Solos

by Kitty Burns Florey

  “I was just thinking.”

  “Dog-walkers don’t just go out and buy life insurance! What are you telling me? What’s the matter?”

  “Emily, nothing is the matter.” Marcus feels as exasperated as he would if he were telling the truth. “Life insurance is an investment. It doesn’t mean you’re terminally ill. If you’re terminally ill, they won’t even sell you a policy.”

  “Suicide.”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to kill yourself?”

  “I’m sorry I even brought this up.” He takes her plate from her. “It was an idle question. It didn’t mean anything. I’m not sick, I’m not going to kill myself. I am going to get you another piece of cake, so that you’ll forget I asked. Okay?”

  She nods warily. He can feel her eyes on him as he makes his way to the cake.

  Lamont and Elliot C. are standing near the dining room table, eating cake and talking. Behind them is the fish tank, populated by a flock of delicate black mollies and two muscular catfish—femmes and butches, Lamont and Luther call them. Over the tank is a sign printed out in thirty-six-point Garamond, which says:

  “I KNOW THE HUMAN BEING AND FISH CAN COEXIST PEACEFULLY.” GEORGE W. BUSH, SEPT. 29, 2000

  Lamont is wearing a shirt of blinding whiteness and a blue tie, tied loosely around his neck. The tie, a birthday gift, has extremely tiny Betty Boops printed on it. He is also wearing a gold paper crown with BIRTHDAY BOY in glitter. Elliot C. is short and chunky, wearing a black polo shirt and black pants and black shoes. He has dyed blond hair, buzz-cut and in need of a touch-up. He wears a gold hoop in each ear.

  “Marco, I’m so drunk,” Lamont says. Lamont is very tall, with a saintly, bovine face that Marcus has to tilt his head back to see.

  “Now that you’re forty you can get drunk whenever you want,” Marcus says. “No one can tell you not to, you’re an official grown-up.”

  “That’s why I’m getting drunk,” Lamont says, being cute, putting his head to one side like a puppy. His glass is half full of brandy, and after he takes a gulp it’s only about three-eighths full. “I don’t want to be a grown-up.”

  Marcus doesn’t feel like encouraging him. Sometimes it seems Lamont is coming on to him, especially when he calls him Marco. Lamont says he does this because the ablative case is so sexy. Not without difficulty, Marcus pictures a threesome—himself with Luther and Lamont, two staggeringly handsome men, one black and one white. He tries to picture them all in Luther and Lamont’s extremely cool bedroom with the gray walls and the platform bed and the windows looking out on the back garden, still lush in late October, where, somehow, they manage to grow something that looks like a palm tree. He feels nothing but a slightly repelled neutrality. “Emily needs more cake,” he says.

  “Cut her a nice big piece, Marco.” Lamont manages to make this sound suggestive. “You know Elliot Cobb, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think we’ve actually met.” They shake hands. Elliot Cobb’s hand is unpleasantly damp, and there is a moustache of sweat on his upper lip. “You moved into Jeanette’s place, didn’t you?”

  “Subletting just for this year.”

  “Lucky Jeanette. London for a year.”

  Elliot Cobb makes a face. “I can’t stand London.”

  “You from around here?”

  “Kind of.”

  “I met Elliot at the Tragedy Club,” Lamont says helpfully. “He was looking for a sublet, and I hooked him up with Jeanette. Right, Elliot?”

  “That’s it.”

  It’s not just his dog. Marcus cuts a piece of cake and flops it onto the plate, where it falls to pieces. Elliot doesn’t have much to say to anyone. “So what do you do, Elliot?” He doesn’t really know why he’s asking these questions. Just a vague feeling that it would be good to know things about Elliot Cobb. And for Emily’s sake, because she’ll ask.

  “I’m a writer.” Elliot forks in a bite of cake, looking at Marcus challengingly, as if expecting to be disbelieved.

  Marcus can’t stop himself. “What do you write?”

  “Pornography, actually. I’m a professional pornographer. I write dirty graphic novels for an outfit called Wanker Press.”

  “Wow,” Marcus says, feeling the nausea he’s been fighting all day threaten to rise. “Is that a dream job or what?”

  “Graphic graphic novels, eh, Elliot?” Lamont chuckles drunkenly at his own joke.

  “Yep, they’re pretty graphic, all right. That’s the point. I do the Master Bedroom series,” Elliot elaborates, not looking embarrassed or even ironic. He could be talking about an article on otters for the Times Science Section. “Maybe you’ve heard of them? Master Bedroom is basically an S&M guy, but—you know—I try to diversify a little. Keeps it interesting for me.”

  “I’ll bet,” Marcus says. Grudgingly, he admits that Elliot is attractive in a sleazy, pimpish way. But he doesn’t like looking at him; he concentrates on the catfish, who are brisking around the floor of the tank and waggling their whiskers, while the mollies do their complicated dance up above.

  “Maybe you could move on to Master Bath if you get sick of it,” Lamont says. “He could do stuff in the tub.”

  “Yeah, I’ve already thought of that.”

  Lamont beams. “Elliot’s in Williamsburg to do research.”

  “You could put it that way.” Elliot Cobb’s smile is bunched up and small, showing sharp teeth. If you photographed it, and took it out of context, you wouldn’t know if it was a smile or the grin of a rabid animal.

  “I won’t grow up,” Lamont sings over the sound system, which is playing an early Alison Krauss album. “Ida wanna go to school.”

  “I’d better get this cake over to Emily,” Marcus says.

  “Ida wanna something something. And obey the golden rule. Who knows the missing line?”

  “So maybe I’ll see you around, Mark,” Elliot says.

  “No, that’s not it. That doesn’t even scan. It’s ‘I don’t want to wear a something …’ But what?” Lamont gulps more brandy, humming.

  “I’ve seen you in the park with your rottweiler a couple of times,” Marcus feels compelled to say.

  “Huh.” Elliot nods.

  He doesn’t volunteer anything else. Emily will want to know about the dog more than she’ll want to know about Master Bedroom, but Marcus needs to get away. He has the same feeling he had after brunch with his father: He would really like to wash his hands. He decides, right then, as he makes his way back across the room, not to call Hart. Not by the weekend, not at all. Let his father call him. Is that wise? What if Hart gives up and finds someone else? Some creep like Elliot C.? He wonders why he finds Elliot C. so creepy. But Hart won’t get someone else. He’ll call. Definitely. Hart will call. And he’ll be able to judge from how long it takes just how serious his father is.

  But it had to be a joke.

  Emily is leaning against the mantel, looking dazed. She has made heavy inroads into her plastic glass of brandy. He hands her the cake. “Ew, it’s all crumbled.”

  “Yeah. Sorry, Em.”

  They look at each other and then away, blushing.

  The first time Marcus called her Em, she said, “Wow, Marcus. Em! That sounds like we’re an old married couple or something.” They both remember this. The usual sequence goes through Marcus’s head: I wish she wasn’t thirty-six, I wish I wanted to go out with her, I wish I wanted to go out with anybody.

  Emily attacks her cake. “Who would have suspected that chocolate cake and brandy go so well together?”

  “Lamont.”

  “Lamont is such a genius. So what’s with Mr. Rottweiler?”

  “He’s just some guy who’s here for a year. Some kind of writer.”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know. He was pretty vague.”

  “What’s his dog’s name?”

  “We didn’t get to the dog.”

  “Oh well.” Emily gazes off into space, maybe grooving on Alison K
rauss’s fiddle. They both look in the direction of the music system, which is housed in a custom-made bird’s-eye-maple Shaker-style unit. Daphne, Lamont’s orange cat, is asleep on top of it in a basket, only the top of her head and her ears visible. Luther is leaning against it, drinking brandy and brooding. He has recently started shaving his head, and his beautiful skull is as smooth and gleaming as a piece of expensive chocolate. Luther is—Marcus realizes—watching Lamont and Elliot C. Alison’s piercing soprano floats above the noisy room: “I’ve got that old feeling that you’re leaving.”

  “I like those earrings,” Marcus says, then blushes again.

  Emily’s earrings are silver, dangly, glinting in the light from the incredibly tasteful recessed ceiling lighting system. She looks at him in surprise. “Thanks.”

  “You have a lot of jewelry. It seems.”

  “It does?”

  “Well—don’t you?”

  “I guess.” Emily smiles. “Earrings, mostly. All cheap. Bought on the street. Or at the Indian place on Mulberry. I always find great earrings there. You know that woman? The batik lady?”

  “I do, actually. I’ve bought batik from her. That pillow I made?”

  “I love that pillow.”

  “I like talking to her. She has very radical politics.”

  “She has very radical earrings.”

  “You don’t have any valuable stuff, do you?”

  “Nope. Just junk.” She takes a bite of cake. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, there have been a lot of robberies lately. I wondered.”

  “Robberies? I thought we were just having rapes.”

  “Oh well. I don’t know.” The nausea now feels like it will never pass. He can still drink, but his glass is empty. “Excuse me,” he says, and sprints into the kitchen, finds the bottle, splashes some into a plastic glass, takes a gulp, returns. “You’re still here.”

  “I go nowhere until I get enough cake. Almost there. Coming down the home stretch.”

  Luther’s black cat, also named Daphne, is rubbing around Emily’s legs, and Marcus stoops to pet her. The change in altitude and the pressure on his gut make him feel, suddenly, even sicker. Out of the noise in the room, his mind constructs the echo of his father’s voice. He has to abandon the cat and stand upright. Black Daphne, fat and indignant, waddles away from him. Marcus stares after her glumly, listening to the pulse beating in his head, hoping he won’t throw up. “Marcus?” He realizes Emily has been watching him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you being so weird tonight?”

  “I don’t think I’m being weird.” He has a sip of brandy, then another. “Let’s change the subject. Did I tell you about this guy I met once in a bar? Who would do anything for a joke? Like he went to some dinky college in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, so he could have a Gettysburg address?”

  She looks at him skeptically. “Oh yeah?”

  “I swear.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Mark Romano. He was six feet two, and he was born in San Diego. His father was a professor of biology, his mother sold real estate. His social security number was 093-57-7882.”

  “What was the name of the bar?”

  “Cappy’s Bar, in Minneapolis. They had a little sign in the window. It said YOUR BEST DAYS BEGIN AND END AT CAPPY’S BAR. It was either an optimistic sentiment or a pessimistic one. Depending on your mood.”

  Emily’s eyes narrow. “What were you doing in Minneapolis?”

  “Drinking beer in Cappy’s Bar. My best days began there.”

  Unexpectedly, she puts her hand on his arm. “Marcus,” she says, and gets the half-maternal, half-something-else look in her eyes Marcus both dreads and loves. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are my dog-and-bird-sitter. Never lie to me.”

  “I am your dog-and-bird-sitter. I will never lie to you,” Marcus lies.

  “Okay. Good. Thank you.” Emily picks up her brandy glass and drains it. “I can leave now.”

  “I’ll walk you home.”

  “That would be great.”

  They make their farewells, but Luther is in a mood, and Lamont is so drunk he doesn’t respond very well. “Am I going to hate myself in the morning? Am I going to begin my forties with a bad attitude? Low self-esteem? A hangover?”

  “Kingsley Amis says the best hangover cure is Paradise Lost,” Emily tells him. “Book 12, lines 606 to the end.”

  “Who’s Kingsley Amis?” Lamont asks. “What’s Paradise Lost?”

  Oliver, who is standing nearby, gives Marcus a despairing look. Pat hugs him and Emily. “Did you like the cake?”

  “We did a job on the cake,” Marcus says, even though he hid his on the mantel behind one of Luther’s pigeon sculptures.

  “The cake was sublime,” Emily says. “Awesome. Megaoutta-sight.” She hugs Lamont and tells him he doesn’t look forty but happy birthday anyway. Marcus shakes his hand. They all say, “See you at the Trollope meeting,” and then Emily and Marcus leave.

  Outside, it’s chilly. Emily has worn a red sweater and sensible shoes, but Marcus is in sandals and his light brown hemp shirt. “You’re cold,” Emily says, and laces her arm through his. “You should have your own dog. Or cat.”

  Marcus knows this is not a non sequitur: Emily is imagining him going home and sleeping alone, uncuddled, cold. He has never told her about the dog of his childhood, his beloved Phoebe, for whom he still grieves. He remembers his grandmother’s house up near Rochester, and the railroad tracks that ran behind it at the end of a field of blueberries. How he used to count the cars of the freight train that went by once a day, making bets with himself on how many there might be. Hobos sometimes hung around down by the tracks. The hobos rode the trains, Grandma said. Going where? Anywhere. Out west. Up to Canada. Further east to the coast. Marcus had been impressed by the romance of it, the delectable queerness of living on the road, being always on the move, sleeping always alone. He has no plans to become a hobo, but he does know that, seductive though it is, 11211 will not be his zip code forever.

  “One of these days,” he says, “I’ll get a dog.”

  “Or a cat.”

  “Or a bird.”

  They have had this conversation more than once.

  When they come to Emily’s building, Marcus frees his arm.

  Emily says, “Marcus.”

  “Emily.”

  “Thank you for walking me home.”

  “Well, our rapist is out there somewhere.”

  “I know. But I still appreciate it. It’s so old-fashioned. Isn’t it? Walking someone home. Like an old song.”

  “I guess.” He looks at her. Her curly hair, her blue eyes, her mouth curving into its smile. “You have to walk Otto now, right?”

  “Nope. I walked him before I left. He’ll be okay until morning.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.”

  He pauses and looks at her in the light from the street lamp. He doesn’t know if she’s pretty, or if she just looks exactly the way he thinks people should look. Both, probably. He could go upstairs with her, he knows that. He could say he’d like a cup of tea, would she make him a cup of nice hot tea? He knows her smile means they could do more than drink tea. He tries to imagine something they might do. Instead, he has a sudden memory of one of the word games he used to love when he was a kid. Mead to Lime, he thinks, and then, concentrating, Mead-mend-mind-mine-mime-Lime. He smiles. “Okay, then. I’ll say good night.”

  “Good night, Marcus.” She is slightly taller than he, and she leans down, as she always does, to press her lips to his forehead.

  He watches while she goes in. Then he puts his cheek to the big metal door so that, against his face, he can feel her key turn in the lock. Then he walks back to his apartment on North Sixth Street near Roebling. Even when he is at his most distraught, Marcus can’t walk past Roebling Street without remembering that John Roebling—who invented the steel cable and used
it in his design of the Brooklyn Bridge—died of lockjaw. This fact he finds as amazingly ironic as Al Capone’s arrest not for racketeering but for income tax evasion. Roebling should have died gloriously, falling from one of the bridge’s towers into the depths of the East River, not sadly in his bed. Like Marcus’s mother, whose name was Summer but who froze to death in the middle of an upstate winter.

  At 222 North Sixth Street, an address that provides a little jolt of pleasure every time he contemplates it, Marcus takes off his clothes, showers for the third time that day, and puts on a pair of clean striped pajamas. What he wants to do is go to bed and have his favorite dream, that he’s gone for a walk in the woods and fallen asleep with his head pillowed on his backpack, and gradually the gentle animals of the forest gather in a circle around him. But he’s still agitated from seeing Hart, and he knows he won’t sleep. He turns on his fifth-hand tape player and puts on a Welsh rock band. He can’t understand a word, and the music is now so familiar he doesn’t even hear it, which is what he likes.

  He makes himself a cup of herbal tea, hoping to settle his stomach, then sits in his favorite chair. On the wall opposite is something Emily gave him: the neatly framed front page of the Daily News on a day last June. The big headline, DOG DAYS FOR DONNA, is about ex-Mayor Giuliani’s almost-ex-wife, who wants but isn’t going to get $1,140 a month for the upkeep of their dog, Goalie. The small headline, SEAMUS IS MY NEW BUDDY, SAYS BILL, is about the new dog ex-President Clinton’s wife gave him as a replacement for Buddy, who was killed by a car a year before. The first time in history, Emily said, that two dogs have ever shared billing on the front page of a newspaper. Emily read him the article inside about Seamus. Bill Clinton said Buddy’s death was the worst thing that had happened to him since he left office. Emily had said, “I find that deeply affecting.” He had thought of his dog Phoebe and wanted, as always, to tell Emily about her, but didn’t.

  When he finishes his tea, he takes from his file cabinet a thin folder neatly labeled MY LIFE, and removes a fading color photograph. It’s a picture of himself and his father and his mother taken in early fall, 1991, when Hart was living with them for the last time. They are standing on the bridge over the Delaware River at Callicoon, New York. Marcus is dressed in a striped T-shirt and baggy knee-length shorts. His skinny legs give him an avian look. Summer is wearing a cotton dress and looks large and pretty, with the aura of strangeness that she never lost, not even during the brief period when she worked at the drugstore in Jeffersonville and wore a maroon blazer and put her hair up in a neat bun. In the photograph, her hair is waist-length and messy, blown back by a breeze that also ruffles Hart’s hair, which hangs long and stringy above his shoulders. Hart has his left arm around Summer and his right hand on the shoulder of Marcus, who stands between and a little in front of them. In the background, the river is shirred—blue and sparkly.