Now and Yesterday

by Stephen Greco

  “And then she says, ‘Use my eyes,’ ” said Will. He was describing the performance he and Peter had seen.

  “And the guy goes, ‘They’re too small,’ ” said Peter. They all laughed.

  “It was ludicrous,” said Will.

  “Crazy,” said Peter. “But, you know . . . there was kind of a point to the thing.”

  “Yeah,” said Will, “a point in the middle of such intensely unwatchable bullshit that it hardly mattered.”

  “That bad?” giggled Luz.

  “Worse,” roared Will. He and Luz laughed.

  “Really?” said Peter.

  “It keeps haunting me,” said Will.

  “But wait, c’mon,” said Peter. “Sure, it was stupid—we made fun—but there was something a little valid about it. . . .”

  “Valid!” said Will, incredulously. Then, for Luz’s benefit, he went on to describe the performance. “It was totally without shape. There was a little dancing, a little text, a little music, and these projections on the walls of the set—you know, live shots of the street outside and a loop of waves, lapping the shore—all sort of thrown together in a sludge that just kept sludging along, until it stopped.”

  Luz giggled and Peter stood fixed in a smile.

  “It was one of these pieces that’s all about the process that created it,” continued Will. “There was this greasy straight guy with no shirt and bad tattoos, who kept roaming around, screaming with his guitar; and these two girls who I think were supposed to be into him, but then they were rolling around with each other, on the floor. And the set, where they had obviously been hanging out for a week—which I’m sure someone called a ‘residency’—was done up like some random, off-campus crib, with a ratty old sofa and empty beer cans strewn all over, pizza boxes. . . .”

  “Ooof,” said Luz.

  “And on the sidelines, these art-school guys on laptops, presumably controlling the lighting and projections. Technicians of the simulacrum!”

  “Wow,” said Peter. “Detailed.”

  Will nodded cheerfully.

  “That’s right. I’m a magazine editor,” he said.

  “What about the performers?” said Luz. “Sometimes watching one person can get you through.”

  “It was just the opposite!” answered Will, before Peter, who was about to say something, could begin. “You didn’t know where to look! It was this frenzy of narcissism and misogyny. At one point the greasy guy says he’s gonna sing a song about ‘boobies’; then he plunks down on the sofa with his guitar and sings a song called ‘Booby Trap.’ ”

  “Charming,” said Luz.

  “It had . . . energy,” said Peter.

  “It did not. It had fake energy,” said Will. “It was fake-cool.”

  “But that guy is pretty well known. . . .”

  “So what?”

  “He’s important, Will.”

  “I can’t believe you fell for that stuff.”

  Luz chose that moment to duck away to the bathroom.

  “You’re just not used to being contradicted,” laughed Will.

  “I was trying to be open to the performance,” said Peter.

  “So was I. Then I had to sit through it.”

  “I didn’t know you hated it so much.”

  “I didn’t know I had to like something just because you do.”

  “You don’t. But it is my job to be open to new things.”

  “Oh, and it’s not mine?”

  “I only meant . . .”

  “My father used to say that a mind can be so open, it’s empty.”

  “Will!?”

  Peter must have looked injured.

  “Sorry,” said Will. “I just feel that sometimes people can be needlessly tolerant of bullshit.”

  “People?”

  Just then, the Australian waiter passed. Will let him top up his glass, while Peter declined another club soda. There was definitely a smile between the waiter and Will.

  “Speaking of tolerance,” said Peter.

  “You know my heart is always with the worker,” said Will.

  “He thinks you’re cute.”

  “I am cute.”

  “He wants you, darling.”

  “He wants an article. He’s a singer-songwriter—he wants to give me a CD.”

  “ ’K, now who’s naïve?”

  “It’s OK if someone’s interested in me for superficial reasons—someone who doesn’t know me in depth, the way you do.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No. But I remember that the first time we met, you didn’t even notice me.”

  “What do you mean? When?”

  “The first time you ever saw me?”

  Peter had to think for a second.

  “At Jonathan’s?”

  “Yes,” said Will.

  “We didn’t meet. . . .”

  “Exactly.”

  “I was probably feeling very shy that night.”

  “Shy!”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Some people are nice to bartenders and waiters.”

  “Will, the guy was flirting.”

  “So? It’s a party!”

  “There’s more to life than that.”

  “I see. That’s why you’re serving crab and champagne”—Will gestured across the room—“and there’s a two-hundred-dollar flower arrangement in the bathroom.” He was whispering loudly enough for some of the other guests to look in their direction. Peter pulled him into the bedroom.

  “Is that what this is about, money?” said Peter.

  “Look, it’s no big deal,” said Will.

  “Tell me, since you have an issue.”

  “Never mind.”

  “You brought it up.”

  “I dunno. Money, display, self-indulgence . . .”

  “I’m a bad person because I’m indulging myself?”

  “Peter . . .”

  “I’m a bad person because I’m spending money that I’ve earned, to give my friends a good time?”

  “Peter . . .”

  “Look, I’m just trying to live my life here, Will. I’m a gay man trying to make it up as I go along. I do my work; maybe I have a little success. I’m trying to figure out how to be sixty, which I’ve never had to do before. Christ! You know, I can’t walk down Eighth Avenue and turn heads, and let that be the thing that makes me feel like I’m living life at its pinnacle.”

  Will said nothing, and Peter realized his friend looked stung.

  “What I mean is . . . ,” said Peter.

  “I know what you mean,” said Will.

  They walked over to the window, to be farther away from the bedroom door and the rest of the guests. On the sidewalk outside, a stroller mom and her payload were parked near the railing in front of the house. The woman was trying to carry on a cell phone conversation, while trying halfheartedly to quiet her squawky child.

  “Sometimes it feels . . . like you think you have everything worked out,” said Will, quietly. “It can be a little daunting.”

  “But I don’t have everything worked out,” said Peter. “I don’t have anything worked out.”

  “C’mon, you do, some things: this house, the way you dress, the way you ingest and process culture. Your approach to living in ‘the world of tomorrow’. . . .”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “First, it was all about sex and love, with your generation. Now it’s about work and personal fulfillment.”

  “So you’re objecting not to me, but to my generation?”

  “You think you know what it’s all about. And, I dunno, maybe you do. . . .”

  “Will, I’ve had two long-term relationships. Both ended sadly. I’ve seen all my friends die of AIDS—starving hysterical naked. I know what some things are about. On the other hand, my job and the fucking world I live in didn’t even exist when I was born. We’re all a little certain and a little uncertain at the same time.”

  Will was noddin
g, but he was plainly unconvinced.

  “Am I . . . putting some kind of pressure on you?” continued Peter. “Because if I am, I don’t mean to. I try to be tolerant, yes. I try to be curious, and that’s very important to me. But I’m trying not to be the old guy here, all bound up in standards and requirements and vast experience. I just want to share some enthusiasm. I like you, Will—I’m just trying to be a good friend.”

  “I know, I know,” said Will. “Look, I don’t want to ruin your party for you. I don’t even know what’s going on here. You deserve your success. And I value our friendship, I really do.”

  “Did you say there was another case of white?” It was the bartender, who had knocked, standing at the bedroom door.

  “In the hallway, downstairs,” said Peter.

  “I’m sorry . . . ,” began Will.

  “No, no,” said Peter. “I’m glad you’re being honest. Really. We’re friends; friends talk honestly. We can continue this some other time.”

  “OK.”

  “Figure it out.”

  “Sure.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  “Hug?”

  “Sure.”

  They hugged for a moment, silently.

  “Then you can tell me more about what’s wrong with my generation,” said Peter.

  Will gave Peter a playful swat.

  “I’m sorry if I sounded stupid,” he said.

  “Callow? Foolish? Immature?” said Peter. “Not at all.”

  Will made a face and they both stepped back into the living room.

  Later, while saying good night, Peter’s writer friend gushed about what a great time he’d had and thanked Peter profusely for introducing him to a publisher who’d said nice things about his work. Well, at least that worked out, thought Peter. Will and Luz toddled off after Luz probed gently to make sure things were OK between the two men. Tyler bolted for another party. By eleven everyone was gone, including the help, who had left the place spotless. Having one more person than you think you need is the key to entertaining, Peter decided—though with so little evidence of the roaring party that had just taken place, the moment felt a little sad, even futile.

  He sat down at the desk and, finding no thank-you e-mails or Facebook pictures of the party—it was too early—started looking through old pictures of himself that he’d posted months before, at Tyler’s suggestion, in a folder on his Facebook page entitled “Dim Prehistory.” “People wanna see where you came from,” said Tyler, and Peter had come to find it useful in the same way—to trace his progress as a human being at a glance, from the Lone Ranger fan of 1957 to the high school nerd of 1968, the college radical of 1971, the gay pride activist of 1976 . . . God, was my face ever that skinny? And that hair—such a perfectly smooth sheet. The amount of work that took every day! . . . To the young professional of 1986, the advertising star of 1998 . . .

  All the styles, and moments, and propositions about life! Peter was contemplating a shot of himself in a hard hat, taken while the atrium was under construction—the empire builder in the new millennium—when a text from Will arrived.

  Had a great time. So did Luz. Thx!! Talk tomorrow? We still have to plan our trip!! They had plans to rent a car on the following weekend and drive up to visit Jonathan in Hudson.

  He shook his head and took another sip of vodka. He was relieved. The tone of the message was so genial, conciliatory. He’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to do the trip alone. Will was such a reasonable soul, underneath the pretty-boy jazz, Peter thought. And his issues, whatever they were, were obviously no less important than Peter’s own, which Peter never addressed directly and, to be fair, didn’t fully understand, either.

  Realizing he could use some fresh air, Peter closed his laptop, grabbed a sweater, and stepped into the garden. He installed himself on the swinging bench at the back of the garden, overlooking the patio, and took a deep breath of the cool evening air, which was fragrant with a rich earthiness. Few of the neighbors’ lights were on—and many of those windows would soon be obscured by leaves from trees just now coming to life again. Except for the soft rasping of the bench as it rocked and the ambient shhusshh of traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, three blocks away, at the edge of the Heights, the night was quiet. The only other sound was the low grind of someone’s air conditioner, two or three houses away—probably set on “vent,” Peter thought; or had the party been so loud that the neighbor turned on the machine to cover the noise?

  OK, they’d had a little scuffle and now it was behind them. The way they had dealt with it was probably more important than whatever the scuffle had been about. Reviewing his mental tapes, Peter thought he had been honest, clear, kind, and understanding. He thought Will had been, too. Both had maintained their humor and sense of respect.

  If he were really in a snit he wouldn’t have texted.

  Peter relaxed back into the bench and took a sip of his drink. By the time he and Will were cohosting summer parties in the garden, their little scuffle would be forgotten.

  And tomorrow night the dark will come even later.

  What was daylight savings, anyway, but the ritual observance of a cosmic cycle embedded in human life? The practice presented itself as something modern, meaning commercial—because that’s the way America did things: It increased farming yields, extended retail hours—yet deep down it was more spiritual, even religious. At least, that was the way Peter savored his excitement about yet another season of warmth and garden parties to come—though the social option was relatively new for him. He and Harold, when they first moved in and before the patio was built and the dogwood and hydrangeas were planted, used to host little pizza-and-beer parties out there for friends, using the landlady’s daughter’s dilapidated playhouse that was then out there for a buffet. Those parties were nice but always felt a little forced—Harold was the one who insisted on making use of the “backyard,” as he called it. Then, over the years, the garden revealed itself as something more than a social opportunity. For Peter it became sacramental—and worth the trouble of dragging canapés and concelebrants into it. If only Harold could have lived to see it!

  Peter smiled. For some, an understanding like this only comes with age.

  It had only been five months since he’d said good-bye to the sun, the previous October, when, in a last grab at the year’s outdoor living, he sat out in the garden one afternoon, bundled up in a jacket, scarf, sunglasses, and hat, trying to work. He did mostly calls when he worked in the garden, since daylight made it hard to see his computer screen; and he remembered calling Jonathan on that day to ask for the number of the guy who’d bartended at his lovely housewarming. It was funny to think about how much had happened in five months. Leaves were falling, then. Now, Peter could smell them returning.

  And this eternal return of newness was as nice as ever, he thought, but also—unexpectedly—nice in a new way. There was something extra that Peter now found accreted around his experience of spring, something new in his enjoyment of both the season and the idea of it: something weird but delicious that he could describe to Tyler, when they spoke of it briefly, at the party, only as “the weight of springs.” If life was sweet once more at this time of year, the sweetness itself was somehow weightier than when Peter was twenty. Perhaps this was always true of an individual, year after year; but it was beginning to register more clearly for Peter, now that there were fewer springs to detonate for him than had already detonated. Back in his twenties, Peter felt each spring as a little dose of a scintillating possibility—new pleasures to come, new poems to read. Now, that part of spring’s eternity felt largely expired, enshrined in the memory of decades of scintillation and poetry, and yet—something was still there, germinating, pushing up from under the weight of memory itself. And though this feeling was scary and undescribed in lines about “daisies pied and violets blue,” it was also thrilling.

  I can’t see myself. Use my eyes. They’re too small.

  Ris
ible, yes. And also maybe not. Another sip of vodka.

  He remembered adapting willingly to all stages of Harold’s decline, and finding new kinds of life and fullness in each one. Then Harold was gone and nothing more seemed possible, at all, ever. And yet . . .

  The air-conditioner grinding had stopped. It suddenly felt colder. Peter got up to go in. From outside, across the garden, the interior of the house looked like a promised land of warmth—lamps, books, artwork, furniture, stuff collected over what was now almost a lifetime. Inside, he shut the door and adjusted the blinds, then fluffed the pillows on the daybed and put them back in the arrangement he liked. The help hadn’t got that just right. A group of Tyler’s friends had been sitting there for practically the whole party. Peter wondered if Tyler, who knew, mentioned that someone had died on that very spot.

  Harold and he hadn’t actually shared death, Peter knew—only what led up to it. Some things can’t be shared. Of course there were things that Peter and Will would never be able to share—and what of it? Sharing everything implied certainty about what everything was, yet life was the ultimate contingency—a terrain whose features looked fixed until the light source changed.

  Our issues are not generational at all—they’re existential! Peter smirked. Oh, won’t that be fun to discuss!

  It was definitely time for another round of therapy, he thought. This was something he’d been considering for a while. The round of couples therapy he’d done with Nick, lasting three years, had done more than allow them to maintain some civility during and after the breakup. It had allowed Peter to see that the major themes of his life—which he’d examined during past rounds of therapy: a short one in high school, another in college, a long one that started just after he arrived in New York—were still evolving. Suddenly, he was curious: Am I a success as a human being, after working on myself for six decades? What’s going on with me and money? Does my mother still matter?

  Golly, what’s therapy for old people like, anyway?

  CHAPTER 15

  “Hiya, babe,” chirped Will, as he emerged from his magazine’s building, around one.

  Luz was perched, along with several other people, mostly tourists and shoppers, just outside the door, on the ledge formed by the thick wooden frame of the plate-glass window of the luxury-brand shop that occupied the building’s ground floor. With a view into the shop past thirty faceless mannequins lined up in neat ranks, like soldiers in summer dresses, their heads all inclined leftward, the window commanded much of the appeal—and some of the import—of the art that used to hang in the gallery that occupied the same space for decades, before SoHo became SoHo-land. That stretch of Broadway, from Houston down to Canal, was now as crowded with shoppers as Madison or Fifth, though the crowd there felt more hungrily hip than uptown, and the collective mood that April day was particularly ravenous, as it was the first time that season when a bright, warm day had unleashed everyone’s appetite for new clothes.