Chapter 47
The guys trickled in. Corey first, who saluted Keith and Annie and then went straight back to his room. Then Terrence and Kelsey, who took a bottle of wine from the bar and said, “Be right back.” Annie looked at Keith for explanation, but he didn’t have one to give.
“You can totally go if you need to talk to them,” she said. “Or I can go—I don’t mean to be in the way.”
“For the first time in a long time, I’m actually okay here,” Keith said, and then felt his cheeks burn.
Jonathan came in rubbing his hands together. “Okay, gang,” he said, “Let’s circle up. We have some healing to do.”
Keith raised an eyebrow. “I think we’re past healing, respectfully, but if you want to try, you’re going to have to go get them all.”
Sarah burst through the door, followed by Scotty and Shawn. “I’m good at Whac-A-Mole,” Sarah said. “You all stay. I’ll get Corey.”
“Who’s with the Talkers?” Keith asked.
“Pancake,” Sarah said, already moving. “Pray for him.”
Scotty looked at Keith and then at Shawn and said, “I’m getting something to eat,” leaving the brothers to finish their conversation.
“Yo,” Shawn said. He didn’t sit. He hardly moved from the doorway.
“Hi,” Keith said. He wasn’t sorry, and so he didn’t apologize.
“Haven’t seen that since the nineties,” Shawn said. “Fisticuffs.”
“Yeah, and that was usually you getting rough with other people’s bodies. Getting rough on other people, period. I’ve taken a lot more punches than I’ve thrown, that’s for sure. We all have except for you,” Keith said. “Guess I finally hit my limit.”
Shawn took off his sunglasses. There were no camera flashes, no stage lights, no excuses. His skin was as tight as a drum. It was a mask; Keith could see that now. “For good, you think?”
“I don’t know,” Keith said. “Maybe.”
Shawn thumped a fist against his own chest and exhaled a small sound that sounded like a whimpering dog.
Keith wanted more, but he wasn’t going to get it.
Shawn was incapable of allowing truths that didn’t fit into his plan.
At any other point in his life, Keith would have waffled, would have given his brother what he wanted, but Keith had decided that he wasn’t going to do that anymore.
Scotty trotted out with a plate heaped high with turkey and strawberries, wiggling his body back and forth, oblivious and totally himself. Maybe that was the goal, getting to that—there was no hope of happiness if Keith didn’t draw a line around what he could and could not accept.
“Actually, yes,” Keith said. “Maybe not forever, but for now, yes.”
Scotty leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “That’s my boy.” Keith’s heart sank, even though he knew that Scotty would understand.
They all fit in the Sanctuary sitting room, barely.
Keith surrendered his seat on the couch to Sarah and Annie and Kelsey, which meant that all of Boy Talk was on the floor.
The night was so odd already that no one seemed to notice or mind that a strange woman had been added to the party.
Terrence sat nestled in between Kelsey’s knees.
At first, Scotty sat against the couch too, but then Sarah pointed a few feet away, to a part of the floor with no fabric anywhere near it, in case the fake blood he was covered with would stain.
Keith put his back against the lip of the shallow pool, and his brother slid down next to him, planting his feet and looking straight ahead.
His bicep muscles flexed and jumped—Shawn was never still, not even now.
Bobby and Corey sat at either end of the narrow oval, at which point Jonathan sighed a happy sigh and rubbed his hands together.
“Team,” he said. “This is what we’re going to do.
We’re going to start by checking in with ourselves to see what we want before we start sharing with the group.
I’m sure you all saw the signs when you came aboard this ship—What’s your fantasy?
That’s the line, right, for this ship? Well, that’s where I want you to start, too.
You can’t get out of one situation until you have a new destination, right?
If you get in your car and don’t know where you’re headed, you’re just going to drive around in circles.
So, I want you all to start and just take a few minutes and think about it. What’s your fantasy? What do you want?”
“This is some touchy-feely bullshit,” Terrence said, shaking his head. “I’m not fucking doing this.”
“Come on,” Kelsey said, wrapping her legs tighter around his shoulders, as if to pin him into place. “It sounds fun.”
Terrence kissed her inner thigh, and then they both closed their eyes.
Keith looked at Scotty, who shrugged and whispered, “I’ll try anything once.
” Everyone else was doing what they were told.
The flowers on the wall looked bigger now that he was on the ground, their petals so large that they were almost scary, and so Keith closed his eyes too.
Scotty’s fantasy was simple. They were all there, Boy Talk, like the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man and the Scarecrow, everyone in their places on the stage.
Scotty held his mic, and he danced, and the audience cheered, but the cheers were deeper than usual, a lower sound.
He stepped toward the front of the stage, close enough to hold his hand over his eyes to block the lights.
The audience was a sea of men. All kinds of men.
Men his age, younger men. Men with beards.
Men of every color and shape. Men, glorious men.
Scotty was a teenager, and if he wanted to kiss any one of them, he could.
He licked his lips, and they cheered harder.
The vessel would be round, or maybe a shape that people on Earth didn’t have a name for yet.
It would hover off the ground, the height of a small house, or a large tree, and an internal mechanism would make a buzzing noise.
A door would open, and a beam of light, orange and full, would go right down to the ground.
That’s where Terrence was, standing in the center of the light, and Kelsey too.
They would be holding hands, and her skirt would blow in the wind, maybe so much that he could see her little underpants that he loved so much, and then he couldn’t think about his wife’s underpants anymore because they would be moving up, up, up into the ship, into whatever the rest of the universe had waiting for them, and Terrence wasn’t even a little bit afraid.
When Corey closed his eyes, he saw flashbulbs.
He was getting out of a car, and there were photographers waiting, and they all loved him.
“Corey!” they called. They knew his name, and they said it with smiles on their lips.
Corey climbed out of the car and waved, and they cheered.
Crowds had gathered, men and women in equal number, and they were all pumping their fists in the air.
Just seeing him had made their day, Corey knew it.
He jogged quickly up a flight of stairs, where a doorman in a top hat was waiting to pull open a heavy gold door.
Corey walked through the door and found more people, more flashbulbs.
The crowd parted for him, like Moses and the Red Sea, which Corey knew all about, because in this fantasy, Corey was very well read, including the entire Bible.
At the end of the clear path was a stage, and on the stage was Oprah Winfrey.
Corey got tears in his eyes as he made his way, slowly now, toward Oprah and the purple velvet chair that was for him, and he waved at the crowd and at Oprah, and she smiled too.
All had been forgiven. He was forgiven. His wife was somewhere else, but she had forgiven him too.
Shawn and Jonathan had already done this exercise, so Shawn didn’t even have to think about it.
He was old, the kind of old where all the candles wouldn’t fit on a cake, a hundred years old, and he still looked so good.
He was in a tracksuit, and he was dancing, and there were Talkers all around him, and they were all old too.
They were all old together. Shawn was swinging his hips back and forth, and he was going to keep swinging them until the second he died.
His brothers were all there too, and now they were swinging their hips in unison, like five grandfather clocks that would keep going forever and ever and ever.