The Tourists

by Jeff Hobbs

  “No,” she declared. “David doesn’t do things like that.”

  “Then maybe…a work trip? Doesn’t he fly to London sometimes?” I didn’t know why I was defending him, except that this kind of mystery—this distraction—would only pull Samona farther away.

  “Not on LAN Chile he doesn’t.”

  I could see her noting a particular coincidence in her head.

  I could see an image pass in front of her and block everything else out as she glanced at the neatly made bed.

  I could see her forcefully push the image from her mind because it could not possibly be true.

  As we left The Riverview (without the clothes or shoes we’d come to pick up) she took a step back in the elevator, looked up at the mirrored ceiling, sighed, and then shook it off.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She barely nodded. I couldn’t tell if she even heard me.

  “I have to get to work,” she murmured.

  And I knew that—at least for a few minutes—Samona missed her husband.

  “See, when we first got together, she was making me breakfast all week. Two pancakes and two eggs over easy, shit like that. By the end, she was just getting up at six and running off to work every morning and it just got to feeling so demeaning.”

  “What felt so demeaning?”

  “No action.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We stopped having sex when we woke up.”

  “I see.”

  “I mean I was feeling like the bitch and that was seriously fucked—that was reason enough to end it.”

  This was Aidan Hoevel, and we were eating brunch at the Moondance Diner on Sixth Avenue.

  Samona hadn’t come back to the loft in two days, and neither of us had heard from her.

  I’d been in the kitchen refining a few pitches to distract myself—for instance, I’d put off Gowanus but not forgotten it—while Aidan rifled through the fridge and, finding nothing of interest, had said, “Let’s you and me roll for some food—I’ll buy.”

  So now we were sitting in a booth at the Moondance because Bubby’s was too expensive and I was listening to Aidan Hoevel complain about the lack of sex that had ended his brief relationship with Suzanne. What surprised me about being alone with Aidan Hoevel was that he didn’t seem like a bad guy. He was just angry—and considering what I knew of his past, I didn’t blame him.

  “Plus she got a puppy. She was walking from the bus stop to her office in Mission Viejo and she saw one in a window. She bought it. Now that was right before I got let go—I still had a job—and even then you know who was walking that thing at midnight? You know who was standing there waiting for it to crap on the street? You know who was picking up that crap?” Aidan paused to thrust his fork toward his chest. “Me. So I ended it. I mean, it was a cocker. Those thing yap, dude, like you have never heard before.”

  “And then you…lost your job? Was she cool with that?”

  Aidan Hoevel moaned. “Don’t get me started on that nightmare. Seriously, it was better arguing about the dog.”

  I thought about the expedition Aidan had been on. “You could have killed it accidentally.”

  Aidan pointed his fork at me. “Why doesn’t anyone believe that I thought it was a shark?” He shook his head and concentrated on his double stack of pancakes, spearing the fork into it so hard that it moved through four flapjacks and made a clinking sound on the plate, and then, frustrated by the pancakes, he poured half a bottle of syrup over them. “Anyway, then she skipped town for this fucking city.”

  “Is that why you came?”

  “No, no, no,” he said a little too defensively. “I’m just screwing around here for a little while. It’s got nothing to do with Suzanne.” He winced while eating another bite.

  “But it must have occurred to you, right? That you might bump into her?”

  “What am I, a stalker? Like that ex–boy toy of my brother’s who hangs out across the street all the time? No, dude—you got me all wrong. I’m just…trying to figure everything out.”

  “Did you love her?” I asked, since I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I mean, if you took care of her dog…”

  “You think I believe in love?” he asked incredulously. “I mean, that a girl can hold my interest for any amount of time? Whoa, dude—my heart’s not that big. And I don’t make bones about it.” And then Aidan Hoevel stopped and looked at me, studying my reaction, and I could tell I was suddenly interesting to him. “You know what, dude? I’ve been watching you a little bit this week, and I think you’re too nice.”

  I just stared at him.

  “You look too softly upon this world.” Aidan lowered his fork. “You really have to keep an eye on how shitty people are.” He was studying my face. “I mean, people are fucked up.” He paused again. “Take Ethan.”

  I settled in for whatever was coming.

  Aidan continued. “Okay, he’s crazy. He’s gay.” Aidan stopped. “I mean, you knew that, right?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s got some cash flow. He’s got this little world of his where he’s kind of a superstar, I guess. And he’s got this weird girl”—I sighed, and Aidan noticed the sigh but kept going—“and now he’s got me. And my question is this.” He speared another wedge of pancake and seemed to contemplate the beer he had ordered. He was getting the words straight in his head before he said them. “Why does he take me so seriously?” He then swigged the beer. “Why does a guy like Ethan take a guy like me so seriously that he’s actually, like, parading this girl Samona around? I mean—what? Just so I won’t think he’s a fag anymore? And if that’s what he wants, then why does he bring you into the mix?”

  “He was really just doing me a favor. I needed a little money and—”

  “Don’t you fucking know yet that Ethan doesn’t do favors?” Aidan turned and stared out the window at the traffic heading up Sixth. “That poor girl. What a mind fuck!”

  I shrugged. “Maybe you’ve got it wrong.”

  (Of course I knew that Aidan was right, and I was completely blown away by the fact that he’d been paying this much attention.)

  Aidan laughed harshly. “Dude, you just proved my point.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’re too nice.”

  After he paid out of Ethan’s billfold—though I offered to leave the tip and Aidan Hoevel didn’t insist otherwise, which left me with $89.69 in my Chase account plus the $850 check from my subletter that I’d just deposited and still had to clear—we walked to Warren Street, where the beer and cigarettes Aidan pulled out seemed a more attractive prospect than going back to my computer.

  Aidan was strangely likable, and now he was also interesting—I’d learned during brunch that Aidan Hoevel possessed a much keener awareness of the world he inhabited than I ever would have assumed.

  (He knew even more than I could have imagined, as it would turn out.)

  As he poured drinks and lit two smokes in his mouth at the same time, passing me one, I felt bonded to him.

  “New York, dude,” Aidan Hoevel rasped a little while later, after we were already drunk, as if this was an epiphany. “It’s like this big, this big, like, irrigation system, you know? And like the streets are like canals and like the people are water like—” I didn’t listen to anything else until Aidan said, “That’s the last beer, dude—there are no more.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Domaines Ott and two coffee mugs.

  “Ethan won’t care—he only buys this pink crap so he can make flower vases out of the bottles.” Aidan wrestled with the cork. “Christ, what a completely faggy thing.”

  I was thinking dazedly that rosé was a beautiful wine, pink like a faded seashell.

  “Sorry, dude. I know you’re friends with him and all.” He inflected the word friends with a particular emphasis. Then, suddenly, Aidan thought about something else. “Beer then wine, never fine? Is that the saying?”
/>   “It might be the other way around.” I sighed.

  “Screw it.” He poured almost half a bottle in each of the two mugs and then flopped down on the couch next to me. “What do you know about Samona?” he asked.

  “Not much.” I shrugged. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  This caught his attention but only for a moment.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen her in a couple days—”

  I immediately cut in. “She’s in a weird state.”

  “Aren’t we all, dude?” he said, shaking his head. “Aren’t we all?”

  We sat in silence, drinking the wine.

  Then Aidan said, “Do you think my brother’s actually screwing her? I’m wondering about that.”

  I paused. “It seems that way.”

  “Don’t you think my brother likes to mess with people?”

  I sighed.

  “I was saying it before,” Aidan went on. “Like—I don’t know—with their heads and shit?”

  We had emptied our mugs in less than two minutes.

  “Doesn’t everybody?” I asked.

  Aidan raised his eyebrows and considered this. “You don’t.”

  “I don’t think I’m following you anymore. I don’t know.”

  “What I’m asking is, how in the hell did my brother score that girl?” He didn’t wait for me to answer before he sat up straight. “Want to hear something? A few nights ago—right after you got here, actually—I was bored out of my mind and watching Groundhog Day and you were on your fucking laptop on the roof and I could hear Samona shuffling around Ethan’s room and so I went in to talk and I just asked her if she knew where Ethan was—even though I could tell she didn’t. And that’s why she was in this big state about it and that’s why she wasn’t talking and I just got the idea that there was no way Ethan was really into her, because he’s into guys. I mean, don’t get me wrong, dude, I would be thrilled if he was with her. She’s gorgeous, right? But he’s not into her and I think she’s just now finding this out.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “When I pressed her on where my brother was she just told me that he had business to take care of and I asked her if Ethan went by himself to take care of this so-called business and she said yeah and I asked her if she was absolutely sure and she said yeah she was and then I said she was a lucky girl to have my little brother and she asked why and I said, well, you know he’s a real man’s man if you get my drift and I was just fucking with her, you know, just seeing how she’d react and then she looked at me hard and said something.”

  “What did she say?”

  In a deliberate tone, enunciating each word clearly, Aidan Hoevel said, “‘I. Think. You. Need. To. Get. A. Job.’”

  I took this in and nodded gravely as if it meant something. “Is that all?”

  “Pretty much.” Aidan seemed unfazed. “I wanted to keep talking because, well, I’ll talk to pretty much anyone. I mean I’m talking to you, right? Just kidding.” He finished his wine. “I think she’s just a very weird girl. Fucking beautiful but weird.” He turned the mug over and raised his eyes. “I hope there’s more.”

  “Why did you say that to her?” My voice sounded urgent and strained enough to get his attention again.

  “I was bored. Wanted to see what she knew about my brother and his—ooh—secret past.”

  “I think you need to know that these people are all in a serious—”

  “These people? Who? You mean my brother and the black chick?” I nodded and realized I was drunker than I thought. “Look, I don’t know anything, dude—I’m just a guy sitting around trying to figure out what to do with my life. Want to see what’s on TV?”

  “Not really.”

  Aidan turned on the television and surfed so fast through the channels that they became a blur. He kept saying in the same toneless voice, “No, no, no, no, no,” until he finally landed on Scarface and settled back into his chair. Still looking at the TV, he smiled and asked nonchalantly, “So you were the guy sitting next to my brother at your graduation, right?”

  Aidan must have known I was staring at him, but he didn’t look up.

  “From college?” I asked.

  “No, from kindergarten.” He rolled his eyes and groaned. “Yes, from college.”

  “I guess I was. Yeah. Why?”

  “So you must have known then. Right?”

  “Must have known about what?”

  Aidan looked up, though he was still switching channels. “Secret past.”

  “Are you talking about him being gay?” I asked. “What’s the secret? Besides Samona.”

  “I guess there’s a lot I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you think Ethan prefers it that way?”

  The smile left Aidan’s face. The channels stopped flipping. He stared at me, his finger making slow circles around the rim of his empty mug. “Look, do you think I’d be hanging around here if I gave a shit about what Ethan prefers?”

  “Then why are you staying here, Aidan?”

  He gazed around the cluttered room. “You wouldn’t even get it. All I’m saying, dude, is that the way I remember it, you and my brother were sitting pretty damn close that day.” He sat back again and mimed a drumroll. “And it looked to me like you were holding hands.”

  It didn’t matter anymore. “So?”

  He lost interest when I said this and took a cell phone off the table my feet were resting on and dialed. “So? Whatever. You used to fuck Ethan, too. I don’t give a shit, dude. It doesn’t matter. You’re a cool dude. Kind of.”

  “Who are you calling?” I asked.

  “I’m calling that freak—the other one who used to fuck my brother. You know him. The one who was mouthing off to me at lunch? I found his number in Ethan’s room. I do it all the time. The guy gets very, very pissed—it’s hilarious.”

  “That really isn’t a smart thing to do.”

  “Why would you think I ever do the smart thing?”

  Aidan dialed and immediately yelled into the phone in a lousy Latino accent going for Tony Montana in Scarface, which was still playing on TV—the scene where he kills his best friend who’s just married his sister.

  “What up, main? Yeah, I talkin’ to you. All I got in this world is my word and my balls. And I ain’t break them for no man and not for no faggot like you. Main. You standin’ under my window all night. Waiting to get fucked by my brother again? You wanna go to war? Then I take you to war! Say hello to my little friend!”

  This was followed by a weak attempt at the sounds of a machine gun, and then, hanging up: “Oh, that’s going to piss him off really bad.”

  I collapsed onto the couch and he seemed to soften, pouring me another mug of wine and consoling me very sincerely. “I know what’s on your mind, and it’s not worth it, dude. Trust me—Ethan, Samona—they aren’t worth it.”

  I took the wine and choked it down. He was putting his sneakers on and heading for the elevator, looking at his watch.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Out, dude. Your stupid depression is boring me.”

  When the elevator finally clanked open, Aidan disappeared. It was three o’clock. I opened another bottle of wine and watched the end of Scarface. When the movie ended, I sat on one of Ethan’s chairs—the R-shaped one—in front of the window and peered down on Warren Street for a while, drinking and trying not to think at all. I felt unemployed. I felt ineffectual. I felt, ultimately, alone.

  It was dark gray outside when I finished the bottle of wine and opened the door to Ethan’s room. I stood underneath the shelf holding his senior project. The woozy wine drunkenness reduced my ambition down to a single objective: I wanted to see the wing move inside the glass case. Because it occurred to me that after Ethan got home, I might never be in his loft again. I also felt like I’d been a component in the thing’s creation, and I was entitled to see it whenever I wanted.

  I reached up to the shelf and placed a hand on each end of t
he glass. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was my shaken state of mind, or maybe it was just clumsiness and sweaty palms, but as I was lowering it down the glass slipped through my hands. The machine hit the floor and seemed to bounce once before rolling onto its side, where I could already see the crack in the glass. Then I heard the elevator and hurriedly lifted the machine onto its shelf just as Aidan came back into the loft.

  He walked in slow motion across the living room and then back into the kitchen, staring at his feet, and didn’t seem to notice me watching him from the bedroom door. When he reappeared, he was opening a new bottle of Grey Goose. He sat on the R-shaped chair (the one he hated the most) in front of the window and stared down at the street in the same way I’d been doing an hour earlier. The sound he emitted was halfway between a groan and a whimper.

  “Aidan?” I said quietly.

  “What, dude?” His voice was seething and dark.

  “Where’d…you go?”

  “Nowhere.”

  I tentatively sat on the couch as he swigged straight from the bottle. “You want your mug?”

  He shook his head. “I just saw her.”

  “Who? Samona?”

  “No, you twat. Suzanne.”

  “Oh? Where’d you see her?”

  His eyes were narrow and his right hand was clenching the neck of the bottle tightly while he rubbed his forehead with the palm of his left hand. “Outside her office.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Hanging out!” His voice rose sharply before he took a deep breath to calm down. “What’s with all your fucking questions, anyway?”

  “Sorry. I was just—I know how it feels, Aidan—”

  “You don’t actually. You don’t know how it feels to see your girl smoking a cigarette outside her fancy new office with some fucking dude who then starts sucking her face while laying his hand on her ass before they go back inside. You don’t know how that feels. Nope.” He collapsed back in the chair and sighed and drank more vodka. “But whatever. Fuck it—whatever.”

  As a peace offering, I held my mug out to him. He poured me about three shots—the bottle trembling in his fist—and massaged his temples as his eyes fluttered.