The Men from the Boys (47 page)

A few seconds of silence pass. “I appreciated the sentiment of the card,” I say, “but the stars and the moon are poor substitutes for the real thing.”

“Jeff, I do miss you. I miss our family. With Javitz being sick, everything's changed. I don't know, it feels as if—as if things are getting clearer for me.”

“What things?”

“Things that matter.” He stands, reaches over to stroke Mr. Tompkins's fur.

The cat shifts in my arms. I notice a hopeful twitch in his right leg. “Lloyd,” I say, “I think he's going to get better.”

“Jeff, don't get your hopes up. This could be just a—”

I look at him. “Don't I
always
get my hopes up? Why stop now?”

We bring Mr. Tompkins back to Dr. Hanley, who takes him gingerly from us and promises to keep us informed. We return to Naomi's, less frantic now. We sit around the table, gratefully devouring her blueberry muffins. She's gone off to work, and Lloyd needs to get ready himself. He's going to be late.

“Cat,” he says, standing up from the table. “You were right. For all my talk about death, for all my past life regressions and seances, I'm terrified of Javitz dying.”

He starts to cry. It startles me, how he could move so quickly from relief about Mr. Tompkins and the neutral observation that he might be late for work to this sudden catharsis of tears. I stand, pulling him into me. He just sobs harder, his chest heaving in my arms, his head pressed under my chin. I rock him softly, saying nothing.

“I wasn't there for him,” Lloyd says. “I walked out on both of you.”

“Don't, Dog. Don't.”

He looks up at me, his face red and shiny. “Do you remember the day we rented that boat? You were so scared we'd capsize. I wanted to have sex out there, do you remember?”

“Of course I do. I was a wimp.”

“No, you weren't. I was scared, too. Only I didn't show it.”

I stroke his face. “I'm here, Lloyd. We're going to go through this together.”

He kisses me. On the mouth. It startles me more than his tears. He turns and heads into the bathroom. I hear the shower faucets squeak, the bang of water pressure being released. I hear him step into the stream of water, making a little “yow” when he discovers it's too hot, or too cold.

Everything's changed. It feels as if things are getting clearer for me. Things that matter.

And what the hell does that mean?

There's a rap at the front door. I look up. I can see through the screen door that it's Drake. For some reason, I'm not surprised. But still I'm not sure what to do. Knock on the bathroom door and tell Lloyd? Answer it myself and be civil? Ignore him and hope he goes away?

But options are eliminated when Drake walks in on his own, stepping tentatively through the living room. “Hi, Jeff,” he says, leaning in the doorway of the kitchen.

He looks the same as I remember: tall and icily handsome, those steely eyes and thick wavy hair, high cheekbones and chiseled jaw. Sitting here with my eyes reddened by tears, my face unshaven and unwashed, I imagine the picture I must present. But I look up at him anyway.

“Hello, Drake.”

“I just wanted to check and see if Mr. Thompson was okay.”

“Tompkins,” I correct him. “Yes. He's going to get better.”

“Well, that's great news. I said a mantra for him this morning.”

I feel generous. “Thank you. Maybe that's what helped him.”

“I hope so.”

“Lloyd's in the shower,” I tell him.

“Oh. Well, then, you can just tell him I dropped by. I'll see him at the hospital.”

“Sure thing.”

He seems to have something that he wants to say. We hear the shower shut off; he doesn't have much time. “Jeff,” he says, “I want you to know that I never meant to cause you any pain by buying the apartment.”

“Do you like it?” I ask him. “Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

He looks at me squarely. “No. I had hoped Lloyd would be there.”

His honesty catches me by surprise.

“I know you don't like me, and I suppose I don't blame you. If I were you, I wouldn't like me much either. You're right if you think I love Lloyd. I even dared to imagine he might love me.” He laughs. “I'm used to getting what I want. That's been my way. I admit that. But I didn't get Lloyd. It wasn't as easy as I imagined, replacing you. That caused me considerable disappointment.”

“Well,” I say, “another discovery by the Brahmins that there is no right to ease.”

“I'm learning that. Yes, things have come easily for me in my life. But I don't think they will anymore. Not when you start going after things that are real, that matter.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“I still love him,” he says plainly. “He taught me a great deal. About inner strength, about exploring our paths. I want him to be happy. But I'm afraid Lloyd is destined for a rather lonely road.” We hear the electric razor start to buzz from the bathroom.

“Really now?”

“I believe we must all take our leaps through life, follow our own paths. But there is no need to do it alone, not when there are others who are willing to leap with us.” He looks directly at me. “Don't give up on him, Jeff. If you do, I'll be there, ready and waiting.”

Drake turns, walks back through the living room and out the door. I hear his BMW start in the driveway. I hear the electric razor click off in the bathroom. I hear Lloyd clear his throat, slap his cheeks.

I'm standing there in the doorframe when he opens the door. He wears nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. It's his turn to be startled, stunned. I gently push him back into the steamy, damp room. I close the door with my foot. I begin to kiss him hard upon the mouth, my tongue exploring places it had long since forgotten. He resists a little at first, but it's as if I were a stranger, a burglar who's just broken into the house and stumbled upon this near-naked man stepping out of the shower. I push him against the sink and pull the towel from his waist, his dick springing into full hardness. I unfasten my belt, pull down my jeans. His eyes look at me with fear and wonder. I rest his butt on the sink, tilt his legs up into the air. He tips his head back, his breath catching in his throat.

I press my dick up against his hole, but I don't enter him. Instead I kiss him again, long and slow and hard. His arms reach up around me, his hands pressing against the back of my head, pulling me closer to him. I can hear his heart now in my own ears, and the passion that burns between us is as raw and exciting as it was that first time, the night he drew for me that bath and I brought him those daisies—even though no fucking follows our kiss, even though our dicks eventually subside and soften. But our eyes continue to grip each other with a ferocity we'd both forgotten lived between our souls. We say not a word—not about sex, not about passion, not about the future. We just smile into each other's eyes, listening to our hearts beat high in our ears. That's the way it stays, for the rest of the day.

Boston, December 1994

I wish I'd never told Javitz that Lloyd said there was no more passion between us. But I did, so I have to live with the fact that he's going to bring it up every now and then, and try to get me to talk about it. But I won't.

He's feeling better. He's still taking it easy, letting us bring him dinner in bed tonight. Chanel's whipped up a Philippine spicy rice dish. “An old family recipe?” I ask.

She smiles. “Kind of. It was in Cook's family for generations.”

Lloyd is exhausted. He's flopped down on Javitz's couch, worn out from a long day at the hospital. “Some patient flipped out in the ER,” he told us. “Went after her girlfriend with a syringe. Chased some kid down the hall.”

“Poor Lloyd,” Chanel says, bringing him a plate of rice and feeding him his first bite. He accepts it gladly. I cover him up with a blanket.

“It's just that I'm so tired of always being the one who has to take care of everyone else. Is that what I was put on this earth for?” I soothe him with my hand on his forehead, a soft sympathetic hum in his ear. Within minutes, he's asleep.

Chanel brings in a plate to Javitz. She sits on the edge of his bed as he tries it and asks him if it's too spicy.

“Nothing can ever be too spicy,” he says.

“Just be careful,” I urge. “You're still a little delicate.”

He frowns. “Not a word I've often heard in conjunction with myself.”

“Well, get used to it.”

Chanel says, “You'd better get your strength back soon because you have to check out my new girlfriend.”

“A name?”

“Kathryn. She's very cute.”

“As cute as Wendy?” I ask.

She makes a face. “In a different way.” She looks up at Javitz. “You've got to meet her, Javitz. I need to know what you think. She's cute, she's smart, she's nice, but—”

“No passion,” Javitz finishes for her.

“No, not really:”

“Darling, without passion, there's not much else.”

“Ah,” I interject, “but define
passion.”

“You shut up,” Javitz says. “Don't confuse the issue. Passion, my dear, is the bottom line. Whenever a student comes out to me, they always want to know how to be queer. The tricks of the trade, so to speak.”

“So what are some of these tricks that you teach them?”

“That there are no absolutes or definites. Except one.” He smiles. “Passion. Passion tells the
truth.”

“Ah, but we still haven't come up with a definition for that,” I remind him. I laugh to myself. There he goes again. Making these great proclamations like the pope issuing encyclicals. I look at my friend, my lover, my mentor, in the bed below me. I have learned much from him and will learn more. But now I wonder: how much fear and indecision are cloaked by his magnificent pronouncements? Javitz, our fearless leader. Might he be as confused as we are? Might the teacher make up an answer when he really has no clue? I reach down and stroke his hair, something I don't often do. He looks up at me with suspicious eyes. I just blow him a kiss.

Chanel smiles, then shrugs. “I guess we'll just have to see what develops.” She taps his plate of food. “Come on now, eat up. I'm going out to the kitchen to load the dishwasher and when I come back your plate had better be empty.”

After she's gone, he looks up at me. “I've been coughing again.”

“Then I don't want to catch you smoking. I mean it.”

“In a couple more days, it'll be gone.” He sighs. “How you doing?”

“Fine. I don't want to talk about it.”

“All right.” He takes another spoonful of the rice, then pushes the plate away from him. “I'm not very hungry.”

“If you don't like it, I can get you something else.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“You've got to eat.”

He sneers. “You know, my mother wasn't even as bad as you are. And she was Jewish.”

I laugh. “It's entirely selfish of me. It's a shorter T ride to Cambridge than schlepping up to Beth Israel.”

He finishes off his ginger ale, the ice tinkling in the glass. “You know, I'm getting tired of this place. I think maybe I want to move.”

I can't imagine. “Javitz, you've been here for seventeen years.”

“Precisely.” He looks up at me, all eyes.

“What's wrong with this place?”

“Nothing's wrong with it,” he says. “It just feels as if it stopped growing with me. Like I've gotten beyond it somehow.”

I look around. The bookshelves crammed with volumes. Obscure titles of Greek philosophy. Thick texts that look as ancient as the history they tell about. The odd frayed envelope here and there, stuck between the bindings of books like a leaf sprouting from a crack in concrete. The posters: “Workers of the World Unite,” “Josephine Baker in Paris,” “Eugene McCarthy for President.” The dusty photos on the walls: Javitz with me, with Lloyd. With Reginald.

“How come you never talk about Reginald?” I ask suddenly.

Reginald was the one man besides me that Javitz ever dated longer than a few months. If I remember correctly, Reginald was around in the early seventies, just before Javitz left New York for Boston. In all our time together, he's barely mentioned Reginald's name. Probably he hasn't brought him up in six years now. But still his photograph hangs on the wall.

“No particular reason,” Javitz says. “It's just that there's nothing to say.”

“You must have loved him.”

“Why must I have?”

“You were together—what? Three years?”

“Three and a half.” He pushes away the tray. “Jeff, I'm just not hungry.”

“Do you ever think of trying to contact him?”

“Whatever for?”

“You were lovers.”

“Do you ever think of contacting
Robert?”

I scoff at this. “Robert wasn't a lover. He just filled in the space between you and Lloyd.”

“Well, Reginald was certainly a lover. You're right. I did love him. And he loved me. But that was that. Then we were done.”

“I don't believe love can just fade away like that.”

“It doesn't. I suppose it's still there, down deep in my heart. But he wasn't political enough. He didn't make the connections, between homophobia and racism and sexism and all of that. Actually, he was pretty conservative, now that I think about it. So what would I have to talk with him about today? And besides, he didn't want to move to Boston when I got the job here. So that was that.”