I took a nap, so tired that I seemed to sleep as deeply as Matthew could. But I awoke in plenty of time to get to the Terminal at ten.
Except that as I was about to leave, the phone rang. The call was from a girlfriend in some distress over the impending separation of her and the man she’d lived with for a couple of years, so I had no choice but to listen and to sympathize. When I hung up and looked at my watch, I knew I might not make it to the Terminal exactly at ten, but sometimes Matthew had been a little late, so I didn’t think he’d notice.
I rushed over. Through the window I could see that instead of sitting in a booth, Matthew was perched on a stool at the bar. Cynthia was beside him and Pete, the owner, was standing in front of him. They were trying to console him because he was so nervous that I hadn’t shown up earlier.
“Here she is,” Cynthia laughed when I walked in. She got me a beer and George went off to make us a couple of plates of French fries.
The minute they’d stepped a little distance away, Matthew began to frantically declare how much he loved me—agitatedly, eagerly, and with, I thought, no real reason to be so excited.
“I’m so in love with you,” he said, his eyes shining like fire reflected in black marble, “I can’t believe it. I’m so in love, so in love.”
I felt the urgent need to calm him down. I told him with laughing gentleness that I loved him too. On the bar was a gift wrapped in black paper with a bow made of silver spikes. “What’s this?” I asked, teasing.
He handed it to me but told me not to open it until we got home.
He couldn’t seem to stop touching me. The stools we sat on were close, with only a small space between, which he filled with his hands, reaching for as much of me as he could touch without the few others in the bar thinking us vulgar.
I was slightly embarrassed at his hunger, as if he had to touch me regardless of what the others thought—but it seemed a sweet hunger, a sweet anxiety that only I could—and did—calm with touches and kisses and reassurances as if I were offering to a beautiful child some promise to keep him still until night.
The French fries came, slathered in gravy as always and accompanied by more beer. Laughing, we ate them, watching Pete’s TV suspended over the bar.
Once more, Matthew began to talk about his wonderful house in the States. About how there were two acres of land. About how a retired U.S. general lived next door. About how the general liked to think he was keeping an eye on Matthew’s place when Matthew was on the road, but that the general wasn’t crazy about the two gay painters who lived there in his absence and who were the ones really keeping an eye on the place.
He talked with animation, as if this house were splendid, but it sounded happily chaotic, too, full of art treasures he’d gathered in his extensive travels, but also full of the sloppy memorabilia that a musician brings back from the road. I imagined Matthew as a man of many and varied possessions.
And he imagined that someday soon I might become one of them. As I listened to him talk about his home, he turned to me, the low fires keeping vigil in his eyes, and he said, “Will you marry me?”
I laughed and said yes.
He told me I could have a little room of my own for my writing. He said I wouldn’t have to work again. He said, “I make …” but his voice trailed off before he named a figure. He was, this night, more handsome than ever, his lean, pale, strong-boned face agile with emotion, his mouth soft with sudden smiles and compulsive kisses, his thick black curls dancing in the blue light of the Terminal TV.
I asked him if he’d thought about coming with me to Utica, and he said, “Well, I’ve thought about it. I spoke to the guys. They can spare me some of the time—I’ve cleared Saturday, but Sunday still looks iffy ….”
I wasn’t disappointed—or hopeful either. The thought of bringing Matthew to meet my brother seemed to feel the same way a dream feels when you have something in it that would make your real life so much better, but you know you can’t drag it back up with you into the reality of day.
“This weekend could cost me four thousand dollars,” he said, glancing over at me from the side of his eye.
“Oh, well, then,” I said, a tiny bit relieved, “you’d better forget about it ….”
“We’ll see,” he answered.
As we watched TV, Michelle Phillips came on, and he seemed spellbound by her, staring intently at the screen and asking me not to talk while she was on. I found this very odd, but very pleasantly requested, so I, too, looked at the screen.
To watch television with him, to talk about his house—which he had suddenly begun to refer to as “our house,” to sit beside him laughing and touching, was such happiness, such ordinary happiness, that I wished with all my heart that the two of us might enjoy these simple pleasures forever.
After a while, we decided that if I was very discreet, I could open my gift. I held it down between our two bar stools and removed the spiky bow and the dark paper. Wrapped in tissue in a box from Eaton’s was a pair of black panties edged in black lace.
Matthew, as was his habit, asked me if we could spend the night together.
Of course, I said yes.
“But first,” I said, “there’s something that’s bothering me—”
“What’s that?” he asked, a little nervous.
He still had not changed his clothes. It looked as though he’d been nowhere but at work or with me since the minute we’d met.
“The cockatiel. Who’s feeding it? Who’s giving it water? You said on Sunday that you were looking after it. Now it’s Thursday. Is it dangling from its perch somewhere or something?”
“Oh, no,” Matthew smiled. “I gave the keys to the apartment to one of the technicians. I had him run over and take care of it.”
I smiled, relieved. It didn’t occur to me to ask him why he hadn’t told the technician to bring him back a clean shirt.
He paid Pete, peeling twenties off his wad again and declaring that he couldn’t believe how small the tab was—as if he were used to much more expensive places.
I found that a tiny bit embarrassing, but Pete didn’t seem to mind. He liked Matthew. And when I was with Matthew, he also liked me. Everybody seemed to like us.
We were golden, as golden as the beer we kept downing.
CHAPTER TEN
FOR THE PAST COUPLE of days, I had been complaining about a sliver in my finger—a sliver that may have been part of the thorn of a rose. Matthew became my surgeon.
As we came to my place, it was hurting and I mentioned it. I had told him before that I had had other friends who were pianists and that it was my experience that pianists had very strong hands.
We stepped inside, and before he’d removed his dark coat, he said, “Would you like me—with my pianist’s hands—to take care of that sliver for you?”
I nodded yes and held out my hand.
He took it gently, but squeezed very hard. I kept my eyes on his darkly intense, handsome face. Though what he was doing should have hurt a great deal, I remember no pain. He seemed quite afraid of hurting me, though, and I had to encourage him to keep at the sliver.
“You’re not hurting me—really, you’re not …”
His fiery eyes flashed sidewise into mine and he swore, “I don’t ever want to hurt you.”
He succeeded in removing the sliver and told me it was a good thing because he could tell it was beginning to be infected. We joked about his saving my life and he said that now he was like Androcles, who’d taken the thorn from the foot of the lion.
“Like him,” I said, “I am now indebted to you for life.”
Matthew said nothing in reply.
In the morning, as usual, we loved again. We had coffee, which we took turns making, at Matthew’s insistence. We talked and talked, and the hours flew as fast as a junkie’s cash.
I packed for my trip. Though we made some contingency plans, it was clear that Matthew wasn’t coming along. I thought it odd that he had to work this Sunday but
had been free enough to spend the whole afternoon at the wake and the whole evening with me the previous Sunday, but I didn’t question him. Nor was I very disappointed. He couldn’t come and that was fine. I gave him my brother’s phone number.
Though my bus wasn’t until two, we set out for the bus terminal at about noon. As we walked to the subway, I mentioned how ironic it was that I should now know the man who had written a song that—every other time I had visited—my brother had sung for me. Matthew said that of course, he’d not written the song for guitar, which my brother played, but piano. He mentioned some technical details about writing in this key or that.
Matthew came all the way to the bus terminal with me. I wondered how he could do that without telling anybody at the studio that he would be late. He never seemed to go near the telephone at my place.
As we neared the terminal, he seemed a little nervous. He told me that he was very bad at goodbyes. He said he’d take me to the terminal coffee shop and that I could order myself some lunch, but that after I ordered, he would just disappear.
I asked him, instead, to stand in line with me while I bought my ticket. “Then,” I said, “you can take off.”
All the time I’d been with Matthew, I had never seen him with any possessions except cash. No wallet. No ID. No keys. The night before, he’d mentioned keys in connection with the cockatiel, but I never saw them. And I never heard them, either, though there were many times I heard him take off his coat and his pants.
But he had keys now.
Because before we left for the bus terminal, I had given him my keys—an extra set to my place. He had not asked for these keys—nor ever mentioned staying at my place when I was away, but something compelled me to give him the keys. I had told this man that I loved him. I had said yes to his offers of marriage. I had trusted him with my heart—and the rest of my body, too.
But the real something that made me give him the keys was a feeling I would not allow myself to admit, though I knew I had it—the deep, certain, instinctive fear that without those keys, Matthew would have no place to sleep.
I bought my ticket. We said goodbye. It was a very shaky parting on Matthew’s part. He seemed scared—more scared than loving. My last words to him were, “Don’t worry about anything.” I don’t know what I thought he might have to worry about.
Before he left me, he waited for me to put my wallet back in my purse. He seemed to study the purse, and he commented on the fact that it was as organized as the rest of me—very organized. “You sure have a lot of compartments in that thing,” he said.
We hugged. Some men feel solid when you hug them, like you’re holding on. Others feel fragile, like you’re holding them together. Mostly, Matthew felt like that.
He moved away. He said something I couldn’t catch, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment by asking him to repeat it. His smile as he said it was casual.
I turned and headed for the door to the platform. But instinct told me to turn around. Matthew was staring at me, raising his hand to wave goodbye.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE FIRST THING I learned when I got to my brother’s was that the book from which he’d learned “Matthew’s” song credited it to someone else.
We called all my brother’s friends who knew about this type of music, but nobody was home. The date of the song was exactly the year Matthew had said he’d written it, but the name on it was definitely somebody else’s. My brother and I came to the uneasy conclusion that perhaps the credit had been mistakenly given, as sometimes does happen. But we came to the even uneasier conclusion that Matthew had lied about the song—and if about that—what else?
And he had the keys to my place!
It was a very distressing forty-eight hours. I was totally preoccupied with who or what this man was or wasn’t.
My original plan had been to take a bus back on Sunday that would arrive in Toronto at midnight. Matthew was planning to meet that bus.
Instead, I took an earlier bus so that I could go back to my place and prepare myself for what I thought was the most likely scenario—that I had seen the last of my Black Irish, my strange songster, my demon. It is hundreds of miles from Utica, New York to Toronto, Ontario. For part of them I worried, for part, I prayed. For a few minutes—on the border—I wept. Mostly I sat immobile, stunned at my own desperate weakness.
I had known Matthew for exactly one week. But it seemed as if I’d known him forever.
By the time I got to Toronto, I was a wreck. Somehow I made it from the bus terminal home.
As soon as I got in, I could see that he’d been there. The bed was made—but not in my usual way. There were matches and a few coins on the dresser that hadn’t been there when we’d left.
But little else seemed disturbed. As I looked around, though, I noticed a couple of things—that someone had used the phone, that someone had apparently gone through a file of my income tax papers that I’d left lying on top of my desk. Whoever had gone through the papers had left out a T-form from my bank that had on it my name and address and also, of course, the number of the account and the amount of interest it had accrued during the previous year.
Two drawers containing papers and odds and ends showed definite signs of having been rifled through.
And in the sink was a single coffee mug with a lipstick stain on it.
I panicked, sure Matthew had slept in my apartment with another woman and sure he had been looking for some paper that would allow him to steal from me in some clever, complicated way.
Frantic, I pulled the sheets from the bed and stuck them in the washer. I called Ruth, my girlfriend, and also my brother—both of whom could hear the terror in my voice and each of whom tried to calm me down, assuring me that it was quite possible that there were other explanations for what I’d found. To them, the evidence that Matthew had done something wrong seemed slight.
But still, Ruth offered to remove my valuables to her place and to let me stay there for the night, and she agreed to come with me to the bus terminal in case Matthew should, in fact, show up. All three of us seemed quite convinced that he would not.
I finished the wash and put the sheets back on the bed. I threw away the roses Matthew had given me. Of course, they were dead now, anyway. I threw out the black paper and the spiky bow. I tossed the bottle from the rare wine.
But when it came to the yellow sweatshirt and the black lace panties—I couldn’t. I took a better look at the panties, which I had thought were silk and saw that they were not. But still, they were very fine and the label said they’d been made in France.
In the hours in which I sat there waiting for my girlfriend to pick me up, I felt first paralyzing fear, then self-disgust, then something I didn’t realize would be more long-lasting than fear or disgust. I felt that Matthew was gone and that I would miss him for a good long time.
During the course of these hours, my landlady came down and told me she’d had a bad scare when she’d seen a man leave my apartment. I’d totally forgotten to tell her that there’d be somebody there while I was away—only that I’d be gone myself.
As I apologized, she said that the man had appeared to be dazed because, he claimed, he’d just bumped his head. She said he’d been alone as far as she knew and that he’d been very quiet.
The hours slowly crawled away and finally Ruth came and we took off, headed downtown to meet—or not to meet—Matthew.
We got there before midnight, so we went into the terminal coffee shop. I was so nervous, I chattered compulsively about how I’d surely seen the last of my strange lover. It seems to me now that I never stopped to think why we were so very sure that that should be so.
Calmly, Ruth told me that should he not arrive, she’d do her best to get me through the night, but that if he did come, she’d check him out and if she didn’t like what she saw, she’d demand the keys back from him and ask him to leave me alone.
“But on the other hand,” she said, “if it looks like he’s no axe m
urderer or anything and if he’s obviously expecting a sweet romantic reunion, I’ll drive the two of you home.”
We sat perched on stools at the high, busy counter. A waiter who’d heard so many stories that not even mine would sound odd took our orders for coffee and tea. Around us the crowd ebbed and flowed. Between me and the door to the station lobby was the rack of refrigerated shelves holding the long day’s remaining wedges of pie and pedestalled glasses of rice pudding. Partly through the dim glass windows of this unit and partly through plain air, I could see people coming and going in the lobby.
Dozens went by. Ruth and I watched the clock. Or rather, I watched the clock and she watched me.
It was not yet midnight when I looked up and saw Matthew—only the barest glimpse of him passing the door.
“He came!” I nearly shouted, hopping down from the stool and went dashing after him. I must have been remarkably quick, for he was only a few yards from the door when I caught him.
He turned. In the fluorescent light of the bus terminal lobby, the planes of his handsome face were harshly exaggerated, but he was smiling at me, and his hair shone like polished ebony.
He still had not changed his clothes.
With nervous haste, I explained that my girlfriend had come with me because I’d come into town early. Perhaps he seemed a little nervous, too, or annoyed at this news, but it was hardly noticeable. I led him into the coffee shop and made the introduction.
It seemed fine. Matthew’s smooth, intelligent, lively talk was exactly right. He told me at once how he’d accidentally scared the landlady and how he couldn’t even respond to her questions articulately because he’d been in a daze after bumping his head on the low door out of my place.
Ruth asked him about the video he was working on, and he began to answer, but then he skittered off the subject and on to the topic of her job. Since the video was now supposed to be done, I interrupted him to ask whether they’d finished. “The end of the month,” he answered with cheerful offhandedness, “a couple more days …”
Terminal Grill Page 5