Chapter 2

Dripping, mumbling, Gerry slammed the door behind him with a definitive clunk and flicked the deadbolt. He kicked off his shoes, sighing as small rivers of water raced across the lopsided flooring of the hallway, and he began to peel off of his wet clothes right where he stood. He might as well only drown one part of the house, and at least that particular location was vinyl tile. Most of the house had decades-old carpeting that, when wet, released all kinds of odors. None of them good.

With his wet clothes piled in his arms, Gerry stepped gingerly down the narrow hallway, and ducked into the bathroom. He dumped the armload into the tub and grabbed a towel off the rack. He didn’t pause to look in the mirror and fix his hair. The cut was short, short enough in fact that he barely had to brush it, and that always seemed to make his sister chuckle when she saw him. There was a time when God himself wouldn’t have been able to get him to cut his hair—when the arguments with his parents would grow to screaming matches over the bangs in his face and the uneven lengths that fell past his collar. But everybody grew up. Eventually.

As he walked back to the hallway, he toweled himself dry. The heat had been on since mid-September, an expense Gerry despised, especially since it seemed impossible to regulate the output. From October to April he either froze or sweated, nothing in between. And there had been winters, in the beginning, when the freezing had been unavoidable. The bills had been too high to bear. Oil, it seemed, was a commodity as valuable as gasoline. That had changed with his current boss, at least. The great and useless Mr. Manon paid him well for his services. If the man managed to hold out on retirement, Gerry might even be able to move into one of the brownstones in the city that he was so fond of. It was cool that he’d managed to find somebody who was willing to pay for the talents of a highly developed schmooze.

In the kitchen, staring through the window above the sink, Gerry contemplated coffee or wine. The sky was darkening so quickly that he doubted the change had anything to do with the time of day. By tomorrow, if the rain wasn’t snow, he’d be damn surprised. With the impending weather in mind, he skipped the light stuff and chose vodka.

The silence of the house was deafening. Even the kids from the houses across the street were quiet, and that was all but unheard of. At that moment, silence was not something Gerry was interested in. There was too much silence in his life already.

With a huff Gerry slung the damp towel over his shoulder and marched into the living room. As though daring the house to stop him, he picked up the remote control for the television and turned on the set. He clicked past the news, past the hilarious but endearing family that managed to sum up all of life’s problems within their twenty-four-minute timeslot, and stopped to watch a super-slim, spiral-haired teenager wail notes that put opera singers to shame. He didn’t make it to the chorus before the button was pressed again.

Gerry took a long drink out of his glass, squatted beside the couch to stretch his legs, and set the glass of vodka on the coffee table. With one hand, he kept flicking through channels; with the other, he pulled the towel off his shoulder to scrub his damp balls. A flash of light from the TV set stilled both hands. Music played. And time and place shattered into a million prisms around him.

“Heaven’s lock on your golden cage, heaven-bound for heaven’s sake…

Don’t worry, baby, no one has to know that you’re afraid.”

He clutched the towel against his naked body. He didn’t have to look up, preferring, in fact, to keep his eyes on the worn hardwood underneath his feet, but even without the visual he knew the eyes that would be staring at him from across the decades. Angel blue. Coke-bright blue. Glitter-spangled blue.

The remote control fell from his hand and clacked on the surface of the coffee table. The glass of vodka danced as he fumbled to retrieve it. His breath caught in his throat; a pained squeak fell from his mouth. Twenty years slipped out of his grasp and challenged him to keep his balance…2

June 1974

“Come on, Gerry!”

His sister’s voice, shrill and demanding, cut Gerry to the core of his soul. The sixteen years of her being spoiled as the family’s baby andonly girl had ensured her the background necessary to perfect her demands to a stage-worthy performance. She whirled around the open doorframe of the bathroom and glared at his reflection in the vanity mirror. “You’re going to make us late.”

Gerry’s brother was no better. Cliff was the oldest, and his self-importance was just as evident as Angie’s self-indulgence. Cliff’s skill set came dripping with contempt as opposed to mere whining, though. “Oh, give it a break, Angie. It’s not like you have to be there early. That space-princess faggot you’re going to see only has eyes for the boys.”

Angie’s voice rose to ear-piercing decibels. “He’s not gay, you spaz!”

Gerry didn’t involve himself in the argument, but it was hard to completely ignore the two of them. The bathroom was tiny, the door was still open, and both their reflections were as obvious as his own. Even with his dark eyes focusing on nothing but the brush and the draw of that brush through his hair, Gerry could see Angie prop a hand on her hip and get ready to spout off. And for the millionth time that month—ever since Angie had decided she’d flipped through enough articles and heard enough interviews to make her an expert—Gerry wanted to scream in her face that she should just shut the hell up and stop trying to fight impossible battles.