These Things Happen (25 page)

   "Sure. Why not?"

   "Before I asked you and before up here— had you thought about it like that?"

   George doesn't answer. He peers out over the building's edge, into the small, on-the-grid, wrapped box of streets; this theater district that can never again be what it was and yet is still full of swirling dollars, bouncing tunes, mobs of the satisfied-enough and the vindictively, revengefully disappointed, on their way home to anonymously leave, on screens, the
opinions
the screens so greedily demand. Up here, though, they are far from all that. George sees things that he hasn't seen before, and wants to point them out to Wesley. But Wesley, he remembers, knows this rooftop well; he hasn't been afraid to come here.

   "I believe you," Wesley says, seeing in what George has told him how it is possible to have an experience and only find out later what it means; that part of the nature of experience is how it insists on the right to keep parts of its meaning a little bit secret, revealing the balance when the time is right. "It makes you wonder," Wesley says, "about what else might be up here, on the roof, I mean. Does that make any sense? I don't mean the
literal
roof; I mean the roof as a
notion.
As a place where things live, one might say; things that neither of us know, that could maybe even be
answers
to things. Who knows, I guess. Right?"

"Right."

   "So I'm the first person to ever hear that? You never told it to anyone before?"

   "No."

   "Why," he says, not putting it as a question, wanting information more than an answer.

   George knows what he would like to say, which is the first thing that comes to him:
Because no one ever asked.
But that's not it, quite, and not fair; nowhere close to what Wesley would call the
thing.
So, once more, George lets that join them— the thing itself— and hosts it as he might at Ecco, this George who can be relied on to be welcoming and insignificant at once. So, then: Why? Because when he came to the city, at eighteen, it was a time when the young men and those a little (but not much) older were less interested in tales of when they knew than in rich, fibrous knowing itself, all that you had to be up on in order to keep up at all; the lore, the facts, what Lenny called the admission price to Gay Street. And so George, when he says to Wesley, "I don't know," is telling the boy the truth.

   Wesley knows it. "I believe you," he says; he wants to stress that, too. " Really. And you should hear the Theo fable, or saga, or whatever it is. It takes place at our school, which isn't exactly known for psychosexual-revelation incidents. There's this bird, see, and a ball, and
Citizen Kane
is in there, too. Don't ask."

   
Don't ask
; an expression George uses daily. Lenny (again) says you need a little Yiddish if you want to survive in New York (and who wouldn't?); he is convinced that Jackie Kennedy, among friends, referred to her second marriage as that whole
mishegoss
with that bug-eyed Greek
momzer. Don't ask.
George wonders:
Did he
get this from me?
And yet, Wesley doesn't follow his own shrug-shouldered, rag-trade advice. He asks all the time; he asks, and asks; and answers are, after all, what they're doing up here. "I won't ask," George says. "Don't worry."

   "But can I ask something?"

   
"Oy,"
says George, not hoping for a laugh, and not getting one.

   Wesley doesn't wait for George to give permission. "What you just told me," he says. "Have you ever told that to my father?"

   His
father
; George has never heard Wesley refer to Kenny as anything but
my dad. Maybe that's what happens up here
, he thinks. He sees a penny on the roof; how did it get there? He decides that he must pick it up, now, or something terrible will happen to them both. He takes a step or so toward Wesley, circles behind him, kneels for the penny, and puts it in his pocket. Now he sits on the ledge where, moments ago, Wesley was
Boy, Reading
, turned away;
I just
want to be alone up here.

   "George—"

   George shakes his head.

   "But you told me," says Wesley.

   Did he? He doesn't even know. "I guess."

   "No. You did. So, don't guess. Not to be rude."

   "If you say so," George tells him. "And you're not, so you shouldn't worry about that." He feels separated into parts; retinas, arteries, discs all laid out on the roof, the pieces puzzled as to how to come back together as:
him.
As whoever he is, or was.

   " Which must mean you trust me, sort of. That is, I guess. In a way."

   "I do."

   "You're the first, then," Wesley says. "The first real person, I mean, by which I suppose I mean
adult. W
ell, you know what I mean."

   "I do," George says again.

" Thank you."

   "I don't think I'll be the last." He is suddenly aware of life at windows; all the books being read (which would please Lola), profiles scanned, downloading, uploading, links being sent;
I thought
you'd like this. . . .
He hears the sigh of the man who has just masturbated to the porn site (T
his is the last time
), the clink of tags as dogs join couples on beds, lights going out and couples turning to or away from each other.

   "So you're
sure
it's okay for me to tell that to Theo?"

   "That's up to you."

   "Then I won't," says Wesley. "Your secret is safe with me, if that's what you want."

   "I know." He reaches into his pocket, finds the penny, passes it to the boy; who takes it, says nothing, puts it in his own
ciambelline-
crumbed pocket. "So where does that put me in your Hall of Guys?"

   "What?" He looks puzzled, as if he'd never heard of anything like this.

   "Like Obvious Guy, remember? Or what was one of the others . . . Literal-Minded Guy?"

   "Oh." Wesley is neutral.

   "So I know who I'd be. Recollecting Gay Guy. How's that?"

   Wesley is careful now, with each word, as if giving instructions to a partially deaf babysitter. "You're not in the Hall of Guys," he says, "at all. Sorry."

   "Ah," George says, familiar with the evoked response:
One more
team that doesn't want me.
"Of course. T
oo gay!
I get it."

   "
No
, George. You're not in it because you don't need to be. Because you're just
you
."

   "That's a good thing?"

   But Wesley's moved on. "Do you want to know where I was?"

Wesley knows he does, so he doesn't have to wait for the assent. " Among other things I went to see Theo," he says, "who's fucked up."

   "What do they say?"

   Wesley doesn't answer this. "And I went to Ben and Mom's. I didn't see her; I will. She was making salmon."

   "So she uses the poacher?" George asks him. "That's good. Most people don't use the poachers you give them."

   Wesley doesn't answer this, either. "It just sort of made sense, after I went for this walk with Ben, to come here next." They share a picture, at the same moment, without knowing it; of Wesley's night flight; a toy plane flying over a map, tracing its journey in dotted lines, as in what George thinks of as a good movie and Wesley thinks of as an old one. "Ben
cherishes
her, George."

   "I can see that. I always have. They're lucky, both of them."

   But Wesley shakes his head, as if George hasn't understood him. "
Cherishes
her." He has netted the verb and traps it, humming, in his hand. "That was his word. I know what it means, but I'd never heard it in that way before, one person using it about another, as this sort of significant v
erb.
And I asked him if that was better than love."

   "What did he say?"

   "He said I'd find out. That he was sure of it. So what do you think?"

   "I think you will, too. I'm sure of it, like Ben."

   "You don't understand, George," Wesley says. "I'm not talking about me; I'm tired of me." He puts up a hand, to forestall George's support. " Which doesn't mean you have to, like, bolster my self-esteem. I'm constantly bolstered; it's sort of insulting, actually, like people think without the bolstering I wouldn't have any at all. Not that you do that. I don't mean you."

   George indicates coldness, as a bad actor would, with hunched shoulders, big shivers, arms wrapping around himself. "It's getting cold. I'm freezing my ass off up here."

   "No, you're not," says Wesley.

   "Well, it's my ass, right? I should know."

   But Wesley has no time for this. "So what do you think? Is it better than love?"

   "Oh, my God," George says. "Why would you ask me that? I don't know." He feels like he does in a dream, the great, reliable dream of forever, the one he still has even years after acting was through for him; where he is waiting in the wings to make an entrance in a play, realizing at the moment he receives what he knows to be his cue that not only hasn't he learned his part, but he was never told what his part was. He is on his own; he could be anyone; and no one.

   But Wesley doesn't know about the dream. Again: he needs an answer. "But maybe I do," George says. "If it helps. I
do
think so. Yes." He says it again, stronger now, to lock it down because he knows it, suddenly, to be true.
"Yes."

   "I don't know why I know this," Wesley says, "but I bet they'll always be together." He nods at his own observation, like someone at a rally agreeing with a point in a speech. " Maybe I'm wrong, but I just sort of know that."

   "You're not wrong."

   " Really?"

   "With some couples, you just know. Right?"

   "Oh, right," says Wesley. "Totally." He's thrilled, again, without quite knowing that's what the sensation is;
an adult has agreed
with his insight into adult life
; he has been given a permission slip to
see.
And that signed paper has, scrawled on the back, the next question he needs to ask.

   Which is this: "So, what about you?" George's face, with its slight, sudden, frosted look of panic, gives him
more
permission:
Hang in; do not retreat, no matter what he says; stay.

   "What about me?" George asks, although, of course, he knows.

   " Maybe I should be more specific," says Wesley. "In the interests of clarity, which I know is a thing I say a lot. But—" He looks at George; he sees that he has him, that for this moment George will not look away. J
ust ask.
"You and Dad."

   "Ah."

   "Do you cherish each other?"

   George doesn't answer; not because he won't; he can't. He is too busy seeing the roof's sudden show of the hundred reasons, laid out like exhibits at a trial, for which he admires Kenny: the medallions, the certificates, the bits of engraved Lucite; the sheaf of op-ed pieces, the statements carefully crafted. And the things he likes: the cleft chin, the taut-enough stomach, the sculptor's hand. And the sister, the Alice, whom George has just learned of after ten years together; up here now, too, along with the outhouse man, asking if Kenny can come again and Kenny saying they're leaving tomorrow.
No. I was
right, downstairs, when I said it. We don't know each other; we never
have. Knowing is the father of cherishing. It is where it begins, and
ends, too. To allow that is the gift. And it has not, in this time, been
given.

   "George?" Wesley isn't waiting for an answer; he's seen what the next question needs to be. "Does Dad cherish you?"

   The patch of roof, for a moment, on which they have come closer and closer together, contains two different kinds of silence. George smiles; his face has always known what to do that is best for the moment, for the beat; the scene. But the smile quickly fades, as if ashamed of itself, and as it does George feels he is no longer on a tar-papered rooftop but on a polished square of floor, a
Swing Time
floor, in the process of seamlessly breaking from the brownstone beneath it, like icing lifted from a cupcake. He doesn't dare answer Wesley's question, or even move; if he does, a crack might open and he will fall through, headlong, not just four floors down but into all the rivers of this island the Dutch gave up in a day and wouldn't fight for, not when faced with the stronger, better-dressed, more amusing Britons.

   "Is it okay for me to ask you that?"

   "It's okay," George says. "I think so, anyway."

   Wesley doesn't wait for more; he now gives permission to himself. "Do you think you'll be like Ben and Mom?"

   "That people will just know, you mean."

   Wesley gently directs George's eye to the clear, even readable words. "That you're one of those couples—"

   George takes over. "Who'll always be together. Right?"

   Wesley nods.

   "Well," says George; he laughs at himself for never having thought of this. "I don't know."

   "Okay," says Wesley.

   "But thank you," George tells him again, without quite knowing why

   "What would happen to you?"

   "What happens to anyone?" George asks, and catches himself, instantly apologizes. "Sorry. What a bullshit thing to say." He spins it in the direction of Dietrich, in T
ouch of Evil
; world-weary, wig askew, secret lover to the great and attractively infamous. "Vhat happens to anyvun?"