I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore by Ethan Mordden Read Free Book Online

I arrived to find Nick throwing clothes into a backpack as Mac followed him around frantically signaling.
    “I know when it’s time,” Nick philosophized for our benefit. “It’s time for L.A. Because I hate this fucking snow, and bartenders, and niggers on bicycles—”
    Mac grabbed my arms, pointed to Nick, then hugged himself, watching me with huge asking eyes.
    “I don’t know what you’re saying,” I told him.
    “This guy saw me in Studio, right? He dropped his glasses on the dance floor and who picks them up?”
    “A wallet,” I said.
    “No, he’s okay. I’m going back with him. On a plane! ”
    Mac moved to Nick, indicating their faces, their hearts, trying to smile. Nick turned away, muttering, “Sure, sure,” but Mac took his hand and touched it to Nick’s forehead.
    Nick jerked his hand away. “Make him stop that stuff.”
    “After what he’s done for you, my friend,” said Dennis Savage, “the least you should—”
    “Hey,” said Nick, his arms as wide as his smile, slurring the word out the way grown-ups do when talking to children, “I earned it, didn’t I?” He patted Mac’s head and headed for the door. “Stay loose, boys,” he called out. “And remember our motto: ‘Don’t screw anything made of wood.’” He laughed and pulled open the door as Mac ran up, pencil dashing across the top leaf of a pad. He tore it off and handed it to Nick.
    “Give it to the next guy,” said Nick. He crumpled the note, let it fall, and closed the door behind him.
    Mac stayed where he was, facing the door, shaking his head. Finally he turned, touched his eyes, indicated us, and militantly brushed his palm across the air.
    “I don’t want you to see me cry,” I sounded.
    “We’ve seen you smile so much,” said Dennis Savage. “I don’t think a little crying would hurt.”
    Mac shook his head, holding back the tears. We didn’t move, and he shook his head again.
    I took the pad and pencil from him, and wrote, “Would you like a quarter?”
    He read it, reclaimed the kit, and wrote, “It hurts to be nice.”
    I furiously shook my head.
    He nodded grimly.
    Dennis Savage held him very, very gently from behind, as if afraid of being pushed away. “Come on and cry,” he urged. He had picked up the crumpled note, and put it in Mac’s hand and closed his fist around it.
    Mac looked at me.
    “What?” I said.
    He handed me the note. I opened it. It read, “My aunt died today.”
    “Mac,” I said, “why did you write this?”
    That was when he began to cry.
    *   *   *
    Mac went home for the funeral, returned to New York, and, bare weeks after, went back to Wisconsin on a long vacation. Letters poured out, somewhat less ebullient than usual; or perhaps as ebullient, but about unusual things—the nightingales at his window or losing to his nephew at chess. He would sneak back to the city, not calling any of us—Mac, the most intent comrade of all. How dare the little bastard, I thought, spotting him in the D’Agostino midway between our apartments. He’s supposed to be in Racine! At least he had the sense of style to be embarrassed, which made it worse. I followed him to the checkout line, and sounded for him to the clerk: he had forgotten to take his pad. This is like forgetting to wear your shoes in a blizzard.
    The Racine trips grew longer, but Mac continued to write. However, the letters grew shorter.
    “Is it Nick?” I asked Dennis Savage. “All this mourning because a love affair ended?”
    “Where do you get off reducing it to ‘all this mourning’? Who are you to point a finger—you who set it all up, as I recall?”
    “I hate you for that.”
    “And you aren’t joking.”
    “I was helping! How was I to know that Mac could stay intrigued by a Nick?”
    “Who made you the social arbiter of gay romance?”
    “It was supposed to be one glorious night. One. It does not follow that a … a player of Monopoly would want to coexist with someone who can’t tell a