Personal Effects (26 page)

“Here,” he says. “Take it.”

I reach for my bag, still not sure if this is some kind of test or trap or something. When my fingers close around it, he lets go all at once. I have to grab it with my other hand to pull it to me. I let my hands trail down, squeezing as I go. I can’t believe it. I think the letters and pictures are still in here. I start to unzip it to look, and Curtis makes this huffy sound.

“No,” he says, mocking, waving toward the bag, “go ahead. Check it out. But we didn’t steal anything. We didn’t even look through it. God, what kind of people do you think we are?”

I don’t think I’m gonna answer that.

Another huffy laugh. “You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” I say belatedly, and more out of habit than anything. But I guess it was cool of him to bring me back my bag, even if I’m not sure I believe that they didn’t look through it and take anything. I’ll be shocked if the letter from T.J. is still in there. But there’s nothing I can really do about it if it’s not.

“I wasn’t sure you were still around,” Curtis says, sitting back against the bench. “I called, but they wouldn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, I, uh, I’ll have to leave. Soon.”

Curtis nods. “This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.” When he sees I’m paying attention, he continues. “None of this. Theo was supposed to tell you. About him. About us.”

My hands grip the edge of the bench.

“I wanted to meet you, to get to know you, but not like this — and I sure as hell wasn’t supposed to have to tell you, not . . .”

Curtis swallows hard, and his whole body trembles as he rubs his banged-up knuckles against his mouth. His hand is shaking when he pulls it away. I watch it stutter all the way back to his lap.

“Every time I think it’s getting easier, something happens and I’m right back in that hole.” I’m not sure he’s even talking to me anymore. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. And I’m so damn angry at him, for not being here, for going back when he should have been done, when it would have been so easy for him to get out, to stay . . .”

He wipes roughly at his eyes. Fast, angry swipes. Something lodges in my throat.

“You came all this way to find something,” he finally says, voice shaky, “or someone. You just going to walk away because it’s not who you thought it’d be?”

I can’t answer. I can hardly breathe. There’s nothing I can say to this guy, nothing that doesn’t suck or sound mean or stupid. I just want him to go away. Go away and leave me alone. Let me have my memories back the way they were. I don’t want this.

“I don’t know what else to say to you,” Curtis says. “I’d be willing to answer any questions you have. I’d love to talk about him. No one really wants to talk about him anymore.” He stares at the passing traffic, then looks me in the eyes. “But I don’t know what you want or need. So,” he says, standing up, “why don’t we try dinner 2.0. You come over. We eat some food. You see some pictures of Theo, and we try this again.”

“I can’t,” I say. Even the thought of going back there makes me feel like puking. Not even for pictures.

“We would love to spend some time with you, and I think you’d like Zoe. He loved her. And she really loved him.”

I shake my head, because I can’t. I can’t go there. I can’t just let this all be true and then crawl back and pretend it’s OK. None of it’s OK. If I go back there and pretend it’s OK, then . . .

“How about tomorrow?”

“I’m, uh, probably leaving tomorrow.” And suddenly, I know it’s true. I’ll leave tomorrow. If I leave early enough, I could be home by late tomorrow night. But to what? Fuck. Think about that later.

Curtis clamps his lips in a tight line. “We’ll be around all day. Come on by before you leave. There are some things I’d like to give you, that I think you should have.”

What is this, some kind of trade? I feel my heart pounding. “You just want the letter.”

“The letters I sent him? Yeah, I would like them back.”

My brain stumbles. Letters. He doesn’t know about T.J.’s letter. Unless he’s playing dumb because he already took it.

“But that’s not what this is about. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. You don’t even have to come inside. But I’d like to give you a few things anyway.”

I need to look in my bag. And what could he have for me, really? Why would T.J. leave anything for me with him, when he knew I didn’t even know Curtis existed?

“Look.” Curtis waves a hand, as if trying to pull the words out of the air. “Theo used to talk about you. A lot. For me, well, it feels a little like we’ve met before, and like I should . . . Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but . . . it’d be nice to have someone who really knew him, and who still wants to talk about him.”

I force my head not to nod or agree. I can’t agree to anything. I need to leave and forget about all this.

“We could e-mail, or talk on the phone, whatever, if you don’t want to come by. But think about it, because I think Missy would really like to see you again, make sure you’re OK.”

My head snaps up. “Missy?”

“Celia,” Curtis says with a wave of his hand, like it should have been obvious. “She feels bad about how last night went down. She feels like she messed up. Like she messed things up on Theo. Just, well, just think about stopping by. Even for a minute.”

Missy. “I’ll, uh, think about it.” Missy and Will. They were there, in the letters the whole time. “But I really might have to leave early. I have to get back.” I’m pretty sure he knows I’m lying, at least a little.

“Anytime tomorrow.” Curtis turns to walk away and then pivots sharply back. “Look, whatever you decide, whether you come by or not, even if I never see or hear from you again, just . . . I’d really like my letters back, OK? You can send them to me, or call me and I’ll figure out how to get them from you. But they’re mine. And you know they are, because you drove all the way here to give them to me, even if I’m not who you thought I was.”

As soon as his car pulls away, I yank the zipper down and pull my backpack open so I can see inside. All three plastic bags are there: the pictures, Curtis’s letters, and the single letter from T.J. I check the back pocket near the straps: Shauna’s money is still there, too. I pull out T.J.’s letter with a shaking hand. Still in its plastic, label still unbroken over the opening.

He didn’t read it.

Or take it.

He really has no idea.

I
HAVE NO CLUE WHAT
I’
M SUPPOSED TO DO NEXT
.

I thought I was coming here on a mission, one last thing I could do for T.J., maybe the most important thing anyone could do for him. And I planned and plotted and drove and skulked and it all worked . . . except for the part where I got everything totally 100 percent wrong.

When the lockout time is over, I go back to my room and look through the pictures, trying to see what else I missed. Curtis is in a lot of them, in most of the pictures of Celia. I just didn’t really see him, because I was looking at her. In some he’s in the background, but he’s there. Even the one of her in uniform, he’s right there, a step behind her, but there.

I read the letters again, too. Knowing “Missy” is Celia, the words shift and rearrange themselves: some parts more significant, others less. Curtis wrote about Celia, and Will, and about Zoe. I just didn’t understand, because he called Celia “Missy.”

And Curtis wrote about lots of other people, mostly guy people. And not guys like Joe and Bob and Mike. Guys like Aiden and Jude and Terrence. He wrote about parties and bars and movies that should have been neon rainbow-colored signs.
West Side Story,
for fuck’s sake.

Reading the letters before, the sexy parts were embarrassing, like I was spying on T.J. and Celia. Now I try to skim quickly past parts about kisses and bed and sex. But Curtis wrote about T.J.’s hands. A lot. And when I thought they were from Celia, it was sort of sweet. But now it’s not at all sweet. It’s fucking all about sex. Now when I read about the rougher feel of T.J.’s fingers, how his hands felt, I know exactly what he meant, where he meant.

He wrote about T.J.’s chest and his shoulders. His back. He wrote about T.J.’s hands on his hips, T.J.’s chin digging into his shoulder, T.J.’s lips on his neck. He wrote about waking up with T.J. breathing in his ear. And when I thought it was Celia’s ear, I was OK with that. But Curtis’s? Now I wish I didn’t know what Curtis looks like. I wish that I could scrub the new images from my brain.

With Curtis calling him Theo, it’s almost like he’s a totally different person from T.J. But even the parts of me that want to sit in a corner with my ears covered, shouting that everyone is lying, has to give in. Because of Curtis’s hand — I know what that beat-up hand meant and how swinging it had to feel, even if he hit a wall instead of a face. And that picture. Not the cut-up piece of crap I’ve been carrying around. The whole one, the one with all of them, or even the other piece, the piece T.J. kept with him, of just him and Curtis. That picture is all the evidence I need to know that everything Celia and Curtis said is true, even if I don’t want to believe it.

In the instant Celia handed it to me, even before I could process that it was T.J., somewhere deep down I understood T.J.’s one-armed half hug and Curtis’s arm around T.J.’s waist. The way they stood and smiled. There wasn’t anything “buddy” about it. And somewhere, maybe in the stuff at home, maybe lost because he kept it on him all the time, is the other half of the picture: the one of T.J. and Curtis. I can practically see it, worn and battered and warped from being hidden in some secret place or compartment, soft around the edges from being handled every day. Small enough to risk it. The only one of just the two of them. How much T.J. risked for that one picture.

T.J. lied to me. And, really, that’s the part that sucks the most. He had a whole other life, one I’m not sure he was ever gonna tell me about. Was he just gonna come back and move on? Just leave me behind and only come to visit once in a while? Play the part of T.J. a couple weeks here or there and then go back to being Theo?

God, I spent my whole life trying to be brave, and strong, like him. Feeling like a waste of space because I’d never be as good as him. And all that time he was this whole other fucking person.

How many times did he call me, well, maybe not a faggot, but a pussy or weak-ass or a wuss? How many times did he sit there while Dad held him up as the poster boy for macho America, making me feel like shit when I couldn’t be as fast or as tough?

My hands clench. And all that time he was a fucking liar!

A knock at the door makes me jump. My heart pounds out of my chest.

“Boris, kweek, opan zee door,” Harley says, muffled only a little by the too-thin door.

Maybe she’ll just go away if I stay quiet.

Another knock. A kick at the door. “Come on, Matt. I know you’re in there.”

I hold my breath.

“Don’t make me tell the front desk that I think you’re a danger to yourself or others in there.”

I open the door, ready to get rid of her.

“Hey,” she says. She bounces up on her toes and plants a quick kiss on my lips. So fast I’m shocked. Then she laughs and does it again, longer this time. When she pulls back, she ducks under my arm, letting her hand trail across my chest on her way past me. “I was looking for you earlier.” She drops her bag onto the chair and pushes some of the letters to the side so she can sit on the end of the bed. “Were you foiled by Moose and Squirrel?” she asks in that weird accent.

“Huh?” My brain is still thinking about the kisses and what the hell just happened.

She rolls her eyes. “How’d it go? Meeting the kid last night?”

“Oh, uh, fine.” Not telling her anything, not this time. Then I’m getting rid of her.

“Good. What are you doing?” she asks, gathering up a stack of the letters, flipping through them. My stomach twists.

“Nothing, really. But, uh, I am kind of in the middle of —”

“Hey, are these from her? The girlfriend?”

“Look, Harley, I’m really kind of busy, so —”

“They are!”

She reads, her fingers crumpling the stack she’s holding. Drops one onto the wrong pile, shoves a stack off the bed with her knee.

“Wow. How fucking sad.” She looks up, waving one at me. “She must be seriously depressed. But meeting your brother’s kid went well? Did she call you Uncle Mattie?” she asks with a teasing smile.

I ignore all the wrong and try to figure out how to get her to put the letters down and leave without looking like an idiot.

She whistles. Waves her fingers. “
Caliente.
Seriously, she writes some steamy letters.” She clears her throat, tilts her chin to perform.
“. . . I close my eyes and think about your fingers digging into my hips, your lips whispering against my ear, it’s
almost —”

“Enough,” I say, grabbing the letter from her hand. “What is wrong with you?” My hands are shaking. She has to leave.

Her face goes from entertained to shocked to sad. Her mouth trembles.

“Sorry, Matt. I was just . . .” She looks at the other letters, puts them down on the bed very carefully. “Sorry,” she says.

“S’OK.” It’s not, but I just want her gone. She’s part of yesterday, when everything was good.