Best Gay Romance 2008 by Richard Labonte

Author:Richard Labonte
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Best Gay Romance 2008
ISBN: 9781573445818
Publisher: Cleis Press
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

No one had ever actually seen any of the ghosts at the country house, at least not during Arnie and Mitch’s tenure, only heard them or felt them in the dark of the evening hours, which usually meant their weekend guests would greet one or both of their hosts the following morning with an odd source of their insomnia, an anecdote of sensing someone at the foot of the bed, the creaking sound inside the armoire, an eerie light going on and off in the hallway. As for myself, I never seemed to be any kind of spiritual magnet and have generally reached a deep and unencumbered slumber on my visits to their country house, particularly since I am out of the city and away from the noisy traffic beneath the window of my third-floor apartment on Ninth Avenue. One guest, however, Cheryl, an overweight and middle-aged out-of-work actress, said she sensed something strange in the guest bathroom one night, where there had never been a spirit presence detected before. “I felt as if someone were looking at me when I got out of the shower,” she explained in a dramatic fluster of over-the-shoulder gestures. “I felt so vulnerable and exposed, like something was going to happen.”

Mitch told Cheryl she had been watching too many teen slasher movies, but over an elaborately concocted cup of vanilla roast coffee served in a disfigured and chipped set of ceramic cow mugs that Mitch had found in a thrift shop in Buckingham, Arnie commiserated with Cheryl that perhaps it was because the ghost recognized her from the low-budget insurance-fraud commercial she had filmed over a decade before. Later, in private, Arnie told me that perhaps Cheryl had only wished someone were looking at her. “She’s desperate for attention,” Arnie said. “She hasn’t been on a date for over a year and can’t seem to get a callback audition.”

Though Arnie and Mitch have never seen any of their ghosts, they have never regarded them with frivolity or contempt, especially since the quarrelsome couple prided themselves on being progressive, inclusive, and multicultural (even when they are at odds). Mitch, a psychiatrist, liked to think of their ghosts as part of their extended family, more welcome in his home than his demanding parents, needy siblings, and pampered nephews and nieces. Arnie, a corporate travel planner, is the more compassionate one, always trying to find a reason for the noise or the cold air, hoping that if he helps change the course of the haunting he might also alleviate any eternal pain; lighting a stick of incense to change the mood, for instance, or leaving open a book of poems or family photographs to soothe the restless soul.

“Emma likes all my divas,” Arnie might explain to the theater director and his ex-hustler boyfriend about his selection of background music during dinner. “Show tunes. Opera. Madonna.”

“But she goes wild when two men sing together,” Mitch would add. “Duets. Chorus boys. Something always goes flying to the floor.”

“We’ve been

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