Contemporary Gay Romances (3 page)

Niels registered it all, and with a sigh of relief he thought, oh, good! Here I am. It worked. I saved the lovely boy, and suffered some little concussion, and all will be well. The intern, who seemed to be of Middle-Asian origin with untypically bad facial skin but lovely brown eyes simply drenched in several rows of eyelashes, said, “Please, sir. I’m Dr. Kawalor Dohendry, and you have had a serious accident and have been out of commission for four days and three nights.”

Niels began to say something but nothing came out—he only could croak.

The nurse lifted a little pink cup of water to his mouth, and he sipped while the doctor looked on benignly, and Niels tried to say something and still nothing came out but frog talk.

“Not to worry, sir,” the doctor said, “These things happen. Maybe later we shall speak. Can you nod your head?”

Niels nodded his head and even he could tell that the motion he made, if it existed at all, was very, very minor.

“Good, sir. Good progress, I think. We will now be able to communicate,” the doctor said, smiling fatuously.

Communicate? Niels wondered. I, who could write a page-long sentence without the need of more than a single semicolon! You call
this
communicating?

“Your son is waiting in the other room. Nurse, get him,” Dohendry said.

Son? I have no son.

“He slept over all three nights in this very room, upon a narrow cot we brought in. He insisted. What a good son! In my homeland, of course, this would be unextraordinary, even expected. But in the U.S. (he pronounced it You-Ass) it is very uncommon for such devotion from a family member. Ah, there you are, sir.”

Niels looked up and it was the Apollo from the construction site. Unharmed. Dressed in different clothing, clean pants and shirt, but the same fellow, more gorgeous than ever. He had his hands together, as though he’d been wringing them, and he looked so sad and yet hopeful too now.

“Yes,” Dohendry went on to the Apollo, “as I told you would happen, he is fully conscious now.” The doctor did something, tucked in a blanket or something, Niels couldn’t make out the darting little movement indicative of care. “But as I also told you, he is unable to speak. The crushed trachea, you understand. It is temporary,” turning to Niels, “only temporary. It is a like a rubber tube that has been given a blow,” he illustrated in the air with a karate chop to one forearm, “and it needs now come back to normal.” Turning now to the Apollo, “He is fully conscious and understands. But only in nods can he communicate.”

Niels looked with astonishment at the construction worker, who suddenly pushed the little doctor aside, fell upon Niels, and hugged him, sobbing loudly.

“Oh, look, nurse,” Dohendry was saying beyond the big clasping body. “Such a lovely reconciliation. I take back all the bad things I have said about American fathers and sons. Every word of it.” He then turned to the other nurse and said something rapidly in a foreign language Niels had never heard before. She responded and it necessitated them going to some machine at the end of the room, while Niels remained unable to do anything but bear the big young lovely clean-smelling head and torso and arms of the Apollo thrown about him, still sobbing, until finally the big tanned face pulled back, streaked with tears, cobalt eyes brimming over with tears, and the quivering Michelangelo lips whispered, “Why’dya do it? Why’dya save my life like that?” before he resumed hugging him and sobbing.

It was during these moments that Niels had the most bifurcated emotions he could have possibly imagined. First, of course, and obvious, the pleasure of the big delicious fellow all over him, grateful, delighted, his warmth, his sheer presence; next to that, opposite it, the absolutely below zero chilling recognition that Niels’s action had not at all resulted in some little concussion and all would be well, because he was more or less paralyzed, wasn’t he? Paralyzed, unable to speak, unable to move anything but he imagined his head a quarter of an inch, side to side.

Niels Llewellyn died then as he had lived in his previous life, realizing what his impetuous and altruistic act had cost him, he felt his spirit leave him and he died. Once again all went black.

But not for long, since he was now in intensive care in a large Manhattan hospital. And so he came to again a few minutes later, only to see Dohendry and hear him saying, doubtless to the Apollo, “We must expect these little setbacks for the next few days. The shock. The shock of it all, and the happiness your father must now feel is naturally the cause of it. He will survive, believe me. A good son’s affection…”

*

He did survive. With all the complications that ensued. Apollo’s name turned out to be Danny Masini, twenty-nine, of Center Moriches, Long Island. There was a wife, Sylvia Masini, pretty, demure, sweet, and a little Danny, aged twenty months, a Cupid, a putti, an angel. The other workers from that day came in too: Ethan Skavenger and Anastas Doremates. They visited less often, but often enough, and sometimes with girlfriends. They lived in Merrick, Long Island. They visited him twice a day and every visit went on for hours and was filled with food and balloons, huge pop-up get well cards, and flowers, music playing and people talking, and in short a little get well party. Soon, the nurses hung around more, to flirt with Anastas and Ethan and their friends, and so Niels got constant, adoring attention from them all. Doubled by Dohendry, who had appointed himself the little group’s guardian, and who got Niels into total physical and voice rehab, pulling strings for medicines not yet fully approved by the F.D.A. and who visited him daily with new methods, ideas, and potions, even when he was moved to a room down the hall and Dohendry was no longer assigned.

Niels made progress. He seemed to have no choice but to make progress. Soon his croaking was more nuanced, comprehensible to the beautiful Danny Masini, who insisted, despite the difference of their names—for they’d gotten his wallet, his I.D., his card for the paltry catastrophic insurance—to anyone who asked that they were related. How could anyone doubt it? Soon Niels was moving his fingers on his left hand, and with little Danny playing with him, his toes on his right hand, and Dohendry was there saying, “What did I predict? Not of course, with the spinal damage you sustained in the accident that you should expect anything like a full recovery, but with such loving friends, such a family, such a son, why, I think you should expect a wonderful life.”

One day, perhaps five weeks later, his agent Lizabeth arrived. She was horrified to see him but hid it quickly. Niels got everyone else out of the room—there always seemed to be at least one of the workers’
cumadre
s sitting with him every day, or someone’s teenage brother helping him do rehab. It was understood by all, and totally approved by all, that he would be living with the Masinis from now on, once he got out. On the weekends, various male family members and pals were helping to close in and insulate the sun room that faced west over the estuary down to the Great South Bay. Danny showed him photos and videos with construction progress reports and it would all be very beautiful. It was understood by all that Niels was “theirs” now, and they would take care of him and do whatever was needed, from now on, no matter what it took. He knew they thought he was a bum, without two nickels to rub together, and he was waiting for the appropriate moment, once they were all settled, and “at home” to tell Danny the truth: that such virtue had a monetary reward too. He knew what Danny would say. “Who needs your money? We’ve got enough! We’re family. Family!”

“Who are these people?” Lizabeth asked.

“What’s happening with the novel?” he asked carefully and watched her slowly figure out what he was uttering.

“Everything we spoke of, except,” here she almost broke down, “the press we’ve gotten is astonishing. You saved this man’s life. You’re a hero. You’re a public relations windfall. There’s so much demand for your book, Andrea’s executives decided to print and ship six months early.”

Niels smiled.

She then went on to explain her absence in Europe, at some European book fair or other, and then on vacation after, which was why it took her so long to find out about him.

“Andrea says photographers from
People
magazine want you,” she said, awed. “That’s a few hundred thousand copies, right there.”

“Good,” he croaked.

“Good? Look at you, Niels! What happened? Oh, God, it’s all my fault. I should have put you into a taxi that day. Just look at you!”

She must have become very loud and sounded upset because suddenly the door opened and two people came in, Tania Skavenger, Ethan’s sister, and Danny himself, the look on his face saying leave him alone or by God, I’ll…

“What’s happened,” Niels croaked out the words carefully, quietly, grasping the edge of Liz’s sleeve with his crooked (but growing stronger every day) two fingers, “is that I’m happy, Liz.”

Lizabeth backed off, all but thrust aside by Danny, who sat down and said, “Look at you, grabbing at ladies! You’re something else!” He kissed Niels’s mouth and said to Tania. “Get me some of the green jello.” Then to Niels, “How you doing? Danny’s here and all is well. Ready for some?”

“Really, really happy for the very first time in my life,” Niels muttered, as Danny readied the spoon of jello and made airplane buzzing noises, “Okay, sweetheart! Open up wide! Here it comes.”

When Mike Strong came up to where she was just leaving the lunch tables outside the big cafeteria and asked her to the Fleetwood Mac concert for the coming Friday night, she knew it had to be a mistake. He was so out of her league. But there he was, tall, incredibly handsome with his pale gray eyes and his butterscotch hair, and he was saying that he and Gabe Dell and Shaun Hunt had gotten the three tickets together. Only Gabe’s oldest sister was getting married in Cincinnati and he couldn’t go. Would she like to join them?

She almost died on the spot right then. It must be a mistake. He looked at her, quizzically, and then Shaun, Mike’s best friend since the second grade, with his corn silk hair and his blue, blue eyes and also incredibly handsome, came up kind of behind Mike but to one side and asked, “So is it okay? Is she coming with us? Are you coming with us, Cara?”

So even though she knew that both of them were really far out of her league she said yes and waited until Friday for it to all be a mistake. But instead, Shaun drove up in his brother’s pale green Buick sedan and Mike got out and said she looked really pretty and she got in the middle and he said, “Gosh, but you’re small,” and they went to the concert and had a great time together.

The lead-in act was a trio of girls who sang a combo of country and pop, which was okay, but not earth shattering. They did one old song called “True Love” Cara had never heard before. It went, “And I give to you and you give to me…True love…True love.” And when they were done, she said something to Mike like “Wasn’t that wonderful? Wonderful?” He smiled and said it was wonderful. She thought, well, so now we have a theme song too.

It was the girl Shaun was seeing, Debbie Josephs, who came up to her the next Monday outside her locker and said they all hoped she would join them that coming Friday night, after school at the burger shop then the movie, and she seemed so nice that Cara said, “Sure. Okay,” although Debbie was so very cool—and a senior!—it had to be a big mistake. Had to.

That was how Cara began dating Mike Strong, even though all the other junior girls at Meriwether Lewis High looked at her strangely thereafter, since all of them wanted either Mike or Shaun or Gabe Dell, the three biggest, fastest, handsomest, best football players in the school.

A couple of times when she was getting ready to go out with them—it was usually four of them, double-dating, and sometimes six, tripling—there were times when she was waiting for Shaun’s car to pull up to the house in the evening, she’d look at her mom and ask her why, why her? With all those girls, why had Mike Strong chosen her?

“Come on, Cara! You’re pretty,” her mother always said. “Some big guys like petite girls, you know. You’ve got a perfect little body. You’re smart. You’re sensible.”

She still wondered if it wasn’t all a big mistake.

A couple of times she thought her mother would ask her if she and Mike were making it, if they’d “gone all the way,” and she would of course say no.

But she knew that’s what some girls at Meriwether Lewis thought. That she was “putting out” for Mike. Once, coming into Phys. Ed. class late in the gym, she overheard two girls talking behind the bleachers. She was about to go up to them when one of them said, “She’s gotta be doing it! Like that Debbie!”

“You don’t
mean
?” the other one, who Cara thought was her friend, asked, scandalized.

“Sucks like a Hoover. Blows like the wind. All those football players like that, you know. Since they’re not supposed to be wearing themselves out too much before the game.”

Their peals of delightedly outraged laughter followed.

How unfair, she thought.

The following weekend, while they were necking in the car, Shaun and Debbie in the front and her and Mike in the back, he bared both her and his own genitals and played with them both until she started making the strangest noises, totally uncontrollably, and having the weirdest sensations down there, over and over again, kind of like burning and being cooled off by ice at the same time. She managed to pull away before she thought she’d faint, just as he made a mess of himself against the backseat. As he was rapidly cleaning it up with a hanky, she pulled up between the two front seats and she saw Debbie was bent over almost double in the front seat. For a second she was going to ask was she sick? Was that why she had her face in Shaun’s lap? Did she need a hanky? Then she saw Debbie’s head moving up and down and she realized, those girls were right about what Debbie was doing to Shaun.