Blink

by Rick R. Reed

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure. That’s what I thought.” He sighed.

  “Tell you what. You like Cuban?”

  He eyed me up and down, doing a comical impression of lascivious. “I like you.”

  “I mean Cuban food. There’s a little place up on Ashland that makes a Cuban sandwich that rivals anything you can get in Miami or even Havana. You wanna go have one with me?”

  “But it’s not a date, right?”

  “It can’t be a date, Harry. But I’d like to get to know you better.”

  “Because you feel sorry for me?”

  “No. I don’t think there’s anything to feel sorry for. You’re a young guy with a good head on his shoulders who’s going to be just fine. I just think you’re—” I groped for the right term.

  “Interesting?” he filled in with a raise of one red eyebrow.

  I would not let him have that. “No. Bizarre. Strange. Funny. You wanna go now or meet up later?” I shut his file with finality and trained my gaze on him.

  I sit back in the same chair I sat in that day over a dozen years ago now. Harry and I never did have a date, but that one dinner, over medianoches and guava shakes, led to a life together.

  It’s funny. I remember telling him that day it was likely something other than HIV would end his life. Little did I know that pronouncement, meant to be comforting, would be prophetic.

  Once Harry had gotten on his drug regimen, he had tested undetectable from there on out. His T-cell numbers were always strong; he was what we in the business call “asymptomatic.” He never got sick. At least, not until the big C raised its head.

  I swivel to face my computer. I need to think about other things.

  CHAPTER 10: ANDY

  JUMPY IS one of those little ma-and-pa coffee shops that managed to survive the onslaught of Starbucks. It’s in a tiny storefront on Lincoln, a few blocks north of Fullerton, and not far at all from DePaul University.

  I arrive a half hour early and debate whether I should actually order coffee or not. The warmth of a nice Americano sounds tempting, but then I think of how jumpy I am myself at the prospect of meeting up with Carlos once again after a few decades have passed. How strange is that? Who can make that claim?

  Anyway, caffeine will probably do nothing more than raise my blood pressure, cause my heart to beat through my chest or burst, and probably make me even more nervous than I already am.

  Herbal tea wins. I order chamomile from a sweet-looking red-haired woman at the counter and take my seat at a table near the wall. The room is crowded with people, all much younger than myself, DePaul students most likely. I feel older than my fifty-five years and think how my son, Tate, would fit in much better.

  I look around. The surroundings are sort of eclectic, I guess you might call it, or maybe retro, or perhaps just dirty. The big plate glass window looks as though it hasn’t been cleaned in years, letting a grayish light seep in and tarnishing the images of passersby, bustling along on busy Lincoln Avenue. The floors are gritty wood, unvarnished and squeaky. The ceiling is pressed tin. This could have been a speakeasy back in the days of Capone.

  It’s oddly quiet here. I think how, once upon a time, a place like this would be bubbling with laughter and conversation. But in spite of almost every table being occupied, the only real sound I hear is the new age music playing softly in the background and the occasional hiss of the espresso machine.

  Everyone is busy on some kind of electronic device. A couple have laptops open, many are staring or jabbing at tablets, the rest are occupied with smart phones, although, curiously enough, none is actually talking into the device, only texting.

  What a world we’ve become. Here we all are, in a space meant for gathering, and each of us in isolation. It’s a little depressing.

  Depressing and distracting. I push the Home button on my own iPhone and see that it’s five past the hour of my meeting time.

  He’s not going to show up.

  I chide myself. It’s only five minutes.

  Almost to contradict me, a man walks up to my table who looks vaguely familiar. He’s tall, on the lanky side, with a thick head of gunmetal gray hair. He wears a T-shirt that shows off his thin frame and a pair of khaki shorts. Keen sandals complete his ensemble. I look up at him, and I can see a question in his eyes.

  “Are you Andy?” He cocks his head.

  This isn’t Carlos. I’m confused. Is this just coincidence? Is this someone I worked with once? Dated years ago?

  He repeats, “Andy?”

  I am almost dumbfounded. I hurry at last to answer, “Yeah, yeah. And you are?”

  “You agreed to meet me.”

  I give a sickly smile. Maybe this is Carlos. Maybe my memory is faulty and I turned him into someone else. Wishful thinking. I mean, this guy isn’t bad looking, but the feeling persists, this is not the guy I met on the ‘L’ all those years ago.

  So who is he?

  He does look familiar. But I just can’t place him. The feeling persists that I have not only seen him before but seen him somewhere recently. I can’t find the space or the peace to concentrate and focus my memory with him hovering over me.

  “Can I sit?”

  “Of course.” I gesture at the chair opposite. I don’t know what to say, so I spit out what’s in my head, not always the best course, despite what the experts might say. “I thought I was meeting Carlos.”

  The man smiles, and there is sadness written across his features in spite of it. His warm hazel eyes meet my own. He touches my hand. “Mind if I get myself a cup of coffee?” He half stands and then asks me if I need anything else.

  I shake my head.

  While he’s at the counter, it comes back to me—who the guy is. A shiver snakes through me, and I grip the table with knuckles gone bloodless. This is the guy in the Facebook picture. He was the man who Carlos—or the man I think is Carlos—had his arms around. I can see the picture now in my mind’s eyes as clearly as if I had it open in front of me on my desktop screen. I glance over at him at the counter, where he’s laughing at something the redhead said.

  It’s him.

  A bunch of questions cascade almost simultaneously through my mind. Why has he shown up here instead of Carlos? Was he the one who wrote to me? Is he a jealous lover, spying on his beloved’s Facebook messages and e-mails? Has he come here to set me straight?

  I clap a hand over my mouth to hold in the near-hysterical laugh in danger of escaping. You didn’t write anything to make anyone jealous in that short note you wrote. That’s not why he’s here.

  My mind shifts to another possibility, one I’d had when I first looked at the photo—that I was wrong about which man was Carlos. I look over at him again, now at the condiment table, where he’s pouring cream into his coffee, and think Are you Carlos?

  But he didn’t really deny or confirm when I said I thought I was meeting Carlos. If he were Carlos, wouldn’t he have just said so?

  He comes back to the table and sits down. He empties a couple of packets of Splenda into the steaming coffee and stirs, looking over at me, a little grin on his face. It doesn’t look mischievous, just sad, sort of sympathetic.

  A light bulb flashes on above my head, metaphorically, and just as metaphorically, I pull the little chain to switch it off. No.

  “I’m not Carlos.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “My name’s Evan. Evan Hyatt.”

  I nod. “Andy Slater.”

  We fall to silence, me sipping tea gone cold and him concentrating on what Carly Simon might call the clouds in his coffee.

  Evan speaks first. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.” He smiles. “And I’m going to tell you, but first I just wondered if you wouldn’t mind telling me what prompted you to contact Carlos. Your message mentioned the 80s, so I get the impression you haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  I feel a little panicked. This most likely is Carlos’s lover, partner, boyfriend, husband, wh
atever term they used. I decide just to keep it brief and noncommittal. There’s no reason this guy needs to know the almost subconscious crush I’ve harbored for his man over the last three decades. I would look like a nut.

  And maybe I am.

  I simply say, shrugging, “You know how you get bored at work and you start trying to find people online you once knew?”

  Evan shook his head. “I’m a physician’s assistant. I don’t get much time to play around on the Internet. Carlos was more interested in it than I am.”

  I notice the past tense. My stomach begins to churn. “Anyway, that’s all. We used to be friends, and I just entered his name on Facebook and thought I’d see if we couldn’t catch up.” The nausea increases. Desperately, I ask, “Why are you here?” Even though I’m pretty sure I already know the reason, I hold out hope that it’s something else.

  There’s a long silence. What I might call a “pregnant pause.”

  Evan closes his eyes for a second and then opens them to focus his gaze on me. He licks his lips. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Carlos passed away a year ago. He was in a bad car accident on Lake Shore Drive.” Tears spring to his eyes, and one rolls down his cheek. Embarrassed, he smiles and wipes it away with the back of his hand. “Sorry.” He gives a little laugh. “I’m still a little raw.”

  The news stuns me, and I’m at a loss for words. This wasn’t the outcome I was expecting at all.

  Evan says, “I hope you’re okay. It doesn’t sound like you guys were too close, if you hadn’t seen him in all these years. But I thought it was the right thing to do to tell you in person.”

  “Thank you.”

  Evan is visibly shaken, and I wonder if he’s about to burst into sobs. He stands suddenly. “I guess there’s not much more to say. I hope my news didn’t come as too big of a shock.”

  I know I’ll have questions, but my mind is too stunned at that moment to formulate any. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, a little breathless.

  We stare at one another, two strangers in a crowded café.

  “I should be going.”

  “Thank you for going to the trouble. You’re a nice man; you could have just written me back.”

  “I didn’t know what your relationship to Carlos was from your note. I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  I nod.

  “Well, good-bye.”

  I stand up to watch Evan walk away.

  I plop back down in my chair after he’s out of sight, feeling numb, as if the nerve endings in my extremities have been deadened somehow. I try to swallow, but there’s no spit. When I take a sip of my cold tea, I notice my hand is trembling. You did think he might be dead. That was one of the possibilities. But hearing it now suddenly makes it seem too real, too sad. I’ll never have the chance to tell him how much he meant to me.

  I sit and simply stare out the grimy window, watching the quality of light morph as the sun gets closer to setting. Shadows deepen in the room. Ironically, my ears perk up and tune in on the song playing in the background. It’s from that time when Carlos and I first met. The band is Quarterflash. I remember because I had the vinyl album and used to play it on the stereo set that was my pride and joy when I was in my twenties, but now seems overly large and cumbersome. The song playing is “Harden My Heart.” It’s all about swallowing one’s tears and getting over a lost love.

  The one thing Evan said eats at me, makes me feel like a fool. “It doesn’t sound like you guys were too close, if you hadn’t seen him in all these years.”

  The bald truth of that makes me wonder about myself. What’s so lacking in my life that I was hungry for a connection with a man I knew only briefly thirty years ago?

  What’s the definition of pathetic?

  CHAPTER 11: CARLOS

  I’VE NEVER been able to shake the bonds of Catholicism. I say that like it’s some naughty admission, like I’ve never been able to quit smoking. But it’s true, even though the Church’s policies have infuriated me and made me feel unwelcome as a gay man, its roots run deep into my soul. It’s hard to break a habit that started with your baptism, continued through weekly catechism and parochial school and confirmation at age twelve. When I entered the seminary, I really believed I’d spend my life in the priesthood, doing good works, shepherding my flock, wherever they ended up being.

  The Church’s rich traditions and ceremony will always be a part of me. There’s no escaping, even though my logical mind tells me over and over I’m dwelling in a house that sees me as unfit, or worse, unclean. That same voice says I should find an “open and affirming” denomination—the Congregational Church or the Unitarians, maybe—if I need organized religion in my life.

  But that voice can’t compete with the deeper one inside or the little boy who daydreamed of himself in priest’s robes at mass, swinging the incense-filled censer.

  I gave up a long time ago. I’m a Catholic and always will be. I tell myself sometimes that the Church is made up of men who will eventually see the error of their ways when it comes to gay people. Now I think I will be long gone before that day of reckoning, but it doesn’t stop me from hoping. I bear in mind that, as a gay man, I am made, just like everyone else, in God’s image.

  It’s this last that allows me to cling to the Church, because it belongs ultimately to God, not man. And I know he doesn’t see me as evil or wicked or wrong. I’m one of his children.

  So I come to confession every week. Things have changed a lot about this rite since I was a boy. Gone are the dark, closet-like rooms with the mesh window at which you would kneel and say, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been (insert time) since my last confession.” Then you’d launch into your sins. And you’d better know precisely how many times you lied, cursed, coveted, or whatever, because the priest would want to know exact numbers. I smile with the memory of my first confession and fighting with the priest, because how was a six-year-old supposed to remember how many times he had fibbed over the course of his life? That priest, Father Sgro I think his name was, kept pressing me for a number. I kept pushing back that I didn’t know. I was only being honest.

  “Don’t argue with the priest!” he thundered through the partition.

  “Nine times,” I said meekly, suitably admonished.

  Now I just meet the priest at the parish housing for St. Christina. We sit in the living room, and Father Gomez serves me tea in a bone china set he picked up on a trip to the Midlands of England. He’s a nice guy, about the same age as I am, Cuban too. He says one Sunday service in Spanish. He once regaled me with how he floated to the US on an inner tube and washed up on a Miami Beach shoreline. He had been twelve years old.

  We sip our tea, and he eyes me over the top of his reading glasses. He’s bald and has a rim of still-black hair that encircles his head. I like to believe that, even though we’re roughly the same age, he looks a lot older than I do. Today he’s dressed in tan slacks, black shirt, and wears his clerical collar. He blows on his Darjeeling and waits for me to begin.

  I still say it. It’s a line of demarcation between everyday conversation about the weather, Cubs scores, or how work is going.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  Father Gomez, Julio, sets his cup down on the rosewood table at his side. The living room of the parish house is fussy, looking as though grandmothers with an addiction to French provincial decorated it. He leans forward.

  I chuckle. “This week isn’t going to be any different from the rest, Julio. No juicy stuff. I didn’t go to the bathhouse, have a one-night stand, or murder anybody. No, just the usual litany of half-truths, taking the Lord’s name in vain, and coveting my neighbor’s husband. But honestly, if you could see him, you’d understand why. I beat off one time thinking about him.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s the best I can do, Father.”

  He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. A wry grin flits about his lips. “You’re pathetic.”<
br />
  “Tell me about it.”

  “I think three Hail Marys and an Our Father should about cover it.”

  I nod. “You want me to say it?”

  “Up to you. We’re relaxed at confession now, you know.”

  “I have to. Wouldn’t seem right.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  I recite the words that have been stamped on my brain since I was six. “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you, and I detest all my sins, because of your just punishments, but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.”

  Julio nods and sits back in his chair, taking up his tea once again. “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, you want to tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t hide it from me. Something’s eating away at that pretty face.”

  “Father,” I admonish, trying to change the subject.

  “Come on. Out with it.”

  I know what he’s talking about—this cloud of sadness that’s enveloped me ever since Harry passed away. People tell me that you never get over losing someone you love, but that it gets better. That it becomes a scar and you always know it’s there, but you move on.

  But when?

  “It’s Harry.”

  Julio nods.

  The emotions rush up—the lump in my throat, that peculiar burning sensation in the eyes that signals tears. I try to stuff everything down inside. I don’t want to blubber into my tea. I’ve done that enough. “I just can’t seem to get on with things, you know? I smile, I laugh, I go to work, but nothing’s the same.”

  Julio nods. “And it probably won’t ever be. You had an idea of what the future would be, and now you’re staring down the barrel of a future you never imagined.”