by Jeff Hobbs
“He fucked around, too, you know,” Ethan said as we began walking again.
“It’s a shitty thing you’re doing.”
“Oh, fuck you. You’re so tired. Don’t you get exhausted from worrying too much?”
“What do you want? My approval?”
“Oh yeah, I so want that from you. In fact if you gave it to me everyone would be saved.” He was walking faster now, back in stride with me. “Thank you for opening my eyes to all the horror that is me.”
“You know I’m right. But, of course, that never mattered to you.”
He stopped and grabbed my shoulder—I’d gotten to him. He was stronger than he looked and there was real power in those long, delicately muscled arms. “You think I’m just holding a gun up to everyone’s head? That I’m the sole reason why people do the things they do?”
“You’re certainly not discouraging anyone.”
“Okay. Let’s start with you, then. Between my loft, Samona’s studio, and David’s office, you seem to be turning up everywhere this summer.”
“Funny how that happens, huh?” I tried to match the mincing quality of his voice.
“Does this happen because, A: You care about our friendship, if you can call it that? B: You’re trying to save a marriage that shouldn’t even exist? Or is it C: Because you’re obsessed with a girl who’s barely even glanced your way since college, when you used to follow her around like some rare breed of toy dog?”
“Let go of me,” I said, pulling away.
I stood a few yards away from him, embarrassed by how hard I was breathing. Then Ethan, still perfectly calm, seemed to soften. “Hey, you’re still coming over for dinner, right?”
In the lobby of Ethan’s building the doorman was stacking boxes into the elevator with Aidan Hoevel.
“Yo, bro,” Aidan said to Ethan, glancing at me uncertainly as he tried to remember my name (of course, I had made that large of an impression, as usual). “Hey there…dude.”
The three of us stepped into the packed elevator. I noticed Aidan had shaved the stubble from his face since the last time I had seen him, and it made him look more like Ethan than I had ever noticed before.
“How long are you staying here?” I asked him.
“Don’t know really. Depends on how it goes.”
“How what goes?”
He just shrugged and stared through the bars of the cage as we rose to the ninth floor.
In one corner of the loft were Aidan’s things: a laundry sack filled with rumpled clothes, an ancient pair of torn-up Air Jordans, a bathroom kit, the Mötley Crüe autobiography, and a PlayStation 2.
In another corner were all the things that Ethan had moved out of his studio: cardboard tubes containing sketches, plastic molds for new designs, various tools, the black wing (recently polished) from his senior project. Ethan had rearranged a number of adjustable walls to build a separate bedroom for Aidan.
“I’m gonna hop in the shower,” Ethan said, stopping on the way to screw two more bolts into the partition. When he left the room, I stood there awkwardly with Aidan while the sound of water running filled the background. He picked up his laundry bag and then dropped it again in the same place.
I tried to reach out. “So I’m…sorry about your job…and your girlfriend.”
He shrugged and muttered, “Fuck it.”
We were again silent until the intercom rang. Aidan picked it up and said, “Yo, food or girl?” He paused, then nodded. “Sweet.” Then, as if I weren’t there, he went into Ethan’s bedroom and came out with Ethan’s wallet.
“Girl?” I asked tentatively.
“I know. It’s crazy,” Aidan replied, removing four twenties.
I let it go. I had not eaten anything all day. I was so hungry that I thought I could identify the various aromas drifting in from the elevator before it opened: curried beef, potatoes, cooked vegetables.
Aidan paid the delivery guy three twenties and put the change along with the fourth twenty into his own pocket before taking Ethan’s wallet back into the bedroom. When he came out, the bag of food was open and he was pulling out chunks of corn bread.
“I don’t know who the hell eats Peruvian food, but it smells all right,” he said, not necessarily to me.
Ethan came out of the bathroom draped in a towel, his pale, wiry frame still dripping. He caught me staring at his chest and smiled as he turned on the stereo and the Clash started playing “London Calling” in surround sound all across the loft.
“I hope you guys like the food,” he said, still smiling at me. “My next trip I’m going back to Peru.”
I scanned his body again before forcing myself to look away.
Ethan had ordered generously from Lima Taste in the East Village—three different kinds of meat, heavy starches, all of it still hot. It was the kind of heavy, intimate dinner I didn’t feel I deserved or belonged at but, being broke, I was so grateful to be fed that I ate silently while the brothers talked.
They made gentle fun of their mother, they spoke good-naturedly about the future, they joked about the way they used to be. These were not the same brothers sitting on the roof a month ago who had not exchanged a single word during that excruciating lunch. A new vibe had developed between them, and I couldn’t tell who was generating it or why.
“This is a really great place, Ethan,” Aidan Hoevel was saying.
“You can stay as long as you’d like.” Ethan said this in a tone of voice I didn’t recognize.
“You’ve done really well for yourself.” Aidan paused. “I’m proud of you.”
“Hey, none of that bogus Irish sentimentality allowed.”
Aidan nodded gratefully while—as inconspicuously as possible—I helped myself to seconds. And as I was setting my plate down on the bamboo place mat in front of me, the intercom buzzer rang again. I looked up at both of them—Aidan first, then Ethan—as Aidan said, “That the chick?”
Ethan was grinning at me as he answered, “Yes, that’s gonna be Samona.”
“Sweet,” Aidan said again, wiping his mouth. “This’ll be like one of those sitcoms Mom’s always watching.”
“Yeah—three people share a loft in New York and calamity reigns.”
I didn’t flinch.
I stared at all the food I had heaped onto the massive white plate.
I knew that I was not going to eat any of it as everything came together in a rush. I sat still and rode out a small wave of nausea while Ethan went to the front to tell the doorman to let Samona up.
“Hey…hey…” Somewhere from far off, Aidan Hoevel was trying to get my attention. When I finally looked at him, he grinned and said, “You know what I told Ethan when he asked me what to do when you’re having an affair with a woman who wants to leave her husband for you? You know what I told him when he asked that?”
“What?” I could barely hear my own voice.
He paused to give his answer authority and weight. “She gives.” Pause. “You take.” Another pause. “You forget.”
“Dude,” Ethan added, returning to the room. “But that was only after he’d asked, ‘Are you sure she’s a woman?,’ ‘Is she hot?,’ and ‘When did you figure out you’re not gay?’”
I could only glare at him. “So…what? She’s coming for dinner?”
“Better,” Aidan said through a full mouth. “She’s moving in.”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Ethan said coolly. “But I thought you’d enjoy the surprise.”
“Hey, you guys are creeping me out,” Aidan said. And then to me, lowering his voice, wide-eyed, “And remember, dude, we’re not allowed to tell her my bro sleeps with dudes.”
Samona came out of the elevator. She was pulling a suitcase on wheels and carrying a six-layer black-
and-white cake from Dean & DeLuca. The beaming expression on her face seemed false to me.
“Hey,” was all she said to me as our eyes met, and I could only nod at her and then look down at my plate again. “This food sm
ells amazing. I wish my stomach weren’t bothering me so much.”
She sat down, and I still wasn’t able to say anything, not even to murmur a greeting.
The particular moment taught me that I wasn’t capable of hating Samona, that the most I could ever hope for was to become numb to her.
She sighed exhaustedly and I managed a glance during which I studied her face distantly—the blush that had been rapidly applied and was already crumbling; the hair pulled back so tightly I could see the tautness in her forehead; the scar near her eye that she would pick at from time to time; the way she looked to Ethan as if waiting to be told it was okay to speak.
Ethan introduced her to his brother. Aidan grinned at her like he knew a secret and said, “Samona’s a beautiful name. Where’s it from?”
“My mother was born in Ghana.”
“That’s, like, on the east coast of Africa, right?” Aidan asked.
“West coast.”
“Right, right. I was on an expedition once. We were gonna stop there.”
Ethan Hoevel watched his brother scanning Samona and cut in: “Weren’t you, shall we say, extradited from the boat before you made it into international waters?”
Aidan flicked his wrist and rattled off: “I was cooped up with a bunch of environmentalists.” He paused. “They didn’t like to have any fun.”
“Aidan got drunk and shot a dolphin with a speargun,” Ethan clarified.
“Oh God.”
Samona brought a hand to her mouth while Aidan scoffed at his brother. “What the hell do you know about it, dude? Weren’t you busy already, doing your thing at Yale?” He turned to Samona. “Mellow out—I thought it was a shark. Plus I drank too much Jack.” When that failed to soothe her, he added, “I cried for like a day afterward.”
On the edge of the table, Samona’s hands crept toward Ethan’s arm. She rested her fingers lightly over his wrist as her eyes searched for a comforting glance. Ethan gave it to her—the kind of look that assured her everything was working out exactly the way it should be, that nothing was out of place, that she was fine.
It was not the kind of look that told her Ethan was screwing her husband, I noted.
“How about some of that cake?” Aidan said, wiping his lips. And then he stopped. “Or should I have some more green beans? I’ve got to start eating healthy now that I’m in New York. Right?”
Samona placed the cake carefully in the middle of the table. Ethan served small portions to Samona and then Aidan before cutting nearly a quarter of the cake for me.
“Why do they call it that?” Aidan asked no one. “Black-and-white? Chocolate isn’t black. Vanilla isn’t white. It should be called a brown-and-yellow cake.” He was shoveling creamy slabs of it into his mouth, chewing furiously, when he noticed the long silence and all of us staring at him.
Ethan turned away from Aidan, and then—smiling tightly, gripping Samona’s hand—he said, “It’s okay—we’ll get used to it.”
Samona sighed tiredly and rubbed her eyes. She and Ethan had one of those brief aside conversations—soft, intimate tones that no one else could hear, coupled with the requisite subtle gestures—and then he stroked her hair and nodded and murmured, “Yeah, let’s get you to bed.”
They stood up. Samona said, “It’s really cool to meet you, Aidan,” and then to me, “Sorry I’m such a drag but it’s been…a long week.”
I replied nonchalantly, “I’m sure.”
“But come by the shop this week and we’ll really catch up.”
“Sure,” I said. “Sure.”
“Night, sweets,” Aidan chimed in.
She let Ethan lead her to the bedroom while Aidan devoured his cake and then made a pot of rocket-fuel coffee, shaking his hips grossly to the music. When Ethan came back fifteen minutes later, Aidan said, “So we gonna roll?”
“Yeah,” Ethan said. “Let’s go.”
“We’re going out?” This was me.
The three of us took a cab to Lot 61, where Ethan had reserved a table with bottle service. The bouncer wasn’t going to let Aidan in—“no T-shirts, no sneakers”—but all Ethan had to do was tell the bouncer his name and the velvet rope dropped. Once we were seated, Aidan Hoevel scanned the lithe bodies in the small black dresses that filled the room as he poured three glasses half full with chilled Grey Goose and added a little tonic. Since I couldn’t stomach the vodka (and didn’t know what I was doing there anymore) I pushed it over to Aidan, who started double-fisting. The big room was now packed and Aidan had an excited grin on his face while Ethan leaned back and sipped his vodka.
I yelled into Ethan’s ear over the din of the music so that only he could hear. “She’s moving in with you guys?”
“She wants a divorce.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said. “Is that why you invited me to dinner? So you could screw with me over this shit?” My voice was muffled by the sounds of lasers backed up with the moans of a female echoing across the dance floor.
“Listen, let’s get out of here,” Ethan said.
“What about Aidan?”
He nodded at his brother, who was walking toward the dance floor, starting to flail his arms, then pushing his way between two college-age girls who were too wasted on Ecstasy to care.
Ethan paid for the bottle service and I followed him outside, where we got into a cab. I didn’t hear what address he gave the driver.
“Look,” he started as we turned down Ninth Avenue. “I don’t know what you’ve got going on inside your head, but—”
“What is this? Your little revenge on me?” I asked. “Did I hurt you that much?”
Ethan surrendered his head to the torn leather seat. “You’ve got to wrap your head around a very simple fact.”
“Which is?”
“This isn’t about you.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Ethan,” I said. “It sometimes feels like it’s very much about me. Because otherwise why would I be in this fucking cab with you?”
“Well, you’re the writer. So I guess you have to answer that yourself.”
I ignored his mocking tone and caught the driver’s glance in the rearview mirror. “I mean, Jesus, has she really not figured out that you’re gay yet?” I was looking out the window at the delis, hardware stores, and service stations passing on Ninth Avenue.
“Gay’s just a word. You know that as well as anyone.”
Then we rode in silence until the cab pulled up outside Arthur’s Tavern in the West Village. “This jazz quartet’s playing here tonight,” Ethan tried to reconcile. “And I just want to talk to you alone for a minute.”
I calmed down as we found an empty table so close to the stage that when the trumpet player swayed back and forth Ethan and I had to lean away in order to avoid contact. I just sat there, numb, watching the bassist as he pulled strings rapidly with his thumb and forefinger. During a break in their set I turned to him. “She’s really moving in with you?”
He sighed and caught a passing waitress lightly by the arm: a glass of cabernet for him and a Budweiser for me.
“I wish we could still smoke in bars,” Ethan murmured. He raised his head and looked away.
The next set began as soon as he finished uttering that sentence: the singer pointed to the saxophonist sitting against the wall offstage right and howled a summoning. The saxophonist was an old man, but the skin on his face was smooth and tight, and he had a full head of thick black hair crawling under the rim of his fedora. He held a drink in one hand and the neck of his instrument in the other. I thought he had passed out but as soon as he heard the singer’s call he sat up and began playing.
I didn’t touch my beer during the entire set.
When the saxophonist finished and collapsed again, Ethan’s cell phone rang and he took it out.
“Should I answer it?” he asked.
“Well, you did leave her alone in your loft. It would be the polite thing to do.”
“It’s not Samona,” he said, putting the p
hone on the bar where I could see the caller ID read David Taylor.
We waited for the phone to stop ringing.
“She found something,” Ethan said. “There were stains. On his pants. Very particular stains that she recognized. And that’s what set everything in motion.” He made a face as he sipped the glass of red wine. “This tastes like vinegar.”
“What did she find exactly?”
“He threw a pair of pants into the hamper that Samona goes through when the guy from the dry cleaners stops by each Tuesday morning. And as she was sorting through his clothes she came across the pants.” Ethan thought about something—the way he had ended the last sentence—and smiled weakly. “She assumed that he was fucking a young summer intern that—surprise, surprise—he’d fucked before, and she assumed from the pattern of the stains that he had fucked her standing up and pulled out before he came. She has this whole scenario blocked out in her mind.” Ethan waited a beat. “It’s not far from the truth. But obviously there was no intern.”
“Shouldn’t you guys be more careful?” was all I could ask, weakly sarcastic.
Ethan finished the glass of wine and made a face again. “What I cannot wrap my head around is that David did not take the pants to the cleaners himself. I cannot wrap my head around the fact that David just tossed them into the hamper without inspecting them first.”
I did not know whether I believed the scenario Ethan was playing out for me. The outrageousness of it made the world a different place and yet he spoke in a tone bordering on utter indifference.
“Why is she staying with you? Why don’t you get a hotel? Why doesn’t she stay with one of her friends?”
“She wants to live with me. That’s what she said yesterday when she called: ‘I’m leaving him and I want to be with you.’”
“You’re inviting her to live with you and your brother while you’re fucking her husband.” Ethan seemed amused at the urgency in my voice, and I raised my hands defensively. “Just so I’m clear on what you’re doing.”