The Locker Room (14 page)

“I"ll do everything you want, Xander, but you gotta do something

for me, okay?” At Xander"s tentative nod, he said, “How about you not

take this… this gift from the gods you got going in that obscenely tall

body of yours and piss it away, right?”

“Chris has the same gift,” Xander said stubbornly, and Leo waved

him away.

“Of course he does, sweetheart—the NBA does not scout hanger-

onners just because they"re cute.” Leo tried a leer then. “And boy

howdy, are you cute!”

Chris returned with a stony-faced glare, and Leo held out his hands

in peace again. “Okay okay okay okay… I get it. No flirting.” Chris"s

expression eased up, and Leo took a look around Xander"s austere, no-

frills room. There were pennants from games they"d won and the Most

Outstanding Player trophy Xander had gotten when UNC had taken the

NCAA championship, and one picture of him and Chris, taken by Penny

right after they"d gone hang gliding off of Nag"s Head and were standing

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companionably with their arms around each other and easy, triumphant

grins on their faces.

“You know, my darling boys, it"s probably a good thing you two

are going to be in the closet for the rest of your lives. The only thing gay

about the two of you seems to be each other.”

Xander hadn"t had any idea what the guy was talking about, and

neither had Chris, so they"d let him hold their hands through the draft

pick, and hoped for the best.

It was worth it. The buying of the expensive, specially tailored

suits, the custom shoes, the countless meals with different teams

(because, according to Leo, they did
not
raise their lubricated assholes

for
anyone
in the NBA unless they expected to become best friends with

a power drill), the asking Penny"s friends to stand in as escorts, in the

end, all of that effort, that role playing, that pretending to be men who

were as ruthless off the court as they were on it, all of that was worth it.

Because in the end, the best
was
the best. The best was

Sacramento, on a “building” year, when the two of them as rookies were

the most exciting thing the old cow town had seen since Vlade, Peja, C-

Webb, and Bibby had lit it up together on the court eight years before.

The best was a mansion in Folsom, bought together with their signing

bonuses and “pimped out” (Leo"s word) to look like two cocky kids

trying to stay frat boys past their prime.

“What we"re going to do is market Xander as the quiet one and

Chris as the party boy. So the east wing of the house is going to be all

nice, understated shit, austere, that kind of thing—you know, sort of like,

say, that godawful dorm room, except you"re going to let me hire the

decorator—okay, boys?”

The two of them stood in the doorway of the big-assed two-story

house that did, indeed, have an east wing and a west wing, clenching

hands in both awe and horror.

They were going to live here?

“And what"s the other wing going to look like?” Chris asked

dubiously, and he and Xander both looked at each other and grimaced.

God only knew what the little man could come up with to make them

look straight. A room full of synthetic breasts, maybe? A harem? A

harem in the titty room, with an estrogen hookah? What would it take to

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make the two of them look like they weren"t fucking each other? (A

thing they"d done a lot of that summer, as they"d road-tripped their way

back home on every road
but
the ones that had brought them there. They

were careful—if anyone recognized them, they got two rooms, one with

a king-sized bed—but they slept together every night, and reveled in the

feeling of their bodies as they fell into the other with a sigh of

completion.)

Leo looked up from what appeared to be grandiose dreams of ultra-

tasteful home décor, and said, “Wha?”

“How. Do. We. Decorate. My. Side,” Chris enunciated, and Leo

looked surprised.

“However the hell you want. You"re the one with personality,

Chris. Cave M… um, Xander here is the one who"s going to live in the

essential man cave. You"re going to live in the nice, warm, homey gay-

topia—with Xander, I assume. One side for show, the other side for you.

I mean, I"m right, right? You two? If it wasn"t for the gay thing, you"d be

an agent"s wet dream. No drugs, no whores, you"re quietly married and

happy to stay out of the limelight. I figure you guys will make it look

disgustingly chirpy and homey, and then when the press needs to come

in, we air out the sheets, throw a few pictures up on the walls, and voila!

Xander lives here. So what do you think?”

Chris was looking around with real appreciation now, and Xander

tried to look at the place through the eyes of someone who knew what a

home should look like. He could see potential. There was a room where

their weights and stuff could go (and their skis and their softball

equipment and their Frisbees and the scuba gear they"d bought right after

the draft when they"d gone to Hawaii for three days as a reward for Chris

not totally losing it when Bob Costas had called Xander the Cave Man,

and for Xander not decking the reporter who had totally grabbed Chris"s

ass.) The master suite was big, big enough for a special-order bed so his

feet didn"t hang over the edge, and so Christian wouldn"t get shoved off

on the diagonal, like he did on the hotel beds. The kitchen looked like it

could house enough food for a month, and there was a patio out back

where Xander thought they might put in a hot tub, because in spite of

Leo calling him “Super-Xan,” the facts were his knees still ached after a

series of away games and there was a knot in between his shoulder

blades that it took Chris forever to get out if he had to work on it alone.

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He looked at Chris and saw that his dark eyes were wide, and his

pouty lips were slightly parted, and there was a small smile on his face,

and he wondered if Chris was already selecting furniture, and thinking in

colors and shapes and sizes. Would there be a reading room? Would

there be a music room? Would there be a really big plasma screen with

the latest video games and some really good comedy movies? (Xander

was rooting for that one). What would Chris do to this side of the house

to make it a home?

That decided him.

“We"ll take it,” he said, and Chris turned to him in exasperation.

“Xander! Dammit, we didn"t even see any of the others!”

“You like this one,” Xander said mildly. “I can sleep anywhere.

You want to make this a home.”

Chris smiled shyly, and blushed. “We can make this half of the

place a real home, Xander. You"ll see. It"ll be all ours, you know?

Dressers that are made to survive earthquakes and shit, and, like,

bombproof furniture!” (Xander had broken three desk chairs at Chapel

Hill, just from sitting on them. Apparently that was a lot of weight to

drop on a piece of furniture from nearly seven feet off the ground.)

“You"ll be here,” Xander said, trying not to get maudlin. He

shrugged, so that it would come off casual, when, in fact, he was about

as proud of this house as he had been about taking Most Outstanding

Player of the NCAA tournament. “You"re here, it"ll be home. That"s all I

want.”

Chris smiled that shy smile again, and Xander thought it would be

a good time to do an over-the-back hug and ear nuzzle, because he knew

Chris liked it when he got all “Cave Man” on his massively bulked-out

body, when Leo spoke up.

“Okay, guys. I"m gonna draw up some privacy agreements so we

can start hiring staff, okay? You"ll have to take a look at them, Chris,

and let me know if you approve.”

“Why me?” Chris asked, at the same time Xander said, “Privacy

agreements?”

“You"ve got the business degree, genius. I"m gonna be running a

lot of shit by you. I could barely get Xander to focus through his

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franchise contract; you think I"m going to let him okay anything

important?”

“There were a lot of flashbulbs,” Xander mumbled, because there

were.

“And he"s not—” Chris started hotly, but Leo had anticipated the

argument.

“Stupid. I know he"s not, Christian.” Leo had gotten into the habit

of addressing the two of them like—in Chris"s words—a beloved older

uncle. Xander had replied that he"d never had an uncle, and he wasn"t

sure about the beloved part, either, but the fact could not be denied that

Leo chose to handle the two of them in a particularly familial way.

Times like now, that could be reassuring. “He"s not stupid, but he

doesn"t think like that. Xander doesn"t see the small shit and you do, and

I"m going to need your help with that, okay?”

“Why do we need staff?” Xander asked, still back at that. “I

mean… we"re not messy, right?”

Chris sighed, and Leo gestured at him so he could field this one.

“We"re gonna need staff, Xan. We"ve been living mostly out of the

commissary for four years. We can make ourselves some grilled cheese

and shit, but neither of us can cook, and you saw all those clauses. We"re

going to be spending one day a week doing charity, and three days on the

road, and the rest of our time during the season working out. We"re

going to need someone to keep up on the cooking and vacuum once in a

while so we"re not up to our eyeballs in dust buffaloes, right?”

“I thought they were dust bunnies,” Leo said dryly, and Chris

returned, “When you"re his size, the bunnies grow,” without missing a

beat. But while Xander smiled appreciatively, Chris only twisted his

mouth into a wry line.

“That"s what the privacy agreements are for, okay, Xan? It"s so we

can hire people who won"t tell about us for fear of losing their jobs. We

can be employers of the year, if you like, but we gotta have us some

staff.”

Xander nodded in understanding, and then his face sort of fell.

“What?”

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79

He shrugged, because it was stupid, but it had been something sort

of growing on him since Leo had talked about buying them a home.

Chris grabbed his hands and peered into his face, smiling that

infectious grin, and Xander had to smile back. “I want a dog,” he blurted,

and Chris"s grin got even wider.

“Awesome. See—staff. Staff will take care of puppy while we"re

gone, so he"s not lonely, right?”

“I"m not five, Chris!”

“It"s not going to be a puppy?”

Xander had to laugh, and he and Chris pressed their foreheads

together while Leo ran off cackling to call the real estate broker and start

pulling up contract models on his laptop. For a moment Xander just

stood there, happy, and then the reality of it set in.

“We"re going to be lying to the whole world,” he said in sort of a

horrified wonder. “I mean, most guys, they stay in the closet, they"re

only lying to the people around them. We"re gonna be… you know…

this place. Only part of it"s going to be our home. The other part is like…

you know. A movie set. That"s awful. That"s like… like
our lives.
And

it"s going to be like… like our lives have fake tits or something, Chris!”

Chris didn"t laugh, and an awful sort of grimace crossed his face.

“Xan… look, don"t kill me, but, um, I don"t think a house with fake tits

is going to be the worst thing we"re going to have to do.”

Xan looked at him, waiting, and when Chris was done talking, he

ran to the pristine bathroom with the real estate broker"s vanilla candle

and pretty soaps, and threw up.

Chris was right. It wasn"t the worst thing they"d do by a long shot.

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Amy Lane

Taint

Five Years Later

XANDER came awake with a start, shaking, sweating, desperate to catch

his breath. Next to him, Chris did what he"d been doing for the past five

years—rolled over, threw his arm around Xander"s waist, and murmured

softly to him.

“"S okay, Xan. You and me, we"re good.”

The first few times he"d done this, during their first road trip to

UNC, when they"d vacationed together during the summers afterward, or

over Christmases, when they stayed with Chris"s folks, Chris had

thought that it just happened whenever Xander changed rooms, or beds,

or situations, and Xander had let him think that.