Part 2
Stan and Kyle had a single employee. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, Butters Stotch got up at 7 a.m. and had a bowl of raisin bran before hopping on his Schwinn Orange Krate and pedaling into town to open up the shop. Butters made a paltry 7 dollars an hour, and even though this was really stretching Kyle’s meticulous budget, he felt that really, having the weekend off was worth $98. Stan was bothered by the idea that a 40-year-old man would want to hang around an antiques store on the weekends, especially when said man was actually a rather respectable elementary school teacher, who made a fine living supporting himself and his pet rabbit. “Oh, whatever,” Kyle would say dismissively. “It’s Butters. Who cares.”
“We should at least be paying him more money,” Stan would suggest.
“Tell me one thing, Stan. Do you want to want to make a profit, or do you just want to throw all of our money away and live on the street like matchgirls?”
“Make a profit. But honestly, we should pay him a little more. He’s worth more than 7 dollars an hour.”
“Well, he seems perfectly happy being fiscally raped,” Kyle would conclude, and it was true. They had this conversation each quarter, and they always determined that Butters, well, Butters just liked antiques. Or maybe he liked the calm, serene, fussy sort of vibe the shop exuded. He was that kind of guy, after all. He looked something like an asexual academic type, with his tapered khakis and loafers and stupid little sweaters. Stan still thought the most humiliating moment of his life was the day he walked into the store to drop off some vintage cookbooks, only to realize that he and Butters were wearing the same exact sweater. Oh, they were different colors, all right, but it still wasn’t lost on Stan, who donated the offending garment to goodwill.
In light of Craig’s ultimatum, Kyle stayed up throughout most of the evening going through his books. And around 1 a.m. he reached the conclusion that they really only had one insanely useless expense. So that was why he was also up at 7 a.m., smacking Stan in the face with a pillow.
“Get up, lazy,” he chided.
“Wha?” Stan asked hazily, yawning. He looked at the clock. “It’s early,” he concluded, rolling over.
“Get up, Stan. If you want to keep this store you have to get up.” So Stan got up, and being very tired he tried to put his left shoe on his right foot. Still, he managed to sleepwalk into the store behind Kyle, at around 9:15 a.m. and they were immediately greeted by their employee.
“Good morning, fellas,” Butters enthused, too chipper.
“Butters, you’re fired.”
Butters just gawked at Kyle. “Oh, no,” he moaned. “I didn’t do anything, honest.”
“You didn’t do anything, Butters,” Kyle intoned, and Stan really thought he could hear an air of regret in Kyle’s statement. “But we really can’t afford to pay you anymore.”
“Oh dear,” Butters continued. “What’ll my parents think?”
“You parents?” Stan asked.
“Yeah, who cares about them?” Kyle added.
“All right, fine, who cares about them. But what about Lillian? What’ll she think?”
“I’m sure she’ll…” Kyle began, but he interrupted himself. “Wait a minute. Butters, who’s Lillian?”
“Why,” Butters sniffed. “She’s my girlfriend.”
Stan and Kyle were dumbfounded. “You have a girlfriend?” Stan asked uneasily.
“Yeah,” Butters said.
“Where the hell did you get a girlfriend?” Stan wanted to know.
“She works at the school with me. She’s the librarian.”
“You’re dating the school librarian,” Kyle said.
“Yeah. And she loves this store. She was so impressed when I told her I got a job here. She comes in every Sunday afternoon, and we…” Butters trailed off. “We like it here,” he concluded shyly.
“You what?” Kyle asked, seriously not knowing.
“You…oh, my god,” Stan choked. “Sick, dude! Butters, you can’t do that in the store!”
“I know,” Butters sighed. “We don’t do anything too rough.”
“Excuse me.” Stan grabbed onto a pedestal ashtray to steady himself. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Are you okay?” Butters asked.
“Here.” Kyle took Stan by the elbow and led him to a sofa near the window. “Shhh, Stan. Deep breaths.”
“Butters…girlfriend…in my store…”
“I know, Stan. Shhh, don’t think about Butters. The Pacific Northwest, Stan. Think about pine trees.”
“Ugh,” Stan groaned. “I can’t deal with this. First Craig, and now Butters … oh my god. What the fuck?”
Butters just stood there, watching this. “What’d Craig do?” he asked uneasily.
“I can’t even talk about it,” Stan said dismissively.
“He wants to either raise our rent, or buy us out,” Kyle stated simply.
“So, you guys gonna pay the rent?”
Kyle sighed as he continued to pat Stan on the back reassuringly. “We can’t afford it.”
“So, you’re gonna sell him the business?”
“Hell no!” Stan shouted, and then he flinched. “He can have this business over my dead body. Oh, Jesus, I think I’m getting a headache.”
“So technically, Butters, you’re not being fired. You’re being laid off.” Kyle thought for a moment. “You might be eligible for some kind of unemployment.”
“Eh, I don’t think so,” Butters said with a shrug. “And even then, I don’t need it. I mean, I’m fine, I got my job at the school. And if Lill and I get hitched, then we’ll have two incomes.”
“You’re thinking about getting married?” Kyle asked, always interested in this subject.
“Oh, no,” Stan moaned. “Butters, please do me a favor and never, ever talk to Kyle about marriage.”
“Well, why not?”
“Because he wants to drive me crazy.”
“All right, Stan, you know what?” Kyle let go of Stan’s shoulders, and crossed his arms. He turned away from the other man on the couch and stared at the wall. “You can just rub your own back from now on.”
“Fine with me, I didn’t want you rubbing my back anyway.”
“Fine, then I won’t anymore.”
“Okay, fine,” Stan concluded.
“Are you guys okay?” Butters asked.
“Fine,” Stan and Kyle answered at the same time.
~
After Butters left, a woman from Denver came in looking for a pair of candlesticks, but she left when she realized that there was a ‘better’ antiques store down the block. This thoroughly upset both Kyle and Stan, and they sat together miserably on the couch, reminiscing about the good old days, although neither of them could remember when that was - it was something of an intangible concept, like having an open relationship. They thought that maybe it existed, and maybe some people had participated, but it was probably just a myth and even if it wasn’t, it probably wasn’t as good as they were imagining it to be.
By the time their conversation was turning really esoteric, an elderly gentleman came into the store, and he left two hours later (after engaging Stan in a frighteningly long conversation about the aforementioned good old days) with a ceramic statuette of a collie.
“At least we made a sale,” Stan said cheerfully.
Kyle, as usual, rained on his parade. “Yeah, and that dog cost us 20 bucks when we got it at that estate sale, and we sold it for 75. So if you think about it, it wouldn’t even have covered Butters’ pay for the weekend.”
“Well, look at it this way: Butters is no longer working here.”
“I know.” Kyle fell back down on the sofa, where Stan was already seated with a 19th-century copy of the Bible that somebody had brought in the other day. “He has a girlfriend. I had no idea.”
“Well, it’s about time,” Stan grumbled. “I just wish he hadn’t done it in my store.”
“But, I mean, a girlfriend?” Kyle pressed.
“What? You thought he was gay or something?”
“Kinda.”
Stan snorted. “You think everyone is gay.”
“Have you ever even looked at him?”
“Well, no, not too closely, but, come on. Butters is the straightest person I’ve ever met in my life. In fact, he’s so straight, he doesn’t even realize when he’s doing something sexually questionable.”
“Look, Stan. He has a rabbit.”
“And if he were gay, he’d have a Pomeranian.”
Kyle scowled, and gave Stan the finger. Stan just laughed at him and went back to flipping through the book in his lap. “What are we gonna do?” Kyle asked again. “Do you realize we have two weeks to figure this out?”
“I don’t know, Kyle. Finance is your bag. What do you want to do?”
“Well, we don’t have a lot of ways to cut expenditures. I suppose we could cut back on our buying.”
“That’s fine with me.” Stan shrugged, and closed the Bible he was studying, and then laid it on the coffee table in front of him, pushing over a glass candy dish to make room. “Most of the crap people bring in isn’t worth anything anyway.”
“The problem with this business is, when it’s good, it’s great.” Kyle sighed. “But you have to spend too much money to make big sales. We could stop buying so much stock … we fired Butters … I don’t know if there’s another way to cut down our expenses.”
“I really don’t want to close this business, Kyle. It’s like … well, it’s like our baby or something.”
“See, Stan? This is what I’ve been saying all along. If Craig came in here and offered us 200 grand for our child, we could have him arrested. But it’s perfectly fine to do it with our antiques store.”
“Yeah, but we can get rid of an antiques store if we can’t afford it,” Stan pointed out. “If we had a kid and it became a burden, we’d just be stuck with it.”
“Well, what do you want to do, Stan?”
Stan answered immediately, and very seriously. “I don’t want to give up my business. Or this store. All I have is this, and you.”
“Oh, I’m so glad I’m runner-up in your heart to this second-hand junk box.”
“Shut up, Kyle. “
“Well, you might get lucky.” Kyle saw Stan make a face, and he groaned. “No, not like that. Who are you, Butters? Pay attention. What I’m saying is, it’s not like we can move.”
“Well? Why not?”
“I’ve looked into it. Craig’s right - there isn’t any retail space available.”
“None?”
“Well, I mean, there’s some over by that Indian burial ground.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound great.”
“Plus, you know, it’s not 100,000 dollars flat-out. There is such a thing as tax.”
“You know,” Stan said very calmly, “I may not have a business degree from a fourth-tier community college, but I do know what tax is. I mean, I am an adult.”
“Sometimes, I wonder.”
“Thank you.”
It was at moments like these that Kyle wished he had some kind of hobby, something that would occupy his hands during the weird little gaps in conversation he and Stan frequently found themselves staring down. The reason he’d never taken up anything was simply that he would never be able to live down the embarrassingly clichéd humiliation of being caught knitting - or, worse yet, needlepoint. In fact, every year for Christmas since they bought their house, Butters had given Stan and Kyle a sampler. With unspeaking shared glances they questioned where got them, or if he made them himself. They hung them in the laundry room, and never asked Butters about it. They preferred not knowing.
~
It seemed that 5 p.m. did not come quickly enough. Kyle did not particularly like antiques, and while he did not really mind or dislike them, either, it was not so easy to sit in relative silence, with no math to do, while Stan performed his endless amount of inventory, appraisal, and so on. So much of selling was talking someone into making a purchase, and Stan prided himself on his ability to talk himself into sales. Moreover, Stan actually enjoyed this. He appreciated old things, where they came from, what artistic merit they had, who made them, what they said about cultures foreign and eras past. This was in contrast to Kyle, to whom the only thing antiques said were “ka-ching,” and if they didn’t say that, they weren’t worth talking about. He had learned some things along the way - he was bright, after all, but really, his opinions on sitting in a room full of ticking clocks and glinting candelabras were hugely influenced by his feelings for Stan. And at this moment, his feelings for Stan were not at an all-time high.
He came home feeling bitter; Stan came home feeling dejected, for even he was not happy about dealing with Craig, the fact that he might lose his store, having to fire his old friend, the only man who shared his passion for the subject, or the idea of having no weekend at all for the foreseeable future. Tiredly, they both collapsed on the couch. Usually after a day of work, Stan liked to have a glass of wine and relax in front of the television. On the weekends, he and Kyle sometimes drove out to Denver for dinner, or to pretend for a few hours that they did not live in South Park. Stan was also a great fan of sex, and good days at work put him in a lascivious mood quite often. But it had not been a great day, and what was more, he was no longer a young man. He wasn’t an old man, but he found himself at the point where he did not compulsively lust for physical attention every hour any longer. Kyle seemed to have no desire to have any sex, or rather, he seemed to be using sex as a means of relationship facilitation, rather than a raw need that slowly wore away at his sensibilities. Apparently, this was just something that happened to the Broflovski men.
So Saturday night was here, for indeed it was dark out already, and Stan and Kyle both languished on the couch, feeling hurt and upset and drained for various reasons. “Is it raining?” Stan asked, wanting for a reason to hear Kyle’s voice, to bolster his own weariness.
“Yeah,” Kyle sighed. “What’s for dinner?”
“Rain,” Stan said sleepily. “Um, how do you feel about pizza?”
“Pizza’s delicious. The problem is, we can’t afford pizza.”
“Oh, yeah. I agree.”
Half an hour later, Stan brought in two bowls of farfalle with pink sauce. “How’d you make this?” Kyle probed, crawling out of the rhythmic cocoon that is a Saturday night Upstairs, Downstairs marathon on PBS.
“I mixed the leftover marinara with that jar of alfredo my sister sent after Italy,” Stan explained. The worst thing about it was, Shelly had apparently never heard of white sauce before her week in Florence, so instead of bringing them back a souvenir, she just went to the grocery store when she got back and bought them a jar of alfredo and shipped it with a note, I tried this in Italy and thought you turds might appreciate some real Italian food. Kyle rolled his eyes at this, but tried it anyway.
“I would have reduced some tomatoes in that chardonnay your mom didn’t finish,” he suggested.
“Yeah,” Stan agreed. “She’s really turning into a wino.”
They ate slowly, glancing at each other and the television set and the clock. Someone, some washed-up actress, was pleading with them for funding for public broadcasting, and in thanks they would apparently receive some videotapes of Upstairs, Downstairs. “Who even owns a VCR now?” Kyle asked.
“I think someone tried to bring one in a couple of weeks ago,” Stan recalled. “Actually, it was that Fosse guy.”
“What ever happened to him?” Kyle wondered.
“Apparently, he still watches VHS.”
Kyle was a slow eater, so Stan put his head on Kyle’s shoulder while he continued to mechanically ingest single bowties. The doldrums of British voices were beginning to lull him to sleep, and it was only 7 o’clock, which was quite sad, when there came a pounding at the door, distinct from the rain.
“Door,” Stan sighed.
“What now?” Kyle asked.
“Maybe it’s Craig, out for revenge.”
“Wouldn’t that be us, seeking revenge on him?”
“Who knows,” Stan yawned, bare toes digging into the carpet as he headed for the door. “Jesus,” he sighed as he swung it open. “You can stop pounding now, I’m right…” he trailed off.
“Stan?” Kyle called from the other room. “Who is it?”
“..here,” Stan finished.
“Hi,” Tweek said morosely. His hair was shorter, and he seemed to be unusually quiet and still.
“Tweek…” Stan said slowly. “Hi.” It was cold; through the screen door, Stan felt the chill of winter (or in this case, early spring) permeate the house. “Here,” he offered, swinging the door open with an elastic snap. “Get in here.”
Tweek hugged himself and shook rapidly as Stan shut the door.
“Godammit,” Kyle shouted. “It’s not actually Craig, is it?”
“Close,” Stan said with a sniff, leading Tweek into the living room.
“Hello,” Tweek said nicely, giving Kyle a sad little wave. “What’s going on?”
“Um.” Kyle bit a piece of pasta off of his fork, chewed it slowly, and swallowed. “Nothing much,” he said thoughtfully. “Having dinner.” He looked at Stan, who shrugged. “Where’s Craig?”
“Gah!” Tweek spat, something more like the Tweek they knew, or at least kind of knew of. “I don’t know where he is, and I don’t care!”
“Well, he’s probably looking for you,” Kyle supposed.
“Maybe,” Tweek admitted. He bit his lip and squinted his left eye. “I left him!” he said suddenly.
Stan put a hand to his throat, and Kyle smiled wryly. “Did you?” he asked. “Why, whatever for?”
“I can’t take it anymore, man! It’s so much fucking pressure! Every day it’s like, Tweek, do this. Tweek, do that. Tweek, take these pills, they make you feel better. Tweek, don’t touch my Warhol print. Tweek, don’t touch the scissors. Tweek, don’t cut all your hair off. I mean, oh Jesus! When does it end, man? When does it end?”
Stan pointed to the hair. “Looks good,” he said.
Kyle put down his nearly finished bowl of pasta and crossed his legs. “So, no more Craig, huh?”
“No way!” Tweek shook both fists. “I gotta go back eventually.”
“And why’s that?” Kyle asked.
“All my clothes are there! Plus it’s just, so, like … oh Jesus.” Tweek put his head in his hands and sat down on the floor, making it wet. “I’m getting all dizzy.”
“I see.” Kyle got up and stepped over Tweek, and then he grabbed Stan by the sleeve of his red cable-knit V-neck. “Excuse us,” he said politely, pulling Stan into the foyer.
“Bingo,” he hissed, thin auburn eyebrows hopping up in jubilation.
“Yeah,” Stan drawled slowly, looking over Kyle’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of Tweek rocking back and forth on the floor. “I mean, what?”
“This is our chance, you fool!” Kyle said, a bit too excitedly for Stan’s taste.
“Our chance to what, exactly?”
“Well, you know.” Kyle paused. “This whole time, Craig’s had something to hold over us.”
“That’s true,” Stan agreed.
“So now, we have something to hold over him.”
“Look,” Stan said with a drawn-out sigh, slumping his shoulders. “Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe this is a sign that we should just, you know … close the store and get 9-to-5 jobs. Start putting real money into our IRAs.”
“Stan, there are two kinds of people in this world.”
“Really? Only two?”
Kyle ignored this. “There are people who get fucked over, and there are people who get to the top, not caring how many little baby toes they step on in the process. Now, do you want to be the first kind of person forever? Because I myself am getting pretty sick of it.”
“All right. I give up.” Stan kicked the carpet with his heel. “It’s your project. I’m not getting involved”
Inhaling the air of what he was certain could only be confidence, Kyle rolled up the sleeves on his crisp black shirt and strode back into the living room.
“Hey, Tweek,” he said in his most plastic, friendly voice. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Tweek lifted his head, and wiped his eyes, which were actually dry. “Really?” he asked. “Craig never wants to talk about it.”
“No?” Kyle asked sympathetically. “Stan and I do a lot of talking.”
“It’s mostly Kyle,” Stan filled in from the doorway.
Shaking his head at this, Kyle pressed ahead. “Communication is so important to a relationship.”
“I know.” Tweek began to chew on his bottom lip, which made him look extremely feral, which in turn made the living room floor look particularly dignified. “That’s why I came to you guys.”
“We’re so flattered,” Kyle lied.
“I mean, you guys are always so nice to each other,” Tweek continued. “Sometimes I’m like, Jesus, Craig, why do I always have to be on the bottom? And he’ll just be like, well, you like to bottom. And I’ll be like, no, man, no! Even though I do like to, it’s just not like he ever asks. What if I don’t want to play doggy one day? What if I don’t want to experiment with nipple clamps? No one ever asks me if I like being humiliated, everyone just assumes I do because - gah, oh my God, do you ever stop and think to yourself, oh my God, I’m an adult, why am I being led around like a dog through the town where everyone can see me?”
“Can’t say that I do,” Stan mumbled.
“Oh dear.” Kyle patted Tweek nervously on the shoulder, trying to prevent vomiting by any means necessary. “Yes, that sounds horrible. You poor dear.”
“And I walk by your store,” Tweek continued sadly. “And I see how nice it is inside. I don’t like sharp corners. They hurt when you walk into them. So Craig says, well, don’t walk into them. But how can I stop? They’re everywhere!”
Stan drawled, “That can be a real problem.”
Tweek quieted down. “I just need a couple days apart from him,” he said firmly. Kyle stuck his tongue partially out, and looked up at Stan, who very firmly, from the arching threshold that separated living room from foyer, shook his head and drew a finger across his neck and mouthed the word no.
“It’s okay,” Kyle said kindly, turning back to Tweek. “You can stay with us for as long as you want.” He made sure to give Stan a defiant, evil smirk. Stan smacked his forehead, and pounded up the stairs. “Do you have clothes? Do you need a toothbrush?”
Kyle and Stan argued briefly, albeit not particularly seriously, in the bedroom when Kyle came up to get Tweek some nightclothes, mostly about whether Tweek couldn’t just sleep on the couch, or if he really had to stay in the guest room. Kyle won. They went back to discussing attire.
“Well, he won’t fit my pajamas.” Stan indicated his two-piece blue, red, and brown plaid flannel pajamas, which for pajamas seemed to be absurdly well-fitted. Kyle thought they were hideous, and that they made Stan look like a child, despite the unsettlingly flattering cut. “Why don’t you lend him something of yours?”
“He’s tiny,” Kyle said in reply, digging through his dresser. Kyle wore flimsy lounge pants to bed, if anything at all; he did not like to admit this, but he liked sleeping under five or six layers of blanket, preferably with Stan’s warming torso wrapped around him. For all his pretense, Stan figured Kyle needed to absorb just as much affection in his sleep as actual heat. But he was going back down to talk to Tweek tonight, so he was wearing a pair of lounge pants, with a robin’s egg blue T-shirt that simply had “Provincetown” imprinted on the front. He had gotten it, of course, in Provincetown - which, of course, they had visited to go antiquing, and certainly not to attend any all-night predominantly homosexual dance parties, or anything like that.
Under all of this fabric, Kyle looked much larger than he was, and Stan enjoyed watching the jersey fabric of the pants stretch across his generous behind as he squatted to look through the dresser. “If I ever worked out I might know where all these junky T-shirts were,” Kyle remarked. He pulled one out. “Do you think Tweek has any political ideologies that would conflict with this?” he asked, brandishing an olive IDF shirt.
“No,” Stan said carefully. “But I bet Craig does.”
“You think Craig is a Palestinian sympathizer?” Kyle asked.
“I don’t know. I just think it’s hot when you get all pissed off about Arabs.”
Kyle got up on his feet, and tried to adjust his pants so that his junk wasn’t visible, but it was no use. “I have to go back to Tweek,” he said.
“Aw, come on.” Stan patted the bed next to him. “He won’t miss you for 10 minutes.”
“No,” Kyle said very obstinately, and then he was gone, leaving Stan to flop back on the bed and service himself.
~
Kyle made two mugs of tea, but he noticed after 15 minutes that Tweek hadn’t touched his. He eyed it suspiciously, and pushed it away very slowly a couple of times, only to draw it back toward him, inspect it again, and decide he didn’t like it yet another time. They mostly talked about Craig, and Kyle made sure to fuel whatever fires of dissatisfaction were already ignited in Tweek’s mind. He didn’t not have a clear picture of how encouraging Tweek to be further pissed at Craig was going to help his cause, but he had a feeling about it - a mean, nasty feeling that made his heart throb with the beat of control.
The biggest surprise was, Tweek was not a poor conversationalist. He had opinions - oh, did he have them. He did not seem to tire, and he did not seem to care for many things. His voice rang with a bell of suspicion, and he reminded Kyle of a toy dog that yelped a lot, and yet lapdogs were very popular due to their adorability and, Kyle had to admit, this frightening urge some people, himself included, apparently, had to stroke them back to calmness.
Kyle did not think Craig would like a lapdog. But just as Tweek was raving about something impolite Craig had done involving a space heater, a pair of handcuffs, and the backyard, Kyle decided that he didn’t know what Craig would like at all, except that he seemed to like financial gains, and he absolutely adored being in command. Yes, in fact, that was the theme of Tweek’s complaints - the lack of his autonomy. Well, what was a lapdog but a little thing for rich people to commandeer?
“And do you know,” Tweek continued, “that he introduces me to his relatives as ‘my sex slave’?”
“Terrible,” Kyle clucked. “You’re not his sex slave.”
“Actually, I am.” Tweek began to tug at the bottom of his shirt like it was making him very itchy. “But that doesn’t mean he has to introduce me like that!”
“I know what you mean. Stan always just calls me his boyfriend. Except when we’re dealing with shop business, then it’s ‘my business partner’ this and ‘my business partner’ that.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Tweek asked.
“We’ve been together for way longer than anyone else I know!” Kyle huffed indignantly. “Boyfriend? What a joke. A boyfriend is someone you’ve gone to the movies with a couple of times. I find it very insulting.”
“He could call you his sex slave in front of his parents, so that they call you ‘sex slave’ too, and every time you walk into their house it’s, ‘Hello, sex slave, would you like some apple juice?’ And the answer is yes, perhaps I would enjoy some apple juice, but Jesus fucking Christ, I have a name! I mean, it just makes me so … gah!” Tweek seemed to jump a little in his seat.
And the conversation continued on like this for quite some time. Kyle could hear in Tweek’s voice the sort of weariness he felt in himself when he thought about Stan: distinct, real self-pity. But the difference between his relationship with Stan and this nightmare Craig/Tweek train wreck was that at the end of the day, Stan Marsh was a good man, a handsome man, a man you could bring with you to visit your parents in Sarasota. He would help babysit your nieces and nephews when you went to visit your brother for Passover. He would tirelessly and without fail make absolutely certain that at no time would he roll over and fall asleep before you too had experienced orgasm. He never forgot an anniversary, birthday, or Mother’s Day.
But then Kyle thought about all the ways in which Stan was part of his family, and he began to get angry again. Because no matter how many Christmas mornings there were, no matter how many Easter egg hunts he went on with Stan’s nephews, he wasn’t a Marsh, and never would be one, and it was all that goddamn closeted asshole’s fault. Still, there were those good things about him. They might not be making up for the bad things at the moment, but they existed. Kyle listened to every single word about the domineering Craig, and tried to figure out what, exactly, Tweek saw in him. At a point or two he was on the verge of asking, “So, what do you like about Craig?” but then he rationalized that this would not help his cause at all, so he kept his commentary to sweet reassurances and “Mmhmm, girlfriend”-type rejoinders.
Right when Kyle was beginning to fall asleep in the middle of Tweek’s complaining, and he was somnolently contemplating making another mug of tea, the doorbell rang.
“At this hour?” Kyle asked generally. “Really?”
“It’s him!” Tweek cried, getting on his knees in his chair. “Don’t answer it.”
The doorbell chimed a second time, and soon after there followed some banging. Tweek hid his head in his hands, and Kyle got up and adjusted his shirt so that it kind of disguised his drowsy bulge. “No,” Tweek said with a sob, clutching at Kyle’s sleeve, but his plan, after all, was not meant for Tweek’s betterment - he had a mission and a deadline. Tweek followed him around to the foyer, where Stan had also sleepily come downstairs.
“You think that’s Craig?” Stan asked.
“I know it is!” Tweek replied hastily.
“Could be,” Kyle said with an over-pronounced shrug.
Stan rubbed his eyes. “Let’s just ignore him.”
Tweek nodded along to this, rubbing his hands together and shivering.
Kyle gave them an apologetic smile, and threw open the door.
In his little booty shorts and sheer shirt, Craig bounded into the house. He was still wearing flip-flops, and Stan’s eyes widened at this, because truly it was too cold out for flip-flops, no matter how erratic the weather was acting.
“What the fuck?” Craig growled with tangible impatience, twisting his sights from Stan to Kyle and back. He then spotted Tweek, who backed away, and Craig reached out for him. “Here you are,” he said menacingly. “Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I need a couple of days!” Tweek was shaking worse than Kyle and Stan had ever seen him shake. “I gotta do this!”
“So you run off to bunk up with these losers?”
“They’re not losers! They’re really nice!”
“What’s the difference?” Craig asked, rolling his eyes.
“They don’t dress me up in girls’ clothes and make me dance for their poker buddies!”
“You liked it!”
“No way, man! I only liked it when it was you and me!”
“I don’t understand, Tweek. What is your problem?”
“I don’t know!” Tweek cried out. “Ah! Just leave me alone for a while!”
“Oh, is that what you want?” Craig asked, eyes narrowing.
“Maybe?” Tweek asked. “I don’t know!”
“Really, Craig,” Stan said sternly, finally breaking into this conversation. “Get out of our house.”
Craig snorted. “Who do you think you are?” He sneered. “I own your pathetic little asses.”
“Oh, really?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah,” Stan chimed in. “This isn’t our store, Craig. We own this house. Get the fuck out.”
“I’ll get the police involved!” Craig threatened, shaking a clichéd fist. “You’re both kidnappers.”
Kyle laughed at this. “We are not. Tweek is here on his own volition.”
Tweek just made a sad, tense little sound after this.
“Besides,” Stan added. “We have friends on the force. They’d never take your side over ours.”
“Oh, you think that fat prick is going to protect you?”
“Yeah, actually,” Stan said.
“He might hate us,” Kyle began.
“And we might hate him,” Stan interrupted.
“But he sure doesn’t give a crap about you, Craig, that’s for damn sure,” Kyle finished.
“I’m not kidding!” Craig shouted. “You can’t do this to a man! Tweek is mine, do you hear me? You can’t take your fucked-up problems out on me, and you definitely can’t take them out on him!”
“Good night, Craig,” Stan said simply, shutting the door in his face and securing the bolt.
“Oh my God!” Tweek cried. He was hyperventilating, slightly. “What the hell!”
Kyle and Stan just stared at the door, which Craig was still banging on. They could hear him shouting things like “I’ll get you” and “You can’t do this” and “I’ll teach you fuckers not to mess with me.”
“How long is he going to do this for?” Kyle asked, stepping back. Stan put an arm around his waist.
“Oh, Jesus, probably all night. You made him really angry!”
“Eh, just forget about it,” Stan suggested. “He’ll get tired eventually.”
Craig did not tire until 5:30 a.m.
Continued here.
“We should at least be paying him more money,” Stan would suggest.
“Tell me one thing, Stan. Do you want to want to make a profit, or do you just want to throw all of our money away and live on the street like matchgirls?”
“Make a profit. But honestly, we should pay him a little more. He’s worth more than 7 dollars an hour.”
“Well, he seems perfectly happy being fiscally raped,” Kyle would conclude, and it was true. They had this conversation each quarter, and they always determined that Butters, well, Butters just liked antiques. Or maybe he liked the calm, serene, fussy sort of vibe the shop exuded. He was that kind of guy, after all. He looked something like an asexual academic type, with his tapered khakis and loafers and stupid little sweaters. Stan still thought the most humiliating moment of his life was the day he walked into the store to drop off some vintage cookbooks, only to realize that he and Butters were wearing the same exact sweater. Oh, they were different colors, all right, but it still wasn’t lost on Stan, who donated the offending garment to goodwill.
In light of Craig’s ultimatum, Kyle stayed up throughout most of the evening going through his books. And around 1 a.m. he reached the conclusion that they really only had one insanely useless expense. So that was why he was also up at 7 a.m., smacking Stan in the face with a pillow.
“Get up, lazy,” he chided.
“Wha?” Stan asked hazily, yawning. He looked at the clock. “It’s early,” he concluded, rolling over.
“Get up, Stan. If you want to keep this store you have to get up.” So Stan got up, and being very tired he tried to put his left shoe on his right foot. Still, he managed to sleepwalk into the store behind Kyle, at around 9:15 a.m. and they were immediately greeted by their employee.
“Good morning, fellas,” Butters enthused, too chipper.
“Butters, you’re fired.”
Butters just gawked at Kyle. “Oh, no,” he moaned. “I didn’t do anything, honest.”
“You didn’t do anything, Butters,” Kyle intoned, and Stan really thought he could hear an air of regret in Kyle’s statement. “But we really can’t afford to pay you anymore.”
“Oh dear,” Butters continued. “What’ll my parents think?”
“You parents?” Stan asked.
“Yeah, who cares about them?” Kyle added.
“All right, fine, who cares about them. But what about Lillian? What’ll she think?”
“I’m sure she’ll…” Kyle began, but he interrupted himself. “Wait a minute. Butters, who’s Lillian?”
“Why,” Butters sniffed. “She’s my girlfriend.”
Stan and Kyle were dumbfounded. “You have a girlfriend?” Stan asked uneasily.
“Yeah,” Butters said.
“Where the hell did you get a girlfriend?” Stan wanted to know.
“She works at the school with me. She’s the librarian.”
“You’re dating the school librarian,” Kyle said.
“Yeah. And she loves this store. She was so impressed when I told her I got a job here. She comes in every Sunday afternoon, and we…” Butters trailed off. “We like it here,” he concluded shyly.
“You what?” Kyle asked, seriously not knowing.
“You…oh, my god,” Stan choked. “Sick, dude! Butters, you can’t do that in the store!”
“I know,” Butters sighed. “We don’t do anything too rough.”
“Excuse me.” Stan grabbed onto a pedestal ashtray to steady himself. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Are you okay?” Butters asked.
“Here.” Kyle took Stan by the elbow and led him to a sofa near the window. “Shhh, Stan. Deep breaths.”
“Butters…girlfriend…in my store…”
“I know, Stan. Shhh, don’t think about Butters. The Pacific Northwest, Stan. Think about pine trees.”
“Ugh,” Stan groaned. “I can’t deal with this. First Craig, and now Butters … oh my god. What the fuck?”
Butters just stood there, watching this. “What’d Craig do?” he asked uneasily.
“I can’t even talk about it,” Stan said dismissively.
“He wants to either raise our rent, or buy us out,” Kyle stated simply.
“So, you guys gonna pay the rent?”
Kyle sighed as he continued to pat Stan on the back reassuringly. “We can’t afford it.”
“So, you’re gonna sell him the business?”
“Hell no!” Stan shouted, and then he flinched. “He can have this business over my dead body. Oh, Jesus, I think I’m getting a headache.”
“So technically, Butters, you’re not being fired. You’re being laid off.” Kyle thought for a moment. “You might be eligible for some kind of unemployment.”
“Eh, I don’t think so,” Butters said with a shrug. “And even then, I don’t need it. I mean, I’m fine, I got my job at the school. And if Lill and I get hitched, then we’ll have two incomes.”
“You’re thinking about getting married?” Kyle asked, always interested in this subject.
“Oh, no,” Stan moaned. “Butters, please do me a favor and never, ever talk to Kyle about marriage.”
“Well, why not?”
“Because he wants to drive me crazy.”
“All right, Stan, you know what?” Kyle let go of Stan’s shoulders, and crossed his arms. He turned away from the other man on the couch and stared at the wall. “You can just rub your own back from now on.”
“Fine with me, I didn’t want you rubbing my back anyway.”
“Fine, then I won’t anymore.”
“Okay, fine,” Stan concluded.
“Are you guys okay?” Butters asked.
“Fine,” Stan and Kyle answered at the same time.
~
After Butters left, a woman from Denver came in looking for a pair of candlesticks, but she left when she realized that there was a ‘better’ antiques store down the block. This thoroughly upset both Kyle and Stan, and they sat together miserably on the couch, reminiscing about the good old days, although neither of them could remember when that was - it was something of an intangible concept, like having an open relationship. They thought that maybe it existed, and maybe some people had participated, but it was probably just a myth and even if it wasn’t, it probably wasn’t as good as they were imagining it to be.
By the time their conversation was turning really esoteric, an elderly gentleman came into the store, and he left two hours later (after engaging Stan in a frighteningly long conversation about the aforementioned good old days) with a ceramic statuette of a collie.
“At least we made a sale,” Stan said cheerfully.
Kyle, as usual, rained on his parade. “Yeah, and that dog cost us 20 bucks when we got it at that estate sale, and we sold it for 75. So if you think about it, it wouldn’t even have covered Butters’ pay for the weekend.”
“Well, look at it this way: Butters is no longer working here.”
“I know.” Kyle fell back down on the sofa, where Stan was already seated with a 19th-century copy of the Bible that somebody had brought in the other day. “He has a girlfriend. I had no idea.”
“Well, it’s about time,” Stan grumbled. “I just wish he hadn’t done it in my store.”
“But, I mean, a girlfriend?” Kyle pressed.
“What? You thought he was gay or something?”
“Kinda.”
Stan snorted. “You think everyone is gay.”
“Have you ever even looked at him?”
“Well, no, not too closely, but, come on. Butters is the straightest person I’ve ever met in my life. In fact, he’s so straight, he doesn’t even realize when he’s doing something sexually questionable.”
“Look, Stan. He has a rabbit.”
“And if he were gay, he’d have a Pomeranian.”
Kyle scowled, and gave Stan the finger. Stan just laughed at him and went back to flipping through the book in his lap. “What are we gonna do?” Kyle asked again. “Do you realize we have two weeks to figure this out?”
“I don’t know, Kyle. Finance is your bag. What do you want to do?”
“Well, we don’t have a lot of ways to cut expenditures. I suppose we could cut back on our buying.”
“That’s fine with me.” Stan shrugged, and closed the Bible he was studying, and then laid it on the coffee table in front of him, pushing over a glass candy dish to make room. “Most of the crap people bring in isn’t worth anything anyway.”
“The problem with this business is, when it’s good, it’s great.” Kyle sighed. “But you have to spend too much money to make big sales. We could stop buying so much stock … we fired Butters … I don’t know if there’s another way to cut down our expenses.”
“I really don’t want to close this business, Kyle. It’s like … well, it’s like our baby or something.”
“See, Stan? This is what I’ve been saying all along. If Craig came in here and offered us 200 grand for our child, we could have him arrested. But it’s perfectly fine to do it with our antiques store.”
“Yeah, but we can get rid of an antiques store if we can’t afford it,” Stan pointed out. “If we had a kid and it became a burden, we’d just be stuck with it.”
“Well, what do you want to do, Stan?”
Stan answered immediately, and very seriously. “I don’t want to give up my business. Or this store. All I have is this, and you.”
“Oh, I’m so glad I’m runner-up in your heart to this second-hand junk box.”
“Shut up, Kyle. “
“Well, you might get lucky.” Kyle saw Stan make a face, and he groaned. “No, not like that. Who are you, Butters? Pay attention. What I’m saying is, it’s not like we can move.”
“Well? Why not?”
“I’ve looked into it. Craig’s right - there isn’t any retail space available.”
“None?”
“Well, I mean, there’s some over by that Indian burial ground.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound great.”
“Plus, you know, it’s not 100,000 dollars flat-out. There is such a thing as tax.”
“You know,” Stan said very calmly, “I may not have a business degree from a fourth-tier community college, but I do know what tax is. I mean, I am an adult.”
“Sometimes, I wonder.”
“Thank you.”
It was at moments like these that Kyle wished he had some kind of hobby, something that would occupy his hands during the weird little gaps in conversation he and Stan frequently found themselves staring down. The reason he’d never taken up anything was simply that he would never be able to live down the embarrassingly clichéd humiliation of being caught knitting - or, worse yet, needlepoint. In fact, every year for Christmas since they bought their house, Butters had given Stan and Kyle a sampler. With unspeaking shared glances they questioned where got them, or if he made them himself. They hung them in the laundry room, and never asked Butters about it. They preferred not knowing.
~
It seemed that 5 p.m. did not come quickly enough. Kyle did not particularly like antiques, and while he did not really mind or dislike them, either, it was not so easy to sit in relative silence, with no math to do, while Stan performed his endless amount of inventory, appraisal, and so on. So much of selling was talking someone into making a purchase, and Stan prided himself on his ability to talk himself into sales. Moreover, Stan actually enjoyed this. He appreciated old things, where they came from, what artistic merit they had, who made them, what they said about cultures foreign and eras past. This was in contrast to Kyle, to whom the only thing antiques said were “ka-ching,” and if they didn’t say that, they weren’t worth talking about. He had learned some things along the way - he was bright, after all, but really, his opinions on sitting in a room full of ticking clocks and glinting candelabras were hugely influenced by his feelings for Stan. And at this moment, his feelings for Stan were not at an all-time high.
He came home feeling bitter; Stan came home feeling dejected, for even he was not happy about dealing with Craig, the fact that he might lose his store, having to fire his old friend, the only man who shared his passion for the subject, or the idea of having no weekend at all for the foreseeable future. Tiredly, they both collapsed on the couch. Usually after a day of work, Stan liked to have a glass of wine and relax in front of the television. On the weekends, he and Kyle sometimes drove out to Denver for dinner, or to pretend for a few hours that they did not live in South Park. Stan was also a great fan of sex, and good days at work put him in a lascivious mood quite often. But it had not been a great day, and what was more, he was no longer a young man. He wasn’t an old man, but he found himself at the point where he did not compulsively lust for physical attention every hour any longer. Kyle seemed to have no desire to have any sex, or rather, he seemed to be using sex as a means of relationship facilitation, rather than a raw need that slowly wore away at his sensibilities. Apparently, this was just something that happened to the Broflovski men.
So Saturday night was here, for indeed it was dark out already, and Stan and Kyle both languished on the couch, feeling hurt and upset and drained for various reasons. “Is it raining?” Stan asked, wanting for a reason to hear Kyle’s voice, to bolster his own weariness.
“Yeah,” Kyle sighed. “What’s for dinner?”
“Rain,” Stan said sleepily. “Um, how do you feel about pizza?”
“Pizza’s delicious. The problem is, we can’t afford pizza.”
“Oh, yeah. I agree.”
Half an hour later, Stan brought in two bowls of farfalle with pink sauce. “How’d you make this?” Kyle probed, crawling out of the rhythmic cocoon that is a Saturday night Upstairs, Downstairs marathon on PBS.
“I mixed the leftover marinara with that jar of alfredo my sister sent after Italy,” Stan explained. The worst thing about it was, Shelly had apparently never heard of white sauce before her week in Florence, so instead of bringing them back a souvenir, she just went to the grocery store when she got back and bought them a jar of alfredo and shipped it with a note, I tried this in Italy and thought you turds might appreciate some real Italian food. Kyle rolled his eyes at this, but tried it anyway.
“I would have reduced some tomatoes in that chardonnay your mom didn’t finish,” he suggested.
“Yeah,” Stan agreed. “She’s really turning into a wino.”
They ate slowly, glancing at each other and the television set and the clock. Someone, some washed-up actress, was pleading with them for funding for public broadcasting, and in thanks they would apparently receive some videotapes of Upstairs, Downstairs. “Who even owns a VCR now?” Kyle asked.
“I think someone tried to bring one in a couple of weeks ago,” Stan recalled. “Actually, it was that Fosse guy.”
“What ever happened to him?” Kyle wondered.
“Apparently, he still watches VHS.”
Kyle was a slow eater, so Stan put his head on Kyle’s shoulder while he continued to mechanically ingest single bowties. The doldrums of British voices were beginning to lull him to sleep, and it was only 7 o’clock, which was quite sad, when there came a pounding at the door, distinct from the rain.
“Door,” Stan sighed.
“What now?” Kyle asked.
“Maybe it’s Craig, out for revenge.”
“Wouldn’t that be us, seeking revenge on him?”
“Who knows,” Stan yawned, bare toes digging into the carpet as he headed for the door. “Jesus,” he sighed as he swung it open. “You can stop pounding now, I’m right…” he trailed off.
“Stan?” Kyle called from the other room. “Who is it?”
“..here,” Stan finished.
“Hi,” Tweek said morosely. His hair was shorter, and he seemed to be unusually quiet and still.
“Tweek…” Stan said slowly. “Hi.” It was cold; through the screen door, Stan felt the chill of winter (or in this case, early spring) permeate the house. “Here,” he offered, swinging the door open with an elastic snap. “Get in here.”
Tweek hugged himself and shook rapidly as Stan shut the door.
“Godammit,” Kyle shouted. “It’s not actually Craig, is it?”
“Close,” Stan said with a sniff, leading Tweek into the living room.
“Hello,” Tweek said nicely, giving Kyle a sad little wave. “What’s going on?”
“Um.” Kyle bit a piece of pasta off of his fork, chewed it slowly, and swallowed. “Nothing much,” he said thoughtfully. “Having dinner.” He looked at Stan, who shrugged. “Where’s Craig?”
“Gah!” Tweek spat, something more like the Tweek they knew, or at least kind of knew of. “I don’t know where he is, and I don’t care!”
“Well, he’s probably looking for you,” Kyle supposed.
“Maybe,” Tweek admitted. He bit his lip and squinted his left eye. “I left him!” he said suddenly.
Stan put a hand to his throat, and Kyle smiled wryly. “Did you?” he asked. “Why, whatever for?”
“I can’t take it anymore, man! It’s so much fucking pressure! Every day it’s like, Tweek, do this. Tweek, do that. Tweek, take these pills, they make you feel better. Tweek, don’t touch my Warhol print. Tweek, don’t touch the scissors. Tweek, don’t cut all your hair off. I mean, oh Jesus! When does it end, man? When does it end?”
Stan pointed to the hair. “Looks good,” he said.
Kyle put down his nearly finished bowl of pasta and crossed his legs. “So, no more Craig, huh?”
“No way!” Tweek shook both fists. “I gotta go back eventually.”
“And why’s that?” Kyle asked.
“All my clothes are there! Plus it’s just, so, like … oh Jesus.” Tweek put his head in his hands and sat down on the floor, making it wet. “I’m getting all dizzy.”
“I see.” Kyle got up and stepped over Tweek, and then he grabbed Stan by the sleeve of his red cable-knit V-neck. “Excuse us,” he said politely, pulling Stan into the foyer.
“Bingo,” he hissed, thin auburn eyebrows hopping up in jubilation.
“Yeah,” Stan drawled slowly, looking over Kyle’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of Tweek rocking back and forth on the floor. “I mean, what?”
“This is our chance, you fool!” Kyle said, a bit too excitedly for Stan’s taste.
“Our chance to what, exactly?”
“Well, you know.” Kyle paused. “This whole time, Craig’s had something to hold over us.”
“That’s true,” Stan agreed.
“So now, we have something to hold over him.”
“Look,” Stan said with a drawn-out sigh, slumping his shoulders. “Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe this is a sign that we should just, you know … close the store and get 9-to-5 jobs. Start putting real money into our IRAs.”
“Stan, there are two kinds of people in this world.”
“Really? Only two?”
Kyle ignored this. “There are people who get fucked over, and there are people who get to the top, not caring how many little baby toes they step on in the process. Now, do you want to be the first kind of person forever? Because I myself am getting pretty sick of it.”
“All right. I give up.” Stan kicked the carpet with his heel. “It’s your project. I’m not getting involved”
Inhaling the air of what he was certain could only be confidence, Kyle rolled up the sleeves on his crisp black shirt and strode back into the living room.
“Hey, Tweek,” he said in his most plastic, friendly voice. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Tweek lifted his head, and wiped his eyes, which were actually dry. “Really?” he asked. “Craig never wants to talk about it.”
“No?” Kyle asked sympathetically. “Stan and I do a lot of talking.”
“It’s mostly Kyle,” Stan filled in from the doorway.
Shaking his head at this, Kyle pressed ahead. “Communication is so important to a relationship.”
“I know.” Tweek began to chew on his bottom lip, which made him look extremely feral, which in turn made the living room floor look particularly dignified. “That’s why I came to you guys.”
“We’re so flattered,” Kyle lied.
“I mean, you guys are always so nice to each other,” Tweek continued. “Sometimes I’m like, Jesus, Craig, why do I always have to be on the bottom? And he’ll just be like, well, you like to bottom. And I’ll be like, no, man, no! Even though I do like to, it’s just not like he ever asks. What if I don’t want to play doggy one day? What if I don’t want to experiment with nipple clamps? No one ever asks me if I like being humiliated, everyone just assumes I do because - gah, oh my God, do you ever stop and think to yourself, oh my God, I’m an adult, why am I being led around like a dog through the town where everyone can see me?”
“Can’t say that I do,” Stan mumbled.
“Oh dear.” Kyle patted Tweek nervously on the shoulder, trying to prevent vomiting by any means necessary. “Yes, that sounds horrible. You poor dear.”
“And I walk by your store,” Tweek continued sadly. “And I see how nice it is inside. I don’t like sharp corners. They hurt when you walk into them. So Craig says, well, don’t walk into them. But how can I stop? They’re everywhere!”
Stan drawled, “That can be a real problem.”
Tweek quieted down. “I just need a couple days apart from him,” he said firmly. Kyle stuck his tongue partially out, and looked up at Stan, who very firmly, from the arching threshold that separated living room from foyer, shook his head and drew a finger across his neck and mouthed the word no.
“It’s okay,” Kyle said kindly, turning back to Tweek. “You can stay with us for as long as you want.” He made sure to give Stan a defiant, evil smirk. Stan smacked his forehead, and pounded up the stairs. “Do you have clothes? Do you need a toothbrush?”
Kyle and Stan argued briefly, albeit not particularly seriously, in the bedroom when Kyle came up to get Tweek some nightclothes, mostly about whether Tweek couldn’t just sleep on the couch, or if he really had to stay in the guest room. Kyle won. They went back to discussing attire.
“Well, he won’t fit my pajamas.” Stan indicated his two-piece blue, red, and brown plaid flannel pajamas, which for pajamas seemed to be absurdly well-fitted. Kyle thought they were hideous, and that they made Stan look like a child, despite the unsettlingly flattering cut. “Why don’t you lend him something of yours?”
“He’s tiny,” Kyle said in reply, digging through his dresser. Kyle wore flimsy lounge pants to bed, if anything at all; he did not like to admit this, but he liked sleeping under five or six layers of blanket, preferably with Stan’s warming torso wrapped around him. For all his pretense, Stan figured Kyle needed to absorb just as much affection in his sleep as actual heat. But he was going back down to talk to Tweek tonight, so he was wearing a pair of lounge pants, with a robin’s egg blue T-shirt that simply had “Provincetown” imprinted on the front. He had gotten it, of course, in Provincetown - which, of course, they had visited to go antiquing, and certainly not to attend any all-night predominantly homosexual dance parties, or anything like that.
Under all of this fabric, Kyle looked much larger than he was, and Stan enjoyed watching the jersey fabric of the pants stretch across his generous behind as he squatted to look through the dresser. “If I ever worked out I might know where all these junky T-shirts were,” Kyle remarked. He pulled one out. “Do you think Tweek has any political ideologies that would conflict with this?” he asked, brandishing an olive IDF shirt.
“No,” Stan said carefully. “But I bet Craig does.”
“You think Craig is a Palestinian sympathizer?” Kyle asked.
“I don’t know. I just think it’s hot when you get all pissed off about Arabs.”
Kyle got up on his feet, and tried to adjust his pants so that his junk wasn’t visible, but it was no use. “I have to go back to Tweek,” he said.
“Aw, come on.” Stan patted the bed next to him. “He won’t miss you for 10 minutes.”
“No,” Kyle said very obstinately, and then he was gone, leaving Stan to flop back on the bed and service himself.
~
Kyle made two mugs of tea, but he noticed after 15 minutes that Tweek hadn’t touched his. He eyed it suspiciously, and pushed it away very slowly a couple of times, only to draw it back toward him, inspect it again, and decide he didn’t like it yet another time. They mostly talked about Craig, and Kyle made sure to fuel whatever fires of dissatisfaction were already ignited in Tweek’s mind. He didn’t not have a clear picture of how encouraging Tweek to be further pissed at Craig was going to help his cause, but he had a feeling about it - a mean, nasty feeling that made his heart throb with the beat of control.
The biggest surprise was, Tweek was not a poor conversationalist. He had opinions - oh, did he have them. He did not seem to tire, and he did not seem to care for many things. His voice rang with a bell of suspicion, and he reminded Kyle of a toy dog that yelped a lot, and yet lapdogs were very popular due to their adorability and, Kyle had to admit, this frightening urge some people, himself included, apparently, had to stroke them back to calmness.
Kyle did not think Craig would like a lapdog. But just as Tweek was raving about something impolite Craig had done involving a space heater, a pair of handcuffs, and the backyard, Kyle decided that he didn’t know what Craig would like at all, except that he seemed to like financial gains, and he absolutely adored being in command. Yes, in fact, that was the theme of Tweek’s complaints - the lack of his autonomy. Well, what was a lapdog but a little thing for rich people to commandeer?
“And do you know,” Tweek continued, “that he introduces me to his relatives as ‘my sex slave’?”
“Terrible,” Kyle clucked. “You’re not his sex slave.”
“Actually, I am.” Tweek began to tug at the bottom of his shirt like it was making him very itchy. “But that doesn’t mean he has to introduce me like that!”
“I know what you mean. Stan always just calls me his boyfriend. Except when we’re dealing with shop business, then it’s ‘my business partner’ this and ‘my business partner’ that.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Tweek asked.
“We’ve been together for way longer than anyone else I know!” Kyle huffed indignantly. “Boyfriend? What a joke. A boyfriend is someone you’ve gone to the movies with a couple of times. I find it very insulting.”
“He could call you his sex slave in front of his parents, so that they call you ‘sex slave’ too, and every time you walk into their house it’s, ‘Hello, sex slave, would you like some apple juice?’ And the answer is yes, perhaps I would enjoy some apple juice, but Jesus fucking Christ, I have a name! I mean, it just makes me so … gah!” Tweek seemed to jump a little in his seat.
And the conversation continued on like this for quite some time. Kyle could hear in Tweek’s voice the sort of weariness he felt in himself when he thought about Stan: distinct, real self-pity. But the difference between his relationship with Stan and this nightmare Craig/Tweek train wreck was that at the end of the day, Stan Marsh was a good man, a handsome man, a man you could bring with you to visit your parents in Sarasota. He would help babysit your nieces and nephews when you went to visit your brother for Passover. He would tirelessly and without fail make absolutely certain that at no time would he roll over and fall asleep before you too had experienced orgasm. He never forgot an anniversary, birthday, or Mother’s Day.
But then Kyle thought about all the ways in which Stan was part of his family, and he began to get angry again. Because no matter how many Christmas mornings there were, no matter how many Easter egg hunts he went on with Stan’s nephews, he wasn’t a Marsh, and never would be one, and it was all that goddamn closeted asshole’s fault. Still, there were those good things about him. They might not be making up for the bad things at the moment, but they existed. Kyle listened to every single word about the domineering Craig, and tried to figure out what, exactly, Tweek saw in him. At a point or two he was on the verge of asking, “So, what do you like about Craig?” but then he rationalized that this would not help his cause at all, so he kept his commentary to sweet reassurances and “Mmhmm, girlfriend”-type rejoinders.
Right when Kyle was beginning to fall asleep in the middle of Tweek’s complaining, and he was somnolently contemplating making another mug of tea, the doorbell rang.
“At this hour?” Kyle asked generally. “Really?”
“It’s him!” Tweek cried, getting on his knees in his chair. “Don’t answer it.”
The doorbell chimed a second time, and soon after there followed some banging. Tweek hid his head in his hands, and Kyle got up and adjusted his shirt so that it kind of disguised his drowsy bulge. “No,” Tweek said with a sob, clutching at Kyle’s sleeve, but his plan, after all, was not meant for Tweek’s betterment - he had a mission and a deadline. Tweek followed him around to the foyer, where Stan had also sleepily come downstairs.
“You think that’s Craig?” Stan asked.
“I know it is!” Tweek replied hastily.
“Could be,” Kyle said with an over-pronounced shrug.
Stan rubbed his eyes. “Let’s just ignore him.”
Tweek nodded along to this, rubbing his hands together and shivering.
Kyle gave them an apologetic smile, and threw open the door.
In his little booty shorts and sheer shirt, Craig bounded into the house. He was still wearing flip-flops, and Stan’s eyes widened at this, because truly it was too cold out for flip-flops, no matter how erratic the weather was acting.
“What the fuck?” Craig growled with tangible impatience, twisting his sights from Stan to Kyle and back. He then spotted Tweek, who backed away, and Craig reached out for him. “Here you are,” he said menacingly. “Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I need a couple of days!” Tweek was shaking worse than Kyle and Stan had ever seen him shake. “I gotta do this!”
“So you run off to bunk up with these losers?”
“They’re not losers! They’re really nice!”
“What’s the difference?” Craig asked, rolling his eyes.
“They don’t dress me up in girls’ clothes and make me dance for their poker buddies!”
“You liked it!”
“No way, man! I only liked it when it was you and me!”
“I don’t understand, Tweek. What is your problem?”
“I don’t know!” Tweek cried out. “Ah! Just leave me alone for a while!”
“Oh, is that what you want?” Craig asked, eyes narrowing.
“Maybe?” Tweek asked. “I don’t know!”
“Really, Craig,” Stan said sternly, finally breaking into this conversation. “Get out of our house.”
Craig snorted. “Who do you think you are?” He sneered. “I own your pathetic little asses.”
“Oh, really?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah,” Stan chimed in. “This isn’t our store, Craig. We own this house. Get the fuck out.”
“I’ll get the police involved!” Craig threatened, shaking a clichéd fist. “You’re both kidnappers.”
Kyle laughed at this. “We are not. Tweek is here on his own volition.”
Tweek just made a sad, tense little sound after this.
“Besides,” Stan added. “We have friends on the force. They’d never take your side over ours.”
“Oh, you think that fat prick is going to protect you?”
“Yeah, actually,” Stan said.
“He might hate us,” Kyle began.
“And we might hate him,” Stan interrupted.
“But he sure doesn’t give a crap about you, Craig, that’s for damn sure,” Kyle finished.
“I’m not kidding!” Craig shouted. “You can’t do this to a man! Tweek is mine, do you hear me? You can’t take your fucked-up problems out on me, and you definitely can’t take them out on him!”
“Good night, Craig,” Stan said simply, shutting the door in his face and securing the bolt.
“Oh my God!” Tweek cried. He was hyperventilating, slightly. “What the hell!”
Kyle and Stan just stared at the door, which Craig was still banging on. They could hear him shouting things like “I’ll get you” and “You can’t do this” and “I’ll teach you fuckers not to mess with me.”
“How long is he going to do this for?” Kyle asked, stepping back. Stan put an arm around his waist.
“Oh, Jesus, probably all night. You made him really angry!”
“Eh, just forget about it,” Stan suggested. “He’ll get tired eventually.”
Craig did not tire until 5:30 a.m.
Continued here.