Xylophone Read online

  “Mr. Boothe,” Jonah said, “this is—”

  “You don’t really go by ‘Mr. Boothe,’ do you?” GG broke in, looking up at Dare. Her eyes were a lighter, more piercing version of Jonah’s. “That’s not how Bobby introduced you.”

  Sighing, Jonah muttered, “I’ll just let her take over,” and sank back into his chair.

  Smiling, Dare offered his hand. “I’m Daren. Clarinetist Ordinaire. Pleased to meet you.”

  GG not only took his hand, she placed her other one over it. “Gina Gonzalez Martinsek. Grandmother Extraordinaire.”

  “Don’t lie to the man,” Jonah told her.

  She ignored him. “The pleasure is mine, Daren. And you underestimate yourself.”

  Dare could’ve sworn her eyes sparkled for emphasis.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me,” GG said, rising from the table, “I need to take care of more pressing business.”

  “You left your spackle in the car,” Jonah said to GG’s back as she walked away.

  GG turned. “Thank you, but my bladder doesn’t need spackle. A sling, maybe.”

  Dare chuckled as he sat at the table. He had to make his move before GG returned. “I hope I’m not being too forward, but I wanted to ask you—”

  “I’m glad you came over,” Jonah said, lowering his voice, growing more somber. “I wanted to ask you too.”

  Dare stalled out. The words he had planned to say were still lodged in his throat, that whole stupid spiel about polka bands in the area, how he wanted to familiarize himself with the best ones. Dumbly he stared at Jonah, who was slipping on his suit coat.

  “Oh,” he said finally. “You mean you wanted to ask me out?”

  “Yes.” Jonah tugged at his shirt cuffs. “Nothing formal, just someplace casual. I suppose you don’t have your phone on you.”

  Dare shook his head. Bob strictly forbade cell phones on stage.

  Jonah reached into his pocket, pulled out a thin leather wallet, and extracted a business card. “Here’s all my contact information. Just call or e-mail when you have a chance, and we’ll set something up.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks.” Dare was still at a loss. The invitation didn’t compute. He hadn’t expected Jonah to be the pursuer. “Yeah, it’ll be easier to talk when I’m not on the clock.”

  “Definitely.” Jonah leaned closer. He smelled of a cologne Dare recognized but couldn’t identify, a pleasantly heady, moderately expensive one. “I figured you might be wondering about my connection to Dr. Battaglia.”

  A cold squall blew through the center of Dare, making his breath go shallow. “What?” he whispered.

  Jonah might not have heard, but it didn’t matter. GG had returned. Dare didn’t have another chance to be alone with Jonah Day and find out why this unremarkable young man had awakened the barely-sleeping dragon of Dare’s past.

  Chapter Four

  FUCKING great.

  Carver, Dare’s twenty-nine-year-old brother and only sibling, was stretched out on the couch with his iPad centered over his face.

  In spite of the fact they barely tolerated each other, this living arrangement was preferable to sharing a cramped apartment with a near-stranger. Besides, it was a great location. Dare occasionally performed in Milwaukee and Chicago and other, smaller cities in the area, and Waterford was pretty much smack in the middle of the cluster.

  He threw his keys on the hall table with obvious vexation and more carefully set his clarinet beneath it. “I thought you were going to an art fair or something with whatshisname, the guy who owns the gallery.” After pulling off his shoes, he went into the living room.

  “Mart.”

  “Okay, art mart.”

  Grudgingly, as if it were an imposition, Carver sat up. “No. His name is Mart.” He squinted at Dare. “What the hell are you wearing?”

  “My band outfit.” Dare dropped into one of the recliners and pulled off his tie. Jonah Day’s business card, still buried in the shallows of his pants pocket, gave his hip a gentle poke. I will not be ignored, pal. The reminder further abraded his mood. “I had it on when I left this morning. You must’ve seen…. Oh, that’s right. You were still in bed.” Dare pushed back and stared at his white-socked feet, hands linked over his belly.

  Carver continued to study him. His torso seemed to be balanced on the tips of Dare’s toes. “Didn’t it go well?”

  “It went great.”

  “So why do you seem so pissy?”

  And why do you seem like such a supercilious dickhead? Carver still hadn’t explained why he hadn’t gone out.

  Instead of answering, Dare closed his eyes. His friends and coworkers generally thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have a queer sibling—theoretically, a confidant, cheerleader, and comrade-in-arms all bundled into one supportive package. But Carver Hamilton Boothe, he of the MBA and macho manner and Spanish Modern aesthetic (or whatever the hell it was), had precious little in common with, or sympathy for, guys who gave away their gayness as soon as they opened their mouths or stepped into a shopping mall.

  Carver was about as straight as a homo could be without engaging in hetero sex.

  Thank God, Dare thought at least once a week, he’d never set foot in the Sugar Bowl.

  “Well?” Carver said. “What’s the problem?”

  Dare sighed. Carver, all too familiar with his brother’s moods, would keep picking until he got an answer. And maybe it would help to talk. “I met someone, a guy about my age who takes his grandmother out dancing every week. I guess he recognized me, but I don’t know from where. He wants to get together and talk about… something having to do with Dr. Battaglia.”

  “Your shrink?” Carver looked as baffled as Dare felt.

  “Former shrink. Maybe his, too, for all I know. He didn’t have a chance to explain.”

  “So are you going to meet up with him?”

  “I don’t know.” Dare covered his face. “Goddammit, why won’t that shit go away and stay away?”

  Carver rose from the sectional and slid his iPad onto the coffee table. “Because it’s your lot. It’s been your lot ever since you invited the attention of a pervert. And you should keep that in mind while you’re doing whatever it is you do at that club—”

  A spring of rage snapped Dare forward and up, making him nearly trip over the footrest. Without a shred of reasonable thought he pitched himself at his brother, pitched himself at Carver the way he should’ve pitched himself at Howard Pankin in that cluttered backroom echoing with xylophone notes and sick desire and the slithering rustle of soiled hands over smooth, clean skin.

  “Hey, hey, settle down!” Carver grabbed his wrists.

  For a moment their locked arms pumped in all directions, jointed braces in a mechanism run amok. The word invited kept striking like a flint, reigniting Dare’s fury. His jaw hurt from being clenched. “You cold, ignorant—”

  With a surge of gym-acquired strength, Carver flung Dare onto the couch, sat on his legs, and pinned down his arms. “Chill. Okay?” He must’ve guessed a knee to the groin would’ve been Dare’s next move; little brother didn’t have much of a repertoire when it came to fighting. “I misspoke. I’m sorry.”

  “The fuck you are.” Dare bucked to throw him off.

  It wasn’t necessary. Still gathering his breath, Carver slowly held up his arms to concede defeat. “You want to punch me, go ahead. If it’ll make you feel better and calm you down, go ahead.”

  Just like that, it was over. Carver’s invitation yielded nothing more than a stare. Dare couldn’t imagine how he looked, didn’t want to think about how he felt. A familiar nonphysical weight seemed to be sinking him into the couch cushions.

  “You know I can’t punch worth a shit,” he muttered.

  After regarding him a few seconds longer—and, Christ, that mixture of disgust and pity made Dare want to throw up—Carver rose and left the room.

  SLEEP wouldn’t come.

  Again Dare heard those xylophone notes, throaty and t
aunting, only pretending to be happy-go-lucky. At one time they’d hung from his bedroom ceiling, hung there for two years, slipping down invisible filaments when night fell, bloated balls with limbs but no features, spiders spinning and dropping. He’d clamp his hands over his ears, fold his arms over his face.

  “It started as a kind of courtship song, or game. In faraway Germany.”

  The notes wanted to fill each small cavity of his body. They wanted to take up residence within him.

  He wasn’t strong enough to turn them away.

  Hi-ho the derry-o…

  The pervert in the ground.

  “No!”

  Heart hammering, Dare pushed and kicked away his comforter. He swung to the right as he lifted his body to reach up and click on the lamp. Jonah’s card lay on the nightstand beside, of all things, a pack of condoms and a bag of Skittles, candy he’d loved since the Time Before.

  He snatched up the card, ripped it in half, and tossed the rent rectangle into the junk-littered darkness beyond his bed.

  Chapter Five

  “I NEED to know how you found out about Battaglia.”

  Dare paced. The phone felt like a parasite against his face. Stepping over or kicking aside the clutter in his bedroom—a heaping laundry basket, teetering stacks of CDs and DVDs, stroke magazines and costume catalogues—he silently cursed himself for fitting the halves of that business card together out of sheer numbskulled curiosity.

  Rain streaked down the windows. How appropriately dreary for a Monday. And for Dare’s state of mind.

  “You sound angry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” A pleasant voice. Midrange, mild.

  So what? “Listen, Jacob—”

  “Jonah.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I’m more used to ‘Jacob’ because I’ve known a few.” Oops. Forget about getting laid. “I didn’t mean to sound so abrupt, but I’m not exactly giddy about seeing you again. I mean, shit, you just threw that name at me out of the blue. It was like a knee to the nuts.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Jonah sighed. “I apologize for that. It occurred to me later that my approach wasn’t the smoothest.”

  “Hey, it’s done. Don’t apologize. Just explain.” Dare dropped onto his rumpled bed, forehead in hand.

  “Fair enough.” Jonah took a deep breath. “When I saw you watching me at the pavilion, I figured it was for the same reason I was watching you—because each of us recognized the other as one of Dr. Battaglia’s clients.”

  “Former client, at least in my case.”

  “Mine too.”

  Now this was really getting confusing. Dare had had one thirty-minute private session with the therapist and a subsequent conversation that had lasted no more than five minutes. How could Jonah have seen him with her?

  “The only reason I noticed you at the pavilion,” Dare said, “was because you… looked too young to spend an afternoon dancing to a polka band.” Obviously not the only reason, but the other one was irrelevant now.

  “Oh. I didn’t realize that. So I guess you don’t remember what happened three years ago.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” Still, Dare couldn’t deny he was intrigued.

  “I saw you storm out of that room in Battaglia’s office suite where she holds group sessions. Where the TOA group was about to meet. You looked upset. And I—”

  Abruptly, Dare lifted his head. “Wait. You were signed up for the group?”

  “Yeah, that’s why I was there.”

  Dare had never had a chance even to see the other members. He’d stormed out, all right. He’d bailed out, some fifteen minutes before the Triumph Over Abuse group was to assemble for its first meeting. From that moment on, he’d never had anything more to do with Marie Battaglia, in spite of her solicitous phone calls.

  He simply couldn’t bring himself to dredge up all that Pankin crap.

  “I pulled out after one session,” Jonah went on. “The whole setup made me really uncomfortable. I’m not very good in those situations—you know, talking in front of an audience and all that.”

  You bet, “and all that.” Like laying down your naked shame, a specimen on a dissecting tray, and letting strangers poke around in it, make notes and comments about it. “All right, so we’re both therapy dropouts. So what’s left to talk about?”

  “Everything we never got to talk about three years ago—what happened to us, and why, and the individuals who… who hurt us.”

  Dare winced. His first impulse was to put up a wall by saying, I was never hurt. I cruised through it just fine. But a noxious smudge was wafting through him, a lingering vestige of the fire that had burned and blistered his soul, and it would’ve belied any nonchalant denial.

  Then a pure, clear memory surfaced. “Were you the guy standing at the reception desk when I left?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve been getting at.”

  Dare’s brow contracted as he remembered.

  Jonah had turned his head when Dare shot past. Anybody standing at the counter could see the short hallway that ran from the waiting room farther into the suite, where the doctor’s private office, a restroom, and a spacious lounge were located. Dare had just come through the door that led to that hallway, because he’d just been speaking with Dr. Battaglia. Jonah must have overheard their conversation.

  “What was his name?” Jonah had asked gently. “Howard Pankin,” Dare had answered without stopping, without even glancing at the speaker. “Reverend Clayton C. Wallace,” the disembodied voice had said at Dare’s back, just as Dare exited the suite.

  Afterward, he hadn’t given the incident much thought. The brief exchange seemed too much like something he’d imagined—an assertion of innocence to a kindred spirit, a fellow sufferer whose understanding was implicit.

  I didn’t do anything wrong. Something wrong was done to me. By a man I knew as….

  Through the simple act of naming their monsters, he and Jonah, who was then a complete stranger, had thrown off at least a little of their guilt and granted each other absolution. It had been a surreal moment, and more liberating than Dare had realized at the time. The relief he’d felt afterward—a small peace, but peace nonetheless—hadn’t come from getting out of that TOA group. It had come (he now knew) from speaking Pankin’s name to Jonah Day, and hearing the name Jonah had spoken. Finally, after so many bleak years, he’d connected with someone who kept the same secret.

  Dare hunched over his thighs and rested his forearms there. He tried to pull his thoughts together. “You want us to get together so we can unload on each other?”

  “Something like that. Unless you don’t need to anymore. Unless you got help somewhere else and you’ve moved on.”

  “No. I couldn’t afford it. That was another reason I dumped Battaglia.”

  Dare knew his folks could have afforded it, easily, if he’d come clean about the episode while he was still a minor and covered by their insurance. But he hadn’t. For a whole reeking tangle of reasons, he’d shoved it down and slapped a lid on it.

  Until, that is, Pankin had resurfaced in his life like a bloated corpse in a lake. That was three years ago, and a long time after their liaison had ended. As it turned out, Dare still couldn’t bring himself to loosen the clamps.

  “I haven’t moved on either,” Jonah said. “More and more things have been reminding me of that. I know I have to do something. There’s so much about me that’s….” He suddenly stopped talking, and Dare felt an unexpected trickle of concern for him.

  He tried to replace it with disdain. He himself had managed to keep his shit together for thirteen years. He had never become so pathetically needful he’d reached out to a stranger.

  In fact, Dare hadn’t even reached out to a friend or family member. Even when, three years earlier, he’d finally confessed to his former relationship with Pankin and let himself be talked into therapy, he wasn’t reaching out. He was simply divulging information his parents and brother hadn’t been aware of, and in the vaguest terms possible.
He’d taken their advice about therapy just to get them off his back.

  “You must think I’m crazy,” Jonah said, breaking the heavy silence. “It’s just that when I saw you at the pavilion, I thought, ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe this is my chance to talk one-on-one with someone who’s been there.’”

  Dare hadn’t been able to muster any disdain for Jonah. Not a lick. How could he? Instead, he heard Jonah courageously speaking a minister’s name, and saw him waltzing with his grandmother to the strains of “Fascination,” and felt the allure of that oh-so-green gaze.

  “Are you gay, by any chance?” he asked quietly.

  Fast as a sprung jack-in-the-box, “no” came through the phone. Then, more hesitantly, “I mean, I don’t know what I am. The abuse started when I was eleven. It didn’t stop ’til I was fifteen. It could’ve really… probably did… mess with, you know….”

  “Your sense of your own sexuality.” Dare dropped his forehead to his hand. This had already gone too far. His spirit felt weighted, but he couldn’t just cut Jonah off. Not now. “I understand how that could happen.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has it been the same for you?”

  Oh, Christ, the hope in his voice, the hope he wasn’t alone. Still, it wouldn’t do any good to lie to him. “No, not really. I was a little older than you when my thing started. I pretty much knew what I was about. In that regard, anyway.”

  Dare’s stomach ached. From eleven to fifteen. Jesus. He’d been thirteen and fourteen throughout his own ordeal, and he’d already figured out by then that he liked boys. This poor guy still didn’t know how to define himself. And seemed afraid to find out.

  “Well, haven’t you had any… indicators over the years?” Dare squeezed his eyes shut and scratched at his forehead. Why am I getting in deeper? “You know, like… reactions to girls versus reactions to guys. Feelings of attraction. Fantasies. Urges. That sort of thing.” He couldn’t get more explicit without embarrassing the hell out of both of them. He couldn’t say, Dude, this is pretty simple. Who has the power to make you bone up—males, females, or both?