Page 30 of Torch Songs

“Totally. Those are genius, by the way. I may never eat a plain burger again.”

Watching Guthrie preen was alone worth the drive down from Sacramento. “See? Not a complete disaster. Just….” He sighed.

“A guy without a lot of time,” Tad said, understanding it. “It’s okay. You’re worth the trip, Guthrie. Do you have hot sauce?”

“For the tots?”

“You read my mind.”

They ate dinner on the couch, talking desultorily about their days. Guthrie had a whole stack of stories—odd, everyday things—that he seemed to have been collecting during the past week.

“Okay,” he said, setting his plate down with the burger mostly eaten and about half the tots left. “So I’m driving to work Friday morning, and there’s this guy on a bicycle—abicycle, mind you—coming from the direction of the hardware store. He was steering with one hand on averybusy road, and balanced on the nut-crusher bar by the seat, partly between his thighs as he pedaled and partly with his hand, was a—I shit you not—six-foot topiary. You know, one of those carved tree things? Like, it was obscene! Like a giant peen with a corkscrew base! And the bike was sort of wobbly, but he just kept plugging away, and the nearest cross street was a mile away. I think he made it. I mean, I didn’tseeany police lights or read about any accidents, but can you imagine? I mean… why?”

Tad was full-out belly laughing by now. “I’ve got nothing,” he said. “But I wish you’d gotten a picture.”

“I was gonna,” Guthrie told him, completely sincere. “But about the time I had my phone out, the light changed to green, and, you know. You’re in a car, you’re behind the wheel, you sort of need to drive.”

Tad chuckled some more and set his own plate down before sinking into the couch sideways, the better to peek at Guthrie.

Guthrie turned toward him and smiled self-consciously. “This is nice,” he murmured.

“The eating? The talking? The fact that this is a real date?”

Tad watched as a faint blotchy pink marked Guthrie’s neck. He’d shaved—no stubble tonight—and Tad wanted to capture that lush mouth with his own. But they were still a little full,and the conversation was nice, so he didn’t mind stretching the moment out.

“All of it,” Guthrie acknowledged. “So, uhm, my last ‘real date’ was about a year ago. I’ve uhm, tested since. How about you?”

“Same,” Tad told him, then grimaced.

“What’s up?” Guthrie was good at that, picking up on expression, nuance, mood. Maybe it was being a musician—or maybe it was being lonely—but he was highly attuned to his fellow humans.

“So I told you about Sam,” he said grimly.

“Douchebag,” Guthrie said.

“No, just, you know. Not… not solid. But anyway, Sam left, and I was vulnerable, and I got hit on by Jesse. Who was arealdouchebag.”

Guthrie reached to the table and grabbed his glass of ice water to take a sip. “You will explain?”

Tad nodded and hoped he could make Guthrie laugh about this story, because he didn’t want to sound self-pitying. “Okay, so Jesse is a firefighter, and he’s in the closet. Now I get it. I don’t advertise. My partner, Chris, just came out as really liberal, so I came out as gay, and his wife doctored my boo-boos on Saturday, and it’s official: I’m family.”

Guthrie gave an appreciative smile. “My boss got mad because I admitted to playing with Seth Arnold, who married his husband. I mean, forgetmebeing gay—knowing a gaymusician, of all things, marked me for death, so your guy at work has gotta be a good thing, right?”

Tad nodded again. “Yeah. It is. And Chris is the best. But you know—youknow—you don’t always have that option, and I didn’t know what Jesse’s department was like, so if he’s in the closet, that’s his business. I want someone to watch movies with, so that’s it. And we flirt a little and exchange numbers, and thenlast summer one of the detectives in homicide gets knifed going to his friend’s business office after lunch. It was kind of a wrong place/wrong time and kind of wrong friends—or at least friends who were trouble-magnets, but it wasn’t their fault. So we’re all standing up for the guy on our off-shifts, right? That’s ourjob—to show our brothers and sisters we’ve got their backs. And on, like, the day after he gets stabbed, I see Jesse come in, and I think he’s going to come sit with those of us waiting to make sure the cop’s okay, but he looksfurtive.Like he doesn’t want to be recognized. A few minutes later, the hurt cop’s friends come in, go right back to the hospital room to visit Sean—they know the doctors—and Jesse goes hauling ass down the corridor, running away like he stole something. Ten minutes later, Sean’s friends are on the way back, and I hear one of them say, ‘Broke up with himin the hospital?’ and holy shit. I mean…holy shit.”

“What an asshole!” Guthrie muttered, appalled.

“Yeah, but it gets better. See, the guy in the hospital—he’sveryout. His whole crew is out. It’s our own rainbow corner of Sac Law and Order, and yeah, I’m a little jealous. But that night Jesse shows up at my place with a fifth of Jack and a bag of DVDs that I later find out wereSean’s,the guy he broke up with. And Jesse’s like, ‘C’mon, Tad—just a night. Doesn’t have to mean anything!’ and I realize that I have been saved from a fate worse than bad sex.”

“Wow,” Guthrie said, laughing like he was supposed to.

“It wasamazingwhat a douche this guy was.”

Guthrie took another sip of water and licked his lips, which wasn’t supposed to be inviting, but suddenly it was. “Did he… I dunno. Get his… you know. Comeuppance?”

Tad grinned. “Like inThe Mummy?”

Guthrie nodded and quoted, “Nasty little fellows such as yourself always get their comeuppance.”

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