CHAPTER SEVEN #2
He knew he was being disingenuous — of course some of what Scott said had hurt his feelings — but none of it badly enough to stop Carver from wanting to have sex with him ever again, and he was really trying not to think about anything else right now.
Scott leaned his elbows onto his thighs and glanced over at him. “I said some mean shit.”
Carver shrugged. “I did, too,” he said, out of both honesty and dismissiveness.
He didn’t want Scott to start apologizing for anything specific he’d said, because he didn’t want them to rehash any of it.
He had some paranoia that Scott might be using an apology as a pretext to revisit his own predictions, eighteen years out.
So, are you madly in love with the woman you married, or no?
Did the goal posts finally stop flying around, or no?
“I should have been more ready to hear a no,” Scott said.
Carver was relieved to hear him take it in that direction. His body relaxed enough to allow him some magnanimity. “But I kept hyping you up about it,” he said. “I kept, uh… I… I encouraged the fantasy.”
Scott’s dark eyes grew slightly wider and more liquid. “Right. Why?”
Carver’s mouth went dry. He sipped his water. “Escapism, I guess.”
“When we fought, you swore you’d been considering it.”
“I did consider it.”
“But only as a fantasy, you’re saying. No part of you was ever serious?”
“I didn’t say that. See, this is why I didn’t want to do this,” Carver said, exhaling a wry laugh. “You just want to make me explain myself.”
“Maybe I do,” Scott said with some defiance. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I would.”
“So?”
Carver stared into his glass. “You know why I said no. We’re adults now. You get it from a logical standpoint.”
“No, I’m not sure I do,” Scott said. “I know it was a crazy idea, I got that at the time, but people do crazy shit. It was pretty long odds for you to get where you are now, career-wise, but you still chased it like I chased music. So I guess it just makes me wonder if you truly thought it wasn’t worth it, or what. ”
Carver’s temper started outrunning his mouth. “What, you want to know if I have regrets now?”
“That wasn’t what I said,” Scott said, too quickly to be convincing.
“Do you have regrets?”
“About what?”
“Running off to fucking California.”
Scott hesitated. “Not in terms of my career, no. L.A. was where I needed to be to start getting my foot in the door.”
“Because I always wondered if all that shit you said about Manhattan being expensive and insular — I wondered if that was you laying cover for getting as far away from Bitterfeld as possible.”
“Yeah, you have a point, but I ended up being right. I couldn’t have afforded the city and I don’t think I would have gotten as many opportunities.”
Carver sat there running his tongue over his teeth, frustrated.
It would have been a painful compromise for both of them, one that wouldn’t have quite shot them clear of the hometown they were suffocating in, but if Scott had only gone as far as the city then he could have more reasonably followed him, he could have spent a couple semesters at NYU before taking another run at Columbia.
“So,” he snapped, “why exactly was it such a huge blow to your ego for me to turn you down? Because I expected you to forget about me the second you got out there and got balls deep in some hairless blonde pussy. Why did you even hang onto this, just so you’d have something to write about when you first got out there? ”
Scott’s expression soured into a glare. He got up and started pacing the short length of the living room. Carver remained still on the couch, wincing internally with regret.
“First of all, screw you,” Scott said. “You don’t get to project imaginary shit on me and then punish me for it.
You think my life out there was the MTV Beach House?
I was living in a shithole with nine other guys, eating beans, working construction jobs under the table.
I was busking. You think I was getting my dick sucked all day?
I used to go home with women just so I could take a hot shower in a nice bathroom. ”
“Wow, sounds like I missed out.”
“That was me on my own! You know that wasn’t what I pictured for us, I told you what I pictured for us, we talked about it.”
“So it’s my fault you were busking?” Carver said, astonished.
“No!” Scott stopped mid-stride, wheeled and sighed. “Jesus, just listen to me. I’m asking you why you let me think us staying together was an option.”
“I told you, because I was stupid and I wanted it to be! We were teenagers!”
“You weren’t a stupid teenager, you’ve never been stupid a day in your life. If it was only ever a fantasy, why did we even talk about it? You think I don’t know you? You always knew how to keep shit to yourself when it was strategic to. So why say anything?”
Carver felt hot and prickly all over. “What the fuck do you want from me?” he demanded.
Scott rubbed his eyes hard with the palms of his hands. “Nothing. Screw it. This is not productive. This is such ancient history.”
“Agreed!”
“But I don’t get it,” Scott said, dropping his hands. “You’re not angry at me for what I said at the time, so what are you angry at me about? Why haven’t we talked for almost twenty years? Why aren’t we even fucking acquaintances? Are you angry at me for asking you?”
Carver’s mouth grew drier. He swallowed again. “We don’t talk because we never had that much in common to begin with.”
“Bullshit, we had the important stuff in common.”
“Well, maybe I am pissed about what you said at the time. And maybe I am pissed at you for asking.” This spilled out of him.
Scott sat back down. Now he was the one facing Carver while Carver faced the rest of the living room and stared at the TV, at Paul Desmond’s tiny shadowed face on the album art for Take Ten, feeling numb.
“Why?” Scott said.
“Because you knew I couldn’t go! So why put it in my head?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You did. You knew what it was like for me.”
“I know you wanted their approval,” Scott said. “I also knew it was probably impossible to get.”
“But I had to try.”
“I don’t know that you did.”
“You don’t get it,” Carver said, still staring into space, his mouth ever-drier. “We’re different people. We want different things from life.”
“So what exactly is it that you want out of life?” Scott said, his voice gentle.
Carver became suddenly furious again. He knew what triggered it: the word exactly, and the Sesame Street tone. “Don’t fucking start on me with that shit,” he snarled before he could stop himself.
Next to him, Scott went still, then said, “Yeah. Did that feel like a normal response to that question?”
Carver started laughing and shaking his head. “You motherfucker,” he said, “you motherfucker. I am not doing this with you.”
“I just asked a simple question.”
“No one knows the answer to that question! Do you know what you want?”
“I think so,” Scott said. “And I’m happy most of the time.”
“You’re happy? You didn’t look happy in the garage. You didn’t sound happy about your career.”
Scott shrugged. “It’s a little embarrassing to come back here and be reminded that I don’t have my shit together in the traditional ways. And frankly, I know what success looks like to you.”
“So it’s my fault.”
Scott exhaled a laugh and did something surprising — he reached out and put his hands on Carver, one on his shoulder and the other on his upper back. Carver froze, feeling prickly heat at these points of contact.
“Please,” Scott pleaded. “Please. I don’t want to be adversarial. I just want to talk.”
“I can’t get off the defensive when I feel like you’re fucking patronizing me.”
“Patronizing you? Carver, you’re filthy rich, you’re good-looking and smart, you’re this huge success, you have everything that most people want. I don’t even get how you feel that way.”
“Because it may be what most people want, but I know it’s not what you want.” His throat was tight. He swallowed again. “And you, inexplicably, feel sorry for me. I can tell.”
“I’m just sort of worried about you, brother.”
“I don’t need you to do that,” Carver said in a shamefully small voice. “There’s no reason to.”
Scott took his hands away. Carver missed them as soon as they were gone.
“I have reasons,” Scott said.
“Like what?”
“Like… you don’t seem like you’re eating right, you look pretty stressed, and you sound like you’re not really in love with your —” (in the split-second between words, Carver became convinced he was going to say wife and felt his stomach plummet) “— job, and maybe like you’re using pharmaceuticals to get through the day. ”
Carver was silent, and Scott added, “If I’m wrong, tell me to go fuck myself.”
“You just described half of Wall Street.”
“Now I’ll say something you’d never expect a broke and pretentious musician to say,” Scott said, “but maybe Wall Street isn’t a very good place.”
“Yeah, and? It’s all I’ve ever done, and it was viciously fucking hard to get where I am now.
I’ve worked ninety-hour weeks and backstabbed people I liked and sold myself out, over and over.
Now I’m at a solid rung on the ladder and I can’t even enjoy it.
” Carver punctuated this speech by pulling his knees to his chest and burying his face in them.
Scott was quiet for a moment. “You said earlier today you always thought you might quit and use the money to do something else.”
“I haven’t made enough money yet.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough to be safe.”
“How much is that?”
“I don’t know,” Carver muttered.
“I think you have an anxiety problem,” Scott said.
“No shit.”
“You know, if you’re doing uppers, it’s probably making that shit worse.”
“But without them I can’t work,” Carver said into his knees.
Scott exhaled. “I might need another drink.”
That wasn’t what he needed and Carver knew it.
He stretched his left hand out, reaching for Scott, his heart speeding up.
He felt the do-or-die madness that always carried him along in moments like this, when his constant terror of fucking things up suddenly gave way to a pure resolve.
If it had to be done and no one else was willing or able to do it, then he could do it, he would immediately begin to do it as if God were working through him.
God placed Carver’s hand on Scott’s warm thigh. The muscle tensed under his palm.
“Carver,” Scott said, his voice soft again.
Carver lifted his head and looked at him. He didn’t see rejection in his face, but instead a moral hesitancy.
“What?” he said.
“I don’t know if we should do this.”
Carver unraveled his body from its tense ball and moved toward Scott, facing him, leaning into him. He placed his right hand on Scott’s thigh this time, higher up, and Scott inhaled.
“Maybe we should talk more,” Scott said.
“Why?”
“I don’t want you to regret this tomorrow.”
“I will regret it,” Carver said, “but if I don’t do it I’d regret that too.”
Scott met his eyes. His were soft and dark and beginning to unfocus. He said nothing but stretched a pinky out to touch Carver’s wedding ring where it rested against his thigh.
Carver’s heart palpitated. “Don’t worry about that,” he said.
“It means something.”
“I know it does, it means an agreement. Lillian and I just have a certain kind of agreement.”
“An agreement that you can fuck guys?”
“More or less.”
Scott put his hand atop Carver’s, covering his ring, and squeezed him lightly. Carver’s dick twitched.
“Everything you’re saying is killing me,” Scott said. “I never wanted you to clip your own wings.”
“I didn’t,” Carver murmured, getting closer to him. He smelled like soap and the lemon oil he used on his guitar frets, mingled with his sweat and a lingering bitter note of burnt transmission fluid. “I’m free. Right now, I’m free. I’m doing what I want to.”
“In secret, in the dark…”
Carver nuzzled his throat, then tilted his head so Scott’s short beard scraped across his own five o’clock shadow. “Last time you fucked me I screamed. Maybe this time I’ll scream so loud I wake everyone up.”
Scott’s whole body stiffened, and he grabbed Carver by the upper bicep. Carver slid his hand up to Scott’s crotch and undid his fly, his mouth filling with saliva as he did. He stroked Scott’s dick through his boxers and found he was already almost rock hard.
“Oh, you still like me?” Carver teased him, his own dick twitching again. He felt his rational mind sailing away from him, and waved it goodbye.
Scott’s breath hitched. His eyes were closed. “I forgot you were like this.”
“Like what?”
“A menace. Just… impossible.”
“Impossible to do what with?”
“I’m trying to be a good guy, here, and you won’t let me.”
“What’s so bad about giving me what we both want?” Carver said, continuing to stroke him. Scott’s lips parted, and he shifted against the couch, thrusting minutely against Carver’s hand. “Don’t pretend you haven’t been thinking about it.”
“Thinking isn’t doing,” Scott said, then exhaled like he’d been holding a breath.
Carver, frustrated, stopped his work and sat back on the couch with his hands in the air. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s just go to bed. Let’s be good.”
Scott stared at him for a moment, gone behind the eyes, then dove on him and slammed him backward into the couch.
He grabbed Carver by the top of his throat, his fingertips gripping the base of his jaw, and started kissing him sloppily.
Carver moaned in delight and wiggled under him so he could get enough purchase to grind his dick against Scott’s torso.
He was in bliss. He loved Scott’s strong and calloused hands on him.
He remembered with a stab of fear that his parents were asleep in the house two hundred feet away, but whatever, fuck them, they deserved this and much worse.