The Fisher Boy by Stephen Anable

Author:Stephen Anable [Anable, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781615950010
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2011-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-five

The flip side of Arthur’s benevolence, his “shadow,” as Miriam would say, was his love of gossip. He spread gossip the way day care centers spread colds: relentlessly, efficiently, and without conscious malice. So he waited all of twelve hours to tell Roberto about finding me with Edward.

I knew something was wrong. Roberto was redolent with Drakka Noir, simmering the entire afternoon, full of the menace of anger or creativity, as if ruminating about a skit in rehearsal. The Big Fight happened Tuesday, July 29th, at 11:19 in our room in the attic of the White Gull. Undressing, Roberto was silent, handsome and unapproachable, folding his briefs instead of slinging them over a chair. He kicked one of his joke shop toys, the walking dentures, across the floor.

Then a hornet began buzzing along the ceiling, buzzing as loud as hedge clippers, knocking against the rafters as it sought escape. The attic felt steaming. I was about to turn on our big electric fan.

“Kill the wasp first,” Roberto commanded.

It was an intriguing slip of the tongue. “It’s a hornet.” I had seen its yellow markings.

He detonated: “I don’t need a fucking Audubon lecture, just kill the godamn bug so I can sleep!”

“I” not “we.”

I tugged the case from my pillow and began throwing it, always hitting the wood just beside the seemingly psychic insect. “Your timing is as bad as onstage,” Roberto snapped, snatching my pillow and pressing it against the hornet until the bug fell to the floor, sputtering like a downed power line. A smack of Roberto’s Teva sandal killed it.

“Arthur told me everything. About finding you and Little Mr. Wonderful in his birthday suit. Is that why you kept the apartment? So you could plow little Edward on the side? Arthur says he’s hung like a horse.”

I told him the truth, how Edward had followed me there after noticing me listening to the evangelist. I told him about Edward’s seductive shower, how I’d challenged him, hit him, demanded he tell me what he knew about Ian and all the catastrophes of the summer.

“This isn’t working,” Roberto said.

I felt nauseous, felt that heaviness at the back of my tongue.

“This living and working together, it isn’t working.” He lay down on the futon I’d used before we’d become lovers.

Why was I surprised? He’d been so calm the other week by Provincetown Harbor, telling me I’d have to leave because the other houseboy was returning. He’d been distancing himself emotionally more and more, spending his free time watching videotapes of The Honeymooners instead of swimming at Race Point with me. I thought of telling him all my secrets, about Ian being my brother, about the trauma of finding his body after our sex in the dunes, about my visit to Truro and meeting that giant and those spooky girls materializing from the woods.

But I didn’t, I held back. Still, I needed the best acting of my career to say one word: “Fine.”

Roberto telephoned his father, then got Roger Morton’s permission to spend some time with his family at the house they were renting in Owl Island, Maine.

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