Getting Away

One of the advantages of having a job in Europe is the proximity of other European travel destinations. Things are quiet in offices across northern Europe from mid-December to the second week in January, so I typically take a ski vacation in Switzerland during that period, since the resorts have plenty of snow then but the number of skiers is lower than the subsequent eight weeks. Most people are busy with family at Christmastime and early in the new year. Once I get home, the slower pace of work when others are away skiing allows me to catch up with all the paperwork and emails that have built up while I was away. I head into the office early take my time over the ensuing week clearing up whatever has built up over my ten-day vacation.

What I hadn’t anticipate was seeing Jonathan Constantine sitting at a table facing me in the dining car at dinnertime on the second night. I think we both caught our breath seeing each other, but it seemed natural for me to point to the char across from me at my table, and he seemed to relax as he got up and came over. I did the gentlemanly thing and stood up to shake hands.

“I guess we both needed to unwind. How far are you going?”

“I’m visiting family in Calgary. I’m from there originally. I’m stopping at a resort outside Calgary first for a seven-day horseback trail ride there, but I can do preliminary sketches for the next batch book covers anywhere, so I’ll stay with my family outside Calgary for a while. Spending winters there is special and it rejuvenates me to get out of the city.” 

I looked at him and saw a whole new person from the man I thought I knew.

“Tell me about that.”

“Did you see the tv series Yellowstone? Calgary started as a hub of cattle raising, a railroad hub then a fort of the Canadian Mounted Police to keep order in what became a ‘Cow Town.’ Cattle raising required grasslands, and each of those ranches were just like the fictional one you saw in that tv series.”

I saw a twinkle in his eyes, and I knew he was holding things back, but I wasn’t going to take the bait. 

“Which trail ride are you signed up for? Is it one of the ones that’s organized at the Fairmont Springs hotel?”

“No. It’s a private family resort that runs pack rides and this one starts on Tuesday.”

I felt the gulp in my throat. Are we going to the same resort?  His eyes are penetrating right into me; what’s he thinking?

“I’m headed to a place called the Moose Mountain Horseback Adventures resort. They’re a private resort that runs horseback pack rides and also offers vacation time in a guesthouse where you can just be on your own but also ride on day trips with a guide for as many hours as you want, so I’m doing a four day pack ride for novices and then a week at the guesthouse.”

Jonathan’s eyes went wide, but his forehead creased down the center. 

“How did you ever find Moose Mountain? It’s a pretty esoteric place for a guy from Toronto!”

I gave him the snorty chuckle he deserved. “That’s what travel agents are for!” 

He looked down at the table and laughed, but then looked up, smiled and nodded, so I laughed with him and finished my venison steak, garlic potatoes and red cabbage. 

“I’m doing one of the seven day rides they offer for more advanced riders.” 

Whenever I look at Eric at editorial meetings, I’m sure he has no idea what people are thinking. When he sits there, everyone’s hearts are probably beating at either fifteen or a hundred and fifteen beats a minute, waiting for the next words coming out of his mouth. He’s always in the middle of the conference table, where the Prime Minister sits at Cabinet meetings, and we’re all waiting to see where his eyes will be directed when he looks up from the papers in front of him. 

Having been invited to share dinner with him, I still hadn’t anticipated how things would flow.

“I know so little about you, Jonathan. You were already one of the cover artists when I got brought on board, and I’ve certainly appreciated your creativity, but I had no idea of your background. Tell me about you.”

“Well, I grew up on that ranch outside Calgary. It was originally settled by my great-grandfather, but he didn’t want to split it up when he died, so he created what was then called an Imperial Trust, which corresponds to what would be called a REIT now, a real estate investment trust. The first bank that had been prominent in Calgary had been the Bank of Nova Scotia, and great grandad like the idea of having a group of Scots being the managers of his trust, so bank officers in the home office in Toronto continue to do that, although there was a kerfuffle about it. The original document of the Imperial Trust stipulated that the officers in the home office of the bank in Halifax had to be the administrators since great grandad didn’t want local bankers in Calgary to be influenced by personal relationships with family members they knew locally. The bank had to get court permission to allow bank officers in Toronto to take over hose responsibilities since the home office would no longer be in Halifax, but it gave a lot of us a good chuckle. 

“Anyway, there are about fifty-six of us who are descendants of great grandad, unless there are some new babies I don’t know about yet. Some of us work the original ranch, which is now only forty percent of what it had originally been, and some of us work the oil and shale fields, which are another forty percent, and some of us work in the corporate center office buildings, which sit on the last twenty percent. There are law offices there and accounting offices, but also day-care facilities for workers families, a preschool and an elementary school and even an urgent care center, a grocery store and post office.”

I looked out the window and took in the fading daylight, watching the bright lights on the combines as they continued to harvest the grain, thinking about that American song about the spacious skies and amber waves of grain.

“You seem to be a million miles away, Jonathan.” 

“Sorry. I was. I was taking in the view of the spacious sky and the amber waves of grain and watching the columbines harvesting that grain before it gets wet.”

“You’ve told me about your great-grandfather’s ranch and how it’s evolved, but you left yourself out of that picture. There must be a place where you fit into it.”

“It’s a complex story. I grew up on the ranch along with several cousins my age. We all went to school in town with kids whose parents worked in the oil fields and with kids whose parents worked in the corporate center, and some of those kids were cousins of ours as well and some of them weren’t relatives at all. Some of the cousins were related through their mothers, so they didn’t have the Constantine name, but others did, so it was always a somewhat awkward town.

“In terms of my artwork, I don’t remember what the sequence was. At some point, we got small sketch pads in school, and I started sketching everything. My family, the cowhands and the cooks in the kitchen. Horses, cattle, fences and views of the great house. Do you know how complex the pipes are on an oil field? It became routine that whenever someone made a trip into Calgary, they’d ask how many sketch pads of what sizes they should pick up for me. Later, they’d ask what kinds of pencils or charcoals to buy.

“Then when it became clear that I was good with numbers in high school, it seemed natural for me to be sent to McGill to get trained in accounting, so I’d come back to Calgary and join the accounting arm of the Trust. What none of us thought about was that college is more than a trade-school and that it would also be natural for me to be take classes in drawing and painting as well as English literature. I hadn’t ever heard of the profession of graphic design until college, so once I took that class I was hooked. 

“You know how various self-publishing book publishers offer competitions for McGill seniors to create covers for books their authors want to publish, and it’s a big deal when students win those competitions. Matt Henderson was at the awards ceremony my senior year, and he set up an interview with me two days later, and he hired me that day.”

Eric chuckled. “When he hired me, he told me you did good work, but I’ve always wondered how you got to be different from the other graphic designers. You’ll have to share your secret sauce someday.”

He was giving me his Prime Minister look. There were just two of us at the table, but it was as if a dozen pairs of eyes were focused upon me at the same time that his were, and a plum felt blocked in my throat.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. That was a compliment, Jonathan.”

I felt myself melting under his gaze, so I smiled and nodded. “Sure. It’s not really that hard.”  

We each went back to our assigned seats after dinner, and as I watched the countryside of Manitoba roll by as dusk settled in, I wondered what Eric’s backstory has been. Standing at the rail in the aisle while the attendant made up my sleeper bed brought back memories of standing at a fence at the ranch watching Matt train horses in the training paddock. His eyes had been on those horses the same way Eric’s eyes had been focused on me during dinner. Will I melt into Eric the same way I had melted into Matt, and will he become the wind under my sails to make me soar to unexpected heights the way Matt had been?

Lord Above, give me strength!

 As I walked back to my cabin in First Class, dinner felt like a lump in my gut. I’m such an ass. When they transferred me back from the London office I met with each member of the team, but all I asked about was what they had worked on for the last three years. Each of them has a backstory the same way Jonathan does, but I’ve worked with them for a year and a half and I haven’t asked about the backstory of any of them. They must all think I’m an ass with ice in my veins. 

I sat in the corner of the benched couch of my cabin and rested my head back. I started my playlist of clarinet music by Brahms, Mozart and von Weber. That always relaxes me. I thought back to the look in Jonathan’s eyes, and the smile he had when he said he was taking trail rides at the same ranch, even if he’s doing one that’s a more advanced one that will also last longer. 

“You could unwind at the guesthouse where I’m staying once your pack trip of finished and unwind before you have to head to the ranch.” 

Maybe that’s a sign from Heaven. Maybe it’s time for me to get over Christopher. London was London, but London is over and London is history now.

Forgetting about Christopher, maybe the sign from Heaven is that I should be a new person at work. Maybe Jonathan is the symbol of how I should spend time individually with everyone on the team and learn about them as a person. Jonathan is just the first one in line. I know the tradeoff I fear. If I get close to them as people, I won’t be able to be analytical in criticizing their work. 

I just have to apply the criticism that worked when I received it, simply being told that I could do better work. That’s criticism wrapped in a blanket of support, not criticism that cuts someone down and leaves him in pieces on the floor, especially if it’s done in front of other people on the team. Maybe we need more individual meetings and many fewer team meetings altogether.

Jonathan does have those same sky-blue eyes that Christopher has, though.

The train rocked me to sleep, and the window shade blocked the northern light, so I slept beyond eight. I got to the dining car at eight-forty-five, but Jonathan wasn’t there. I asked the waiter about him.

“Oh, he was here early, Sir. He finished his breakfast almost an hour ago. He said something about always having breakfast early on his ranch.”

I felt the warmth on my face. That’s definitely not like growing up in Toronto or London. What have I missed in life?

Jonathan was reading a book when I came into the dining car at lunchtime.

“Can I join you?

“Sure. I’m happy to see you again.”

“What are you reading?”

“Hemingway. One of his short stories.”

“Which one?”

“Big Two Hearted River”

“That’s intriguing.”

“You know it?”

“I read it years ago. Upper Peninsula of Michigan, right?”

“Yeah, and like so much of Hemingway, it’s really a character development story. A budding author wrote a novel incorporating that story as an example of how one of his characters encourages another character to spread his wings, so I want to see if I can use that aspect of the novel in designing the cover.”

I looked at him, and I saw it.

“That’s it! I bet no other graphic designer would read a secondary part of a novel in order to see if that would be something that could give them an idea for a cover. That’s your secret sauce!”

His blush wasn’t as bright as a red pepper, but certainly the color of a pomegranate.

“Well, I have to admit that I do enjoy re-reading Hemingway on my own, so it was a good excuse all by itself!”

The smile was in my eyes, and the words were out of my mouth before I knew it.

“You stud!”

I stammered. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? Thanks for the compliment.”

I never stammer. What the hell was that about?

I had to recover.

“Tell me about the novel that got submitted.”

“It’s a gay romance novel about a university professor who teaches English   that gets involved with a construction manager who’s supervising the building of a condo the professor is buying. The professor is trying to get the construction manager to understand that he has more depth within him than he understands, and he does that by getting him to see that he can enjoy reading Hemingway’s stories and novels, and then even seeing that he’s just like some of Hemingway’s characters.

The waiter brought our luxurious lunches and we dug into them. I had a Quiche Lorraine with more ham incorporated into it than I had ever had before and a sourdough boulle with salted butter. Jonathan chose the leek and ham quiche with his own boulle of sourdough bread. We both had the crème brûlée and black coffee. We looked at our food and smiled at each other as we ate and chatted a bit. I couldn’t help myself wondering if there was a special reason that he was working on a cover for a gay romance novel. 

Does he share more with Christopher than the color of his eyes? 

We got off the Canadian VIN Rail train in Jasper, Alberta.  It seemed natural for us to share a car to drive down to Bragg Creek. Eric offered to drive me to the family estate from there, and I certainly didn’t need have my own car at the ranch, so it seemed like a fine arrangement. 

We got to the resort at four-thirty, so once we stowed the stuff we weren’t going to take on the pack rides, we headed into dinner. Eric caught me off guard.

“Tell me about Hemingway.” 

“Well, you know. 

“I think every high school boy in America and Canada is assigned to read The Sun Also Rises when he’s sixteen. I certainly was. It was over my head, but I was intrigued by reading what I knew to have been a great writer, so I delved into A Farewell to Arms and then Kilimanjaro. 

“That was when one of my great-uncles was dying at one of the oil fields. I wasn’t close to him, in fact I barely knew him, but he was the grandfather of one of my cousins, so he was family. He was the first man I knew who died and his was the first funeral I ever went to, so it was all jumbling around in my head, with Hemingway right there. 

“Then in college I read For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, and I came to realize that Hemingway’s writing impacts you differently at different times in your life. That was accentuated two winters ago. I had come to the ranch the way I do most winters, and my cousin Paul was doing his eighteen-year-old reading of The Sun Also Rises. He was struggling with it the same way I had done, so I offered to read it aloud with him so we could talk about it scene by scene. As young kids always do, our younger cousin Jacob, who was eleven, wanted to join in, so the three of us spent evenings in the library at the estate with me reading the book to them. Paul lay back on a couch so he could take notes and Jacob snuggled against me on a wide easy chair alongside the floor lamp. 

“I hadn’t ever read to someone else before, and it seemed to be a whole new book than the one I remembered. Of course, I realized it was a whole new me who was reading the same book I had read a dozen years before, and that was a little startling. I was also startled every time Jacob squirmed against me on that chair. It was the first time I had ever conceived of what it must feel like to be a father, reading to your own child, and that sent a shiver up my back.

“Anyway, there’s something unique about Hemingway that brings all that out within me, and that’s why I wanted to read that story of his that the novelist was referring to in order to see it through my own eyes and then to go back into the novel and see it again through that novelist’s eyes as one of his characters describes it to his other character.”

“That’s all very deep. Thanks for sharing it. I’m glad we’ll have some more time to share personal stories, but we should get some sleep. Brook said that wake-up would be at seven, and I’m sure tomorrow will be as full as today has been. Sleep well.”

“Thanks. You too.”

How the fuck did a guy his age develop the gravitas he’s described? What must that family dynamic be on the estate, both the ranch and the oil fields? He barely knew his great-uncle, but he envisioned him as Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea and mourned him that way at his funeral? He was twenty-six and reading Hemingway to his sixteen-year-old and eleven-year-old cousins, and sensing what it might be like to be a father reading to his sons as he did that? What maturity is that? 

Now he’s spending his career doing graphic design for covers for our publishing house. Surely, he was put on this earth to accomplish more than that. I wonder who that novelist is who’s trying to self-publish the book Jonathan is interested in. We should talk about that. Maybe that’s a role for him: seeing authors who are trying to self-publish and having our house try to develop them as authors rather than trying to polish the particular manuscript they submitted which may not be good enough for us to publish right now.

I really am bushed.

The five-day pack trip was exactly what I had needed. Each step along the trail demanded my full attention, and that forced me to clear my head of the brambles of the last three years. It was clear that each stop for a meal or a snack had been planned to offer opportunities to take in vistas of the Rockies. I always found a tree or a boulder to lean back against while I could stretch my legs in front of me, soaking in those vistas the same ways Christopher and I had done in the lake country of Cumbria.

I had known it all along. A viscount needs an heir. An heir and a spare, for that matter, and adopted children don’t carry a viscount’s bloodline. He might have a dalliance from time to time, but he couldn’t have a long-term gay relationship on the side. The move to Toronto saved both of us. We both knew that. 

Two days to unwind after my pack trip was ideal. I slept until ten on the first day, walked on a trail and soaked up some sun, had lunch at the Lodge along with two beers and napped until three. I took a longer trail walk and found an isolated stream that had a pool within it at the base of a meadow just off the trail. It was too good to pass up, so I stripped down and leaned back in that sandy pool with just my face above the surface. The water was refreshingly cool, and I finally walked back to the guest house in my shirt and boxer-briefs and trainers. They’d dry overnight.

I had brought a prepared dinner of Swedish meatballs, egg noodles, cucumber salad and red cabbage back from the Lodge after lunch, along with a small bottle of Wiser’s Canadian whisky. I lit the fireplace and streamed a movie until I fell asleep.

The second day at the guesthouse was better. I got up earlier and had a full breakfast at the Lodge. I got a lunch basket for two and one of the guides took me on a horseback ride to a vista I hadn’t seen on the pack trip, and we were back at the Lodge by three in the afternoon, so I took a hot tub and then a nap and went back to the Lodge for a late dinner of venison steak, Boursin mashed potatoes and roasted carrots at eight o’clock. I never understand how pastry chefs make flourless chocolate cake, but I consider it to be one of the most decadent desserts in the world.

Jonathan got back from his pack trip the second day that I was at the guesthouse, while his group had their own farewell dinner at the Lodge that night. He stopped by as I was finishing my dessert and said he’d come to the guesthouse after the big breakfast everyone would be having as a farewell event before most people headed out to the airport in Calgary. 

“I know you’ve been riding horses all week, so I promise you can just lie on a meadow if you’d like or we can walk on a trail if you want. There’s a nice stream if you want to cool off.”

His eyes went wide. Did he realize I had been skinny-dipping?

“There’s a hot tub here at the Lodge if you have a bathing suit. They sell them in the store if you don’t.”

He couldn’t hold back his chuckle. Maybe he thought I had been getting into the stream in one of those after all.

The sun was warm, so he said he wanted to soak some of it up on the meadow overlooking that stream, and we headed up there, wearing polos and shorts. Once we got to my favorite spot I took off my shirt and got ready to lean back and stretch my legs out in front of me, but I heard his gasp when he saw my chest. I was used to that reaction, so I explained.

“It’s a trogon. I had gone on a bird-watching safari in Guatemala and Belize and this species of them are common there. They’re too beautiful for a guy not to memorialize them once you’ve seen them, don’t you think?”

He was wide-eyed, and I knew he’d never look at me the same way again, but he smiled and nodded and I knew there was also a new bond between us. I also wondered to what extent the word would get out at the office now, but that was not my problem; it would get out eventually at a pool party or a beach party anyway, no doubt. Perhaps this wasn’t the day to suggest going skinny-dipping with him, though. This was the day to fire the bazooka.

“I’ve been thinking about that book you told me about. The one that included the reference to Hemingway’s story The Big Two Hearted River. Could you ask the author if you could share the manuscript with one of the editors you work with? Perhaps tell him you were describing the part about the Hemingway story, and it intrigued me and I wondered if we’d be interested in publishing the book.”

“I’m sure it would blow his mind. Authors self-publish because it’s a bear to even find an agent who’s willing to pitch their book to an editor, so the idea that an editor is approaching him out of the blue would astonish any author. I’ll go through the steps, but I can’t imagine he’d decline having you look at it. 

“He can fax the manuscript to the ranch, and you can stay over for a few days until we get it and you can look it over and see if you think it’s work publishing.”

“I’ve been thinking about more than the issue of publishing that book. From what you say, it very well may be worth editing and publishing it and putting our resources into marketing it to make it succeed. You know what a financial commitment that entails, but I’ve been thinking about a broader set of issues.

“There’s a great line that’s attributed to Winston Churchill, although it’s not clear if he actually said it. It goes something like ‘the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man.’ The pack trip I took gave me time to think about the conversations we had on the train, and I came up with several ideas.

“First, I was thinking about that author of yours. It’s like you said. We look at manuscripts that agents have pitched to us and make decisions about whether they’re projects we could publish at a profit. That’s a certain business model.

“That wasn’t the business model for the publishing industry a hundred years ago, though. Hemingway’s a perfect example. He wrote a few stories that were blockbusters and a publishing house picked him up as an author. They worked with him over a long period. Their editors molded him. He fought with them and manuscripts went back and forth eight or ten times before they got published.

“So that gets back to another of my Churchillian horseback moments.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

“My impression is that you’re working way below your capacity, and I’d like to raise you up to greater job responsibilities in addition to your graphic art cover design work, which I know you enjoy. The good news is that it involves work that you could do at your family ranch, and I know you love being there. The even better news is that it would involve a hefty raise in your salary.”

I froze. “What do you have in mind?”

“You described that author as a man who created a protagonist who saw deeply into the heart of the other character in the novel and wanted to raise him up to a higher emotional awareness level within himself. That’s gravitas in the protagonist, but it also suggests gravitas in the author, and that’s what I want to explore in the manuscript. What I was thinking about in my Churchillian moments was that we should be looking for authors who show gravitas in their characters regardless of whether their manuscripts are ready for publication, and your work designing covers for self-publishing houses may be a way for us to be finding those types of authors. 

“You have the gravitas yourself to recognize a manuscript that has characters of gravitas, and that might be our way to reach out to those authors and connect them with developmental editors within our organization who could mentor their career as we publish their initial book and then hopefully get them to create further projects. You’d be the point-man finding those authors.

“What do you think? I hope you’re not offended by my having said that I thought you were working below your capability.”

I saw his fear. 

“What makes you think I can do that?”

“You said it all yourself during dinner on the train. Your life on the ranch, your life among cousins at the industrial part and among teenagers your age who weren’t part of your extended family. Then you described the death of your great-uncle and how that and his funeral made you think about The Old Man and the Sea when you were still a young man yourself. All of that may represent more gravitas within yourself than you’re aware of, but I certainly saw it. I don’t have any concern that you can’t recognize depth in authors based on the depth of the characters they’ve created.

“Let’s follow your suggestion. Let me drop you off at your family’s ranch and see I can stay in Calgary for a few days until that author faxes the manuscript to you there and I can come by and pick it up and see if I agree that the author seems to be a man who’s demonstrating gravitas in the way he develops his own characters. If that’s the case, I can reach out to him and invite him to come to Toronto once I get back and see if he’d be interested in the kind of editorial mentoring I’m thinking about.”

“There’s no need for you to go back and forth to Calgary. Just stay at the ranch while we’re waiting for the manuscript and while you’re looking it over and while you’re deciding if you want to reach out to him. The family would love to have my boss staying over for a week or ten days. Hell, they’ll get you doing chores by the second day!”

Yes, it seems that neither of us would look at the other the same way again after this trip. He does have a million-dollar smile that goes right up to his eyes.

The meadow was a good place for us to stop and soak up some sun, and Eric suggested that we lean back against a couple of trees and take in the view of the stream and the mountains beyond it. I hadn’t expected him to take off his shirt, but my mouth dropped when I saw his exposed chest. He had well defined pectorals and deltoids with good upper arms, and he had gotten a tan during his own pack trip, but his left pec had a tattoo of a brightly colored bird draped over it. The whole team at work had faced him at meetings for a year and a half and I’d lay a two hundred dollar bet that none of us had ever imagined that he had a bright tattoo on the chest underneath his shirt.

The bird had bright red plumage with a grey bill and grey outer wings but with brown inner wings and brown wings going down its back. It had a brown circle around its black eyes, accentuating them. The bird was looking toward the distance, not directly at me, but I knew its eye was focused on me and it would fly away if I moved a muscle. 

I looked up at him without saying a word. I guess he was used to the response people have when they see it for the first time, so he gave me the explanation about his bird-watching safari.

I swear I saw him smile and nod; he was taking pleasure in having startled me. I, on the other hand, couldn’t decide if I just wanted him pressing that pec against my face or whether I wanted him to hold it an inch or two away so my tongue could reach out and trace the margins of the tattoo and lap the nipple that was where the bird’s leg met its body. I looked away so he wouldn’t catch me hungry for him.

I finally looked at Eric, but he was giving me his Prime Minister look.

Had he seen the lust for him that I was feeling?

When he came out with his proposal of how he wanted to move forward in having me looking for authors who were trying to self-publish their books whom I could evaluate bringing into our publishing house I was floored. That job-offer from him was exactly how startled author would feel when he heard that an editor wanted to read his book.

I looked at him. I’m not sure I had ever experienced the emotion of being dumbstruck, but that’s how I felt now. Then the emptiness hit and I couldn’t hold back spitting it out.

“What makes you think I can do that?”

He gave me the warmest smile I had ever seen from him, and I thought about having that bird on his chest leaning onto my face, covering me with the warmth of his body as his warm forearms engulfed the back of my head to hold me against him. 

Luckily, the tree behind me held me up, so I didn’t pass out.

Eric had gotten some cold cuts and sourdough bread for sandwiches, so we had a late lunch once we got back. I hadn’t realized that I was ready for a nap after that; was it the delayed effect of the pack trip, or was it the emotional hit of Eric’s plan for moving forward with my responsibilities at the publishing house? 

Either way, I slept until four. Eric suggested a soak in the hot tub at the Lodge, and that seemed to be a great idea, so I did buy a pair of short-short swim trunks at the resort store. 

I leaned deeply up to my neck into the tub, the same way I always did at the ranch, letting the heat of the water envelope me. I’ve always considered a hot tub to be a baptismal tub for a man’s sexuality. Isn’t it intended to allow him to feel the arousal the heat brings to each of his erogenous zones?

I closed my eyes and envisioned Eric’s tattoo pressed against my face and my mouth opened a bit as I fantasized letting my tongue lap his firmed-up nipple, but I shook myself out of that reverie and opened my eyes, relieved that he was looking elsewhere so he hadn’t seen me opening my mouth. 

I spoke up quickly. “Tell me about your life in London. How did you even get there?”

 He chuckled. “I got my degrees in creative writing and editing at York University and then I got a job at the Toronto office of Harper Collins, doing line editing and then copy editing for four years. My boss there got a promotion being transferred to the London office and he offered me a chance to come with him, so I jumped at the idea. London, and all— it was a no-brainer opportunity.

“I had a great life there and I loved it, but then it was time to move on, so I transferred back when the opportunity came up.”

Wasn’t it hard coming back to Toronto after living in London for all that time?” 

“It was, but the transfer was really a blessing. London is dynamic and exciting, but the publishing world there is very high-pressured. Toronto felt like a demotion for the first few months, but I could never have planned a three-week vacation working in London, and that’s what I needed to get decompressed. I’ve been a tight-wound spring for the last three years, even before I came back to Canada. That’s why I needed the riding trip as well as spending an afternoon in this hot tub before a late dinner with two glasses of wine!”

“I know what you mean. That’s why I look forward to spending time at the family’s ranch. We all need time to decompress. The tradition at the ranch is kielbasa, dill pickles and Canadian whisky before dinner to unwind, but just one drink. People have to depend on each other, and nobody puts up with drunkenness. 

“You wouldn’t believe how calming it can be to muck out horses’ stalls in the mornings and farriering horses’ shoes later in the day. I’m lucky I can get the books I need to read, and I can work on my sketches and cover pictures in the evenings after doing afternoon and evening chores at the ranch.”

I laughed. “That’s a word I haven’t heard since I was in York! I had a friend in London who came from there and we visited his family estate. His best friend on the estate was a guy he had grown up with who was the farrier based on that estate and who made rounds on neighboring estates. The two of them had a gleam in their eyes whenever they looked at each other as if they had been twins.”

Eric looked away and seemed to stop breathing.

“Are you okay? You just turned pale.” 

Eric looked at me, exhaled and nodded. “It was just a memory that caught me off guard. I got a cramp in my gut. Yeah, I’m fine.”

Fine my ass. He had a friend who had an estate in York who had a friend who was a farrier who could have been his twin and the memory of them gave Eric a tight cramp in his gut that made him go pale. Right. 

Not! He had a great life in London for eight years and then it was time to move on, and he moved back to Toronto in what felt like a demotion. 

Sure. Got it!

No wonder he was strung out even before he left London!

We stayed at the guest house for the week Eric had booked it. He was interested in hearing about the previous books I had worked on as a graphic artist, and he took notes about my impressions of each of the authors. He chose five of them whose books he wanted to buy since they had already been self-published, and we arranged for me to buy them and have them delivered to the ranch, so they’d be there when we arrived. 

We took hikes each day, but on the fourth day he said he was going to go to that stream and go skinny dipping, so perhaps he should go alone if it would be weird for us to be doing that together if we were work colleagues. I looked at him hard and wondered if he had figured out that I wanted my face lapping his tattooed chest and whether I might want to be sucking his cock, so I said the most neutral thing.

“I can see that it would be awkward for you at the office if we had been swimming naked together, so it’s no problem. Go enjoy yourself. Maybe I’ll swim there myself tomorrow!” 

He laughed, but I saw that he was relieved. I wasn’t going to tell him that the men at the ranch soak in the hot tub there naked. He can decide for himself whether he wants to join me there when the time comes. I wonder if he has any tattoos below his waistband the way some of those guys do. 

We drove to the ranch as planned, and Eric fit in just as I knew that he would. I got back into my routine, and he joined in with the chores like everyone else did. There were several episodes of eyes roaming when Dad came into the Great Hall while we were all sharing kielbasa, pickles and Canadian whiskey with the usual friendly banter and handed Eric some documents that had come in on the fax machine in Dad’s study and ranch hands realized that Eric wasn’t just a family visitor.

It was Mom, of course, who pulled me into the butler’s pantry after dinner the sixth- or seventh-day Eric was staying with us. She could always see right through me.

“What’s going on, Jonathan? You look like a scared rabbit every time Dad hands him a fax.”

I looked at her and took three cleansing breaths. “He’s offered me a big promotion. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it while he was here. He says I haven’t been working up to my potential, and he thinks the new responsibilities will offer me opportunities to soar. I’m not sure I’m up to it, but I’m excited to give it a try. I don’t have to give up the graphic art that I’m doing, so I can always fall back to that if it doesn’t work out.”

“Oh, I’m betting you’ll soar, all right! Haven’t you seen how he fits in with everyone here? He didn’t get to be an editor at Harper Collins by being a poor judge of other people!”

She was right. I had even seen how he had gotten Matt out of his taciturn shell. I don’t know if I had ever heard Matt speak a sentence of more than six or seven words before Eric got chatting with him. It had all started when Eric started leaning on the paddock fence watching him train horses the same way I had done when I had been a teenager. Eric stood there for an hour at a time, just as I had done. Matt acted as if he didn’t even notice that Eric was there, but I knew that he did. They didn’t even look at each other during snack-time in the Great Room those first few days, either.

I caught my breath on the fourth day, though. Matt moved from his usual place to sit across from Eric at the dinner table, in a seat where he had never sat as long as I had known him. He still had that taciturn look on his face, but as dinner progressed, I realized I was seeing Matt demonstrating the closest thing to flirting with another man that I had ever seen him doing, and my jaw dropped. Eric was conversing with him in his most natural way, but somehow, I knew that Eric would get the two of them talking a walk together after dinner, for sure. 

There was the man I had lusted over since I had been fourteen flirting with a boss of mine who had a tattoo on his chest that I had lusted to feel against my tongue, and I was fantasizing about the two of them holding hands as they went for a romantic stroll under the stars after dinner! Holy Christ, what’s that about?

We were bringing our dishes to the kitchen after breakfast when Eric came over to me at the beginning of the second week he had been staying at the family’s ranch. 

“Everything’s worked out exactly as I had hoped. I’ve read the book that author faxed here and it’s time for us to talk about making plans to move forward, both with him and with the job position I proposed to you. Is there a way for us to spend a couple of hours brainstorming things?”

“Sure. I’m supposed to be helping Rory farrier a group of horses, but he should be finished with that by about three. Let me take a shower and meet you in the library about three-thirty?”

“That’s fine. I’ll meet you there then.”

I finished a bit early, so I headed to the Main House and started up the back stairs. When I turned on the landing I heard a door latch; it was pretty close. Eric’s room was nearby, and everyone else would still be at work, but when I got to the top of the stairs it was Matt’s silhouette I saw going down the hallway, and it all fell into place.

The man I had lusted for since I was fourteen had been lapping the tattoo on the chest of the man whose chest I had wanted pressed against my face for the last three weeks. Mother of God!

I guess the only question was whose cock had been in whose mouth while I had been in the shoeing barn.

I stopped breathing and everything swirled in my head. That was only the first of a dozen questions, of course!

The next two years felt the way Eric had described London. Well, not quite London, but certainly a dynamic life in Toronto for a guy who had grown up on a ranch in Alberta and gone to college at McGill. Toronto does have a dynamism that’s different from Montreal, and after I worked the new program with Eric the publishing house created a whole new department of Developmental Editing. They hired a former professor of Creative Writing from York University to run it and I was one of the prominent recruiting officers looking for unknown authors for the editors to evaluate for the program.

Luckily, I could still take time to visit the ranch each fall and early winter. I was surprised that Matt wasn’t there the second year I went back, so I asked Rory where he was.

“Oh, he’s entitled to three weeks’ vacation a year by now, so he’s been taking it as one block in September the last couple of years. He vacations with a friend at a guesthouse in Bragg Creek.”

Holy Mother of God! 

Vacationing for sure and doing more than skinny-dipping in a stream that’s overlooked by a sun-drenched meadow.

I held onto various pieces of furniture as I made my way into the library, and then I crashed on a sofa and clenched my eyes shut, taking about six breaths a minute. At least I don’t have to face Eric at work anymore. 

The last words he said to me came to mind. He had been shaking my hand as I was moving on to the new department.

“I remember what my professor at York said to me on graduation day when I was headed on to my job at Harper Collins. He said that he was happy to know that he had been the wind under my wings as I had taken flight on my own, and that’s how I feel about you, Jonathan.”

Maybe that’s the key, though. Maybe it’s time for me to soar in more than one way. Maybe one of those authors is someone I should spend more time with myself. I’m not working with them in any professional way, I’m just exploring the depths of the ways they’ve created their characters, so there’s no professional conflict in me getting involved with them myself. Maybe some of them are men whose cocks I’d enjoy having in my mouth, or maybe they’d like having mine in theirs’. 

As I said to Mom, it’s worth a try!

The End