Now and Yesterday

by Stephen Greco

  The apartment’s renovation had probably been expensive and was clearly meant to be luxurious, but the result was nonetheless cheesy. The look was generic Home Depot’s best: Sheetrock walls, painted linen white; laminated hardwood flooring in pecan; double-hung, vinyl windows of the energy-saver variety. New ceiling fans with the look of brass and walnut contributed a “heritage” touch, while the kitchen proposed “Mediterranean” via faux-rustic cabinet doors and a ceiling lamp in faux-wrought iron and faux-stained glass. The lamp hung directly over the kitchen table, one of the pieces of furniture that came with the place.

  “Sometimes I have to wonder if I’m looking for something that really isn’t here,” said Will to Luz one night, shortly after they had arrived in New York. “I mean, I’m here now and I’m going to give it a year or so, but sometimes I think I’ll wind up back in California. Or, I dunno—Switzerland.”

  “Switzerland?!”

  “Yeah, one of those beautiful cities on Lake Geneva, or one of those amazing mountain towns. We used to go to Zermatt every year, to ski. My family rented a house there. Did you know they only have electric cars in Zermatt? They don’t want pollution to spoil the view of the Matterhorn.”

  “Doing what, may I ask? With whom?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How are you supporting yourself in the Zermatt scenario? Are you working? Are you in a relationship?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.”

  Luz smirked genially.

  “Minor details,” she said.

  “I know,” sighed Will. “It’s a dream.”

  “More like a fantasy.”

  Luz was an East L.A. girl, originally. She and Will met at Berkeley and then saw each other on the Hollywood party scene, but they hadn’t been particularly close until moving in together in Astoria, and then a deeper friendship blossomed—something like what Will had with his sisters, but more challenging, in a good way. Will liked Luz’s directness, her talents for frank discussion and intelligent compromise—good qualities for a lawyer, which had also proved themselves useful when the two of them were moving in and needed to figure out how to deploy their personal items among the pieces of furniture that came with the place, and what new pieces needed to be bought. But Luz was also warm, caring, real—and she was that way constantly, and never seemed to fake it or waver from it. Their friendship felt healthy to Will, mature. He and Luz began referring to each other jokingly among friends as “my gay husband” and “my straight wife.”

  “Must not live in fantasy world,” said Will, punctuating each word of the resolution with a poke to the side of his head with his forefinger. “Guess we can live without that.”

  “Yes, we can,” said Luz.

  They were hanging pictures. Luz had a set of three abstract silkscreens she had done as an undergraduate, that they were installing on the wall of the living room, above a Crate and Barrel-ish sofa that was another of the pieces of furniture that came with the apartment.

  “Case in point—Rob,” said Luz, while continuing to play with the exact position of the silkscreens. Rob was the movie studio executive with the penthouse in Century City. She had never liked him.

  “No, you’re right. It’s a fantasy.”

  “Two fucking years! That man wasn’t good enough for you, sweetie.”

  “I know.”

  “You know now. So enough. You need to find a man who’s worthy of you. Stop wasting time.”

  “Ouch.”

  “You know I adore you, mi amor.”

  “Worthy of me—what a concept.”

  “Of course, worthy of you. I learned this from my family. My dad’s a tailor; my mom is a cook. Self-respect was the name of the game. Otherwise, you know how jerked around I would have been, just because I am this beautiful woman you see before you?”

  “You’re saying I’m spoiled.”

  “Not spoiled.”

  “Lazy.”

  “Just not in the habit.”

  Will had begun to worry, in fact, that he lacked the habit of personal growth that others seemed to possess. Everything he knew he should be doing at this stage of his life with jobs and men seemed unnatural to him, and everything that came naturally, especially with men, seemed more or less a dead end—an attractive dead end, perhaps, but dead nonetheless. Everyone else seemed to be finding their so-called next levels, as if they’d been taught to do so, but for Will, so far, the quest was largely theoretical. He tried to mimic what he saw other people doing, but knew he wasn’t doing it very well: go to New York, find job, date men—are we adults yet?

  And in back of this worry was something worse. Luz had actually named it once, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to name, accept, control, and surpass: fear. Will had begun to be afraid he wouldn’t be able to find a next level, that there was no next level for him; that he might actually be kind of content at his current level, and that this complacency was something like a blessing and damnation all in one. This had been a nagging feeling even when he was in L.A., with Rob, who was so supermotivated. Now, in New York, it had become truly unpleasant. Whenever people spoke about their passions and projects and intentions for the coming year, Will felt embarrassment and shame. That was new for him. Luz had helped him name those feelings, too. Sometimes Will found himself exaggerating the passions and intentions he did have, because suddenly they felt vague and juvenile. Sometimes he heard himself dwelling on them too much in conversation—“. . . supposed to be meeting my sister in Paris . . . ,” blah-blah-blah—and that made him feel even worse.

  Luz was right: He was spoiled. Why else would every day in that apartment feel like exile from his real self? Two blocks from an elevated train! A two-family house with no landscaping! Exile was a persistent ache, if a manageable one. And what if the next level were even lower than the current one, if he were sliding down toward something truly abysmal? Like moving into his parents’ guesthouse.

  A few days after his visit to Enrico’s apartment, Will was sitting at the kitchen table with Luz when Enrico called. He went to his room to take the call, then came back to the table.

  “He wants to do something this weekend,” said Will.

  “And?” said Luz.

  “He texts me, like, ten times a day.”

  “You gonna see him?”

  “I guess so.”

  “But?”

  “No chemistry.”

  “I thought you went home with him.”

  “I did.”

  “Why did you go home with him?”

  “I thought he was hot, a nice guy.”

  “OK.”

  “I told you about the apartment.”

  “He fell into your trap.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You see a guy, he looks hot, you do that thing, Will—with the sparkly eyes and the big smile. I’ve seen you do it a hundred times, and it always works. ’Cause you’re the designated Cutest Guy in the Room.”

  “Oh, now . . .”

  “Right? You’ve always been. You learned it around eleven, right? By the time you were, like, fourteen—pfft. But then what?”

  Will sighed.

  “Exactly,” continued Luz. “Those are tricks, sweetie. Believe me, I know all about it, because we girls, we have our own tricks, as you may have heard. Only some of us are smart enough, we know when to give it a rest.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Will. “You know I know better than that.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. But you’re gonna tell me that, walking down Eighth Avenue, you don’t feel like you can get anybody you want?”

  “Well . . .”

  Will’s smirk gave him away.

  “That!” said Luz, pointing at him. “You see? That look says everything.”

  “What look?” said Will, giggling.

  “You’re so proud of yourself! That’s, like, your superpower. Dope, you need to hang up that shit.”

  “No walking down Eighth Avenue? No talking to other men?”

  �
�Did I say that? No, sweetie. You just need to find the rest of your power. It’s not all in those ojos azules.”

  Will was silent for a second, thinking. And then Luz finished her thought.

  “Because you’re almost thirty, mister. You wanna be rocking those tricks when you’re fifty?”

  Peter’s get-together took place a week later. It was just before Thanksgiving, when New York’s seasonal parry against the onslaught of short, sunless days was coming into full swing, with incessant inducements to shop, party, celebrate.

  On the sidewalk in front of Peter’s house in Brooklyn Heights, just before five, Will stopped to answer a text from Enrico.

  How did the interview go?

  Fine, thx—the ed. was cool. But lemme call ya later. Going into a gig.

  It was almost dark, and the evening was cool and clear. Will felt a little shivery, having chosen to wear a jacket that was lighter and more stylish than his heavy coat; the jacket would be easier to manage, should he want to go out after the party. He double-checked the address in his iPhone against the number on the door in brass numerals, then mounted the stoop and rang the bell.

  Once again, the blerp-blerp of an incoming text sounded from his pocketed phone.

  Calm down, buddy, thought Will, without checking it.

  Peter came to the door in jeans and a polo shirt, looking unlike any of the older gentlemen Will remembered from Jonathan’s party.

  “Hi, hi—c’mon in,” said Peter.

  “Hi,” said Will.

  The house was much more charming than any Will had seen in New York—an old house in great shape, warm and homey, without the interpolation of too much modernness. The architectural elements in the hall looked more restored than renovated—the wide planks of the floor, the original turned-wood banister of the stairway leading up to the second floor. Hanging on the wall, echoing the muted red, white, and yellow in the Persian rug at the foot of the stairs, was a fifteen-foot-long sign proclaiming MURRAY’S CUT-RATE CIGARS, in faded, hand-painted letters. Peter’s landlady had rescued the sign, years before, from the demolition of a building on the Lower East Side.

  Peter showed Will through a large door into the parlor floor apartment, where he lived.

  “Very nice,” said Will, taking the place in. “Eighteen forty-three, huh?”

  “Yeah—oh, the plaque outside?” said Peter. “My landlady just put that up. We’re one in a row of four brick houses—maybe you noticed, as you came in? All sort of small-scale. They were built twenty years before the real so-called brownstones.”

  “Cool.”

  Peter walked Will through the place, showed him the bedroom, the bathroom, the back door and, from the porch, the garden beyond. He pointed out the original moldings, several of the artworks. Lights were low and votive candles flickered from little sapphire-colored glass cups, all around the apartment.

  “Put your stuff in the bedroom,” said Peter, “and I’ll show ya what I’ve done.”

  Will was taller than Peter remembered, and much better looking. Why had such a handsome guy failed to make an impression on him? Peter wondered. Vainly, he tried to remember him from Jonathan’s party, behind the bar, but drew a blank.

  “I see you’ve got everything set up,” said Will, surveying the kitchen, which was open to the living area. Peter had come home from the office early, to prepare. Arrayed on the counter, under tiny spotlights hidden under the cabinets, were several bottles of wine, a phalanx of stemware and tumblers, a cutting board with a knife, some lemons and limes, and a corkscrew. Also on the counter was a platter of shrimp; and set up around the apartment were baskets of crudités and dip, and platters of meze appetizers.

  “Yeah,” said Peter. “And here’s what I was thinking about, for the hot hors d’oeuvres.” He produced a printed schedule that noted the times when the baking sheets he’d lined with canapés should go into the oven and come out, and be passed among the guests. One sheet was already in the oven, heating up, and three more were waiting in the refrigerator. Peter also showed Will where the rest of the wine and soft drinks were.

  Will was amused by the written schedule.

  “I do the same thing for parties,” he said. “It’s good to stay organized.”

  “It helps, right?” said Peter. “Anyway, poke around, see where everything is. I have to answer three more e-mails. Oh, and people can put their coats either on the hooks out in the hallway or on the bed.”

  “How long have you lived here?” asked Will, when Peter returned to the kitchen. He was opening one of the bottles of red wine.

  “Thirty-seven years,” said Peter. “My late boyfriend and I moved here pretty much directly from college, and I’ve been here ever since. He died in 1989.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Will.

  “Works much better for one person. Sorry, Harold!” When telling people about the apartment Peter sometimes added that Harold died right in the spot where the daybed was; in this case, he thought better of it.

  “And you said advertising, right?” said Will.

  “Right,” said Peter. “And may I ask what you do—I mean, besides this?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Bartending-as-well-as.”

  “Exactly. Actually, I had an interview this morning for a job I’m up for, at a magazine—my second interview. Fingers crossed.”

  “An editor thing?”

  Will named the magazine and told Peter about the interview. The editor in chief who had seen Will had “turned the magazine around” and run it for the past few years; he spent a large portion of every evening, apparently, going to parties and being photographed with leggy babes. He seemed a nice enough guy in person, but didn’t always look directly at Will when speaking to him; in fact, he had let his managing editor, a gay man with a shaved head and big glasses, pretty much run the meeting.

  “We’re going even more in a celebrity direction,” said the managing editor.

  “And we’re taking more of it online,” said the editor in chief. “Just in case print is, you know, dying.”

  Will didn’t know if the remark was supposed to be funny or not, but tried to look as if he thought it was at least wry.

  “Onscreen interviews?” asked Will.

  The question seemed to surprise the editors.

  “Those, too, probably,” said the editor in chief.

  “You’d be great onscreen,” said the managing editor.

  “They’ve been trying to figure out what to do online for years,” observed Peter. “Maybe you can help them solve it.”

  As Peter and Will were talking, Peter poured himself a club soda.

  “Lime?” said Will.

  “Sure,” said Peter.

  Guests began arriving around six-thirty. Deftly, Will managed the door and the coats, and got people started with their drinks, while Peter, after putting on some music, began chatting with his guests. It was forty-five minutes later when Peter realized what a good time he was having and how effortless the hosting was for him. Will was handling the mechanics beautifully. Peter, while enjoying the company of friends and coworkers, noticed Will across the room, filling glasses and plating hors d’oeuvres; and then there he was, right next to Peter, with a platter of phyllo-parsnip-and-gruyère puffs, encouraging people to try one.

  He’s so smooth, Peter thought. Will was better than any of the other guys he’d ever hired for a party—realer, warmer, noticeably more competent. And though the party’s small talk touched flatteringly on the fact that poor Peter lived alone in that beautiful apartment, without a boyfriend to share it with, Peter, in fact, was enjoying the evening hugely. He saw himself, at one point, in the movie moment when the chatter in a room full of people goes distant and the music swells, with a close-up on the leading man’s happy-looking face, meaning, “Me in my lovely home, with my lovely friends, with this lovely young man running my kitchen.”

  And then suddenly Will was standing next to him, as a friend might do—only Will, in his apro
n, was bearing a fresh club soda with lime, and took away the old glass, which he had spotted as empty from across the room.

  When Tyler arrived, the party, already in gear, kicked up a notch. He greeted everyone elaborately and introduced everyone to his date, a glossy young man named Matt, who ran a PR company representing entertainment types.

  “G-Star and Lindeberg,” said Tyler, looking Peter over appreciatively, when they found a moment alone. “Very good.”

  “Your work here is done,” said Peter, wrapping his arm around Tyler’s waist and pulling the boy closer. “No, Tyler, it isn’t! What would I do without you?”

  “I always love your place. It works so well for a party!”

  “People are having a good time, right?”

  “Matt’s boyfriend is coming, by the way. I told him to meet us here. Is that OK?”

  “Of course. So you’re not seeing this guy?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Tyler!”

  “No—they’re probably splitting up! The boyfriend is much younger.”

  “But Matt’s only your age.”

  “Jacob is, like, nineteen. He’s a model.”

  “How long have they been together, four minutes?”

  “Yes, four minutes.” There was no talk of Damiano.

  They were joined by Frank, a straight guy from the production side of the office.

  “By the way, Petey, I gather that guy is not your boyfriend,” said Frank, gesturing toward Will.

  “Oh, no, no,” said Peter.

  “We all thought he was,” said Frank.

  “He’s helping me out for the evening.”

  “You should have said that.”

  “What do you mean? I introduced him.”

  “You said his name was Will, like we should know him.”

  “Oh, I don’t know how to do these things.”

  “You should have said, ‘This is Will. He’ll get you a drink.’ ”

  And the party chugged on, happily. Even the arrival of Jonathan, who looked noticeably fragile and was showing a bit of rash on his face, didn’t deflate the evening. Jonathan installed himself in a chair, and Peter tended to him for a while, before leaving his friend in the hands of a little group who wanted to know all about the new film and Connor Frankel’s coming out.