by Jeff Hobbs
Ethan consciously looks away and doesn’t talk and in his mind comes up with a list of things he has enabled David Taylor to do:
Have sex with a man.
Let his wife leave him without an argument.
Take time off work to fly to Peru.
Face the possibilities that exist outside the plan David Taylor laid out so carefully for himself a long time ago.
He’s wondering what compelled him to create this list when the front tire blows out.
“What do we do now?” David asks in a state of mild panic, looking around them, scanning all the empty space and the few dilapidated farms farther up in the hills. “Do you have a cell phone? Or what?”
“You’ve never changed a flat tire before?” Ethan asks, amused.
David sheepishly shakes his head, and Ethan finally lets himself smile as he teaches this man—who’s afraid to go underneath the car because the jack that came with it is brown with rust, trembling under the weight—how to change the tire.
Ethan adds “change a flat tire” to his mental list as they start moving again.
“What should we do when we get back?” Ethan asks suggestively, hoping that maybe the flat has erased the tension between them.
“I don’t know. I’m still really tired.”
“It’s just the altitude.”
“I know. You’re right.” He hears Ethan’s sigh and adds, “It’s really beautiful here.”
A few miles pass. The hills are a muddy green. David reads out loud the words Viva Peru, which are scorched in gigantic letters into the grass near one of the taller peaks.
This is when Ethan says casually, “Are you worried about your wife?” David gives a forced shrug and shakes his head resignedly, and Ethan trains his eyes on the road. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”
“You didn’t?” The words come out too fast.
“Relax. I’m sorry I said anything.”
David sits up. “I am relaxed. I’m relaxed and I’m fucking sick. And no, I’m not worried about her. Would I be here if I were?”
“I don’t know. I guess that’s why I asked.”
They move through a mountain pass and Cuzco spreads out before them again. David pans across the red-roofed houses crawling up the slopes on every side of the city until his gaze falls on the Christ statue towering above them.
“It’s called the Cristo Blanco,” Ethan says. “I didn’t tell you that before.”
A moment passes, and then David asks quietly, “Are you worried about my wife?” He opens his mouth to say something more, but Ethan’s hard silence stifles him for the rest of the drive.
David goes to bed early again while Ethan goes back to Alejandro’s restaurant, and they talk easily, sometimes reaching out to tap the other’s forearm, rehashing hazy memories—the three-day coke binges in Ethan’s apartment, the hikes in the mountains, the crazy trip to Rio, the simplicity of it all, and then the way Ethan left so abruptly to go back to New York—and, after the restaurant has cleared, Alejandro ends the conversation by asking Ethan to come home with him again, and Ethan shakes his head—even though he really does want to—and walks back through the Plaza del Armas to sleep next to David, even though he knows that nothing will happen, that this trip is basically a failure.
(Failure of what? he asks himself, but doesn’t answer.)
He gets back to the hotel and stands over David, watching him sleep, thinking about the times they’ve been together, and the times Ethan has been together with his wife, and the moment eight years ago when he saw them sitting together at Love’s Labour’s Lost, and how that vision on the quad lawn cemented Ethan’s desire never to be as naive as David Taylor and Samona Ashley were.
Then Ethan shakes himself out of it—it’s painful for him to dwell there—and settles in on the other side of the bed.
He thinks: fuck all this; fuck David Taylor; fuck the illusions.
The next morning he wakes to the sound of David slipping out the door quietly.
Ethan, after brief consideration, follows him outside into the city.
He watches David Taylor have lunch at an empty pizzeria, where his presence only makes the room seem more empty.
He drifts thirty, forty, sometimes fifty yards behind as David wanders aimlessly along the stone walkways, carefully avoiding the stray dogs everywhere, carting an intense loneliness on his shoulders, still trying hard to pretend that he is just traveling with an old college friend.
Ethan stares from behind a corner as David stops at a street vendor’s cart and picks up a pair of earrings—dangly, jade green.
He watches David take out his wallet and realize he hasn’t changed any money, and then Ethan keeps following while David gets lost looking for a bank on the narrow winding streets.
Then David looks up again at the Cristo Blanco—backlit by blue lights—and he seems to forget about the earrings and instead he starts climbing up to the statue.
Trailing behind David Taylor, Ethan senses how the pure physicality of climbing inspires a deep and unfamiliar nostalgia in the former runner, and he senses the feeling of supreme accomplishment David experiences when, an hour later, he collapses on a bench at the foot of the Cristo Blanco.
Everything’s quiet there. David takes heavy breaths and begins to absorb the small details around him—the bleached, chipped marble; the flowers and prayer beads spread around its base; the vendors selling jewelry and keepsakes and water; the chilled, clean air; the muffled echo of traffic rising from the streets—and then, on a bench eight hundred feet above the city, David Taylor smiles.
As Ethan turns around and hurries down the steep hillside, he understands that David Taylor has experienced a revelation, and that he’s shed the feeling of guilt that, for David, comes naturally with not working, and being in a foreign country, and having his wife leave him, and traveling to this place with a person like Ethan Hoevel.
This is when Ethan comes up with a plan for the night ahead.
When David comes back to the room, Ethan is leaning over the antique table at the foot of the bed with Alejandro, snorting lines together.
“Hey,” is all David says. He awkwardly comes forward to shake Alejandro’s hand.
“Where’ve you been?” Ethan asks.
“A little exploring, just walking around.”
After introducing them, Ethan then makes sure that David picks up on the knowing smiles and the shared laughter between him and his old friend.
When the jealousy he’s been trying to invoke finally starts to grip David—it flashes over his face—Ethan glances up at him between lines, and the glance is a suggestion.
As Ethan expected, David Taylor sits down and does two lines himself, and Alejandro says, “I should take you guys out tonight.”
While walking to the club, David trails two steps behind, tuning in to their laughter and the way their shoulders are touching with every other step, and then he moves forward between them and—blasted by the cocaine he’s not accustomed to—starts giddily asking Alejandro questions about the risks involved in the restaurant business in South America, nodding his head like he understands.
Ethan isn’t surprised when, at the club, David stays close.
Ethan isn’t surprised when David puts his arm around Ethan’s shoulders.
This gesture—and Ethan’s gratified response—makes Alejandro disappear into the crowd.
A few hours seem like a few minutes while the drinks and drugs ease David’s stiffness until he doesn’t have to force himself anymore. Ethan asks David if he’s okay and David is fine, great actually, awesome, and then Ethan leads David into a bathroom where they share more of the cocaine while David asks, referring to Alejandro, “Who was that guy?” and Ethan silences David by kissing him on the mouth, positioning him against the mirror of the locked stall, then turning him around, and David keeps letting him do these things—David’s in another place right now—and then Ethan kneels behind him, using his tongue and forefinger, first gently
, then harder, and then David lets him push inside him, and he slides in so easily and, breathing hard, David pushes back against Ethan and quickly comes and then they’re both focusing on the small green tiles on the floor beneath them until Ethan starts coming a few seconds later and David tenses with a sharp intake of breath.
“Are you okay?” Ethan asks a few moments later, over the din of techno music outside the door.
David just nods, sweating. He doesn’t meet Ethan’s gaze, or react at all when Ethan rubs his hand along the back of David’s neck. He keeps breathing hard, looking away.
“Come on—I’ll get you another drink.”
Ethan heads to the bar, and when he turns around again, David is gone.
He’s lying on his stomach when Ethan walks into the hotel room and stands next to the bed, peering down on the body and gently asking, with anger and longing, “Are you still awake?” and David Taylor doesn’t say anything and closes his eyes tightly while Ethan undresses.
And the next afternoon turns out to be their last in Cuzco, because a dense fog rolls in over the mountains and Ethan Hoevel knows that fog in Cuzco can ground every plane for a week, so they go to the airport three days early and change their tickets and then stare out the departure gate windows toward the snowcapped mountains beyond the end of the runway. They don’t exchange a genuine word until after the plane takes off, when David says, “I’m glad we won’t be stuck there,” and then realizes how that sounded and adds, “I had a really good time.”
Ethan nods. “I don’t know why I came back. It was all just so long ago that—I don’t know—it doesn’t mean that much anymore.” He turns to David. “I probably should have come alone.”
And then David is suddenly saying, “I told you I didn’t mean to leave you at that club—I was just messed up. Everything got so crazy.”
“You might find this hard to believe, David, but what we did happens all the time. It’s not that crazy.”
David pretends that he doesn’t know what Ethan is talking about. “Well, I’m sorry if I’ve never been in a club full of Peruvians while high on cocaine. I’m sorry I don’t have sex in bathroom stalls.”
Ethan laughs spitefully.
David’s eyes follow a stewardess gliding up the aisle. “Jesus, I couldn’t breathe. And that guy was there and…anyway.”
Ethan winces.
“Ethan…” David is obviously not comfortable voicing the name. “What can I say?” He tries to laugh at himself. “I was tired.”
David turns away then to stare down at the mountains they’ve already flown over, which are strewn with pockets of fog.
27
“WE DIDN’T TALK much on the plane coming back.” Ethan finished the story in a low murmur that was tinged with the sadness of knowing he couldn’t exist back in that place with David Taylor anymore. Then a nurse walked tentatively into the room, scanning for us in the corner.
“He’s awake,” she said softly. “He can see you now.” And with a firm look at me: “Family members only.”
I started to sit—I didn’t want to go in anyway—but Ethan took my hand. “I want him to come.” He looked at the nurse and because of the force of that look she nodded and then I was following Ethan down the long white hospital corridors until we walked into Aidan’s room, where one leg was raised in traction, a thick black brace wrapped around the other, and a plaster cast encircled his entire abdomen from his hips to his underarms. An assortment of tubes ran into various orifices, his neck was immobilized, and the sheets were stained with small drops of blood. Aidan Hoevel was also strapped to the bed.
Ethan stood over his brother for a long moment. “Hey,” he finally said.
“Can you get me some more drugs?” Aidan’s voice was soaked from the intravenous drip and he was peering through glazed eyes. A thin rivulet of drool clung to his chin. “I tried but I’m no good at stuff like that. Maybe if you asked…”
“They told me you’ve had plenty.” Ethan sat down in the chair adjacent to the bed while I stood back against the wall, glancing every once in a while at the football game on the overhead TV that was mostly static. It was easier than looking at Aidan.
Aidan grimaced with a bolt of pain. The wires elevating his leg trembled. We were all silent for a moment, and then Aidan started fading into sleep.
“It’s what I was always afraid of.” This was Aidan. His eyes were now closed but his voice was uncharacteristically steady. “Something like this…look at me.”
“You fell off a roof, Aidan. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“How many times do you think I heard that today?”
“You should stop talking.”
Aidan’s lips located a smile. “Ever since you told me…this is the exact thing. This is what I feared.”
“Aidan, cut it out.”
“Mom’s home right now in Long Beach. She’s afraid to go outside. She’s in her room watching Ellen or something. And she doesn’t even know about any of this…”
Ethan gestured to me. “He called her. He told her what happened.”
I considered this. “Well, I sort of told her,” I murmured.
Aidan opened his eyes and gazed, unfaltering, at his brother. “You’re way off, Ethan. You don’t even know what I mean.” Then his eyelids fluttered and closed again. “This is really all about you.”
“You got drunk, Aidan,” Ethan said, indignant. “You got drunk and you fell off a roof.”
“No, no…” Aidan turned his head weakly from side to side, grimacing again. “This is about you…this is about you in your graduation gown—”
Ethan stood up and turned toward the door and was about to call for a nurse.
“—and…and you were in your graduation gown and you were holding that guy’s hand…” His eyes flickered toward me, in the corner where I’d been slowly backing away. “Ethan…both of you…please—please don’t get me wrong.” Aidan breathed in and then exhaled, rasping. “You’re my brother and I have to love you—even if I didn’t…and you” (this was directed at me) “…I don’t mind you, dude…and the way you’re always hanging around looking at my bro with those…I-want-you-back eyes…it’s kind of—I don’t know…sweet or something.” Aidan Hoevel paused and licked the spittle off his lower lip. Ethan Hoevel locked onto me, remembering certain moments and decisions and failures we’d experienced—there was no escaping any of them right now. “But ever since then…that morning I saw you two…ever since then I knew you were gonna hurt someone…I really did…I just never thought it was gonna be me…”
Ethan was reeling at this point. I could see him resisting everything he heard. I could see him becoming afraid. “Aidan. You got drunk. You fell off a roof.”
But Aidan wasn’t listening anymore; he was spent and his voice dropped as he struggled to continue. “And you know what I’m afraid of? You know what’s gonna haunt me when I’m sleeping tonight and every night after this one? You know what that is, Ethan?”
“What? The feeling of falling nine stories onto a concrete sidewalk?”
“It’s that—”
“Jesus! Not having a job? Not having insurance?”
“—I’m not the first person you’ve hurt before—”
“Killing a dolphin with a speargun?”
“—and I’m not going to…be the last—”
“That someday you’ll die?”
“—and the ground you walk on will be littered with all the people…that you’ve hurt…”
And then Aidan Hoevel passed out again, his eyelids dreamlessly still.
Ethan watched his brother for a few minutes. Aidan’s leg started twitching and pulling on the thin traction cables, and I couldn’t help flashing on the nano-wires of Ethan’s senior project.
“Should we…get him some drugs?” I murmured.
Ethan nodded grimly and sighed. “Yeah, I’ll try.” And that spark of mild amusement that usually clung to the pain in his eyes was gone when he said to me, “You should go home. I w
ant you to not be here anymore.”
I left the hospital without telling him how Samona had slipped out of the loft before any of the ambulances came, and that I hadn’t heard from her since.
I also left the hospital without telling him about the note I’d found in his room, the note she’d left for him which he would find later, written on Ethan Hoevel Designs stationery: You asked me once why it took so long for us to meet. Now I know the answer and the only question left is why it took so long for me to figure it out. Samona.
Then I walked slowly back to my studio, where the subletter had left lumps of cat hair clinging to almost everything. The sheets were unwashed and stained all over with ominous brown flecks, and the toilet was clogged.
It occurred to me while plunging that the only reason I’d known Ethan had come home was that David had called that afternoon. When I finally returned David’s call, it was out of the need for distraction as much as anything else. I didn’t want to dwell on pain and sadness anymore.
“Did you send that letter?” he asked immediately.
“I’m sorry—what?”
“The letter to Leonard. Was it you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. A lot’s been going on, David, and—”
“And the picture. If you sent it, just tell me right now. I’ll have you fucking arrested. You’ll never work in this city—”
“David, the only mail I’ve sent in the last month was an overdue rent check to my landlord.”
The harsh and unfamiliar tone in his voice grew more urgent. It sounded as if David Taylor was pressing the mouthpiece against his lips.
“So you didn’t send it?”
“No. David, what’s going on?”
He wasn’t listening to me. “Because if it wasn’t you…” There was a long pause and then there was a click. The conversation was over, and I went to sleep.
Of course I already knew what letter and photograph he was talking about.
There was no way to know then what had occurred in James Leonard’s office on the afternoon David returned from Peru. It was only months later—when I began writing this story and found the journalist in me desperate for the few missing details—that I made the last-ditch decision to call Mr. Leonard under the guise of “a reporter working on a small piece for the Times focusing on the particular attributes that separated people in hedge funds who’d lost their jobs from those who’d been able to keep them.” He didn’t name names, but he did in fact allude to a certain executive who’d spent the previous summer under “the burden of a curious brand of personal duress.” Then James Leonard told me that “as the CEO of a boutique investment fund such as The Leonard Company, it’s my responsibility to take everything into account during the grueling decision-making process.” After speaking with Mr. Leonard for twenty minutes and taking liberties with the facts I already knew, I was able to envision David Taylor’s afternoon on the second Friday in September: