In Mike We Trust (10 page)

Garth drew a blank for a moment. Then he said, “The quarterback?”

“Halfback.” She extended her neck and smiled proudly.

“You're dating a
jock
?”

“Tell me you aren't jealous.”

He thought about it. “I'm not.”

“Oh, come on! He's gorgeous!”

“Not my type.” Garth shrugged.

“Having never dated anyone, you don't get to have a type.”

“That was harsh.”

“It was, wasn't it? Sorry. I try to spare you my mean
side. I'll be making it up to you in a few minutes, in any event.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind, it's a surprise,” she said, smoothing out her towel. “I can't believe you don't think Billy Fillmore is droolworthy. Wait till you get to know him.”

“I'm not sure I want to.”

“Why?”

“Well, have you ever seen those movies about Vietnam, where the soldiers don't want to get to know any of the new recruits because they probably aren't going to survive for very long?”

“Wow. Now who's being harsh?”

He grinned and said, “Me, for a change.”

“Oh! Here comes your surprise.” Her eyes darted toward the path that led from the footbridge.

Garth looked over and saw Adam Walters approaching them.

Adam had a towel in one hand, his shirt in the other. He wore only bright red bathing trunks and a pair of sneakers.

Garth turned back and glared at Lisa.

“Your uncle isn't the only one who can help you come out,” she told him.

“Hi,” Adam called as he drew near. “You guys were
easy enough to find.” His dense sandy hair flashed in the sun.

“My favorite spot on the island,” Lisa said, stretching out. “I think you've already met Garth.”

“Yeah. We go all the way back to…Wednesday.” Adam smiled and reach a hand down toward Garth.

Garth got to his feet—and immediately regretted it because of how much taller Adam was than him. He was self-conscious, too, about his hair (unwashed and unruly), about his legs (ultraskinny, like pipe cleaners), and about his stomach (which was flat enough but soft, and absent of the ridges he could see in Adam's). “Hi,” he said, shaking the hand. “I—I didn't know you were coming.”

“Me either. Till about an hour ago.”

“The magic of cell phones,” Lisa said.

Adam glanced at the wet footprints still visible on the rock. “Looks like one of you has already been in the water.”

“Just to cool off,” Garth said. “The water's actually pretty cold.”

“I guess I'll bake myself for a little while first.” He spread his towel out on the rock next to Garth's and lay down on his back. After a few moments, he rolled over with his head turned away. “I had to wash both my parents' cars this morning,” he muttered. “Guess it
was the head start on my tan.”

Garth let his eyes linger undetected on Adam's smooth back, the nape of his neck, the slope of his shoulders. Correction:
not
undetected. Lisa was observing this examination. He caught her gaze and bugged his eyes out at her. He really didn't know whether to scowl at her for putting him in this spot, or thank her.

“It's a wonderful view, isn't it?” she said, then immediately added, “The skyline, I mean. All that green, and then all that silver.” She nodded toward the buildings downtown, across the river.

“Yeah,” Garth uttered. “It's great.”

“I can't decide whether it's more impressive from a distance, or when you're right up close to it.” She arched an eyebrow, then lay down herself.

He remained propped up on his elbows. Next to Adam, he felt like a squishy little (he hated thinking the word almost more than he did hearing it come from someone else's lips) shrimp. Was this what being attracted to someone else of the same sex—in such close proximity (and with so much exposed flesh)—had to be like? Did you have to see your own bodily faults in order to appreciate their assets?

Relax,
Mike would have told him if he were here. So he decided to.

He lay flat, closed his eyes, and listened to the treetops
stirring in the slight breeze. The traffic clopping over the bridge. Farther down, the rapids—so faint that he might have been imagining the sound. When he opened his eyes again and glanced over, Adam had his head bent back and was squinting at the woods that stretched out behind them.

“There used to be a prison on this island, right?”

“The whole
thing
used to be a prison,” Garth said.

“It would make a good white-collar prison,” Lisa put in. “With a spa and mud baths—and nature hikes.”

“Well, it wasn't
that
kind of prison,” Garth said. “When the North took the city, they just stuck all the Confederate soldiers out here with no food, no supplies, nothing. They had to, I don't know, eat each other to survive.”

“That's disgusting,” Lisa said. “And you know what? When we read about that in American History, I thought, The river's not that wide. Why not just swim back to civilization?”

“Because there were guards posted all along the bank. They'd shoot you if you tried.”

“Oh,” she said. “Ouch.”

“Yeah, ouch,” Adam echoed. “But I was just thinking, that would be a great story for a film. A love story, in fact.”

“A
love
story?” Lisa asked.

“Yeah. Two prisoners stuck out here on this island, fighting to survive. One helps out the other in some skirmish, and they bond, fall in love.”

“Sort of like
Romeo and Juliet
meets
Escape from New York
?” Garth asked.

Adam laughed. “Exactly! Well,
Romeo and Romeo
meets
Escape from Belle Isle
.”

“The problem with that idea,” Lisa said, “is that it would have to be about a bunch of Confederate soldiers. That would be like making a love story starring Nazis. It can't work. No one would sympathize.”

“I disagree,” Adam said. “You're taking brainwashed kids off farms and putting guns in their hands, sticking them on the front lines, giving them no choice. You can't expect them all to rise to your moral standards.”

“Plus,” Garth said, “you could always have your characters become a little…conflicted about the cause.”

“Right? That's what would make the story interesting! Conflict and the steamy island sex.”

“Wait,” Lisa countered. “Two rebel soldiers having sex? That's hot?”

Adam glanced at Garth. “Hello?”

“That is so twisted,” she said.

Garth shrugged.

“I have a project in mind, too,” Lisa said. “I want to photograph my probably soon-to-be sister-in-law once a week throughout her pregnancy, naked—her, not me—and then once a week naked with my niece-slash-nephew for the first ten years of her-slash-his life. Same pose, every time. I want to call it
129 Months
.”

“That sounds like a recipe for one messed-up niece-slash-nephew,” Garth said.

“Seriously,” Adam grinned.

“Not everything is about sex,” she declared.

“Oh? No one told me.” He turned to Garth. “So what about you? Any artistic flair?”

“Flair?” Garth asked.

“Interest. Pursuit.”

The wording threw him. He opened his mouth, then closed it.
You, at the moment,
he imagined saying.

“Garth,” Lisa announced, “is going to become the world's greatest veterinarian.”

“Really?” Adam asked him. “So you must have a lot of pets.”

“No,” Garth said, “just one dog—a springer spaniel named Hutch. We used to have a golden retriever named Starsky, too. My dad named them both; he was crazy about that show when he was growing up.”

“Starsky and Hutch. Hilarious. What happened to Starsky?”

“My parents got him before I was even born. He lived to be twelve and a half. Then he kicked.”

“Kicked! You don't sound like a very sensitive vet!”

“What do you want me to say? He passed on. Expired. Went to biscuit heaven,” Garth said. “I don't have the compassionate vet lingo down yet, I guess.”

“Don't listen to him,” Lisa said. “Garth's going to be the Surgeon General of dogs.”

Garth felt his face flush. He shrugged, deflected. “Who knows, I might not be a vet at all. I just want to work with animals in some way.”

“You could join a circus,” Adam offered. “Be an elephant trainer.”

“Or the guy who cleans up the elephant poop,” Lisa said.

“Thanks,” Garth said. “You flatter me.”

Adam turned toward him. “Did you watch the film, by the way?”

“Not yet.” Garth was suddenly embarrassed, realizing that
Did you watch the film?
was just another way of asking,
Are you going to invite me over or not?
Fortunately, Lisa didn't know about Mike's suggestion, or she would have run with that one big-time, right there on the spot.

They drifted into silence. When Garth looked over
again, he saw that both Adam and Lisa had closed their eyes and were basking in the sun. He felt as if he'd missed some signal that it was nap time (what was this, grade school?) and he closed his own eyes, wondering if he'd said something stupid to shut the conversation down.

What seemed like less than a minute later, he heard a rustling next to him. He glanced over and saw Lisa standing with her towel thrown over her arm.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” she said. “I have to get ready for my date tonight.”

“With Billy Fillmore.”

“The one and only.”

“The quarterback?” Adam asked, pushing up onto his elbows.

“
Half
back,” Lisa corrected, then went on to qualify: “That's twice a quarter. I'll see you boys later.”

She apparently recognized the slight panic Garth knew was in his face, because she gave him a wry look and—blatantly, so that Adam could see—a thumbs-up.

When she was gone, Garth and Adam just lay there, both propped on their elbows, watching the river. Another kayak drifted by. Then a trio of middle-aged hippies on their backs in inner tubes, holding cans of beer. Adam scissored his feet back and forth. A jet passed
high overhead, its engines briefly overlapping the sound of the river. They said nothing but just watched the river for what felt to Garth like a long stretch of time but was probably only a few minutes.

“Do you want to swim?” Adam asked, rising up into a sitting position.

“I was already in once.”

“I know, but it looks like you've sufficiently dried out.” He glanced at Garth's hair, his chest, even the fabric of his swimsuit. “Want to cool off again?”

Garth suddenly felt aroused, nervous, and frozen all at once. “You go ahead,” he said. “I'll hang out here.”

Adam stood, straightened the waistband of his swimsuit, and walked to the edge of the rock. His body—still pretty pale but a little pink now along the shoulders and around the back of his neck—was gorgeous. Sexy.
Hot.
Should he have offered to join him? Did his nervousness show, now that Lisa was gone?

Did Adam even care?

With the downtown skyline nearly hidden by the trees on the opposite bank, they might have been in a different world. Just as being around Mike was starting to feel like a different world from the one he shared with Lisa, or his mom. Or maybe he had that wrong. Maybe
he
was the one who was different around each of them. If that was the case, who was he now?

Yet another Garth in the act of figuring out the world.

He sat up as Adam slid off the farthest rock and down into the water. Garth kept him in his sight line, held him that way, as a narrow band of cloud snaked a shadow between them.

 

The next morning, after they'd finished breakfast and his mom had left for work, Garth caught Mike up on what was going on.

“And?” Mike said, pouring two mugs of coffee—one for him and one for Garth.

“And what?”

“What happened next? You don't have to give me the gritty details, but did you at least get some sort of signal from him?”

Signals? Garth wondered. Like referee hand gestures? Two tugs on the ear, one tap on the nose:
I think you're cool?
“We hung out for a while. He swam, I didn't. We talked some more, then rode our bikes back to the neighborhood and went our separate ways.”

“So you got no sense at all that he's interested in you? As maybe more than a friend?”

Garth shrugged. “How would I even know?”

Mike groaned—as if he really had something invested in this and Garth was tampering with the
market. He sipped his coffee, studied Garth for a moment, then said, “Let's talk about tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“I called my contact at the charity organization and we're all set to go.”

Contact?
It sounded more like spy work than charity. “What does that mean?”

“It means we can use the old pamphlets. Unfortunately, there've been no new developments on the meninosis front since the last printing. I also bought us a card table, which is more effective as a ‘base' for a charity drive than just walking up to people on the sidewalk. Oh—and poles for the banner.”

“What banner?”

“There's always a banner. You think people are just going to walk up to a table on their own? Something has to catch their eye.”

The more concretely Mike talked about the charity work, the harder it was for Garth to actually picture them doing it.

“So let's talk strategy,” Mike said. “How are your acting skills?”

“My
what
?”

“You know—tragedy, comedy, the gamut in between. Can you act sad, if you have to? Not burst-into-tears sad, but gloomy. Woeful.”