by Grant Ginder
Donna drains the drink into Janice’s glass and returns to the living room.
“Your tree, their tree. Whatever. What happened with all that?”
“Give me that.” She snatches the glass away from Donna. “Incidentally, it does matter whose tree it is. It matters very much.” She drinks and stares up at the ceiling. “And, for the record, it’s ours. The most substantial part of the root structure is technically on our property.”
Donna sinks into her chair and looks out the window. Next door, in the Reynoldses’ front lawn, the sycamore’s leaves obscure the twilight.
“And they still won’t agree to cut the damned thing down?”
“No! Even though the roots are practically tearing up our entire driveway.”
“Did you…”
“Tie floss around it like you said?”
“Yes.”
Janice props herself up on her elbow and sets her drink on the floor. “I did. Crawled out there wearing all black in the middle of the night like some goddamned spy, and you won’t believe what happened.”
“Tell me.”
“The next day, I was standing at that window right there with a pair of binoculars. I wanted to see if the bark on either side of the floss was starting to dry out and die, like you’d said it would. Anyway, I couldn’t see it, the floss. So, that night, I dressed up all in black again and went out there to check if it was still there, and the damned thing was gone.”
“No.”
“Swear to God. This morning I saw some crows picking around the trunk. I’m guessing one of them pecked it off or something. Just as easy as that. How’s that for a ‘fuck you.’”
Donna laughs, though privately she’s relieved. She’d given Janice the idea of using floss to kill the Reynoldses’ tree two weeks ago, after she’d seen an episode of Judge Judy in which the defendant was accused of using a similar method of arboreal sabotage. It had been an evening almost identical to this one—Janice sprawled on the couch; Donna propped in her chair; both of them waiting for House Hunters International to begin so they could ignore it and continue to drink. And like now, they had been gossiping in that way that’s particular to two people who’ve lived across the street from each other for three decades, and who’ve built the foundation of their friendship on dissecting the lives of those around them.
A phone in the kitchen rings, and Janice sighs.
“Just when I was getting comfortable.”
She hauls herself off the couch, and Donna is left in the room alone. On the muted television a couple frets over choosing between three apartments in Barcelona. Donna’s been to Barcelona. Many times, as it happens. So many times, in fact, that she grew bored with the place. She had told Henrique that she’d sooner die than ever have to go back there again. “Nothing but sweaty tourists, architecture that’s trying too hard, and a lousy church that looks like a sand castle. I prefer Lisbon any day, if you insist on heading that far south.”
Donna smiles: those had been her exact words.
“Well, Gary’s drunk.” Janice wobbles back into the room, holding a new cocktail.
“Oh?”
“Played nine holes this morning and has been throwing them back at the clubhouse ever since, evidently.”
“Oh, my.”
“He’s too bombed to drive. Was begging me for a ride home.”
Janice reclaims her spot on the couch. In Barcelona, the couple’s dream apartment, a two-bedroom in Les Corts, hangs in the balance. House Hunters International fades to commercial.
“What’d you tell him?”
“What’d I tell him? I told that son of a bitch to get a cab.”
Donna laughs. Janice and Gary have one of the most functional, healthy marriages she’s ever encountered, but she appreciates the effort Janice puts into making things seem otherwise. She’s always thought it to be the polite thing to do.
“And what’d he say?”
“That he didn’t have any cash.”
“Oh, no.”
“I told him he should’ve thought of that before he bought his last scotch.”
Donna laughs—harder, this time—and in doing so spills what’s left of her drink onto Janice’s white carpet.
“Shit. Here, lemme get—”
“Oh, forget it, would you?” Janice says. “We’re replacing the carpet with hardwood floors in a month, anyway. And in the meantime, vodka hardly stains.”
Donna sits down again. She kicks her feet up onto the coffee table and lets her shoulders slouch. The commercials end, and she clicks her wineglass against her teeth.
“You’re so good with him,” she says. “Gary, I mean. You’re so good with him. I’m terrible at men.”
Janice turns over on her stomach. Her capris bunch up around her knees. “You’re only saying that because one husband left you for some Spanish slut, and the other one died.”
Donna knows that Janice is trying to make her laugh, but still something stirs in her gut.
“And Paul,” she says. “Don’t forget Paul.”
Outside, the streetlamps buzz. The sycamore—alive, rooted, destructive—sways.
“He still hasn’t called you back?”
Donna shakes her head. “Not a word.”
“What a drama queen.” Janice sits up. “Or maybe you’re the drama queen. You still haven’t told me what this is all about.”
“It’s nothing,” Donna says. Though, is it? No, it’s not. It’s something. She remembers how the AT&T salesman’s forehead had creased as he scrunched up his face and said, Two years is a long time. “And I don’t want to bore you.”
Janice considers this as she quietly watches a yogurt commercial.
Then, she says, “Give me your phone.”
“Huh?”
“I said, give me your phone.”
Janice leans forward and braces herself on the coffee table. With her index finger, she hooks Donna’s purse and drags it over to her.
“Where the hell is it?”
Donna says, “The outside pocket. What are you doing, anyway?”
“I’m going to call that fucker,” Janice says.
Paul
May 3 & 4
His phone buzzes against his thigh. Cradling it in the palm of his hand, he looks at the Indiana number flashing across the screen, then returns it to his pocket.
“My God,” Paul says, leaning into Mark. The bar isn’t crowded, but it’s pretending that it is; Paul can hardly hear himself above the music, some pop song he knows from the radio but that the DJ, a third-rate drag queen named Tina Burner, has remixed within an inch of recognition. “She’s calling again.”
“WHAT?!”
Paul pulls Mark closer to him and presses his lips up against his ear. “MY MOTHER! SHE’S CALLING AGAIN!”
Mark nods, but he keeps his eyes fixed on the bar, where Preston, the taller half of the couple they’ve come to Maryann’s with, is trying to corral the bartender and order a round of drinks. There are only four other people lined up alongside him, but the bartender—a guy with muscles that look like they’re pumped full of air, and who’s wearing a white T-shirt with pit stains and a slogan—KEEP ON LOOKIN’—is busy pouring a round of shots for a blond kid in a tank top who looks about half Paul’s age.
But then again, he thinks, they all do. A bunch of grad students and waiters and God-knows-what-elses who haven’t discovered their first wrinkle, their first gray chest hair; who haven’t started worrying about things like colon cancer and still think cocaine is fun; who haven’t been burdened with the rationality of experience; who don’t need to be up at six forty-five so they can catch the eight o’clock SEPTA to Bala Cynwyd and—Christ. Who was it that said, “Old age is a shipwreck”? Charles de Gaulle? It was either him or Debra Winger—Paul can’t remember. Whoever said it had a point, though hardly as it applies to gay men, he thinks as he watches the bartender pour a steady stream of tequila down the twink’s fleshy throat. Old age for gay men is hardly as repairable as a shipw
reck. When a boat crashes into an iceberg, say, and sinks to the bottom of the Northern Atlantic, there are still gems that can be recovered: artifacts and memories and hidden bits of history. With gay men, on the other hand, some new analogy is needed: a nuclear winter, maybe, or global warming. Something irreversible that has layers of denial and repression. It’s why people Paul’s age still listen to pop music and black out on Saturday nights. It’s why he and Mark are here, on a Tuesday, waiting for Preston to hurry up with the drinks so they can stop chewing ice and more successfully forget about how they’ll feel tomorrow morning. It’s why …
“WHO DID YOU SAY IS CALLING?!”
Paul glances over to his left, where Crosby, Preston’s boyfriend (no, fiancé—he can never remember that. They got engaged two months ago) is looking up at him.
“WHO’S CALLING?” Crosby says again.
Preston. Crosby. Think of that wedding invitation. For fuck’s sake, it’s like they made up their own names.
“MY MOTHER!”
At the bar, Preston flips his blond hair out of his eyes. Above him, a small television screen plays a music video that doesn’t correspond to the song that thumps on the speakers: a seventies disco diva, emerging from a beaded curtain, trailed by a cloud of smoke.
Paul tries not to think about how long it’s been since the floor received a proper mopping.
“WHY DON’T YOU PICK UP!?”
Paul opens his mouth to respond, but Mark cuts in.
“It’s a long story,” he says. “Aha, just when I thought I’d die of thirst.”
Preston wedges his way up to the high, circular table they’ve gathered around. Between his two massive hands, he balances four glasses. “Right, okay,” he says, distributing them. “A bourbon on the rocks for Paul. Mark takes the Guinness. I’ve got the IPA. And a vodka-soda for my babe.” He leans over and kisses Crosby on the cheek. “In any event, gents, I’m sorry that took so long. Evan was predisposed, pouring a round of regret for some teenybopper with nary a pube to be found, no doubt. Had to practically lasso him to get his attention.”
The bar is pure back-room Berlin: black walls and black floors and waist-high black boxes that, at least on weekends, play stage to go-go boys in tighty-whities, their cocks bouncing and flopping to Whitney Houston. For now, though, they’re empty save the drunk twink and his band of merry boys; the only thing making use of the dance floor is a pair of colored spotlights, playing a game of erratic, loopy tag. Posters and fliers plaster the walls of the square room, advertising strip-bingo nights and eighties theme events and a biweekly dance party hosted by the statuesque Catherine de Veuve—a blond New York queen who’s 80 percent legs and 20 percent hair and who’s the reason why Miss Burner has been relegated to Tuesdays.
“I’ll tell you one thing: Evan could pour me a round of whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and I’d be there to drink it up,” Crosby says.
“Christ, Crosby,” Mark says. “There’s no accounting for taste.”
“Look at his arms. Like you’d kick that out of bed.”
“He may have arms…” Mark slugs from his Guinness. “Unfortunately, though, there’s no such thing as a gym for your face.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Preston slips his long arms around both of them. “You’re both being absolutely terrible. Under normal circumstances, I’d enjoy it. Would revel in it, really. It’s Tuesday, though. And Tuesday’s hardly a time for reveling.”
They met the couple a year and a half ago now, about six months after they moved from New York to Philadelphia. A fellow Ph.D. candidate of Mark’s at Columbia had suggested that he look Preston up once he arrived at Penn, where Preston had recently won a tenure-track position teaching Georgian literature in the English department (his thesis—an exploration of the use of eating utensils in Jane Austen’s earlier work—remained a constant source of anxiety and wonder for Paul; he could scarcely pick up a fork anymore without thinking of the Bennet sisters). Within a week of arriving at Penn that August, a dinner had been arranged. Paul’s first impression was that they were sort of an odd couple: Preston, with his lanky, ropy build, his boyish face, his inexplicable Etonian affectations; Crosby, with his short, thick frame, perpetual tan, and tendency toward business-casual attire. Preston had selected the restaurant—a small Italian place on Chestnut that couldn’t have had more than ten tables. (“Don’t be fooled by the red-and-white tablecloths,” he’d said to Paul when they walked in. “The food’s heavenly. Order the linguine with clam sauce and then look me in the eye and tell me that you wouldn’t murder an infant for a second serving of it.” Paul did as he was told, and found that Preston had been right: the food was delicious.) Over the course of one, and then two, and finally three hours, the men had gotten to know one another: Preston and Mark explaining their research; Crosby discussing his plans for when he finished his M.B.A. at Wharton; Paul trying to detail the nature of his work at the clinic without coming across as pathological himself. Fifteen minutes short of midnight, they finally paid the bill and stumbled home, their mouths tasting like cotton and their minds whirling through a Chianti fog.
“Speaking of reveling,” Mark says, “I’m liable to be deaf by the end of the night if this music keeps up. Anyone mind if we take this all downstairs?”
Preston performs an urbane bow; Crosby lightly elbows Paul in the ribs and rolls his eyes, and Paul smiles. On the other end of a near-vacant dance floor, Tina Burner finds her footing again and the beat, once irregular and vapid, becomes fuller, louder. Mark catches Paul’s eye and mouths let’s go.
It’s tamer at street level—more suburban wine bar than East German disco—though the bass from upstairs still manages to disturb the peace whenever someone opens the door and stumbles down the staircase connecting the two floors. There’s an empty red couch beneath a framed portrait of a trio of bronzed, shirtless surfers, and they make their way over to it.
“So, wait,” Crosby says, “why does your mom keep calling you?”
Paul sinks deep into the velvet cushions. He fingers a crusty stain next to his left thigh. “To tell me that my half sister Eloise is getting married.”
“Well! That’s great!” Preston clinks his glass against Paul’s. Paul looks at the naked ice cubes and shriveled lime at the bottom of his cup and regrets drinking his bourbon too quickly.
“Eh,” he says.
Crosby angles himself on the sofa so he can face Paul. “What do you mean eh? I love weddings. I kill at weddings.”
“It’s true,” Preston says. “He loves them. Dances with anyone. Grandmothers, bridesmaids, groomsmen. One time I thought the mother of the bride was going to send out an amber alert when he took up with a flower girl during the electric slide. Would’ve caused a terrible scene, really.” Crosby rolls his eyes again, and Preston grins. “In any event, why the ambivalence, Paul?”
“To be honest, it’s more of a matter of—”
But he doesn’t finish, because Mark cuts him off. He stands, drink in hand, and says: “Eloise’s father was Paul’s mom’s first husband. Some big-shot French guy that she met in Paris. Obviously it didn’t work out—there’s a story there, but for expediency’s sake, let’s keep it at that: it didn’t work out. As evidenced by the fact that Paul is sitting here with us, and he was sired by a different fellow: Donna’s second husband, a certain Mr. Bill Wyckoff.” Here, he takes a breath. “Rest in peace, of course.”
Preston finishes his vodka. “Ashes to ashes, my friend.”
Mark continues: “In any event, Paul thinks that his mother always treated Eloise a little differently. Showering her with attention, presents, and all that, because she was—how did you describe this to me, Paul? Oh, right—she was the last tie to a past that his mother was desperately trying to hold on to. Sorry if I paraphrased that, but really, you get the gist. Am I missing anything?” He pops a piece of ice into his mouth. “Oh, right, right, there’s also the issue of Alice, Paul’s older sister—or full sister, I should say, as they both c
laim Bill, Paul’s father, as their creator. She’s got issues with Eloise, too, though I suspect they’re different than Paul’s, and—from what I know of her, which is actually quite a lot—I doubt she’d ever come out and admit them.” He crunches down on the cube. “Does that cover it?”
Preston stands and begins to applaud; Crosby says something trite like fucking family.
Paul swallows hard and looks down, in case he starts to blush. Mark started doing this—cutting him off, telling his stories, stealing his punch lines—ever since he got the job at Penn and they moved to Philadelphia. Or—no, Paul thinks, recalibrating. That’s not entirely true. For the first six months they lived here, things were as wonderful (at least relatively) as they had been in New York. Still unsure of his own future, Mark seemed to appreciate Paul’s neuroses, his constant fretting—he even went so far as to tell Paul, multiple times a week, how he thought it was healthy that they could voice all their insecurities to each other without fear of judgment, or some irrevocable shift in the power dynamics of their relationship. Mark was initially having trouble finding his footing at the university, and Paul’s presence and general disposition when he came home from work helped to create this scrappy we’re in it together vibe that kept him sane.
But then there was a shift. A paper Mark wrote got published in The American Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and ended up winning some award, the name of which Paul can’t remember. It was big, though—it must have been—because within a year whispers started circulating around the department that Mark might be considered for early tenure. The rumors were premature, of course—he’d hardly been there three semesters—but the very specter of the possibility did something to Mark, changed him. At home, Paul felt the tenuous balance between them slipping: Mark started to correct him more than he ever had before; his voice took on a patronizing uptick.
More and more, Paul has become obsessed with the idea that he embarrasses Mark.
Still staring down, he hears Mark say, “Sorry, babe.”
Mark leans over and kisses his cheek. “You’ve just got a tendency to drag that story out a bit, so I figured I’d help with the CliffsNotes.”
