The General and the Horse-Lord (15 page)

“Oh, my God! Look at the hair!” Kim had wandered in from the garage. He didn’t seem to notice the two uncles walking like Egyptians in their boxers across the living room. He was staring at the Bangles on the TV screen with their pink guitars and tambourines and big eighties hair. “Look at that, she’s got a lace catsuit! I’ve got to get one of those.”

A lace catsuit?
John and Gabriel looked at each other and watched Kim go back to the garage and close the door. Now John believed the nail polish was Kim’s. What else he had out in that garage, John didn’t want to know. Gabriel pulled John close. They were both breathing hard from the dancing, and John felt the rocking of their chests, skin to skin, hearts beating so close, just a couple of layers of muscle and bone between them. Gabriel leaned over, kissed his ear sweetly. “I’ve got the
Ultimate Barry White Collection
in the CD player next to the bed.” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down, and John laughed and thought,
Yeah, I would say the blood’s moving.

Chapter 11

J
OHN
watched Gabriel sleeping. He sprawled out, half on his side and half on his stomach, one hand hanging over the side of the bed. His skin was so warm and brown, his silky hair the gorgeous color of Russian sable, not quite brown and not quite black. John pushed the hair back from his face. He’d always loved the feel of it, fine and delicate. Gabriel still had plenty of hair. Forty-eight, and when he was asleep, he looked twenty-five. Maybe some lines next to his eyes, but they just looked like he’d been smiling.

John pulled on a pair of sweats and went into the kitchen to make breakfast. He had something to look forward to, an article for
Monocle
on leadership among the ancient Greeks. People never seemed to get enough of Sparta and Athens, fighting against the devilish Persians. It would be a fun article to write. He’d not read his Xenophon for some time.

He pulled open the fridge and stared inside. Something special, a little treat for Gabriel. They could eat bacon, just this once, without worrying about the cholesterol.

The house smelled like heaven, coffee and bacon and English muffins toasting. Gabriel came into the kitchen, his face damp and freshly shaved, his pale-blue dress shirt tucked into navy trousers. He looked happy, John thought. Gabriel sat down at the kitchen table and John brought him a cup of coffee, and Gabriel took his hand, said, “Thanks.”

The simple pleasures were the ones that brought the most joy, John thought, looking down at Gabriel’s head when he bent over the coffee cup. This was a memory they should have had from a hundred mornings, but it was new, something bright and beautiful: a handsome man, his lover, drinking coffee at the kitchen table after they’d loved each other the night before, and slept the sleep of happy men.

Gabriel looked a question up at him, and John put his hands on his face, looked down into his dark eyes. “I love you. I haven’t said that before, have I? I hope you never doubted it.” John leaned over and kissed him, tasted the coffee on his tongue, smelled the bright citrus scent of his aftershave. Gabriel reached for him, slid an arm around him, and John could tell he was smiling. He tasted like hope and happiness, like the possibility of every morning for the rest of their lives. “I love you, and I made you bacon for breakfast.”

“I know,” Gabriel said. “About the love and the bacon.”

J
OHN
worked on his article most of the day. He had an email from Gabriel, asking him to come to Ho Ho’s for some afternoon soup so they could talk about the tutoring with Juan. Martha wanted to talk to him. He gave Billy a call, woke him up, but Billy sounded okay, said he was going to check in with Kim later.

When he walked into Ho Ho’s, there was a sleeping homeless guy in the back booth again. John thought it was a different guy from the last time, but he couldn’t be sure. There was a tableful of coeds, and they were eating, talking, and texting on their phones, all at the same time. Juan was sitting at a table with his mother. John stared at the back of her head, and Martha turned around and looked at him. She put her hand on a chair and pushed it toward him, an unmistakable invitation.

He sat down, nodded to Juan, who studied the tabletop.

“I thought, since you might be spending more time in the future with my children, we should get to know each other a little better.”

What?
“I’m always happy to see you, Martha. Juan, how are you?”

“I’m okay. Do we have to start on the algebra today? Kim could probably use some help bussing tables.”

“Yes. But fifteen minutes should be enough to start.”

Martha raised her index finger. “I would like to sit in, if I may.”

“Sure, of course.” He turned to Juan. “Did you bring a notebook?” Juan nodded, pushed the notebook toward John. “We’re just going to talk about a few basic principles today,” he said. “Algebra is all about relationships. It’s about writing out mathematically how things are related.”

Martie came bouncing out of the bathroom, hopping like a little kangaroo. She looked like Martha, but with Gabriel’s silky hair. It was long, nearly to her waist, pulled back in a ponytail. John could see wispy curls along her neckline. She was wearing a navy-blue pleated skirt and a white polo shirt, neatly tucked into the waistband. John remembered what Gabriel had said about Catholic school. She leaned against the table. “Is this him?” She looked at Martha, and Martha nodded at her, gave her a stern face, and put a finger against her lips.

“So let’s start by talking about two….”

“So you’ve been dating my dad for, like, over twenty-five years? Even before he met my mom? That means you’re homosexual, right? Because you’re not married. But my dad, he’s bisexual, because he had me.” Martie pointed to her chest. “I made a note on my Facebook wall that my dad was bisexual. Lots of my friends think that’s cool. I got fourteen likes. There’s a girl at school, her name’s Amalie, she has two mothers who are lesbians. We talk about nontraditional families because Jesus loves everyone, no matter what they do. Are you and my dad going to get married? I think that would be cool. I could be the flower girl in the ceremony. Or if you just wanted to do a commitment ceremony with rings, I could still be a flower girl, just not with a white dress. Like, maybe a flowered dress.”

Kim brought over a pot of tea, laid a hand on John’s shoulder in silent support. Martha looked furious, furious and heartbroken, and John was reminded this new nontraditional family that was so cool to her daughter was not what she had signed up for. Martha looked up when Gabriel walked in the door, and then she looked at John, eyes narrowed, looked to see what was in his face when he looked at her husband. While he was sitting at a table with her children. John thought if she’d had a shiv in her hand, she would have shoved it into his heart.

“So one way of thinking about algebra is to remember that some things change and some things don’t. We distinguish between these things by calling them variables when they can change, and constants when they don’t change.”

Juan dropped his head to the table. He refused to look at his father. “Seems to me everything changes.”

Martie had flung herself into Gabriel’s arms, and he was holding her up, her legs wrapped around his waist, listening with growing dismay to her plans for his commitment ceremony. Her voice was pitched too high, a frantic little sound, words falling over each other, and there was a line of damp along her forehead. Gabriel was rubbing her back, trying to quiet her, saying, “Daddy’s here. Hush now, baby. Daddy’s here.”

It occurred to John for the first time that this was going to hurt. That he had something to do with what was happening, that he had some responsibility for these people. That his role was more than just a supportive friend and lover, while Gabriel changed his life. John could see very clearly for the first time that he was a part of what was happening, and it was not going to be easy, not for any of them.

G
ABRIEL
took the kids out to supper so Martha could have a few hours to herself. John hoped she was using the time to take a nap or have a couple of margaritas and talk about what assholes men were with her girlfriends, rather than looking for a hit man.

John was reminded how cool Gabriel was, how smart and how strong, when he came in from dinner with the kids, gave John a smooch, and got his briefcase out and started working at the kitchen table. John was working at his desk on the article for
Monocle
, and the house was peaceful. The quiet felt like bliss. Kim stuck his head in about ten, said he and Billy were working on an art project out in the garage, so if the uncles heard noises, they should ignore them.

John was happy to ignore any noise from the garage, but he stuck his head through the door to see how Billy’s face looked. He couldn’t tell, though, because Billy was working on a mask, a black mask that covered the damaged half of his face. He looked like a petite, fey Phantom of the Opera. He seemed pleased when John told him this. “Listen, Billy, when you went to the Urgent Care the night you got hurt, did they ask you about next of kin? The name of the person who was going to pay the bill? Anything like that?”

Billy nodded. “I know I’m going to have to call my dad. If he gets a bill from Urgent Care and I haven’t told him about it, then he’s really going to be upset. I’ve been avoiding it, actually. I mean, I’ve got three older brothers, General Mitchel. I don’t want them to make me go home.” He took off the mask, drew around the eye with a tiny tube of glue, and sprinkled it with glitter. The swelling was worse, but none of the abrasions looked infected. “I’m thinking about going home, but I want to decide myself, you know? I don’t want to get rescued and carted off to Wyoming, proving their point that I’m not safe without all three of my brothers standing over me, ready to kick the ass of anyone who insults me.” He looked up with a sad little grin, then slipped the mask back on. “Especially now I’ve had my ass kicked, I take the threat a lot more seriously.”

“Dean Fox might call him too. I just want you to be ready.”

“Did he seem worried to you about liability? Or was he genuinely concerned?”

“Maybe 20 percent concerned about liability. The rest was real and all concern for you, Billy.”

“That’s about what I thought. He seemed really nice.”

“Enough chitchat! Out, out! We’re creating here!” Kim was shooing him out the door.

“That door locks both ways, kiddo.”

“Oh ho! The uncles want some private time! You don’t have to tell me twice.”

John shook his head, went back through the garage door. That kid was a piece of work. What was he up to now?

Gabriel was yawning, picking up the files, and putting them back into his briefcase. “I’ve done nothing but sit on my ass all day. So why do I feel so whipped?”

“You want to run with me in the morning? I’ve got a three-mile loop. Just enough to keep the knees from getting stiff.”

“I’ll run with you.” Gabriel went back into the bedroom, dug around in the overnight bag he’d brought yesterday. He pulled out a tee shirt and a clean pair of socks.

John caught him around the waist. “Why don’t you bring everything? Bring it all, okay? Just bring everything, and we’ll deal with the fallout.”

Gabriel wrapped his arms around him, rocked him a little bit. “You sure? You know it won’t be easy. I’m not pushing you into this, am I?”

“I’m sure.” And he was. John watched Gabriel getting undressed, sitting on the side of the bed to pull off his socks, and he remembered him when he was a hotshot young pilot, wings so new they were practically damp, remembered the eagerness in his touch. Remembered the shyness and the question in his eyes, the first time they’d touched like lovers. Gabriel had always followed his lead.

But John wondered, watching him ease back, his head on the pillow, sighing when he stretched his back and started rolling around, finding his position to sleep, if Gabriel hadn’t always wanted more. Maybe he had always hoped for something more, right from the very beginning. If so, then John thought that logically, what they were all going through right now was a consequence of his failure. Had he had a failure of leadership himself? The thought had never crossed his mind before. What if he’d said, way back when he’d realized the feeling between them was deep and strong and real, what if he’d said right then, let’s take a chance. Let’s risk it all. What we have, you and me together, it’s worth more than anything. What would Gabriel have done? He’d have come into John’s arms, nodded his head yes, and followed him anywhere. Their lives would have been different, but for the first time, John wondered if he might have made a mistake, and chosen the wrong path.

In the middle of the night, John felt Gabriel’s hand reaching for him, cupping his face, stroking the angle of his jaw with his thumb. Gabriel moved his hand down across John’s chest, down to his belly. He slid his fingers into the wiry hair in his groin, then wrapped his fingers around John’s cock. “There you are.” Gabriel’s voice was sleepy, and John thought he was smiling. “Just making sure it’s you. It’s so wild, isn’t it? Me and you, every night….”