Page 30 of Blue Umbrella Sky
But it was longing he didn’t have time to entertain, not with Ruby dashing back and forth between him and the back door, looking at him as though to say “Don’t you get what I’m trying to tell you? I’m hungry!”
“Yes, yes, I know, little girl.” Milt stood, feeling like the old man he thought he was. Lead flowed through his veins. His head was cloudy.
As he walked to the door, Ruby’s tail-wagging increased proportionately.
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” he told her.
He thought he’d had a dream, something about Corky, but he couldn’t recall any images from it.
There was only a weird sense of peace—and Milt realized it was not for him, but for Corky.
AFTER HE’Deaten dinner—grilled rib eye and an arugula salad—Milt went to the window and peered outside, Ruby trailing close behind. He’d given her a steak too because he felt guilty about sleeping through her usual suppertime and for ignoring her. He was sure all was forgiven. She didn’t let him out of her sight for a second, though, lest he should produce another steak.
The sky had morphed from its multicolored display into a deep navy with stars.
What are you looking for? Maybe you’re checking up on Billy again, hmm?He shrugged, not wanting to admit the fact to himself. He forced himself away from the window. It only took a minute before he decided he needed just one more glance, just one more, and then he’d stop.
As he was about to pull away from the window a second time—because Billy’s trailer was totally dark—Milt spied him, whizzing by Milt’s own house on his bicycle. Milt watched his progress through the dark, staring after him until the reflector on the back of the bike disappeared into the dark, dark night.
Still restless, Milt sat down, picked up the remote, and aimed it at his TV. There was a rerun playing of an earlyRoseanne, when the show was still blue-collar and still good, and Milt watched for a few minutes the very realistic banter between the sister characters of Roseanne and Jackie, trying to engage with the show.
But it was useless.
His mind kept returning to Billy and their conversation on the mountain.Just let it go. Let him go.These thoughts repeated over and over, a litany, but they were like a few sandbags trying to hold back the rise of a flood in a storm. The thought of letting Billy go made Milt physically ill, and he wondered if his dramatic march off the mountain, along with his latest refusal of a date, had finally caused Billy to give up on him.
Milt couldn’t blame him.
Milt wondered where Billy was headed on his bike. A jealous part of him entertained the notion that he was heading out for a hookup, someone he’d met up with on Craigslist or one of those sites Milt could never bring himself to explore, like Adam4Adam. Or maybe he was using one of those apps, like Grindr, that puzzled Milt even more. He’d met his Corky the old-fashioned way—in the back room of a leather bar. They’d had oral sex to completion before they’d even learned each other’s names. Milt grinned at the memory. Perhaps things weren’t so different in gay male cruising today; they’d advanced only technologically.
Yet Milt, imagining Billy off to some salacious assignation, wasn’t as jealous as he would have expected.
And Milt realized that was because he didn’t believe for a moment that was what Billy was doing. A vain part of himself opined that it was too soon for Billy. He couldn’t possibly be hooking up, for heaven’s sake. Despite any resolve on his part to maybe not see Milt again—to move on—Billy still had to be pining for Milt, right? Perhaps a song in his repertoire today would be “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
Milt wanted to kick himself for the outlandish line of thought.
No, he really believed Billy wasn’t meeting up with a man, because he suspected he was headed out to the Rimrock Shopping Center down the road. Every week there were dozens of twelve-step group meetings at a little unassuming building called Sunny Dunes near Von’s supermarket.
Billy had told Milt he went there sometimes twice a day, for what he called “step study” or “round robin” and to meet with fellow recovering alcoholics. Milt wondered why he needed to go toso manymeetings. Wasn’t Billy cured by now? In one of their conversations while hiking, Billy had told Milt he hadn’t taken a drink in years. Wasn’t there a time when one was safely out of danger of relapse? Milt shrugged. He’d never understood addiction, not in any real sense. Maybe that was because he’d had so little exposure.
He wondered what meetings were like. And as he wondered, he was heading toward the bedroom to slip out of his sweats and into a clean T-shirt and jeans, maybe a hoodie. These days, temperatures plunged after the sun went down.
You shouldn’t be doing this. It’s an invasion of privacy.
Milt realized he didn’t care. He was curious. And he attributed that curiosity to wanting to know Billy better.
He grabbed his wallet and car keys off the nightstand.
MILT SLIDinto the big room as quietly as he could. The meeting was already in progress and clearly very well attended. There were men and women of all ages, colors, shapes, and sizes sitting on folding chairs lining the walls. Some also sat in the center, at long buffet-style tables. Milt grabbed a seat near the door, doing a quick tally. There had to be at least fifty or sixty people in the room.
He’d had no idea there were so many afflicted people. And this was just one meeting in one night, in one city!
When Billy told him he attended AA meetings, Milt just assumed they were small, with just a handful of people in attendance.
But this was like a rally.
He crossed his legs as he listened to a redheaded woman with a fuchsia tank top and tattoos speak about her inability to stop relapsing. “I look at some of you guys, with so much clean time, and I want what you have, but I just can’t figure out how to do it.” She looked around the room, her gaze lighting briefly on Milt, which made heat rise to his cheeks. He wondered if she expected someone to offer guidance or perhaps a suggestion.
But everyone stayed silent.
