Homecoming

*28*

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Fond Farewells

Justin

Dan and I had just arrived at the house when Brian called. Dan doesn’t ask me what it’s about, because he’s got that whole British-reserve thing happening, but I know he heard me say that we should stay at the house tonight, and I don’t want him to feel … like we’re pushing him out or something … so I tell him a little about the situation with Gus, and with Melanie.

He frowns and his face gets this vinegary sort of look that actually reminds me of Brian when he’s in a bad mood, and says a little waspishly, “She sounds most unpleasant. I trust that you and Brian have a good lawyer.”

I grin at him and nod. “I’ve only met her a couple of times, but I think she’s a real shark. She even scares Brian.”

Dan gives a little twist of his lips that in any one else might even be a grin, and says, “I suspect that there aren’t too many who can claim that … and that most of them are women.”

I stare at him for a moment, and then I laugh. “You’re right,” I tell him. “They are.”

He nods.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then in a soft, kind of sad voice, he says, “Billy’s mother scared me silly. She was so angry with me when she found out … well, about us … and when we decided to leave Britain and come here … she came to see me. Told me that if ever Billy had cause to regret trusting me she’d track me down and … she threatened to do things that I didn’t believe that a respectable woman would even think about back then. Even years later, when she and Billy’s sister came out to visit us … I spent weeks beforehand trying to work out if there was an urgent business trip that I could take at just that time.”

He smiled, then. A real smile, full of happy memories. “Billy thought it was terribly funny.”

I grin at him. “Brian’s kind of afraid of my Mom, too,” I tell him. “Or he used to be. Now they get along much better. Too well, sometimes,” I find myself murmuring, half to myself. It’s true, though. Sometimes it almost feels like they’re ganging up on me.

He smiles again, a different smile this time, a little bit smug, really, and says, “Yes, by the end of that visit, Billy’s mother and I had … er … bonded, I suppose you would say.”

His voice changes, then, and he looks away, out of the kitchen window into the infinity of sky, “She wrote to me not long before she died and told me she felt that God had given her another son.”

I don’t know what to say to that, but I don’t have to because he says, almost to himself, “I felt as if He’d given me another mother, but I never had a chance to tell her that. She died before my reply arrived.”

“I’m sorry,” I hear myself say.

He turns back to me, shaking his head. “No, no. I’m sorry. I just … we have so few opportunities, really, to tell people what they mean in our lives. And we waste most of them.” He huffs a little laugh and then goes on, “I don’t mean that we should spray our feelings over everyone all day every day as if we’re on some endless damned … what do they call them? … talk show. I mean real opportunities … times when it would be appropriate, and when the person concerned is ready to hear us. But we rarely recognize the moments when they come along. That, I think, is one of the few things that I regret in this world … the loss of some of those opportunities.”

I nod slowly. I know what he means, I think. I mean, it would be really kind of weird for me to go up to Emmett and Ted and just blurt out how grateful I am for the friendship they’ve shown to both me and Brian. I guess with Emmett I could. Maybe. But with Ted it would just be weird and really really awkward. It would make him so uncomfortable. Well, both of us, really. But if ever a chance did come along, I’d probably "um" and "er" and let the moment slip because I just wasn’t sure if it was okay.

 

*****
 

Brian

I can tell from the looks I get from the flunkeys on reception as I stride past them to the lift that I shouldn’t expect an invitation to join their golden guest list or whatever the fuck the Marriott chain calls their flatter-you-so-you’ll-spend-more-money-with-them scam. All the hotel chains have them and they royally piss me off. I expect to get the best deals, and the best service because that's what I pay them for, not because I’m so impressed with the fact that they remember my name and so eternally grateful for the basket of fucking bananas in my room that I’m prepared to stay with them no matter what - like accepting any pathetic little room they try to palm me off with, and ignoring the usual lame-assed TV package, poor service and all that shit.

Lindsay looks a total fucking mess, but at least she’s packed all their stuff. Gus runs over to hug me and he’s holding onto my legs like he doesn’t plan on ever fucking letting go.

“Mama was here,” he tells me. “And she was mean. She kept yelling at us through the door.”

I pick him up and raise an eyebrow at Linds.

“You ready to get out of here?” I ask.

She nods. She looks like she’s really shaken. What the fuck was Melanie thinking, coming here and putting on that kind of performance? Well, I guess she wasn’t. For someone who has complained over and over again that I spend too much time thinking with my dick, she’s not exactly a shining example of rational behavior. At least when I was thinking with something other than my brain, I got laid. All that she’s likely to get is her ass kicked by my lawyer. And it doesn’t look as if it’s won her any points with Linds either.

I call the front desk and ask them to send up a bellhop to deal with the mounds of shit she’s brought with her. I know that she’d say most of it is for Gus, but fuck!

I don’t even have the jeep, because I told Justin to take it for the day. I didn’t want the old fossil to break his neck trying to get in or out of the ‘vette and fucking sue us. Or worse, move in with us, because Justin wouldn’t let him travel in that state, or try to cope on his own either.

So when we get downstairs, I tell the valet guys to park my car and we pile into a cab with all the damned luggage, and head off to meet Jenn.

By the time we’re halfway to that meeting, though, I’m ready to jump out of the fucking cab right into traffic. Linds, despite every attempt to shut her up, is spewing forth all sorts of shit about her and the she-wolf, and Gus is getting more and more upset. Eventually, I flat out tell her to shut the fuck up, and she blinks at me like she can’t believe I could be so cruel, and then the waterworks start.

I just pass her a tissue from the box the driver has in the front and concentrate on my son. I reach back and make a grab for his knee. To my relief I hear him giggle and say, “Don’t, Daddy!”

His mother mops up once we reach the address Jenn gave me, and we start looking through the place. It’s okay - one of a set of four two storey apartments that share a common courtyard area out the back. It’s kind of small, but it’s got two bedrooms, each en suite, so it’s okay for a temporary home.

Linds is inclined to turn her nose up, but I remind her that it’s only till she finds somewhere permanent and she finally agrees to take it. Jenn tells her she can move in as soon as she signs the lease. There’s a bit of palaver about that - I have to co-sign because Linds doesn’t have a job - or even a functioning US bank account. But what the fuck do I care? It’s still cheaper than paying for the fucking hotel suite.

Then mercifully Jenn offers to drop me back at the hotel so I can collect the car and get back to work, so I have an excuse to leave with her.

Who would have thought the day would arrive when I would regard an offer like that from Jenn as equivalent to the arrival of the cavalry instead of as an almost certain ambush?

Gus gets a little weepy, but I remind him that he's spending the day with Justin and me tomorrow, and he brightens up then so I can escape with a clear conscience for once.

 

*****
 

Justin

Dan doesn’t seem to mind me being there while he says goodbye to the house. In fact, as we sit drinking a last cup of tea in the kitchen, he starts telling me stories about some of the times he and Billy had together here. Like when Billy insisted on using one of the small front rooms as a studio, and made this beautiful lifesize sculpture of a water nymph on a plinth in all different shades of blue and green glass to go in the middle of some rich guy’s fountain. Only thing was it turned out the plinth was too big for it to fit out through the door and Billy didn’t even think of that till the whole thing was finished.

Dan says every time he’d tried to point out that there might be a problem Billy had nearly snapped his head off, and told him that he should worry about his own business and leave Billy to get on with his, so in the end he’d just left him to it. He says he got home one night to hear Billy ranting and raving and throwing things around and only just managed to stop him pulverizing the whole thing.

Dan gets this look on his face that reminds me of how Brian looks sometimes - how he looked when he gave me the computer for my art, for instance - and says he would have smashed a hole through the outside wall if that’s what it took to get it out rather than let Billy destroy something so beautiful, that he’d put so much of himself into. But in the end, they worked out that Billy could cut down the plinth to a size that would fit through the door and eventually he set the smaller plinth into a big marble base and no one ever knew any different.

But he stopped using the room as a studio after that; he hired a sort of warehouse place where he had plenty of space and no issues about door sizes, no matter what he was working on.

Dan says that was a good thing; it meant that they could leave their business lives behind at the office, or the studio, and that when they were at home it was just them. He says that he really needed that, because otherwise the temptation to work on things at home rather than spending time with Billy was too strong, and there were times when that caused problems between them. But that he believes that it was important for Billy also, so that he had a space away from his work. He gives me one of his piercing looks and says that no matter how creative a career in art is, it’s still a job; that an artist can be as much a workaholic, more so, than any businessman. And that it’s just as important to take a break from that process as it is to take a break from designing an engine - or an ad campaign. That too much of a focus on work isn’t good for anyone; and definitely not good for relationships.

I totally understand what he’s telling me. I know that when I was in New York, the temptation to work all hours of the day and night if the mood struck was really overwhelming. And that was fine when I was there on my own. But I would hate it if Brian was always working on some campaign or another and never spending time with me, so I have to be really careful that I don’t do that to him either. I don’t mean that I plan to punch a time clock or anything, but if I have a separate studio, then there’s not the same temptation to think “I’ll just do a little bit more tonight before I go to bed”, or to slip out of bed and start painting sometime after midnight.

I know inspiration isn’t governed by a clock, but it’s bullshit to say that if you don’t do it right then that you will lose some magical “vision”. Real art is hard work and it takes a long time to do anything worth doing. Most times, if you are at risk of losing your “vision” for a piece because you can’t work on it straightaway, it's a sign that you’re really in trouble, or that there's something wrong with the piece, because you’re never going to get it finished before you need to take a break, unless you plan on working for days without food or sleep. So you might as well work reasonable hours per day.

Of course there are times when you really do want to get the outline of an idea down right away. Just like there are for Brian when he gets an inspiration for a new campaign. But most of the time that isn’t how it works. Most of the time it’s just following through and executing on those initial ideas and, honestly, you should be able to take a break from that and come back refreshed and pick up where you left off. Just like a writer does, or a film director, or an architect or an engineer … or an ad man.

So anyway, what Dan says reconfirms my feeling that it's really good that I'm planning to have a studio away from here. Of course, it's at the loft, which means that Brian and I will probably crash there sometimes kind of out of habit, but at least it means that this place is really a home … not an extension of either of our work spaces.

We go through all the stuff about where the controls are for the heating and for the pool heating and all of that one more time, and then I tell Dan that I'll wait for him in the car and go off to leave him a few private moments to say his farewells to the life he lived here with his Billy.

He doesn’t take long to join me, and when he does he's … brittle. Kind of like Brian would be in the same situation. So I do what I'd do with Brian, I just talk about anything I can think of; I hear myself prattling on about how Gus will love his little room, and that we're looking forward to taking the boat out on the river, and how we must remember to get a child-size life jacket for Gus and how it's Brian's birthday tomorrow and how he normally hates them, but this year might be okay because Gus is spending it with us and Gus wants to make his Daddy a cake and all sorts of shit.

Well, okay, mainly about Brian and Gus, because I'm so relieved and so happy about how all that is working out. For so long Brian has had to live, not just with the pain of not having Gus around, but with the fear that one day they might just take off and he might never hear from them again, and there wouldn't be anything he could do about it.

Having Gus back here, and actually having some say in how and where his son is living, that's huge. It's the best present Brian could ever ask for … well, except for the gift that Gus gives him every time he smiles at Brian, and makes it clear that he loves spending time with his Dad.

I feel kind of bad about going on and on about our happy family life when Dan is so alone, but he actually seems to enjoy it. By the time we take the turn off to the airport, he's obviously more relaxed and he even manages to huff one of his dry laughs when I talk about how Brian is going to hate eating the cake but that I bet he will because it's from Gus, but that he'll make me pay for it later. And that I'll love it.

We get Dan's luggage checked in and then go to get something to eat … not that there's really anything decent to eat of course - there never is at airports, but we got here really early so it's ages till Dan's flight will board and at least it fills in the time and gives us both something to do with our hands and stuff. I can feel myself getting really choked up already, and I don't want to embarrass him by having some kind of meltdown in the airport.

He tells me that there's no need for me to stay, but of course I brush that aside. I'm not just going off and leaving him all alone here.

We’re just finishing our food when my cell rings. It's Brian.

"Where the fuck are you?" he asks.

"At the airport," I say, kind of bewildered. He knows I was bringing Dan here, and he sure as Hell knows the flight time because his PA organized it all.

"I fucking know that," he snipes. "I just want to know … Never mind."

Then the phone goes dead. I blink at it even more confused, and then I hear, "I might have fucking known you'd be feeding your face."

And Brian is pulling up a chair next to me.

 

*****
 

Brian

He gives me this look when I sit down and I realize just how smart I was to push everything else aside and take a cab out here. He's going to be all fucking weepy and emotional when the old buzzard finally walks through the gates, and God knows what he'd do to the Jeep driving home in that state.

The old buzzard himself gives me one of those fucking superior smirks like he knows exactly why I'm here, and I'm about to say something snarky that would probably guarantee that I don't get laid for at least … well, probably not tonight anyway … but right then there's one of those little ping-pang noises through the public address system and everyone in the damned airport is informed that there's a flight ready for boarding; because that's a fucking surprise - it's a damned airport, for Chrissake! If you understand Swahili you could probably even tell which flight it is, but by the way Justin is starting to fucking hyperventilate, he at least figures it's good old Dan's.

So we all head down to the gate and go through the fucking painful process of saying goodbye to someone that we hardly know but who … well, who's turned into one of the few people that either of us really fucking cares about. I know people think Justin is a sentimental little sweetheart, but that's bullshit. Underneath that sweet little blond thing he's got going on, he's as hard-nosed as they come. There aren't a lot of people that he really feels deeply for, but Dan has become one of them.

Fortunately, Dan and I see eye to eye about some things, and prolonged goodbyes seem to be one of them. He shakes my hand and thanks me for all the help that my PA gave him in organizing his bookings and shit, then he gives a little smile at Justin and holds out his hand to him, but he doesn't know my Sunshine half as well as he might think he does, because Justin ignores the hand and throws his arms round him.

Dan freezes for a moment, and then he lets his arms fold round Justin and gives him an awkward kind of hug - like it's something he doesn't do often, or hasn't done for a while anyway.

Justin hangs onto him for a moment, and then finally steps back and says, "Remember, you promised to write. I mean, it's not like you don't know the address."

It's a lame attempt at humor, but Dan and I both smile dutifully and he nods. "I promise I will send you a postcard as soon as I find my feet in London," he says.

He's going to be staying in London for a week or so catching up with one of his sister's kids, before he goes up north, which is where Billy's family came from, to see Billy's sister and her brood.

After that, who knows? I don't think he's planned very far ahead. I have the feeling he doesn't think he needs to.

But that's not something that any of us want to think about right now.

"And you promised to send me the catalogue from your show," he reminds Justin. "And any other news. If you email me care of my nephew, he will see that I get it."

Justin nods and for a moment I think he's going to do a Deb and overwhelm poor old Dan with another hug, but he steps back against me and I can actually fucking feel him doing his best to smile.

"Take care of yourself," he says. "I'm … Dan, I am so glad we met you."

Dan smiles then for real and nods. "I am very glad to have met you both. I hope you live a long and happy life together and that the house shelters you well."

He gives another nod, and then turns and walks away.

I hear little Sunshine give a sort of soggy sigh, but for a minute I'm busy dealing with my own allergies. Fucking shitty air-con system, probably the air has been recycled so many times that it's almost pure allergens by now.

I take a deep breath, turn and start steering us towards the parking lot.

We have to get to the loft and get some stuff so we can hightail it to the fucking house before dear Melanie comes calling.

I've put up with all the emotional shit that I can take today.


March 13th 2011

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