Grisha had laughed nervously then. Nate’s face darkened, grew impatient. The dock beneath shifted and groaned.
“It’s not a good idea,” Grisha said.
“Boys,” Brigid said as she came down the slope. She wore a lambswool sweater in a pale salmon color and blue shorts. Her voice was smooth and clear. Grisha tried to pull his leg away from Nate, but Nate cupped his fingers on the inside of Grisha’s thigh and held him firm.
“Tell him,” Nate said, looking back and up at Brigid. Her expression shifted, pinched slightly, and then she stooped behind Grisha and put her arms around his neck.
“It’s okay,” she said. She stroked his neck and put her face against his cheek. She smelled like flowers. Her arms were taut and firm. There was strength running through her, like a spring wound tight. “It’s okay. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Grisha was quiet. Nate dug his nails into Grisha’s leg. Brigid shot him a hard look.
“You’re being a brute,” she said. “He’s just a boy. You’re being a real bastard about it.”
“The hell I am,” Nate said.
“Do you not like boys, is that the problem?” Brigid asked. “You don’t, do you?”
Grisha closed his eyes and tried to think, but the smell of flowers was in him, drowning out everything.
“No, I do. Well. I don’t know what I like. I don’t like anything,” he said.
Nate snorted. He let go of Grisha and took out some cigarettes from his pocket. Grisha wet his lips.
“Oh, we’ve found something he likes,” Nate said. He lit the cigarette with an impossibly elegant gesture, and something in Grisha grew hot and keen, like the end of a knife left in the sun. Brigid drew her hand across his chest in smooth circles in a gesture that Grisha thought of, with some mild anger, as maternal, as loving, as kind.
“He’s just a boy,” she said again, this time a whisper pressed to the nape of Grisha’s neck. “Just a baby boy.” Grisha could feel the press of her heat close on his back. He counted the freckles on her wrist and her forearm, watched the fine white hair shift in the wind. Nate’s blue smoke was on them, hung in the cool air and seemed almost solid.
“He’s not a baby,” Nate said. “He knows what he wants.”
“I don’t,” Grisha said. “I don’t know anything.” Brigid laughed at him, but he hadn’t been trying to be funny. He had noticed that when he spoke to older people and tried to be honest about his thoughts or his feelings, they always laughed at him, as if he were telling some sort of joke.
Brigid kissed his neck, his shoulder, his cheek. She patted his chest and stood up. He felt the boards flex under them.
“Don’t bully him,” she said. “If he doesn’t want it, he doesn’t want it,” and she left, going up the hill and then into the house, which, caught in the glow of the sinking sun, was a little bead of light among the dark trees.
Nate gave him the cigarette. Grisha sucked it down greedily.
“She’s right, you know. I won’t bully you. Hell, I don’t know. I just thought we could have fun together. The two of us, I mean.”
“I don’t know about that,” Grisha said. “You’re my teacher. You’re my boss. I don’t know.”
“I’m not your boss. I don’t pay you. It’s a volunteer position,” Nate said. “Is that it? You want money? I can give you money.”
Grisha narrowed his eyes, which stung from the smoke. He picked at his teeth with his thumbnail, swallowed.
“Money?” he asked.
“How much?”
“I don’t want to talk about money,” Grisha said, dropping off the pier into the cold lake. He held his breath for as long as he could, and when he emerged, Nate was gone.
* * *
At the party, Grisha spotted Victor leaning against the credenza in the front hall. When they had arrived, Grisha had seen the three of them in the circular mirror that hung above the credenza, which was adorned with small dark statues made of wood or ebony. The reflection had startled him. He had not recognized himself for a moment. He was tall and dark-skinned, which seemed even more prominent between Enid and Victor. The summer suit they had bought for him, elegant, cut slim along the line of his body, seemed like an oxymoron of a sort. He had grown up thinking of himself as ugly, as stupid, but here he was among all of the beautiful things in life—fine architecture, sumptuous design, elegant food on delicate plates, surrounded by an array of grayish-white people who smiled and said erudite things. It had surprised him, that was all. But now, here was Victor looking forlorn, looking tired. He wore a dove-gray turtleneck, and there wasn’t a speck of hair or lint or dust on him. Grisha brushed his fingers across the velvety surface of Victor’s sleeve and smiled.
“There’s my boy,” Victor said, putting his arm around Grisha, locking it at the elbow so he couldn’t get free. Victor sniffed. “Smoking, how bad. You don’t deserve that body.”
Grisha flinched a little, but Victor just settled him closer while they leaned against the credenza. At the end of the hall that opened into the interior of the living room, they could see the backs of the other guests. Victor’s hand rested between Grisha’s shoulders. In his other hand, a glass with two fingers of whiskey. Victor lifted the glass, and Grisha took it. He sipped from it the way a child might. It was bitter but sweet, and it burned a channel down his throat when he swallowed. Grisha crossed his arms. He made a noncommittal sound. His stomach ached. The smoke had turned sour on his belly. He had been trying to quit now for some weeks. It kept coming back to him, nestling up to him like a faithful animal.
When he had stopped smoking at Victor’s request, the colors of the world had deepened and grown richer. The blue of the sky outside of his room at their house, the green of the leaves, all of it felt supple and clear. When he had stopped smoking, everything had grown crisp and sharp. He could see. He could run again without heat in his lungs. The ache in his knee subsided. He ran long hours in the park. He became fleet-footed, agile again, as when he was gangly and fourteen in a Chicago suburb, dreaming of going pro with his friend Marshall, or at least to Northwestern. He turned away from the memory of Marshall’s face, because it came, in his mind, with the memory of Marshall’s mother, the long, dark pull of her stare in the rearview mirror as she drove them home from practice, all sweaty and tired and bruised up. Marshall had turned fifteen and then sixteen and then seventeen, and then something in Marshall’s brain had burst on a rainy day in October. Marshall had died in the old clubhouse at the edge of the park fields where the two of them used to go sometimes, before practice, to smoke or beat off or test each other, feel the changing shapes of their bodies, how suddenly they’d become men, or something like men. That day, Marshall had gone there alone, to be alone, because of an argument they’d had in geometry. A stupid fight about something that Grisha could not remember, that’s how unimportant it had been. He’d gone there all alone. Dropped dead. Right there. By himself, with the sound of the rain tapping on the window, on the roof. He had found Marshall. He had found him and run across the street to the small corner store, panting, doubled over. He’d said, “Call someone, call someone.” But by then it was already too late. The doctor said that Marshall’s death had been sudden and merciful. When he thought of Marshall now, he thought of Marshall’s mother those years before, when she’d looked at him like she wanted something, and how slowly that look changed in memory from wanting to hating.
But he’d gone and smoked tonight anyway, knowing what it would do to his body, knowing it would make him sick.
He’d done it. Because he was stupid.
“Where are you, space cadet?” Victor asked, and his hand was moving around Grisha’s side to his hip, in the way Enid’s had done. “Are you all right?” His dark blue eyes were narrowed in concern. Grisha smiled, nodded.
“I’m fine,” he said. His lower lip twitched.
“I’ve been tired myself,” Victor said with a soft laugh. His palm was warm against Grisha’s neck. “The summer’s almost over.”
> “So it is,” Grisha said with a brief smile.
“Can you believe it’s been three months already? Where does the time go?”
Grisha pressed the rim of the glass to his gums and nodded. It had seemed like no time at all since he’d come to live with them.
Three months was no time. Three months was no life at all.
“Well, we’re very proud of you,” Victor said. “You’re going to make a fine architect.”
“Come on, Victor,” Grisha said, shaking his head. “It’s impossible. You know that.”
“It’s not impossible. Not for you,” Victor said, and his eyes were damp, and glistening, which startled Grisha. Victor’s thumb brushed Grisha’s carotid artery. Grisha swallowed. Victor passed his thumb higher until it ran across Grisha’s lips, and he kissed it. Victor’s eyes grew darker, damper. “You’re going to be magnificent.”
“I’m going to be a corporate chump,” Grisha said, trying to laugh, but finding his voice thick and raspy. Victor drew him in for a hug, and the two of them embraced in front of the mirror. Grisha put his chin on Victor’s shoulder, felt the sudden tight security of Victor’s arms close around him. It was different from what their bodies usually did together, and Grisha felt the curious, weightless sweep of what he’d felt when Marshall had hugged him those years ago. His body, which often grew hot and stiff with inflammation, felt whole and good and loved. That’s what it was, he realized. Tenderness. Love. No one had ever been in love with Grisha before. It had never occurred to him that someone might fall in love with him. He had loved Marshall. He had even loved Nate and Brigid. But no one had ever loved him, or made him feel loved. He felt dizzy and hot and a little sad. He could smell Victor’s cologne, dense and musky. Someone loved him. Someone loved him. Someone loved him.
“You’re nobody’s chump, kid,” Victor said. “And if you ever… well, you’re not.”
“Thank you, Victor,” Grisha said. “For everything.”
“Of course,” Victor said, laughing. “You sound so formal. Like you’re heading off to war.”
“Oh,” Grisha said, and he was embarrassed to feel warmth in his eyes. “Oh God. You’re right.”
“We support our troops,” Victor said, and Grisha pulled away from him, blotting at his eyelashes with his thumb. “What? My jokes aren’t that bad.”
“No, it’s me,” Grisha said. He shook his head and tried to laugh it off. “I’m a real baby tonight.”
“You are a baby,” Victor said. “Positively fetal.”
“And what does that make you?”
“Don’t be mean, Grisha,” Victor said, and his voice was hard. His eyes glinted. There was tension in his jaw. Grisha reached out and tried to brush Victor’s cheek with the back of his hand, but Victor slapped his hand away.
“Come on,” Grisha said, trying again, and Victor slapped his hand away again, so Grisha pushed away from the credenza, caught Victor under his throat, and shoved him with one quick motion against the edge of the archway. They were in the shadow of the foyer. Victor’s eyes narrowed, turned dark. His mouth fixed itself in a stern line. “Look at you,” Grisha said.
“Look at me,” Victor said, and Grisha felt Victor’s palm groping between his legs. Such ugly desperation.
“Don’t be pathetic, Victor,” Grisha said, but Victor was already pushing out toward him, pulling at Grisha’s waist. Grisha felt hot. His mouth dry. He dug at Victor’s lips with his free hand, pried at them, but Victor clamped his mouth shut. “Open like a good boy.” Victor did not open, so Grisha pressed on his throat and leaned closer so that their noses touched. Victor’s hands stilled on Grisha. He could feel the fingers, stiff, taut, like suspension wires keeping the two of them together. The noise of the party fell away.
Victor was breathing hard. A white foam beaded at the corner of his mouth.
“Open,” Grisha said, low, and Victor did open, just enough for Grisha to wedge his lips apart. Grisha inhaled and spat into Victor’s mouth. He snapped Victor’s mouth shut, saw the wild, furious beat of the vessels in Victor’s eyes. “Swallow,” he said. The cartilage in Victor’s throat rose and fell, and Grisha watched his pupils contract. He could feel it in Victor’s body, could feel Victor plummeting down through himself into humiliation and then into pleasure.
“Is that what you’re proud of?” Grisha asked. Victor’s muffled groan was neither assent nor denial, but it left Grisha feeling damp and unhappy. He let Victor go.
Enid’s laughter trailed into the hall.
“I’ll see what she’s up to. Do you want another?” Grisha asked. Victor was coughing, massaging his neck. Grisha felt a little guilty. A little sad about the redness. The bruise.
“No, I’ll come with you,” Victor said, his voice thready. He put his arm back around Grisha’s waist and drew him along the hall into the living room, where the others were sitting elegantly on the lean, muscular furniture in its modern gray tones. Enid was near the archway, across the room, at the edge of the kitchen. She was talking brightly to three other women of relatively the same age and size as her. She looked up, saw him, and waved him over. Victor let out a low chuffing sound, like a laugh.
“Grisha,” someone said at his left, and Grisha turned to see Ramona.
“Hello,” he said. On the long gray couch, two men and two women, their skin a rich, deep tan. Open shirt collars, black dresses. The room had the inflection of a funeral or a wake. They were all laughing.
“Do you have a moment?” she asked. “I’d like your help with something.” Victor let him go.
“I’ll go see about Enid,” Victor said, moving away toward Enid, across the room. Ramona’s hand was on Grisha’s elbow.
“I do,” Grisha said.
“This way,” she said. “Please, if you’d just come with me this way.” She paused, glanced at him over her shoulder. Grisha felt a familiar tightening in his stomach, that stutter-step that comes right before recognition. He followed her into the hall and then into a small room off from it. The air was cool. The room was dark. Grisha held his breath.
There was just enough light down the hall for Grisha to make out the depth of empty space in front of him. The music from the front of the house was louder here. It was some cover of an old song by Jacques Brel. He recognized it because it was Victor’s favorite. He had come to know things like that about Victor and Enid: Their favorite songs. Their favorite meals.
“Are you enjoying the party?” Ramona asked, and Grisha could make out the shape of her in the dark now, near the window on the far wall. He stood in the doorway.
“Yes,” he said, “though I guess I’m getting a little tired.”
“Nonsense,” she said firmly. “I don’t believe that’s true at all.” She was crouching near the wall, rooting through something.
“Would you like a light?” he asked.
“No, just a moment, just a moment. Be patient.”
Grisha nodded, but then he realized that she probably could not see him, and that was just as well. Patience came easily to him. Waiting had become a habit, like smoking. Waiting had as much to do with his relationship with Enid and Victor as the sex. The room smelled faintly sweet and damp, like an ice cream store.
“Here,” she said, coming back to him. She handed him something heavy and cold, one of those plastic coolers. “For the party. We made a dessert, and we forgot to put it out.”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, of course.” He carried the cooler into the hall.
“It’s torte. With salmon roe. We thought it’d be a nice note to end the summer on,” she said, smiling, and smoothing the front of her dress down. They stood in the hall very close to one another. Over her head on the wall was the black-and-white framed photo of her and a man not much taller than her and a small, sexless child. They were not smiling in the picture. She did not look like herself, so much so that Grisha wondered if it wasn’t her in the photo but someone else. It could be that way, but he’d never asked.
“Sounds great,” h
e said, lifting the cooler higher so that it didn’t slip. She raised a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. She noticed him looking over her shoulder and she turned and saw that he was looking at the picture. She cleared her throat.
“That’s his first wife,” she said. “She died. Cancer. It was very sad. It was very hard on him. He was alone for a long time before we found each other.”
“Oh. It’s nice you ended up together” he said, but she didn’t seem to hear him or care one way or another what he said.
“That’s his first wife,” she said again with a voice that was like tightening a screw. Something in that moment darkened and dilated, and it felt like time itself was opening up, making space. But she didn’t say anything. She ran her hand down the back of her dress, gave him a tight a smile, and moved down the hall. After a few steps, she stopped and looked at him again. “It’ll melt if you don’t hurry.”
* * *
The torte was beautiful—a matte crimson surface studded with clusters of orange salmon roe. It rested on a small transparent dais in the cooler, which had been filled with liquid nitrogen. It was as if it rested on a cloud. Grisha set the cooler on the coffee table in front of the sofa and stood up. The other guests gathered around, and he felt some small measure of pride though he had only carried it.
“It’s gelato,” Ramona said, standing near his elbow. “You wouldn’t know it from looking, but it’s gelato.” She rested her head against his shoulder.
A man, whom Grisha presumed to be her husband, came across the room with a knife. He playfully jabbed it in Grisha’s direction, and he said, “Watch your hands, young man.” He winked at Grisha. He had dense, leathery skin hanging under his neck, and very pale eyes. His mustache was bristly and dark. He wore wool slacks though it was summer.
The man leaned down and cut the cake with a smooth, even motion. Grisha watched the long muscle in his forearm extend and contract. The man made small, encouraging sounds to himself as he cut the torte into sections, and Grisha watched the pale interior of it emerge. The scent of coffee lingered in the air, and he looked up to see Enid carrying a tray with small espresso cups and a small carafe.
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