The Men from the Boys (27 page)

“Wonder what could be keeping him,” I say, checking the cabinets to see if we have enough egg noodles for the soufflé.

“Maybe he and Drake rented one of those by-the-hour motel rooms,” Javitz says.

“Fuck you.”

“I've decided against doing that safe-sex workshop, by the way, even if it does mean missing a dinner with Drake.”

I check the date on a can of tuna. “More's the pity,” I say.

“Darling, come on. You don't think Lloyd is going to leave you for
Drake,
do you?”

“Of course not.” I place the tuna on the counter, sit down at the table across from Javitz. “But come on.
Something's
up with him. I mean, you guys haven't seen each other in almost two weeks.”

Javitz tightens his lips. “I tried, but he was always too tired. Even for one of our late-night walks through Copley Square.”

“He's going off the deep end, Javitz. I'm worried about him. These psychics and gurus—”

“He needs to do whatever sustains him.”

I shake my head.
“We
used to sustain him, Javitz. You and I. And he us. The three of us. What's happened all of a sudden?”

Javitz grins. “I got sick and you met Eduardo.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Darling, you're being incredibly oblivious if you can't see how your affair with Eduardo affected Lloyd.”

“He falls in love with his tricks.”

“Not like that.”

I squirm. “But Eduardo is gone. My place is here, with Lloyd. Now we're boxing everything up and we don't know where we're going and
you're
bolting out of here—”

“ ‘Bolting out of here'?” He grins wider. “Why don't we talk about that? I don't think we finished that conversation the other night.”

I'm quiet for several seconds. “I can't imagine what Boston will be like without you,” I say finally.

He reaches across the table and places his hand over mine.

“Take away one,” I say, “and it's no longer three. Three has worked so well for us. The back-and-forth. The give-and-take.”

“The yin and yang,” he says, smirking.

“Whatever. But everything's become so hazy, so ambiguous—”

“I wish I could tell you I could see the future, but I can't.” He stands up, props open a window, lights a cigarette, and aims the smoke outside. “Do you mind?”

“No,” I say, “go ahead.”

“I've known all along that Lloyd had wings on his back. I told you a long time ago that you'd be the one to build the nest, that he'd be the one who wanted to keep flying up to the clouds.”

“I've never clipped his wings,” I insist. “He goes off to these spiritual weekends, gets together with old tricks. We've
both
had enormous freedom in meeting other people.”

“But Lloyd is looking for passion.” He exhales and continues looking out the window. “Tell me about his relationship with Marty.”

“I don't know much. I guess he was pretty surprised when Lloyd left. He was somewhat controlling, from what I gather. Tried too hard.”

“Sound at all familiar?”

I ignore him. “But there are always two sides to every story. Maybe Lloyd just got it into his head one day that it was time to go find another path. I imagine poor Marty was devastated when he woke up to find Lloyd gone.”

“Darling, I told you once that you'd give him nest and he'd give you flight. You've done an admirable job nesting. But what flights have you accepted?”

I scoff. “What am I supposed to do—move to
India
for a year?”

“Maybe.”

I give up. I begin banging around the kitchen, hunting for the soufflé dish.

“Jeff, when I was in the hospital this last time, do you know how many times Lloyd came to see me?”

“No, but I'm sure you do.”

“Just twice. And I was in for nearly three weeks.”

“He was always getting beeped.”

Javitz smiles, deadening his cigarette in the soil of a potted Swedish ivy. “Don't you remember how distraught he was the first time I went in, right before Thanksgiving?”

I did. Lloyd was a wreck. “I can't imagine life without Javitz,” he said then. “I can't even
think
about it.”

Javitz sits back down at the table. “You're not the only one pissed off at me for moving.”

“I'm
not
pissed off at you,” I say, exasperated.

He just laughs. “Oh, I suspect the three of us are going to have some very long talks along the breakwater this spring.” He stands all at once, reaching for his coat.

“Aren't you going to wait for Lloyd? Don't you want to stay for dinner? I'm going to make this tuna soufflé—”

“Thanks, but I think I'll pass.” He gives me a wry smile. “No offense there, Betty Crocker. It's just that I have a sense Lloyd is going to come back filled with white light—and there just might be some sparks.” He kisses me on the forehead. “Have him call me. Tell him I miss him.”

He walks through the living room toward the door. Mr. Tompkins bounds off the couch and grips him by the ankle, biting down. “See?” I call out, laughing.
“He
doesn't want you to leave.”

“If there were lunatic asylums for cats, this one would be admitted for life.”

Then he's gone. I prepare the soufflé, set it in the oven. I'm getting pissed and worried at the same time that Lloyd is so late, but then the sound of his key in the lock reassures me, as always. “I'm home, Cat,” he calls.

The usual dry, light kiss on the back of my neck. “Did it go well?” I ask.

“Oh, honey, let me
tell
you—” He pauses. “Is that dinner you're making?”

“Don't worry. It's not veggie pie.”

“Honey, I love your veggie pies. Please let that go.”

“It's a tuna soufflé. I found a recipe for it in the food section of the
Globe.”

“Sounds great,” he says.

“You just missed Javitz.”

“Oh, that's too bad. But Cat, let me
tell
you ...”

He informs me that the retreat was a silent meditation followed by a meeting with the guru of the ashram, an old, old man with long white hair and a long, long Indian name. Lloyd has his picture hanging in our bedroom over our bed, the way I once hung a crucifix as a boy. The guru apparently found much to gush over in Lloyd. Big fag, I'm sure—although Lloyd would insist that the guru is so realized that he's transcended any definition of sexual orientation.

“He told me that he could see my aura, that it was brighter than anything else in the room,” Lloyd is continuing. “He put his hands on my shoulders and, honey, I could feel his energy in all my chakra points, especially here.” He points to his third eye. He's taught me that the space between our eyebrows is a secret eye. If I didn't pluck the hair from that spot regularly, I'd have one big long eyebrow. I'm not sure what that would do to my third eye.

“We were allowed one question to the guru. I asked him how to find my path.” Lloyd looks over at me. “He told me I would only find my path by myself.”

“What does that mean?”

“That no one could show me, I guess. That I had to find out on my own.”

“Find out after dinner, okay?” I place the soufflé on the table. “It's ready.”

“You're being trivial about this,” Lloyd protests.

“I'm sorry. I don't mean to be. But all this talk about your path. About taking leaps. My God, Lloyd, our whole lives are changing. We don't know where we're going to live. Javitz is moving away from us. Can we deal with this first and then worry about leaping and third eyes and how brightly our auras are shining?”

The soufflé smells horrible. It seems to cower on the plate below us, collapsed into itself like a deflated inner tube.

“Jeff, I can't separate what's going on with us from what's going on inside me.”

“Fine. Can we eat?”

We're silent as I cut a piece of the soufflé and shovel it onto Lloyd's plate. It breaks apart. A hunk of tuna falls to the floor.

“I should just give up trying anything new,” I complain.

“It's fine,” he says, but he's testy.

It tastes terrible. I'm wondering to myself if I left out an ingredient when Lloyd asks the same thing.

“No,” I snarl defensively, but suddenly I don't remember adding any milk. I
must
have. “Don't eat it if you don't like it,” I tell him. “Here. Have some peas.” He eats these from the bowl with his spoon. He picks at the soufflé. I force myself to finish my entire piece.

“So, are you angry with Javitz?” I ask, breaking the silence.

“Why would I be angry at Javitz?”

“For leaving us.”

“Cat, he's not leaving us.”

“What do you call his waltzing off to Provincetown?”

“He's hardly waltzing off.” He frowns. “Have you shared these feelings with
him?”

“That's not the point. I don't want to burden him right now. But you act as if it doesn't even affect you that he's leaving, and I know it does!”

He puts his spoon down. A couple of peas roll off the table. “Of course it affects me. I think about it all the time. Don't you get it, Jeff? Can't you
ever
see through your own shit and see what's going on for someone else?”

He stands up, pushing his chair back, scraping the linoleum. He's angry. Lloyd doesn't often get angry like this. But when he does...

“You know, you have been walking around here for weeks moping about leaving this apartment like it's the worst fate anyone's ever faced! And you know why? Because your routine has been tampered with. Your little schedule—getting up, writing, doing your interviews, going grocery shopping, shooting the shit with Melissa or Chanel in the middle of the day—”

I stand up, too—ready,
itching,
for the fight. “—
and
cooking and cleaning and washing your clothes and making sure dinner's on the table for you when you get home, even if it is just slop like this....” Oh, God, even
I
can tell I'm playing a very bad Harriet Craig—or a psycho June Cleaver, I think with some horror—but somehow I just can't stop the tears.

But they calm Lloyd, as they usually do. “The point is, Cat, that's
your
routine. It's not mine.” He leads me to the couch and we sit close together, his arm around my shoulder. “Look. Three years ago, you changed your life. I was so proud of you. You left the newspaper. You took a major leap, and it's worked for you. You define your life now as you see fit. You structure your days as you decide. Well, I want that, too. I want to find a way to get out of my job, do something else....”

“Then why don't you?”

“It's not that easy. It's not just about changing my job, getting out of the stress of the crisis program. It's about looking at my whole life, and making some decisions based on how I live my life as a whole.”

My tears dry on my face. I feel my testicles tighten into a cold little ball.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“You asked me if Javitz's leaving has affected me. Of course it has. But not in the way it's affected you. I think about him taking that leap, that chance, and I say, Why not me? Javitz has chosen to make his way, to find his path, according to his own needs. His own karma. That's all we can do, any of us. Ultimately.”

I look at him. “You want to break up.”

“No, no, you don't get it. I don't know what my path is. Maybe we're meant to be together for the rest of our lives, passion or not. But the only way I can discover that is on my own.”

“There's passion between us,” I say through tight lips.

Lloyd strokes my face. “Look, Jeff, I know your heart is aching for Eduardo. That's the kind of passion I'm talking about.” He turns my face so that I am forced to look at him. “I need to be on my own to sort all this through. I can't be caught up in your karma, or Javitz's either for that matter. Not that I don't love you both. Not that I don't care, not that I don't want to be involved. But it's all become too complicated, too intense.” He pauses. “I don't think we should live together for a while. We can put most of our stuff in storage. I can live at Naomi's. She has an extra room. And Melissa has a room in her basement where you could—”

“I'm
not
living in a basement room in
Dorchester.”

“Whatever. We can find you a place—”

“You don't have to
find
me a place. I'm perfectly capable of finding my own place.” I stand up harshly. I'm rolling now. I can feel the rage swirling around inside my rib cage and surging upward, like heartburn after I've eaten too much broccoli or garbanzo beans. It forces its way up my throat and burns my tongue as it spews out of my mouth. “In
fact,
Lloyd, I know
exactly
where my place is. Right
here!
Right here with you, with Mr. Tompkins, with Javitz. Watching videos, and baking brownies, and making each other laugh. Holding each other as we fall asleep, waking up in the middle of the night and feeling the other one beside us. Right here, in this
fucking
apartment, right
here,
the three of us—you, me, and Javitz —because there's nothing wrong with the way things are right
now!”

“Jeff,” Lloyd says, his serenity an eerie contrast with my histrionics, “I don't think even you believe everything is right between us.”