Stealing Home

by Tom Mendicino

Genres: Sports; LGBT Gay; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

As young men on the cusp of life, Charlie Beresford and Kevin “KC” Conroy forged an unlikely friendship. Though the years have lead them down unexpected paths, the bonds of an enduring love will bring them back to where they have always belonged . . .In the summer before college, hauling furniture is the last thing Charlie Beresford wants do with his time. Then, Kevin Conroy—the Mighty KC—joins the moving crew. A star baseball player bound for the big leagues, Charlie is shocked when KC reveals another side of his jock persona—and suddenly, Charlie finds the long summer coming to a bittersweet end. But as Charlie moves on to Dartmouth, KC never makes it to the majors. He finds himself in Oregon, no longer defined by his physical gifts, but building a new life with new friends, and learning to play by the heart . . . At twenty-two, Charlie has a degree in hand and an entry-level job in radio. But sometimes he feels like the only thing he learned in college was that he’s already made the biggest mistake of his life. So when he runs into his old high-school crush, he’s more than ready to make up for lost time, even if the odds are long. Because the one thing Charlie and KC know too well is that the only thing worse than striking out is never taking a chance at all . . . Praise for Tom Mendicino’s Probation “Thoughtful, textured and poignant . . . an exciting impressive debut.” — Time Out NY “A smart, engaging, witty, sad and unusual book about the complicated nature of family and love.” —Bart Yates, author of Leave Myself Behind “A potent debut.” — Publishers Weekly “Achingly honest.” —Vestal McIntryre, author of Lake Overturn

Release date: January 31, 2017

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 342

Sample

The first lesson he’d learned was that he would be spending the entire summer after graduating high school answering to the name Buddy. His birth certificate, Social Security card, driver’s license, all the official documentation of his existence, still confirmed his identity as Charles Beresford. But no one on the crew wasted any time or effort trying to remember if he went by Charlie or Chuck or Chad. Or Bill or Mike or Dave, for that matter. He was beneath contempt, the lowest of the low, the worst possible brand of sausage, their name for the high school and college kids who swelled their ranks during the peak moving season for a restless nation in search of better opportunities and friendlier climates. Meat, that’s all they were. Dead meat, if they slowed down the job or otherwise screwed up.

“Buddy, what the fuck am I supposed to do with you?” the dispatcher sputtered when Charlie appeared at his desk at precisely six in the morning the first Monday of June. An emergency phone call was placed to Mr. Ryan of Ryan Allied Van Lines, who immediately put to rest any doubts about young Mr. Beresford’s suitability to spend the summer on the crew of one of his moving vans.

“I don’t give a fuck if he wipes your ass and holds your dick while you take a piss, just find something for him to do,” he shouted at his dispatcher, not knowing, or caring, that his bellowing voice could be heard by anyone in reasonable proximity to the dispatcher’s speakerphone, including one Charlie Beresford.

“Wait till he gets the fucking bill for your worker’s comp claim,” the dispatcher grumbled, resigned to carrying out the boss’s orders. “He’ll be singing a different tune then.”

“What worker’s comp claim?” Charlie meekly inquired.

“The one you’ll be filing after two hours on the fucking job.”

The dispatcher’s reluctance to assign Charlie to a crew was nothing compared to the open revolt by the drivers, who balked at any attempt to saddle them with a hundred-fifty-five-pound scarecrow constructed of toothpicks and rubber bands. They threatened an uprising, objecting to being forced to carry human deadweight, but the dispatcher quickly laid down the law, crushing the revolt by six forty-five a.m.

“The next one of you assholes who bitches about the kid gets the methadone clinic job in Arbor Hill. So do I got any volunteers who want him for your crew?”

Apparently even a day with Charlie Beresford was preferable to hauling filing cabinets out of dingy clinic offices, listening to verbal abuse from the clients, and needing to put a full-time guard on the truck to ensure that everything that couldn’t be locked down wasn’t pilfered. Four drivers swallowed their pride and offered Charlie a place on their crews. The dispatcher pulled him aside for one last word of advice before sending him on his way.

“I’m putting you with Bruno. He’s a mean, dumb Polack, but he won’t let you break your back your first day out. You’ll put on some muscle by July if you live that long. Until then, stick to packing and cleaning the shit out of the basements and attics. Think you can handle that, buddy?” he asked, grinding a Marlboro Red between his teeth.

It had been nearly four months since the night Larry Coleman, Charlie’s best friend since sophomore year, overcame his skittish nerves, his courage fortified by a half bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, and asked Charlie if he would think he was some kind of freak if he admitted that he liked Charlie more than as just a friend. When Charlie didn’t respond by punching him in the face, Larry confessed he thought Charlie was the handsomest boy he’d ever seen, as good looking as that dude from The Strokes, and that it was getting harder and harder to resist the urge to grab him by the shoulders and kiss him so hard their teeth would rattle, just like Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain.

Sweet, fruity wine and adolescent libidos being a deadly combination, Charlie had willingly succumbed to Larry’s physical advances, though their frenzied, awkward gropes and grunts (Charlie actually caught the skin of his own scrotum in the teeth of his zipper) seemed more like the antics of the suburban nerds in Superbad than the epic legend of soul-crushing passion between a pair of exquisitely beautiful Wyoming cowboys. Still, it was reassuring for Charlie to discover there was at least one person who thought he was attractive, that, indeed, at least Larry Coleman found him worthy of being loved. And even if Larry, with his thirty-eight-inch waistband and benzoyl peroxide–resistant back acne, wasn’t the type of boy that Charlie fantasized about when he reached for his pecker to wank himself to sleep, he was the only other upperclassman at the Augustinian Academy for Boys whose favorite new band was The National and who appreciated the unparalleled genius of Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth.

Larry Coleman, despite his physical shortcomings, happened to be a great kisser with a natural instinct for poking his tongue into the deepest recesses of Charlie’s mouth. Larry was learning how to give a decent blow job, too, after gagging the first few times when Charlie, despite his best intentions, was unable to hold back until Larry could take it out of his mouth. Charlie was less enthusiastic about satisfying Larry’s physical longings and would roll on his back and doze off the minute he climaxed, not even offering a helping hand as Larry beat off. Once he even yelled at Larry for coming on Charlie’s belly instead of on the bedsheets. But Larry didn’t seem bothered by the distance Charlie insisted on maintaining, assuming that whatever they had together was meant to last forever. He’d even MapQuested the shortest route between Syracuse University, where they’d both been accepted for early admission, and Hanover, New Hampshire, the site of Dartmouth College, which had recently notified Charlie he’d jumped from the wait list to the rolls of the incoming freshman class.

Charlie’s good fortune meant Larry would need to find a new roommate at Syracuse come fall. But they still had all of June and July and a few weeks of August sharing a tent as counselors at Algonquin Peak Summer Camp, a rustic sanctuary costing the parents of the Upper East Side and Westchester County a hefty ten thousand dollars a season to provide their privileged sons and daughters opportunities to, according to the brochure, “strengthen athletic abilities, cultivate artistic talents, and learn important character-building lessons while building self-esteem.” Larry, a gifted doubles tennis player despite his girth, had been on the staff since he was fifteen; he’d gotten Charlie a gig when the guitar instructor unexpectedly notified the owners he wouldn’t be available to return this summer, the rumor being he’d been busted for selling pot to the underclassmen at his New England boarding school. But Larry’s best-laid plans for their unforgettable passage to manhood were swiftly derailed after Charlie’s mother finally consulted the family doctor when the lump she’d been ignoring under her right armpit finally left her unable to lift her arm above her head. She’d insisted the family sit down to pork chops and mashed potatoes that evening, that grace be said, and Charlie keep his elbows off the table. But even his precocious little sister, Madeline, sensed something was different, off-kilter, a pall settling over the table despite their mother’s best efforts at business-as-usual.

“Madeline’s asking you a question, Paul,” Charlie’s mother informed her distracted husband, her voice more snappish than she had intended.

The berry pie was store-bought, not homemade, final confirmation that all was not right in the Beresford household. Charlie’s mother told her children to sit up and pay attention. She had something to tell them. She had to go into the hospital. Her sister had offered to come stay at the house, but she thought they could make do on their own for a couple of days. Charlie could look after Madeline; neither of them were babies, after all.

“Now I want both of you to listen to me,” she announced as they pushed the blueberry filling around their plates. “Your father is a worrywart, but I promise you that everything is going to be fine.”

The procedure was scheduled for the next morning, enough precious time already wasted. Charlie’s assignment was to keep Madeline occupied during the seeming eternity until their mother was brought back from the operating room. He pacified her with Happy Meals and strawberry milk shakes, and they frittered away several hours at Toys “R” Us and Barnes & Noble until their father finally summoned them late in the afternoon, looking a decade older than he had that morning. He explained to Madeline that her mother had had a big operation and was going to be sick for a little bit, promising she’d be all better real soon, the same old Mommy she had always been. Later, driving to the hospital for evening visiting hours, he shared the horrific details of the radical mastectomy with his son. Charlie tried not to cringe as his father described how his mother no longer had a nipple, the very thought of her intimate anatomy being more than he could bear. She had a long, hard haul ahead of her, his dad explained, and he hoped Charlie understood how important it was for him to be there for her this summer, even if there was nothing he could actually do. Just knowing he was close by would be a big comfort, his father assured him.

“I’m really sorry about your mom,” Larry had said, sounding dejected and demoralized after Charlie delivered the bad news. “Maybe you can still come up for the second half of the season if she’s feeling better,” he suggested, his mood brightening a tiny bit at even the slimmest prospect of salvaging a month of togetherness.

“We’ll see,” Charlie responded, remaining stubbornly noncommittal despite Larry’s crestfallen face. “I’ll call you every night,” he promised, trying to cheer up Larry.

“The cell reception at camp sucks,” Larry moaned. “It’s the fucking mountains. Sometimes you can’t even get a signal.”

Charlie’s spirits soared at this welcome news. He’d already tired of needing to return forty or fifty text messages a day, feigning interest in the minutest detail of Larry’s every waking hour. He didn’t really give a shit about the awesome song streaming over Pandora radio or the latest outrageous gay double entendre on Family Guy or the amazing picture of Johnny Depp in the surf at Saint-Tropez that Larry just found in the new issue of Us Weekly. Now, thanks to the Adirondack mountain range, Charlie wouldn’t even need to feel guilty about not returning voice and text messages. All he needed to do was say he’d never received them.

Dartmouth seemed to be a cruel tease, a macabre joke. Charlie was certain he’d never live to pass through its ivy-covered gates. He’d mistakenly assumed his enormous sacrifice of foregoing two-plus months of squatting in latrines, taking group showers, and listening to Larry Coleman’s lame-ass opinions about his favorite bands had earned him a reprieve from needing to join the ranks of wage slaves for the summer. He’d figured he would need to be available to drive his mother to and from chemotherapy and to keep an eye on Madeline, making sure she wasn’t abducted by child molesters and fixing her the occasional peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. He’d be free to spend his time working on finishing his latest music project; he had almost a CD’s worth of deeply lugubrious songs that he’d hoped to send to Thurston Moore if he could find someone who knew his address. He would pull all-nighters polishing the pieces of rock criticism he’d published in the high school paper for the portfolio he intended to show the editors of The Dartmouth daily when he arrived. He’d even called the local progressive rock station offering his services as an unpaid intern, completely unaware that his father’s best friend since childhood, Oliver Ryan, the local franchisee of the nation’s largest long-distance moving company, had offered to put him to work at a decent wage until he departed for Hanover, New Hampshire.

His crime was needing tuition money and the sentence was long days loading the contents of the split-levels and ranches of Schenectady and Albany for a one-way trip to the Sunbelt. The first week was a living hell, endless hours of physical torture and mental fatigue. Each night he crawled home to a tube of Bengay and was sound asleep by ten, still exhausted when his father pulled him out of bed before sunup and pushed him out the door, thermos in hand. He ached in places he’d never known existed, but he’d survived, if barely. He hadn’t even been the first newbie to fall. That dubious distinction had been earned by an All-Conference tackle from Mohawk Valley High School, two hundred sixty-five pounds of solid muscle, strong as a bull, who worked himself into a state of dehydration on the unseasonably hot first Monday in June. He’d collapsed on the basement stairs of a four-bedroom, three-story job in Troy and tumbled down the steps, gone by two in the afternoon, never to return.

The monotony of Tuesday was broken up by a bloody fistfight in the half-loaded van between Bruno and one of his regular crew, a scrawny inbred who looked like one of the crazies from The Hills Have Eyes, who ended up with a broken thumb for unwisely challenging the driver’s intelligence. Even worse than the altercation was the boozy reconciliation between the two pugilists at a downscale titty bar where all the strippers were on a first-name basis with Bruno. Charlie, who had never been drunk on Jäger shots before, gratefully accepted a ride home with one of the dancers when he realized Bruno and his erstwhile antagonist had settled in until last call. She offered him a hand job in his parents’ driveway at the bargain rate of twenty dollars, leaving him babbling incoherently, struggling to come up with some pathetic excuse why he had to decline.

On Wednesday, too hungover to object, he broke his cherry with his first “humping,” the technical parlance for hauling heavy cartons on your back.

“Not bad for sausage. You’re stronger than you look, buddy,” Bruno complimented him at the end of the day. “You’re gonna fill out real good before the summer’s over.”

Thursday’s job was the type Bruno hated most—a house filled with heavy, awkward pieces of large furniture, priceless antiques, according to the wiry, dog-faced lady of the household, who followed them up and down the stairs, holding her breath as they negotiated sharp turns and angles, taking every opportunity to remind the man in charge of the large insurance claim she intended to file if there was any damage. She’d loudly objected to Bruno’s practical suggestion that heavy moving pads would protect her precious cargo from the sudden deluge that began late in the morning.

Bruno called an early lunch break until the rain subsided, and the crew retreated to the safety of the van. The two Mexican day workers huddled together in the back, squatting on their haunches, jabbering in Spanish as they tore through the smelly lunches they’d packed in greasy paper bags. Charlie settled in a brighter corner with a protein bar and a well-thumbed but barely read copy of Infinite Jest. Bruno hunkered down with a liter bottle of Pepsi and his laptop. Charlie assumed he was downloading free amateur pornography, grainy videos of leathery sluts with a taste for beast-on-girl sex with slobbering pit bulls, only to discover Bruno was a huge fan of the Streisand/Kristofferson A Star Is Born and that he knew all the lyrics to “Evergreen.”

The peaceful interlude ended abruptly when the mistress of the house came stomping up the van ramp, cell phone in hand, saying the dispatcher wanted to talk to Bruno, who was promptly ripped a new asshole because the bitch had called to complain that the crew was sleeping on the job. Bruno handed her the phone, saying nothing, and ordered everyone back to work before barricading himself in the master bathroom, telling Charlie he needed to take a shit.

“Lousy plumbing in these old houses,” he announced when he finally emerged, a smug smile on his face, and told Charlie and the Mexicans to find another toilet if they needed to answer the call of nature. Twenty minutes later, they heard the door of the off-limits bathroom slam shut. The woman came charging down the stairs, waving a plunger, enraged, her threats peppered with curses. Bruno didn’t need to say a single word; the piercing glare of his ice-blue eyes was sufficient warning of the folly of engaging him in a confrontation. At the end of the job, her treasured antiques safely loaded into the van, she even paid the crew a generous tip.

There was a phone message waiting when Charlie got home that night. The manager of McDonald’s was impressed by the application Charlie had dropped off at the drive-through that morning. Sweating over deep fryers seemed like paradise compared to spending the summer in the back of a moving van. He decided to take the coward’s way out and resign by voice mail message over the weekend. He could survive one last day of Bruno’s living hell. Friday morning he was assigned to a load-and-deliver crosstown move. His last hurrah was going to be a twelve-hour day with the driver cracking the whip because it wasn’t a job transfer and the client was paying out of his own pocket. The hell with it, he thought. Why prolong the agony when he was quitting anyway? He summoned his courage and tried to overcome the onset of dry mouth. He was minutes away from announcing his resignation when a hand clasped his shoulder and a sympathetic voice promised solidarity in misery.

“Looks like we pulled the shit end of the stick. Guess it’s you and me today, buddy.”

Charlie’s knees went wobbly, his voice tight, when he found himself standing face-to-face with a genuine high school hero. The name on the young man’s birth certificate was Kevin Conroy, but he’d been called KC since his first Little League season. His ability behind the plate and his prowess in the outfield were almost mythical; his batting average and number of errorless innings were legendary. The Augustinian Academy yearbook had entire pages dedicated to the exploits of the Mighty KC.

“You want one of these?” KC mumbled through a mouth full of Boston cream, offering the doughnut box.

“Naw,” Charlie muttered, his voice barely audible. “They’re too sweet and make me sick to the stomach,” he blurted out nervously, instantly regretting his confession, certain that KC, who was licking the last of the custard from his long, elegant fingers, would think he was an incredible pussy.

It was going to be a long day, still unseasonably hot for early June, and Bruno’s crew was small, just KC and Charlie. Charlie nudged close to Bruno when the three of them squeezed into the cab. Bruno hated air-conditioning, claiming it fucked up his sinuses, so the driver was particularly ripe that morning, his armpits already damp with sweat. But Charlie was determined to avoid even the slightest physical contact with KC, who was too preoccupied with trimming his nails to notice Charlie squirming.

“You ain’t getting that shit all over my truck, are you, kid?” Bruno grunted.

“Relax, bro. It’s cool,” KC said, tossing the clippings out the window.

Cool was his birthright. Not cool as in “hip,” like the assholes who told you they were into your favorite band before it became so passé that only the worst geeks were downloading its music. KC was cool as in Bond, James Bond, cool. Capable, confident, slightly distracted, as if he occupied an entirely different space from ordinary mortals and the rest of the world was only occasionally worthy of his attention.

The load-and-deliver was easier than expected, no Victorian armoires to maneuver, no king-size mattresses to grapple. Charlie did his fair share of humping. He hustled all day, unaffected by the heat, carrying weights he couldn’t have lifted Monday morning, driven by the fear of being thought inadequate by KC. Not that KC seemed to care. KC knew only one work speed: slow. Bruno could only murmur snide remarks under his breath because KC, like Charlie, was off-limits, protected by higher forces that insisted he never be asked to lift any weight that could strain his arm and shoulder or cause him to injure his lower back or pull a hamstring.

“They’re paying that little shit to stand around and look pretty,” Bruno muttered to Charlie, confiding in him as if he were a peer or an equal. “Fucking Oliver Ryan sponsors the superstar’s American Legion team.”

Driving back to the depot in the hazy dusk, Bruno made a pointed comment to Charlie, the highest praise for sure, sincere but also meant to embarrass the member of his crew for whom such compliments would not be forthcoming.

“You know, buddy, keep working like that and you’ll be a hell of a humper soon.”

KC rolled his eyes as they hopped out of the truck and waited for Bruno to park and unlock the front door so they could punch the time clock. KC helped himself to a pinch of chew and offered Charlie the bag. He waved it away, clueless about what to do with it.

“Smart guy,” KC said. “I’m trying to quit.”

The brown juice would have turned Charlie’s stomach if it had been dripping from anyone else’s chin.

“You went to Augustinian, didn’t you?” KC asked.

“Yeah,” Charlie mumbled, utterly dumbfounded to discover that the mighty KC Conroy, at one time, had taken notice of his miserable existence. He still had a vivid recollection of cowering in the locker room, self-conscious of his bony limbs, averting his gaze as KC emerged from the steamy mist of the showers, his thick black chest hair wet and slick, his long brown cock slapping against his thigh, laughing as he gracefully negotiated a gauntlet of buddies snapping heavy wet towels at his perfectly shaped buttocks.

“Me too,” KC said, as if Charlie wouldn’t know.

The day’s heat lingered despite the late hour. Charlie felt weighed down by exhaustion; he fought the urge to close his eyes, struggling to keep from falling asleep on his feet until KC’s casual question, completely unexpected, snapped him out of his stupor.

“So, you wanna hang out tonight?”

Charlie? Hanging with KC? Impossible. He couldn’t play pool. The only card game he knew was hearts. He’d never done tequila shots and didn’t like the taste of beer. He was damn sure KC didn’t intend to get shit-faced on Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill. Charlie would pass out on the spot, exposed as a homo, if some girl pulled up her blouse and offered him a feel. He’d embarrass KC in front of his posse, forcing his new friend to humiliate him to save face.

“Sure,” Charlie said, stuttering, knowing he’d regret it the rest of his life if he didn’t say yes.

In the end Charlie was relieved, and more than a little disappointed, when KC’s idea of a big Friday night was chugging liter bottles of warm Mountain Dew and watching Field of Dreams. KC’s parents had a cabin on Lake George where they spent every summer weekend, so the boys had the house to themselves. KC had a Legion game in Schenectady Saturday at noon, then a night game in Newburgh at seven. He needed eight hours of shut-eye to be at the top of his form. There was still time for a couple hands of blackjack or a game of Call of Duty after the credits rolled. Charlie pulled Stratego from a stack of board games and challenged him to a match.

“No way, buddy. I always lose that fucking game. You have to think too much. . .