Games Boys Play

Tess left Danny. She had quoted every promise, every word verbatim, that he ever said to her to get her to stay with him. And when she couldn’t remember the words anymore, she had flung a list of his wrongdoings at his head and stormed out of the arched front doors of their home.

That was three months, four days and exactly twenty-two hours ago. He knew because Danny called him that morning to tell him so. That call came to him five hours and thirty-two minutes ago, right in the middle of a double order of Eggs Benedict and his second glass of orange juice.

Rusty stood in the entrance of Danny Ocean’s house. He hadn’t bothered to knock—there was no reason to. Danny had given him a key the moment he and Tess bought the house, for those occasional nights when Tess left him. His friend would call and his voice would be grim, “She packed her bags again, Rusty, and I say good riddance to the Devil Woman.”

He could always tell—like how he knew when Danny would fuck up a job two steps before Danny even realized he made a mistake. And when Danny was playing the mournful pup, he would call Rusty. He would hint that maybe they should go to a bar or a club, or one right after the other. And then maybe they could find someone to play some cards; maybe find a girl to give them a dance. But Rusty would show up at the door, two six-packs in hand and Danny would open the door to him wearing nothing but flannel pajama bottoms, holding a slice of pizza.

“A bit of cold comfort,” Rusty would tell him each time before walking in and making his way toward the living room. “A bit of cold comfort,” he would say as he held out a sweating longneck bottle to Danny.

There would be beer and pizza for Danny, something less greasy for Rusty—a thick sub-like sandwich with peppers and vinegar, perhaps. And they would sit on Danny’s brown-leather club sofa while a game of football played in the background. Neither watched the game, though they both occasionally broke their silence to utter something along the lines of “those fucking Giants” or grunt something unintelligible about yellow flags when there were none.

A second six-pack into it and Danny would look at Rusty who sat on the other end of the couch. Danny’s face would be reddened by the alcohol, his mouth shining from the film of grease that sat on top of the five pieces of extra-cheese pizza that Danny consumed. Then there would be a shy slide across the firm leather cushions of the couch—shy as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing; shy as if Danny didn’t do the exact same thing each time Tess left him.

Rusty would put his sandwich down, wipe his hands off on a napkin and brush crumbs from his chest. Then he would turn to Danny who, having pressed his thigh against Rusty’s leg, would say, “She’s left me for good, Rust.”

“No,” Rusty would tell him and he knew his breath smelled like the peppers from his sandwich because Danny’s nose would wrinkle. “She hasn’t left you for good, Danny,” he would say each time. “You know she hasn’t.” But he wished she would so Danny would need him more often, so he could feel the warmth of Danny’s thigh against his every day.

“You didn’t see her this time, Rust.” And Danny would lean back against his couch, slip down into the seat further and rest his head on the back cushion. He would, as he always did in this game of theirs, heave a heavy sigh and roll his head onto Rusty’s shoulder. He would close his eyes and say, “She was furious. She kept saying to me how it was my fault that she was leaving because I couldn’t stop planning, couldn’t stop formulating ways to feel that thrill of excitement that the heists gave me. ‘Why don’t you just admit that I don’t make you feel that way, Danny?’ she yelled at me.”

Then Danny would turn and lean into Rusty; that was the moment Danny’s hand would touch Rusty’s leg and Rusty would spread his legs wider as the heat hit him in the gut. Danny’s arm would snake around Rusty’s waist and Rusty would turn just in time for Danny’s lips to press against his—just in time for Danny’s fingers to unbuckle his belt, for his hand to slip inside Rusty’s pants.

And now Rusty was standing inside Danny’s house and Danny wasn’t walking down the hall to greet him. He passed each room as he went further in, stopped when he reached the kitchen. The beer in his hand weighed heavy as he stood there staring at the refrigerator. He dropped them on the kitchen island thinking that they would be within easier reach when the two of them came back to get them later.

At the end of the hall was the bedroom that Danny and Tess shared before she left. Rusty held the brass doorknob gingerly, as though the knob was made of glass or something else as delicate, and he turned it slowly, tentatively. He stood in the frame of the door, filling the open space and he stared at the bed where Danny Ocean sat.

Danny was sitting upright, his back against the headboard of his four-poster. The television set across the room was on an infomercial. Some woman who looked a lot like Tess was raving about the latest, lightest skin regiment.

Danny’s face was unshaven, as if he hadn’t taken a blade to his face in a week. His hair was unkempt in an unflattering way that Rusty somehow still found sexy. His Napoleon of Crime looked rugged, and alluring, and, yet, he also looked miserable underneath it all.

Rusty moved towards the bed—towards Danny—when Danny said, “I told her this time, Rust. I told her that she doesn’t fill me with it, that it was never her,” and his voice broke on the word ‘never’ as he swallowed it back and patted the bed for Rusty to climb up beside him.