The builder's office shouldn't be dark at this time of day. True that the sun had set and it would have been dark in any event as the snow had begun to fall faster and was mounding up around the door. But Chet had made an appointment to deliver the plans for the Thornton's new house to the builder, and Danny had promised to keep the office open for him. Chet had almost put the transaction off, as the funeral had only been yesterday, but the Thorntons were anxious to get past this phase and neither Danny nor Chet had wanted to give them second thoughts about the contract. Phil had been the front man for the building firm, while Danny had been the behind-the-scene organizer and schedule keeper. With Phil gone now, it was likely that the firm's clients would be antsy about the business. Phil had been the outgoing one, the marketer, the glad-hander. There was no way that the clients would know that Danny had been the glue that held the business together, the engine that made it work. He was too young and reticent to make his mark while he stood, willingly, in the shadow of Phil.
Phil had been quite inconsiderate, Chet was thinking as he pushed the front door of the office and entered the empty, but still brightly lit reception room. A frosted white Christmas tree stood, a bit askew, on the top of the reception desk, a gold braided garland drooping down to the surface of the desk and its red balls reflecting light from the overheads back onto the glass front window. The tree lights were off; they'd been off since Friday—when it had happened. The tree lights were off just as starkly as the light of the firm was off.
Phil had been quite inconsiderate in Chet's opinion at the moment because he'd chosen not only to die abruptly, without warning, but to do so between Christmas and New Years—on a Friday night. Danny, of course, hadn't been any help. Chet and a few of the couple's other friends had to step in and make all of the arrangements. And this wasn't easy to do. Phil's religion dictated he be interred immediately. But there had been no prior arrangements. Phil had been robust and fully alive, even though he was past fifty. Dying was the last thing either he or Danny had considered possible. They had been together—and inseparable—for nearly five years, ever since Danny graduated from college and joined Phil's firm.
Chet felt a little put upon for all he had had to do over the past two days. But he had done it for Danny. He had wanted Danny from the day he had joined the firm. But Phil and Danny had made their connection even before that, and Chet had been forced to stand in the shadows, watching and wanting Danny, but not wanting to break into what Phil and Danny obviously had going for themselves.
Chet heard rustling from the back, where the private offices were, and he pushed open the door to the back corridor and moved, by instinct, past Danny's office to the large corner office at the back, the one that Phil had ruled the firm from. The door was ajar and the room was dimly lit by a single desk lamp on the large mahogany executive desk that commanded the room, nearly centered on the lush Oriental rug.
Danny was slouched in Phil's throne-like chair behind the desk, his arms hunched on the top of the desk and his forehead arced down. He had a sweater held up to his eyes and he was snuffling away. Chet recognized the sweater as one Phil liked to wear after the clients had departed and he was playing lord of the firm.
"Danny," Chet said softly, wanting to warn his young friend of his presence, wanting to give Danny a moment to pull himself together. But Danny didn't pull himself together. He continued to cry softly and rub the cashmere softness of the sweater on his eyelids.
Chet took this as a good sign. Danny had been stoic through the visitation and the funeral ceremony itself. Not that many knew that Phil and Danny were lovers and were living together. Phil's family didn't know it, and Danny had done all he could to give his lover that deniability beyond the grave. Chet was pleased and comforted that Danny didn't keep up that pretense with him.
"Danny," Chet repeated after he had sat down on the visitor's chair on the other side of the desk, a chair that Phil had had made shorter than normal to put his clients and other visitors in their place relative to him. "Danny, I could come back later. But we'd arranged—"
"No, no," Danny said in a small voice muffled by the sweater. "Go ahead and put the plans on the desk. I'll have them delivered tomorrow. Madge and Tony are coming in. Madge had taken the holiday week off, but she volunteered to handle the phones. There have been a lot of calls . . . about Phil."
"I'm sure there have been. It was a shock to us all. No one expected—"
"No, no one did," Danny said. He put the sweater down, lovingly, almost reverently, on the desk, folding it as if he was going to put it back in the drawer. "I'm such a mess—"
"No one who knew about you and Phil would expect you to be any other way, Danny. It's OK."
"No," Danny said. "It's that I'm being so . . . Goddam irrational and selfish."
"Irrational? Selfish? I don't follow," Chet murmured. "It's natural—"
"It's natural, with Phil being dead, to wonder where my Christmas present is?" Danny asked. The vehemence in his voice showcased the depth of his despair and self-loathing."
"What? Come again?" Chet asked. He was completely nonplused. Danny didn't have a selfish bone in his body. He had done everything for Phil. The cooking, the washing, the shopping. All Phil had to do was the fucking.
For a moment Danny was speechless. What he had blurted out had certainly rendered Chet speechless. Danny began to wheeze, which prompted him to reach into his pocket, take out a small pill box, and struggle with it for a moment.
"Shit. Can't get it open. Piece of crap. Been that way for weeks." But then he did manage to get it open, with such force that pills spilled out over the desk top. Danny selected two, popped them in his mouth, and took a swig of water from a half-full glass. Then he cleared his throat and made another attempt to speak.
"I shouldn't care, of course. It's just the unfinished business of it all." He stopped, gathering his thoughts.
"Go on," Chet prompted in a low voice.
"You know that Phil's been home sick for the last couple of weeks. We should have known something was coming on. He'd never felt that weak and wiped out before."
"Yes," Chet said. "But the present—"
"Even though he'd been sick, he'd managed to get a birthday present for me after Thanksgiving. And then he got weaker, and I asked him if he needed any shopping done. And he said no and that he'd gotten me something special but I couldn't see it until Christmas."
Chet didn't say anything, still perplexed.
"But, but . . .," Danny was having trouble continuing. "But Christmas came and went, and he was in a high fever Christmas day and the ambulance came for him that night. Needless to say we didn't have Christmas at all."
"And no present?" Chet asked?
"Right. Oh, God. It's not that I have to have a Christmas present," Danny blustered, already close to tears again. "But it's knowing he had something for me. A last present. Some of it is that, wanting that last present to hold onto. But mostly it's knowing that it's around somewhere. Unfinished business. And, God, the worst part—maybe finding it three months from now when I've somehow managed to adjust to him . . . being . . . gone."
