Scott stared into space, looking almost disoriented. “They made four Lethal Weapons?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s in the fourth one?”
“The usual guys, plus Chris Rock and Jet Li. It’s not bad. It’s not that good, but it’s not bad.”
“Okay.”
“Introduce me to your friend,” George said, nudging him and offering a smile. “He knows we’re talking about him up here, I don’t want to be rude.”
Scott nodded and stepped back so he could turn around and beckon the guy. “Carver,” he said.
Carver came up the stairs to them, sidling in past Scott and offering his hand to George. George shook it while Scott formally introduced them to each other. Carver had a firm, efficient handshake, and made strong eye contact during, which made George suspect he had an MBA. His grooming and the Rolex on his wrist also suggested MBA, though he was dressed kind of haphazardly. George was usually good at stepping back from a situation and assembling its parts into a coherent whole, but he was struggling here.
“This is nice,” Carver said, tipping his head back to look up at the townhouse. “Like a brick brownstone. I didn’t know Hoboken had these.”
“Well, come on in, get the tour,” George said, opening the door and leading the way. “Excuse our mess, the drop cloths andsuch, I hope Scott already told you it’s a work in progress in here.”
“How long in progress?” Carver said.
“About a year and a half now?” George said to Scott, who nodded.
They started by showing him the main floor, as it was the one they were both the most proud of. They’d installed built-ins in the living room, replaced the windows in the front and back of the house, and torn down two interior walls to let more natural light flow through and make an open layout that complemented the high ceilings. George was particularly proud of the kitchen at the back of the house, where they’d almost finished the job of replacing all the original cabinets with green glass-paneled ones that had lights installed both inside and underneath. He was also proud of the island, which was topped by a big slab of Breccia marble that had veins running through it in shades of green, purple and gray.
George pointed out the wainscoting and moulding which Scott had cut and installed, and noticed the way Scott’s eyes snapped to Carver. Carver voiced his approval, and Scott looked both pleased and relieved. It was dawning on George that Scott really liked this guy — he wasn’t just having sex with him. He was treating him the same way George remembered treating each of his wives back in the day.
At first blush, at least, Carver struck him as a nice guy. He listened to them with interest and asked polite questions. George was noticing now the ways in which he was a little swishy; how he moved his hands when he talked and his hips when he walked, the expressive way he tilted his head, how he kept batting his eyelashes at Scott.
As they went down to the ground floor, Scott’s domain which led out to the back patio, George decided to wingman a little. “Scott did some of the millwork down here, too,” he said as theywalked into the parlor, and pointed at the fireplace. “The mantle there.”
“Damn,” Carver said, sounding impressed. He went over to a long bookshelf at the back of the room and started unashamedly examining the spines. “Since when do you know how to do this shit?” he said over his shoulder to Scott.
Scott had his hands in his pockets and looked shy. “None of these designs are that hard, and it took a lot of practice,” he said. “I fucked up so many pieces of wood at first. I had no intuition for joinery at all. Honestly, I still don’t quite get it, most of this stuff is glued together under the paint. George is the one with the, like, spatial intelligence. He saves my ass all the time.”
“He’s great with the designs, though,” George said. “You know, knowing what would look good in a room and picturing it in his head and then figuring out how to make it real. I just tell him he has to measure fifteen times and cut once.”
Scott laughed. “Remember when I brought you that piece of moulding and it was like five inches too long?” He turned to Carver. “He was like, ‘How the fuck did this happen? I don’t understand how you arrived at this conclusion.’ Like he was worried about me.”
“The boy can’t count,” George admitted, and both Carver and Scott laughed. “But that’s okay. He’s got other talents.”
“I’m honestly really impressed,” Carver said, coming back over to them. “This place looks great.”
“Thank you, thank you,” George said. “We’ve been going slowly… one thing at a time, then we try to live with it for a few weeks before we do anything else, in case we fucked something up. And we fucked a lot of things up at first. But I do think it’s coming together nicely.”
Carver looked around the room, examining Scott’s crates of vinyls, speaker system, wall-mounted guitars, and his large framed print of Clarence Clemons kissing Bruce Springsteen.George looked at the latter and wondered how he didn’t realize sooner that Scott was for dudes. To be fair, hanging right next to this was an impressionistic painting of a naked woman.
Scott’s phone rang, and he got it out of his pocket. “It’s the tow truck,” he said, heading for the back door. “I told them to pull into the alley so I can bring my stuff in through the back, then I’ll have them tow it to the garage.”
“Check the temperature on that pork while you’re out there,” George called after him, and Scott waved in assent.
Carver gave George an appraisive look, then went over to the suede couch in front of the fireplace and sat down. George sat next to him, apprehensive. He usually knew more about his houseguests than the very little he knew about this guy. There was something almost conspicuous about this Carver, too, some keen and restless quality that made it hard not to feel his presence.
“So you’re in the music business?” Carver said, studying him.
“Uh-huh. I used to do A&R for a few smaller labels, now I’m a consultant for some bigger labels.”
“What do you consult on?”
