Slightly more muscular than actors she admires on TV. Maybe he is her type.
The house tour takes a few minutes, and then Martin inspects the garage to see if it’s long enough for the limo. When he noses it in, its sleek blackness lifts the gloom. “Roseman Limousine Service” and a cell phone number mar its gleaming sides. Fletch would bet Colette is hoping her neighbours get a good long stare before the door slides down.
They stand talking in the garage, and when Colette asks pleasantly about his family, he shrugs. “They don’t need me, I don’t need them. Moved out as soon as I could, as far away as I could without leaving the country.”
Jewish families on TV are always so close, almost stuck together.
“Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins?” asks Colette.
None of the above, he says. A bit like Colette.
Colette stands there, and Fletcher senses her trying to remember the checklist in Guide to Landlords’ Rights and Responsibilities. He is just about ready to go fetch her the book when she asks, does Martin have many visitors?
“A few,” he says. Then, his face half-turned away, he squares his shoulders beneath the brown leather and says, “My partner will be here sometimes.”
“Your business partner … ?” she nods at the limo.
“Domestic partner,” he enunciates clearly, slowly, allowing no mistake.
“Oh,” says she, leaning a few degrees back.
Who would have guessed? I can never tell with dogs either.
• • •
If Martin and his partner had shown up together, well …
You might say Martin is up front and honest. But Colette isn’t prepared. Nothing like this in the Guide. No ready-made social procedure.
Colette hasn’t met a gay man in her thirty-seven years. They don’t hang around Tim or his law office — not that she knows of, anyhow. And guys with names like Roseman don’t hang out there except for business.
Colette sets her chin just like her grandmother. She did say she was going to change something, anything.
She can deal with this. Sure she can. Grandmère was very open-minded; Colette should be too. She might have to keep it a secret from Tim, but there’s no way out. The book said no discrimination on the basis of age, sex, race. Did it say sexuality? Gayness? Anyhow, she can’t excuse herself to run upstairs and check, not with Martin standing there, still half-turned away.
“I see.” Her voice comes out faint. “Does your, uh, partner live nearby?”
Each muscle in his shoulders tenses, as if he’s anticipating her rejection.
“Rochester, New York.”
Far enough away. New Yorkers don’t come visiting the fly-over states.
She mutters, “Okay.” Very casual. She pat-pats Fletcher on the back as if patting her own.
Accepting gayness is so New York or California, she might forget where she is — in a subdivision in the heart of the Bible belt. It’s her French-Canadian side; Tim would have shown this man the door right away.
Colette touches Martin’s arm lightly. “If you’re all right with the rent, you can move in the first of next month.”
• • •
A week later, Martin has sponge-painted the half-bath white on blue, transforming the tiny room to a tiled raft floating through sky. He has doggie treats ready for Fletcher, and they aren’t the ones that look like other dogs, so Fletcher doesn’t feel like a cannibal as he scarfs them down. Then Martin leads Colette and Fletcher through his new home with a solicitousness, a politeness Tim would never show.
It’s respect. You could even call it gentleness, in light of what the only alternative radio station in town would call his “sexual preference.”
Dark, brooding abstract art on the walls — none featuring naked men or body parts, Fletcher notes — healthy ferns and palms in every corner. Nothing too floral, no lace.
The sight of Martin’s queen-size bed knocks Fletcher to a crouch: leopard-print sheets are folded over a pitch-black down comforter.
A cat lover. Well, nobody’s perfect.
Colette is standing with her palms turned up, as if testing the weight of the atmosphere.
“I feel completely safe here,” she says.
Yeah, I bet you do, thinks Fletcher. Hasn’t he heard about all the men who’ve led her to their bedrooms over the years, many of whom mentioned their interior decor or art collections as a pretext to get her in the sack?
The best ones are either gay or taken — or turn out to be cat lovers.
In the living room, a white leather sectional sofa cordons off a sports-bar-size TV. The kitchen’s dining space features a smoked-glass tabletop on a scrolled wrought-iron base. There’s even a rose silk flower arrangement at the centre.
Fletch curls up on the sofa, testing it. Colette shoos him off.
The fragrance of thyme, sage and rosemary rises from a rack by the stove; how Fletcher misses the smell of Grandmère’s cooking. Actually, cuisine. Far removed from the salt, pepper and parsley flakes Colette grabs on rare occasions when it occurs to her to enliven a can of soup. Martin’s windowsill overlooking the shared front lawn is lined with flavoured oils; the corresponding sill in Colette’s kitchen holds one never-opened tin recipe box from Grandmère. When he goes to the fridge at her standard request for Diet Coke, Fletcher sees there’s no beer but glimpses a bottle of Moët & Chandon.
Once, on Grandmère’s eightieth birthday, Fletch stole a sip. Well, more than one. Missed half the party.
What’s Martin doing here? He’s capable of more than living in Grandmère’s old house, renting instead of owning, running a one-man limousine service. Fletcher can feel he’s nursing a festering sore. He’ll move away soon, that’s for sure. Meanwhile, he’s more fun than Tim.
Colette opens a closet and reaches in. Unthinkingly, she starts to tidy a jumble of old photo envelopes tossed on a shelf. Then stops herself with an embarrassed laugh.
But Martin doesn’t join her. In an instant stripped of social pretence, his sadness enters Fletch. Even Colette catches an expression of sheer desolation in his eyes. For no reason.
Denying that look is easiest. Polite. Colette feels that too.
She gives another half-laugh. “I’m a control freak, I know.”
What a confessional tone — somewhere between an Oprah guest and a member of Weight Watchers.
“You are,” he says. She was trespassing, but he could have protested — one of Colette’s girlfriends would have. Maybe gay guys don’t react exactly like women; Fletcher hasn’t met enough of them to compare.
At the end of the tour, Martin invites Colette to dinner soon, once the kitchen is repainted. A courtesy invitation, thinks Fletch.
Say yes! Those treats were the best.
Colette accepts. Then she says, “Will your partner be in town? It would be nice to meet him.”
“No.” But his voice has coloured with gratitude that she asked. Fletcher can feel her admiration for her own magnanimity spreading like a tutu around her. Martin adds, “He’s gone backpacking around the world for a few months; he has things to work out.”
Colette’s shoulders relax, drop an inch. “I’d love to travel,” she says.
She won’t travel much if she lets Tim think he owns her. Once upon a time he must have liked to travel; foreign countries offered him backdrops he could brag about, backdrops for photos of himself. Now he’s bought Photoshop, loaded his hard drive with clip art and pastes himself anywhere he wants.
“Hey,” she says, as if suddenly inspired, “mind if I bring a guest?”
“Other than Fletcher? Sure.” He picks up Fletcher.
Fletch glares into Colette’s brown eyes. They’re so hard and opaque he has to look away.
The next day, when Colette returns from work, she tells Fletcher she’s invited Tim to meet her “new boyfriend,” counting on his curiosity, knowing he will accept. She did add they were “just friends,” with a simper and a flutter of eyelashes Fletch has seen many
times, many ways on TV. Disturbing Tim’s complacency was so simple, so safe, so easy to effect, she says. A little jealousy … she’s been too available. She is thirty-seven, too old to invest another two or more years in a new relationship.
That Sunday, the Apocalypse Man takes his turn around the cul-de-sac, shouting “Repent! Repent!” Fletcher goes ballistic again. But Colette doesn’t budge. She has stuffed her ears with earplugs.
She’s thinking, plotting, scheming.
• • •
Martin has thoughtfully provided Fletcher with a bowl of Kibbles and his very own cushion in the corner. Chin resting on his paws, Fletch watches Colette surveying Tim and Martin over the rim of her third glass of Merlot — good thing she doesn’t need to drive home. The wine is helping her relax, keeping whatever plan she has going. Fletcher stays alert because he watched a program on Discovery once about dinner being the most dangerous of human rituals. He can’t remember the whole thing, something about humans being as vulnerable as he is while eating but armed with knives. Tim keeps thrusting his knife into the stir fry vegetables. He’s sprinkled them with soy sauce and cut everything on his plate into smaller, unattractive morsels.
And he doesn’t toss Fletch one scrap.
Colette has manoeuvred the seating into a triangle with herself at the apex, Tim’s U of Chicago sweatshirt and Martin’s black turtleneck facing off across the table.
Tim gets his preliminary small talk over. Then, “You get that limousine around here? How many miles to the gallon?”
Fletch gives a small rrrrff, just to interrupt him. Martin tosses him a piece of chicken.
“How much do you charge from here to O’Hare?” Tim is interrogating Martin as if he were a hostile witness. Martin counters with nutshell answers, as if he’s heard the questions many times before.
Tim the predictable.
“Do you get lots of wedding parties?” Colette interposes, offering everyone a chance to change the subject. Tim’s got one chance at redemption. He can repay all Colette’s loyalty right now and claim her back. He should say, I was thinking you could do ours someday, or, We’ve got one coming up for you, don’t we, Colette? The lines scroll on Fletch’s teleprompter through the moment in which Tim misses his cue.
Well, Colette did tell Tim that Martin was her new boyfriend — but that guy! He’s taking her seriously. Even though he didn’t when she broke up with him at Land’s End. Can’t he tell Martin is gay? Maybe he thinks Colette doesn’t know, and he’s waiting for her to find out.
What a scumbag. Fletcher wants to taste his blood.
Martin answers Colette. “Quite a few wedding parties — that’s why I’m not around much on weekends.”
“But Martin heard our Apocalypse Man before he left Sunday morning.” Colette is smiling, but Fletcher can feel her fighting the urge to hold her dinner knife somewhere near Tim’s jugular. Make him pop the question now. No whereases, no notwithstandings.
He goes over and noses her leg, but it pushes him aside. She’s describing the weekly doom and gloom visitation.
Fletch jumps up on the couch where he can see and hear better. Nobody orders him off.
Tim interrupts, “Wackos’ll go on believing anything, even after Y2K arrived and nothing happened.” He assumes a good-ole-boy tone, as if he’s from Texas. “End of the world — ha! I didn’t worry about computers packing up, I worried about the Ayatollah types.”
Martin says, “It wasn’t the end of their millennium.”
“Yeah,” said Tim, “but they knew it was ours. True believers, those Moslem fundamentalists. All so sure of themselves.”
He’s looking real sure of himself, too. “Can’t even get on the same calendar with the rest of the world.” Now he’s stuffing himself — he can’t resist Martin’s cuisine.
Colette raises her glass to eye level and gazes at Tim through a ruby red lens.
Martin says to Tim, “Makes you wonder what we’ve been doing to cause so much hatred, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, we haven’t done anything they wouldn’t do to the tenth power in our position,” says Tim, bristling. “If the ragheads were on top, you think they wouldn’t blow up more than the World Trade Center? They think they’re going straight to heaven when they blow themselves up. I say lock ’em all up and sterilize them.”
Tim expects Martin to nod in agreement — he thinks everyone agrees with him. Fletch never has, but no one pays him any attention.
“Lock who up?” says Martin, leaning forward. “All Arab-Americans?”
A tiny smile tugs at Colette’s lips. She wants Martin to fight Tim, like Fletcher would fight for her or Yoriko.
“Nah, just the foreigners,” says Tim.
“That’s how the Nazis began, with just the foreign Jews. Gradually, they turned fear to hatred.”
“I’m not afraid of anyone.” Tim is backtracking as if a swastika is rising in a thought balloon over his head. “But,” he says with passion beyond provocation, “anyone who can’t speak English should be sent home.”
“You sound like you hate lots of people who are already at home, and a lot of other people in the world who aren’t doing anything wrong, unless you count existing,” Martin says evenly. “Is there anyone you love?”
A question Tim probably has never been asked and to which Fletch knows Colette wants him to respond, Yeah, Colette. I love Colette. But he doesn’t say anything.
Her expression says, It was on the tip of his tongue. He was willing to say it — he just can’t get it out.
Fletcher doesn’t think so.
“Sure — I love my family,” is what Tim finally blurts. “My mom, dad, sister.”
“And they love you?”
“Sure. Of course. They have to — they’re family.”
“Don’t think it works that way,” said Martin. “Sometimes you can hate what you’ve created. Especially if it turns out different from your expectations, from what you wanted. Fathers can hate their own children, sometimes. Mothers too.”
Fletch rests his head on his paws. So long as he gets fed, brushed, walked and petted, what does he care? He snoozes.
When he opens his eyes, Tim is still being his usual self. Martin is still objecting, but he looks as if his stir fry is decomposing in his mouth. Fletcher gives him a bark just to say, Tim’s like the Apocalypse Man, blowing into his bullhorn. There’s only a graffiti-splattered station wagon and a dried out Christmas tree to tell them apart.
But Martin doesn’t understand Fletch. He leans back, and that look of desolation Fletcher saw the day of the apartment tour crosses his face. “Sometimes I think we humans deserve to be annihilated, like that Sunday morning preacher says, for what we do to one another for profit or love or religion.”
The scent of his anger mixes with frustration, pain beyond words. Fletcher goes over and rubs against his shins.
“I don’t believe in any God who’d destroy his own creation,” Colette says.
Fletcher takes Tim’s shoelaces in his front teeth; he pulls them loose. He steals back to his vantage point and tries to look innocent.
“But,” she continues, pert and bright, as if reading off a Trivial Pursuit card, “do you believe divine intervention is possible?”
Tim consults his Rolex, the Divine being a judge whose jurisdiction he acknowledges only on Sundays. “Don’t need the Lord’s intervention,” he says. “What we need is for government to get the hell out of business’s way. Bush has the right ideas — a hundred and thirty-five trillion in tax relief.”
“For the rich, yes,” says Martin.
“For the small businessman, Roseman. People like you in the limo business.”
Fletch rolls his eyes and feels his ears droop. It’s the usual liberal-conservative stalemate.
“It will take more than divine intervention.” Martin speaks with passion, as if talking about something he deems anything but trivial. “Things don’t get better. You think, now we’re in the twenty-first century, people will final
ly realize we’re all equally human, despite our differences, and then along comes one more guy to remind you just how wrong you are.”
“Any wine left?” Colette interrupts the men’s staring match. Tim reaches for the bottle. Colette holds her glass out to Martin, raising it slightly.
A homemade cherry pie is served — Fletch drools and whines. Nobody cares.
Veins stand out on Tim’s forehead. Fletcher would bet he’s calculating the income differential between himself and Martin. He can see Tim chewing on the idea that Colette might prefer Martin’s lower net worth to his own.
Not the Colette Tim thought he knew so well — uh-uh.
Afterwards, Martin walks Colette and Tim out by way of the garage. A helium tank in the corner stands ready to puff up pink and powder blue balloons. Just Married signs in varying sizes rest against the wall, white tulle and ribbon sachets of rice stand on shelves. Ribbons of all widths stick their coloured tongues out at Tim for not thinking marriage. Fletch sticks his tongue out too because he’s darn happy Tim is messing up. Whatever happens, Tim must never think he owns Colette, or Fletcher.
Colette smiles sweetly as she says goodbye to Tim but doesn’t yell at Fletch for spraying pee on the hubcap of his Lexus. She takes Martin’s arm to walk back to the house. Tim will notice that as he drives away. Well, at least subliminally.
Martin pulls his arm away at her front door. “You,” he says, “have been using me all evening.”
“Using you? Why would you think that?”
Martin looks down at Colette and Fletcher with a terrible bleakness on his face. “You’ve cooked up a cool scenario for Tim and all you want from me is silence, right? My complicity, right?”
Colette laughs uncertainly. “What are you talking about?”
She’s so transparent.
“You want that man, that’s your problem. You can have him. He’s a piece of work. I didn’t say anything tonight because you were my guest, he was my guest too. But from now on, just leave me out of it, okay? Don’t need any more complications in my life.”