“Would you like to come in and meet Olga?” Hank says. “And have a cool drink with us?”
The cop is loaded down with all kinds of gear. Sounds like a pack mule when he walks. Inside, Olga greets us in the kitchen, those black eyes of hers that make Hank’s look brown, the cornflower blue sleeveless smock thing she’s changed into, her nipples under the cornflower blue smock thing, her beautiful braided long black hair, the matching cornflower blue scarf in her hair, the gold hoop earrings, the gold bracelets on her long, thin brown arms, Olga’s beautiful smile.
In her very best English-as-a-second-language accent that makes her sound like someone Spanish speaking English-English not American, Olga says:
“Good afternoon, officer. Would you like a glass of lemonade?”
THANK GOD OLGA’S got her passport with her. And her visa.
A warning. That’s all we end up with. A written warning on a piece of large pink paper that I’m obliged to give to Esther.
When the cop finishes his lemonade, he gets up, walks to the door. He has to be packing twenty pounds. Just as he grabs for the doorknob, before he opens the door and walks out, he stops. Puts his hat on, cocks it to the side. Turns his baby face around to Hank and Olga and me. In his best grown-up tough guy voice, he says:
“If I were you,” the cop says, “I’d go over to your neighbor’s house and apologize to him.”
THAT NIGHT, AFTER our first bottle of wine, the sun making a spectacle of itself going down, is when Hank and Olga finally start to relax. Their visit to the enraged neighbor has cleared things up. I never doubted it. Just being close to Hank, to Olga, their physical beauty unnerves the gods. Plus their offerings of a bottle of wine, and Olga-made gazpacho and a blackberry torte. Turns out the neighbor and Hank had the same baseball team they liked. Philadelphia’s, I think. The Phillies, maybe. Or is that football?
Something’s still caught in my throat, though, between my throat and my heart, that place that hurts where I smoke. But it ain’t smoke. It’s Hank. You stay out of this.
We’re on the screened-in porch, the dark night around us getting deeper. White linen, the good silverware. Tall candles, short fat candles, votive candles, candles and candles. Their light, the way it always moves. So full and golden. Big, heavy white dinner plates. Each of us, a water glass and a wine glass, crystal that hums a wet finger along the rim. On the table, Olga’s big bouquet of red, yellow, and purple stolen flowers she’s arranged into a large, blue glass vase. Hank gives me a wink then starts in:
Olga Rivas, he says, so pastoral, so Keats and Shelley, in her white dress like in a Matisse painting picking lovely wild flowers and effluvious herbs in a garden meadow. Not in a mean-spirited way. But the way like only Hank can do. Olga cusses, hijo tu puta madre, throws a baguette at Hank, then an Anjou pear. But it isn’t long and Olga is laughing. She’s sitting on Hank’s lap and Hank and Olga are laughing.
I don’t laugh. That big baby torpor in me. I try and tell myself that Hank’s a guy and guys are just this way, and I’m not a guy, never been one, never will be, and it’s just too fucking much to comprehend. Just let it go.
But Hank is my friend. My friend that I love.
It ain’t long and way too loud, Big Ben just comes shooting out my mouth:
“Fuck, Hank,” I say. “You and I got to fucking talk.”
Olga and Hank stop. They look over to me like who’s he? Olga’s one eyebrow goes up. Spanish, the way she uses her eyes. Latina Attitude. She doesn’t like it I got the attention. And Hank. The look on his face. At first he acts like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. But Hank’s eyes, the way they get fuck-you blacker, Hank knows.
Olga gets off Hank’s lap, steps away. She keeps her hand on his shoulder as she speaks.
“I’ll go open another bottle of wine,” Olga says.
“Mi amor?” she says, “you want the California cabernet or the Bordeaux?”
HANK’S BODY IS on alert, but still he slouches down in his chair. One leg is up and his bare foot sets on the seat. I can’t quite see his face behind Olga’s big bouquet of red, yellow, and purple stolen flowers. The way he holds his head, Hank’s face is in the shadows of the candlelight. I slide my chair over so we can see eye-to-eye. At the sternum, right in the middle of my chest, a lightbulb that you can see the filament flickering. All the Running Boy wants is for me to get my ass out of there. It’s a showdown, all right, we both know it, and I wish it weren’t, but how else do you do shit like this.
“That’s how guys do it, ain’t it?” I say.
Hank stays hunched over, his head down, looking at his hands. Rolls his thumbs. Zeus is pissed and something big is going to blow. God the Father’s going to kick ass. Supreme, the power of men. Terrifying, really. Something so terrifying about this moment and so familiar, but I don’t know why.
GOT TO GO pal. The words that hurt. Years later, Zeus, God the Father, Hank must have sat that way in his house in Florida holding onto the pages of that last letter I wrote him. God the Father ready to kick ass, the sadness, trying to see through it. I should have made the joke about the hair. Made him laugh. But I didn’t.
THERE ARE PETALS, yellow ones from the sunflower, fallen onto the white, starched tablecloth. The petals rub off yellow onto my fingers. I take a deep breath.
“That’s why male love is back-to-back,” I say. “It’s about maintaining your position. If you love another guy you show support.”
“Gruney?” Hank says, “what the hell you talking about?”
“Stay out of this, Gruney,” I say. “You hurt my feelings.”
Hank’s leg comes down off the chair and is a big thud on the floor. His face big and bright with candlelight. His empty wine glass right there. His fingerprints on his wine glass.
“Come on, man,” Hank says. “I was angry. Don’t take it personal.”
“It’s weird, Hank,” I say, “how far away you can go and how fast. Then when you do speak, there’s threat behind it.”
“That’s your shit, Gruney,” Hank says.
“But really it’s all bluff,” I say.
“And if it isn’t?”
“You throw a thunderbolt,” I say.
Hank’s face goes back into the shadows. Yellow is all over the place. On my fingers, on the tablecloth. Yellow fingerprints on my wine glass. I always make a mess of things.
“Hank, you were stressed, I get it,” I say. “It just freaked me out you were talking to Olga that way. Does that make me a traitor?”
“I was angry,” Hank says.
“Angry’s okay,” I say, “but is that the only appropriate emotion? Can’t men be afraid and confused too?”
Out there in the dark, in the kitchen, Olga is opening drawers. Between Hank and me, the table and all the candles. The fires reflecting on the glasses, the shiny silverware. On the edge of flickering light and dark, Hank’s face disappears, reappears. The way he holds his body so still. The Enigma of Hank. The Warrior Ghost.
The old house is big and dark. It holds our silence. Only Olga in the kitchen. The pop of a bottle cork. Hank goes to speak but he has to stop first to clear his throat.
“I thought that’s what I was doing,” Hank says.
“What?”
“Showing you how confused and scared I was,” Hank says.
“Hank,” I say, “when a man talks to me like that all I can hear is my father.”
“Fuck, Gruney,” Hank says, “you’re doing it again.”
“I’m not saying you’re an asshole,” I say, “or that I’m superior. I do shit like that all the time. You’re my friend, man, and this is what friends do.”
“Like that night at Ursula Crohn’s,” Hank says.
“Friends don’t let friends get away with shit like that,” I say. “I know I’m way too sensitive, but I don’t want any shit to come between us, so I got to tell you when shit comes up.”
When Hank speaks again, Hank ain’t locked up faraway and he’s the Hank I know agai
n.
“Fuck, Gruney, you’re totally right on, man,” Hank says.
Hank’s big arm with his big hand on the end of it falls out of the shadows, down to the table, rattles the china. He pushes his open palm out to me.
“Gruney Babe,” Hank says, “I’m sorry.”
FRIENDS. FUCK. FRIENDS again. Eating and drinking with friends. I’m feeling especially high because things for a while there looked so bleak. Hank apologizes to Olga and Olga says she should have known better and we all get pretty high off each other. I barbecue the steaks and Olga makes the salad dressing and Hank opens more wine. In that big, beautiful, dark old house.
After three hours of us eating and drinking, the table is a mess of meat scraps, corn cobs, wilted tomatoes, and greens. Our wine glasses, our fingerprints on them. Olga’s red cherry lipstick. The three bottles of wine finished off, mostly by Olga and me, then there’s the snifter of brandy. We’ll all work a whole month paying this dinner off.
Olga wants a cigarette. I do too. So what does she do but pull a tin of Nat Shermans out of her purse. I’ve quit and started smoking so many times in my life. This is one of those nights I start.
The mean neighbor appeased, inside the screened porch, no mosquitoes, under a roof, a warm summer night, the three of us in that big house, no lights on, just the many candles on our table. Filled with good food, fine wine, our big snifters of Hennessy, Olga and me smoking. Still ahead, our desserts and espressos. Still ahead, our novels coming out in March. The night deep dark inside the house too. Only the candlelight. Around the table, each of us a painting by Goya. Out of the darkness, a slow contour of light, and as if miraculous, out floats a face, an arm, a hand.
Friday night. Ahead of us still Saturday, still Saturday night, still Sunday morning. The train ride back to the city still far enough away.
“Let’s dance!” Olga says.
Hank lets out a little moan. Straight guys don’t dance. I take a candle into the next room, the living room, to Esther’s stereo hi-fi – a huge piece of oak furniture that is a record player. My God, the albums in there. Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mercer, and Frank Sinatra before he was a Republican. It takes me a while, but I figure out how the stereo hi-fi works. Pile a bunch of records on and crank up the volume.
The song is “Lullaby of Old Broadway.” I dance the candle across the dark room back onto the porch. The table is an altar with all the candles. When I get to the table, I set down my candle, do a twirl. Hank’s rolling his eyes. I take Olga’s hand and her cherry red lips are smiling big and we start dancing. Olga’s still wearing the cornflower blue sleeveless smock thing. It goes all the way to her ankles. She twirls, the skirt lifting up, flowing. We dance our bodies close at first, a two-step or foxtrot or whatever it is, nice rhythm, fast, and lots of spinning. The sound of gold against gold. Then we break out into a jitterbug. Olga lets out a big laugh, throws her head back, her gold-hooped earrings, flashes of gold light. Her cornflower blue scarf comes undone, falls down around her shoulders. Olga tosses it away, doesn’t miss a beat.
Something you got to know about me and dancing. Maybe it’s all gay men, I think it is, at least most of us. Nothing can make me happier. Except writing. Dancing is why I think straight guys like sports so much. They get to move. They get to move remarkably. People watch you and you get to show off how you can move.
Bette Podegushka and me dancing at the Mercedes Inn were the best dancing days. Nothing’s come close. Except for nights like this one. Olga and me and Hank. Hank’s dancing with us too, even though he’s sitting. He just doesn’t know it. Put on an LP, a big band and Ella Fitzgerald on a stereo hi-fi, and that’s all it takes. In all of my life, of all the places I’ll go around the world, Paris, Nairobi, Mombasa, Marrakech, London, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, always the best times, the most exotic, the most romantic, tender, the most intimate, is after a great dinner in a home of a friend, bottles of wine, maybe a splif, turn on the stereo and dance around the table with your friends.
“I’m Beginning to See the Light.” My body feels good moving. Dead Lorca, dancing is the only way to shake it off. The heavens above and the earth below connect. My body is what connects them. In the connection, transformation. What it is to be alive.
Then the record’s over and Olga and I are trying to get breath. Hank’s giving us a standing ovation. Olga walks over, grabs his arm, “Fascinating Rhythm”’s on now and Olga tries to pull Hank out to dance but Hank doesn’t budge. I’m dying to pee.
The bathroom with just the candle light is too weird. Strange shadows and big porcelain ghosts. I blow out the candle, and in the dark, sit to pee because I know if I stand I’ll miss the pot. We got to leave Esther’s house the way we found it. The smell of melting beeswax. Quiet, so quiet in the room except for my piss in the bowl.
Something like a ghost passes through me. Or maybe it’s gas. A trembling in my chest that feels sick. When I lean my head on my hand, my forehead is sweating. I stand up slow and do what I always do when my body starts acting up – pretend it isn’t happening. At the sink, it’s cold water on my face, handfuls of it.
In the kitchen, I relight the candle, keep pretending through the kitchen, through the living room. I think maybe if I turn on the lights, the awful feeling will go away. But if I turn on the lights that means I’m sick and I’m not sick.
The cigarette. It must have been the cigarette that fucked me up.
The LP touches down and it’s Billie Holiday, “April In Paris.” I’m in the doorway when I stop. On the porch, the table that is an altar. Hank’s bare-chested and glowing like a Catholic saint. Olga’s gold, little fires all over on her body, everything about her is pointed at Hank.
Some songs can stop you in your tracks. Especially that song. I go to take another step but can’t. Too much red wine, I figure, the Hennessy, or maybe I stood up too fast. In one hand, the candle and the flame. My other hand waves through the darkness, looking for something solid. My shoulder lands against the doorjamb. In my ears, a pulse of heartbeat. Dizzy. I tell myself that if I fall I should fall so Hank and Olga don’t see. A long moment when my body isn’t mine at all. In fact, my body goes away altogether. I’m like the flames. No substance, only spirit. Long deep breaths. My eyes, whose eyes are they, look down at my chest. My hand, some strange guy’s fingers. For a moment I actually think my heart is breaking.
Billie Holiday isn’t singing, she’s talking to me. Her voice, the way each word is in her mouth. How she licks it, rolls it around, makes the word hers. It’s as if she’s so present loving how that sound is in her mouth she doesn’t ever want to let it go. This is how it is, let me tell you, how Paris is in April, all this hope. Fucking hope, man. But the way Billie loves each moment, every word, makes her hold on just a little too long. Why she lives is in this moment. Giving voice, so precious, she doesn’t want to let it go. But any moment now she’s going to fuck up the rhythm. But she always lets go just in time and she never fucks up.
In my chest, the sick feeling leaves as quick as it came. My heart is pounding strong, I’m back in my body, breathing deep, and so happy to be back home. I’m in my moment the way Billie is, holding onto it for dear life. All those years I spent trying to get out of my body, when all the while I was trying to get in. I slide down the door jam and my butt hits the floor. In my hand, I’m holding up fire on a candlestick. In front of me, just beyond, out there in the world on the screened-in porch, into the candlelight, Hank swirls up Goya.
I can’t believe my eyes. In that part of the house between the screened-in porch and the living room is a stage. The candles are the dramatic lighting. Hank is on the stage. Just in his long khaki shorts. Olga’s scarf a turban tied around his head. He is dancing.
Hank’s not showing off. Well maybe a little. He’s a man alone dancing a room, his eyes closed. He’s dreaming with Billie in Paris in April. That thing in his shoulders and his chest that always seems to h
old him up, isn’t holding him up. How smooth his body is in the light. His feet are solid on the shiny, slick oak, his second toes longer than his big toes, thin ankles, his surprisingly hairless calves.
Olga’s at the table, her curly black hair hanging down to her shoulders. Her hands are over her mouth, her gold bracelets down around her elbows, eyes bright and wide as if she is witnessing one of the wonders of the world.
She is. Hank Christian is dancing.
Slow, more like a man swimming than a man dancing, how a body moves against the water. That way straight guys won’t move their hips, Hank is moving. My ass is beautiful, the way his hips are moving. The candlelight on the muscles of his back, his chest, his arms, that full, bright face framed in cornflower. His closed eyes, his nipples, his hairy underarms, the hair in the middle of his chest, light, dark, light dark, light and dark. Hank’s gone. He’s with Billie in her moment that she lives in that she expresses that she craves. Hank’s body, how he licks the music, rolls it around, makes it his.
What have you done to my heart?
The silence after the song, LP scratches. Crickets. Warm, the night is warm. I’m still sweating. My eyes can’t bear to look into Hank’s, so I quick look away. The candlelight on the oak floor, the shadows around the table, the candlelight against the screen. Delicate. We are so delicate.
WHEN I WAKE up, I’m in my bed in my room upstairs. I don’t know what the fuck. I’m just in my shorts and on the bed there’s a pool of sweat between my shoulderblades. Night sweats. I’ll come to know night sweats well. Something is flashing. It’s outside, the flashing. Really all I know about the flashing is that it’s not in me.
The pain in my chest is gone. I feel fine, a little drunk maybe. Then flash, there’s a big, bright light, silver that for an instant makes every object super real and alien at the same time. The shadow from that light slanted, a weird, cold darkness. Moments later, a crunch of thunder.
Out the bay window, the huge dome of Pennsylvania sky is a road map of heaven. Long cracks of heat and light point bright fingers into the deep, dark earth. Silent flashes, repetitions of flashes. Every so often, thunder you can feel in your bones. The earth is a baseball getting hit out of the park.
I Loved You More Page 11