Hi All! Hope you enjoy the continuation of the story. I'll be keeping to a once-a month schedule, so you can check up about this time each month. Also, I've gone back and tried to correct some items in earlier chapters so the story is a bit more consistent. Your comments and emails are always welcome! J
"Hey! How ya doin' guys?!" Peter cried out as the dogs barked and jumped and generally went crazy as he pushed open the heavy, fortress-like front door.
"Whoa! take `em outside, Peter! They're going to start peeing all over the place again!" his Dad called out as he ran down the stairs and into the foyer.
"OK, OK," he replied as he backed-up onto the tile covered outside porch, a mischievous smile appearing on his face as the dogs followed him out and continued to climb all over him. "You wouldn't do that, guys, would ya? !" he teased before putting down the luggage he was carrying and getting down on his knees to great them.
While the canines continued their enthusiastic assault on Peter, Marty stepped by the raucous crowd and caught the closing door with his shoulder as he dragged a towering trio of battered cardboard boxes over the threshold. "Here's the first delivery," he called as his right foot flattened the rug that had been scrunched up by the dogs.
"Let me give you a hand," Brad said as he pulled the topmost one from the stack. "I think you guys are going to be in the apartment, so we should take all these upstairs. Marty, is that going to be OK with you, to be upstairs?"
"Oh yeah, that's great! I think that Pete told me about that already," he replied, "I really appreciate it, but I think anywhere is fine. Just thanks for letting me stay for the summer. And Angie, too."
"We're really glad to have all of you, I'm sure you know that. But's let's get all the stuff unloaded first, especially the fish, before we start celebrating. Peter wanted us to prepare the aquarium so we got it all ready."
"Yea, we should get those critters in as soon as we can, they aren't the best travelers," Marty said. "We hardly stopped all the way here because Pete was worried about them.
"By the way, will Angie be here next week?" Brad said as the led the way through the house.
"Yeah, her semester is about a week longer than ours, so she's coming solo on a cheap flight from Boston."
"And she probably has a ride from the airport, correct
?" Brad said, turning his head back to smile at Marty.
"Yes, I think that Todd has volunteered for that," he replied as he followed the voice and head of Peter's Dad, his view partially blocked by the two boxes he was still carrying.
Marty had only seen the inside of the apartment a few times this past winter while Bik and Laura were staying there. He didn't recall the layout perfectly, but nonetheless remembered it as being kind of cozy, reached from an almost hidden stairway tucked away at the back of the kitchen
Since it was originally a maid's apartment of the type common in large homes built before the depression, it had its own bathroom and even a surprising large sitting area off the bedroom with a view of the back yard from a tall bay window. Mike had completely renovated it himself before his parents moved in over 25 years earlier, so it had a clean, modern appearance with recessed lights, blond wood floors and built-in drawers that still looked fresh.
But he felt that the need to make a few changes to accommodate the guys. One was to install some additional built-in cabinetry in the sitting area to accommodate their computers and create work areas for the two of them, which he did in the same modern style of his earlier renovations. It was a snug fit for two, but the bay window turned out to have just enough space, with the added bonus of the nice view.
The other major change was less utilitarian and more dramatic. Mounting Peter's aquarium directly onto the wall at the top of the stairs, where it was centrally located between the bathroom and the bedroom, it became the visual focus of the entire apartment. Mike had to take the entire wall apart in order to install all the extra supports that the heavy aquarium would need, stuff that no one would ever see, but he know how much the fish meant to his son and wanted both of the guys to have something special.
After Peter got the dogs calmed down and herded back into the house, he rushed back to the car to rescue his fish. He hoped that they were all still alive, but knew that this kind of transfer was very stressfull so quickly brought the padded box into the house.
"You won't have to look for their home," his Dad said as Peter practically ran past him on his way through the kitchen to the apartment stairs.
He knew that his Pop had moved the aquarium from his old room, but was so focused on the fish that he didn't even notice it until he got to the top of the stairs and almost crashed into the metal frame.
`This is great! wow!' he said to himself as he finally looked up, his nose almost touching the glass as he recovered his balance. But he could pause only briefly to appreciate the new installation before he carefully began the process of liberating the fish from their solitary confinement in the bags.
Under his breath, he addressed each swimmer individually as he moved them over, "Easy does it Sammy...Welcome home, Rainbow...you'll be OK, Sparky." It was a delicate task, best done in the dark, and very traumatic for the fish. And it was one that he decided he wouldn't do again (after negotiating a commitment from his Dads to take care of them during the next two academic years.)
He breathed a sigh of relief when he finally transferred the last one over, a blue and yellow Angelfish which was a special favorite. Stroking the top of the tank with this hand, almost like he would stroke his dogs, he carefully replaced the cover then put a blackout cloth over the tank before finally taking a few moments to look over the installation.
He couldn't understand how his Pop had gotten the heavy tank to hang right off of the wall, where it almost seemed to float without any supports directly underneath it. During his grandparent's time there was a small Bauhaus-style table with a lamp, vase and a family picture on the wall above, and that tableau had remained the same for years, even when Bik and Laura occupied the apartment last Christmas. Now, he could hardly believe the transformation.
As he looked around further he saw that same picture, which was a Christmas shot of all the families, mounted to one side of the aquarium. On the other side, to complete the symmetry, was the picture of Marty and Peter and the dogs that had been taken the previous Christmas. Even though the picture was actually hanging correctly on the wall, Peter instinctively reached over and gave it a light touch, just to make sure that it was hanging perfectly straight.
`Just right,' he said to himself before dimming the lights and stepping back down the stairs.
He went back outside to see what was left to be handled, but Marty and his Dads had already carted out all of the boxes, duffel bags, crates and other assorted containers that filled every corner of the interior and trunk of the car. So Peter just made a quick clean-up of the sandwich bags, soda pop cans, toll receipts and other road trip detritus and locked it up for the night.
When he got back upstairs he found Marty just starting to empty the first box, putting their t-shirts and socks into the top row of dresser drawers built into two sides of the now somewhat darkened room.
"Can you see OK in here?" Peter asked.
"It's a little dark for moving stuff around. But I assumed you turned the lights down for the fish, so I can make it work."
The light reduction had definitely made the room a bit dim for trying to sort clothes, but what it lost in practicality was made up for in the sort of romantic character it now had, like the back room at an intimate Italian restaurant. Peter seemed to pick up the passionate side of it and not the practical one as he slipped behind Marty and wrapped his hands around his slim waist.
"You ready for some dinner? I think my Dad's got some good stuff for us. I'm pretty sure I smelled meat and carbs when I went through the kitchen," he said as he rested his chin on the solid shoulder."
Marty stood silent for a moment as he began to stroke the hands that embraced him. His dark-colored sweater almost turned black in the low light, which accentuated the outline of Peter's fingers as he started to massage them, pulling on each digit individually as he rolled and twisted them.
"Yeah, I smelled it, too. Gosh, anything sounds good right now, but do you think we should finish unpacking first?" he replied, turning his head to make sure that Peter heard him.
"We can do that later, even tomorrow morning, I think. We kind of rushed the drive here this time, so you must be pretty tired from being behind the wheel so much," he said, almost getting hard from the gentle manipulation of his fingers not to mention just the close smell and scent of Marty's body. "By the way, thanks again for driving so fast. I don't like to keep the fish in bags for very long, so I appreciate it."
Marty turned around to face him. "No worries. I wouldn't want to be in a plastic bag for the drive from Massachusetts to Ohio either. And they still seemed to be moving around in there so it looks like they all made it safe and sound."
"I hope so. We won't know for sure for a couple days. But they were all alive when I put them in, though they were pretty sluggish. I hope that they take this this bigger aquarium as some kind of reward, "he said with a slight grin as he pulled both of their bodies in the direction of the stairs.
"Let's not keep my Dads or your stomach waiting any more. Time to eat!"
"Marty, do you have any firm plans for a job this summer?" Mike asked as Brad collected the salad plates before moving on to the main course of steak and potatoes. In deference to Peter, they decided on eating at the kitchen countertop rather than at the formal dining room table. Besides preferring the informality, it was also an arrangement, with everyone closer together, that allowed Peter to catch more clearly what everyone was saying.
"Well, I've got a couple leads from the internet, and a pal at school who knows some people here, so I've sent out some letters already. But basically I've just got to really hit the pavement and start looking as soon as I can," he replied. He tried to keep his voice as calm and steady as possible, not wanting to intimate how much he really did need a job and at the same time not wanting to make them feel responsible for him or worry them at all.
"I have one thought, if you'd want to consider it, but I don't want to intrude if you've got a plan," Mike continued as he acknowledged Brad's placing a ribeye on his plate with a silent nod.
"Well, I've only got the couple of leads I just mentioned, so I'm wide open right now," he replied with a clearly nervous laugh, his carefully constructed façade suddenly failing him. "It would be great to hear about anything."
"He almost got a big scholarship! They told him he was the runner-up for one of the departmental awards," Peter said as he put his arm on Marty's shoulder and shook him. "The winners were all juniors; he was the highest sophomore, so next year might be better."
"I gave it a shot and got close. I hope I can hit it next round. But that's a long way off, and I guess I've got to deal with the near term things right now."
"Well, you might consider this one a longshot, but I think it might work," Mike said, trying to figure out the best way to introduce his plan. "And it kind of has to do with last winter. You know, you did a great job in the wood shop, I think you're a real natural at it, Marty."
"I'm not sure I'd say that, I mean I think I did OK, but I wasted a lot of good wood, and..." he began to protest until Peter interrupted.
"I use that chair you made for me all the time, it's really great. I know I myself don't have an aptitude for carpentry, as my Pop will attest," Peter claimed, to a smile from his Dad, "But you really did a great job, especially for your first time in the shop."
"You're better than you think you are, Peter, but no, you won't be making a living at it," his Pop said to him, before turning back to Marty.
"But I think that you're a real natural and can maybe make some money at it, as least as a summer project."
"What do you have in mind?" he asked, flattered, but at the same time not at all sure that he had any of special woodworking skills that someone would actually pay money for.
"Well, we have a client who needs a scale model of a small town neighborhood done for a master planning study. It's really just like the little models of villages that you make out of Lego blocks, just more detailed and realistic. We normally have professional model builders do this, or even people in our office for relatively simple models like this, but everyone is too busy or on vacation right now so there's a big hole here."
"How would I know what to do? I mean, I'm not an architect like you or anything like that." Marty replied. "I don't even know where I would even begin"
"Most of the people who do these things aren't architects either. They're just model builders, no different from people who build model cars or planes or boats. In fact, I doubt that any that I've dealt with have had any special academic training in it; they just were just taught it by someone or picked it up themselves. It just takes an ability to build things and to be accurate and careful. And I know you can do that - I've seen it."
"Besides," Mike continued, "it's mostly just simple little wooden boxes meant to represent existing buildings like houses and stores, but lots and lots of them, plus streets and trees and neighborhood stuff like that. And the site is pretty flat too, so no hills to make it complicated."
As they talked further about the project Mike went to the office that he and Brad shared and brought out a picture of the kind of final product that he was proposing. Marty took the picture and studied it, Peter peering closely over his shoulder, as he asked Mike question after question about the model and how it was built.
After a few minutes of their back-and-forth Marty sat back in his chair, his eyes seeming to stare at the space in the kitchen beyond. Peter studied him closely, but couldn't exactly tell what he thought of all this. All he could do was reach under the countertop and stroke Marty's leg until he finally came out of his trance.
"You know, I actually think that I might be able to do this, though those could be famous last words," he declared, his hesitation and apprehension unmistakable. "But even if I can do it, then the question becomes, how much could I charge for it? It would probably take me weeks to finish this thing, and by then it would be too late to get a real job."
Mike laughed at the reference to `real job,' knowing that lots of people actually make a living at this, then explained to him how he could potentially make in 6 weeks what a lot of other students could make in an entire summer. "There might be some late nights toward the deadline time, there always are. But you could do really well financially, believe it or not."
"Yeah, really, babe, it almost sounds like a modeling gig," Peter added, "You work like crazy for a while, sometimes a couple of 12 of 14 hour days but then you're paid pretty decent for that short burst of work. Not a predictable 9-5 job of course, but you really could make in a few weeks what some people make in a few months."
"It's the price of some risk," Brad said, his lawyer, analytic side coming out as he had both elbows on the shiny stone surface and his hand folded in front of himself. "But from what Mike says and from what I know about you, it's a risk worth taking. I know you could do it."
"Hmmm..." Marty was stroking his chin as he gazed beyond into the kitchen again.
"Speaking of modeling," Peter said, after some hesitation, "um...I've talked this over with Marty, and I think that I'm going to maybe do some more modeling work this summer. You know..."
"What!" he heard immediately as a chorus from both his Dads. It was almost exactly the reaction that he had correctly predicted to Marty on their way home.
"I know what you're thinking, I know!" Peter responded as he raised his arms in the air, motioning at them both to calm down, and at least to just hear him out. "I know that you both don't like it, but, well, it's really tough out there and we need to make some money this summer. I'll do it on my terms, of course. I'm not going to roll over for them on this hearing aid thing. But modeling is the only trade that I have any `talent' for at this point in my life" he said, raising his fingers parenthetically at the word, "so I've got to cash in while I can."
His Dads looked at each other, clearly perplexed. His Pop rubbed his forehead, trying to massage away the sudden surprise. "I thought that you might lifeguard or work in some office like last summer or something like that. I know you can do more, but I never thought you'd go back to that...but you're an adult, Peter, and you can do whatever you want, and you know... we'll support you. I just don't, well, like some of the stuff that happens in that industry. You know all the reasons. "
"I know Pop. Like I said, I'll do it on my terms. But that one agent who wasn't so bad, that Dave guy, he still sends me stuff about once a year. I didn't reply to anything until this past spring, and he seemed to still have some real interest. He does mostly advertising and stuff like that. Maybe some travelling to New York because he works out of there now, but that's about it. Kind of predictable shoots and hopefully some quick cash."
He continued. "I sent him some pics that Marty took. Nothing fancy. I wanted to see what he thought, just in case my so called `masculine but boyish' looks have faded."
"And...?" his Pop replied.
"He emailed a contract right away!" Marty blurted out, before Peter could even open his mouth.
"Huh?!' his Dad responded. Like his partner, he was confused and skeptical. But, like Mike, equally resigned to their son's decision. "Well, like your Pop said, it's up to you. Just...um, you know...be careful with those sharks."
"Your Pop and I will clean up down here. You guys can go and unpack or do whatever. You're probably exhausted," Brad said as he and Mike started to clear the counter. But just as he was about to return for another load of plates, he changed his mind and wiped his hands on the washcloth he had just put out for the dishes and approached Marty.
"By the way, we were all so rushed before, we didn't have a chance to give you guys a proper welcome," Brad said as he wrapped his arms around him, giving Marty another one of the bearhugs that he got back at Christmas. If anything, it was an even warmer embrace than he had received the first time. "We're so glad to have you guys here. We've both missed you a lot!" he whispered in his ear as he stroked Marty's back.
As Brad finally pulled away it looked to Marty like his eyes were reddening, and the scene was similar with Mike, who almost could let go of him or Peter when they hugged. The seriousness was only broken when Marty almost tripped on the dogs, who had been hovering around him ever since he and Peter had gotten up from the table.
"We've missed you, too, and I'll put Radar and Tony in that boat also," Marty with a laugh. Any slight doubts that he had had about a whole summer as a guest had quickly evaporated, as he tried to stifle his own strong emotions from the overwhelming welcome.
"Oh, I wanted to mention, too. The apartment really looks great. You did a lot of work in there for us, the aquarium and those new desks. You didn't need to do all that...but thanks. "
"Glad you like it; I hope it all works out. I thought that you all could use some desk space up there. In fact, it was kind of Bik's idea. He thought the place would be perfect for you guys, but that it would help to put some shelves in or something like that so you had a place to work, "Mike responded.
"Only Pop can't put in `just shelves.' It's got to be more than that for him," Peter said smiling.
"We'll maybe I did get carried away a bit," he responded, "but I think it will work out really well for you guys. The desks even have a nice view."
"I know it will, Pop. Thanks." Peter said as he put his hand on his Pop's shoulder. "I can't wait to test drive them. We'll hook up our computers tomorrow."
Marty went upstairs to continue the unpacking and Peter, who had gotten delayed once again by the dogs, was about to follow him when he heard, or rather sensed, the footsteps of his Dad as he approached him from behind.
"Peter, you know we will cover you guys for whatever you need, so I hope that you all don't feel too much pressure to make a lot of money this summer. Your Pop and I can handle whatever we need to do.
Peter reached up and adjusted his hearing aid, wanting to make sure that he was getting this all correctly. "I know Pop, and we appreciate it. But Marty really wants to carry his own weight and doesn't want to take out a lot of loans. He'll accept help if he absolutely needs it, but he really doesn't want to seem like a burden. Plus, he's trying to help Angie as much as he can, though she's probably in better shape that he his."
"I've told him before that he shouldn't worry, we're in this together," he continued, "but I think that it's just in his nature. He's a guy that gives help, not the other way around."
"We'll take your word for it, son, but we're here if you all need us. There's no reason to stretch yourselves too far."
"OK, Dad, thanks. I'll holler if we need help," he said as he shooed the dogs upstairs.
"Good enough. G'night, Peter. We'll see you guys in the morning," he said before pausing.
Peter turned around and was about to wish his Dad a good night when his Dad approached him again and put his arms around him in the same welcoming embrace as only a few moments before. He kissed him on the forehead and then spoke directly into Peter's good ear, "I'm sorry, but we've just missed you so much, son!...so much!"
"Me too, Dad!" Peter said, "me too."