Chapter Four

 

I NEVER saw Jude again after that night. I ended up going to my room, where I masturbated in the shower as I thought of us doing all the things we hadn’t been able to do. Afterward, I fell into an unsettled sleep as Perlman farted out lullabies. By the time I got up the next morning, Jude was gone.

Although I considered asking Melissa how I could get in touch with him, I soon realized my interest could very well out him to his whole family. Not only didn’t Jude seem outed to his family, he seemed to have a good reason for his reticence. His parents might have suspected his orientation, but I’d gotten the distinct impression they found it odious.  

I also realized I could’ve been jumping to all kinds of erroneous conclusions… but I still couldn’t risk exposing him.

Jude had made a strong impression on me, though, no doubt about it. The memory of that night remained tenaciously in my mind. It surfaced whenever I felt disillusioned with the dating scene. It surfaced with maddening regularity while Robbie and I psychologically battered each other on the road to Splitsville. As much as I’d tried to repress the feeling, I’d always regretted not having pursued Jude Stone, that shy, funny, passionate man who’d so effortlessly enchanted me.

Now, as we both strode through the central parlor of North Lodge, his presence at Stronger Wings began to make disturbing sense.

He anxiously glanced over his shoulder at me. I couldn’t not follow him, because my room was in the northwest wing, just as his was. As soon as I spotted my room number, I hastily opened the door and threw my stuff inside while I kept an eye on Jude’s progress. He stopped a few doors down. I made sure nobody was around to see me before I dashed to the farther room and let myself in.

Jude whirled around and gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look. “Are you crazy?” he asked in a strained whisper. “Get out of here, Misha!”

“No, not yet.”

He turned away from me and put his hands over his head.

“Why are you here?” I asked. My voice sounded strange. It reflected my concern, my dismay. I hadn’t expected that.

Jude turned away from the curtained window he’d been facing and sank to the floor in front of the bed. Yup, it was a single bed. The room was small and Spartan, its color scheme solidly set in blues and beiges. Only the bedspread, which bore another of those Native American lookalike patterns, had touches of other colors—brown bars, orange rings. I was surprised not to see a cross on one of the walls, until I remembered this “ministry” professed to be nondenominational; they were equal-opportunity homophobes. Instead, a photo of the Ozark Mountains provided inspiration. The only other pieces of furniture were a bedside reading chair, a small nightstand, and a simple Thoreauvian desk with an equally simple desk chair. Drawers beneath the bed took the place of a dresser.

I, too, lowered myself to the floor. Jude and I sat cross-legged, facing each other, but I made sure my knees didn’t touch his. Christ, what had happened to him?

“Tell me,” I said.

Jude raised his head from his hands. “You should know. You’re here too.”

I could’ve adopted the ruse then and there. I could’ve pretended to be like the other registrants—a man despairing of his attraction to other men and desperate to obliterate that attraction. My experience with Robbie had even provided me with the perfect motivation. I could’ve fed Jude some blarney about how my former boyfriend had set an example for me and I wanted to follow in his footsteps.

It would’ve been the perfect way to get Jude’s guard down. Then, once he’d started feeling at ease with me, I could’ve sneakily chipped away at his resistance.

It was damned tempting. But even I would’ve choked on so big and foul a lie. Not only did I despise what Robbie had done, I couldn’t bring myself to manipulate Jude, especially through deception. The Stronger Wings Ministry would likely do enough of that.

“I’m not here for the same reason everybody else is,” I said.

A crease formed between his eyebrows. He looked the same as I remembered, except for that hint of distress in his face. Jude was twenty-eight now; I was thirty-one.

“I’m here doing research for a magazine article,” I said. “But please don’t….” Damn. How could I phrase it?

“Don’t blow your cover?” Jude said wryly.

He’d made me sound like some hostile infiltrator. “That’s pretty melodramatic. I’m just a minor-league journalist. In fact, I’m planning on telling Hammer why I’m here. I just can’t tell him—”

“You’re still gay and content to be so.”

“Yes.” I gave Jude an imploring look, begging him to understand. “I have to tell Hammer I’m straight, maybe separated or divorced. He’ll kick me out otherwise.” I leaned forward. “Jude, this is my job. This is what I do for a living. I can’t get the boot.”

Scraping his teeth over his lower lip, he nodded and looked down. I recalled with a flash of longing how it had felt to kiss him—how eager and eloquent and plush his lips had been, how agile his tongue.

“You still shouldn’t be here, Misha. Not unless you want to change.”

Want to change. The phrase stabbed at my heart, a sudden, strong reaction made all the more potent by its unfamiliarity. I hadn’t been too moved by much of anything since Robbie’s departure. “Please tell me what made you take this step.” When I spoke, I impulsively touched Jude’s thigh.

His gaze jerked up as he flinched away. “Don’t do that.”

I put up my hands. “Okay. Sorry. I won’t.”

The look Jude gave me verged on apologetic. It was certainly indecisive. I wondered what he would do if I just leapt at him and pulled him against me, caressed his back.

“I’d appreciate some insights for my article,” I said. It was my first fib. The article had nothing to do with my interest in him.

Jude idly scratched at his pants legs. “Nothing’s right,” he murmured. “I’m not right.”

My mouth formed a question—What?—but no sound came out.

Jude’s eyes turned up. Etiquette dictated he should look at me while he spoke to me, and Jude believed in courtesy. That’s just the way he was.

“I’ve never really felt good about myself,” he said. “My parents think I’m disgusting. They’re ashamed of me. They can’t bring themselves to talk about it, but I know that’s how they feel. More and more, I think I’m disgusting.”

It made no sense to me. None. He was a lovely man. “Jude, why?”

The furrows in his forehead had increased and deepened, and when his eyes again met mine, I fancied I could read his embattled history there.

“I’m sick of the whole shallow scene, Misha. The bars and Internet sites, the party boys and flaunters and users and cheaters. That ‘anything goes’ or ‘if it feels good, do it’ attitude. I hate what it brings out in me. Maybe what I am is an abomination. Something that’s completely right and natural shouldn’t be depressing.”

I stared at him in despair and felt a too familiar, jagged ball of ice form in my stomach. I’d heard this spiel before, albeit a more religious version, and getting over it had taken months off my lifetime allotment of good cheer.

“What happened to make you feel this way?” I asked, convinced there must’ve been some catalyst. The potential lover I’d met three years ago didn’t just wake up one morning and decide being gay was a curse.

Jude shook his head and shrugged. “It’s been an accumulation of things. The way my parents look at me, feel about me. And the nature of my job. And the hook-ups I’ve made, the way they’ve gone….”

“Was there one in particular that went bad?”

Jude looked away from me. He was tightening, sealing himself up. I’d hit on something, but he obviously wasn’t going to talk about it.

“I’m just sick of self-serving people whose lives center on their damned genitals,” he mumbled. 

I leaned back, as if his feelings were a physical repellant like insect spray. Directed at me. “Do you think I’m like that?”

What does it matter? I asked myself. Still, I wanted to know.

Again, Jude shrugged. It was obvious he didn’t like talking about this stuff to someone who didn’t “want to change.”

“Please don’t get dodgy,” I said. “Just tell me.”

He gave me a glance shaded equally with embarrassment and suspicion. “I only know what I’ve heard.”

“Where?”

“At Barbarosa’s.”

“Were you asking about me?”

Immediately, Jude blushed. “I could’ve been. I can’t remember.”

“Bullshit.”

Scowling, he shushed me. “Okay, maybe I was.”

“And?”

“I was told you were….” Again, he had trouble looking at me.

“What?”

“There’s no point in repeating it.”

“To me there is.”

His eyebrows rose, then fell. “A player. A cock whore. Fickle and self-absorbed and—”

“Okay, that’s good enough.” Frowning, I got up and sat in the chair beside the bed. I was angry; I was hurt. I wanted to rage indignantly. I wanted to pity myself. More than anything, though, I was mortified. I didn’t want anybody to think of me in those terms.

“You still live in Green Bay?” Jude asked, as if he were indeed taking pity on me. He’d kindly changed the subject. Even his voice was milder, and his eyes matched his tone. They looked like warm molasses.

“Yeah, but I often stay with my sister in Chicago. That’s where the magazine’s offices are. I don’t work with Mont anymore.”

“What magazine?”

“Options.”

Jude brightened a little. “Wow. I’ve heard of it. Don’t they publish online too?”

I was ridiculously pleased that he seemed impressed. “A month after an issue comes out in print. How about you? Where’re you living now?”

“Still in Archerville.”

We were practically neighbors. I’d never known that. Our old conversation had never gotten that far. “Aren’t you a pastry chef or something?” That reference he’d made to his job—maybe it had something to do with how “faggy” it was perceived to be.

The question drew a baffled frown. “Music teacher and band director. High school.”

“Oh.” How could I get the two mixed up? “You sure you don’t do anything with pastry?” I vaguely recalled a reference to frosting.

After a pause, Jude muttered, “Not anymore.”

I snorted out a laugh. Each of us snuck at glance at the other, and he kind of smiled too.

“Jude, could we talk more?”

Article or no article, I couldn’t just let this go. He was full to bursting with anxiety and shame and bitterness. And he seemed achingly confused. His relationship with his parents must’ve been a nearly lifelong agony. The fact he was a teacher was also telling. And I had a strong feeling he’d once had a partner who’d somehow made him suffer.

“Not now but soon,” I added, because I knew I should get out of his room. “I’d really appreciate it.”

“That might not be such a good idea.”

I rolled up my eyes. “I’m not trying to get in your pants.” Fib Number Two, but the fibs were getting rickety. I was starting to mean what I said.

My choice of words clearly made Jude uncomfortable. He rose from the floor, opened his bag, and distractedly began picking through its contents. I admired the backs of his hands, their distinctly masculine bas-relief of veins and tendons, and again noticed he had enticing fingers.

“You know,” I said, “what you heard about me isn’t entirely true. I actually had a steady boyfriend for a while after you and I met. And I never cheated on him. I’m not a total schmuck. I do have some scruples.” 

That snared Jude’s interest. His hands stilled as he cocked his head in my direction. “You still with him?”

“No. He… found something else to do and someone else to do it with.” Forearms resting on my thighs, I toyed with my fingers while a ghost of recollection blew through me. When it had passed, I looked up. “But I still don’t want to get in your pants. Especially under these circumstances.”

I couldn’t quite read Jude’s expression—he’d started poking around in his luggage again—but another withheld smile seemed to tease his mouth. He could’ve been amused by my obvious distaste for this place or my claim to purity of intent. Or both.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Thank you.” I rose from the chair.

“A lot is going to depend on Hammer’s reaction, you know.”

“I know.”

Suddenly, getting laid got shoved onto a back burner, alongside that cooling pot of Robbie regrets. I didn’t want to see this unassuming man get flushed into a cesspool of self-loathing. I didn’t want to see him scale over with repression. He was too fine. I knew that with absolute certainty.

I’d already lost someone to this accursed movement. That was why I was here. And even though I couldn’t “lose” Jude, since I’d never actually had him, I was determined to save him.

I had no fucking idea where this Superman complex had come from, but I clung to it. Nobody was going to drain the vibrant sexuality out of my favorite dancer. Nobody. 

Jude hustled up to the door before I opened it. “Let me make sure the coast is clear before you leave.”

His shoulder inadvertently brushed mine as he leaned past me, and I smelled the cleanness of him. The arc of his neck drew my gaze; with it, the kind of innocent yearning a harried man feels when he looks at a hammock in the shade. Jude’s lithe body had simple, clean lines, a graceful geometry. I wanted to fit myself to it. That was all. Just settle in and, after a while, arise feeling reborn.

He motioned to me then briefly cupped my arm. “Okay,” he whispered. “It’s safe.”

No, I thought. No, it isn’t. But I’m going to try my damnedest to make sure you’re safe.