This work was published in The Avenue Journal, Issue X: Dogs
Playing Dead
by John Whittier Treat
Drew was getting married here today, which might not be the case if his family didn’t own this summer house, a two-story Cape built by his great-grandparents. Hollywood couldn’t come up with a better place to stage a wedding, even if its old shiplap siding could stand a new coat of paint. He spent a lot of time here, not only as a child but in his adulthood. He’d find Manhattan insufferable without this retreat at his disposal. Drew looked at the calm horizon of the sea beyond the house’s front yard, the busy road, and the inhospitable rocky shore he’d grown up calling “the beach.”
No morning person, Drew had rolled out of bed in the dark, leaving Arthur to his dreams. What was gnawing at him yesterday still gnawed at him today, even before the sun rose, and the sun rises early in June. Later, over coffee, his mother said she’d wait for the florist, and he should have accepted her offer to help. No, she was already doing so much, and not just for the past couple of days. So he sat at the top of the stairs leading to the porch and the front door, keeping an eye peeled for a van from Wellfleet Roses & More.
He cradled a warm mug in his hands. Everywhere in the house, on every sofa and rug, his friends were in the sleeping bags Drew advised them to bring. Except for him and his mother, Eve, no one was awake. Her Volvo, a sign of old money on the Cape if nowhere else, was no longer parked in the gravel driveway behind his rental car. She’s out on an errand, Drew concluded. He took a deep breath and thought: When she’s gone, really gone, this place will belong to me. And Arthur. But for now, until it became his responsibility, the property was hers. She paid the bills, she called the shots.
Was he marrying Arthur because Drew’s family had the perfect place for it? The New York Times was interested enough to request photos of the ceremony. The family name retained some of its former cachet. Arthur was the one, however, who most wanted “to tie the knot,” as he once said to Drew, who winced at the cliché. As soon as Arthur moved into Drew’s apartment, he worked hard to retrofit their lives for a Fifties sit-com that never was, a mash-up of Leave It to Beaver with My Little Margie, shows from before they were born but these days caught in syndication. Drew was more of a 1990s Friends kind of guy—think Monica’s carelessly eclectic style—but he let Arthur have at it in the interests of domestic harmony. In their one-bedroom Chelsea apartment, there was an upright piano, a retro HiFi, and a tiny kitchen made tinier with a Sunbeam waffle iron which, like the piano, they never used. It was all for show. Arthur had in no way been raised in an Ozzie-and-Harriet household, but Drew figured that, for Arthur, that era was when America was optimistic about the future, and Arthur wanted in on some of that optimism. And so, despite an already crowded apartment, like every homosexual in the neighborhood, they added a dog. Drew could foresee the day when packs of wild dogs would terrorize Chelsea, pets abandoned by their gay owners who’d moved on to the next New Man-Magnet. Double Dutch. Tiddlywinks. Unicycle clubs.
In keeping with his pseudo-nostalgic tastes, Arthur declared the Labrador Retriever’s name to be Astro, in honor of the Jetson family’s cartoon dog. Drew protested that was a name for a boy, and Astro had no dick. “Make it Astra,” he told Arthur, who acquiesced though unsure what the difference was. Drew reconciled himself to explaining the dog’s unusual name to everyone who asked. To his relief, no one did. Not even his mother, otherwise inquisitive to a fault. More likely, Arthur had told her about the name during one of their tȇte-á-tȇtes. In any case, they had a young neighbor in their apartment building who called her horrid little schnauzer “Dipshit.” Maybe she thought it was horrid, too. No one names their dog Scooter or Daisy anymore, the latter of which was his family terrier’s name when Drew was growing up in Harrison.
Drew Alfred Worthington II sketched pictures for a living. His small studio, which he shared with a Chinese painter who seldom showed up, was across the river in Jersey City. There was a narrow daybed, and he slept on it one night recently, after he and Arthur had a bad, and of course stupid, argument over their wedding. It started with a tiff over whether to make the reception vegan, and culminated in the inevitable “Are We Really Doing This?”
Drew liked to think he was an artist. He always told people about his group shows at the Drawing Center on Wooster Street, whenever they happened, which was rare, but never what he did to pay the bills. What supported him were his sketches for department store ads, first in the newspapers and now the internet. He was an illustrator-for-hire who consoled himself that Warhol started the same way.
When he met Arthur five years ago, he told him he was an artist. He zeroed in on Arthur where he worked until last year, Barney’s shoe department. Drew had gone in for espadrilles and came out with a date. Then Arthur was promoted to the accounting department. Drew visited him at work and was disappointed to find Arthur’s cubicle in a room with no windows.
They were never preordained to be a couple, or even a number. It just happened. Friends were a little surprised. Drew had money he’d inherit, Arthur none. Drew had a fancy education culminating in a degree from Williams in art history, plus a couple more years at the Art Students League; Arthur, in contrast, nothing beyond Cardozo High School in Queens. Neither could boast of having matinee-idol good looks. But through sheer force of personality, or so he liked to think, Drew had enjoyed a promiscuous, and even glamorous, youth in his obligatory Whore Period. He was famous for it among those who recalled. Whereas Arthur never had a boyfriend, and hardly a hook-up, before Drew. Sex was still fun, even after five years. Despite his lack of Drew’s experience, Arthur taught him new tricks in bed, probably things he’d been saving up for a “serious boyfriend.” He and Arthur were happy. They didn’t step out on each other. They had zero interest in threesomes. They ate the same foods. They were medium-hot Thai and no-anchovies-in-the-caesar-salad type of guys. They were so happy, or happy enough, that Drew wondered why they would risk it all up by getting “hitched,” as Arthur once painfully put it.
Drew heard a commotion in the house. Voices were loud for this hour in the morning, and some sounded incredulous. Arthur came through the front door onto the porch, wearing the same skivvies and t-shirt he’d slept in. When he saw there was no coffee in his fiancé’s hands, he realized something, somewhere, had gone wrong.
“Where’s Eve?” Arthur asked.
“Well, good morning to you, too,” Drew tossed back. “Is it all right for the groom to be seeing the bride before the wedding?”
“Where’s your mother, Drew?” Arthur and Eve had grown close to each other in recent years. He’d even come up to the house without Drew on the odd weekend. His mother and his boyfriend shared secrets Drew was certain he’d never be let in on. He understood. The older he became, the more he resembled his late father: taciturn, gruff, and not always fun to be around.
“See for yourself. Her car’s not here.”
“That’s not an answer, but I’ll take it.” Arthur paused. Drew heard him clear his throat. “Astra is dead.”
Three friends cowered shoulder-to-shoulder in the door, neither quite in nor out of the house. Drew saw Stu, David, and Sarah grimacing as he turned his head to meet Arthur’s eyes. Unlike Arthur, his friends had fetched coffee. But like Arthur, they were still in their sleepwear. Drew immediately intuited there was a script everyone needed to follow, and he had top billing as the Shocked and Disbelieving Host. But this was only Act One, Scene One. The curtain rose on the stage to reveal five characters with four mugs. Arthur was cast as Iris, Greek Goddess of Bad News; the three friends made up the chorus; and Drew was the fully clothed, if mug-less, antagonist.
What? he exclaimed, though he heard Arthur clearly. Arthur said Astra was at the foot of the bed he and Drew had slept in, and she was dead. He said he’d kicked her, but she didn’t move.
“You kicked her? How do you know everything? Could be she’s asleep. Or playing dead. Playing a trick on you.”
Arthur walked back into the house without a word. Sarah stepped out of the door jamb to allow Arthur to pass, and then stood in the spot where Arthur had been.
“Astra’s gone. There’s no breathing.”
Drew wanted to ask Sarah if she thought Arthur’s kick had killed their dog. Were there other signs of abuse? Poison in her water bowl? No, Drew knew better. Dogs die. They have epileptic seizures. Heart attacks. This dog, if Sarah was confirming it, was indeed dead. He didn’t trust Arthur to get facts right, but he’d been at Williams with Sarah, and she was Phi Beta Kappa.
“Drew, go upstairs.” Sarah did what Arthur hadn’t; she rested a hand on his shoulder.
He rose from the step he’d been sitting on since coming outside. When he went into the house, the crowd of his friends parted to let him through. There were more wedding guests, roused and sprawled across the living room. A few held coffee or juice glasses in their hands. No one said a word to him.
The stairs creaked as he ascended to the house’s second floor and the big guestroom he and Arthur commandeered when staying here. As a child, he’d been assigned a tiny room, really a closet. Now, as heir presumptive, he’d moved up in the world. Been moved up in the world.
The door was closed. He didn’t knock. He pushed it open, defeating the stubborn resistance of the layers of paint applied to its hinges and jambs over the years.
The room was bright with morning light. He’d soon notice Arthur lying on the unmade bed, but that was not where he looked first. His eyes went right to Astra. She was on her side, at the foot of the bed, body half in light and half in shadow, four paws touching where the rug began. Drew moved closer and looked down at Astra from straight overhead. Her coat of fur was an uneven mixture of black and very black. Anyone else might have called out her name, hoping to wake her; or, failing that, bend over to feel the dog’s warmth with a palm. Dogs were known to play tricks. But Drew did neither of those things. Arthur hadn’t touched him on the porch, and Drew wasn’t about to touch Astra now.
He turned his head to acknowledge Arthur’s presence. He was on his back and slightly askew. His upper body was propped up with all the bed pillows, save the one where Drew’s head had recently been. His fingers were knitted together on hands resting on his stomach. He looked ready for anything from Drew: sympathy, reproach, tears, anger. What Arthur got was none of that.
“Jesus fucking christ.”
“That won’t resurrect her, Drew,” Arthur said with a sigh.
“Dead, huh?”
“Yeah, dead. As in a doornail. What’s a doornail, anyway? She wasn’t old. Doesn’t seem fair.”
“Every dog is younger than us, Arthur.” He paused. “No dog was going to outlive us. And let’s not get into what’s fair.”
Drew moved onto the bed and forced, as he had the bedroom door, one of Arthur’s interlocked hands to link with his own fingers.
“You walked right by her when you got up. Was she alive then?”
“Frankly, Arthur, it was dark.”
“What happens now?” Arthur asked, on the verge of resuming the tears he’d stopped once Drew entered the room.
“Dunno. My mother will. She knows everyone in this town. There must be someone you call when this happens.”
“It’s Saturday,” Arthur reminded him.
“Dogs die every day of the week.” Drew exhaled. He squeezed Arthur’s hand. He knew Arthur would take it hard, harder than himself. But Drew knew enough not to let on his grief was any less than Arthur’s.
Arthur posed a new question. “Do they do an autopsy? Like on people?” His answer was, once again, that he didn’t know. This was uncharted territory for them. Like two men getting married to each other, this day was already starting with first-time things.
* * *
The stairs creaked louder as they descended them, because Drew and Arthur took each step together, carrying between them a dead dog wrapped in a bedsheet. Their combined weight was well over twice what Drew’s had been going up the stairs.
The first floor of the house was a hive of voices that ceased when they appeared at the foot of the staircase. The entire household was up now. Stu and David presumably told the other guests—Jeffrey, and David’s new Asian boyfriend, whose name Drew had already forgotten—what had happened. The hush held while the pallbearers lowered their bedsheet-wrapped, lifeless dog onto the carpet. Condolences flowed from everyone’s mouth at the same time, canceling each other out. Drew sat on the sofa after those already on it made room for him. Arthur plopped down on the floor next to The Dog Formerly Known As Astra. David leaned toward Drew and offered him a toke on a joint, a gesture Drew dismissed with a flap of his hand.
It didn’t take long for the matter of burial to arise. Drew brought it up first. Arthur said he assumed it would be in the backyard of the beach house, but Drew reminded him the water table was high. What he had wanted to say to Arthur was, Who the hell cares? Arthur waited for his Soon-To-Be Husband to propose any acceptable alternative, given how angry and disappointed he was, cheated of his dog and the joy of this day. Of all the times to teeter over and croak, Drew reflected, it had to be on Arthur’s wedding day.
“Is my mother back?” Drew asked loudly and to no one in particular. No one replied. Of course she isn’t back, you idiot. She’d be right here if she were, telling him what to do and how to do it. The first thing he’d ask her would be about the disposal of animals in general; the second, the disposal of this animal; and third, if he had the balls, which he didn’t, would be whether they were going through with the festivities tonight.
“Man,” David said, happy to keep the joint to himself, “What a bummer. When does the rest of the posse arrive?”
Drew knew David from New York, where they’d fallen in with other as close friends after dismally failing as fuck buddies. Arthur didn’t know that history, or so Drew assumed, though Arthur often surmised more than he was told. Technically, Arthur only knew David as Drew’s friend who never left a party without being fully fried. Drew looked at the clock on the fireplace mantel. It wasn’t even ten a.m. yet, and one of his guests was already stoned. What was that Bette Davis line? Fasten your seatbelts.
“Like I know? How long does it take a caravan of Marys and their BFFs to get their faces on, in the middle of the night, and make it to Wellfleet?”
Jeffrey, accustomed to being the obligatory sole Black guest at many white people’s social events, was counted on to supply comic relief. Today was no different. He snorted through his nose and replied, “As long it takes to knock-knock on a door, walk into a bar with a priest and rabbi, and change a lightbulb?” People grinned, but no one laughed.
The screen door to the porch made a sound when Eve pulled on its door handle. She’d wrapped her hair in a scarf and was wearing what she referred to as her “Capri pants.” She wore no jewelry—this early in the day, she must have thought she could get away with being what she otherwise considered “half-dressed.”
Somehow she managed a smooth entrance, even with the large bags from Bagel Hound in her arms. She was adept at using a foot to open doors.
“You’re all up? These are still warm if we eat them right away.”
Drew stood. His sneakers’ heels backed up against the bedsheet-wrapped lump on the floor. David extinguished his joint in his hand, the smooth move he was adept at.
“Mom, let’s go into the kitchen. I’ll help you with those. We need to talk.”
A large, rough-hewn wooden table dominated the middle of the kitchen. Drew sat on one side, his mother on the other. Ten minutes later, probably thinking he had had time enough to explain the situation to Eve, Arthur and Sarah joined them at the table. They were correct. Drew and Eve had already lapsed into silence.
“My mother says some outfit called ‘Critter Control’ will come for Astra.” Drew dared a quick glance at Arthur. His face displayed neither approval nor disapproval. But Arthur did ask the first question.
“What about the marriage ceremony? The party?”
Eve was quick to respond. “We’ll go ahead with everything. Of course.” Drew speculated: Well, it’s all paid for, and with her money. Guests had already arrived, or soon would. His mother would not be sentimental about this. “Your guests presumably have lives they have to get back to.” Nuptials that his mother six months ago thought were just this side of scandalous—now the whole Cape would know she had a queer son—she was now determined to make go as planned, because her reputation as a hostess was at stake. In the run-up to today, her shame had inevitably given way to vanity. “And your wedding license isn’t good forever, you know.” Yes, Mother, you’ve made your point.
Eve’s hand slid across the table toward Sarah’s, but halted halfway. As he and Arthur left the room, Drew could hear Eve say to Sarah that it was a blessing, if not optimally timed. “Think of what a vet would have charged for dog MRIs and chemotherapy.”
* * *
Drew and David relaxed in the upstairs guest room. Critter Control came and left with neither protest nor tears from Arthur, whom Drew last knew was sitting on the porch. He assumed he must be waiting for his sister and brother-in-law to pull in from Long Island, the furthest any guests were coming. Judy and her George were the only family Arthur mailed invitations to.
It was two-thirty, and Drew decided the day was far enough along for him to partake of David’s excellent dope. They’d moved on to a bong. He could hear the rest of his friends outside in the backyard shouting playful curses at each other as they played renegade, no-rules croquet. His mother, thinking of everything, had laid out the wickets for them.
“What a bummer.”
Drew reminded David he’d said that already.
“I don’t mean your dog this time. Though that, too. I mean, whaaat, marriage?”
“Why a bummer?” Drew said, regretting the direction this conversation was headed. They’d had this talk before, and David couldn’t possibly add anything new. “I love Arthur. Arthur loves me.”
“Well,” David drawled, pleased with himself. “Put a bow on this bitch. Or should I say, a wedding ring. It’s love all around. You’re a genuine killer-diller, Drew. I mean, Future Mrs. Arthur. You’re pussy-whipped already. Or should I say puppy-whipped? Arthur is acting as if he lost his firstborn child instead of a canine. Don’t get it. Let’s not beat a dead dog, shall we? Hah hah. I’m a cat person, anyway. By the way, speaking of offspring, skip the surrogate-mother-in-Vermont part. You might as well pass go and proceed directly to divorce court. Did you have Hubbie sign a prenup?”
He could have asked David why he was here, if that’s what he thought. But he understood David’s reasoning, as well as his ill-concealed envy. His presence granted him the right to say, at some future time and in his best diva voice, “I told you so.” The four most delicious words in the English language. Drew used them himself on occasion.
“Where’s your date, David?” Drew still couldn’t remember his name.
David shrugged. “Dunno. He’s probably making the all-too-intimate acquaintance of your knockout friend, Son of Ham Jeffrey. Love? This may be it, at proverbial first sight. Well, easy come, easy go. Give me the bong.” When he reached for it, Drew noticed that David, who had never seen the inside of a gym, still boasted the muscular forearms that attracted Drew to him years ago. What could have been, Drew mused.
“Time for you to go, David, but not to rescue your boyfriend from Handsome Jeffrey’s clutches. Go find Arthur and send him up here. It’s time for us to get ready.” But Drew had no intention of dressing for the ceremony yet. It was hours away. Instead, he was going to take off what few clothes he was wearing and give his fiancé’s ass the prenuptial ride of its life.
* * *
“Your mother still gonna be the priest?” Arthur asked. “Someone downstairs is wondering what church was marrying us.”
“Not priest. The wedding officiant. She wrote away and got some diploma. Anyway, it’s fake. Remember, we go to City Hall next Thursday and they make it official.”
“Well, I think it’s a little incestuous. Your own mother marrying us.”
“Just think of her as the captain of the ship, because that’s what she is.”
Arthur remarked that if they had to do something official about Astra’s death, too, maybe they could do it at City Hall the same time. The city had issued her her dog tags, Arthur reminded him. “I wonder if dying out-of-state makes any difference.”
Drew replied he doubted it. Arthur nodded and adjusted his black bowtie yet again. It had been chafing at his neck since he put it on. Otherwise, their rented tuxedos fit them well. They donned them after they, postcoital, finished showering together. Arthur was growing anxious and looked repeatedly at his watch. They sat next to each other on the edge of the bed. Arthur nervously toyed with Astra’s leash, wrapping and unwrapping it around his left forearm.
“Your sister get here?”
“Yes, and with George. They brought us a big present.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Dunno. They said Astra would enjoy it.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t tell them.”
Drew rested his hand on Arthur’s.
“Arthur, look, this has got to be tough on you. You were so looking forward to this day.”
“I still am. Aren’t you?”
“In my mind, we’ve been married a long time already. No, I mean with Astra and all. Is this okay?”
“Is what okay? Say what you want to say, for chrissake.”
“Are you—are we—really in the mood for this?” The insertion of “really” in Drew’s question was entirely gratuitous.
Arthur said what Drew should have expected he’d say. “I lost my dog this morning. And now, what, I’m losing you, too?”
Drew stepped up to the plate. He’d pushed aside his wedding-eve doubts and misgivings for the moment. He owed Arthur this. He should take him in his arms and kiss him. Instead, he chose instead to squeeze Arthur’s hand with his own. He knew better than to say they could get another dog, or that Arthur would “get over it.” He was not superstitious, but if events this morning weren’t an omen, then nothing was. Worse news than a dog’s death could be on its way. He didn’t want Arthur to wander off any place he couldn’t keep an eye on him.
“Arthur, we’re in it for the long haul.” At that instant there were two Drews in his head, but only one had spoken, the same one who had added “really” to his previous utterance. The silent Drew ordered the other one to go away.
“I know how special Astra was to you.” Told to retreat, Drew Number Two threw in that “to you” to rob the good from whatever Drew Number One was trying to say.
“There was nothing special about Astra. Except she was ours.”
Drew could have reminded Arthur that Astra had that weird black spot on her tongue, but he didn’t. He knew he corrected Arthur too often.
Long before he’d met Arthur, Drew tagged along with David to a dinner party on the Upper East Side. The guests were A-list gay men. Bankers, Broadway producers, a few of the Idle Rich. The conviviality ended, however, as soon as one guest said he’d just taken his dog to the vet’s to be “put down.” This past year, he watched his dog get weaker and sicker until he couldn’t bear it any longer. Drew wondered: Were his parents lying to him when they said a farmer had adopted Daisy?
The next day, Drew called the host to thank him. The host fell over himself to explain that this same man, who yesterday paid for the killing of his dog, had watched his lover deteriorate and die in agony a decade earlier. Euthanasia not being a legal option for human beings in New York, the host added. Drew wondered if he’d just been told a joke. The lover suffered for more than two years, incontinent and blind, the host went on to say, the dog was in misery half that time. It’s a dog’s life after all, isn’t it, he said, and sometimes mercifully shorter than the owner’s.
“Astra was special to me, too.” That was not precisely true. Comparing one grief with another might strike Arthur as demeaning, even cruel. He’d let Arthur be sad for now, hoping he might have his emotions under control by the time of the ceremony. It was only a few hours away, but he had seen Arthur’s mood turn mercurial before. For his part, Drew could not predict how he’d feel standing next to Arthur, in front of friends and family. He wished David was still in the room with his bong and killer weed.
“You know, Drew, in some states, a dog can preside over a wedding. As—what was that word?—‘officiant’. Or as a witness. Good thing we weren’t counting on that.”
“This is Massachusetts, Arthur. You couldn’t buy booze on a Sunday here until a few years ago. Much less let an animal marry you.”
“But this was the first place to allow gay marriage.”
“Yeah, two dykes in Malden. I think they got divorced a year later. Another first for the Commonwealth.” Drew couldn’t remember who quipped that marriage is “a kind of friendship recognized by the police,” so he didn’t quote it to Arthur. He was glad he didn’t. Not the right time or place to belittle what Arthur believed. But it nonetheless summed up Drew’s opinion of the government licensing people’s private lives.
He heard the stairs creak. Eve didn’t think it necessary to knock on the door either, because she barged in waving a piece of paper in one hand and a small box in the other. “Caterer’s here,” she said to them both. “Now we’re just waiting for the package store boy. That’s liquor store to you, Arthur.” Drew caught his mother glancing at the dog leash wrapped around his boyfriend’s forearm, no doubt wondering if it would soil his rented tux.
“Here,” she said to the young men as she extended the hand holding the box. “These are your boutonnieres. And before you ask, the answer is yes. They match. Exactly.”
* * *
The ceremony in the front yard was over, short enough and the crowd young enough for everyone to stand. Eve was spared the bother of renting chairs. She beamed as mistress of ceremonies. In her Vera Wang, she was deliberately the best dressed person, which wasn’t hard given how many of Drew’s friends were in shorts and flip-flops. Eve’s dress would have impressed the neighbors, had his mother been brave enough to invite any. Even in a tux, Drew was upstaged.
Now was time to herd everyone into the backyard, where they’d open gifts and enjoy the reception. Small round tables topped with linen tablecloths stood where the croquet wickets had recently been. The tidbits to eat were many and colorful. Floral arrangements from Wellfleet Roses & More were everywhere. The Times stringer was snapping multiple pictures. Drew caught a glimpse of David’s short boyfriend trying, unsuccessfully, to rub shoulders with tall Jeffrey. He took an instant dislike to the boyfriend, which he’d been ready to do anyway. Drew did not want David humiliated any further today.
The centerpiece came into Drew’s view, an immense wedding cake. He was pleased until he saw two little plastic men in tuxedos and holding hands at the apex, with a minuscule black dog heeling by their side.
Sarah gave them antique cocktail glasses in a hand-hewn mahogany box, Jeffrey season tickets to the Met, Stu a beautiful Japanese tea bowl. Eve’s gift was already known to her son and new son-in-law. It was this wedding. David brought them nothing. The box from Judy and George loomed largest among the gifts. Drew dreaded opening it, spooked by what Arthur’s sister had said about it. But Arthur dived in.
The colorful box, stripped of its even more colorful wrapping paper and ribbons, contained an indoor dog house. They’d have to assemble it, an apologetic George offered from the sidelines. Judy explained they knew Arthur and Drew lived in an apartment, and they couldn’t have a normal outdoor doghouse. Like normal people, was the unspoken part. No one had told Arthur’s sister and brother-in-law the dog was dead and on ice at Critter Control until someone issued further instructions. Per aspera ad astra, Drew reflected. Through Hardships To The Stars, the Latin motto of so many endeavors, from the State of Kansas to American rockets launched into space. But not their dog Astra’s, or, in all likelihood, this marriage’s. Errare humanum est. To err is human. No, that wasn’t fair to Arthur. Errare Drew est. Sitting on the bed earlier with Arthur had been their last chance to talk, but he had been a coward.
At the same time, Drew wanted to give Arthur everything that was in his power to give, and that generosity battled with whatever was newly lodged inside of him, a lump as heavy as the dog he and fiancé had hauled down the staircase. Something inert, something that had expired elsewhere in the world, something without purpose that he’d have to carry around. The freshly minted husband standing next to him would feel its numbing presence one day, too, because no two people in love can be spared each other’s burdens. What Drew was experiencing wasn’t the usual bridegroom’s regret in surrendering bachelorhood. The mating rituals of heterosexuals were tired, absurd, and ridiculous, but something else was gnawing at him. If he were more like David, he could take a step back, poke fun at everything, show how devastating his wit could be. No, Drew was taking the world at its most dead-serious. After “sealing the deal,” as Arthur might put it, Drew was changed in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. He wasn’t what he had been, but the details evaded him. He’d traded in some part of himself for the sake of Arthur’s happiness, and its absence rendered Drew hollow despite the heavy weight inside him.
When the cake was cut a half hour later, and the champagne flutes refilled, David preempted Sarah to propose the first toast. The devilish grin on his face might have warned Drew what was coming, but at that moment his eyes were focused on a beaming husband.
“Listen up, everyone,” David started. “A toast! To the one that got away, and the one who got him. Here’s to our happy newlyweds, Drew and Arthur!”
Drew was relieved. But David’s toast had one more line, and he pitilessly, perfectly, paused before delivering it.
“And to Astra, Doggie Dearest, looking down upon them this evening from the firmament!” David was first among the assembled on Eve’s backyard to drain his glass, and he signaled the best-looking waiter to fill it again.
John Whittier Treat’s 2015 novel The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House, was a finalist for the Lambda Prize for Best Gay Fiction. A novella, Maid Service, was published in 2020 by Jaded Ibis Press, and his second novel, First Consonants, came out in 2022. Treat’s new novel is The Seventh City of Refuge, from Phylum Press, is a contemplation of modern risk set among survivalists in rural eastern Washington State. His opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and Out magazine. His current project is a collection of short stories exploring America in the age of AIDS, Remembering Our Own.
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