“Playing with Matches”

I

Around the living room, Cole raked his irises of honey-brown. Never had he seen so many matched items and polished surfaces. No wonder Rick wanted his other property painted pronto—to pay for the goodies of this house with the rent income of that apartment.

“Would you look at that screen?” Rick said. He sat up on his black loveseat of leather. “Our first baseman is switch-hitting.”

Tod’s soft-spoken voice sounded abruptly curt. “Don’t start with that.”

“What,” Rick uttered.

“Don’t play dumb with me.”

“You’re right,” Rick pattered like an automaton. “So I’ll come out and say it. Number 22 is horny as the pigs; he has obviously failed to find a chick on the diamond; and he is thus searching for a dude to fuck.”

“Would you show some respect for our guest?” Tod said.

“I’m sure Cole can take a lewd joke,” Rick said. He turned left his squarish face of light cream and gave Cole a coquettish eye.

Cole spoke with a Tennessee drawl, one that was three times thicker than Tod’s Piedmont drawl and Rick’s brogue. Offhandedly, Cole said, “I can take a joke.”

“That’s my buddy,” Rick said and slapped Cole’s swarthy thigh.

Who would have known? Cole thought. Tod, the blond fresh out of high school, was acting mature relative to Rick, the dark-haired manager of a workout center. Tod even refrained from lolling back on his cream recliner of waxy leather. Rick, by contrast, had his legs on the glass coffee table, black hiking boots and all. If anyone was showing consideration for Cole, it was Tod.

Cole swigged some beer out of his glass bottle.

“See?” Rick said. “My talk is inciting Cole. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he wants to suck dick.”

“Watch it!” Cole said.

“Don’t take it personally,” Rick protested. “We’re all loaded as that player.” Rick wrapped his lips around the head of his glass bottle.

Petulantly, Tod sucked his incisors of porcelain white.

Rick slipped his lips off the neck of his bottle. This made the sound of air escaping the unfastening lid of a jug of water. “There,” Rick said. “We’re even now.”

What, Cole wondered, would his wife say if she knew whom Cole was hanging out with? If only Sheena’s mother weren’t so ill. Sheena would then have returned from Kentucky; she would have brought back Sheena and Cole’s little boy; and the three would no longer be separated. As for Cole’s side of the family, Cole could only guess: what if his parents and older brother hadn’t pressured him to conform to their way of doing things? Then, Cole wouldn’t have to stay away from them—especially, on weekends—and he wouldn’t be hobnobbing with Tod and Rick. Only Cole’s younger brother and younger sister accepted him despite the mistakes Cole had made through his teens and most of his twenties. Cole’s younger siblings, however, lived under the same roof as his crucifiers.

Rick croaked, “I can lend you my wife, you know.”

“You’re bluffin’,” Cole said.

“I’m serious,” Rick replied in a rapidly rising tone.

“Jeepers creepers,” Jennifer said.

Cole nearly flinched, but he managed to smoothly turn left his oval face.

Jennifer clacked onto the white mega-tiles of the family room. Her scent of jasmine prickled Cole’s narrow nostrils.

Cole’s tight chest pulsed as if a bass drum were beating in the bedroom behind