I knew it.
“But Mike,” he reached over and touched me again, “I have a rule with straights—and so should you. Look, but do not touch.”
I plucked his greasy fingers off my forearm. “Play by your own rules.”
“You still won’t admit it, will you?”
I acknowledged I was gay, okay? I just wasn’t like him.
“Anyway,” he stretched his arms over his head and wriggled his skinny butt down into his chaise. “Beau was yesterday’s cock tease. I’m in love with Shane now.”
Shane. Jamie’s imaginary boyfriend. This guy he’d supposedly met in an online chat room. Jamie’d been bringing up his name for the last month or so, but I’d tuned him out. Next month it’d be someone different.
“He called me last night. From Mississippi.”
“Who?”
Jamie turned his head. “Hello? Shane?”
I whipped around and frowned at him. “You’re kidding. You mean, like, on the phone?”
“No, from a hog-calling contest. ‘Hoo eee, Jam-eee.’ Yes, on the phone. From work.” Jamie crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “He’s everything I ever dreamed of. And more.”
“What did he say?”
“None of your business,” Jamie sniped. “It was a very private, very intimate conversation. Maybe if you ask me nice…”
This bothered me. Sitting up, I took off my shades and swung around to face Jamie. “You shouldn’t have given him your phone number. That scares me.”
“Yeah, it scares me too,” Jamie admitted. “I’ve never had anyone actually be interested in me. I have to wonder why.”
That wasn’t the problem. Jamie was attractive. He was a good guy. Anyone would be lucky to have him for a boyfriend. Although, I couldn’t imagine Jamie having a boyfriend. “You’re not planning on meeting him, are you?”
Jamie dropped his jaw. “Well, duh. Of course I am.”
“Jamie, you can’t!” My voice rose an octave. “Come on. You’ve heard the horror stories about meeting people on the Internet. All the perverts and child molesters. Get real.”
“What choice do I have? It’s not like we live in San Francisco. You want me to go to Wichita and hang out in the gay bars?”
“No,” I said. God, no.
“Then tell me, where are we going to meet people?”
Here, I thought. They’ll come here. She’s here.
Jamie’s head lolled back on the chaise and he closed his eyes. “I don’t want to be the oldest living virgin on Earth. Aside from you.”
I sneered, which he missed because he was totally out of touch with reality.
“He’s calling me again tonight.”
“Jamie—”
His voice softened as he added, “I like him, Mike. I really do. We have a lot of the same interests: music, movies, porn stars.”
I blew out an irritated breath and put my shades back on. The water tank behind us was reflecting heat like a solar panel. My skin sizzled. I needed to move. Take action. I scrambled to my feet. At the railing, I leaned over to catch a breeze and asked Jamie, “How old is he? Where’s he from? What’s his family do?”
“You sound like Geneviève. ‘James, sweetie, who is this Shane person? Where is he from, honey? How big is his dick?’” He imitated his mother perfectly, except for the last part.
“Well?” I said, turning and extending my arms along the crossbar. “Inquiring minds want to know.”
“Okay, Katie Couric. He’s from Alabama, and he’s got the sexiest southern drawl to prove it. He works in a gas station, but that’s just temp. He wants to become a filmmaker. He’s twenty-two—”
“Twenty-two!” My voice bounced off the water tank. “He’s too old for you.”
“No, Mother Superior, he is not. That’s only five years’ difference. Geneviève and Hakeem are twelve years apart and it works for them. They’re celebrating their twentieth anniversary this year.” Geneviève and Hakeem. Jamie’s parents.
Jamie scrunched up, hugging his knees. “He lives in a small town where there’s not much action. None, he says. He’s lonely, Mike. Like me. I’m so fucking lonely.” Jamie’s eyes bore into mine. “And so are you.”
I hustled to gather up my gear and shove it in my pack. My towel, sunscreen. “You’re a horndog,” I told him.
“And you’re not?”
I shouldered my pack and headed for the gate.
“You’re leaving already? It’s barely noon.”
Let him wallow in self pity. My life was fine, perfect. So what if I didn’t have a girlfriend? That was about to change.
As I stepped onto the top rung of the ladder, I glanced back to find Jamie staring at me. Excavating my soul. I had to admit, he knew me better than anyone. What was it we had between us? An indefinable connection, an understanding. A shared desperation. I don’t know. The gay thing.
He was right. I was lonely.
“Just be careful,” I said. “Please?”
Jamie nodded. “You too.”
There were five messages on the answering machine. The first was Nel, from the tavern. “Mike, call me as soon as you can. I have a disaster here and I need your help. Let’s see, it’s twelve-forty. Call me.”
What kind of disaster? I wondered.
The second message was from Xanadu. “Oh my God, help me!” she cried. “I’m stuck in a freaking time warp in Sublette, Kansas. Where the hell is Sublette? Isn’t that an apartment? You think Coalton’s small? Aunt Faye and Uncle Lee dragged me along on their weekly visit to his folks, who are old as Egyptian mummies. Right now Uncle Lee and his dad are in the parlor—yes, the parlor—comparing war injuries. God. Before that, they pulled out these shoe boxes full of old photos for me to see, like I know who Bella and Abel Cleveland are and all their twenty-five-hundred children and grandchildren. They’re probably all dead by now—”
Beep. The message timed out. A memory resurfaced. My grandparents. Grandma and Grandpa Szabo. Darryl and I used to go stay at their house in Leoti for two weeks every summer. I loved how we’d dump out Grandma Szabo’s hatbox full of black-and-white photos and pass them around. She’d tell us about the people; share the family secrets. She didn’t make up stories the way Dad did.
Grandma Szabo. She made me a quilt for my tenth birthday. I loved that quilt; still do.
Beep. “How rude. I’m back. Uncle Lee’s mother and Aunt Faye are in the kitchen with the next door neighbor, Elektra. Yes, Jamie. That’s her real name. I actually laughed out loud when she said it. Of course, I had to repeat my name three fucking times before she got it. They’re comparing recipes for their Jell-O ambrosia. Do you know what’s in a Jell-O ambrosia, Mike? Lime Jell-O and coconut; fruit cocktail and cottage cheese. Cottage cheese, in Jell-O. It has to look like someone blew chunks in a cake pan.”
I burst into laughter.
Beep.
Jell-O ambrosia. Wow, I hadn’t had that since… since I stopped going to church. The church ladies used to hold a potluck after the last service. I sort of liked Jell-O ambrosia.
Beep.
“You need to set your machine for longer messages if we’re going to be best friends,” Xanadu said. My heart leaped. Were we? Going to be best friends? “Anyway,” she exhaled loudly, “there’s this church-y social thing that I’ll no doubt be forced to go to and be paraded around. So glad I wore my black leather S&M bustier and spiked dog collar. When Gramps saw my belly-button ring, he about popped the blood vessels in his one good eye. Did I mention he has a patch?”
I snorted.
She blew out a long breath. “He had to show me the shrapnel scar on his abdomen too. That’s when I checked out. I’m holed up in the downstairs bathroom now, which smells like moldy mildew. There’s a mousetrap by the sink. You don’t think that means—” She screamed.
I laughed so hard, I about peed my pants.
“Okay, false alarm. It was only a cockroach. I’m sorry to bother you with all this, Mike. It’s just I’m going psychot
ic here. Aunt Faye won’t let me call my friends at home…. My friends, right. Like I even have any. They all turned on me after… you know. They made me feel defective. Which, I guess, I am. If, or when, you get back from wherever you are—pitching cow pies—whatever, would you please, please call me? My cell number’s seven two oh…”
I rummaged through Darryl’s junk on the counter to find a pencil and paper, and missed the number.
Xanadu’s voice on the machine muffled. “I’m down here, Aunt Faye. I’ll be right up. No, I just have a touch of diarrhea.” More distinctly, she spoke to me. “I am now going to attempt to suck my brain out through my nose with this toilet plunger.” There was this weird sound, then the machine clicked.
I replayed the last message to retrieve her cell number. She’d rattled it off so fast, and our machine tape was scratchy, and I had to replay it six times. When I thought I finally had it, I dialed the number, but only got a recorded out-of-service message.
The Davenports were in the phone book. I dialed their number. It rang and rang. Maybe I could drive out to their place. Park and wait. I didn’t want Xanadu to think I wouldn’t call her at the first possible moment. She needed to hear she wasn’t defective.
The phone rang. I lunged for it. “Hello?”
“Mike, thank God you’re there. Did you get my message?”
It took me a moment, since I was expecting, hoping, to hear Xanadu’s voice again. “I just got home,” I told Nel.
“This is a disaster. Both my toilets are overflowing and I can’t find the shutoff valve.” She sounded frantic. “I don’t know if the septic’s full or there’s something in the line. It shouldn’t be full. I had the tank pumped a couple of months ago. I’d call up to Goodland, but they won’t come on a Sunday, and even if they did it’d cost me an arm and a leg. Your dad always handled this kind of thing for me. Do you think you could come over and take a look?”
I hesitated.
“Mike?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be right there.” This was Nel. She had an emergency.
“You’re an angel.” She hung up.
There was a clog in her line somewhere. An easy fix. I’d have to stop by the shop for the snake and pump—
No.
Please no.
Not the shop.
Chapter Eight
My stomach felt queasy as I turned up Main. I could see it from a distance, the front window, SZABO PLUMBING AND HEATING. I’d done the lettering myself in sixth grade. Stick-on letters—big deal. The glass was still cracked from the hailstorm that about demolished the town the day of Dad’s funeral. Our roof at home had been pulverized so bad a bunch of shingles had busted loose. Did Darryl fix it? No. Every time it rained the water spots on the ceiling in my room spread like a grease fire. One of these days the whole roof was going to collapse.
This vision materialized in my mind: Me, that day, standing on the porch at home watching the world get ripped apart. Same way my insides felt. Like an idiot I’d rushed out into the mucky backyard to retrieve a handful of hailstones. They were still in the freezer as a memento, I guess. I didn’t need any mementos.
I parked in the alley behind the shop and sat for a minute, trying to slow my pounding heart. I swore I wouldn’t do this; wouldn’t come here. I’d respect his wishes, his decision.
Respect.
He didn’t extend it to me. All the times I’d come to work with Dad, come to the shop, we’d make a day of it. A pit stop at the Suprette for a couple of sticky buns and a quart of orange juice. Our favorite breakfast. He’d pour the juice into his coffee mug, then mix it with vodka when he thought I wasn’t looking.
I was always looking, Dad.
I turned off the truck. I got out, leaving the keys in the ignition. I could just run in, get what I needed, get out. The back door key was still on the windowsill where it always was. Only over the years it’d been incorporated into a spongy spiderweb. The door still required a good heft of shoulder. Dad vowed he’d fix that loose frame. Someday, he’d said. Someday.
“You ran out of somedays, didn’t you, Dad?” I flicked the light switch. Nothing. Of course, the electricity would be off. What was I thinking, that everything was the same?
Some things were. Dad’s two oak filing cabinets, circa 1940. His steel desk. The stockroom shelves of PVC pipe and copper tubing, bathroom fixtures, valves, vent caps, flare plugs, flex connectors. When I was little and Dad would bring me to work with him, he’d plop me on the braided rug behind his desk and give me boxes of elbows and wyes and flare nuts and male and female adapters and nipples and stub outs and tees and unions and compression caps. I’d play for hours and hours fitting all the parts together, screwing and piecing. Everything fit perfectly. Like life. No leaks.
What was I saying? Life leaked from every loose coupling. There wasn’t enough plumber’s putty in all the world to keep the life from leaking out of Dad.
Stop it, I admonished myself. He’d made his choice.
That was the part I was having trouble with. His choosing to die.
The building still belonged to us, at least. Great-Grandpa Szabo had built it himself, brick by brick. From the ground up, he’d built our reputation, the family business. He meant for it to stay in the family. Forever. It would have too, if only Dad had trusted me.
Shut up, brain. It’s not his fault.
Whose fault is it?
Darryl’s, if anyone. He trashed the business.
Breathe in deeply; hold, hold. Don’t let it get to you, I told myself. Control. Action. I released my breath, along with the tension in my muscles. In my jaw, my stomach. It’s all about control.
Action and control.
Dad’s toolbox lay open on his desk. I closed the lid and latched it; noticed a stack of mail in his outbox. For some reason, I riffled through the envelopes: Rural Phone and Electric, Farmer’s Insurance, Aquastar Heaters, the Mercantile—
“Dammit, Darryl,” I cursed him out loud. “The least you could’ve done is paid the bills. He trusted you.”
He trusted you, Darryl. He trusted you with the business. The least you could’ve done is cared.
Nel was swabbing the floor when I pushed through the café doors at the tavern. She flung the mop down and rushed over to meet me. To hug me. “Mike, you’re a lifesaver,” she said.
“I thought I was an angel.”
She cupped my chin. “That too. I found the shutoff valve, at least.” The hardwood floor was damp and discolored around the booths, and the whole place reeked of sewage. Poor Nel. She’d be bleaching for days. The phone rang and she hustled around the bar to answer it. “You know where everything is in the bathrooms?” She lifted the receiver.
“I’ll find it.”
“Hello? Oh, Miss Millie. I just wanted to call and tell you I had to close early today….”
Miss Millie. She’d assumed Dad’s exalted position of town drunk after he’d relinquished the honor.
Both restrooms had been mopped, but there was still standing water around the toilets. I’d never worked on these particular units. They were ancient even by Coalton standards. In the women’s room, I removed the tank lid and examined the ball-cock assembly. Rusty, but intact. Did I smell sewer gas? I followed my nose out the back door to the septic tank. All the other buildings in town had hooked into the main sewer line a few years back. Dad and I had done most of the conversions. Darryl had helped a little, if you want to call it that. “It’s not my gig, Dad,” I remember him saying. Remember him whining the whole time. Then bailing on us.
He and Dad got into a fight about it later. Darryl hollering he didn’t want to be a turd herder.
The septic wasn’t full, as Nel suspected, so there had to be blockage in the line. I’d augur it first. Clear the siphon holes in the toilets. If I had to root the main line or dig a trench to cut through the pipe, this could be a mammoth job. I almost hoped it was. Not for Nel. For me.
I loved plumbing. Loved the problem solving, discussing wi
th Dad solutions, how to fix things, connecting the parts, the pieces. I loved new installations, planning the architecture, the piping, soldering, installing the fixtures. I loved every aspect of plumbing. It was in my blood; it ran through my veins.
It took a few tries, first with the snake, then the power snake. Eventually, I twisted through. A huge clot of cloth, like a dishrag, came out attached to the snake blade. Weird. It was in the men’s urinal.
I showed it to Nel. She said, “Oh shit. I know whose that is. Charlene and Reese. They stopped by to show me their new baby girl on Saturday. Charlene’s in seventh heaven finally having a girl. After those boys of hers…” Nel shook her head. So did I. The Tanner boys. Look out, world. “The baby needed changing and Charlene and I were catching up on news, so Reese said he’d do it. That man has the brains of a two-year-old, I swear. That might be giving him too much credit. I can’t believe he’d flush a diaper down the toilet.”
“Maybe you should have him arrested,” I said.
Nel looked at me and burst out laughing. Reese was the town sheriff. Nel laughed and laughed. Her smoker’s wheeze degenerated into a coughing fit.
“Do you want me to help clean up?” I asked, rewinding the snake.
“Not necessary. You’ve done enough. You are an angel.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You go on home.”
I didn’t want to. I wanted to replumb the whole tavern.
Nel trailed me out to the truck. After I hefted the power snake into the back, I turned to find her extracting a wad of money from her zipper pouch. She peeled off four or five tens and handed them to me.
“Forget it,” I said. “It’s on the house.”
“No such thing,” she said. “You’re as bad as your dad.” She slapped the money into my palm and closed my fingers around it.
She had to bring him up, didn’t she? Just when I was feeling so good.
She shut the driver’s side door after me and rested her arms across the open window frame. “Arrest Reese. Ha. That’s a good one. You’ve got your Dad’s sense of humor too. I could always count on him to leave me with a laugh. I miss that.”