First Year Out

“Cosmic Nelly’s on Seventeenth Avenue Southwest.”

At exactly twelve noon Bill walked in to Cosmic Nelly’s thinking that if this was nothing important he would have time to make it to Moviedome for a movie matinee, but the sick feeling inside him made him suspect that afterwards he wouldn’t want to go to the movies. Denise was sitting in a booth by the window.

She was smiling. That, Bill thought, was a bad sign. Denise was only pleasant to him when she wanted something from him. She ordered a steak. Bill had a club sandwich and a diet coke.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” Denise said. She spoke softly.  Bill’s stomach began to churn. “It’s something important and I don’t know how to talk to you about it.” She hesitated. Bill’s appetite left him and, since his sandwich had just arrived, he gave it a sickened glance and ignored it.

Denise attacked her steak and potatoes, pausing between bites to say, “Randall and I have been thinking about opening our own business together. It isn’t something we’ve jumped into. The problem is that we need you to co-sign the bank loan.”

Bill said nothing. He wanted to cry and run. This was like a reenactment of the day that she had left him, her apparent concern, in her gentle tone. He sat there wishing that he would not sound so unreasonable, wishing that he could curl up like a ball and roll away.

Denise finished her steak and potatoes, scraping the last of it up from the plate with her knife, bricklaying it neatly on to her fork and into her mouth. Then she put down the knife and fork and looked at him.

Denis e told Bill in no uncertain terms that if he did not co-sign the loan for her and Randall that she would make sure that everyone they knew, including his parents would know that he was gay.

The waitress had stopped right beside their table with two plates of roast beef with vegetables and rice. Bill got up, reached out and slipped his hand under one of the plates just as the waitress put it down. He picked it up and tipped it over Denise’s head. Then he ran out of the restaurant.

Snow fell during the afternoon. Bill lay on his bed in the warm room and watched it fall. The phone rang several times since he got home, but he just didn’t answer it. He was so distraught he didn’t remember how he had driven home. Snow had started to fall when he left Denise and he was so cold, like he was coming down with the flu only he wasn’t.

He lay there until dark. Then he heard the intercom but he didn’t get up. The noise went on and on like somebody was leaning on it. When he decided that it was not going to stop he got out of bed and buzzed the front door open.

He threw open the deadbolt to find David standing there. He was wearing a black overcoat and was covered in snowflakes.

“Bill looked at him and smiled but then his hands shook and his legs wobbled. Then without warning at all he started to cry, not gently or discreetly but the kind of wracking sobs with which he had cried himself to sleep night after night for the first couple of months when Denise had walked out on him.” “During that time there had been no one to comfort him.”

David swore softly and then he got him inside and sat him down on the sofa, putting both arms around him, all Bill did was lean his head on his shoulders. Bill did nothing but cry for a long time and with his arms fastened around David he was able to tell him about the meeting with Denise.

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