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Also, the question mark at the end of “books?” made him feel unhinged, because how much doubt could there really be? How completely incompetent did a person have to be in order to not know what he had just put in a box?
When the food came, Caleb greedily ate his hot dog and the french fries that came with it, and by the time his plate was empty, he felt better. It was always annoyingly predictable that he felt less ornery after a decent meal. He might have thought that by now he’d have made the connection between an empty stomach and a bad temper.
“Good grief,” Caleb said, turning the radio off entirely. “I didn’t realize they had that this far north.” “Had…religion?” “Had people yelling about it.” “I think that’s everywhere, pal.”
He wished he wasn’t like this—so eager to make things right, so pitifully eager to please but so hopelessly bad at it most of the time.
As Caleb flipped through the newspaper, he occasionally emitted a little hum of interest or sniff of disdain, as if the entire world could be divided into things that pleased him and things that irritated him. Peter already had a partial list. Filed under “things that please Caleb Murphy” were sandwiches, extra fries, cheap beer, and newspapers. Filed under “things that drive Caleb Murphy into a snit” was virtually everything else, as far as Peter could tell.
“Are you hungover?” Peter asked. “From two and a half beers?” “Shut up.” “Let me get you some aspirin.” Peter disappeared, returning a moment later with two white pills and a glass of water. “Two and a half beers,” he murmured. “Fuck off.” “You’re welcome.”
When he opened the door and was hit with a blast of morning sun, Caleb cringed. “Ahh, why is it doing that?” he cried, shielding his eyes with his hand. “The sun? Why is it shining?” asked Peter, unfairly amused. “It often does.” “Does it need to be so annoying about it?” Caleb grumbled, squinting and shielding his eyes with his hand. Peter murmured something that sounded a lot like “two and a half beers.”
“The problem is that the world goes in all different directions, and a map is just…there, all flat and judgmental. I can’t look at one and imagine where I am, let alone where I’m supposed to go.” That was enough frank admission for one day, so he gathered up his pride. “Honestly, I think the rest of you are faking it. You look at the map, say ‘yes, yes, go east for thirty yards and then southwest for a mile and the service station will be on the leeward side of the car’ but really you’re just making it up as you go along.”
But he looked vulnerable, and at that moment Caleb wanted nothing more than to prove to Peter that he deserved better than whatever he was used to getting.
“The Chicken Basket,” Peter announced. “The sheep bucket,” Caleb declared promptly. “What game is this?”
Caleb didn’t have the energy to be anyone’s existential crisis.
“You’re appallingly easygoing and probably too kind, if your treatment of me is any indication. You exude goodwill. I worry that you’ll be taken in by the first sad story you hear, and that you’ll wind up destitute and disappointed in humanity.” Peter didn’t say anything but Caleb could feel his gaze. “Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?” Peter eventually asked. “I wish I knew,” Caleb sighed.
A week ago, if someone had told Peter that he’d be charmed by a man attempting to evenly apportion a breeze, he’d have thought they were nuts. Now he just smiled helplessly as he watched Caleb rotate the fan’s base by a fraction of a degree to make it point at the exact midpoint between the beds.
“You are decent and good. You want other people to feel good. This is called not being an asshole. You were raised by emotionally dead rich people so you don’t know this.”
“It’s nice that you bought me this paper. You are nice. I actually like you, despite being dead set on not liking you, just on principle.” “You like me?” “Don’t let it get to your head.” “Too late.”
“What were you thinking about?” “That it’s really unfair that some people have so much more than others.” “Welcome, comrade.”
He smiled faintly, and Peter remembered what Caleb had said about being homesick for a place that might not ever be real for him again.
It hardly mattered what Caleb said, so long as he kept talking, kept reminding him that whatever he had done, he wasn’t lost, wasn’t alone.
Is that how tornadoes start? With a thunderstorm?” “Beats me. The fact that there are tornadoes in Kansas is literally the only weather trivia I know, and it’s possible that The Wizard of Oz isn’t an accurate source, so don’t ask me.”
“Now that I know you can’t predict the weather, I don’t like you anymore,” he said. “Sorry.”
At least in college, he was good at some things. He had friends; his grades were always fine, and in classes that were mostly reading and writing, they were better than fine. After graduation, he wouldn’t even have that. He’d have to hide who he was in order to please people who would never be pleased by him. By the end of the fall semester, he was only leaving his room to go to class and to practice with his team. By Easter, he was starting to fantasize about getting hit by a bus or coming down with various debilitating illnesses, and that couldn’t possibly be a good sign.
“You are an idiot. A preposterous fool. Bless your heart. I don’t know what I see in you,” he hissed. “The reason I don’t fuss about dinner is that I don’t care. There are a lot of things I don’t care about. One thing I do care about, you poor sweet idiot, is who I—” he broke off, realizing his voice had raised above a whisper. “You get the picture.”
“So while your concern is admirable and this conversation, however much I hate to admit it, was probably a good idea, your worries are unfounded, and you are very dumb.”
“Shit,” he said, as one of his shoelaces snapped. He held the broken length in one hand that he was mortified to realize was shaking. “I have a spare,” Caleb said. “Jesus, what was it, an heirloom shoelace?
Caleb was going to associate the smell of laundry detergent and the sound of washing machines with frustrated horniness for the rest of his life.
“Look at you.” His voice was soft, quiet, as if he didn’t even mean for Caleb to hear. He brushed some hair off Caleb’s forehead and held his hand there. “You’re beautiful.”
“Do you ever put the top down on this thing?” he asked, so the next thing Peter knew they were back on the highway, the breeze hot and fast in his face, Caleb wearing Peter’s sunglasses and a song about El Paso on the radio. Peter wanted to take the moment and put it in a box and bury it deep inside his pocket where he would never lose it.
Peter just didn’t know anything at all, because he was a complete nightmare of loveliness and Caleb didn’t know what to do with him.
It took fifteen minutes to get back to the car, because Peter had to stop and pet every dog they saw. Then Peter insisted on digging his camera out of his bag and taking Caleb’s picture in front of the car. Caleb never wanted to see what his face looked like in that photograph, never wanted to know whether he looked as exasperatedly fond as he felt. The best he could hope for was that he’d at least never have to encounter proof about how far gone he was.
Peter didn’t think he could ever get tired of how hungry Caleb acted for him. He didn’t think he could get tired of anything about Caleb.
“You don’t need to let yourself be hurt. Ever. Not even for a good cause. Not even if you owe a debt of gratitude to the person hating you—which, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you do.”
He felt like he spent the past four days in a state of constant, simmering arousal, which would have been bad enough even if it hadn’t been compounded with something in the vicinity of his stomach that was either happiness or food poisoning.
“Your interrogation technique has gone to hell in a handbasket after less than a year away from Washington,” Peter observed. “Wow.” “Damn it. This is what comes of not being surrounded by suspicion and enmity.
When Peter paid for two slices of peach pie and two cups of coffee and then almost absentmindedly took the forty-five cents Caleb handed him, Caleb realized he was in love. Or scratch that. He didn’t know if it was possible to fall in love in under a week. He also didn’t care if it was possible to fall in love in under a week. All he knew was that when he looked at Peter, he felt both fond and raw, like he had been turned inside out and was glad to have had it happen.
If he let himself dwell on love and other dangerous things he’d start to think about how much he missed his mama, and then he’d never do anything with his life except pretend to be straight and worry that the tiniest slip would make everyone he loved think he was going to hell. And he couldn’t do that, he had ruled that out years ago, just like he couldn’t listen to the little voice in his heart insisting that it wasn’t such a bad idea to tumble head over heels in love with someone who was definitely going to break his heart.
“Jesus. Every time I’m nearly mad at you, you have to go and ruin it by being all…” He gestured vaguely in the air. “Good,” he concluded disgustedly. “I ruin your attempt to be mad at me by…being good?” “Yes, exactly, glad we understand one another.”
Again, he had the sense of heading towards something, something that mattered, rather than merely running away from a life he couldn’t stand anymore.
Peter loved it—loved him, if it came to that. It was definitely too soon to even be thinking things like that, but after a lifetime of throwing away love and affection, maybe he had a surplus, and Caleb was welcome to it.
At this point Caleb realized two things. One, that Peter really wanted to see this crater. And two, that Peter would pretend not to mind missing this crater if Caleb wasn’t fully on board. “I love craters,” Caleb said, yawning. “I demand to see any and all craters along our route.” He opened his eyes and saw Peter grinning at him. Caleb would have happily gone to see five dozen stupid craters if it put a smile like that on Peter’s face.
“You’re allowed to be imperfect. Anybody who expects perfection secretly likes being disappointed in people. You’re good enough exactly the way you are. Everything else is a lie.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re a bit biased when it comes to me.” He thought Caleb would give him one of those rare blushes or go into one of his snits. Instead his jaw set into something almost fierce. “Good. We all need people in our corners, and somehow, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, the people in your corner are horrible and I want to hit them with a pipe.”
“You get turned on by weird things,” Peter said. “No, I’m just crazy about you,” Caleb said, and then everything about him went still. In slow motion, he turned his head to look at Peter, his eyes wide, his expression stricken. “I’m crazy about you too,” Peter said. “I mean, obviously.”
As they ate their scrambled eggs and toast in the lodge, Peter happily lecturing about train stations and gold prospectors and Hopi muralists, all Caleb could think about was the utter ruin he had made of Peter’s voice. (“I think I have a bruise on the back of my throat,” Peter had cheerfully observed while combing his hair in the cabin’s bathroom, and Caleb had promptly walked into the door.)
His brain felt like it was filled with wet lint, except for when he thought about Peter, and then he was torn between a demented urge to ask if he was warm enough without a sweater and the need to bend him over the nearest piece of furniture.
Caleb thought it was a testament to the depth of his affection that he was no less fond of Peter even when he spoke in an offhand manner about the disappointments of a trip to Paris.
“I think it’s the scale. It’s just…really very large. I can’t overstate how large it is.” “Grand, one might even say.” “Fuck off, one might even—”
There were enough tragically stupid people in the world without having anyone indulge in recreational stupidity.
“You know, you’ve totally lost the ability to insult me and sound like you mean it,” Peter observed cheerfully. “It all comes out like sweet nothings.”
“In the spirit of equal time and fair-minded debate, here’s a list of reasons why I very much want to keep doing this. You’re good and kind, you make me laugh, it sure doesn’t hurt to look at you, you tip waitresses a ludicrous percentage. That’s over three, just off the top of my head.” He made a dinging noise like he had gotten the correct answer on a quiz show, then yawned. “You lose.”
Maybe spending time with someone who really liked you let you see yourself reflected in their eyes, even just a little.
