Something Like Winter (22 page)

“
See for yourself.” Tim
handed him the envelope. Quentin shifted through the checks one by
one, grunting after reading each number. Then he got to Eric’s
check, which Tim had intentionally put last in the pile.

“
Holy shit!”

Tim grinned. “I know,
right? Pretty sweet!”

“
And it’s from the faggot!
What’d you do, suck his dick?”

Tim’s face fell. “Dude.
That’s not cool.”

Quentin shrugged, still
beaming at the check. “I’m joking. I know you didn’t go down on the
old geezer.”

Tim felt heat rising.
“Eric’s a brother. You shouldn’t talk about him like
that.”

Quentin reluctantly pulled
his eyes away from all those zeros. “He’s not a brother. Do you
know what he did?”

“
I don’t care,” Tim
said.

“
Well, I’m going to tell
you,” Quentin said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Eric
Conroy
was
a
brother once, until he was caught sucking off the pledges. He was
taking advantage of his status to blow most of them before he got
caught.”

“
Bullshit!”

Quentin’s brow came
together. “Are you calling me a liar, Wyman?”

“
I’m saying the story
doesn’t add up. Eric was sucking off a bunch of straight guys
against their will? How does that work? If some guy put your dick
in his mouth, would you get hard?”

“
A mouth is a mouth,” one
of the brothers shouted with a cackle.

“
Just put a wig on the
faggot,” another said. “Or a paper bag with a hole in
it.”

Tim ignored them, still
holding Quentin’s glare. “Well, would you get hard?”

“
Hell no!” Quentin
snarled.

“
There you go. The story is
bullshit, so stop bad-mouthing him.”

Face red, Quentin stared
long and hard at Tim before he spoke. “You’re lucky I’m your Big.
Now get back out there and finish the list.”

“
Fine.”

“
Hey,” Quentin called after
him.

Tim turned around.
“Yeah?”

“
Good job getting the
queer’s money.”

Tim shook his head and
left, the chorus of laughter drowned out by the drumming in his
ears. What an asshole! What sucked most is that Quentin could be so
cool. He had sponsored Tim during the rush, acting as his Big. This
meant he helped Tim, his Little, get through and avoid the early
pitfalls new brothers are tricked into. Quentin did it mostly
because Tim was a legacy, but he could be a warm and protective
guy. Except, apparently, when it came to this. Tim wanted to
believe that Quentin was only harping on Eric because he had been
kicked out, but the homophobic slurs were impossible to
ignore.

Quentin had met Eric once
and seen how nice he was, which made Tim even angrier. He couldn’t
tolerate ignorance like that. Not since Ben. What if Quentin had
been talking about Ben just now? Or Travis, who had overheard
everything and was no doubt freaking out.

Tim hurried back to their
room, which was empty, then checked out the rest of the house. Only
when Tim walked out into the yard did he spot Travis sitting
morosely on the curb.

“
People talk shit,” Tim
said, standing behind him. “It comes with the
territory.”

Travis didn’t
respond.

Tim’s patience exhausted,
he left to get the car. Then he took Travis to breakfast but didn’t
try to make conversation. The tables around them were full of
parents and kids. Travis fixated on these families like his future
was calling to him.

The day went downhill from
there. Every house they visited had family photos on the wall.
Wives brought in drinks while the husbands chatted with them about
the good ol’ days. The background sounds of children playing only
drove the point home.

The timing couldn’t have
been worse. Just when Travis was coming around, all this stupid
fund-raising had come along and wrecked it. Eric, Quentin, all of
it made Tim’s mood grow dark as the day wore on. When they were
finally through visiting the alumni, that anger found a
target.

Quentin.

He could have accepted
Eric’s donation with grace. Here was a guy who, despite being
kicked out of the fraternity and treated as a joke, still gave an
enormous amount of money to them. And Quentin had stood in front of
everyone and talked trash about him like an ungrateful dick. Tim
wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

Once they were back at the
fraternity house, Travis slunk off somewhere while Tim put in an
appearance to show the other brothers that everything was cool. He
was even friendly to Quentin, giving him the day’s checks and
asking how the others had done. Then Tim made himself a sandwich
and ate it in the common room, keeping watch until Quentin took the
envelopes upstairs.

That’s all he needed to
know. Quentin had the only bedroom on the first floor—a sprawling
space on one corner of the building. He wasn’t keeping the checks
there. That left the second floor office. Tim sat around, watching
a movie and waiting until most of the brothers went out for drinks
or on dates. Then he went upstairs.

The office door was locked,
but the doorknobs were the cheap kind that could be picked by
inserting a paperclip into the hole. The brothers trusted each
other; such flimsy precautions were only to keep visitors out. Tim
picked the lock and slipped inside the office, locking the door
after him. There weren’t many places to look. Aside from a computer
and desk, the office was furnished with filing cabinets stuffed
with paperwork. Tim searched those first, finding the section with
the current year written on it. Soon he had a fistful of checks,
but he only sifted through them until he found Eric’s. Then he
folded it and put it in his back pocket.

He thought about taking the
check to the bathroom and burning it, but he felt Eric was owed
more than just his money back. Hopping in his car, Tim headed for
the outskirts of Austin.

* * * * *

Tim found himself not in
the luxurious front room with its burgundy and gold-threaded
couches, but deeper in Eric’s home in what was introduced as the
living room. One wall was dominated by bookshelves of different
widths, between them equally tall and narrow windows that also
varied in breadth. A couch and a number of armchairs filled the
rest of the space, with thick carpets cast seemingly at random
across the hardwood floors.

“
Do you recognize it?” Eric
asked, nodding to the shelves. “This room is also inspired by one
of my favorite paintings.”

Tim was at a total loss in
regard to both the right answer and the situation. He had imagined
speaking to Eric at his front door, but the older man had greeted
him with enthusiasm, practically dragging him inside when they
shook hands.

“
I don’t know,” Tim said,
grasping for anything. He considered the windows, how lights in the
yard lit them from behind like stained glass. “It sort of reminds
me of a forest, how trees form dark lines and the empty gaps
between them glow.”

“
Exactly!” Eric gently
turned him by the shoulder so Tim faced the opposite wall. There
hung a painting of a woman riding through the woods, except
something was amiss, because it wasn’t clear if the woman was in
front of the trees or behind them or entirely there at all. “René
Magritte’s
Le Blanc-Seing.
The bookshelves are trees, the windows— Well,
you’ve already figured it out. Here, sit down.”

Tim was directed to a
couch, its fabric the same color as the horse in the painting. Eric
took a seat in one of the comfortable chairs across from him,
cheeks warm and red as if he had enjoyed a glass or two of
wine.

“
You have an artistic eye,”
Eric said. “Do you draw? Or paint?”

“
Uh, listen,” Tim said. “I
really need to get something off my chest.” He stood enough to get
the folded check from his jeans pocket and stretched out his arm,
handing it to Eric.

“
What’s this?”

“
Your check. You were right
about the fraternity. They
are
a bunch of homophobic assholes.” Tim sighed.
“Well, not all of them, but they don’t deserve your
money.”

“
I take it you heard the
gruesome legend of Eric Conroy?”

Tim nodded.

“
Well, go on. No doubt it’s
changed since the last time I heard it.”

The idea of repeating the
story made Tim uncomfortable, so he tried to present it in the most
polite language. “They said that you were taking advantage of
pledges, uh, sexually. But it didn’t make sense, because the
pledges weren’t the ones pleasing you. Um.”

“
I was sucking their
dicks?” Eric said candidly.

“
Yeah.”

“
Thrilling.” Eric rolled
his eyes. “Next time I hear the story I’ll probably be sodomizing
the entire fraternity against their will.”

Tim shook his head. “It’s
stupid because it’s not like there aren’t gay brothers in the
fraternity. One night I got up the guts to visit Oilcan Harry’s,
the gay bar in the warehouse district.”

“
I’m familiar with
it.”

“
Oh. Well, I walked in and
almost had a heart attack because one of my fraternity brothers was
sitting right there at the bar.”

Eric snorted. “What did you
do?”

“
Uh.” Tim scratched the
back of his head. “Ended up getting it on in his car. He didn’t
even recognize me until afterwards.”

Eric laughed so hard he
started coughing. “And I take it he’s not the only one? Your friend
Travis, for instance.”

“
Exactly. The guy at the
bar has since graduated, but there’s at least one other besides us,
and that’s a story I’m definitely not telling.”

“
At least not sober,” Eric
said. “If you weren’t driving I’d offer you a drink.”

“
Thanks anyway,” Tim
said.

Unfolding the check, Eric
studied it. “I take it you’re still in the closet?”

“
That’s the other thing,”
Tim said. “I acted like Alpha Theta Sigma was all progressive just
because I’m gay, but none of them really know. That was misleading
of me.”

Eric shrugged. “I’ve never
needed any help in leaping to conclusions.” He looked up from the
check to consider Tim. “For someone in the closet, you seem very
comfortable with your sexuality.”

“
I’ve had a lot of
practice.” Tim saluted. “Proud closet case since I was
seventeen!”

Eric gestured for him to
continue.

Tim shook his head. “It’s a
long story.”

“
Then you have time for
that beer after all.”

And when Eric came back
with an ice cold bottle, plus a glass of wine for himself, Tim told
him everything. Talking about Ben again, even saying his name
aloud, opened up so many old wounds. Those old emotions, both good
and bad, had never left him completely. Even though he tried to
kill them—turn his heart to ice—all he had really done was enter a
fragile denial. These days he didn’t suffocate his feelings. Like
the dull throb of a toothache never tended to, Tim had slowly
learned to live with the pain.

“
You know what the worst
part is? I still remember that feeling when we first moved to
Texas. All the potential I saw, how my life was going to be bigger
and better. When I was with Ben, it was. Everything else was
Kansas, act two. Darryl was just another Brody, Stacy another
Carla. The only new thing was Ben. Once he was gone, the same
boring pattern repeated itself. Even now. Quentin might as well be
Darryl or whoever.”

“
Except now you have
Travis.”

Tim didn’t respond to this.
There was no comparison to Ben. Instead he took a swig of beer and
said, “What’s it say about a person when they know they have a
problem but never do anything to fix it?”

Eric smiled. “That they’re
human.”

Tim shifted in his seat and
stretched, stiff from sitting for so long. “Man, I’ve just been
rambling on and on about myself. Sorry.”

“
There’s nothing to
apologize for. I enjoyed it.”

“
It’s been one-sided
though. Tell me about your life.”

“
Well, I’m usually in bed
by now,” Eric said.

“
Oh! Sorry.”

“
But if you let me take you
to dinner tomorrow, I’ll talk your ear off.”

Tim paused. “Are you asking
me on a date?”

“
You think you’re man
enough to handle me?” Eric winked. “No, no strings attached. Just a
nice meal and an old man droning on about all his
regrets.”

Somehow Tim doubted it
would be anywhere near that boring. “Then it’s a non-date!” he said
as he stood.

Eric walked him to the
front door, fussing over Tim being able to drive, but he’d only had
the one beer. Life at a fraternity meant he had a high tolerance.
He was below the legal limit anyway.

“
You can have this back,”
Eric said, holding out the check.