by David Gates
“That figures,” James said. “So we’re talking cancer.”
“Again,” said Finn.
James said, “I want to call my sister.”
The test results weren’t in until the following Friday. On Saturday morning Finn drove James to Albany. He put James’s round-trip ticket on his Visa and got him four hundred dollars, the daily limit, from a cash machine. After a goodbye hug at the gate, Finn walked back out to the car, sat on the front fender and watched the plane out of sight. Watched himself watch the plane out of sight.
The drive down to JFK used to take Finn four hours; today it had taken four and a half. He no longer had the energy—no, the foolhardiness—to roll seventy and seventy-five all the way. Even so, he was half an hour early, so he tried to get comfortable on the narrow aluminum ledge of a giant window near the security station, and to involve himself in the last act of Timon of Athens. He’d deliberately brought nothing else: damned if he’d allow himself to get that far and not finish. But how was he to concentrate? About fifty people were clustered here, whole families with whining children; they sat against the wall, paced, stood shifting their weight from foot to foot. Only ticket holders were being allowed to go through security and down to the gates where there were seats. So decent, ordinary people, waiting for their loved ones, were denied a modicum of comfort all because—well, enough. It was unattractive to be querulous.
He’d driven all the way down here because James couldn’t find a direct flight. Flying to Albany would’ve involved shuttling from JFK to La Guardia, sitting at La Guardia for two hours … ridiculous. If the lights started to bother Finn’s eyes on the drive back, they could always stop and put up at a motel. He’d also driven down because he needed to make another foray into Times Square.
James had seemed in fine fettle on the telephone, but now that it was certain the old man (five years older than Finn) had only months to live, God knows what buried feelings were bound to come up. Finn was truly sorry for James: he himself had been forty-five before he’d had to go through this. But he hoped that whatever James had to endure over the next few months—and he was ashamed of how selfish this sounded—it would not prove too disruptive. During the week and a half James had been gone, Finn had written another three pages of his essay and had composed the covering letter. No doubt James would be upset that he intended to run an errand—particularly this errand—before going home. Had Finn not taken so much wine last night, he would’ve been able to get up earlier, to finish picking up the house earlier and to make his stop before coming to the airport. But if there had to be a showdown, then a showdown there would be. This was his only life, and he had only so much of it left.
He couldn’t concentrate on Timon of Athens.
At last passengers with suitcases and garment bags began appearing. No one had even bothered to announce the arrival: the slipshod way everything was run nowadays would make a saint querulous. Yet he mustn’t visit this querulousness on James, who would need his support. And would find his bitching and moaning unattractive. And there was James now, his canvas duffel slung from his shoulder, and in his other hand—what? A net bag of oranges.
Finn gave him a brotherly one-armed hug. James bent to lay the oranges down, straightened up, gripped the back of Finn’s neck and kissed him on the mouth. “This is New York City,” he said. “Remember?”
“Forgive an old man,” said Finn. “When ye git my age, sonny …”
“If,” James said.
Finn looked at him. James’s tan, he noticed, was even deeper than when he’d left. So more had been going on, apparently, than just the compulsive TV-watching and the silent family dinners James had re-created so amusingly on the phone. “Ah, nature’s bounty,” he said, bending down to pick up the oranges.
“My mother insisted,” James said. “And she was very particular that they were for both of us.”
“Well well well,” said Finn. “God and sinners reconciled. But wouldn’t pink grapefruit have been more appropriate?”
James began walking. The sight of his firm buttocks under his white shorts made Finn suddenly furious.
“Your tan looks splendid,” he said, catching up. “So how are the beach girls down there? Really stacked, I’ll bet.”
James stopped. People passed by on both sides, paying no attention. “Hey, Finn? Why don’t you give it a rest, okay? I’m just really not up to it. This has not been a good week.”
“Yes, I can see it must’ve been hell,” Finn said, appalled that he couldn’t shut up.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” said James. “I’ve been off the plane for all of two minutes, and already we’re in one of these things.”
“I’m sorry, Jamie. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me.”
“Can we not stand here in the middle of all this?”
“Sorry. Here.” Finn touched James’s shoulder to guide him. “We’re parked down this way.”
They walked a few steps toward the escalator and James stopped again. “Look,” he said, “would you rather I just took a cab into the city and got out of your life?”
“Jamie, I’m truly—”
“Because I don’t seem to be making you very happy, and you’re driving me out of my mind.”
“You’re shouting,” said Finn.
“What, these people have never seen a pair of bickering faggots before?” Well, he was shouting now, at any rate.
“James,” said Finn. “For Christ’s sake.”
“You want to know about my tan? Well, my parents have a pool, man. In their backyard. Which is where I sat for nine days, man, watching game shows with my mother. She keeps a TV out there so she can work on her tan. She looks like distressed leather. My father, meanwhile, sits in the den with the blinds closed, watching—I’m not kidding—old Super Bowl games on his VCR. He’s got tapes of all but four of however many fucking Super Bowls there are. And he’s scared shitless and he eats so much Valium his flesh is turning to balsa wood.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Finn.
“Look,” James said, “do you mind very much if we get out of here?”
In the parking garage, Finn unlocked the passenger door first. James in turn reached over and unlocked the driver’s door, which Finn took as a sign of conciliation. He decided not to nag James about his seat belt. He reached over and stroked the back of James’s head. James allowed it.
When they came out into the sunlight—it was still only five o’clock—Finn put on the air conditioning. James had taught him that it was more fun to keep the windows open when the air was on, even if less efficient. On the Grand Central, traffic in the other direction was halted, but inbound it was moving right along.
“I hate to backseat-drive,” said James, “but shouldn’t we be in the other lane?”
“Ordinarily,” Finn said. “But I need to make a quick stop-off in midtown.”
“For what?”
Finn drew a long breath, let it out. “For something you don’t approve of.”
“Oh.” James looked at his watch. “You know, it’s going to take hours to get in and out of Manhattan at this time of day. You couldn’t have done this on your way?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll make this as quick as I possibly can, but I get to the city so seldom that I really mustn’t pass up the chance.”
“So that’s why you were so hot to come down and pick me up,” said James. “Tell me something. Do you ever think your tastes might be a little depraved?”
“We’ve been over this,” Finn said.
“Then let me put it in another light for you. Did it ever occur to you that it might be insulting to me?”
They were caught behind a huge yellow school bus. The lanes on either side weren’t moving any faster, but Finn cut to the left in front of a cab—the driver leaned on his horn—just to get behind something he could see past.
“You’re not going to provoke me,” he said. “We disagree about this project. I respect your view. I’m asking
you to respect mine.”
“Project?” said James. “What project? This isn’t a project, for Christ’s sake. It’s one more old queen who likes to watch young dudes get it on. You can dignify it because you used to be some hot-shit filmmaker.”
Finn looked over at him, this idle boy with his dirty blond hair blowing. Who made him waste his time and now had contempt for him because of it. He had let himself become an aging man with no family, who no longer prepared before meeting his classes and whose taste for good wines was giving him broken veins in his nose. He was this young man’s sugar daddy. He turned back in time to avoid ramming the BMW ahead of him by lifting his foot quickly from the gas pedal: to hit the brakes would call James’s attention to his bad driving.
“For whatever reason,” Finn said, his heart beginning to pound in delayed reaction, “I have done almost no work in the time I’ve known you. This is going to come to a screeching halt.”
“You haven’t done any work for five years, man,” said James.
Seven, thought Finn. “I’m not putting it off on you,” he said. His heart was pounding harder. “But I won’t allow you to interfere with what I need to do.”
James said nothing.
“And I might add that it’s probably time for you to start thinking about what you’re going to do when you grow up.” The pounding began to subside. “It’s a waste of life, and it depresses me severely.”
“Would you like me to go to night school and become a hairdresser?”
“That, my dear, is up to you,” said Finn. “What I mean to do is to make a stop in midtown. For one hour, no longer. And then we’ll be on our way. If you’re coming.”
“Finn,” said James. “It’s your car, it’s your life. I don’t really have anything to say about it.”
“Now, if you prefer,” Finn said, “it is getting late-ish. We could have dinner in the city, leave when the traffic’s thinned out and maybe put up for the night somewhere along the way.”
James didn’t answer. Finn looked and saw that he was crying. Not sobbing, just letting the tears go down his face.
“Just please do what you’re going to do,” James said at last. “All I want is to get home.”
• • •
James had been back almost a week before Finn had time to sit down and go through the videos he’d bought in Times Square. Made time, he corrected himself. But James had come down with a summer cold, and Finn did have to nurse him, bring him ice cream and ginger ale and magazines, go to the drugstore for cough syrup and Comtrex. And they did have to ask Peter and Carolyn over to hear James’s report and to discuss what might have to be done in the time remaining. Which of course involved preparing a decent meal, and what with the shopping and the cooking, that was another day shot to hell. And the lawn had needed another mowing. He’d neglected it while James was gone.
But now, at last, a quiet day. James, recovered, had borrowed the car for the afternoon. Acting mysterious about it, too. Perhaps out buying a thanks-for-taking-care-of-me gift, since before leaving he had—wonder of wonders—done the breakfast dishes and straightened up the bedroom. So Finn, having run out of distractions, sat alone in his study with a notepad, watching something called Hellfire Club. Two men lay side by side on a bed as cheap, nasty music went wacka wacka wacka on the soundtrack. One, with mustache and short hair, decked out in leather jacket, leather pants and motorcycle boots, was propped up on a pillow, angrily puffing a cigarette. The other, with a platinum-dyed Mohawk, wore only a black leather collar with diamond-shaped silver studs. He lay facedown, his body a uniform dingy white; you could see sores on his legs. (At least this film wasn’t arty.) The leather one took a final drag, tapped off the final ash and stubbed his cigarette out on the Mohawk one’s white buttock. The Mohawk one twitched, then lay still again.
Finn suddenly felt sick to his stomach; and these were only the opening minutes of a sixty-minute film. He hit STOP and the screen went snowy. Was his discomfort a sign that here was something worth his attention? Had he needed to turn the thing off because it was too powerful? Or was it just ugly and frightening, period, without any significance? Why did these films fascinate him? Did they fascinate him, or was he in fact burned out and desperately willing himself to be fascinated?
Well, good: simply to ask such questions was to work. Unless it was another way of not working.
Perhaps the thing to do was to look at something less harrowing and allow his unconscious to process some of this.
He ejected Hellfire Club, put it back in its case and looked through the rest of the new ones. Well, what about Sean in Love? If nothing else, it ought to be sensitive. Perhaps instead of films that were manifestly sordid, you wanted to look at the capital-S sensitive ones and spot the details that showed they were sordid, too. Or was that too easy? Probably.
The premise of Sean in Love was that “Sean,” a Wall Street type—there was some malarkey at the beginning about “mergers”—took an island vacation and kept falling for lifeguards, Rastas and suchlike. He would gape at them, then the image would go wavy and dissolve (harp glissando on the soundtrack) to show that what followed was fantasy. In the third such fantasy, he was in a sauna getting fucked by a Nautilus instructor—it seemed to Finn that the wooden bench must’ve been hell on his back and shoulders—when there was a cut to outside the door (through which their stagy moans could still be heard), where a third young man, in tight shorts, was reaching for the door handle. (This annoyed Finn: up to now the fantasies had been presented scrupulously from Sean’s point of view.) “Oopsy-daisy,” said the intruder—and Finn leaned forward. Cut from the fuckers’ surprised faces to the smiling face of the intruder: James, of course, of course, of course. Younger, but still James. Finn had never been fool enough to think that particular smile had been turned on no one but him. He watched the scene through to the end, with its combinations and recombinations. All very predictable.
Finn was still sitting in his study when he heard the car pull in. He’d smoked all but one of the cigarettes that should have lasted him until sometime tomorrow, and he’d tossed the pack with the last cigarette onto the floor just out of reach; that way he wouldn’t smoke it until he really needed it. Well, he would take the keys from James—who he now hoped wasn’t bringing him a present—say as little as possible and drive over to Stewart’s for a fresh pack. Maybe by the time he got back he would’ve figured out what to do next. He heard the screen door slap and James calling, “Hey, anybody home?”
He stood up and felt suddenly lightheaded. He’d been sitting there ever since … ever since. He opened the door and saw James coming through the kitchen. The living room between them, with its narrow, glossy floorboards, looked as vast as a basketball court.
“So guess what?” said James.
“Suppose you just tell me,” Finn said.
“Okay. Brace yourself.” James wasn’t picking up Finn’s mood at all. Or he was choosing not to, in order to make his own mood prevail. “You’re looking at a productive citizen.”
“A productive citizen,” Finn said.
“Well, a soon-to-be productive citizen. I’ve got a job.”
“Do you.” Finn remained standing in the doorway. James went over and sat in the burgundy armchair, draping one leg over the side and letting the foot swing.
“So aren’t you curious?”
Finn said nothing.
“I would’ve thought you’d be pleased.” James now seemed to be catching on.
Finn thought for a second. “I can understand that,” he said.
“What’s going on?” James said. His foot stopped moving. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “My dad.”
“Say again?” Then Finn remembered. “No,” he said. “No, there’s no news of your father.”
“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me. So listen, do you want to hear this or not?”
Finn stretched forth his hands as if supplicating, then let them drop. “Fire away,” he said.
“Okay, there
was an ad in the paper that they were looking for an assistant manager at the Symposium. So I went down and checked it out? I thought it would just be like running the popcorn machine. But it’s actually a serious job, like book-keeping and stuff. I will have to run the ticket window, but he said I’d have some input on programming, and I’ll definitely be writing the little synopses in the schedule, and it’s just—I think it’s really going to be good.”
“You’ve taken a job,” Finn said.
“Assuming the reference I gave him checks out.” James laughed.
“Right,” Finn said.
“So anyhow, I promise that every July I’ll get them to run our Hitchcock movies again that we didn’t like. God, I’m getting sentimental in my old age.”
“Perhaps you could make it a triple feature,” said Finn. “With Sean in Love.”
James cocked his head. “I don’t get it.”
“Sean in Love,” said Finn. “It’s a video I picked up in Times Square. I think it would interest you greatly.”
James took a deep breath and let it out. “Oh,” he said. “Always wondered what they ended up calling it.”
“So what do they pay for work like that?” Finn said.
“I don’t know. They paid me a hundred dollars. Which I needed very badly at the time. It was my first year in New York.”
“A hundred dollars,” said Finn. “Did you enjoy your work?”
“Did you? What do you want me to tell you? That they were holding a gun to my head like Linda Lovelace? You know, I was eighteen, and this friend of mine asked me if I wanted to be with him in this movie that—”
“Which friend was that?”
“He was supposed to be playing this exercise teacher or something. He actually was an exercise teacher. I used to go to his workout.”
“I can imagine,” said Finn.
“Maybe you ought to sit down,” James said. “You look really pale.”
Finn walked to the blue armchair—his footsteps seemed to echo, and the journey seemed to take a long time. He sat down. Sparkles swam before his eyes.
