Trudy was back on Old Murphy Road again, pulling over onto the gravel shoulder. The sun was setting. She had left Mercy and Claire at home with their smelly dog and their fantasy baby, Jerome.
As she walked toward the porch, she could hear their voices, their laughter, and stopped for a second. Why was she here? She turned and looked back out over the bay and considered leaving. Just going back home. But instead she took one step at a time up to the porch, quietly, stealthily. She stood at the screen door, thinking it would be funny to just wait there until someone noticed her. Maybe give them a little fright. She saw Jules, leaning back from the table, his foot in its cast resting on a chair. He was smiling.
And then she saw something amazing, something she never thought she would see: James and Mark cuddled up together on the old couch against the back wall of the kitchen.
Those two big grown men, pressed right up against each other. Mark had his arm behind James across the back of the couch and his leg draped over James’s thigh. He was almost sitting on his lap.
She turned away and crept down the steps.
Then she turned around and walked right back up the stairs, making plenty of noise and thinking, I don’t know anything about anything. Not one thing about anything in this whole world. James opened the door before she even knocked. “It’s a woman,” he said. “Thank God. Come in. We were getting tired of our own company around here.” She doubted this, but she liked the way it made her feel when he said it. Jules looked at her and smiled, patted his lap, and nodded at her. She walked over and settled her weight on top of him. Trudy saw him wince a little and she started to get off but he grabbed her hips and brought her back down. “No,” he said. “It’s good. It feels good.” James grabbed Mark’s hand and led him out of the room. Trudy stared after them.
“Never mind them,” said Jules. “They’re always like that. All over each other.”
Trudy didn’t know what to say.
Jules looked her in the eye. “What’s up? You OK?”
“Yeah. I guess I just never really thought about it before.”
“Never really thought about what?”
“You know, being gay. Around here, it’s just a name people call each other, a joke. I never really thought about it being real.”
Jules was laughing now. He couldn’t help it.
“Don’t laugh at me!” Jules pulled her close and kissed her. She kissed him back and thought about James and Mark. About them kissing. Their faces rough against each other. Their strong arms around each other. Jules’s breath was hot in her ear and he was kissing her neck, his hands on her thighs. “Stay with me,” he said. “Come upstairs with me.”
“I can’t. I have to go to work.” Her body felt heavy, magnetized. Like she would have to be hauled off him with a crane. He was kissing her again, and his hands were under her shirt, undoing her bra, his fingers tracing a line down her sides, barely touching the sides of her breasts. His voice was in her ear again. “I will make you feel good, I promise.”
Trudy kissed his neck, his cheek, his ear, and pulled away. “I’ve heard that one before,” she said.
(This was a lie.
Nobody had ever said anything like that to her before. Ever.)
She shrugged her shoulders as she did up her bra, straightened her shirt, and flipped her hair back over her shoulders. She grabbed her fringed purse and headed for the door.
“Promises, promises.”