Women have other reasons their hearts explode, she said.
Still, given the opening, and one was always curious, she put her fingers around it, through his pants, just to see what he was talking about, which she should not have done since in the end she knew she wasn’t sleeping with him. Lucy always said she judged by their hands, which was pretty common but wasn’t in Anna’s experience all that dependable—or big hands were pretty dependable but smaller hands could go either way; another friend, from college, Maya, swore she was always right and she could tell by the lines around a man’s mouth, a kind of ampleness, she called it. Anna thought this was ridiculous. She had never found a pattern. So there it was, Eric’s manhood—that she thought of this word was the first signal she wasn’t sleeping with him. It was thick and certainly long enough and he kind of arced and moaned when she took it, and then he said, into her neck, “Mmm, do you like that, baby?” in this grotesque porn voice and at that point it was all over. He had spent forty or fifty on drinks and food, so she’d paid for the movie, and after the ten-minute conversation about why she wasn’t sleeping with him, and his bitter Fuck you to end the evening, she spent twenty-eight dollars on a car service from Boerum Hill up to 121st Street.
She thought next day that the evening was really over before it started, when she got to the bar a few minutes ahead of him. There were these people there, a group, three women and two guys, all in major outfits, corpies Lucy called them, very corporate and not long out of college and the types where you knew they were not going to stay in New York for that long after they married and you wished, badly, that they weren’t here now either, and four of the five had what looked to be the newest Motorola cell phones on the bar—this was like twelve grand in cellular technology sitting amid the seven-ounce vats of Cosmos they’d been served, Anna figured the phones had to have come from the jobs. One of the phones buzzed and began to wriggle across the zinc and the woman who grabbed it up practically shrieked: Oh my god I can’t believe he’s calling me, oh my god! And so they passed the fucking phone around, one to the other to the other, looking at this poor fool’s number in the readout and laughing and screaming and making comments. It was one of the ugliest little social moments of recent months; it had the bitter taste of a city and a society in deep decline; it was, if she was still allowed to use such words, immoral and poisonous, and at that moment she thought to herself, what exactly am I doing here? But of course she stayed.
* * *
NOT MANY WEEKS later, she was coming home after dark one evening—she’d gone to HR about John so she figured her days were numbered and she’d celebrated this beginning of the end by having drinks with Lucy and Mick. The two of them were into going to this club later where some blues band was playing but Anna had wanted to go home and shower and change. She was walking down Frederick Douglass from the station at one-two-five, as Lou Reed called it, and four kids were making their way down the street ahead of her, boys, walking that walk, stiff kneed and shoulders dipping, that put-on young-male self-confidence, little guys maybe twelve, learning their moves, T-shirts down to their knees, shorts hanging mid-shin, sneakers untied, and one of them was carrying in two arms a black cat whose rump hung heavily over the crook of the boy’s left arm, tail dangling down and twitching like Beatrix Potter’s cat watching the goldfish pond in Peter Rabbit. And Anna, walking faster than they—people around here walked so slowly it drove her insane—approached the boys and the cat’s tail flicked back and forth, dark cat, dark night, that cat the blackest thing on a charcoal street. She was passing them and one of the kids was saying, Yeah well the cops come, tell him, aight? Cuz tell him the cops roll up on you no reason and they fuck with you… It struck her as a Norman Rockwell scene if Norman Rockwell had had a clue about this other side of American life. But no, it was more than that: she perceived it internally then, one of those occasions when one realized this scene, this here-and-now, this reality, was exactly what it was and what it had always been intended to be, and, for now, it was gentle and numinous: the present moment. And what surprised her was how happy it made her, just for a few minutes—how filled with joy.
* * *
BROWN & CO. issued its IPO in 1994 and was opening stores in Canada and Europe and George was invited to the opening night and after party for Louis’s new play, which had already in previews become a big deal. It was making his old friend famous. He had been known before this but now he was on the cusp of Very Big. The letter arrived at George’s office with a wax seal and promised two tickets at the Will Call window. George examined the seal and then got a loupe from design to look closer: some kind of Mughal-era pornography, the two-backed beast, but very hard to see. The Post Office would be appalled.
George was at a moment: he liked himself in his expensive clothes. In his suits and black cashmere shirts. Nate was still mostly in DC with Marina. He went out frequently, plays, films, exhibitions, etc. He was in an easy relationship that he knew wouldn’t last. At this party, after the play, Louis approached him. George was standing alone with a drink—he’d come alone, some instinct told him to.
Oh, look at you, Louis said, in your gorgeous suit! Bespoke! Are you bespoken for these days? Is that a hint of gray at the temples? Are you almost forty like me? Don’t answer all at once.
I’m younger than you, as I recall, George said. Suit’s made for me in Bogotá. I have a son, an ex-wife, occasional lovers, so go ahead, give it your best shot. Since I don’t go for men I don’t give you good odds. But hell.
Shot indeed, Louis said. George smiled and nodded and took a large sip of his wine.
I got there once, Louis said. Remember? ’Twas a dark and stormy night.
I remember no such thing plus it didn’t happen, George said. Plus I’m not high and drunk and feeling warm.
Straight men are such liars, Louis said.
You still want to die in the doorway of a Tad’s Steakhouse? George asked.
Tad’s! Louis said.
I thought about that for years, George said. Made me laugh every time. Whenever I saw one.
Are there still Tad’s Steakhouses around anywhere? Do you eat there?
I never ate there. You ate there.
Only once, Louis said.
That’s not what you claimed. You said you loved them.
I exaggerated, Louis said. It’s still a flaw. The idea, the existence and proposition of Tad’s Steakhouse, it held ironic appeal. But the meat was inedible. Anyway I don’t eat meat anymore at all. I’m really, really healthy. I work out. And you, you look great as always.
I make it to the gym once or twice a week, George said. Just enough to fight the flab to a draw.
You don’t have flab, Louis said.
Yes, I do, George said.
It’s well hidden. Oh no, speaking of—have you seen Arthur?
Not in a long time. Five or six years maybe.
He’s big as a house. A big house. It’s so sad. He’s a great photographer, you know. I mean really fine. But he’s so fat now I don’t know how he moves around.
Several people came by and greeted Louis. He dealt with them, giving them a few Louis-y lines each, then turned back to George.
I would have introduced you but I can’t remember who they are, Louis said. Back to our snowy, snowy night.
George looked at him. It’s a very good play, he said. Congratulations.
Thank you, Louis said. You may change the topic on a dime if you’re complimenting me.
The ghost of Wilde at the table, I was almost out of my chair. And the assistant, he’s so good. Anyway. People were crying.
I know, Louis said. Not you though.
I don’t cry at plays, I cry at movies, George said. I cried through the whole Sid Caesar documentary—
But it was funny, Louis said.
I know, I know, George said. But think of all that’s been lost. Anyway some people around me were crying. Not at Sid Caesar—tonight.
Don’t you love that? Louis said. Crying
in public? There should be more crying in public. I was on a train out to Long Island the other day to see my mother, who still speaks to me, unlike my father, and on the train the conductor, a woman, she came to take my ticket. I held it out to her, then she shook her head and walked into the door area and I couldn’t really see her but she seemed to be leaning against the doors face-first and—I assumed—crying. She came back for my ticket after a couple of minutes and sure enough, teary, red eyes, the whole thing, a slightly younger than middle-aged woman, a little chubby, weeping at work. On the train.
What about? George said.
Did I ask her? I did not, Louis said. We’ll never know now. That’s what I thought too—I want to know but I never will. So I said to her, I gave her my ticket and I said, Oh, I’m so sorry, and she said, which amazed me, I think only a woman would say this, It’s not you. Yeah. Du-uh. Of course it’s not me. You just met me. Women are insane, aren’t they? Like why would I think it’s me. So I said I know it’s not me but I’m sorry anyway and she went on to the next person and another and a few feet away I heard her say it all gets to be too much sometimes. To another woman she said this. It was almost as if she were talking about the weather but I wanted to say, honey, it’s not every day the conductor lady is weeping on the Long Island Rail Road. Bernie!
He reached for the arms of a friend. Bernie! This is George! From college! Bernie and I roomed together in the East Village circa what?
Like ’83, ’84, ’85, Bernie said. I know in ’86 I moved to Bennington for two years.
Those years, Louis said. Of dying. And later years, of dying.
Well, your play.
We had fun though, didn’t we? We had fun!
Bernie said, Fun’s not really in your repertoire, Louis.
That’s unfair. I love fun.
Fun’s not really in your repertoire, Louis… George would hear this in his head later.
When Bernie had gone off, George said, Bernie seems something of an imperious bitch. But maybe it’s me.
No, it’s him, Louis said. Once you get close to him he gets even worse. Overwrought and vicious. A termagant, a virago. Queer men have to start owning these terms because why should the harpie women have all the fun.
The Play—he would forever after call it The Play, would never use its title as he did with his others, as opposed to his others—was to be released in two parts. Part I opened in London, traveled to San Francisco (the San Francisco audiences were outlandish and rowdy and emotional, shouting at the stage and weeping, which Louis said he didn’t wish to be moved by and struggled not to be, but was) and finally opened in New York considerably revised. They cried in New York too, but not like in San Francisco. He’d been working on it for five years. And even before that, before he knew what the play would be. One short act of it had played at that church on East 5th Street across from Marina’s old apartment, more than a decade ago. George had seen it there. The final play kept the same title—God’s Beautiful Men. An updated story of Lot. The three angels who destroyed everything. Except it was set in 1986. In the earlier one-act the three angels are invited to dinner with Abraham; he takes them to a restaurant. The destruction was AIDS. Which was not to say there weren’t explosions. The final Broadway production had convincing explosions, bombs depicted onstage. Frightening the audience. It had made George jump in his seat.
Louis left to make the rounds. Someone tapped George on the shoulder. It was Anna. She looked sophisticated. Beautiful shoes, he noticed. Running cream to yellow. Makeup. Hair.
Wow, he said.
Wow yourself, she said.
You’ve stayed in touch with Louis?
I did some work for the GMHC. We reconnected.
What kind of work? George said. This is my subtle way of finding out what you’re doing.
Nonprofit governance, she said. How to establish a board, by-laws, that kind of thing.
George looked at her.
Legal work? she said.
Right, right, George said. I got lost there. I kept thinking, holy shit, it’s been ten years.
Eleven and a half, Anna said.
Well I guess you passed the bar, he said.
I did. That and I found some jobs too. You’ve built some kind of empire that’s part of the language now. Soy half-caff latte.
George covered his ears—It burns! It burns! he said. I’m personally responsible for most of that.
It’s an achievement, she said.
So is designing a prison, I guess, he said.
Anna looked at him. A moment’s pause.
I heard you got married, she said.
Yeah, I did. We have a son now. We’re divorced. My ex lives in DC with him and I go down to see him. Or she brings him up.
Hard to read her face.
What’s his name? she said.
Nate. Nathaniel—but we call him Nate.
Good sturdy New England name, she said. Like you.
I’m sturdy? George said.
Well, you’re New England anyway, Anna said, and they laughed.
And if I remember correctly, she said, you’re sturdy enough.
She eyed him. He felt a little jolt… if I remember correctly…
What about you? he said.
I married a charming handsome cad, she said. Sent him packing. I just held on to the most charming and handsome memories and let the rest go.
And so?
Now I have a cat.
Probably better, George said.
In some ways, Anna said.
Would you like to get a drink? George said.
Now?
Sure.
Anna’s eyes were lowered. About to his chest level. As if she were staring deep into space, except right through his breast bone. She remembered the sting, that day outside Charivari. She wondered if he did. Memories swelled in behind that one—came up and seemed to crowd into her throat. She looked up from his chest into his eyes.
No, she said. I don’t think so.
* * *
ONE DAY BURKE announced he wanted George to fly with him to California to meet what he called these people.
Montecristo Coffees of San Francisco, Burke said, sounding more reverent than he usually managed, although if anything made him reverent it was the coffee business. He said, They’re like the gods of coffee importers.
The red-eye and an early check-in, at the Drake, no less; Burke was feeling a little grandiose. Each lay down for a couple of hours before showering and gathering for a ten o’clock meeting at the Montecristo offices about three blocks north.
Montecristo’s head of sales: We are in touch through the year with virtually every farm in our network, that’s six hundred farms. Not all of them get to sell to us in any given year, it depends on the crop outcomes. Right now—example—we have a farmer, Gustavo Haberman, he’s in southern Mexico, near the border with Guatemala. Beautiful estate. Fincas, the estates are called. Except this is Chiapas, there’s a rebel group in that part of the country, the EZLN, informally known as the Zapatistas, you’ve heard of them. Gustavo isn’t a big landowner, it’s cooperative-style management with profit-sharing, he’s married to an Indigenous woman, so he’s essentially safe, but the district is surrounded by the Mexican army. You can’t blame the EZLN, the government is as corrupt as they come and has broken promises over and over about land reform and Indigenous rights. But the conflict keeps interrupting the traffic down to the coast. So we have approved Haberman’s shipments and we have paid him an upfront percentage to help get the coffee out, about seven thousand dollars, which is not much but it goes a longer way there. We have no guarantees anything is going to make it out or if they’ll even have a crop. There are a dozen situations like this in the coffee-growing parts of the world. There are a lot of gambles.
The sales guy said: Small-batch roasting. Delicate process depends on the bean. And when you get it you grind it medium coarse, not too fine, and put it through a drip by hand. You prime the grounds with a little water then a s
low regular pour, water at ninety-three or ninety-four centigrade—never boiling. You have to make these coffees by hand. You can’t just dump them into some monster urn from hell and shoot the boiling water through. You have to make them in a drip—Chemex or some other glass pot, ground and dripped by the order. The coffee has to have a set amount of time in contact with the water, not too much, not too little.
Burke nodded at the guy, rapt. George was thinking, Oh yeah? Really? Make a kind of show of it then, the drama of your coffee. He started considering outfits.
I don’t see how you can do this at the scale you’re trying to work at, said the sales guy. Then he took them around for a little tasting. The coffees were in fact superb, each with a slightly different feeling in the mouth. Burke was in a religious state: transcendence and conversion.
Burke’s idea, laid out on the plane: he drew small careful pictures with his mechanical pencil on the yellow-brown endpapers of the novel George was reading, showing a medium-large store site, counter midway into the space and on the left from the entrance, with seating up front as always, a few more tables beyond the regular food and drink counter, and against the rear wall a bar, with small circles for stools and, depicted as ovals, two baristas behind it.
Burke said, We can have the normal counter as always—urns, paper cups, plastic lids, you can be in and out in two minutes depending on the line—and then we can have the coffee bar in back, literally like a bar, one to two tenders, ready to take the specialty orders. They can hand out tasters when they’re not busy.
Crazy Sorrow Page 24