Page 89 of The Locker Room
thing they"d done a lot of that summer, as they"d road-tripped their way
back home on every roadbutthe ones that had brought them there. They
were careful—if anyone recognized them, they got two rooms, one with
a king-sized bed—but they slept together every night, and reveled in the
feeling of their bodies as they fell into the other with a sigh of
completion.)
Leo looked up from what appeared to be grandiose dreams of ultra-
tasteful home décor, and said, “Wha?”
“How. Do. We. Decorate. My. Side,” Chris enunciated, and Leo
looked surprised.
“However the hell you want. You"re the one with personality,
Chris. Cave M… um, Xander here is the one who"s going to live in the
essential man cave. You"re going to live in the nice, warm, homey gay-
topia—with Xander, I assume. One side for show, the other side for you.
I mean, I"m right, right? You two? If it wasn"t for the gay thing, you"d be
an agent"s wet dream. No drugs, no whores, you"re quietly married and
happy to stay out of the limelight. I figure you guys will make it look
disgustingly chirpy and homey, and then when the press needs to come
in, we air out the sheets, throw a few pictures up on the walls, and voila!
Xander lives here. So what do you think?”
Chris was looking around with real appreciation now, and Xander
tried to look at the place through the eyes of someone who knew what a
home should look like. He could see potential. There was a room where
their weights and stuff could go (and their skis and their softball
equipment and their Frisbees and the scuba gear they"d bought right after
the draft when they"d gone to Hawaii for three days as a reward for Chris
not totally losing it when Bob Costas had called Xander the Cave Man,
and for Xander not decking the reporter who had totally grabbed Chris"s
ass.) The master suite was big, big enough for a special-order bed so his
feet didn"t hang over the edge, and so Christian wouldn"t get shoved off
