They traded the club for Katrina’s hotel bed. Richard had trouble getting it up, then he didn’t. He lay back, she rode him, and all he could think was how, once, he’d been young too.
He didn’t love Katrina, and she made it clear that she did not love him. He loved Lisa—loves his wife. But one life will never be enough. If he could, he’d do it all again a hundred different ways. He’s sure he could live a hundred lifetimes and never grow bored.
In the boathouse, a wasp dive-bombs, and he returns the lifejackets to their hooks. He pulls the cooler with the day’s uneaten sandwiches from the boat. The cooler’s heavy. It will hurt his back to drag it up the hill.
At the door to the boathouse, he looks back, and it occurs to him this might have been his last day on the water. Given what’s happened, his family may not want to fish or swim. They may not want to stay the week.
He starts up the hill. The grass needs mowing. Above, the sky is dark, rain on the way. He sets the cooler down and stops to catch his breath. He used to race his boys up this hill. He’s always been an older father, forty by the time Thad was born, but he used to be in better shape.
In the grass, there’s a horseshoe. He bends to pick it up, then straightens, thinking of his back.
His affair with Katrina lasted three months. They were careful. They always used condoms, a new sensation that took some getting used to, and not once did Katrina call him at his home. In the end, it was Richard who called it off, more from guilt than fear of being caught. Katrina hugged him, straightened his bow tie, and said she understood. She accepted no blame for his infidelity, nor did he blame her. If a marriage was worth protecting, it was the duty of the married one to keep the vows.
That fall, then spring, they worked side by side as though nothing happened. On Friday afternoons, Katrina’s new boyfriend picked her up at the lab. He seemed nice, was handsome and much closer to her age. They were happy together, and Richard wished them well. He should have been relieved. Why, then, did he feel hurt?
What does he want?
He wants his body back, for one. He wants the stamina and muscle tone of someone half his age. He wants to be adored, not as a mathematician, but as a man.
He wants Lisa not to leave him. He fears she suspects, though how could she know?
On his cell phone, Katrina used to come up as K. What he wouldn’t give, some days, to see that letter blink green on the black screen of his phone. But they haven’t talked since spring semester’s end. She was not at his retirement party in May, a modest reception in Malott Hall. Chances are, they won’t speak again unless Katrina needs a reference for a grant or residency, a letter Richard will gladly write.
A screen door bangs, and Lisa meets him in the yard. She helps him lug the cooler up the hill, and they rest on the bottom porch step.
“Did they find him?” she asks, and Richard shakes his head. She’s been crying, face puffy, red. “Diane called. Michael got stitches, but he’ll be fine. They just need a ride home.”
“I’ll go,” he says.
The helicopter, departing, passes overhead. In the bay, divers climb onto their boats.
“Are they giving up already?” Lisa asks.
He doesn’t know. He guesses it’s the weather, takes her hand.
“Those poor people,” she says. “That poor boy.”
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “Absolutely not.”
They stand, and together they carry the cooler up the steps and across the porch, then Richard follows Lisa into the house.
6.
In dreams, Jake is running. His father has him in his sights.
In dreams, the Remington never wavers, and the buckshot, when it comes, arrives like lightning down his back.
In dreams, he’s in Phoenix at the Road to Manhood camp. He prays and prays and prays, and still he’s gay. Men scream at him. A counselor presses his erection to Jake’s back.
In dreams, his father calls him faggot, pussy, queer.
In dreams, his father says, You’re not my son.
From dreams, Jake wakes, and Thad is watching him from across the room.
“How long was I out?”
“Not long,” Thad says. “My dad went to get Michael and Diane. Mom’s making dinner. You can sleep more if you want.”
Jake sits up. The towel slips from his waist, and he’s naked on the bed. Thad’s seated at the desk his parents purchased for this room when Thad insisted he was a poet and needed a place at the lake to work. It’s the kind with hinges that opens to make a surface for your work.
“What’s that kind of desk called?”
“Secretary,” Thad says. He turns back to his work, writing in one of the little notebooks he carries with him everywhere he goes, a choice Jake finds insufferable. Jake doesn’t keep a sketchpad on him, never has. Maybe Thad’s poems are competent. Jake can’t be sure. With paintings, he can eye a piece and tell you in two seconds if it’s any good, what the artist was after, and how long it took—or should have taken—to paint. Whether he likes the painting is beside the point. What matters is conviction, is evidence of care and craft. Thad has conviction. Jake’s not so sure about the rest. The world of Thad’s poems is mostly a blur, like a moon glimpsed through a backward-facing telescope. Then again, Jake’s never really gotten poetry.
He stands. He moves to the desk and takes Thad’s shoulders in his hands. He kneads, and Thad puts down his pen. He lets the notebook flap closed.
“Please don’t,” Thad says. “I want to get this down.”
“Get it down,” Jake says. “No one’s stopping you.”
He massages. Thad’s shirt is blue and scratchy, the collared kind, Lacoste alligator openmouthed at nipple-height. Thad needs new shirts. The past year, his clothes have gotten tight, which Thad blamed on the dry cleaner before admitting he was the proud owner of what their friend Wes called a muffin top. “Welcome to thirty,” Wes said, and Thad gave Jake a look that said no way were they going to bed with Wes again.
Jake runs his palms down Thad’s back, lifts the hem, then slides his hands inside Thad’s shirt.
Thad stiffens. “I said don’t. I said please.”
Jake withdraws his hands. “I was being nice.”
“You weren’t.” Thad flicks his pen, which rolls off the desk onto the floor.
Jake leaves Thad’s side. He retrieves his laptop from his backpack and opens it on the bed. He gets comfortable, pillow under his head, then navigates to Chat-N-Bate, clicks Male on Male, then, changing his mind, clicks Male Solo.
Onscreen, a man sits on a bed. The bed is long and narrow, and there are posters on the wall: Metallica, Korn, Tool. A lava lamp shares a table with a stack of books. It’s a thirty-year-old’s idea of what a dorm room looks like, and this man is thirty if he’s a day. But Jake gets it. The college look is in, and being in is what gets you tips. Jake’s never tipped, but he likes to watch.
The man onscreen wears no shirt. His jeans are around his ankles. He’s shaven, long, uncut. He’s tugging at himself, looking into the camera like he can see Jake through the lens. He can’t, of course, but that’s the illusion: to make the other person feel seen.