Quabbin - 13. Chapter 13

“So, you in love?” was the first thing I asked Cameron, Monday.

He grinned. “I can barely walk.”

“See any of Boston?” I joked.

“Yeah, we needed a couple of breaks.” He was still grinning, so I laughed. Then he laughed. Then we stared at each other. “He really is something,” he finally admitted.

“Yep, he is,” I agreed. Then what more could I say? Nuttin’, without getting us both in trouble. So for the rest of the day, that was pretty much all we said about Kevin. Cameron never was a guy big on swapping details anyhow, and I didn’t need any. I was mainly curious if they were gonna see each other again.

“Out of my control,” he said eventually. “Who knows what goes on in Kevin’s mind?”

I had that feeling, too, so it was nice that Cameron was equally lost.

“You want to see him again?” he asked.

“Do I have a shot?” I still wasn’t sure I wanted one, but -- especially after the frustrating weekend -- I wouldn’t have minded just hanging out with Kevin.

“I don’t think either of us have a chance,” he said, laughing. “We may as well hit the gym.”

I had to beg off. My body still ached.

“Buy you a pizza then,” he offered. He didn’t seem to have other plans. Since I’d happily skip any meal with Dad, I said, “Sure.”

Though I was surprised Cameron hadn’t offered beer -- that usually hits his mind before food -- but he seemed beat. And since we weren’t working out, we just walked around the corner into town.

When Waldron was booming, South Marshall Street must’ve been something. There are black-and-white photos in the basement of the Mill. Six blocks long. Three-story buildings on both sides. And there weren’t only stores in every building; they were useful ones -- drug stores, bakeries, barber shops, beauty parlors, shoe stores, clothing stores, butchers, laundries, hardware stores, stationery shops. Now, it’s all convenience junk. If you needed something real, you had to drive fifteen minutes to Holyoke.

‘Cept if you wanted pizza -- that was still good. So Cameron and I sat in an old, probably-never-repainted restaurant, while its ovens beat up the air conditioning and you could barely see through the windows.

“Should’ve picked a cooler place,” Cameron said, wiping his face.

“We can take it out. Go sit by the bridge.”

“It stinks there,” he insisted.

“It stinks here.”

We laughed. But when the pizza came, we asked for a box and hit the street. Looking for somewhere out of the sun -- Cameron didn’t want to go back to the office -- we settled on the small village green and flopped on the grass. We could’ve used the one stiff bench, but it looked like it could hurt us.

“Orr doesn’t really know what he wants,” Cameron told me about halfway through the pizza. He didn’t ease into it, just popped it -- smack! -- and I had to ask, “What do you mean?”

“Like the way he handled us,” Cameron went on, so I figured he had to be talking about Kevin. “And it’s not just that he’s a guy, and guys get to sleep around... But when I’m doing that, I know just what I’m after. It’s more like he’s… well… shopping...”

I was still half lost.

“It’s the way people treat dessert,” he explained, “like when everything looks good. They take a piece of that, and a slice of this, and, oh, maybe just a little bite of...”

He was mimicking some moron. But it wasn’t Kevin.

“Or when you take great-looking things,” he said, “then leave half of ‘em on your plate. That’s what he’s doing -- since his break-up. And it’s not just the two of us.”

He seemed almost abused, which cracked me up. “Come on,” I joked. “It’s not the first time some guy’s wanted to sleep with you.”

“It’s not like that. Most guys aren’t like that -- most people -- ‘least not the ones I know. Even when they do sleep around, they still always think the next person’ll be the right one.”

Cameron hadn’t slept with the same men I had.

“And I’m not saying Kevin’s confused,” he continued. “He seems to know just what he’s doing. It’s like he’s given himself permission. But he’s trying to make up for seven years of a bad relationship.”

I thought about that for a moment. “He didn’t say it was bad. He said, finally, the guy wasn’t what he wanted.”

“He didn’t measure up,” Cameron cracked.

I laughed again. Is that what was bugging him -- that he couldn’t match Kevin’s future? He was right about that, so there was almost nothing I could say, not without being rude. Cameron was a nice guy, in a job and a place that were probably perfect for him. Some day, he really would settle down.

But not with someone as ambitious as Kevin. Even from the way Kevin dressed, you could tell he wouldn’t be sticking around. And when he talked about leaving Chicago -- a place other people were trying to get to -- you knew this was just a start. In Cameron’s future, there was a walnut plaque reading Forty Years Service.

We sat for a while, watching cars. There weren’t many. And I flicked ants off the empty pizza box. Or maybe it was the same ant, each time crawling back.

“You missed something,” Cameron finally told me.

“What?” We hadn’t been talking.

“Something I said -- that we weren’t the only ones.”

“When?” I hadn’t been listening.

“You’re so dense sometimes,” he complained.

Oh, sure -- beat up on me ‘cause you’re ticked off.

“He’s slept with other guys since his partner husband.”

“Kevin?” I asked.

“Yeah!”

“I thought he just left… I mean, how long’s it been?”

“That’s the whole point! He hasn’t been here any longer than you’ve been back. And he came straight from Chicago.”

“So?” I really wasn’t making connections, and that just pissed Cameron off more. He grabbed the empty pizza box, stood, then crushed it in the nearby garbage can. Then he headed across the street.

“You know who he was with, the night he died?” he almost shouted when I caught up. That sort of gave it away.

“He told you that?” I asked. I was stunned.

“This morning,” he yelled over his shoulder. “We didn’t leave Cambridge till six.”

No wonder he looked beat.

“He said he’d been wanting to tell me all weekend -- that it was important somebody knew. He said he wasn’t there when it happened, and that nothing really had happened between them. But that Kohler probably wouldn’t’ve died if Kevin hadn’t been around.”

“Hold it!” Too much information, too fast. And some of it fighting with itself. “Did he sleep with Kohler or not?” I asked, trying to sort easy things first. That didn’t sound anything at all like Drew Kohler.

“I thought he did -- at least at first. Then Kevin said they’d just spent the night together.”

“Doing what? What else does ‘spend the night’ mean?”

“They just talked,” he insisted. “And drank. And got high.”

Now that sounded like Kohler, and it was something Carrie and I had even discussed. We’d all wondered how much our parents had used drugs. Besides the obvious reject of my dad, most of us agreed that our folks couldn’t’ve grown up without getting high.

“So nothing really happened?” I repeated to Cameron. I was mainly double-checking what I understood. “They weren’t chasing around the Mill, doing acid?”

“They were in the Founder’s House.”

“What? That makes no sense. The first time I talked with Kevin, he’d never been inside.”

“When did he say that?” Cameron asked.

I had to think. “The day of the funeral. Night we all went out.”

“That’s the problem.” Cameron had stopped walking and was facing me. “He tells me one thing -- or tells me part of it. Then, five minutes later, he says something else -- that goes completely against what he just said. Though when he fills in all the little stuff -- like what he thinks -- it all makes sense... kinda. Though it’s never any easier to believe.”

I thought about that, too, while Cameron leaned against a car. “I never thought he was lying,” I slowly had to admit. “But he never said anything I thought he’d be lying about.”

“Exactly!” Cameron almost shouted, then he started walking again. But whatever point he’d thought I’d made was lost on me.

“Why did he tell you this?” I asked, chasing after him.

“I don’t know. I thought he told you, too.”

“What? No! No way! I would’ve told you, immediately.”

“I thought that was the reason he took you home. Or let you take him home. ‘Cause you knew the Kohlers, so could break it to them.”

Break it to them? Took me home? What?

“Why would I possibly tell the Kohlers?” I asked. “What could any of his family possibly gain by finding out who Kohler’d spent his last night drinking with?”

Cameron said nothing. We’d reached the back gate of the Mill, which was almost always locked. Cameron went after his keys.

“I have no idea what goes on in Kevin’s mind,” he repeated. “I had a great weekend -- we had a great weekend. Then, in the last ten minutes after we pulled off the Pike -- just before we stopped to pick up his car -- he dumped this on me.”

I had to laugh at that.

“What’s so goddam funny?” he growled.

“Lot of worse things he could’ve told you,” I said, grinning. Though maybe there weren’t.

Cameron walked away from that, like maybe he was trying to walk away from the whole thing. And maybe Kevin was, too. Maybe, once he’d finally told someone else, he could just forget it.

Though if he’d only been drinking with Kohler, what was the big deal? If they just drank too much, and smoked a little, and that’s what accidentally killed Kohler, that wasn’t Kevin’s fault. Kohler was a grown man. He drank. He smoked. Maybe he didn’t sleep around -- or maybe I really did need to believe in fairy tales -- but the biggest problem, at least for me, was What if Cameron wasn’t the only person Kevin told? What if all this did get back to the Kohlers, and it really hurt them?

I was juggling too much. And beating myself up over something that wasn’t even my business. And I knew I didn’t know enough about any of it. I needed to talk with Kevin first to do that. Or just walk away.

Trying lamely to keep Cameron’s mouth shut, I told him, “Just forget about it all. Remember the good stuff about the weekend and skip the rest.”

He laughed. “I’m not about to forget the good stuff.”

“And don’t forget what you’ve already told me -- that Kevin’s just shopping around… That no one knows what he really thinks.”

“Yeah,” Cameron sighed.

“And even if it really sucks about how Kohler died, it wasn’t Kevin’s fault.” That was my biggest point, and Cameron needed to think about it for a moment. He seemed to, and he might even have wanted to say, “You’re right,” just to back me off. But I knew he was too bright.

It was just really important to me that Cameron didn’t talk -- and he suddenly had a hell of a lot not to talk about. Me. Hookers. Kevin. Kohler. Drugs. And Cameron was the kind of guy who liked to talk. Especially if it wasn’t about him. Especially when he was drinking. Seeing it that way, we just should’ve taken out ads on TV -- spilled it all at once. Then we could try and mop up.

Nah, the more I thought about it, the better it was to keep secret. Which Cameron finally seemed to realize.