The Men from the Boys (29 page)

He's listened to me more than I've realized. “I'd go with you, get tested myself, if that's what you wanted.”

“What good would it do us to know?”

“Okay.” I sigh. “Eduardo, I never meant to do anything that might harm you. I—I care about you too much.”

“I know that.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Jeff, there's no need—”

“Yes, there is. I mean it. I don't want to hurt you.” I get off my chair, squat down in front of him, his hand still in mine. It's as if I'm proposing marriage or something. “I don't mean just about this. I don't want to hurt you in any way.”

He seems touched. “Then don't get caught up in the scene,” he says earnestly. “The whole tricking scene, the whole body image, cruising, bar scene.” He grips my hand tightly.

“Are you asking me not to trick?”

He looks at me. The earnestness is gone, and he relaxes his grip on my hand. “No. I could never ask you to do that.”

Go
ahead,
I want to say.
Ask me.
In this moment, I would promise him anything. But I say nothing in response.

Eduardo stands then. “I think I want to sleep alone tonight,” he says.

“Okay,” I say, but I feel confused, abandoned. I think about playing with him, pouting like I usually do to get my way. But I don't.

He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Want to do something tomorrow?” I ask.

“I don't know, Jeff. Maybe I need a couple days on my own.”

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing. I just need some time.”

“Talk to me—”

“Please, Jeff. It's been a long day, a long couple of weeks. And you always holding the upper hand, telling me when I can come over, when I can't. I just need some time to think, to be by myself.” He kisses me again on the cheek. “Okay?”

I shrug. “Whatever.”

So I watch him go, off down the beach, disappearing into the haze and the dark purple night, a small, slight figure leaving behind only a trail of footprints to mark where he's been. Eventually these too are claimed by the unrelenting tide, and I'm left with nothing but the stars and the sky and the sound of the surf.

Boston, March 1995

It's the night before Javitz leaves us. He's all packed, the boxes of books are piled high. The movers will be here promptly at eight tomorrow morning. We asked him if he wanted a party, some sort of testimonial. After all, he's been an activist here for a long time, been involved in some key fights. He's a fucking
icon,
for God's sake, or so the newspapers have claimed. A lot of people would want to wish him well. But no, he insisted. “It'd only turn into a wake.” No doubt he's right.

It was supposed to be just the three of us tonight, a small pizza-on-cardboard-boxes kind of celebration. But I hardly feel very celebratory. Lloyd got beeped, of course, and isn't here. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I took the battery out of that damn thing without him knowing. Who might die? Who might hack their husband or wife into a million little pieces? Who would care?

“Well.” I lift a paper cup of champagne. “Happy leaping.”

Javitz smiles. “I felt a touch of the melancholy this morning. I want you to know that. It isn't all joy leaving Boston. There are many things I'll miss.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“All-night convenience stores. Fresh produce in January. Live theater. You.”

I smirk. “You talk as if Provincetown were on the West Coast.”

“Come with me.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

He's being cryptic. I try to figure out his riddle. “I don't understand.”

He takes another slice of pizza. His side has pepperoni, meatballs, and pineapple. I'll never understand his eating habits. He takes a bite, wipes his mouth with a paper napkin, and says, “Where else are you going to go?”

I watch him swallow. “Are you serious?”

“Lloyd's going to stay with Naomi. Darling, you just need somewhere temporary to stay. Why not Provincetown? I've got a second bedroom, remember. It was supposed to be our summer house.”

I can't think. “You mean, leave Boston?”

“Look at it as going to Provincetown for the summer one more time. I know you didn't want to do that scene all over again. So don't. Come and finish the novel.”

“Do you
want
me to go with you? I mean, is that it? Are you concerned about being alone?”

“ ‘Want' is the correct word. Yes, I
want
you to come. No, I don't
need
you to come.”

“Are you just feeling sorry for me? Because if that's the case—”

“Fuck you, Jeff.” Javitz stands up. He accidentally knocks over the pizza box. I catch it before it falls facedown on the hardwood floor, burning my hands slightly as I grip the greasy underside.

Javitz lights a cigarette. He exhales with a flourish. “Can you never look beyond yourself? Are you so trapped by your own perception of the world you can't imagine there are other ways of seeing things?” He takes another deep drag.

“I think I have an open mind about things.
You're
the one who thinks he's always right.”

“Where's
that
coming from?” He exhales smoke and I cough.

“Can you please? I know this is your house but these are my lungs.” I stand up now. I've lost my appetite.

We both pace around the room a bit, our footsteps echoing along darkened, empty corridors. I rest my head finally against the old couch, tipped on its side. I smell Javitz on its cushions: the smoke, of course, but coffee too, hazelnut coffee and cream, and bacon, and Bisquick waffles, from hundreds of breakfasts prepared in this place, many for me. I remember sitting on that couch my first day here, so very long ago, in another time, another world. The couch smelled of Javitz then, too, this exact fragrance. It will smell like this even after he is dead, and the couch sits in the back of some thrift shop, marked “$100 or Best Offer.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“I would hope so, Jeff.” He's not letting this go. “This has all been about you. My whole decision to leave. That's all you've seen, how it would affect you. That's okay, if you had expressed that to me. If you had told me why you were angry with me.”

“I did. I told you.”

“No you didn't. You said you were angry because you were afraid if I got sick, I wouldn't have you to take care of me. The reality is, you're angry with me because you're afraid I'm not going to take care
of you
anymore.”

I look at him for several seconds. “That's not true,” I lie. “I don't need anyone to take care of me.”

“Oh, please, don't be so transparent, Jeff. You're made of better stuff than that. If you're going to try noble, give me Bette Davis at the end of
Dark Victory.
Or Crawford in
Mildred
Pierce. You're not even up to the standard of Luise Rainer.”

I'm insulted. “Now it's my turn to say ‘fuck you.' ”

“Go right ahead. I wish you had a lot earlier. Gotten it off your chest. Then maybe these last few weeks wouldn't have been all you, you,
you.”

“That's not fair,” I protest.

“Don't talk to me about fair,” he says. I'd forgotten: Javitz won't use that word. Nothing's fair in life, he says. Fair has nothing to do with anything. “Talk to me about why you're angry with me.”

I walk over to the window, look down on Harvard Square. Tomorrow Javitz won't live here anymore. I turn back to face him. “All right,” I admit. “I
am
angry at you. Angry because you're walking out on me. On our family. There was magic,
real
magic between us. Now you're just walking away from that. And not just by moving to Provincetown. Once it was
us,
Javitz. The three of us. We made a family, whole and complete. But now I feel I'm no longer in your club, not in your league. You've turned your back on me because I'm not positive—or don't know if I am, anyway.”

He makes a face. For once, I can't read him. I don't know if it's anger, surprise, or hurt. He starts to say something, then reconsiders. I'm not sure if I should go on, if I've already said too much, and you can't take back words once they're out of your mouth. But the silence unnerves me. I continue.

“Ernie,” I say. “It's been him each time you've made a life decision over the past year. It used to be me. Me and Lloyd.”

Javitz sits down on a cardboard box.

“Now you're leaving, packing up and going. You're moving totally into that world now. A world that doesn't include me.”

“I just asked you to come with me.”

“But why?”

“Oh, Jeff.” He reaches for another cigarette, then reconsiders that, too. “I'm not going to sit here and deny that I need the company, the community, of other positives. Yes, I've gone to Ernie. That's because I feel I have too often closed myself out in the past from what I really need by populating my family exclusively with negatives—or, excuse me, with people who believe they're negative. And yes, I'm moving into a much different world now. But if you think that world excludes you, then that's your issue, not mine. Seems to me I remember you turning down a couple of invitations to join us for dinner at the Collective. How much distance have you created yourself?”

He stands up and begins to approach me, but stops midway across the floor. “Think about it. When was the last time I had a date? Not a quickie on the side of the road or in the dunes. I mean, a
date.”

I don't remember.

“Four years,
Jeff.” He holds his hands out to me, almost imploringly. “Talk to me about how I feel. Why I'm leaving Boston. Why I'm
really
leaving Boston. You've never asked.”

“I thought I had,” I say, but inwardly, I know I haven't. It was much too frightening a question to pose, and even now, I hope he doesn't answer it.

Too late. He tells me. “I'm leaving Boston because of you.”

If he was hoping to startle me, he must be disappointed. “Maybe I already suspected that was the case,” I tell him.

“Oh, really now. Why don't you expound on that?”

“It must be hard for you. I mean, Lloyd and I have been having problems these last few months. Perhaps that reminds you of us—you and I, when our relationship ended, all over again. Perhaps you see me struggling to make it work with Lloyd, and perhaps you feel I didn't do that with you. Perhaps the thought of our three-way friendship ending or changing unsettles you, because it brings up your feelings for me all over again.”

He stares at me unblinking.

“I know we never processed the whole ending. I know you were hurt. And I'm sorry about that.”

I take a step forward, prepared to embrace him. That's when he makes a sound, a sound I first take to be a laugh, but of course it can't be. I look at him through the gathering dusk. Is he crying? I'm not sure I can handle Javitz crying.

“Oh God, Jeff,” he says, and then I realize he is laughing. He's laughing as if despite himself. His face is contorted in an expression of mirth and derision.

He's laughing at me.

“Is that why you think I want you to come with me to Provincetown?” he gasps.

He can tell by my face that I'm hurt. He stops laughing. But he still appears hard, brittle, distant. “You really
are
something, you know that?” he says. “You really are.”

“I was trying to be sincere.”

“Jeff, I love you. Profoundly. Always have, always will. But I am not in love with you. Does it hurt too much if I tell you I never was? Oh, you meant the world to me. You let me teach you. You let me see the world through your young and eager eyes. You gave me youth. You gave me a sense of myself I had forgotten. Oh, yes, I loved you. Very, very much. But when our relationship ended, it was right. The sweet joy of it all was finding Lloyd, and creating our family, finding a new way to be with both of you in our lives together.”

I'm not sure I understand any of this. “Then what do you mean you're leaving because of me? It doesn't make sense. You're leaving that family we created.”

“Precisely, Jeff.” Now he
does
approach me, and he takes me in his arms. For once, I do not retreat, do not grow stiff. His touch feels as it did a decade ago, soft and warm and reassuring. I sink my face into his cashmere sweater, taking comfort in the warmth and the fragrance of smoke I find there. “That's why I need to go,” he says, stroking my hair. “I need to find the next chapter of my life. One that most likely is going to be my last, and so extra care must be taken in its execution.”

“But why does it have to be another chapter? Why not just let this one keep going?” ,

“Because we have to move with the times. Darling, I'm not the man I was two summers ago. Do you remember the time I came home on the back of that motorcycle? How glorious that was. Riding through town as the sun broke over the horizon, the wind in my hair. We'd fucked all night, not a moment of sleep. How utterly magnificent. But I couldn't keep up that pace last summer. It's age, it's AIDS, it's everything—why, I doubt
if you
could jerk off on the dance floor of an underwear party again.”

“Could too,” I say, muffled, my lips in his sweater.

He smiles. I can hear it in his voice. “Maybe you could at that. But do you know what? I don't think you
want
to anymore. I know
I
want something else. I'm not quite sure what yet. I know it's not about tricking, or even sex in the dunes. It's certainly not about activism anymore. It's certainly not about fights at the State House or going to jail. I'm not sure what this next chapter is, but I
am
sure of one thing.”