Strings Attached (15 page)

“And when you’re finished—” Ellie interrupted “—don’t forget to take out the trash, I mean, let yourself out. Now off you go, time is money. Tick-tock, tick-tock.”

Coby cut in. “Will you both just quit it?” He turned to Ellie. “I came up here to ask you to please be nice to her, just for tonight. Brynn already promised me she wouldn’t start anything with you.”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “Coby, sweet, simple Coby, are you forgetting whose house this is? You should’ve known better than to bring
her
here.”

“You’re the one who invited me.”

“Exactly my point.”

His face flushed. “If she’s not welcome here, then we’re both leaving.” He grabbed Brynn by the arm and headed for the stairs.

“Don’t forget to tip the valet,” Ellie sang.

As soon as they were gone, she collapsed onto her bed, beating her fists on the rumpled sheets. “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her!”

Reed calmly turned to Jeremy. “You better go find Carlo; it looks like I’m gonna be here a while.”

Jeremy nodded. “OK.” He smiled shyly. “Can I call you?”

“Get my number from him.” She stood on her toes and kissed him gently. “Call me tomorrow.”

He tore down the stairs.

Carlo sat by himself on a long, black leather sofa. He looked up as Jeremy approached, his eyebrows knitted together. “I suppose you still need a ride home,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Look, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. It came out different than I meant it.”

“Yeah, whatever. I just want to get the fuck outta here. You’re lucky I waited.”

“Thanks, Carlo. So do I. Let’s go.” He held out his hand and pulled Carlo up from his seat. “We need to talk.”

Carlo slowed the Tahoe in front of the Tyler Compound’s fancy iron gates and then stopped. The engine idled expectantly. Should he put the car in park or leave it in drive? Park meant they would be talking for a while, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He only felt like sulking. And he was afraid that if they started talking, he would wind up expressing the distress his heart was screaming, even if it meant Jeremy would shush him or, worse yet, laugh. It was like they were both watching the same thrillingly romantic movie, only Jeremy was listening to dialogue radioed in from another theater.

Meanwhile, the boy in the passenger seat unbuckled his seat belt, then puffed out his cheeks and blew an invisible tube of air at the windshield. The ride back from Ellie’s party had taken only ten minutes but had felt like an hour; the tension between them flickered like distant lightning, too far away to hear but hot as hell and headed this way. And now he just wanted to get inside the house; he wanted to think and needed to pee. Better get this over with. He looked over. “Hey, I said I was sorry. I just don’t want Reed to get the wrong idea about me. I think you could understand.”

Carlo’s knuckles showed white on the steering wheel. “Jeremy, all I said was that we had an hour before we had to go.”

“You grabbed my hand and called me ‘Cinderella.’ In front of Reed.”

“Everybody knows I joke around like that.”

“Well, it didn’t feel like a joke then, or when you called me ‘girl,’ or when you made your comment about Ellie ‘setting me straight.’” He spoke with the masculine self-assurance of a boy with the taste of girl on his lips. “I don’t like you implying that I’m gay, especially in front of other people, because I’m not. Or have you already forgotten our conversation,
Miss Sara Lee
?”

“If you were secure about your masculinity, it wouldn’t bother you.” Carlo shoved the gearshift into park and switched off the motor.

“That’s total bullshit, and you know it. Even if I was gay, I wouldn’t want you throwing it around. A person’s sexuality is their business.”

“Now
that’s
total bullshit, Jeremy,” he declared. “Everywhere I look I see breeders forcing their sexuality on me. Churches, billboards, at school, on TV, even in commercials where they drive their fat ugly kids around in their minivans. And if you don’t see that, then you’re as homophobic as the rest of them.” He sighed. “I’m just sick and tired of feeling like I’m from another planet.”

Jeremy fiddled with his hat. “Then maybe you should stop acting like it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What I mean is, why do you act so faggy sometimes?”

“I’m not in the closet, Jeremy,” he snapped.

“That’s great, Carlo. I respect that. But is being the queer poster boy really who you are? I mean, you didn’t act as gay when you came over to study the other night—then it seemed like you were being yourself. But at the party, it was like you were someone else.” He paused, searching for a way he could make himself understood. “Tonight you seemed kind of like a cartoon character. I mean, if a straight guy on TV acted the way you did tonight, you and all your little gay friends would get pissed off that he was acting like a stereotype.”

Little gay friends?
“When you’ve gone through as much shit as I have,” he stated with furious dignity, “then I’ll have the balls to listen to you talk down to me, then say I’m acting like a cartoon. But not before!”

“I’ve been through plenty of my own shit, Carlo.”

“Oh really?” He snickered. “Did Butler burn the toast again, Master Tyler?”

“That’s not fair. Where I’ve lived for one week has nothing to do with it.”

“I’ll tell you what’s not fair, Jeremy. It’s not fair to listen to your mother crying as she dies, not from the cancer eating her alive, but because she says she’ll never see you in heaven because you’re going to hell.” He was trembling suddenly, as if freezing. “And it wasn’t fair when my father told me I killed her,
I killed my own mother,
because I’d broken her heart and she lost the will to live. He even told me—” his voice cracked “—that he hoped God would send me AIDS to punish me for what I’d done to her. He hoped, Jeremy, he
hoped
!”

“Oh, dude,” Jeremy said, shaking his head. “That’s totally fucked up that he would say that. Of course it wasn’t your fault…he probably just needed someone to blame.”

“So blame her doctors, blame her fucking HMO, or better yet, blame
her
for not getting a Pap smear for twenty years!” Carlo exclaimed. “But not your son, not your grieving boy!” He sobbed now, unabashedly, his face contorted as if his features had frozen in mid-sneeze. “Can you believe he wouldn’t even speak to me at her funeral? And now he just looks at me with hatred and disgust, like I’m some dog shit stuck to his boots.” He pulled up a corner of his tunic and loudly blew his nose on it. “So now I make sure that I act like the very thing he hates the most in this world. I throw it in his face every day and every chance I get, so he can see that his son is a
joto,
that he was such a fucking horrible father he raised a
maricón
instead of a man.” He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, then heaved a leaden sigh. “And that’s why I dropped the ‘s’ from ‘Carlos,’ because I was named after him, this ‘father’ who wishes a miserable death on his only son. And that’s also why I won’t
tone that faggot shit down,
Jeremy. I act the way I do because I’ve earned the right to.”

Jeremy was speechless. He could only watch as Carlo’s crying-hiccups diminished, then he laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, I know we haven’t known each other very long, and you’re right, I haven’t been through anything like what you have. All I can say is…I know how it feels to lose someone, and to be thrown away by someone who’s supposed to be there for you.” He squeezed his shoulder, feeling the knotted warmth beneath his hand. “And if nothing else, I understand what it feels like to be hurt. More than you know.”

Carlo looked back at him and saw the understanding in his eyes. He felt a rope being thrown his way. He nodded, and Jeremy smiled. He grabbed Jeremy’s shoulder and squeezed back, and as he did so felt that rope become taut. “It’s just so hard sometimes for people like us…being this age and all.”

“I know it,” Jeremy said softly. “It’s like everything’s turned up full blast when you’re a teenager—you have all these choices, but you also have people everywhere telling you who to be and what to do. But you’re lucky in a way, Carlo, because your anger’s helped you figure out what you really want, and I’m only now starting to think of what I want instead of what other people want for me. You’re way ahead.”

Carlo stared at him. “That sounds great and all, but if you really understood, you’d never think of me as ‘lucky.’”

Jeremy nodded. “OK, maybe I don’t understand. It just seems to me that if you’re mad at your parents, why take it out on everyone else?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…that if you act a certain way to piss off your dad, don’t you think it might keep other people away too? Like people who want to be friends?” His mouth made a shy smile. “Like me?”

“I never thought about it that way,” Carlo answered quietly.

“Well, maybe you should. It’s your life and all, but if it’s not really the true ‘Carlo,’ then why do it? I mean, isn’t that the whole reason for your being out in the first place, so you can be yourself?”

Carlo pressed his fingertips to his temples and made tiny circles. “My head hurts, Jeremy. I need to go home and think this whole night through…but I want you to know that I really appreciate your listening to me go off.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?” He grabbed the door handle and pulled.

“Right. But one more thing.” Their eyes caught. “I need to confess something.”

Jeremy waited.

“I made that Cinderella crack tonight because I felt a little left out because of how good Reed and you were getting along.” He sighed. “So I think you were right after all…that in some way I was trying to piss you off. And I’m sorry.”

“Thanks for the apology.” He opened the door and climbed down. “So I guess I’ll see you at school on Monday—oh, and Reed told me I could get her number from you. Is it OK if I call you tomorrow?”

“Sure. I’ll be home.” He started the engine, then pulled the gearshift into drive. “And if my dad answers the phone, tell him you’re a gay porn producer who wants to hire me.”

They waved as he drove away.

Jeremy punched his security code into the keypad, and the gates swung open; then he trudged up the remaining length of the driveway to the main house’s side entrance. Once inside, he meandered through the hallways to the kitchen in search of a tasty bedtime snack.

He found his uncle sitting at one of the barstools thumbing through a stack of complicated-looking papers, digging his fork into a triangle of oozy green pie.

“Hey, Uncle Bill.”

“Jeremy!” the man blurted. “I didn’t hear you come in.” He flipped the stack of papers upside down on the counter, then squeezed his eyes nearly shut as the reality of Jeremy’s costume sunk in. “Where on God’s green earth did you get
that
?”

“It’s Arthur’s,” he told him. “He let me wear it to a Halloween party.”

“Mr. Blauefee, of course. I keep forgetting about his ‘colorful’ past.” He chuckled through his nose. “Well, it’s good to see something like that put to use. Lord knows he won’t be wearing it again.” He patted the barstool next to him. “Sit down, young man, and cut yourself some of this key lime pie.”

Jeremy hated key lime pie. “No thanks.” He leaned against the counter, comfortable with discussing the subject since, apparently, it no longer applied to him. “That’s too bad about his friend, isn’t it? I mean, how he died and all on September 11. And then for Arthur to be kicked out of the Marines on top of everything.”

“Such a tragedy for him, losing his career.” Bill shook his head. “Of course, if people didn’t lie in the first place, they wouldn’t have to worry about their awful truths being discovered, now would they?”

“Do you mean he shouldn’t have ever gone into the military?”

“Of course! Those people have no business in the armed forces. It would be like my trying to be some Hollywood hunk or Olympic athlete at my age. Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

“But aren’t you talking about the way someone is physically?” Jeremy asked, then perched himself atop a nearby stool. “Arthur sure looks like a Marine, even still.”

“What I am referring to is a weakness of the mind, my boy. It’s a sickness…” he pointed to his head and tapped his finger over his ear “…up here. Would you want a mentally unstable person rescuing you from a burning building?”

“I guess I wouldn’t care who rescued me…as long as they did,” he replied.

“When you’re older, you’ll understand. You will understand.” Bill’s eyes narrowed. “Speaking of which, your eighteenth birthday is coming up in a few months, isn’t it?”

“March fifteenth.”

“And have you decided what it is you want?”

Jeremy’s head dropped. “I’ve already gotten so much from you and Aunt Katharine. To be honest, I haven’t thought about it at all.”

“Nonsense. You’ve just been deprived of so much your entire life
by that woman
that you’ve grown accustomed to having nothing. But all that’s changed.” He popped a piece of pie into his mouth, chewed noiselessly, then swallowed. “So think, boy. What is it that would make your eighteenth birthday one you’ll never forget?”

He’d already been promised a car, even though he couldn’t drive yet; he had a computer, he had new clothes. So what didn’t he have? A vision suddenly popped into his head of Coby and him splashing and swimming through turquoise water, then sunning themselves side by side on an empty beach. “A trip to Hawaii this summer,” he suggested happily, “with a friend.”

Bill laughed, and a chunk of pie fell from his mouth onto his lap. “Jeremy, dear boy, you’re still thinking like your mother’s kind, like some cocktail waitress or the pizza man. You’re a
Tyler,
and the sooner you start thinking like one, the better.” He picked up the renegade morsel and popped it into his mouth, leaving a stain the shape of Texas on his trousers. “So, what will it be—an apartment building in East L.A.? Or maybe you’d prefer a well-diversified stock portfolio? Our shares of Wal-Mart have been doing magnificently.”

Jeremy’s smile vanished.
What fun were those?
“Uncle Bill, I guess I need to think about it. I mean, it’s still a few months away.”

“A very wise decision, young man. In the meantime, you might find it interesting to know that I’m working on something very special for your eighteenth—an event of sorts.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Something to make the momentous occasion unforgettable.”

“Really.” He was squirming with curiosity and hadn’t a clue as to what the man could be thinking. “Could you give me a kind of a hint, please?”

“Mmm, well…” He looked at him like a shark eyeing an oblivious sea lion. “All I can tell you is that if what I’m considering takes place, it will involve your family and all of your closest friends, and will be an unforgettably elegant event.”

“Really!” Jeremy exclaimed, almost gasping. He hadn’t even thought of having a birthday party, he was so used to them passing by unacknowledged. Clearly his mother, with her ominous “warnings” had been lying again; Bill had already done more good for him than she would in a thousand lifetimes.

“But it’s a surprise, Jeremy. So
don’t tell anyone anything.
”

“I won’t, Uncle.” He yawned, then scooted off the barstool. “I’ve got to go to bed now. Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

His heels on the stone floor made happy tap-dancing sounds as he trotted toward the stairs leading up to his room, then switched directions after realizing he needed to return the precious uniform to Arthur. But would he still be awake? He rapped gently on his door after spying the glowing bar of light coming from underneath. He heard shuffling feet, then the door swung open. Arthur wore a wifebeater T-shirt and boxer shorts with big Chihuahuas printed willy-nilly all over them.