“I saw him last week,” Katrin said.
“Who, Davey?”
“Rich,” she said. “He was out with Lucas and Miranda, I ran into them at the Melrose.”
The blazer in front of him oozed the distasteful exhaustion of too many board meetings. He uncrimped his lips, flicked it past, and without meaning to said, “How’s he doing?”
“Hon,” she started.
“Why’d you tell me if you didn’t want to talk about it?”
Katrin snapped her fingers and he met her stare over the rack. “He’s fine, and he asked how you were holding up, which was very awkward for me, if you have to know. He wondered if you wanted to come see Stevie sometime.”
Stevie, their six year old calico who had no business living in an ambitiously ratty Chicago storefront with her erstwhile owner. She must have been enjoying the big apartment with the big bookshelves and Rich’s bed—which had been Charlie’s before, too. He gave Katrin an unimpressed look to cover the prickle that crept across his arms like the worst cousin of goosebumps. She returned a comical face of concession that telegraphed sorry, nothing’s going to make this not weird via the scrunch of her eyebrows and a flattening of the dimple on her left cheek. He snorted.
“That’s a terrible face, very ugly, would not recommend repeating,” he said.
“Fuck you.”
Big city, small circle—a hundred thousand people around but a handful he could call his own. Less now, as most of them refused to choose a side. He skipped past another set of blazers, which Lucy had at least made some concession in stocking together, and paused. Stuffed between a high-button-collar blouse and a winter-weight sweater he spied the tiniest burst of sunset.
“Lucy, I forgot my watch, what time is it?” Katrin called.
“Four forty-five,” she hollered back.
“Shit.” Katrin sighed. “I’ve gotta go, Cissy. Shift starts at five-thirty.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said while she crossed the shop and deposited three items of her choice on the desk. One bustling smack of a kiss on the cheek then she was out the door without a pause for reply, striding across the street as if there weren’t a crosswalk a half-block down. Lucy rolled her eyes and flapped open a paper sack, folding the gowns between tissue paper before stacking them into it.
Against logic, whirlwind-Katrin’s departure constricted the room. Charlie shoved the sweater aside. The spark of fabric that had caught his eye belonged to a burnt-orange silk robe, pale blue flowers stitched in cascades over the length. The lining, too, had the color and texture of a sunrise sky. The contrast smacked him in the stomach. He plucked the hanger, lofted it overhead, and crossed to the window to catch the best light.
Lucy said, “Wow, that’s gorgeous.”
One hand cupped the bottom hem—worn at the edges—and he spilled the length brimming with home through his fingers in a caress: evenings spent reading with feet on a partner’s lap and head on a pillow. Sedate tenderness. It had been loved, deeply loved, soaked through with ages of adoration. He dropped the hanger on the floor and slid the robe over his shoulders. The bridge of his nose burned. Stevie used to sleep on his stomach while he read and Rich rubbed his calves. He’d had that, settled into it for good, but as abruptly as it had begun it was done—and here he was alone, older than he’d ever been and certainly older but less experienced than half the boys he saw at Berlin.
Too strange a man for Rich’s sedate preferences on a few levels, not limited to his habit of knowing secret feelings from a glancing brush of belt, collar, button. A pang of habituated distaste caught him when the sleeves strangled tight on his biceps but the radiating constant of love buried it again fast. The door to his left swung further open with a metallic scrape as he reveled in the ghost of someone else’s safe, perfect moment preserved in the amber of silk and thread.
“Lucy, I have to have this,” he said in unhindered awe.
“You look amazing in it, Cissy. Fits you like a charm.”
“It’s really lovely,” a man said.
Charlie jerked his head to the side to blink owlishly at the stranger standing a step from the doorway. His suit was pressed, fresh, charcoal and slimming; plain brown eyes, plain brown hair, clean-shaven face. The cornflower silk tie didn’t match his lace-up high tops in forest green. A flush rose to his cheeks as Charlie continued staring.
“You’re really lovely.” The tremble in the stranger’s voice crossed between embarrassment and candor. “Sorry, that’s not the best start, sorry. Hello,” he said.
“And you are?” Charlie replied in his best dowager impersonation.
“Making myself look like an idiot. I saw you in the window with the kimono, I was walking outside. I know how this is going to sound, but would you happen to have plans for dinner?”
Charlie raked his gaze over the stranger again. His knuckles were prominent and his hands veined. The watch on his wrist hadn’t achieved hideous ostentation but it was worth six months of Charlie’s rent. Older, not too old—the mature end of his thirties to Charlie’s latter twenties, he guessed. The contrast of the robe’s domestic bliss with his own regular loneliness ached in double-time. He glanced at Lucy, who flashed him an okay gesture and waggled her eyebrows like this was a humorous interlude he should roll with, some daddy picking him up.
The man said, “No expectations, I promise. I’m only here for the night?”
An uncertain lilt, as if surprised that he’d propositioned a total stranger in a women’s consignment store. A guy with a watch like that should have had plenty of confidence to spare but instead he held himself like a pane of glass about to crack. Fissures spread at the edges of his winsome smile.
Charlie muttered, “This is a very awkward pickup.”
The stranger snorted, self-aware and self-deprecating, then rolled his shoulders. His hands hung at his sides. Fashion made the man, Charlie thought, reaching out to tap his mismatched tie for a stolen glimpse past the surface. The silk sighed grey drizzling rain, solitary afternoons—a familiar sort of emptiness. He swallowed. The robe’s neckline cradled his frightened, tripping pulse. Charlie pictured the lumpy mattress in his storeroom, a month’s overdue rent slip on the desk waiting for him; he compared that surety to the breathing human potential of the narrow chest under his fingertip. The adrenaline that pumped across his nerves was far headier than salvaged feelings bought secondhand.
So he found himself saying, with a slight tremor, “All right, why not?”
The imitation smile pasted on the stranger’s face spread boxy with relief, unearthing wrinkles at the pinched crescents of his eyes. The cut line of his jaw hinted at a solidity that Charlie allowed himself to pause on. His mouth: thin but not unserviceable. Just dinner, he’d agreed, but—
“Thank you.” Subdued and sincere gratitude, not a trace of presumption.
—Charlie was out of his depth. He hesitated. “I just need to, uh, get my stuff?”
“Of course,” the gentleman said.
Two steps to traverse the room and Lucy forked over his satchel from behind her counter. He whispered, “Not to be weird, but could you call me at the shop in the morning? Just check, you know.”
“Gotcha,” she said. “Wear the robe out, seems like he likes it.”
Charlie glanced across the stuffed shoebox of a store. The stranger had turned to face the front window and the sun haloed the crown of his head in burnished auburn filaments.
“Seems like he does.”
On the sidewalk, the stranger tucked one hand in his pocket in casual contrapposto. Charlie adjusted the strap of his satchel across his chest and tucked the bag behind his hip. The sunlight beat down unforgiving with the barest sweeping breeze to lighten it. He wasn’t sure who was going to speak first and judging from the pursed mouth, neither was his companion.
“I was thinking about treating myself to the Signature Room,” said the other man.
“What’s your name?” Charlie asked.
He shifted from one h
eel to the other. The angle of his chin tilted as he swept a glance across the length of the street, and said, “Could we wait on that? I’m not saying no, but for a while, I’d like—”
“Okay,” Charlie cut him off.
The thump of his pulse kept up a persistent clip. He wrung his memory for the name of the restaurant and it came to him in a splash: a review in the paper of the new face of the 95th, last month, when it opened up under a fresh name with fresh staff and linens.
“That’s pretty high end,” he ventured.
The stranger leaned into the street, sticking his arm out with his elbow cocked at an uncomfortable angle. Charlie tipped onto his toes, the slides unsticking from the soles of his feet with a slap, to see the topper of a cab approaching. His companion said, still waving like a marionette and laser focused on the cab, “Is that okay? I wanted something, I don’t know, memorable.”
Charlie’s ears went hot. “And you want to take me there, looking like this.”
The cab rolled up. Charlie slid onto the sticky leather seat first with the robe bunched up in his hand to keep from dragging it; the stranger blurted their destination louder than necessary through the barrier. The driver muttered a bullshit warning about traffic and cost that Charlie was almost one-hundred percent sure meant he would drive them the longest route he could get away with, but it wasn’t his money on the line when the stranger agreed. After they merged into the stream of afternoon traffic his companion cocked a knee up onto the seat and leaned his spine against the door.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“I mean, you’re not looking to go somewhere in Boystown,” Charlie said. Tousled blonde-streaked hair in fluffed waves but perpetual stubble on a square jaw; plump mouth but thick arms and flat broad hips stretching at the limits of his slacks and blouse; bony feet and ugly-bright shoes. Charlie knew his mismatches with intimate displeasure and had been reminded of them often.
The stranger’s expression narrowed. He said, “You’re handsome. Or beautiful, whichever, both. Stopped me dead to rights on the street.”
“Going to get some stares,” Charlie muttered, flushed with the tickle of handsome/beautiful, and propped his chin on his hand to break the tension. The stranger’s reflection in the window frowned again.
“Well, fuck them,” he said with surprising vehemence for a guy who looked clipped out of GQ.
Charlie flopped against the door too and kicked one bare foot up. His toes touched the leg of the suit pants, disappointingly so new they had gathered no impressions but storage rooms and tailor’s pins. “In town for business?”
“No, personal time. Putting some things in order. I thought I’d see the sights, have the coffee and doughnuts, trawl the bars a little later.”
“That’s a very crisp suit,” Charlie said.
He tugged the hem of his white sleeve, long under the charcoal jacket. The turn of his wrist flashed light off the watchface.
“First time I’ve worn it. It’s certainly slimming.”
“Bless the new style,” Charlie murmured.
A flint-spark pause. Charlie’s throat clicked on a swallow. Fabric tickled his damp toes, the ball of his foot. The rhythm of the city flowed along outside, crowded and exuberant, a hundred sights to see—even if he’d lost touch with the how of risking himself within it, retreating to his borrowed cloth-textured ghosts instead. The stranger’s hand slipped across his own knee and calf, stopped for permission, then two fingers passed over Charlie’s ankle to curl around the crest of his foot. He allowed the contact while the stop-signs skipped past, breathing in the stale air conditioning.
Dinner crowd at five-thirty was sparse. The host seated them in a small booth with a sweeping view of the cityscape, one candle flickering in the centerpiece. Charlie touched the table linen and appreciated the dense weave of harried serving labor with luxurious relaxation. His companion ordered a bottle of wine from a crisply-pressed waitress who smiled at them with empty eyes and clicked across the floor to the kitchen in low heels. Charlie winced to imagine running a supper shift in them.
The man said, “Here we are. A little like a blind date, I guess. Tell me about yourself?”
“Huh, all right.” Charlie paused. “So I’m not from Chicago originally. I have a bachelor’s in fine art. I restore and sell vintage clothing.” Another hesitation. Might as well—“I’m broke. I’d never consider coming to eat here in a million years.”
“Glad to share my best day with you, then,” he said.
Charlie made an inquisitive noise, flicking his glance up from the menu.
The stranger wrinkled his nose in thought, a tic Charlie noted, charmed. “I’m trying to do that. Have a best day, today. Otherwise I wouldn’t have, just…” He trailed off with a gesture flicked at the room.
“Picked up a guy you don’t know?”
“Well, I might’ve done that tonight if the mood felt right.” He flashed another performed-though-warm grin. “But not coerced a gorgeous young stranger into letting me buy him a nice dinner.”
“I don’t feel coerced,” Charlie returned with a smile of his own.
The waitress returned and both ordered. A seafood appetizer, steak for the stranger and roast chicken for him, an ambitious pre-dinner decision on chocolate cake for dessert. She poured their wine into spotless narrow glasses, mahogany-tinged red, and Charlie plucked the glass up to tilt for a toast.
“Me either,” he said. “I mean, I also don’t do this, things like this.”
The stranger clinked rims. “Why’d you say yes if you don’t mind me asking?”
“It’s like, cinematic,” he said.
He hummed in agreement and said, “Our moment out of time.”
The wine coated Charlie’s tongue, acidic and smoky. He resisted the urge to smack his lips like a heathen and, under the tablecloth, crossed his bare feet on top of his slides. The high daylight complimented his date’s cheekbones, the shadow of a morning shave starting to come in over his top lip. Those human details, one at a time, colored in the stolen moment he’d found himself caught inside. An island of time where he was someone else with someone else, not the same Charlie as when he woke up and not the same Charlie as he’d be when he went to sleep. The poetry appealed to him in his core. Rich was an accountant with a set of five plain suits of the same shade and two pairs of leather flats, one brown one black. Poetics hadn’t been his strong suit.
“What brought you to Chicago?” his date asked.
The second mouthful of wine allowed a moment to consider before he answered with the truth. “A boyfriend. My college boyfriend, actually.”
“Current?”
“No,” he said. The relaxed softness of the stranger’s expression keyed at the dull pain in his chest. The softer version of the tale, the one he rehearsed for friends, tumbled out: “He left me a couple months ago. No one’s fault, that kind of situation. He said he needed more stability. I haven’t had it in me to try to like, meet someone else yet, with everything going on.”
“I keep having to thank you,” he said, grasping Charlie’s hand on the tabletop once then withdrawing. If Charlie’s insides were a cinched knot, each moment spent wearing orange silk that breathed lovelovelove in his ear unwound him another centimeter.
“Thank me for what?”
“You’re giving me a lot. Your first date as a single man,” he said.
“God, you’re too nice to be real,” Charlie sputtered through a laugh.
The appetizer came; their waitress arranged the plate of fresh mussels between them, turned on her heel, and left without a word. The stranger crimped his mouth at her back. “Unlike some people.”
“Like I said, you might pass but I sure as hell don’t.”
He snorted and plucked up a mussel. “And I wouldn’t have asked for you to. I’m perfectly happy to be seen out with you. If they’ve got a problem they can suck my dick, figuratively speaking.”
A steel surety lurked beneath his pronouncement, one Char
lie relaxed within, remembering his own nights staring at the stars in the middle of fucking nowhere before he made it to a place he could breathe. The stranger popped the mussel into his mouth. Watching his jaw work as he chewed and swallowed the fleshy piece of meat plucked a nerve in Charlie’s guts he hadn’t felt in weeks, had gone so far as to morosely entertain worries of never feeling again. The invisibility he’d languished under dissolved at once, a slipped knot, in the face of being improbably seen.
“When you noticed me, what made you stop, honestly?”
“The look on your face when you put that pretty robe on, all lit up in the sun. It was unreal.” Swipe of tongue over his lower lip, dart of his glance to the side. “And if we’re being honest, you reminded me of someone.”
Charlie asked, “Someone important?”
“Yeah, they were.”
Charlie nodded, allowing the matter to drop, and his date’s charming smile belied his relief at the lack of pursuit. Conversational pirouettes around the use of past tense had become a familiar dance among friends.
After a moment the man said, “Tell me more about your clothing business.”
The meal unfurled, glorious in spite of—or, the echo of they can suck my dick ringing in his ears with pride, a little bit because of—the silent judgement of the waitress. Charlie spoke at length as the wine and the freedom of being unknown loosened his reserve: the shop he needed to succeed, his misplaced sense of futurity, the cat he missed, the bracelet he had to sell because it wouldn’t fit his wrist, the boy before Rich in high school who would suck his cock but not date him because gay was one thing but whatever Charlie had going on was entirely another, all of his friends still being Rich’s friends, his favorite spot for late-morning coffee. The stranger opened to him in bursts also, though detail remained sparse—he worked in academia, he was not from Chicago, he’d chosen the city for its distance from his home. He’d been in town three days and this was the last night. He was a reader and he’d already finished the book in Charlie’s satchel, The Secret History, the week it came out while Charlie had waited for the public library. He was having his best day, whatever that meant.
Uncanny Magazine Issue 37 Page 8