Chapter Five
THEY DIDN’T find the dog.
Austin wanted to keep searching, but dark set in, and Joe called a halt.
“What if she’s hurt?” Austin couldn’t take the idea of an injured animal alone at night, especially now that it was getting colder.
But Joe refused to give in to his pleading. “It’s too dark to keep looking,” he said sternly, like Austin was one of his children, and dragged him into the house.
For the hour or so while they were unloading and sorting through boxes, Joe almost succeeded in getting Austin’s mind off the poor dog somewhere out in wilderness, but when Austin made his way back to the trailer after Joe drove away, he couldn’t help but look around for sightings of a furry tan animal hiding somewhere.
So when he got back to the trailer, he sat down at the tiny decrepit table and continued the slow task of cleaning and oiling the typewriter they’d found, until his eyes started to sting and he fell into the tiny bed.
The early drive from the house to his shop was definitely preferable to the late drive, and Austin had no regrets about the trailer that day.
A few days later, Austin made his way up to the second floor for the first attempt at a declutter.
He decided to start with one of the smaller bedrooms, as it was, surprisingly, the least horrifying—perhaps because DeeDee hadn’t wanted to fill up the room that might have been a child’s or perhaps had acted as a guest room.
Either way, there was actual visible floor space, unlike the third bedroom to the right, which was so full Austin couldn’t tell if it even held a bed.
Hours later Austin sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by the usual three piles—garbage, sentimental, decide later.
“Find anything good yet?” Joe asked from the doorway, and Austin jumped.
He looked up from his spot to see Joe leaning casually against the frame, arms crossed and hip cocked.
Austin took a moment to appreciate the sight of the man’s legs in jeans, then looked down at the object in his hands.
He’d found a small bookshelf that might have belonged to a child and promptly gotten distracted by the contents.
“Found stuff for Meg and her family,” he admitted.
“Oh?” Joe lifted an eyebrow, and for some reason, Austin blushed. He hadn’t been doing anything wrong, but now that Joe was standing there, he felt caught out.
“Yeah. Old kids’ books, school books, a couple of journals, mostly empty, I think. And a photo album.”
“Oh!” Joe lurched forward and dropped down beside Austin in the only spot of empty floorspace, apparently unconcerned that it meant their thighs were all but glued together. “Lemme see.”
So Austin flipped back to the beginning of the small album, and together they leafed through.
The shots were mostly from the ’80s and ’90s, and some featured a woman Austin guessed was a younger DeeDee, but he couldn’t say any of the other faces were familiar.
Well, beyond a passing resemblance to Meg, suggesting a familial link.
“Definitely Meg’s dad,” Joe said with a laugh as he pointed to a picture of a young man in baggy clothes, looking artfully unimpressed by the cake before him with fourteen candles.
“Cute,” Austin said sarcastically. Then he looked back to the bookshelf for any more finds. He didn’t want to look at pictures of strangers rejecting the sort of happy childhood hallmarks he would have begged for at that age.
“Fourteen-year-olds,” Joe said. “I can’t say I miss that stage. The kids are definitely cooler now they’re approaching drinking age.”
“Harsh,” Austin said as he flipped through an aged copy of The Fellowship of the Ring.
“Nah. Talk to me when you’ve got kids in the preteen, early-teen stage and then you can judge.” He bumped their shoulders together to take the sting out of the words. Not that Austin was stung by the reminder that he didn’t have a fourteen-year-old at the ripe old age of twenty-nine.
Joe dropped the photo album into a box with Meg’s name and gestured at the book. “You ever read?”
“Yeah.” Austin set the book onto a pile that he’d been setting aside. He didn’t know if Meg’s family would want to bother with them.
“Could never make it through the series,” Joe said. “Got bored in the first book.”
Austin shrugged. “It picks up.” He didn’t add that the copy he read had belonged to a foster parent who hadn’t had a TV or the internet and whose library had mostly consisted of stuff for little children or dull, long-winded history textbooks.
Austin had read every novel in that house, cover to cover, as a way of relieving the boredom generated by a 5:00 p.m. curfew and no TV.
He pulled out a few more books and set them aside. Joe broke the silence as he flipped through a copy of Call of the Wild. “Still no sign of the dog?”
“No.” Austin’s mouth twisted. He was beginning to think they wouldn’t find it. He hoped that was because it was safe and not because it had gotten hurt. “What if we left some food out?”
Joe turned and gave him a look. “Yeah, no. Not unless you want something else to come visit, like racoons or worse—like the coyote that Linda suggested our mystery dog was.”
Austin conceded the point but couldn’t help but pout. “Fine.” He pulled over a new box, flipped it open, and stared. Then he slammed it shut, face burning. “Why would DeeDee have a box of Playboys?”
“What?” Joe lunged for the box and leaned into Austin’s space, practically sprawling across his lap. He tore the flaps back and breathed with delight. “Oh my God.” He reached into the box.
Austin covered his eyes.
“Why are you hiding?” Joe demanded. “This is amazing.”
“Did you forget the part where I’m very gay? Besides, I don’t want to see someone else’s magazine collection.”
“Okay, one, you are making assumptions here, buddy. Because, two, these are from, like, the ’70s, and in pretty decent condition, and—” Joe looked back in the box and shifted some magazines around.
“There’s also some Archie comics and gardening magazines in here, so I bet this is another one of her thrifting or junk collections.
You know, the old Playboys can have value, like anything else vintage. ”
Austin’s shoulders untensed, though he didn’t want to take a closer look at the magazine Joe was actually flipping through.
Joe sat back and then shot Austin a look. “Ooor, maybe they were DeeDee’s and she kept them for the articles.”
Against all Austin’s better judgment, he opened his mouth. “What kind of articles does Playboy have?”
Joe shrugged. “I don’t know—let’s find out.” He plopped a magazine in Austin’s lap and flipped back to the beginning of his own, like he was looking for a table of contents.
Austin still felt like he should be wearing gloves, but so far none of the magazines had crackled with anything suspicious, so he opened the cover.
And—all right. The pictures of naked or nearly naked women didn’t do anything for him, but they weren’t gross, other than in the exploitative way pictures like this were inherently gross.
Bisexual or not, Joe didn’t seem to be lingering on them either.
Maybe he thought so too. Or maybe he was having the Dad Reaction, imagining Meg being photographed like that.
Austin grimaced and put that thought out of his mind, to focus firmly on the words in front of him.
Then, blinking, he flipped back to the front cover to check the magazine’s date.
“Huh.”
“Mmm?” Joe asked beside him and leaned to look over Austin’s shoulder.
Austin paged back to the article and read the line that had caught his attention.
“About AIDS being a ‘gay’ disease: It’s not.
There’s no such thing. Germs can swing both ways, and they don’t care whom their hosts sleep with.
” He paused and let that sink into him—the reality of a magazine printing those words in October of 1983.
“Is it weird that I’m now kind of hoping these actually were DeeDee’s and that she did read them for the articles? ”
Joe already had his phone out. “I mean, I’m asking Meg right now, so….”
“In the group chat?” Austin asked, imagining the chaos that would ensue.
Joe glanced up, warm eyes dancing in the light of the single lamp plugged in on the floor two feet away. “They give me so much shit, you don’t even know. It’s karma.”
Needless to say, they didn’t get much sorting accomplished that night.
Instead, they spent an hour reading each other bits and pieces of the unusual treasure they’d found.
Many of the magazines had short stories by authors Austin had read before—Vonnegut, Oates, le Carré.
At the bottom of the box, they found a truly ancient issue that had a story set in a dystopian future where everyone was gay and people marched against heterosexuality.
“I’m not going to lie. My mind is totally blown right now.”
“Same,” Joe agreed. “Mind blown, ass numb.”
Now that he mentioned it, Austin was feeling the lack of circulation himself. He glanced at his phone. “Jesus, it’s eight o’clock.”
“That explains why I’m so fucking hungry.” Joe used Austin’s shoulder to leverage himself to his feet, then offered his hand. “Come on, you want to go find dinner?”
For a second, Austin stared at it, uncomprehending.
Joe waggled his fingers.
Austin let Joe pull him to his feet. It left them standing close enough for Austin to feel the heat of Joe’s body from his shoulders to his knees.
But it wasn’t just body heat, was it? It was something else, in the light of Joe’s eyes and the fondness in his smile. Something in the way the touch of his palm on Austin’s seemed to linger even after they let go.
Or maybe he was just delirious from hunger. That had to be it.
Austin cleared his throat. “Uh, I mean, I was just going to make mac and cheese with hot dogs in the trailer. But you’re welcome to join me.”
“Well, if you’re rolling out the red carpet like that….”