Free The Fisher Boy by Stephen Anable Page B

His uncle died being interrogated by German troops.”
    Leave it to Ian to worry about demonizing Nazis.
    “Have a seat. Don’t stand there on view for the Decency Patrol.”
    I didn’t want to, not really, not my rational side. I kept remembering what he’d said that awful night of the performance at Quahog. His lip was still split, daubed with mercurochrome. Did that make us “even”? Could I ever be even with one of the Drummonds?
    He pulled a peach, cold as a snowball, from his hamper. “Care for a fruit?”
    “Thanks.” Saying that made it easier to sit on his towel.
    I refused a Swiss Army knife to peel the peach.
    “You’re buffed,” I said. Ian was tanning a caramel color, and shaving his chest; he was much less hairy than I’d remembered. He was handsome in a blond, heavy-jawed way, much more adult than, say, Edward. You can’t help but notice beauty, even in your enemies.
    He inspected my groin. The wind sent granules of sand stinging against my body. Because I was conscious of him evaluating me, I was determined not to reciprocate. He uncrossed his legs, showcasing himself. He said, “It’s always good to get a rise out of people.”
    He was going to play games. Very much in character.
    “I saw you chatting up Arthur’s little protégé, his bit of beachcombing.” Then Ian crossed his legs, again censoring himself, again confusing me. His features tightened. “I haven’t been very nice to you, Mark.” He sighed while thrusting the vodka bottle in my direction. “I haven’t been nice to you since way back when. At St. Harold’s and in Gloucester, when we were kids.”
    Feeling vindicated but slightly embarrassed, I took a slug of vodka.
    “I’m sorry, man.” He never usually used “man” or other dated hipster slang, so perhaps this apology was equally bogus. He clapped his hands onto my shoulders so that he forced me to look directly into his face. He looked fatigued, gray around the eyes.
    He squeezed my shoulders in a quick, confiding way, then drew me toward him so that our chests were touching. He licked at my ear and I could feel his hot breath as he nibbled my earlobe.
    This is betrayal, I thought, of my mother whom he’d insulted, betrayal of all of my family, going back generations. But I took another swig of vodka, raw like paint thinner, down my throat. I remembered all he’d done, all he’d apologized for, then tried to stand but lost my balance.
    My heart was pounding the way it does when my blood pressure gets taken, when the sleeve begins tightening, crushing my arm.
    “Hey, man, relax.” A sexy leer transformed Ian’s face. I had another hit of vodka then another, my eighty-proof excuse for what was happening.
    “It’s not like we’re total strangers,” he said. Conservative in his politics and clothing, he was liberal in ways of the flesh. His chest was like stone. He was far from the beefy stripling of St. Harold’s. I’d done my time with free weights and jogged hundreds of weedy-smelling miles by the Charles, but I felt thin and naive at that moment compared to Ian.
    I was enjoying the sex, but felt a little detached as though I were hovering above us in the hot, salty air, like a soul afloat above its newly-dead body. I was confused about the work my mouth and hands were doing—to someone I half-despised.
    After it was over, he became brusque. He stared out to sea. The coast, the crook of Cape Cod stretching toward Plymouth, was grayish-blue in the distance. He lit a cigarette and smoked with a kind of hunger.
    “You never used to smoke,” I said, and he snapped, “Don’t get on my case, okay? I don’t need an extra physician. I’ve got enough people on my case already, so I sure as hell don’t need you!”
    He slipped the Swiss Army knife back into his wicker hamper, then brushed me and the sand from his towel.
    “You’re not staying to watch the sunset?”
    “You sound like a greeting card.” Ian sounded more weary than hostile. He pulled on