The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  "Then if I ask you for a favor, you'll know that I'm asking as a brother in Christ, a born-again Christian, and a reformed-a reforming-homosexual."

  Hauling himself upright, he said, "Young man, I am not accustomed to having people come up to me in public for the purpose of being so-so pertinent. I'm pleased to hear you saw the light of day, but I'm afraid that that simply isn't resonant to-."

  Where have you gone, Mrs. Malaprop? I thought.

  "Mister Thorstensen, I'm asking you as a brother in Christ. Leave the OWT alone."

  He guffawed, so suddenly, so loudly, that I flinched. All around us, heads turned.

  "That's entirely out of my hands, my boy. Entirely out of my hands."

  "As far as I know, you haven't introduced a bill yet. All I'm asking is-. I'm just asking you, please-. If you haven't introduced a bill yet, don't."

  For a moment he seemed suspended in deep thought, his head lolling, his lips smacking. He said, "It's a trifle more complicated than that."

  Gingerly I edged an empty chair toward his. "May I, sir?"

  A foolish question-he'd already invited me to sit. But he took no notice. He nodded, gestured toward the chair. I sat on the edge of the seat. I set my salad on the table. I caught a smoky whiff of the ham. I edged the bowl away, into the farthest corner of the table.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to be rude." I gave a short, self-conscious, self-deprecating laugh. "Maybe I thought I could win your respect if I affected a certain-a certain bravado. Please forgive me."

  He nodded. I caught him eying my salad. He sucked his teeth.

  "There are many things in my life that are changing now, as you can imagine. My friends, my habits-." I swallowed hard. "My filthy habits, my whole way of thinking and being. I've had to give all of those things up to God in the hopes that he'd change them."

  With a kindly smile he leaned forward. "And he is, isn't he?" Falling backward again, he barked, "He is, isn't he?"

  "Yes, sir, he is." I couldn't manage to return his smile, not quite. "He most certainly is."

  "I have always said that my God is a just and powerful God," he said. He jabbed the table with his index finger. "I have always said it."

  Edging my chair forward, I said, "But then you can see how burdensome it would be for me to find other work, especially when OWT has a worthy purpose. It may not be the highest purpose in the world, but it's not unwholesome. And I-. You remember what we said in that forum, about protecting against anti-religious harassment. I can do some good as part of OWT."

  He nodded. "I see what you mean. I do. But there are so many other factors-. This is not just about you. There are budgets to consider, and office space, and-well, and any number of things."

  I slid backward into my seat. "I understand that," I said. "I've been here long enough to know that no decision is made in a vacuum."

  "For example," Thorstensen said, clearing his throat, "I've heard-. I've heard that there is to be a provision in your policy concerning specific protection for homosexuals." He tipped his chair back, balancing it on its hind legs. His vest opened its half dozen mouths. "I've heard that in one of your forms, someone was complaining because a coworker objected to a book. A pornographic book left out on someone's desk."

  I had no idea what he meant. A pornographic book? Which book? To Thorstensen, Leaves of Grass would be pornographic. Ulysses would be pornographic. For all I knew, the classic comic book of Moby-Dick might, to Thorstensen, seem pornographic.

  "I've heard," he said, "that the objection to the book would be classed as harassment, but not the book itself. I think it should be quite the obverse, don't you?"

  I felt my face grow hot. I swallowed. "Nothing's set in stone." Had my voice sounded as foreign to him as it had to me? "The policy is still in its beginning stages. Adjustments could be made. There are things we've been considering that could be-. That could be altered or eliminated."

  He nodded. He smiled. He licked his lips. "That's what I thought." He cleared his throat. "There is much business before us this session," he said. "I think it's probably a little late now for proposing a lot of new and trivial legislation."

  I smiled. I tried to make it a broad and happy smile, but I felt queasy. "Thank you, sir. I'm glad to hear you say that."

  * * *

  Martin sat at Christa's desk. He wore her phone headset. As I ducked toward my cubicle, he shot me a vituperative look. "I'll look into that, senator," he said. "Of course, you have every reason-. No, not at all-. My assistant will-. Yes, good-."

  I had barely enough time to sit at my desk before he appeared at my side. "I know I was gone for a long time," I said, "but trust me when I say it's worth it."

  He folded his arms across his chest. "'Worth it'?"

  "I ran into Thorstensen in the cave. I convinced him to leave us alone."

  His eyes grew large. "'Us'? 'Us' meaning the OWT?"

  Smiling, I nodded.

  "You're joking. How?"

  My smile disappeared. "If I tell you, you'll lose all respect for me."

  Chuckling, he reached out as if to pat the top of my head. "That already happened, when you shaved your head." Beaming, winking, he drew his hand back. "I won't inquire, then." He rubbed his hands. "But we have a lot of work to do, don't we? We haven't accomplished a thing in weeks." He backed out of my cubicle. "Come see me when you've settled in. We have a policy to create."

  He disappeared into his office.

  I had already settled in. I had no more settling in to do.

  So. Legal pad and pen. I summoned up my blood. I stood at the door of Martin's office. I set my teeth, held my breath, and stretched myself to my full height. Into the breach.

  * * *

  Decades later-or so it seemed-when I returned to my desk along the trail of stones I'd left for myself, a light on my phone blinked, showing that I had voice mail.

  Tigger. "Sorry to call you at work." He spoke in a hoarse whisper. "I had-well, I had a bad night last night. Tonight's bound to be worse, I know it. I really need to talk to someone. Call me." He counted out his phone number, twice, slowly. I copied the number at the top of the top page of my legal pad. I dialed.

  At first, the line was busy. When I tried again, after about fifteen minutes, he answered on the fourth ring. "I can't seem to keep myself away from that place," he said. "I went last night."

  "Why didn't you call?"

  "I didn't want to bother you."

  "You're supposed to call. We help each other."

  "Days are getting longer now. I feel like getting some air after work, and-. I know I'll go back tonight. Last night I was only there a few minutes. Tonight I might not be so lucky."

  Martin, on his way out, gave me a small wave. I returned it, waited for him to go. To Tigger I said, "Luck has nothing to do with it. You make these things happen, and you can make them not happen."

  He made a small sound, a whimper, a sigh. "You're right. I'm sorry."

  "Let's do something tonight."

  It was Thursday. Thursday, and yet-and yet!-I didn't have to go to group. I felt it again-the joy, the relief. Thursday, and no group.

  "Let's get your mind off it," I said. "Let's see a movie or something." A movie where nothing happens, perhaps. With a pang, I thought of Tory. "Or we could just hang out and watch television. Anything that might help. Where are you?" Hadn't I written down his phone number? Yes. Here. Two-nine-two was the exchange. "St. Paul?"

  * * *

  Tigger gave me directions to an apartment building next door to the Fitzgerald Theater, across the street from the science museum. I knew the street well-in summer, when I often went to the library at lunch, I walked by it at least once a week-but I'd never noticed this tall, tiny-windowed structure. Two colors of brick formed a basket-weave pattern up the front of it-red on the vertical lines, yellowish-tan on the horizontal.

  Opposite Tigger's building, along the street, a half dozen metered parking spots stood empty. Tigger's street ended at a cross
street, at the front door of a church, Central Presbyterian. Against its red stone fa?ade, a green banner read, "SAM STINSON IS COMING! ARE YOU READY? MAY 3." I waited for a red light, made a U-turn, pulled into the parking space nearest the corner.

  A narrow strip of grass, winter-browned, lay behind an iron fence. In a few weeks it would be filled with sunlight and laughing children. Now it was a desolate place. As I passed, an icy breeze whipped through it, stirring the damp carcasses of dead leaves and slicing through the fabric of my khakis.

  Tigger waited in his building's vestibule, looking through me, it seemed, not at me. Crossing the empty street, I waved. Double-taking, staring at the top of my head, he held the door open to me. In the lobby, along walls the color of linen and among vinyl furniture the color of mud, men in bathrobes shuffled their slippered feet. The warm air smelled of hospital disinfectant.

  Tigger led me to the elevator. "I'm glad you could come," he said. He wore a blue and red flannel shirt, cut-off fatigues, and the familiar, much-scuffed Doc Marten boots. His nose was bare-no septum piercing. I took it as a good sign.

  "This is all about being there for each other," I told him. "Say," I said. "You mentioned something about Charlie and Eliot-."

  Tigger looked at me. "It was-. You just don't know-."

  Just then, the elevator doors rattled open. A bony man in a pale blue bathrobe leaned against the carpeted wall. I stood aside for him. When he didn't move, Tigger stepped into the elevator and pulled me after him. Mumbling, the man in the blue bathrobe stroked his long yellow-white beard.

  Just as Tigger and I stepped out onto the fifth floor, the old man cried out. "Bean sprouts," he said. His eyes-wide as pennies, the same washed-out blue as his robe-held mine. "Don't ask, don't tell," he said. "Government waste."

  Tigger tugged my sleeve. The elevator door slid shut behind me. "That's Mr. Graves," Tigger told me. "He's not supposed to watch the nightly news, but he always finds a way."

  He led me through narrow hallways, along walls covered in blistered paint, past baseboard heaters pouring their swelter into the air. At apartment five-fourteen we stopped, and Tigger fumbled a thick featureless key into the doorknob. Standing aside, he waved me through a tiny hallway and into a living room. Sepia walls seemed to lean in on an unmade futon, a square table of unfinished wood, and a waist-high bookcase of incongruously rich cherry.

  I stepped to the table. Some drawings lay in the yellow light of an ancient desk lamp. In the drawings, squarish, random objects scattered themselves across narrow, hand-drawn grids.

  Beyond the table lay a galley kitchen. The narrowness of the space accounted for the counters' lack of depth, but not for their lack of height. Tigger saw me looking.

  "This apartment is really intended for someone in a wheelchair," he said. Leaning forward, he pointed to the base of the kitchen cabinets. Underneath the countertops there was leg room for someone wheelchair-bound. "See?"

  "What is this place? Some kind of nursing home?"

  Blushing, stuffing his hands into his pockets, he walked across the futon. "Assisted living," he said. At the window he turned. "I have these seizures. Sometimes I need to have someone around, in case." Jumping as though someone had poked him, he returned to the futon. "I'm being a bad host. Let me make a place to sit." With a few deft motions he slid the futon's frame into the rough outline of a couch. The pine frame scraped across the linoleum. "Have a seat," he said.

  But by then I had found more drawings. Line and shade represented in hyperrealistic detail a male form. In one drawing the subject stood erect, holding his erect penis while tweaking his left nipple. His angular lips were parted, his eyes shut tight. He reminded me of someone.

  Tory. He looked like Tory. The square jaw, the high cheekbones, the straight, slender nose. Having felt Tory's chest against my cheek, I could say with some certainty that his bare chest would be similar to this man's-broad, somewhat flat, with a deep cleft down the middle. I wondered if Tory were as well-hung as this fellow, if his cock would be as well-proportioned, as long, as thick, as perfect.

  In another drawing, the man lay on his stomach, his legs spread, his scrotum sprawling in vein-shaded fullness. In a third, his thick fingers explored-something, a pair of sketchy curves-a second man's ass? In a fourth, he stood over the slender, prone body of a man whose hands had been bound with rope.

  Joining me at the table, standing on the other side of it, Tigger blushed. He tapped the standing figure, the man who reminded me of Tory. "Bobby," Tigger said.

  He slid a drawing from the stack. It showed two men fucking. The bottom, the man on all fours, was clearly Tigger.

  I raised my eyebrows. "These are from life? Not fantasy?"

  "Some of both. He didn't pose or anything, but that's him."

  Somewhere beyond the walls of the apartment, pipes squealed and clunked. Water gurgled and surged. I imagined that I could hear it striking a surface of tile or porcelain. The walls must be very thin.

  I said, "Is that the neighbors' shower?"

  "What?" Tigger cocked an ear. "No, that's Bobby, taking a shower. He works nights."

  "Bobby," I said. Laying my finger on the last drawing, I said, "Bobby?"

  Folding his arms across his chest, Tigger nodded. He frowned as if in concentration, as if trying to surmise where my question might lead.

  I said, "You're still living with Bobby? I thought you broke up."

  Tigger dropped his arms. "Sure, sure, we did break up."

  "But he's living here?"

  "Where else could he go?"

  "Do you mean to say this whole time you've been in group, trying to transform yourself, you've been living with your lover?"

  He turned toward the futon. "I sleep here." He pointed toward a green door behind him. "He sleeps in there."

  "You don't see a problem with that arrangement? You live with this man, you draw him tying you up, and you wonder why you can't keep yourself from the beach?"

  His frown, now, was one of displeasure. Taking a drawing from the table, a drawing in which Bobby carefully and methodically aimed his erection at a bent-over bottom, Tigger traced with his finger the shape of the buttocks. "This isn't me. See? This guy is much narrower in the hip than I'll ever hope to be."

  With the same screech and bang that had announced its starting, the water stopped.

  "Maybe I'd better go," I said.

  "I don't understand."

  Softly the green door opened, and the subject of the drawings appeared. He wore a damp towel slung low across his hips-nothing else. In life, Bobby was softer than he'd appeared in charcoal, softer and hairier. Before he saw me, he said to Tigger, "Got some grub for me, boy?"

  With his eyes he expressed that superiority, that cockiness, that I'd seen before in Spike's eyes. His voice, too, reminded me of Spike's. It was if in this one man I had found a combination of Spike and Tory. My heart splashed in my chest.

  Bobby saw me at last, acknowledged me with the barest hint of a smile.

  "No, sir," Tigger said. "I've been entertaining my friend, Jonah."

  Sir?

  Bobby's eyes grew wide. "This is Jonah. Jonah with the shaved head."

  Tigger said, in a small, urgent voice, "He's from group."

  "From group," Bobby said, and his smile grew positively salacious, the grin of a satyr. It took only a flick of his finger to drop the towel. The white terry cloth fell to his feet, revealing narrow hips and a growing erection. Stepping toward me, taller than I had realized, he placed his hand on the side of my head, so that it covered the curve above my left ear. "I like a challenge." He chuckled. "I will say, though, that none of Tigger's little Christian friends have been much of a challenge."

  His grip was strong. It forced my head downward. I saw a trail of ebony curls dwindle toward his navel, then flare into a spade of glistening obsidian at the root of his cock. And I saw that the thick brick in Tigger's drawings was, in life, more of a narrow arrow.

  "Like the looks o
f that?" Bobby said. He placed a hand on either side of my neck and pushed downward. "You'll like the taste even better."

  Bobby's resemblance to Spike-and to Tory-vanished. This close, I saw how wrinkles crowded his eyes and framed his mouth, how his arms carried the bulk of fat rather than muscle, how the absence of both lateral incisors from his lower jaw debauched his smile. Ducking out of his grip, I laughed.

  To Tigger, I said, "I'm going now. You ought to come with me."

  Bobby's face crumpled in anger. Still naked, his erection pitifully shrinking, he stalked toward me. "What are you laughing at?"

  "Tigger?" Tigger stood nearly motionless, his fingers clutching at air, his jaw working. "You're crazy to breathe the same air as this." I waved in Bobby's direction.

  Still, Tigger stood rooted to the floor.

  Bobby lunged, swiping at me. I dodged him easily, and in the same motion I had the doorknob in my hand.

  Following me into the hallway, still naked, Bobby said, "You don't know what you're missing, boy."

  Turning, calling over my shoulder, I said, "I've seen what I'm missing. It's not much."

  * * *

  As the elevator sank-empty, now, of Mr. Graves-my spirits surged. My chest lifted, my back straightened. I had withstood temptation. Face to face with Spike's personality married to Tory's features, I had blinked, it was true. I had, at first, been tempted.

  But upon opening my eyes, I'd seen Bobby for what he was. And I'd resisted him, easily, with little effort.

  But what about Tigger? I'd left him, abandoned him. If I could withstand Bobby for a minute, could I not also have withstood him for five, or for ten, or for a hundred, while I lured Tigger away? What if Bobby now turned violent? Or worse, seductive?

  I stood at the foot of the building. I counted the windows-five rows up from the sidewalk-but I had no idea which might be Tigger's. Indeed, I had no idea, even, if his window faced the street. In every window the blinds were the same. Every ceiling, every wall, was the same yellowed shade of taupe. For some minutes I stood watching, waiting for some telling shadow. None appeared.

  * * *

  Victory was short-lived. As I drove home, I began to feel nibbles of regret. What if? I thought. What if Bobby's attitude had been more than bravado, more than posturing? Close inspection had revealed him to be-what?-not a beast, after all, but rather an ordinary middle-aged man. A man not much older than Tory, and a man who bore a strong resemblance to Tory. And, yes, Tigger's drawings had exaggerated certain of Bobby's physical attributes, but even so-. Even so, frankly, his cock was bigger than mine.