Chapter 6
6.
A Room of One’s Own
“Keep your dirty secrets in bedazzled boxes.”
—Disco Witch Manifesto #126
“Try this,” Ronnie said, handing Joe a skimpy, sleeveless Gold’s Gym T-shirt that had been cut off at the midriff.
While Howie and Lenny were setting up the attic, Joe had run back to Ronnie’s room at the Flotel to borrow something more appropriate to wear for his five PM interview.
“Where’d you get this?” Joe asked, squeezing himself into the shirt. “The kids’ department at Woolworths?”
“It’s not The First Pennsylvania Bank—it’s a gay bar. They wanna see your guns and your tits.”
Joe checked himself in the mirror. The shirt did make his arms looks bigger. It also exposed the furry treasure trail that perfectly bisected his stomach. “Wow … I look kinda good.”
“More than kinda ! You’d give Tony Danza a run for his money. Now, let me see your tightest jeans—we may need to rip ’em in the crotch.”
When Joe got back to 44 and ⒈／⒋ Picketty Ruff, the boys were still banging around upstairs, so he dragged his duffel into the bathroom to shower and get ready for his interview. When he emerged twenty minutes later, Howie and Lenny were on the couch, hands folded, smiling mischievously.
“Look at you!” Howie exclaimed. “So handsome!”
“Not bad.” Lenny nodded approvingly. “Ripped crotch. Nice touch. Trampy, but not overboard.”
“Ronnie is a genius at gay stuff,” Joe said. “Can I see the attic yet?”
“We hope you like it,” Howie said, winking at Lenny.
Joe climbed up the attic ladder with his duffel. As soon as his head cleared the hatch, he let out a Hollywood-worthy gasp. The attic had been completely transformed. All the boxes were gone, and the shelves had been rearranged, creating enough room for a bureau, a fully made-up queen-sized mattress, and a nightstand with a campy lamp featuring a male hula dancer and a stack of old books.
“Do you like it?” Howie asked from just below Joe on the ladder.
“It’s incredible,” he said, stepping up into the newly created bedroom.
“The mattress is practically new!” Lenny shouted up. “We stole it—I mean commandeered it from one of the houses we clean!”
“They won’t mind,” Howie added. “They’re Merv Griffin rich. Besides, they switched to waterbeds. By the way, that afghan was knitted by a wonderful transsexual up in Provincetown. The wool is from a herd of holy Guatemalan alpacas. Feel the energy. It’ll keep you safe from any terrible nightmares … or at least the useless ones.”
Joe dropped his duffel and rubbed his hands across the soft orange and brown afghan before letting his exhausted body fall onto the giant angel-food-cake mattress. “This is the most comfortable bed I’ve ever been in,” he said. “Thank you so much. You really didn’t need to do all this.”
“Oh, poo!” Howie waved his hand. “We’re gay. We’d redecorate the inside of a milk carton given the chance.”
Joe got up from the bed to explore all that was new in the room, including a just-bought shiny padlock on the crawl space next to the ladder. “Is that where you stashed all your stuff?” he asked, stepping toward the small door. “Maybe I could also use it for a closet.”
Lenny leaped in front of Joe, blocking him. “You can’t go in there,” he snapped.
Joe jerked backward, noticing the anxious look in Lenny’s eyes. “But I was just—”
“What Lenny means is”—Howie tittered as if he were embarrassed by Lenny’s overly dramatic response—“we keep some very important things in there: old supplies, relics, and whatnot.”
“Relics?” Joe asked.
“Unfortunately, we’ve lost a number of friends over the past few years,” Howie said.
“One hundred and six in total,” Lenny chimed in glumly. “Eighty-two of ’em were close friends.”
“Eighty-two?” A lump of pain filled Joe’s throat. He had lost only Elliot, and the grief had paralyzed him. To have lost that many seemed unfathomable. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, Joe.” Howie looked over to one of the group photos. “When we helped clean out their apartments, we wanted to keep what was most precious to them.”
“Or sometimes we just kept them .” Lenny shrugged.
Joe offered a small laugh, assuming it was a joke. Lenny, however, did not laugh. The hairs on Joe’s neck prickled.
“As usual,” Howie said, smiling, “Lenny lacks nuance. Yes, there might be an urn or seven with some ashes, but mostly, as I said, just a few keepsakes, as well as our favorite old dance outfits and some crafting supplies.”
“Nice euphemism,” Lenny said.
“Shh,” Howie spat. “Now isn’t the time.” He turned to Joe and smiled. “The one thing we ask here is that we all respect one another’s private spaces. I’m sure you understand …”
“Of course.” Joe stepped away from the crawl space. “I promise not to be nosy.” To change the subject, he gestured to a desk that had been set up on the other side of the attic. “That wasn’t there before.”
“We figured you could use it.” Lenny crossed to the old oak executive desk with pride. “This way you can do your studying to get into medical school.”
The blood in Joe’s veins grew cold. “How do you know about that?” he asked, trying not to sound as disturbed as he was. “I never told you anything about med school.”
“Don’t get your jockeys into a knot.” Lenny groaned as he fiddled with a vase of fresh African daisies on the desk. “Parfait Bob over at the liquor store gave us the skinny.”
“I don’t know any Parfait Bob,” Joe said, confused.
Howie sat on the alpaca bedspread and sighed. “You know how it is: tell-a-gay, tel-e-phone. I suspect your friend Ronnie must’ve lovingly bragged to someone who told somebody who told Parfait Bob. Don’t worry. We aren’t stalkers, and we certainly can’t read minds.”
“Speak for yourself,” Lenny muttered.
“What Lenny means is, on this island the hagiographies of handsome men spread faster than chlamydia. But I will say, my instincts say you will make a fantastic doctor.”
“Damn right,” Lenny added. “You’ll look swell in green scrubs with all that chest hair and swarthy coloring—a gay Doctor Kildare.”
Joe smiled, though he still felt out of sorts with the idea of strangers talking about him.
“Don’t hold your breath,” he said. “The doctor thing is just a pipe dream. I got drunk one night and told Ronnie about it. Now he’s decided I just need to ‘positive think’ my way into med school. He even recites daily affirmations for both of us. It’s a little woo-woo nuts.”
“It’s not the worst approach.” Lenny was back to fiddling with the daisies. “Though the efficacy rate is low, it’s not zero.”
“ Anyway …” Howie stood up. “We should let you unpack before your interview.”
“Yeah, I probably should.” Joe dropped his duffel on the bureau. Looking around, he noticed there were several prominent discolored blank spots on the wall where photos had been removed—including the Anne Boleyn decapitation photo. “Why did you take those old photos down?” he asked. “They were pretty boss.”
“Oh, right,” Howie said. “We wanted to make space for you to put up your own photos.”
The only photo Joe had with him was one of him and Elliot together on the beach at Ocean City. It was, in fact, the only clear photo he had of Elliot at all. All the others had been smudged or destroyed in the basement flood. In the snapshot, Elliot wears his favorite white-and-yellow rugby shirt and is playing the guitar—the slash of the dimple, the jut of his lower lip—while Joe lies on his side, facing him, his back to the camera. It was taken shortly after they first fell in love, before Elliot got sick, before everything.
“I don’t have any photos,” Joe lied.
“Then you must take some this summer!” Howie said. “Trust an old queen, Joe. We are what we remember. You’ll understand one day. Anyway, we’re off to go clean a house on Bay Walk. But first I have something for you.” He handed Joe a tiny, handsewn, saffron-colored pouch. “It’s a little good luck charm I whipped up—a mix of protective and relaxing herbs. It might be useful. You never know.”
“Thanks.” Joe sniffed the little packet, which smelled mostly of lavender and jasmine, but with darker undertones—mold and camphor. “Smells interesting.”
“Come on,” Lenny whined. “We got crap to do!”
Joe shoved the charm into his back pocket and listened for the screen door slamming, followed by the rattle of their cleaning cart rolling down the walk. As he unpacked, his eyes kept wandering to the empty spaces on the walls and the locked crawl space.
They were definitely hiding something.