The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

He was a keen observer, more inclined to stand back and watch a thing than he was to participate in it, and Tyler had always been one of his favorite subjects to study.  He knew all sorts of things about him, including the fact that he had an unprecedented amount of pride when it came to his city of origin.  If there was one surefire way to improve his mood by leaps and bounds, it was to mention how fantastic a city New York was. 

“That’s what I like to hear, Caleb.  That’s exactly what I like to hear.  Hawaii can keep their beaches and their crazy named fish.  We don’t want ‘em, do we?”

“No sir, we don’t.”

“No!  Not even a little bit!  We’ve got the city, and what kind of amazing things does it have?”

“Pizza?”

“You bet your ass, pizza!  We have the best pizza.  And every other kind of food, for that matter.  We’ve got Central Park and everything being open for twenty-four hours and the hottest girls and things I don’t even know about yet.  We’ve got it all, don’t we?”   

“We sure do, Tyler.  The best place on earth.”

“Glad we can agree on that, else this friendship might be over already and wouldn’t that be too bad?  Now, on to the next thing.”

All of a sudden, Tyler seemed to have forgotten all of his wild-eyed fancies and far away dreams. Instead, he was focused as intensely as he knew how on his quiet, and physically smaller, friend.  Caleb squirmed under the scrutiny.  It always made him nervous when Tyler paid him that much attention, mainly because he could never be sure of his reason for doing it. 

He was almost like a feral cat the way he moved through his world, his actions unpredictable and his temper sometimes severe.  Caleb was now and always had been content to be his sidekick, to exist in his shadow and let him have all of the attention.  He didn’t want the attention and he felt somehow naked when he got too much of it.

Especially times like this where Tyler had focused all of his considerable force on him.  It made him wish he could just go invisible until Tyler moved on to something else.  Which he would.  A lengthy attention span was not exactly one of his strong points.  But this time his state did not waver.  He just looked and looked until Caleb was sure he would burst.  He just couldn’t take it anymore.

“What is it?”

“What’s what?” Tyler asked casually, as if he hadn’t just been boring holes into him with his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?  You know it makes me nervous.”

“I do?”

“Sure you do.  I’ve told you and told you.  I must have told you a million and one times if I’ve told you at all.  Which I have.”

“Alright, alright, don’t get your panties in a bunch.”

“Hey!  I don’t have panties.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because I’m a boy, that’s how.”

Tyler grinned, delivering another sound punch to the arm, and then ruffled Caleb’s hair.  Now he was going to have a bruise for sure, and he did his best not to wince or show any kind of weakness.  Everyone already knew that he was the weaker of the two boys.  There was no need to make it more obvious than it already was.  That would just be embarrassing.

“OK, if you say so.  But back to what I was thinking.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I was just thinking, do you think anyone ever mistakes us as brothers?  Like, if they didn’t know us, would they look at us and think that maybe we were part of the same family?  Like I was the older brother and you were the younger one?”

Caleb hesitated, not a hundred percent sure how he should answer a question like that.  The thing was, if he was being honest with himself and with Tyler, the answer would have to be no.  As far as he was concerned, they looked about as different as two boys possibly could.  Caleb was a boy who had often been described as angelic, ever since he was a baby.  He had hair so blonde it was almost white and big blue eyes that always looked on the verge of some kind of massive emotional epiphany. 

He was small for his age and, for the most part, unusually quiet for a boy on the verge of becoming a teenager.  Tyler was like his polar opposite.  Dark, thick curls falling across his forehead, always unruly regardless of how his mother tried to comb it.  His eyes were the color of deep amber, something his mother liked to say could only be dug up out of the heart of the Amazon.

He was tall for his age, and lanky, always spoiling for a fight.  He was the one who protected Caleb, when he wasn’t the one tormenting him, and the last thing Caleb wanted to do was tell him the opposite of what he wanted to hear. 

“Sure, Tyler, they might think that.  Siblings look different all of the time, don’t they?  I bet people who don’t know us and see us walking down the street think that all of the time.”

“I like to think so.  We kind of are brothers, don’t you think?  Just brothers who have different parents is all.”

“Exactly.  Just different parents.”

Tyler reached out for Caleb’s secret stash of cigarettes and lit two at a time, handing one to Caleb and keeping one for himself.  The two boys sat there, one from the light and one from the dark, dangling their feet over the landing of the cramped New York apartment building.  They surveyed the city as if they were its little lords, smoking in silence and watching as the sun began to set.  Finally, Tyler’s eyes traveled back to his brother, looking at him with a big question mark on his face.