know me only as “Henry, Lloyd’s manager,” because, after all, that’s who I am here, the manager of Lloyd Griffith’s popular guesthouse.
Without Joey, Henry Weiner exists only in reference to Jeff or Lloyd.
The siren song of the Chunky Monkey in the freezer finally wins out. Without even thinking about it, I’m lured over to the refrigerator, and it’s with the first spoonful into my mouth that Jeff catches me. He barges into my apartment without knocking.
“What are you, Kramer?” I ask, annoyed. “What if I was in here with a trick?”
“From the looks of it, your only tricks tonight are named Ben and Jerry.” Jeff’s all smiles, as if he has good news. “I thought you were trying to lose weight.”
I toss the ice cream into the sink. It was getting crystallized anyway. “For your information, bucko,” I tell Jeff, still a little pissed, “I already tricked today. A very hot boy I met at Tea Dance. Ask your sister. She saw him.”
“Yeah, yeah, she told me. Good for you. But come downstairs, okay? Lloyd and I have been waiting for you to get back. We have something to tell you.”
I look over at him. What is it about Jeff O’Brien? He’s forty now, maybe even forty-one—he’s always been cagey about his age—but people still sometimes think he’s younger than I am. That’s because, unlike mine, Jeff’s hair hasn’t started to recede. Nor does any fleshy excess mar Jeff’s middle. He maintains the same strict gym routine we both kept during our days on the circuit. Of course, Jeff has always known a few shortcuts to looking good. He buys his T-shirts one size too small and has his jeans taken up in the seat to make his butt look more perky. And I suspect an occasional injection of Botox from Ann Marie’s dermatologist boss might explain why Jeff’s forehead is still as smooth as a nineteen-year-old’s. He argues that he keeps up appearances simply because a hot author pic sells books. Who am I to question success? Certainly I’m no expert at it.
I think again about Luke, and the copy of Jeff’s book under his bed. I decide against telling him.
“What’s the big news?” I ask.
Jeff winks at me. “We’ll tell you when you come down.”
He’s back out the door. I can hear his steps on the staircase, fast and happy. He’s probably signed another book contract. Good for him. The bounty never ends for Jeff O’Brien.
I turn to the sink to rinse the ice cream down the drain when my cell phone rings. The caller ID shows a wireless number with an area code I don’t recognize. Normally I just let calls I don’t recognize go to voice-mail—but for some reason I answer this one.
“Henry?” comes the voice at the other end.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, it’s Luke.”
“No way,” I say, smiling despite myself, my words ahead of my brain. “I was just thinking of—”
Bad. Very bad. Never admit right off that you were thinking of somebody. I learned that much from Jeff. Play aloof. Make them do the work.
Luke seems pleased. “Of me? Really? You were thinking of me?”
“Well,” I explain, “of my shirt. I left my shirt in your room.”
He laughs. “Isn’t the fact that you’re wearing mine an even exchange?”
“It’s not really a big deal—”
“We can make the switch tomorrow.” I can hear Luke blowing smoke from his cigarette. “I was thinking maybe we could hang out.”
So you can meet Jeff. “Well,” I say, regaining my stride, “tomorrow’s kind of busy for me…”
“I really enjoyed meeting you, Henry. Can I call you in the morning?”
“Like I said, tomorrow is kind of busy…”
“But can I just call and see if things lighten up for you? I’d really like to see you again, Henry. Maybe we can just, you know, get together for a little while?”
This is one pushy kid. I should just say no, end it right here. But instead I say, “Yeah, okay. Call me tomorrow afternoon.”
“Awesome. Talk to you tomorrow, Henry.” And he hangs up.
I smirk. By tomorrow Luke will have met someone else, probably some hot boy closer to his own age, either on the dance floor at the A House or on the steps of Spiritus Pizza, and he’ll have forgotten all about me.
Unless, of course, he still wants to meet Jeff badly enough.
“Henry!” Jeff hollers up the stairs. “Are you coming?”
I head down. “I had a call,” I tell him as I enter the guesthouse’s common area. “This may be hard for you to accept, Jeff, but I do have a life of my own. Sometimes your beck and call has to wait.”
Jeff just smirks. “Oh, Lloyd, our boy is feeling rebellious tonight.”
“We do appreciate you coming down, Henry,” Lloyd says from the bar. He comes around from behind, carrying a bottle of champagne and three glasses.
“Well,” I say, “I guess this really is a celebration. What’s the big news?”
“Don’t rush things,” Jeff says, settling himself onto the couch and propping his feet up on the coffee table. “We need the proper mood.”
Lloyd sets the bottle and the glasses down and softens the light. I sit in a chair opposite Jeff, wondering what this is all about. It’s more than just a book deal. It concerns Lloyd, too. I watch him move across the room to the front desk, where he turns off the ringer on the phone. Lloyd might not be as put together as Jeff, but he still looks damn good for his fourth decade as well. Buzzed head, a sexy soul patch of hair below his lower lip, a tattoo of a dragonfly on his well-rounded shoulder. He’s wearing a white ribbed tank top and low-rise jeans, and for a moment my mind flickers back to sex with him, as those green eyes hovered above me, those lips softly touching mine…
“Okay,” Lloyd says, breaking my reverie as he plops down on the couch next to Jeff, putting his arm around his lover’s shoulders. “You want to tell him or should I?”
“Tell me what?” I ask, sitting forward, finding myself getting anxious, despite the happy grins and the bottle of champagne waiting to be opened.
Jeff holds my eyes. “We’re getting married,” he says.
I look from him over to Lloyd.
“The middle of next month,” Lloyd adds.
“I know it’s not far away,” Jeff says, “but we want it to coincide with the anniversary of the day we met.”
“So we can keep the same anniversary,” Lloyd says.
“And Henry,” Jeff says. “We want you to be our best man.”
The words haven’t fully penetrated my mind. “Married,” I say.
“Yeah, one hundred percent legal,” Jeff exults. “After sixteen years I’m finally gonna make an honest man out of him.”
They giggle like schoolgirls.
“Married,” I say again.
“Well, what do you think?” Lloyd asks.
“Well,” I say, unsure of my thoughts, “I didn’t think marriage was something you’d be interested in.” Years of political pontificating from Jeff and Lloyd come flooding back to me, their endless rant against the status quo. “I mean, marriage is a failed heterosexual institution, isn’t it? You’ve both called it that.”
“Sure it is,” Jeff says, “but maybe we homos can improve on the formula.” He’s beaming like a jack o’lantern.
“But,” I say,