“What now?” he asked.
“Hmmm?”
“What now? What happens to us now?” hespoke to my neck. whispered against my neck.
My eyes opened. I hadn’t thought much beyond what we’d just done and the sleep that was fast approaching. I just wanted to be here, warm and asleep. He was right, though; we’d have to figure out what had happened. The second one of us opened the door to leave, the world would pour in.
“What do you want to happen?” he asked.
“I have to go,” I said, and then feeling his body pull away a fraction, I added “soon.”
“Oh.” His body had already gone stiff against mine.
I felt the bed get colder. “I have to take care of something for my mom and dad,” I said, looking around to see where my clothes were. I found them in a pile near the window. I started to think about how to untangle myself from Kevin and get to them. Some part of me grew angry, though; I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave to do something for them when they’d never done anything for, and I stopped myself at that moment. It felt odd, but I stopped myself; everything shut off for a second. It was like slow motion in a movie. I watched myself from inside, and actually saw the last word, the one I’d been about to say, floating there in my mind. Why had I started to think that?
“What are you thinking about?” he asked in this small voice. I was still “stopped” inside. My eyes rolled over to look at him. I decided to come back to the world.
“I was just thinking,” I said.
“About what?” he whispered.
“This,” I answered, “how hard it is to think about this.”
A little valley formed between his eyes, “What do you mean?”
“Were you—?” I started to say, then stopped. I realized that the question I was about to ask sounded stupid.
He smiled, “I was wondering when you were going to ask.” He shifted around some, getting comfortable. I noticed how little the mattress moved as he did; how light he seemed. “Yes, I was always like this,” he said, “and I always hoped I’d wind up right here; right where I am right now.” I made a sound that I didn’t understand. He looked at my eyes for a second, and I had to look away.
“But you hated me,” I said.
His lips pursed for a second, then he whispered, “Maybe for a little while. I was a kid; I thought it was your fault I—felt the way I did.” I looked back up into his eyes. “I was a kid; what did I know?” His shoulders moved slightly. Just then, my stomach growled. He laughed, and I laughed too. He reached out and put his hand on my stomach; it was warm, and made me breathe heavier.
“Aren’t you ever worried?” I asked.
“Worried about what?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at the floor. “Aren’t you ever worried someone will find out?”
“Half the town already knows, Mikey,” he said. He sat up, letting his hand fall from me. “You have been gone a long time, but I’ve been here my whole life,” he said, staring forward as if in a trance. “Most of the guys in this town were friends of mine at one time or another through high school.”
“So then why do they—”
He made a small noise in his throat like a laugh. “After one sleepover, Mikey, they weren’t very friendly to me anymore.”
I started to ask what he meant, then it hit me. I felt cold and hollow inside, staring at him.
“The rest of the men in this town know because they know which door to knock on when their wives and girlfriends get mean.” He turned and put his feet on the floor. He stood up, and the light moved over him. Again, my mind saw a skyscraper—tall and thin and flat.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He went to the window, and peeked out of a blind. He let it slip out of his finger and it snapped loudly back into place. He turned his head slightly, and over his shoulder said “It means I don’t say ‘no’ a lot.” Something in his voice was empty.
“So, you mean you—?” I started to ask, but trailed off. I tried to see in him the boy who had so terrorized me. There was something there, the fierce set of shoulders and the ramrod straight spine. Something was gone, though; he seemed more like a little boy standing by that window than he ever had when he actually was small.
“It pays the bills, Mikey,” he whispered, “and that’s all I care about.”
“But, aren’t you worried?” I asked.
“About what?” he whispered.
“You know—getting it?” I asked. He turned toward me.
“Getting—?” he asked, his head moving forward from his shoulder.
“AIDS,” I said.
His eyes closed and he let out a long sigh. “You don’t get ‘it’,” he said, making the marks in the air with his fingers and I felt stupid, “by just being gay.”
“No, I know that, but I mean—well, are you scared you might someday with—umm—as many people as—umm—you say you’ve—?”
“Have you ever known someone who was living with it?” he asked.
I shook my head.
The look on his face said, thought so. He leaned back against the wall. “It’s like some—some fucking science fiction film. Like someone made the most horrible thing they could think up; something out of a zombie movie or something. You watch them smile and laugh,” he said, “sometimes you think that maybe it’s something God’s doing on purpose—not to wipe out gay people—but something to wipe out people,” he said, and looked down at the mattress, the whispered “Sometimes you wonder what the world is going to be like after there is a cure You wonder if the whole world will just have a big sigh of relief and then go on as if nothing happened. As if millions of people haven’t just vanished because of this—this—thing that acts like something out of a stupid drive-in zombie movie,” and with each word he crumpled some; some writer guy would say that better, but that’s what it looked like.
“So you think that it’s something someone did?” I asked after a long pause.
He glared at me, “I don’t know dick about it, Mikey. All I know is that I don’t have it, and it makes me feel like shit to be thankful for that. It makes me feel like a horrible person every day.”
“Did you—?,” I started, but my throat closed up. When it opened again, “did you lose someone to it?”
He looked at the floor, then walked toward the bedroom door. “Do you like your eggs scrambled or how?” he asked.
I felt stupid. I wondered if he’d always been this smart as a kid. I wondered what might have happened if we’d been friends then. He walked past me and out of the room. I sat on the bed for a while longer. Then I got up, and put my pants on. I looked at my shirt, thought about putting it on, but didn’t. I heard Susan’s voice from a few months ago in my head, “you never just slum it, do you?” When I’d asked her what she meant, she’d said “you always put all your clothes on, even if we’re not doing anything that day. My brothers were always running around without their shirts or socks on. It’s like they didn’t care who saw them. You even wear your belt right up until it’s time for a shower or bed.” I don’t think I understood what she meant until that moment. I didn’t care if Kevin saw me without a shirt. Somehow, that felt important.
When I walked into the living room, Kevin was standing near the stereo. He put a disc in, and pressed play.
“Who’s this?” I asked as the song started playing.
“Johnny Cash,” he said, and I noticed that when the man sang a line, Kevin closed his eyes.
“You like country music?” I asked.
His eyes opened. He looked at the front door, then he looked at me for a second. He shook his head slowly from side to side. He went into the tiny kitchen, and pulled a pan out from an overhead cupboard. He set it on the stove, then opened the refrigerator. I looked in over his shoulder as the scratchy voice on the speakers asked how many roads a man had to walk down before he could be called a man. I wasn’t hungry anymore. “I’m not really all that hungry,” I said. He stopped, then closed the refrigerator slowly.