Robin and Ruby

by K. M. Soehnlein

  Peter says, “I’d love to know how this sounds to you.”

  “Shitty.”

  “Tell you what. I won’t say anything else. I’ll let you lead from here.”

  Robin nods and smokes his cigarette. He doesn’t know where to look.

  Peter says, “Meantime, how about we eat? This is hummus, this is baba ganoush, and this is tzatziki.” He points as he identifies each one, then grabs a pita slice, dips, and eats. Robin puts out the cigarette and then does what Peter does. Dips and eats. Chews and swallows. He compliments the food, as if this will somehow counteract everything that Peter has just said to him.

  “The tzatziki’s good,” Robin mumbles. “I’ve never had it before.”

  “Yogurt and mint,” Peter says, mouth full.

  As the meal proceeds, Robin notes Peter’s every facial expression and gesture. He seems satisfied, or at least relieved. Where is the doubt, the remorse? Robin’s own thoughts return to a fantasy he’s sometimes indulged since meeting Peter, the one about moving in with him to a little cottage by a creek on a bucolic patch of land in the western Pennsylvania countryside, while Peter finishes his dissertation and Robin decorates the house, cooks meals, auditions for summer stock plays. He has no idea where this vision originated or how he, a city boy who loves taxis and tall buildings and restaurants, could possibly remain satisfied out in the boonies. The fantasy curdles, and he sees himself staring at a closed door, behind which Peter types out pages of whatever it is he has to say about Renaissance art. He sees himself going quickly insane, snapping and turning against Peter, who has ruined his life by promising him love that he can’t deliver, sees himself creeping up on Peter’s bed, a kitchen knife in hand, the blade poised above Peter’s heart…

  His mother once admitted that she fantasized killing his father after he asked for a divorce. Dorothy had seemed absolutely bonkers to Robin at the time, beyond the realm of understanding or sympathy. But now he sees that he’s just like her, and that hurt finds hurt and magnifies it.

  What will she say when he tells her about this, about Peter? Peter’s really quite provincial. You need someone more sophisticated. I had a feeling this wouldn’t work out. George will say it more simply: I never trusted him.

  When the bill lands on the table, Robin doesn’t budge, even though his pockets are full of tip money. They have always split their costs, but not this time. This one’s on Peter. And then, as the waitress takes the money away, Robin is seized with panic. Has he just given the breakup his blessing, letting Peter pay his way out of their relationship? It’s all suddenly so real: not a scene he’s starring in but his actual life.

  Outside the restaurant, they linger under the bright summer sky. The heat of the day has passed, but the humidity clings, and under his work clothes, his skin is grimy, coated in burnt butter. He resists the urge to light up again. “Will you stay over tonight?” he asks, as Peter jiggles the car keys.

  “I’ve got somewhere lined up,” Peter says, nodding vigorously. “But I’ll drive you home.”

  “Lined up? With Diana?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  There’s something suspect about Peter’s behavior. He keeps nodding as he lets himself into the car.

  Robin looks into the empty hatchback. “Where’s your bag? Where are your clothes?”

  “They’re already at Diana’s.”

  “You went there first? Before you picked me up?”

  Peter nods. “I figured you’d need some space—”

  “You had this all planned out.” He gets in, slams the door. “You said it’s all about you and your path in life and your fucking destiny, but it’s about me, about what’s wrong with me. Why don’t you just say it?”

  Peter starts the ignition and without looking whooshes into traffic. A blare of a car horn startles them both into a shaky calm.

  “OK, yes,” Peter says, his gaze on the road, “there are some things about you—not that you’re a bad person, but there is the difference in our ages—eight years is a lot—and the fact that you have all of your twenties still ahead of you, whereas I want to figure out other things, start settling in to my adult life.”

  “I’ve already had my twenties. I had them in my teens.”

  “There’s also that,” Peter says. “Your history.”

  Robin feels his heartbeat quicken. “You mean my sexual history.”

  “Yes,” Peter says, softly but emphatically. “Especially after the last time.”

  The last time: The sex they had, during Peter’s previous visit, three weeks ago. That hot, hot moment when Peter slipped inside Robin unsheathed, and Robin let him thrust, thrust, thrust. Thirty seconds like that, maybe sixty, maybe a whole minute and thirty seconds. A tiny span of time that felt eternal. They both knew what was happening. Robin even said an encouraging yes, but finally Peter froze, cold realization on his face. “What are you doing?” he asked, and pulled out.

  “I haven’t been with anyone since I’ve been with you,” Robin says. “And I haven’t wanted to, either.”

  “With this virus, when I sleep with someone, I’m sleeping with everyone he’s ever had sex with.”

  “Well, that’s only a few dozen people,” Robin says and then neither of them says anything more.

  His head is flooding with chatter, noise he wants to float away from. He pushes the play button on the cassette deck. Exposé mixes into Lisa Lisa singing “I Wonder If I Take You Home,” a perky song that he understands now is really an anthem of doubt. Robin snaps it off after just a few measures.

  As Peter heads along Walnut Street toward West Philly, Robin imagines leaping from the car and running back to the restaurant, which is really a wish to run backward in time, to just a short while ago, when Peter was still his boyfriend. But in fact he feels paralyzed, rigid with the horror of being discarded by this man he was sure was the right one, the safe one, the one who would prevent him from chasing after his every dangerous impulse.

  The ride passes in silence. They cross over the Schuylkill River, past the big neoclassical train station and into the Penn campus, mostly quiet now that the summer is here. Peter reflexively locks the doors as they move into the surrounding neighborhood, where once-stately, now-dilapidated single-family homes are the outward sign of the poverty and crime that runs deep here. Peter pulls up to the curb in front of the row house where Robin and George share an upper-floor apartment. On the neighboring stoop, two teenage boys turn their attention to the car; these two, sometimes along with a couple more just like them, dressed in backward baseball caps and shiny tracksuits, are always here, staring at Robin as he comes and goes, never saying anything directly to him but often talking loudly among themselves in a way that unsettles him, because they’re letting him know whose turf this is. For the first week he would offer a hello, but he never got a verbal reply, and one time he heard one say what sounded like, “Crackers tryin’a take over the ’hood.” After that he just moved past quietly.

  The fact is that Robin picked exactly the wrong time to move into West Philly, just a week after police helicopters dropped a bomb on a separatist black commune twenty blocks away. There was still smoke rising from the ruins on Osage Avenue when George helped Robin lug his bags up to the apartment, and the first call Robin got from his mother was an urgent plea that he get out of there quickly. In the weeks since, he’s quietly wondered if he should have listened to her. But it became a point of pride to not flee the heat, to be one of the few white faces in the crowd at Clark Park last weekend when the neighborhood demonstrated against police brutality. Plus, how could he leave George? He needed to show George that he was down with him.

  George claimed that the Stoopers, as they’d dubbed the boys outside, always said hello to him, but when Robin and George went in or out of the building together, he never heard any of them speak to George.

  Usually Robin puts on his butchest demeanor when he sees them, adopting a toughness that doesn’t come naturally. But right now, he simply doesn’t ha
ve the energy. “You suck,” he says to Peter, slamming the door behind him. “And not in a good way.”

  “Don’t leave angry.”

  Robin throws his hands in the air. “I am angry,” he shouts, “and you don’t want to stay over, so I guess I’m going to leave. Angry.”

  Peter hangs his head and mutters, “OK, then. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  Robin stares through the window at the dashboard. His gaze lands on the tape deck. Peter never listened to dance music before he met Robin. He pushes the eject button and the plastic cassette pops forth. He sees his own handwriting on the label. It reads, “Dance With Me.”

  “I want it all back,” he tells Peter. “Everything I ever gave you.” The words are borrowed from somewhere, a book, a movie. He long ago learned the importance of an exit line.

  He hears Peter pull away from the curb, and then there’s a swell of laughter among the Stoopers. He hears one of them use the word “punk,” which George recently explained to him has nothing to do with punk rock and everything to do with getting it up the ass.

  He takes the two flights up to his apartment quickly, past the first floor, where their landlord’s daughter is raising a bunch of kids, where the cry of an infant is almost a constant. The old wooden stairs creak beneath him, and as he gets closer to his third-floor flat, he realizes there’s music coming from behind the door.

  He enters, and there’s George: naked and dancing.

  Robin gets an eyeful of the muscular triangle of George’s back and the high, hard curve of his ass, shaking with the music. Prince’s seductive falsetto rings out over an amplified beat, I really get a dirty mind, while George shakes his index finger at some invisible lover, his masculine body softened by his sassy pose.

  Robin feels the first smile of the day breaking across his face. “Is this a free show, or are you looking for tips?”

  George spins around, startled to be discovered. He lets out an embarrassed whoop, shields his crotch, and dashes by, near enough for Robin to reach out and slap his ass. Robin can feel the damp heat rising off George’s skin.

  Through the bathroom door, George shouts, “I came out of the shower, and I heard this song, and I was, like—”

  “Empty apartment, dance naked.”

  “You know I love me some Prince.”

  “I’ll come in more quietly next time.” Robin affects this kind of flirtation with George sometimes, a little steam valve meant to release whatever tension might naturally build between gay friends sharing an apartment but not a bed. This tension wasn’t something he’d expected going into the summer, since he and George did not, it seemed, have any unresolved questions about who they were to each other. But George isn’t the diminutive science geek he was in high school. He’s been building up his body, dropping to the floor of the apartment once a day for push-ups and sit-ups in a tank top that reveals the sweet dusting of hair at the center of his developing chest. Robin has imagined running his fingers over those newly tight muscles, and he imagines more than that in this moment. But then George reemerges from the bathroom in his ugly plaid robe. Its indigo and turquoise stripes seem designed to make its wearer look as unattractive as possible.

  “I thought you’d still be at work,” Robin says.

  “I asked to leave early. I thought you were out with Peter.”

  “He ordered us Greek food and then broke up with me.”

  “What?”

  The phone rings, and Robin grabs it, wishing for Peter, but instead it’s someone named Matthias. “Mah-TEE-uss,” in some northern European accent, calling for “Gay-org.” George takes the phone without explanation and stretches the cord as far as it goes, which in this case means back into the bathroom.

  Robin steps to the window, propped open because they have no air conditioning, just a ceiling fan that stirs up the heat. Maybe Peter’s out there, maybe he came back and is waiting for you to notice him, ready to apologize and ask you for another chance. But, no, just the neighborhood boys doing their thing. Above the trees on 41st Street, the sky is a haze of pastel twilight, a glimpse of a fading day.

  At the far end of the living room is a waist-high countertop that opens to the kitchen. George walks from the bathroom to the fridge, pulling bottles of Old Latrobe from a six-pack he probably bought at the corner bar on his way home from work. He hands one across the counter to Robin, who drinks deeply, feeling the earthy, cold liquid move into the hollow center of his torso.

  “So, what happened?” George asks him.

  “You first. I want details.”

  “About?”

  Imitating the voice on the phone, Robin says, “Matthias.”

  “Did you see him in the restaurant today?” George asks.

  “One of the Germans?”

  “He’s actually Danish. The tall guy, with the punky hair?”

  “That guy? How’d you know he was gay?”

  “He practically followed me into the kitchen. You should have seen Cesar’s reaction to that.” George looks down at the floor; he might be hiding a smile. “I gave him my number.”

  “Wow. That’s superfast. Maybe some kind of record for you.”

  “What was strange was how he was so sure I was gay,” George says. “That never happens. Especially with white boys.”

  “Georgie, when you stare—”

  “I know, I need to wear dark glasses.”

  “Because your eyes go up and down a man—”

  “—like searchlights. Thank you, Joan Crawford.”

  “That was Rosalind Russell.”

  George slugs from his beer until foam spills from his lips. Then he wipes his mouth and lets out a resonant belch.

  “That’s right,” Robin says. “Wash down the gay movie reference with a brewski.”

  “He’s leaving town tomorrow.”

  “Ah, that’s why you left work early. You’re gonna see him tonight.”

  “Maybe.” George steps around to Robin’s side of the counter and hops up onto one of their two barstools, his bare legs dangling below the robe. “Hey, I looked up something in the university catalog today. It’s not too late for me to apply for semester abroad programs. How slammin’ would that be, if I was in London at the same time?”

  “That would be major.” In an instant, the entire picture of London seems to click into place: the two of them sharing a flat, Robin going off to rehearsal, George doing an internship at some kind of national health clinic, meeting up at night to go dancing at that world-famous club, Heaven…“But wait—don’t change the subject, Georgie. You need to get some.”

  “OK, we both know it’s been a long time.” He arches his back and howls, “Matthias, have your way with me.” The robe slouches open. Robin finds himself staring again, staring at George. So weird.

  George says, “I’ll call this guy back. I will. But first tell me what stupid Peter said to you.”

  Robin frowns. He relocates to the couch, facing the window, looking out at the dimming sky. Where to start? How about this: “He thinks I’m going to give him the virus.”

  “Don’t even joke.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You took the test, Robin.”

  “They say it can hide for a while in your bloodstream. Undetected.”

  “I know,” George says. “But you can’t make yourself crazy about every penis that’s been in your mouth.”

  Robin doesn’t say what he’s thinking, what George is probably thinking, too. It’s not so much penises-in-mouth that worries him, it’s cocks-up-ass. In New York City. For years now. Only lately did anyone recommend using a condom, only lately did they even have a name for this: AIDS.

  George follows him across the room. “What did he actually say to you?”

  “Something about the last time, when I let him fuck me with no rubber.”

  “You what?”

  “Not for very long. He didn’t shoot.” Robin feels his face warm up; he knows how this must sound to George, can see him getting agitated.
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  “But that’s riskier for you than him. Why is he putting it all on you?”

  “I’m the one with the history.”

  “Fuck Peter,” George says, cresting. “Fuck that hairy white boy. He’s putting you at risk and laying blame on you. He’s the one breaking up with you. It’s not your fault.”

  “You never liked him.”

  “Now you know why. He’s a mind-fucker.”

  “You might be right.” Now he might cry. Yeah, just cry yourself a river. George can handle it.

  As Robin wipes moisture from his eyes, the phone rings again. Peter! But no, it’s George’s mother.

  Mrs. Lincoln calls every few days to provide family updates, especially about George’s older sister’s upcoming marriage and the latest triumph his younger brother has scored on his way to the state track and field championships. While his mother talks, George cradles the phone at his neck, with little more to say than, “Uh-huh,” “Yeah,” “Really?” and so on. The joke around the apartment is to let the dishes pile up until the next call from Mrs. Lincoln, when George can get them done while she fills his ear with chatter. It’s a joke that hides a reservoir of uneasiness: His parents don’t ask him about anything but his school-work. He’s the brain in the family, as he’s been told since childhood, so as long as his grades stay high, they don’t need to know anything else. The Lincolns are all overachievers. Mr. Lincoln is a county administrator involved in local politics; Mrs. Lincoln has gone from school-teacher to secretary of the teacher’s union. Robin knows, though it’s rarely discussed, that George’s courses in premed are guided more by his parents’ deep desire for a doctor in the family than by any dream George ever held.

  When at last he hangs up the phone, George wraps his fingers around his neck and gasps, “Help! I can’t breathe. My mama sucked the air outta the room. Right through the phone!”

  Robin resists saying what he wants to say: Come out to them. You’re not going to have a real relationship until they know who you really are. The last time he tried to encourage this, George said, “You don’t know black folks, do you?” It was the first time, in all their years of friendship, that George ever said anything like that to him. Living here in this neighborhood, at this time, Robin thinks, no, maybe I don’t.