Prettyboy

28: Texas Graveyard, It Didn't Suit Him

I was in no way beyond doubt when I thought of taking Paul Ferro with me to Ray's. I thought I needed company, but the moment he slumped into the car and made himself comfortable on the shotgun seat, I knew he would begin to ask a thousand questions and, eventually, come to learn everything about me, or act as though we were in a James Bond film. I didn't know which variant I thought preferable.

"Damn, I didn't know Robbie was being serious—I thought he was spewing spiteful nonsense when he said you had been married thrice. Well, four times, now!"

"Technically, it's been three times," I objected, listing in my head; Ettie, Lana, Scotty. Scotty didn't exactly count. In fact, none of my marriages 'counted', in a sense. Technically, I was never married.

"Damn. You know the saying about bastard sons?" he laughed. I did, in fact, know the the saying about bastards sons not ever settling down; I was an illegitimate child, so, in a sense, it pertained to me. "So, where are we going? To confront one of your ex-wives?"

"No," I made very clear as if I was talking to a toddler, "we're actually going to see a friend o' mine. On whom our entire careers depend."

"The one that stole your billets-doux?"

This might have been entertaining for Paul Ferro, but he wasn't exactly grasping the significance of the predicament.

Whatever Raymond was planning to do with those vital pieces of information on me, whether that was keeping them under the table or sharing them with whoever, I knew I had to get those letters back where they had been stowed away for so long. Going back to Massachusetts, where Raymond now resided by himself, was something I had thought about postponing. I hadn't been home for more than a year; I had not seen my own mother for a while and I didn't know if Glenn had come out with dementia or any degenerative disease of the brain yet, but assuming from the fact that my mother had kept quiet about it all, they were both doing fine. Massachusetts was not the place to be, in June 1969. I had talked to Gerard about it one last time, before I left, and he told me to get on with it now, because I would keep stalling it if it went on and on. And he was right, after all, though he himself had not returned to Pennsylvania in years, never mind the fact that he needed to take possession of some important documents and certificates that were still in his mother's house. I didn't call attention to the fact that he was also stalling this priority of his, because, were I in his shoes, I'd probably rather not having the right to own property, than having to visit Lana ever again.

But it was different for me, or so I thought.

For the most part, if you examined my current relationship with Gerard, you could be able to analogize it to that of two old friends, because I had avoided coming closer to him, lest he freaked out on me about the situation. In fear of getting excluded again. I figured, it was on my list of priorities to lay it all on the table, but I wouldn't be able to do that so quickly. So, my half-devised plan went as such: waiting for the right moment. I am a dabbler, after all. Until then, we would go on allowing silences to prevail when words that wanted to be wrought out of us could not be spoken because of the magnitude they harbored. We would go on stepping away from each other, in fear of coming too close and losing all control. We would make sure to never drink in front of each other, never let ourselves cut loose. And all I would think at those goddamned moments was the words he once wrote to me: 'Always suppress your artless hunger, friend.'

Meanwhile, I had quit going out late, completely. My tongue hadn't tasted alcohol for weeks. I had not had sex for weeks. I couldn't because he was always on my mind. Sometimes, I would stay up, lying on my bed, unable to sleep and I would be stuck on envisioning what it would be like if he lived with me, instead of living with him. I still could not believe he was still living with him. My heart pounded in my chest whenever I would think about it, and it still does now. It skipped a beat when I thought of them going to bed together, and waking up together, leaving me feeling quite dead and vacant inside.