Silver Lake (6 page)

“I’m serious,” Tom said, fixing his glare on Carlo. “Somebody messes with me, I will get a gun and I will fucking kill him.”

“Great,” Robbie interrupted. “We get it.”

“I doubt it,” Tom said. “I bet if someone smashed his way into your lovely glass house here and threatened to shoot you and your monogamous boyfriend for no reason other than you’re fags, I bet you’d wish you had a gun in your night table drawer.”

Had they offended Tom in some way?

Robbie said, “I’d like to believe I can reason with anyone.”

“Reason,” Tom snapped. “‘Your kid or your eyes’—and you’d try
reason?
That’s rich.”

“If any two people talk long enough,” Robbie insisted, “they will find something they have in common.”

“Oh my goodness,” Tom said, “you actually believe that, don’t you? I don’t know what world you think you live in, baby.”

“I forgot we have brownies for dessert,” Carlo said. To Tom: “There’s a new gourmet place across from our office we like—”

“Talk,” Tom said. “Talk, talk, talk,” he said, pushing himself up and bumping into the bookcase on his way to the kitchen, where he opened another bottle of wine.

“We won’t be able to let him drive,” Robbie whispered to Carlo.

“You’re talking about me,” Tom said.

By the fire again, he cradled his wine goblet. He was lying back in such a way that his sweater and T-shirt rode up and revealed a patch of his pale abdomen. The dark clouds had passed again—he seemed calmer. He rested his free hand on his stomach, his thumb inserted into the exposed waistband of his boxers.

Before long, the fire was mostly embers, and Robbie claimed he saw figures moving in these embers, ecstatic dancers, dogs in full stride, cross-country skiers. Carlo pictured static things, numismatic profiles of famous men, the shapes of states, planets in revolution around minor suns. Robbie asked Tom what he saw.

Tom said, “Fire is fire.” He said, “I guess it doesn’t much matter if someone breaks into your house and you have no gun, because you can be going in to cash your social security check in Oklahoma City or riding a bus in Tel Aviv, doing what you have to do to get through your lousy day, taking the subway in Madrid, and that’s it. You’re done, you’re cooked, game over.”

“I hate to admit it,” Carlo said, “but I agree.”

Robbie was compact again, knees pulled into his chest.

Carlo said, “We can eat brown rice and swim an hour a day, but we’ve either got the mutation for lung cancer or we don’t. We can choose to walk instead of drive to work and be crossing the street and get slammed by someone running a red because he’s late for a hot date. So why live any safe way in particular? Why worry about anything?”

“Because the city finally put in that traffic light,” Robbie countered, “and because the odds are very good anyway that you won’t get hit by a car when you cross the street.” Tom sipped his wine, and was he grinning? “Robbie and I have this argument every so often,” Carlo said. “Fires happen, earthquakes happen. Plagues out of nowhere suddenly in the population happen, devastating plagues—”

“We’re not having this conversation now, thanks,” Robbie said.

“Apparently you are,” Tom said.

“Robbie will tell you that progress is possible. We change the world by
believing
in that progress. Never mind whether we do anything about it—”

“Cut it out,” Robbie said.

“There is a genocide in Europe. We say never forget,” Carlo said.

“Then we forget,” Tom said.

“Oops, genocide in Africa,” Carlo said. “Ethnic cleansing in Europe again.”

Robbie said, “You know, if your father heard you—” “If my father heard me
what
?” Carlo snapped.

“And you guys have never even had a threeway,” Tom said.

The two men stared at their guest.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Carlo asked.

“Never hired a hooker at a resort, never gone out together to a sex club? I’ve had so much sex,” Tom said, “and it’s a miracle, but I’m clean. Not everything comes down to fate, that was my next thought. There’s proof someone is watching out for us. Someone is certainly watching over me.”

“No one is watching over you,” Carlo said. “You’ve been careful is all.”

“Oh believe me,” Tom said, his stare hard on Carlo, “I haven’t.”

Carlo realized he was clasping his hands tightly.

“Then you’ve been lucky,” he said. “We’ve all been lucky about something at some point.”

Tom stood up and wobbled and fell back into the couch.

“I think someone is watching,” he insisted.

“I don’t think so,” Carlo said.

“Carlo,” Robbie intervened, “you can’t deny someone his faith. That’s cruel.”

Tom bit his lower lip. “Maybe you’re afraid of being alone,” he said to the two men. “Twenty years.”

“You know, you’re kind of drunk,” Carlo said.

“So are you,” Tom said.

“A little,” Carlo admitted.

Nothing was said for a few minutes. Then Tom, staring at the ceiling with his head resting on the back of the couch, unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his fly—

“Whoa,” Carlo said and leaped up from the floor.

“Sex would make it a perfect night,” Tom said, and started to shove down his jeans and boxers but couldn’t lift up his butt sufficiently to make this happen.

Carlo managed to grab Tom’s wrists and hold them in place. For a moment, Tom didn’t budge. Carlo stared at him. Tom stared back, his smile ebbed. Carlo released his grip. Slowly Tom rebuttoned his jeans but didn’t buckle his belt. He tried and failed to push himself up.

“I need to go home,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Carlo said.

“I’m embarrassed,” Tom said.

“You don’t need to be,” Carlo said.

“You’ve been so kind to me and I’m embarrassed,” Tom said.

“It’s all fine,” Robbie said. “But we can’t let you drive. You’ll sleep here.”

“I can drive fine,” Tom said. “I …”

“Tom?” Carlo asked.

“You said you believe, right?” Tom asked Robbie.

And Robbie answered, “I think something connects us, yes, something has to.”

Tom stared at him like he wanted more.

“There are things science will never explain,” Robbie added, “that I don’t necessarily want explained.”

“It’s a miracle,” Tom said, and he looked at Carlo: “Someone watches.”

“Sure, someone watches,” Carlo said.

The two men on either side of their guest sat him up, then got him up on his feet. He was heavier than Carlo would have guessed.

“I can drive,” Tom protested.

“I’m sure you can,” Robbie said, “but you’re not going to.”

The three of them shuffled toward the guest room but stopped when Tom tried to step away and speak.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ve been so kind and I made you fight.”

“No worries,” Carlo said. “Robbie and I don’t really fight.”

“We have disagreements,” Robbie said. “Not to worry.”

They made it to the guest room, where Tom fell back on the bed. He pulled off his sneakers from the heels.

“‘Your kid or your eyes,’” he said weakly. “It’s just so awful, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Robbie said.

“What kind of world,” Tom said.

“I know,” Carlo said. “It’s sad.”

“Maybe you’re right, maybe,” Tom said to Robbie.

“About?” Robbie asked.

“Any two people. They talk long enough. If I could believe that.”

He slipped off his sweater and shirt. His pants fell off, and he was only in his boxers and socks as the two men pulled back the blanket.

“I’m not sure why you’ve been so kind to me,” Tom said, rolling onto his side.

And then his head was on the pillow and he was out. The two men stared at Tom while his breathing took on added weight. The room seemed quieter than it normally did. Their guest was asleep. They left the dishes for the morning. They retreated to their own bedroom and shut the door.

“Signor, signor,” Robbie said.

Carlo stifled a laugh.

“He’s a bit of a pistol, isn’t he?”

“Speaking of gun control,” Carlo said.

They stood next to their bureau, facing each other, taking off watches, emptying pockets of keys and coins. They unbuttoned each other’s shirts. They unzipped each other’s pants. They had a guest and took care not to make noise, which brought economy to their movement, which brought on a rush of furtive heat. And then they held each other first above and then beneath the blankets and they, too, began to fall asleep in the quiet house.

Carlo never had dreams, which was to say he never recalled his dreams, and neither did Robbie, although that might be because he dreamed all day long and so his sleep went storyless, Robbie who was an untroubled sleeper, the first always to drift off. Tonight was no different than any other in their two decades together. One long sigh, and Robbie was out, and he made sleep look so deeply gratifying. He was like a cat this way, Carlo thought, and a cat’s sleep was a thing worth guarding.

• • •

I
T WAS LATER THAT SUNDAY MORNING
then when Robbie awoke with the uneasy sense something was wrong, that some volume of air was displaced, something fixed had been moved. He was cold and shivering, even in bed, whereas Carlo, a pillow pulled over his head, exuded warmth like a bread oven. Robbie inched closer to feed on this heat and noted the vial of sleeping pills on the night table. Their policy was that if Carlo took a pill during the night, he was not supposed to return the bottle to the
drawer but leave it out so that in the case of a medical emergency, Robbie (who mistrusted all narcotics) would be able to inform the paramedics what was in Carlo’s system. So apparently Carlo had been unable to sleep—he would be out a while now.

The alarm clock was also on Carlo’s side of the bed, and while it was only seven, there was a guest in the house. Knowing Tom, he would expect a proper breakfast and want bacon and eggs and toast and black coffee. There was no need to interrupt Carlo’s slumber, not that Robbie could at this point, so he eased his way out of bed and found his boxer-briefs on the floor. He stepped into loose jeans. The T-shirt he reached first and put on was Carlo’s. He remained barefoot and tried to keep his step as light as possible until he was outside the bedroom.

The guest room door was ajar, and so Robbie assumed Tom was up, but he wasn’t sure and avoided the hallway floorboards of known creak. He stopped short of the guest room and leaned forward, peering through the open door. Tom wasn’t in bed, he wasn’t in the room. The bed looked only moderately slept in, and Tom’s clothes were gone. Had he woken up still intoxicated and driven home after all? They should have taken away his keys. Next to the bed on an octagonal table, there were three books Tom must have pulled from the shelves. The one on top was the classical architecture tome he’d picked out.

The guest was not in the guest room, nor was he in the main room, although at first Robbie thought he saw him lying on a couch because the couch cushions were still in a state of disarray. The hearth threw off heat even as the embers were ashes and the ashes were white. The corky aroma of the dinner Tom cooked hung in the air.

Out front, his car remained parked in their driveway, blocking their wagon. He had not driven drunk, good—maybe he’d called a taxi.

Robbie rounded the corner into the kitchen and noticed immediately that the dishes had been washed and dried and stacked on the counters. The pots and pans had been scrubbed and also left out to be put away by someone who knew in what cabinets everything belonged. Tom had cleaned up, which was generous of him, and it could be he wanted to apologize for his brasher behavior. Truth be told, by the end of the night Robbie wasn’t sure he was eager for Tom’s continued friendship, but this minor act of etiquette returned Robbie toward a fonder feeling. He turned around and looked beyond the dining table toward the sliding doors that led out to the patio and saw one was wide open. No wonder the house was as cold as it was—

Robbie caught a chair with his hip as he vaulted across the room. He was out on the patio in seconds, his heel turning against the damp slate.

Tom was hanging from a noose tied to the lowest branch of their neighbor’s tree.

His body made a quarter turn toward the lake. A thin rope wound tightly under his chin pulled his neck inhumanly long, his chin resting against his collarbone, his legs long, his arms loose, his eyes wide, mouth agape, jaw aslant. Spit drooling from one corner of his mouth had turned to ice. A patio chair lay on its side beneath him, his baseball cap on the ground. High up the limb of the Liquidambar to which the rope had been knotted, the branch had snapped halfway but not broken free. Tom’s body turned back toward the house.

His feet were bare and hanging a yard off the ground, plumb like the rest of him.

Robbie became deaf to his own voice but knew he was screaming because Carlo appeared, nearly naked, bounding toward the patio, slipping—but before Carlo could reach the patio, Robbie had already righted the chair and was standing on it and grabbing hold of Tom’s waist, tugging him down—and why, when it was obvious his neck was broken?

He pulled at Tom by his legs and Tom’s loose jeans indecorously slid halfway down his ass, and the motion caused the branch to break all the way, to snap free from the tree, and Robbie fell over, lost his grip on Tom—Tom came down and landed on the slate. His body was not warm.

Carlo helped Robbie to his feet, and Robbie could not remember a time he’d seen Carlo so white.

First their guest Tom Field had done the dishes, and then he hanged himself. And in the distance was the lake, always the lake, annealed, unrevealing, the water an unforgiving blue in the ante meridiem light.

T
HEIR HOUSE BECAME A CRIME SCENE.
The two men received a gentle reprimand from the police for disturbing it by pulling Tom down, although it was considered understandable they thought they might revive him. They were asked to wait in the main room. Carlo, dressed now, sat with both his arms and legs crossed. He’d barely spoken since they found Tom, or rather, since Robbie found Tom. An ambulance was parked out front, strobe off. A gurney had been rolled through the house and out to the patio, a body bag unzipped, yet Tom’s corpse had not yet been removed. It was possible the sleeping pill Carlo had taken allowed him to be calmer, Robbie thought, because through it all, Carlo remained seated while Robbie could not stay still. He needed at least to neaten the couch cushions or return a stray wine glass to the kitchen, where an officer asked politely if Robbie would confine himself to the other room a short while longer
and then they would ask more questions, although what more could they ask?