Mike and Winston - 4. Chapter 4

Winston brought nothing with him the next time they had sex. He was also more taciturn, less rushed, but they were just as quick in reaching climax, which they hit with quiet and separate grunts. Mike decided in the afterglow that the silence felt suitable. Winston had kept his wedding ring on the whole time, and Mike wondered if he should mention it, even—though he dismissed the notion right away—compliment him on it.

“I probably won’t have time the rest of this week,” Winston said. They were sitting on Mike’s bed, their backs propped against the wall and legs stretched out in front of them.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Mike said. He hesitated before sitting up, swinging his legs out of bed, and padding softly to the refrigerator. “Want a beer?”

Winston’s lips quirked upwards in a smile, as did Mike’s, at the irony of it. “Sure.”

Mike took out two bottles and shut the door. “I’ve two midterms this week anyway. I should probably study for them.”

“You probably should. What’s your major?”

“Business,” Mike replied.

“Are you going to apply for the Haas Undergraduate Program?”

Mike nodded. “How’d you know about it?”

“I did my MBA at Haas.”

“Oh, cool. I guess I’ll be asking you how to get in.” They chuckled. “I’ll be finding out in March if I got in,” Mike added.

Winston nodded. “Good luck.” Then he gave a funny kind of grin. “If you’re as good with apps are you are in bed, you’ll have no trouble.”

Mike gave a snort of laughter. Yeah, thanks a lot,” he said. He smiled in Winston’s direction, but Winston was staring ahead. Mike hesitated. He tried unsuccessfully to gauge the air, reminding himself that they were only two encounters and a handful of IM conversations away from being strangers. He took a sip of beer and noticed Winston doing the same thing.

“My mom really wants me to get into Haas,” Mike said. “She wasn’t happy that I decided to do business instead of engineering. She thinks I’m wasting my talents.” He shrugged his shoulders as nonchalantly as he could.

“That’s a bit of twisted logic,” Winston remarked. “But I guess that’s parents.”

The question came out before Mike had time to reconsider it. “You’re not… d’you have kids?”

“God, no.”

Mike nodded.

“It kinda sucks for my mom because my dad’s gone all the time,” Mike said. He darted a glance at the other man. “And she’s always stressing out about it. So I feel really bad for her, you know.”

He was surprised when he saw a small smile on Winston’s face, as though saying that he understand. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Mike said, a little irritably. “This is… unrelated.”

It was a lie, Mike thought, and Winston probably knew it.

“You…” Mike paused. He had begun only to forestall Winston from saying anything, but now that he had started, he was unsure how to continue. “You’d be doing it with someone else if I weren’t doing it with you. Right?”

There was a moment’s pause before Winston nodded his head.

“And if I”—he paused for emphasis—“weren’t doing it with you…” Mike shook his head. “At least you’re not a psychopath. I think.”

Winston sniggered. “You can never be sure…”

Mike quirked a grin. It felt good to grin, to smile.

Winston dressed himself a short while later, and this time Mike followed suit, although he was not going anywhere. He stopped, though, in only his boxers and shirt, and watched the other man straighten the dark blue blazer and adjust the patent leather shoes.

“I guess I’ll see you next week,” Mike said.

Winston nodded, glancing at his watch. “Good luck with everything.”

“Yeah, you too. Um.” Winston was at the door, one hand on the knob. “Thanks,” said Mike, waving a hand behind him, “for the beer.”

Winston smiled, though it lingered only around his mouth and not his eyes. “Don’t mention it.” He turned, and Mike let a wry grin work up one side of his face. Some of the ease of their first meeting had definitely come back. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Mike said, nodding, and watched the door shut. He paused, intending not to go to the window. He did anyway, but, he told himself, only to open it, as the room had gotten too stuffy. He glanced down through the opening between the curtains. Winston was going up the street, hand stuffed in his pockets, and legs taking him at his usual brisk pace back to work and the second life that was waiting.

The first time Mike had seen Dan since last week’s party was Tuesday, already three days ago.

“I owe you, man,” Dan had said with a smile. Mike had smiled back, a twang in his chest.

It would have been easier if that had been all. But when Mike had asked where water might be, Dan had gone out and gotten them both a cup of water to drink from the lounge, which Mike had not known existed. So after they had finished entering a data set, Dan had decided to show him where it was.

“This is a coffee machine,” Dan had introduced, “and here’s a fridge. You should label whatever you put in there as being yours, though, I’ve had someone steal a six pack I brought in.”

“Of beer?”

Dan had nearly choked on the lemonade mix he had been drinking. “No—Pepsi.”

“Oh,” Mike had said, turning a bit red around the ears.

Dan had ambled to the window. “I’m, uh… not usually like the other night,” he had said, eyes flickering from something outside the window back to Mike’s face. “You should’ve let me clean the bathroom, at least.”

Mike shrugged. “Nah. It was nothing.”

“Well, if you ever get sick all over your toilet, you know who to call.”

Mike looked up; Dan was grinning. “Well, now that you’ve volunteered, I’m going to hold you to that. And I warn you, I’ll probably be calling you pretty early in the morning.”

“Why?”

“My landlady cleans the bathrooms at nine in the morning. You’ll have to do it before she does.”

Dan had laughed. “Bastard!” Mike had matched it with a grin that he had trouble keeping away. He did not want to keep it away.

Later, Mike had learned that Dan was partial to the lemonade mixes the lounge kept abundance. Dan also had the habit of visiting ESPN every ten minutes or so to check on the teams he followed. He confessed to liking soccer just as much as football. He was curiously apathetic to basketball. Recently, he had been checking out some of the more obscure sports, like judo and rugby.

“You’re cool,” Dan had said, and then smirked, “For a sophomore.”

Mike had grinned, and Gil’s words from the other name threaded through his mind. Cause he obviously likes you.

That Friday after the party, instead of hauling Dan back across campus, Mike had dragged them both to his own off-campus dormitory, which was only a few blocks away. The walk had been laborious, and Mike swore it took a whole minute just to unlock the door.

Dan had resisted going in. “This isn’t Lincoln,” he had muttered.

“No, this is where I live,” Mike said.

“Oh,” Dan had said, blinking. “That’s all right, then.”

Going up the stairs had taken a while, and more than once Mike had had to catch Dan from toppling over and cracking his skull on the narrow steps. When at last they were at the door, Dan was giving an incoherent lecture on the evils of flag football. Mike had listened indulgently. In high school, he had gotten tipsy once or twice at the few dances he had attended, but it had never been as bad as this.

“Fucking keyhole,” Mike had muttered. The door opened at last, he had groped along the wall for a moment before he found the switch. He had turned to find Dan looking extremely uneasy.

“What?”

“I’m… I’m gonna be sick—”

“Fuck. Here, this way—” He had dragged Dan down the hall. “The bathroom’s here.”

They had almost made it. Either that, or Dan’s aim was atrocious, because the next thing Mike saw was a pool of remarkably green vomit coating the bathroom floor.

The rest of the night had passed with the pervasive stench of vomit and the dizzying persistence of green. Mike had put Dan in his bed and the trash can next to Dan while he attempted his best to clean out the bathroom. His only consolation had been that his particular hallway was not one for parties, and nobody had walked in on him scrubbing the floors with an old sponge.

Dan had still been muttering when Mike returned. It had been nearly four, and Mike had been planning to catch the nine-o-clock train home for the weekend. He would have to think up an excuse for his mother; she would probably not be happy knowing that her son was keeping a drunk senior in his bed, one who was currently retching his guts out into a trash can. Mike had looked away, then back again. Dan had finished attempting to force his innards through his mouth and was twitching slightly; there was a pinched look about his face, which shone pale and glistening with sweat.

“Mike…”

“What’s up?”

“There’s something I wanna tell you.”

Mike had watched, waited. “Yeah?” He had cleared his throat and said, louder this time, “Yeah. So what is it?”

But Dan’s eyes had drifted shut, and Mike had gotten no response, not even after having waited there far too long, helplessly watching the lips that were slightly parted, the shoulders rising and falling…

“Do you want to go grab dinner somewhere besides the dining hall today?”

Mike looked up from his computer screen, his reverie interrupted. The low Friday sun was shining into his eyes.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Great,” Dan said. “By the way, Hubbell probably wants us to do another survey next week. We’ll have to make up the questions for it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mike said, distracted by the box that had popped up with a message from Winston75.

hey

Mike shot a furtive glance before typing back, hey, can’t talk im at work right now

He minimized the window and reached for stack of papers, rearranged it, and put it back. The taskbar flashed. He clicked open the window.

sorry, this’ll be quick Another message: are you free tonight around 7?

Tonight. Mike gave a brief look at Dan. It was a dead end, he told himself, a hopeless hope. But the alternative was probably worse. Dinner with a straight friend he was crushing on, or sex with a married man? sorry, can’t… im having dinner with a friend

“Hey, d’you want to go to the lounge for a drink?”

g2g sry

“Yeah, sure,” Mike said. “Just let me…” He shifted his cursor to the corner and quickly signed out of the messenger service. He really should not have signed himself in, he thought.

“Still think Hubbell will come in and look?”

Mike tried to laugh at the joke. “No, just habit. You said the lounge?”

Seven-o-clock passed them in a pizza parlor not far from Telegraph Avenue. It was about halfway between Lincoln and his own dorm, Mike noticed. Dan had been surprised that Mike had never eaten there before, and correspondingly pleased to be the one making the introduction. Dan had gotten tomato basil, and had persuaded Mike to try the spinach. Mike decided, to his surprise, that he liked it.

“So you live in a single?” Dan asked.

“Kind of. I have a roommate, but he’s always at his girlfriend’s place. He only pays the rent and stuff because he doesn’t want his parents to know.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. His name’s Jonas, and I haven’t seen him since the first week.”

Dan laughed at this, and Mike smiled as well. They swapped roommate stories for a while as their pizzas shrank, and Mike wondered if that would be it, just a dinner. He would not mind if that was all, he told himself; he would not be stupid and fantasize more. He wondered what Dan had wanted to tell him the other night.

“So having a single is pretty sweet, huh?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“I’m actually stuck with living by myself in a double,” Dan said with a wry smile. “I had a friend I was rooming with, but he ditched me for a frat. And most of my other friends are living in frats, so I’m stuck.”

“That kind of sucks,” Mike said. He put the last of the pizza in his mouth and glanced down, as he had been doing periodically, at the other man’s arm, rested on the table. Even the little hairs, catching light at the top of their arch, were beautiful.

“Yeah, ‘cause I don’t want to live in a frat, and I can’t pay for the double I’m living in right now.”

Mike’s head snapped up. “Oh… you’re looking for a roommate, then?”

Dan smiled. “Yeah, I am. And I don’t want to room with someone I don’t know anything about. There’s a lot of weird ass people out there. I am a bit picky about the whole thing.” He said the last part almost apologetically.

“No, I get it.” Mike paused. “So how much is the rent each month?” he asked and colored slightly.

“A little over five hundred a month.”

“That’s good!”

“Yeah, I know the landlord, so he gives me a discount. It’s actually closer to campus than your place, and bigger.”

Mike wondered if the expectant look on Dan’s face was hopeful as well, or if it was all part of his imagination. “Yeah,” he managed, and smiled genuinely, if nervously. Rooming with Dan. “You said you were a bit particular—” He stopped, stumbling. “You wouldn’t mind if I”—he made a gesture with his hands—“roomed with you?”

“Dude, you’re cool,” said Dan, and it was like magic: Mike dropped his hand, stopped moving, as though every particle in his body were obeying the other man’s words. “And I think we know each other well enough that that’d be okay. But no pressure, man! I’m just a bit worried about this month’s rent.” He chuckled, and Mike echoed it.

“I’ll think about it.”

“The Chinese Students Association didn’t keep you this week?”

“No,” Mike replied. He dumped his backpack on the couch and ambled into the kitchen. “Actually, I don’t think I’ll be doing that club this year. Last Saturday was a onetime thing.”

His mom looked somewhat disappointed. “It’d be nice for you to do stuff like that. You can meet some friends, other people.”

Girls, Mike thought darkly. He drank his water. “Nah. All they do is party and get drunk.”

“Ohh. You’ve to be careful around that sort of people. Who knows what sort of things they’d be doing.”

Xi pi gu guai things, he thought. “Yeah, don’t worry, I don’t have much to do with them,” Mike said in a reassuring voice.

He made his way to the living room, where Steve was slouched in the chair in front of the computer. “Hey Steve.”

His brother returned his greeting with a glare. “What d’you want?”

“Are you done with the computer?”

“No.”

“Steve,” their mother called from the kitchen, “you’ve been using it all morning!”

“But Mom, Mike has his own laptop! Why can’t he just bring it back with him and use that?”

“And risk getting it stolen on the train?” Mike said in a reasonable sort of tone. Steve muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath before getting up to stalk down the hall to his room.

“You can use my computer,” their mother offered, as Mike took the vacated seat.

“Your computer’s too slow, Mom!” Steve shouted before shutting the door—hard enough to make a statement, but on this side of being called a slam. Mike grinned as he opened the web browser and went to check his email. He hesitated for a moment before double-clicking the instant messenger service.

“Steve, Mike, do you boys want to do anything this afternoon?”

“Maybe,” Mike answered dutifully after a pause. “I’m kind of tired though.”

hi

Even though he knew Steve was in his room and his mother was in the kitchen, Mike glanced around quickly before replying. what’s up?

how was your dinner yesterday?

not bad, Mike said.

my wife’s gone this whole week for some science camp thing. she’ll be back Friday. Before Mike could think of something to say, Winston had sent another message. if you’re up to it, we could spend more time together

i think so. i haven’t any midterms this week

great. i can’t get away anymore for lunches, but my evenings and nights are free

Mike’s stomach clenched. Nights. cool, sounds good

great A moment later, another message: are you at home?

yeah, but no one’s here right now

good. i can therefore tell you how much i'm looking forward to having my dirty way with you for a whole night A flirtatious smiley face.

The bark of laughter came out before he could bite it back. Mike quickly minimized the window and look around again before pulling up the window. lol. i wont be able to walk to class

i'll carry you

Mike snorted, imagining himself arriving at his economics lecture with his arms wrapped around Winston’s neck. nah…you can just let me have a bit of yours every once in a while

that’s a deal

By the time his mother was calling them for lunch, to be followed by a visit to the cinema, Mike was regretting that he had left his laptop in his dorm. It was more fun than he had imagined, talking to Winston. Flirting, he supposed it was.

“Hurry up, I’m hungry,” Steve muttered in the living doorway. “Why’re you clearing the cache anyway?”

“It’s good practice,” Mike said, feeling too cheerful to respond to Steve’s sullen tone. “You should do it too. After all, there might be other snoops out there besides you.”

“Shut up.”

It was ox-tail soup that night. Mike had been wondering when his mother would make it again, as it was supposed to be one of his favorites. They had ended up watching something their mother had wanted to see—a chick flick, much to Steve’s embarrassment—and thoroughly discussed it by the time dinner started.

Mike scooped out another spoonful of the egg and tomato dish he and Steven usually fought over, listening to his mother scold his brother. It was something she probably did every night, he thought, and was, of course, a complete waste of breath.

“I told your father what you got on your last test,” she was saying, “and I notice you haven’t been studying for that SAT this April. Steve, you’ve got to study!”

“When’s Dad coming back?” Mike asked.

“Next weekend,” his mother answered. “He’ll be here for four days, the twenty-eighth through the thirty-first.”

The phone rang. Mike looked from his mother’s face to the phone, feeling his appetite dissolve. To his surprise, Steve stood. “I’ll get it,” he said. Steve never picked up phone calls voluntarily, Mike thought.

“Hello,” Steve said. Mike waited, listening. “Yeah, it’s me… I’ve having dinner. No, it’s fine…”

Mike watched incredulously as Steve retreated. After the brusque greeting, Steve had sounded pleased, even warm. Steve never sounded anything besides rude and ungracious. Mike turned to his mother, who had a disapproving look on her face.

“Who’s that?”

His mother shook her head. “Steve, instead of finding a way to bring up his grades, has found himself a girlfriend.”

Mike turned to look down the corridor where his younger brother had vanished. “Oh.”

They were alone for what seemed like a long time. His mother seemed too engrossed in her own thoughts or simply too tired to say or ask anything. Mike shoveled some more of the egg and tomato dish into his own bowl; it was best to take advantage of Steve’s absence. But he found himself strangely unable to eat.

“We’ve some ice cream for dessert,” his mother said.

Mike gave his mother as sincere a smile as he could. He had just been about to say that he was full. “Thanks.”

“And tiramisu,” his mother added. “You’d better eat as much as you can. Or take it back with you to Berkeley.”

“No, Mom, that’s fine.”

“If you don’t, Steve will eat it all by Wednesday. Morning to night, all he does is eat and play around on his computer. When’ll he ever learn to study?”

Mike smiled wanly. He always did when his mother complained, which was often. He liked his mother. Though he hated the unhappiness that deepened the lines around her eyes and put gray in her hair, he liked spending time with her. Sometimes, it felt as though he had been raised by his mother alone despite the fact that he knew his father had been around for the first six years of his life. He had few memories from that—the image of a dark living room as his father played dinosaurs with him, the feel of his father’s stubble against his forehead. It was not much to go on.

His mother preferred him to Steve. He knew that; everyone knew that. His mother made a habit of declaring it. “If only Steve could be more like Michael,” was what she said to other parents. And, to Steven himself, “Can’t you be more like your brother?”

But in the end, Mike knew that the joke would be on him. A girlfriend. He shoveled his spoon deeper into the ice cream. The sides were wet against his fingers, and he had to tighten them against the cold to keep the carton from slippery. A phrase was making rounds in his mind, circling and circling like a trout in a goldfish bowl: borrowed time. He was and had always been living on borrowed time.

Unless, he thought, he ended up marrying a girl anyway. Like Winston.

The door opened. Steve stepped out, phone in hand, looking somewhat happier than usual.

“Ice cream?” Mike offered.

“No,” their mother answered. “Steve’s been sneaking it the whole week. Check the tiramisu, I’m sure it’s gone already.”

“Mom!”

Mike watched his brother shove the phone roughly back on his stand and slouch into his room. He wondered what his mother would think once she knew about him. He wondered why he was so certain that it would be a when, and not an if.

The thought stayed only for a moment before he directed his mind to more pleasurable prospects, such as week ahead and the feeling of another person’s skin against his, a warm body next to his own. He opened the dishwasher and took out another bowl for his brother.