Nightswimmer (24 page)

A horrifying thought. “Only
you
would think of such a perverse-case scenario,” I said.

“Why do you think it’s called star 6-9?” Greg threw me one of his typical “I know you inside and out” looks as he steam-pressed a shirt arm. “Just troubleshooting yet another possible paranoid fantasy.

When I accused him of being flip and unsympathetic, Greg’s face reddened. He uprighted the iron and slammed it down on its tin tray. “Now, just wait a second here. Who stayed up with you until three in the morning Halloween night? Who missed two parties and the parade because you were feeling so dismal?”

“Well, you’d have been depressed, too.”

“No shit. Look, I wanted to take care of you. But I easily could’ve fed you a couple of Xanax, put you to bed and gone out.”

“Maybe you were being helpful because you were secretly glad.”

This made Greg seethe. “You know one of the things I hated about being involved with you, Will? That you always saw a black hole in the middle of everything. I couldn’t even tell you you fucked me good without your thinking there was some qualification to the compliment.”

I managed to smile.

Greg continued, “Look, you know my opinion of the situation. From what you’ve said, Sean has never been able to handle a relationship. The claustrophobic type that bails out when things get a little uncomfortable. You saw it coming a mile away. And now that it’s happened, you’re going to realize: better now than later.”

“Here’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

“Look, I never claimed I was perfect.” Greg peeled the shirt off the ironing board and held it up to the light. He scrutinized it for creases, then his eyes found mine. “I’ve apologized for hurting you a million times. I don’t know what you want.”

“Well,” I complained, “for starters I’d like it if you’d stop dorking Sebastian.”

Greg fixed me with a stubborn gaze. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

“He’s hateful.”

“Did I ever tell you to stop dorking Sean?”

“Sean wasn’t involved with anybody else.”

“What’s the big deal, Will? I mean, Seb is just a fuck buddy.”

“Oh, he’s Seb now. Your fuck buddy Seb who happens to despise me.”

“That’s not”—Greg paused—“necessarily true.” He grabbed a bottle of starch that was standing next to his ankle and sprayed a wand over his shirt. “Anyway, he knows my loyalty is to you.”

I said nothing for a while and watched Greg finishing up his shirt, listening to the gurgling of hot water in the iron, hot water sizzling into steam. “I think I blame myself for making you into such a hard-ass,” I finally said. “You weren’t nearly so tough when we first met.”

Greg shrugged and headed over to his closet. “Yeah, well, I lived with you for long enough. What do you expect?”

“Just what I want to hear.”

Greg had turned away from me and was trying to select a pair of dress pants. “I’ll admit that I was threatened by your thing with Sean. You made it sound like it was some grand passion or something.”

It
is,
I wanted to reply. But I said nothing because Greg had already told me that in his opinion throughout those few months with you I’d been on edge, expectant, hardly my old self.

“I must admit it really got to me when you went up to Vermont with him … to our old place. And then that night we almost lost Casey, even though I was nearly out of my mind, I noticed his smile. A smile that could crack a safe.” Greg turned to face me again. “So factor all that into my hunch that nobody can get too close to a guy like him. Principally because a guy like him has no real devotion to anyone. And that with Sean Paris you were basically spinning your wheels.”

At this point, Casey got up from where he’d been lying next to Greg’s refrigerator and sauntered over to a plastic pumpkin chew toy that squeaked. He picked it up, squeaked it a few times, then brought it over and dropped it in my lap. Petting him, I tossed the pumpkin a few feet away and Casey pounced on it and began a wrestling solitaire.

“Don’t get him riled up right before I have to leave,” Greg warned as he finally selected a pair of dark trousers and stepped into them. He put on the dress shirt and buttoned it up swiftly.

“I think I’ll take him with me tonight, to my place,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”

Greg now showed me the most compassionate face I’d seen thus far in our conversation. “Mind? I wish you’d take him to your place more often.”

“Maybe I’ll start doing that.”

Once Greg was dressed and ready to go, and after I’d put on Casey’s leash and collected a few of his chase balls, I said, “So exactly how often
have
you been seeing Sebastian?”

Greg broke into a grin. “God, you’re really fixated on this thing with Sebastian! Once a week … at the most. But I’ll be honest with you, he
does
talk about Peter a bit too much.”

“Don’t you get it? They can’t live without each other.”

“Well, fucking around with me is surely a strange way of being unable to live without Peter!”

That was when I pointed out it was the only way to dilute the terror of real intimacy.

Casey and I escorted Greg to the subway and then we dropped in at the dog run and threw some balls around until Casey got tired. We took a little stroll after that and eventually wound up back at my apartment. Like a vigilant heart, the red answering machine light pulsed with a message. Your recorded voice said, “Hey, Will, it’s Sean here. Just checking in to see how you’re doing. Give me a call, whenever you feel like it.”

We were still speaking maybe once or twice a week. Nevertheless, the lags between those calls felt endless, like great flat stretches of a monotonous landscape. I kept thinking that during one of those perfunctory phone calls you’d come to your senses, that missing me would eventually get the better of you, but it never happened. And to think that only recently you’d said that it was finally beginning to “work” between us. Though I knew why we’d split up, there was still an injured part of me that kept appealing, “What happened, Sean, what happened?”

While listening to your message, I watched Casey trundle into the kitchen and sniff around for his food bowl in just the place it used to be when he’d lived here with Greg and me, a bowl that had since been retired to the cupboard. When he didn’t locate it, he fixed me with a baleful look. And I got sad. Because I realized that during those four years with Greg and Casey I’d probably come the closest to living in any sort of normal, domestic bliss.

I
FOUND MYSELF AT
Splash one night, watching video footage of the Halloween parade, the variations on drag and vampires and androgynes on stilts that I’d deliberately missed. This year there seemed to be a surprising number of eunuchs weaving in and out of the costumed regalia, innocent-looking boys with golden tresses; it made me wonder if there is a movement afoot toward sexlessness. After the parade shots was threaded some footage of a rather drab-by-comparison Veterans Day picnic. Thanksgiving was now only a week away, and for the first time in many years I’d deliberately made no plans. I hardly had much time to feel sorry for myself, however, when I noticed a hot blond giving me the eye. It’s scary how deep depression can suddenly burn off like fog when a number is overtly making his interest known. And there’s always that moment before you get into conversation and hear how he speaks, when you allow yourself to imagine this guy will be the one who will willingly spend the weekends reading with you and seeing films, who’ll prefer spending time in Vermont instead of on Fire Island. But usually the moment he opens his mouth you know at best it will be a one-night stand.

Nevertheless.

Eyes finally locked, we were grinning at each other, and as I strolled toward him, suddenly somebody tugged my shirtsleeve.

Another man, an exotic with golden skin and eyes glossy like Mediterranean olives, dark, wavy hair, diminutive. If I hadn’t already set my sights on the blond I might have been more friendly to this guy.

“Are you Will?”

I checked to see if the blond was still enthralled; he looked bewildered by the fact that I’d allowed his gravitational pull to be thwarted.

“Yeah, I’m Will.” I sounded brusque because I wanted to keep moving forward.

“I’m José Ayala.”

I now turned to gape at him. And the hunky blond shriveled into a passing thought. “God! I’ve wanted to get ahold of you!” I exclaimed.

“I guess I should’ve given you my phone number that time we talked.”

José glanced at the scowling blond, now retreating back to his original perch. “I don’t want to get in the way of anything.”

“Don’t worry about it. That was just my loneliness rearing its ugly head.”

“Well then, you’ve come to the right place.”

I grinned and asked what
he
was doing at Splash.

“Same as you. Deluding myself that I might get laid tonight.” We both laughed.

“I never expected you to be handsome,” I said boldly.

“You thought I’d be a troll?”

I considered this for a moment. “Honestly, I don’t know what I expected.”

“The one whose love is unrequited has to be ugly, right?” José grinned.

I agreed that it’s a dismal assumption. And I reflected back on your ideas concerning what exactly constitutes
a fatal attraction.

José was dressed better than most of the people in the bar. He wore a pair of black jeans and a white cashmere crew-neck sweater that showed the bones of his clavicle and the beginning of a taut, slightly built chest. Unconsciously rattling the ice in his cocktail glass, he asked if he could buy me another beer. I explained that I’d soon be leaving.

“Anyway,” he said, “should I assume because you’re here that you’re … alone again?”

I nodded. “You must’ve heard.”

“I did, actually.”

“Sebastian clue you in on that one?”

José frowned. “I haven’t spoken to him since … Is he still seeing your ex?”

“No, thank God. Greg finally blew him off. Sebastian finally starting bad-mouthing me.”

“That was loyal.”

“Well, that’s one dividend of gay life. Your former lovers often become your best friends.” As soon as I said this, however, I realized what an insensitive comment it was in light of what had happened to Bobby Garzino.

“It’s kind of like a wartime mentality,” José conceded as he gulped back what remained of his drink. “Our side has got to stick together … especially these days.”

I asked him how he’d been able to recognize me. He surprised me by saying that he checked one of my books out of the library (the one, ironically, that I’d thought he’d shredded) and had looked carefully at the author’s photo.

“I still haven’t figured out who shredded my novel.”

José appeared concerned. “Honestly, it could have been anybody.”

“Promise it wasn’t you?” I was smiling.

“I swear to you on my mother that it wasn’t.”

I looked over where the blond had been standing and found him speaking to a short, barrel-chested boy who had more hair on his head than I, and bigger proportions, and was younger.

“I’m going to get that drink now,” José said. “Sure you don’t want anything?”

“You go ahead. I’ll just wait here.”

José coolly approached the bar and confidently snagged the attention of the shirtless bartender, who served him promptly. There was something of the patrician in this little guy, I decided, a charming sort of assurance, which seemed quite a contrast to the person whom I’d imagined desperately gouging up a wooden door and placing importunate calls from pay phones. Why did he get so stuck on Bobby Garzino? Then again, such obsessive behavior could easily overwhelm most people who found themselves in a similar predicament. When he returned, José asked if you and I had broken up before you quit your job.

The question threw me into confusion.

“You didn’t know?” he said.

“I haven’t heard from Sean in a couple of weeks now.”

“Well, he left work ‘suddenly.’ So says the receptionist.”

“Bugging him at work again, huh?” I managed to say, despite a burgeoning anxiety. “Even I never did that. Not even in my most dismal hour.”

“You never had an ax to grind.”

“How do you know?”

“I guess I don’t know, really.”

There was a brisk silence and I was about to leave when José said, “Look, I want to apologize for telling you things that maybe you didn’t want to know.”

“They certainly had their desired effect.”

“My object wasn’t to break the two of you up.”

“You’re going to have a hard time convincing me of that.”

“Well, if you really believe that, then why are you talking to me now?

I pondered this. “I don’t know why, exactly. I guess because I’m intrigued. Intrigued that we’re both connected to the same man in different ways.”

“Me in a more hostile way,” José amended. “Though of course that’s over now.”

I doubted that but suppressed saying so. When I reminded José I had to be going, he asked if he could take me to dinner sometime.

I looked at him shrewdly. “What for?”

“As a gesture of thanks.”

“Come again?”

“I feel I owe you. I finally got all the loomed things back. Sean brought them over one night and left them in a box at my door, and they were lying there when I came home. I figured you had something to do with their being returned.”

I grabbed a cab hurtling along Seventeenth. Gave the address on Grove Street, leaned forward in my seat, gripping the door handle, cringing whenever we snagged any traffic. The rest happened like clockwork. A young couple who lived upstairs happened to be leaving the building the moment I arrived and, recognizing me from all the nights and mornings I spent there, let me in.

The ruined door had been spackled and repainted, the marks of José’s anguish completely eradicated. I tried it and, to my surprise, it swung open.

The beloved apartment was like a struck stage, hastily abandoned, and not quite denuded of props. The furniture was gone; so was the piano; the walls were bare, with gaping holes from where pictures had hung; and all the stuffed birds and butterflies had taken spectral flight. Left were a digital clock-radio and a box of moldy paperbacks. The floor was strewn with paper clips and pieces of broken tile that I recognized from the garden on Charles Street. In the closet hung a torn houndstooth jacket. An ugly brown sweater was wadded up in a ball and stuffed into a corner.