Tribe (2 page)

“Christ,” growled Pat, “he's out on the fire escape!”

Outside in the cold, Greg screamed the alarm: “Homo alert!”

A tidal wave of panic overwhelmed Todd. He saw his future. He knew what was going to happen. This was exactly what he'd been so terrified of. And now Greg knew the truth. He was going to tell everyone. Todd would be kicked out of the fraternity. He'd be shamed out of school. His parents would find out. This was the end.

The adrenaline coursed through Todd's veins. There was no doubt Greg had seen everything and recognized Todd, and in a mere instant Todd's body blossomed with sweat. He spun around, tripped over a shoe. Just get away. Just get out of here. And he half-fell as he clambered to escape. Reaching the door, his trembling hands fumbled with the lock.

Behind him, Pat was charging toward the window, furious and shouting, “Get out of here, you asshole! Leave us the fuck alone!”

Todd ripped open the door, glanced back one last time, saw Pat trying to lift open the window.

“Todd, I can't get the window up!” yelled Pat in a panic. “Help me!”

As Todd stood in the doorway, Pat turned around and their eyes locked. For an instant everything seemed to freeze in disbelief: Is this really happening? Overcome with terror, however, it never occurred to Todd not to run away, not to beat a cowardly retreat, and he darted into the hallway. Greg lived just there, in the room to the right, the one with the open door and open window. Hearing footsteps from that room—shit, who was in there?—Todd spun around and dashed the other way down the hallway. And immediately stopped. The next door, Kevin's room, was opening. A bunch of guys screaming with juvenile gusto was about to burst out.

“Get the faggots!”

“Pat's doing it with some guy!”

Todd guessed that these guys had been in on it too, perhaps listening through the flimsy walls. Right, they'd been on one side of Pat's room, Greg on the other. On a boring night just before finals it was a conspiracy to trap and rid the fraternity of queers.

There was a small door right in front of him and Todd heaved it open. Not a closet but a narrow staircase. The back stairs, totally dark. Todd was rushing so quickly that he missed the first couple of steps and tumbled forward. Catching himself on the railing, he paused, heard Pat slam his door as the herd of frat boys charged his room.

“Open the fucking lock, Pat!” shouted one of the guys as they started beating on the door.

In the dark Todd scrambled to his feet and raced down, not stopping at the third floor nor the second. He just had to get away. Away from the truth. When he reached the first floor he didn't head out into the main living room, where someone was watching television and others were playing Ping-Pong. No. He couldn't let them see him so panicky, so blistered with sweat.

The back door. He tore through the small hall behind the kitchen and then out the rear of the house. Hurling open the door, he was hit with a gust of frigid air. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slumped against the side of the building, his right cheek pressing into the brick. Oh, shit. He clutched himself. There was no way Greg hadn't seen what was going on. There was no way Greg hadn't spied Todd nibbling on Pat's ear or caressing his ass. And there was no way Greg wasn't going to tell the entire world.

Opening his eyes, Todd stared at the frozen ground covered by a mere inch of snow. As he stood there, paralyzed with any number of horrific thoughts, something fell from above, slipping through the air and landing on the ground a mere foot or two from him. Not a snowflake but a chunky cigarette butt, hand-rolled and one end still burning an orangish-red.

Suddenly a scream cut through the cold night air. Todd looked toward Sheridan Avenue. Seeing nothing, not even a car, his eyes darted to the side toward a clump of trees. He heard it again. Another terrified plea. Following the sound more closely, Todd looked up. The fire escape was directly above him, a mishmash of black steel climbing back and forth the entire four floors of the fraternity. And way up there, right at the top, shadows were dancing in the night. He couldn't see, couldn't tell in the dark, who was up there, if there was one guy or two. Wait. He stepped away from the building and to his horror saw more clearly. Holy shit, someone was dangling and twisting from the fire escape, scrambling to hang on.

A figure that dropped free.

Dear God in heaven, they'd thrown Pat off the fire escape. Hurled him right out. Todd watched in horrified dismay as the figure hurtled downward, shrieking all the way, his shirt and pants flapping, his body arched and tumbling like that of a tragic diver.

And finally it ended, that moment that seemed to stretch forever. The cry ceased with a thud, followed by the deep, cold silence of the night.

Standing there in a helpless moment that lasted far too long, Todd stared at the body lying facedown not ten feet from him. Barely able to breathe, Todd understood that the guy was dead. It was the way the body was so horribly twisted and so pathetically still. Todd wasn't sure whether he wanted to vomit or scream for help. Or run. If they had done this to Pat, what would they do to him? Perhaps come after him and drown him in the frigid waters of Lake Michigan?

Wait, he realized, this can't be Pat. This person's fully clothed.

Trembling, Todd's feet slid through the thin snow as he moved closer. If not Pat, then who? Leaning forward, trying to see the face smashed against the hard ground, Todd saw the glasses, recognized the hair. Holy shit, it was Greg.

And the question that the campus cops would ask over the course of the next week was, thankfully, not whether or not Todd was gay, for the dead frat boy had carried that secret to his grave. No, the question they would ask was whether Todd had witnessed an accident. Or murder.

Minneapolis

present day

She'd seen him only
once, but had thought of him every day since.

Back then he'd been a kid of eighteen with beautiful long, dark hair, a clear complexion, and a rugged jaw surfacing beneath the round cheeks. A shy smile, too, that showed off all those white teeth. Very cute. No, extremely cute. He'd been thin, his legs long and a bit awkward. And those eyes, dark with eyebrows that promised to be thick and striking.

Okay, okay, thought Janice Gray as she sat in her idling car, the heater on high. So she would recognize him. It was just that they'd met only that single time; one summer morning he'd just shown up at her law office, claimed he was passing through town, and they'd disappeared into the conference room for several of the most intimate, heated hours Janice had ever experienced or imagined. He'd gone on and on, even cried, this boy—he and a friend, he confessed, had been caught smoking pot and he'd run away from home—and had opened up to her in a way that had shocked her. In response she couldn't help but be as revealing as he, telling him all about the joys and tragedies of her life, of her legal practice, and finally, eventually, that she was a lesbian, which at the time hadn't seemed to faze him.

That was three years ago. Three and a half years, actually, and not a word or any news from him since. He'd just disappeared. Perhaps her honesty had frightened him. Perhaps she'd been too lawyerly, too probing. Perhaps she'd looked too formidable in her pretrial blue pinstripe suit that made her appear distinctly tight and conservative. Or maybe he'd vanished because he really couldn't handle the fact that she was a dyke.

Shit, thought Janice, hugging her dark blue wool coat around herself, it was too cold for this kind of thing. Early January in Minnesota was no time to be sitting in your car in some snow-whitened parking lot, waiting for a punk to show up. If he showed up. She shivered and rubbed herself, then wiped a film of fog off the inside of the windshield and peered out. It was a classic Minnesota winter night, the famous kind—fourteen below, the night sky clear, the air still and amazingly pure. A car drew in from the street, and two people got out and ran for the glaring lights and promised warmth of the supermarket.

A month ago she couldn't take it anymore, so she went out and bought the one and only Christmas card she was to send that season. Janice wrote a brief note inside, included a couple of photos, and then mailed it off to the only address she had for him, printing on the front please forward. Ever since she'd dropped it in the mail Janice had wondered if he received it, and then finally at four this afternoon the response came. She'd been sitting at her desk, reviewing a case on a woman who'd been fired from a computer firm, when the call came. He was in town again, he told her, and he desperately needed to see her. They could meet tonight, right? Behind his pushy request she'd immediately sensed some sort of trouble—could it be drugs again?—but she was so stunned to hear from him that she didn't ask. Yes, she'd replied, for in truth she'd meet him anywhere, anytime. Eight this evening. Sure, the parking lot of Rainbow Foods at Lagoon and Dupont. Of course she knew where that was, right in south Minneapolis, right on the edge of Uptown, the trendy and popular neighborhood adjacent to the chain of now frozen lakes.

Janice tilted her rearview mirror and checked herself in the faint light. She'd changed after work and now wore jeans and a red wool sweater that complemented her deep-auburn hair. Perhaps they'd go out for coffee and he'd tell her what was up; they certainly couldn't sit out here very long. With any luck she'd get him back to her house. She dabbed at her makeup, tried to soften it a bit, for she didn't want to look like a hard-ass defense attorney who regularly went up against the top lawyers in town. She just wanted to look like her real self—a forty-two-year-old woman who was trim, her narrow face attractive, her mouth always ready with an eager laugh. She didn't want him to sense, however, the emptiness in her heart.

Janice's car windows were fogging up badly, and she turned a knob until the heater died and the defroster began to spew full blast. Glancing at the car clock, Janice saw that it was ten after eight. Maybe he wasn't going to show. On the phone he'd said there was something he had to tell her, but maybe he'd chickened out. Perhaps he was afraid or perhaps he couldn't bring himself to trust her after all.

The lights of another car swept off Lagoon Avenue and toward her, and Janice felt her stomach tighten. It was a small car, blue and old and rusty from countless winters. A kid's car? Probably. Studying the vehicle as it pulled into the parking lot, however, Janice couldn't really see much, for the windows on that car were mostly iced over as well. But there was just one person in there, wasn't there? Right. She saw a head of long hair but couldn't tell if the driver was a man or a woman. Her eyes trained on the vehicle, Janice watched as the car came to a stop some forty feet away. Though she had followed his directions and parked in the exact snow-filled corner, she wondered if she should climb out of her own car and identify herself, call out to him perhaps. She twisted around, saw a figure emerging from the other car, bundled in a thick nylon parka.

Damn, a young woman. Janice couldn't really see the face, but she could see a purse and—

Her entire car seemed to shake as the passenger door was hurled open. A large bundled and hooded figure descended rapidly into her car, and Janice tensed and threw herself against the seat. Reflexively, she grabbed the door handle, for more than anything it seemed that she was about to be accosted. The figure then slammed shut the door, sat there for a moment, and finally pulled back his large black hood.

“Shit, it's cold.”

As was seldom the case, Janice was at a loss for words. He was no longer a boy but a young man, his once long hair now as short as if he were in the army. His baby face had melted away as well, he'd grown so that he had to be over six feet tall, and despite the overcoat she guessed that there were broad shoulders beneath that bulky parka. The shading of a beard lined his chilled red cheeks, and the eyebrows had indeed grown thick, just as she had imagined. She hadn't foreseen, however, the dark circles beneath his eyes.

Oh, God. Somewhere deep inside herself Janice moaned silently, and her entire body flushed with a deep, penetrating warmth. She had to have him, this Zebulun. She had to take him and hold him in her arms. She had to kiss this gorgeous young man and tell him how she loved him with every part of her being and that never, not for one moment, had she ever stopped thinking of him. And she had to tell him how she never wanted to lose him again.

Instead, attorney Janice Gray clenched down on her teeth and held herself in check.

“Hello, Zeb,” she said.

They stared at each other in the faint light of her Honda Prelude. There was so much to say, so much to catch up on.

“Hi,” he replied, his voice hesitant and low and deep.

“How have you been?”

He wrapped his arms oddly, nervously, around his waist and looked away. His profile silhouetted by the parking-lot lights, she was struck as much by his beauty as his seriousness. Every trace of boyishness seemed to have been eradicated, and this adulthood saddened Janice.

Finally he replied, “I've been better.”

“You want to get a cup of coffee?”

Obviously disturbed about something, he quickly said, “No.”

All Janice could imagine was that he found her disgusting. Watching as his hands fumbled around his waist—what the hell was he doing, did he have something hidden beneath the folds of his parka?—Janice felt her heart ripping in two. She shouldn't have come. This was far too hard, for she already sensed that he was going to disappear again.