Going Dutch

by James Gregor

  “Yes,” he said, not knowing what else to say, feeling he should be the one to ask her how she was. So he did. “Are you okay?”

  He closed the door behind him as Anne looked out the opposite window.

  “I’m fine.”

  “That was impressive,” he said quietly. The car began to drive.

  “It all happened very fast.”

  “You were so poised.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” she said, squeezing Richard’s leg. “You’re not traumatized, I hope?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Richard’s mouth seemed to dry out completely as they made their way back to her apartment, and with it any words he might say. Anne didn’t appear particularly interested in talking either. For her it had to be the full, radiant quiet of triumph, he thought, but for him it was like admiration mixed with the aftermath of a scolding, a failing.

  They went immediately to bed, but just to sleep.

  “Good night,” she said, rolling toward the wall.

  “Good night.”

  TWELVE

  Three nights later, in restaurants all around the city, dinners came to an awkward conclusion.

  I didn’t have wine.

  I didn’t have an appetizer.

  Let’s split it seven ways.

  You added cheese and bacon though.

  Stomach contents were taken into account, and generosity was improbable even from generous people. The bulky arrival of debit machines in the hands of aproned waiters signaled that genteel discussions among friends—even lovers—would turn flinty as the pleasant energy of the evening dissolved in an acid bath of addition and subtraction. Sometimes the diners did the calculations themselves on a napkin or the back of the check, then parted quickly outside, impatient to get home, put on the next episode of the latest network series, and forget the petty end of the meal.

  Around eight o’clock, Richard walked along DeKalb Avenue on his way to meet Blake at one of the lackadaisical but expensive restaurants, where babies breastfed by candlelight, scattered throughout ever-greater swaths of Brooklyn.

  Blake was waiting in the vestibule when Richard arrived. They greeted each other with a smile and a kiss. Soon they were seated and handed menus.

  Richard scanned his menu in a slight confusion. Nothing immediately stood out in this curio cabinet of flesh and bone. A mooning straight couple sat a few feet away—an alabaster redhead with ringlets, and a sensitive ursine type in a plaid shirt. They had arranged their plates beside each other in the middle of the table in order to share what they’d ordered: citrus donuts, pancakes, some sort of smoked-meat hash. It was breakfast for dinner.

  “Do you have any favorites?” Richard asked Blake finally. “I can’t decide.”

  “They change the selection every week depending on ocean currents.”

  “Ah,” Richard said, as if this had been clarifying, which it hadn’t.

  “The steak,” Blake said, when the waiter arrived. “Rare.”

  “The steak for me too.”

  A hunk of meat seemed like a safe bet.

  “And the plate of grilled wild sardines for the appetizer,” said Blake. “And more bread.”

  “To drink?”

  Blake spent a long moment examining the wine list. Richard smiled up at the tall, shaven-headed, gorgeous young waiter in a gesture of commiseration. The waiter’s face looked like it naturally descended into the clinking shield of an intimidating scowl, but also he was doing little to mask his annoyance. Of course, with a face like that he could get away with it.

  Blake finally came to a bottle that was to his liking.

  “You should have ordered something different,” he said when the waiter left.

  “I was following your lead.”

  Blake nodded. “It’s not a big deal. I’m just OCD about sampling as many dishes from a menu as possible.” He smiled. “Next time.”

  “Next time” made Richard feel cozy, despite the slap on the wrist of Blake’s disappointment.

  “That makes sense,” Richard said. “So, how’s work? You said things were busy the last time I saw you.”

  “I need to tell you something about work,” Blake said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I am an actor, but I don’t work in administration. I’m really a lawyer.”

  Was this some kind of coquettish game? If so, Richard was not, in his first gut reaction, too disappointed by the turn it was taking.

  “Okay, but you are, or you’re not, an actor?”

  “No, I am an actor, in my spare time. I’m in an amateur Tennessee Williams troupe.”

  “I love Tennessee Williams!”

  “Tell me about it. One of the highlights of my life as a young fag was seeing Jessica Lange play Blanche DuBois.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “What made you lie?”

  “It’s sort of a test. You know—are you still interested if . . . ?”

  “You think I’m a gold-digger?” Richard said, smiling.

  “And that wasn’t my apartment.”

  “What are you going to tell me next—that’s not your real face?”

  Blake pretended to peel off a mask.

  “No, this is my face.”

  “That’s good. It’s a good face.”

  “Thank you. I was renting out my place on Airbnb. That was a friend’s place. I’m not that messy.”

  “Good. That place was a disaster.”

  “And I’m into literate guys,” Blake said. “I don’t know, ‘creative’ guys”—he used his fingers to indicate quotation marks. “Guys who read, who are thoughtful. I always worry they’ll think I’m lame if they know I’m a lawyer.”

  “It’s the opposite,” Richard said. “It’s definitely a plus. My father is a lawyer.”

  “I know. It’s just one of those silly irrational worries we all have.”

  “My turn,” Richard said. “I wondered about the food we ate. What you thought about it.”

  “The diner, you mean? Well, I wouldn’t want to eat there every day.”

  “No, no, of course not,” Richard said, shaking his head.

  “A healthy body and a healthy mind are essential,” Blake said, with intentional pomp. “It’s the Spartan ideal.”

  “Throwing babies over cliffs too, I think.”

  “What about naked wrestling?” Blake quipped.

  “That’s the Athenians,” Richard said. “So where do you really live?”

  “I have a studio here, in Fort Greene.”

  “You own it?”

  Blake nodded, and Richard felt a mixture of trepidation and satisfaction. Blake’s tone of responsibility, and his ownership of property, suggested that he took to heart the task of secure and adult living. Whether he expected that same seriousness and ability in a partner was the question that naturally followed.

  Blake said that his building was old, with beautiful crown moldings, which helped ease the blow of its many deficiencies. It was a stalemate of gentility and neglect. He’d made valiant advances with hanging plants and wicker chairs inherited from his grandparents, but was routinely outflanked by bad plumbing and clever rodentia. When he left the confines of the apartment and went out onto the street, a leafy curving omission from the area grid, he liked to pretend that his own building was erased completely—an orgiastic wrecking ball turning it to rubble.

  “What about your place?” Blake asked.

  “It’s really nothing,” Richard conceded.

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Blake smiled, and Richard wondered if he could convince Leslie to vacate the sofa, even for an hour.

  “How long have you been there?” Blake asked.

  “Two years.”

  “I never want to leave this city,” Blake said. “It turns you into a different person.”

  Richard wondered if Blake was one of those people who thought New York had once been better—who ide
alized its squalid past, burned-out buildings, cheap rent, and creativity. Or was he a sunny optimist, in love with statistical data, pleased with the influx of foreign billionaires and the new pedestrian zones and landscaping, and eye-rollingly dismissive of those romantics who felt the soul of the city had been lost? By sensibility, Richard was drawn to the first group; but of course, at this point in history it was obviously to the latter group that the future of the city belonged.

  “I could never move back home,” Blake said.

  “Me neither,” Richard said. “My hometown is like a graveyard. Does your family ever visit?”

  “My parents are coming for my birthday.”

  The grilled sardines with frisée arrived. Looking thoughtful, Blake took one between his fingers and chewed the flesh off the bone. Richard ate one too, and then promptly washed down the invading flavor with a gulp of wine.

  “I’m sure you’re the good son,” Blake said, leaning to one side and pretending to vomit. “I can just tell. Sweet, dependable.”

  “Dependable?” Richard said, thinking back to Patrick: You’re not a provider. “I don’t know about that.”

  “My parents haven’t met many of my boyfriends, except Luke. But they didn’t know he was my boyfriend at the time.”

  “Who was Luke?” Richard asked, feeling retrospective jealousy at the mention of this figment of a person.

  “His parents were Christian Scientists who made this huge antiabortion placard and paid to have it installed on the side of the highway. It was a baby in a big yellow sac—I guess it was supposed to be a uterus—with a hand creeping up behind it. Luke would come over wearing an oversized wool coat. He’d have on a sparkly dress or something underneath that he got secondhand. We’d put on the Paris Is Burning DVD and try to vogue, but neither of us had any sense of rhythm.”

  “I love that movie.”

  “Yeah, everybody does. Anyway, Luke needed rescuing. So I rescued him, for a while.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Your parents are really progressive then?”

  “Progressive enough, I guess.”

  After school, Blake said, he would get a ride to Luke’s house in a wood-paneled Dodge Caravan, which smelled of a minty analgesic cream the driver and housekeeper, Jean, used on her splotched, arthritic hands. Freezing air would stream in as Jean dangled a cigarette out the window and drove with one hand, commenting on the foul snow banks.

  “She smoked in the car?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wow.”

  Luke was indifferent toward Blake in the van, barely acknowledging his presence. But when they entered the house through the large archway, paid for by the medical and legal judgments rendered by Luke’s parents, he would surreptitiously take Blake’s hand and lead him down to the basement.

  While Blake flipped through discarded House and Garden magazines, Luke would paint a toboggan or sand down a skateboard. Blake grew accustomed to Luke’s sloe-eyed stare, and the foamy brain that had such a thick, sentimental crust, and made Luke swallow tears when he saw a bird dragging its wing around the backyard. Eventually they would connect the old Nintendo machine to the television and play Mario Brothers, perched on a tan leather sofa, legs curled under an afghan. As Luke pinioned from right to left, elbows out, Blake would look up the sleeve of his T-shirt to the enticing dark patch of hair in his armpit.

  Deputized to Luigi, Blake found death quickly in balls of fire or in the jaws of carnivorous plants, while Luke’s triumphant and coruscating Mario flew over yawning gorges, hacked dragons to pieces, and rescued princesses.

  After three or four rounds, Luke would declare, in a self-consciously hollow voice, that he was sick of video games and preferred to watch TV. Despite the laboring furnace, they could credibly enlist the services of a blanket, under which they would privately grope each other. It was always cold in the basement; everyone complained about it.

  The possibility of discovery increased the tension. They were alert to the possibility of Jean coming down the stairs with a pale blue duster in hand. It was gripping to maintain the facade of normalcy as long as possible, going through preliminary motions, tucking in the blanket and bringing out the Masseur-In-A-Box portable massage pad from beneath the sofa—a black polystyrene thing with metal rods running lengthwise across it.

  The Masseur-In-A-Box had several settings. It could go very fast, bringing them to a climax in a matter of seconds, or slowly, with an interval of ten or fifteen seconds, as it cycled down the length of the pad. Luke’s preferred setting was “Rolling Shiatsu,” because it prolonged the experience. There was a small black device attached to the pad where the settings could be chosen. Blake liked to abandon control to Luke. Would he be selfish or generous? Blake wondered, his throat dry with anticipation.

  “So what happened in the end?”

  “Luke went to college in Canada and we lost touch.”

  The main course arrived.

  “Bon appétit,” Blake said. He vigorously sawed off a piece of steak and started chewing. “Well, I wouldn’t say this is rare.”

  He put down his fork and made a cupped gesture of futility with his hand.

  “Would you like to try mine?” Richard said. “It might be different.”

  “It looks worse.”

  Blake renewed his carving.

  “I’m a food brat. I apologize.”

  “That’s okay.”

  For dessert, they shared a piece of carrot cake, and then Richard excused himself, figuring he would give Blake the opportunity to pay. As he went toward the restrooms, he had a feeling of contentment. Soft candlelight bathed the attractive couples leaning toward each other across the tables as Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers pulsed from the speakers.

  When he returned to the table, Blake stood up.

  “My turn,” he said. “Be right back.”

  Richard watched as Blake headed in the direction of the bathroom, his broad back emphasized by the undersized polo shirt he wore, the neat fade of his hair indicative of a recent visit to the barbershop. Richard looked out the window and saw two men licking ice cream cones, swooping and maneuvering to catch errant streams, their hands coming together in a gentle grip as they walked off.

  “One bill or two?” the waiter said, appearing beside him.

  “One.”

  The waiter went away again. Several minutes passed. Wondering where Blake was, Richard again looked toward the far end of the restaurant. What else was back there? A tiny faux market selling a brand of lobster oil made at the restaurant. It was dark and boarded-up now. Perhaps the food didn’t agree with Blake. Richard hoped nothing was wrong with the steak. Had it been too rare after all?

  In another minute, the waiter was there again.

  “We’re still not ready.”

  The waiter bounded off with a look of annoyance. Richard couldn’t decide what would be more embarrassing: greeting Blake after such a long trip to the bathroom, or telling the waiter each time he came for the check that Blake was still back there?

  The waiter skidded past again.

  “My shift is over. I have to cash out.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yup.”

  Richard reached into his wallet and handed over a credit card. The waiter swiped it through the machine and the receipt curled out immediately. He handed it to Richard and roared off without another word.

  Blake came back to the table as the waiter was leaving.

  “Where’s the bill?”

  “Taken care of,” Richard said, with a sense of wobbling pride.

  “I have cash.”

  Richard nodded but didn’t say anything. Blake picked up the curling piece of paper, his lips moving silently as he calculated the numbers.

  “Here.”

  He handed Richard some bills.

  “Thanks,” Richard said, putting the money in his pocket. Their shoulders gently knocking together, they went outside and walked down the block.
Some light remained in the clouds. Couples hung about with their bicycles in the pleasant warmth and made conversation. It seemed the model of a functioning neighborhood, a progressive urban tableau, and Richard wanted to say look at us, we’re part of this.

  They climbed a set of stairs into Fort Greene Park. For a few intensely pleasurable, lingering, and uncertain moments, they sat on a bench, cowitnesses to the evening.

  “I want to invite you over,” Blake said finally. “But I have to get up very early tomorrow morning. Meeting.”

  “Sure,” Richard said, disappointed but also understanding, because he felt entirely disposed to Blake at that moment.

  “I am genuinely disappointed,” Blake said, winding his fingers in Richard’s.

  “Well, so am I, but that’s okay.”

  Blake squeezed his hand.

  “You have nice hands,” he said.

  “Is this your MO? You compliment and then you leave? Blue-ball me with compliments?”

  “I compliment and then I leave, disappointed.”

  They sat for another few minutes. When they stood up, Blake leaned forward and they kissed, this final contact almost cruel in the light of their impending separation, but Richard left the dimming park feeling assured. He walked home through the low organ hum of the sultry evening. When he arrived, he took the money out of his pocket and discovered that it amounted only to Blake’s share.

  THIRTEEN

  The June days went past like clear windows, each one filled with a brighter picture of sun, cloud, and sky. In the budding skirmish of the heat, Anne and Richard continued their academic routine, beginning their research for the Clio Prize. Richard persisted in making an effort, though with increasing halfheartedness. Sensing this, Anne continued to praise him, but her praise had more to do with him as a person and rather obviously little to do with his scholarship. She said that he was dedicated, patient, and kind—things Patrick, for one, did not say of him. These were not unpleasant things to hear. But he remained firmly an assistant, not a contributor. Like those friends of Toller’s who worked for powerful media figures as sorters of email, bookers of flights, filers of taxes, and impromptu babysitters, he orbited around true talent and made it possible for that talent to express itself.