T H R E E
“No matter what, things are never where you thought they would be in someone else’s house.”
-Elias Anderson-Stanley
EARLY IN THE MORNING, while Dylan was snoring, Elias lifted his arm from over him and, cat light, swung his legs around the bed and then rose to get dressed. It was barely six in the morning now, and as Elias slipped on jeans and a hoodie, he grabbed his keys at their tips so they didn’t jangle, and headed up the steps of the basement apartment. He would walk.
A few blocks later he arrived at the home of Lance’s family. He had a key and he came through the front. He could hear Mrs. Bishop shuffling about getting the coffee ready and having her few minutes of alone time before the rest of the family rose. Elias tiptoed up the stairs and into Lance’s room, glad that he never locked it. The shades were pulled down, and in the semi darkness, despite his largeness, Lance looked like a little boy. Elias stripped to his underwear and climbed over him to fit himself between Lance and the wall and, in his sleep, Lance made a baby whimper. Elias climbed under the covers and pressed his back to Lance’s and it was a half hour later the other man yawned and smiled down on him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
Lance gave his great jack o’ lantern smile and kissed him.
“You did.”
Lance turned around, and the bed heaved a little with his turning. He wrapped his arms around Elias. “You always do.”
“I missed you.”
Lance pulled Elias tighter, and placed his chin in Elias’s back.
“If we weren’t how we were, I think we’d all be cheating on each other and unhappy.”
“I know,” Elias said, his voice sounding strangely brokenhearted.
Lance kissed the back of his neck and said, “So maybe we will all have to go back to Chicago.”
“How you mean?”
“If you’re at Loyola and Dylan’s goes to McCormick then maybe we just need to all stay back.”
“But your new job is right around here.”
“I can travel with it. I can do it anywhere. I’m just a recruiter for Aerotek.”
“I don’t really even know what that means.”
“It puts food on the table.”
“Well, yes,” Elias turned around and looked at Lance, who shrugged and said, “That’s all you need to know, baby.”
“I want to know what you do.”
“It’s a staffing agency.”
Elias raised an eyebrow and Lance chuckled.
“It’s a job that helps people find jobs.”
“How meta!”
Lance laughed and pressed his head into Elias’s chest.
“I don’t think either one of us knows what the other is talking about half the time,” Lance said. “How can we be in love?”
That Saturday morning, Elias Anderson got up early and even though Dylan and Lance tried to ignore their promise, the din of pots and pans in the kitchen, the smell of coffee at eight, told them that Elias had not forgotten that they were Christmas shopping.
They were on the Red Line heading to Belmont, and then took the Brown Line and got off twice before coming downtown.
“Aren’t you glad we got that done?” Elias said, cheerfully as they marched up to the L platform and the sky was going dim though it was only three o’clock.
As the L passing in the opposite direction jangled above them ,and the passing train made shadows on their faces, Elias told his two exhausted lovers, “You’re going to thank me for this.”
“I’m going to kill you for this,” Lance Bishop murmured under his breath.
If Elias heard, he pretended not to.
“So tonight Chay and Casey are having that party.”
As Dylan sat down on the bench under the heating lamp and waited for the next train, he said, “Whaddo you think happens there?”
“We weren’t invited,” Lance said. “So I can’t say I care.”
“I bet it’s porn shit,” Elias said. “Which is why I can’t believe Sheridan and Bren are going. Or at least Bren.”
“Next train in less than two minutes.” Lance looked up at the digital screen.
By the time they could feel hear the rattling that promised a new train looping through the dense buildings of downtown Chicago, Elias said, “Lance is right. Rob is flaky. I’m going over there to watch Rafe.”
Lance, in his car coat, nose as red as the ears that were uncovered by his grey knit cap, opened his mouth to protest, but Dylan just touched him and shook his head.
They were home by four, and Elias, stacking away his bags in his closet, without saying a word, climbed into bed and went to sleep.
“I thought he was cooking,” Lance murmured.
Dylan raised an eyebrow.
“Fine,” Lance shrugged. “We’ll order a pizza.”
“Maybe we could all go and take care of Rafe.”
“I’m not leaving this fucking couch till Monday.”
“Really?” Dylan looked at Lance, rubbing his shoulder, “Cause Elias isn’t going to be here tonight, and… well… after my nap I know I’m going to have a lot of energy to burn tonight.”
“Oh!” Lance went red and his eyebrows shot up.
“Yeah, Lancelot,” Dylan squeezed his ass quickly, “so stop being such an old man.”
At 5:45 the alarm clock went off and Elias said, “I feel refreshed. I smell pizza.”
“It just got here,” Lance told him, bringing him a saucer. “Eat before you go.”
“It’s hot.”
“In this house,” Dylan Mesda said, pouring drinks, “we like to do things like take care of each other. My Good Samaritan baby doesn’t get cold pizza.”
“Plus,” Lance said, mouth full of pizza, “its our way of apologizing for the sex fest that’s going to happen once you’re gone”
“Damn,” Elias said with only half pretend wistfulness, “I do love sexfest.”
“We’ll record some of it for you,” Lance said.
“We will not,” said Dylan, who had recorded himself having sex once, and was not pleased by the result.
When Sheridan opened the door, Brendan heard him say, “Elias, what are you doing here?”
“I thought Rob would like company. I know I would. Watching kids can be hard.”
Sheridan leaned down and whispered, “You think Rob’s a fuck up, don’t you?”
“That’s unkind,” Elias said with a sly look on his face.
“Look,” Sheridan told him. “I owe the fuck out of you.”
“Elias came into the bathroom where, where Brendan was shaving, naked but for a towel around his waist. Elias had only had sex with two people and he lived with them both, but he admitted, not for the first time, that tall, golden haired, lightly muscled, a little heroic in his honor code, Brendan would have been the third.
“I thought that you would feel better if an actual grown up stayed in the house with Rob and Rafe.”
“Thank God for you,” Brendan grinned at him. “I could kiss you but you’d be covered in shaving cream.”
Elias almost said that he wouldn’t mind. Brendan was almost twenty years older than him, but not at all, and Elias wondered if, in some way, he hadn’t taken two trains just so Brendan could smile at him.
Rob Affren did not smile at Elias. He did not look grateful for Elias’s presence, and Elias did not care.
Brendan and Sheridan headed to the train station around seven thirty, but when they went down to main and up the walk they did not catch the El, but the Metra.
“How do we look?” Sheridan asked as Brendan helped him into his coat.
“I’m not going to lie, you both look really hot.”
Sheridan laughed, and Brendan cut a funny bow. Elias wondered if they really knew how handsome they were. Elias did not feel attractive or unattractive. He felt like himself, and yet he knew Lance and Dylan were both good looking. Arguments, close quarters, bad breath, wet towels on the floor, ball scratching, belching, farting and returning empty milk cartons to the refrigerator made one for these things though.
“Let’s watch a movie!” Rafe demanded.
“Uh, you and Rob can watch a movie,” Elias said. “I’m just chaperoning the chaperone. I’m gonna take a walk. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
It was for this time of year and Elias wondered if, at this moment, Lance and Dylan were fucking their brains out, or if they were passed out in front of the sofa. Lance and Dylan, Dylan and Lance, the two of them without him. If everything depended on him it was no good. He didn’t need things to revolve around him. He had come into their love, and though the love had to be fractured to let him in, once he was in, he felt it was his responsibility to keep it whole.
LATER, WHEN HE GOT to the house, Dylan’s cousin Laurel was there with his stepsister, Maia, and Laurel said, “Some people look like the cat who ate the canary, but you look like the canary that just got swallowed.”
“Well, it was a long trip,” Elias said and realized this was a little bit of a lie. “I didn’t know Dad would send me out for so much.”
“When I was a little girl,” Laurel said, “every Saturday, Mom and I would spend the morning cleaning house, and then, in the afternoon, we would walk to the store downtown, and then we might take a cab bag. Damn I hate the grocery store. And cleaning.”
“I would never let Tara go to the grocery store without me,” Maia said. “I mean, you never know what she’s going to get. And you can’t just be like, would you remember such and such? Cause she won’t.”
Elias looked between the two girls and realized they weren’t going to go away, so he said, “Dylan, I need to talk to you.”
“That’s a cue,” Laurel realized, standing up and motioning for Maia to do the same.
“You all don’t have to leave,” Dylan said.
“Of course I don’t have to leave,” Maia said, “but I will go to Dad’s office.”
Laurel shrugged.“I was going to the kitchen. I still am.”
“Well, I was going to say let’s go to the study,” Elias said. “So that means we’re all leaving the living room.”
“Which is fine with me,” they heard Fenn call from the kitchen. “The last thing I need is ten teenage feet tracking dirt across my carpet.”
They obeyed, splitting up, but Elias heard Maia mutter, “Fuck this ratty carpet,” as she headed upstairs.
“Do you need a ride?” Laurel asked Elias as he was leaving?”
“No, I brought my bike. I’m just going down the street.”
Laurel got in the car with Maia, waved at him and went down the driveway. Elias rode the few blocks to Lance’s house. He’d gotten directions before. He hoped Lance would be home. When he got to the Bishops’ saltbox house, he thought how clean and white it was, how the yard wasn’t too trimmed. These people liked to let it grow. He liked them. He stood on the grey painted stoop and knocked on the door.
Elias was glad when the woman answered the door. He hated when the door was opened by someone who was not the master of the mistress. He knew Lance had a sister and a brother, and he would have hated if anyone of them answered and he just stood there waited for the real permission to answer.
“Hi,” Elias said, losing his voice and finding it, “I’m Elias, and I was looking for Lance.”
“You’re Elias!” Mrs. Bishop laughed with delight. “Come on in. Come in. I was worried you were selling something for school. We’re all out of money. Come on in. Peter,” she shouted, “come here! This is Lance’s friend, Elias.”
She turned back to him. “You can call me Lane. Lance is at work.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Elias began.
“Have you had dinner?” she asked.
“Not yet, I just—”
“Well, you’ll just have to stay for dinner. Lance should be off in about a half hour. He’ll be so glad you’re here.”
When Elias remembered the meal years later, he knew there was Velveeta shells and cheese. But he couldn’t remember the rest. He remembered it made him feel like home, and he thought of being at Dylan’s house and how Fenn always said, “That’s not real macaroni. I’ll show you real macaroni.” Elias liked Lance’s family, and he looked from his brother, Austin, to his sister, Charity and saw the similarities in them to Lance. At first neither one of them seemed much like their brother, but he saw in Austin’s forehead and square shoulders some of Lance and Lance in Charity’s height.
As dinner plates were being cleaned up, Lane Bishop said, “I don’t know where he is. He should have been home by now.”
“I’ll call him,” Peter Bishop decided. Elias told himself to stop looking lustfully at Lance’s father. The more he looked at him, the more he seemed like an older grey version of Lance. The old man took out his phone and called Lance. He frowned at the flip phone.
“No answer.” He turned it off. That’s odd.”
“Just stay,” Charity said, touching Elias’s hand. “He’ll be upset if you’re not here when he gets home, and if it’s too late we can take you home.”
“Yup,” Peter said, “we’ll load that bike on my truck.”
“Yeah, you better stay,” Austin agreed. “Except for Dylan, Lance doesn’t really have any friends.”
“Don’t say that,” Lane reprimanded from behind the kitchen door.
“Why not, it’s true?” Charity said. “Lance never brings anyone home. You know,” she continued, “boys don’t really have friends anyway.”
“That’s not true,” Austin scowled from brows that reminded Elias of his brother. “I got plenty of friends.”
“You do now,” Charity said, knowledgeably, “Because you’re twelve. But men don’t really have friends. They have buddies.”
Austin kept scowling, but Charity shrugged. She continued, “and so if Lance had two friends, then he’s doing pretty good.”
Just then they heard the door open and Charity sighed, “It’s about time. That must be Lance.”
“Or else,” Austin pronounced with entirely too much excitement, “it’s a serial killer coming to get us.”
“Really?” Charity frowned at him.
Lance strode in, and Elias noticed the change on his face. He had definitely been preoccupied with something, and then he had been totally surprised by the presence of Elias, and for a moment Elias wondered if he’d done the right thing by coming.
“What the…?” Lance began, breaking into a smile.
Elias didn’t know exactly how to answer, and he said, “You didn’t look alright at the grocery store, so I came over.”
“What happened at the grocery store?” Charity asked.
“Mind your business,” Lance said in a tired voice, and his sister took an ice cube out of her glass and elaborately examined it before popping it into her mouth.
“You are very, very late, young man,” Peter said.
“The store,” Lance said. “I had to stay later.”
“You could have called,” Lane said from the kitchen.
“I know, Ma,” Lance was looking at Elias.
“Your phone was off,” she said. “You always forget to keep it on, and what’s the point of giving you one if you’re going to turn it off all the time. I’ll make you a plate. Get changed.”
Lance half grinned, and then looked at his father.
“Well,” the grey haired, clean shaven man said, “I guess she said it all.”
“Wanna come up with me and get away from my family?” Lance said, and Elias followed him up.
“Were you really at work?” Elias asked him when they had shut the door and Lance discarded his apron.
“Nope,” Lance said.
“Where were you?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it now,” Lance said. “I need to eat.”
“You’re not….. It can’t be anything serious…” Elias said.
Lance shrugged and unbuttoned his shirt. When he pulled it off Elias got an electric thrill. He had never seen Lance shirtless, and here he was with his hair sticking up, his long trim torso defined by muscle.
“I’ll tell you everything,” Lance said with an almost sensuous smile, and when he reached for a long sleeved tee shirt. Elias was sad to lose the sight of him, but the shirt was snug, and the hills of muscle in his arms, and the muscles in his tight stomach could easily be seen.
“You ready?” Lance held out an innocent hand to him.
How could he not touch Lance’s hand?
