The program opened with a Friday evening session that sounded as un-missable as all the rest, so I went into debt on favors and found somebody willing to swap an early shift for a late one. By two-thirty I was out of my crappy uniform, showered, shaved, packed, and on the road. I’d arrive too early, but I had nothing else to do with my energy. Besides, it didn’t matter – Halley had told me that her work was all early starts, and that she was done by three at the latest, so I wouldn’t need to sit around in my car waiting when I arrived.
I’d amassed a few more details about her in the weeks leading up to the roadshow, so now, in addition to her address, I knew that she lived in a basement flat under her grandparents’ house which had its own entrance if you followed the path at the side, and don’t worry about the dog, he’s so old he barely gets up anymore…
All of which was handy to know, but…
I knocked on the side door and two seconds later it was wrenched open by a long-limbed guy with messy dyed-black hair, two delicate silver skulls quivering from a ring at each earlobe, and a fat bar shot through his right eyebrow…
His face lit up. “Bede!!” he exclaimed. “My man, you made good time! Musta ate up that road!”
I tried to come up with a response, but nothing happened. My heart hammered in my throat. This…doesn’t compute…
He saw me floundering and grimaced momentarily. “It’s Halley,” he said, pointing to his chest, sounding it out as Hal – Lee, “not Hay-ley. Halley. Like that ye olde astronomer guy…”
“I – uhhh…” Nope. I was still fresh out of words.
“Come in, dude,” he enthused, opening the door all the way and flattening himself against it, gesturing me over the threshold.
I found my tongue. “I, um…might just grab my things from the car first…”
“Sure thing,” he agreed. “Want a hand?”
“I’m fine,” I squeaked, scuttling up the path, clicking down on my key fob over and over, watching my car’s lights flicker as it unlocked then locked then unlocked then…
Oh god oh god oh god…get yourself together, Bede! It doesn’t matter! You aren’t here to go on a date!
I can do this, I told myself, lugging my gear back toward the house. I just need to re-set my head.
And my expectations? Well…yeah, maybe. Maybe I had thought…or hoped…or wondered…what might happen if we ever…y’know, met. But…No. Doesn’t matter.
I was obviously still coming off kind of flustered, because the first thing Halley said to me, relieving me of one of my bags as I wrestled with the door, was;
“Hey…are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “It’s just – this is all a little bit weird…”
He grinned, and there was something slightly provocative about it. “Good-weird or bad-weird?”
“Good-weird, obviously,” I blurted. I mean, what else was I gonna say to somebody who was hosting me totally for free for the next two days?
But an hour – and two beers each into a six pack – later, I’d concluded that it was good. And no longer weird. Much better this way, I told myself. Less complicated. Halley was still Halley. He had the same zany sense of humor, same turns of phrase I knew so well by now, only housed in a different shell than I’d pictured – lean, sprawling, porcelain-skinned, and capped by that shock of emo-dark hair, adorned with intriguing jewellery…
He caught me appraising him, making comparisons to whatever cute bunny I’d conjured up in my imagination…
“What, bro?”
“Did it hurt?” I asked him. “Getting your eyebrow done like that?”
He shook his head. “Nah, not much. Nor this one,” pulling up his t-shirt to expose another thick dumbbell nestled through the skin immediately above his belly button. “Buuut…that’s as far south as they go. I don’t have any really daring ones – too much of a wuss for that.”
Uh…okay…I desperately needed something else to think about, something that wasn’t a mental visual of what might be ‘further south’ of that svelte white abdomen, pierced or otherwise…
“Did – do you think your parents were like, into astronomy or something?” I said. “I mean, with your name…”
Halley snorted. “Well, given they were both seventeen year-old high school dropouts, I doubt it…”
Oh. Um. Whoops. “So have you always lived with your grandparents?”
Halley shook his head. “Not always-always. We all lived here together – like, when I was a baby. And then…Mom kinda had a rough patch, with uh, y’know, drugs and stealing and shit, and my grandparents got custody of me. I don’t really remember that, I was too little. She got cleaned up, though, and got herself through college, starting when I started at school.”
He pointed at the floor between his feet. “We lived down here while she was doing that – Gran and Pops had the basement kitted out so she could be mostly independent. And then…so, she graduated when I was nine, and when I was eleven she got married, and I went and lived with her and Carl instead. And that…honestly, it was never awesome – from my perspective, anyhow. But there’s no reason my mom shouldn’t get to have another go at life.”
Stretching out straight, locking his hands behind his head, he confided; “The thing is, they’re both super-religious, and by the time I was fifteen, it just wasn’t working. They didn’t like my video games, didn’t like my music, my t-shirts, my friends, and Carl especially? He really didn’t like this sorta vaguely androgynous vibe I’ve got going on. He was worried I was gonna warp my little brother’s mind, and I was like, how? Tell me how am I gonna screw with a three year old’s concept of masculinity?”
“Yeah,” I stuttered, “I mean, that’s…”
“Anyway,” he sighed, “it all just got quite…extra for a while – but my grandparents kind of intervened. They still had custody, and so they brought me back here and they just…fucking…let me be, because they’re amazing awesome people – and look!” He flung out his arms grandly. “I turned out great!”
I laughed. “You sure did…”
“You’re so full of shit, Bede,” he teased, tossing the last beer to me, popping the ring on his own third can. “I could be an axe murderer for all you know. I could be planning to dismember you in your sleep tonight…”
“Leave it ’til tomorrow night, eh?” I advised him. “Then at least the journey’s worth it to me. Plus I’d like to see some of this roadshow before I die…”
Halley choked on his beer, put it down, blew his nose, laughed some more. His laugh was surprisingly high-pitched, close to a giggle, and it made me feel kinda glowy inside. Actually, that was probably the three beers…
“You’re gonna get to see some in, like, two hours,” he pointed out once he had his amusement under control. “Meantime, we should get something to eat. You wanna head out, or shall we sit here like a pair of slugs and order in some pizza?”
“I vote for option two,” I said. “I’m gonna turn into a beer conduit pretty soon.”
His face screwed up in confusion, causing the eyebrow bar to protrude very slightly at the top. “A what -duit?”
“A pipe, basically,” I told him. “An object through which liquids pass…”
Halley laughed again. “You have all the words, don’t you, Bede? Which I guess I already knew from reading your stuff. You an English major?”