Home Stretch

by Graham Norton

  ‘What can I get you?’

  Finbarr decided to waste no time.

  ‘Actually, I’m looking for a job. Have you got anything?’

  The barman lowered his head, as if disappointed he would have to deliver the usual bad news, but then his expression suddenly brightened.

  ‘You know what – maybe.’ He turned towards the far end of the bar. ‘Judson! Question for you!’

  An older man stepped away from the bar and came towards them. He had grey hair but such a muscular tanned body that Finbarr couldn’t begin to guess what age he might be.

  ‘Franco?’

  ‘This young man is looking for a job.’ He indicated Finbarr and moved down the bar, as if affording them some privacy.

  Judson looked Finbarr up and down unapologetically. He felt like meat.

  ‘You worked in bars before?’ The question was almost barked at him. He began to see how someone might have just walked out.

  ‘Yes. Loads, but back home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘Ireland.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘Green card?’

  ‘I have,’ Finbarr was flustered, ‘I have a J1 visa. It’s a visa they give to students who have—’

  ‘I’ve heard of them,’ Judson interrupted him. Finbarr had no idea how this encounter was going but it was the closest he had got to a job so far.

  ‘You strong?’

  This was a question Finbarr hadn’t considered before. Unsure of how to answer, he just grinned and said, ‘Not as strong as you.’ And then he poked a finger into Judson’s left bicep.

  The older man released a loud honk of a laugh. ‘You might fit in!’

  Finbarr let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Finbarr.’

  Another loud honk from Judson. ‘Finbarr at Sobar! It’s perfect. Well, Finbarr, all we have right now is a bar-back position. You bus tables, stock the bar, make sure the bartenders have everything they need all night. It’s hard work. We pay minimum and the barmen tip you out at the end of the shift.’

  Finbarr’s heart sank. This was not what he had wanted. He had heard tales of the amazing money bartenders could make, sometimes hundreds of dollars in a night. This sounded more like McDonald’s.

  ‘Right. I’m … well, it’s just that, I’ll have to pay rent and that.’

  ‘What’s your rent?’ Judson asked matter-of-factly. This was not a man for sob stories.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Judson raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I haven’t found somewhere permanent to live yet,’ he added quickly so that he didn’t sound like a complete fool.

  ‘OK, Finbarr, sit up here,’ Judson patted the bar stool, ‘and grab a beer. I’ll be back.’

  ‘Franco.’ It was the barman, arm outstretched for a handshake.

  ‘Finbarr.’

  ‘Most of the time.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Finbarr was confused.

  ‘It’s fun most of the time.’

  ‘No. Finbarr. It’s my name.’

  Franco gave an easy laugh and slapped the bar. ‘I thought you said “fun bar”.’

  ‘Finbarr,’ he repeated, and they shook hands once more.

  ‘So, you’re joining us?’

  ‘I don’t know. He told me to get a drink and wait.’

  Franco pulled a face to indicate that he didn’t know if that was good news or bad.

  ‘What’ll it be?’

  As he nursed his cold beer and waited, Finbarr felt nervous. It wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed or was accustomed to. Even worse, he felt small. This was a dive at best, and he wouldn’t even be working behind the bar, flirting and earning tips. But still, in just a matter of days, it seemed the city had humbled him. He didn’t just need this job, he wanted it.

  The second Irish man walked in just after seven o’clock. He wore faded jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with a Miami Dolphins logo but there was no mistaking his face as anything other than Irish. His reddish hair had turned sandy with flecks of grey over the years but the wrinkles on his face did nothing to disguise the constellation of freckles that covered it.

  Connor had never been in Sobar before, but when his boss had offered him a lift back to Manhattan, his phone had told him this was the nearest gay bar to where he had been dropped off. He didn’t care. He just wanted a drink. He was hot and needed the alcohol to slow his brain down. Today of all days.

  It was his and Tim’s anniversary. Exactly one year since Connor had been throwing clothes into a weekend bag when the ringing of the phone had interrupted him. Tim had been out at the house on Fire Island all week and the plan had been that Connor would join him for the weekend. In the past they’d gone together, but this summer Tim had been working less and spending more time out on the island by himself.

  When Connor tried to recollect the details of the call, he presumed there had been some pleasantries but all he really remembered was Tim’s voice sounding dry and even. ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea you come out this weekend. I’m catching the ferry back this afternoon. We need to talk.’

  He had sat on the bed with his half-packed case and allowed the dread to build until it was almost a relief when Tim came into their apartment and delivered the fatal blow to their relationship. Would he cross the room to sit with him? Hold his hand? Wrap an arm of comfort around his shoulders? No, he would just stand a few feet inside the door of their bedroom, staring at the rug they had bought together on that trip upstate to Hudson, and deliver his prepared monologue. Connor could almost see the paragraphs hanging in the air.

  He wasn’t an idiot. He had known there had been someone else staying at the Fire Island house. Friends had been only too eager to share their sightings of the dark-haired twink: ‘Who’s the hottie at your house?’ Some had even met him. ‘Carl seems nice …’ would be dropped into conversation like a depth charge. How bad were things between them? Connor had shrugged it off. There had been others before. The design assistant with the big lips in Denver. The tall intern at Tim’s agents. Not to mention the one-night stands, or out-of-control parties. Connor had seen them all off. Tim had come home to him, and no matter what dalliances or sexual distractions Connor might have indulged in himself, he knew his true home was lying beside Tim listening to his breathing find the rhythm of sleep.

  Now he struggled to believe that this new boy, this Carl, needed so much space in Tim’s heart, his home, that there was no longer any room for Connor.

  After Tim had finished speaking, Connor sat on the bed. He had questions, so many of them. ‘Where did you meet him?’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Who is going to Betty and Karen’s wedding?’ He opened his mouth to speak but only a long sigh emerged. What was the point? He knew the only thing that mattered. Tim didn’t love him.

  He stood and continued placing folded T-shirts from the bed into the holdall,. He might not be off to Fire Island but he was going somewhere.

  ‘No,’ Tim said. Connor swung his head to look at him. Was it all a big mistake? Had he come to his senses?

  ‘No, you stay here, Connor. I’m going back to the island. My lawyers will be in touch early next week.’

  More than sixteen years together. The front door of the apartment closed with a quiet but definitive click. No drama. No raised voices. Just like their lives together, except they no longer were. No kiss or hug to mark the end of all those years. The apartment felt cold, or maybe it was just him. Connor walked from room to room, picking up photo frames, touching things they had chosen together. He knew he was being maudlin, but he couldn’t help himself. It was if someone had died and then it struck him that that person was him. Life would go on in this apartment. The same frames would house new memories of Tim with his arms around someone else. Connor would be erased. Without really deciding to, he placed every framed photograph he could find face down. He thought of it as a mark of respect.

  Tim and Connor on safari, on beac
hes, at parties, opening nights, always together, and if these photographs were to be believed, always bursting with joy. Connor knew that wasn’t true, but even now, as the rage towards Tim began to build, he remembered far more good times than bad. He had been whisked off his feet. That’s what it had felt like. Their first night together sharing plates of pasta in Orso. The things that Connor had idly admired when they walked past a shop window, being handed to him gift-wrapped the next day. Trips to Vienna, Berlin, Copenhagen; wherever Tim’s work took him, Connor followed. Things moved fast, but it never felt reckless. They were both so ready to embrace this. Connor moved into the house Tim rented in Islington, and in under a year had quit his job because it had become so difficult to swap shifts or take time off to fit in with Tim’s schedule. At first Connor had resisted everything being paid for – it had caused some of their only rows – but slowly he accepted that the amount of money he could contribute was negligible and by insisting on working he was just complicating their lives needlessly.

  Living with Tim was an education. Not just about opera but about food and wine, the correct things to wear on specific occasions. Connor learned fast. He found a copy of Delia Smith’s Winter Collection in Tim’s kitchen and began trying out recipes. Soon they were hosting dinner parties, where Tim’s friends, men usually a good decade or two older than Connor, teased him, and squawked at Tim, ‘Where did you find him?’ ‘Bargain basement, dear!’ Connor could feel himself growing, evolving, and most importantly, putting even more distance between himself and the past.

  Travelling so much and, when they were in London, spending more time with Tim’s friends or eating in the sort of restaurants where you didn’t pour your own wine, meant that Connor saw a decreasing amount of his old friends. Tim’s world became his world. Moving back to New York full time had been an announcement, not a discussion. But Connor understood why, and more than that, he liked that this was what his life had become. It was never as if Tim was telling him what to do, he just let Connor know what was going to happen. It was a life without responsibility, and he enjoyed it.

  In order to get a visa to live in New York, Connor was employed as Tim’s assistant and he did in fact deal with a lot of their life administration. He spoke to contractors, made reservations, mapped out calendars. It gave him just enough sense of purpose so that his days had a structure but with enough free time for the gym or planning menus.

  Now he was standing in an apartment that was no longer his home and waiting once more to be told what was going to happen. Through the window he could see the lights of Midtown. Each lit square a life, full of joy and despair, ambition and disappointment. Thousands, millions of people filling the hours, ticking off the days, until what? Connor felt very small. His life was just another speck, a dot of light in the skyline. The tears began to roll down his face and his body shook. Naturally he was upset that Tim had left him, but what he really felt, what was overwhelming him, was fear. After sixteen years he was going to have to decide what happened next.

  On the Monday, it transpired that Connor wasn’t yet making his own choices. Tim, or at least his lawyer, had some further announcements to make. Tim had purchased a small studio in Hell’s Kitchen as an investment property. Why had Connor never heard about this? Had Tim been planning this break-up for years? Was this where Tim had carried on his affair with Carl while Connor was at home making a wine reduction or experimenting with sourdough? The property was to be gifted to Connor rent free for three years. He was also to receive a generous sum of money. The lawyer referred to it as a settlement. The sort of amount that if Connor was careful, meant he could probably avoid getting a job for a year, maybe longer.

  Gratitude and rage are an uneasy mix but that was precisely what Connor felt as he ended the call. Huge relief that his immediate worries were over but fury at Tim. This wasn’t an ex-boyfriend being generous, this was a rich man paying his way out of guilt. Tim didn’t need to feel bad, because he had behaved with such largesse. Yet again, he was controlling the situation. Nobody was going to be on Team Connor. He could almost hear Tim explaining the end of their relationship to friends, dismissing it with ‘Well, of course he was upset, but I’ve helped him out a bit, so he’ll be fine.’ Connor wished he was the sort of man who could just walk away. Storm into Tim’s work studio and tell him where to stick his apartment and his cash, but he knew he wasn’t going to do that. It seemed that as part of the divorce settlement, Tim had taken his pride.

  When Connor moved up to his new studio apartment, he stood with his unpacked boxes and looked at the four walls. It was so small, and yet he knew that on his own even this was way beyond his means. Why did it feel like he was being punished when he had done nothing wrong? He allowed his self-pity free rein. He slid a Purcell CD into the stereo and turned up the volume, then while ‘Dido’s Lament’ filled the room, he took a bottle of red wine and a glass into the bathroom. He squeezed his way out through the small window to sit on the fire escape in an attempt to make his world seem larger. Before long he was crying while simultaneously looking at Grindr.

  For nearly two weeks this became his routine. Sometimes guys came over, which initially was fun, or at least a distraction, but invariably they made him think about Tim. The way they kissed, a question about his CD collection, some stupid joke. It seemed that somebody informing you it was time to stop loving them didn’t mean you actually did.

  One evening Connor was on Ninth Ave picking up more wine when he bumped into Daniel, a friend of Tim’s. Had any of them ever been his friends? He doubted it. Certainly none of them had rushed to get in touch. Connor saw Daniel first. He was walking quickly and checking the time. When he looked up and saw Connor, he paused. Was he going to blank him and walk on? No. He smiled and stepped forward to kiss Connor on the cheek. Even on this warm evening, his skin was cool, the cologne freshly spritzed. Connor was acutely aware that he hadn’t showered for more than a day.

  ‘Connor. Good to see you.’ The two men smiled at each other.

  ‘You too.’ An awkward tension made both men slightly regret that they had acknowledged each other at all. Daniel stroked his neatly trimmed goatee beard with a manicured hand. Connor noticed his heavy expensive watch and hated himself for it.

  ‘I heard what happened. How are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, you know. It’s all a bit weird right now. I’ll survive.’ He shrugged.

  ‘What are you up to? You working?’

  ‘Not yet. I mean I will, but it’s been a lot with the move and everything.’ Connor wondered how much he should say. Was Daniel going to be on the phone to Tim the moment he walked away?

  ‘Well listen, I’ve got to rush. I’m off to see Mary Poppins, but—’

  ‘Mary Poppins?’ Connor interrupted. Daniel did not seem like the sort of man who would go to see Mary Poppins on Broadway.

  ‘It’s a client thing.’ He rolled his eyes and laughed.

  ‘Who’s the client? Justin Bieber?’

  Daniel barked another laugh and Connor felt a little glow of pleasure.

  ‘No. Some old Disney queen, you know the type.’

  ‘Good luck.’ Connor raised his eyebrows and Daniel started to move away, but then turned back.

  ‘What I was going to say is that there’s a guy I know, an ex actually, who runs an irrigation company. It’s about to get crazy busy at this time of year so he’s always looking for guys. Message me on Facebook.’

  ‘I’m not on Facebook.’

  ‘Oh.’ It took Daniel a moment to digest this information. ‘Well, here’s my card. Email me. I’ll give you his details. That’s if you’re interested.’

  ‘No. Sounds good. Thanks.’

  ‘Nice to see you.’

  ‘Enjoy Mary!’

  A quick embrace and then he was gone. Connor looked at the business card. Was Daniel just sniffing around Tim’s leftovers? If he emailed him would there then be a casual suggestion of drinks some time? Or had this something to do with Tim himself? Was he st
ill pulling the strings? He decided that even Tim wouldn’t have been able to orchestrate him bumping into Daniel on Ninth Avenue.

  Later, fuelled by a few glasses of wine, Connor dug out the business card and sent a short email. He didn’t have to apply for the job and, besides, maybe he wanted to go for that drink.

  The reply that arrived the following morning was disappointingly formal. The contact details and nothing else. Connor felt rather deflated. It seemed people might not be fighting over Tim’s hand-me-downs. Probably everyone wanted their very own brand-new Carl. Who was Connor on the dating scene now? Was he really old enough to be a daddy? If he was, it certainly wasn’t one of the sugar variety. He doubted there was much demand in this city for a sugar-free daddy. A job seemed like quite a smart move.

  In the event, Connor enjoyed the work. It wasn’t especially taxing and he was outside most of the time with access to amazing apartments and roof terraces all over the city and a few properties out in New Jersey that to his eyes looked like stately homes. It was just a few weeks’ work draining systems and making things secure for the winter, but George the boss seemed to like him. In February he had called and asked Connor to help with some new installations and then kept him on during the spring and summer for maintenance. It wasn’t great money but living rent free meant that Connor didn’t need to worry – well, not yet.

  Driving around the city in the truck made Connor think of Liverpool. It seemed so odd to him that at just forty-four his life had straddled such change. He wondered where Knacker, Ciaran, Robbo and the others were now. What had their lives become? The irony wasn’t lost on Connor that after all the years and everything that had happened to him, he was back once more in the back of a truck as an unskilled labourer, but this time it all felt so different. Living a life without fear was a wonderful thing. The endless anxiety of trying to hide, making sure your secret was safe, had been such a huge burden. Sometimes he wondered how he had managed it. Of course, while marvelling how good life felt without a huge secret, he continued to carry another with him.