When Austin inhaled, he could smell stale cigarettes, old beer, and a spritz of bathroom Polo that someone had applied with too liberal a hand. But he could also smell onion rings frying, and a fresh breeze from somewhere, as if one of the staff had opened the door from the kitchen to erase the funk from the place.
“Two?” asked the waitress as she stood there, eying him in his floppy and damp windbreaker and Clay in the DU sweatshirt he’d borrowed from Austin. The waitress wore a red t-shirt with an outline of a white bison and the wordsA Whole Lot of Funwith round white lines beneath,which were probably meant to look festive but which simply looked like a bad milk stain.
“Yes, please,” said Clay, bright and shiny, smiling at Austin and they followed the waitress to the last booth before the bussing station. “I love bars like this.”
“There’s a dead stuffed bison head on the wall,” said Austin as they sat down, wishing he could come up with something more scintillating to add to the evening’s whirl of gaiety. “And there are bison painted everywhere. It’s bisons all the way down.”
Clay was busy memorizing the menu the waitress had handed him. When Austin picked his menu up, he could only imagine the implied wide variety was going to turn out to be variations on a theme, that is, burgers, any way you wanted them. Decision made, for without Mona’s insistence they eat something trendy, he was going to order a cheeseburger with lots of onions, he could now let his eyes wander.
There was something comforting to be sitting still, out of the rain, with the anticipation of a good, greasy cheeseburger coming his way. And something energizing about Clay as he studied his menu, having turned it over twice now, with his blonde hair drying in dark-gold strands, his cheeks flushed, eyes bright. When he must have felt Austin look at him, he lifted his chin and smiled, showing Austin two sweet dimples.
“There’s a dance floor, did you see?” asked Clay.
“Where?” asked Austin.
“In an alcove next to the bar.”
Clay pointed over Austin’s shoulder, though Austin didn’t look, for there was something arresting about Clay’s pleasure in this small fact, his smile, his brightness, drawing Austin to consider that, perhaps, the end of the day would be better than how it had started.
“I’ll be your wingman if you want to ask some fine lady to dance,” said Austin. Back in college, in the good old days, he and his friends would help each other bolster their courage to single out someone to dance. He’d been the recipient of such encouragement, so why not offer the same to Clay?
Clay gave him a look, an odd pull to his mouth as the waitress came up to take their orders.
“You go first,” Clay said, gesturing to Austin and then to the waitress.
“I’ll have a cheeseburger with extra onions and a beer, whatever you have on tap.”
“You want fries with that?”
“Yes, please,” said Austin.
After Clay ordered, getting pretty much the same thing, they both settled into their booth seats, and Austin found himself smiling at the picture Clay presented: a young man in a too-large sweatshirt that gaped from his neck, hair drying off, dimples showing. Pleasure radiating from him like a warm breeze.
“So, which young lady?” asked Austin. “Pick out one and I’ll help.”
He fully expected Clay to respond in kind, to offer Austin the same assistance, and perhaps add something about wanting to know if it was too soon after his divorce for such jocularity. Instead, Clay shook his head and looked a little rueful.
“The thing is,” he said, taking a swallow of the glass of beer that the waitress had brought. “I’d be asking a gent. Not that I’m much of a dancer, although maybe I am, but I’d most definitely be dancing with a guy.”
Mid-sip of the most banal beer he’d ever tasted in his life, Austin swallowed a little too quickly to give him time to think.
“Uh.” Internally he winced.
“Will that be a problem?” Clay’s expression, that his blue eyes went a little dim, alerted Austin to the fact that his answer was important to Clay. “If you don’t want to share a bed, I can sleep on the floor, if that’ll help.”
The last thing Austin wanted to do was to make Clay sleep on the floor. His mind raced a bit, having never been confronted with anything like this in his life.
He’d only ever dated Mona. He’d never hung out with a gay man before, let alone slept with one. Though what did he know? Half of the guys he’d played b-ball with or went camping with could have been gay, and he was just too unaware to know it. And besides, what difference did it make?
“Well,” said Austin, feeling a little like he was stepping through a doorway where one’s true opinion could be expressed, where what he felt and thought would not be controlled by Mona. “I am a little concerned,” he said, now grave, as though discussing world peace. Clay looked worried for only a second, but Austin felt bad about teasing him even that much. “I am alittleconcerned. You said you don’t snore, but really? Maybe you do. And maybe you’re a blanket hog. Why should I trust you? Who’s to say?”
To his pleasure and delight, Clay barked out a laugh, dimples rising, his eyes bright as though glittering with stars.
“Well, maybeyousnore.”
“I already told you I did, a little, so let’s be clear about that. I’ve been upfront with you from the start about that.” Finding himself laughing out loud, for it was just so silly and simple and easy, he smiled when Clay laughed again, shaking his head.
“Yes, you were.” Clay lifted his glass, and Austin tapped it with his glass, and they were like that when the waitress came with their food, ample plates of greasy fried food and even greasier toppings. Fries spilling out of their grease-paper lined red plastic baskets.
