Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  “Oh, boy,” Jeff mumbles.

  I just hang my head.

  Ty tries to smile. “Lloyd, I think on some level she honestly believes everything she’s told you is true. That she and Steven had this great love affair. Even the truth of his gayness she won’t allow to disturb that image.”

  I finish my brandy. “And now she wants me to take Steven’s place in her life. The clothes she’s given me, the ring …” I think of something. “Ty, did Valentine’s Day ever mean anything to the two of them?”

  He looks at me strangely, almost defensively. “Why?”

  “She said it did. She once claimed it was their anniversary, but I saw from their wedding album they weren’t married on that day.”

  He stands, cursing under his breath. “Valentine’s Day was Steven’s and my anniversary! Damn her for appropriating even that.”

  I share his anger. I look over at Jeff. But his eyes aren’t angry. They’re … moist? He actually wipes away a tear. Why is he all of a sudden going sentimental about Eva—when he’s lost no opportunity to denounce her from the heavens for months?

  I think Ty wants us to hang out longer, but I need some air, even if a light mist is still falling. I explain to Ty that we have to get back to Connecticut so that I can make an early return trip the next morning to Provincetown. I’d told Eva I’d be gone just a couple of days, and it is, after all, high season.

  “Well, maybe we can have dinner soon,” he says, keeping eye contact longer than necessary. “Come back to the city or I’ll come up there.” He looks from me over to Jeff, and seems to accept that something has changed. “Actually, maybe we can make it a double date. I’ve had dinner a couple times with your friend Drake. He’s very persistent.”

  “Persistent he is,” I agree. I see Jeff smirk and look away.

  “It was good to meet you at last, Jeff,” Ty says, extending his hand.

  Jeff shakes it. “Well, I’m still in awe of meeting Tyrone Power.”

  Ty grins. “Next time I’ll introduce you to Linda Darnell. She’s an attorney down the hall.”

  We all laugh. Ty and I exchange a look. It’s a look of both good-bye and gratitude. He’s a good man.

  Outside, Jeff and I don’t speak for a long time as we walk down Eighth Avenue. I’m replaying what Ty told us over and over in my head. Finally I look over at Jeff.

  “You were right,” I say. “It could have been a fucking laundromat. She used me to fill a void in her life without ever really caring about this guest house in the way she pretended to be. She pretended to share my dream of finding a new life just because it was the only offer she had!”

  Jeff stops walking and looks at me. “Lloyd, I can understand you feeling that way. But I can’t get over how sad I feel for her. I can’t dislike her anymore, despite everything she’s done to keep us apart. All I can feel is so sad for how lonely she is. How lost.”

  “Pitiful,” I say, almost spitting the word. “That’s what she is.” I feel betrayed, used—and it’s with great effort that I try to remember that she’s ill, that it’s about pathology and not malice.

  Jeff lifts my chin with his forefinger to look me in the eyes. “Don’t you think compassion might be a more useful emotion than pity?”

  I look at him. He’s right. I just feel such a shattering disappointment. I stand there on the street, my clothes getting wet, and I feel like such a fool. Why hadn’t I seen it before? How did I allow this to sneak up on me? Some great psychologist I am. “I bought a house with a borderline personality!” I shout, the full weight hitting me.

  Jeff smirks. “Like the Madonna song?” He sings a couple of bars.

  I laugh. Thank God Jeff’s here with me. He’s keeping me sane. “Look, I don’t know for sure that it’s an appropriate diagnosis for her,” I say. “Borderline is pretty serious, and some psychologists don’t even use the term. It’s been very misunderstood. But she seems to have some of the traits of a borderline. She needs to be in therapy to determine her problem.”

  “So you think she can get better?”

  “Borderlines are very difficult to treat. Not impossible, but it takes a long, long time.” I feel tremendously sad. “And I don’t know if I can last that long.”

  “Maybe I can talk to her,” Jeff says. “Maybe I can tell her that I’ve been in therapy in the past. That it’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe I can encourage her to seek some help.”

  I have to admit that Jeff’s about-face, his surprising counsel for compassion, impresses me. This is the guy who only a few weeks ago hadn’t been able to tolerate Eva’s presence in the same room. Now, instead of using the occasion to rail against her, he actually finds it in his heart to feel sorry for her. Now he’s actually considering talking with her, advising her.

  True, I wish Jeff had gone into therapy himself to process his grief over Javitz’s death. When I suggested it, he’d been as rigid as Eva was evasive about the subject. The sessions he refers to are, in fact, from long ago, while we were still together, and they lasted only a few weeks. Still, his compassion for Eva shows that he’s made some breakthroughs on his own, and it heartens me to see it.

  Maybe, in fact, the vulnerability he’d shown on the breakwater the other day, when he’d finally grieved for Javitz, hadn’t been a one-time thing. Maybe the cold, hard, distant Jeff is disappearing. Maybe my soft old Cat was coming back to me. Certainly his sudden compassion reminds me of the Jeff I fell in love with all those years ago, the one who cried seeing dead animals in the road. Underneath his hardened, cynical circuit-boy exterior, maybe he’s still as soft as marshmallow fluff on Wonder bread.

  We hail a cab. It’s starting to rain harder. I don’t want to think about Eva anymore. I suddenly lean across the seat and—cabbie be damned—kiss Jeff full on the mouth. He reacts with surprise but quickly begins kissing me back.

  “I just want you to know how wonderful it’s been being with you these past few days,” I tell him.

  He smiles. “Well, it’s likewise, Dog. It means a lot to have you with me, supporting me through this stuff with Anthony.”

  I kiss him again. I notice an eyebrow lift in the rearview mirror. Hey, I’m sure New York cabdrivers have seen a lot more than this.

  Suddenly I’m struck with an idea. “Jeff,” I ask, “where did you say you and Anthony spent the night New Year’s Eve?”

  He looks at me oddly. “What?”

  “I’m shifting gears here. I have to or I’ll go nuts thinking about Eva.” I pull back to focus on his eyes. “Anthony was staying in Chelsea with some guy, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jeff says, still puzzled.

  “Do you remember where in Chelsea?”

  “Nineteenth Street and … Seventh Avenue, I think.” He makes a face. “But Lloyd, what does this have—”

  “Trust me.” I tell the driver to scratch Grand Central and take us to the corner of Nineteenth and Seventh instead.

  “But why?” Jeff asks.

  “For clues,” I insist. “Maybe the guy Anthony was staying with is home. Maybe Anthony talked to him, told him something.”

  A grin slowly stretches across Jeff’s face. “You’d make a good reporter yourself, Dr. Griffith.”

  I wink at him.

  Of course, Jeff has a hard time remembering exactly which house it was. It had been dark, and late, and he’d been a little tweaked. But he finally settles on one address.

  “Yeah,” he says, pointing up at the building, “I remember that little moon carved over the door.” He’s certain the apartment they slept in had been on the second floor, in the front, facing the street. Given that it’s only a little after three o’clock, we suspect that the guy is probably still at work. But we ring the buzzer anyway, noting the name of the tenant: R. PHILLIPS.

  As we expected, no one answers. But as we turn to head back down the brownstone steps, a guy comes walking up past us, a little out of breath. Back from a jog. He’s cute, with a receding hairline and a nice set o
f rounded pecs bouncing beneath his wet T-shirt, clinging to him from the rain. Obviously a Chelsea fag.

  “Are you Mr. Phillips?” I ask, completely on a whim.

  Now, I believe the universe helps you out when you’re doing the right thing. It sets up little chances like this, so-called coincidences that later you can’t believe really happened. If this is the guy we’re looking for, and he just so happens to be returning home just as we are on his steps—when we might otherwise have missed him by a slender moment or two—well, then, wouldn’t that just confirm that we—both of us—are justified in our quest into the lives of both Anthony and Eva? Wouldn’t that just be our vindication from the powers that be?

  The guy in the T-shirt looks at me strangely. I repeat my question. “Are you R. Phillips, from the front apartment, second floor of this building?”

  “No,” he says, scrunching up his face. “I’m just here visiting my girlfriend.”

  Okay, so whatever. Jeff and I look at each other and crack up, linking our arms around each other’s waists as we hail another cab.

  The First Week of August, Nirvana

  Henry

  Come on, Clara,” I call. “Come on, girl!”

  Brent loved this little dog. Clara made his singlehood bearable, he said. I couldn’t bear to think of Clara in the kennel, so I went down and picked her up a couple of days ago. There was no one else to take her.

  “That’s a good girl! Come on!”

  Clara’s a pug. You know pugs: so ugly they’re cute. Little round jellyrolls, perpetually in motion, with apoplectic eyes over faces defined by twists and folds. I adored her from the moment the lady at the kennel placed her in my arms. I was wearing one of Brent’s shirts. I hoped his scent might comfort her.

  It seems only fitting that my first trip with Clara should be to Provincetown. I needed to get out of Boston. The city felt too confining, too dreary, too much of a fuss over nothing. And I wanted to be in Ptown. You know. Because of Brent.

  I toss the squeaky rubber bone across the grass. Clara runs after it, yapping wildly, fetching it in her mouth and bringing it back to me. I wrest it from her teeth and throw it again. She makes another manic dash across the lawn. When she comes shooting back at me, a furry little cannonball, I roll onto the ground, my arms and legs in the air, and let her climb on top of me. She loves it when I do that. She drops the bone onto my chest and licks me all over my face.

  “That’s my girl,” I laugh. “That’s my baby girl!”

  A couple of the other guests at Nirvana are passing through the yard. They stop to comment on how cute Clara is. I grin and accept their praise on her behalf. Brent was right. Having a dog does make you popular. Everyone stops to chat.

  Lloyd has been great, refusing to charge me for my room, even though I insisted that wasn’t necessary. Except maybe it is. Remember that promotion I was up for? Well, I didn’t get it. They gave it to some woman who had less seniority than me but apparently better connections. All those years slaving dutifully away in my cubicle suddenly feel wasted. So money remains tight. And it’s been some months now since Hank has contributed anything to the household income.

  The sun is dropping lower in the sky. Out on the street I watch as a gaggle of boys heads toward Tea Dance, chatting animatedly like boys do on the streets of Provincetown, all hands and eyes. I recognize them as Boston boys. The same old tired faces. One waves over at me. I manage a smile.

  I’m not planning on joining them. Instead of the bars and the beach, I’ve spent my time walking with Clara through Beech Forest and sitting out on the stones in the East End, as far from the crowds as I can get. It’s a different Provincetown, one far removed from the throbbing beat of the Crown and Anchor and the “see-me, see-you” crowds at Spiritus. It’s a Provincetown I didn’t know was available during the height of summer, but Lloyd has revealed it to me.

  “There’s so much here that so many never see,” he explained. I followed him out on my bike to the other side of Route 6, where we hiked up into the dunes, the place where the artists lived in their shacks and where the vast horizon of sand looks like the Sahara Desert. It was the first time I’d ever really spent any time alone with Lloyd, and I found his slower, easier, more spiritual energy so different from Jeff. So refreshing. It’s been just what I needed, just what I’d been looking for on this trip.

  Lloyd has come out onto the porch now and is watching Clara and me wrestle on the lawn.

  “You two want to take a walk on the beach?” he calls over to us.

  “Sure!” I stand, clapping my hands as Clara trots alongside me. “Come on, Clara! Come on, girl!”

  I spot Eva coming out of the house behind Lloyd. “Did I hear you boys say you’re heading to the beach? I’m finished with the work here, so maybe I’ll—”

  I watch as Lloyd shoots her a look. It’s a look that surprises me in its intensity. “We’ve talked about this, Eva,” Lloyd says. His voice seems hard, definitive.

  Her face crumbles. “Right,” she says, trying to smile. “I’ll watch the house.”

  Lloyd is already down the steps and crossing Commercial Street. I can’t help but keep my eyes on Eva. It looks as if she might cry. Then suddenly her expression changes: it’s almost scary, like Madame Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Something twists, and she looks furious. She seems not to know I’m watching her. She turns and goes back inside the house.

  Something has definitely gone down between Eva and Lloyd. I don’t know what it is, but it must have been something fierce.

  “Lloyd!” I call. “Wait up!”

  Clara and I follow him onto the beach. The little dog keeps running up to the edge of the waves, backing off when they come in too close.

  I catch up with Lloyd. “You seem to be keeping Eva at arm’s length,” I observe.

  He sighs. “Yes. I suppose I seemed a little harsh back there.”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  “It’s not easy,” he says. “I keep wanting to melt, to give in. But I have to be firm, Henry. Otherwise everything will collapse.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That sounds pretty dramatic.” I try to smile. “Letting her walk with us along the beach wouldn’t have been a problem.”

  He shoots me a look almost as ferocious as the one he gave her. “You think not? Then she would have wanted to cook us dinner. Then we’d have all sat around and she would gotten you talking about Brent. Then she would have told you about Steven. Then she’d be in bed with you. Give her an inch and she takes a mile.”

  I make a face. “Lloyd, you’re exaggerating a little.”

  He relaxes. “Maybe. But trust me, Henry. I’ve learned some stuff.… Believe me, this is the only way for now. It’s called tough love. Eva has some problems she has to deal with. I’ve told her the only way I can see us continuing with this business is for her to be in therapy. I’ve asked her to start making some friends of her own. She can’t always be tagging along with me.”

  I shrug. “She’s always been very sweet to me.”

  “There comes a time when the mother bird has to kick the babies out of the nest.” He smiles. “I’m coming across hard, I know, but it’s the only way. I can’t go on enabling her. She needs to prove she can do the work.”

  “Well, I trust your judgment, Lloyd,” I tell him. “I figure you know best.”

  You see, I’ve come to view Lloyd as a wise man. No matter what we’ve talked about, he’s been able to offer ideas and counsel I never would have thought of on my own. If he believes “tough love” is needed for Eva, who am I to question him?

  We’re quiet for a while, watching Clara play chicken with the tide. She seems fascinated by its possibilities, but terrified of actually finding them out.

  “Jeff’s been trying to reach you,” Lloyd says all at once, just as Clara gets her paws wet and yelps out loud, running back to me as fast as her little legs can take her.

  I pick her up. “Yes,” I say. “I got his messages.”

  “I know he wanted to co
nnect with you when he heard about Brent.”

  I sigh. “Yeah. I’ll call him when I get back to Boston.”

  Lloyd levels his eyes at me. “Henry, I don’t really understand the problem between you and Jeff, but I know he really cares about you. He really wants to know that you’re doing okay with this.”

  I laugh, a little too harshly. “Doing okay? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lloyd picks up a stone and tosses it into the waves. Clara wants to leap out of my arms to go after it, but I hold her tight.

  “We’ve talked about everything in the last twenty-four hours except the reason you came down here,” Lloyd says, turning to look at me. “Do you want to talk about Brent?”

  “I … I don’t know what I’d say.”

  He looks over at me with the kindest, softest eyes I think I’ve ever seen. “Was anyone with you when you got the news that Brent died?”

  There are those words again: Brent died. I’ve heard them over and over, of course, for several days. I’ve even said them, giving the news to friends and acquaintances throughout the South End. But still they seem so strange, foreign, ridiculously unreal. Brent. Silly, spirited, ubiquitous Brent. He turns up everywhere, annoying the shit out of everyone. How can he be dead?

  I set Clara down. She runs around in circles a couple of times before deciding to check out the waves again. “I called Shane,” I tell Lloyd, “and he came over.”

  Lloyd smiles. “Good old Shane.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “Good old Shane.”

  He came right over after I called, bearing Chinese food and two bottles of wine: one red, one white. He forced me to eat the sweet-and-sour pork (if Mother only knew), and then we consumed both bottles of wine. Even though we didn’t talk much, just ate and drank, it felt good to have him there. Just somebody else in my apartment who was living, breathing. Of course he spent the night. We didn’t have sex, but he held me, and feeling Shane’s warm body next to mine all night was comforting.