As if Brazil were not in enough trouble already, Axel ordered a tin bucket filled with
iced-down bottles of Rolling Rock beer. This was going to work just fine, the music
critic was sure of it. Brazil was a puppy and could be trained. Axel was stunned to
suspect that the guy might never have been drunk in his life. Incredible. What did he
grow up in, a monastery, the Mormon church? Brazil was wearing another pair of
slightly too-small jeans left over from high school days, and a tennis team T-shirt. Axel
tried not to think about what it might be like to get those clothes off.
“Everything here’s good,” Axel said without looking at the menu, as he leaned into candlelight.
“Conch fritters, crab cakes, Po-Boy sandwiches. I like the baskets, and usually get fried
scallops.”
“Okay,” Brazil said to both Axels sitting across from him.
“I think you’re trying to get me drunk.”
“No way,” Axel said, signaling for the waitress.
“You’ve hardly had a thing.”
“I don’t usually. And I ran eight miles this morning,” Brazil pointed out.
“Man,” Axel said.
“You’re sheltered. Looks like I’m gonna have to educate you a little, pull you along.”
“I don’t think so.” Brazil wanted to go home and hide in bed. Alone.
“I don’t feel too good. Tommy.”
Axel was insistent that food would prove the cure, and what he said was true to a point.
Brazil felt better after he threw up in the men’s room. He switched to iced tea, waiting
for his internal weather to clear.
“I need to go,” he said to an increasingly sullen Axel.
“Not yet,” Axel said, as if the decision was his to make.
“Oh yes. I’m out of here.” Brazil was politely insistent.
“We haven’t had a chance to talk,” Axel told him.
“About what?”
“You know.”
“Do I have to guess?” Brazil was getting annoyed, his mind still in Dilworth, really.
“You know,” Axel said again, his eyes intense.
“I just want to be friends,” Brazil let him know.
“That’s all I want.” Axel couldn’t have agreed more.
“I want us to get to know each other real well so we can be great friends.”
Brazil knew a line when he heard one.
“You want to be better friends than I want to be. And you want to start right now. No
matter what you say, I know how it works. Tommy. What you’re saying is insincere. If
I told you this minute that I’d go home with you, you’d go for it like that.” He snapped
his fingers.
“What’s so wrong about it?” Axel liked the idea quite a lot, and wondered if it were
remotely possible.
“See. A contradiction. That’s not called being friends. That’s called being laid,” Brazil enlightened him.
“I’m not a piece of meat, nor do I care to be a one-night stand.”
“Who said anything about one night? I’m a long-term kind of guy,” Axel assured him.
Brazil could not help but notice the two guys with bulging muscles and tattoos, in greasy
coveralls, drinking long-neck Budweisers, glaring at them as they eavesdropped. This
didn’t bode well, and Axel was so obsessed, he wasn’t picking up on the stubby fingers
drumming the table and toothpicks agitating in mean mouths, and eyes cutting, as plans were being made for the dark parking lot when the fags returned to their vehicle.
“My feelings for you are very deep, Andy,” Axel went on.
“Frankly, I’m in love with you.” He slumped back in his chair, and dramatically threw his hands up in despair.
“There. I’ve said it. Hate me if you want. Shun me.”
“Puke,” said Rizzo, whose visible tattoo was of a big- breasted naked woman named
Tiny.
“I gotta get some air,” agreed his buddy, Buzz Shiftier.
“Tommy, I think we should be smart and get out of here as fast as we can,” Brazil
suggested quietly, and with authority.
“I made a mistake and I apologize, okay. I shouldn’t have come over and we shouldn’t be
here. I was in a mood and took it out on you. Now we’re going to make tracks or die.”
“So you do hate me.” Axel was into his crushed, you have-deeply-wounded-me routine.