by Peter Gadol
When he got home, Gabriel was down on the lower terrace. He was attempting to position the cut stones around the fountain pool. The rain would return soon.
“Are you growing a beard?” the boy asked.
“I misled you,” Carlo said. And then: “I misled everyone.”
The boy set the slate slab down on the ground and cocked his head.
“Two hours after we all went to sleep that night, I found Tom doing the dishes in the kitchen,” Carlo said, and once upon a time, his own story had seemed complex to him, impossible to narrate and convey the shifting moods of each moment built out from the previous moment, when in truth, his story was as simple as could be. He told Gabriel the truth and then the two of them stood there, Gabriel impassive as Carlo bowed his head, as if awaiting a verdict.
However, Gabriel only blinked a few times and then began to climb back up the slope toward the house, his feet slipping in the mud.
“Gabriel.”
The boy kept going.
“Say something,” Carlo said.
The boy turned around. “Like what?” he asked. “Like basically you’ve been lying to me?”
Carlo had allowed him to believe one thing, not another, and so yes, that was a lie.
“Like what? Like how I thought your boyfriend was the scummy one, but actually you’re both scummy?”
Carlo wasn’t sure he saw a connection, but he accepted that a web of dishonesty existed for the kid. Oh, Gabriel, you’re only a boy, he wanted to say, how could you understand, but that was the point: he’d failed a child and the child understood perfectly well what had gone on.
“Well, you know what?” Gabriel asked.
Carlo shook his head: No, what?
But Gabriel didn’t say anything more. He swung around and continued up the hill and was gone, and Carlo didn’t hear a sound anywhere, no cars, no people, nothing in the sky, nothing carried in the wind. He was alone. He was finally all alone.
• • •
AND THEN DECEMBER WAS GONE, and it was the end of another year, another bright Saturday, but in no way a peaceful day. A cold gale trampled the tall trees all around Silver Lake and lifted shingles off rooftops and swept wave after wave across the Reservoir. It was a wind that showed no sign of letting up, not until it had moved everything movable, street signs, birds in flight, even, it seemed to Robbie, the afternoon sun: one of Jay’s windows did not close all the way, and enough air periodically rushed over the sill to peel back the curtain, throwing a narrow blade of light into a frantic dance.
The end of another year, Robbie thought, unlike any other because this would be the first in twenty he didn’t spend with Carlo. New Year’s Eve, their habit was to stay in and fix a leg of lamb with roasted new potatoes and sautéed cabbage, nothing special, but this in and of itself, the dinner, staying in, was a sustaining ritual. Midnight, the two of them alone in their house, safe in their own history. What was Carlo doing now? Was he sleeping in, maybe with the benefit of a narcotic? Had he left the pill bottle out on the night stand in case something went chemically awry? Had he moved yet to the center of the bed?
Robbie turned his attention back to the atlas open in his lap.
He was trying not to think about Carlo but thinking about Carlo just the same. Jay meanwhile was puttering. He rearranged the shirts hanging in his closet. He refiled books Robbie had withdrawn from his shelves. He washed out the mason jars Robbie had been using for green tea. When Jay sat at the edge of the couch next to Robbie and began putting on socks and shoes, Robbie asked him where he was going.
“I made plans,” Jay answered.
“Plans, what plans?”
“I have friends, you know,” Jay said.
“Okay. I’ll come with you.”
Jay stopped tying his shoe.
“You don’t want me to come with you,” Robbie said and fell back against a cushion that was all give. He wanted to take Jay’s hand, to massage his long fingers, but the moment wasn’t right for that. Something was coming to an end.
“You want me to leave,” Robbie said.
“I never wanted to be a cuckold,” Jay said.
“Technically Carlo is the cuckold.”
“Whatever.”
The wind tearing through the ballpark across the street was rattling something, loose fencing or trash cans or light posts.
“Sunset hikes in the hills,” Jay said, “and midweek sleepovers and deciding one Sunday breakfast that keeping two apartments is silly. Getting a place together, decorating it with no money. I want to fall in love the old-fashioned way,” Jay said. “You understand. You did that once.”
“Once,” Robbie said. “It was different.”
He placed his hand on Jay’s knee and Jay set his hand atop Robbie’s.
Robbie asked, “Why did you let me stay here all this time and have, like, a huge amount of sex with me?”
It was a relief to see Jay grin. “I’m twenty-six?” he said, he asked.
“Don’t make me go home,” Robbie said.
“I’m not making you do anything. You brought up leaving.”
“I’m not going home,” Robbie said.
“Fine.”
“Ever.”
“You weren’t supposed to find the drawing.”
“Here we go again.”
“Well, you weren’t.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” Robbie said. “Maybe I am the cuckold.”
“Would that be enough to make you break up?”
Robbie’s answer was no, but he didn’t respond.
“Do you think that’s what happened that night? With you asleep in the other room?” Jay asked.
“I don’t know,” Robbie said.
“But you do know.”
“Jay.”
“You do know what happened. You have a theory.”
“I do?”
Jay nodded.
“Okay,” Robbie said, and he was angry now, “fine.” He was angry he was being pushed. He said, “I’ll tell you what I think.”
After all, what he thought happened that September night was really very simple: From the bedroom, Carlo watched Tom out on the patio. He watched Tom tie a noose. He watched him stand on the chair and then stand on the fence to tie the rope. He watched him stand on the chair again and slip the noose over his neck—and Tom in turn saw Carlo standing at the window, Tom knew Carlo was watching him. Tom took his time. He was waiting to be stopped, but Carlo didn’t stop him, and what could Tom do, as if answering a dare, but take one step closer to death? He drew the knot tight and waited and nothing. He stood up on his toes and waited and nothing. He let his hands fall to his sides and waited and nothing. And Carlo watched Tom kick away the chair. He watched the rope pull against Tom’s neck. He watched him asphyxiate. He watched Tom’s body lose its being, he watched his body go slack. He watched the urine run down Tom’s pant leg and he watched the drool run from Tom’s mouth. Carlo watched Tom leave this world, and then Carlo took a sleeping pill and got in bed next to Robbie and joined him in sleep. That was what happened.
“You don’t think that,” Jay said.
“What if I do?”
“But you don’t,” Jay said, “you don’t, you don’t. Do you really think your boyfriend would do something that heinous? This man you’ve been with for twenty years—you don’t think he’s capable of what you’re saying.”
In truth, Robbie didn’t know what he thought but felt justified in his own behavior if he could believe the worst about Carlo. Although Robbie had to wonder what it said about him that these grim pictures came so fluently. At that moment, he did not like himself very much.
“Tom had dying on his mind,” Jay said. “We’ve talked about it. He didn’t want to be stopped. He would not have gone through with any of it, if he thought he was being watched.”
“You can’t say that for sure.”
“Maybe I can,” Jay said. “You gave me a detail.”
“I did? What detail?”
<
br /> “And you know your boyfriend didn’t watch Tom die. It’s not fair to say that.”
“Fair to whom—why are you on his side? And what detail?”
Jay finished tying his shoes.
“When will you be back?” Robbie asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“You want me to leave.”
Jay was looking at the floor, out the window, everywhere but at Robbie.
“Where will I go?” Robbie asked.
Jay put on a fleece-collared denim jacket.
“What detail?” Robbie asked.
Jay kissed him on the cheek, wished him a happy New Year, and left.
• • •
MEANWHILE, Carlo at the house was recognizing he could not live the way he’d been living. In the main room there were newspapers and magazines everywhere, the couch cushions all askew, blankets and pillows brought in from the bedroom since he didn’t want to sleep in the bed alone, empty wine bottles, empty water bottles, coffee mugs, goblets, socks, shoes, sweaters everywhere. A couple of cereal bowls, an open bag of cookies, an orange peel. He couldn’t account for what he’d done these last days but in some vague way, perhaps only calendrically inspired, he was filled with resolve and therefore spent the first part of the day cleaning up.
He needed to keep moving because whenever he stopped, he suffered memories: Like the time he’d been sitting high up on the library steps and Robbie happen to walk by on the quad below, not noticing Carlo, and there was something about Robbie’s stride, short yet fast, determined yet springy, something about the way he left his parka unzipped even though it was cold out and the way he wore his bookbag high on his back, the way he appeared to be singing to no one but himself that drew Carlo to Robbie. That stride, that confidence—maybe Carlo had observed it recently, but it had been missing for such a long time, it seemed. What if Robbie were happier now wherever he was, on his own, then shouldn’t Carlo let him go? Wouldn’t that be an act of love, even if Carlo himself were destroyed? His life would be nothing, he would have nothing.
He did not need to be in a good mood about being alone, but sooner or later he was going to have to accept his station. He decided to drive down to the grocery store and pick up ingredients and busy himself in the kitchen cooking; not the traditional leg of lamb, but roasting a chicken might occupy him. But then the idea of cooking for only himself was depressing. He had gone through all the soup and canned goods in the pantry, and all the wine. He put off going to the grocery store until the late afternoon and then finally ventured out.
The streets were layered in leaves and twigs, and palm fronds strewn across the boulevard looked avian and skeletal, as if large birds had been thrown from flight and smashed dead by the wind. Carlo had electricity at his house, but down the hill it was out: the traffic lights were operating on backup power, pulsing red. On the way to the grocery store, he ended up at a café and stood in line, ordered to-go and paid for his latte like a normal person, albeit an extremely scruffy one, and the caffeine in his system when he’d eaten little both gave him a jolt and the shakes.
In the car again, he held the steering wheel with both hands. He was jittery, and therefore not sure at first whether what he saw while waiting for the light to change at Hyperion and Griffith Park was what he thought he saw: a long black sedan, the long black sedan with a band of young guys in it, heading toward the high school.
Carlo was in the right lane, and watched the car stream past, and he didn’t have a clear view because another car came in close behind the black car. He made the turn and followed the black car, too.
The other car peeled off at St. George, but the black sedan turned left and, maintaining some distance, Carlo turned left as well. The car turned right again in front of the brick school, up Tracy, as did Carlo, and he didn’t know what he was thinking, what he thought he’d do, but here they were, yes, his young assailants with their wild black hair and wild eyes, yes, the one with his drooping chin and drooping moustache, the other maybe a brother or cousin, but minus the moustache. Don’t look, they barked, but he’d looked, now he was looking again. They had to slow down at the bend in Tracy, and then they made a left on Monon, a dead end.
It all began with them. If they hadn’t ambushed him and humiliated him, he would not have met Tom at the police station, and then not gone to see Tom a month later and had sex with him, and then Tom would not have surfaced at the office that otherwise benign autumn afternoon. He would not have played tennis with Robbie and won over Robbie and then come home with him and had too much to drink and become so dark and disconsolate—Carlo never would have met up with Tom in the kitchen after Robbie was to sleep and then, then Carlo would never have failed Tom Field. Tom never would have killed himself on a cold morning and Carlo’s life with Robbie would never have been cleaved into a before and an after. After all this, then, here they were again, the carjackers, and as he followed them down Monon, once a river and now a narrow street of unassuming houses, followed them all the way to the thicket of brush beneath the white concrete pillars and trusses and arches of the Shakespeare Bridge overhead, he knew he had to achieve some kind of vengeance and in revenge, closure.
The black sedan stopped at the dead end and pulled into the single space parallel to the bridge overhead. The doors flung open and the three young men hopped out, immediately lighting cigarettes. They didn’t appear to notice Carlo’s car as he drifted closer. They were leaning against the side of the sedan, facing the brush, their backs to him. They looked tense in the shoulder, all of them wearing black leather jackets, expectant, as if they were ready to meet someone, ready for a transaction, most likely up to no good.
Carlo put his car in park, and only because he’d stopped in the middle of the street, effectively blocking any other car from approaching the black sedan, or for that matter, preventing the black sedan attempting a getaway, did first one and then the others turn and look at him. Carlo stared the tallest one in the eye. He had a moustache and a full beard now, too.
Why don’t you try me again, Carlo thought, and fixed his gaze on the young man. Try me.
But the man looked away, up at the bridge, at nothing.
Carlo wondered what Tom would do, and he knew damn well what Tom would do. Carlo opened the glove compartment and removed the gun, its grip heavier than its barrel, but secure in his hand. He held the gun in his lap and stared and waited.
The tallest man glanced back again and could see Carlo still staring at him. He shrugged, What?
Carlo didn’t blink.
What? the man seemed to be asking, and his pals watched him as he came round the sedan and began moving toward Carlo’s car. What do you want?
And Carlo sat up in his seat, his gun concealed, his finger wrapped around the trigger, ready now, ready. Alone in the world, he had nothing to lose.
• • •
ROBBIE LEFT JAY’S but didn’t know where to go and ended up walking around the Reservoir. There was no dusk to speak of, night had fallen. He wandered up to Neutra Place and peered at the glass houses, the lights coming on, wondering why the life inside, the careful arrangement of things, seemed alien to him when for better or worse it looked no different than his own house and life, at least once upon a time. His hands in his pockets were fists. He was angry at Jay for kicking him out, angry at Carlo, angry at happy people cooking happy New Year’s Eve dinners.
He shuffled along toward Glendale and down Glendale to the diner, where he saw a group of cops eating burgers and fries. Robbie slipped into the rest room and took out his cell phone. He didn’t know what he would say, but he’d decided to set the record straight. He wanted Carlo to have to admit his role in Tom’s demise—he wanted Carlo at last to pay. Robbie dialed the number on the card Detective Michaels had given him almost three months earlier.
“Hi there,” the detective said, cheery. Was she at a party already? There was music in the background. “Thanks for returning my call finally,” she said.
This natu
rally confused Robbie.
“You got my message?” Detective Michaels asked.
Robbie explained he’d not been home in more than a week.
The detective must have moved to her office or a private room wherever she was because the background music was gone. “I see,” she said. “It was a courtesy call to let you know our finding.”
Robbie waited.
“To be frank,” the detective said, “I think there may be more to the story about what happened that night.”
And she paused and Robbie held his breath. Yes, more. What?
“But I can’t justify keeping this case open when in the end, we’d still end up finding that Mr. Field committed suicide,” the detective said.
Robbie slumped against the tiled wall, he sat down on the floor.
“But you were calling me?” Detective Michaels asked.
He was picturing Tom lying dead on the patio, remembering that brief moment when he thought Tom might be pulling a crude prank. A suicide: What kind of lonely.
“Did you have something you wanted to tell me?” Detective Michaels asked.
Robbie was picturing Tom that morning, and suddenly he understood what detail Jay possibly was referring to.
“Mr. Voight?”
“Happy New Year, Detective,” Robbie said.
• • •
IT WAS A LONG WALK HOME up the hill and down the hill again, down their street, and Robbie was so beat that when he finally arrived at the house, he couldn’t make sense of what he witnessed:
First, Carlo pulling into the driveway and throwing open the car door and jumping out, Carlo was holding in his right hand what appeared to be—no, what was—a silver pistol.
And second, the lower part of the old pepper tree was illuminated, and for a moment, Robbie thought Carlo had strung up Christmas lights, until he realized the broad boughs were outlined in flame, and that the wind was drawing the blaze up so that the tree was fast becoming no longer a solid thing but a negative of itself, ghostly white in the dark.
Then there was a cry, a man crying, but not Carlo—Carlo was not the one screaming.
