by Mary McCoy
LEE:
The past. College. Your group of friends. Mom told me about the summer that all of you were living in the house on Belvedere.
SAGE STEELE:
Oh god, yeah. I was driving carriages downtown. Do you remember, Arthur, the nights when I finished too late to make it out to the stables? I’d drive the horses back to Midtown and keep them in our backyard overnight.
ARTHUR SWAN:
I don’t really want to talk about the past. It’s behind me. It’s dead, Lee. Let it die.
LEE:
What about the future, then?
ARTHUR:
Well, I found some apartments today.
SAGE:
Did you sign anything?
ARTHUR:
I haven’t even looked at them yet.
SAGE:
Is someone going with you?
ARTHUR:
God, Sage, I’m an adult.
SAGE:
Sometimes you’re not great at seeing red flags.
ARTHUR:
Goddammit, I am a middle-aged man, shirtless and about to be divorced. This is a somewhat vulnerable position from which to have one’s life scrutinized. Lee, would you please turn that thing off?
It’s a terrible interview.
But the tattoo needle buzzing in the background sounds exactly as cool as I thought it would.
* * *
“What’s going on with you and Sage?” I ask once Max and I retreat to the attic, surrendering the living room to Sage’s makeshift tattoo parlor. “They’re baring their soul at the dinner table, and you’re shooting dirty looks?”
“What’s going on with you, Lee Swan?”
He plops down in Vincent’s chair, and I have to remind myself that it’s not Vincent’s chair anymore. It’s just a chair.
“I think I’ve been more than forthcoming on the subject of my goddamn life,” I say, sitting down next to him.
“I’m talking about what you said when you were recording yourself and you thought no one was listening. I’m talking about Claire, with her cute little freckles and nose ring,” he says, adding teasingly, “You player.”
I blush. “It’s not like it was something I could talk to anyone about.”
Max gives me a more serious look and a poke to my collarbone. “Then how come this is the first I’m hearing that you like girls?”
It would have been easier if he’d looked disgusted and judgmental about the cheating, but Max’s face is open and smiling and expectant. He doesn’t think I’m a terrible person. He’s waiting to hear my side of the story, which makes me feel even more guilty.
“Max…” For almost a minute, I can’t get any further than that. Every way I think about explaining what I’ve done only draws into sharp focus how much I’ve fucked up.
“Let me show you how to clean up this audio file,” I say instead.
“I know what you’re doing,” he says.
I get up from my chair and turn off the air conditioner. It’s miserably hot up here without it, but it’s too loud to have it on while I’m recording or editing.
“Okay, I don’t know what you’re doing,” Max says. “You know it’s ninety degrees outside, right?”
“It’ll stay cool long enough for us to do this.”
I import the interview with Sage and my dad into my editing software. Max watches intently as I show him how to edit out the coughs, how to amplify the buzz of the tattoo needle at the beginning to set the scene, then fade it out so it doesn’t distract from the interview. It’s a comforting and familiar rhythm, one I know by heart. It calms me down.
Maybe Max knows this, and that’s why he lets me spend a few minutes running my mouth about levels and ambient noise before he cuts me off mid-sentence and says, “Don’t tell me you did it because you thought girls ‘didn’t count.’ ”
I know that this time he’s not going to let me off the hook until I give him an answer.
“It wasn’t like that,” I say, turning away from the computer screen. “I could justify it to myself, like, well, I like girls, too. That’s part of who I am, and that’s not someone Vincent could be to me. And yes, maybe it crossed my mind that if I did get caught, maybe he wouldn’t be as angry with me.”
“That’s some slippery fucking logic, Lee Swan.”
I think he’s going to turn his back on me and walk out of the room, but instead he says, “Do you want to know why Sage and I are fighting?”
“Sure,” I say, grateful not to be talking about myself anymore.
“Because my sort-of girlfriend just broke up with me.”
“Wait, your girlfriend?”
“Her name’s Xochitl.” He takes out his phone and shows me a picture of a girl with purple hair that’s buzzed on the sides and long on top. She’s wearing a leopard-print coat and a studded choker necklace, and her teeth are bared to reveal pair of Halloween vampire fangs; however, her eyes have a puckish smile and her arms are thrown wide, like she’s about to hug whoever is taking her picture.
“Oh my,” I say. She looks cool and fascinating and fun. She looks like someone I’d want to know, and I can tell right away why Max likes her.
“I don’t know what it means or why it happened,” Max says. “All I know is we started hanging out, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and now suddenly there are a few more constellations in my sexual universe.”
“And you would like to develop an international space exploration program.”
“Nobody’s walked on the moon or anything, but yes. The problem is, Sage and Mom don’t like her. They think all this is her doing.” He gestures to his eyeliner, his piercings, his clothes.
“When did your parents get judgmental about style?”
Max rolls his eyes. “They think this isn’t ‘the real me.’ Mom says I warped myself into a different person just to get her attention, and they made me come to Memphis because they said they didn’t trust what I might get up to while they were out of town.”
“They let you stay by yourself when you were dating Niko.”
The saintly Niko, whom Max had been dating the last time I saw him. All Sage and Maggie could talk about was how talented and accomplished Niko was, what a fine young man, so good for Max.
“And they never had a problem with my presentation of self when it involved hanging out with bougie white people,” Max says. “I tried to explain it to Xochitl, but she knew how Niko and I were when we were together, having cute little Friday-night dates and dinners at each other’s houses. All sanctioned and approved of. She said it felt like I was keeping her off to the side, and I said I was still figuring some stuff out. So she said, ‘I’m not your experiment,’ and dumped me.”
“I’m so sorry, Max. That’s awful.”
“And now she won’t answer my texts, and Niko hates me. Sometimes I wish I could have been happy with what I had before I met her. Not that my life felt right before, but it was uncomplicated and mostly okay, and easier than… all this messiness.”
“We are a couple of messy bisexuals.”
“Speak for yourself. I didn’t cheat on anyone. You’re a messy bisexual. I’m an untidy queer.”
“I’m sorry that you’re stuck here in my attic with my bullshit.”
“Your attic is fine. Your bullshit is fine. But you know, Lee, what you did to Vincent… it’s everything people say is shitty about us. That we can’t make up our minds. That we can’t be with one person. That we cheat.”
“That’s not fair,” I say. I’m not trying to defend what I’ve done, but I also don’t think I should be expected to model ideal bisexual behavior—whatever that is—at all times. When straight people cheat, they aren’t failing the whole straight population. They are just failing one person.
And isn’t that bad enough?
“I’m pretty tired,” Max says, even though it’s only nine o’ clock, “and it’s starting to get hot up here.”
“You can take a nap in my room if you want. I’ll wake you when it’
s time to pick up Greg from the airport.”
“Could you maybe get him yourself?” I must seem like this hurts my feelings because his expression softens, and he says, “It’s like Sage was talking about. It’s exhausting being in a place where you don’t quite know the rules.”
I think about my editing chair and my computer and the way that working on an audio file centers me. That’s my space and my comfort, and Max is five hundred miles away from his.
I think about the rules of Memphis, which I know like breathing but that Max has to improvise with every single interaction. No wonder he needs extra time to recharge.
“I’ll sleep in the attic,” I say. “Get your rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
LEE SWAN: (studio)
The first time Claire and I hooked up, it was after an open mic at Java Cabana. The whole night had felt like a game we were playing, pushing each other to see how close we could come to the edge without going over. I touched her waist when I passed behind her at the register. She rubbed my shoulders while I worked the soundboard. And then, at the end of the night, I was in the storage closet putting away my gear, and I turned around and she was standing in the doorway, and it just happened.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I thought about breaking up with Vincent, I thought about telling him everything.
But then, the next time I worked with Claire, we both acted like the whole thing had never happened. So I decided that instead of telling Vincent, I’d tell myself that it didn’t mean anything and didn’t matter, and for a while that worked.
Until the next time.
An hour later, I’m alone, texting my dad from the baggage claim.
The flight from Los Angeles, connecting through New Orleans, had already arrived; the passengers had all deplaned.
I hadn’t seen Greg since I was eight, but I scan every face for some twinkle of familiarity. Thirty minutes later, there’s just one big yellow suitcase left, wrapped in duct tape, abandoned by its owner and circling the Memphis airport baggage carousel.
My mom said that Greg wouldn’t come, and my dad was so eager to point out that she was wrong, but there is one thing my mom is never wrong about, and that’s knowing when people are going to disappoint you.
CHAPTER 12 Objects of Destruction
LEE: (studio)
My dad takes a vacation day, and the two of us go out to White Station to look at an apartment.
ARTHUR: (driving)
I can’t live in a neighborhood called White Station. I mean, technically, it’s named after a person, but it’s a very strange coincidence that it just happens to be the first stop on the train out to White Flight Land.
Did you know that the founder of the Ku Klux Klan is still buried in a park downtown? They took down his statue, but they can’t figure out what to do with his grave. I mean, if Hitler was buried there, would people be whining about historical preservation, or would they just yank his corpse out and toss it in the river?
LEE: (studio)
He’s talkative, cheerful in his peculiar way.
The apartment we look at is in a modern complex, all metal and glass. The landlord shows us a place on the fourth floor with cream carpet and vertical blinds, two bedrooms, and a renovated kitchen.
ARTHUR: (sliding closed the balcony door)
It’s within my budget, there’s an extra bedroom, and I can walk to work.
LEE: (studio)
He doesn’t sound happy about it, though, and he doesn’t sign anything. We drive to the second place, a shotgun apartment back in Midtown.
There, the landlord immediately tells us…
LANDLORD: (fumbling of keys in a lock)
This place is cursed. The last three couples who moved in here all split up within a year. Nasty breakups.
LEE: (studio)
My dad’s face lights up at this news.
She tells us it was built in the 1920s for wealthy cotton brokers who used them as short-term rentals. The gentlemen would occupy the front rooms, and their servants would live in the back.
ARTHUR:
I do not have any servants.
LANDLORD:
Of course you don’t. But you might be interested in this.
LEE: (studio)
We’re standing in a tiny breakfast nook, in the part of the apartment that would have been for the servants, and there’s a bookshelf built into the wall. The landlord walks up to it and pulls it open to reveal a hallway that leads all the way to the front.
ARTHUR:
A secret passageway?
LEE: (studio)
My dad will never choose the apartment with an extra bedroom that’s within his budget and walking distance from work. He will sign a lease on the cursed fourplex with a secret passageway every time.
Maybe Sage would have pointed out all the red flags, but I don’t have the heart to do it. When I called him from the Memphis airport baggage claim last night and told him that Greg wasn’t on the flight, all he said was, “I see. Well, you’d better come on home.”
He doesn’t bring it up while we’re apartment hunting either, so on our way home from the cursed secret-passageway apartment, I finally ask him point-blank.
He shrugs and says, “Something probably came up.”
“It probably came up? He still hasn’t texted you to say where he is?”
“Haven’t heard from him since yesterday.”
“What if he’s dead?”
“Well, if he was dead, someone would have texted me by now to let me know.”
I can’t stand how calm he’s being.
After Dad and I get home, I find Max where I left him the night before, playing video games in my bedroom with the lights off and the air-conditioning on high, and it suddenly occurs to me that this is also a way to process a breakup. You didn’t need to throw yourself into an artistic project or a frenzied mission. You could sleep a lot, or reorganize your bookshelf, or watch ten movies in a row.
“Do you want to go to Java Cabana with me?” I ask.
“Give me five minutes,” he says. “I’m just finishing up the weapons system on this ship.”
I love how Max plays video games. He’ll never blow anything up with the ship he’s designing, even though that’s the point of the game. Instead he’ll spend an hour naming it, carefully selecting its shields and outfitting the crew, giving them all names and elaborate science credentials.
He pats the spot on the floor next to him and says, “Talk to me while I’m playing. Tell me what happened last night. What happened when you picked up Greg?”
“Well, as you can see, he’s not here.”
I explain the rest of it while Max names his ship the USS Kinsey.
“What do you think happened?” he asks.
“That’s why I want to go to Java Cabana,” I say. “I want to get some perspective.”
“Don’t you have any other friends?” Max asks. “Like, regular, non-work friends?”
I start to answer his question with an indignant Of course I do, but then I catch myself. It was a question of what I had time for. Of course, I had nearly unlimited time for Vincent and for Artists in Love, but when I started to feel frustrated or pent up, I never talked to any of my friends about it. I didn’t want them to know we weren’t perfect. Instead I spent my limited free time flirting with Claire at Java Cabana. Claire, who didn’t know me; Claire, who wasn’t friends with my friends; Claire, who existed completely outside my supposedly perfect life.
I know the real answer to Max’s question is I used to, or more accurately, I used to, but I messed it up.
Instead I tell him, “I have you. Besides, that’s not important. What’s important is getting to the bottom of a nineteen-year-old mystery.”
Having been holed up in my bedroom for the past fifteen hours, Max does not protest further. We walk down the street, through the Cooper-Young District, right in the heart of Midtown, past all the restaurants and music venues, past Burke’s Book Store, the comics shop,
and the kickboxing studio.
When we arrive at Java Cabana, Claire is behind the counter, eyeing the gear bag I have over my shoulder.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be here,” she says.
I’m somewhat taken aback. I know I’m not running sound for the open mic or the poetry slam or the shows, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I might be Brent levels of banned.
“Trudy’s not here, so I won’t say anything if you won’t,” she says, and I feel better knowing she’s at least partly on my side, that maybe she thought what had happened to me wasn’t entirely fair.
“Max and I are working on something, and I wanted to ask if we could interview some people in the shop. Person-on-the-street kind of thing?”
“I don’t know,” Claire says, suddenly looking less on my side.
“Can we interview you, then?”
“I’m working.”
“I’ll do all the dishes if you talk to us,” I say, looking at the sink behind us, overflowing with the blender containers for smoothies, which were such a pain in the ass to clean that the baristas left them to pile up until washing became unavoidable. “And wipe the tables.”
Claire smirks at me but doesn’t budge, holding out for a better offer.
“I’ll clean the bathroom, too,” I add, and Claire finally relents.
“Ask me anything.”
The little bell above the door jingles, and I hear a voice behind me. “Oh hey, I wondered when I’d see you around here.”
It’s Risa, the girl with the guitar who played first at the last, disastrous open mic I’d hosted. The girl who’d had stage fright and sung with her eyes closed, even though she played the guitar with rock-star confidence. She gives me a grin, which I return even though I’m surprised she’s concerned herself with my whereabouts.
“I know you’re here a lot.” I must look alarmed, because she quickly adds, “I promise I’m not following you around. I work at Burke’s. I see you in here sometimes when I walk past. But anyhow, I wanted to say thank you for being so nice to me the other night. It helped a lot.”