The boy was invited to the baker’s house for dinner. The baker told the boy his parents were welcome too, but the boy not-so-accidentally forgot to pass the invitation along. His parents were decent enough people, but in their striving to be affectionate they would betray some confidence, hold him up, if not to scorn, then to light-hearted condescension, which was worse. In his suit, the boy surfaced from the subway. The night was cool. The streetcar clanged past, forlorn faces peering out from the soft yellow light within, light that seemed to the boy, that evening, ancient and on the verge of going out forever. I’m on my way to dine with the baker, the boy thought, pleased and excited. He wondered who else would be there. Certainly the baker’s wife, but which of the baker’s children? Would they resent him, look at him as the usurper of their inheritance? Would they remind him of himself, those apprentices to the baker far longer moulded than he? As he approached the baker’s house, he untied his tie and buried it in his jacket pocket. He didn’t want to show up the baker’s sons.
He arrived nervous to the point of exhaustion, but the baker’s wife put him immediately at ease. She hugged him, smiled at him, her face warm, eyes sly, asked him: You didn’t get lost? It’s cold outside. He shook his head; he breathed in the smells of the baker’s house. The baker lived in a house full of spices and salts. You look very nice, said the baker’s wife, it was sweet of you to get dressed up, he’s told me all about you. And she looked at the boy with something resembling pride. He’s not home yet, she said, you can wait in the living room with the kids, they’ll be happy to entertain you. Are all your kids eating with us? asked the boy, as the gentle plink of a piano sounded in the next room. The two youngest, the twins, they’re the only ones who still live at home, thank goodness.
She led him around the corner — and there, in a worn armchair, was the baker’s son; at the upright piano, the baker’s daughter. They were older than him, but not by much. He could see only the side of the daughter’s face. She played a simple étude in a major key. Her black shirt clung snugly to her shoulders, her arms. White hands crept out; long white fingers. Though her crescendos were subdued, the boy could see her chest swell with them. She was no bigger than him; older, but no bigger. He longed to touch her — the dancing fingers, the languid, tender arms. Yet there was nothing coarse about his feeling for her. She could never be anonymous for him, never girl, never woman. She was the baker’s daughter, the daughter of the baker, the master of his craft. The étude sunk low, grew reflective; her chest rose. Perhaps the baker’s wife had been a pianist; perhaps for years the house had been full of apprenticeship, the man and boys kneading, weaving, the girls and woman swelling the house with song, straining towards a mastery that would arrive coupled with the obligation of transmission, filling the house with apprenticeship again, through the generations. I’ll just be in the kitchen, said the baker’s wife. The boy and the baker’s son, tall and gaunt, made introductions. My father tells me you’ll make a fine baker, said the baker’s son. He’s told me he’s real proud of your business, said the boy, wondering if the baker’s son were lying too. The baker’s daughter turned her head at the sound of his voice, gave him a thin smile. It danced up his spine.
At dinner the boy sat beside the baker, who smiled at his wife and said: This one will make a fine addition to the profession. The baker’s son laughed, said: Ever consider that he might not want to make bagels all his life? The boy didn’t mind the tension. He was preoccupied. The baker’s daughter captured all his attention. He was drawn to the fiddlings of her long, white fingers with the cutlery. At first he stole glances, afraid to be caught, to offend her or his hosts. But soon he began to stare. What if they got married? He too would be the baker’s son …
There was a knock at the front door. The boy, startled, watched as the baker’s daughter excused herself from the table. She returned with her black-clad arm and white hand around the waist of a man: a thick man with thick-rimmed glasses, in his twenties. The man’s hand — large, rough — toyed with the fabric of her sleeve. She slipped her fingers into his. Her hand was swallowed, crushed, yet she seemed not to mind. The thick man exchanged greetings with the baker. I’m going to stay over at his place tonight, said the baker’s daughter. She kissed the baker and went out with the other.
The room was now colder, its lights harsher. The boy stared at his plate. Here again was the despair that visited him at idle moments — the certainty, the absolute, unshakeable certainty that nothing mattered, nothing could matter, nothing he was or did would ever matter. Yet this despair made no sense. True, the baker’s daughter wouldn’t marry him; too small, too polite and sweettempered, too much of a dreamer, he was clearly not the type of boy that bakers’ daughters spent time with. But the baker still glanced at him fondly. He still had dessert to look forward to. The next day at school, he would still walk into class and feel distinguished by an air of irresistible mystery. He would still be the baker’s apprentice.
Yet for the rest of the evening he could think of nothing to say.
The next day was Friday. Today they would make challahs for Shabbat. In the doorway at dawn, the baker studied the boy for a moment longer than usual. You look unwell, said the baker. I’m tired, said the boy. It’s really early.
They made bread together. The baker led, the boy followed. But this morning the boy felt impatient, didn’t want to be anyone’s apprentice any longer, and he tried to weave tighter, more perfect loaves than the baker’s. Do I not bake just as many bagels and rolls? thought the boy. He should be the baker just because he’s older? They readied the trays to load them into the oven. But as he glanced at the loaves, the baker hesitated. He read the shape of the unbaked bread with his hands, twisted the tray to inspect the other side. He looked at the boy, mystified and disturbed. These are all wrong, said the baker, the old baker without an heir. Can you explain this? The boy shrugged.
The boy quit his job later that day, his resignation tendered in a phone message left after business hours. In the message he gave his mailing address so he could be sent the remainder of the money he was owed. His marks improved again. Without the pre-dawn commute, he was alert again in school. He lost his absentee mystique, though he had to admit that it may have existed in no one’s eyes but his own. His parents thought his decision sensible, responsible. There would be plenty of time to work, after all.
A little more than a year later, the boy, who’d gotten his driver’s license, sat in the back seat of his father’s car with his lips pressed into a classmate’s navel. It was his first such encounter. He felt tired, strangely, insistently tired, but grateful, too, and he drew the girl towards him. He sucked her bottom lip, teased her teeth with his tongue, as if he knew how it were done. He slid his hand beneath her shirt and she nodded, didn’t push it away. He pushed and pressed; he kneaded, he shaped. He lost track of which hands were hers and which his. But now she was squeezing his wrist. What, he said. You kiss too hard, she said. He let go of her. He felt far away from her, from everybody. Yet what did it matter? The girl, kissing, expectations, disappointment. He could hardly remember her name. A world full of people making needful things, making sense — when had he believed in that? His face grew hot with shame.
He told her he was sorry, helped her fix her shirt. They were silent, embarrassed, while he drove her home. When she had gone, he sat in the parked car for a long time, watching porch lights flicker into life, his thin and knobby hands wrapped tight around the wheel as the sky grew dark.
Rhapsody
Thomas and I are seated at the bar, close to the piano. We’d been wandering around the West Village, our freshman faces getting us turned away from a string of venues, when I spotted the lovely singer of show tunes through the window. Let’s try here, I suggested, and Thomas was an easy sell. He usually is. A lad of outstanding piety, he’s less concerned than I am about sex and so is more relaxed. He sleeps with guilt on a regular basis; guilt is tender and attentive.
Tall, curvy, in her twenties,
with wavy red hair, the chanteuse turns to the two of us after her song and says: “You guys smile a lot.”
There’s an older man a few seats down from us at the bar, and he takes this opportunity, our moment in the limelight, to catch my eye. “Can I buy you boys drinks?” I flop around for a moment like a seal losing his fish. He senses my concern. “No strings attached,” he adds. My friend, emboldened by confidence in his own chastity, says: “Sure!” I feel this is a sticky move. I go along with it.
Our solicitor is about sixty, short and wiry and well groomed; a hint of boyishness abides beneath his wrinkles. He is, can be nothing other than, a regular in this bar. He wears the room with ease. He doesn’t appear drunk, though many in the 30-plus crowd seem to know how to hide it.
Some verbal scuffling with the bartender confirms that 21 is, non-negotiably, the legal drinking age in the United States. We go with Cokes. We talk to Saul, who’s introduced himself with a firm handshake. I can learn something about flirtation from Saul. His manner is coated in harmlessness but taut with intent. It’s sexy, or it would be, were I at all interested. He asks us where we’re from. Toronto, I say. How did we meet each other? Oh, we went to high school together. We didn’t meet over the Internet or something?
Oh.
It’s clear that Saul is attracted to men. The pianist, who is a man, is flirting with the bartender, who is a man. The group of four middle-aged women in a nearby booth appear to be, possibly in various combinations, more than friends. Apparently we’re in a gay bar.
Now Saul says something silly. “You ever want to be in a porno film?” I blink several times; Thomas furrows his brow, perplexed. Saul tells us he thinks we’re beautiful boys. Thomas finally gets it. I worry he’s about to blanch and whip out his Aramaic and do sixty Hail Marys, but I have no need to worry. My pal is a smooth operator. He tells Saul he thinks I’m more beautiful, I tell Saul I think Thomas is more beautiful, and so a heated argument begins. Saul arbitrates and ends it by saying that Thomas has the hair and I the face, “the sweet faccia.” Insecurity insists I read his judgment as a lie. Still, I thank him.
A draught from the opened door makes me shiver. I’m starting to feel guilty for not correcting Saul’s assumptions. But the lovely singer’s set is coming to an end and Saul’s advances have given me a shot of confidence. She sings a pristine top note; the drunk lesbians in the booth hoot; Saul leans over to talk politics with Thomas. As the object of my Saturday night affections walks from the piano to where she’s deposited her winter accessories at the back of the bar, I trail behind her. My hands tremble. She’s slipped into her sleeves by the time I heave my heart into my throat.
“So that was great,” I say. “Like really great. What a great set.”
She turns and takes me in with a charmed curiosity, as if I’m a talking cocker spaniel. “Well, thank you.”
“So how do you get started with this stuff? I mean, you’re a singer. That’s wicked. So do you, like, what, make a demo tape and then send it around? That sort of thing?”
“Yeah, that sort of thing. Are you an aspiring musician?”
“Well, sorta. I mean no. But I can play the guitar. Sorta.”
She gives me a bemused look.
“Look at how straight you are,” she says.
Um.
“Right? You’re not gay?”
“Well, no. I mean not in the traditional sense. Like I’m not going to go home with our new friend at the bar there. Even though I’m sure he’s a nice guy. But, like, I dunno. I could love a guy. Sure. Love is love.”
“That’s a very delicate answer …”
“Steven.”
“You’re what, nineteen?”
“Sure.”
“Have you ever been with another boy?”
“Okay, no. But that’s more a matter of chance, isn’t it? Like if you find someone compatible who happens to be the same gender — ”
“But you’d probably rather sleep with me. For instance.”
“No, I, yeah, but that’s not the — ”
“Steven.”
Her eyes are very blue.
“Okay. Yes. I’d rather sleep with you.” I take quite a deep breath. “So … is that a possibility?”
She seems to give it due consideration.
“I don’t think so. Sorry.”
The confidence with which Saul fuelled me forms a puddle on the floor. “Oh. Why not?”
“Because you’re crazy young. For starters.”
“I’m not that young. How the hell old are you, anyway?”
“Take care, Steven.”
She blows me a kiss and makes her way to the exit. Blood rushes to my face. I think of a thousand things I should’ve said.
Thomas is laughing with Saul. I clap a hand on my friend’s shoulder and he glances up, sees my expression, loses his smile. “No luck?”
“I mean…”
“Ah.”
Saul gives me a sympathetic look. “Your pal tells me you’re straight.”
“Oh yeah? What did he tell you about himself?”
“Things I would never, ever repeat in respectable company.” He pats Thomas on the thigh. They both smile.
I’m beginning to feel nauseous. The ladies in the booth are singing Yellow Submarine. Thomas is confusing me. I’m sweating. I really want to take off my clothes. I really want to take off my clothes with someone else. But I don’t like older men that way. “I’m getting tired.”
Thomas frowns. “Oh. So you wanna go?”
“Can we?”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
I can see that this has depressed Saul. I don’t feel great about that, but my claustrophobia is mounting. The piano man seemed talented, but now it’s as if he’s playing Heart and Soul over and over again.
I grab my jacket. I toss money (those pale bills the colour of melancholy) at the bartender. He slides it back across the bar and tells me Saul has picked up our tab. Thank you, Saul. Thomas follows close behind me and, with plenty of eyes on our exit, we’re back in the crisp chill of the West Village in December, remnants of the year’s last leaves crunching beneath our feet.
We don’t look at each other as we walk. When we arrive at Christopher Park, we sit on a bench. The park is poorly lit. I can hardly see Thomas. Down the street, a pack of college guys clown around with the one female friend in their midst, take turns doing the tango with her, ignore that she seems obviously to be annoyed. It turns my stomach. I consider the possibility that I might hate sex. Or at least all the dirt that clings to it. It’s midnight.
“How you doing?” I say to Thomas.
“Mm. Good.” He seems distracted.
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Gay.”
“No.”
I think for a second. “You wanna kiss each other or something?”
He looks at me without judgment. “Not really.”
“Me neither. Not particularly.”
As we walk home, steam funnels up from underground and cloaks the street. For a moment, passing through it, I feel like I could disappear.
Faithful
I.
He’s at a cocktail party. On the rooftop, in the moonlight. He’s talking to Phil Goldman: loud, and a loud tie. Talking about golf, or Phil is; then fishing. Masculine bonding rituals, boring to him. He made an effort, upon leaving the academy and entering the productive economy so-called, to acquaint himself with such things, to learn how to look at ease on the links, hooking bait. But this was narcolepsy-inducing, and he’s always found, probably it’s a liability, that once he tires of something he can’t bring himself to drudge through for very long. We’ve bought a boat, Phil Goldman says, driving it up to the cottage on the weekend, you should come out sometime, bring Cynthia and the girl, what’s her name again? Hannah, he says, watching the moon paint the glass of neighbouring bank towers. The wind is cold. Of course, says Phil, embarrassed, perhaps, to have forgotten his boss’s daughter’s name, not noticin
g that his boss is indifferent, is preoccupied by moon and glass. What time is it, he wonders. When can I leave. Will the streets be quiet when I drive home. Will my mind be tranquil — and Phil’s asking him if he’d like another drink. He says: thanks, scotch.
Phil heads to the bar, procures two glasses of scotch. Before he returns, he detours to the guardrail at the edge of the building, where there stands a woman in black. Her necklace is bright blue, and her earrings. You can see them at a distance. They stand out against the white of her skin. Phil greets her, smiles, gestures loosely with the glasses in his hands. She responds politely, he can see from across the roof, but not with feeling. She doesn’t meet Phil’s eye, rather stares off, much as he, Jake, stares off, at the city lit up and darkened in the night. He’s never seen her before. Her hair is black. Her skin is pale. She looks, and he’s not typically given to thoughts like this, thoughts touched by fancy, but the impression comes strongly: she looks like a swan. Long neck. Pink in the face, the cheeks pink, the lips pink, a softness and lightness about her beneath which you sense, as you sense in the presence of swans, a feral power. Phil laughs, touches her shoulder, rubs the finger vised tight by his wedding band against the side of his leg; she’s remote, elsewhere. He watches. Hannah had a piano recital today. He missed it. He was in meetings, then at dinner with Steyn, a fund manager he likes, then at this party. No chance to see his daughter play, just time enough to call and hope to hear her voice, and find she’d gone into the theatre already, his wife wishing him well and telling him in her warm and charming way about her day’s banal adventures with the not-for-profit board on which she volunteers, this grey Thursday’s engagement. He watches the woman in black.
Faithful and Other Stories Page 6
