Martin and John (15 page)

“I
told
you,” he tells me, sounding like a angry child. “If we’d had more money we could’ve taken the taxi back to Manhattan.” I pick up the money, stuff it back in the book, and put it all back on the shelf. I want to ask him why he didn’t say something, warn me. But I’m afraid he’ll say, Why didn’t you tell me about Henry? And I want to ask him again, Where did you come from, why did you come
here? but I have no idea what he’d say to that. When I turn off the light, I realize it’s fully dark out. Time to get up.

I WALK THE two miles home from my third day of work slowly, my feet sweating in the heavy boots. Small clouds of dust puff up with each footfall, and I watch these to avoid staring at the vehicles racing past me on the highway. I’m almost home when I look up and see our house: it sits isolated, a half mile from town, and behind it, the just-risen sun glows, illuminating the paint so that it seems yellow, almost golden. The windows are open and a breeze blowing through the house flutters the curtains outside the sills; as I approach they wave at me, or perhaps they warn me away. I take my boots off before I go inside and wipe my feet with the dry tops of my socks. I enter the house quietly in case Martin is sleeping on the couch. He’s not. I see him sitting at the kitchen table in his white work clothes; he isn’t moving at the table and doesn’t seem to have noticed me. I unbutton and remove my sweaty shirt, then walk into the kitchen. Martin perches on the chair with shoulders hunched, back slumped, head leaning forward. On the table a cup of instant soup steams in a clear glass mug. Martin doesn’t look up when I greet him, and I notice that his chin and shirt are stained with broth and a whitish-yellow noodle clings to his face just below his lip.

“Johnson was on my case again last night. Faggot this, faggot that.” His voice startles me. “I’m sorry,” I say, and go to
the cabinets, grabbing a cup and a package of soup. I turn the gas on under the teakettle. Martin idly twirls the spoon around in the soup. “He said, I heard you’re living with that Italian boy, what’s-his-name. Everyone
knows
he’s a faggot. I said, So what? He said, So he’s a
faggot.”
His voice inflects slightly, but something in his tone brings out the vehemence, the hatred. Only, I can’t tell if he’s imitating Johnson’s or if it’s his own. I don’t know if I should go to him or stay back. I don’t know what to do in a situation like this; I’ve never been in a situation like this before. “I got mad, I guess. I said, So what if he’s a faggot? What if I’m a faggot? He said, Then I’m going to run you out of town on a rail.” His head turns as he says this. His lips twist, half-snarl, half-cry, and his cheeks turn red. Then, as quickly as it started, his face relaxes, and he just sits there again. What does that mean, I wonder, on a rail? The teakettle whistles that my water is boiling. I empty the yellow powder and dried noodles from the soup package into my cup and lift the kettle from the stove. “What happened?” I ask. “He made me blow him or else he’d fire me.” The water gushes from the kettle’s spout too quickly and some of the soup splashes on the counter. I stir it a little, my spoon clinking against the sides of the mug, then I set the spoon on the counter and place the kettle on top of the cup so the dehydrated noodles will steep and become soft and fleshy. It takes a few minutes, a little time, for the absorption to take place. I wish I could rush it, but I can’t.

I take Martin from behind, encircle his chest with my arms.
Looking down the slope of his face, I see the noodle clinging below his lip and I reach up and remove it. Martin takes small sloppy bites of his soup. His cheeks are red again, but he isn’t crying. I say, “We’ll leave soon.” Martin says, “Never get angry.” I let go of him. “I’ve got to go take a shower.” When I’m in the bathroom I think I hear his voice in the other room. I don’t ask him what he said. Instead I call out, “Charlie invited us to dinner,” and turn on the bathtub water. “Do you want to go, Martin? There’ll be plenty to eat.” There’s a pause, and then I hear Martin sing-songing, “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.” “What about Charlie?” I call. If he answers me, I don’t hear him. All I hear is the hissing of the shower and a low gurgle as water leaks down the drain.

BETWEEN BITES OF doughnut, Charlie’d said, “You know we’re useless, don’t you, kid?” “What?” “Twenty-six years I been here. That’s a quarter century plus. And in all that time there’s never been one break-in, not even an attempted break-in. Not into any of the offices, not the safe, and certainly nothing having to do with national security wrenches.” “What are you talking about, Charlie?” “Hell, they’re just Allen wrenches anyway. This whole shebang was just some old senator’s gift to his home state back in the fifties. He guaranteed them defense jobs, see, and they guaranteed him votes. And this night watchman’s job, it’s just one more useless job that goes along with this whole useless plant.” He
paused, then pushed on. “We’re not the only night watchmen, you know?” “No, I—” “There was another one, before me. But he’s dead now, no wife, no family, nothing left behind him. Sometimes I think I’m the only one that even knows he existed. But it’s okay, I guess, however you touch other people, as long as you touch them, understand them a little, it’s okay.”

DINNER AT CHARLIE’S, once it’s cooked, is a short affair. Martin eats little, but drinks three beers quickly, biting his lips and frowning. Charlie and I talk loudly around him, and eat all the food that he doesn’t. Once, Charlie asks Martin if he’s feeling okay, but I answer for him. “Just tired,” I say. “He’s just tired. He works a night shift too.” “Yeah?” Charlie says. “My wife used to work a night shift for a while, so we could spend more time together.” “What a coincidence,” Martin says, speaking for the first time. Charlie looks at Martin chewing on his lips. “Everything taste okay to you, son?” “Everything’s fine,” Martin says, then turns to look at me. “Everything’s just like John said it would be.” “What?” I say. “I didn’t say anything.” Martin harrumphs. “Well,” Charlie says quickly, “if you’re not going to eat this, I’ll just help myself,” and he reaches to Martin’s plate and takes a chicken leg that’s only been nibbled on. And then dinner’s over. On the way out, I say to Charlie, “Are you sure we can’t help you clean up or something?” “No, no,” Charlie says, cleaning his
teeth with a toothpick. “I’ll get it.” “Do you want to sit outside for a while? We could,” and here I pause, thinking of what to do. “We could watch the night or something, the stars.” “No, that’s okay. Think I’ll just do the dishes and go to bed. You two probably want to get home anyway.” “Well, look,” I say, conscious of Martin walking away from me. “If there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all, you be sure and give me a call, okay?” Charlie looks flustered, almost embarrassed. “Look, son,” he says, and I feel that he’s embarrassed for me, not himself. “If there’s anyone you should be taking care of, it’s Martin.”

NOW THERE’S JUST the two of us walking home, a couple of feet apart on the sidewalk. It’s early evening, the time of the day when the black starry bowl of the sky drops down like a cool blanket to soothe the earth’s charred skin. Soon enough, though, like a real blanket in summer, the coolness is gone, leaving only hot scratchy fabric to grate over our skin. “You want to hear something about New York, John?” Martin says to me. I have a feeling I don’t, but I keep silent. “I went to a party once, I was sixteen. There was this man playing the piano. He was beautiful. He sat at the piano as if he’d had nothing better to do all his life than sit at pianos and entertain people. And then this other man comes up. He was around the same age, but he seemed younger, more insecure. He gives the first man a drink, and then they start talking, and it’s
obvious that there’s a seduction going on. I mean, just the way that guy played, so quietly, smiling, laughing every once in a while. And the second guy slides on the bench and they sit together for a while, the first man playing, the second one turning the pages of the sheet music, and then, after a while, they get up and leave together, and you just know what they’re going to do.” He’s spoken quietly but quickly, and it seems we’ve not traveled very far since the beginning of the story. “I don’t understand what that’s got to do with us,” I say. Martin plunges ahead, his voice desperate. “That party, John, that guy, so cool, so suave. The two of them went together so well. You could see them falling in love, right there, in their own little world, you could tell nothing was going to go wrong in their lives. I didn’t just want to take the other guy’s place, John, I wanted to
be
him.” “I still don’t get it,” I say, feeling stupid. “You don’t get it?” he practically shouts at me, and I look around nervously. He grabs me by the hand and I have to resist the urge to pull free. “You don’t get it? Well, get this: I wanted us to be them. When I came out here, and out of the blue met you, I thought, This is it.
We’re
it. We’re them.” He lets go of my hand and I’m relieved. I say, “But it hasn’t turned out like that. For you.” We’re almost at the house now. We turn up the path and the walk seems immensely long, a thin spindly bridge across a chasm that we can only traverse single-file. I watch Martin’s hunched shrinking shoulders as he ascends the porch steps. His white back is ghostlike, almost transparent as he walks under the
shadow of the porch. He opens the door to the house, turns to me. He’s licking his lips with an expression of distaste. “No,” he says, “it hasn’t.”

I walk in behind him, then go to a window and see the plant in the slit between the two curtains. “I’m going to stay up for a while,” I say. At this distance, the plant seems as small and insignificant under the sky as I am. “John,” Martin’s voice calls from the other room, “are you coming to bed or not?” “Soon,” I call. “Soon.” Sometimes I think that, given other choices, Martin and I wouldn’t have come together at all. I used to feel sure that whatever we were missing would appear somewhere, someday, perhaps lying beside the road or out in the open fields. Perhaps I’ll look up on my walk home from work and glean something from the brown-gold light of the sunrise that so resembles the dying light of sunset: it
will
be there, I tell myself, whatever it is. Until then, there is Martin; for a time, he will do, and, I suppose, I do for him. Such, I guess, such is the gaseous nature of love, which expands to fill whatever shape encompasses it.

I open the curtains wide—something we never do when we’re home—and push up the glass. It’s big and empty out there, quiet, and it seems like now there’s nothing to keep out of the room, and, as well, nothing to keep in.

“Love is in the morning” he said, “after a long night spent sleeping together.” We sat at his table. Eggs steamed the air before us, a bottle of milk waited to fill empty glasses. “Why the morning?” I asked. “Because in the morning,” he said, “you’re just awake.” He yawned and then smiled, as if at a joke I wasn’t getting. “Just awake?” I asked. “What does that mean? And anyway, shouldn’t love be at night, in bed?” He just smiled, then poured milk in his glass without looking at it and handed the bottle to me. “Why not at night?” I repeated. Last night we’d met, talked, come here, had sex, fallen asleep: if love existed, wasn’t that the place to look for it? And then I remembered dreams, interrupted, awakened by his hands, as he’d taken me a second time and I pretended to sleep. Now, pouring milk in my glass, I watched him, spilled a little, and handed the bottle back to him. He stood up then, so close to me that the white plain of his stomach filled my vision and the odor of his crotch filled my nose. I leaned my head toward it, my mouth
already open: I thought that’s what he wanted. But he pushed me back, walked behind me, behind my chair. He held me then kissed me then ran the cold milk bottle between my legs, and then, “John,” he said, “this is not just love, nor is it all of love.” He held up the half-drunk bottle and swirled the milk in it, and then he put it on the table and ran his wet hand down my back. He stopped at the base, scratched me lightly. I shivered as cold water ran off my thighs, and then I turned in my chair and put my hand, my big clumsy hand, on his chest. Each finger took a rib like shipwrecked swimmers clutching at life rafts, but my thumb danced over his heart, alone, uncertain. And then I gave in and moved close. I rested my ear against his chest, encircled him with my arms, and lay like a swimmer who has at last reached the end of the ocean. “Love is in the morning,” Martin repeated, mouthing the words into my ear, kissing it with dry lips, moving his wet hand up and down my back, making me, making me want … nothing. “After a long night spent sleeping together.” Beneath my ear, his heart moved a river of blood on its way and, at the thought of that, part of me shivered, and part of me was warm.

I HAVE KNOWN Martin for two and a half months, and this apartment, formerly his alone, still feels new. Sometimes I read Martin’s journal. It’s written in a compact precise hand distinguished from anything else he writes, which sprawls illegibly all over the place. Martin is a writer, though he’s never tried to publish. His story, a long, perhaps unending
narrative, floats at me from off the page, defying the cramped letters that frame it, spilling out into life. There is much of Martin in it; there are things I hadn’t thought of before, but after reading him, I ask myself, Is this real? and then answer, Yes. The words often seem spoken by children, or adults so close to their childhood that it still breaks over them in waves. Martin acts like a child, wild, impulsive, and carefree. He drops money on whims: gifts for me or old lovers whose friendship he still covets, or for other friends. He’s compulsive about his gift-giving, his goodwill; at his most rash I’ve seen him walk the city blocks with hundreds of dollar bills rolled in a ball and stuffed into one of the deep pockets of his pants. At every outstretched hand or cup he peels off a dollar, and into the receptacle, like a piece of food, he places the money, a gift of nourishment. Some people say he wastes these dollars, but Martin has plenty of money to give—perhaps even more than he has compassion. Martin wants to connect with the world. That’s a phrase that appears in his journal. It’s what the money means when he gives it away, and other things he does, like teach school, are all part of this desire to connect. Martin loves children, but is afraid of scandal or invasion by prying eyes if he tries to adopt. So he teaches grade school weekdays, and while he’s gone I do things about the house and run errands, visit my friends or shop, waiting for him to come home. It’s easy to love Martin: he’s rich, nice-looking, has a remarkably affectionate personality, and he loves me. He loves like a child, and I guess,
despite my outlook on life, so do I. The closer I get to him the younger I feel, more impulsive and, strangely, more in control of myself, as though I’m free to visit a different world, one that Martin brings to me. Sometimes when I read Martin’s journal and taste his little snatches of story, see his bright bursts of color and imagination, I feel this way, and feel also a rush of love, just from his words.