Part 14 (2/2)

Daniel was absolutely busting up - ”Pendejo!” he said - and I realized I'd been played again. Now he even had Kevin laughing at me.

”Daniel wanted help on some homework,” I said. ”But he was just leaving.” My face was the death ray in some sci-fi epic.

”Yeah, yeah, I'm going,” he said, s.n.a.t.c.hing up his textbook and backpack, then slithering for the door. He'd come, he'd seen, he'd conquered, and now he was leaving.

Kevin stepped to one side to let him go. But when Daniel reached the doorway, he turned back to me and grabbed his crotch through his cotton pants. ”That was hot,” he said. ”But next time, I'm gonna let you do me.” Then he was gone.

The second the door was closed, I said, ”Nothing happened! I was trying to get him out of our-”

Kevin burst out laughing, but it felt different now that Daniel was gone. Now it felt more like he was laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.

I smiled.

”You really trust me that much?” I said, touched.

”Trust you?” Kevin said. ”With Daniel? Oh, h.e.l.l, no! But I opened the door a few seconds before you think I did. I saw the whole thing.”

Later that night, Kevin and I were lying in bed, cuddling. My head was on his chest, and I could smell his athlete's foot cream, which he'd just put on.

”Daniel is such a twit,” I said.

”You think he's s.e.xy,” Kevin said.

I jerked my head up and glared at him. ”I do not!”

”Sure, you do. It's all good. Even if he's only seventeen years old, you pervert.”

I didn't say anything for a second. Kevin noticed.

”What?” he said.

”He turns eighteen,” I said quietly. ”On Sunday.”

Kevin laughed.

”Stop that!” I said. ”He's a twit.”

”Sure, he is. But you still think he's s.e.xy, and now he's basically legal, so just admit it.”

”Why don't you admit it? You're the one who keeps bringing it up.”

”I'm not the one who was pressed up against him in our bedroom today.”

I reached down and slipped my hand up through the leg of his running shorts. Kevin wasn't wearing underwear and he was completely hard, straining against the nylon.

I looked back at him accusingly.

”I deny everything,” he said.

”Uh huh,” I said, gently stroking him. ”Maybe you should have a talk with your d.i.c.k.”

”Maybe you should have a talk with my d.i.c.k.”

I smiled and leaned in to kiss him. He kissed me back, more forcefully than I expected, hungrily.

He's still thinking about Daniel, I thought. But that was okay. I confess I was thinking about Daniel too - the smell of him, the feel of him against my body.

I worked my way down Kevin's torso, sliding his shorts down so I could have that aforementioned conversation with his d.i.c.k. At the same time, the rest of Kevin's clothes were coming off, and mine were too, even though my mouth barely left his d.i.c.k.

In a minute, we were both naked, and I climbed on top of him, kissing again, thrusting together. We were touching each other, kissing and licking, but we were thinking about Daniel, even as we both knew the other was thinking about him too.

I couldn't help but wonder: did all gay couples do this? I bet a lot of them did. Unlike straight couples, gay couples can find the exact same person hot. It was totally erotic, knowing that Kevin was turned on by the same thing I was, that we were sharing the same object of desire. In a weird way, both of us thinking about Daniel even made for a strange moment of connection.

The truth is, s.e.x makes no sense whatsoever. But I guess that's a big part of what's so great about it.

Afterward, Kevin fell asleep, but once again I didn't. I just lay in the dark, listening to the traffic and the sounds of the city.

Whatever you do, don't- That's what the ghost said to me before, the last time I'd stayed awake after Kevin and I had s.e.x. Except it wasn't really a ghost. It had probably been the neighbor's radio, a trick of the acoustics.

Still, unlike before, I now knew that someone really had killed himself in our apartment, that screenwriter named Cole Gordon. Or did I know that? All I really knew is that there'd once been a screenwriter who'd lived in our building, and he'd died in some kind of accident. I didn't know it was suicide or even that it was our apartment.

I slipped out of bed, pulled on my underwear and a t-s.h.i.+rt, and walked out to the front room. I didn't turn on the lights, or the TV, or even pick up my iPad. I listened, but I didn't hear anything. What was I expecting to hear? The voice of the ghost again? That was stupid.

I looked around the darkened room. If Cole Gordon really had lived here, and he really had committed suicide, I wondered how he'd done it. I'd thought before that maybe he put his head in the oven and turned on the gas, but somehow that didn't feel right.

I looked up at the ceiling, but there wasn't anything to hang a rope on. The only fixture was over the table in the kitchen, and the ceiling wasn't tall enough in there to hang yourself. Could he have put a plastic bag over his head and suffocated himself? Did they even have plastic bags in the 1950s? I didn't know. Maybe he took an overdose of sleeping pills - that method of suicide seemed like an old standby.

This line of thinking was morbid. Whatever happened, I had no way of knowing.

The real question was why had he done it?

Gordon, 34, was an unproduced screenwriter.

That's all the article said. Was I jumping to conclusions to a.s.sume that he'd killed himself because he was an unproduced screenwriter? That's what the legend said - what Gina had told us that day we first met her - but I wasn't sure if I should put any stock in that at all. Weren't legends like that game you play at birthday parties, where you go around the room whispering in each other's ears, and by the end of the game, the person says something completely different from what the first person whispered?

Still, I thought, let's a.s.sume that really was the ghost of Cole Gordon I heard: a big a.s.sumption, but whatever. Presumably, it was hard for ghosts to speak to the living. If it wasn't, they'd talk to us a lot more often, and more importantly, someone would have proved that they talk to us. Maybe this particular ghost had gotten through to me anyway, at least for a few seconds. What was so important that he had to try and reach me? And what was the rest of the sentence?

It had sounded like a warning.

Cole Gordon was a screenwriter, and I was a screenwriter, so it seemed reasonable to a.s.sume it had something to do with that. Did it have to do with my movie deal with Mr. Brander? Was I making a mistake somehow?

”Tell me,” I said to the darkness. ”What's the thing that's so important I not do?”

The second I said the words out loud, I felt stupid again. It was definitely time to go back to bed. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but even I knew it was time to turn in when you were standing in a darkened room, listening for answers that will never come.

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