Tribe (21 page)

Todd called it out, all eleven numbers, and then listened as the phone began to ring. In the last day or two Janice might have placed a catalog order with Lands' End or some other mail-order company; perhaps she'd bought something for the baby. Or she might have called a friend who lived out of state, in which case Todd would be disturbing someone yet again. Instead, though, he reached an answering machine, and the man's voice on the other end was deep and clear. By the second or third word Todd's stomach clutched. Was it the way he said “hello,” the letter
H
pronounced long and slow? Whatever it was, Todd knew that voice, didn't he?

This
couldn't be happening. A blow job? Now? Was Pat crazy? Had he flipped? Todd stared as Pat unzipped his jeans in that dingy basement at Northwestern, and all Todd wanted to do was hit him. His frustration ran smack into his fear, boiled into anger.

And yet…

God, if anyone knew. If Pat told anyone, that would be the
end. He'd do it too. Pat would tell. Tell everyone. Todd looked into his hooded eyes, saw Pat's sly grin, and Todd realized this was a part of Pat he'd never seen before. God, wasn't there anything Todd could do?

Desperate to change the course of events, Todd blurted, “That cigarette
—
it dropped right in front of me before Greg fell”

Pat stopped tugging out his shirt, said, “Forget it, man. Like I told you, just fucking forget it. Whatever you saw must have just blown off a windowsill or something.”

“It was a cigarette. One end was glowing, it was still lit.”

“So someone threw it out a window.”

“Maybe, but I keep trying to remember what I saw and—”

“Fuck it, Todd, you didn't see anything,” snapped Pat, his frustration more than evident.

“But I think I did. When I left your room I thought I heard someone else in Greg's room. And then when I went outside I think I saw someone else out there on the fire escape with Greg.”

“Bullshit.”

“What about you, Pat?” asked Todd, eyeing him suspiciously.

Todd couldn't let go of the idea of the other guy, the one at the frat house Pat had also screwed. Could Pat be protecting him?

“Are you sure you didn't see anything?”

“I told you, no. And I was right there. I couldn't get my window open, which is when I yelled at you for help, thank you very much, Mr. Chicken.”

“Sorry…”

“Yeah, well, then I had to lock my door to keep those other jerks out. And then I went back to the window.”

“So maybe someone crawled out Greg's window when you went to the door. Maybe that's when someone crawled out and pushed him.”

“No, I'm telling you, Greg slipped and fell over the rail. ”

Shit, nothing was making sense anymore. Was Todd merely imagining things? He recalled looking up there, at first thinking a second person was on the fire escape, then realizing Greg was dangling from the railing.

“You must have seen Greg's shadow,” suggested Pat. “There's a big light out in that courtyard, and you must have seen Greg's shadow against the building.”

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe.”

“Man, if you tell the police about what you might have, maybe, could have seen, well, then, do you know what kind of fucking trouble we're going to fucking be in, both you and me? We'd be fucked. Totally fucked. Everything would come out about where you'd been, where I'd been, and what we'd been doing. It'd probably be in the school newspaper, man, and everyone in the world would know that we'd been having sex. And let me tell you, it's not fun having everyone call you a faggot.” Pat glanced around the dark basement, pushed his jeans down to his thighs, pulled down his white underwear. “Enough with all that crap, Todd. Forget it. Don't ever talk about it again and everything will be fine. Now get down on your knees. I need to relax. I need a release.”

“Oh,
God.”

“What? Who was it?” demanded Rawlins.

Having listened to the entire message, albeit short and concise, Todd hung up the phone. Of course that was Pat. Even after all these years there was no doubt in Todd's mind. He could never forget that voice, and he tensed, bristled with the bitter memories.

But it didn't make any sense. Janice had…had contacted him?

“Todd,” pressed Rawlins, “who did Janice call?”

“An old friend, if you could call him that.” Shaking his head, Todd went to the kitchen window and stared into the snow-filled backyard. “You know, I think the reasons I was in the closet for so long are a lot more complex than I ever realized.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I'm not sure, exactly, but I think I've been carrying more secrets than I've been willing to admit.”

After Todd and Rawlins
patched the basement window, they went to bed. Todd, however, barely slept. Of all the forks he'd come to in his life, the choice of direction he'd made that night at the frat house when Greg had tumbled to his death was the one he regretted most. Then again, he thought, naked in bed next to Rawlins, what could he have done differently? Talking openly to the police, telling them where he'd been, what had happened, and everything that he thought he'd seen, no matter how speculative, was what he should have done, even though that would have been tantamount to outing himself. It would have been the right thing, but he'd been so young. So stupid. So afraid. Never mind that outing himself back then would have altered the entire course of his life— would he have gone into broadcast journalism, could he have ever gotten a job in the late seventies as an openly gay reporter, would he have been more active sexually, would he have contracted AIDS and be dead by now?

Oh, shit. Would that he could do it over, that night, those events. Wide awake, he lay beneath the comforter in Janice's guest room spooning Rawlins—his chest against Rawlins's back and his left arm wrapped snugly around Rawlins's muscular stomach. How many therapists had he seen over the years as he struggled at first to deny his homosexuality, then later to accept it? Four, he thought, including the first one, the one he'd seen during college who'd used electric-shock aversion therapy.

“What the shock does,” the shrink had explained, “is replace any positive feelings you might have toward other men with negative ones.”

So Todd, young and wanting so desperately to reject his past and be straight, had done it. He'd crawled up on that table, let the therapist brush his right arm with salt water to make a good connection, let the guy attach the electrodes. Then Todd had closed his eyes and conjured up men, handsome, naked, butch guys. He'd filled his mind's eye with sensual fantasies of his encounters, and when he felt his erection pressing against his jeans, he'd nodded. Then: Zap! A current of hate shot through his body all the way to his heart, overshadowing any desire with a barbed-wirelike cut of pain.

Now lying in the dark, Todd looked blankly at the ceiling. A dozen sessions. A dozen searing shocks. Nothing, however, burned him as badly nor repressed him as much as the incident at the fraternity.

So what had Todd actually seen? Had he witnessed a murder and had his silence prevented the real story from surfacing? And why, why, why had Janice called Pat tonight of all nights, and why in the hell hadn't she told Todd?

Consumed by these thoughts and aching with pain where he'd been struck, he tossed until almost three, when sleep finally began to pull him under. Then at seven thirty the phone began ringing. Beneath the warm down comforter, Todd and Rawlins began to move and stretch. And then Todd quickly silenced Rawlins.

“Don't move,” he said, suddenly awake.

Todd zeroed in on the voice as Janice answered the call. It was a short conversation, the words unclear to Todd, and as soon as she hung up Todd jumped naked out of bed, cracked open the door, and called down the hall.

“Janice, who was that? Anything about the baby?”

“No.”

He couldn't rein in his curiosity, and he pressed, “So who was it?”

It was a moment or two before Janice replied, “My secretary from work, okay? She was just asking if I really needed her at the office today on account of the snow. I told her, for your info, to take the day off.”

“Oh.”

“So do I have your permission to make another call, Todd? I need to talk to one of the other attorneys about a court case. You don't have a problem with that, do you?”

“No, of course not,” replied Todd, a tad sheepish.

Todd shut the door, then walked stiffly to the small guest bath off the other corner of the room. He turned on the shower and felt a blast of cold water. As he waited for it to warm up he leaned his head out the door.

His voice low, he said, “Rawlins, don't say anything about me checking the phones last night, okay?”

“What?” he asked, looking up from the depths of his pillow, his eyes barely open.

“I want to wait for her to tell me about Pat.”

Rawlins groaned and dropped his head. “Whatever you say, boss man, but don't you think that's only going to cause trouble?”

“Yeah, probably, but I think it's the only ammunition I'm going to get, and I want to save it for when I really need some firing power.”

Janice
thought they would never leave for the hospital. She made a pot of coffee, some toast, then showered and dressed, staying up in her bedroom as long as possible so she wouldn't have to face Todd and his questions. At least he believed her stories about the phone calls.

Sometime during the night the storm had finally stopped, leaving the Twin Cities under a mantle of fifteen inches of snow, which today was glistening in the now cloudless sky. Finally, just after eight thirty, Janice came downstairs and bid them goodbye, and Todd and Rawlins clambered out the front of the snow-laden house and down to the Cherokee. Once they had brushed and scraped off his vehicle, Todd rocked and blasted his way out of his parking space and into the single lane that been opened by the pass of a plow.

Janice watched them from the front windows of her house. She had no idea how long they'd be gone or if they'd be back within the half hour—who knew if the personnel department at Edina Hospital would even be open today. This being Minnesota, however, chances were that someone would show up at work and Todd and Rawlins would be able to secure Zeb's home address. But if they came back before she did, she'd deal with it then. She'd just say something like she walked to the grocery. Right, she told herself, and then made a mental note to buy a half-gallon of milk and something else. Soup. A can of chicken soup. Perfect. Who'd doubt a story like that? And before she even put on her coat and boots she hurried into the kitchen, grabbed a pad of paper, and scribbled, “Walked to the store. Back soon.” Purposely not putting a time on it, she propped the note up in the center of the counter where they couldn't miss it. She next darted to the front hall closet.

The plows might have cleared some of the main streets, but they wouldn't get to the alleys for hours, perhaps not until nightfall. Without even checking Janice knew there was no way she'd be able to extradite her car from the garage, at least not this morning and probably not until this afternoon at the earliest. That was why she'd suggested they meet at the small restaurant up on Lyndale; she could walk, and he'd be able to use the highway and major thoroughfares to get there.

Amazing, she thought. They hadn't seen each other for over two decades. It was just too much to comprehend, and the last thing she grabbed were her sunglasses, for there was nothing brighter than a sunny winter day in Minnesota, particularly after a snowfall. Dressed in her Sorrel boots and long wool coat, she headed out and was greeted by the distant sound of shovels, snowblowers, and from one house the blaring music of U2. The temperature was all the way up to twenty-five, and evidently some neighbor thought it was spring and had thrown open his windows.

Not sure what to expect of this meeting, she tromped along the parkway and up to Lyndale, which was already pretty well cleared, and turned left. The restaurant was up just a block or two, past the theater and a newly opened coffee shop. Reaching her destination, a small family diner that had been around for years, Janice stomped her feet. Oh, shit, what was Pat going to look like after all this time? Still as skinny? Still as young-looking?

She took a deep breath, pulled open the door, and stepped in, her sunglasses perched high on her nose. She looked down the long counter, where every stool was occupied by locals who were eager to talk about the storm, but didn't see anyone that was obviously him. Her head then turned to the opposite wall and the row of red vinyl booths, all of which were also taken by weather gossips. Lifting off her glasses, she saw a couple of guys at the first booth, three women at the next, an older couple after that, and…

A man at the fourth booth stopped drinking his coffee, looked at her, and started to rise. Dear God. His hairline had receded and his hair, particularly his sideburns, had grayed. No longer was he the kid with the lean swimmer's body, but a middle-aged man clearly out of shape. Or was that not him?