If I Must Lane Read Online Free PDF Page A

would probably be a quiz later.
    But Mel being Mel didn’t want to talk about work. As their mother bustled about in her flowered housedress and apron, pouring coffee and cleaning up the last of the breakfast dishes (corn pancakes—Mommy was definitely trying to send them both home fat!) Mel made it perfectly clear that what she wanted to talk more about was Ian.
    “Ian?” Mommy asked, sitting down to drink her coffee with them. “Isn’t that the man you share a house with?”
    “More like an apartment, Mommy,” Joel said, telling them about the vast top floor of the Victorian that dominated the block.
    “His roommate is a real character,” Mel said, looking over her coffee at Joel. “Seems like he couldn’t find his ass with both hands if Joel didn’t hand it to him all labeled and neat, you know?”
    Lucia Martinez nodded. “That’s Joel—even as a niño, he kept neat—you remember his room? He used to save his shoeboxes to keep his toys straight.”
    “I liked knowing where to find them,” Joel said with dignity, and then, because he couldn’t stand that his sister thought badly of Ian, “and Ian’s brilliant.” Lost, but… “Don’t let me give you the wrong impression. He’s just eccentric.”
    “Eccentric?” Mel had what Joel always thought of as her “evil” look now. She was teasing him, trying to get him to say something that she could get him with later. “You told me the guy once forgot his own birthday!”
    Joel regretted telling that story. It was a fun, glib story you could use to get someone to laugh, but now it felt wrong. Now it felt like Mel was getting to know Ian, and Joel wanted his big sister to like the guy.
    “He remembered his birthday,” Joel corrected seriously. “He just forgot how old he was!”
    “Well, it must be nice to get so wrapped up in your work you can’t remember you’s getting wrinkles, eh papi?”
    Joel shivered, and the mood at the kitchen table grew inexplicably sober. “No,” he said quietly. “No. No. Nothing nice about it at all.”
     
    On the days Joel didn’t bike to work, he dragged Ian to the gym. Ian usually went willingly, but, if left to his own devices, he forgot how long it had been since last he went. On this day, Joel got home a little early and breezed through the living room shouting, “I’m gonna get my stuff, Ee, are you ready?”
    “Ready? For what?”
    Ian stuck his head out of his room and turned that lost-Siamese-cat gaze toward the calendar on the wall. “What are we doing again?”
    Joel came out of his room wearing only his work khakis. “The gym? Working out? It’s Wednesday, remember?”
    “Wednesday? Wednesday the what?”
    “Wednesday, September twenty-fourth,” Joel told him patiently. He was unprepared for Ian to stand up off his rolling chair and peer at the calendar closely as though the damned thing had lied.
    “Really? The twenty-fourth?”
    “What’s the matter, Ee? You miss a lecture?” Joel didn’t think so. Since that one phone call from Ian’s supervising professor, Joel had put all of Ian’s guest lectures on the calendar and taken to giving him one reminder the night before and one reminder as he left the house. Florence Kohl had sent him a case of really good wine, but mostly, Joel did it so Ian wouldn’t have to look lost and miserable the way he had the last time he’d been caught unaware.
    “No, I just….” Ian turned around and squinted at Joel in that way that told Joel he hadn’t looked away from his computer in a while. “I think today’s my birthday.”
    Joel’s face split into a grin. “Well, awesome! Fuck the gym, let’s go out!” Ian had treated Joel to a gigantic steak and a nice bottle of wine in Old Town when Joel turned twenty-seven. The least Joel could do was get him out of the house.
     “How old are you, anyway?”
    He was unprepared for the dismay this question seemed to cause.
    “I- I don’t know,” Ian murmured. “Twenty-five? No. Maybe?