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Ask No Questions

Ask him.

The thought nudged like an elbow in his ribs. Uncomfortable. Persistent.

Darby fidgeted his hand around the chunky-cut glass of Schorschbräu's. The sizzling cap of foam had long since fizzled to a flat ring around the sides of the glass. Every line and web of his thumbprint stood out on the matte finish of condensation.

Ask him.

Darby ran his tongue along the seam of his teeth. Asking would be pursuit. Darby Delancey Cardozo didn't chase anyone.

Bev's glass of Cabernet Sauvignon was untouched too. He reclined in the chair, one arm dangling over the back. He didn't need a stout Sauvignon to loosen him up, make him lean back or slouch or unbutton his starched collar. Darby's company did that.

Darby raised his glass to feign a sip and kept it in place long enough to eye Bev over the rim.

Bev's attention meandered through the restaurant, drifting from one cluster of activity to another. His smile had faded naturally. He wasn't pressured to maintain it out of courtesy. Bev was at ease. Bev was just as comfortable as if he were lounging on the sofa at home with his nose wedged in his collector's edition of Leaves of Grass.

"I Sing the Body Electric," Darby thought. Boy, don't I. Good old Whitman. He tilted his glass just enough to let a malty tide swell at his lips, but didn't open his mouth.

Bev's shoulders were big. His shirt stretched tight over them and pulled in rows of tiger-stripe wrinkles under his arms. Why he hid in that dumpy overcoat all the time, bundled up like an Arctic researcher and shaped like a blunt-cornered rectangle, was a mystery. A hint of color warmed the white fabric. Bev must have eschewed a sleeved undershirt.

Darby sipped without thinking and blanched. His mouth was lukewarm and musty. He swallowed and returned the glass to the folded napkin coaster. When he moved, Bev glanced down at his hand, then at his face. His eyes crinkled from the bottom when he smiled.

"Not your taste, is it?"

"Mm. Oh—nah, it's fine. You?" He blindly swatted each word in Bev's direction as though he were scrambling with a racquet after a shuttlecock. He'd never liked badminton.

"It's great. I love it." Bev hadn't so much as wet his tongue with it yet.

Classical music wafted crisp and sharp through the room like an autumn breeze. Bach? Beethoven? Debussy? Heck if he knew. If Bonnie were here he would have elbowed her as he made that last guess and relished in his victory as she valiantly tried to hold back a bale of snickers. But Bonnie wasn't here, and it wasn't even that funny anyway.

Despite the heavy ambiance of music and clinking porcelain and kitchen cart wheels clattering over linoleum and a hundred overlapping conversations buzzing, a bubble of silence squeezed their table in the corner. Bev leaned back in the chair, studying one of the massive gilded portraits that paraded down the burgundy walls. The big square heels of his oxfords scuffed the carpet as he stretched his leg beneath the table. His ankle hit Darby's. Neither of them moved away.

Darby flattened his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Bev balanced his arm over the back of the crystal chair and clasped his hands.

"Look," he said, still focused on the portrait.

Darby acquiesced.

Lights concealed in the potted lemon trees overlaid the portrait with a golden glow. It needed all the glow it could get. As far as Darby could tell, it was just a painting of some old fart.

" . . . yeah?" he said, because he didn't know what else to say.

Bev still stared at the painting, or maybe through it. His eyes were almost as distant and foggy as those of the hag in the portrait.

"Théodore Géricault," Bev said. "French artist in the Romantic period. This one is a copy from his set Les Monomanes." He sounded like dried peas in a can, rattling off a description on a museum plaque. "1822. La Folle Monomane du jeu."

"Si hablas francés, entonces hablaré español."

"Woman with a Gambling Addiction," Bev said. When he glanced back at Darby, a little smile hitched up the side of his mouth. Darby narrowed his eyes. Well, well, Beverly, he thought, let's see if I ask you now. Bev would never let him forget what had drawn Darby to him in the first place: money. Could anyone blame him though?

But he was over that.

He resigned himself to enough spite to force down a swig of forty dollar booze. It was rank as an eighth grader's Axe-greased armpit and Darby wondered if a bashed-in can from the gas station cooler wasn't any better. He rolled the taste over his tongue and rolled thoughts through his head in a slow, sleepy tumble.

Bev pushed his elbows into the table to prop himself as he leaned forward. "Hey, Darb."

"Yeah?" Darby favored 'yeah's above 'yes's no matter the formality of the conversation; 'yeah's never caught on the edge of his teeth and lisped like 'yes's and other trailing 's's often did. Bev had long ago learned that his 'yeah's weren't flippant and took no offense.

Bev's big arms lay like planks on the table, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the sparse shag of black hair stark against the white linen. His hands were open, palms up, fingers relaxed, as though he were waiting for something. Something, something . . . was he—?

Darby hesitated. Nobody had better be looking. He'd walk out. He'd saunter straight through those swinging double doors. A sigh made his bundled nerves droop and all the tension melt away like frost on a spring morning. He put his hand in Bev's.

Bev laughed that warm laugh that stayed in his throat and never left his mouth. "You could always say no, you know."

"No way." Darby furled his fingers to lace them with Bev's. His hand was dry and cool against Darby's wet one, clammy from his glass. Softer than Darby's. Trim nails, none of them chewed or ragged like Darby's either. Darby squeezed his hand in one quick pulse that calmed him.

"You remember how long we've known each other?"

Darby pursed his lips and angled his eyes at a chandelier. "Three years."

"On the money, baby; right on the dime. Three years today. August 25th."

"Izzat why you decided on an extravagant dinner tonight? Not like it's our anniversary or anything, Bev'rly," he said with a disparaging pffh, as if Bev had just confided he believed the tooth fairy was real. Before he even finished his heart sank like a cinderblock down into his guts. He curled his fingers.

Bev's smile didn't falter. "Aw, Darb. You've hit the nail before I've even told you there was one."

"Eh?" Bev loved his idioms. Even when they made less sense than gibberish.

Bev dodged the question as if it were a landmine and popped one back. "What do you think of me, Darb? Compared to when we first met three years ago."

Well, Darby thought, isn't this a fine fish soup.

He shifted his shoulders like an uneven balance creeping toward equilibrium. "If you're gonna dig at me about the gambling thing again, I got the hint. You're allowed to make only one crack a day about it."

"It's not about that. Come on, Ditto. I'm being serious."

"Oh. Hmm. Umm. Well. I dunno."

"Do you need an icebreaker?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'll go first." Bev leaned a little closer. His voice lowered, almost lost beneath the clattering plates and distant airy laughter. "Before I met you, I lived stiff as a starched suit. Have you ever felt that way, Darb? Like you're not really you but you're watching yourself from far away, mingled in with the crowd that's watching you, too?

"And every moment aware not of your own feelings or thoughts, but aware of the thoughts of others who are around you. And wondering what they think of you? And a sidelong glance makes you itch to check if you've remembered to shave or buttoned your shirt properly because surely they're holding in laughter at you?"

Darby had heard this before and knew it was rhetoric. He didn't need to fumble for a response. Bev knew that too.

"I had never been comfortable before I met you. I'd never known it was possible to be happy with yourself or with living with others instead of feeling like you're meant to be a centerpiece. And when I sat down for lunch with you and your sister that day in the Record Pie diner, watching you two make each other laugh by pronouncing words off the menu wrong and betting on the number of blueberries in the pancakes and drinking creamer instead of coffee—it dawned on me. I wanted to laugh with someone like that too, and ignore the world around me."

Darby watched Bev's brown eyes flicker. "Like how we're in the most white-tie joint in the city, and you didn't wear your overcoat and you pulled up your sleeves and didn't take off your hat and didn't flinch when the waiter with the Errol Flynn mustache gave you the stink eye."

"Bingo again, babe."

"You've gotten comfortable, Bev. I've watched. You've always been confident and go-with-the-flow, but you've gotten so much more . . . relaxed. I like it."

"I like it, too."

"Mm."

"Now you talk to me, Cardozo."

"Cutting to the chase, aren't we?"

Bev was leaning close enough now to nuzzle Darby's forelock, and he did. The table creaked under his weight. "Come on. It's important."

"Ah, gee. Where do I start, then?" His cheeks tingled. Bev's cologne was orangey and sweet and filled his head like a dream.

"From the beginning."

"Phew. I thought we were having dinner, not a stroll down memory lane."

"Dinner hasn't come yet. We have plenty of time. What's the rush?"

Even the impending platters of bluefin tuna flank, foie gras, brioche and mille-feuille weren't enough to quell Darby's wishes that he were at home on the sofa beside Bev instead. God—that cologne rich and heavy like a garden on a humid summer day, and the puffs of breath curling against his cheek. He gripped Bev's hand tighter.

"When I first met you I thought you were a frickin' fop." He closed his eyes.

He still remembered the way Bev had apologized to him after slamming into him on the sidewalk and making him drop his overstuffed grocery bag. Bev had that quaint way of scattering British slang through his speech, absorbed from poring over too much Dickens and Austen. Ostentatious little whit.

"I'm awfully sorry," Bev had said, collecting cans of tomato soup from the gutter. "Say, let me help you with that bag, babe; you look knackered and it's the least I can do."

Bev's voice filtered through the memory. "A fop, huh?" He grinned.

"The worst of the kind. I thought your pockets were so deep you'd get lost in 'em, and that you'd look down on people like Bonnie and me who try to stretch paychecks and don't have Benz lined up like matchbox cars outside."

"But I didn't."

"But you didn't."

"And when you saw I like to share, you wanted to take a dip in those pockets."

"Yup."

"The Great Dollar Chase."

"Darby Cardozo doesn't chase. I wait. I waited and you've given me everything I could ever want."

"Am I still a fop?"

"A little. But in a good way. Like your thoughtfulness and quiet ways of interacting with people that makes everyone feel important and special, and your patience: that's been new to me. Maybe even a little unreal. To me and my sister and probably everyone else you know. I've seen you lose your temper exactly once in three years."

Bev's gaze jolted to Darby's left shoulder where the empty jacket sleeve dangled limply. He caught himself, smiled sheepishly, and massaged the back of Darby's hand with his thumb. "I think that one time was excusable, given the circumstance."

"I bet."

"Hey. I just find it difficult to sit back when my best friend is about two seconds away from waking up in heaven."

Darby shifted uneasily. "You've helped me. A lot. You've helped me take things easier, I guess. And you've helped remind to not be such a rat ba—" He winced. Not be such a what? He could think of a lot of words, but none that weren't vulgar as vomit in this pristine restaurant.

"A two-timing weasel?" Bev offered.

"Thanks, Bev. That. You've helped me to—well—think about other people more. To think about good for them and not just good for me. And to not assume that what I want is the same as what someone else wants."

He couldn't ask now. He lowered his head. Had he really just admitted all that? Geez, he thought. Just put me on a platter and split me open and let everyone take their pick from my guts since I just spilled them all. Bon appétit, babes.

Bev took the chance to rub his cheek against the top of Darby's bowed head. For a second, Darby didn't care about asking anymore. He'd already said it. He doesn't chase. He waits. And waiting wasn't all that bad, if it stayed like this.

Smooch. A quick kiss stamped against his bangs. Then the table squeaked again when Bev leaned back. He still cupped Darby's hand.

"We're a good team, aren't we?"

Darby glanced up and realized he was smiling. "Thought we established that."

"Just checking. I wanted to hear your thoughts on things as they are before I brought anything up."

A flutter of a twinge shuddered in his heart. His fingers flexed into a fist in Bev's hand before he straightened them. "Like what?"

Bev shrugged. "You know, don't you?"

"Try me."

"'First comes love'," Bev said. His grin cranked up a little higher.

"Holy crap." All Darby's blood drained from his brain, his face, his heart, through his heels and down, down, down through the floor. "Baby carriage."

"No!" Bev went white as instant potatoes and gripped Darby's hand. With a shaky laugh, he knocked their knotted hands against the tabletop. Thunk. Thunk. "You missed a step there, bud."

Fuzz piled up like static in Darby's head. Was Bev actually talking or was he imagining it? In the cartoons characters could pinch themselves and jar back to reality. Well. His hand was in Bev's and he didn't have a second one to spare.

Love. Of course they loved each other. Why would Darby have ever considered asking if they didn't? They were best friends and more. People who didn't love each other didn't hold hands in public and speak in hushed tender voices with their foreheads touching. That was a given.

And it was more than that. They'd helped each other through the years. They were comfortable together. They were far better people together than they had been separately. They were a good team. A good . . . couple.

"What do you say, Darb?" Bev dropped his other hand on top of Darby's to sandwich it between his. The embarrassed grin returned. "This isn't how I'd planned to ask, or dreamed it or imagined it. But . . . well . . . I'm asking, and that's what counts."

How strong was that Schorschbräu's, anyway? Darby could list in radio announcer-fashion every elemental component of a given enzyme and draw extensive chemical reaction roadmaps on the back of a napkin after a one-word prompt, but couldn't understand what Beverly Keo was going on about right now.

"Darb . . . ?" Bev patted his hand. "Oh, uh, I'm sorry. Would you rather talk about it a different time? I thought if we set up the mood by reminiscing on how far we've come, and how much farther we could go together, it would—"

"Bev," Darby said, "what in the frosty hell are you even asking me?"

"I'm asking—" Bev's tone went sharp for an instant, for emphasis, before falling back to a murmur "—exactly this. I want to stick with you, Darby Delancey. Now and always. Better or worse. Sickness or health. Are you following the breadcrumb trail here?"

Darby sat like a rock. Oh, naw, he thought.

Bev moved his hand away, keeled to the side, and plunged his hand into his pocket to rummage. Darby watched. His hand was going numb.

Bev straightened and tipped his chin up with resolve as he took a breath. That smile again. A bit embarrassed, a bit apologetic.

He flattened his hand atop Darby's again, hiding it. Something cold and hard and small brushed his skin and stung.

A lump like a barrel cactus swelled up in Darby's throat. Clogged him up and the air and orange cologne couldn't get through.

The cold hard thing encircled his finger. He'd already known what it was. Bev guided it down, gentle as a shy whisper, until it fit around the base of his finger. He moved his hand away and the chunky sterling band glinted back a million tiny stars it mirrored from the diamond chandeliers.

"You have got to be kidding me." The words managed to get past the cactus. "You gotta be fu—"

Bev laughed and it was sweet as maple syrup, the real stuff, not the melted plastic in the red-capped bottles, and Darby clutched at his hand as though it were his last resort.

Bev smoothed his thumb over the ring. "Perfect fit, isn't it?"

"As soon as we get home I'm going to kiss the bejeezus outta you. Maybe more. Ugh. Bev—" And the chandelier sparkles blurred into rainbow splotches like raindrops in front of a street lamp. He tugged his hand away and scrubbed at his eyes.

"Don't cry! You'll make me cry, too," Bev said, and Darby knew he meant it. "I'm sorry. I was going to wait, at least until after we’d eaten, but it seemed like the right time."

"I'm happy." His voice cracked like a porcelain plate on concrete. "I don't know why I'm welling up. I don't know. I don't know. I'm—this—I've never been—"

"Is that a yes, then?"

Darby swiped his sleeve over his face then plugged his hand back into Bev's waiting one. He sniffled. Stared down at their hands, warm and brown on the crisp cool cloth. Squeezing. The big heavy band glimmering on his finger. It was warm now too.

"Yep."

Bev stood in his haste to bend over the table and get in Darby's face. Darby closed his eyes and lost everything around them as he took the slow careful kiss. Darby's chest thrummed as if filled with a thousand buzzing cicadas. He almost reached up to grab Bev's tie and drag him closer, but before he could they parted with a dry smack.

Exhilar-frickin-ation, he thought. It was. It pulsed through his nerves and left him breathing hard and shallow through his nose. His legs were as weak as if he'd just stumbled over the marathon finish line.

"You realize we can call each other something else, now?"

"Yeah?" Darby said, only half-listening. He ran his tongue over his lips. Still tingly. "What's that?"

A cart swung toward their table, guided by the powdery waiter with the Errol Flynn mustache that didn't do much otherwise to make him look like Errol Flynn. He lifted the dome from a dish and steam mushroomed out.

"Foie gras, sir?"

"That's mine, thank you." Bev flashed a showstopping white smile. "And the bluefin steak is for my fiancé."

All righty, Darby thought. It took him a few seconds to realize Mr. Flynn had clacked the dish in front of him. He stared at Bev across the table.

"Well, well, well," Darby said in an upwards stairstep tone when Mr. Flynn careened his cart away. He balanced his chin on his fist. "I believe I like the sound of that."

"Don't you," Bev said around a gob of foie gras.

"Let me hear it again."

"I'm eating, see?" Bev raised his fork. "And you better tackle that fish, too. It goes rubbery when it's cold."

"Say it."

"I'm eat-i-i-i-ng."

"I demand you say it."

"You always have been rather demanding."

"And you like it."

"How are you so sure, hmm?"

"It turns you on."

"Ah." Bev packed the remaining half of the gooey liver into his mouth. "If that's the criterium we're using, then you like it when I deny you until you need to beg."

"I don't beg. I don't chase."

"Sure thing, babe."

"Bev—" Darby raised his hand to make the ring sparkle.

"Okay, okay. You've made it awkward, haven't you? You're my fiancé. The one I plan to spend my life with, who stole my heart, who's looking devilishly handsome in that white suit and who's going to have a delightful time with me on the couch tonight."

Darby invented a few new curses under his breath. Then aloud: "You're doing things to me, Bev'rly." He carved a semicircle out of the fish, chewed twice, and washed down the lump with warm Schorschbräu's.

"You know," he said, "you beat me to the punch."

Bev jolted a little and a tine of his fork screeched across the plate. "What?"

Darby spent a long time chewing the next bite, relishing it. Beg, Bev, beg. Another bite. Another swallow.

"Mhmm. Always a step ahead, aren't you?"

"How's that? You weren't planning to propose to me tonight, were you?"

"Propose!" Darby almost howled. Oh, he loved that. "Maybe so."

Bev casually played his fingers around the stem of his wine glass. "You didn't get me a ring, did you?"

Darby winced. "I wasn't going to officially propose anything. I was just going to . . . test the water. Hint a little."

"We'd still be in the Stone Age if things were left to you, Darb."

"It turned out great though, didn't it! Fi-an-cé," he said in a teasing singsong.

"It always does."

"I love you, Bevvy-boy. I really, really do."

Bev gave a moonstruck little sigh. He watched Darby fondly.

"Would you still care for dessert?"

"Let's see . . . spend half an hour longer here with a big plate of mille-fueille, or haul home and share sugar there?"

"Home?"

"Home."

They scraped the last bits of fish and liver from their plates in contented silence.

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