“Martin and I, I mean. I assured him you were a very smart guy. He’s not so sure about me.”
He draped his coat over the back of a chair. With Ked at his mother’s, he could afford to be lax. These days Kendra had him almost as much as Dan did. Maybe she was afraid he’d grow up thinking she didn’t care about him. It wasn’t true. She loved Ked as much as Dan did but with a detached edge, the way she loved all things. It was as though he’d never really been a part of her body, whereas Dan felt Ked had always been inside him, waiting to emerge.
So far Ked hadn’t shown any signs of troubled behaviour that children of divorced parents exhibited, perhaps because his parents had never been together, either in memory or before. He was a happy accident rather than the spoils of war. And since his parents got along, Ked seemed to think it fine that he had two homes to go to, two bedrooms to mess. No one fought over Christmas or other holidays. Double birthday celebrations at two different addresses guaranteed double gifts and two cakes. No complaints there.
Dan cast his eyes around. The house was in reasonable shape. When Bill got around to returning his call, Dan would entice him over with a promised romp. A few softly murmured dirty words were usually all it took. Dan didn’t mind if Ked was home when Bill came by for his infrequent visits, but he preferred he wasn’t. At first he’d fooled himself into thinking he didn’t want Ked to overhear the crescendos of their sweaty sex romps — and Bill certainly liked to vocalize his pleasure — but in fact Dan didn’t want Ked there because Ked looked down on him for dating Bill. He should have found that amusing, but it made him uncomfortable knowing his son thought less of him for his choice of romantic partners. Though admittedly there was really nothing romantic about Bill.
He went upstairs with his laptop and emptied his inbox with a few quick replies. Done, he tossed some ice in a glass and poured a tumblerful of Scotch, priding himself on having waited that long. When Ked was around he stuck to beer, but tonight he was alone. He sat in the living room and looked out at the street. The birch in the front yard hid the window from view but allowed a bird’s eye view of anyone passing. He flicked on Jazz FM and caught something dark and rhythmically complex. He had no idea who it was. Donny would, of course.
His second glass had less ice, more Scotch. He returned to the chair. Outside, the street was empty apart from an occasional car stirring up leaves before passing from view. The program switched over to Jeff Healey’s My Kind of Jazz and his archive of treasures from the twenties and thirties. The old, growly blues records — wonderful stuff — bringing to life voices and musicians from nearly a century ago. And then it was time for another drink.
In the kitchen, the dog stared as Dan cracked the ice tray and filled his glass. He tried to recall if he’d let Ralph out when he came home. He rubbed his eyes and blinked. The room turned blurry for a moment then cleared again.
He remembered Ked’s injunction on speaking to Ralph. “What do you want?” he said, opening his arms wide the way Ked had done.
The dog whimpered but didn’t move.
“What do you want? Show me what you want.” I’m talking to a dog, Dan thought. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Ralphie?” he said in exaggerated tones.
The dog scampered up, racing to the front door.
“I guess you do.”
Ralph whimpered worriedly as Dan fumbled with the leash and struggled with his windbreaker. Outside, it was a cloudy, moonless night. Leaves littered the sidewalks. The dog lunged down the walk. Caught off guard, Dan lurched into the fence. He heard a loud crack as his knee connected with a fencepost.
“Goddamn it!” he bellowed.
The dog looked back, straining to keep as far from Dan as he could. “Stop pulling!” Dan yelled.
He felt around with his fingers. No pain. It had been the fence post rather than his leg he’d heard cracking. They continued to the street, Ralph dragging him along.
“Stop it!” he commanded. The dog stopped and waited, then sprang forward as soon as Dan moved. Dan yanked on the leash and Ralph yelped. He cowered as Dan came toward him. “No, it’s okay,” Dan said gently. “Just stop pulling.”
They continued at a slower pace. Ralph seemed to like to lead, so Dan gave him some distance. He trotted proudly, looking back once in a while as though checking in or encouraging Dan to walk faster. You can do this, Dan told himself. You can walk the dog without getting angry.
They reached Danforth Avenue and turned left. Outside various halal shops, bearded men in white thobe robes sat looking otherworldly, smoking mysterious-smelling herbs and muttering strange syllables, as though they knew secrets they shared only among themselves. In a Greek butcher’s window, trussed lamb and goat carcasses hung down, skinned and venous. Ralph sniffed at the doorstep, a biblical angel checking for smeared lambs’ blood, and lapped at a dark spot on the sidewalk.
Dan’s head was losing its fuzziness. He thought of the drink he’d poured and forgotten. They turned back at the borders of Riverdale and headed south again. Arriving back at the house, Ralph trotted up the walk and curled up on the rug in the living room.
The ice had melted in Dan’s glass where it sat perched on the arm of the chair. He had no idea why he’d placed it there. Maybe the idea of balancing it on the arm had appealed to him. In any case, Scotch was for drinking, not for balancing on chair arms.
He took a slug, waiting for the slow burn in his throat. His father had been an angry, frustrated man most of his life. The irony was he was nicest when he drank, as though alcohol allowed him a bit of headroom on the tight leash on which he kept his emotions. But nothing ever brought his father closer. Dan had filled the mantle with athletic trophies from school, but his father hadn’t cared. He’d done the housework, but his father seldom noticed. Even when his Aunt Marge pointed it out, praising Dan in front of him, his father only grunted in his usual incoherent manner, as though it made no difference to him whether dishes got washed and beds made, whether the garbage was put out on the curb or left to stink up the house.
Dan took another swallow and felt the warm release, wondering if this was what his father had felt when he drank. And this was always, always when he thought about Bill. The images jutted like a loose floorboard he’d tripped over and couldn’t resist pulling up to see what lay beneath. Only with Bill there was never really much there.
They’d met at Sailor’s on a Saturday night when the bar was crammed. Dan seldom went out to bars and, if he did, almost never on a Saturday. Crowds made him claustrophobic, but mostly he disliked being jostled and touched. There were also too many slight, pimple-faced youngsters who reminded him not a little of Ked a few years on — boys who tried too hard to be desirable when in truth they were simply awkward, thin and insecure.
Dan knew boys like that. They wanted Jake Gyllenhaal, but they’d settle for a guy like Dan who could make their hormones twitch with a glance. Especially once the bar lights came up and they found themselves alone again. But those boys required work once you got them home, made them feel safe, fucked them till they grinned, and then hoped they’d leave so you could get some sleep and forget you’d just bedded another twenty-year-old who had pleaded for your number but would never call. The next time they saw him in a club, they turned their heads and pretended not to notice him for fear he’d assume there was anything between them.
That particular Saturday, he’d been about to leave when a nicely built guy in jeans and a sweat-top caught his eye. The man pushed himself off the railing, tumbler in hand, and lurched in Dan’s direction. Blue eyes and brown hair. Toothy gash for a mouth. Casual and assured. He might have been
