The Good Neighbor: A Novel Page 4

  “Hey!” Bruno said. “Watch it. What makes you think he’d be a thug?”

  “You. The apple never falls too far from the tree. Look at Bridget.” Rory said. “We’ve even got a thug-looking dog. Admit it; you’re just a thug with an MBA. Can’t you see a kid of ours? God, we’d spend our lives in juvie court.”

  “No,” Bruno said wistfully, “he’d be all golden and talented like you. Sensitive and shit.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Sure.” Bruno took his arm out of Rory’s shirt and stretched it across the back of the wicker sofa, opening his legs wide in relaxation. He put down his wine glass and readjusted himself in his shorts and sighed. “Is there any more of that wine?”

  “A bit. Hand me your glass.”

  Bruno handed Rory his glass. He watched as Rory shifted and found the wine bottle in the shadow of an overhead beam that obscured the moonlight on the table by the sofa. Absently, Bruno said, “He’s a nice-looking guy. You think his pecker is as big as he is? You can never tell with those basketball player guys. Their dicks always look small in proportion.”

  Rory emptied the bottle into his glass and handed it back to him. “I dunno. I didn’t see any swing in his sweats, but he could have been wearing tighty-whities. He looks like the type to be all cooped in.” Carefully, he sat the empty wine bottle back on the side table. “She’s not a bad looking woman.”

  “Hmmm,” Bruno responded as he took a sip of the wine.

  “Hmmm? That’s it?” Rory asked.

  “Are you fishing, Rory?” Bruno responded quietly. He was well aware that there was always a part that remained deep in Rory that didn’t trust him after he’d broken up with him years before to get married. It had laid minefields in their relationship that Bruno still had to negotiate after nearly twenty years.

  “Not necessarily. I’m just saying…”

  “She’s very pretty. He’s lucky to have her. But,” Bruno lifted a hand to ward off any further questions, “did you hear her jump dead in his shit about the boys watching South Park? I bet she can be a real bitch.”

  “You got that too, right?” Rory said. “Did you hear him tell her he couldn’t keep a constant eye on them? I’ll give you four to one he’s got the bulk of responsibility for those kids. Did she say what she did? I missed it.”

  Bruno snickered. “She’s a lawyer. Just made partner.”

  “Oh my god.” Rory gaped. “And he sells medical equipment? Well, there you are.”

  Bruno lifted his arms over his head, threw his head back and yawned. “I’m fucking glad I’m not straight. I couldn’t put up with the bullshit.”

  “You and me both.” Rory said and gave him a look in the dark. Bruno’s face was silvered by the bright January moon overhead, exaggerating the dark circles under his eyes.

  “Busy day tomorrow, Bruno?” he asked gently.

  “Oh yeah. Presentation of findings at eight. I need to be at my desk at seven to go over the numbers one more time,” Bruno replied tiredly.

  “How does it look for them?”

  Bruno grunted. “They’re top-heavy. It’s all chiefs and no Indians. They’ve got some sound thinking, but they’ve downsized to the point of freezing themselves and their productivity all out of proportion to their potential if they were staffed in the right places. They’d have done better by themselves if they cut upper management and left themselves some room to respond to market shifts with their production department.” Bruno shook his head like a bull ridding himself of annoying flies. “Why are we talking about this? I don’t even want to think about those fuckers right now. What were we talking about before?”

  “Not being straight. Well, married and straight anyway.”

  Bruno reached to tickle Rory’s side again and laughed as he shifted away. “I’m too old for all that hassle. God, I’m glad you’re not a bitch.”

  Rory smiled. “C’mon beast. One of the great things about gay marriage is you have somebody who’s only concerned with you. And, I say it’s time for you to call it a night.”

  Bruno grinned. “One of the great things? Hell, I thought that was the great thing.”

  “What’s the great thing?”

  Bruno slipped an arm around Rory’s waist and kissed the side of his head. “Just being looked after by you.”

  “A couple of glasses of wine and you get mushy. You know that, beast?”

  Bruno only yawned hugely once more and nodded his head.

  “What are the odds of that guy knowing us from college?”

  Bruno grunted. “I can’t place him, but hell, how many people were there at that school back then? Maybe sixteen, seventeen thousand? Besides, you and I are probably more recognizable because of me playing sports and us being in the band. The guy said he remembered me from the lacrosse team.”

  “Yeah,” Rory agreed. “He did say he was Eddy’s roommate and mentioned the band. But, I swear to god, I can’t place him.”

  Bruno yawned and stood. “Why should you? We met a lot of people back in those days. Besides, you and I didn’t leave much room for other people.”

  Rory laughed. “Yeah, that’s true. We were pretty stuck together, still are.”

  “Like white on rice,” Bruno said, and reaching out he pulled Rory up from his seat by the upper arm and steered him across the pool deck. Bridget got to her feet stiffly and padded ahead of them toward the bedroom door.

  “Some guy we only met, like twice, back then, and now he shows up in fricking Broward County, Florida.” Rory mused. He paused at the door to their bedroom to allow Bridget to go in before heading in after her.

  “And moves m next door for god’s sake,” Bruno said tiredly as he passed into the bedroom.

  “Well, if he barely knew us then, let’s hope he’s a good neighbor and keeps on barely knowing us now,” Rory said as he closed the door and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

  5160 ST. MARK’S COURT

  AUSTIN LOOKED IN on the boys to make sure they were bedded down and the television was turned to a fairly innocuous channel. After Joshie had decided to spout off like Eric Cartman earlier that evening, Meg wouldn’t be watching them to make sure they weren’t wallowing in South Park, she’d be watching him to make sure he monitored the boys’ viewing choices. Austin frankly didn’t want the hassle of Meg’s pointing out any laxity on his part in that regard.

  Both boys were asleep in their sleeping bags on the floor of what would be their upstairs play area. He knelt and tucked the edge of Noah’s sleeping bag around his shoulders against the chill of the air-conditioned night. In sleep, his breath was slightly sour, betraying his last glass of milk before bedtime. Austin wondered if he’d brushed his teeth, but decided it was pointless to speculate. He wouldn’t wake him up to brush. That was the difference between him and Meg. She would have shaken the boy awake and steered him in his half sleep into the bathroom to brush. Meg had little tolerance for half measures.

  Impulsively, Austin kissed his sleeping son’s cheek and smiled. The whole South Park thing in the driveway that evening was funny, really. It was all he could do to be stern and not join in the boys’ joke. It was also funny when Josh clocked Noah on claiming fourteen when he was still shy of that birthday by more than two months. His oldest son was now impatient to be grown, but sleeping as he was now, there was still more than a trace of the little boy he had been.

  Tiredly Austin moved on to tuck in his brother. He patted Joshie’s little rump, which he thought stuck out at an oddly obtuse angle to his shoulders inside the sleeping bag. He comforted himself with the notion that Josh had to be comfortable to be sleeping so soundly and then raised himself painfully off his knees. With a sigh, he flicked off the television, then the overhead lights, to leave his sleeping sons some peace to dream on their first night in their new house.

  Austin made his way into the room that was to be his office. Before he’d brought the few things they’d sleep on tonight, he’d transported his desk, computer, printer, fax, and phone to th
e new house. Though the phone and the Internet service wouldn’t be connected until tomorrow, he still quickly plugged in all the cables that allowed the various components to talk to each other. Satisfied, he stood by the window under his desk and switched everything on. He was rewarded with the computer operating system’s welcome screen and then a picture of the boys and Meg on the beach that served as his screen’s wallpaper. He felt reassured by the continuity of this image from his old home to this new house. Obviously, nothing had changed and everything had changed simultaneously.

  Curiously warmed by the glow from the computer’s screen, he looked out the second-floor window to the broad reach of the moonlight silvering the canal. It looked to be a vast distance to the line of lit houses on the opposite shore. Austin was pleased with his view. He told himself that was a good thing, considering the premium he’d paid for this house on the water. It was a costly view, but he had no doubt, as he worked from this desk day in and day out to pay for it, he’d be glad he sat and looked where he did.

  Austin glanced down and was startled to find his neighbors and their huge dog sitting on their deck by their pool. He had no idea they would be so close under his gaze. He felt almost as if he was spying on them, but he didn’t look away. He could see them linked, intimately relaxing side by side on their wicker sofa in moonlight bright as day. He watched as Bruno stood and eventually tugged Rory to his feet. The dog stood as well. Casually, they headed toward a set of French doors that offered a glimpse of the foot of a bed beyond.

  Austin watched as the dog led the way in and they broke their touch only to pass through the door and into the pool of lamplight inside. Bruno wearily trudged in first, followed by Rory, who quietly closed the door behind them. Austin watched through the door’s glass panes as Rory turned and stripped off his T-shirt and tossed it into the room before moving out of his line of sight.

  He recalled in full then the memory that they’d sparked earlier standing out in front of his new home, and the discussion between Noah and Josh about their gay neighbors. Surprisingly, Noah had been sanguine about their relationship. To him, it was an accepted fact of life, two men living together. Times had certainly changed, but then Noah’s attitude wasn’t too far from what Eddy had said all those years ago when Austin had brought up the discomfiting encounter with Rory and Bruno. He had just laughed. “Man,” he’d said. “Those two are like white on rice. You couldn’t pry them off each other with a crowbar.”

  “Damn,” Austin had replied. “Could they be more obvious? I mean it’s no big deal to me, but you’d think they’d get the crap beat out of them.”

  “Bullshit,” Eddy had snorted. “You saw Bruno; you want to piss him off?”

  “I thought I had, the way he was acting. It was like he thought I was after Rory or something.”

  Eddy then had opened the refrigerator and threw him a beer. “Bruno’s a big dumb pit bull when it comes to Rory and anybody giving them any grief about the gay thing. He’s sneaky though. On the lacrosse team, some guy was giving him shit about being queer. He waited until he had a shot at the guy while they were at practice and goddamn near broke his jaw. The guy’s parents almost brought him up on assault charges. It was pretty fucked up.”

  “But I couldn’t care less,” Austin had said. “What makes him think I was, damn, hitting on his boyfriend? No way.”

  Eddy had laughed again and opened a fresh beer himself. “Forget about it, man. Bruno’s weird. It ain’t got nothing to do with you. He’s so up in his own head; he looks at himself in the mirror and figures if he can be queer, every other guy has half a notion to. He’s an arrogant motherfucker, but he’s a pretty good guy if he likes you as a friend.”

  “What about Rory? I mean, he seems like a regular sort of guy,” Austin had said. “Seeing him around, I’d never figure him for a fag. How does he put up with Bruno jerking him around by the neck and shit? Damn, I’d have to kill Bruno if he treated me like that.”

  Eddy had just shrugged and said, “Look man, I’m not a great big authority on fags. I just know those two. All I got to say is, they’re pretty great guys once you get to know them.” Eddy took a long hit on his beer can. “Hell, they’re just like everybody else.” Then Eddy had said something that had struck Austin for nearly two decades as particularly wise. “Don’t question the tie that binds, man. Don’t question the tie that binds.”

  Eighteen years later, Austin looked from Rory and Bruno’s darkened bedroom door out over the wide moonlit canal and sighed. What, he thought, are the odds I’d end up with those two as next door neighbors?

  “All set up, sweetheart?” Meg asked from his office doorway, bringing him fully back from the past.

  Jerked from his reverie, Austin looked down at his desk into the welcoming glow from his computer’s screen. “Yep. Got it all fired up and working.”

  Meg walked from the doorway and came to stand behind him. Wrapping her arms around his waist she stood on tiptoe and kissed the side of his neck.

  “Look out at the view, honey.” Austin said, and taking one of her hands he pulled her to stand next to him. “The moon’s full. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Meg rarely allowed herself to be so pulled. She squeezed his hand and looked out the window. “Yes, it is. It’s lovely from here.” Austin felt her unclasp his hand and turn toward the side window. “My god! We can look right down to their pool deck. I can see everything on it.”

  “So?”

  “Well… so… so what if they lounge out there and stuff?” Meg said worriedly.

  “Isn’t that what people do on their pool decks?” Austin asked as he placed his hand gently on the back of her neck and squeezed.

  Abruptly, she shrugged off his touch. “So, what if they swim and lay around all lovey-dovey? I’m not so sure I like the idea of the boys having a full view of their lifestyle that way,” Meg said as she turned to face him. “I had no idea we’d have gay next-door neighbors right under our noses.”

  Austin turned away from the window and leaned against the lip of his desk. “Come on, Meg. This isn’t like you. Besides, I doubt very seriously if they are going to be fucking in their pool. Neither one of them seems to be really obvious. Besides, Rory said they’ve been living together for seventeen years. If that’s the case…”

  “If that’s the case, what?” Meg said as she turned to face him.

  Austin replied with a weak laugh. “Seventeen years. They’re probably lucky to fuck once a month.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Meg bristled.

  Austin pushed himself away from the edge of his desk and held his hands up in mock surrender. “It was a joke, Meg. It didn’t mean anything.”

  Meg turned away from the window and sighed tiredly. Edging past Austin, she leaned against his desk as he had. “I’m sorry, Austin. I’m just tired and a little sensitive about that subject.”

  Austin wanted to hug her. It would be so easy to reach across the small space between them and take her in his arms, or even just take her hand, but he was hurt from her earlier rebuff. Instead he only smiled ruefully. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Give yourself a break.”

  Meg rewarded him with a smile and looked back over her shoulder through the window to the house next door. “Well, this is your office. I doubt very seriously if the boys will be in here taking in the view of our gay neighbors doing whatever the hell they probably do on their pool deck.”

  “They probably just sit and have a glass of wine. That’s what they were doing five minutes ago. They probably won’t… well, I don’t think they’ll be out there butt-fucking every day.”

  Meg stood and took his hand. “I know you’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m being so tense.”

  Austin squeezed her hand gently and said, “You’re not tense, you’re just very, very alert. Are you ready for a cup of tea and bed?”

  “A cup of tea sounds heavenly, but how?”

  Austin smiled. “I know you like a cup of tea before bed. I packed a
few tea bags, some Equal, and your favorite mug to bring here with the stuff for us to sleep on. I know how to take care of my honey after all this time.”

  “And how do you think you’re going to get hot water? Did you bring a kettle too?” Meg teased.

  Austin grinned. “Nope. Didn’t need to. The morning kitchen in the master suite has one of those instant hot-water tap things. You’ve moved on up, girl. The Hardens have arrived in that dee-luxe apartment m the sky-y-y.”

  Meg giggled. “If I wasn’t so tired… you’re the greatest, Austin.” Meg stood and leaned against him appreciatively as they stepped toward the door. “I’ll just check on the boys and be right in.”

  Austin noted she didn’t let go of his hand. For a moment, hope for a bit of private time together flared and threatened to kindle. “There’s no need,” he said soothingly. “They’re asleep. I just tucked them in, turned off the television, and shut off the light. They’re fine.”

  “Did they manage to brush their teeth?” Meg demanded.

  Austin felt the fragile spark of promise die. He swallowed hard, and then lied. “I saw them do it myself.”

  Meg nodded and took off toward their master suite with Austin’s hand still firmly in her grasp. He didn’t let go, but did resist her urging long enough to switch off his desk lamp. He allowed himself to be pulled through the air-conditioned, near-dark coolness into their bedroom. He quietly half closed their door but left it open enough to hear any cries the boys might make in their sleep.

  Meg found her overnight bag in a corner on the floor. She fished in it briefly and found an oversized T-shirt emblazoned with an image of Shamu from Seaworld. Glancing behind her, she noticed Austin standing there, watching her. She turned her back to him, pulled her polo shirt over her head, unhooked and removed her bra, and quickly pulled the T-shirt over her head before removing her jeans.

  Austin turned away and walked to the area of the master bedroom that was outfitted with a small sink in a marble countertop. The alcove where it was situated came equipped with a diminutive microwave and refrigerator as well. Quietly, he put together Meg’s cup of tea and left it to steep as he undressed to his jockey shorts.