Free Everybody Loves You by Ethan Mordden

I said, in the murmur of late-night Pines for the dishing of persons but inches away, “do you think Tom is straight?”
    â€œHe surely is. But he’s nice, for a gringo.”
    â€œYou don’t find an interior contradiction in a Pines-loving, massage-giving, former porn-posing man who doesn’t date women and doesn’t know men?”
    Carlo shrugged. “There’s contradictions all over the place. Who’s not a contradiction, when you look close enough?”
    â€œYou aren’t. I’m not.”
    He grinned. “Ain’t we got fun?”
    â€œDid you ever run into Tom along the Circuit?”
    â€œSure. He’s been around about as long as any of us.”
    â€œWell, did you ever try to set something up?”
    He shook his head. “You look at a guy like that and you think, Hey, that’s damn hot cake, now how about a slice? But wait a bit here. Never saw a man could talk to you for so long without knowing you’re there. His quarter’s twenty cents short, right? A smart guy would not want to take that on.”
    â€œHe doesn’t really seem dangerous, though, does he? I mean, he’s strangely vacant, all right, but—”
    â€œNo, I catch that story. I truly do. See a tough guy like that who’s kind of wounded and trying to be likable, and you think, I bet there’s some real tender inside him, if only I could reach it. What a lover he’d make then, right? Is that the story? Some guys really go for that. So I’ll tell you—don’t go messing around looking for tender in Tom Adverse to strike that vein in there. Like what I told you before about the rough and smooth—you ain’t going to hit gold. You’ll bust a volcano.”
    In slow motion, whispering, he imitated an eruption; and went to bed.
    Taping had energized me too much to consider sleeping. I took a walk along the beach, did some reading, and made myself a sandwich. I was halfway through it when Lionel came down. Besides dating idiots, he also mystifies his friends by wearing very questionable outfits. At the moment, he had on a white karate gi over an elaborate jockstrap of hempen webbing, the kind of thing you normally only encountered in the fashion layouts in After Dark. Lionel was also, at the moment, very shaken.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” I asked.
    He held out a hand: wait, let me collect my thoughts, choose my words. He kept pacing and looking upstairs.
    â€œLovers’ tiff?” I asked.
    â€œNo, I … I don’t know how to express this. You’ll … will you promise to take me seriously?”
    A thought struck me. “You saw a ghost, right?”
    He stared at me.
    â€œWhen Tom was the only one who saw it,” I went on, “I dismissed it as Tom in a Mood. When Carlo joined in, I must admit, it was disquieting. But what the hell, what the hell. Now I know it’s a joke! So call the pranksters downstairs and let’s do a little giggling and pushing while—”
    â€œPlease don’t humor me,” he said. “This is not a joke and I’m not giggling. I saw something … phenomenological.”
    Now I stared at him.
    â€œSurely not,” I said.
    He took another look upstairs, then sat on the couch. “I saw something,” he insisted.
    â€œWas it like a lot of little candles? Did it sound like—”
    â€œIt was silent. A sort of metaplasmic laser beam with shapes inside it … bumpy and … spinning…”
    I know Lionel well enough to tell when he’s joking around. He wasn’t.
    â€œYou realize,” I reminded him, “that ghosts do not exist. You realize that.”
    He nodded.
    â€œI mean, there’s no Santa Claus, no Shroud of Turin, and no ghosts. Right?”
    He nodded.
    â€œSo—”
    Bert came down the stairs so quickly he virtually leaped into Lionel’s lap.
    â€œOooh,” Bert gasped. “Like