BOOK ONE: DECEPTIONS
Chapters One to Twenty Six
Vignettes 1 - 140

BOOK TWO: YESTERDAY ECHOES
Chapters 27 to
Vignettes 141 -

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Vignette #30: Focus

Ian triple checked to make sure that he had his cell phone and crossed back home. He let himself in the house going straight to the closet and getting his guitar. He stripped down to his underwear, sat on the chair of the balcony and started strumming.

Bits and pieces of the past kept coming in waves through his mind. Ian’s hands were strumming, but his mind was folding moments over and over in his head. He was staring into space, playing his guitar, no idea how much time had passed and certainly no idea that he was being watched.

“Mom said that I should bring this stuff back over to you and thank you again for bringing it.” Reese was holding two bags, one in each hand. “She put everything in the dishwasher and to tell you again how delicious everything was.”

“Thank you, Reese. Just put ‘em down there and I’ll get them later.”

“I can take them inside for you, if you want.”

Ian stopped playing. “Okay, the doors unlocked.”

Reese let himself inside and Ian went back to staring into to nowhere and strumming the Gibson. In a moment, Ian heard a throat clear again. He looked again.

“Would it disturb you if I…” Reese nodded at the pool.

“No, go right ahead.”

“Thanks”, the young man said quietly and began to pull his shirt over his head pushing his sneakers off at the same time.

Ian continued to strum as Reese undressed. He was definitely the son on Colton Shores, the dark hair, still in the close-cropped military cut, and the broad, broad shoulders, quietly rugged and masculine.

Reese had served in the battlefields during the Iraqi conflict, which Tippy said he refused to discuss. He had always been quiet, she said and feared that his time in the military had forced him even more inward.

He refused to go out much and interaction with even his family was minimal. What Ian noticed was a 25 year old man, who had probably been through the most terrifying experiences anyone could imagine, much less a pampered Hollywood baby, who now just needed some quiet time to process it all.

When he was down to a pair of khaki color baggy boxers, Reese jumped in the pool and began to quietly swim back and forth. Ian went back to his strumming and thinking, but watching the man doing lap after lap, with the obsession of a long distance swimmer. As he reached the sides of the pool he would tag and flip over, coming back to the surface of the water and stroking to the other side.

Reese must have gone on non-stop for twenty minutes, Ian’s mind studying the whole time, but his eyes looking past the movement and finally beading in on a place that his mind went to, somewhere out of his own body, trapped in the terrors of the past. When Ian shook his head and snapped back to where he was, Reese had stopped swimming and was resting his chin on his folded arms, lower body still in the deep end of the pool, looking at Ian.

Reese didn’t smile. He just said flatly. “I like the way you play. It’s nice.”

Ian shook his head thank you. “Good night isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Reece agreed, “one of my favorite times of year.”

“I love the fall.” Ian thought out loud, “I’m not sure you have one of those here, do you?”

“Sort of, it mainly gets chillier at night and we get more rain.”

“I’m not sure I’m gonna like the lack of real seasons.”

“You get used to it. You get used to a lot of things around here.”

There was quiet for a moment and Ian strummed his guitar a little more. Reese laid his head down on his arms and looked at Ian sideways.

“I notice a lot.” Reese said quietly, never raising his head from its position on his arm. ”People think I’m quiet and stupid, but I’m not. I just like to observe.”

“I noticed that about you.”

“I know Mom and Dad are worried about me, but I’ll be alright. I just don’t know how to tell them.”

“They’re not stupid either Reese, they’ll catch on.”

He nodded his head. “You wanna talk about it?” There were more words coming from Reese than there had been the whole afternoon.

Ian stopped strumming and looked up. “Talk about what?”

“Whatever it is going on in your head, the thing that makes you so sad.”

Ian smiled. “I’m not sad.”

Reese blinked his eyes and was quiet a moment. “Yes, you are.”

Ian sensed his need to talk, so he put down his guitar and slowly made his way down to the pool. “Mind if I get in?” He asked.

“Your pool.”

Ian smiled as he slipped over the side beside Reece, “I keep forgetting.” He pushed himself down to the bottom and then floated back to the top, coming up wet and cool right beside Reece. Ian leaned his back against the pool wall beside Reese.

Reese hadn’t changed his position, his head was still lying sideways on his arms. They were quiet for another moment. Reese sighed. “You ever done it, with a guy?”

“Reese, I wonder if you should be having that conversation with your parents. It may be difficult, but they seem very open about sex and I’m sure they would…”

“Open?” Reese laughed and turned around facing the same direction as Ian. “The first time I snuck a girl in my room to have sex, my mother burst in the door and said, “Oh I’m sorry, I though I heard mice.” Then without as much as the bat of an eye she said, “Reese, honey, arch your back a little more, you’ll get deeper penetration and stimulate her clitoris more. She’ll love that.”

Ian laughed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh.”

For the first time he saw Reese smile, “Its okay. It’s pretty funny, now, and she was right. Despite everything, my mother is almost always right.”

“I’m learning that.”

“So have you?”

“What?”

“Made it with a guy before?”

“No, and not interested. I have nothing against it, but it just doesn’t interest me.”

“That’s cool.” Reese said flatly. “I love sex with woman, but I’ve had sex with guys.” He sighed. “This is California. If a dude hasn’t had sex with another dude at least once he’s probably not been potty trained yet.”

Ian piped in, “It seems everyone I meet is beautiful, horny and not very discriminating about what sex they get off with as long as they get off.”

“That pretty much sums it up.”

“How do relationships survive here?” Ian pondered.

“Most of them don’t. Some do, but most don’t. A lot have a pact like my parents, but it doesn’t always work.”

“A pact?” They swim to the shallow end and sat on the bottom.

“You don’t know about that?”

“Not really.”

“It’s a pretty standard agreement. They only play around if the other spouse plays with them or watches; no one on one with the opposite sex unless the other one is there. Same sex play is permitted at any time provided condoms are used, and the spouse is honest about it.”

Ian was a little dumbfounded but not shocked. “That doesn’t seem very romantic. More like, oh I don’t know, rules to some kind of card game, not a relationship.”

“It works for some.”

“I guess it does.”

“It wasn’t going to be that way with me and Kelly. We were going to be monogamous and only make love with each other.”

“Who’s Kelly?”

Reese looked down in the water, like he’d let a secret he hadn’t meant to slip. “Someone I was in love with.”

“Have your parents met her?”

“No.”

“You should bring her to meet them.”

“Can’t”.

“Still overseas?”

“Dead.” Reese looked seep into the water.

Calloused hands dug into the scar tissue in Ian’s head with dirty fingernails and splattered bloody pulp everywhere. Almost as quickly the quake rocked him, the mess was pressed back together clean, slipped pristinely in the box and tucked away away where it couldn’t be seen or thought about again.

“Reese...I…” he stammered as he began to focus again on the outside.

When Ian was aware again, Reese was quietly crying. He knew that there was nothing he could say. He reached out and put an arm around him and squeezed him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. Really, it’s okay. I won’t say anything.”

Reese pulled himself into Ian’s shoulder and filled the pool with pent up tears. Ian didn’t know why, out of the blue, Reese had chosen him, maybe he was just in the right place at the wrong time, but he knew how Reese felt, he understood. How many times a day had Ian felt that he was alive and dead and totally unconnected.

He let Reese shake and cry. Sometimes the boy/man whaled, sometimes he just sniffled until the next uncontrollable wave of pain and anger over took him. It was an hour before Reese stopped, dried his eyes and himself and walked back over to his house.

It left Ian drained, but feeling as though he had made or at least was trying to make the connections that had always escaped him. The incident also bubbled something else up—fear, the fear that there were things he could never escape. Things he feared that his simple being touched off and made bad things happen to good people

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