Chapter Four
A few nights after he’d gone to Emilio’s, Vince called his sister Rachel. She answered on the third ring.
“Vinnie. I thought you’d forgotten my phone number.”
“Hey, Rach. Sorry. Been busy.” He rubbed hard against the back of his neck. “What about you? Are you busy? Right now, I mean?”
Rachel went immediately serious. “I knew it. Something’s wrong, isn’t it. You never call unless something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Vince lied. “I just wondered if I could stop by and talk to you, that’s all.”
“Sure, hon. Where are you?”
That was a good question. Vince looked around to get his bearings. “Rush and Wabash.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
It was past ten when Vinnie finally got to Rachel’s apartment. She lived in the Marina Towers, three floors from the top, which Vinnie hated because he always felt like he was going to puke from the wind-resistant design. The term was a not-so-humorous oxymoron, because while the building might be safer from damage, “wind resistant” for the residents meant a great deal of swaying back and forth. Normally he got used to it once he’d been in the building for awhile, or once he’d had a few drinks, but when the wind was up like it was tonight, the motion never seemed to subside, which was why he had to stop halfway down her hallway and let the wall prop him up for a minute before he continued on to her door.
She answered wearing what he would have sworn was a bright blue kimono over a soft peach lacy number with spaghetti straps. Vince staggered back a few steps and held up his hands. “What the hell, Rach?”
“What?” Frowning, she glanced down at herself before rolling her eyes. “Jesus, Vinnie. You think I’m supposed to get dressed because my big lunk of a brother is coming over?”
“You trying to tell me you were sitting around the house wearing that?” he demanded.
Now she was mad. “If I’d known you were coming over to play Italian Big Brother, I would have told you to stay home. I was getting ready for bed, if you must know. Are you coming in or what?”
Vince grunted and shoved his hands in his pockets, keeping them there as she pulled the door open wider and he shuffled inside.
Rachel’s apartment was the same as it ever was: like an ad out of some luxury-living magazine. Like the ones, in fact, that she’d pored over as a kid when she’d hid out in his bedroom. Everything was sleek and white and minimal and arranged to take in the amazing view of Lake Michigan through the open curtains. Vince hated it, because he always felt like he was going to get something dirty. Which was why he didn’t sit down on the couch but sat on one of the chrome barstools and watched Rachel pull down the bottle of Oban and pour him three fingers into a tumbler.
“You should be nicer to me, considering what I picked up this afternoon.” She slid the glass toward Vince, then opened a cupboard as he took the first sip of scotch. The woodsy smoke taste exploded over his tongue, making him wish he’d brought a cigar—and then he saw she’d produced a box of Havana Ovals and a lighter.
Groaning, Vince sagged against the bar and held out his hand. When she only lifted her eyebrows and smirked at him, he said, “Please, Rach. I’m sorry I freaked out that you met me at the door like a streetwalker.”
She snorted, but she smiled too, and most importantly she passed the cigarettes over. Vince was a bit of a snob when it came to cigarettes—he only smoked Nat Shermans, usually settling for the naturals. Havana Ovals weren’t made with Havana tobacco anymore, but they were the Cadillacs of the Nat Sherman line: rich, unfiltered 100s wrapped in brown paper. Vince drew the box to his nose, shut his eyes and inhaled. It smelled like tobacco and heaven.
“Take them out to the balcony,” she called over her shoulder as she poured gin into her martini shaker.
Vince grabbed his scotch and tucked the cigarettes and lighter into his pocket before weaving his way carefully through the living room to the double doors off the dining area that led to the balcony. The breeze coming off the lake was a wind up this high, but he didn’t mind. He felt the sway out here too, but for some reason it never bothered him outside as much. Something to do with physics, he supposed. He stood a minute holding his scotch, his other hand in his pocket, and he took in the glorious night. Sighing happily, he set the glass on the bistro table, pulled out the Havana Ovals and tucked himself into a corner to light up. He always smoked Nats, but the Ovals had no filter, which meant a moment of adjustment as he tried not to get the raw tobacco on his tongue. Eventually he got it lit and tossed the box and lighter onto the table next to his drink. Vince leaned against the iron rail and savored his cigarette.
Rachel came up beside him, martini glass in her hand. Vince passed over his cigarette before she could ask for it and went to the corner to light himself a new one as he returned to the rail. They stood there for several minutes drinking and smoking in silence as they watched the lights of the city play below until they were swallowed up beside the darkness of the lake.
Rachel ashed over the edge. “So what’s eating you, big brother?”
Vince cradled his scotch in the center of his palm and trailed a car down Lake Shore Drive. “It’s complicated.”
Rachel didn’t say anything, just waited, letting Vince take his time.
Which was why he had come to her. Even if he thought he could have discussed this with anyone else in his family, he still would have come to Rachel, because everyone else would have talked him to death. Everyone else would have used the lag it took him to get started to talk about themselves. Most of the time that didn’t bother him. He liked listening to his family. He liked it, mostly, when they meddled. But this was too complicated for that. So he stood there with Rachel, drinking and smoking until both their cigarettes were spent and their glasses were empty, and about ten minutes after that he cleared his throat and said, “I’ve kind of been thinking that maybe”—his heart clenched, and he shut his eyes—“I’ve been thinking that maybe I—”
But he couldn’t say it. I think I might be a little bit queer. It was terrifying enough in his head, but not even Oban and Havana Ovals and the view from Rachel’s balcony helped him get the words out.
Rachel’s hand landed on his shoulder and massaged gently. “You want some more scotch, hon?”
Yes, he did, but Vince wasn’t sure he could keep it down with the way his stomach was dancing. He shook his head.
Rachel’s massage ended with an encouraging squeeze. “Just take your time, Vinnie.”
Vince nodded and trained his eyes on Lake Shore, willing the traffic to hypnotize him. It did, a little, lulling his panic back to a dull roar, and he decided to try a different approach. “There was this call the other day. Down in Lakeview. I took it because everyone was out and it sounded like a pretty simple leaky disposal.” The story relaxed him further, and his grip on the rails eased. “It was these two guys. They both met me at the door and were real nice, thanking me for coming so quickly, and then one of them went back into the den and the other guy took me to the kitchen. They were regular guys. I mean, at first I figured they were roommates or something. They had the game on in the other room, for God’s sake. They were just guys.” He paused for a breath. “But then I saw this picture. It was the two of them, sitting all close together like a portrait, like a couple, and that’s when I realized it. They were gay. And—” He stopped, hitting the wall again.
Rachel waited for half a minute before replying. “Vinnie, are you telling me…” She trailed off, not finishing.
Vince gripped the rails until his knuckles were white. “No. I mean, I don’t think so.” He sighed and sagged forward. “Hell, Rach. I don’t know what I mean. All I know is that I’ve felt weird ever since then. All messed up. The way I heard them talking from the other room. I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense at all, but I keep thinking…” He pushed off the rail and turned away, grabbing the box of cigarettes.
He took his time lighting up, lingering a little in the corner, bracing his arm above his head against the wall as he tried to collect himself. He didn’t notice Rachel leave the balcony, but she must have because when she nudged his arm, she was handing him his refilled glass of scotch, and when he turned back around to sip it, he saw the bottle sitting on the table.
She leaned against the door, idly trying to light her own cigarette. When Vince tried to take the lighter to do it for her, she waved him off and motioned to his drink. He sipped at it, watching her.
“I mean, I’m not,” he said, not exactly sure it was true, but feeling better for saying so. “I played around when I was at school, but it didn’t mean anything.”
“You’re telling me you had sex with guys in college?”
Vince nearly dropped his scotch. “No.” He set the drink down, took a heavy toke on the Havana Oval and grabbed the lighter from Rachel, cupping his hand around it as he sparked the flame for her. “No, not ‘guys’. Guy. One. And it wasn’t sex. It was just playing, like I said.”
Rachel inhaled, lowered the cigarette and blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “What’s playing? Are you talking hand jobs, or blowjobs, or what?”
Vince retreated back to his corner and kept his eyes on the floor of the balcony. “Both. I mean, I never gave one,” he added quickly. That had always seemed so important, and it was a lifeline right now. “But there was this guy. We’d jerk each other off a lot, and…” he reached for his scotch and took a deep drink, “…sometimes he’d blow me. But it was just fucking around. I think he was gay, but…you know.”
Daring a glance at Rachel, he saw that no, she didn’t know. She didn’t look disgusted, but she did look confused. “I don’t get it. He was gay, but you were…what?”
I don’t know. “Horny.” He drew again on the cigarette. Then he shrugged. “He wanted me to fuck him. I didn’t want to. That was too far. That was gay.” He ashed out and glared at the floor. “I wasn’t gay. I dated girls, Rach.”
“But you played around with a gay man.” When Vince started to panic again, she held up a hand. “I’m trying to understand, sweetie.”
So was Vince. He let his head fall back against the wall. “I mean, hell. I don’t have any idea how many women I’ve dated.” Panic swelled, terror racing up from his feet like a fire. Bolstered by high-quality scotch and Nat Sherman’s finest tobacco, he made himself say the rest. “But I’ve always noticed guys too.”
He felt like he’d jumped over the rail of Rachel’s balcony. For the first time in his life, he wished she weren’t as one with silence as he was, wished she had their mother’s penchant for filling spaces with questions and observations. Rachel was quiet a long time, so he made himself wait, and breathe.
The scotch and the Havanas helped.
“Okay,” Rachel said at last. “Here’s what I need help with. Are you telling me that you like women and men, and that’s what you realized when you were at this couple’s house, or are you telling me that you like men and have all along but liked women enough that you could fake it and don’t want to anymore?”
Vince felt dizzy. Almost sick. Because that was the question, wasn’t it? He’d been telling himself he was trying to work out if this was some stupid…phase? Crazy idea? Psychosis? Something along those lines. But leave it to Rach to skip right over that and into the belly of the beast.
“I don’t know,” he whispered at last.
He wanted her to come over and hug him. To ruffle his hair and tease him and call him silly and promise him it would all be okay. To reassure him that he wasn’t… Hell. He didn’t even know the word for it. Messed up. Delusional.
Wrong in the eyes of God and his family.
She didn’t, though. She wasn’t forming the sign of the cross with her fingers and backing away, but she was quiet and thoughtful, not comforting. “Well,” she said at last, “I have to say, I didn’t see this coming.”
Vince couldn’t take it anymore. “Rach,” he whispered.
Thank God, thank God, she did come over to him then, extinguishing her Havana in the silver ashtray she kept on the sill before she took him in her arms, making gentle shushing noises as she stroked his hair and kissed the side of his ear. “It’s okay, baby,” she promised softly. “You’re okay. Straight, bi, gay—I’m going to love you no matter what you are, forever.”
Her words were a relief and a terror at once. “I’m not gay,” he objected, his voice rough.
She kissed him again, on his temple this time. “You might be, hon. And don’t freak out like that. I know this has to break every piece of the Italian macho code they programmed into your DNA, but let me be the first to inform you that gay men can be pretty macho too.”
“But I don’t know that I’m—that,” Vince insisted. He sounded a little whiny, he knew, but Jesus. Not that.
To his surprise, Rachel got angry. “Gay, Vincent. You can say it without bursting into flames. Gay. G-A-Y gay.” She reached for his scotch and drained the last of it. “You insult half my advertising team when you act like it’s a disease instead of an orientation. And let me promise you, if you persist in thinking gay equals effeminate, I’m going to have Steven show up at your apartment in his leather gear and Dom your ass into next week.”
Vince had no idea what she was talking about, but he got the message loud and clear. He nodded curtly. “I don’t mean to disrespect your friends,” he said, and he meant it. “It’s just hard for me, Rach. And I don’t know what I am. I really don’t.” He crossed to the bottle of Oban, took his glass back from her and poured liberally. “But hell, what if that’s been the problem all this time, why I can’t stay with a woman?”
Rachel snorted. “You can’t stay with a brand of shampoo, Vinnie. You have commitment issues that have commitment issues.”
Vince ignored that. Because he’d gotten a lot of mileage out of this idea, that maybe the problem wasn’t the girl but that she wasn’t a guy. Scary as that was, it wasn’t anything compared to the idea that he wasn’t an ass, he was just barking up the wrong tree. Well, it wasn’t scary until he sat with it for a few minutes too long. “What if it made the difference, Rach?”
She pursed her lips and held up her hand. “Back up, Vinnie. Back way up. Two minutes ago you couldn’t say ‘gay’, and don’t think it hasn’t escaped me that you can’t say the word, but now dating a man might change your whole life?”
Well, put like that, it did sound bad. Vince sighed.
“And don’t do that either,” she went on. “Don’t go giving up before you start. You know, you might be partly right. This could be the way to go for you. At the very least you might not propose on the second date for a change because you’re so sure rainbows will start flying out of your ass.” Rachel reached out and rubbed his shoulder. “How about you explore this? How about you go check out a gay bar sometime and see?”
Vince thought about it a moment, then nodded. It did make a kind of sense. He could check it out. Go into a bar where no one would know him and see. See if it clicked. See if it felt like coming home or going to hell. See if he flirted with men as well as he flirted with women. He swallowed hard. Okay, maybe he wouldn’t even flirt the first time. But Rachel was right. He could go check things out.
Clutching his scotch tightly, he nodded.
Rachel smiled and turned her gentle stroking of his shoulder into a soft punch. “There you go. See? It’s going to be okay, Vinnie. One way or another. I promise.”
Vince nodded again. It’s all going to be okay.
Jesus, he hoped so.