Read Online How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden - Free Book Online Page A

would put out only after “dinner and a show.” Brides, who mystified him, did not have sex at all, at least not with Vince.
    “I’m just some mutt to them,” Vince told us, sitting on our couch, congratulating us for having Beck’s Dark beer and thanking Cosgrove for giving it to him in a glass, looking around at the stuff on the walls as if he’d never seen Wizard of Oz frame enlargements or a Billion Dollar Baby poster before.
    He was very tall, with long, shaggy brown hair and the heavy, loose construction of a thirtysomething who doesn’t consciously take care of himself but spends his days delivering those great bulbs of water-cooler water and picking up the empties. I’d call him ordinary but for a saving grace: his eyes grew extra warm and wrinkly when he smiled.
    J. walked in a bit later, and I stopped him at the door with a whisper: “Just give me the ground rules here—are we supposed to be gay?”
    “Make your choice,” he said, brushing past me.
    Vince looked up gladly as J. approached. “Your friends are treating me real nice.”
    “They can show a cruel side,” said J., joining Vince on the couch. “Yet I love them as brothers.”
    “Friends, sure,” said Vince. “Can’t fuck with them, can’t fuck without them. Like my buddy Red Backhaus. Him and me, we’re special-close, all the way back to second grade. Screwed our first gash together, side by side. Put him up when some bitch threw him out after hours. He’d do anything for me, Red. But there’s always this, like, contest, when he disagrees with what I say and betting me a fast ten I’m wrong. Then he tries to forget to pay. But I love his soul.”
    “Does he have red hair?” Cosgrove asked.
    Thinking it over, Vince said, “’S’more brown. He doesn’t take to the color, keeps it short. And his body is all freckles, which also he don’t take to. But chicks’ll notice colors, and that can be useful.”
    J.’s failure to explain the reason for this visit worried me. Were Cosgrove and I supposed to represent the normality of gay life, thus to correct Vince’s preconceptions and advance his seduction by J.? Yet J. had, I learned, told Vince nothing of us save that we’re all longtime friends. Vince even asked Cosgrove where he lived.
    “Right here” was the answer.
    Vince nodded. “So you’re like me and J. here.”
    “You aren’t yet,” said Cosgrove.
    “Yeah, now, with my real good buddy Red Backhaus, we both know the same things, so there’s no surprises. Huh—’less Red shows up with some slick new babe and I steal her away.” Chuckling here. “He’ll bet on it, the girlfriend tango we have. He’ll lose. But he could steal gash from me anytime he wanted to. He’s a five-alarm guy, Red. A beautiful, beautiful guy to know about.”
    Fleabiscuit’s snout came ever so slowly out from under the couch, just to the right of Vince’s shoe.
    “I told Red he should establish some Polaroids of himself, show his charms. Not to no princess, you know, who would just pretend to be horrified, like she’s been taught to show. But gash love to know what’s in store. Now, what are you up to, short stuff?” he suddenly asked, swooping down to pick up Fleabiscuit. “Where’d this little flyboy come from?”
    Fleabiscuit, content in Vince’s grasp, closed his eyes and went limp.
    “That’s right, now,” said Vince, setting the puppy to rest on his lap. “Anyhowsle, though, I took a few shots of ol’ Red to show him how it goes. Had him pose in just a pair of dress pants I lent him, which gives it class. We opened them up so to show off his racy boner and he looked real good. But I don’t expect that Red takes those pictures out at the right moment. Red’ll get confused or drunk. He prefers to do a triple, where two ol’ friends share the gash and everybody’s happy.”
    Fleabiscuit awoke, shook himself, and jumped back down under the couch.
    “Now, with J. here,” Vince went on, his eyes winningly wrinkling,