Rough Canvas (26 page)

Daralyn worked in the store one summer and I’m the only man she trusts. She doesn’t 132

Rough Canvas

want…a normal relationship. Ever. She wants a friend to keep her company, protect her. And I do love her, like that. I can do that.

“My brother’s in a wheelchair. I know he could do more, he’s milking it, but if I’d been there… And my father, his heart attack. My mother feels… And I’d…”

He couldn’t go on, was appalled he’d just blurted this all out. The sensation of being unable to breathe was closing in, but he had to say the last words because they were the ones erupting into flame in a line from his gut to esophagus, the ones he’d also been unable to say to anyone.

“And I’d rather cut out my own heart than hurt Marcus, but he’s the only one I

think will be okay. I mean, look at him. He’ll never lack for someone to love him. He’s got money, power, everything he does turns to gold. How can I give myself that when my mother is still crying herself to sleep, and the bills are coming in?”

“So is the issue your family needing you, or you not being able to believe someone like Marcus can need you as much?” Cathy asked quietly.

“Maybe he needs you more.”

Thomas turned, surprised at both comments. Sometime during his diatribe, Walter had risen, gone to the sink. Now he leaned on it, chewing on a toothpick, studying Thomas. He’d given the sketches a cursory look, obviously uncomfortable with the male/male subject material, turning them quickly over to Cathy, but now there was nothing evasive in his expression. Wryly, Thomas was starting to get the feeling that still waters ran deep in Walter, that his slow talking and watchful demeanor masked a man who did a lot of thinking.

“Your family trusts you enough to show they need you. That tells me they know

they can count on you, that they’re pretty solid about your love for them. Yeah, that one outside is pretty and put together like one of those fancy ads, but did you notice how my Cathy has a spot of juice on her dress? Her hair’s a little messed up today too.”

“Walter Briggs.” She began to push at her hair, but he straightened and caught one of her hands, stilling her. All the while keeping his gaze pinned on Thomas. “When you know you’re worth loving, you can be a little imperfect. Hell, look at me—a lot imperfect. It makes all the difference in the world when you believe someone loves you enough that they
don’t
overlook the spot and the messed up hair. They just add it to the things about you that make them love you all the more.

“He’s too damn perfect. You were thinking he left this room because it reminds him you’re going home and what you’re going home to. Maybe.” Walter shrugged. “But

maybe it’s also that he’s looking at something he thinks he’s never going to have. He said his family is in this room. That’s you and only you. And you’re not staying. So he’s got nothing but those perfect looks that can’t in a million years make him believe he deserves a good-hearted man like you.”

“But I can’t abandon—”

“Young people don’t listen. They think it’s all about the grandiose gesture.” Walter made an impatient gesture of his hand even as Cathy made a soothing noise in her 133

Joey W. Hill

throat to calm him down. “That’s all about ego. You don’t have to abandon anything.

It’s about doing what’s really hard, day to day. Someone willing to put up with tantrums on both sides and say, ‘you’re both my family, and we’re going to make this work’.

“You don’t think he’ll stick with you if it gets that messy. From where I’m sitting, it appears you have your heads up your butts. You’re as afraid to bring him into your world because it means he might really decide you are some hick, as he is to ask to be invited, for fear of being rejected.”

He settled back against the sink, pointed at Thomas with his toothpick as if it were the finger of God.

“Get over it, the both of you. If you do, maybe you’ll be sitting at a breakfast table together like me and Cathy forty years from now, thinking you’re the luckiest people ever been born.”

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Marcus knew Thomas had been surprised to see him actually smoking the cigarette he’d bummed out of a pack Walter left on a barrel outside the side door. It was something he hadn’t done in awhile, but the acrid burn had suited his mood. Marcus also knew that his foul mood was spawned more by watching Thomas with Cathy than watching him with Walter.

It mattered to Thomas. His mother’s love, her approval. The sense she was behind him.
Do my parents love me?
The Achilles heel that every child was infected with at birth like a virus, and spent adulthood trying to overcome in order to be who they were meant to be.

They stayed at the rental house for the next couple days, with no plans for

excursions. Marcus encouraged Thomas to spend the time roaming the property

acreage for inspiration. Apparently today Thomas had enough crowding into his head, for he’d never got further than the outside deck. He’d sketched most of the morning and part of the afternoon, sometimes standing at the rail, sometimes sprawled over the lounger.

Now he was sitting on the deck, letting his feet hang down off the side of the deck, using the middle railing to prop his sketchbook. As he tore off sheets, he used several empty coffee mugs he’d taken out there to guard against them being blown away by the breeze.

Marcus stayed inside, working in the living room on phone calls and paperwork,

but positioning himself where he could watch Thomas through the glass doors.

Thomas was listening to a track by Staind. While the insulated glass blocked out all but the reverberation, Marcus felt the poignant, hopeless, visceral anger to it. Totally fucked up except when you got to be with the person who made it all unfucked up. But you could spend a life functioning while being fucked up. Until it killed you.

Thomas would be going home in a day or two, and maybe that was good. The

shadows kept rising. Marcus didn’t have time to get trapped in a morbid fog. He had gallery showings…things to do. Plenty of opportunities for…something. He sat there, staring out the glass at Thomas until the cell rang, breaking his concentration.

“Julie, how are you?”

“I’m stalking your fine ass, of course. Heard you’re in the Berkshires, and guess what? Girlfriend crisis, so I am too. What do you think of…”

* * * * *

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Joey W. Hill

Julie Ramirez ran a theater near Marcus’ gallery. He’d been her first patron, now one of many. He’d come to his gallery on a Saturday, dressed casually to pull some receipts, and seen the short, voluptuous brunette hauling out a load of dusty boxes too heavy for her to lift and too bulky for a hand truck. With the same powers of persuasion she’d apparently used to get the landlord to sign a five year, dollar-a-year tax write-off lease on the building she intended to turn into a community theater for the arts, she got Marcus to volunteer his whole afternoon to her.

It wasn’t until a week later she learned he was the affluent gallery owner up the street. By then, he was impressed enough with her commitment, her background in a theater family and her willingness to stick her neck out that he was more than willing to hand over a check. Which she cheerfully and unabashedly hit him up for as soon as she learned that “he was mega-loaded”.

At the end of that first day, however, he’d sat on the edge of her truck, covered in dirt and cobwebs, his hair yanked back and held by a rubber band they’d found in the debris. She’d leaned back on her elbows and given him a thorough look. “Jesus.

Someone who can be that filthy and look that pretty needs to be beaten with a stick. Can I buy you dinner for helping me? Offer you sex? Dinner
and
sex?”

Marcus grinned, leaned back on his elbows next to her, his shoulder brushing hers companionably. He tried not to be a tease with women, but they were so easily,

physically affectionate, sometimes it was hard to stay out of range. Just because he preferred a man for sex didn’t mean he didn’t like the touch of a woman’s hand, their different texture and pressure, the rich emotional language they conveyed so easily.

And because they’d been bantering all day, he put a little stretch into the leaning back, drawing her attention to his upper torso, the strength of his arms, biting back a chuckle as she snuck a quick glance at his groin area.

“All right.” She punched his shoulder. “You’re doing that on purpose. Don’t be

such a tramp.”

“I’ll take you up on dinner, but I’m afraid I’m going to pass on the sex. I’d be a disappointment.”

“Oh.” She digested that. He was prepared to add more clarification if needed,

something to salve the ego, but then she brightened. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, you’re a
man
. It’s
sex
. Can’t you close your eyes and pretend I’m a guy? We can turn off the lights and I’ll talk deep, like this.” She mimicked what he thought sounded like a frog with a bad cold. “You can even do me from behind, but I’d kind of like you to get my preferred orifice, if you don’t mind.”

It startled a laugh out of him, and he’d been delighted with her a hundred ways since. When he met Thomas soon after and introduced them, Thomas had been equally enamored of her in no time.

Marcus considered her a true friend, not only because she was honest and

forthright in a brutal, New York way, but carried a heart of gold that came straight from her home state of Oregon.

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Unfortunately, Marcus knew while she had a limitless heart for friends and her

theater, she’d always fallen for the type of guy who would take advantage of her nature. As a result, at thirty-five, she’d never been married. She still dated, but not too seriously, telling Marcus she’d decided she preferred to be a pathetic hanger-on to the platonic physical affections of gay men and their enjoyable company than fucked over emotionally by a straight male.

“Besides,” she’d told him later, after he’d met Thomas. “I keep hoping you’ll come up to my place and just stand next to my bed naked and hold the vibrator. Now if you
and
Thomas did it…hmmm…like Thomas would hold me on his lap…he’d be naked too, of course, and you’d do the vibrator thing, and it would be like a real fantasy. I wouldn’t have to worry about the stilted ‘I’ll call you’ bullshit conversation. You guys would even fix me breakfast. Those pancakes you make are
so
good.”

When Marcus mentioned Julie’s birthday was coming up, it was Thomas who said,

“Let’s go give her that fantasy she wants. If she chickens out, we’ll buy her a pizza from the Greek place around the corner she loves.”

That was after they’d been together for a year, when Thomas had become more

adventurous, always within the protective shadow of Marcus’ sophistication. But Marcus still hadn’t expected him to suggest it. It had been one of those remarkable confluence of events. The right mood, the right timing…

They’d shown up with a bottle of expensive wine, pancake fixings and a vibrator, giving her exactly the fantasy she’d requested, something even now she said she couldn’t believe she’d been seduced into doing. Even though she simultaneously

claimed it was one of the most intensely sexual experiences of her life.

While Marcus teased her ever after, claiming that was just a sad commentary on her love life, he had to admit it had been quite a charge for him and Thomas as well.

As she’d said, they
were
guys, and even though women were not their preferred bed partners, watching Thomas sit behind her on the bed shirtless, holding her arms, had made Marcus hard in no time. He’d let loose his full Master nature upon her, commanding her to spread her legs, taking the vibrator in deep as she undulated.

Thomas’ arm muscles tightened to hold her as she pulled against him in response, his eyes fastened on Marcus’ hand, his attention coursing down Julie’s naked body to Marcus’ equally bare one…

When she fell asleep at last, curled between two male bodies, another fantasy, they gazed at each other in the dim light, wanting each other fiercely, but not moving. At least until she mumbled, “Guys, guys—you’re going to impale me”. She’d clambered over Marcus like a cranky sister, but then placed her hand on his back in quiet wonder as he turned Thomas, took him from behind. Marcus had felt the pressure of her palm, her caressing fingers as his back flexed under her touch. Felt her stillness as Thomas groaned, as they both found their climax.

They’d had a fleeting worry that the night would somehow make things awkward,

but the next day, Julie was Julie. She gave them both hugs, her eyes wet, told them it 137

Joey W. Hill

was the best present she’d ever been given, and asked, “Where are my damn

pancakes?”

* * * * *

Thomas glanced over his shoulder as Marcus came onto the porch, phone still in

hand. “You remember Julie Ramirez?”

Thomas slanted him a grin. “Uh, yeah… Let me see. Isn’t that the woman who runs the theater across the street from your gallery?”

“The same.” Marcus gave him an equally droll look and spoke into the phone. “He thinks he remembers you. Vaguely.” He glanced back at Thomas. “She happens to be in the area visiting a friend and wants to know if we’d be willing to take them to a place where the men aren’t interested in women. They want to dance.”

“Only if groping is allowed.”

“You got that?” Marcus paused, chuckled. “She says only if you’re willing to follow through and make it worth her while.”

“Spoilsport.” Thomas grinned more broadly. When he did, the agonizing fist

around Marcus’ chest loosened, just like that, and things felt better. “Sure.”

It told Marcus he wouldn’t send Thomas away one moment sooner than he had to.

Every agonizing moment was worth it, just for that smile. He was lost. Fucking gone.

That was it. Just lost, taken over by the soulful brown eyes of a North Carolina farm boy who somehow knew how to reach inside people and read their hearts, while being as unworldly as a duck living in a pond. It was the genius of his art. He explored the universe of people’s desires inside and out, while he’d never hardly been anywhere but home and New York City.