Brief Encounters

Hank and Bill are looking to buy their first home together, a weekend cabin in the mountains. They enlist the help of their realtor, Mitch, but they’re in for a surprise in what he shows them.

Mitch looks at this couple with interest and relives fond moments of his own relationship. It is only when he thinks that they are the appropriate people does he show them their perfect cabin, but it’s not all it seems.

Review:

This story is told from a couple of perspectives, from that of the couple Hank and Bill who are seeking their first vacation home together. Bill is somewhat older than Hank and after coming out of a rather messy long-term relationship he was hesitant to tie them together financially, but he finally feels they are ready and have been in touch with real estate agent Mitch who will show them a few places. It’s also told from Mitch’s perspective. He’s an older gay man whose partner died of AIDS many years ago, and he seems much of himself and his lover in the young couple he’s with.

His first stop is a rather typical American suburb where the men are not overly impressed to see the standard look-alike houses. Hank wants a “cabin”, not just another house. Mitch starts to reassess the young couple, maybe they aren’t like all the other gay men coming to check out vacation home, maybe Bill is not trying to impress his younger lover by buying him a house, they could be the real deal. He then takes them to another house out it in the country and Hank falls in love. It’s what all of us would imagine a vacation cottage is supposed to be, however as they are looking around Mitch seems to vanish. When they return to town to figure out what the heck happened, they discover the agency has no agent named Mitch and the house they looked at has been empty for so long because something always goes wrong, people get injured while visiting, mortgage approvals fall through, rather a bad-luck piece of property. Hmmm.

I found Mitch’s reminiscences about his own life with his lover very touching. You can feel that he still feels the loss many years later and while he moved on with his life and wasn’t wallowing really, he never found that kind of love again and seeing Bill and Mitch who remind him so much of his younger self was rather bittersweet. I found the writing a little choppy perhaps at the beginning, but once it got flowing it smoothed out and I got more invested in the story. I didn’t really connect as much with Bill and Hank for some reason, maybe because the focus for me seemed to be more on Mitch and his past. I did enjoy the paranormal twist though and if you are interested in stories that are a bit less typical, not boy meets boy falls in love, it is a good choice.