The Bridegroom Comes: Chapter Two: Hunter's

“Anton, Darling, what is that you’re wearing? Old Spice?”
Anton squirmed inwardly at Herman’s massive embrace, knowing from experience that any outward sign of his repulsion would be met by an intensified and prolonged entrapment. Nevertheless, he stiffened. Over the course of a month’s weekly meetings with Tracy at Hunter’s Bistro, Anton had come to accept such interruptions as inevitable. Queers, it turned out, were a gregarious lot, at least when on their own turf, not at all the wilting daisies he remembered as the obvious fags in high school. And, it had quickly become evident, Hunters was very much their turf: The clientele seemed to include a fair amount of straights—mostly the young, hip and/or artsy—, but the core crowd seemed to be homosexuals comprising a surprisingly broad spectrum, from old men and women to kids who looked like they must still be in high school, though the majority appeared to be young, middle-class types like Tracy.
“For heaven’s sake, it’s like queer repellant. Are you quite sure you like to suck cock?” Herman settled heavily into the chair Anton now regretted not having moved away from the table Tracy habitually claimed at the Bistro. Herman’s eyes flitted around the room in hopes of an audience, then, met with the indifference of customers accustomed to his theatrics, bore in again upon Anton, who steeled himself.
“O, dear, already an ice queen, and not yet even out of his Sears and Roebuck couture. Really, Darling, just because Tracy knows how to greet royalty with open arms, doesn’t mean you have to.” The attentions Tracy attracted from members of the Bistro’s varied cliques no longer surprised Anton, nor did the fact that some of that attention inevitably seemed to spill over onto himself—he sometimes felt like the new, exotic addition to some zoo. But, the presence of this massive drag queen still unnerved him, though he had never actually seen Herman in anything but the fairly conservative mufti Anton surmised he always wore in public outside the confines of whatever bar tolerated the complete unleashing of his dramatic leanings. Shifting his attention to Tracy, Herman asked, by way of apology, “Can you believe what a bitch I am? Must be the hunger. I’m famished!” He raised his voice to be sure to be heard by the young man behind the counter, who feigned imperviousness. Anton forced a smile.
“Get a load of the dimples,” Herman cooed. “And the blush!” He turned to Tracy. “I can see why you’re so taken.”
“Behave yourself.” Tracy’s tone conveyed both affection and real admonition. Uncharacteristically, Herman made no rejoinder, but sat, smiling.
Tracy broke the silence: “Okay, out with it. You’re obviously dying to tell us something.”
“You’re no fun.”
“You want me to beg?”
“I wish! Why I even bother with you commoners . . . .”
“Begging your pardon, Your Highness.”
“Well, as it happens, it is a matter of the goings on at Court.”
“ . . . Well?”
“We’re going to have a party!”
“This is news?”
“For the children!” Satisfied at the bemusement that crossed Tracy’s face, Herman pressed on: “You know the school off Pine Street, behind the Pink Flamingo?”
“St. Monica’s?”
“Right. The one with the boys choir.”
“Isn’t the choir director one of your Court queens? The black closet case.”
Herman shrugged. “Simon. Anyway, we voted yesterday to adopt the whole school for Christmas. We’re going to put on the show of the year to raise funds.”
Anton interjected, “Drag queens and parochial schoolboys: Interesting mix.” He really wished Herman would leave.
Tracy rose to the defense. “Well, if anyone ever needed royal patronage . . . . Especially, now that Holy Mother Church is so down-and-out. I hear the diocese is about to declare bankruptcy because of all the law suits from former altar boys they buggered.” Remembering Anton’s neck cross, he glanced to see if his words had provoked a rise. They had not.
“Exactly.” Herman fixed his gaze again on Anton. “I’m not just talking a Santa Clause quickie, either: ‘Wam, bam, thanks for relieving my conscience, now back to the suburbs.’ Have you seen their playground?”
“Uh huh,” Tracy answered. “Looks like it’s been frequented more by drug pushers than school kids lately.”
“We can earn enough to reclaim it, if last year’s gala is any indication: a new jungle gym, swing set, teeter totter, whatever. The idea came up at the Court meeting last night, and I can’t remember the last time I saw the girls so worked up about something, not even Cher’s inclusion of Dallas in her “Farewell Tour” last year.”
“The ‘goodbye’ that never came to an end.” Tracy felt vaguely annoyed at the staleness of his own joke. He glanced again at Anton, whose face registered nothing. “What about the AIDS shelter? Isn’t that your pet cause?”
“Honey, those folks have an endowment! So to speak. Besides, every gay group in town gives to them. Those kids need someone besides the nuns looking after them; they could use some mothering.”
“And, you’re just the mothers to give it to them.” Tracy grinned.
Sweet Cheeks!” Herman again accosted the barista, who had ventured out to deliver a lunch plate to another table. “Are you going to take my order now, or wait ‘till I’ve passed out on the floor? Man cannot live by the sight of those honey buns alone!”
“These aren’t for you, Miss Ivana.” The young man did not bother to turn around. “But, if you behave, you might get a taste of something.”
Herman’s roar of laughter finally won the attention of the other customers. Anton had learned not to wince, but his annoyance grew. He had worked at gaining Tracy’s trust, and feared that Herman’s unpredictable behavior might somehow upset the balance. Six months’ effort, including a move to Texas, was quite an investment. It struck him momentarily how different his life looked from six months ago.
* * *
He had been standing in his mother’s kitchen in Portland, discussing with her his prospects for a promotion at work, when the phone rang. He felt annoyed at the interruption; his mother never seemed to make use of the answering machine he bought her for Christmas, beyond glancing at the caller ID before picking up the receiver. Still, he’d never known her to reject a call. “214?” she read out the prefix, “Who could this be? Hello?”
Anton picked up the paper on the kitchen table and began to scan the headlines, impatiently waiting for his mother to get off the phone with whichever telemarketer she was allowing to interrupt their conversation. A change in her voice broke through his concentration.
“Yes, that’s me. . . . Who?” Irene’s body grew rigid, matching the suddenly icy tone of her voice; a demeanor she reserved for conversations concerning her estranged husband, Gary. “Yes, that’s right. . . . No, we have no contact.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper; it was all Anton could do to stop himself from leaning forward. . . . “Yes, but frankly, I don’t see what that has to do with me. . . . I see. . . . Well, I appreciate your calling, but frankly, I’m not interested. . . . No. . . .No,” his mother’s voice grew firm, almost angry. “Thanks for your call, but I have no intention of pursuing the matter. “. . . No, that won’t be necessary. . . . No, I have your number on the machine, but as I said . . . . You’re welcome. Goodbye,” placing the phone back on its receiver, Irene remained at the kitchen counter, gazing out over the sink through the window.
“Who was that?” Anton had to repeat the question before catching his mother’s attention. He made as if to get up, intending to place his hand on her shoulder, but she cut him short, walking briskly back to her seat at the table. A firm nod of her head and the frown on her face kept Anton in place. “. . . Well?”
“Your father.” Anton frowned, but kept his eyes fixed on his mother’s face. She tried to avoid his gaze. “He’s come into some kind of money. It has nothing to do with us.”
“Who was that?” It was only with the greatest difficulty that Anton succeeded in prying from his mother the gist of her conversation: The caller was some Dallas lawyer his father had consulted. Apparently, Gary had won a tidy sum in the Texas State Lottery and was anxious to shelter the profits from any claims Irene might make. As it happened, this could be fully guaranteed only by her ignorance of the matter. Stupidly, and typically, Gary had tried to stiff the lawyer, who had called, Anton surmised, out of revenge.
Anton made a point of never entering into arguments with his mother any more. He had inherited her stubbornness, and the combination of their tempers had made for such fierce rows in his teenage and college years that their relationship had nearly been permanently damaged. For both, this would have been of tragic consequence; the bond between them was all the fiercer for their emotional distance from others. Ultimately, Anton had come to recognize that, while Irene was as emotionally dependent on her son as he on her—perhaps more so—, it was up to him to acquiesce whenever the possibility of an argument raised its head. This had once appeared to him as an injury to his pride. With maturity, he had come to accept it as the demand of filial loyalty, even to take pride in it as a sign that, in this area, at least, he had emotionally outgrown his mother.
So, Anton later regretted the argument that took place over the phone call. Irene resolutely refused to follow up on the matter or to have any further contact with the lawyer. Looking back on his angry pleading, Anton blushed to realize how he had reverted to teenage behavior, to the point of petty subterfuge: Before leaving her house, he had returned to the kitchen on the pretext of retrieving the newspaper, and had furtively copied down the lawyer’s number.
To little avail: He called the lawyer from work the following Monday, but was rebuffed. The man had already taken legal risks in contacting Irene, he explained; to divulge information about his client to any one else against Gary’s wishes, even to his son, would be simply too risky. Anton kept his cool with difficulty; he had no intention of falling back into the pleading tone he’d adopted with Irene. Hanging up the phone, he wanted desperately to break something.
It took some time for him to calm down; in fact, his frustration burst out in exaggerated pique at work and at home over the course of the week. He knew it was pointless to bring the subject up again with Irene, but he could not escape the sense that he was called to do something. He owed it to his mother, he knew, and to himself—ultimately, to God. While Irene was not exactly destitute—thanks largely to the monthly deposits Anton had arranged directly from his paycheck into her savings account—, the years in which she raised her son and made mortgage and car payments while setting aside money for his college tuition on a hairdresser’s salary had been a fairly hard-scrabble existence. She had refused to pursue Gary for child support just as adamantly as she refused to entertain the notion of having their marriage legally dissolved. “I won’t give the bastard the satisfaction,” she had said on the single occasion she consented to discuss the matter with her son. “Whether he likes it or not, he’ll die a married man and a deadbeat father. But, frankly, the less he has to do with us, the better.”
Well maybe his mother was content to live out the rest of her life as the victim of a worthless husband, but Anton was damned if he was going to just stand by and watch it happen. Up to this point, though, he had felt helpless to do anything about it.
This pervasive sense of helplessness conflicted with what Anton had unconsciously over the years come to assume as his unique calling: the pursuit of justice. It shaped not only his sense of his role as son to a wronged mother and protector of his wife and children, but his choice of profession, as well: Anton pursued his work as an accountant with a zealotry others would find foreign to such an occupation. In his current firm, he had made a reputation for handling particular types of cases: those that required the sniffing out of hidden profits and losses on behalf of large creditors and stockholders. He found the work engrossing, deeply satisfying to his lust for bringing to justice those who sought to adulterate the orderly realm of numbers and mathematical law, to pervert the one sphere of human understanding free from ambiguity into a means of pursuing private desires at others’ expense.
So, when he learned at the end of the week following the phone call from Gary’s lawyer that a position had come open in the Dallas branch of Anton’s firm, he saw God’s hand in it. He immediately applied, and by the end of the month had his wife, Cynthia, packing for the move. His co-workers had been baffled by his willingness to uproot his family for a job which paid no more than he had been making in Oregon, with fewer hopes for advancement. Anton still felt guilty for lying about this to his wife.

* * *
The real payoff was what he had come here, to Hunter’s Bistro, to pursue. Anton had at first feared that Tracy would grow impatient with his awkwardness, or suspicious that his evasiveness over the details of his own life might arise from motivations more sinister than bashfulness. But, Tracy’s seeming arrogance worked in Anton’s favor. It appeared to him that Tracy delighted in the role of gay mystagogue, offering up his own experiences and prejudices as a template for the “novice”—Anton appeared to be playing that role fairly convincingly—, finding it natural that Anton’s life prior to and apart from their relationship held nothing much worth discussing. Anton assumed it was for this reason that he found it relatively easy in their conversations to keep the focus off himself, and on the object of his investigation. That, too, was a role he played well, and one to which he was far more accustomed.
In truth, Anton had come to look forward to these weekly meetings—an emotion he attributed solely to the “predatory thrill” he frequently experienced in the course of an investigation. That thrill had reached an apex just before Herman’s uninvited intrusion: Anton, having worked the conversation around to Tracy’s sexual escapades, lighted upon his ongoing relationship with a man named Peter. He was eager to bring the subject up again.
First, he had to get rid of Herman.
As it turned out, that problem solved itself. “Darlings!” Herman stage-whispered. “You won’t believe who just swept across the threshold: Miss Holier-than-Thou, herself, the reigning queen of Austin-and-all-Texas, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting.
“Miss Amanda! Amanda Squeeze! What brings you to Dallas? An unannounced visitation—Honey, where is your sense of etiquette? Darlings, you don’t mind?” Rising from the table, he barely glanced at Tracy, who waved him on with a tolerant smile.
Clearly enjoying the peace left in Herman’s wake, Tracy stretched back in his chair. “So, where were we?”
Anton affected a casual air. “You were telling about your move from Portland. With . . . What was the name?”
“Peter.”
“Right.”
“Yeah. So, you and I have that in common.”
Anton flushed, despite himself. “What do you mean by that?”
“Moving here from Portland.” Tracy gave him a curious look. “So, how long’d you live there?”
“I grew up there.” Anton hastened to shift the focus back. “You?”
“Same. The suburbs: Troutdale. What neighborhood were you in?”
“Southeast Portland, right near Milwaukie. So, you and . . . Peter . . ., are you still . . .” –he sought for the right word— “. . . involved?”
Tracy smirked. “That’s one way to put it. I look him up once in while. We didn’t last long as ‘a couple.’ Not exactly husband material.”
“You or him?”
“Both. Why the hell some queers are so eager to ape straight marriages . . . . ‘Good Housekeeping’: mowing the lawn, white picket fence, a dog. 2.5 children, conceived with the aid of a turkey baster and a lesbian, of course. Shit! The whole thing is so fake.”
“Children aren’t fake.”
Tracy broke the awkward silence. “I’m sorry, I forgot you have kids. Two, right?”
“Forget it. So, if it was just sex, why’d you move to Texas with him?”
“I dunno. Adventure. I wanted to get out.”
“That’s all?”
“I was still a kid, really. Twenty-four.” He shrugged. “I guess I still believed in picket fences.”
“Did Peter?”
“What do you think he was running from? He had a wife and a kid.”
“A son?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Anton felt queasy. “What kind of work does he do?”
“He’s a trucker.”
Gary, Anton’s father, had driven truck, among his many jobs, none of which lasted more than a year. Anton spun another line: “That’s a hard way to make a living.”
“I guess. I don’t know if he’s still in it. He just came into a big inheritance; should be enough to retire on. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes him to go through it. I give him a year.”
The bastard hadn’t even used his real name, had thrown it out like so much garbage, along with . . . us. Me. Mom. Odd, that he’d pass off a lottery win as an inheritance, though. Lying bastard.
“You alright?” Tracy looked truly concerned. “You look like you’re going to get sick.”
“No, I’m . . . . I must have eaten too fast. Heartburn. So, does Peter still live in Dallas?”
“Nearby, in Mesquite.”
“Maybe you could introduce us sometime.”
“Why? Believe me, you two have nothing in common.”
“You’re protective of him?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Nothing so conventional, right?” Anton immediately knew he had gone too far, had bordered on revealing an interest in this man and a degree of malice that might arouse suspicion. “Never mind. It’s getting late; I’d better get back to work. See you later.”
“You’d better watch out; you’re getting to be almost as much a regular here as me. Or Herman,” Tracy smiled.