The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  "Why on earth would you do that? Stay here all the way till Franklin."

  Her route took us along the river road, past the Jewish Community Center, past the University of Saint Thomas, past houses turreted like castles, past apartment buildings and bridges and a train trestle, past Prospect Park. Past Bare Ass Beach. As I rounded a curve, the Chevette's headlights swept over a pair of boys in black. Long after we'd passed them, I realized they were the two who had been smoking at the beach that morning.

  At Franklin I stopped for a red light. Ahead of us lay the University of Minnesota campus, mostly obscured by the trembling branches of trees. For some reason, the brick buildings were never as clear from the ground as they were from the river.

  "Left, left, left," Christa said.

  I turned left.

  Franklin to Riverside. Riverside to Cedar to Washington. Washington to Hennepin.

  "See?" Christa said. "Easy."

  * * *

  People thronged The Gay Nineties' central bar, the old west saloon. Above our heads, above the mirrors and the bordello-red walls, were smoke-darkened murals that might have been unchanged for decades. Beneath our feet, gum and trash flocked the carpet.

  I followed Christa to the coat check, where we paid a dollar each for leather-sitting. We sped by a pair of men in chaps and leather jackets. I felt or imagined that their eyes followed me as we passed, and my heart fluttered. But before I could make eye contact, Christa and I were in the black cave of the Dance Annex.

  Music thundered and thumped. On the big screen behind the dance floor, Janet Jackson canoodled with buff men in sepia clothing. Except for two bartenders and one white-whiskered old man on a black leather couch, the place was empty of people.

  "I can't dance here," I said. "Not until some more people show up."

  Christa rolled her eyes. "Don't be an infant. Let's get a drink."

  The bartenders stood talking at the other end of the bar, near the narrow hallway to the restrooms. Both men wore jeans and boots, but one wore a crisp white banded-collar shirt, and the other had strapped his brutish torso into a leather-and-chrome harness. Looking vaguely put upon, the white shirt met us halfway down the length of the bar. Christa ordered a Corona for herself and a Diet Coke for me.

  Over the bar a black-lit banner gleamed. In foot-high letters of Day-Glo orange it read, "Thank God It's The 70's." Smaller letters below that: "Disco Lives All Night Long."

  Christa handed me Coke-moistened ice in a slender glass. In unison we sipped, turned, leaned back against the bar.

  The DJ booth filled with the dim glow of orange and green lights. As Janet Jackson faded out, the Village People faded in. "YMCA."

  Christa set down her drink. "You have to dance to this, or I'll start to suspect you're really straight."

  I let her drag me to the dance floor. Spotlights faded, replaced by flashing colors. I hopped around for a minute, like a boxer loosening up in the ring. By the first chorus, I was ready for the hand motions. Christa and I did them together, facing each other. She added fillips and filigrees to every movement, and I mimicked her.

  By the end of the song, we were no longer alone on the floor. "Brick House" came next. Christa was just warming up. The chiffon seemed to inspire all manner of pirouette and glissade. Once, she took my hand and somehow managed to dip herself against my arm.

  When the DJ put on "Dancing Queen," no one fit the role as well as Christa. Agnetha herself would have run for the ladies' room, tears streaming down her cheeks. The crowd hung back at the edge of the dance floor, watching Christa.

  For the right song-and none came closer than "Dancing Queen"-I could stand having the floor to ourselves, but not with all of Minneapolis watching. I slipped into the crowd. By now traffic had formed a circuit from one entrance to the other; people clogged the narrow corridor behind the Dance Annex. I inched my way through.

  There were restrooms, and a line at each door. Beyond the men's room lay the Men's Room-the back bar, the "leather" bar. Men crowded the space, but in no semblance of the organized event Spike had promised. No posters announced a party. No volunteers sold raffle tickets at the door. No patrons queued for twenty-five-cent keg beer. Men lined up against every vertical surface, drinking, posing, staring.

  A voice behind me: "Jonas?"

  It was Michael Walton, of all people. For some reason he carried two beers, a Rolling Rock in his right hand, a Heineken in his left. With neither his eight nor his US Rowing jacket, he seemed shorter. He was, in fact, close to my height. At the last rowing club meeting he'd worn his hair in a high-and-tight. He'd looked like a Marine, like a honed-steel warrior on a recruitment poster. Now his dark hair fell in unruly cascades from a central part almost to his shoulders.

  "Jonah," I said. Someone squeezed past me, and to make room I moved a step closer to Michael.

  "Right. I hear we have a mutual friend," he said. He took a long pull from the Heineken.

  "Which friend is that?"

  As someone slithered past me, a hand or arm brushed my lower back. I tumbled through a kind of time warp. All at once the loneliness and hysteria of the last months vanished, and I knew it was Tom, returning from the men's room, slipping his arm around my waist in that intimate, slightly possessive way he had when we were among other gay men. But no, it couldn't be Tom. It was no one I knew. In fact, by the time I turned, half-smiling, there was no one at all.

  I felt as if I'd crashed through a series of alternate dimensions, as a silent film comedian might crash through all the floors of a shabby building. I felt bruised and exhausted. Barely a second had passed.

  Michael Walton was still chugging Heineken. He said, "Spike. He couldn't stop talking about you."

  "Is he here?"

  Michael looked around, and I watched the muscles in his thick neck move under his skin. "Holy fuck. Did you see the guy with the chaps?"

  "When did you see him?"

  He pointed the neck of the Rolling Rock bottle toward the bar. "He's right there."

  "Spike, I mean. When did you see Spike?"

  "Oh. Spike." He laughed. "About two, I guess."

  "I thought there was supposed to be a beer bust here tonight."

  Michael was still watching the guy in chaps. "That's funny, so did Spike. It's next week. Next Sunday."

  "Will he be back for it?"

  He sipped the Rolling Rock. "Hell if I know."

  "He came looking for you at the boathouse this morning. Spike, not the guy in the chaps."

  At last Michael's eyes fixed on mine. "He mentioned that. Said he helped you dry your boat." He smiled. An enigmatic kind of smile. "Spike, not the guy in the chaps."

  "Is he still in town?"

  "He got a call. Had to go back to Duluth. We could only talk for a few minutes. He might be back next week. He owns a bar up there. He's doing a series of fundraisers for us. The Gay Games and all that. Local dudes go to the Games, blah, blah, blah. Support your Minnesotan brothers, blah, blah, blah."

  This was the very first I'd heard about Michael's team rowing in the Gay Games. Maybe Christa knew something about it. I nodded placidly, as if I might not be the most inconsequential rower in the Twin Cities.

  "Of course," he said, sipping his beer, "now he can pull people in with a bunch of bullshit about our courage in the face of adversity." A shirtless, absurdly muscular man-his triceps were so overbuilt that his arms curved out to either side of his torso like parentheses-winked at Michael and gave a tiny nod. Michael's head bobbed and swiveled, watching the bodybuilder strut away.

  "Adversity?"

  The shirtless man dissolved into the crowd, and Michael's attention returned to the guy in the chaps. After a moment, though, his face dropped, and he turned to look at me. Leaning toward me, squinting, he scrutinized my face, as though all the signs of my flawed character were written there for him to see, if only he looked closely enough.

  "You don't know."

  "Don't know what?"

  "About th
e boathouse."

  "What about it?"

  "It burned down."

  "Burned down? No. No, I was there this morning. I met Spike there this morning. I put my new shell in there this morning."

  "It happened this afternoon," he said. "Some old guy across the street saw the smoke and called the fire department. About two o'clock, I guess. By the time I heard, Spike was already on his way back to Duluth, so, I guess, about four o'clock?"

  The very idea seemed preposterous, scandalous. The boathouse had no electricity-no faulty wiring to spark a blaze, no creaky space heater that might have been left on. Spike didn't smoke. I didn't smoke. Few of the rowers smoked, and I doubted that any of them would have tossed a smoldering butt into the corner of the boathouse among the racked shells.

  "Well, who-? What-?"

  Rolling the mouth of his beer bottle across his lower lip, Michael shrugged. "Don't know anything more than that yet. Guess it must be arson."

  "I just put my new shell in there this morning," I told him.

  "You said." He drained the Heineken and tossed it into a trash can behind me.

  "You're bizarrely calm about this. Won't this affect your training for the Games, at the very least?"

  He shook his head. "Everything's insured. The boathouse and everything in it. The river'll be freezing up any day now. And we've got a year and a half to go anyway."

  "I just put my new shell in there this morning. I saved all year. I stopped buying records."

  "Records? Vinyl records?" He put his hand on my shoulder. "You need to rejoin us here in the 'nineties, buddy." He smiled and winked.

  I'd rarely given Michael Walton a moment's thought without the word "jerk" bobbing up from my subconscious like a cork, but it was undeniable that when he smiled, he was as beautiful as the sky. Watching him suck Rolling Rock from its emerald green bottle, watching his meaty neck muscles churn as he swallowed, I felt giddy. His hair glistened blue-black in the neon light. Tom, Spike, Michael Walton-all black-haired, all so beautiful that the sight of them could make my heart knock like a mistuned engine-could it be that I had a weakness for black hair?

  He said, "It'll be fine. Your boat's covered under the insurance. I just renewed it, too. Sent in the check a couple of weeks ago. Just get me a copy of the paperwork at the next meeting. To prove the replacement value."

  He must be rowing club treasurer. Was there anything about the rowing club that I did know?

  "Sure," I said. "I-. I guess I'll see if I can find-."

  Just then the shirtless bodybuilder appeared at the bar, leaning over an empty stool to give his order to the bartender. Michael's whole attention appeared to rest worshipfully somewhere between the bodybuilder's trapezii and latissimi dorsi.

  "Catch you later," I said, backing away.

  * * *

  Christa had attached herself to a pack of lesbians. Four of them stood in a circle around her. She snapped and pranced, shaking her breasts at them, oblivious to their breaking hearts. Someone swept up behind her, a guy so young-looking in his cardinal-red letterman jacket that he must surely have used a fake ID to get into the bar. He put his hands on her waist. Without so much as a flinch, she leaned back against him.

  On and on they danced. They swayed together, smooth as milk. Their feet didn't seem to touch the floor. They were so good together, and so blind to everyone around them, that the lesbians eventually decamped.

  When they came to quench themselves at the bar, Christa made brief introductions. His name was Tory. "Like the conservatives in England, not like Aaron Spelling's daughter," he told me.

  "Aaron Spelling's daughter?"

  He looked puzzled, as though I had spoken Swahili. He said, very slowly, "Tori Spelling. From Nine-Oh-Two-One-Oh?"

  "No one ever sings," Christa said. "Jonah wouldn't be interested."

  Tory smiled at me as one might smile at a small child before mussing his hair. "You're seriously missing out," he said.

  I touched Christa's elbow. At last she looked at me, and even took half a step closer. "Listen," I said, "I just talked to Michael Walton."

  "So was I right? Was he a male prostitute?" She grinned at Tory in a way that bespoke fascinating intrigues which must remain concealed.

  "The boathouse burned down."

  "Oh, sweetie! Your new shell!" She stroked my forearm. "It's insured, though, right?"

  I nodded. "I was thinking I should go down there and see if anything's left."

  "That's crazy. We'll go down tomorrow." She turned to Tory. "Jonah just bought a new rowing shell and the boathouse burned down."

  Tory displayed a puzzled, pitying smile. "Sorry to hear about it, man. You're insured, right?"

  * * *

  Somehow, when they returned to the dance floor, I ended up holding his damned letterman jacket.

  While Michael Jackson sang "You Can Cry on My Shoulder," and Christa laid her head on Tory's shoulder, I seethed with envy for his deltoids. I ruminated on the fact that he appeared much older up close than he had at a distance. He must be at least thirty-five, and didn't that make the damned letterman jacket unutterably sad?

  When they returned to the bar, briefly, for more Corona, I said to Christa, "Well, this was a real nice clambake, but-."

  She looked at me, dabbing the damp hair at her temples with a little square bar napkin. "And I am telling you I'm not going."

  I felt my eyes narrow. She must have been saving that for a while. I said, "Just you wait, 'Enry 'Iggins."

  Tory took Christa's elbow. He said, "While we still have the chance, let's face the music and dance."

  She frowned. "You're both scary as hell."

  After sullen and suffering hours, during which I tried to recall all the lines of "I Could Have Danced All Night" in the right order, the DJ announced last call. There were boos and catcalls-even some hissing-from the few patrons who remained, but my joy was Brobdingnagian. While the other dancers started shuffling toward the doors, Christa and Tory made the most of the last song. They turned and glided, inventing moves that belonged in a soft-core revival of Funny Face. At last Christa turned to face him, and as the chorus repeated and faded, they kissed under the spinning lights. The song was "Heart of Glass."

  * * *

  As I descended the stairs, I could smell the river, an icy, clean smell. Snow swirled among the trees. Where the path turned away from the river, the birch tree stood orphaned on the riverward side. Its bark shone like bronze in the pink glow of distant streetlights.

  I stopped. In the wind and snow I hugged myself. The leather of my jacket creaked. The boathouse would be there, I told myself. Some mistake had been made. Michael Walton had fallen for an adolescent prank. Or perhaps he'd perpetrated the prank, and I had fallen for it.

  But then, just beyond the birch, I smelled stale charcoal.

  Where the boathouse had been-all around it, down to the dock, and into the trees on every side-there was a tract of black earth and, in the center of that, a heap of charred timbers. Nothing resembling the weathered A-framed building I'd loved, with the mismatched shingles that had given it the crazy aspect of a fairy-tale cottage. And of course, nothing resembling the boats that had been inside it.

  A squall kicked up. The snow wrapped around me like a living thing, or a rout of ghosts.

  * * *

  3 - Archaeology

  Naked in the pink glare of streetlights, I stumbled down Nicollet Mall. A man emerged from a darkened doorway. As he strolled away from me, shadows gathered to him. I beseeched him to turn back, to speak to me.

  People lined the pavement. I felt them there, felt them waiting and watching, as if for a parade, but I could not bear to turn my head and look at them. I thought I heard them whispering-some in horror, it seemed, and some in amusement.

  At last, the man turned. Shadows concealed his face. He spoke with the voice of my alarm clock. I woke.

  The churlish boiler had drenched the air; the bedroom was as sweltry as a rain forest
. My sweat dampened the bed where I lay. In my sleep I'd tossed the sheets and blankets to the floor. I shook off the dream and rolled over to silence the alarm. It had been warbling for fourteen minutes. The fat red numbers glimmered in the half-light: twelve after eight.

  I walked stiff-legged to the bathroom. I blotted my face with a hand towel. I sat to pee, slumping against the cool tile.

  I squeezed toothpaste onto my toothbrush. I squinted at the mirror. Dark orange whiskers crowded my upper lip and the tip of my chin; I looked as if I'd begun to rust overnight. Reflexively I gripped the toothpaste tube, and a white ribbon of the paste splattered to the floor.

  As I squatted to wipe up the mess with a towel, I saw that a bit of white paper had fallen to the floor, who knew how long ago, and had somehow partially worked its way under the vanity. I picked it up, turned it over. It was a business card bearing the name of my dentist, George Bell, DDS, in raised type. A smiling cartoon tooth held a toothbrush. The thick blue ink of the toothbrush handle and the tooth's rickety legs shone and rippled like old window glass. In a shaky slanted cursive, Dr. Bell's hygienist, Miss Morton, had written, "Monday, November 2, 1992, 9:00 am."

  "Holy shit," I said.

  * * *

  The snow had vanished. Glistening puddles were all that remained. The dank air carried a whiff of woodsmoke. Ordinarily it was the cozy perfume of winter hibernation, a pleasant reminder of my youth, of the snow days I'd spent listening to Cabaret and South Pacific with liner notes spread across my lap and my bare feet propped on the hearth, but now it reminded me of my lost boat, of the acid smell of the charred boathouse.

  I'd parked the Chevette at the end of the front walk. As I slipped the key into the ignition, I looked up. A neighborhood rogue had written on the windshield in angular strokes of flaky white soap-a belated Halloween prank. The delinquent had formed the letters backward, so that they would be legible from inside the car, but he-it seemed natural to assume the prankster was male-had strung them together from his left to his right, so that they spelled "GAF."

  Laughing, I turned the key. One thing in the engine pecked softly at another. After that, silence. "Shit," I said. I rested my head on the steering wheel. "Shit." Somewhere behind me-a couple of blocks away, I guessed, somewhere on University Avenue-a siren keened and faded. I turned the key once more. Nothing.