“Iconic songs like this one lend themselves to a lot of folklore, I think,” Liam said, threading his fingers between Didier’s. “I saw something once that said Keith Richards wrote this as a lullaby for his son, a way to address the fact that he was on the road a lot. But I like to think it’s about something more basic and undefined—a yearning that can’t be easily named and one that may be impossible to satisfy.”
Didier threw back the last two swallows of wine in his glass and lay back on the bedspread, stretching his arms luxuriously across the width of the bed.
“You certainly are an old soul, aren’t you, Liam? I get the sense you’ve lived decades longer than you actually have, like you’re carrying around the yoke of past lives or something.”
“I seem like an old man, hunh?” Liam kicked his shoes off and curled up beside Didier on top of the bedding.
“Quite the contrary. The combination of your young stud body and that rugged old soul—your world-weariness, as my mother would have called it—make you so fucking irresistible. Well, I can barely stand to look at you.”
“Then let’s close our eyes and go to bed.”
They fell asleep on top of the duvet with their clothes on and at some point in the middle of the night, Liam woke up to use the bathroom and stripped Didier’s pants off to place him under the covers. Didier wore black dress socks that clung tightly to his hairy and muscular legs. Boxer briefs amplified the curve of his buttocks. Liam stood for a minute watching Didier sleep peacefully on the bed and felt certain that he must be dreaming. When he got back into bed after using the bathroom, Liam wrapped his body around Didier’s and fell fast asleep, and for the first time, in as long as he could remember, Liam turned off his 6 A.M. alarm and skipped the gym. He lay in bed in a state of half-sleep, feeling the warmth of Didier’s body next to his own. There was something so much more special and more hopeful about everything given that they hadn’t had sex. They left the apartment together and wordlessly parted ways at the corner, with a tacit understanding that talking would only sully the moment. Liam felt like a new man heading into the office that day. He vowed, silently, to continue to surprise himself.
By late morning, Liam was ravenous with hunger. Instead of buying two cups of yogurt at the deli in the lobby of his building, he decided to stretch himself beyond his normal routine, write to one of his friends who worked nearby, and suggest a lunch date. As he sped through the contacts on his laptop, Liam realized that he needed to connect one-on-one with Riser. Perhaps if he met him face-to-face without the distractions of other people, Liam could cut to the core with Riser and find out if his new friend had become a strict vegan and was looking more drawn as a result, or whether he was slowly starving himself to death.
Riser wrote back immediately to Liam’s e-mail and said that he would love to meet up for lunch; Riser even went so far as to suggest a great place for chopped salad where the owners charged a flat rate for all you could pile on rather than à la carte pricing. It’s these little niceties that create loyalties for me, he wrote in the exchange. The care given to pointing out this banal detail comforted Liam on his friend’s behalf. He had an overpowering sense of optimism and contentment when he left the office to meet Riser for lunch at The Raw Deal.
Arriving first, Liam snagged a table for two in the back of the establishment, so that they would have the space and privacy to talk openly and honestly. Liam ordered some seltzer and cranberry juice and a platter of steamed edamame to keep his rumbling stomach at bay while he waited. With all the miles he had been running lately, Liam noticed that his appetite had increased exponentially to keep up with the additional energy needs he was placing on his body. After about fifteen minutes of waiting, Liam emailed Riser from his BlackBerry to make sure that all was okay and that they were, indeed, still meeting today for lunch. Riser arrived within seconds of Liam hitting the send button on his BlackBerry.
“You had me worried there for a second, cowboy,” Liam said with a wide grin as Riser sat down across the table from him.
“What? This is New York City, Liam,” Riser responded, visibly agitated. “Haven’t you ever heard of being fashionably late?”
“I am familiar with the term, Riser, but—fashionable or not—I get a pretty tight hour for my lunch, so I will need to leave here in about forty minutes to get back to the office before someone has a coronary. I just wanted to maximize my time with you.”
Riser shifted in his seat and seemed angered at having expectations flung upon him.
“Let’s order quickly,” Liam offered. “At least this type of food doesn’t take long to prepare.”
When the waiter came around to their little raw wood table, Liam scanned the menu one last time and thought how he would really love a juicy hamburger and fries. The concessions one makes in the name of friendship!
“I will have the hearts of romaine with egg and raw tuna,” he said, in final capitulation to the sparseness of the menu.
“And for you, sir?” the waiter said, without making eye contact with Riser.
“Oh, just some hot tea with lemon,” Riser responded. “I am getting over a bad fever and am still in the phase where I have absolutely no appetite.”
As the waiter hustled off into the kitchen to place his last round of lunchtime orders, Liam stared blankly into his friend’s eyes.
“Work with me here, Riser,” he said. “We did not have to eat out today if you were not feeling well.”
“But I know these types of outings are just as much about the social aspect as they are about the actual nourishment.”
Liam could feel himself freezing up; he wanted to say something about how the rapid weight loss and sunken features had made him fear for Riser’s life. But he didn’t want to hurl Riser further into this defensive and self-deluding posturing.
“It is really good to see you without the whole crew around,” Liam said to Riser.
“A rarity—right! I wouldn’t be surprised if Zane or Gary or Ben parachuted down right now and landed at the table next to us. Not in the slightest.”
When his salad arrived, Liam felt very self-conscious eating forkfuls of egg and tuna as Riser drank, stingily, from the small saucer of hot tea he had been given.
“Are you sure you don’t want some of my dish, Riser?” Liam asked, in a last-ditch effort to speak to the skinny, little elephant that had been at the table for some time now. “As runners, we really need to take better care of our bodies than the average Joe. We burn more calories before noon than most people burn all day!”
“Look, if you brought me out today to give me a nutritional lecture, then I am heading back to my own place of work, because I have better things to do with my time. No offense, Liam, but I see my doctor regularly, and I know my own body. I mean, I have been running faster times than ever before, and I feel so much more focused at work. Eating now would just distract from all that focus and take away from all those well-earned accomplishments.”
Liam knew now that he would only be digging himself into a larger ravine of faulty logic and spurious facts if he continued to point out the gaping flaws in Riser’s thinking. Instead, he ordered the check and told himself that he would enlist the help of some of the Fast Trackers who specialized in social work and health issues. Maybe a professional opinion and a learned voice was what would ultimately yank Riser out of this abyss he had fallen into.
MILE 16
Liam had snoozed through the first Sunday morning wake-up call and squinted at the digital blocks of time on his clock radio three times in a row before frantically recognizing that he had only twenty minutes to get uptown. Having spent the last two days guiltily sneaking around town with Didier, Liam wondered what he would say to the Fast Trackers about him. They seemed to monitor his coordinates within the city on a daily basis. While he liked the familiarity that had been established in recent months, he craved a little privacy—at least while he discovered whether or not something real might transpire with Didier.
I
n a hurried fit, Liam threw on the clothes he had laid out the night before and paced back and forth on the cool wooden floor trying to devise a game plan. He knew he was wasting time. But he also knew that the gang would not leave without him. As he raced out of the apartment and leapfrogged over the sets of hallway stairs, the pesky old lady one floor below him creaked open her door and called out Liam’s name.
“Not today, Mrs. Scalabrin … I’m running late.”
“I’ll say you’re running. Sheesh, what’s the rush? You’ll break your neck on these rickety stairs.”
A pang of guilt hit Liam; he knew the old lady was dying for a cigarette and was afraid to leave her apartment and venture to the corner bodega by herself. For the next few hours, she would be listening for a willing neighbor on his or her way out of the building. On a Sunday at 6:30 A.M., she could be waiting for a very long time. Liam had moved to Manhattan, in part, for the anonymity but found that living inches away from strangers sometimes provided enough glue to form the invisible bonds of family. People crept into your life even as you tried to shut the door in their face. Almost every weekend Liam found himself running some small errand or other for Mrs. Scalabrin.
The cab rocketed up Sixth Avenue, the streetlights all turning green in perfect time with Liam’s taxi ride uptown. As he approached the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue, Liam saw Gary’s big red Range Rover idling in a stretch of road designated for a city bus stop. He glanced down at his watch. It was 6:45 on the dot; he could not have been more punctual. Gary looked relieved as Liam waved to him from across the street.
“I’m so happy that there is one in my flock who I can count on,” he said and gave Liam a tight hug. He held Liam in his arms for a noticeable amount of time, as though searching for an answer in their embrace. “I am so happy to see you that I am not even going to ask why you didn’t return my phone calls the last few days.”
There it was—the inevitable. Liam’s life had been handed over to the Fast Trackers, and he had willingly cast off almost all ties to the past and to other friends. But as he thought of Didier’s hot breath in his ear and the rush of the forbidden, Liam felt his tongue twist over itself and did not attempt anything more than a feeble smile and a coquettish batting of his eyes at Gary.
The air still hadn’t shaken the cold of the night before, but the strong shards of sunlight across the perimeter of the park and the stench of fertile soil hinted that today was going to be beautiful. It was almost June now, after all. Liam initially had reservations about forfeiting the Sunday of his Memorial Day weekend for this trip, but Gary lobbied so strongly that Liam found it impossible to say no. Succumbing fully to the persuasions of the Fast Trackers had become the norm for Liam of late, as Monroe had noted snidely the last time they met.
“Do I have time to get a cup of coffee?” Liam asked.
“Given that we’re waiting on Zane and Mitch, you definitely have time.”
“Mitch? Talk to me, Gary.”
“Oh, shush.” Gary giggled nervously. “Everyone knows that I’m dramatic. That’s part of my charm. I explode inappropriately and then apologize profusely. Create mess. Wash. Rinse. Repeat cycle. We’ll be fine. That scene at the Brooklyn Half Marathon is SO yesterday!”
“Alrighty, then,” Liam said. “I just wanted to make sure all would be peaceful for the two-hour car ride.”
“Of course, sweetie. Now make mine dark and stormy. And hit the Dunkin’ Donuts on Lexington. It’s a bit of a walk but the best coffee in this neighborhood.”
By the time Liam returned with the two coffees, Zane and Mitch had arrived and had managed to cozy themselves into the car, with Mitch riding shotgun and Zane sprawled out across the back bench. He moved his feet a few inches so that Liam could squeeze into the back and then they flew off on their adventure.
With few cars on the road, Gary pressed down hard on the gas and hit seventy-five miles an hour by the time they reached the Triborough Bridge. A honeydew glow covered the island of Manhattan, making all the buildings look like cardboard pieces in a Candy Land game, and Liam thought about how small and manageable the massive city was from a distance. The driver behind them honked wildly and stuck his head out the window to shout an obscenity at Gary for cutting him off on the way to the E-ZPass lane. The incident pulled Liam out of his quiet reverie.
“A lightbulb just went off … Car game! Car game!” Zane exclaimed as Gary settled into the left lane of I-95.
“Ugh, I’m not looking for North Dakota license plates,” Mitch groaned.
“Can’t we just listen to my iPod? We can synch it with the radio here,” Liam offered.
“I’m game for a game,” said Gary. “It’ll help keep my mind off the day. Distractions can be an old man’s best friend.”
“Okay, we’ll do a few rounds of ‘I Never,’ ” Zane announced.
“That’s really more of a drinking game,” Mitch chimed in. “I don’t think I can play that before 8 A.M., Zane. Sorry.”
“Of course you can. We’ll keep it honorable. We’ll keep it tame. In fact, we can keep it a drinking game. Everyone has Gatorade on them. Every time, we do an ‘I Never’ proposition, those who have ever can drink a sip of Gatorade. Remember, you have to make true statements, so you can’t have done the things you claim to have never engaged in. Gary, you start.”
“I never lost control of myself while running.”
Everyone in the car looked at each other, and then Mitch took a swig of Gatorade.
“I was in Queens on a long run and got lost,” he implored.
Zane then took a sip as well. It was unclear to Liam if that was an act of honesty or one of solidarity. Either way the game moved on, and it was Mitch’s turn.
Mitch took a moment before speaking.
“I never cried myself to sleep at night,” he then said.
Mitch looked straight at Gary, who turned to Liam, who looked up at Zane, who was staring off into space.
Gary drank first, followed by Zane and Liam.
“What did you expect, Mitch? We’re gay men!” exclaimed Gary.
“Okay, onward and upward,” Zane said. “Liam, it’s your turn.”
“I never drank too much and puked—since graduating college.”
“I think we’re all going to have to stop on the road to whiz at this rate,” Mitch complained.
“You don’t see me drinking, do you?” Zane smirked.
“Fine. Your turn now, Zane,” said Mitch.
“I never slept with a Fast Tracker,” Zane said, barely containing himself.
“No one drink!” Gary shouted from the front seat. “Zane, you know better than to pull this shit. I mean, even among good friends this is dangerous territory.”
Liam studied Zane’s face for some sign, to see if he was being mischievous or just plain mean. When he had confided in Zane about the Ben incident, Liam made it crystal-clear that the story was top secret. Deciding to give Zane the benefit of the doubt (gay men often did things without thinking or for humorous effect), Liam also saw this as an opportunity to change the subject and talk about another topic that had been on his mind. Riser.
“So, on a completely different note,” Liam began, “what do you guys think we should do about Riser’s current state of emaciation?”
“Has that girl dropped more weight?” Mitch asked. “She’s always been a twig in my book.”
“We all go through phases with our weight,” Gary said, switching lanes and passing a small minivan with palpable vexation. “I hope you are not monitoring the spare tire inching across my midsection!”
“I think he has switched his diet to become macrobiotic,” Zane said. “That could be part of it. He’s still running strong so he must be okay. Have there been any other changes in Riser’s mood that you have witnessed, Liam?”
“Well, I had lunch with him last week, and he got really miffed at me for pointing out that he should eat something when he only ordered a hot tea.”
“Now, that seem
s like unhealthy behavior,” Zane said, repositioning himself in the seat and looking straight at Liam. “Why didn’t he order food?”
“Some excuse about being sick. I don’t really know that I believe it.”
“Look, I struggled with this in college, Liam,” Zane offered. “Sometimes it is dangerous if people point out or harp on the issue of weight or eating patterns. Guys with eating disorders are already being really hard on themselves, and genuine concern can come across as unwanted criticism—which he does not need right now. I will feel him out next time I see him. Don’t worry, I will be subtle. I deal with a lot of people with body image issues in my practice.”
Feeling comforted by that promise, Liam curled into the nook of his seat and gazed out the window as the flat screen of Connecticut suburbia rolled out before him.
“Come on … come on … ” Liam opened his eyes slowly to see Gary emptying the car. He had brought along a cooler and a first-aid kit and several changes of clothing for everyone. While Liam found the paternal instinct in Gary to be endearing, he wondered if he had gone more than a little overboard in his preparations for this day trip. They were parked in the corner of a well-manicured football field, alongside a handful of other vehicles.
“Where are Mitch and Zane?” Liam asked as he stretched awake. He looked for something to cover his arms. Sleeping had chilled him.
“They went for a warm-up jog,” Gary replied. “You should too. This race starts in less than half an hour.”
After having reconfigured his entire weekend to suit this whim of Gary’s, Liam chafed at the curtly delivered suggestion. Gary had sold the concept of a fun race away from the suffocating crowds of Central Park effectively (the man could proselytize with the best of the Bible thumpers), but the antics of the morning had worn away Liam’s patience. Running a 5K around the West Hartford Reservoir could only provide so much stimulation. Liam knew that he could have spent the afternoon at a beer blast on the roof of Eagle Bar with Monroe. He poured himself out of the car and hopped up and down on the crunchy grass of the football field to wake his muscles into action.
The Miles Page 15
