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  “I’m not a virgin,” Jonah said a bit tartly, “if that’s what you’re wondering. But during the period I was sexually active, I was kind of… fucked up. A lot fucked up. So all that fooling around didn’t shed much light. I was just randomly promiscuous.”

  The phrase fucked up had made Dare’s eyebrows jump. Vulgar language didn’t jibe with his image of Jonah. Randomly promiscuous had been another attention grabber.

  So much for assumptions.

  “And since then?” Dare asked.

  “Since then,” Jonah said dryly, “I’ve been selling insurance and taking my grandmother out dancing.”

  In other words, he’d been steering clear of all sexual encounters. “Jonah, maybe you really should see a professional. You’re in your twenties now—”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “You’re twenty-four now, and some sicko jagged you around at one of the most defining times of your life. I’m not sure just talking about it to a layperson is going to help.”

  Silence.

  “Jonah?”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Fuck, Dare mouthed. The sound of Jonah’s voice—not just defeated but resigned to defeat—had gotten to him. Maybe more than that had been getting to him. In spite of his initial determination to distance himself from these memory swamps, he’d weakened.

  And now he crumbled. “We could still get together, though. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

  Much.

  Chapter Six

  THE Polka Doodles had just wrapped up a quick Saturday birthday gig, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., at some VFW or American Legion hall in one of Milwaukee’s southwestern exurbs. Dare wasn’t sure which one. Hales Corners, Franklin, and Muskego all sort of ran together with no discernible city limits. At least it seemed that way.

  Besides, Dare’s ass was dragging, and when his ass was dragging, it dulled his mind. He’d worked last night at the Sugar Bowl. He had to work again tonight. In between, he had yet another obligation to fulfill—one that made him anxious and preoccupied.

  Jonah Day was going to meet him here. Then they’d decide where to go for their first… whatever the hell it was. A get-together that defied definition, couldn’t be categorized as a date or confab or meaningless lark.

  Dare again scanned the parking lot as he slid more equipment into Bob’s van. He’d quickly become the designated humper for the Doodles, a position he’d assumed without pressure from his bandmates. It just stood to reason the youngest and fittest man in the group should do the grunt work.

  Bob trundled up behind him with the cased glockenspiel. “Take it easy, Flash. You’ll rupture something.” He leaned past Dare and craned his thick neck, as much as he could crane it, to make sure the equipment was arranged and stacked properly. He was as fussy about loading the van as he was about everything else.

  Once Dare had tucked away the instrument to Bob’s satisfaction, Bob sat on the edge of the van’s floor. “What’s the rush? You gotta be somewhere? I noticed you changed into your civvies real quick.”

  Assuming an air of indifference, Dare leaned against the open door. “A friend is meeting me. I’ve sort of been invited to….” Shit, he had no idea how to explain this. Fact was, he hadn’t been invited anywhere in particular.

  Bob watched him expectantly. “Give a private concert?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

  Dare’s face warmed. “Hardly.”

  Flustered, he wondered how his bandmates could embarrass him so easily without even trying. Their teasing innuendos barely qualified as off-color, much less smutty—merely the kinds of things older married guys said to younger single guys—yet they made Dare cringe.

  How strange. He could perform bare-assed in front of a hundred strangers, and bump and grind into men’s faces, and let some of them lick his sweaty chest or feel up his junk, and not have the slightest self-conscious twinge. Maybe Bob, Max, Ernie, and Junior made him painfully aware of his double life.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll butt out.” Bob turned and putzed with something in the van.

  “It’s no big deal. Really.”

  As Ernie approached, carrying his banjo and a couple of music stands, Jonah pulled up in his shiny blue Ford Focus. Bob turned to look at the new arrival.

  “Hey, there’s JoJo! Wonder what he’s doing here.”

  Dare stepped away from the van. “He’s the person I’ve been waiting for.”

  “Hell, I didn’t know the two of you were pals.” Bob waved as Jonah got out of his car. “I saw you talking last week, but I figured….” His grin wilted almost comically as he glanced from Jonah to Dare and back to Jonah. “Oh.”

  Oh shit. Bob had made an inference. Maybe it was inevitable. He had a slightly effeminate clarinetist. He had a male fan who’d only been seen in the company of his grandmother. The two young men were roughly the same age.

  One by one, the other guys in the band appeared in the parking lot. They, too, called out greetings to Jonah without using his full name.

  Dare strolled away from the van and tried like hell to keep his hips from swaying.

  He couldn’t keep his mind from straying. Dressed casually today, Jonah looked so fresh, so clean. His expertly trimmed hair had the loveliest glimmers of color: subtle, nutty, like the winking farewell of fall as it ceded to winter. Jonah’s hair, Dare decided, was the color of acorns.

  “Hi,” Jonah said, his gaze cutting past Dare to scope out the band members. Maybe he was wondering about inferences too.

  “JoJo?” Dare said archly.

  Jonah rolled his eyes. “God, I hate it when they call me that. Or JJ.”

  “I think it’s kind of cute. The guys are probably just making your name match GG’s. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s all the more reason for me to hate it. Sometimes I think these people see me as a sissy little momma’s boy. Or grandma’s boy.”

  Sure enough, Jonah was wondering what conclusions the Polka Doodles were drawing. “Does that bother you?”

  “Wouldn’t it bother you?”

  Dare huffed out a dismissive laugh. “Hell, I’m used to it.”

  Now Jonah studied him curiously. “You don’t come across that way.”

  “What, you mean nelly?”

  “Whatever,” Jonah mumbled.

  “You just haven’t seen me at my finest. I’ve elevated male-femme to an art form. At my primetime job, that is.” Dare couldn’t seem to put on the brakes. Why was he bragging about Pepper Jack? Why was he on the verge of shoving his alter ego into Jonah’s clean-shaven, pink-cheeked face?

  Fucking stop, man. This is getting sick. It’s like you’re testing him.

  So maybe I am. Maybe he’ll leave me alone if I push it far enough, if I can make him fail the test.

  Jonah, who wouldn’t look at him, seemed to be having second (or third or fourth) thoughts about this meeting.

  Now Dare flipped inexplicably from not wanting it to wanting it—maybe. He cleared this throat, chucked away the male-femme talk. He’d committed to this. He had to follow through. “So where should we go?”

  Briefly, Jonah looked torn between reluctance and relief. “How about Whitnall Park, the botanical gardens? It isn’t far.”

  “Good idea. I’d like to be outdoors for a while.” Dare was about to head for his car but turned back again. “You sure the gardens are open at this time of year?”

  “’Til the middle of the month. So we’re good. Oh, admission is five bucks. You okay with that?”

  Dare grinned. “Hey, I just played a major gig with Bouncin’ Bob’s Polka Doodles. I could buy a bus ticket to Waukesha if I wanted to.”

  Jonah laughed. It was the first time Dare had seen him laugh. Inexplicably, it made Dare feel good.

  For better or worse, they were back on their uncertain track.

  AFTER a quick stop for soft drinks, they drove the relatively short distance to the park. Dare led the way. He didn’t want to be distracted by the sight of his companion, even the none-too-cl
ear image of Jonah’s head above the driver’s seat. Although Dare tried to keep his mind blank, behind its white screen a chaos of thoughts collided: Jonah’s really fucking cute, he seems so different today but not entirely, what the hell are we going to talk about, will we be uncomfortable ’cause this is a pretty unnatural situation, do I smell okay?

  They’d no sooner parked and exited their vehicles than Dare could tell Jonah wanted to ask a question. He’d slipped on a pair of sunglasses—the day was cool and bright—but Dare could still see the dip in his forehead.

  Jonah held the question in. After paying admission, they strolled through the annual garden and down the shrub mall to the rock garden, which Jonah said was his favorite section. Dare got the impression he came here a lot, maybe with GG, but Dare didn’t voice that assumption. Not after Jonah’s outburst about people perceiving him as a “sissy little grandma’s boy.” Instead, they talked about innocuous things, stuck to subjects that people getting to know each other might cover. Nothing too personal, nothing upsetting. Like their time in college, and how it hadn’t opened any doors to the future for either of them. (Jonah had an Associate degree in marketing; Dare had no degree at all.) Jonah’s job, which he’d taken out of desperation. Dare’s somewhat interesting family.

  After sitting for a bit, they resumed their stroll, crossing the long wooden walkway over the bog garden into the rose garden.

  “So,” Jonah said in a strenuously offhanded way, “I gather you’re not exactly straight.” He bent over to sniff a salmon-pink rose that shaded to creamy yellow toward its interior.

  Dare eyed his ass. “I’m not even vaguely straight.”

  Again, no reaction. Jonah simply lifted his head, and he and Dare continued walking.

  Their silence didn’t last long.

  “Before, when we were back at the hall,” Jonah said, his face downturned, “were you saying you’re, like, a cross dresser? Or a drag queen?”

  “Nope. That’s not what I was saying. I’m neither.”

  “Trans?”

  “No. I’m just a dancer who wears kind of unusual costumes. It’s my primary source of income.” Dare’s voice had lost the glinting edge it had when he’d first broached the subject. His perverse impulse to goad Jonah had died. The guy was curious, that was all, and it was understandable. The most exotic things in Jonah Day’s world were tastelessly-dressed polka bands. He’d certainly never crossed paths with a gender-fluid performer.

  They took a seat on one of two slatted wood benches that flanked an enormous tree. Jonah took off his sunglasses and hung them from the collar of his shirt. The mild-mannered insurance agent hadn’t yet responded to Dare’s revelation.

  Once they were settled, he did.

  “Are you a good dancer?”

  The question took Dare by surprise. Or rather the choice of adjective did. When he glanced at Jonah, saw the slight, teasing smile on his face, he also smiled. Broadly. “I haven’t been fired yet.”

  “So you must be doing something right.”

  They were looking into each other’s eyes. Dare’s were blue, and he vaguely wondered if Jonah found them as pretty as he found Jonah’s.

  “Must be.” He was tempted to add, But I doubt it has much to do with my dancing. Dare’s gaze broke away, faltering over flowerbeds and visitors. “Kind of funny,” he said, “how we both like to dance. I even took classes in ballet and acrobatics. Which I guess means I more than like it.” His eyes stalled in a spill of shade beneath a brilliant sugar maple, where a teenaged girl sat within the bowl of her boyfriend’s legs. She leaned comfortably against his chest, her head turned to his ear. “Strange….”

  “Why’s that?” Jonah’s voice sounded more distant, but he hadn’t moved.

  “Because it takes joy to dance, and I could’ve sworn that prick had killed all the joy I had in me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Dare

  June, 1999

  I SAW it from the bus as I was coming back from my first clarinet lesson. First private lesson, that is, with a music teacher who wasn’t my band director. My mother wanted to drive me to and from Mr. Eger’s studio, but I told her no. I was thirteen and starting to stretch my wings. Independence felt good.

  Only, that’s what put the rainbow and the windows in my path. A sparkling rainbow arching over an otherwise plain storefront, with bluebirds hovering at each end. And display windows packed with a jumble of things that didn’t look new. The sight was captivating. A thirteen-year-old boy—especially a quirky and somewhat rebellious boy like me—couldn’t possibly resist that kind of enticement.

  Later I’d think, If only I’d been sitting on the other side of the bus, I wouldn’t have seen it. Over the Rainbow Resale would never have intruded on my life.

  I was deluding myself. Seeing the store was inevitable. Fate had made it inevitable. I know that sounds crazy, but I believed it for years. Maybe I still do.

  The following week I got off the bus just a few doors down from the shop. Since I had a bus pass, I wouldn’t have to walk the remaining distance, maybe a mile or so, to my house. This mattered, because I was carrying my clarinet. Not that it was heavy, but I was afraid someone might snatch it from me. I was even more slightly built than most girls my age. If I’d been mugged—and it never occurred to me most muggers weren’t after clarinets—I couldn’t have hung on to my most treasured possession.

  At first I dawdled on the sidewalk, hugging the case to my chest, and studied the stuff in the windows. A manikin wearing a polka-dot bikini and a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask. A barbecue grill heaped with molded plastic food and a rubber plucked chicken. Painted wood fish and frogs sitting on the rungs of a swimming pool ladder. African-looking busts draped in costume jewelry. An old-fashioned picnic basket stuffed with garden tools. A red bicycle. An alto sax with silk flowers erupting from its bell.

  Beyond this summery mad mess, the shop looked dim and dingy inside. But a multicolored OPEN sign hung crookedly on the door. I set my clarinet case at my feet, cupped my hands around my eyes, and peered inside. The ceiling lights were on. I saw shelving units, packed with merchandise, set at odd angles to each other, and more weird stand-alone displays, and even a few racks of clothing. No one was manning the old office desk that sat near the wall to the left of the door. I figured it must’ve been the checkout area, because a scrolled brass behemoth of a cash register weighed down a counter behind the desk.

  Someone had to be there.

  I crept inside… and immediately heard it. Magical music dancing behind the buzzer sound that wavered from somewhere in the back of the shop. Notes like a fusion of dripping water and muffled bells.

  He’d seen me. I didn’t know it then but I know it now. He’d seen me staring enrapt at the junk in the windows, a clarinet case clutched to my heart, and he’d scurried away to set his trap.

  Jonah

  September, 1999

  WE LIVED in Detroit, my mother and I. My sister Josie was eighteen and had already taken off for California. She’d always hated Detroit.

  After my parents got divorced, my mother found religion. I think it was one of our neighbors who turned her on to it, got her to accept Christ as her personal savior. Not that it amounted to much. Mom lost interest in going to church after the second or third time. She never could keep to a schedule. But she expected me to go, like I was her stand-in. Vicarious salvation, I guess.

  I didn’t really mind. The services were lively and entertaining, a break from my routine. I was shy, kept to myself, didn’t have a lot of friends. The highlight of every year was spending part of the summer with GG at her lake cottage. Mom would drive me there, hang out for a few days, then drive back to Detroit. Or wherever. She’d pick me up more or less when she felt like it. Maybe two weeks later, maybe two months later. But I always got back before school started.

  Anyway, the church I went to was one of those hole-in-the-wall, neighborhood places—Pentecostal, I think—pastored by a tall, immaculately dressed
man named Clayton C. Wallace. He had a small multiracial congregation. The services were full of spontaneity, not like the Catholic Mass my dad’s parents once took me to, and they either made me smile or held me spellbound. There was a lot of singing and clapping and arm-waving, people shouting out or even falling down during Reverend Clay’s sermons.

  Never a dull moment.

  The first time I saw a woman collapse to the floor, drooling and jerking, it scared the daylights out of me. But soon I started looking forward to all the signs and wonders. That’s what they’re called. People speaking in tongues. Reverend Clay healing the sick.

  His cures were almost violent. They entailed a lot of gripping and shaking, wailing and weeping. When he banished demons in the name of JEEzus, I swear it was the most awesome thing I’d ever witnessed. Of course I never actually saw one of those demons, but I wished I could, just to relish the terrified look on its face as the Reverend’s booming voice banished it to Hell.

  Yeah, I sure got hooked. I stopped noticing the rickety folding chairs and scuffed pulpit and wilting flowers that smelled of poverty and decay. I stopped noticing the grime on the floor and the stench of ripe sweat and belly gas.

  Church went well for a while. Folks were nice to me, kind of looked after me. They were decent people. Reverend Clay even singled me out. He was always smiling in my direction, putting an arm around my shoulders, tousling my hair. It made me feel special.

  Too special. At least for an adolescent kid who spent more and more time alone with a married man and father to a baby girl.

  Chapter Eight

  THEY asked each other questions, less tentatively than Dare would have thought. A conduit had already opened between them. It was fascinating, they agreed, to find out how other predators operated, how they drew kids into their webs. But it was sickening, too, and deeply troubling. So many scenarios were possible, so many ways for craftiness to take advantage of gullibility.