These Things Happen (26 page)

   But Wesley, happily, is a clueless audience. " Where would you go?"

   "Oh, you know," George says, even though
he
doesn't.
Does
anyone?
he thinks. Well, yes; many do; there are armies of lucky people to whom fatalistic philosophies don't apply. George has even been one of them, for a long time. Or thought he was; which is the same, until things change and you have to choose, in the night, the three things to put in your suitcase.

   "Actually," says Wesley, "I don't."

   Now George is not, especially, a queeny queen, but he does know, he realizes, the imaginary cities where one can go to be tragic, whispered-about, a veiled
condesa
with a backward daughter. "Zurich first, probably."

   "Are you serious?"

   "Oh, yes.
Ja.
I miss Germany."

   "I don't mean this to be literal-minded, or anything, or rude?" says Wesley. "But Zurich is in Switzerland, more or less."

   "Well, of course it is."

   "So, where would you go?"

   All right, then; here it is, or here
he
is. George, who has never been one to fear the future or even, much, to consider it; for him it has been nothing more than the next place, that then gives way to the place after that; none of those places, surely, to be feared. Nor does he fear death, and never has; what Lenny refers to as the Table for One, in off the street with an hour to kill, no reservations, might as well be here. If anyone were ever to ask George why he doesn't fear the things most people do, he would see, perhaps, that yes; it has to have been the road; it was where he formed his just-the-next-place philosophy, on buses smelling of French fries, old gum, sleeping people who know they will never rise higher than this; buses bearing him to two nights here, three there; the next places much the same as the places before; the same scrappy museum, rich lady's garden, the same depressed downtown. Next places; never new ones. And, then, death.
He died the death of a salesman.
George was Biff, twice, so he knows the play; he has always understood what Willy meant. You do your job, and then it's done, while you were still in the act of doing it. You've gone nowhere, maybe, but you've kept your hands busy; you have not risked being still, because to do that would be to open yourself to questions, from others and, maybe worse, yourself.

   So as for now? There's this building, its claws dug into the flesh of the street; below them, the tight fourth-floor rooms, and the subterranean bit of Tuscany; he has been here for ten years, believed he had loved here, kept it stocked with bread, flowers, stories in which he's the comic lead; dear George, clueless, silly, slow to see. But he sees, now, that this has never been more than a place between places, the stop longer than most. Has he always known this? "I don't know," he says at last.

   "Well, that sucks."

   "You think?"

   "I mean not to know," Wesley says. "That's all."

   They both start to notice how cold it is and act it out for each other, shivering and shrugging, synchronized, like a dance team.

   "Hey, George?" Wesley says, even though they are looking right at each other.

   "Yeah?"

   "I don't know why I feel the need to tell you this, exactly? But I'm not gay, actually. Well, I don't mean
actually
? But you know what I mean. Right?"

   "Now,
that's
something I do know," George says. "At last. Something!"

"Or I don't think so, anyway."

"Well, things can change."

"They can?"

   George bites his lip; he wants the joy of telling Wesley something ridiculous, to fool him for a moment (this kid will believe anything) and then, deliciously, resolve his worry. "Well," he says, "one day you could be walking down Sixth Avenue, right? Which is where things like this usually take place, somehow."

   Wesley, he sees, is already a little worried. "Like what kind of things?"

   "Transformations, of the Gay Kind."

   "That can happen?"

   " There you are, and all of a sudden there's thunder and an eclipse and this Great Gay Rain starts to fall. And everyone suddenly has very white teeth and eight percent body fat and they're all singing ' Being Alive.' "

   Wesley stops him. "What is ' Being Alive'? Is it like a song?"

   George laughs. "Yes," he says. "But all you need to do is
be
alive. Don't worry about
being
it."

   "Good," Wesley says. " About not needing to know, I mean. So at least I can be consistent, because I don't know anything."

   "Well," says George, "as has been well established, neither do I."

   Wesley looks out, over to Ninth Avenue, as if Ninth Avenue held the answer to the question he's privately asking himself:
Does
anybody know anything?
"Nobody does," he says, still looking out. "It would seem. Do they."

   "No."

   "Do they," he says again, and again without a question mark; for he knows the answer, himself. "I should tell Theo that. We missed our Fact today. I should tell him it's a fact that nobody knows anything. Other than facts, I guess. Right?"

   "It would seem that way," says George. "Yes." And facts, now, are everything; George can nearly see them, waving their hands and insisting they be called on.
He loves this boy
; he sees and acknowledges that.
He could be kept from seeing him again
; he can see that, too; possession, or nameability, is not only nine-tenths of the law; it is the law. And then the fact that doesn't insist, because it doesn't have to; it is the one George has always known, in one way or another, in situations other than this.
He would like to give something of
value; he has nothing of value to give.

   "But I know something," Wesley says. "It's just one thing, but I know it's true, and I'm sure of it. Is it okay if I say it?"

   "Please," says George.

   "It's just that whatever I become? Whoever I turn into—" He looks down; his fingers brush the slightly raised caterpillar of stitches above his left eye as if they were a Braille that might tell him what to say next. Then he nods, just once, as if he's come to a final agreement with himself. He looks up, his eye now on a direct route to George's. "I know that I want to be like you."

   George laughs; or maybe the laugh steps forth, before he can do or say anything else. Words come forth, as well—
I don't think you
mean that—
that sound like they're coming from somewhere else, from another rooftop.

   "But I
do
," says Wesley. "I want to be like you."

   "Oh," George says now; all other words have left him; it is all he can think of to say.

   "So would that be okay? Because I completely mean it."

   "I know you do," says George; and he does. "But why would you ever want that?"

"I just do. I can't e
xplain
these things, exactly."

   "No, no, of course you can't." He says this, maybe a little too quickly, wise and seasoned about an exchange he's never experienced before; he realizes that Wesley's words have scared him, have demanded something he doubts he can give, which is a clear-eyed story of himself. So, in a voice that seems to echo back to him, as if the night sky above was no more than the high ceiling of a dark blue room, he says, "But what do you mean? What
am
I like? In what way would you want to be like me?"

   "Well," Wesley says, "in the interests of clarity, I don't mean I want to be like this big fag, or anything." George laughs, out loud; he can't help it. "Not that I'm insinuating that you're all that big?"

   "You can say it. I
am
a pretty big one. In fact, I'm—"

   Wesley puts up a hand, to stop him. "Don't. Don't say a funny thing."

   This has been like water, sprayed at an unruly puppy; George is stunned, at first, then shakes it off. "Sorry."

   "I want to be how you a
re."

   "And tell me how that is," George says, now, forgetting all he knows of himself, giving it up, releasing it, ready to learn from this boy. "How am I, Wes?"

   "Don't you know?" Wesley says, gently. "You're
there
, George."

   "There," George says. "Okay." Wesley's gaze has not freed his; he feels rubbery, leaking gravity like motor oil; were he to lightly jump on the roof he would not be surprised to find that it was, actually, a trampoline, with all New York as its net, that would bounce him up high for the sport of it, with no promise to bring him back.

   "That probably doesn't make sense. I know I
don't
make sense, mostly, and you don't have to say I do, because I see your lips start ing to form supportive words and phrases. I
know
you, George." He takes the penny George found from his pocket, blows on it, polishes it on his sweatshirt; he holds out the penny to George. As a gift; without a word.

   George takes it. "There," he says, echoing Wesley's word for him.

   " Which you are," says Wesley. " Which you've been, George. For me."

   
There
; just that, alone. Where they are now, in fact, in the fixed center of the night, a brief safe place while the borough bubbles and aspires below them. And from this new place George can see that, while this boy has been with them, he has for the first time seen himself as a full man, and complete; this has nothing to do with defeating a belief that Men Like That (his preferred term) cannot, by their nature, ever be complete men; he doesn't believe it, for one thing, about himself or others. No; it has more to do with the sense of himself Wesley has, just by being there, provided. How can this have happened? He is nothing like the boy George was; a matinee liar, a secret traveler on morning trains. But, somehow, he has taught George words to the spell to summon that boy, to give him a rooftop on which to speak the hundred secrets he was so sure he could never tell, secrets that, over time, he has even learned to keep from himself. George knows now that the boy he has heard above him, on the roof, working out his steps at 2:00 A.M., is
that
boy; himself, he has always been waiting. And to see him again— awkward, lumpy,
undelightful
— is to see at the same time a glimpse of the richer life he would like to lead and has been afraid to ask for. He can't yet isolate the elements of that vision. But he has help now; there are two of him; together, they are a place from which to start. So where do they go?

   "Hey, George?" Wesley says suddenly. "Look!" He points to a window in the building across the street; a young man stands there, waving. "That guy!"

   George looks. "Oh, him," he says. "That's just Eddie. He's in
Wicked
; he comes in sometimes, after the show." He waves back, calls out. "Hey—!"

   "George!"

   "Yes?"

   "You can be so embarrassing!"

   " Thank you," George says. It is delicious, he finds, to mortify a teenager, even if the witness to Wesley's eternal shame is just one
arrabiata-
loving Flying Monkey; he even makes a little bow. "So I don't know about you, but I'm freezing my ass off up here."

   "You've said that."

   "Well, this time, it's true."

   "Not to be rude, or anything."

   "I didn't take it as rude, or anything," says George, not mocking him. "So maybe I'll go in. Would that be good?"

   "Go in?" Wesley says, puzzled. "Why?"

   "You said you wanted to be alone."

   "I did?"

   "When I came up. You don't remember?"

   Wesley, for what seems, to George, in his vivid, dream-like fatigue, like an endless elastic moment, doesn't answer. Then, at last, he does. "Well, maybe you should go in," he says. "Because you're probably really tired. I know you hear me up here, and not just the other night, or whenever it was. All the nights. Sorry. You need your sleep."

   "I
don't
," George ridiculously says. "So don't apologize. I was up, anyway."

"Of course you need your sleep! It takes energy to be like—"

   "What?" George says, wondering if Wesley has one more adjective to offer.

   But he doesn't. George can tell. He looks down, shuts his eyes, just perceptibly moves his lips as if telling a story to himself. At last, he looks up.

   "Hey, George?"

   "Yeah?"

   "Can I maybe ask you a question?"

   Questions, answers; it's how they began.
Is your name by any
chance George?

   "Of course you can, Wes," he says, throwing in at the last moment the second syllable, "—ley."

   But he shakes his head. "No," he says. "Forget it."

   "You sure?" He nods. "So I will go in, then," George says.

   Wesley doesn't stop him. George turns back to head for the little door. As he stoops to go through it, he hears "Hey, George?"

   He turns. "Yeah?"

   "Does my dad love me, George?"

   "Oh, my," says George when he hears this. "Oh, my."

   "That wasn't fair," Wesley says. "I shouldn't have asked you that."

   And here is what George does, after he notices how close Wesley has come to him, close enough to touch. And he does touch him, this son of others; without thinking or seeing himself do it he puts a hand on his shoulder. "You did ask, though," George says. "And he does." Does he know that, as a fact? No. But he believes it, is even sure of it.

   "Okay, then. Thank you."

   Another nearby window opens. Someone is watching tv; George hears a few notes of music and knows it is Bernard Herrmann's score for
Anna and the King of Siam.