When You Don't See Me (18 page)

I walked out of the park onto Fifth Avenue, but instead of turning toward home, I went the other way. I had no particular destination in mind. I just didn't feel like another unfinished story from Kendra or a confrontation with Morgan. Roberto was still at work. I hesitated when I got to Drayden's, then kept going.

I thought about the surprise birthday party Gretchen and Gwendy had thrown for Daniel in their Tribeca loft when Emily was nine months old. Gretchen loved to host a crowd. The reflection of the candle flames danced in her eyes when she brought in the cake, singing off-key until Uncle Blaine took over the tune. Josh snapped pictures, and Sheila handed out slices of cake after Daniel blew out the candles.

Then Blaine sat with Emily on his lap, his arm draped across Daniel's shoulders. We all listened to Gretchen's stories of the days before Blaine had known Daniel. Now and then, she'd slap Gwendy's greedy fingers away from the cake frosting with warnings about processed sugar. We stayed up late that night, long after Emily was put to bed, talking and laughing while Daniel and Gretchen reminisced. Gwendy shared stories about growing up with Daniel as her big brother. Everyone seemed lazily content to sit there while Daniel got his moment in the spotlight.

Blaine finally insisted that it was time to go. He went to Emily's room to take a last peek at her. Then he and Gretchen hung on each other while everyone else hugged Daniel good night and repeated their birthday wishes, put on jackets, and gathered up purses and cameras.

That Saturday was the last time we'd all been together
before.
Before the Tuesday in September when everything changed.

With faith, there is love. With love, there is peace. With peace, there is blessing.

But there was no peace. Only questions that stuck in my throat like tears that wouldn't come out.

I was all the way to Washington Square Park before I realized what I was doing. I stopped, looked down the avenue at the empty sky, and said, “I don't think so.”

I walked east until I stepped inside Cutter's. I didn't see Cookie, so I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. No one asked for an ID. No one paid any attention to me. At least that was what I thought until Dennis Fagan slid onto the stool next to mine.

“Been a long time,” he said, tipping his beer toward me.

“Well, you know,” I said.

He didn't smile, but his eyes wrinkled a little. “Yeah.”

He watched a baseball game on the bar's TV. I thought about nothing in particular. Neither of us talked. I finished my beer and, not wanting to push my luck, waved the bartender away. Then I turned and stared at Dennis until his cornflower blue eyes met mine.

“Okay, then,” he said. “We're outta here.”

There was no conversation while we walked. I didn't look at the sky. I didn't really even pay attention to where we were going. We ended up on a street near Wall Street, but I had no idea which one.

Inside my head, I counted off
red building, white building, brown building, red building, red building…
Until Dennis stopped at a door next to a deli, opened it, and led me to the second floor, where he unlocked an apartment. Tiny kitchen behind a living room; bathroom and small bedroom to the left. I didn't look at it with the eyes of a Wamsley & Wilkes employee. In fact, I didn't see much at all. I took a swallow of the beer Dennis brought from the refrigerator. Then he stared at my face for a few seconds before gently pulling me to him.

We made short work of undressing. His bed was a jumble of sheets, but they felt good and smelled of laundry detergent. Nothing perfumed, just clean. For a man with massive muscles, Dennis was a surprisingly tender lover. He was furry—manscaping was an idea that would never have occurred to him—warm, and strong. We both knew he was in charge. From the timing, the place, the circumstances, the provision of condoms and lube—it was his show, and that was how I wanted it.

We lay side by side later, beers propped against our bellies. His open window faced an office building across the street. The building was dark at that hour on a Saturday night. The August air was hot and still, allowing street noise into the apartment. I liked it. It reminded me of Harlem and felt like home.

“I used to have a better view,” Dennis said. “A fifth floor walk-up near Battery Park. My bedroom window framed a clear picture of the twin towers.”

I looked at the hard hat on a scarred desk across the room and said, “You worked on the site after—”

“Yeah, but that's over. It's good to go back to building things.”

“What are you working on now?”

“A job at the Financial Center atrium.” He took a pull of his beer. “You'd think after months of cleanup, I'd want to get as far away as I could. But it's been my place since I was a kid. My father and uncles helped put up three of those seven buildings. My brothers, cousins—we're all in the trade. As long as there's work, we'll be there.”

I nodded. We were quiet for a few minutes, until I said, “The night you got in that fight at Cutter's because of me. I didn't know you were gay.”

Dennis laughed and said, “Gay? Gay is coffeehouses and sushi. Madison Avenue. Chelsea. Abercrombie & Fitch or whatever you boys decide is the next right thing. I fuck men. I'm not gay.”

“But—”

He gave me a look that shut me up and said, “There's a difference. That's all.”

“Okay,” I said, realizing he didn't mean he was one of those men who pretended to be straight and to lust after women. He was right. There was a difference between his world and the world of men like my uncle, who identified themselves with the word
gay.
“Why'd you take up for me that night?”

“Too many questions,” Dennis said. He put down his beer, set mine on the floor next to his, and wrapped me up in his body. It wasn't sexual, although I had a feeling it would be again. It was more brotherly. Not like my own brothers, but like Roberto.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll shut up.”

“Did I say shut up? No questions, but talk if you want. I heard most of it from Blythe anyway.”

“She told you about me?”

“She told me about
her,”
he corrected. “You figured into
her
story. But it's
your
story, if you want it to be.”

Did I want it to be? Hadn't I been doing it Dennis's way? Wasn't that the better choice? Wasn't that why I sought the company of people who didn't talk everything to fucking death?

I thought about Miss Goldman, sitting in her corner at the dry cleaner's. With ignorant people like me thinking she hadn't had much of a life. Would that be me? Never finding a way to release something toxic that churned inside me until finally I was leached clean? Or else, after it destroyed my insides, would it spill over onto other people?

I was walking to the men's room in Cutter's when the drunk's words registered and I realized he was talking about us.

“Fucking punk kids,” he said. “Everything handed to them. Don't appreciate any of it.”

It stopped me. I stared at him. I noticed his bleary eyes and realized he was just a stupid, tired drunk. I turned back toward the restroom.

“They oughta be fighting like real men their age. Instead of sitting on their asses, getting drunk. Just walking on blood and ashes, not giving a shit.”

I froze for a few seconds. My ears were roaring. I turned around. I wasn't sure what I thought I could do, but I never had a chance. Dennis exploded out of a group of men standing nearby. He was on the drunk, hitting him, and he didn't stop until he was pulled off by two men as big as he was.

“Just get out of here,” Cookie said, shaking my arm.

I couldn't stop staring at Dennis, the drunk's blood splattered across his face and chest. A beast inside me thrilled with recognition of the same animal inside him. It took hours for me to settle down after Fred dragged me from the bar.

Had I cried that night? Probably not. I used to cry at sitcoms. Insurance commercials. A dog without a collar. Losing a favorite graphite pencil. I'd been dry as a bone for longer than I could remember.

“One of my roommates has two snakes,” I said to Dennis. “She feeds them mice. Live mice. She gets them from a pet store.”

Dennis pushed his thumbs into the muscles around my shoulder blades. His hands were strong, and the pressure was so intense that it silenced me for a minute. I could almost hear Gavin saying,
Breathe!
I breathed.

After a while, I went on. “On one level, I understand that snakes have to eat. And they eat mice. It's the choosing that bothers me.”

“Your roommate choosing. Like she's playing God,” Dennis said.

“Exactly. Why this one and not that one? And why do I fucking care? Why do I even think about it?”

His thumbs went down either side of my spine in the same rhythm he'd used on my shoulders. Press, release, move. I felt like I was shivering inside.

“You tell me,” he said.

“It's like she's God playing a game,” I finally said. “The way I play backgammon. But a game has strategy. Rules. There's a reason for what you do in a game. It's arbitrary shit that makes me crazy.”

Press. Release. Move.

“A woman wakes up one morning, drinks her coffee, kisses her partner and her nine-month-old baby good-bye, then goes to work. Not to her own office, where she goes every day. To somebody else's office. Why that office, on that floor, in that building, on that day? It's so fucking random.”

“Right,” Dennis said. His voice was tender. I wanted to crawl inside it and never leave.

He reached over to turn off the light, then put his arms around me again. I knew I could talk as long as I wanted, street music in the background, and he'd keep holding me.

I knew something else, too. Dennis would listen to me because he did belong to that world where things went unsaid.
When our fathers and uncles and their friends started coming home, they didn't brag about what they'd done. They barely talked about the war at all.
Like Kruger, Dennis came from a place where silence was part of being a man.

Maybe we both needed for me to talk.

I felt like something clicked inside my brain. Dennis's silence was part of how he'd been taught a man should be. But my silence—had that come from my mother? The person who didn't want to burden anyone? So instead, she left people—left
me
—feeling helpless and inadequate. Did I make people feel that way, too, with my silence?

Not Roberto. I never had to explain things to Roberto; he just
knew.
It was like he was the twin I was supposed to have been born with.

But just because I had Roberto, did that mean I never had to talk to anyone else? Maybe sometimes people needed to hear things. Maybe I needed to say things to them. Like with Dennis and me.

Tonight,
I answered Kruger's earlier question,
I'm getting a lot of some. And I don't mean just sex.

Feeling safe, I curled against Dennis, sighed, and began.

“Her name was Gretchen Schmidt. She was my cousin's mother. That morning, she left early for work because she had a meeting in the North Tower….”

September 4, 2003

Dear Nick,

I'm so glad you called, because you've been on my mind a lot. I didn't realize how much I needed to hear your voice until after we hung up. I agree with what you said. This anniversary seems harder than last year's. I think that's why Daniel and I decided to go ahead and make the trip to Europe, just to get away from everything that will be on TV here.

Gwendy said she isn't interested in going to any of the memorial services. She and Kruger are going to Wisconsin and will be there on the eleventh. This eases my mind, because I know the Stephenson family and Adam's family will make sure there are a lot of happy things going on for Emily, Gwendy, and Kruger.

I know you said you can't get away from work, but if you change your mind, I've got your passport. All we have to do is buy a ticket and you can go to Spain with us. Or if you want to go to Wisconsin, that's fine, too. I'm enclosing our itinerary and all our phone numbers if you need to call me for anything. Even if just to talk. You can always charge any calls to our home account. Just in case you don't have that card anymore, I'm dropping in a copy.

I love you, Nick. I probably don't tell you that enough, or let you know what a comfort you've been to me over these last couple of years. I've never had one moment's regret about the way I borrowed my brother's son three years ago and kind of forgot to give him back. You're the best.

Love,
Blaine