The Tin Box (6 page)

After a few miles of quiet, Colby began to fiddle with the stereo dials. When he hit the right combination of buttons, a CD started up. It was a Schubert string quartet.

“You listen to
that
?” Colby asked incredulously. “Don’t you have something better? In your glove box, maybe?”

“There’s a Beethoven disc in there. I think some Liszt too.”

“Anything a teeny bit more modern?”

“I had a Stravinsky but it got scratched.” William had his gaze on the winding road in front of him, but with his peripheral vision he could see Colby shaking his head.

Colby switched off the CD and began to hum instead. William didn’t recognize the tune, which wasn’t surprising. He wasn’t much into music. He had only a basic knowledge of the classical stuff, and he listened to it mainly because his father had always listened to it when he drove or worked. In fact, most of William’s small collection of CDs had been gifts from his parents. He’d never been sure whether they thought he liked the music or were hoping he would
come
to like it. Maybe they just couldn’t think of anything else to give him for his birthday and Christmas.

Not surprisingly, Colby was humming something bouncy. He jiggled his leg too, and tapped his fingers on the door handle. William had to remind himself to be annoyed, and he tried not to focus on the fact that Colby was so close in the small car that they were almost touching. It was better to focus on the road—a lot of drivers evidently mistook this highway for the Monaco Grand Prix racetrack. People kept zooming past him even though he was going several miles over the speed limit.

As they drew closer to Mariposa, Colby directed him off the highway, past a few blocks of houses and a church, and around a little park with swing sets and a slide. Their destination seemed to be a strip mall containing a restaurant, a hair salon, and one large store—Frank’s Grab’em.

“Are you buying perishables?” Colby asked as William parked the car.

“Probably.”

“’Kay. Then how about lunch first?”

William wasn’t really all that hungry, but he followed Colby into the Java Joint, which proved to serve coffee, frozen yogurt, sandwiches, and burgers. They took a booth near the front. There were only a few other customers in the place: a couple of older ladies dining together, a guy in his thirties poking at an iPad, an older man reading a newspaper. The waitress appeared long enough to plunk down plastic menus and a couple glasses of water, then disappeared into a back room.

“Avoid the eggs,” Colby advised. “But the burgers are always good.”

“Okay.”

William hid behind his menu. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten out with someone who wasn’t Lisa or a fellow student. It hadn’t really occurred to him on the drive over that he’d be forced to make conversation with Colby for the length of the meal.

Eventually the waitress reappeared. William was thankful to be able to order coffee at long last. He asked for a cheeseburger too, as did Colby. Colby wanted a Diet Coke. “Gotta watch the waistline,” he said, winking at the waitress. She giggled.

With the menus gone, William had nowhere to hide. He pretended to be closely examining his surroundings, but in fact the Java Joint was pretty unremarkably decorated, and he couldn’t avoid Colby’s thoughtful stare.

“You don’t like me much, do you?” Colby finally said.

“I… I don’t think I know you well enough to not like you.”

“Yeah, but you sort of make these faces and you keep flinching away.” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you homophobic? Afraid you’ll catch my queer cooties?”

If William had been sipping his water, he would have choked. As it was, he coughed rather loudly. “I’m not a bigot.”

“It doesn’t bother you to be seen with a flaming gayboy?”

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks.” That was true, more or less. Once he’d given up on gaining his parents’ respect, the only judgment he’d feared was his own. Unfortunately, he was a harsh critic of himself.

“So then what’s the deal? Hermit? Confirmed introvert? Asperger’s? Maybe you just disapprove of my stylistic choices.” Colby gave a significant look at his own tight and fairly skimpy outfit, and then at William’s Oxford shirt and sport coat. “Are you the fashion police, Will?”

“William.” He wanted to frown, but Colby was looking genuinely upset, his sunny smile replaced by troubled eyes and a frown. For the first time, William felt guilty for how he’d been acting. Colby seemed like a nice guy. Friendly and cheery. It wasn’t his fault he made William uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Colby. I think I’m just kind of a jerk.”

The grin reappeared, and William was strangely relieved. “You’re not really a jerk,” said Colby. “We just need to work a little on your social skills. Loosen you up a little. ’Cause Will, my man, you’ve got a stick so far up your ass you must be tasting it. Who the hell put it there?”

William felt a little flutter of panic at the question. He intentionally pushed it down and focused instead on the coarseness of Colby’s language, which made him blush. It didn’t help that he knew Colby was right—William was about as uptight as they came. And Colby wasn’t the first to accuse him of it. Even Lisa used to complain and tell him to ease up, and she was wound pretty tight herself.

The coffee arrived, hot and blessedly caffeinated. William burned his tongue but didn’t especially care. Coffee had always been his one true vice, the one thing he wanted, knew he shouldn’t have, and couldn’t quite give up. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the rich, bitter flavor. He imagined he could feel his veins singing in happiness. Oddly, the song sounded a lot like the one Colby had been humming in the car.

“I’ve seen guys look less blissed out than that after a really good orgasm.”

William opened his eyes to glare. He looked around, but if any of the other customers had heard what Colby said, they weren’t reacting. “I need to buy a coffeemaker,” William said.

“Yeah, Frank’s will have one. How come you didn’t bring yours with you to JV?”

“JV?”

“Jelley’s Valley. See, now that you’re a local we can let you in on our secret lingo.”

“Oh.”

“So why no coffeemaker?”

After taking another soothing swallow, William answered carefully. “I didn’t have one before I came. I used to just go out for coffee.” That was sort of true. A few years back he and Lisa had splurged on a really nice Italian machine, the programmable kind that brewed coffee and espresso and probably did your income taxes if you punched the right buttons. Naturally, Lisa had kept it when he left. And during those miserable weeks of living in his office, he did go out for coffee, buying it from a campus vendor when he could afford it, pouring it from the burner in the graduate student lounge when he was broke.

“I guess that’s one of the advantages of living in civilization. You can go out for stuff.” Colby seemed neither sarcastic nor sad, just matter-of-fact.

“Have you really lived here your whole life?”

Colby had been slurping at his soft drink; now he smiled around the straw. “Why? You figure I’m a little too colorful for JV?”

“Maybe,” William answered cautiously.

“I thought so too, when I was a kid. Couldn’t wait to shake the dust from my feet. I graduated high school early, when I was only sixteen. Took off for the bright lights. San Francisco—homo heaven, right?”

“And your family let you go?”

Colby shrugged. “Dad was dead. Mom was remarried, to a truck driver. He has a house up in Redding but he spends most of the time on the road. Mom too. They’ve got their rig all set up like a little apartment, practically. It’s pretty cool. And Grandma and Grandpa, they were a little overwhelmed with me, I think.” He batted his eyelashes, which were unnaturally long. “I was just too fabulous for them to deal with.”

The waitress came to the table and plopped down laden plates. She pulled ketchup and mustard bottles from her apron pocket and set them on the table. “Anything else?”

“We’re good for now,” said Colby.

William had been thinking he wasn’t hungry, but he changed his mind when he caught the scent of his burger. It looked good too. He removed the sliced onions and spread a little ketchup evenly inside the top bun with his knife, then he sprinkled pepper on the thick-cut fries. No salt. By the time he took a bite—careful to lean over the plate so he didn’t drip onto himself—Colby was nearly halfway through his food. He was making happy little noises of enjoyment as he ate, sometimes pausing to lick the juices from his lips.

“I don’t go out all that often,” Colby said, a little apologetically.

“This was a good suggestion. Thanks.”

Colby beamed.

The waitress came by just long enough to bring Colby a refill of Coke and to top off William’s coffee cup. William wiped his face with a paper napkin. “How’d you survive in San Francisco so young?”

“Wasn’t easy. But I knew some people from the Internet.” He looked slightly embarrassed. “Older men, mostly. Guys who didn’t mind letting a cute boy crash on their couches. Or in their beds.”

William almost gasped. “That’s… that’s illegal. That’s child abuse.”

Now Colby wasn’t meeting his eyes. “Yeah. I mean, I thought it was what I wanted. I felt very grown-up, you know? In retrospect… well, it happened. I don’t really have a lot of regrets. And I had a lot of fun. Took some classes, too. I’m about sixty percent of the way to a BA in history.”

William couldn’t help but imagine a teenage Colby running around San Francisco, partying, dancing. Having sex. When William was sixteen, his life hadn’t been remotely like that. An outsider might point out that William’s life had been less dangerous than Colby’s. Less… sordid. And yet Colby seemed happy now, at peace with where he’d been. William wasn’t there yet.

“How’d you end up back in, uh, JV?” William asked quietly.

“A few things sort of happened all at once. I was starting to get bored with the hookups and stuff. I mean, they were fun and all, and I was still horny as hell, but… same old, same old after a while. And then I was realizing that a degree in history is possibly not the most useful thing, career-wise. Unless you want to teach, which I didn’t. I didn’t know
what
I wanted to be when I grew up. I was planning to quit school anyway, and then Grandma got sick. So I came back home to help Grandpa run things. And I kinda stuck.” He slurped loudly at his drink.

“But wasn’t it hard trying to… to fit in here?”

Colby laughed. “Baby, I
never
fit in here. Not even when I was a little kid. I guess I could try dressing like everyone else and doing my hair like them. I could drive a pickup and drink cheap beer and watch NASCAR on TV. But I’d still be me.” He raised his eyebrows a little and then spread his arms wide. “Colby Thomas Anderson, JV’s resident queer. So I figured hey, I’m gonna be the most authentic fucking me I can be.”

Authentic. There was a word William would never use to describe himself. He wasn’t even sure who he really was, which made being himself impossible. Unlike Colby Thomas Anderson, William Benjamin Lyon was a constructed creature, an identity based largely on who William thought he
should
be, who he had been coerced to be. Lately, that construct had begun to crumble and he was afraid of what would result. He envied Colby.

William took another bite of his burger, chewed, and swallowed. Eyes cast down at his plate, he said, “I like Thai food too.”

Colby was silent for a moment, no doubt thrown by the non sequitur. But when William risked a glance, Colby’s grin stretched ear to ear. “I’m gonna tell Grandpa his customer base for pad thai just doubled.”

T
HEY
split the lunch bill right down the middle. Colby tried to talk William into frozen yogurt afterward, but the burger and fries had been a lot of food, and William wanted to get his shopping over with.

So they went next door to Frank’s Grab’em, which proved to have an odd but surprisingly diverse selection. William started his cart with a set of sheets—dark gray, $59.95, and large enough to fit his new bed—and a basic coffeemaker. He picked up some toiletries, toilet paper and paper towels, dish soap, a sponge, and one of those pot scrubby things. He found a pair of knee-length khaki shorts that would probably not look too ridiculous on him, but he flatly refused the bright-blue flip-flops Colby tried to toss into the cart for him. And then he bought groceries. Mostly things like pasta, ground beef, and spaghetti sauce, but also as many bags of frozen veggies as he thought his freezer would hold. He even managed a grin of his own when he found a couple boxes of green curry with jasmine rice and added them to his growing pile of purchases.

“You going to invite me over for dinner, maybe?” Colby asked.

William wasn’t sure whether Colby was teasing, so he didn’t answer. But he
thought
about the idea as he continued to push his way up and down the aisles and listened to Colby give his opinion on nearly everything they passed.

Despite his earlier claim that he needed to go shopping too, Colby didn’t choose much for himself. Just a birthday card for his Aunt Deedee, a box of granola, and the
Game of Thrones
season one DVD set.