Nightswimmer

by Joseph Olshan

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “He’s the most charming man in the world, completely charming, but he’s got no heart.”

  “You don’t really know him.” I merely projected my own concern.

  “You’re the guy he’s been dating, the writer.”

  I did not respond.

  “I know who you are. You’re the guy people saw him leaving Splash with the other night, aren’t you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’d like to come over there and talk to you.”

  “About my writing?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “No, about Sean Paris.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

  “Sean has things that belong to me that I need as soon as possible.”

  I deliberated over whether or not to let on that I knew what was between you and José. Finally I said, “You know that’s a distortion of the truth. So don’t try and trick me.”

  “So you do know what’s going on.”

  I admitted that I’d been told.

  “I have this letter from Bobby saying I should get all his stuff back. I have this letter that says—”

  “Look, sir, this is not my business.”

  “Suddenly so formal.” He sounded disgusted, but not hostile.

  “I want this argument to be between you and Sean.”

  José suggested I could do everyone a favor by acting as a mediator. “I’m going to call back and read you—”

  I said, “If Bobby wanted anything back, he should have asked Sean for it directly.” I realized that I’d gone too far with the conversation, indeed, had way overstepped my bounds. I’d ceased to be somebody protecting your apartment and was swiftly becoming an active participant in your affairs, someone you might end up resenting.

  “Bobby did ask for it—”

  “Look, I’m just staying here for a while, okay?” Then I found myself lying. “Sean lent me this apartment as a favor.”

  “I’ll just wait until you leave and then I’ll pry my way in.”

  “That’d be breaking the law.”

  “Call the police, I don’t care,” José said. “Because there are too many Sean Parises around. Too many guys getting away with hurting sweet wonderful people like Bobby.”

  “That’s not fair. It’s not fair to blame his death on Sean.”

  “I guarantee that you don’t know the whole story.”

  “Of course you’d say that. You’ve got an agenda,” I said and quietly replaced the receiver.

  I stood there in the gathering twilight. All the things I loved in your apartment—the stuffed wood ducks, the collections of smooth sea-tumbled stones, shells and fossils on the mantel—everything vibrated with a cryptic intensity, as if there were clues to your enigmatic past. José had clearly tried to undermine my sense of trust in you. Why should I be permitting him to put doubts in my mind? I tried to be glad I’d hung up when I did.

  But there were doubts simply because I’d already sensed something remote in you, something as inaccessible as the yet untold story of your broken heart. In my agitation, I went to the open window and leaned out over Grove Street the way you had done the first night I ever visited. Then I stepped away, stripped myself down to nothing and wandered around the apartment naked. Hot Hudson River wind spiraled through the windows. I felt bereft of something that I couldn’t quite name. I went into your closet and picked through the clothing, searching for something of yours to wear.

  I found T-shirts silkscreened with places from your past. I admired one from a golf course in Okinawa, but it was the name of a bowling alley in San Diego that I finally brought out and laid on the bed. As I was restacking the pile, I came upon a mound of military fatigues, all block-printed over the rear pocket with the name Monroe. Monroe. A surname? The surname of the R. M. addressed in your letters? Goaded by jealousy, I wondered how exactly you’d come by them, finally imagining that he’d given you one pair every time he made love to you until there were none left. Who was this man? And where was he now?

  R. M.’s fatigues had the same impoverished softness of the T-shirts Chad used to wear. After Chad vanished, in order to mourn his vanishing, I had worn his clothes and only his clothes, dressing exclusively in what was his and clearly not mine. In the wrath of my temporary madness, I actually used to believe that dressing like him would bring him back, as though a swath of fabric could actually be patched onto what the fates had already woven. Come back, Sean Paris; come back, R. M.; come back, Chad.

  In the closet I also unearthed a small gift box containing two things I assumed had been made by Bobby Garzino: a nubby scarf fashioned of eggplant-and-black silk threads that had a rich texture; a small pillow sewn from a similar fabric with a printed tag on the side that said: A Dream Pillow, handmade by “The Loom’s Desire.” The scarf was extravagantly long. I wrapped it once around my neck and draped it across my chest like a banner. Grabbing the pillow, I walked toward your bed. Noticing a sweet, earthy fragrance, I put the pillow to my nose. It was the smell of mugwort, a gentle soporific herb that I used to take during the time when I had such trouble sleeping. I lay down on your bed, put the pillow behind my head, draped the soft scarf over my groin.

  I’d just begun masturbating when the phone rang. I let the machine answer, and after the announcement played, I listened to the message. “Hey,” you said. “Are you there?” I stopped playing with myself and picked up. “Hey, yourself,” I said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Jacking off.”

  “Uh-oh. Bad timing, I’m sorry. Do you want to speak later?”

  “No, I want to speak now. It’s always there, so it can wait. Where are you?”

  “In the boonies, way up at the top of Montana. Almost in Canada.”

  “Nice?”

  “Dry and cloudless. A perfect way to put all the shit in Manhattan behind me.”

  “Sounds like you don’t want to come back.”

  “No, I do want to get back. Although it is rather grand up here in the woods. In fact, it’s priming me for Vermont.”

  “And how’s tree tagging?”

  “We got some real beauties. How’s the old homestead?”

  I looked around the room: the rinsed and dried cocktail glasses clustered on a kitchen shelf, the mahogany breakfast table gleaming with its new layer of lemon oil, the neatly arranged stack of bills that I’d put on top of your piano.

  “In better condition than when you left.”

  “You didn’t!” You sounded aghast.

  “It’s different when it’s not your own place.”

  “Sleeping okay in my bed?”

  “Seem to be.”

  “Are you leaving my stuff alone?” You chuckled as you said this, which, I must say, sounded as though you were teasing me, or even making light of what you’d already perceived to be my weakness.

  “I’ve been wearing your clothes, if that’s what you mean … and there have been lots of calls.” I deliberately moved onward. “Everybody’s miffed. You certainly do seem to have a lot of friends.”

  A sigh. “It’s been said that I’m a lot better friend than lover.”

  “Is that a warning?”

  “And you’ve sounded tense throughout this whole conversation. Is it only because you were … interrupted?”

  “No, it’s because … that guy called, the ex-lover, José Ayala.”

  There was a lull on your end and I could hear something that sounded like a white-noise machine in the background. “Well, I figured he would.”

  I relayed the gist of the conversation. However, I found myself omitting the man’s attempt to get together to talk things over with me, to discuss you.

  “He’s jerking your chain, Will. He’ll do anything to give me a hard time.”

  “I realize that. He tried to convince me that you were bad news.”

  “That would be the thing to do.”

  “Yet you’re sounding pretty unflappable.”

&nb
sp; “What choice do I have? Anyway, tomorrow I’m coming back. Then we’ll log in some time. And you can make up your own mind about me.”

  But after I said goodbye to you I felt unsettled by our conversation and by the desperation of José who loved Bobby Garzino. I decided to go for a walk and soon was strolling along sultry Seventh Avenue in the direction of Splash. The place was even more crowded than the last time I’d been there. Your T-shirt was tight on me; I’d rolled up the sleeves with the idea of soliciting attention from others. Then maybe I could avoid feeling so vulnerable to you. A steroid-swelled bartender served me a cold Rolling Rock with a leer that instantly perked up my mood.

  Soon I found myself in the corner watching the Morning Party playing on the video screen. As the summer was ending and the length of daylight was beginning to dwindle, Splash, in response to popular demand, would keep reprising footage of the Morning Party. Sometimes they would even intersperse footage from the West Coast version that took place in Palm Springs. I was trying to remember what it had been like before I’d grown fixated on you, when I was open to the idea that there still could be others in my life. But that night, when I was staying at your place, when I was still hoping for the best possible things, when I believed that you would be the one whose heat would finally cure me of Chad, I riveted my attention to the video screen until I finally saw what I knew I’d come to see: you dancing with the black man. And as I watched, I tried to assure myself that I was the only one in the world who held a vaunted place in your life, the only one to whom Heart-breaker would finally tell the tale of his own heartbreak.

  A hand reached from behind and grabbed my chin. I looked down at the pumped-up, freckled arm of Peter Rocca. “What is this, your new hangout?” he said.

  “Looks like it’s yours.”

  “Nah, I’m here with Sebastian. We just blew in for a beer before dinner.”

  “Sounds like you guys are on again.”

  “What’s it to you? You don’t call me anymore.”

  “It’s not like you’ve been calling me, either.”

  “It’s a matter of pride. The last two times I’ve seen you, you’ve blown me off for Sean Paris.” Peter looked around. “Is he here with you?”

  “No, he’s out of town.”

  “Hey, Sebastian!” Peter yelled. The pompadour boyfriend was standing a few feet away talking to some other guys. “Sean Paris is out of town.”

  I instantly regretted giving out that information and vowed to return to your place immediately, in case somebody hanging out with Sebastian was or perhaps knew Bobby Garzino’s ex-lover. I asked Peter why Sebastian wanted this information. “I don’t know. Somebody was asking him before.”

  A moment later Sebastian excused himself from his two buddies and moved toward us in a deliberately slow drift. “Say what?” he said in a sort of growl, edging into Peter with propriety, sparking his dark eyes at me. His face had the usual oblong handsomeness of certain Mediterranean men, his nose prominent yet well formed.

  “Sean Paris is out of town,” Peter said.

  “Who needs Sean Paris?” I asked.

  “You do.” Sebastian flashed a grin of bone-white teeth, one of which was chipped. “Big time.”

  “Big mouth.” I shot Peter Rocca a look of condemnation, then turned back to Sebastian. “He just told me a friend of yours was asking.”

  “Yeah, so? What are you, Sean Paris’s keeper?”

  “I’m taking messages for him.”

  “You move in quickly, don’t you?”

  “Let’s say I have my own inimitable pace.”

  “I know all about your pace, man. Reminds me of some sharks I seen at the aquarium.”

  The note of aggression had a familiar ring to it, and I began searching Sebastian’s expression for a sign that he might somehow know the person who’d been calling.

  “And believe you me,” Sebastian continued, glancing at Peter. “I wouldn’t be talking to you at all if I knew you still wanted to be a home wrecker.”

  “Do I count in this conversation at all?” Peter asked irritably.

  I turned to him, remembering that cold afternoon many months ago when I’d rounded the corner of Lafayette Street to find him strangling this swarthy, brooding man. “Go ahead,” I said. “Take the floor.”

  But Peter decided to pull his psychiatrist’s poker face, and his reticence allowed Sebastian and me to exchange one look of complicity before the lines were drawn again.

  “Okay, let’s just set everything straight,” I resumed in earnest. “I’m sorry if I caused you any grief, Sebastian. I didn’t realize how important you were to Peter. So how about if we just say it’s behind us? Enough at least so that we can be cordial to each other.”

  Sebastian calculatedly ran his fingers through his luxuriant onyx-colored hair, almost as though to make a mockery of my ever thinning pate. He said finally, “I accept your apology, okay?” Then he shoved his finger into my breastbone. “But what you did is not forgotten. Because I’m Maltese,” he added by way of explanation.

  “I won’t even try to fathom that.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Peter said approvingly.

  Back at your place, I phoned to check the answering machine at my apartment and retrieved a message from Greg, who, citing an appointment, asked if I could come by the next morning and give Casey his midday antibiotic. In what I thought was an effort to spare his feelings, I’d explained the facts of what was going on before announcing that I was staying at your place. I now left Greg a message that I’d be by in the morning.

  Lying in your bed, anxious, it occurred to me that an unslakable curiosity about my lover’s past has all too often contaminated my happiness in relationships. Your Florentined diaries held what you’d felt for R. M., whom I did not know, but was curious to discover. Weighing against that was the realization that whatever I might read, besides being out of context, was likely to perturb me even more. And so I lay in your bed, wrestling with my urge to absorb your most private thoughts, and my fear of them, watching the lights of the city stippling the ceiling, looking out into the branches of the courtyard ailanthus. Finally I made my decision.

  As I climbed out of bed and crossed through the shadows, I guiltily imagined you sleeping in a motel somewhere in the northern part of Montana, a tall graph of evergreens visible from your window, and beyond that, a dark horizon of mountains with white beards of snow. Like a supplicant, I kneeled down to the musty bottom bookshelf and put my hands on the slim first volume, cracking it to where it held the series of onionskin letters. I selected one and took it to the window to read by moonlight. One random letter, I told myself. No more, no less. This was my final bargain with the Devil of Curiosity. Or so I thought.

  Before I began reading, however, I smelled the page: the faint yet distinctive odor of laundry rooms, of a mother’s hands scrubbing collars and cuffs, the sweeter smell of a younger man who was better cared for, different from the starchier fragrance of you now, a guy with a nine-to-five job who sent his whites and linens out to be commercially laundered.

  Okinawa, July, 1982

  Dear R. M.,

  The second time you’ve stood me up in ten days. Why can’t you just call and say you’ve chickened out? Don’t you realize how fucking nerve-racking it is, not to mention humiliating, for me to keep standing there like a dummy in front of the PX and having to see all my stepfather’s friends? And the fact that they might he home when you call is no excuse for not calling to say you can’t make it. There could he any number of reasons why you’d call me. I’m of age. I’m allowed to have friends…

  I stopped reading long enough to calculate that in 1982 you would’ve been twenty-one.

  You keep bringing up the possibility of my stepfather finding us out. I know it’s a smoke screen. And you know it is, too, you know there are plenty of places we can still meet with anonymity. I hate it when you can’t be honest; it makes me feel like a kid. And I’m not a kid anymore, R. M.; I’ve take
n this on completely. I’ve known you long enough to know that I want to be with you and only you. And you know it, too, and that’s why you’re afraid that if my parents suspect anything, if my father asks, that I won’t lie about it. But of course I’d lie, I’d lie for you.

  You’ve said that I can’t really be in love with you, for some reason you don’t believe me when I tell you. So then explain to me what is it that keeps me up nights, what is it that steals my appetite, makes my heart race in the middle of doing absolutely nothing? And why is it when you don’t call at the appointed hour, I begin to feel like a prisoner of myself, knowing I have to get through another eternity of an evening until I’m alone again and you can call? And even then I can never call you.

  My parents keep asking me when I’m going back to California; they can’t understand why I’m procrastinating finding a real job or making up my mind about grad school. They realize I’ve put my life on hold, they can sense that I’m waiting for something.

  Meanwhile, I’m beginning to lose hope. Because you’ve stopped talking about getting transferred back to San Diego. Because you’ve stopped talking about our future together. And because the only time you ever tell me you love me anymore is when you’re inside me and it’s hurting me and you just plain forget to hold the words back.

  I’m still waiting to hear from you.

  Love Always,

  S.P.

  ELEVEN

  WE TRIED TO MAKE love again, shortly after you arrived back in the city, smelling of stratospheric travel, of jet fuel and that sweet reek of plastic audio headsets. You came in wearing your fatigues, your neck branded with a blue-collar worker’s sunburn. You threw your arms around me and I was terrified. I kept trying to lick the red line of the sunburn where it bordered pale skin. But all too soon I felt the Marine coming between us, the Marine who once had the power to catapult you into such a state of expectation and desire, the Marine who fucked you until it hurt. Something made me hold back, and then you picked up on it and we ended up lying there, disconcerted.

  “God,” you said finally, “it’s so bizarre because all I could think about on the plane was getting home and jumping on your bones.”