Tell Me It's Real(57)

I ground my teeth together, planning intricate revenge plots that would end with Sandy framed for the murder of an English baroness.

“Hey, Sandy,” Vince said cheerfully, and my traitorous heart stumbled in my chest.

“You’ll have to bear with us a moment,” Sandy said loudly. “Paul’s in the bathroom talking to himself in the mirror about sexy underwear and plane turbines.”

“Plane turbines?” Vince asked, sounding adorably confused. “I have a lot of pairs of sexy underwear.”

Of course he did.

“He’s worried a turbine will fall on your apartment, the poor thing,” Sandy said, raising his voice even louder.

I gripped the countertop tightly, trying to remember that Sandy and I had been friends for more than twenty years and that someone somewhere would miss him if he was buried in the desert in an unmarked grave.

“I think I have renter’s insurance,” Vince said. “But I don’t know if that covers planes.”

“I’m sure it does,” Sandy said smoothly. “Paul? Oh, Paul? Are you done talking to yourself? You have a guest!”

You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.

If this were a movie, this would have been the point where some cheesy-ass song would play as I walked down the hallway into the living room. The music would swell, blaring something about kissing or loving or fucking or some other romantic bullshit, and then Vince would see me for the first time, a grin growing on his face, a hint of lust blooming in his eyes like fire, all because of me. I’d walk into the living room and all the rest would fade out around him and he would only have eyes for me. Sandy would disappear, my house would disappear, the world would disappear, and he’d breathe my name because I was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. And, of course, I would be the hottest thing he’d ever seen, and he wouldn’t even be able to remember a time he didn’t know me because I’d be his whole fucking world. The music would reach its screeching chorus and he’d step toward me and murmur, “Fuck the date, let’s just go to bed so I can do naughty things to your butt,” and then we’d live happily ever after.

The end.

Okay, but that’s not the end. Because that’s not what happened.

What happened was I was halfway down the hall when Wheels heard me coming and started yipping excitedly. After all, his three most favorite people in all the world were standing under the same roof for the first time ever and the universe needed to know about it! “Daddy!” he was barking at me as his claws scrabbled along the tile, his wheels squeaking. “Daddy! I’m coming to you because I’m so excited I could just shit!”

And me, of course, being wrapped in my own neurosis, didn’t see him until the last second, when he was right under the foot I was about to step down on. And as my foot fell and I heard his happy little bark, I could already see the headlines: Gay Man Distracted By First Date Steps on Two-Legged Dog and Kills Him and Canine Lovers Everywhere Demand Dog Killer’s Testicles and The Christian Right Says, “This Is Why Gay People Are Evil; They Kill Handicapped Dogs To Satisfy Their Immoral Lust.”

So at the very last second, I launched my foot forward with a squawk, the heel of my foot sliding along the right wheel of his cart. Naturally, this made me lose my balance, and I went forward, stumbling to the end of the hall, then careening into the living room and smashing into the far wall. But it was okay! Instead of the obvious solution of stopping my forward momentum by pressing my hands against the wall, I took the extremely radical approach of stopping myself with my face. Into the wall.

Silence fell over the room.

Then: “Sandy?” I asked, my face still pressed against the wall. My nose and right cheek hurt like a son of a bitch, but I wasn’t bleeding. Not yet.

“Yes, Paul?” He sounded somewhat shocked, but like he was also trying very hard to keep from laughing, a breathless sound that reminded me why having a best friend was never a good thing.

“Will you do me a favor?”

“Yes, Paul.”

“Will you look up the nearest Taiwanese restaurant for me?”

“Of course, Paul. Can I ask why?”

“You may. I’d like to see if they would buy my dog.”

“Wheels, Paul? You want to sell your dog?”

“Yes, Sandy. To a Taiwanese restaurant. So they may cook him and serve him to a table of four. I may even give him up for free.”

“Table of four. Got it.”

“Sandy?”

“Yes, Paul?”

“Did you both see me trip and smash into the wall?”

“Yes, Paul.”

“Has Vince run screaming yet?”