Serenading Stanley (14 page)

Apparently, Roger was not to be put off. He ran a hand over his short hair, which he always seemed to do when he was concentrating on anything, and while he rubbed his hair with one hand, he laid the other firmly against the outside of Stanley’s door. The implication was clear.
Don’t close the door in my face. Please.

“Stanley, I just wanted to tell you I’m glad you came by last night. I’m glad we got to know each other a little bit. If I did anything to make you mad, I’m sorry. Come on, kid, don’t shut me out. Let’s be… friends. Okay?”

With a hopeful expression on his face, Roger held his free hand out like a man sealing a deal.

Stanley looked at that outstretched hand for a couple of heartbeats; then he reached out and took it because he didn’t know how to
not
reach out and take it without looking like a dick. As always, the smooth heat of Roger’s flesh made Stanley close his eyes for a second. He longed to simply walk forward into the man’s arms, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He had already been shot down once. No way was he going to let it happen again. He had a
little
pride left. Not much, but a little.

Roger accepted Stanley’s hand and, taking a firm grip on it, refused to release it. “Come down tonight for dinner, Stanley. I’m not much of a cook, but I’ll whip up some hamburgers or something. And we’ve still got watermelon for dessert.”

Stanley did smile at that. He looked down at his feet even while Roger still held his hand. “Sorry about the watermelon. I was stoned. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“I know. Last night you were stoned and this morning you’re embarrassed. I still want you to come for dinner. Will you?”

“I don’t know, I—”

“Please?”

Stanley heaved a monumental sigh, rather like a man being asked to donate a kidney to a total stranger. “Well… I guess. If you insist.”

Roger’s smile came back with full wattage. “Great. And sometime between now and then, I’m going to have a few words with ChiChi about hanging drugs on your door. On
anybody’s
door for that matter.”

“He was just being neighborly,” Stanley said.

“No,” Roger answered, eyes stern, jawline set. “He was being stupid and reckless. If he wants to bed you, he should go about it the normal way. First bring you flowers or ask you out to din—”

Stanley watched as Roger clamped his mouth shut. Then he watched the blood rise to Roger’s cheeks. And while he did all that, he felt the blood rise to his own cheeks as well.

Roger tried to backpedal. “Not that I’m trying to—”

“I know you’re not,” Stanley said. And the cool way he said it, made Roger’s eyes open wide. He began to understand a few things, or thought he did. Stanley’s attitude was beginning to make sense. Maybe.

Throwing caution to the wind, Roger stepped forward and lifted Stanley’s chin with his fingertip. Stanley tried to look away, but Roger wouldn’t let him. He waited until Stanley’s eyes were centered on his, right where Roger wanted them to be.

“Sometimes I think maybe you think too much, Stanley. Sometimes I think you think you know things you really don’t know at all.”

Stanley focused his attention on Roger’s lips because he couldn’t bear to gaze into those crystal green eyes another second. “Terrible sentence,” he said. “Didn’t they teach you grammar in nursing school?”

Roger grinned. “Did you expect me to take advantage of you after you passed out last night? Is that what’s bothering you?”

“No, I—”

“Good. Because it shouldn’t.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Y-yes.”

Roger tapped Stanley’s lips with a fingertip. “Seven o’clock. Promise?”

Stanley nodded.

“And don’t bring any more melons.”

“I won’t.”

“Or eat anything else you find hanging on your doorknob.”

“I certainly won’t.”

“Can I have a kiss?”

“What, I—”

Roger didn’t wait for Stanley to finish his question. “I can’t resist,” Roger said, and gently laid his soft lips over Stanley’s mouth.

“No tongues,” Stanley mumbled around Roger’s mouth, and Roger smiled. Stanley could feel it.

Roger broke off the kiss while Stanley was just getting into it. “One favor,” Roger said.

Stanley merely nodded because he didn’t trust his voice. He was getting a hard-on, too, and he didn’t trust that either.

“Stop cutting yourself short.”

“Compared to you, I am short.”

“You know what I mean.”

Stanley nodded. “All right.” And after a second, he added, “Your place. Seven o’clock.”

Roger tousled his hair. “Good. And if you find you can’t wait any longer, come early.”

And with that, he was gone, bouncing and thumping down the stairs while he whistled a happy tune, leaving Stanley breathless and hopeful all over again in his wake.

Suddenly in a pretty good mood, Stanley rushed back into his apartment and without even thinking about it, began dressing for school. If he hurried, he wouldn’t miss more than one class.

He tried not to think about his dinner date for the evening, either. Because Roger was right. Stanley
did
think too much. And when he was thinking, he was usually thinking all the wrong things. At least he hoped he was.

After tonight he’d know for sure.

S
TANLEY
had been in the apartment almost a month before he noticed the two red-tailed hawks nesting in the eucalyptus tree just outside his living room window. He watched them now as he unwound from his day of classes and waited for seven o’clock to roll around so he could prance downstairs and spend some time with the man he was probably going to regret being so infatuated with.

No matter how nice Roger Jane was, no matter how many times he approached Stanley, no matter how many kind things he said, Stanley still felt he was courting a broken heart. He couldn’t help it. His inferior feelings, as far as romance was concerned, were too deeply embedded.

Even if Roger was being honest about wanting to build a friendship, that didn’t mean he wanted anything more. And
more
was exactly what Stanley craved. It was sort of like the longing you feel when you buy a lottery ticket, and you really, really want to win, but you know damn well you’ll be lucky if you get so much as your dollar investment back.

And as far as financial investments went, hell, Stanley was already out six bucks for the watermelon.

He just shook his head at that thought. God, he was a putz.

As the clock crept from four to five to six, Stanley went from tense to nervous to damn near panic-stricken. If it weren’t for the two hawks staring back at him through the glass, taking his mind off what was about to happen, he would probably be hiding under the bed like the coward he really was.

He could hear ChiChi flailing away at someone’s naked ass through the kitchen wall, but he pushed all interest in the proceedings out of his mind. Besides, he was getting used to the noises next door. They had ceased being intriguing long ago. What ChiChi did with his little leather whip didn’t much interest Stanley anymore. He had his own self-flagellation to worry about.

Finally Stanley dragged his nervous ass into the bathroom, tore off his clothes, and stood under a hot shower for twenty minutes, trying to calm down. When he started to prune, he climbed out and toweled off. Hair dry, he reached for the gel to spike it, then remembered what Roger had said about liking Stanley’s hair soft and ungooped. So Stanley turned from the mirror and dropped the sixteen-dollar bottle of styling gel into the wastebasket.

Jesus! How desperate to please was that?

And because Stanley was careful with his money, and also because he really had no idea how this night was going to pan out, he reached into the wastebasket, retrieved the sixteen-dollar bottle of styling gel, and stuck it back in the medicine cabinet.

Just in case.

Stanley pulled on a freshly laundered pair of jeans, a clean and not too ratty T-shirt, and opted to wear sandals instead of shoes. He might be an emotional wreck, but at least his feet would be comfortable.

As soon as he was presentable, he glanced at the clock. He still had twenty minutes to kill. He didn’t care what Roger said about coming early. He had no intention of rapping on the man’s door even one minute before seven o’clock. He had managed to make himself look desperate enough last night. Damned if he would do it again. In fact, Stanley might even shoot for being annoyingly late. That would show Roger Jane who was boss.

While he had stood pruning in the shower, the sun had gone down. Since it was dark outside, he could no longer see the hawks through the window, although he could still hear them now and then, crying and chattering to one another in the branches outside.

When his phone rang he knew beyond all doubt that Roger Jane was calling to cancel. He answered the call with a sinking heart, his feelings confused by both relief and anger.
Thank God!
he thought. Then his brain flip-flopped into
the jilting, two-timing bastard!
Nothing conflicted about Stanley Sternbaum. Nosiree.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t Roger on the phone at all. It was his mother. And she actually sounded chipper, which confused poor Stanley even more.

“Hello, dear. I just called to let you know the news.”

Stanley didn’t trust the happy lilt in the woman’s voice. If rattlesnakes could talk, that’s probably how they would sound just before they sank their fangs into your ass. Wary, Stanley asked, “What news would that be?”

After a dramatic pause to heighten the grandness of the whole thing, she finally announced, “I’ve quit smoking!”

Stanley couldn’t believe it. “Mom, that’s
great.
I’m proud of you. This is absolutely the best thing you could ever do for yourself. How are you coping? They say it’s really hard, especially for someone who has smoked as long as you have.”

His mother tittered. “No shit. I came out of the
womb
smoking. No wonder my mother hated me. That must have
hurt.
But it’s not so bad, not smoking. I seem to be coping just fine. I thought it would be difficult, but so far it’s really nothing at all. Just a breeze, Stanley. A veritable breeze. I should have done it years ago, because frankly, it’s easy as pie. No problem whatsoever. Some people are just crybabies. Whining about how terrible it is going into nicotine withdrawal and being hungry all the time and gaining three hundred pounds and everything. It’s all a bunch of hooey. Just a bunch of hooey.”

Stanley was floored. “Well, that’s wonderful. How long has it been since you quit?”

“Let me see,” she said. Stanley could picture her craning her little green or pink head around to look at the clock on the mantle. “Oh, well, that’s pretty good,” she crooned to herself. And aiming her words back to Stanley, she said, “It’s been twelve fucking minutes already.”

“Twelve minutes.”

“Twelve
fucking
minutes. Give or take. If you’re going to nitpick, maybe it’s more like ten.”

“Ten. Ten minutes. Not exactly a world record, is it?”

Stanley could sense a slight shift in the woman’s mood. Well, it was a little more than slight. It was more like the jolt you feel when the tectonic plate beneath your Reeboks suddenly slides thirty feet to the left and the building over your head crumbles into ruin. “Don’t be so fucking judgmental, Stanley. I’m doing the best I can.”

Stanley backpedaled like crazy. “You’re right. I’m sorry. And I’m sure it can’t be easy, what with you being so upset about your hair and all. But don’t worry. It’ll grow out.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Well, uh, isn’t it green?”

“No, it’s pink.”

“
All
of it?”

“Yes, all of it.”

“But isn’t it shorter than mine? Yesterday it was shorter than shit. I mean, shorter than mine.”

There was a chill in his mother’s voice that would have frozen kerosene. “So now you don’t like my new hairstyle. I hate to say this, Stanley, but sometimes you can be a miserable little turd. Ramon says I look
lovely
with my hair like this. My neighbors all commented on it too.”

“I’ll bet they did,” Stanley mumbled.

“Look, Stanley. If you don’t like my new hairstyle, don’t fumblefuck around mincing words. Just say so.”

“I don’t like your new hairstyle.”

“Well, why the hell not? It’s young, it’s hip, it’s the happening thing.”

Stanley laughed. “Did Ramon tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“Mom, Ramon is in the seventh week of beauty school. He hasn’t even gotten to perms or frostings yet. He would tell you
anything
to get you to let him play in your hair.”

Stanley could feel his mother vibrating over the phone: that’s how mad she was. It called to mind the old Pinto Stanley used to drive that had a shimmy in the front wheels that practically shook your fillings out when it went over thirty miles an hour.

“Well, if you hated what Ramon was doing, maybe you should have said something
yesterday.
Now I have to go buy a hat until this pink shit grows out.
Why didn’t you stop me?
”

“Hey, you’re the mom, I’m the son. You’re supposed to be the adult in the relationship.”

“Well, that’s just not fair!”

“No, I don’t suppose it is.”

“Oh, my God, I look like a freak! Don’t I?
Don’t I?”

“So you admit you don’t like it either.”

“That’s it! I’m hanging up now. I was in labor with you for sixteen hours!
Sixteen fucking hours, Stanley!
I had to dilate to something like two and a half feet to squeeze your big fat head out. And this is the thanks I get. If I start smoking again, it’ll be
your fault. Good-bye.”

Just to get back at him, Stanley pictured her shaking out a Marlboro and lighting it up even as she hung up the phone. That’s probably why she phoned him to begin with. She needed an excuse.

Well, ten minutes was better than nothing.

Stanley shook his head, glanced at the clock, and forgot about her in two seconds flat.