by Matt Dean
She'd left her white robes at the church. Now she wore jeans and a man's white V-necked undershirt.
"You look so familiar," she said. "Where do I know you from?"
"Doctor Bell's office."
"Of course," she said. She slapped her forehead. "That's where I know everyone from." She gulped her drink. "What was your name again?"
"Jonah," I said. "Jonah Murray."
Frowning, she shook her head.
"Something about a boat," I said.
Her eyes widened. "That was you?"
"None other."
"I can't believe I didn't recognize you. That was my most fun day of work ever at Doctor Bell's."
"Fun?"
She held her hands out in front of her. "Sorry, sorry. That sounded simply awful, I'm sure."
"Not so-."
"It's just that, what you don't know about Doctor Bell is that he's boring." She rolled her eyes, tipped her glass, took a big swallow. "Not Doctor Bell, necessarily, but his patients. Old, old, old."
Jonquil cut her eyes at Christa's mother. She seemed to be gauging whether she now needed to add a disclaimer-"no offense intended," perhaps, or "no reflection on you." But Alice didn't seem to have heard. She sipped her club soda, her eyes following the wedge of lime perched on the rim of the glass.
Alice looked at Jonquil. Their eyes met. Alice flinched, startled, as if Jonquil had just materialized in a cloud of pink, kohl-tinged smoke.
"What did you think of the ceremony, Mrs. Kristiansen?" Jonquil said.
With great care, Alice placed her half-empty tumbler in the very center of her cocktail napkin. She laid her hands on the table, on either side of the napkin. "Oh, you know," she said with an air of apology. She sighed. "I'm a more traditional sort. I didn't understand all that stuff you read about astronomers and balconies."
I looked at Christa. With an affectionate and-I thought-somewhat lascivious expression, she stared at her new husband, who leaned over the bar, speaking with the bartender. Tory's suit coat had ridden up-the vent had fallen open-and his trousers hugged his narrow hips. Christa watched him and watched him and watched him.
"So how have you been?" Jonquil asked me.
I shrugged. "How did you get from Doctor Bell's to this?"
"I was just working there to get through seminary," she said.
"Seminary?" I said. The word had such a Catholic flavor to it. It conjured images of priests, of celibate men in black tunics and high collars, of Gregorian chant and stony chapels.
Jonquil sucked on an ice cube. She looked at me over the rim of her glass. "Seminary."
"You don't strike me as the seminary type."
She grinned. "Because I'm a woman?"
I wondered if she'd gone to seminary more or less because women didn't generally go to seminary. "No. Of course not."
She raised an eyebrow. Perhaps, as Tory kept pointing out, I was an inept liar.
"And this church? What is it? Word of the Spirit? Spirit of the Word? Did you start this church?"
"Yes. Yes, I did." She grinned. "But you never answered my question," she said. "How are you? Better since all that stuff about-about the boat?"
"Never better."
I wondered what she would say if I told her about Eliot, about the group, about Hope and Healing, about my box of bad influences. Of all the things she might not understand, I was sure that forgiveness was the one thing she would understand.
She leaned closer. "Can I tell you a secret?"
I was sure she would tell me in any case. I said, "Of course."
"My real name is Janice."
"I'm sorry? Janice?"
"You can be anything you want to be. I decided to be Jonquil, not boring old Janice. Then I decided to be the Reverend Jonquil, not just a receptionist in a dentist's office."
"What if I wanted to be the Zodiac killer? Or-. Or what if I wanted to be Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and make meat pies out of self-righteous beadles?"
"Ha. That's very funny. Fleet Street." She said it a few more times, clipping the syllables, biting them off between her teeth. "You know what I mean. As long as you don't harm anyone, including yourself, you can be anything you want to be."
"I-. Why are you-? I don't know what-."
Just then, Tory returned to the table with a platter the size of a manhole cover. In the center of it, a six-inch-high mound of chicken wings glistened, red-orange. Christa swept away the salt and pepper shakers and a napkin holder, and Tory set the platter in the middle of the table. The wings smelled of vinegar and hot peppers.
I hadn't eaten all day. I'd been famished, I realized, and now I was ready to devour the better part of an entire chicken.
* * *
We ordered more drinks, more chicken wings. Christa made many trips to the jukebox to play ABBA and Prince and Gloria Gaynor. Jonquil and Tory played a round of pool. Christa guzzled club sodas, but giggled and slurred her words as if she were growing very, very drunk. Alice sat in her chair, looking prim and disobliged. As the hours wore on, Alice seem to fold into herself, to shrink and wrinkle like an apricot drying in the sun.
And then she vanished. All at once, I realized that Alice had gone. Perhaps to the ladies' room? But no, after thirty minutes, it was clear-she'd gone home.
Jonquil left, too, slipped out while I was in the men's room.
Tory slid into the chair next to mine. He wore the same broad grin he'd been wearing all day. "I never got a chance to say how good you look," he said. He stroked my bare scalp. His fingers were warm, his grip strong. "I like it. You should keep it."
"I-. I will," I said.
"And thank you for standing up with me," he said.
I leaned toward him, hoping to catch that smell, the apple-pinesap scent he'd worn in the hospital. Now, though, he smelled of nutmeg and tobacco-not of smoke, but of rich, earthy, pipe tobacco.
"I know it's not exactly traditional-the groom and the best man dancing-but how about a dance?"
"A dance? Here? Do you feel like getting knifed out back on your wedding day?"
Christa leaned over, grinned, poked my ribs. "You dope. This is a gay bar."
At the bar, two men sat side by side. One laid his head on the other's shoulder. The bartender had removed his shirt, and his muscles bulged and rippled around the straps of a leather harness. I could see, through a narrow gap, that in the back room two of the men playing pool stood arm in arm. There were no women in the bar, other than Christa.
Tory laughed. "You never noticed?"
How could I have noticed? The first time we'd come here, I'd been too busy getting drunk, pining for Spike, and popping in and out of the phone booth. This time, I'd spent the entire afternoon and evening watching Tory, staring at him in his spruce black suit.
"I guess I-." I rubbed the top of my head. "This is your bar? The-the bar you come to most often? A gay bar?"
"I came here a lot with Adam," Tory said. "So?" He stood, held out his hand. "Dance?"
Christa dropped a couple of quarters into the jukebox. She selected a Streisand song, of course. "If I Loved You." Wasn't that from The Broadway Album?
I cut her a look. She stuck her tongue out at me.
There was no dance floor. Right there in the front window, alongside our table, Tory took me into his arms. I tried to keep some distance, but he pulled me tight against him. We swayed, each trying to lead.
"I liked all the Whitman you used in the wedding," I told him.
He grinned. "He was Adam's favorite, for obvious reasons. That last bit-'fatigued by their journey' and all that-it actually refers to two men. It was something Whitman wrote in his journal. God giving his blessing to the love that dare not speak its name. I trimmed it, so it fit us better."
Instead of a prayer to thank me, I thought, kiss again. I looked at Tory's mouth, his beautiful full mouth, and wished that I could kiss him.
Tory leaned down, whispered into my ear. "Thank you," he said.
"For what?"
&n
bsp; "For everything. Mediating. Getting us back together. Being such a good friend to both of us. Being my best man."
I started to say, "It was nothing that-." But there was nothing to say, really. Nothing more useful than, "You're welcome."
Again as on that morning in Saint Joseph's, I laid my head on his chest. He cradled my head in his warm, damp palm. I snugged myself against him, held tight to him.
The music played on. "If I Loved You" had always been a favorite of mine. Streisand sang it beautifully-I didn't want to let myself think so, but it was true. She sang it beautifully.
Tory and I danced.
I let him lead.
* * *
25 - A Man of God
The evening air was balmy-relatively balmy, that is to say, in the forties, surely. The sky was clear, deep, starry.
A few blocks down Lake Street, I plugged the Walkman's earphones into my ears. The C-sharp minor quartet, of course. I fast-forwarded past the first movement, into the second.
I didn't feel like going home to my empty house. As I drove, I avoided the freeways. I turned left, onto a street I didn't recognize, made another turn, another. I let myself get lost in the streets of Minneapolis.
The C-sharp minor quartet played on-the second movement, the third, the fourth.
In time I came to the river road. I told myself I'd found it by accident. I had, hadn't I?-found it by accident?
I slowed, looking into the lawns on my left. I couldn't say, now, which house was the little gray-haired man's. His lawn signs were all gone, the election lost, America's goose well-cooked.
Near the main entrance to the beach, cars-a few cars-lined the street. I rolled past-the steep asphalt ramp on my right, the Shriners Hospital ahead on my left.
At first I shook off the impulse to stop-"I don't do that any more," I told myself-but past the train trestle, past the three-way stop just beyond it, I pulled to the curb. It was too early to go home-I didn't want to go home.
The clarity of the moonlit sky filled me loneliness and longing. How long had it been since anyone had held me the way Tory had held me as we'd danced? Before Christmas, and that had been Tory, too, in the hospital corridor. Sitting, still, behind the wheel of the Chevette, I hugged myself. I hoped to recapture, somehow, the sensation of Tory's body against mine, but I felt only that my arms were empty.
Pocketing my keys, I descended dark ledges of stone, past a thick, rough-barked tree, past a slender, smooth-skinned one. Bare branches swayed against the luminous sky, tickled the moon.
The last step was the steepest, a drop of eighteen inches or so. Standing on the brink, I curled my toes, as if they could, through the stiff soles of my dress shoes, grasp the sharp stones. I let myself rock forward and landed silently on both feet.
In a semicircle of young trees, on a rough-cut stump, a man sat, his twill-clothed legs splayed wide, one hand in his pocket. The night reduced him to his brightest colors, the white of his long beard and narrow fingers, the pale blue of his shirt, the orange firefly of his cigarette. "Evening," he said in a voice cracked by age and smoke. "How are you?"
"Can't complain," I said, and hurried past.
Further along the path, a black shape rustled the limbs of a sumac. The shape might have been one man standing alone or a pair of men huddled together. I didn't stop to see.
At the bottom of a two-foot drop was the park's official entrance. I made the small leap and stood on the asphalt plateau. On the right, the steep climb to the street. On the left, the steeper drop to the picnic area and the central paved trail. I hiked downward, into the river-fed chill of the park.
Crossing a squarish patch of concrete at the foot of the hill, leaping over a border of rough rock, crunching through sand, I went to the water's edge. The river licked the soles of my shoes. Up above, on the street, the air had seemed almost warm, but here the wind whipped through the thin fabric of my trousers as if they were mesh or gauze. I breathed deep, letting the cold burn my nose and throat, taking in the clean watery scent of earliest spring-sap, bark, peat, budding greenery.
Above me half a dozen parallel curves of cloud stretched across the sky, delicate wrinkles in taut velvet. To the west, Orion stood tall, one foot-or was it a hip?-already below the horizon.
From behind me and to the left, where a small path stumbled upward among bamboo stems and oak burls, a figure appeared. The moonlight was clear enough, bright enough. I saw the fireplug, brick-shithouse shape of him, the silver sheen of his shaved head, the bristles of his goatee. He wore baggy knee-length shorts and a black T-shirt. A sudden breeze off the water rippled his clothing.
Seeing me, seeing me watch his approach, he stopped. He paused a moment, looking around him. He came and stood next to me.
"Damn cold down here," he said. As he turned his profile to me, moonlight glinted along a ring in his septum.
Tigger? I squinted at him. Yes, it could be Tigger. "Tigger?"
The bluish whites of his eyes grew large. He leaned forward. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't remember your name."
"Jonah. From group."
"From group. I remembered that much." He cleared his throat. "Are you still in?" He chuckled. "Obviously, you aren't, or you wouldn't-."
I stopped him. "I am. I'm still in group. I thought you were with someone."
He stuffed his hands into his pockets. "We broke up again."
"Are you coming back to group?"
Shaking his head, he looked out across the river. His eyes climbed the height of Orion. "What's the point? I'll only wash out again."
"Isn't it worth it to try?"
Turning, he looked me up and down. "The whole time I was in group, I was coming here. That's the real reason I left. Bobby wanted to get back with me, sure, but I was already a goat among sheep. Why stick around?"
"Why didn't you ever say anything? Couldn't we have helped?" I studied the river-slicked tips of my shoes. I stepped back from the water. "Not me, in particular, but Eliot and the group? Aren't we supposed to help each other out, hold each other accountable? If you'd just been-."
Backing off a step, he swung his arms out. "If I'd just been, if I'd just been. I'm queer. That's all I've ever been. That's all I'll ever be." He poked my shoulder. "You too. You're queer too. That's why you're here and not home genuflecting or sacrificing or reading your fucking Bible. The sooner you get over yourself and be who you are, the better off you'll be."
He strode off, toward the heart of the beach, toward the sumac-covered dunes. To the back of him, I said, "Are you better off, Tigger? Are you happy?" He couldn't have heard me over the sounds of the wind, the tree branches knocking together, the river washing the shore.
My feet ached with cold. In my jacket pockets, in my gloves, my fingers were nearly numb. And yet I could bring myself neither to leave the park nor to penetrate further into it. I lay instead on top of a picnic table above the beach. Its surface was oddly warm.
The ripples in the sky, the six wavelets of cloud, had slumped together. Above me they formed a set of rounded and uneven tiers, a stairway to heaven, impossible to reach and climb. Or an ancient eye shut tight, folded in on itself, blind.
Wind rattled the trees behind me. With a start, thinking that someone new had emerged from the path, I looked around me. No one. Again I lay back.
Poor Tigger, I thought. So lost. But then, here we were, searching in the same place for-admit it, Jonah-the same thing. In his case, though, a passing resemblance to Tory wouldn't be a requirement.
"Wasn't this supposed to get easier?" I said aloud. "Wasn't the loneliness supposed to go away? Wasn't that the whole idea?" I listened. My only answer was the slurp of river water on the sand.
Group. The group was an integral part of Stinson's plan. We all had the same struggles, we all had the same desires. By participating in the group, each of us bound himself to the others. If one of us went astray, the others brought him back. If one of us struggled with temptation, the others helped him resist. If one
of us made progress, the others praised him.
Once, long ago, Tigger had come to group, had confessed that he'd spent an entire day cruising here. Eliot and the others had comforted him, had encouraged him. To confess another day spent cruising, though-? And another-?
It was one thing to confess a fantasy, an impure thought-even thought as deeply, deeply impure as Fred's-but an act-a repeated act-the act of coming here, of seeking a physical connection-that was another matter.
Could I, would I, sit in group on Thursday night and admit that I'd come here?
"Lord, forgive me," I whispered. I closed my eyes. "I'm weak. You know how weak. I want to do right. I want to be a part of your plan."
Out of the night air, a spot of warmth. A hand. Bare fingers caressed my thigh, feeding my senseless flesh with their heat. Another hand snaked its way inside my jacket, walking its way up my chest. It palpated the muscle. A finger flicked each nipple. My dress shirt and undershirt muffled the sensation, so that I felt his touch as something apart from me, at a remove.
I felt the bulk of a head between my legs and hot breath through the taut worsted of my trousers. Slowly the fingers tugged at my zipper.
"No!" I shouted. In an instant I stood on top of the picnic table. The man knelt in the sand at the table's end, looking up at me, an apotheosis of supplication and fear. "No!" I said again. My voice returned to me on a watery echo. "You will not have me, darkness," I said. I said it more or less to the gray-bearded man who crouched below me. And that was so absurd-he wore a Helly Hansen jacket and a heavy twill trousers, not a cloak of darkness-that I began to laugh. Laughing, I said, "You will not make me your whore." Turning, I addressed the beach at large. "You will not capture me, and use me, and make me your whore. I am a man. A man of God."
By then the gray-bearded man had disappeared, leaving only a rustling of branches as evidence that he had been there at all. Others-surely only one or two, in this cold, on this night-hid in those bushes, other men wrestling shadows, other ears craving truth. Thickets and dunes might conceal them from me, but I had only to raise my voice to reach them. "My weakness brought me to this evil place. I am in this evil place, but I am not of this evil place."
I paused. The whisper of leaves underfoot, the clicking of branches against themselves, gratified me. And then a voice, from afar, said, "Bug the fuck out, Jesus freak."
My voice boomed out over the river: "By the power of God, by the blood of Jesus, I will be rescued from the demons that lured me here." These words, it seemed, came not from me, but from heaven itself. I lifted my head and my hands to receive them. My eyes fixed on Orion's belt.
