Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club (16 page)

Whoever they were, they were having a good time. A better time than I’d ever had. And then there it was, the point of all the sex, the climax. Why did people always say,
god, god, god
when they came? I was smiling my ass off. But then I realized something. Something that really confused me. There was no girl. The voices were talking now, and both voices, well, they were both guys. I just kept listening. “I might love you,” one of the voices said.

And the other voice said, “Don’t love me.”

“It’s too late, Brian.”

“Jorge, you know—I mean—I don’t know what I mean.”

“You’re the one who started this. Now it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late.”

“You want to pretend that nothing’s going on between us?”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what, Brian?”

“I don’t know what I mean.”

They were starting to get mad at each other. My heart was beating fast and I wanted to just get out of there, but I knew they’d hear me and I didn’t want them to know I was there. I felt confused but I knew, I knew who they were, God, I knew them. It was Brian Stillman and Jorge Ledesma. Jorge lived on Brian’s farm. His dad had come from Mexico to work with the Stillman’s. Jorge was quiet and tall and had the body of an athlete. But not from working out, just from working on the Stillman farm. In grade school I’d helped him learn English. But we had never been friends. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I wasn’t good at making friends. Maybe it was because I’d been an asshole and didn’t want to hang around with Mexican Mexicans. I mean, maybe I wanted to be an American. Hell, I don’t remember. We just weren’t friends.

I kept listening even though I didn’t want to listen. I tried looking up at the stars, tried concentrating on them, but I could still hear everything. And then I heard Brian say, “If I don’t leave this goddamn place, I’m gonna go nuts.”

“Why?” I could tell Jorge was crying. “Why are you leaving?”

“I can’t stay here. I can’t.” And then there was this long silence. “You can come with me, Jorge.”

“My mom’s sick, Brian. I can’t leave her.”

“You need a life.
I
need a life.”

“You hate your father.”

“
He
hates me, Jorge. And I’m not fucking staying.”

“And what about me?”

And then there was nothing. Nothing at all.

My heart was beating really fast. And I felt—I really don’t know how I felt. I just lay there, my feet in the water, unable to light a cigarette, waiting for them to leave. And then I heard them moving. And then I heard Brian’s voice. “Hey, hey, don’t. Don’t be sad. We’ll figure something out.” I pictured Jorge leaning into Brian’s shoulder. I pictured Brian’s arms around Jorge. I didn’t know why I was picturing those things.

I heard them walking away.

They were talking again, saying things, but their voices were distant now, and then their voices disappeared.

I lit a cigarette. I looked up at the stars. And suddenly the world was so much bigger than I’d ever imagined it to be. And I couldn’t get the idea of Brian kissing Jorge out of my brain.

I had them both in my head when I masturbated that night.

I was trembling.

I knew something about myself that I’d never known. Just when I’d started liking myself, I hated myself again.

The day after graduation, I decided I was going to college in Albuquerque. I told my dad. I don’t know why I thought he might actually be proud of me. “Think you’re smart enough?”

“I got a scholarship, Dad.”

“You’ll be back after you fuck that up.” That’s all he had to say.

My mom cried. “Your father doesn’t mean it,” she said.

She needed my smile. “I know,” I said. We both knew it wasn’t true. But we needed to lie to ourselves and to each other about the truth of who my
father was. What could a woman tell herself when she knew what kind of man she’d married? What could a guy tell himself about a father who’d never love him? It was easier to smile.

I worked two jobs that summer. Saved money. The scholarship gave me two thousand dollars up front and paid my tuition for the first year. The letter said if I kept up my grades, then the scholarship would be renewed for another year. After that, I was on my own. That was a lot. God, that was so much money. A fortune. But still I knew it wouldn’t be enough. And I was already thinking about the last two years and how I would pay for that. And I kept telling myself this one thing:
I am not going to be poor.
I knew I’d have to do it on my own. So it was me and work. Hell, I knew how to do that. I was living for the future. I guess I’d always been doing that.

I didn’t really hang out with anybody that summer. I was too tired. I’d work on a construction site from six in the morning till three in the afternoon. I’d come home, take a shower, eat, relax and go into work at the 7-Eleven from five till eleven. Saturdays, I’d work an eight-hour shift at the 7-Eleven. Sundays, I’d just sleep. That was my life. That, and dreaming of my new life in Albuquerque.

One Saturday afternoon in July, I decided I needed to do something besides read a book or watch television. My parents were out of town at a funeral in San Diego. They’d let me stay behind so I could work. I liked having the house to myself—not that it really felt like home. My dad had a way of making sure I knew that the house I lived in was
his
.

But being alone was really good. Really, really good.

I decided I’d find some beer or something. The needing-to-feel-alive thing. Yeah, that was always there. I went riding around, smoking cigarettes, felt kinda lost and kinda sad but didn’t know why. I guess I hated my life. I
found some homeless guy and he was asking for money. I told him to buy me a six-pack and I’d give him a couple of bucks. He was hungry to take the bait. We both got what we wanted. “God bless you, son,” he said.

I shook my head. “Let’s leave God out of this one.”

I drove around. I don’t know why, but I found myself taking the old farm road. I liked that road. I’d grown up on a farm before my father lost it. He lost it betting on a cock fight. Yeah, well, that was my father. I hated him when we had to move. But I’d never hated him as much as he hated me. I just didn’t have it in me. I wondered if deep down he wanted to love me as much as I wanted to love him. But there were certain things you couldn’t do anything about. Fathers were one of those certain things.

So there I was on Highway 478. Driving down the road, smoking a cigarette. And then I saw him. Brian Stillman. At first I wasn’t sure if it was him, but as I drove closer I knew it
was
him. It
was
. He was all beat-up to shit. I mean, the guy’s face was all bloody and he was just stumbling around, like he’d gone ten rounds. Goddamn, I thought. He’d taken off his T-shirt and was using it as a giant handkerchief for his bloody nose. I stopped the car by the side of the road and yelled his name. “Brian!” He looked at me. He was numb. He just stood there staring at me. Then he just waved me away.

“Brian?”

He waved me away again.

“Get in the car,” I said.

He shook his head.

I got out of the car and grabbed him by the arm. “You’re hurt,” I said. “Get in the car.”

“Don’t call anyone,” he said.

“I won’t. You need help.”

“Fuck you, Neto.”

“Don’t give me that fuck you shit. That’s not gonna work on me. Just get in the car.”

He was too tired and too beat-up and too sad to fight me. He got in the car and stared out the window. I handed him a beer. “Here.”

He took it. He chugged down the whole thing. And then he just started crying. I didn’t say anything.

“Just don’t tell anyone,” he said. And then he was crying again.

“Who am I gonna tell?”

After a while, he stopped sobbing but the quiet tears kept running down his face.

“You need to get cleaned up,” I said. “Maybe you need to see a doctor.”

“No way,” he said. “No fucking doctors.”

I thought he was going to hit me. “Okay, okay,” I said. I handed him a cigarette. He was trembling as he smoked. I kept watching him out of the corner of my eye.

I drove toward my house, neither one of us saying anything.

When we got to my neighborhood, Brian looked at me. “Where are we going?”

“My house,” I said.

“I don’t want—”

“My parents are out of town,” I said. “It’s okay.”

He didn’t say anything.

When we got to my house, I had to help him get out of the car. I thought he really needed to see a doctor. But I knew Brian wasn’t going to go for that.

I helped him to the couch and handed him another beer. He drank this one slowly. He wasn’t shaking as much. I gave him a cigarette and then went
looking for a wet towel. His lip was cut but it had stopped bleeding. I could tell someone had taken a fist to his handsome face.

I handed him a wet washcloth. “Here,” I said. He tried his best to clean himself up. I knew he was hurting. I’d been in a couple of fights. Not a smart thing for a guy to do when he wasn’t a fighter.

“Who did this to you, Brian?”

He looked at me. I guess he’d decided he could trust me. “My father,” he whispered.

Great, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. I just kept staring at his beat-up face. “He’s a fuck,” I said.

He almost smiled when I said that.

“Why?” I said. “Why did he do that to you? He’s a fuck.”

He shook his head. I knew he wasn’t going to tell me.

And then I said, “Hell, it doesn’t matter why. You don’t deserve that.”

“He hates me.” He started crying again. I hated to see him like that, like a dog that’s been kicked around. God, I hated that. I almost wanted to cry too.

“My dad hates me too,” I said. “Maybe our dads went to the same father school.”

He smiled. I was glad he could still smile.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a doctor?”

“I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“You sure?”

He shrugged.

“You’re gonna have a helluva shiner. Shit, Brian,
two
shiners.”

He shrugged again.

“You don’t deserve this, Brian.” I wanted to shove that phrase into his heart. But I knew he’d always believe that he did deserve what he got. I
somehow understood that.

“Maybe I do,” he said.

I shook my head.

I helped him get to the shower. I could hear him groan as he washed himself. I lent him some clothes. He was bigger than me but my T-shirts fit him and I found a pair of my father’s jeans that fit him.

He looked so sad and small sitting there, even though he wasn’t small at all. I gave him some aspirin and some ice to put on his shiner. We drank a beer together. “Why are you doing this?” he asked me.

“Doing what?”

“Helping me.”

“Because I’m not your father and I don’t hate you.”

“You should hate me,” he said. “I was always an asshole around you.”

“It didn’t kill me.”

“If you really knew me, I think you’d hate me.”

“Maybe I do know you,” I said.

He looked at me. “Nobody knows me.”

I wanted to say
Jorge knows you
. But I didn’t. I thought I should just let it go.

He fell asleep on the couch.

I watched him sleep.

I knew what I thought as I watched him sleep even though I didn’t really want to tell myself what I thought. I thought he was beautiful. I didn’t let myself tell myself. But I did think he was beautiful.

He slept all afternoon, and then at night I let him sleep on my bed. I slept on the couch and read a book. I couldn’t sleep.

In the morning, I made breakfast. We didn’t talk much.

He offered to wash the dishes. I let him. He wanted to do something for
me. Yeah, I let him wash the dishes.

He wasn’t crying anymore. And he wasn’t trembling. But his face, God, it was swollen. We hung out that day. It was Sunday, my only day off and I had no plans. And Brian had nowhere to go.

“Your mom won’t worry about you?”

“I doubt it,” he said. “She died when I was eight.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“She loved me,” he said.

I nodded. We hung out. I kept making him put ice on his face. But since it was Sunday, we couldn’t get any beer. We broke into my father’s liquor cabinet. I pulled out a nearly full bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Won’t your father kill you for that?”

I smiled. I marked the bottle with a magic marker. “Tomorrow, I’ll get one of the guys on the construction site to buy me a bottle. And I’ll replace it. Easy.”

“You smile a lot,” he said.

“Do I?”

He was going to say something else—but he didn’t. We drank Jack and coke and smoked cigarettes. Brian kept feeling his face and wincing. He looked sad and I tried to talk about stuff that didn’t matter very much. Songs we liked. Our favorite movies.