“Yeah, well,” he said, stooping a little, bowing his head. Then he paid the taxi driver and waved him off without even waiting for change.
“Lead the way,” he said. He’d propped the door open with a fat Manhattan phone book, and he picked it up as we went in. His long arm reached over my shoulder to push the button for the elevator. The door was shiny steel, and I saw Toby looking at me in its reflection.
“Thanks,” he said. “You know, thanks for coming.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said, even though in the scheme of my life it was a huge deal to be going down to the city without anybody in my family knowing about it.
The elevator in Finn’s building was slow and old, and it had always seemed like a long time before it got to the twelfth floor.
“It’s open,” Toby said when we got to the door. I put one hand on the doorknob, then stopped and turned to Toby.
“Is it different in there?” I didn’t mean to sound scared, but that’s how it came out.
Toby didn’t answer; he just reached over my head and pushed the door open, and there it was. Finn’s place. Just like always. The Turkish rug. The papier-mâché elephant on top of this old carved trunk he had. Those black-and-white pictures he’d taken of my grandfather’s hands, which were so close up they looked like the landscape of some other planet. There was a framed picture of each hand, left and right, on each side of the huge window that looked down onto 83rd Street. The only different thing about the apartment was that it didn’t smell like lavender and orange anymore. Now the place smelled mostly of stale cigarette smoke.
Toby scooped up a bunch of papers and books and clothes from the couch and piled them on one of the dining table chairs.
“There, that’s better,” he said. “Come in. Sit down.” He seemed nervous, smiling too much and fussing over little things. Smoothing out a crumpled cushion, straightening a crooked picture on the wall. He’d taken Finn’s cardigan off as we walked in and underneath he was wearing a shabby black Museum of Natural History T-shirt with glow-in-the-dark dinosaur bones all over it. After a while he sat on the couch opposite me.
“So, what did you think of the photo?”
“It’s good.”
“Brilliant.” He sounded surprised. “I thought there was something a bit, I don’t know, odd about it. But I’m glad you like it.”
“Well . . . it is a little weird.”
“Oh.”
“But in a good way. Like art.”
Toby’s smile had faded but now was back full beam. “Yeah. Like art. Just like art.” He looked at me like he thought I was the smartest person he’d ever met. “Like I said, you can cut me out if you want. There’s a big space between us. I don’t mind.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Well, it’s your copy, so if you change your mind . . .”
“I really wouldn’t.”
We sat there after that, not knowing what to say to each other. After a few minutes Toby stood up.
“Tea?”
While he was in the kitchen, I had a chance to look around the apartment without anyone watching me. Finn’s old blue velvet chair was still there. The seat was all worn, but the back was bright because Finn was always leaning forward when he sat there, in toward the easel in front of him.
On a table in the corner was a lamp Finn had made by burying a lightbulb in the middle of a goldfish bowl full of green sea glass. There were pieces of smooth glass in every shade of green you could think of, and when you turned on the light it looked like something from the future. Next to it was this chess set that Finn had made in art school. He said he kept it to remind him never, ever to be a pretentious idiot. All the squares on the board were black, so it was hard to know whether you were in the right place. The pieces were these tiny rat skulls that he’d varnished. Each one had a small mark to tell you what piece it was. The bishops had a little cross on the top, and the knights had small horse heads. But other than that they were all the same. Practically identical unless you looked up close, and then you’d start to see the differences. Like one might have a chipped-off tooth or something. I couldn’t see what was so pretentious about it. It was kind of gross, but I liked it.
I had one of the skulls in my hand when Toby came back out with the tea.
“Care for a game?” he asked.
I shrugged. “If you want.” I didn’t really know how to play chess, but I didn’t want to admit it to Toby. I brought the board over and set it on the coffee table between us.
He’d made the tea in a plain white teapot that dribbled when it poured and was nowhere near as good as the Russian teapot. I could tell we both knew that, but neither of us said anything.
“Sugar?” Toby said, raising a spoon over a half-full sugar bag. Finn used to put sugar cubes on a little plate with tiny tongs that were shaped like the claws of a small animal. Toby must not have known about that, because he just brought out the wrinkled sugar bag.
“Two,” I said.
“Excellent. I like a woman who’s bold with her sugar.” I turned away and smiled, mostly because he’d called me a woman. Toby stirred two spoonfuls into my cup and then what looked like about four into his own.
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and slid one out. Then he looked over at me like he wasn’t sure what to do.
“Do you . . .” He tilted the pack toward me and raised his eyebrows. That was the first time anyone had offered me a cigarette, and I wondered then if Toby knew how old I was.
I slid one out of the pack and said thanks, like it was something I did all the time. Like Greta would, not showing anything. Toby took his, then lit them both with a neon orange lighter.
“Ahhh, that’s more civilized,” he said, inhaling deep, suddenly seeming to relax a bit. I took the smallest puff and coughed, then put the cigarette down in the ashtray. I was waiting for Toby to laugh at me, but he didn’t.
“You or me?” he asked, nudging his head toward the chessboard.
“You can go first. I don’t care.”
Toby lined up all the pieces, then moved one of his.
I watched what he did, then moved something on my side that was almost the same.
“Where’s all your stuff?” I asked, scanning the apartment.
He hesitated, crossing his gangly legs. He stared at the chessboard, then moved one of his pawns.
“Well,” he said, “you know, some of this is my stuff.”
I looked around the apartment. I could only see Finn’s things. The same things that had been in this place forever. I moved one of my pawns, barely looking at the board.
“What do you mean?”
Toby didn’t look me in the eye. He had a finger on one of his knights, but he took it back off and had a drink of his tea. Then he took a long pull on his cigarette before resting it on the edge of the ashtray. He still wouldn’t look at me, and suddenly I started to realize what he meant. I looked around again, this time eyeing everything with suspicion.
“Well . . .” he said, sliding the knight halfway across the board.
“So, which things are yours?” I waved the back of my hand at the room.
“I’ve lived here for almost nine years, June. It’s hard to say exactly what’s mine.”
Nine years. Nine years? I was five nine years ago. He had to be lying.
“Well, I want to know. I want to see what’s yours.”
Toby looked at me like he was really starting to feel sorry for me. He glanced around the room, then pointed to the big wooden shelf near the door.
“That jar. Those guitar picks. They’re mine, for instance.”
Finn’s guitar pickles. Those picks—“plectrums,” Finn told me to call them if I wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I used to play with those for hours and hours when I was a little kid. Dumping them onto the carpet, the colors like candy. Hours and hours of sorting them and piling them up and setting them out into long lines like roa
ds stretching the length of Finn’s living room. I used to have contests with Greta to see who could find the prettiest one out of all the swirled marbled patterns in that jar. How could those not be Finn’s?
“Are you sure?”
“June, Finn couldn’t play guitar. You know that, don’t you? He was a misery at musical instruments.”
I didn’t know that. Of course I didn’t, because I didn’t know anything.
“Yeah. Of course I know that. You don’t have to tell me about Finn. He was my uncle.”
I picked up my king and plonked it right down in the middle of the board. Toby slid a pawn diagonally three spaces.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Well, why didn’t Finn ever tell me about you?” I was trying hard to keep the anger out of my voice.
Toby shrugged and glanced down.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m nothing to brag about really. Look at me. I’m a mess, I’m—”
“That’s no excuse. I’m nothing to brag about either but you knew about me, didn’t you?”
“June, listen, I used to be jealous of you, you know.”
That really ticked me off, because I’m not a jealous person. Not at all. Why should I be jealous? What would I have to be jealous about? I looked at Toby perched on the edge of the couch, hunched over, legs crossed, trying to fold his long body down. Toby with his stupid accent. English but not real English. Not Room with a View English or Lady Jane English but some broad slurry thing I didn’t know anything about. I watched him sitting there with cards up his sleeve. Decks and decks of surprise cards he could slide out whenever he wanted to. Stories of him and Finn I’d never heard. Not like me. My deck was thin. Worn out from shuffling over and over in my head. My Finn stories were dull and plain. Small and stupid.
“I’m not jealous,” I said.
“All right. Sorry. Of course you’re not.” Toby scratched a finger over the arm of the couch, then he looked at me. “But I was. I was jealous of you. All those Sundays . . .”
He was just saying that to make me feel better. I could tell.
“And you’re not jealous anymore?”
“No, not really.”
“Because Finn’s dead?”
Toby fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. That was something else I noticed. He was always fidgeting. Why would Finn—who could have chosen anyone he wanted for a boyfriend, a so-called special friend—choose Toby?
“Yeah, probably,” he said. He looked at the floor, then up at me.
The rain pounded against the window and we both sat there quiet for a long time, sipping on our cold cups of tea. Toby lit another cigarette.
I stared down at the chessboard, because I didn’t want Toby to see my eyes. Then I stood up and said I had to go to the bathroom. I walked down the hallway, and right away I could see that Finn’s bedroom door was open—the door that had always been closed, private. Every single time I’d been there it was closed. I went up to the bathroom door and closed it, but I didn’t go in. Instead, I tiptoed back down the hallway and stood outside Finn’s bedroom. The room was dim, the overcast light coming through a wispy white curtain. I stared for a while, standing on the threshold. Then I did what I knew I shouldn’t do. I stepped in.
There was a big red guitar in the corner. There were two pairs of slippers, two bathrobes hung over a chair. One of them was Finn’s yellow one. The other was blue. The bed was unmade, and I tried to guess which side Finn would have slept on. Then it was obvious. One side table had two empty cigarette packs, half a bottle of gin, and a York Peppermint Pattie wrapper on it. The other had an old-fashioned alarm clock and a frame with three photographs in it. I stepped over and picked up the frame. The top picture was of Finn and Toby. It was black and white and looked like it might have been taken in London, because there was one of those big black taxis in the background. They both looked young and so happy. Toby was taller than Finn, and he was leaning his cheek in to rest on the top of Finn’s head. I took my thumb and covered Toby’s face with it so it was just Finn. Just Finn wearing my thumb like a hat. The middle picture was Greta and me when we were much younger. We were in Finn’s apartment and we were each painting at an easel. The third one was the oldest. It was Finn and my mother. A holiday snapshot. A beach somewhere.
I listened for a second to make sure Toby wasn’t coming to look for me, then I climbed into the bed. I slid in on Finn’s side and pulled the covers up all around me. This is where Finn and Toby had sex. This might be the scene of the crime. This might be the very place where Toby gave Finn AIDS. I slid my hands over the sheets, pressed my face into Finn’s pillow. Private. This was what private meant.
“Whose turn is it?” I asked Toby when I went back to the living room. I tried hard to keep my voice solid.
“Look, I don’t even really know how to play chess, June. I should have said.”
I looked at those little rat skulls scattered across the smooth black surface of the board, the two of us pushing them around like it actually meant something.
“Me neither.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, then. Move wherever you want.”
I took my time, eyeing my pieces. I put my index finger on a knight and slowly slid it straight across the board, right up to Toby’s king.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”
Toby pushed himself up from the couch and strode across the room. His back was facing me, and with one flick of my finger I bumped his king and knocked it off the edge of the board. Then, before he could turn around and see what I’d done, I quickly picked it up and set it back in its place.
Toby asked if I was hungry, and before I had time to answer he was already putting his coat on and moving to the door. He stopped at Finn’s desk, opened the third drawer, pulled out a bunch of money, and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.
“Ah, before I forget.” He spun around and ran down the hall to the bedroom. When he came back he was holding a small blue present.
“For you,” he said. I took it and turned it in my hands. “From Finn. It was one of his things. He said to give it to you if you ever came to the apartment.”
I could tell it was probably a book. It was wrapped in a silky kind of Chinese wrapping paper with blue butterflies all over it. I thought that if I held it or looked at it too long, I might cry right there in front of Toby, which I didn’t want to do. At all. So I just said “thanks” and walked over and slid it into my backpack. Then we left.
As soon as we were out on the street, the wind and damp went right to my bones, making my teeth chatter like crazy. With Toby holding a big black umbrella over the two of us, we turned south on Columbus Avenue, then walked for blocks and blocks. After a while Toby stopped and pointed at a Chinese restaurant called Imperial Dragon. It was the kind of place with red lacquered lanterns and long fish tanks where lionfish swam over pagodas that sat on colored gravel. Toby ordered three meals, even though there were only two of us. And spring rolls. And wonton soup. And two extra bowls of crispy noodles with duck sauce. We ate everything like starved animals, not saying a word.
We’d just about finished. I was loading some sugar into my little cup of Chinese tea.
“Hey,” Toby said. “For you.” From under the table he pulled a gold colored napkin folded into a butterfly.
I stared at it.
That was Finn’s trick. Toby was stealing Finn’s trick right in front of my eyes.
“No, thanks,” I said, sliding it back across the table.
“Do you not like butterflies?” he said. He had the gold butterfly cupped in his palm. He was looking at it the way you’d look at a hurt bird.
“There’s nothing wrong with butterflies,” I said.
“Napkins, then? One of those rare cases of napkinophobia I’ve been hearing about?”
I rolled my eyes. “So where’d you learn that from? Who showed you how to do the butterfly?”
I was waiting for him to say, “Finn,” and then I’d say, “I tho
ught so.”
Toby set the butterfly down gently next to his teacup.
“It’s only from an origami book. When I was a kid. It’s one of my fiddly-hand things. Card tricks, flea circus, guitar, origami. When—if you get to know me, I’ll show you some stuff.”
All at once I had a picture of Toby teaching Finn how to make butterflies out of cloth. His hand guiding Finn’s. The two of them laughing when Finn got it wrong. The two of them, I thought, and a billow of sadness filled my whole chest.
“Oh,” I said, not looking Toby in the eye. “I guess it’s just not my kind of thing.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and in one motion he picked up the napkin and snapped it in the air. I watched as all the knots and folds fell from the golden cloth and the little butterfly disappeared, leaving Toby with a plain old napkin in his hand.
But the sadness stayed with me. Not only sadness because I wasn’t part of Toby and Finn’s world but also because there were things about Finn that weren’t Finn at all. Now my memory of Finn making the butterfly at the restaurant was all wrong. What if everything I loved about Finn had really come from Toby? Maybe that’s why I felt like I’d known Toby for years and years. Maybe all along Toby had been shining right through Finn.
“I’m sorry about this. All of it,” Toby said after a while. “I promise that if you come again it won’t be as bad. The worst is over, all right?”
I didn’t believe him. The worst would never be over as far as I was concerned. But just like at the train station, Toby promised he had more stuff to give me. Stuff Finn wanted me to have.
“I’ll pick you up, all right? I’ll find you. You don’t have to do anything.”
I shrugged. “If you want to.”
“I do.”
“Well, whatever, but it has to be a Thursday. That’s the only day I can do it.”
“Thursdays, then.”
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