by Matt Dean
"For anything."
We traveled wordlessly west on University. He poked along in the right lane. It seemed, even, that he slowed on approach to green lights, as if willing them to turn red. I watched his hands move over the wheel; they stayed always in motion, gripping the wheel, letting go, gripping again. His brown fingers moved in rococo flourishes.
Soon we reached Fairview Avenue. As we sat at the red light, Jaime dropped his right hand to his knee. He lifted the hand again and dropped it in his lap. He cupped, squeezed. I looked up. How long had he been watching me watch him? He smiled. I blushed.
The light changed. Using both hands, he steered into the Midview lot's narrow entrance. I pointed to my car. The lanes between cars were narrow; luckily, I'd parked in a space perpendicular to a lane, so that my car had nothing but open space behind it. After a three-point turn Jaime backed the truck into place.
"You can stay here if you want. Just give me the keys?"
I did. He rattled them, smiled, and hopped out of the truck. Over the quiet chuckle of the idling engine I heard chains rattle, and my car door swing closed, and steel scrape blacktop. I watched the mirror on my side, watched Jaime move and work in the cold. His breath rose in a white mist.
Off to my right, Eliot's front window, now dark, chided me for my earlier flight. What had I been so afraid of? If I stopped for a minute and thought about it, wasn't the idea of God comforting? If I stopped working so hard to drive it-that is to say, him-that is to say, God-away, didn't I feel something like peace?
The truck's winch kicked in with a deep whir. Soon Jaime would be back, and the smiles and the coy gestures would resume. If he wanted me, I knew he would have me. But afterward, wouldn't I yearn for him pointlessly, half-afraid to call him? Wouldn't I listen, terrified, to his answering machine, and then hang up without a word?
Eliot's door swung open, and there was Eliot. Leather jacket, leather satchel slung over his shoulder, a bright red knit cap tugged down over his ears. I heaved my door open and jumped down from the cab.
Eliot seemed surprised to see me. He looked around him, as if this might be some kind of prank, as if nearby bushes concealed Allen Funt and a cadre of videographers. "Jonah. Are you all right?" he said. "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."
"It wasn't you, really. It was the subject matter."
"Not a bit reprehensible," he said, smiling.
I pressed on. "I was a little taken aback," I said. "I guess I kind of thought that therapy-."
He wagged a gloved finger at me. "I'm not a therapist," he said.
"Counseling, then. I didn't think that-." I looked up at the impenetrable sky, the clouds shell pink in the mercury lights.
"In my experience, when people are grieving, unhappy, adrift, they cling to all sorts of physical things-shopping, alcohol, drugs, sex-when really what they're missing is something spiritual."
I took this in. It seemed completely apt. "I think I'm ready-or, at least, I think I was ready to start talking to God again. I remember saying my prayers as a kid, and I remember how safe and peaceful it made me feel. I think it could make me feel that way again."
"But?"
"But when I got home today some vandal had plastered my house with Sam Stinson bumper stickers."
He tilted sideways, readjusting the satchel's strap on his shoulder. "And?"
"And it made me angry and scared all over again."
For a long moment, he looked at me, his face still and calm. "Whatever your father did to you, and under whatever pretext, it had nothing to do with God."
Tears welled at the corners of my eyes. Without forethought, on pure instinct or reflex, I fell into his arms. The shoulder of his jacket was frigid against my wet cheek. Softly he stroked my back.
"It's okay," he whispered, his lips nearly touching my ear. "It'll all be okay."
We stood for a long time. Icy rain began to fall, but his body heat warmed me. At last I drew away, sopped tears away with my mittens.
"What should I do next?" I said. "What's the next step?"
"Talk to God. Just like you remember."
"Can we get together next week? I'd like to talk some more."
"A couple of years back I started a support group for gay men. We meet on Thursdays at my house. Would you like to join us tomorrow night?"
"I'm not sure."
"I'm booked into next week. If you come tomorrow, you won't have to wait. I promise you all of these men are struggling with the same issues you are."
I heard a car door slam and remembered Jaime, the tow truck, my car. I turned to look behind me, and saw Jaime standing in the parking lot, tugging on his gloves.
"All right," I said to Eliot. "I'll call you for directions?"
Eliot set a gloved hand on my shoulder. He grinned. "Do that. And I'll see you tomorrow."
As I crossed the parking lot toward him, Jaime said, "All set?"
Again, he helped me into the passenger's set. Again, his hand lingered in the small of my back.
To maneuver through the tightly packed lot and then through its needle's-eye exit required both hands and cost him a deep frown. But as soon as my car's back bumper cleared the curb, Jaime's face split into its crinkled grin. His hand dropped again to his lap. First with two gloved fingers, and then with the palm of his hand, he rubbed the leg of his coveralls. A longish bulge appeared.
My mouth went dry. I wanted that. Whatever its shape, size, color, or proclivities, I wanted it. But it seemed an unwholesome temptation. If Jonah swallowed Jaime, the whale would swallow Jonah.
I kept watch out my window. Once, when some pine trees along the street darkened my view, I saw Jaime's hand, still stroking his thigh, reflected in the glass. It seemed impolite, somehow, to ignore him after having shown such interest. I glanced over, watched him for a few seconds, smiled, and turned away again. By the time we got back to Ward's, both his bulge and his smile had vanished.
Leaving Jaime to set free my car, I went inside to talk with the service manager. No one could look at the Chevette before morning. At some point during the following day, I would receive a call.
When I left for home, I noticed that Jaime and his monster truck had disappeared.
* * *
9 - A Gift to the World
At ten o'clock Martin had a meeting with the Speaker. I waited until then to call Eliot. While I wrote down and read back his directions to an address in the intricate maze of Prospect Park, Christa bustled about in her cubicle, slamming drawers, bumping her chair into walls, ripping paper, rattling her trash can.
I said goodbye to Eliot, and before I could fit the handset into its cradle, Christa stood beside me. She dropped a fat gray cloth-covered book onto my blotter. A thick sheaf of notebook paper, folded lengthwise, marked a spot near the front of the book. I turned the book over, looked at the worn imprint on the spine. Thomas Mann. Doktor Faustus. Below that, in smaller type, Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus.
"What's this?"
"Doktor Faustus." She spoke the words with extreme care, as if she'd rehearsed their pronunciation.
"I can see that." I set the book down, thumbed a spot on the edge of the front cover where the cloth had frayed and split. "Why are you giving it to me?"
She tugged at a corner of the notebook paper. She pulled the stack of pages free of the book and dangled them in front of me. "Tory asked me to give it to you. There's something about Beethoven. He translated it."
"Translated it? Tory translated this?"
"In case you don't read German. I told him he was being completely ridiculous. Doesn't everyone fucking read German?"
I opened the book, flipped pages. It was in German, all right. "Let me make sure I understand. Tory translated a section of this book. From German."
Christa flung the pages of Tory's translation into the air. Turning abruptly, she fled the office. I closed the book and watched the sheets of notebook paper flutter down around me.
What the hell had just happened?
I followed her. She sprinted down the hall. Her black skirt flitted around her legs like a colony of bats. By the time I reached the elevator lobby, she'd vanished. I went to the stairwell and listened for her footsteps on the stone treads. All was quiet, but then I heard a soft creak behind me, and turned to find the ladies' room door swinging closed.
I waited for her. At last she emerged, pallid and shaky. She clasped her hands over her stomach. "I'm sick," she said. "Food poisoning or the stomach flu, I think."
"Isch. Have you been to the doctor?"
She rolled her eyes. As we turned back toward the office, she lurched sideways. To steady her, I took her elbow. She yanked her arm away.
"Back off, Mom," she said. "If you kiss my forehead to check for a fever, I swear to fucking God I'll knock your block off."
"You're not a very good patient, are you?"
When I returned to my desk, I gathered the papers-dozens of them-Christa had scattered. Tory's penmanship was impeccable-whatever his faults, I had to give him that-but page numbers would have been nice. As I stacked the pages, I scanned for mention of Beethoven.
Actually in his middle period Beethoven was more subjective-or we might say "personal"-than at the last. At that time [middle period] he was heedless of the conventions, formulas, and ornamentation of which music is of course full, instead allowing personal expression to consume [overwhelm?] them, to melt away into the subjective dynamic.
What?
Of what did he speak? Now, the man was capable of devoting a whole hour to the question: "Why did Beethoven write no third movement for the Piano Sonata, Op. 111?"-an item worthy for discussion, no doubt. But one imagines the advertisement fastened to the Community Center, or advertised in the Kaisersaschener Railway Journal [made-up newspaper], and asks oneself if such a thing can arouse any measure of common curiosity.
Of what did who speak? Beethoven? No, surely Beethoven wouldn't advertise and deliver a lecture about his own piano sonata. Worthy for discussion?
After all, Beethoven-so we'd heard-had an acknowledged reputation for being unable to write a fugue, and now we asked ourselves to what extent this bitter defamation in reality applied. Plainly he had tried to refute this claim. Several times he had in his earlier piano music inserted [inlaid] fugues in three voices-in the Hammerklavier as well as in the one in A-flat.
"Christa?" I said. "Is Tory going to expect me to discuss this with him at some point?"
In reply she fed a pencil into her electric sharpener for something like four minutes.
* * *
I parked in front of Eliot's house. A concrete stair climbed an unkempt low slope of red grasses, pine bark mulch, and dead leaves. At the top of the stair, at the back of a narrow rectangle of lawn, a homely two-story cottage sat, white and square, among short, bare-limbed trees. Black earth circled the base of each tree and paralleled a short, crumbling brick walk to a small rectangular porch of ramshackle concrete, about four inches high, unsheltered, off-center from the front door.
The sky was an overturned bowl of dirty cloud. Eliot's windows glowed, the curtains clad in golden light. From inside I heard the happy din of voices. I rapped the iron knocker and waited for answer. I stood back from the door and tried to read the faded lettering on the rush welcome mat. Not "Welcome," certainly-not enough letters. "Moon"? No, too many letters.
When the door opened I first saw a pair of tasseled loafers, polished almost to the sheen of patent leather. I didn't think it possible that Eliot could own a pair of glossy tasseled loafers. Indeed, it was not Eliot, but a thewy, sandy-haired, bearded man in khakis and a rayon shirt of forest green. He smiled. Lines crinkled around his pale gray-green eyes. Blond whiskers on either side of his mouth folded and bristled.
"I'm Charlie," he said. "Charlie Kent." He shook my hand. His grip was sure and warm. He turned my hand so that it was underneath his. I lost myself for a moment in the whorls of brown hair on the back of his hand. He tugged me gently toward him, into the entryway.
"Jonah Murray," I said.
He helped me out of my jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. With a wink and a lavish gesture he swept me into the fire-warmed space beyond. The living room, far larger than I had expected, seemed to extend the full length of the house; there were curtained windows on three sides. The carpet was plush, beige, spotless; I wondered if I should have taken off my shoes. Only five men-far fewer than I'd expected-crowded the sofa and matching chairs near the stone fireplace.
A double-hung door, barely three feet from my elbow, swung abruptly toward me. Eliot emerged, carrying a lacquer serving tray on which he'd arranged silver bowls of potato chips and nuts. As he walked, he stared at the bowls as if daring them to spill their contents.
To avoid a collision, I stepped back. "Eliot," I said, more sharply than I'd intended, so that his name sounded like a warning or reproach rather than a greeting.
Eliot turned and looked at me. "Jonah," he said, a little breathless. "Glad you could make it. Did you have any trouble?" He set the tray on the coffee table.
"Car's still in the shop," I said. "I called a cab."
He smiled absently, as if he hadn't quite bothered to hear my answer. To Charlie he said, "Can you make introductions? I'm still working on the refreshments." By then he was already pushing open the kitchen door.
Drawing closer, Charlie grasped my elbow and aimed me toward the sofa. He whispered in my ear, "Be not afraid." His breath smelled sweetly of mulled cider. "They're noisy but harmless."
Fred was the oldest of the group. His hair was a ring of white bristles around a shiny pink tonsure. Creases showed the path of his easy grin. He handed me slim fingers the color of unbleached cotton. I hoped I was supposed to shake his hand rather than kiss the enormous signet ring on his pinky finger. "Welcome to our happy little group," he said. His voice rattled like a sack full of gravel.
I fought an impulse to reply in French. I said, "Pleased to meet you."
On Fred's right sat Jeremy. His perfect skin had the color and gloss of bittersweet chocolate. High, sharp cheekbones and short dreadlocks reminded me of Erma, Luther's wife, but his narrow chest and toothpick limbs precluded further comparison. He opened his small angular mouth in a small angular smile. "How do you do?" he said.
"How-." I was about to say, "How kind of you to let me come," but I stopped myself. "How do you do?"
Rob and Tigger shared an armchair, Rob on the arm, Tigger crowded into the opposite corner of the seat. Rob stood and gripped my hand strongly in both of his. He wore a brown plaid shirt with pearl snaps. Years of ironing his store-brand jeans had drawn a white crease from the cuff of each leg nearly to the fly. He'd shined his round-toed cowboy boots until they gleamed like polished ebony. Somehow, by applying any number of pomades, mousses, or gels, he'd managed to do the same thing to his hair. He said, "So glad you could join us."
"We're always looking for new meat." That was Tigger. Now that I looked at him, I realized I'd seen him before-just days ago, in fact, coming out of Eliot's office as I'd gone into Dr. Bell's. I glanced down and saw the shiny Doc Marten boots he'd been wearing on Monday morning.
As his broad warm hand engulfed mine, I asked him, "Why are you called Tigger?"
"I picked it up as a kid. I was always bouncing around."
"On his tail," Jeremy said.
Tigger blushed. Even his hand, still holding mine, flushed red. Everyone screamed with laughter.
That is to say, everyone except Mason. Moving with great care, as if approaching a dotty and irascible monarch or a cornered and possibly rabid animal, Charlie escorted me to the chair where Mason sat. He hugged his knees, slouching as if he longed to disappear into the carapace of his pilled and faded beige cardigan.
"Pleased to meet you," I said.
Mason nodded. He muttered something that might have been "likewise," or just a pair of random syllables. I had a suspicion that, if cajoled and prompted and bribed with Star Wars action figures, he could b
e persuaded to quote entire chapters of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy verbatim.
After all of the introductions, there was nothing else to say. Charlie and I stood side by side in front of the fire. The others stared into their empty laps or empty hands. Rob snapped and unsnapped the cuff of his left shirtsleeve. Jeremy leaned into Fred's shoulder and whispered something. Fred nodded and coughed. Silence.
Directly across the room from the fireplace, a tarnished mirror hung above a marble-topped console table. The mirror's gilt frame was a baroque topography of acanthus and anthemion. The table's base was an elaborate concoction of iron scrollwork and bronze filigree. I couldn't quite make these pieces square with the simple furnishings of Eliot's office, with the orderly arrangement of books and souvenirs on his plain white shelves.
Within this single large room, in fact, the furnishings seemed to represent an unpropitious marriage of two styles. A pair of simple ladder-backed oak chairs flanked the console table. The sofa and armchairs-overstuffed and upholstered in blue and gold stripes-looked utilitarian above all, comfortable and possibly durable, but hardly the pinnacle of the decorative arts. Yet the round tables on either end of the sofa were florid meditations on the rocaille style.
When I looked again into the mirror, I saw that Charlie had been watching me. I turned to him. His face rucked up into a grin, the jubilant, ungovernable smile of a lottery winner. I wanted to reach up and touch the deep furry dimple on his left cheek.
The others-all but Mason-chatted and chortled, but I had lost the thread. They might have been enacting a pantomime. It was as if I could hear only my own slow pulse. It was as if my breathing and Charlie's had fallen into the same rhythm, as if our bodies-though not even touching-had become intertwined, interdependent. I hated to speak if by speaking I would spoil such a perfect moment.
Charlie glanced toward the kitchen door, then at his watch, then again toward the kitchen door. "I wonder what could be taking him so long," he said. "I'll just check."
With that, the perfect moment was over-indeed, it had never been. Surely this was the casual stewardship of a partner, not a client. I'll just check. Keeping things on track, managing the schedule. I'd been dreaming. All this time Charlie had just been the polite host.
