Now and Yesterday (6 page)

Cum flew onto the floor, and there was a moment when the two bodies relaxed. Will's halfhearted attempt to get the other guy to let him jerk him off fizzled. Silently, the guy put away his cock and wiped his hand with a paper towel, then gave Will a quick pat on the shoulder and walked out.

And Will felt fine about all this. He'd scored the cutest guy in the bar and could now go home, as he had been dying to do—though on his way out of the bar, a few minutes later, he saw several other guys he would have talked to, if only it hadn't been so late and he weren't so tired.

When he arrived home, around two, Will found his roommate, Luz, still up.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi, hon,” said Luz. She was sitting at the kitchen table, tapping away on her laptop.

“Writing?”

“Big day tomorrow.”

Luz was in law school. She was a few years younger than Will. They'd been friends since Berkeley and were living together now as an economy measure. The place they found for themselves was a five-room, second-floor apartment in a large, formerly single-family home on a tree-lined street in Astoria, still owned by the original family. The landlady, a middle-aged Greek widow, liked her new tenants, and visited them frequently with gifts of dolmades and baklava.

Will poured himself a glass of club soda.

“How was your gig?” asked Luz.

“Easy,” said Will.

“And long. You just getting out?”

“I went for a drink afterward.”

“A big gay drink?” It was a phrase they used when Will invited Luz, who was straight but between boyfriends, to join him for a cocktail in Chelsea or Hell's Kitchen.

“Exactly.”

“I thought the party
was
gay.”

“It was—
way
.”

“But?”

“No but. Just older guys. I needed to see some younger faces before coming home.”

“Working tomorrow?” asked Luz. Will was currently temping, through an agency.

“Nope—day after,” he said. “Tomorrow, I'm sleeping in.”

“Bitch.”

 

The next morning, Peter was busy in his office, working on a tagline, when Tyler appeared at the door. He was dressed sharply in a brown Prada jacket, skinny blue jeans, and good shoes. He and Peter were pitching a client, later in the day.

“How'd it go?”

“The party? Fine.” Peter waved Tyler in.

“Yeah? Did I miss anything?”

“Cracked crab, baby.”

“Oooh!”

“But it was dull. Not
dull,
but—well, you know what I mean.”

“How'd you look?”

“Like everybody else.”

“What a triumph.”

“Anyway, are we set for the meeting? The projections?”

“The tech guy's setting up right now in the Den.”

“And the video—the new edit?”

“Done, in my office.”

Actually, “office” was not the way their work spaces were referred to, in the agency's official jargon. They were “executive pods.” It was the parent company's idea. Peter had sold his agency, the year before, to one of the big global advertising conglomerates. He and his team now were housed in a complex of work spaces in the company's newly renovated headquarters, on five floors of a boxy office building on Madison Avenue. For years, the headquarters took the form of the usual warren of offices and cubicles; then it was transformed, by gutting all five floors down to the structural steel, into a “three-dimensional hive of supercharged creativity,” as
Ad Week
described it. Now, when the elevator opened onto the twenty-first floor and a visitor stepped off to approach the expansive, white plastic, sculptural installation that served as a reception desk, she looked up into a vast, multistory atrium that unified several levels and was crisscrossed by an erector set of stairways and ramps, punctuated with landings and balconies, and studded with a variety of seating pods and large-scale, cutting-edge artworks. On the periphery were more private meeting and work spaces, with names like “Temple,” “Nest,” and “Arena.” There were even a few plain-old offices, for the company's big bosses.

Peter's part of the complex was designed to be “like home” and had the formulated realness of a sitcom set. Comprising a kitchen, “living room,” and gym, in addition to work pods and the Den, the place wrapped around a loggia halfway up into the corporate maze, chiefly on what had been the twenty-third floor. The aerie looked out into the atrium, affording views of people going between levels, clients waiting, way down
there,
whiz kids taking a moment to clear their heads, way over
there
. Throughout the hive, people spoke quietly. Every so often laughter could be heard echoing through the atrium, and when there was no human sound at all there was the barely audible
whusshh
of massive amounts of air being circulated by a dramatically exposed system of ductwork.

As Peter was chatting with Tyler the phone rang. It was Laura, the company's vice president for business development. She had one of the few conventional offices, on the twenty-fifth floor.

“I have to take this,” said Peter.

“Hey, are we on for tonight?” said Tyler.

Peter nodded yes and mimed texting, and the boy took off.

“Laura, darling.” Peter swiveled around in his chair, to gaze out the interior window in back of his desk, into the atrium.

“Wanna hear something funny?” Her voice sounded perpetually, if superficially, cheerful, and she never started phone calls with a greeting, as if a conversation were already in progress—a habit that put the other person in the somewhat defensive position of having to know instantly who was calling and what it was about.

“Always,” said Peter.

“I just got off the phone with McCaw's people.”

“Henderson McCaw?”

“He's leaving Fox and starting his own media company. They're looking for someone to rebrand the whole thing—TV, Internet, radio, documentaries, live events.”

“Amusing idea. So?”

“You'd be perfect for it.”

“I doubt that very much. And how are you today?”

“And they wanna start deep with the DNA, Peter.”

“Whose DNA?”

“Their message, their thinking—and the national mood. And the global mood. They're not just thinking national; they're thinking global.”

“Like the Taliban.”

“I'll have their plan in my hands by the end of the day.”

“C'mon. Don't you think they should have someone who likes the guy?”

“I don't know—don't you like him?”

“I think he's—Laura, he's basically Satan.”

“Now . . .”

“He's completely ignorant, for one thing.”

“No, he's anything but that and you know it. The point is, this could mean millions of dollars in billings. It would be one of our biggest accounts.”

“You can get somebody else, easily. I'm not the only genius in this joint.”

“You're the one he wants to talk to, Peter.”

“Me? Specifically?”

“Apparently, he loves the talking car.”

Laura said she was going to meet with McCaw's people preliminarily and get a clearer idea of the scope of the project. Peter agreed to think about the assignment, but said he wasn't promising anything. Good advertising involved the ability—and willingness—to think exactly like a client, to feel his hopes and fears as symbiotically as possible, while mapping these emotions dispassionately onto a) market realities, and b) the collective unconscious. Going deep in this way—into the individual's quest for wellness through personal hygiene, as Peter did for a facial tissue, for example, or her birthright of easy breathing and clean air, as he did for a sinus medicine—could be an interesting venture and a rewarding one; at times, it even felt noble. But diving into the panic McCaw was stirring up felt dangerous to Peter. The values McCaw espoused on Fox were backward and hateful, yes, and success in the assignment would probably mean the propagation of those values. But the underlying dissatisfactions McCaw exploited—including, perhaps, a certain existential rage at the limits of life itself—seemed deeper than Peter wanted to go, personally, for any assignment.

Yet that limit alone, now that it had arisen, was also slightly intriguing.

Peter went on with his morning—writing copy, returning calls, making some notes for the afternoon's client meeting. Then, just before noon, Jonathan called. He was in the neighborhood. Could he take Peter to lunch at Fred's or somewhere?

“What are you doing up here?” asked Peter, cheerfully. “Shopping?”

“My new urologic oncologist is on Park.”

“Oh,” said Peter. Alarm clutched his stomach.

“Yeah,” said Jonathan. “Not good.”

“Shit.”

“Listen, if you're busy, we can talk later.”

“No, no—I'm good. This is a good time,” said Peter. “I'm glad you called. I've been worried about you. I do have a thing here at the office at three, but—you wanna meet now? I'm walking out the door.”

Barneys was empty and Fred's still quiet when Peter arrived. The hostess, a gorgeous dark-haired girl in big heels and a little black dress, took Peter straight to Jonathan, who was installed at one of the tables by the big windows along Madison Avenue.

“Your e-mail was so sweet,” said Jonathan.

“It was a fantastic party,” said Peter. “I just hope
you
had a good time.”

Jonathan barely rose and the two men kissed. Peter silenced his iPhone as he sat down.

“Why do I know I'm also going to receive one of those delicious Pineider cards of yours in the mail?” said Jonathan.

“Because . . . I wasn't raised in a barn?” said Peter.

With a flourish he unfolded the napkin and draped it over his lap.

“Everyone wants to know why you showed up alone,” said Jonathan.

“I'm a lonely old bachelor, that's why,” said Peter. “And I doubt anyone was paying attention to me.”

“You're not that lonely. You do have your young ward, after all.”

“His boyfriend is in town.”

“I thought you were sweet on him.”

“Tyler? Jonathan, I'm not even attracted to him in that way. He's just fun. A valued coworker.”

“You like his
energy
.”

“Exactly. God knows, I haven't had real sex in I don't know how long.”

“No?”

“I talk about boys, I go out with 'em, but I'm not gettin' any love anywhere.”

“Well, maybe we should do something about that.”

“Like what—get me a hustler?”

Jonathan made a squeaky “maybe” sound.

“No,” continued Peter. “I have to face the awful truth that my standards have gotten stratospherically high, in my old age.”

He instantly heard his words about the “awful truth” in context and felt a pang of regret. Normal chitchat was suddenly over.

“Don't worry,” sighed Jonathan, as a pair of stylish women sailed past, following the hostess to a table. “
Oh,
this is so exhausting.”

“Tell me everything,” said Peter.

“OK.” Jonathan took a breath. “From boys to cancer. It might be stage four. It looks like it is.”

Peter winced.

“No.”

“Yeah.”

“Damn.”

“I was at Sloan-Kettering all morning.”

“And?”

“You can see it in the scans. It's gone into the bone—you know, the spine. It's ‘aggressive'—that's the word they're using. And remember I was having this little ache in my back . . . ?”

“Ugh.”

“I thought maybe I pulled something in the gym. My trainer gave me some stretches for it.” Jonathan shook his head. “Funny, huh?”

“What's the next step?”

“Chemo, radiation. They're figuring it out. But we're going to start doing something fast.” Jonathan managed a wan smile. “We're going to be aggressive, too.”

“Good.”

“There's this place in Cleveland—superspecialists—where they want to send me for a consult.”

“OK.”

“It's not gonna be much fun, this next year.”

“No.”

“And they're clearly not too optimistic, either—though there's such a reassuring language around all this.”

They were silent for a moment, then Jonathan continued.

“The word ‘options.' There are always
options
—apparently even for people who will be dead by next summer.”

“They're making advances all the time,” said Peter quietly.

“Are they? In prostate cancer?”

There was anger in Jonathan's voice, and fear.

“I'm totally here for you, no matter what,” said Peter.

“I know you are, darling—thank you,” said Jonathan, attempting to brighten. “Could you possibly go through the treatment for me and pay for it, as well?”

Peter smirked.

“I'm sorry,” said Jonathan. “That came out wrong.”

“It's OK,” said Peter. “I know you have insurance.”

“Oh, yes—a million-dollar cap,” said Jonathan. “The doctor says I probably won't burn through that, in one bout of anything. Very comforting—the thought being that I might not need insurance after that.”

Jonathan shook his head. Just then a waiter arrived, with two enormous menus.

“Can I get you gentlemen started with something? A bottle of water?”

“You sure can,” said Jonathan. “A bottle of Fiuggi, please. And do you have any dry sherry? I would kill for a few sips of Manzanilla.”

The waiter smiled slyly.

“I'll see what I can do,” he said. “For you, sir?”

“Better not, thanks,” said Peter. “Oh, wait—on second thought, make it two sherries.”

“Very civilized,” said Jonathan.