CHAPTER SIXTEEN #4
Once Carver had come into Scott’s hand — and once Scott had used the other hand to dig around in his half-open duffel bag for a towel to wipe them both down with — they lay panting on the navy blue fitted sheet, too hot and wired to cuddle or sleep.
After a few minutes Carver sat up and started to trace Scott’s body with his hands; it took Scott a moment to realize he was examining his tattoos.
“What does this mean,” he said with the unthinking boldness of a little kid, pointing at the ouroboros around Scott’s left bicep.
“Fair warning, some of these answers are going to disappoint you,” Scott said.
“Why? Did you get it for a girl?”
“No, I got it ‘cause it looked cool on the flash sheet.” Scott indicated the knife on his left forearm. “Looked cool on the flash sheet.” He pointed to the poppy flower on his right forearm. “Looked pretty on the flash sheet.”
Carver touched the anchor on his right bicep.
“Second one I got, after this one,” Scott said, tapping the avenging angel on his thigh, which was in need of a touch-up. “Got it a week after I moved to L.A. I liked the idea of getting one of the classics. It was either that or MOM in a heart.”
“But my mom said you barely see your mom.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of why I went for the anchor.”
Carver laughed and touched the scorpion on his hip.
“Thought it would look cool,” Scott said. “And I always liked the scorpion and the frog story.”
“What, you relate to the scorpion?”
He laughed. “No, man, the frog. The scorpion just looks cooler.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Carver pointed below his collarbone, and Scott tilted his head to see which one he was indicating. “That’s a line from Waiting For Godot.”
“You read it?”
“I saw it off-Broadway back in like, ‘06, and I actually didn’t like it then, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I bought a copy and read it and liked it.”
“You were in New York in ‘06?” Carver said, his gaze intent.
“Briefly,” Scott said. “I caught some work as a session artist.”
“Where were you living then?”
“I’d just left L.A. for Phoenix.”
“Phoenix? Arizona?”
“It’s a good place for like, day labor under the table, and there was cool stuff going on there musically at the time, I swear,” Scott said. “There still is, it’s a good scene. I was just never, like — I don’t know.”
“Never what?” Carver said.
“Ah, nothing. I feel like this shit bores you.”
Carver rolled his eyes and ran a hand up and down his thigh. “Just talk. I’ll let you know if you start boring me.”
“Alright, alright. Uh, I don’t know.” Scott was a little embarrassed, and embarrassed about being embarrassed.
Most people — especially people he’d just had sex with — were happy to hang on his every word about his art, but with Carver it was different.
His art was the reason he’d left for California.
There was more pressure to justify, to reason it all out.
“I spent a lot of time around the hardcore, punk, metal scenes, but that wasn’t me.
I —” He broke off with an ambivalent noise.
“Too loud?” Carver said, with a knowing look.
“Kind of, yeah. Too fast, too loud. I played in this one band for a while, just a couple months replacing a guy who’d left, and at every show their fans would get this giant mosh pit going, and I hated it.
” Scott laughed. “This is going to sound so stupid, but it felt like they weren’t even paying attention? ”
Carver laughed, too.
“Like, quit shoving each other, I’m fucking playing up here.”
“Can I tell you something?” Carver said, sounding almost shy.
“Yeah, of course.”
“I listen to metal sometimes.”
Scott laughed in surprise. “Yeah?”
“My freshman year roommate was really into Slipknot, he got me into it.”
“You ever go to any shows?”
“Christ, no. And I barely listen to it anymore, but I did for a while… just for like, workouts, or when I had to grind on work, or if I wanted to not think about anything.”
“Yeah, it can be hard to think while you’re listening to metal.”
“Right, and you want people to think about your shit, I know. You want to tell a whole story about the old man and the shoe, or whatever.”
“Come on,” Scott said, laughing more. “I’m not, like, a folk singer. And I want to be loud, just my kind of loud.”
“Not even a little folk?”
“No, I don’t — this sounds bad, but I never wanted to write about all the problems in the world.
Like, who am I to get into that? I’m not like Bob Dylan, watching the civil rights movement happen around me.
Or even like Bruce Springsteen growing up dirt poor in Jersey.
I grew up here, and nothing ever really happened to me.
I’m just a guy who lived on the periphery of a really nice place and didn’t go to college. ”
“Then what stories do you want to tell?”
“Shit that happened to me, or shit I saw happen, or something beautiful I saw. Or sometimes I see a person out in public and I kind of imagine a story about them and I end up writing it down. I wrote a song that — I don’t think anyone knows this, ‘cause the lyrics are kind of abstract — but it was about an old lady I saw on the bus in Denver. Or who I imagined her to be, like, the life I thought she’d maybe had. ”
“Denver,” Carver repeated. “When were you in Denver?”
“After Phoenix. Actually, after Phoenix I went back to L.A., then out to Denver, then Seattle, then back to Denver for a few years. I liked Denver… it was a cool place, and I got to play Red Rocks at one point, which was sick. But eventually it got too expensive, so I moved to Philly, kinda realized I actually missed the East Coast and stayed for a while. That was where Silk Tourniquet got started. After a few years I moved to Jersey so I could get access to the rich kid music lessons market.” Scott yawned.
“You teach kids?” Carver said, sounding surprised.
“Yeah. Not as much anymore, I have more steady income now and I don’t really have as much time for it, which is kind of ideal ‘cause now I only have to take on the kids I like. I can tell the brats to go pound sand. Well, tell their moms.”
Carver smirked at him. “You ever fuck the moms?”
Scott exhaled to start explaining himself, and Carver made a crowing noise. “Okay — I fucked one mom, after the kid went to college —”
Carver cracked up laughing.
“— she kept telling me how lonely she was!”
“What is it with you and the older women?”
“Dude, I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it too hard.”
“Good thing you didn’t get that MOM tattoo, or the cougars might start to wonder,” Carver said, and Scott groaned in dismay. “You ever fuck older men?”
“Hell no.”
“How often do you fuck men?” Carver said in an unconvincingly casual tone, looking at him from under his eyelashes.
“Not a ton,” Scott said honestly. “Sometimes the opportunity presents itself.”
“You do have a bisexual look.”
“I know, I’m aware of it. You look more straight than I do.”
“And yet,” Carver said, with a devilish grin, “people can just tell somehow.”
“It’s not a bad thing,” Scott said, smiling back at him. “You’re just a little bit… elegant. Anyway, once in a while I’m in the mood for a guy. Like how once in a while you’re in the mood for a steak.”
“No love there?”
“A few of them took me out to dinner once or twice, but honestly, I don’t think men look at me for that. I think they get a certain impression and run with it. Women are a little more patient.”
Carver nodded. “What impression?”
Scott wasn’t sure what to say. This particular topic felt like a live wire he should take care not to grab, but so had fucking Carver in the first place. “That it’s not worth trying me out.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“For most people, it isn’t,” he said, shrugging.
“I can tell pretty quick on my end if I have any kind of connection with someone beyond sex. So if it’s not there, I’d imagine I come across as pretty closed-off.
And the times when that connection has been there, it’s been, uh, fleeting.
Even when it was intense, once that faded, it was like — I knew there was something that should be there and I knew it wasn’t.
I never want to believe it, but once I know, I know, and then I leave.
Or sometimes they figure it out first and dump me, and then I get to wallow in it even though I know they were right. ”
Carver was looking at him with intent again, that fixed big-cat stare. “That’s it?”
“That’s been it.”
“I always thought of you as a hopeless romantic.”
“I think I am, I’m just not delusional. A lot of my music is about, like, crushes or missed opportunities or fantasies.
Situations where there’s room to imagine something real and solid.
And I want the real thing. I always have.
I just kept not finding it, and I knew I wasn’t finding it.
I think I fell in love maybe twice, but it was just — both times I knew going in there wasn’t a future, I was just happy to be stupid and infatuated for a while, and get some music out of it. ”
“Who were they?” Carver said, still giving him that look.
“The married woman I told you about,” Scott said. “And this Spanish chick I met in Barcelona when I was there for a couple months. Like ten years ago now. She was a PhD student. We barely knew each other, we just ran around the city acting like we did.”
“How do you know there wasn’t a future?”
“Because I don’t think about either of them anymore,” Scott said, gazing back at him, feeling his heart quicken and his breathing shallow. “I guess, uh, I omitted the first time.”
“The first time?”
“You. I forgot to mention you.”
Carver gave him a slow nod, and his gaze wandered. “Me, huh?”
“Yeah, in high school.”
“Right.”
“And I have, uh, continued to think about you.”
Carver’s chest rose, and he blinked several times, but said nothing.
“For whatever that’s worth,” Scott added with sudden anxiety. He hadn’t meant to lead them here — but then, he hadn’t, had he? Carver’s relentless questioning had gotten them to this point.
Carver was quiet for a long moment. Then he murmured, “How often?”
“Huh?”
“How often did you think about me?”
“Uh… whenever I got reminded.”
“How often is that?”
“I don’t know. A couple times a week?”
“Couple times a week,” Carver repeated, and Scott’s stomach swooped. That was far too often, he knew this. “What do you think of when you think of me?”
“Just, I don’t know, remembering you, wondering how you’re doing.” Scott was quiet. “I saw you at the fifteen-year reunion.”
“You did?” Carver said, sounding surprised. “I didn’t know you went.”
“Letty dragged me. I was only there for like half an hour, I left with Bryce and Eli and those guys, and we posted up at a bar down the street for the rest of the night. But I saw you, I think with Lillian, and I thought you looked a little… I don’t know.
I started wondering if you were doing alright. ”
“I barely remember being there,” Carver said, shaking his head.
“I was surprised you came.”
“You should have said hi.”
“Would you have wanted me to?”
Carver smiled. “Probably not, no.”
Scott studied him. “How often did you think about me?”
Carver began to laugh, sounding genuinely amused, which was not the reaction Scott either expected or wanted. “I’ve tried not to. Christ. I spent eighteen years just forcing myself not to think about you.”
“Why? Even if you never saw me again, wasn’t it a nice memory?”
“Because I wanted to see you again,” Carver said, like he was dumb. “Because it was a nice memory.”
“Okay. Yeah.”
They were quiet. Carver was starting to look cold, so Scott gathered up the comforter where it had been tossed and made up the mattress.
They both bedded down, cuddling into each other, laying their heads side-by-side on the single pillow.
Carver reached up to play with Scott’s hair, twirling it in his fingers.
“Do you know what you’re gonna do?” Scott said carefully. “About…”
“My job and my wife?” Carver supplied. “No. Not yet.”
“Okay.”
“I do want to leave her. I do want to leave my job, too, but I don’t know where I’d go — oh, fuck!” He slapped the meat of his palms to his eyes as if they’d just been gouged out. “Shit. Fuck.”
“What?” Scott said, alarmed.
“Nothing. Sorry. Nothing. I just thought about my carry.”
“Who’s Carrie?”
“My carried interest. Fuck! Don’t worry about it.”
“Carver, what?”
“It’s just money, it doesn’t really matter, but if I leave now I’m going to forfeit millions of dollars.”
Scott sympathetically sucked in air through his teeth. “Millions?”
“Yep,” Carver said, his hands still pressed to his eyes. “Even if I handle this as well as I can, I’m still going to leave something like…” He trailed off for a moment as if doing mental math. “Fourteen million dollars on the table.”
“Jesus!” Scott said, trying not to sound appalled by the amount of money involved in whatever the fuck Carver did for a living. “How much are you worth now?”
“On my own, raw market value? Probably eighty million.”
“What?” Scott exclaimed.
“What did you think I was worth?”
“Like, ten!”
Carver laughed. “Ten? Come on.”
“No offense, Carv, but who cares about fourteen million when you’ve already got eighty?”
Carver shrugged, removing his hands from his eyes and looking over at Scott. “Human nature.”
Scott shifted on the mattress, feeling out of sorts and self-conscious. This somehow felt like more of a revelation than the paternity stuff. Who the fuck had eighty million dollars? “Now you’re gonna think I’m a gold digger,” he said.
Carver laughed. “Not with that very communist look of disgust you just got.”
“I’m not a communist.”
“You’re a little bit of one. Not in a serious, Trotskyite way, but in that ‘why don’t we all live in a big house and take care of each other’ way.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I actually like that about you,” Carver said, surprising him. “Look, I like money, and I’m good at making it, but it’s not — you know. I’m aware it hasn’t been making me happy.”
Scott reached up and stroked Carver’s cheek with his thumb. Carver’s eyes softened.
“Can you turn that light off?” he added. “I’m so fucking tired, I just realized.”
Scott got to his feet and hit the light, then sank back down in the darkness, returning to Carver’s warm body. Carver snuggled up into the crook of his arm, laying his head on Scott’s chest, and Scott held him and listened to his breathing slow as he fell asleep.