The Good Neighbor: A Novel Read online

  “Don’t pout, Rory. People will say you’re spoiled,” Bruno said.

  Rory gave him a deadly look and returned to the cabinet for paper towels, bread, and utensils.

  “Look, Rory. I don’t want to feel this simmering around me all the time. If they come over for dinner, they’ll have a chance to get to know us and not think we’re going to fuck with their children every time they set foot outside.”

  Rory gave him another cutting look.

  “I know. I get sick of it too. But it’s not a bad idea, okay?” Bruno lowered Rory’s beer and sat it back on the counter next to him.

  Rory went around the bar and sat next to Bruno. Grudgingly, he smoothed a paper towel on the counter in front of Bruno, then put a knife on top of it. “I suppose I have to cook for them, too,” he said.

  “You’ll make something wonderful, I bet. C’mon Rory…” Bruno cajoled.

  “Exactly when is this love feast supposed to be?” Rory asked as he drew two slices of bread from the bag and laid them on his own paper towel.

  “Two weeks from tonight,” Bruno said gently.

  Rory took a slug of his beer, and looked a Bruno with a forgiving half smile. “Okay, I’ll feed ’em. They seem like nice enough people. But I don’t want to give you the wrong idea, I don’t intend to get all close to them. They can stay on their side of the fence as far as I’m concerned.”

  Bruno gave him a gentle shove with his shoulder. “You aren’t very social, are you?”

  Rory opened the mayonnaise jar and sighed. “Nope. Not with people I have nothing in common with.”

  Bruno dipped his knife into the mayonnaise jar and snickered. “You don’t have anything in common with anyone these days, do you?”

  Rory didn’t answer. While he had never been very social to begin with, his opportunities had peeled away the further his moves with Bruno had taken him from Fort Lauderdale itself and their orbit had shifted to the western confines of the county. Now, apart from Bruno, the only people he ever saw were his occasional clients and the people in the shops he still frequented. There were people in his church he recognized each week, but a nod and a smile were all the interaction they required of him and vice versa. What friends he did have had moved on or deeper into their own tightly knit circles.

  The fact was, Bruno was jealous. Though he didn’t own up to it, he made it clear time and again that he preferred their friends to be held jointly and seen in common. While Rory felt secure in Bruno’s possessiveness, he realized that because Bruno worked in the world while he worked from home, Bruno’s range of social contacts far exceeded his own, and Bruno didn’t mind keeping him at a disadvantage. There were times Rory wondered if Bruno cheated on him. He was oversexed and often away from home. At the selective rate at which he displayed Rory, Rory wondered if he had things to hide. All of these nagging thoughts he chalked up to living in an isolated, if satisfied way. While it made Rory wonder, it also made him less than happy to report the fresh news he had to tell Bruno.

  Rory took a piece of sliced chicken and laid it on a slice of bread lightly covered with mayonnaise. “Guess who I ran into this morning?” he said carefully.

  Bruno, busily completing his own sandwich, only gave him an encouraging glance.

  “Dazz Coleman,” Rory said speaking of a friend he did recall from their college days, and one who’d managed to appear and reappear in all the ensuing years since. Dazz was a go-getter, a black kid with a Rolodex full of contacts in a fledgling music scene who had gone on to become a producer. He’d surfaced in Charlotte when Bruno and Rory lived there after school, and he had gotten Rory a few gigs doing voice-overs and commercials. Eventually he’d moved to South Florida about the same time Bruno and Rory did to take advantage of the Miami hip-hop scene in its infancy. These days, Dazz rather grandly called himself a hip-hop impresario, but he was a good guy, and he never forgot a name or a talent.

  “Where in the hell did you run into that slimeball?” Bruno said warily.

  “At the Galleria,” Rory replied openly.

  “What the hell were you doing way downtown at the Galleria?” Bruno demanded.

  “I wanted to go to Banana Republic. I have a meeting with a new client this week, and I want to look sharp,” Rory said simply.

  “I don’t like you traipsing around the Gay-leria by yourself. Who knows what you might get into,” Bruno said and took a surprisingly considered bite of his sandwich.

  “For fuck’s sake, Bruno. I’m forty years old. No one at the Galleria is going to cruise me. Buy a clue,” Rory snorted.

  Bruno chewed and swallowed determinedly. “Well, Dazz Coleman found you, didn’t he? My guess is he’s got some bullshit deal he thinks you’d be perfect for. What is it this time, radio spots for steam-cleaning carpet?”

  Rory took a deep breath and tried to answer in a way that wouldn’t betray his interest. “He’s producing a new group, some black guys who are doing some interesting work.”

  “What’s this new group got to do with you?” Bruno demanded.

  Rory picked up his sandwich and held it thoughtfully in front of him. “They need a strong voice to sing backgrounds for these old songs by the Isley Brothers. They’re doing this really acid jazz kinda funked-out mix of rap and singing for the new arrangements. Dazz thinks I’d be great. Right now there’s no club dates or anything. It’s just studio work,” Rory said hopefully.

  Bruno thought for a minute and took a bite of his sandwich. Around his mouthful of food, he mumbled, “So what did you tell him?”

  Rory put his sandwich back down and half turned toward Bruno. “I told him to get me a CD to listen to and I’d think it over.”

  Bruno dropped the remains of his sandwich on his paper towel and picked up another to wipe his hands and mouth. “No way,” he said decisively.

  “Aw c’mon Bruno. It sounds like it could be fun. It’s been a long time since I’ve done any singing. They may hate me, but I’d like to give it a shot,” Rory pleaded.

  “No fucking way. Dazz Coleman’s been trying to separate you from me since college for some bullshit group. Why are you always so damn eager to jump into one of his crappy little deals? And rap? What the hell do you know about acid jazz or rap and funk? Besides, I need you here when I’m here, not out all night in some nigger studio in the goddamn ’hood. Tell him you thought about it and you decided no. End of story,” Bruno said with finality.

  “Bruno…”

  “Ba-da-bing, Ba-da-boom,” Bruno said, wiping his hands against each other sharply and then holding them out. “End of story.”

  Rory took a disappointed bite of his sandwich, then slipped the rest to Bridget who was waiting on the floor by his stool. He chewed the tasteless bit and took a draft of his beer wordlessly. The demo CD was in his car with Dazz Coleman’s card. It could wait until Monday, he decided. Inside, he rebelled against Bruno’s typical highhandedness. On Monday, with Bruno safely at work, he’d listen to the demo CD and make up his own mind. It wasn’t worth fighting about at this point.

  “Hey, you didn’t eat your sandwich,” Bruno said. “Bridget got it.”

  Rory gave him a half smile. “It wasn’t what I expected,” he said.

  Bruno nodded and looked down to watch Bridget hungrily finish Rory’s sandwich. “You should have given it to me,” Bruno said. “I still want more.”

  5160 ST. MARK’S COURT

  MEG TOOK A rare glass of white wine out onto the pool deck and settled herself on a chaise lounge facing the view across the canal. The view was phenomenal. In the sky overhead large billowing clouds floated as fleet and stately as schooners. The blue of the sky was deepened by the enormous pool enclosure’s screen, and it looked like a fairy tale picture of a sky. Meg took a sip of her cold wine and sighed. It wouldn’t be long now before Austin and the boys returned from Home Depot, but it would be long enough for her to have a cherished minute to herself, free from chores, free from files, and free from the ungainly male animals who seemed to collide
with her every intention to keep them organized and reigned in. It was like living with a bunch of big dogs, Meg thought, big unruly dogs.

  Meg had a friend named Sabrina whom she saw regularly at Noah and Josh’s soccer practices. Sabrina had four boys, and while she handled them with an easy, rough affection that seemed to make them calm magically under her hand, Meg thought she’d rather taken an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” attitude. Sabrina was always comfortably dressed in a T-shirt and shorts that bore testament to other’s sticky hands and bloodied cuts and scrapes. Her hair was styled for ease, not effect, and her hands always seemed to scream in painful need of a manicure. Meg shuddered inwardly at the thought. While she had to live in a world of boys, she had no intention of letting herself go to the extent Sabrina had. Though Sabrinas boys seemed to adore her, their adoration of their mother came at a price to Sabrinas femininity that Meg wasn’t willing to pay.

  Then, too, Sabrinas boys were a profane, rough-mouthed, scrappy bunch of brutes as far as Meg was concerned. They swore. They rough-housed. And they always seemed dirty to Meg. While she conceded that boys weren’t meant to be delicate flowers, she had no intention of letting her boys grow up to be so uncouth. It was part of her self-identity that she could raise masculine little men who didn’t scratch at themselves as if they had fleas or collapse into laughter at the thought of passing gas. And they watched their mouths around her as well. Thinking of these things, she nodded to herself and took a sip of her wine. Tiredly, she dropped her head to rest on the chaise lounge’s back and sighed.

  Distracted by her train of thought, Meg found Austin’s unwitting form in the clouds over her head. Fondly, she thought of him much the same as she did her boys. He had their effortless enthusiasm and curiosity, or at least he once did. These days he seemed diminished by circumstance. She knew he was discouraged and disheartened by his new job. Somehow, she wished he could see through the current moment and resource his imagination. She knew he wasn’t doing what made him happy, but she believed he was responsible for getting over that. She believed in him; she only wished he believed more in himself.

  Meg took another drink from her cool glass. The ease the wine promised was stealing over her. She felt herself relax and became aware of how pleasant the rough texture of the lounge chair’s weave felt under her feet. She drew them up with a bend of her knees and shivered slightly as the movement sent a wave of pleasure up her legs to settle near her groin. For now, this moment, that was satisfying enough. And that discrete knowledge brought to mind another nagging concern about Austin. It had to do with sex.

  She wished Austin could understand that he wasn’t attractive as he turned to her out of dissatisfaction with his life right now. His near-constant hovering with his hang-dog expression was certainly not sexy. In fact, it put her right off the idea. To her, his physical neediness reminded her of the boys when they demanded a closeness out of their own insecurity and unexamined hunger for her attention and care. She needed Austin to be masterful and assured, not pawing at her like an ignored dog.

  Meg allowed her feet to slide back down the length of the lounge chair’s surface. Their return to the end of its reach was no longer satisfying in its friction. Meg sighed once more. She realized she hadn’t really been in the mood for sex in any event, all of Austin’s problems aside. Her work was, quite simply, a bitch. Every day, in every way, she felt as if she was constantly under scrutiny and subjected to a microscopic examination of her every potential oversight and possible flaw. She was a professional. She knew the level of insight, detail, and discernment she brought to her caseload. She knew she could perform, but she also knew she’d risen very quickly to the position she’d attained, and she knew how many people would like to see her fail and fall. That was one thing she would not allow to happen. She would not, she absolutely would not, let her attention or control flag for one moment. She wouldn’t at work, and she wouldn’t at home.

  Meg drained her glass of the remainder of her wine and stretched her arms up over her head. The sudden weight of tension drained down her arms to puddle in her shoulders. She dropped her arms and rolled her head from the neck to ease the stress. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the Griffin-Fallon’s backyard and stretch of canal, empty now of Bruno’s broad back, long legs, and handsome face watching the water for the tug on his fishing line. Now that one, Meg thought, ain’t nothing hut a man.

  She allowed herself a moment to categorize Bruno’s best features, from his hard jaw to his slim, flat waist improbably supporting those shoulders and deep chest covered with just the right amount of comforting black hair. He was something to look, at she grudgingly admitted. He was also somewhat winning when he wanted to be. She recalled his bashfulness when she remarked on his looks. It seemed too genuine to fake, but then again, the man was probably used to being assessed frankly and admiringly. Still, it was fun to flirt, especially when there was no real threat of it becoming anything more than it was. Meg decided he was a handsome idiot. Not bad to look at, probably pleasant to know, but ultimately a lightweight. His being gay obviated everything about him that could be so appealing.

  She heard a sliding glass door move along its track across the way and turned her head to see who would appear. She was rewarded with a glimpse of the other one and the sight of their absurdly huge dog lumbering out onto their pool deck. Quietly, the sliding glass door closed against the heat and the dog settled itself with a thud near the lip of their pool.

  Meg turned her head guiltily. She didn’t want the other one to think she was overly concerned with their comings and goings. She searched for his name briefly until it appeared to her. Rory, she thought, His name is Rory. Try as she might, she could place neither of them from their college days, though Austin claimed they went to the same school. She pictured the man in her mind. What she recalled was a form lean and somewhat fey until his face appeared from her memory. Sleepy-eyed and slightly freckled, was her impression of Rory. He didn’t strike her as a man who would put himself forward in any way. In fact, he seemed diminished by his boyfriend’s obvious presence. She dismissed him out of hand.

  Carefully, she placed her wine glass on the brick pavers of the pool deck, then let the back of the lounge chair down a couple of notches. She leaned back, gratefully surrendering herself to the wine’s pull toward drowsiness. She recalled how quickly Bruno had responded to her concerns about the boys being next door. While she knew not every gay man was a child molester, she decided it would be better if he and his partner felt she did. It put them on the defensive in a way she could work with. One way or another, it was just a matter of handling men, and that was something she’d learned to do well. Gay or straight, they all were the same as far as she was concerned. The only difference was where they put their peckers. In that, they all were preoccupied and dimwitted in their single-minded focus.

  Curiously, she thought of Bruno Griffin and Rory Fallon together. As far as she could recall, Rory was the slick and pretty one. It wasn’t hard to imagine him m the passive role. She tried to picture him naked and only came up with a feminine blur. Rejecting the image dismissively, she turned her imagination to Bruno. His naked form was easier to imagine after seeing him shirtless and shorts-clad earlier in the day. Idly, she tried to imagine his penis and giggled to herself.

  Closing her eyes against the brightness of the afternoon, she pictured Bruno hunched in concentration. His penis stood out as veined, gnarled, and knobbed as the shillelagh her father kept in the umbrella stand in the foyer back home. In response to the impressive notion, she drew her feet up against the lounge chair’s fabric once more, enjoying the texture on the soles of her feet. She parted her legs and gripped the sides of the chair’s frame with her toes. Bruno approached her as he tugged his ungainly penis, urging it downward as he moved between her legs. A heedless shiver of anticipation ran up her spine as she imagined the thought his weight sinking on top of her.

  The sliding glass door slid open abruptly and
Josh stepped from the family room onto the pool deck. “Mom?”

  Meg jerked her knees together and raised her head and shoulders in abrupt and shame-faced alarm. “What?” She demanded sharply.

  Josh’s happy face fell. He stepped back into the family room as if she’d slapped him. “We’re back,” he said quietly.

  Meg swung her legs over the side of the lounge chair and sat up guiltily. “I’m sorry sweetheart. You startled me. I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she said.

  Josh nodded and backed further into the family room. “Dad wants you to come see. He bought you a present,” he said warily.

  Meg opened her arms and said softly, “Come here Joshie and give your mean ol’ mama a hug.”

  The little fellow brightened and hurried toward her with arms outstretched. When he was close enough for her to grasp, his sneaker kicked her wine glass and sent it crashing across the pavers to the wall behind her lounge chair, where it stopped in tiny sharp shards of breakage. Guiltily, the little boy jerked back from his mother’s grasp and looked at her with alarm. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do it,” he cried.

  Meg stole a look at the broken glass and then found the little fellow’s face. Her mind registered the fact that the glass was one of a set of four, now diminished to an odd group of three. At the same time, she noted the panic in Josh’s eyes. Her heart broke a little at his display of fear of her reaction. He was as thoughtless as a lumbering puppy, but he was her puppy, it seemed, and she had made him afraid of her. Quietly she said, “Don’t worry about it, Josh. It’s only a glass.”

  Josh looked at her dubiously. “I can clean it up,” he offered.

  She pictured him running with the broom and dustpan, stumbling, and falling face first into the sharp mess. “No,” she said firmly. “You might cut yourself. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Josh offered once more.