The bride and groom sweated their way through a thankfully short ceremony. Tom sweated his way around the periphery, already calculating how he would tone down the glow in the bride’s cheeks as he edited photos of the kiss, the smile, and the oh-wow-we-actually-did-it moment. There was always one photograph that made his day, and he captured it seconds after that: the flash of pride on the groom’s face as he congratulated himself for making the best decision of his life. The June sunshine agreed.
While he packed his gear, Tom’s heart and mind were already in the forest around the lodge, maybe on the south trail where the trees gave way to a small, rocky beach. By the time he stopped to check on his mom, the sun would have passed around the bend in the creek and he’d have ample shade to sit while cooling his heels in a very real sense.
Fatigue checked his enthusiasm a little, as well as concern over his mother’s health. The doctor had listed her condition as stable, but if there was one thing Wendy Benjamin didn’t know how to do, it was “stable.”
The receptionist called for his attention as soon as Tom ducked into the air-conditioned lobby of Mountain Manor. He strolled up to the front desk and stood sweating as two hours under the sun evaporated beneath a cool swirl of air. The receptionist tapped a few keys on the keyboard in front of her and an old, familiar tension slid down Tom’s spine. He wasn’t completely unaware of the state of his account with Mountain Manor, but he’d had a lot of practice in ignoring the obvious until it became painful.
Experience had taught him that being the last to say something often bought time.
Without looking away from her monitor, the receptionist spoke in a confidential tone that wouldn’t have been quiet enough to exclude anyone else hanging around the front desk. “I’m showing your account is two months in arrears, Mr. Benjamin.” It was always Mr. Benjamin when they wanted to talk about money. She glanced up, showing him a practiced smile. “How much can you pay today?”
“My checkbook is in the car.” Tom gestured in the opposite direction. Toward the clinic. “I can grab it as soon as I’ve checked in with my mom.”
If anyone else had been at the desk, watching this exchange, they might not have noticed the subtle expression change—unless they were also the deadbeat son of a mentally unstable woman with a long history of substance abuse. Another receptionist might prefer he got his checkbook now. Would prefer he paid something instead of the fat nothing he obviously planned. But this one was too polite to say so, even in front of an imaginary audience.
Next month she wouldn’t be so polite.
Taking her silence as his cue, Tom dipped his head in a little nod, patted the top of the front desk—my check will be here, soon—and went to visit with his mom, where he stayed for an hour, holding her limp hand, then left after being assured she was responding to treatment. He remembered his checkbook as he left the parking lot and almost paused, gripped by a combination of guilt and the need to defy expectation. Then he turned onto West Main in the direction of home, because however he felt, he couldn’t afford the overdraft fee.
Frank’s rental was in the circle in front of the lodge. Tom pulled around the side and parked in the garage. He considered hiding in there, but it was hot in the car and hot in the garage and just too damn hot for June. Could he sneak into the guesthouse and grab a pair of trunks before Frank spotted him? The creek beckoned ever more insistently.
Frank met him at the kitchen door. “There you are.” His easy and relaxed smile held a similar quality to the receptionist’s. Not so easy, not quite relaxed. For a moment, Tom actually wondered if he owed Frank money too. “Here, let me help you with that.” Frank took one of the camera bags and held the door open as Tom hauled the rest of his equipment inside. “Where does all this go?”
“Downstairs.”
“In the cellar?”
“I’ve got an, um, office down there.”
“In the cellar.”
“Next to the darkroom.”
“Why didn’t you say so last week?”
Tom felt his forehead crease. “What do you mean? I thought I pointed it out.”
“No, we walked past the darkroom, which you said you only used sometimes, and then we went on to where the wine was.”
“Oh.”
Frank stood still, as though waiting for something, and Tom’s mood slipped further south.
“So, I have an office down there.” Oh, was this a . . . “Robert offered me the space. I can clear it out in a day, though. If you give me two days, I can clear out the darkroom too. And my tools. I’ll need to borrow a truck.” Did Gerry still drive a pickup? Fuck, where would he go? Would Gerry offer him a corner of his garage as well?
“Christ, Tom. I didn’t mean for you to pack your things, I was just surprised you’d work in the cellar, is all. Isn’t there a workroom next to the laundry? Or there’s the office up here.”
Hot, tired, and pulled this way and that by emotions he didn’t have names for, Tom stared at Frank until Frank took a step back.
“What?”
Tom shook his head. “Sorry, it’s been a long day. And too hot.”
“Another wedding?”
“Yeah.”
“You do a lot of weddings?”
“This time of year, yeah.”
“Well, show me where this office of yours is and then maybe we can have something cool to drink. You look as though you’ve spent all morning on the roof.”
“That was all week, actually.”
Frank’s chin lifted as he glanced upward.
“I patched all the holes I could find, but the roof needs proper attention.”
“I’ll add it to my list.”
With a grunt, Tom led the way to the cellar stairs, down, and into the office he kept next to his darkroom. Robert had made both of the same offers Frank just had: use of the workroom next to the laundry and the main office. Tom liked his basement cave, though. It was cool, dry (thanks to a dehumidifier), and private. He could lock the door and leave knowing that the most valuable possessions he had were safe, and he enjoyed being down here when he worked. Hidden from distraction.
Tom set his bag on the counter running the length of the narrow space and began pulling out his cameras and lenses. “I want everything to cool down before I clean it up and put it away,” he explained. “Condensation is bad.”
Frank studied his computer setup and light table before turning to take in the prints on the walls. Tom let him do his thing while Tom did his. He unpacked, jotted a few notes to himself—reminders of which photos he wanted to do something special with—and put his bags away. By the time he was done, Frank had migrated to the cubby-style shelves at the end of the counter and had a magazine in his hands.
He’d made a small stack on the empty shelf beside him.
Oh shit.
Frank looked up. “These are mine.”
“Um, technically, they’re mine. I paid for them.”
“No, I mean”—he closed the issue of GQ in his hands and held it up for Tom to see—“I have a column in this one.” He put the magazine aside and picked up an issue of Traveler. “I have the cover of this one.” He picked up another two magazines. “An article in this one and an essay in this one. All of these magazines”—he gestured at the stack he’d made—“have my work in them.”
What to do but shrug and pretend to organize his cameras again.
“Tom?”
“Are you about done? I want to lock the door and go upstairs.” Even though it was cooler down here.
“Tom.” Tom turned around. Frank held up the magazines. “Can I ask why you have these?”
“Probably for the same reason you have twelve of my prints.”
Frank’s mouth dropped open. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so weird. “How did you know it was me?”
“I didn’t until the third order. Same account. I wanted to know who liked my work enough to buy three separate prints, so I reverse googled your address.”
Frank looked down at the magazines in his hands. Shuffled them like oversized, floppy cards. Then he began stacking them back on the shelf he’d pulled them from. Something slipped from beneath the stack and fluttered toward the floor. Recognizing the cover, Tom jumped forward. But Frank had already bent to pick up the very old, very creased notebook. The last one. The one they’d called the list of lists. The final itinerary for Benjamin and Franklin.
Watching Frank flip through the pages, Tom decided he was imagining the shaking of Frank’s hands and the reverent way he handled the notebook. Frank got to the end, closed the book, and squeezed it between his hands a moment before tucking it back into the shelf beside the magazines. His voice was quiet, his words facing away. “I don’t understand us.”
Neither do I.
Frank seemed somewhat more composed when he turned back around, but his hazel eyes held questions.
“Want to come swimming?” Tom asked.
“What?”
“Swimming. You know, getting wet. And hopefully cool.”
“I don’t have any swim trunks with me.” Frank frowned. “And there is no water in the pool.”
“We haven’t run the pool since 2015. Too expensive. I meant the creek.” Tom felt the grin before it broke over his face. “Pretty sure I have a box of forgotten trunks in the laundry, though.”
He half expected Frank to scoff at the idea of wearing something from the lost and found. The guy wore slacks on a Saturday, for Christ’s sake. But Frank gestured for him to lead the way back upstairs and seemed content to sort through the box while Tom held it, both of them connected by cardboard, castoffs, and memories.
Frank pulled out a pair of Sponge Bob trunks. “If only these were my size.”
Tom snickered.
Next was a ladies black one-piece. Frank pressed it to his chest with one hand, and molded his empty, sagging “breasts” with the other. “This doing anything for you?”
Tom’s lips twitched. “No.”
After digging deep, Frank came out with a bright-red pair of trunks about his size. “They’re so red.”
“More red than your hair.” They looked up at the same time. “Well, than your hair used to be. Do you dye it now?”
Frank’s smile narrowed. “Something like that.”
“Seriously?”
“You really think this strawberry blond is the natural product of age?”
“I dunno, man. Orange hair could go one way or the other, right? Though, if I remember correctly, Anne with an E suffered under the curse of the carrot for most of her life.”
Chuckling, Frank said, “If there’s anything more ridiculous than carrot-colored hair, it’s carrot-colored hair highlighted with white. Not gray, not silver, but white.”
“Because gray would be too mundane for Franklin Tern.”
“I’d already been lightening my hair for years, to tone down the orange, so I simply went a little lighter. The plan is to one day go gracefully white. When I’m tired of this reddish sort of blond.” He shrugged. “Or when my vanity finally gives in to the fact I’m nearly fifty.”
“It looks good.”
Frank smiled, the compliment obviously touching something other than a peripheral need for reassurance. “And you look about the same.”
“Except with gray I’m not . . .” No, he wasn’t going to say that. Frank didn’t need an excuse to color his hair.
Frank finished the sentence anyway. “Vain enough to color?”
“No.” Tom shrugged. Frowned. “I just don’t care, I guess.”
“You never did.”
“Sure I did or I wouldn’t’ve been pissed when you wanted me to wear trunks out of this box all those years ago. I hated the idea of wearing hand-me-downs.”
“That’s not what I meant. Okay, so you’ve got some gray going on. The fact you’re not trying to hide it is what makes you so you. You were never one to apologize for who you were, Tommy. I always envied that. Your confidence.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I followed you around like a bad smell. I wanted so badly to be in your life. To have your life.”
“And I wanted yours.”
“A drunk mother and a shabby trailer? Your father was a doctor, Frank. You lived in the nicest house in town and spent afternoons and weekends at your uncle’s resort playing with all the kids who could afford to get away for a few days. You had everything.”
Frank was shaking his head. “No, I didn’t. Not until . . .”
“Until what?”
“Not until you.”