Read Online Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin - Free Book Online Page B

looked okay, but I figured there were chores aplenty in the kitchen. Sure enough, the grime under the sink had reached crisis proportions, so I pulled out all the rusting cleanser containers and Simple Greened the hell out of the place.
    Are they done yet? Or have they started all over again? Are they lying somewhere together now, catching their breath, explaining themselves to each other?
     
    By four o’clock I was on the sofa watching a Netflix movie. Normally I save them for the two of us, but this one was a thriller, and Ben’s never been crazy about the creepy stuff. Besides, I required serious distraction, and I’d run out of stuff to clean.
    In the midst of the movie the phone rang. I hit mute and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
    “Hi, babe. It’s me. I’m on the bridge.”
    “Hey, sweetie.”
    “What are you up to?” he asked.
    “Just a movie,” I said. “Sharon Stone in a big house with snakes dropping from the chandeliers.”
    “Glad I missed that one.”
    “How were the tubs?”
    “Okay,” he said with a comforting lack of enthusiasm.
    “Just okay?”
    “It was pretty slow for a Sunday.”
    “Ah. That’s too bad.”
    “There was this guy from San Leandro who was kinda hot, but he had awful dragon breath.”
    “Ugh,” I said, but of course I meant Thank You, Jesus.
    “He knows you, in fact,” Ben added. “Or of you, anyway. You worked on his ex’s backyard in Pacific Heights.”
    “It’s not ringing a bell,” I said.
    “It was back in the eighties, I think. He remembered your name, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.”
    He was right. All that mattered was that Ben had brought up my name to this foul-smelling stud, making it patently clear that he already belonged to someone else.
    “Do we need anything?” he asked.
    I did a quick mental inventory. “We’re out of laundry detergent, if you feel like stopping at the corner.”
    “Okay. What about for dinner?”
    “I thought we’d do some chicken on the grill. I got this great new finishing sauce with apple and chipotle. Fuck!”
    “What?”
    “We’re out of propane.”
    “No we’re not. There’s a spare tank in the shed.”
    “Oh, you’re right,” I said. “What would I do without you?”
    He chuckled. “Watch Sharon Stone movies, I guess.”
     
    We lay on the sofa after supper, intertwined and swapping endearments. I won’t bother to repeat them here. Whoever named them sweet nothings was right. They really are nothing; they’re little more than footnotes to a feeling, almost useless out of context.
    “You know what?” said Ben, idly caressing my chest.
    “What?”
    “I’d sort of given up believing this could happen. I thought I was being unrealistic.”
    “C’mon,” I said. “You’re thirty-three.”
    “So?”
    “So that’s too early to have given up.” I realized this was bullshit the moment it came out of my mouth. I spent most of my twenties feeling unrealistic about love.
    “You don’t know,” said Ben. “It’s not that easy to find an older guy who isn’t already fucked up.”
    “Why, thank you, Colonel Butler!”
    He laughed. “I mean it.”
    “I know,” I said, kissing the top of his head.
    “Your generation has a lot of baggage.”
    I said that’s why I preferred not to date them.
    “They think of themselves as liberated, but there are so many wounded old tarts out there. Sex inside a relationship scares the holy shit out of them.”
    “Well, I’m grateful for them,” I said. “They were saving you for me.”
    He snuggled closer and pecked me on the ear. We were silent for a while.
    “I saw Anna at the Bi-Rite,” he said at last. “She was there all by herself, just humming away over the produce bins.”
    I told him that Anna liked to walk to the market sometimes, that she usually referred to it as her “constitutional.”
    “I hope I’m still that vigorous when I’m her age,” Ben said. “I hope you are, too,” I replied. “I’ll be a hundred and five, so I