John glanced in irritation at his watch as he turned onto Dryloch Road. He'd promised Sue he'd deliver the graded tests for her seventh period class during her free fourth period. If he had any hope of getting to the school in time, he'd need to be in and out of Joe's house in less than ten minutes.
Joe's Mastiff, Cotton Gin, nearly knocked him over at the door in her eagerness to cover him with sloppy dog kisses. Another worry: What if he came over with Sue to visit Joe, and she grew suspicious of the dog's obvious familiarity with him? John preferred a football game and a six pack to socializing with families, his or hers. Before he and Joe... got friendly -- he'd never been good at euphemisms -- he'd only seen Sue's family at the holidays, and then he'd come along grudgingly and sullenly. After taking up with Joe, John had gone to even greater pains to avoid the relatives.
"Ginny, down. Get dow -- what? Put the puff down! This is not puffy toy playtime."
Ginny looked like she could repel armies, with sheer bulk alone if necessary. Joe said that's why he'd picked Ginny out nearly 10 years ago -- for protection. What a strong, if a bit short, guy like Joe needed with a threatening-looking dog John had never understood, but people have stranger things for pets, he'd figured.
Trouble was, Ginny was about as interested in aggression as a pacifist chinchilla. She still might have pulled it off if she didn't express unseemly enthusiasm for the wimpiest toys conceivable. Her new favorite was a squeaky stuffed sheep which bore more resemblance to a mutated Q-tip than it did to a barnyard animal. Joe encouraged this disturbing personality perversion by continuing to buy Ginny puffy toys. The time John had shown up with a giant rawhide bone, in an attempt to show both man and dog the error of their ways, Ginny had backed off in fear.
After Ginny finally accepted that John wasn't going to wrestle her puff with her no matter how many times she dropped it at his feet and yipped encouragingly, she collapsed at his feet with a disconsolate sigh.
"C'mon, Ginny, buck up. Where's Joe?" No answer. "Joe!" he called.
Again, no answer -- but John thought he detected a faint keening noise from upstairs. He climbed up the first few steps.
"JOE?"
"I'm -- I'm ..." Any further response was lost in a sniffly wail.
John gritted his teeth and headed toward the upstairs bedroom. There he found Joe, sprawled on the bedspread, still wearing his boots and work flannels.
"Oh thank God!" Joe cried, managing his first full sentence in hours. He flung himself across the room, attempting to throw his arms around John. Instead, he tripped over Ginny, who sensed affection afoot and was eager to partake.
Joe and Ginny ended up in a tangled heap on the floor. Sizing up the situation, the dog nosed around in the tangle and retrieved her sheep, which she optimistically squeaked.
John reached down, extricated Joe from the mess, and kissed him passionately. He hoped that would shock some coherence into his disconsolate lover.
After a long moment, Joe broke off the embrace, sighing and wriggling further into John's arms.
"Oh, John ... it's been such an amazing few months, since you came by in June for Sue's yearbook, and we started talking, and then, to run into each other again just days later in the bar in Ridgefield, and then, finding out we both send away to New York for those special chaps..."
"Joe. You said this was urgent."
Joe stepped back, his eyes downcast. "It is. I'm just so afraid you'll never speak to me again, after you find out how much I've been hiding."
"Joe, I --" John swallowed. He hated this mushy nonsense, but Joe occasionally had these bouts of sensitivity, and seemed to need the reassurance. And, much as John occasionally wondered about Joe's virility -- the guy had poetry books on his shelves, and not manly, hedonistic stuff like Whitman, but flimsy things like Dickinson -- and had sporadic pains about the fallout if Sue ever caught him, the fact remained that Joe touched him in a way no one had in years. Metaphorically speaking.
Well, actually, literally as well, if one wanted to be precise about these things.
"Joe, I can't imagine anything changing my feelings about you." There. Said.
But instead of reassuring Joe, John's words set off a fresh gale of tears. Joe turned away and walked to the bedside table, picking up a sheaf of papers.
"This might," Joe said, waving a sheet. From John's distance, all he could see was a large block of text.
"This was the first. It came last week. In -- in the fax," Joe said, looking like he might dissolve again at the memory. "I tried to see if the number was traceable, but it was blocked."
John crossed the room and took the paper. In chunky, nearly centered letters, it read, "I KNOW ABOUT YOUR BROTHER-IN-LAW."
John stared at the paper for several moments.
"Well, shit," he finally proclaimed.
He glanced back up at Joe. Strangely, Joe didn't look at all relieved to have finally broken the bad news.
"Why didn’t you tell me when it first arrived?" John asked.
"Because I hoped it was some sort of -- I don't know, some sort of empty threat. I thought about calling you. But it doesn't say anything else, just, 'I know.' So what could we have done? But then -- this. This came the next day." Trembling, Joe handed over another sheet.
In the same, centered font, this one read, "AND I KNOW ABOUT YOUR PAST. DOES HE?" This sheet, though, had an image in addition to the text. Below the message was a pixilated clip-art graphic of a pair of high-heel shoes.
John glanced quizzically at Joe. "'Your past?' What does that mean?"
Joe ignored him, cutting off the last of John's words with a rush of his own. "I spent the weekend panicking. I dialed your number a dozen times, but I kept hanging up before hitting the last number, since I knew Sue might pick up. I was going to call you this morning. I still didn’t know what to say. But then -- then --this showed up!" With that Joe broke off again into disconsolate wails. John took the last sheet of paper from Joe's unresisting hands.
"IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR SECRETS, BE HOME AND BY THE FAX MACHINE AT 4 PM ON THURSDAY. FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS WILL FOLLOW."
John tried to cut through the weeping wreckage of his boyfriend's distress. Ginny, concerned about her master's obvious misery, galumphed across the bedroom to offer her own brand of furry -- and very ungraceful -- consolation.
"Joe. Joe, c'mon man, pull yourself together. You need to tell me what this means. So someone knows about us. Ok. We can find out what they want. But what's this about your past?"
"I -- I -- " Joe gulped for air, and finally managed to latch onto a lungful. "I tried to figure out how to tell you, and I just don't have the words. So I thought of -- this photograph." Joe managed to pick up off the table a face-down photo John hadn't noticed lying there.
John gazed at the print. For a moment, he didn't understand -- his eyes absorbed the image, but his brain couldn't unscramble the signals. Then, the epiphany hit.
John raised his eyes in shock to look afresh at the person he thought he knew.
"Oh my God ..."
---
By a curious happenstance that would doubtlessly interest metaphysical researchers into the nature of time and space -- not to mention smarty-pants literary critics who smugly dismiss coincidence as the crutch of desperate writers -- John's wife (and Joe's sister) Sue was uttering those very same words at that moment, some 10 miles away.
She was standing in the teacher's lounge, which she'd entered in a state of pique at her husband's failure to arrive with the promised papers she'd forgotten that morning. Her annoyance vanished when she spotted a manila envelope poking out of her mailbox cubbyhole.
John must have stopped by earlier, while she'd been in class, and left the papers here. A flicker of guilt passed though her mind over the too-quick assumption that John had not met his obligations. It was followed by a swell of love for her husband, who, of course, she knew, would never fail her.
Love, guilt, and a nagging queasiness from the Twinkie she'd impulsively consumed for breakfast, were all swept away, however, as she opened the packet and gazed upon its contents.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, with bold, neatly centered text: "I KNOW ABOUT YOUR BABY. DOES HE?"
--
What did John see in the photograph?
What about the baby, anyway??
Are we going to mention the Rubber Ducks again, or was that a complete red herring???
These questions, and one we found scrawled in the bathroom at work, will be answered in the next thrill-a-minute episode of... CLIFFHANGER.
Posted by Stacy at November 3, 2003 10:22 PM