We Are Lost and Found

by Helene Dunbar

Two in the morning comes out of nowhere. James and I stumble onto the street. Ears ringing with silence. Legs adjusting to the tedious movement of walking. Shoulders pressing together for warmth. And snow. Snow everywhere. Piles and piles of it covering the statue of George Washington on his horse in Union Square and still falling.

  Before George married Martha, he was in love with his best friend’s wife, James tells me, his breath crystalizing in the frigid air.

  These are the types of things that James knows. Obscure facts about George Washington. Statistics of sports he doesn’t follow. City death tolls from GRID (gay-related immune deficiency), which James tells me is now called AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), because being gay doesn’t equal being dead, and because there is something drastically wrong with naming a disease something that places the blame on those it infects. From what James says, it didn’t matter anyhow; the name change hasn’t altered anything else.

  People are dying regardless.

  I guess, given everything, I’d rather hear about George.

  Once I asked James why he was so fascinated by other people’s relationships.

  It’s less messy than being in one myself, he said.

  Hey! You two want this?

  A guy in his twenties, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a fridge door stops near Broadway. The door is clean. Gleaming white as if he’d just ripped it off a floor model at the Appliance Warehouse out on Long Island.

  I feel for the five bucks stuffed into the front pocket of my jeans. Mug Money, my mother calls it. Something to give a thief so they don’t get your wallet, or your watch, or whatever else you have that’s actually worth something.

  I’ve never had to use the fiver and wonder if we’re really going to get mugged or if this guy is simply hopped-up on drugs. I mean, why else would he be walking down 17th carrying a fridge door?

  I take a step closer to James. He isn’t much good in a fight, but he can talk his way out of almost anything. That boy could charm the birds out of the trees, my mother says of James, despite the fact that James is exactly the kind of person my dad thinks is ruining the world. Not that Mom would ever defend James, or anyone, to my dad. Instead, she feeds James. Lasagna. Spaghetti. Cannoli. It’s not good to be so thin, she tells him.

  The fridge guy breaks into a smile and points at the snow-covered street. I’ve been sledding all night on it, he says, nodding toward the door. But I can’t feel my fingers anymore. It’s yours if you want it.

  James looks at me and raises an eyebrow. Snowflakes perch on his long lashes, and time shudders to a standstill, leaving me breathless with longing for something…someone…I’ll never have. It’s as much of a rush as it is painful, like a brain freeze after eating your favorite ice cream. It’s a song that craves to be sung, a chord bent out of shape. My feelings for James are just one more of the things I’ve learned to stay silent about.

  It’s ultimately pointless anyway.

  James shakes his head, sending the snowflakes flying, and time jolts forward. The next thing I know, we’re sliding down Broadway. Careening into curbs and piles of snow. Pushing ourselves off parked cars, holding onto the door, and each other, and our coats. James’s scarf wraps around my neck like the last Dr. Who, and James is laughing, laughing, laughing, and I realize I’ve never heard him laugh quite like that before.

  Then we slam into a fire hydrant. We’re fine, but the door is banged up. So we shake ourselves off, haul it to the sidewalk, and leave it for someone else to salvage.

  We walk crosstown. The trip takes three times as long as normal because of the snow and because James insisted on wearing boots with metal heels instead of anything remotely practical. By the time we get to his apartment, we’re both shaking with cold. James jimmies the lock on the front door while I stand guard. Last week, someone was stabbed in the tiny lobby.

  You sure there’s room for me? I ask, wheezing like a pack-a-day smoker as we hike up five floors of stairs.

  In front of me, James shrugs. There’s always room for you, Michael, you know that. Besides, he says, slowing down so much I almost run into him, we’re one person down. Steven is in the hospital.

  Oh no. What happened?

  We reach the top floor, James pulls open the door, and we huddle inside. He stops again before he says, Pneumonia, I think. His sister came and cleared out his stuff.

  I wait for some bit of random information, the dosage of a common antibiotic shot or Steven’s third cousin’s middle name, but James is quiet, staring at the couch.

  I stop short of asking whether they’d cleaned the cushions. It doesn’t matter. Not like I’m going to make it home in this weather.

  James’s roommates:

  There’s Rob, who almost got arrested with James at a rally to save some Broadway theaters from being torn down last year. There’s Ted, who is a painter. James thinks Ted’s father owns the apartment, but isn’t sure since Ted doesn’t talk much and James sends his rent check to some P.O. box in the Bronx. Then there’s Steven, who does lighting or something and travels a lot and has the couch in the front room.

  Had, I guess.

  Most of the guys who have lived here are older, somewhere in their mid to late twenties, with jobs as waiters or cashiers they never talk about, and dreams of being actors or musicians that obsess them.

  When I’m here and they’re talking about art and meaning and rehearsals and their big breaks, I want to be one of them.

  Only later do the doubts creep in. Only later do I remember the late notices from the electric company stuck to the fridge door and the drunks passed out in the doorway.

  Only later do I wonder what’s really going on with Steven.

  Some are saying seventeen inches, some twenty-four. Either way, it’s a lot of snow. The subway is running because it’s easier, apparently, to keep it going than to shut it off and restart it. We can go anywhere we want, except it’s the middle of the night and we’re in Hell’s Kitchen and there’s nowhere to go.

  Smoke leaks out from under Ted’s door.

  The ceiling squeaks like it’s going to come down. Rob pounds on it with a broom and says, Fucking newlyweds. Then he shakes his head and laughs at the double meaning of his own joke.

  We hang out in the living room. I try to solve a Rubik’s Cube. Blue. Red. Yellow. Nope, the green and white are wrong. Start again.

  James sits on the floor, leaning against the wall, legs folded insect-like, smoking the thin cigarettes he rolls himself.

  James is a collection of straight lines. His concave cheekbones and his too-straight nose, the cut of his cream-colored hair, the lapels on his jacket decorated with ever-changing pins of silver crowns, ringed hands, tiny bells.

  My edges are round. My hair curls violently when it’s wet. James’s waist-cinched jackets are too restrictive for me to dance in. And mostly that’s okay. But there are nights when I watch James, and his straight lines, and his straight fingers around a straight cigarette, and I wish I were more like him.

  Rob likes to flirt.

  And he likes to flirt with me, although we both know it’s a joke.

  But James isn’t the only one in the apartment who seems subdued tonight. Everyone is kind of glancing at the couch and then looking away without saying anything.

  Rob is stretched out perpendicular to me, his long legs on top of mine, back on the floor, eyes on the smoke that rises toward the ceiling.

  Oh, Michael, Michael, Michael, he says, dramatically breaking the silence. Why don’t you have a boyfriend?

  All of James’s roommates are dramatic. And I don’t know them well enough to tell what’s real and what’s theater, or to know whether I should even care.

  Maybe I have a boyfriend and I just haven’t told you, I tease back.

  As if.

  I stare at the laces on Rob’s shoes. They’re blue. Faded.


  And easier to look at than James’s face when I’m lying about having a boyfriend.

  MTV is blaring in one of the bedrooms. I Want My MTV, a variety of rock stars chant.

  I kind of wish I could see it, because watching MTV at home around my dad is risking a lecture on morality and, of all things, fashion.

  As if either of those were things my dad knew anything about.

  I assumed I’d sleep on Steven’s vacated couch, but am not about to put up a fight when James suggests the beanbag chair in his room instead.

  Do you think Steven will be okay? I ask, Is he coming back?

  James shrugs a sad I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it shrug. I don’t know what he’s hiding or whether I’d want to hear it, but I’m not going to press.

  I follow him to his room, a world away from the rest of the apartment.

  Tapestries from India line the walls.

  A stack of Playbills threatens to topple over on his tiny desk.

  A Styrofoam head wears a pair of shutter shades.

  His cologne, spicy and intoxicating, fills the room.

  James lights two oil lamps that hang from the wall as I settle in on the beanbag at the side of his twin bed.

  Every time I move, it sounds like one of those rain sticks they sell in the Village. Like James’s laugh while we were riding the fridge door.

  We talk about music, whether film can ever be considered as much of an art form as live theater, and the rumor about a new Bowie album, until we’re hoarse and James is tired enough to allow the British accent he inherited from his mother to bleed through.

  I’ve been hired to collaborate on a new performance piece, he says.

  Then James tells me he wants me to contribute sound to it. Not, he explains, music, but noises. Guitar strings breaking. A percussive effect. A chord out of tune.

  Out of tune? I ask. I spend all my time getting in tune.

  But aren’t all things more interesting if they’re ever-so-slightly wrong? James asks.

  I shrug. If that were true, I’d be the most interesting guy in the world.

  I wake to a clatter of dishes. James is obsessed with breakfast. Somewhere in his past, he had a German nanny, and on weekends he likes to recreate her puffed apple pancakes, piles of bacon strips, fresh squeezed juice.

  I make my way to the kitchen, passing Rob who gives me a seductive, sleepy smile that makes me wish I were attracted to guys in their midtwenties with facial hair.

  James is quiet as he cooks, measuring flour and who knows what into a large bowl. Duran Duran meets Julia Child, Becky likes to say about him.

  It’s funny, though. I have a hard time seeing James as Simon Le Bon. Sure, he’s got those delicate features and his hair is cut in kind of the same way, but James always makes me feel like he’s going to morph into something else. Something dark and slightly dangerous. I told him that once, curious to hear his response. He just smiled.

  As if she’s been summoned by my thinking about her, Becky calls.

  James holds out the phone to me.

  Becky says, Your mom told me you were at Connor’s, so I figured you were at James’s. Meet me at the cathedral?

  Becky is pretty much Jewish. Technically, half. Or maybe a quarter. Her family is as much a melting pot as the city, and people are always looking at her permanently tanned skin and her dark straight hair that she’s constantly teasing, and her dark blue eyes, and asking her where she’s from as if “here” isn’t an option.

  Anyhow, her dad was the only one who practiced. Now he’s gone, and her mom doesn’t care about religion. Though she still goes to a synagogue on the big holidays, standing in the back because she doesn’t have a ticket, somewhere along the line Becky has become fascinated with Catholic churches: the incense, the music, the candles, the stained glass. She doesn’t go to mass; it isn’t about worship, she tells me. She only likes to pop in at odd times, when she has St. Patrick’s mostly to herself. She says she likes to hear her steps echo through the high arches.

  I cock my eyebrow at James, who is taking off a yellow apron. He knows what she’s asking without my having to repeat it.

  Tell God I said hello, he says. James tries to avoid religion at all costs.

  I’m somewhere in between. Catholic school years aside, I’m not particularly interested in religion, but not totally ready to rule it out yet either. Plus, I’m kinda pissed at my dad for using God as an excuse to kick Connor out of the house. As if my dad has any use for God. Or God has any obvious use for him.

  Come, I mouth to James, silently begging. Sometimes church makes Becky depressed and I’m already feeling out of sorts.

  James holds out his hand for the phone and passes me the apron in trade.

  I love you to pieces, kitten, he says into the phone, but it’s you and Michael today.

  Damn.

  They talk about the snow for a while, and when he hangs up, his hand stays on the receiver, back in its cradle.

  I want to ask him if he’s okay. He has these moments with Becky sometimes, like there’s something he wants to say but can’t, and they seem to be happening more and more lately.

  But then he turns, that sly smile on his face, and says, Light a candle for me, will you?

  I need to learn to say no. Becky tells me that all the time; only she never wants me to say no to her.

  When I walk into the church after trudging through the snow for what feels like an hour, she says, You’re late, you missed the bells.

  The bells. Of course. Becky knows facts about the bells—even their names—the same way James knows facts about…everything.

  It’s snowing, I remind her. You know, like a lot.

  She bumps her shoulder into mine, surrounding us in a cloud of powdery perfume. A dusting of slush sprays off my coat.

  No shit, Sherlock, she says with a laugh. But you still missed the bells.

  I offer my apology, though, really, I’m surprised I made it at all.

  Did you get home okay last night? I ask. Becky lives in Queens but lies and uses her aunt’s address on the Upper West Side, so she can go to our school in Manhattan. Her aunt actually lives in California, though, and only rents the place out, so it isn’t like Becky can move there for real or anything.

  I crashed at Andy’s, she says, And don’t look at me like that. His mom took the night shift at St. Vincent’s, but his dad was there.

  Andy’s mom is a nurse and his dad is, like, seven-feet tall and a cop who no doubt made Andy sleep on the couch and kept his hand on the butt of his gun all night.

  So remind me why your boyfriend doesn’t do this church thing with you again?

  Becky snorts. He doesn’t believe in God.

  And you’re Jewish, I say. So why go to church?

  She smiles, and in the light that’s shining through the stained glass, she looks a little angelic.

  I believe in an equal opportunity God, she says. Sue me. Come on, let’s light some candles.

  I always feel pressured lighting candles in church. If I light one for one of my grandparents, I worry the other might feel slighted. What if I light one for a cousin and forget someone else?

  Then there’s James. It’s kind of odd lighting candles for people who are alive, right? I ask Becky, even though, lapsed as I am, I’m the one who should know. But I feel as though I’m jinxing people when I light one in their name. Like it’s some sort of bad omen.

  It’s fine, Michael, she says, slipping a couple of dollars into the box. It’s about intention and prayer.

  Intention?

  What if my intentions and James’s are different?

  I can’t lie in church, not even to myself, so I switch my focus to prayer.

  What would James want me to pray for?

  Why don’t I know?

  Be happy, I think as I light a candle
for him. And even though Becky thinks it’s okay, I still feel weird about doing it.

  But he asked.

  That being said, Becky might be on to something. I feel lighter as I leave the church. Like I’ve done something worthwhile.

  It’s still snowing. Still snowing. And since it isn’t ridiculously cold, I walk back home, notes flying through my head. They’d make a good song if I’d only remember them, which I won’t.

  I’m sleep-drunk. Or rather, tired-drunk. Exhausted. And the snow is making me numb and giddy. Happy. And that’s the odd thing. Not being happy, but realizing it. Because how often, when you’re happy, do you have the chance to step back and notice?

  When the snow clears, the city goes back to trying to clean up the subway cars. Monday, they take the 1 train out of service, and on Tuesday, it comes back silver and heartless. It’s as if they dipped the whole thing in peroxide, and I spend the whole ride trying not to touch anything.

  By Wednesday, the train is comfortably covered in tags and graffiti again, the station boasting a Haring chalk drawing of dancing figures losing themselves in joy.

  My morning starts with chemistry.

  How’s your brother? Mrs. Bryson asks. She had him his senior year and really liked him, even tutoring him for free to get his grades up high enough for college applications.

  He’s good, I say, not knowing if I’m telling the truth. I have to assume Connor’s good since it isn’t like he’s easy to get hold of. But at least he’s having fun, I guess.

  Is he giving any thought to college? she asks.

  Mrs. Bryson knows that my dad cut Connor off financially after kicking him out of the house, so he had to get a job. But no way am I telling her that I’m pretty sure his entire hourly salary goes toward boys and drugs and summer tickets for the ferry to Fire Island.

  Whatever he’s giving thought to, I doubt it has much to do with school.

  I have study hall third period, but nothing to study for. Instead, I smuggle my UK single of U2’s “New Year’s Day,” which was totally worth getting since it came with an extra 45 of three live tracks, into one of the language labs that line the back wall of the library. Then I shut the door, and hope the librarians won’t do a spot check.