To me, it felt like danger was suddenly all around us, ready to pounce from all sides, but of course Joey couldn’t know why I felt this way. I hadn’t uttered a word to Joey about losing my composition book, hadn’t told him about my confrontation with Cliff, or that Joey and his job at the State Department had been the main target of Cliff’s threats. I would like to be able to say I kept this information from Joey to protect him, but that wouldn’t be truthful. The truth was I felt too angry, too short-changed, and too powerless to put any of this into words.
“I don’t understand,” I said now. I could hear the anger in my own voice, but I could do nothing to stop it. “Why did you bother to check in if you had a bad feeling about the clerk in the first place?”
“I don’t know, Miles,” Joey said, tired. “I didn’t think it was as bad as it is but you should’ve seen him just now. He was either on a telephone call or pretending to be, going on about reporting a guest to the police. He was looking at me over the desk the whole time he was talking.”
“You ought to have changed hotels a few visits ago, Joey. You’re reckless and pigheaded.”
Joey snapped to attention at my impatience. I was being irritable and nasty; I couldn’t help it. I was frustrated with the whole situation, which in my mind was somehow linked to the injustice of Cliff stealing what amounted to my father’s life story. Inexplicably, I decided to take my anger out on the person for whom I felt the most passionate feelings.
We went downstairs to check out. I agreed to wait outside on the street, so as not to raise the clerk’s ire any further. After a few minutes Joey came hustling out.
“Made me pay in full for tonight. Knew I wouldn’t argue. You should’ve seen him,” Joey said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look so smug.”
“Let’s hurry,” I said.
We took a taxi across town, farther west, nearer to the docks, where the hotels grew incrementally seedier every block you drew nearer to the Hudson. These were the hotels that played host to temporary “assignations,” as they were often dubbed by law enforcement and courts. The hotel where we finally stopped was not so bad as all that, but I was ready to complain about anything and everything.
“If these hotels get any seedier, next thing you know, we’ll be sleeping in the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” I said, referring to the notorious homosexual haunt as we stepped onto the curb.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joey replied.
Ah, I thought, so now you’ve grown a spine and are going to fight back, are you? “It means I have the feeling you’ve been through all this before.”
Joey’s mouth dropped open. He didn’t reply.
“Don’t tell me you don’t already know where to find the YMCA in Washington, or that you haven’t learned which hotels specialize in discretion. I’m surprised we’re not lousy with bedbugs already.”
“Why are you like this, Miles?” Joey asked in a quiet voice. “That cut . . . did someone beat you up? Were you jumped?”
“I told you,” I said. “Shaving accident.”
I could tell he thought I’d been attacked, that he was sorry for me, even worried. All at once, it broke my heart to read the intensity of concern inscribed in his face.
“Fine,” he said, sighing and avoiding a bigger argument. He turned towards the hotel entrance. “Let me go first. I’ll check us in, then you can follow.”
Joey checked in, and we found our way upstairs to our room without incident. We set down our suitcases and lay down on the bed, not touching, both of us mentally exhausted. Minutes ticked by. The faucet in the bathroom sink was suffering from a minor but noticeable leak. We stared up at the ceiling and listened.
I reached for him first. I don’t know why I did it; perhaps to get things over with. There was a certain gravity about our bodies coming together, just as there had been that first time on the houseboat, only this time it was much darker and more terrible and rote. We were rough, not tender. It was mechanical, and as we went through the motions I felt those first poisonous drops of hate mixed into our love.
When it was over, we wound up lying on our sides with our backs to each other. I waited for sleep to come, feeling the great and burdensome expense of Joey. He was—I was irrationally convinced—the reason I’d lost my composition book, or, at the very least, the number one obstacle that prevented me from getting it back. It galled me to think of what Cliff might’ve done with it and how he was going to stamp his name on it as if it had always been his. A tremor of true hate passed through me. Unable to direct it at Cliff, I directed it at the man lying next to me. Just before I fell unconscious, Joey rolled over and slipped his arm around me, pulling me close again.
It was as if he could feel the tide turning.
68
I called Joey at home the following Thursday and canceled our plans to see each other the next weekend.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“I wish you would stop asking that.”
“I wish I would stop feeling like I ought to.” He sighed. “C’mon. It was one bad weekend; let it pass. You promised you wouldn’t do this to me again.”
“I’m not. It’s just . . . we don’t have to see each other every weekend, Joey,” I said. “I’ve got a life to live. I’m sure you do, too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I haven’t been paying much attention to Janet. This isn’t fair to her.”
He laughed. “This isn’t fair to anyone,” he said. “But it’s the world we live in.”
“I’ve got plans to be with her this weekend,” I said. I knew this was a knife of sorts. I felt it pierce his skin, but instead of pulling it back, I decided to push it in further. “Janet and I have things to discuss. We’ll be looking for an apartment of our own soon.”
“Miles . . .”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone else to amuse you this weekend—and other weekends, too, perhaps.”
“Is that really what you think of me?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, and sighed. “Look, I’m sorry.” I was sorry, but the truth was, ever since Cliff had made his threat, I had grown frightened for—and intolerant of—Joey. Where I had once smiled pleasantly, now I squirmed whenever I thought of him, and felt my throat constrict. “I’d better go before my mother comes in and asks me who I’m talking to.”
He was quiet for a long moment, and I was tempted to hang up the phone.
“Do you love her?” he finally said.
“Who?”
“This silly girl of yours. Janet.”
I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I said finally.
“Do you love me?”
The line was silent for several seconds. “I don’t know,” I repeated. It was the truth, I realized. Joey’s only response was to hang up.
• • •
It is clear to me now that what I did next I did out of fear and a desperate desire to distance myself from Joey, though I wouldn’t have acknowledged this simple truth at the time.
I was out with Janet one evening when I impulsively reached for her hand and said, “Let’s get a room.” We were walking through the park, and as the sun was setting it was clear we were both chilled to the bone and would need to go somewhere to warm up. I couldn’t stand the thought of another diner with bad lighting, sitting across from Janet and making small talk.
Janet looked at me now, vaguely alarmed to be so easily offered the one thing she had requested for so long. “Let’s get a nice one,” I continued. “I’ve been saving up some money for our apartment, but we’ve done enough waiting.”
“All right,” she agreed. I could hear the nerves in her voice. She had wanted us to be together, but now that it was truly happening she was anxious, timid to follow through on her offer. We were at the south end of the park, and we left the park to stroll the streets nearby, l
ooking for a hotel that felt right.
“How about this one?” I said. It was an old historical hotel, small—nothing so grand as the Pierre or the Plaza—but with a dignified entrance and plush red carpet leading to a revolving door.
Once inside, we garnered some looks from the reception staff. It was not likely they received many colored couples for guests. They frowned but said nothing. I paid the deposit, and soon enough we were signing the hotel register. Janet’s hand was shaking, I noticed, as she scrawled the unfamiliar combination of words Janet Tillman, next to the line where I had written Miles Tillman. A bellhop came over to take our luggage to the room, and there was some embarrassment when we admitted we didn’t have any, for our sole purpose in taking the room was revealed. The clerk behind the desk gave a disapproving tsk, and I waited for him to throw us out or remind us they weren’t the sort of establishment that rented rooms by the hour, but he let it go. Without the bellhop to show us, we took the elevator up three flights and found our way to the room on our own, which was just as well, for we were both growing increasingly nervous.
I fumbled with the key in the door, and Janet tripped ever so slightly over the threshold. The room looked out into an air shaft—I felt certain the clerk had assigned us this room on purpose—but it was well furnished, the walls and the upholstery an elegant buttery-yellow color. I switched on a few lamps; then, remembering why we had come, I switched all of them off again, save one. Once Janet and I had taken our coats off, we stood there a moment, not knowing quite where to begin. The tension between us was excruciating.
“Let’s just hold each other awhile,” Janet suggested.
“Is that what you would like?” I asked stupidly.
“It would help.”
We lay down on the bed together, and I took Janet into my arms. Her body, I realized, was completely unfamiliar to me; our petting in the park had done nothing to help me memorize the ridges and curves one might expect a fiancé to know by heart. She was a thin woman, but as I touched her now, she seemed strangely soft and doughy, and I felt slightly nauseated. Several minutes passed. I was anxious to get things over with and began to run my hands more aggressively over Janet’s body, feeling under her shirt and toying with buttons. She warmed to me shyly at first, and began doing the same, until she was in the lead and I was nearly undressed. I reached over to the nightstand to click off the light of the remaining lamp, and our bodies became shadow shapes in the dark, moving and writhing as we labored. Janet winced a bit when we finally began in earnest, and I felt all the more sorry for her, and all the more responsibility to uphold my end of the deal. Our undertaking was a task, I realized, one at which I could not afford to fail. I understood I possessed some monstrous component within my personality to do this to Janet, to treat her so; but we were moving forward now, and forward was the only direction I wanted to go. I wanted to move out onto the horizon, far past Joey, and leave him behind.
Janet began to moan softly, and I began to sweat, thwarted by the sound. I felt as though I were climbing a mountain that was forever getting taller.
• • •
Afterwards, when it was over, we lay side-by-side for the better part of an hour, our sticky skin cooling. We both knew Janet had to go home to her aunt and uncle’s apartment, or else telephone and make some excuse they weren’t likely to believe. She got up to put her clothes on, and I got up to follow her, assuming I would escort her home.
“That’s all right,” Janet said, stopping me. “You ought to stay and enjoy the room. It cost a lot. And, well, I’d like to be alone. I feel . . . different.”
My heart convulsed. “About me?” I asked.
“No, no,” she reassured me. “Just different in the way a girl feels after.”
I hadn’t given Janet’s virginity much thought, but now it was clear she had, and she was presently experiencing all the feelings of farewell and nostalgia that came with it.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take you home?”
“I’m sure.”
I walked her to the door.
“Thank you, Miles,” she said. I felt terrible she was thanking me, and said nothing. But then she smiled with the pleased air of a smug child, and I realized part of her felt as though she had finally won some sort of battle; that, self-sacrificial as she was, she was also claiming victory for herself.
“I love you,” she told me, and kissed me good night.
Alone in the room, I felt more monstrous than ever. I switched on the lamps and looked around, wondering what to do with myself. I found a small spot of blood in the sheets, and it occurred to me that a great act of violence had just taken place.
I thought about Joey and wondered what he was doing. He would’ve enjoyed the room I was in now, and suddenly I was sorry he wasn’t there with me, sleeping next to me through the night. I picked up the telephone receiver from its cradle but thought better of it, and set it back down.
EDEN
69
Cliff’s novel was being hurried into print with what was, for publishing, breakneck speed. Mr. Nelson had made good on his word to make me a reader, Cliff was finally getting the recognition he so needed, and we even had less trouble with money, thanks to the $15,000 advance Cliff had received.
Cliff and I had even made plans to reveal the secret of our marriage, once and for all, to his family. (We would, we decided, eventually make a trip to Indiana to relay the same tidings to my parents in person.) The idea was—according to Cliff—we’d come out with the news during the book launch party, when his father was likely to be full of gin and happy about the novel they’d just published together.
“He’ll be in one of his mercurial moods,” Cliff said. “We can tell him just about anything then.”
This was actually a decent plan, for I’d witnessed Roger Nelson’s good moods when one of his authors turned out to be the talk of the town. He usually puffed up, happy to take credit for the book’s success. There was every reason to believe Cliff’s novel would be the toast of New York, and if this happened, there would be no better time to reveal the secret of our marriage. Mr. Nelson had given strict instructions to limit the number of galleys and to keep the publishing of Cliff’s novel somewhat secretive in order to build anticipation, but those few critics who’d received an advance copy were already praising the manuscript. It was touching—albeit perhaps a little egomaniacal—to see Mr. Nelson strutting around the office whenever someone paid the book a compliment.
“Good to know the boy soaked up something from his old man,” Mr. Nelson would say, taking credit for Cliff’s writing talent in his usual bombastic-yet-charismatic manner.
Once we’d hatched our plan to reveal our marriage to his parents, it suddenly felt more real. I was excited to finally be able to announce our union and be inducted as a real member of the Nelson family, but I was nervous, too, I suppose. Cliff and I decided to celebrate. I came home that day to find an atypically polite note from Cliff on the card table, saying he had gone to run some errands (I inferred this meant have a beer with Swish), but that he promised to be home for dinner no later than seven o’clock. Excellent! I thought. I’ll dash out to pick up some groceries and make a real, bona fide meal! It would be just the thing to show Cliff how much I cared.
I made a quick round of the shops and returned home in a little less than half an hour. I’d gotten steak—Cliff’s favorite—and had designs to sear it in a pan over the hot plate, something my Modern Gal’s Cookbook promised me was possible. The trick was to get the timing right so the steak would be nice and hot around the time Cliff walked in the door. So I set about boiling the potatoes and mashing them, and then boiled up some spinach, too. Just as I finished the spinach, it dawned on me that part of a meal was the ambience, and that the apartment could do with a good scrub.
I tidied up our clothes; Cliff’s were generally strewn all over the floor. I found a clean floral sheet a
nd draped it over the card table. We had a few empty wine bottles with candles melted into their necks (left over from a brief period when Cliff and I had gotten into a tight spot and failed to pay the electric bill) and I put those out on the table, planning to light them right before Cliff was expected home. I looked at the clock and saw I still had an awful lot of time on my hands, so I thought to quickly scrub the floor. Once that was done, I would fix myself up and set the table.
The floor of our apartment was made of ancient wood, badly in need of refinishing. The porous wood attracted dirt into every tiny groove in its grain, and it took a great deal of elbow grease to get it even remotely clean. I put on my rubber dish-gloves, and got down on my hands and knees. Just as I was making headway with a particularly grimy plank, it suddenly sprang up, completely free. Stunned, I lifted it to find a hollow cavity just below.
In the dim light of the overhead bulb, I could see there was something down there. Carefully, I reached in and felt around. My hand hit something—something paper—and I pulled it out.
It was a composition book. When I opened it up, I recognized the sentences instantly; I had been intimately familiar with these sentences over the last few weeks. They were handwritten, not typed, and the handwriting was definitely not Cliff’s. I flipped to the inside cover of the notebook and saw the owner had printed his name in the top left-hand corner: MILES TILLMAN.
My heart sank with the cold chill of dread.
I sat there, not moving, just taking in the sight of my absurd rubber-gloved hands holding the composition book. Its existence repelled me, I realized, but it didn’t surprise me. That was the worst part: realizing I wasn’t the least bit surprised. Subconsciously, I had always known. I had known the day Miles had stopped by the apartment; I’d read the look on Miles’s face. I had seen Cliff’s black eye when I came home later that night. I had known and I had chosen not to know.
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