The Men from the Boys (34 page)

Yet on what basis do I offer reassurance? I have no guarantee that this will all come back, that we will all be reunited under the same roof. I think of Junebug, who trusted me, too, once—but I push the thought away.

Melissa and I hug each other good-bye. “Thanks for taking him,” I say. “And for talking.”

“You'll be okay?” she asks.

No, of course I won't be okay. But I tell her yes, I'll be fine, and I watch her go, trudging along with the heavy cat box, the daffodils stuck ungainly under her arm. With Mr. Tompkins gone, that's the last of it, right out the door. This cold, barren flat is no longer my home; it is little more than shelter for the night, with just a mattress left in the bedroom.

The sun sets, and I watch the shadows lengthen across the hardwood floors. Finally I settle down on the mattress, but it's not easy falling asleep. All of the sounds are gone, all of the electrical hums and ticking of clocks, all of the little whispers Lloyd would make in his sleep. Even the street seems strangely quiet tonight. I long for a siren, anything. But no sounds, none at all.

Provincetown., September 1994

The weekend after Labor Day is Eduardo's last.

It's also his birthday. He shows up bright-eyed and eager. I've promised to take him out to dinner, as much a good-bye to summer as a birthday celebration. There's been something heavy in his voice for the last week, as if each word were an effort, self-conscious and labored. A couple of times he's fallen quiet; once, he turned surly for no apparent reason at all. When I ask him what's bugging him, he just looks at me as if I'm horrible for even asking. Maybe I am.

But today is his birthday, and tonight his mood is happy. That is, until I tell him I have no gift for him.

“What I thought was, we could pick it out together. Whatever you want. We'll go to a store. Here or in Boston. Whatever you want.”

The truth was, I hadn't known what to get him. I didn't want to get him something too romantic. Given how he'd been lately, that would send the wrong message. He'd read it as saying I wanted to be with him forever, or that I'd never trick again, that it would just be he and I—and Lloyd. But neither did I want to give him something trivial. After all, his gifts to me have been very thoughtful—and he
has
mattered to me, a great deal.

Matters,
I mean. Present tense.

Since meeting him, I've tricked only sporadically. One night, there was a boy from New York—Craig, I think his name was. Craig or Greg. I'd actually been more interested in his friend, a hunky Chinese boy with big biceps, but he hadn't returned the attention. I was getting better at dealing with that. There were a couple of blow jobs at the rest stop, of course, and a kind of half-trick with a guy named Jeff I met at Spiritus one night. It was the first time I'd ever tricked with someone with the same name as I. Strange how rarely that happens to people. Maybe that's why the trick kind of fizzled out halfway through, and I told him I was tired and wanted to go home.

Or maybe it was for other reasons I don't yet fully understand.

“Really,” I tell Eduardo now, “we can pick out something nice.” I touch his face. He smiles to smooth over his disappointment.

He's in love with me. Yes, that should be a good thing. “Of course you love him,” Javitz has said, and he's right. But how fast we fall from our pantheon of theory to ground-level reality. No, it's not a good thing. Not for anybody. I haven't had sex with Lloyd in a month, because all my passion's used up with Eduardo. Meanwhile, what Eduardo wants is love, commitment, and marriage, but he's had to settle for love with an already married man. I have never told him fully how I feel: if I did, what would that do to the apple cart?

“I want what you and Lloyd have,” Eduardo said to me the other night. “I want that sense of being together, of being able to plan next month, next year, five years from now.”

“You'll find it,” I reassured him.

He made a sound in disbelief. “Do you know how lucky you are? How few people actually
do
find it?”

“Open your eyes, expand your heart,” I chided. “It's not just Lloyd. I also have you. And Javitz.”

“But I want what you and
Lloyd
have,” he insisted. “Not what you and Javitz have.”

“Or you and I?”

That's the crux. What is it that we have? What makes what Lloyd and I have—or at least
appear
to have—the prize? Ever since the summer began weaning itself away from us, I've felt Eduardo's struggle. I can see the pain in his eyes every time I look at him. Poor kid. What to make of me, of us? What to expect when the summer is over, when we go back to Boston, me resuming my life, him starting anew? What then?

“I can't promise him the world,” I said to Javitz. “But I think that's all he'll settle for.”

“He's young, Jeff. He should only settle for the world.” He smirked. “But then again, maybe the two of you aren't so far apart as it seems. After all, that's what you demand, too.”

But I can do only so much. “Maybe we can pick one day a week when we're back in Boston that will be our day,” I suggested to Eduardo. “I'll come to Somerville or you'll come to the South End.”

He laughed. “Except that will change. ‘Oh, Lloyd's coming home early.' ‘Oh, I can only stay an hour because I have to pick Lloyd up with the car.' ”

“So we pick another date then.”

He threw the pillow at me.

“Really,” I'm telling him now, trying to banish the disappointment from his eyes and furious at myself for not buying a gift, “we'll go down Newbury Street and you can pick out anything you want. A sweater? You want something to wear? Or maybe jewelry.” I smile, as if I've hit on the magic solution. “Jewelry. I could buy you a necklace like the one you got me.”

“That was one of a kind.”

“It certainly was.” I try to kiss him, but he pulls away. “Oh, come on. Why does this have to be so difficult?”

He's about to respond, but Javitz has come into the room. “Can you believe it? One more week and then another summer hits the history books.”

“It went fast, didn't it?” Eduardo says.

They exchange a look. “They always do,” Javitz says.

“Do you remember the lunch we had together?” Eduardo asks him. “Do you remember sitting out on the wharf eating fried clams?”

Javitz smiles. “Oh, yes, how well I remember.”

What did they talk about that day? Me, I'm sure. What did Eduardo say then? What did Javitz tell him? Has it all come to pass?

“You told me that day you'd show me a picture of what you looked like at my age,” Eduardo says. “You never have.”

Javitz's lips purse, twist, as if he's reluctant but tickled as well, delighted that Eduardo still remembers. “All right.” He disappears into his room.

“I've never seen a picture of him at that age either,” I say. “And I've known him a
long
time.”

Just how long is made manifest when Javitz produces his wallet and flips through the photos encased in plastic. Me a decade ago, about which Eduardo makes no comment, despite my full head of hair and unshadowed eyes. Me and Lloyd, our first summer here, with gads of necklaces and our sideburns that grew to points in the middle of our cheeks. Me and Lloyd and Javitz, snapped by a neighbor of his in Cambridge, posing near the steps of the T station in Harvard Square. Then, finally, in the back, a small black-and-white photo, professionally done, probably one of twenty.

“Oh my
God,”
Eduardo says.

I peer over his shoulder to get a good look. It appears nothing like Javitz. The boy in this photograph is young, full of bloom, expecting to live forever. I see it in his eyes: deep and dark, already taking it all in. From such a boy as this has come such wisdom, wisdom around which I've structured my life. And here he is as just a child, an eager, wide-eyed kid, staring into the photographer's lens blithely unaware of the eyes that would stare back at him some thirty years later, eyes of men who love him, revere him, men he loves in return.

And he's beautiful. My God, he is beautiful. As beautiful, maybe, as the man from Greece. The photograph was taken in the mid-sixties, before boys began to grow their hair long. I've seen pictures of Javitz from that later era, his kinky Jewish locks grown out and teased into a curly white boy's Afro. All the better to weave daisies through. But this photo is a snapshot of the end of another time: a time when Javitz was still David, still an awkward, short-haired working-class kid from the Bronx, before he rebelled against his family and moved to the Village and began his long career rewriting rules. When the other boys grew up and cut their hair, Javitz kept his, and it's still thicker than mine. “Thank God I've never gotten KS,” he has said. “Then I'd have to take chemo and lose all my hair.”

“Did you really look like this once?” Eduardo asks, having taken the wallet from him and studying it close to his face.

“Yes, once.” He smiles. “And that's all that's necessary, really.”

“To look like that just once?” I ask him.

“That's all that's necessary,” he repeats, looking at me.

“You were so—
cute
,” Eduardo says, handing back the wallet.

“ ‘Were'?”

“Well, now you're—striking.”

Javitz laughs. “You see, Jeff? You have nothing to fear. You don't age. You become striking.”

Eduardo gets up. “Well, you at least had some raw material with which to work,” he tells Javitz.

“Hey,” I protest, “why are you being mean to me?”

“Sorry,” he says.

I make a face at him. “Javitz, tell him to be nice.”

“Eduardo, be nice.”

“Tell
him,”
Eduardo says.

“Jeff, be nice.”

That's when Javitz gives Eduardo his birthday gift: a small wooden sculpture of an owl. “It's Minerva, the goddess of wisdom,” he says.

Eduardo adores it. “Thank you so much,” he gushes, hugging him. “Thank you for everything this summer.”

“Thank
you,
darling.” Javitz kisses his neck. “Now I'm off to the dunes.”

“You know, at the beginning of the summer, I had all sorts of ideas about the kinds of men who had sex in the dunes.”

Javitz laughs. “They're all true, darling. They're all true.” He winks, then he's gone.

Eduardo sits down holding the owl, turning it over and over in his hands.

“I'm sorry I didn't have anything for you,” I say.

He looks up at me. “We'll pick out something really nice. A sweater. Or how about a piece of jewelry?” My words back at me.

“Hey, listen, I didn't know what to get. If I had gotten you that owl, you would've said, ‘Why? Do I need more wisdom?' It wouldn't have been romantic enough. But if I'd
gotten
you a romantic gift, you would have taken
that
all wrong too.”

“How so?”

“You know. You would've thought—”

“I'm going home.”

“Oh, for God's sake, Eduardo.”

“Good night, Jeff.”

“We had dinner plans. I was going to take you to dinner.”

“Some other time.”

“But you're leaving tomorrow. Will I. see you?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Eduardo. Do you know how hard it is to be your friend?”

He looks at me. Just stands there looking at me. As if I'm the one who's being outrageous. “
What?
” I ask, unnerved.

He finally stops looking at me and goes. Slams the door, in fact. Slams it so hard that I think the glass might break, shattering all over the floor into a thousand glittering pieces.

But it doesn't. It holds firm. It shudders a bit, but in the end it doesn't break. And for that, at least, I'm grateful.

Boston, April 1994

Why I'm still hanging around, I'm not sure. I've left the keys for the landlord on the counter. I've hauled the mattress out to the sidewalk. I've done one final sweeping. Now get the hell out of here, Jeff, I tell myself. Why are you dragging this out?

Carefully piled beside the door are my essentials: a suitcase of clothes, a toiletry case, a box of books, my computer and my printer. My article on gay conservatives is due in two weeks. I need to get up to Provincetown, settle in, and begin.

I look down at my little pile. “That's it, right there. That's what it all boils down to.”

And yet even that seems far too much, way too heavy to lug through life. I'm so tired, so completely drained. I don't even feel sad anymore, or frightened. Just tired.

There's a knock. It makes a hard echo through the emptiness of the apartment. Who could be knocking now? Drake, with another batch of flowers? If it's a salesman or some kid selling Girl Scout cookies, I'm just going to step aside and say, “Look. I'm out of here.”

But it's Tommy.

“Hey,” I say. “How are you? I was going to call you next week—”

“To say good-bye?”

“Tommy, I'm just going to Provincetown for a couple of months. Then I'll be back.” I stand aside and he brushes past me into the apartment. “I just didn't get a chance to tell you the other day where I was going.” I laugh, awkwardly. “Can't exactly ask you to sit down. Everything's gone.”

“I can only stay a minute, but I wanted to talk with you.”

“Sure.”

He stands in the middle of what was once our living room, where the couch once sat, where Tommy himself once sat, confessing his feelings for Lloyd. He thought it best that we not see each other for a couple of months. He needed to deal with his envy for me, he explained. “Do you ever realize how
fortunate
you are, Jeff?” Tommy asked me all those years ago.