CHAPTER THREE #2
“No, I think you’re right,” Lillian said, tossing her hair. “Now that I think about it, that is a lot of what we’re invested in — neural interfaces and life extension. And curing fat people.”
Carver rushed to edit her: “Obesity. Curing obesity.”
The thoughtful silence that followed this gave the patient, neglected wedding coordinator the opportunity to pipe up: “Should we go take a walk around the grounds?”
Letty, who had been exchanging an amused look with Sana that was clearly about Lillian, said, “Sure.”
They all started heading for the door that led outside to the green expanses of the club’s bridle paths and golf course. Scott, fingering a dirty little riff on his guitar, looked up as they passed and said, “Could I grab Carver, actually?”
Everyone paused. No, no, they were so close to the door! Don’t listen to him, he’s dressed like a Foo Fighter, he’s not a real person.
“Grab me?” Carver said, coming to an unhappy stop.
“Yeah, I need to check the levels with someone on bass while I’m on guitar. I’m gonna have my buddy Johnny on bass and keys on the actual day, but he gets in tomorrow.”
The chemistry of the group changed; now Carver was no longer in it. Now he was a tonsil stone that needed to be ejected before they could go on about their business, and he felt their confused impatience increase by a logarithm as he remained motionless.
“Yeah, coming,” Carver said, and climbed onto the stage. Scott offered him a hand up, but he didn’t use it.
“Have fun,” Nora said. “Just like old times.”
Carver breathed out a laugh. Everyone filed out the door to the grounds. He watched them go through the windows, then looked over at Scott, who was extending a Fender J-Bass to him.
He took it. “What are we playing?”
“Just noodling around,” Scott said. “And thanks. I was going to ask that kid to do it, but he was a little overeager, he kept dropping shit. I figured, you know, you’ve at least played bass for me before.”
“For you?” Carver put the strap around his neck and adjusted it. “I think I played bass with you?”
Scott shot him a grin — a genuine one that made his eyes crinkle. “Right. And you weren’t bad.”
“Not bad? I think I was pretty good, dude.”
“You were impressively technically proficient for how little time you had to learn.”
Scott had put together a band the spring of their sophomore year and lined up a few local gigs mostly through charisma alone, then got in a pitched artistic dispute with his bassist and lost him.
Carver, hearing about this, offered to learn in time to play the gigs.
He’d played violin as a kid and didn’t see what the difference could possibly be.
He still didn’t. Besides a few details like size, the instruments made similar demands of him.
Scott fingered the guitar again, tuning it, then added: “You weren’t the most passionate musician, I might say.”
“So?” Carver roamed the stage aimlessly, waiting for directions.
“Just your playing felt a little, uh, studied.”
“It was studied. I’m not a musical person. I was doing you a favor.”
“No, I know.” Scott peeked at him from underneath dark eyelashes. “I mean, I didn’t want it to just be a favor. I kinda did hope it might be a good outlet for you.”
“Outlet for what?”
“I don’t know. Latent creative passions.”
“I don’t have latent creative passions. Not everyone is creative.”
“Yeah. I guess not.”
“I did like playing loud,” Carver offered.
Scott grinned. “That’s an outlet too.”
His large, calloused hands were moving up and down the neck of the guitar with a speed and ease that made Carver queasy.
He willed himself not to watch, but he was fixated.
The modafinil — the same drug they gave fighter pilots so they could stay awake for twenty hours in the cockpit — was pressing his brain to his eye sockets with howling urgency.
Look at those hands. Imagine them on you, recall his teenage fumbling and imagine what he could do now.
As good as it had been, imagine how good it could be.
Imagine him squeezing your thighs and throat while you writhe in brainless ecstasy.
Imagine one hand a lovely vice around your dick while the fingers on the other work their way inside you and rub you out of existence like marker off a whiteboard.
Imagine the hands pinning you down and never letting you up again, freeing you from all earthly madness.
Carver was getting a little bit hard again. Luckily his stimulant erections were usually transient. He stood behind the bass rigid with mortification, forcing his chattering mind to go blank. His dry mouth had flooded with saliva.
Scott looked up. “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s hit it.”
Carver nodded, grateful for a distraction.
As the blood moved upward out of his dick, his frantic need subsided and shame rushed into its place.
There was a greasy, tender note of gratification in the shame, but mostly it just made him feel low, and it made him resent Scott.
It would be one thing to just fuck men. In the Roman tradition, Carver felt like he would struggle with this shit less if he only ever wanted to take the active role during sex, if there were nothing passive in him.
He resented that men like Scott could dismantle him into submission, and he resented Scott for being the one to awaken this part of him.
Carver remembered fantasizing about Scott’s fingers the same way during band practice twenty years ago, wanting things he had no words for before the two of them had even kissed.
In his teenage fog of hormones his desires had been even more extreme.
He wanted Scott to tear him apart like a pack of wild dogs.
He wanted things that the women in porn said they wanted, things no one else ever seemed to want in real life, which contributed to his shame.
At sixteen Carver had wanted an ecstasy so pure and terrible that it would rend him asunder at his moment of orgasm, killing him and sending him directly to heaven.
Scott started to jam, filling the reception hall with warm and romantic chords. Muscle memory took Carver over, and after some musical throat-clearing he accompanied him effortlessly, his fingers moving on autopilot.
The kid who had been helping Scott earlier came back out of the hallway office he’d disappeared into, grinning. “Sounds great, man,” he said, when Scott stopped.
“Nah, I’m getting buried,” Scott said, setting his guitar down and starting to move the amps.
“Well, the bass should be behind you, right?” the kid said, pointing at Carver without taking his eyes off Scott.
“I was,” Carver protested.
The kid acted like he hadn’t spoken. Some things never changed — teenage boys still hero-worshipped Scott.
Scott finished what he was doing and glanced at Carver. “Yeah, he’s fine. It was the amps. Let’s go again.”
They went again, for the sole audience of this zitty teenager in a crisp polo.
Carver tried to channel some of his lunatic horny fighter pilot energy into his playing, which at first resulted in a couple of sour notes, to the clear disdain of the teenager.
But before long Carver’s fingers caught up with his mind, and then he saw what Scott meant.
The mix benefitted when the bass had some energy behind it — Scott sounded better too, without doing anything different.
Scott grinned at him again, nodding, and Carver smiled back. They wound down, and Scott said, “Okay, that’s solid. I think we’re good. So I can just leave all my shit here overnight?”
“Yeah, we only use this hall for events, and nothing else is booked for this weekend,” the teenager said. “Just make sure you pack it up and get it out of here after the reception ends.”
“Cool,” Scott said. “Thanks.”
The kid took the hint that he was being dismissed. “No worries, man,” he said, and vacated the scene.
Scott turned to Carver. Standing this close, Carver had to crane his neck to make eye contact — he was about five inches shorter. “I feel like we’ve barely had a second alone.”
“Uh, do we need one?”
“I mean, I’d like to catch up.” Scott set his guitar down and moved toward the edge of the stage, sitting down.
Carver followed suit, but sat with his legs crossed instead of dangling them like Scott was, his body rigid.
“It’s cool to see Letty so happy,” Scott said, glancing over at him.
“It is,” Carver said.
“You haven’t really hung out with them as a couple, have you?”
“Uh, yeah, no. I only just met Sana.”
“Oh, shit,” Scott said. “The four of us should meet up after the rehearsal dinner tonight. Catch up, reminisce.”
Carver stared into space. “Sure.”
“It is weird being back here. Since my parents moved, I’m never out here anymore.”
“Right.”
“I always forget how much I really, uh…” Scott trailed off, then laughed and scratched the back of his neck. “I really don’t like these people.”
Carver swiveled his head to him. “What people?”
“Bitterfeld people, man. Aloof, entitled…”
“You know, you’re one of them,” Carver snapped. “You grew up here, you’re one of us, you always will be.”
Scott examined Carver for a moment, making his cheeks warm. “You got me there,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “but it’s not like I was in step with the rest of you.”
“You elected not to be.”
“No, man, I — come on, don’t get defensive. You know I’m not talking about you. We always used to talk about this, how weird we both felt growing up here. You’re telling me you don’t still feel that way?”
Carver didn’t respond to this. It was embarrassing to get defensive and be called defensive, yet everything Scott was saying was making him more and more defensive.
Down the hallway, the door to the reception hall banged open, and they both looked up.
Letty’s mother, Carver’s aunt Josie, bustled in with her husband Hank on her heels.
They looked like they had gotten dressed in a hurry and rushed over here.