We Are Not in Pakistan (13 page)

Fletch grovels and whines, but right this minute he doesn't care. He finds the right grass to settle his stomach.
The hell with the mailman — must have fed me a piece of junk mail.

Where are they? Here's a path they haven't taken before.

Fletch peeks into the model home adjoining a developer's office. Overstuffed sofas and corded window “treatments.” A normative tale hovers just out of reach, challenging all who enter to live it: the unstated presence of a spouse and two-point-two children.

He can see Yoriko and himself living here too. He hasn't made her any promises, though.

The scent of chocolate chip cookies wafts past; Fletcher pulls Colette inside.

A man in a bowling shirt stands beside a high-heeled, brightly scarved and gilt-brooched broker, asking for the same interior decor as the model, scaled down for a bachelor.

Bowling shirt. Not Colette's type. And he must have eaten all the cookies; Fletcher can't find a crumb. He leads Colette outside again.

Halfway across the park, Fletcher spots Yoriko. Colette, angled like a leaning pen, follows his straining, sniffing form.

“Fletch the letch,” she says.

When he gets close enough to take in a whiff of Yoriko's poodle perfume, Fletcher struts past as if she's any other dog. Yoriko's master restrains her. She's suffering, Fletch can tell. She's pining for him.

An hour later, Fletcher's legs are ready to fall off, and he's lagging as far behind Colette as his leash allows. She comes panting around the corner and back to the cul-de-sac, four minutes late for the rental appointment. She stops; Fletch stops. He blinks at
the sight of a sleek black limousine parked at her front door. Not a stretch limo, but a limo all the same.

Oh no! Tim has come around. He's making up. This is the beginning of his proposal.

Nah. Tim wouldn't rent a limousine to take Colette out. He wouldn't try to surprise her — he knows zilch about surprise. Flowers, maybe. And there'd never be an apology or proposal to go with, so — a limo? Black. Tim would have chosen white. Colette stands there. Fletch is half expecting those tinted windows to drop, Mafia-style. It takes him lots of scraping at the ground to pull her up to the limo and around it.

A man in a leather bomber jacket leans against the gleaming black body, looking up at Grandmère's two-storey house with an appraising eye. Fletcher goes for his ankles just to sniff him out. His throat closes immediately as Colette yanks him away.

She nearly choked him! Fletch whines. His growls were merely informational, approving, friendly.

“Martin Roseman.” The guy offers her a handshake. Tall, hairline slightly receding at the temples, wavy hair, tanned. Fletcher can tell Colette's thinking: moustache à la Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck in the eighties, that is, playing Magnum P.I.

“You must be Colette. We have an appointment?” says the tenant.

Prospective tenant. As Grandmère used to say, “Slow down, Fletcher.”

“Yeah, sorry I got delayed.” Colette juggles her keys and the leash. Martin's socks smell of just-cut grass and pond water — pleasing. Fletch jumps up to his knee. He even allows Martin to ruffle his pooch-cut.

•   •   •

“I used to work for the nuclear weapons industry,” says Martin. He pronounces it “noocyular,” Fletcher notes. Not Colette's type. And he's Jewish. Which, even in fantasy matchmaking, is like being non-Lhasa apso — less acceptable. But cross-breed loving isn't impossible, considering himself and Yoriko.

Slightly more muscular than actors she admires on TV. Maybe he is her type.

The house tour takes a few minutes, and then Martin inspects the garage to see if it's long enough for the limo. When he noses it in, its sleek blackness lifts the gloom. “Roseman Limousine Service” and a cell phone number mar its gleaming sides. Fletch would bet Colette is hoping her neighbours get a good long stare before the door slides down.

They stand talking in the garage, and when Colette asks pleasantly about his family, he shrugs. “They don't need me, I don't need them. Moved out as soon as I could, as far away as I could without leaving the country.”

Jewish families on TV are always so close, almost stuck together.

“Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins?” asks Colette.

None of the above, he says. A bit like Colette.

Colette stands there, and Fletcher senses her trying to remember the checklist in
Guide to Landlords' Rights and Responsibilities.
He is just about ready to go fetch her the book when she asks, does Martin have many visitors?

“A few,” he says. Then, his face half-turned away, he squares his shoulders beneath the brown leather and says, “My partner will be here sometimes.”

“Your business partner … ?” she nods at the limo.

“Domestic partner,” he enunciates clearly, slowly, allowing no mistake.

“Oh,” says she, leaning a few degrees back.

Who would have guessed? I can never tell with dogs either.

•   •   •

If Martin and his partner had shown up together, well …

You might say Martin is up front and honest. But Colette isn't prepared. Nothing like this in the
Guide.
No ready-made social procedure.

Colette hasn't met a gay man in her thirty-seven years. They don't hang around Tim or his law office — not that she knows of, anyhow. And guys with names like Roseman don't hang out there except for business.

Colette sets her chin just like her grandmother. She did say she was going to change something, anything.

She can deal with this. Sure she can. Grandmère was very open-minded; Colette should be too. She might have to keep it a secret from Tim, but there's no way out. The book said no discrimination on the basis of age, sex, race. Did it say sexuality? Gayness? Anyhow, she can't excuse herself to run upstairs and check, not with Martin standing there, still half-turned away.

“I see.” Her voice comes out faint. “Does your, uh, partner live nearby?”

Each muscle in his shoulders tenses, as if he's anticipating her rejection.

“Rochester, New York.”

Far enough away. New Yorkers don't come visiting the fly-over states.

She mutters, “Okay.” Very casual. She pat-pats Fletcher on the back as if patting her own.

Accepting gayness is so New York or California, she might forget where she is — in a subdivision in the heart of the Bible belt. It's her French-Canadian side; Tim would have shown this man the door right away.

Colette touches Martin's arm lightly. “If you're all right with the rent, you can move in the first of next month.”

•   •   •

A week later, Martin has sponge-painted the half-bath white on blue, transforming the tiny room to a tiled raft floating through sky. He has doggie treats ready for Fletcher, and they aren't the ones that look like other dogs, so Fletcher doesn't feel like a cannibal as he scarfs them down. Then Martin leads Colette and Fletcher through his new home with a solicitousness, a politeness Tim would never show.

It's respect. You could even call it gentleness, in light of what the only alternative radio station in town would call his “sexual preference.”

Dark, brooding abstract art on the walls — none featuring naked men or body parts, Fletcher notes — healthy ferns and palms in every corner. Nothing too floral, no lace.

The sight of Martin's queen-size bed knocks Fletcher to a crouch: leopard-print sheets are folded over a pitch-black down comforter.

A cat lover. Well, nobody's perfect.

Colette is standing with her palms turned up, as if testing the weight of the atmosphere.

“I feel completely safe here,” she says.

Yeah, I bet you do, thinks Fletcher. Hasn't he heard about all the men who've led her to their bedrooms over the years, many of whom mentioned their interior decor or art collections as a pretext to get her in the sack?

The best ones are either gay or taken — or turn out to be cat lovers.

In the living room, a white leather sectional sofa cordons off a sports-bar-size TV. The kitchen's dining space features a smoked-glass tabletop on a scrolled wrought-iron base. There's even a rose silk flower arrangement at the centre.

Fletch curls up on the sofa, testing it. Colette shoos him off.

The fragrance of thyme, sage and rosemary rises from a rack by the stove; how Fletcher misses the smell of Grandmère's cooking. Actually, cuisine. Far removed from the salt, pepper and parsley flakes Colette grabs on rare occasions when it occurs to her to enliven a can of soup. Martin's windowsill overlooking the shared front lawn is lined with flavoured oils; the corresponding sill in Colette's kitchen holds one never-opened tin recipe box from Grandmère. When he goes to the fridge at her standard request for Diet Coke, Fletcher sees there's no beer but glimpses a bottle of Moët & Chandon.

Once, on Grandmère's eightieth birthday, Fletch stole a sip. Well, more than one. Missed half the party.

What's Martin doing here? He's capable of more than living in Grandmère's old house, renting instead of owning, running a one-man limousine service. Fletcher can feel he's nursing a festering sore. He'll move away soon, that's for sure. Meanwhile, he's more fun than Tim.

Colette opens a closet and reaches in. Unthinkingly, she starts to tidy a jumble of old photo envelopes tossed on a shelf. Then stops herself with an embarrassed laugh.

But Martin doesn't join her. In an instant stripped of social pretence, his sadness enters Fletch. Even Colette catches an expression of sheer desolation in his eyes. For no reason.

Denying that look is easiest. Polite. Colette feels that too.

She gives another half-laugh. “I'm a control freak, I know.”

What a confessional tone — somewhere between an Oprah guest and a member of Weight Watchers.

“You are,” he says. She was trespassing, but he could have protested — one of Colette's girlfriends would have. Maybe gay guys don't react
exactly
like women; Fletcher hasn't met enough of them to compare.

At the end of the tour, Martin invites Colette to dinner soon, once the kitchen is repainted. A courtesy invitation, thinks Fletch.

Say yes! Those treats were the best.

Colette accepts. Then she says, “Will your partner be in town? It would be nice to meet him.”

“No.” But his voice has coloured with gratitude that she asked. Fletcher can feel her admiration for her own magnanimity spreading like a tutu around her. Martin adds, “He's gone backpacking around the world for a few months; he has things to work out.”

Colette's shoulders relax, drop an inch. “I'd love to travel,” she says.

She won't travel much if she lets Tim think he owns her. Once upon a time he must have liked to travel; foreign countries offered him backdrops he could brag about, backdrops for photos of himself. Now he's bought Photoshop, loaded his hard drive with clip art and pastes himself anywhere he wants.

“Hey,” she says, as if suddenly inspired, “mind if I bring a guest?”

“Other than Fletcher? Sure.” He picks up Fletcher.

Fletch glares into Colette's brown eyes. They're so hard and opaque he has to look away.

The next day, when Colette returns from work, she tells Fletcher she's invited Tim to meet her “new boyfriend,” counting on his curiosity, knowing he will accept. She did add they were “just friends,” with a simper and a flutter of eyelashes Fletch has seen many times, many ways on TV. Disturbing Tim's complacency was so simple, so safe, so easy to effect, she says. A little jealousy … she's been too available. She is thirty-seven, too old to invest another two or more years in a new relationship.

That Sunday, the Apocalypse Man takes his turn around the cul-de-sac, shouting “Repent! Repent!” Fletcher goes ballistic again. But Colette doesn't budge. She has stuffed her ears with earplugs.

She's thinking, plotting, scheming.

•   •   •

Martin has thoughtfully provided Fletcher with a bowl of Kibbles and his very own cushion in the corner. Chin resting on his paws, Fletch watches Colette surveying Tim and Martin over the rim of her third glass of Merlot — good thing she doesn't need to drive home. The wine is helping her relax, keeping whatever plan she has going. Fletcher stays alert because he watched a program on Discovery once about dinner being the most dangerous of human rituals. He can't remember the whole thing, something about humans being as vulnerable as he is while eating but armed with knives. Tim keeps thrusting his knife into the stir fry vegetables. He's sprinkled them with soy sauce and cut everything on his plate into smaller, unattractive morsels.

And he doesn't toss Fletch one scrap.

Colette has manoeuvred the seating into a triangle with herself at the apex, Tim's U of Chicago sweatshirt and Martin's black turtleneck facing off across the table.

Tim gets his preliminary small talk over. Then, “You get that limousine around here? How many miles to the gallon?”

Fletch gives a small rrrrff, just to interrupt him. Martin tosses him a piece of chicken.

“How much do you charge from here to O'Hare?” Tim is interrogating Martin as if he were a hostile witness. Martin counters with nutshell answers, as if he's heard the questions many times before.

Tim the predictable.

“Do you get lots of wedding parties?” Colette interposes, offering everyone a chance to change the subject. Tim's got one chance at redemption. He can repay all Colette's loyalty right now and claim her back. He should say, I was thinking you could do ours someday, or, We've got one coming up for you, don't we, Colette?
The lines scroll on Fletch's teleprompter through the moment in which Tim misses his cue.

Well, Colette did tell Tim that Martin was her new boyfriend — but that guy! He's taking her seriously. Even though he didn't when she broke up with him at Land's End. Can't he tell Martin is gay? Maybe he thinks Colette doesn't know, and he's waiting for her to find out.