Now and Yesterday (34 page)

“Poor boys,” said Jonathan. “You must have been up at dawn. Well, to bed, then. Tomorrow we'll take you antiquing.”

“Yay,” said Will.

“Can we go to the new kitchenware place you mentioned?” said Peter.

“Yes, yes,” said Jonathan. “It's right there.”

“Kitchen stuff is like porn to me,” said Peter.

Inside, at the bottom of the stairs, Jonathan bid Peter and Will good night.

“We alarm but there are no motion detectors,” he said, “so feel free to go padding around during the night. Leftovers in the fridge are up for grabs.”

“I couldn't eat another thing,” said Will.

“Neither could I,” said Peter.

“There's water in the little fridge in your room,” continued Jonathan, “inside the closet.”

“I found it,” said Will.

“Aldebar makes a pot of coffee around nine, in the kitchen, yeah? l have mine in my room, but we can all have some breakfast together around ten-thirty. The shops open at noon. How does that sound?”

Peter and Will said good night and went upstairs together. As they entered the room, Peter again felt a pang of excitement mixed with terror.

“Did you have a preference of bed?” said Will. “I didn't mean to preempt a discussion. I just threw my stuff down.”

“No, this is fine,” said Peter.

“Tout le confort moderne,”
said Will, as he plopped down on his bed, undid his sneakers, and placed them carefully near his bag. His feet were, what, size eleven?

“It's even splendider than when I saw it last,” said Peter.

“Could you ever live here?”

“Well . . . it's not exactly my style, but yeah, sure, of course.” Peter poked his head in the large closet on the wall opposite the windows, to take stock. The closet was huge, fitted with a built-in stack of drawers, a cabinet for the refrigerator, and a long rack on which Will had already hung some things—a flannel shirt, a pair of khaki pants, his jacket.

“Well, I love it,” said Will, unbuttoning his shirt. Underneath was a crisp white T-shirt, somewhat tight, which emphasized his perfectly proportioned torso. “To me, it's like magic. It's like what my parents' place on Pine Mountain—this place we go near Santa Barbara—wants to be.”

“Where you used to go camping?” said Peter, sitting down on his bed and removing his sneakers, trying not to stare. He was acutely aware of being in a room for the first time with the man who meant everything to him, for the purposes of taking off clothes and going to bed. He wanted to savor the moment but also to give Will the freedom to remain comfortable, in case he wasn't necessarily thinking about ravishing his older friend suddenly with the kind of passion and tenderness that was certainly on Peter's mind.

“Yeah, though it wasn't really camping,” said Will. “I mean, there was running water and heat and everything. But I loved it. I was so happy there. I like mountains.”

“Me too,” said Peter, putting his sneakers and a few of the rest of his things in the closet, including his shirt, which he slipped off unceremoniously. “You wanna hear something funny? There was a bird singing when we got out of the car in the driveway. I don't know if you noticed.”

“Uh-uh,” said Will.

“It was a bird I remembered from growing up in these parts. I hadn't heard it for decades, but there it was again:
doodle-oo-doo-dweet. Doodle-oo-doo-dweet-doo dwink
.” Peter's gray athletic T-shirt was emblazoned with an orange P for Princeton, where he'd guest lectured once on branding.

“Very impressive,” said Will.

“Thank you—thank you very much. I may be known for other things, but I do speak a little bird. But really, the way that sound echoed in the trees—among the leaves, I guess—I dunno, it just brought me back.”

Will stood.

“I'm just gonna have one last look online—do you mind?” he said, ambling over to the desk and opening his laptop. “Though I suppose everything is pretty much over for today.”

“I'll hit the bathroom,” said Peter.

Inside, the door closed, Peter flossed and brushed his teeth, washed his face, peed, and gave his hands another little wash. He looked at himself in the mirror and quietly whispered
“Coraggio!”
Then he stepped out of his jeans and brought them out of the bathroom to the closet, where he hung them on a hook.

“Poor Jon,” said Will, quietly, absorbed in his laptop. “He's lost so much weight.”

“I know,” said Peter. “It's sad.” He found himself looking through the papers in a file folder he'd laid next to his computer, on a table near the window, though he wasn't really looking for anything. He was nervous.

“He's such a hero,” said Will. “He told me the work was exhausting but that he was worried about letting down Connor Frankel.”

“I gather the treatments are pretty intense.”

“Chemical castration—that's what he told me it was called. Can you imagine? Testosterone is like fuel for this kind of cancer, so they dose him with the other stuff.”

“Ecch.”

“And still it progresses. Jesus.”

“It's no picnic.”

“He said an interesting thing. He said he can't claim that his body betrayed him, because he got through AIDS. But now here he is, old enough to, you know. . . .”

Peter sighed.

“We lived through a war, Will,” he said, “and now we get to face the
really
tough stuff.”

Will shut down his laptop and closed it, and swiveled in his seat.

“Are you saying that you're made of tough stuff, mister?” he said, with a funny-serious face.

“The toughest,” said Peter. “I'm the toughest piece of fluff you're likely to find.”

“O-
kay,
” said Will, with a triumphant chuckle. He rose and turned toward the bathroom. “Are you finished with the . . . ?”

“Please,” said Peter.

While Will was in the bathroom, Peter arranged the rest of his things and adjusted the room's lighting, switching on the lamp between the beds and switching off the other lamps that were wired to the switch near the door. He jumped into bed and grabbed a book from the night table and started leafing through it: Edith Wharton's
The Decoration of Houses
. He listened to the water running and imagined Will brushing his teeth, washing his face. And when Will emerged he, too, was in boxers—blue-and-white stripes—and his T-shirt.

Will walked over to the closet to stow his jeans, then draped his socks over his sneakers. He was barefoot. Peter remained cool but felt guilty for stealing even infinitesimally short looks at Will's muscular legs and beautifully formed feet and strong-looking upper arms and thick neck, while pretending to go on casually with the conversation.

“So . . . bedtime, yes?” said Will.

Peter nodded. “I'm bushed,” he said. “You know, I think all the books in this room are about décor.”

“Oh, nice, cool,” said Will, as he jumped into bed. “Alarm?”

“Hmmh—maybe. Just in case.”

“Nine?”

“Perfect.”

Will programmed his phone.

“I can't wait to go antiquing,” he said.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” asked Peter. And Will began describing some of the things he might be looking for, for his apartment—a table, a lamp—though Peter was too caught up in his own thoughts to concentrate on what Will was saying.
His feet are so fucking gorgeous,
Peter thought.
And his butt is amazing—solid and round and really up there. I can't believe how narrow that waist is.
He continued to flip through the Wharton, but at the same time was mapping all the new bits of physiological information he had gained in the previous few minutes about Will's body onto his old mental picture of it—a picture that had formed over the previous months, when winter clothing had revealed only dribbles of the information about this sacred territory. Now here was a flood!

“Luz said I should be spontaneous, so I'm going to be spontaneous,” Will was saying.

Peter closed the book and put it aside. He rolled onto one side, propping himself up on one arm.

“Wait till you see, Will—there's a whole street of shops,” he said. “And it's like they come in three densities. There's the junk shop, which is packed with crap that you have to paw through, although there can be some real treasures. There's the nicely arranged shop where everything is clean and nicely displayed, and there are no funny smells or back rooms with old clothes. And then, of course, the highfalutin shop, which is extremely select and set up like a salon in somebody's gracious home, and the owner is a gracious lady or gentleman with whom you have to make gracious small talk. . . .”

“Oooh, I can't wait,” said Will, fluttering his legs in boyish excitement, under the covers. Then he slid down in bed and propped himself up on one arm, too.

“Are
you
looking for anything in particular?” he asked.

“I dunno,” said Peter. “I suppose I'm always on the lookout for a head of Alexander, like the guy in Egypt I told you about.”

“OK,” said Will.

“Or maybe a vintage etiquette book.”

“For your collection. Same way I'm always on the lookout for beach art.”

“That's right—you collect seascapes.”

“Sunday painter stuff, mostly—primitives, folk art. I have a few watercolors of the Pacific coast and some little oils I found when I was a teenager.”

“But I didn't see them at your place.”

Will laughed.

“They're in the bedroom,” he said. “And as I recall, you didn't get to spend any time in there.”

“There's always next time.”

“Yes, there is. Anyway, we have a van, so we can drag back the fucking Lincoln Memorial, if we need to.”

“Great.”

Did it aid the romantic escalation he longed for, Peter wondered, to be in bed, in the same room together, without even mentioning how absolutely thrilling this was? Or did the very impulse or ability to endure such a thing without mentioning it—let alone without someone making a rashly passionate move, damn the consequences—doom the possibility of romance? Peter tried to quiet his confusion by taking pleasure in the unmistakable domesticity of the situation. Maybe they
were
like an old married couple. That would actually work for Peter, who had, in the previous half century, enjoyed what he often termed “all the sex there was.” And if, in some odd scenario, Will were the sexy young guy who happened to want some kind of
mariage blanc
with the right older guy, that included a few discreet fiddlings on the side, well, Peter could deal with that perfectly well. Though signaling the latter to someone under a certain age could come across as pathetic, monstrous, insulting, or worse.

“Lights out?” said Will.

“I guess,” said Peter, pushing his pillows into place.

As Will switched off the lamp, Peter slid down in bed and pulled the covers over his shoulders. The room was cool, the quiet, profound. Every rustle of Will's twisty quest to find a good position in bed sounded like heaven.

“I'm a terrific roommate, by the way,” said Will. “I don't snore. And if you do, I won't care.”

“I don't snore,” said Peter. “At least, I don't think so.”

Peter realized that he wouldn't know if he had become a snorer. The last person he'd slept with regularly was Nick, and that was ten years before. What if he snored now? These things happened.

T
he next morning, when Peter awoke, he found that Will was already up. The other bed was empty, semi-made in the same manner that Peter had been taught to leave a bed when a guest in someone's home: the bedclothes straightened and crisply turned down, the pillow plumped.

In the kitchen, Peter was pouring himself a cup of coffee when Will bounded in, winded, in gym shorts and an XL tank top that was patched with sweat. A towel was pulled around his neck.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Peter.

“You know there's a gym here, right?” said Will, grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl. His hair was wet around the edges and he smelled faintly of fabric softener.

“Yeah,” said Peter. “I meant to tell you last night.”

“I was going to go run outside, but I figured what the hell?”

Will leaned against the counter where Peter was standing. His body was even more luscious than Peter had dreamed, and the sight of more of it was a lot to take in: the big traps and bulging triceps, the surprisingly well-defined deltoids, the smoothness of so much glowing, unblemished
convexity
. Peter giggled inwardly, remembering that this was, after all, a mortal being and also a friend. No hair was visible on the sternum or the part of Will's chest that Peter could see through the armholes of the tank top. Then Will bent forward to reach past Peter and tear a paper towel off the roll, and the front of his shirt bagged outward, affording a lavish view of the right pectoral. The nipple was small and tender-looking, positioned well to the edge of the pec, and not perfectly round but a little stretched, as if in delicate tension due to the development of the muscle underneath.

“Sleep well?” said Peter.

“Big time,” said Will. “And you?”

“Very well, thanks.”

“No snoring.”

“Oh, good.”

“Banana?”

“No, thanks. I was actually thinking about making a frittata, maybe having breakfast ready when they come down.”

“Aldebar's up with Jonathan.”

“Let's see what we've got,” said Peter, opening the refrigerator and peering inside.

“He went out for croissants.”

“Plenty of eggs,” said Peter, taking stock.

“And fresh OJ.”

“Yup. OK—mushrooms, onions, zucchini.... Ooh, Gruyère! I guess we can do it.”

“Gimme five minutes for a quick shower,” said Will. “I'm totally helping.” He tossed the banana peel in the trash and bounced out of the kitchen.

Lord—and well-defined calves, too! I'm fucked!

Cooking together was fun. Moving about in sync in the kitchen was as automatic for them as it had been the previous time, at Peter's place. As they went about prepping and tidying, Peter saw that the level of silent communication and thoughtfully choreographic awareness of each other had, if anything, improved. Will handled the
mise en place
for the frittata without prompting. When Peter put the frittata in the oven and turned to slicing potatoes and onions for the home fries he decided to make, Will took the egg bowl, cheese grater, and the rest over to the sink.

He swooned as he started washing.

“Oh, man,” Will groaned. “Is there anything like somebody else's dishwashing liquid?”

Peter grinned.

“Never in a million years would I have bought New Apple Blossom Dawn,” said Will. “But right now, it's saying everything to me about my life!” He sambaed in place, as he stood washing.

And as Peter pushed the potatoes and onions around in the skillet, he felt a kind of contentment—not exactly “making breakfast for my best friend in his beautiful home, with my amazing boyfriend”-type contentment, but close. He added some smoked paprika, which he found in the cupboard. Outside, across the river, green hills hummed in unison in the cheery morning light.

Can I have this?
Peter thought.
Can I morph my life into this, or do I just go on waiting and drifting, and see what happens? How pathetic I am, to go on and on about love, yet remain so passive, so content without it. Somehow, I used to have more energy to pursue love.

The aroma of fried potatoes filled the kitchen.

No, wait—I
never
pursued it. Harold and Nick just . . . happened.
“Looks like we've got an awesome day for it, eh?” gushed Will, toweling his hands and giving Peter an enthusiastic tap on the butt. He hummed a bit of a Stevie Wonder song—“You Are the Sunshine of My Life”—as he began to set the table.

Aldebar and Jonathan were delighted when they came down and found everything ready. The four devoured breakfast and cleaned up as a team. By a quarter of twelve they were walking out the door.

“Two cars?” said Peter.

“We could do one,” said Aldebar. “The Navigator has tons of room, even with the chair.”

“Why don't we take ours, just in case,” said Peter, with a glance toward Will.

“We're hunting big game,” explained Will.

They helped Jonathan into the car, while Aldebar loaded the wheelchair into the back.

“We've got this down to a military maneuver,” said Jonathan.

“Were you ever in the army, Aldebar?” said Peter, jokingly.

“You know I was in the marines, right?” he said.

Peter and Will were both stunned.

“What—seriously?” said Will.

“Wait,” said Peter, “let me get this straight: You're an RN who knows all about opera
and
you were in the marines?”

“It just happened,” said Aldebar, laughing, with a wink.

“That's amazing,” said Peter. “Jonathan?”

“What can I tell you?” said Jonathan. “He's Superman.”

 

Chartered in 1795 by merchants who ran the place, Hudson was the fourth largest city in New York State by 1820—a bustling port on a major American river. By the end of the nineteenth century, though, river commerce was winding down and the town was flooding under waves of gambling and prostitution. Governor Thomas E. Dewey started busting up the rackets in the early '50s, and throughout the '60s and '70s Hudson was on life support, owing to the same kind of helplessness that still afflicted Peter's hometown, where a long-ago boom in canal- and rail-fueled commerce was never bested. At which point a group of local antiques dealers came together—cue the string quartet!—and ignited a revival. Hudson's new antiques trade at first reflected and then helped fuel a demographic shift in the area, which saw traditional families give way to more young couples, couples without children, retirees, single folks, and weekenders, all of which, of course, meant gays. By the '90s, on Warren Street, the main thoroughfare that climbs up from the river in a battery of modestly scaled commercial blocks, storefronts that once offered quotidian stuff like clothes, shoes, drugs, and hardware now stocked items whose value derived chiefly from their having survived history with a little dignity.

Presumably, there was a mall nearby, where people now went for their hardware—which these days was made in China—and shoes—Brazil. But around noon on a beautiful spring Saturday, Hudson's Warren Street would come alive with well-shod folks from as far away as New York, hankering not for Buster Brown oxfords but for
marvelous
things,
charming
things. And as they began strolling from shop to shop, these folks, whether just-looking-thanks or actively searching for something, would almost visibly charge up with brilliant discoveries about
how we once lived,
and
how we choose to live now,
and
how we survive through our histories
. And if, just a block or two off Warren, in the part of Hudson that remains unrevived, in a house that was hacked into apartments after Grandpa George's refrigeration business went bust and Aunt Betty died of lung cancer, there was an empty windowsill on which that lovely pink Deco vase had stood for decades, the one that was now close by in a shop vitrine, poised to be snatched by someone who
really values
design and character—well, that was America in the twenty-first century.

Peter and his friends arrived early enough to find parking spots right on Warren, close to each other. And for two hours they explored, sometimes as a full clump of four, sometimes two by two, and sometimes as a threesome, while someone dawdled or peeked into a shop that no one else was interested in. They took turns wheeling Jonathan. Peter and Will just had to poke through a “junk store” that Jonathan disdained; Peter and Jonathan lingered at a fancy shop to chat with the owner about an oil portrait of a young man; they all diligently inspected the place that specialized in prints, the one with the great furniture, and the one with all the books and photographs. Will looked at tables and lamps here and there, but didn't see anything he liked. For $10, he bought an old black-and-white photograph of a college rowing team. The clerk gave him a recycled green plastic supermarket bag, lined with a paper bag, to carry his purchase in.

At one point, Peter and Will were in a gallery looking at seascapes—watercolors and oils from an amateur Danish artist who had died in the '80s. The owner represented the estate.

“This was a little fishing village on the North Sea he returned to every summer,” she said, as they inspected a small watercolor. “A place called Lønstrup. Lovely light, as you can see.” The piece was primitive bordering on clumsy, but it had the charm of simplicity, depicting a few village houses seen from the hill above them, their red roofs a bold slash between the white and ochre of stone walls and the blue of the sea. The scene was rendered with a genial looseness and lack of pretension.

“That's the way the roofs are there—red,” she said. “He was a dentist who lived in Copenhagen.” All the works were surprising affordable.

“It's sweet, isn't it?” said Will.

“Absolutely,” said Peter. “The price is certainly good. What do
you
think?”

“I dunno. I like it.”

“It's nice.”

“It
is
. . . .”

“We can keep it on the short list and come back if you want.”

“Should I just get it?”

“Up to you.”

“Mmm. Maybe I should think about it and see how I feel later in the day.”

“Good idea.”

Around two-thirty Jonathan suggested lunch, so they went over to a cafe that was owned by a friend of his, who also owned a popular place in New York. The place was busy, but welcoming. The staff knew Jonathan and quickly prepared a table that could accommodate the four of them, plus the chair.

Lunch was relaxed and Jonathan was talkative. As the crowd thinned out, the owner came over with some free desserts and sat with them a while. During coffee, Will asked to be excused. He had received a text that needed to be answered with a call, he said. When he returned fifteen minutes later, Peter noticed that he had his green bag with him, which seemed curious, though Peter didn't give it a second thought. Maybe he went back for the seascape.

After lunch there were more shops, including a high-end kitchenware place where Peter bought a wind-up timer in butter yellow, and then it was time to head home. With endearing tact, Aldebar suggested that “we” might be getting tired.

“Maybe a little around the edges,” said Jonathan.

“I'll just take two minutes to circle back to that watercolor place,” said Will. “It's only a block or two that way, isn't it?”

“Jon, why don't you guys go ahead,” said Peter. “We have to go look at a watercolor.”

“Take your time, please,” said Jonathan. “I'm going to go take my nap. You guys should go on that drive I told you about. It's only an hour and really worth it. We'll see you at dinner.”

“It's good, right?” said Will, when they were back in the gallery, looking at the piece.

“I love it,” said Peter. “It's passed the test of time.” Red roofs, dazzling ocean. The owner looked on approvingly.

“I'll take it,” said Will. And the owner wrapped up the picture and included a brochure about the artist.

Just as they were stepping out of the gallery someone greeted them.

“Peter?”

It took a moment to place the man.

“Arnie—my goodness!”

It was someone Peter had known since college, a composer who taught, Peter thought he remembered, at a community college. It had taken a moment to recognize him because the man had changed so much in the years since Peter last saw him: He'd put on a lot of weight, and his once thick, black, curly hair had gone gray and scraggly. He looked old, yet there was still that diffident, impish smile....

Peter introduced Will to Arnie and asked if he was still teaching. “Oh, yes—composition,” said Arnie, naming the college, which was in the next county. “Which leaves me time to do my own work.”

“And you live nearby, right?” said Peter.

“Over in Catskill.”

“OK. Yeah, we're just up for the day—you know, doing the Hudson thing.”

Arnie rolled his eyes in a friendly way. He was dumpily dressed, Peter noted sadly, in clothes that looked neither vintage nor retro, but worn. The absentminded professor?

“Driving back tomorrow,” said Peter. When he mentioned Jonathan, Arnie said he remembered him and knew he lived in Hudson, but didn't see him socially.

They chatted a little about teaching, a little about advertising. Arnie was part of the crowd that Peter moved in, during those early years in New York, only unlike Peter and Jonathan, Arnie had never found financial success. Then again, thought Peter, maybe Arnie hadn't been seeking that.

“Do you get down to the city much?” asked Peter.

“Once in a while,” said Arnie. “For a concert or something. It's expensive.”

It was an awkward moment. In the mid- and late '70s Arnie was the one who, among all of them, seemed poised for success, and was even a little farther along toward it than the others, with occasional commissions from out-of-town orchestras. The first dinner party Peter had ever attended in a restaurant's private dining room was hosted by Arnie. Yet nothing more had really happened for him, and at some point, during the '80s, he just left town.