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“Hey, Boots,” said Bruno.
There was a muffled thumping noise. “No.”
“You haven’t even asked what this is about yet!”
“I don’t need to. It is—” There was a pause while, presumably, Boots checked his clock. “Four forty-five A.M., as in in the morning, and I have never, in all our many years of acquaintance, known you to come up with a good idea between midnight and five A.M.”
“You’re correct. This isn’t a good idea. This is a great idea.”
“Bruno.” Boots groaned. “I have to be at work in two hours and fifteen minutes. We are grown-ups now. You have got to stop fighting the establishment. We are the establishment.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Oh, no.”
“I’m running for school board!”
“Bruno,” said Boots, voice full of exquisite despair. It wasn’t that Bruno couldn’t hear the despair; he always had, and he had always chosen to ignore it, as he did yet again.
“It’s perfect! Look, you know local politics is a hodge-podge of whoever shows up. Well, it’s my turn! I’m going to be the guy who shows up!”
“This could have waited until at least six.”
“Genius waits for no man.”
“Genius should learn to wait for an alarm clock unless genius wants to get socks for Christmas.”
“I need you to help me with my campaign.”
“It is 1992. We are not children,” said Boots, but then, he said things like that every time Bruno called him.
“Come on,” wheedled Bruno. “It’s summer break, right? UBC doesn’t need you. They’ll survive without someone to—what is it you’re doing again? Watering plants?”
“I’m a research assistant on a very important study, you hoser!”
“What I’m saying is, this beautiful Toronto neighbourhood in which I have made my home—”
“You rent an attic—”
“—has inspired me with a deep desire to help the children who play along our tree-lined streets, who deserve the best education possible, even if they can’t afford private education.”
“We both had private education!”
“Which is exactly how I know that children need high-quality education in order to flourish.”
“You don’t even have kids! Isn’t that going to look weird? A twenty-one-year-old single man on the school board?”
“Nonsense,” said Bruno firmly. “Any proud Canadian citizen ought to be investing in our youth. They’re the leaders of tomorrow.”
Boots sighed. “And you want me to drop everything and fly out there to help you with this insane plan?”
“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the beginning of a long and historically significant political career!”
“I don’t think you want me on this one, Bruno.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why not?”
“I’m gay,” said Boots. “People get picky about the gays being around their children, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Mere prejudice alone cannot stand—” was as far as Bruno got before his brain caught up with him. “What?”
“I’m gay.” Boots said it kindly, gently, but with a steely edge. “I wasn’t sure how to tell you, but since you feel totally comfortable waking me up at, again, a quarter to five, in the morning, now seems like the time.”
“Boots.” Bruno’s heart was pounding. “That’s—gay is fine, but. You aren’t—please tell me—”
“I’m not sick.” Boots’ voice was very calm but even harder. It was like talking to an icicle. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Oh, thank God,” said Bruno before he could stop himself.
Boots burst into sharp laughter. “And there you go. You don’t want me on your campaign for this one. You don’t want me anywhere near this. People would talk about your gay campaign manager who probably has AIDs and licks lollipops before giving them to children, and that’s a something I don’t need in my life right now.”
“Boots. You didn’t tell me?”
“I’ve barely told me. You were next in line.”
“People don’t…” Bruno trailed off.
“Need to know? Yeah, thanks, thought about that.”
“You want to be a scientist,” said Bruno helplessly. “Is this—”
“Going to mess that up for me? Maybe.”
“And you can’t… teach…”
“Not if I want a personal life, no.”
“Which you would.”
“Which I would.”
“Is there, uh.” Bruno coughed delicately. “Anyone I should—”
“I am going to stop you right there, I have no desire to hear how that sentence was going to end, but no. Right now I don’t have a personal life as such.”
“I. Um. Thank you for telling me.” Bruno cleared his throat. “As your best friend, I just want to say how much I appreciate—”
“Bruno! Do not give me some kind of speech about coming out.”
“I wasn’t going to!”
“You most certainly were!”
“All right, I was, and it was going to be heartwarming.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Boots laughed. He sounded more like his usual self, and less like a prickly stranger. “Consider my heart warmed.”
“As long as it’s not burning. Heartburn is a very serious issue.”
“Please don’t start talking about—”
“School lunches, for instance, contain—”
“I’m going back to sleep, Bruno. I cannot help you on this campaign. Get one of your new buddies to help, it’s time somebody else took a turn anyway.”
“Hey!” said Bruno indignantly. But the line went dead.
He looked around himself at his attic room, now full of pages torn from his notebooks and legal pads, covered in slogans, speech ideas, and possible logos for his school board run.
“I’m going to need an artist,” he said thoughtfully, tapping his fingers against his lower lip. Boots’ defection was not, per se, forgotten, but it had been forgiven immediately, and Chris went to the U of T, too. And in his time zone, it was a reasonable time in the morning to be awoken.
In 1986, The Fish took them all to the CN Tower. Or, more accurately, The Fish grimly boarded the first of several buses required to transport all of the screaming, shouting, rowdy boys ranging in age from eleven to eighteen and contemplated once again why he had chosen a career in pedagogy when there were such attractive alternatives. Like wrestling snakes.
Bruno and Boots were, at the time, fourteen. Bruno, whose hometown was much closer to Toronto, had been to the CN Tower before, with family and friends; it was the kind of thing one felt obligated to show visitors to the city. But he’d gone as a child, and was returning as a teenager, which held a certain frisson of excitement.
The elevator ride made Bruno’s stomach drop. He liked the sensation; Bruno liked all kinds of terrifying things, like roller coasters and toboggans and the look in his mom’s eyes right before she used his full name. His dad always said, “You got your wild streak from her,” nodding over at his mom, and she’d just smile and wink.
Boots tipped his head to stare at the ceiling of the elevator. There were a handful of boys crowded in together, but Boots was the important person.
“Isn’t this great?” said Bruno.
“Yeah,” said Boots, “but it makes me dizzy.”
It turned out over the years that lots of things made Boots dizzy: fast elevators, roller coasters, knowing that he was going to get in trouble with The Fish for something.
They got to the top, and out on the Space Deck, Boots looked cautiously interested; he drifted over to look out at the lake.
“Pretty cool.” Bruno nudged Boots’ shoulder with his own.
Boots nodded. “Yeah.”
“Think you can see the school?”
“We’re not even looking in the right direction.”
“Not even if you look really hard?”
“Bruno—” said Boots, exasperated, but he glanced over at Bruno and caught how Bruno was biting his lip to keep from laughing. He cracked up and smacked Bruno’s shoulder. “Knock it off!”
“Not my fault you’re gullible!”
“Oh, who’s gullible? You believe in ghosts!”
“I’m open to the idea that the spirit world is beyond our understanding!”
Boots was laughing at him, mouth open, whooping a little for breath. Bruno felt deeply, terribly, wonderfully happy. Everything was good in the world, everything was right; in a world that contained Boots, there was a limit to how bad anything could get.
Of course, that theory was tested on the ride home, when they got held up by a bad traffic accident and the bus was full of school-aged boys who had all consumed far too much sugar on the trip and were ripe for a good conspiracy, but he preferred to think of that as a problem for The Fish rather than himself.
It was barely even a riot. The police were hardly involved.
Chris Talbot gestured at the art for Bruno’s sign. “I mean, I think that’s fine, right?”
“But does it say trustworthy? Does it say engagement? I need to make sure I hit all the right notes in this election!”
“It says ‘Bruno Walton for school board.’ I think that covers the bases.”
“It says nothing about why I want to be a trustee, though.”
“Does it need to?” asked Chris with a weary hopelessness that had not withered after nine years of knowing Bruno.
“Boots should be here,” muttered Bruno, frowning at the sign. It was fine. It was probably fine. He would have felt much better if Boots had been there to examine it carefully, doing that thing he did when he concentrated very hard where he stuck his tongue into the corner of his mouth without noticing. “Boots would know.”
“He does have, you know, a life in Vancouver.” Chris raised his eyebrows ruefully, quirking one corner of his mouth. “I know you don’t like it, but it’s true.”
“No, that’s not it,” said Bruno absent-mindedly. “He could have come out here for the summer. He’s just gay.”
“Hm?”
“Gay.” Bruno prodded the sign with his index finger. It fell over. “He says he can’t help me run for school board because he’s gay and people would freak out. Since when has he been gay, anyway?”
“Uh,” said Chris. His face took on an almost cross-eyed look.
“Are you constipated?” asked Bruno with concern.
“No. Uh, no.”
“But really, who knew he was gay?” Bruno nudged the corner of the sign with his foot.
Chris grimaced hideously. “Not—me! Definitely not me.”
“What?” Bruno looked up at him narrowly. “Did he come out to you before he came out to me?”
“No! That did not happen.”
“So you didn’t know he was gay?”
“Can I please just… leave?”
“No. You’re my campaign manager.”
“I am not!”
“You are now. Anyway, what’s this about Boots? Did you know?”
“I…” Chris tugged at his t-shirt collar. “I had an idea.”
“What? An idea? That’s a little vague, don’t you think?”
“It was just a feeling.”
“A feeling?”
“Bruno, sometimes you just… get a sense about people. Certain people. And sometimes you’re right, and sometimes you’re wrong, but in this case, all I can tell you is that I am not surprised to hear that Boots is gay.”
“Did other people have this feeling? Why was I left out of the feeling?”
“Yes, and I genuinely have no idea how you missed it.” Chris propped the sign back up. “I need to go, Bruno. I actually have classes today, and one of them starts in ten minutes.”
“Fine!” Bruno shouted after Chris as he beat a hasty retreat. “I need to workshop these designs anyway!”
He glared at the sign. Bruno Walton for School Board! it said, in excited bright blue lettering with a swoosh underneath. It was concise, it had that going for it.
He picked up the phone again. Chris had his summer classes and Boots had his work-study job with the research project. Luckily, he knew one person who was doing very little over the summer, and he had had her number memorized since she started at McGill.
“Walton, what’s the news?”
“Cathy. It’s wrong to tell other people that somebody is gay, right? Like, if I know someone is gay, I probably shouldn’t have told Chris Talbot.”
“It’s definitely wrong, but also too late. Just don’t tell Myron,” she said. “Who’s gay? My money was on you.”
“What?”
“Is it Pete?”
“No!”
“You can’t lead off like that and then not tell me, Bruno. Who is it?”
“He’s not really out yet. Mostly. Officially. It might only be to me. Well, and now it’s me and Chris.”
“Is it Mark? I always thought he was cute. Did you make out?”
“No. Cathy, I don’t understand how your mind works.”
“That’s been obvious for quite some time. Tell me. I’ll keep guessing. Oh, God, is it Boots’ little brother?”
“Edward? No.”
“Hm, I thought it might be genetic,” she said casually. “And with Boots—”
“Wait, wait, wait. You knew about Boots?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, in the same tone of voice as she might have used if she had been challenged about, say, gravity. “I mean, who didn’t know about Boots?”
“I didn’t!”
There was a crash from the other end of the line.
“Cathy? Are you okay?”
Hooting, riotous laughter greeted his concern.
“Cathy!”
“How did you not know about Boots? You! Of all people! Bruno, you are dumber than—oh, Bruno. Babe. You’re a moron.”
“Look, just because I’m not as, as interpersonally gifted as you apparently are—”
“Bruno,” said Cathy, “are you a virgin?”
“Wait, what, whoa, there, missy, that is a very personal question and I—”
“Okay, so you are. Wow. I was so sure you guys were doing the nasty!”
“What,” said Bruno, not in the form of a question.
“I mean, come on, you were always together, joined at the hip, and then come college application time it’s this whole big drama about how Boots wanted to go to UBC and you wanted to stay in Toronto and he went and you stayed and you moped for like a year and I kept thinking you were going to, like, transfer so you could have your big gay reunion, and then you didn’t and now you’re about to be a senior? And he is still in Vancouver and you just realized he’s gay? You’re approximately Scrimmage-level dumb, Bruno!”
“I… am… not…” he managed, but it was difficult with how he was suddenly hyperventilating.
“Anyway, was that all you called about? Boots being gay?”
“He says it means he can’t be my campaign manager!”
“Well, that’s a stupid reason.”
“That’s what I said!”
“What are you running for, anyway? Student body president?”
“No, school board.”
“Is that even legal? Why would you want to?”
“Of course it is! Probably. I need to look into it a little bit, I’ll admit. But I have some great signs. Chris is helping me with them. And school board trustee is a much more important role than people give it credit for! Shaping the minds of the next generation—”
“Okay, I can sort of see why Boots said no. It’s still dumb, though. He’s, like, the safest person I know for people to leave their kids with. A lot safer than you.”
“Hey! But also, yes.”
“Homophobes suck.” Cathy blew out a big, gusty sigh. “Pretty sure they’re why Diane wouldn’t shack up with me.”
“What,” said Bruno, who had possibly never been caught flat-footed this many times in a single conversation before. He was much more familiar with baffling people than with being baffled, and with the proverbial shoe on the other foot, he was finding that he did not much care for the sensation.
“Diane! You remember? Blonde? Pretty? Devious? My obvious soulmate, who is now in California for some godforsaken reason?”
“Oh, my God.” Bruno pressed the back of his free hand against his forehead. “It’s us. It’s you and me. We’re both so terrible we drove our best friends across the continent and, in your case, into another country.”
“Keep up, Bruno, I’m blaming it on the homophobes.”
“I don’t think I can!”
“How do you know? Maybe Boots knew he was gay when he picked UBC. Maybe he picked it because he was gay.”
“How does that even make sense?” Bruno winced from the pain of trying to follow her logic.
“How doesn’t it?”
“Cathy, can we focus on my problem right now, and not any of your many problems?”
“You mean your tragic brain damage? You realize this election isn’t until November, right? How are you going to do this at the same time as you’re in classes?”
“I’ll manage. I mean the fact that I need a campaign manager and Boots won’t help!”
“Well, look at it from his point of view,” she said in her sensible voice. Bruno never trusted her sensible voice. “He just wants to keep his head down and study some kind of fern, or whatever. And if he got involved in your campaign and people heard he was gay they’d turn it into a whole big deal and he doesn’t want that.”
“You’re right,” said Bruno.
“Uh oh.” Cathy sounded wary. “You never just agree with me.”
“But you’re right! He shouldn’t have to live in the closet!”
“Oh, that is not even close to what I said. Or what I meant.”
“That can be the big message of my campaign!”
“Bruno, you’re going to regret this. It’s not Macdonald Hall anymore. You can’t be you like this.”
Three years of university had instilled in Bruno, who had now been president of no fewer than seven clubs and organizations (and had been kicked out of nine), a deep sense of social responsibility and absolutely no moderation of tone or action. “That’s where you’re wrong. It’s never more important to be yourself than when you can’t.”
She sighed deeply.
He waited.
“I hate it when you’re right,” she said ruefully. “Okay. I’m in. What do you need?”
Chris stared in wordless admiration—at least, Bruno assumed it was admiration—at his sketch before saying, “Really? That many colours? It’s going to cost an arm and a leg to print.”
“Or it would,” said Bruno, “except I have you!”
“No, for real this time, Bruno, even I can’t fix it for you. If I used the large-format printer for that we’d run out of ink in no time and I’d get canned.”
“Hm.”
The process of getting the funding for the signs was somewhat circuitous and involved no fewer than fourteen donors, recruited at a local drinking establishment with its own colourful reputation, and by the end of it Bruno had several new fans and one indecent but poetic proposal that he graciously declined.
“Look,” said Bruno, “hear me out.”
“No.”
“It’s going to be great!”
“I have to work, Bruno,” said Boots.
“It’ll only be, like, a week. You’ll come out, you’ll help me get things whipped into shape, you’ll leave long before the actual election. You’ll be part of my strategy team, that’s all, no knocking on doors or talking to reporters. Come on, what’s the worst that can happen?”
“The worst that can happen? With you?” Boots burst into laughter. “Good Lord! In a whole week, I wouldn’t be surprised if you got us both convicted of murder!”
“Like a week would be enough time for the trial. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—”
“I never got caught,” Boots chorused irritatingly right along with Bruno, and then laughed again. “I’m telling you, I need to work, a week wouldn’t be anything like enough time to do real campaign manager work anyway, and there wouldn’t be any point to me flying out there.”
“It would be flying back, here, for your information, and come on. We both know Dave could use some help.”
“I thought Chris was your de facto campaign manager.”
“He said he could either do art or manage, but not both.”
“And you picked art?”
“Well, I do need art. It’s kind of important. I’m running a home-grown campaign, but I don’t want it to look unprofessional.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And Mark said he’d rather eat an entire bag of kitty litter, which seemed a little excessive but got his point across.”
“You took no for an answer? From anyone? I’m impressed.”
“He threw my campaign sign out a window and told me he’d push me out next.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“So you’ll come?”
“Bruno…”
“Pleeeeeeeeease?” wheedled Bruno, who had never been above anything in his life and was proud of that fact. Standards were just excuses for people who lacked creativity.
“I don’t think I can afford the plane ticket.”
“I’ll buy it for you.”
“You can’t buy friendship.”
“No, but I can buy a cheap seat.” More accurately, he could talk to his friend whose dad was a pilot and got free airfare for one friend or family member per flight, but details would only have been a distraction at that point.
Boots sighed heavily. “I’ll ask for the time off. If I can’t get it, I’m not coming.”
“Yes! This is going to be great!”
When Bruno picked Boots up at the airport, there were several important things that Boots should have noticed immediately but demonstrably did not.
First, Bruno had taken pains to dress like someone running for school board. This might not have been entirely clear, but it meant wearing a nice dress shirt and a pair of slacks, and although he was not actually wearing a tie he thought he had the air of someone who might wear a tie at any moment.
Second, Bruno had a new car. Boots didn’t even ask about the Brumobile.
Third—well, third will become clear. Eventually. Probably.
Boots looked older than he had the last time they’d visited, when Boots had come home (to a town some distance from Toronto but not unreachable) to see his family at Christmas and Bruno had abducted him for a wild night at the arcade, where they’d just put quarter after quarter into machines that lit up and flashed and made bell-ringing noises until midnight. It was weird, how his face was slowly morphing into an adult’s face. Bruno heard about it all the time, heard you’re growing up now, you have to do things differently, but had successfully ignored it. This was different. This was evidence, in a way his own changing face was not.
Boots gave Bruno a quick hug and smiled.
“Good to see you,” said Bruno.
“You, too. Where’s the disaster?’
“What disaster?”
“There is definitely a disaster, or else I wouldn’t be here.”
“There’s no disaster,” lied Bruno confidently.
“Sure.” Boots infused the word with oceans of skepticism, but Bruno was undaunted.
He waved Boots into the Brumobile, climbing in on the driver’s side.
“Hey,” said Boots, squinting around. His gaze landed on the air fresheners dangling from the rearview mirror. “Is this a new car?”
“It is!”
“It smells different.”
“It smells like a new car.”
“No, that’s not it. How many air fresheners are in this thing?” Boots opened the glove box. A small pile of tree-shaped air fresheners fell out.
“A couple.”
Boots reached under his seat and found two more. “I think I’m up to a dozen.”
“It’s a very nice car.”
“I’m not disputing that, really, but—”
“It was a great deal!”
“Did someone die in this car?”
“Do not speak of the Brumobile in that way!”
“It smells…”
“No human being died in the Brumobile.”
“Please stop calling it that. Also, what do you mean, no human being? What did die in this car?”
Bruno coughed. “Hrrrmpurtloop.”
“What?”
“Turtle soup. Apparently the car’s former owner had a big tureen of it in here and forgot about it and went on vacation.”
“Oh, no.”
“For a month.”
“Oh, no.” Boots looked nauseated.
“I’m not saying it didn’t have an effect.”
“Good, because I’d have to disagree.”
“I’m saying it’s nothing several dedicated shampoos and a few pine-scented air fresheners can’t fix.”
“Oh, Bruno,” said Boots, tenderly. “You’re such a lunatic.”
“I prefer to consider myself a visionary. Who sees what the future could be and works towards it!”
“Spoken like a politician.”
“The school board election,” said Bruno as he cut across traffic in a way that made Boots suddenly grip the door handle with white knuckles, “is a great opportunity to get involved in how the next generation grows up thinking about not only educational but also social issues.”
“Wow. That was very… coherent.”
“I’m a great public speaker! You should hear me at a bar!”
“I should not hear you at a bar, the last time we went to a bar you got us kicked out for your oratory.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” said Bruno wistfully.
“I hadn’t! I can’t believe I’m never allowed back into Joe’s.”
“Well, to be fair, Joe’s was hardly up to our standards.”
“They had beer. I have no other standards.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Melvin.” Bruno sniffed disdainfully, and then rolled the window down even more. “We have the highest of standards.”
“How is it always we when you’re doing something that’s going to get us in trouble?”
“Because you recognize a social good when you see it. Surely all those Philosophy classes are good for something.”
Boots rolled his eyes but didn’t actually have a comeback for that one; in amongst all the biology he’d managed to semi-accidentally acquire a Philosophy minor, and he could hardly argue the point.
After a minute Boots said, “I think it might be because I’ve had so many concussions over the years.”
“When did you get concussions?”
“Excuse you! I fell off that drainpipe how many times—”
“Yes, and you never seemed disoriented! I think you’re exaggerating.”
Boots blew out a breath, sounding annoyed, but he wasn’t really. Bruno had known him long enough to know.
Boots turned to look out the window, reaching up and out so he could drum his fingers absently against the roof.
“It’s good to see you,” said Bruno.
Boots shot him a quick smile. “You already said that.”
“A sentence so nice I said it twice.”
Boots laughed again. He laughed a lot with Bruno, and not nearly as much with anyone else, Bruno thought.
By the time they got back to Bruno’s place, the sun was setting, and jet-lagged Boots was yawning heavily.
Bruno pushed the door open at the top of the creaky exterior stairs. “We can talk about the campaign tomorrow. You want to get some sleep?”
“I should eat.” Boots tossed his bag onto the futon. “Do you have any food?”
“Define food.”
“I would eat a sandwich.”
“Then you’re in luck, because I have both bread and peanut butter. If you ask nicely, I might even throw in some jelly, free of charge.”
“That sounds good.”
Bruno puttered around at the kitchenette for a minute—he had a whole two burners, no stove, and a miniature refrigerator that fit in under the eaves, in addition to his sink—and handed Boots the sandwich. “You want a beer?”
“Sure,” said Boots through a mouthful of sandwich.
Bruno popped the caps on two bottles and handed Boots one. He reached out and clinked the neck of his bottle against Boots’.
“To my dawning political career.”
“To your inevitable public disasters.”
“They’re not disasters, they’re strategic failures, and they’re like—like the Challenger explosion.”
“Fiery? Horrific losses of human life?”
“An opportunity to analyze failure and do better next time.”
Boots paused. “That was unexpectedly deep.”
“I can be deep!”
“I know you can.”
“I have great depths.”
“I know, Bruno. I know.” Boots took a drink and then yawned, deeply.
“You need to sleep.”
“I’m almost done with this.” Boots lifted the bottle towards him. “Then I’ll sack out.”
“Good, I don’t want to have to prop your eyelids open with toothpicks tomorrow.”
Boots laughed and leaned back against the somewhat tattered pillow on the futon. “I wish I didn’t think you would.”
“Hey!”
“You get excited about these things, I know.”
“Excitement is a very positive quality in civic engagement.”
“So it is.” Boots drank the last of his beer. “Okay. I’m going to brush my teeth and hit the hay.”
“Mind if I stay up a little longer?”
“Doing what?” asked Boots, who was wise to Bruno’s ways.
“Writing. I’m working on some campaign speeches.”
“That seems harmless enough. Just turn off the light when you’re done.” There had been many a night when Boots had fallen asleep to Bruno working frantically under his desk lamp and awoken to find Bruno sprawled face-down on his desk, snoring, the lamp still on. Boots never slept as well with the light on, Bruno knew, because Boots had told him a thousand times.
Bruno stayed up late writing, but he did manage to knock it off around midnight.
What he was writing, he thought he should probably keep to himself.
When Boots woke up the next morning, Bruno was, miracle of miracles, already awake. Boots had to attend to his morning sneezing, but then the day was on.
“Are you all right?” asked Boots cautiously.
“I’m fine!” Bruno grinned a big, bright, alarming smile at him and held out the frying pan. “Want some bacon?”
“Yes, but you never eat breakfast.”
“I’ve heard it’s the most important meal of the day. Who am I to skip it?”
“You ate breakfast at the Hall a grand total of four times the entire time we were going there! What is up with you?”
“Just getting a jump on the day.”
“Give me that bacon.”
Bruno assembled a plate—well, it was a paper towel, but the thought was there—and shuffled it over to Boots. It contained bacon, toast, and a single fried egg.
“You’ve been replaced by a clone.” Boots squinted at him. “A good clone, I’ll grant you.”
“I’m learning important life skills.”
“You’re being way too grown-up about all of this.”
“As befits a member of the School Board!”
“A future member at best.”
“Shh, I’m projecting confidence.”
Boots snorted around a mouthful of bacon. “You always project confidence.”
Bruno rolled his eyes and took a big bite of his own slice of toast. It was a darker shade of brown than most people might have associated with edibility, but he wasn’t going to nitpick his own cooking.
After they finished eating Boots squared his shoulders and said, “Okay, show me the disaster.”
“There is no disaster! I don’t know why you don’t believe me.”
“We have been friends since we were eleven, Bruno, I know you much too well to believe you.”
“Hey, we met when we were ten!”
“It took me a month to decide you were okay.”
Bruno laughed out loud. “Ouch! Okay, come on, I want to show you the campaign signs.”
“You keep going on about these signs.” Boots raised his eyebrows as Bruno dug them out from the narrow crack between the bed and the wall. “They better be good.”
Bruno took a deep breath and turned around, flourishing the largest of the group. “Ta-da!”
Boots blinked. Then he stared. He kept staring. Bruno started to fidget after a minute or two of silence.
“Uh, they’re pretty good, right?” said Bruno anxiously.
“They’re… rainbow.”
“Yeah!”
“They say,” Boots cleared his throat, “‘A family-friendly future for every kind of family!’”
“I thought it was catchy!”
“It’s… Bruno, did you make your signs gay? On purpose?”
“The signs can’t be gay, Boots. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“But you made them like this.”
“Yes.”
“On purpose.”
“That’s correct.”
Boots ground the heel of his palm into his eye. “Why? Do I dare ask?”
“Because that’s what this campaign is about.”
“Homosexuality?”
“Making a better world! A world where people don’t have to be scared. Look, I did some research—”
“Of course you did,” said Boots wearily. “Of course for the first time in your life you do research now.”
“—and gay and lesbian teenagers face extraordinary levels of discrimination, even in urban areas like Toronto where we pride ourselves on open minds, and that’s just not okay! We need to make Toronto the kind of city where all kids know that they’re going to be loved and accepted!”
Boots stared at the sign without speaking for a long time.
Bruno fidgeted some more. His fingers drifted down to the pocket of his jeans, where his lucky penny was tucked in with a wad of lint and a chewing gum wrapper.
“It looks great,” said Boots eventually.
Bruno relaxed, his whole body slumping in relief.
“You know you’re not going to win,” added Boots.
“Who says?”
“Common sense?”
“Since when I have listened to that kind of negative thinking?” asked Bruno airily, and Boots closed his eyes in what looked like pain.
But Boots had a trace of a smile around his mouth when he opened his eyes again. “All right. Let’s talk strategy. How many of these bad boys do you have, and where are you putting them?”
By the end of the week, Boots had helped Bruno (and Dave, whenever he could coerce Dave into joining them) make geographic maps for signs, canvassing, and attempting to solicit donations to the campaign fund. He had also hauled Bruno in to the bank and gotten Bruno to fill out the appropriate forms so there was an official campaign fund, one which would withstand some scrutiny.
Bruno’s canvassing team was not large, but they were mighty: a smattering of Macdonald Hall grads, and a not-insignificant number of Bruno’s new friends made during his time at the U of T. He had also managed to recruit a healthy proportion of the members of the gay club—
“Student organization, Bruno—”
—and was learning more than he had expected to about the finer points of eyeliner, largely from a sweet, floppy-haired kid named Jimmy who was very active in drama club. That led to the recruitment of a small contingent of drama kids who, if not themselves homosexuals, had strong homosexual sympathies.
Boots did not ask Bruno much about this, despite Bruno’s simultaneous hope that he would and fear that he might. He did say, “Blue isn’t your colour. Actually, I’m not sure it’s anybody’s colour,” when Bruno returned to their booth at Andy’s All-Nite Diner after a bathroom ambush by Brenda (drama geek, possible lesbian).
“It’s all about the effect.”
“The effect is that you’ve frozen to death.”
Bruno sniffed haughtily. “Fine. You’re just jealous I can pull off turquoise.”
“Bruno…”
Bruno waited for whatever Boots might say, but after a long minute Boots just sighed and shook his head.
“Fine,” said Boots. “I must just be jealous that you look like Tammy Fay Bakker.”
That led to another spirited dispute but, as it happened, no heartfelt conversations.
The closest they did come to something like one was when, on the fourth night of his week there, Boots said in the dark, “Hey, Bruno, are you awake?”
“Yeah,” said Bruno immediately.
“How are your parents?”
“They’re fine.”
“You know what I mean. How are they taking this?”
“I’ll tell you when they see it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I haven’t told them I’m running yet.”
“And I’m assuming you haven’t told them about your extremely brightly coloured signs.”
“No, I figured I’d lead with the plain blue ones.” Those were being kept for the more conservative areas; places where the rainbow signs were unlikely to survive a single night.
“And what about when they see the gay ones?”
“They’re signs, Boots, they can’t be gay. And my parents will have to deal.” Bruno paused. “How about your parents?”
“I haven’t talked to them about this. Exactly.”
“Exactly?”
“Well, no. I sort of started to. Tried to. But they just kept talking about the swim team.” Boots sighed. “It was like being twelve again.”
Bruno made a vague, commiserative noise.
“Maybe I never have to tell them,” added Boots hopefully. “I mean, I was sort of thinking about waiting until I was done with college, anyway.”
“You don’t think they’d stop talking to you, or anything?” Bruno sat up in the darkness. “That would be awful!” Boots’ parents were not particularly cool or exciting, but they were his parents and he seemed to like them.
“No. I don’t. I—well, I don’t really know, I guess. They never talk about it. So I don’t exactly know what they think. But I don’t think they’d cut me off.”
“Lack of parental support for their own children is just one of the many reasons educational reform is so important!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Don’t turn me into a talking point, I’m twenty-one, I can take care of myself!”
“Really? Because I’ve seen what happens when you try to iron your own shirts.”
“That was once!”
“If they give you any grief, my parents would take you in.”
“You’re that sure?” asked Boots wryly.
“Yeah.” Bruno paused. “My mom’s brother—my uncle Bernard. He’s gay.”
“Oh.”
“Dad isn’t thrilled but Mom would never let him be a real jerk about it.”
“That’s handy,” said Boots. “To know for sure.”
“Yeah, I mean, if it wasn’t for that—well. Things would be harder.”
“With this campaign.”
Bruno made an affirmative noise.
“Because you’re running a gay campaign.”
“I’m running a campaign that focuses on the diverse needs of Toronto’s families, many of whom struggle with—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Boots sighed. “I get it. Go to sleep, Bruno.”
It was good advice that Bruno couldn’t follow. Instead, he listened to Boots breathing on the other side of the room, just like the good old days. Eventually Boots’ breaths turned into soft snores. He fell asleep some time later, listening to those little whistling noises.
At the airport Bruno looked at Boots, and Boots looked at him. Boots leaned in, and they hugged, tightly, for a heartbeat too long; then Boots leaned away, and Bruno reluctantly let go.
“Hey,” said Boots.
“Yeah?” Bruno’s heart was pounding.
“Thanks.” Boots gave him a small smile before pushing his hair out of his eyes, turning, and walking onto the plane.
Bruno kicked a rock on the way back to his car, and his toe hurt after that. It seemed unfair.
“Honey,” said his mother, “those signs are… really something.”
“Aren’t they?” he asked with a false, bright cheer. “I couldn’t be more proud of Chris! He really did some beautiful work. Of course, the roughs were all Cathy.”
“Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“That depends, Mom!” He smiled at her through numb lips. “Is there anything you would want to hear?”
“You know I’ll always love you,” she said. She looked down at her hands where they were loosely clasped in her lap. “No matter what.”
He was very startled to find that he was crying.
It didn’t take long for his campaign to blow up in the news. He opened the newspaper one morning to find that he was a tiny, but distinct, column of text.
Local college student mounts homosexual campaign for school board, it said. There were some unkind comments about how his campaign was likely to peter out quickly, and overall presented his bid for school board as some sort of freak occurrence, like unseasonable tornadoes.
He half-expected a call from Boots, but nothing came.
Over the next two and a half months, the tenor of the news coverage changed. It went from mildly amused and faintly disgusted to startled and outraged, and then a crop of other pieces started popping up—stories from people who knew Bruno, who kept saying things like “an iconoclast” and “always focused on the well-being of those around him, particularly those who are most powerless”—he was surprised they’d tracked down The Fish, and even more surprised to get a brief note in the mail wishing him well and congratulating him on taking an interest in the politics of education, signed, gravely, Sincerely, William Sturgeon.
“Not even a mister!” he said to Boots on the phone that night. He’d barely called Boots since the plane took off. Things between them felt off, lop-sided, and they kept missing the familiar beats of their conversations. But this was big news. “He says he’s proud of me!”
“Well,” said Boots, who then ran out of things to say. It was a lot to ponder.
“Hey,” added Bruno, “do you want to come out here for my victory rally?”
“Uh.” Boots coughed delicately. “I might, that is.”
“You think I’m going to lose!”
“Bruno.” Boots’ voice was painfully gentle. “You’re running a campaign on how we need to include gay parents and students in public planning. In Toronto.”
“So? You say in Toronto like Toronto is some kind of backwards hinterland, but the truth is, somebody’s gotta do this! And it might as well be me, and it might as well be now.” Bruno took a deep breath. “Why not now? What better time than when kids, just kids, Boots, are dying, and there isn’t enough, not enough research, not enough funding for anything, either research or care, and people—people are acting like it’s somebody else’s problem! Like it’s not their kid so who cares?”
“You’re not going to win.” Boots paused, and then said, quietly, “But I’m glad you’re running like this.”
“Yeah.” Bruno blew out a breath. “And I’m not done yet. I could win this. My biggest threat is Margot Masterson, and I have some choice words in my next speech about her approach to teacher to student ratios.”
“You…” Boots didn’t finish the sentence.
“Yes, I’ve thought about that! Of course I have. It’s one of the biggest issues—”
“I’m proud of you,” said Boots, hurriedly, almost like he didn’t want to get into a discussion about the importance of proper staffing. Bruno had a legal pad half-full of his thoughts on that alone. “But I can’t take the time. I’m sorry. I’ll be back with my parents for Christmas, and I’ll see you then.”
“Okay,” grumbled Bruno, not mollified.
He never publicly answered questions about his own sexual orientation. Those questions were a distraction from his positions. Bruno didn’t need any more distractions.
Bruno couldn’t sleep the night before the election. He was not polling well (though the polls for school board trustee were not, perhaps, the most vigorously performed). He had received some colourfully-worded letters in response to his candidacy and platform, and all told it was the most interest anyone had had in a school board election for years, but it wasn’t going to be enough.
At the rally that night (held at Andy’s All-Nite Diner, under the auspices of Andy, who turned out to have a very nice gentleman friend named Richard who had big streaks of white in his hair and shook Bruno’s hand very hard), Bruno watched himself lose on television. He shook a lot more hands, accepted commiseration, and gave a brief but stirring speech about the importance of continuing to work towards a more representative, fair, and compassionate government.
Boots called him late that night.
“Sorry,” said Boots.
Bruno sighed. “Look, it’s just as well.”
“You need to be able to focus on your senior year.”
“I need to start setting up my campaign for mayor.”
“Bruno.”
“Okay, mayor might be a bit of a reach, but it’s a good way to get these issues into the public eye!”
Boots started to laugh helplessly, on the other end of the line, a thousand miles away, and Bruno gave in after a few seconds and laughed with him, even though he was deadly serious.
Boots flew back home after he finished writing his last exam. Bruno was staying with his folks for a week; they had moved even closer to Toronto after he graduated from high school, and renting his attic close to the university had been more about independence than convenience.
He pretended, firmly, not to be waiting for a phone call. His mother raised her eyebrows when she found him sitting in the living room, purely coincidentally where the phone happened to be located.
The phone rang. Bruno flailed and grabbed for it so hard he knocked it off the table and onto the floor. He reeled it in using the cord as he heard, “—Bruno?” in a confused tinny tone from the other end.
“Hi, yeah, hey, it’s me,” he said.
“Oh, great. Anyway, I’m back in town.” It was an hour’s drive to his parents’ home, give or take. “Do you want to hang out?”
“Yeah, absolutely. Where do you want to meet up?”
“Andy’s?”
“Sure, why not.”
So when Bruno pushed open the glass door at Andy’s, the little bell jingling, his breath still making clouds from the icy air outside, he found Boots inside, sitting in one of the narrow booths for two. Boots looked tense—he was tapping his foot, tugging at the end of his big red wool scarf. Diane had knitted it for him in their last year at the Hall.
Boots looked around when Bruno came in, and a big smile broke over his face. “Hey!”
“Hey, yourself.” Bruno gave him a hug. “How are you?”
“Good.”
“How was the flight?”
“Long.” Boots laughed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “It took forever.”
“I believe it. They need to make those planes so they can go warp speed.”
“Or at least break the sound barrier. We need a Concorde.”
“At least.”
“How have you been?” asked Boots. He wrapped his hands around the mug of coffee in front of him. It was terrible diner coffee, Bruno knew from experience, but it got the job done.
Susan, one of the waitresses who knew Bruno too well, plunked a laminated menu in front of him. “You want to look at this?”
“Sure. Give me a second.”
“Sure, honey.” She smiled at him; he smiled back.
“I’m okay,” he said to Boots, whose face still held the question. “My parents are still trying to live it all down.”
Boots winced. “Fun.”
“I keep telling them I’m not going to stop, and my mom just keeps saying, ‘I know, honey,’” he said in falsetto. “I’d hate to think I’m becoming predictable.”
“I would never accuse you of that.” Boots smiled down at his coffee.
“I’m not kidding about the run for mayor, though.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me, too.”
They talked about anything and everything—Boots’ plants (Bruno did care, he was just very good at hiding it), Bruno’s new role as social secretary for the gay club (“I didn’t know they had a social secretary, but I’m it now”), Edward’s misadventures at the Hall. Anything and everything, except for the thing that was on Bruno’s mind.
It was a good night. A good talk.
Once they’d finished the last of their pie and Bruno was driving Boots nuts scraping his fork across the plate to get the last crumbs, Bruno suddenly said, “Hey, you know where we should go?”
“Where?”
“The CN Tower.”
“Why on Earth would we do that? I’m not a tourist! You’re not a tourist!”
“Old times’ sake.”
“What old times? We went there once!”
“Then that old time.”
“Is it even open right now?”
“I think so.”
Boots shook his head, laughing. “No, thanks.”
“Then you want to come over to my place?”
“Your parents’ house or your attic?”
“Either.”
“Let’s go to your attic.”
“Okay.”
They had beers again, but this time it was root beer, since Boots still had to drive home and Bruno was probably going to drive back to his parents’ house to sleep. He had a load of laundry going and his mother would get annoyed if he never claimed it. It wasn’t late; it wasn’t early; it was an in-between state, where it was dark and cold and snowy outside but not horrible.
“I don’t understand how you were so calm about losing.”
“The thing is,” said Bruno, “I knew I was going to lose.”
Boots raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Yeah. But that wasn’t the point of the campaign.”
“I thought winning was pretty much always the point of a political campaign.”
“You forgot about strategic failures.”
“I did, didn’t I,” said Boots slowly.
“You most certainly did.”
“So what was the point, Bruno?”
Bruno looked down at where his hands were resting casually on the blanket. “I—well.”
“Don’t tell me you’re speechless. You’re never speechless.”
“I’ll tell you sometime.”
“Was it to support me?” asked Boots. He gave Bruno a little half-smile without actually making eye contact; he kept looking down at the book in his lap, turning it to run his fingers over its spine. “Because it was a nice thought.”
“Sort of.”
“Only sort of?”
“I mean, not really. Maybe half? Maybe.”
“Half of what?”
“The total reason.”
“Huh.” Boots picked at a little spot where the leather binding was coming apart. Bruno wanted to tell him to stop it. “What was the rest of the reason?”
“I’m not sure you want to know,” said Bruno, which was the truth and considerably more than he had intended to say.
Sure enough, Boots’ head came up like a dog scenting kibbles. “What? Why? What is it?”
Bruno wouldn’t have said anything; he wouldn’t have, it wasn’t the right time, he knew that, he hadn’t even asked things he needed to ask. Like whether Boots was seeing anyone.
But Boots looked so worried, and a little bit angry, which was fair, because he probably thought Bruno was hiding something important from him.
“It’s not that important.”
“I don’t care. Tell me.” Boots got bossy, when he got worried, and Bruno liked it. He had to admit that. He did like it.
Bruno raked a hand through his hair. “See,” he said, and then had to try again. “The thing is.”
Boots set his bottle of root beer down with the thump. “Tell me!”
“I wanted you to know,” said Bruno.
“To know what?”
“That I’m in love with you. Romantically. Not platonically. Sexually, I think, too, though I hesitate to mention that. There’s no pressure, you know, I don’t think you, uh, just because you like, uh.” Bruno shut his mouth. Consciously. With purpose.
Boots stared at him blankly.
Bruno continued to keep his mouth shut.
Boots yelled, “Are you insane?”
“Probably!” Bruno snapped defensively. “Out of all of the things I’ve done, though, this is arguably one of the least insane!”
“Arguably?” bellowed Boots incredulously.
“Look, I said no pressure, I—” Bruno started to say but Boots made a series of incoherent gestures that nevertheless managed to get his point across, and Bruno shut up again.
Boots reached up; he laced his hands together and put them on top of his head. He was turning bright red. “I can’t believe you. What makes you think you are in any way qualified to make that statement? Even for you this is ludicrous!”
“What’s so ludicrous about it?” Bruno snapped.
“You’re not gay! That’s the whole—that’s why this whole campaign was so ridiculous! You’re, you’re just this straight guy who is a jerk and also my best friend, and you came out to all of Toronto because you felt bad for me, and that does not make you gay! It makes you—I don’t know! But something else!”
“Bisexual,” said Bruno. He slapped his hand down on the floor. “It makes me bisexual, Melvin, that is a real thing, and it is a thing that I am, and I would appreciate it if you listened to me before you decided for me what I’m allowed to be! And besides, coming out to all of Toronto was pretty good practice for coming out to you, since it turns out you’re ready to write your own bad editorial!”
“It’s not what you’re allowed to be, it’s what you are!”
“I’m telling you what I am! I’m telling you I’m in love with you and could you please stop yelling at me about it? I pay a very reasonable rent on this place and the landlady lives downstairs!”
Boots got up. “Oh, I can stop yelling. I can leave, and I’m going to.”
“Fine!” Bruno yelled. “Apparently I’m just an idiot for thinking you might love me back!”
Boots slammed the door on his way out. A tack fell out of the wall, and Bruno’s poster from Rocky Horror Picture Show fell to the ground.
“Great,” Bruno muttered.
By the time Bruno locked the attic door behind him, there was no sign of Boots or the car he was borrowing from his parents.
Bruno drove home and moved the laundry to the dryer. Forty minutes later, he carefully shook it out and folded it and put it in a neat pile.
His mother hovered, worried, near his door.
“Are you all right, honey?” she asked.
“I’m fine, Mom. Thanks,” he said, without irony. He loved his parents; they were not without flaws, but they weren’t half-bad.
“Do you need anything?”
“No. Thanks.”
She had wrapped her hand around his doorframe, and she squeezed before pushing off and letting go. “Okay, then.”
“Love you,” he added.
“Love you too, honey.”
He stayed up late reading The Prince, and fell asleep somewhere in the middle of something about fortifications.
The next day he helped his dad fix a door that was hanging crookedly. “See,” said his dad, sweating a little but smiling at the end of it, “I can still find my way around a hammer!”
“Uh-huh!” said Bruno encouragingly. They did not, by shared consensus, mention his father’s swollen thumb. His father had, with the grim air of a soldier approaching Normandy, picked up a load of Bruno’s rainbow-coloured signs and distributed them amongst his many friends and friendly acquaintances for display on their lawns, and had temporarily secured a position free from loving mockery.
After dinner he was sketching out some ideas for the signs for his mayoral campaign (it was never too early to plan) when the phone rang. His mom picked up.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “Well, he’s right here.”
Bruno’s head snapped up. His mother motioned him over to the phone, and he vaulted over the sofa to get to it.
“Hi,” he said, breathlessly.
“Meet me at the CN Tower,” said Boots. “Can you do that?”
“Yeah—”
“ASAP.” Boots hung up.
Bruno stared down at the phone in his hand and then looked up at his mom. She raised her eyebrows. “What is it, honey?”
“I gotta go,” said Bruno. He hung up the phone and then made a mad dash for the car, stuffing his arms into his coat and his feet into his boots as he went, hopping, almost tripping on an untied bootlace.
He got to the CN Tower in record time, thankful that no one from law enforcement had been around to observe exactly how many kph he’d been going, and was still breathing hard when he got into the elevator.
When he got to the observation deck, there were only a few people scattered around. He craned his neck, looking around for any glimpse of Boots; a shock of blond hair, a red scarf—so when he felt a hand on his shoulder he just about jumped out of his skin.
“Sorry!” said Boots immediately. “Sorry.”
“You’re going to give me a heart attack!” Bruno clutched at his chest. “Why am I here?”
“Because I needed to apologize.” Boots pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Really apologize. I was such a jerk to you last night. I don’t even know—I spent all day thinking about how to apologize and then I thought, well, you wanted to come here, let’s come here.”
“You’re apologizing?”
“I’m not just apologizing. I’m, I’m groveling, I am abjectly begging your forgiveness, because you were right. You were actually right, a hundred percent, and I was such an asshole!” Boots said the last part too loud and got a stern glare from a middle-aged tourist; he didn’t even seem to notice. His cheeks flushed. “I shouldn’t have—I should have believed you. I should have trusted you.”
“Yeah.” Bruno shoved his hands in his pocket and hunched his shoulders down. “You should have.”
“The problem is, was, whatever, that I—okay, you have to—the thing is, I’ve been in love with you since we were twelve,” said Boots all in a rush, fast enough and mumbling enough that it took Bruno a few seconds to parse out what he’d said. “And I thought you were—it was so sudden and so glib, and it seemed like you being you again, like you took up a crusade this summer and it was me, and what was going to happen when you got bored of that and switched to some new cause?”
“I wouldn’t—”
“I’m still apologizing, don’t worry, I’m not done yet. That was a terrible thing for me to think! And I should never have said what I said. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“Can I get that in writing?” said Bruno.
“Absolutely not. But the thing is, look, I am in love with you and if you—if—” Boots turned even redder and ran out of words completely.
Bruno took a deep breath, cracked his knuckles, and kissed Boots.
“What!” said a tourist, sounding affronted.
“Don’t worry!” Bruno snapped at her over his shoulder. “We’re just Europeans saying hello!”
She glared at him like she suspected, accurately, that she was being made fun of, but she did at least storm off, leaving them briefly entirely alone. Bruno went back to kissing Boots.
Boots grabbed Bruno’s elbows to haul him in closer, and Bruno wrapped his arms around Boots, getting tangled in his absurdly long scarf.
“I love you,” said Bruno into Boots’ ear. “I love you so much, I wanted—you know the first time we were here, I wanted to kiss you. I was going to tell you when we came up here but you made me tell you in my attic—”
Boots laughed shakily. “I like your attic.”
“I like my attic too but it’s not romantic! It doesn’t have a view.” Bruno squeezed Boots’ shoulders and pulled back to look him in the eyes. “We need champagne.”
“Are you going to try to take advantage of me?” Boots grinned, biting his lip. “I might be in favour of that.”
“What? No! I mean. Uh,” said Bruno, brain catching up to him. “Oh, we definitely need champagne.”
“I’m buying.” Boots landed one more quick kiss and then they broke apart as a huddle of tourists hove into view. “I’m still apologizing.”
“I think you can be done with that.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t. I was a real shit to you.”
“Water under the bridge.” Bruno grinned at Boots and nudged his shoulder. “Hey, can we see Macdonald Hall from here?”
“Not at night, anyway.”
“Want to try?”
So they stood at the glass, peering out into the night, pressed shoulder to shoulder, and Bruno couldn’t stop smiling.
Today, he conquered Boots’ heart; tomorrow, the Toronto mayoral race.
Boots looked up at him, cheeks flushed, disheveled and laughing, and Bruno kissed him one more time for good luck.
“I can’t believe you,” said Cathy scathingly. Her hair was a sleek chin-length bob, and though she was still dark-haired, it seemed more purple than brown at the moment.
“What do you mean?”
“You did that whole ‘I didn’t know he was gay!’ thing, and I bought it!”
“I wasn’t acting! I swear.”
She glowered at him. “I don’t even know how your brain works.”
“At the moment, it works with the finely tuned hum of a precision engine. Like a Ferrari.”
“I would have suggested an Edsel.”
“I really didn’t know.” Bruno looked down at his cup of coffee. They were having grilled cheese sandwiches at Andy’s, while Cathy was visiting him for a few days, and the terrible coffee was an integral part of the experience.
“About him?” She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”
“About either of us. It just… never occurred to me.”
“Wow!” Cathy leaned back, apparently amazed. “You are really something, Bruno.”
“Thanks?”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Aw,” he said sadly. She patted his hand.
“Anyway, good for you. He’s a cutie. Are you going to be long-distance?”
“For now. He’s coming back next summer, assuming I don’t royally mess everything up, which of course I won’t.” Bruno wiped his palms on his pants. “How’s Diane, anyway?”
Cathy wrinkled her nose and took a sip of her own coffee. “Still at Berkeley.”
“I have to say, I’m not sure you were right about her.”
“About what?”
“About the homophobes being the problem. I mean, she went to Berkeley. That’s not the kind of place people go to be less gay.”
She frowned at him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I think you should call her.”
“What?”
“You should, you know. Double-check.”
“Double-check what?”
“That she’s not in love with you and running away from it.”
“Do I need to hit you in the head? Because you’re acting like someone from a bad soap opera who has amnesia.”
Bruno took a bite of his grilled cheese sandwich, and when he was finished chewing and swallowing, he said, “She went to Berkeley. Boots went to UBC. They ran far away from us and our, shall we say, intimidatingly oversized personalities—”
“Speak for yourself—”
“—And maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe they got to figure out who they were without us there, and maybe they’ve decided to make a free choice to return to us. You know, like that saying, if you love something let it go—”
“I am going to hit you in the head.”
“You should call her and ask if she’s into you.”
“I hate you,” said Cathy with great feeling.
“Just try it. Better yet, I can call her—”
“Don’t you dare!” she shouted.
Bruno leapt out of the booth. “Hang on, I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Bruno Walton!” She chased him, but he was nimble and ducked lightly under a passing waitress’ coffee pot; Cathy, being unwilling to body-check someone who was simply trying to serve a beverage, was delayed. He repeated this gambit with a four-person party moving slowly into a booth. And thus, he made it to the payphone first, fumbling with stray quarters retrieved from his pocket.
He had called Diane many, many times while working on a project for Linguistics, and had inadvertently memorized her number, which he had never envisioned being useful in quite this context. He punched the numbers in a tad forcefully and then had to wait.
The phone rang a few agonizing times while Cathy finally got around the human obstacles (after several agonizing iterations of the too-polite-dance, swaying back and forth, getting in each others’ ways again and again). Finally, Diane picked up. “Hello?” she said.
“Hi Diane it’s Bruno Cathy is in love with you!” he yelled into the receiver, just as Cathy appeared, ready to wrest the phone from his hand.
She froze. He froze. On the other end of the line, there was a moment’s crushing silence.
Then: “What?”
“Cathy is in love with you and she thinks you went to Berkeley because you don’t love her back.”
“I…” Diane sounded bewildered. “How do you know she’s in love with me?”
Cathy scrabbled for the receiver again. Bruno used his forearm to hold her back long enough to say, airily, “Oh, she told me. I thought you should know.”
“She… told you?”
“Yes. Very cavalier about the whole thing, honestly. I think she’s just disguising the depth of her feelings to avoid feeling hurt, personally.”
“I…”
“Do you want to talk to her? She’s right here. She was going to strangle me but I think she’s given that up.”
There was a very long silence. Then Diane said, firmly, “Yes.”
He handed the phone over to Cathy and returned to their table, where he made it through an entire cup of coffee before she returned, looking like she’d been hit with a brick.
“So!” he said briskly. “Are you going to strangle me, or am I the best friend in the history of friendship?”
She socked him, but only in the shoulder, so he figured he was probably the very best friend.
Toronto’s First Gay Mayor Elected in Landslide Victory
[inset photograph of Bruno grinning widely while shaking Cathy’s hand]
Bruno Walton, Toronto’s charismatic young politician who first rose to prominence after battling not one but three years in a row for a seat on the School Board, has done the impossible. He’s won again. Only this time, the stakes are higher: instead of talking about school lunches and class size, he’s taking on the city of Toronto—a daunting project even for experienced politicians, much less this young man, whose meteoric rise has raised expectations along with it, to astronomical levels. His campaign manager, Catharine Burton, is likewise a neophyte in the political arena, but developing a reputation for ruthless charm.
Making his bid even more of a long shot was his lifestyle. His partner is a charming young gentleman, but nevertheless unmistakably a man. In a decade that has already seen seismic shifts in public policy, not to mention public opinion, an openly gay mayor seemed like a fantasy, or something out of science fiction. So how did we get here?
To be honest, we’re not quite sure.
Boots threw down the paper and made a rude noise. “They keep calling you gay!”
“They think I’m more respectable that way,” said Bruno through a mouthful of waffles. “They’ll come around.”
“And they don’t even name me!”
“They do too!” Bruno pointed further down the page than Boots had read. “They call you Melvin.”
Boots flung his hands in the air. “I’m not cut out for this!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re a wonderful host, and you haven’t gone streaking in public.”
“Those don’t seem like they should be the only requirements.”
“The Prime Minister is going to love you,” said Bruno soothingly.
“When? When are we—you didn’t schedule something without telling me, did you?”
“No.” Bruno thought it over. “Not yet. Although the idea does have a certain charm, doesn’t it? You should really meet Minister Rae and convince him that I’m a shining light in the Ontario political scene and should be paid attention to.”
“No, I should not!”
Bruno set down his fork, a sign that things were getting serious, and said firmly, “Boots, everyone loves you, you’re going to have to come to terms with that sooner or later. Martha Stewart wants you in her magazine!”
“What?”
“Oh, I might have forgotten to mention that. We got an e-mail. I think it’s genuine. I can’t wait to see you in a beige turtleneck.”
Boots had to put his head between his knees for a moment, but when he sat back up, Bruno regarded him with compassion before sliding his plate over.
“Waffle?” asked Bruno tenderly. Boots sighed, grabbing a fork.
“Yeah.”
“Can’t face the future on an empty stomach.”
“No, indeed,” Boots mumbled back, mouth already full. The prospect of being with a rising political star was intimidating, but by God, Boots wasn’t coming to the table empty-handed.
He made a mean waffle.