Safety Net (20 page)

Davaughn Charles was indeed the
best-dressed of the lot. And since he won the trophy by a landslide, he was all
grins. They watched Erick give him a congratulatory handshake and back-clap,
watched the acceptance speech, and in the middle of highlight clips of Syracuse’s
undefeated season, they got bored and switched to a game between two low-ranked
Big Ten teams. Half the guys drifted away, including Tomasovich. Dempsey pulled
up a chair and said to Lowell, “You’re tight with West. Is he okay?”

Lowell said with admirable
neutrality, “I think so. Why?”

“He hasn’t been home much.” Dempsey
was one of Erick’s roommates. “I know his schedule this year has been crazy,
but he’s stayed out all night a few times. Which is... you know. It’s not Erick
West.”

Dale envied Lowell his calm
coolness. “Yeah, that’s unusual for Erick. Huh,” Lowell said. “I know he’s got
that horrible space class this quarter. He’s been working a lot on that.”

Dempsey nodded, sitting back. “Yeah,
that’s true. I guess he’s been pulling all-nighters in the library.”

Lowell said nothing, tilting his
head in what could’ve been agreement.

When they were walking back to
Poitier, Dale said, “You could win an Oscar for that performance.”

Lowell’s brow knitted. “Shit. It
just occurred to me that even the clueless geeks in Poitier are gonna start
recognizing Erick after this. He’s becoming a celebrity. What the hell are we
gonna do?”

Dale wondered, off-handedly, why his
first reaction wasn’t jealousy but a genuine desire to help Lowell solve the
problem of how to sneak around and fuck Erick without anyone knowing. It wasn’t
that he didn’t miss having Lowell in his bed -- he definitely missed it. But,
he supposed, he didn’t miss it as much as he wanted Lowell and Erick to be
happy. And that was the thing he saw when he looked at them: they were happy.

“We gotta find some place out of
the dorms,” Dale said. “Hmmm. Tricky. But not impossible.” He did, in fact,
have a few ideas.

Lowell said warningly, “If you’re
going to suggest the men’s room by the soccer field or inside the mausoleum, I’m
going to toss you off a bridge. This is serious.”

Dale bumped him with his elbow. “I
know it is, bro. I’m thinking seriously of solutions. Stuff I thought about
before. When we... In case we...”

“Oh.”

They walked a few steps before
Lowell sighed, saying nothing.

Dale said, “Lowell, please. If you’re
beating yourself up over this on my account, you can stop now. Much as I love
you, you’re not my guy. Not The One, you know?”

After a pause Lowell said, “I still
feel crappy about it, though. ‘Cause it was like, I’m with you then suddenly I’m
with him. Kind of harsh.”

Dale felt a sour pleasure at Lowell’s
guilt and wasn’t proud of it. “Yeah, it was. But I knew I was opening up a can
of worms when I hooked up with you, Menacker, so I have to share some of the
blame.”

They walked on in silence for a
while.

“What was wrong with his suit?” Lowell
asked, sounding curious and not defensive.

“He needs to wear a dark suit. Dark
jacket at least. That beige? Made him look ill. I don’t think it fit him,
either. The jacket made him look fat. The whole thing was yuck.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I thought he looked
cute.”

Dale lifted his hands to the sky. “Why
me? Crazy straight boys in love gonna kill me dead.” And Lowell snickered.

By the time Erick returned to
campus, they’d gotten the announcement that Crocker would be playing WVU in the
Orange Bowl. Back to practice and lots of meetings and reviewing video of WVU,
a school Crocker had never played before. They used a hurry-up offense similar
to Oregon’s but less controlled, and it was hard to get a read on their
defense.

After one of the offense and
special teams meetings, Dale ran into Erick while Lowell got called back with
the rest of the tight ends for more practice.

“No quarterbacks’ meeting?” asked
Dale.

“Not today,” Erick said. “I’m
heading to Hopkins to grab some chow. Wanna come along?”

Dale couldn’t remember the last
time he and Erick had hung out together without Lowell. He fell into step with
him.

“Had you ever been to New York
before?”

“No. It was pretty sick. We could
see Central Park from the hotel room. But it was cold and raining and noisy.
God, the noise. How do people stand it? You ever been?”

Dale shook his head. “No. I have
family in upstate New York, but we never visit them.”

Erick said hesitantly, “How is your
family? Your parents. Do you, uh, talk to them?”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. We talk.” Dale
remembered he’d included Erick in the beginning of all of that, but not in any
of the follow-up. “It’s, uh, all right, I guess. They’re getting used to the
idea that they’re not going to get a daughter-in-law.”

“Oh. That’s good. I’m glad.” Erick
smiled at him.

By now they’d reached the dining commons
at Hopkins. They grabbed dinner and instead of sitting with the guys they found
a small table in the back to sit alone.

“Um. How’s Candace?” Dale asked,
watching Erick.

As expected, Erick flushed at her
name, but not guiltily.

Erick sat back and picked at a
bread roll, tearing it into tiny pieces and eating them. “Seriously? I hate
that she’s in England for the whole year. It’s driving me nuts. At first I was
texting her and calling her all the time, but the phone bills killed us.
International charges. I had no idea.” He sighed and popped another piece of
bread roll in his mouth. “We tried to Skype but the time difference sucks. When
she’s home, I’m at practice or in class.”

“How do you keep in touch?”

“E-mail,” Erick said, wincing.

“Bro, that sucks.”

“Yeah. It does,” Erick said with a
sigh.

They finished eating. Dale picked
at a bowl of chocolate pudding that had seemed like a good idea at the time --
Hopkins made a mean chocolate mousse-like pudding. Erick, watching him, said, “You’re
going to tell me I’m insane, but every day I wish I could tell Candace about
Lowell. Not because I want to hurt her, but because I want her to know Lowell.
Know him like I do.”

“Like you do?” Dale said, arching
an eyebrow.

Erick grinned. “Well, no. Maybe
not. You know what I mean.”

“I don’t, bro, but I’m not going to
tell you you’re insane for loving two people.” Dale laughed a little. “I’m the
last person on the planet who’d tell you that.”

Erick looked at him for a moment. “I’m
sorry, you know.”

Dale shifted, spinning the spoon
around in the pudding. “I know. Erick. It’s okay. Lowell... Well, he’s Lowell.
He was too much temptation for me. I played with fire. It happens.”

“I thought you guys got together,
like, a year ago,” Erick said steadily. “When you were living with the lesbians
and he was going over there a lot.”

Dale blinked at him. “You did? Why?”

Erick looked uncomfortable. “I don’t
know. No. I’m afraid I do know. I think deep down I wanted it to be true
because that meant Lowell liked guys and might like me. ‘Cause I wanted him to
like me.”

Dale couldn’t help it. He burst out
laughing. Erick stared at him, face pale. “Sorry,” said Dale. “It’s just... God,
you two. You definitely deserve each other, that’s all I’m gonna say.”

Erick relaxed, shaking his head. Dale
pushed his mostly untouched pudding to the center of the table and Erick
finished eating it. Dale watched him and smiled. He’d intended to wait for
this  moment until Lowell was free, but he was seized with the desire to
see the look on Erick’s face.

“C’mon. I got a surprise for you,” Dale
said, clapping him on the arm.

-----

“Here we are,” Dale said as he
opened the door. “Your shacking-up shack, courtesty of Dr. Brandt, associate
professor of chemical engineering.”

Erick wouldn’t step over the threshold.
He stared as if Dale were in the middle of stabbing someone to death. “What...the
hell...” he said at last.

Dale flipped the keys in his hand. “Bro,
relax. It’s okay. We’re housesitters. Or, you and Lowell will be. Dr. Brandt is
in Mumbai until the end of May.”

Erick frowned, his look of fear and
horror turning into puzzled skepticism. “Explain, please.”

Dale walked around the living room.
He’d only been here once to meet Dr. Brandt and hadn’t taken a good look. Not a
bad size, with floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, covered with ugly
vertical blinds. The living room bent into a tiny L --  the so-called “dining
nook” that Dr. Brandt used as a home office. An even more tiny square kitchen
was stuffed beyond that. Dale checked that the fridge was empty, nothing
rotting and stinky, and wandered back to the living room where Erick stood in
the middle of the floor, watching him warily.

“It’s nothing illegal, for
chrissakes,” Dale assured him. “A girl in one of my classes told me about this
campus notice board, kind of like Craigslist but limited to the university.
Faculty looking for housesitters and nannies, grad students looking for
roommates, students looking to share rides to the airport or concerts... Stuff
like that.”

“Oh.” Erick relaxed a little and
looked around. “But... How can Lowell and I be housesitters? We didn’t even
sign up for this.”

Dale cocked his head and sighed. “Your
SAT score was what again? Try to keep up, Texas. I signed up, I found Dr.
Brandt, I met him, he’s cool. He just wants to make sure no one steals his TV
and computer and he has some plants he wants watered. He wanted to sublet but
couldn’t find anyone in time, so he settled for having a student come and keep
an eye on the place. Erick. This is the best set-up ever. You and Lowell get
your own crib away from prying eyes.”

Erick took another look around. “Ohh.
Wow. Dale. That’s, wow. Really awesome of you.”

Dale rubbed the back of his neck.
Basking in Erick’s awe at what a great friend he was paled after a second. “Um.
This was something I started looking into a while ago. Just in case. Um. If
Poitier got too fishbowl.”

Erick glanced at him, completely
calm and steady. “Oh. Ah. I see.”

It’s not like I need a
shacking-up shack anymore
, Dale thought irritably. And a memory of Lowell
sucking him off whipped through his brain, just to torture him some more. He
said shortly, flipping the keys in his palm, “Hey, you don’t want it? No prob.”

“Dale.”

Erick came over to him and wrapped
him in a hug. “Thank you.”

Dale patted Erick’s back. “Yeah,
yeah, you better fucking be grateful. And don’t fuck it up, either. I’m
counting on you to keep the TV and Mac safe and keep the plants alive.”

Erick let him go. “But if Dr.
Brandt thinks you’re here... He’s met you. I don’t think it would be right...”

Dale wandered off to explore the
bedroom. “Don’t worry about it, bro. I told him you were a friend of mine and
might need to get away from the attention from time to time. Asked if it was
okay if you studied here. He said it’d be fine.”

“He’s a Crocker football fan?” Erick
brightened considerably. He stood in the doorway, watching as Dale checked out
the bedroom.

“No. Actually, he’d never heard of
you, but I explained things. About the Heisman and all.”

“Oh.” Erick paused. “Well. If you’re
sure it’s okay. Wow.”

Dale stood at the foot of the bed,
looking at it critically. “Too bad it’s not a king, but you and Menacker should
fit on a queen. More or less.” He glanced at Erick and caught his blush. Made
it worse by adding, “You should buy your own set of sheets. And bring your own
towels.”

-----

Dale was the only guy on the team
who didn’t groan about the shortened winter break -- only four days off, the
rest of the time taken up with extra practice for the Orange Bowl. And when the
team arrived in Miami Gardens, Dale figured he’d be the only guy whose family
hadn’t flown out to spend New Year’s Eve in a nice cushy hotel with their son.
Turned out he wasn’t, and a bunch of the guys spent an “orphans’ New Year’s” at
a bar near the hotel, sneaking spikes into the colas of their under-twenty-one
teammates.

There were a lot of strange
publicity things for the team to do, which annoyed everyone because it
interfered with practice. Erick got a lot of attention and handled it with his
usual, “It’s not about me, it’s about our great team.” He was getting better at
avoiding dumb questions and not looking like he wanted to kill the
photographers.

There were far more Crocker fans
around than the team had expected, ranging in age from babies dressed in
Crocker red to white-haired alums who could’ve remembered Crocker’s previous
11-1 season in 1924. Most of them were staying in the same hotel as the team
and their families, and as the week wore on, the hotel became a Crocker house
party. Dale met alums from three different decades, their wives, husbands, and
kids, just by lounging around by the pool. They didn’t quite treat the players
as royalty, but they made it clear: they were proud of Crocker’s team, they
were grateful for such a spectacular season. Not a single one of them said
anything negative about the dismal Hammer Game.

They had free time on the afternoon
before the bowl game. Dale went for a run around the hotel grounds -- it was a
resort hotel with a small golf course -- and ran into Lowell’s mother on her way
in from a shopping spree. He stopped to help her carry the bags to her room.

“I hit the outlet malls,” she
explained, dumping shopping bags on one of the beds. She straightened up,
pushing her hair back, and smiled at him. “Thank you, Dale. Most of this junk
is for Lowell, anyway.” She waved a hand at the assortment of bags: Nike, Tall
Men’s Wearhouse, Calvin Klein.

“Trying to improve him?” Dale
asked, arching an eyebrow. He guessed the Liz Claiborne and Casual Corner bags
were for her.

Mrs. Menacker rested her fists on
her hips. “Oh, as soon as I saw him in those same ratty pants he’s been wearing
since high school. He says they’re his
good
pants. Because they’re not
sweats and they’re not jeans. I could strangle him sometimes.”

Dale laughed. He knew exactly which
pants she was talking about, and yeah, they looked awful on Lowell.

She pulled a pair of dark navy
dress pants from the Tall Men’s Wearhouse bag. “I got him these, but I don’t
know if they’ll fit.” She held them up and eyed them doubtfully. Dale checked
the measurements on the tag.

“They’re long enough, but you know,
his waist and hips are fairly narrow.” He mimed sizing Lowell’s hips with his
hands. “They may be too big around the middle.”

Mrs. Menacker looked at him for a
moment, and a chill slid down Dale’s forehead and cheeks. He said quickly, with
a false laugh, “Hey, that’s life on the team for you. We all know each other’s
measurements.” Oh God, that was worse. “Height, weight...um...” He slapped a
grin on his face. “One of the linebackers eats a second piece of pie, we all
hear about it. No secrets in football.”

Mrs. Menacker gave him the most
incredible, gentle smile. It said
I know you’re lying to me about something,
but I’m going to let you lie because I like you
. Dale let out his breath
little by little, relieved, while Mrs. Menacker folded the pants and set them
aside.

“Lowell said your family didn’t
come out for the game,” she said with a note of concerned curiosity in her
voice.

“No,” he said. “My father probably
had to work.” It had been his stock excuse all week, and it sounded plausible
enough.

“Oh, that’s too bad.” She was
pulling box after box of Calvin Klein underwear from a bag. Black, grey, black
and white pinstripes... Dale could, to his chagrin, imagine Lowell in them all.
He focused his attention on Mrs. Menacker, tried to see if Lowell’s good looks
came from her.

She met his stare, not bothered by
it. Lowell’s eyes had come from her, certainly, but not much else that he could
see, though she wasn’t bad looking. For someone’s mother.

She said, “Have you met the Wests
yet?”

“No, not yet.” Dale had avoided
them all week. What Erick had said of his family had made Dale wary of them,
especially the sisters.

Mrs. Menacker rolled her eyes,
startling Dale into a brief giggle. “That bad?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re nice enough...for
Texans...” She paused, realizing she wasn’t talking to a confidante. Dale
thought, flushed with a sudden platonic crush on her,
Oh, please let me be
your confidante.
“Mr. West is a very pleasant man,” she finished. Dale was
disappointed until she added, “He must have the patience of a saint and quite a
sense of humor.”

“Are both of Erick’s sisters here?”

Mrs. Menacker had pulled out her
Liz Claiborne purchase: a long drapey cashmere sweater in a golden brown color
that reminded Dale of the color of Lowell’s body hair. He wished he would stop
having inappropriate thoughts about Lowell in front of Lowell’s mother.

“Janine and the other one...the
pregnant one...”

“Trish? Trisha?” Dale supplied. “She’s
pregnant?”

Mrs. Menacker chuckled. “Very
pregnant.”

“Erick’s going to be an uncle?” Dale
was floored by this. An only child, the concept of nieces and nephews was
utterly foreign to him. “Wow. That’s so...huh.”