Nineteen Minutes Read online

  "You will."

  "I don't have a choice," Alex said.

  Josie turned to her, her eyes reflecting the candlelight. "Everyone has a choice," she said. She came up on an elbow. "Can I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "Why didn't you marry Logan Rourke?"

  Alex felt as if she'd been thrust out into the storm, naked; she was that unprepared for Josie's question. "Where did this come from?"

  "What was it about him that wasn't good enough? You told me he was handsome and smart. And you had to love him, at least at one point . . ."

  "Josie, this is ancient history--and it's stuff you shouldn't worry about, because it has nothing to do with you."

  "It has everything to do with me," Josie said. "I'm half him."

  Alex stared up at the ceiling. Maybe the sky was falling down; maybe that's what happened when you thought your smoke and mirrors would create a lasting illusion. "He was all of those things," Alex said quietly. "It wasn't him at all. It was me."

  "And then there was the whole married part."

  She sat up in bed. "How did you find out?"

  "It's all over the papers, now that he's running for office. You don't have to be a rocket scientist."

  "Did you call him?"

  Josie looked her in the eye. "No."

  There was a part of Alex that wished Josie had talked to him--to see whether he'd followed Alex's career, if he'd even asked about her. The act of leaving Logan, which had seemed so righteous on behalf of her unborn baby, now seemed selfish. Why hadn't she talked to Josie about this before?

  Because she'd been protecting Logan. Josie may have grown up without knowing her father, but wasn't that better than learning he'd wanted you to be aborted? One more lie, Alex thought, just a little one. Just to keep Josie from being hurt. "He wouldn't leave his wife." Alex glanced sideways at Josie. "I couldn't make myself small enough to fit into the space he wanted me to fit into, in order to be part of his life. Does that make sense?"

  "I guess."

  Beneath the covers, Alex reached for Josie's hand. It was the kind of action that would have seemed forced, had it been in visible sight--something too openly emotional for either of them to lay claim to--but here, in the dark, with the world tunneling in around them, it seemed perfectly natural. "I'm sorry," she said.

  "For what?"

  "For not giving you the choice of having him around when you were growing up."

  Josie shrugged and pulled her hand away. "You did the right thing."

  "I don't know," Alex sighed. "The right thing sets you up to be incredibly lonely, sometimes." Suddenly she turned to Josie, stretching a bright smile on her face. "Why are we even talking about this? Unlike me, you're lucky in love, right?"

  Just then, the power came back on. Downstairs, the microwave beeped to be reset; the light in the bathroom spilled yellow down the hallway. "I guess I'll go back to my own bed," Josie said.

  "Oh. All right," Alex answered, when what she meant to say was that Josie was welcome to stay right where she was.

  As Josie padded down the hallway, Alex reached over to reset her alarm clock. It blinked 12:00 12:00 12:00 in panicked LED, like Cinderella's redflag reminder that fairy-tale endings are hard to come by.

  *

  To Peter's surprise, the bouncer at the Front Runner didn't even glance at his fake ID, so before he had time to think twice about the fact that he was actually, finally here, he was pushed inside.

  He was hit in the face with a blast of smoke, and it took him a minute to adjust to the dim light. Music filled in all the spaces between people, techno-dance stuff that was so loud it made Peter's eardrums pulse. Two tall women were flanking the front door, checking out the new entrants. It took Peter a second glance to realize that one had the shadow of a beard on her face. His face. The other one looked more like a girl than most girls he'd ever seen, but then again, Peter had never seen a transvestite up close. Maybe they were perfectionists.

  Men were standing in groups of two or three, except for the ones that perched like hawks on a balcony overlooking the dance floor. There were men in leather chaps, men kissing other men in the corners, men passing joints. Mirrors on every wall made the club look huge, its rooms endless.

  It hadn't been hard to find out about the Front Runner, thanks to Internet chat rooms. Since Peter was still taking driver's ed, he had to take a bus to Manchester and then a taxi to the club's front door. He still wasn't sure why he was there--it was like an anthropology experiment, in his mind. See if he fit in with this society, instead of his own.

  It wasn't that he wanted to fool around with a guy--not yet, anyway. He just wanted to know what it was like to be among guys who were gay, and totally okay with it. He wanted to know if they could look at him and know, instantly, that Peter belonged.

  He stopped in front of a couple that was going at it in a dark corner. Seeing a guy kiss a guy was strange in real life. Sure, there were gay kisses on television shows--Big Moments that usually were controversial enough to get press, so that Peter knew when they were airing--and he'd sometimes watch them to see if he felt anything, watching them. But they were acted, just like regular hookups on TV shows . . . unlike the display in front of his eyes right now. He waited to see if his heart started pounding a little harder, if it made sense to him.

  He didn't feel particularly excited, though. Curious, sure--did a beard scratch you when you were making out?--and not repulsed, but Peter couldn't say he felt with any great conviction that that was something he wanted to try, too.

  The men broke away from each other, and one of them narrowed his eyes. "This ain't no peep show," he said, and he shoved Peter away.

  Peter stumbled, falling against someone sitting at the bar. "Whoa," the man said, and then his eyes lit up. "What have we here?"

  "Sorry . . ."

  "Don't be." He was in his early twenties, with white-blond crew-cut hair and nicotine stains on his fingertips. "First time here?"

  Peter turned to him. "How can you tell?"

  "You've got that deer-in-the-headlights look." He stubbed out his cigarette and summoned the bartender, who, Peter noticed, looked like he'd walked out of the pages of a magazine. "Rico, get my young friend here a drink. What would you like?"

  Peter swallowed. "Pepsi?"

  The man's teeth flashed. "Yeah, right."

  "I don't drink."

  "Ah," he said. "Here, then."

  He handed a pair of small tubes to Peter, and then took two for himself out of his pocket. There was no powder in them--just air. Peter watched him open the top, inhale deeply, then do the same with the second vial in his other nostril. Mimicking this, Peter felt his head spin, like the one time he'd drunk a six-pack when his parents had gone off to watch Joey play football. But unlike then, when he'd only wanted to fall asleep afterward, Peter now felt every cell of his body buzzing, wide awake.

  "My name's Kurt," the man said, holding out his hand.

  "Peter."

  "Bottom or top?"

  Peter shrugged, trying to look like he knew what the guy was talking about, when in fact he had no clue.

  "My God," Kurt said, his jaw dropping. "New blood."

  The bartender set a Pepsi down in front of Peter. "Leave him alone, Kurt. He's just a kid."

  "Then maybe we should play a game," Kurt said. "You like pool?"

  A game of pool Peter could totally handle. "That would be great."

  He watched Kurt peel a twenty out of his wallet and leave it behind for Rico. "Keep the change," he said.

  The poolroom was adjacent to the main part of the club, four tables that were already engaged in various stages of play. Peter sat down on a bench along the wall, studying people. Some were touching each other--an arm on the shoulder, a pat on the rear--but most were just acting like a bunch of guys. Like friends would.

  Kurt took a handful of quarters out of his pocket and put them down on the lip of the table. Thinking that this was the pot they would be playing