering the chief’s careless declaration that money was no object. Don looked forward to handing him the bill. “Everything has to be first-class.”
“I know a custom jeweler in New Mexico. If you want this done properly, I can ship the medal there, and they can make a single, solid gold mount. It might take a while.”
“How long?”
The man shrugged. “They’ll do a superb job. All the measurements will be perfect. The medal will look like it’s just floating in the center of the box. I promise you’ll love it.”
“Can they get it done in a couple of weeks?”
The man shrugged. “They’ll have to make a special lead mold. That’s the tricky part. If they don’t get the measurements perfect, they’ll have to start all over again. It requires a gifted craftsman.”
A gifted craftsman’s bill might give Tedesco a heart attack, and Don needed time to prepare a list of questions anyway. “Okay, do it.” He went on to say that a tip of one hundred dollars awaited a speedy delivery.
“We’ll do the best we can.”
Don tried to find someone in South Dakota who knew something about the Tom Malicheski investigation, but he got nowhere after making numerous calls over several days. No one remembered the case, and nobody had the slightest interest in looking up details. After his fifth referral to the public information officer, a title that promised a public relations runaround, he finally called.
The officer said, “If what you say is true, that case is closed, mister.”
“But there’s a possibility he committed similar crimes here in Ohio. I just need to know what they discovered when they searched his truck and residence.”
“All of that information should be at the courthouse.”
“I tried that already. They have transcripts of the trial, but that won’t help. This evidence wouldn’t have been used to convict him for killing those women.” He listed all the agencies he’d tried. “It’s like as soon as he was executed, everyone just wiped their hands of the case.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, but I can’t because I’m trying to see if he’s connected to the murders here. There has to be evidence stored somewhere. You know, the stuff they collected but didn’t use in court.”
“Why would we keep ancillary evidence for someone who was convicted and executed? What you’re asking for makes no sense.”
Don chuckled that the public relations guy had proved useful after all, saying what he needed to hear. “You’re right. It doesn’t.”
Dad improved on the stronger fentanyl, and it seemed likely he’d live through the holidays. He watched the shows on his tablet incessantly and discussed them with Don, the science documentaries especially.
Tim and Sally made Thanksgiving dinner but brought the ingredients uncooked to the house so that Dad, who couldn’t rouse himself for even a few minutes at the table, could at least smell the turkey roasting and feel included. Sally complained their son Robbie and his family couldn’t join them because it was his wife’s turn to spend Thanksgiving with her family.
“She knows this will be Dad’s last year,” Sally said, furiously peeling potatoes at the sink like she was whittling a spear. “Why not break a rule, just one time?” Tim tried to soothe her by rubbing her shoulders, but she brushed his hands away.
Randy’s daughter Julie also begged off. “That bitch Renee is keeping her from me,” Randy said. Mom explained that Julie knew her mother was alone, while he had a family.
Bruce arrived with his first homemade cheesecake. He didn’t have a spring form pan and baked it in a glass roasting dish Don recognized as the one he’d used for the lasagna. Bruce apologized for the two fissures on the surface of the cake, but Don said it didn’t matter.
Bruce said, “My family understands that I can’t join them this year. I told them your dad doesn’t have much longer. It would be nice if our families got to know each other. We might be able to do some Christmas things together.”
Don nodded. Mix the families before Christmas? Worried Bruce was moving too fast, he said, “Yeah, maybe. Let’s see.”
Bruce picked up on his hesitation. “I’d like to spend as much time with you over the holidays as I can, but I need to see my family for Christmas. It would be easier if we could do things in a big group. I can host something at my place.”
“You have a grand total of three chairs in your house.”
Bruce smiled. “I guess you have a point. I never needed chairs before.”
All through dinner, Sally sulked and Randy fumed. They made an effort to be pleasant for Bruce’s sake, but Don knew they were leaning on the assumption that any adult knows what it’s like to be angry at family, and Bruce would understand. It seemed like he did.
Soon after dinner, when Don and Bruce assured everyone they would clean up, Tim and Sally left. Randy followed a few minutes later. Dad watched holiday movies on the tablet, and Mom started scooping leftovers into plastic containers.
“No, Mom,” Don said. “I’m not taking Thanksgiving dinner across the street. Just forget about it.”
“But it’s…”
“No. It’s not happening. Not tonight. Let it go. Thanksgiving is too personal to share with them.”
She looked surprised, as if suddenly understanding his logic. “Okay. I can see your point.” She sat at the kitchen table while they cleaned. “You two are sure a big help. Thank you again, Bruce, for making that delicious cheesecake.”
“Sorry it was cracked.”
She flipped her hand. “A little whipped cream fixes all mistakes.”
She looked pleased when they laughed. She gave a big yawn, the inevitable end of the Thanksgiving feast, and pushed herself to her feet. “Thank you again for coming, Bruce. I hope you had a good time.”
“Thank you for having me. And I did.”
She put a hand on his shoulder and rose on her toes. Startled, he bent and she kissed his cheek. She turned and disappeared down the hallway, as if she’d done it a million times.
Don and Bruce stared after her.
“Does that mean she likes me?”
“I think it’s even better than that,” Don said. “I think it means she likes us.”
The next morning while Don and his mom drank coffee at the kitchen table, he said, “Mom, thank you for that nice gesture last night. Giving Bruce a kiss. It meant a lot to both of us.”
