The Wonders of the Invisible World

by David Gates

  I get the stuff going, then head back to the Koreans’ to pick up a Times and something to put in my stomach. I’ve quit hovering over the machines waiting to add fabric softener when the rinse light goes on: Dinah’s little protest. The homeless man is still in front of the door, so I first go over to this sort of diner place to get coffee. One of Tobias’s things is to call the man who runs the place Mr. Mippippippippopolos (not to his face), which does strike me as being not funny. I always say milk no sugar, and Mr. Mekos always drops four sugar packets into the bag. I suppose you could take it as not listening; I take it as wishing you more sweetness in life, like a Mediterranean thing. I pick up the Times at a little news and candy store that keeps the papers outside so you don’t have to go in and see all the sex magazines. The homeless man is still in front of the Koreans’, so I figure okay, fine. I hang back until he turns to this woman in running shorts coming out with a bottle of Evian, and I dart in past him. But when I come back out with my banana I’m the only one around, and he says “Spare anything?” in this odd voice, so I give him three quarters and say “Good luck.” My usual.

  I walk up to what used to be a block of 91st Street and is now this mall with benches, and sit with my back to the little park we herd the kids into every nice day in the warm weather. It’s great having a job right in your neighborhood, except sometimes it makes you crazy, like you can’t ever get away. Already children are yelling and running through the sprinklers.

  I take the lid off the coffee and say “You and me, pal,” to the mostly naked discus thrower on the cup. His crudely drawn muscles look like the squares on a turtle’s shell. I sip gingerly so I won’t burn my mouth. Then I peel the banana partway down and break off a bite.

  I always read the Times the same way: scan the front page, go to the editorials, then the columns, then see if there’s a letter about anything interesting or from somebody famous. What stops me is Bernie Adler’s name, at the bottom of a letter headed WE’RE ONE COMMUNITY.

  To the Editor:

  Thursday’s peaceable and mostly amicable march on City Hall has reminded New Yorkers of what we’re too apt to forget: that we’re one community and not (ideally) a welter of warring entities at each other’s throats in a zero-sum game.

  Can it be that even the Giuliani administration, once so cynically adept at other-ing homeless New Yorkers, demonizing the so-called “squeegee men” and putting the police at odds with a segment of the public they exist to serve, is feeling the winds of change?

  We of the New York Homeless Alliance wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the mayor’s office in facilitating the people’s exercise of their right “peaceably to assemble,” and to express our gratification at the measured police response to the (very) few potentially provocative incidents. May this march serve to put on notice all those who would polarize and divide us: The men and women of the NYPD are working people (they work for us—for all of us), and the vast majority of the homeless would be working people under the aegis of more enlightened social and economic policies.

  Bernard Adler, Chair

  New York Homeless Alliance

  I’m like, What?

  But I know. I mean I guess I sort of did know. But here it is in black and white. Real words in a real newspaper that a million people are reading in the real world. Now I feel my heart start to pound, like it took a few seconds for the idea to get through to my body: that I live with a man whose mind’s gone wrong. Take out the clothes, dry the clothes, fold the clothes—but sooner or later you have to go back to where he’s waiting.

  I smell the homeless man before his shadow darkens the page.

  “Excuse me for intruding.” I look up, thinking, Oh, shit. It’s the same one: white stumblebum, teeth with gaps in between like a syphilitic, carrying a dirty white paper shopping bag. “D’y’know Jim Morrison?” he says. Sort of an Irishy accent: hint of a d among the r’s. Mawdison. “Of The Doors?”

  “Yes,” I say, and look back down at the paper. Not streetwise of me to answer at all, but I believe you give each person their dignity until they ask you for something.

  “There’s been a slaughter here!” he sings, or more like chants, in what he must mean to be Jim Morrison’s voice. Been comes out bean. I don’t recognize the line: I don’t know any more than just the normal about Jim Morrison, having been a Dylan person.

  I get to my feet and walk away, telling myself not to run, leaving coffee, banana and newspaper behind. I wouldn’t look in that bag for anything.

  There’s a phone if I can make it to the laundromat. But who would you call? The police, to report that a homeless man said something crazy? Your husband, to say you’re afraid and could he please come make it right? Save your quarters for the dryer. Let him and the thing he’s got in there, the thing he’s following you along the street with, the thing he’s now yelling about, the thing that probably isn’t anything, melt back into the Great Whatever. I’m walking faster now, he’s dropping back. And this will be just another New York story I’ll tell.

  THE INTRUDER

  They had the air conditioner on HI COOL, and the whole downstairs smelled of roasting turkey. Friday afternoon. Finn sat in the blue armchair, which rested on Teflon wafers to protect the floor he’d finally gotten around to sanding and re-finishing. With spar varnish, not that damnable polyurethane. He was reading, of all things, Timon of Athens, which he’d remembered as being much better. So this would probably be the last time in his life he would read Timon of Athens; that made it seem sad and precious, if not especially enjoyable. As he read, he worried: that there would be too many leftovers, that Thanksgiving dinner in July wasn’t charming but simply outré, that none of the guests would know he’d been interested in American cooking before it had become fashionable, and that he had been boring James by saying so repeatedly.

  James sat cross-legged in the burgundy armchair with his earphones on. Among the few possessions he’d brought along when he moved in was his collection of books on tape. Lately he’d been reading—if that was the word—Edgar Allan Poe.

  “Plugged in and passive,” he’d said. “I’m the first to admit it. The MTV generation. Before your very eyes.” Affected decadence was one of James’s comic turns.

  “But Poe?” Finn had said.

  “It’s camp, what can I say?” said James. “I thought all faggots were into camp back in your day.”

  On the floor by his chair James had set a sweating glass of seltzer. He was forever setting his glass on the floor, and Finn was forever nagging; today especially he should just bite his tongue. He’d invited Peter and Carolyn, of course, and people from the department—Bill and Deborah Whitley, Byron Solomon—although he’d told no one it was an occasion. An anniversary, for James and Finn, could only be the anniversary of one thing, and Finn was … he called it considerate, James called it chickenshit, about shoving in people’s faces what they didn’t want to know. They’d decided to make today their anniversary, although it could also have been yesterday; by the time this had become important, it was too late to pin it down. James had gone to the library and looked in the microfiche to check the movie ads in the paper that week. Rebecca and Notorious had been Wed–Thur, but they couldn’t decide which day they’d gone. For once Finn hadn’t been teaching summer school, and James said (his decadent routine again) that he hadn’t cared what day of the week it was since the last time he’d held a job.

  James’s sister Carolyn lived on the next street, one house over from Finn’s: their backyards touched at a single point. A year ago today—or yesterday—Finn had been out back taking down, at long last, the swing set that had been there when he’d bought the place. With a sledgehammer he’d pulverized the concrete plugs that anchored the supports in the ground; the swing set now lay on its side like a dog killed by a car, two stiff legs in the air. He was trying to decide if it could be knocked apart with the hammer or if he’d have to take a hacksaw to it when he noticed this “young man”—Finn hated the expression—d
ressed only in shorts and running shoes mowing the Sykes’s lawn. Finn nodded and received a nod in return. Carolyn had forewarned him that her brother would be coming up to stay in the house for a few days while she and Peter were in Umbria, and encouraged him to go over and introduce himself. It seemed uncivil not to make use of this opportunity, but the brother’s very good looks made Finn feel disinclined. That night, Wed or Thur, he went to what he still thought of as the Central but was now called the Symposium: the town’s musty, velvety old theater had become a revival house with air-popped popcorn and a beer-and-wine license, run by a graduate-school dropout convinced that civilized people were getting tired of VCRs. Ahead of him in the ticket line stood the young man. When he turned away from the window with his ticket, he saw Finn, smiled and nodded, and walked over.

  “I think you’re Finn McCarthy,” he said.

  “Well, that makes one of us,” said Finn. “However. Yes. And I think you’re the person who was so diligently mowing the Sykes’s lawn this afternoon.”

  “James Chase.” The young man stuck out a hand. “Carolyn’s brother.”

  “Yes, Carolyn had prepared me,” said Finn, taking the hand. “Somewhat.” Should he have? Well, it was said now. “I ought to have come over to say hello, but I was preoccupied.”

  “You did look kind of menacing with that sledgehammer,” said the young man.

  “That was my John Henry mode,” said Finn. “Otherwise I’m harmless enough. So Peter and Carolyn euchred you into looking after the old homestead while they traipse around sunny Italy.”

  “It didn’t take much euchring.” James Chase pushed up the sleeve of his T-shirt and scratched a shoulder. “It was this or muggy Manhattan. Carolyn told me I should be sure and look you up.”

  “Ah,” said Finn. “Here, why don’t we go in?” Was he overreacting, or was this a bit gauche of Carolyn, to have steered this obviously gay boy in his direction? The first move, if any, ought to have been Finn’s. On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to think ill of Carolyn Sykes: except for poor Byron Solomon, and of course now the Whitleys, Peter and Carolyn were as close as Finn had to friends in this community. As Carolyn undoubtedly knew. Which was why she had taken such a liberty. Although she had surely meant well. (There: he was coming around already.) And as to the boy’s being obviously gay, would that have been so obvious to a less knowing eye? Did Carolyn herself know it? One’s family had a gift for not knowing these things, or so it had been in Finn’s family. This brother of Carolyn’s was certainly presentable—whatever that meant—and obviously conversable.

  When the lights came up at intermission, Finn turned to him and said, “I’m going to give Rebecca a miss, I think. I remember this as being the better of the two, and it’s starting to show its age. All this malarkey about how magical the two of them are together. Didn’t seem so bloody magical to me. Ingrid Bergman reconciles me to living in the age of Julia Roberts.”

  “It really wasn’t all that hot, was it?” said James Chase. “God, I feel like a heretic.”

  “Bracing, isn’t it? I’ll tell you what, since you’re new in town. There happens to be quite a wonderful diner here. A lot of the old features pretty much intacta. They make a mean rice pudding, and there’s a jukebox thing in every booth, with all sorts of marvelous old songs. It still has ‘Ring of Fire.’ Do you know ‘Ring of Fire’? Johnny Cash?”

  “I must’ve heard it,” James Chase said. “But, you know. I’m into Garth. Mr. Va Va Voom.”

  “Well, then,” said Finn, “we must educate you. Are you game?”

  “Always,” he said.

  From the diner they went back to Finn’s house to hear “White Circle” by Kitty Wells, which Finn insisted was a minor masterpiece. He opened a bottle of Montalcino, and soon he heard himself calling Willie Nelson a “filthy toad,” and was aware for the millionth time that he tended to sound like an old queen when he’d been drinking. And so to bed—a surprise to them both. Finn had stopped doing this kind of thing years ago, and James had promised himself that he hadn’t come up here to cruise. And he’d sworn off older men.

  Later that same night—actually, it was beginning to turn gray outside the windows—when they got around to comparing stories, Finn’s misgivings came back more sharply. James had been vague about his involvements in New York, but from what Finn could gather it was clear that he might really have been taking his life in his hands with this boy. But truly, wasn’t AIDS simply the extreme, the mortal, instance of what had always been the case: that your new love’s irrevocable past determined your future? But this James was his first adventure—was it possible?—since he’d moved here. Finn didn’t even have a condom in the house. James, thank God, had come equipped, despite what he’d promised himself; he carried them in his wallet, like the flamboyantly heterosexual boys of Finn’s high school days.

  Finn found James’s coming-out story unsettling, too. His own announcement to his parents (he’d been forty; they’d been too old to hear it) had been like something out of a made-for-TV film: the father’s anger, the mother’s self-castigation. James had been in his last year of high school; he’d stuck a video called Top Sergeant (randy Marines in the barracks) in a Sound of Music box, wrapped it and put it under the Christmas tree. As James told the story, his parents waited to watch it until his Aunt Addie showed up for Christmas dinner, and she’d been so shocked that her dentures fell out. Finn suspected that at least part of this was invented: Aunt Addie was clearly a stock character, a Margaret Dumont or an Edna May Oliver. And it might or might not have been true that his father’s slapping him across the mouth had been the pretext for James’s quitting school and moving to New York. But true or not, the story made Finn feel both excited and intimidated, much as he’d felt when Ricky Morrison had seduced him into playing with matches. From the can Finn’s father had kept in the toolshed, Ricky had poured a circle of gasoline onto the McCarthys’ lawn and tossed match after match until it roared up. Finn rubbed in vain with the soles of his sneakers at the telltale ring of charred grass; he’d caught holy hell, named his accomplice, and that was the end of his friendship with Ricky Morrison.

  That first night, with Kitty Wells keening, it had been James who committed himself first: he took a deep breath, put a warm hand on the back of Finn’s neck and pulled him close. Yet it had also been James who’d said, “I want to put this on you, can I?” So neither of them, Finn reminded himself, had all the power. That is, if you believed it was all about who fucked whom.

  James’s Walkman gave a snap. Finn looked up from Timon of Athens and saw him take off the earphones, stretch his arms up over his head and stand up. “The willies,” he said. “So what time are people supposed to be arriving?”

  Finn stuck a finger in the book and rolled his wrist to check his watch. Ten after four, which of course had no bearing on the question. “I told ’em all six o’clock,” he said. “I hate this nonsense where you have one coming at six o’clock and one at six-fifteen and so on.” Endearing that anyone could still get the willies from Edgar Allan Poe.

  “Six o’clock,” said James. “Listen, if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to nap for a little. Could you come wake me up?”

  “What time?” Finn said, hoping he didn’t sound disapproving. He’d gotten up at three in the morning to take a piss; when he came downstairs he’d found James in the study watching Star 80. The room had stunk of pot.

  “I’ll leave that,” James said, “to your discretion.”

  Oh.

  “Actually, I might come up and join you,” said Finn. “I’m pretty much at a stopping place. Just let me baste Junior again.”

  “Don’t feel obliged,” said James.

  “Now, what’s all this?”

  James shook his head. “Nothing. I must be on the rag.”

  Oh, fine, Finn thought. So now it was up to him whether to allow James to get in a jab for free or whether to turn this into another battle royal. Since there were guests due in a couple of hou
rs he should just drop it. But. But but but.

  “Am I being unreasonable?” said Finn. Like a damn fool. “To want to know what I’m being told?”

  “You’re never unreasonable.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said. You’re never unreasonable. I’m unreasonable. As we all know so well.”

  Finn closed his eyes for a count of three and blew out his breath for James to hear.

  “Now I’ve done it,” James said. “Enter the Bickersons.”

  “Why are you doing it?”

  “What a reasonable question,” said James. “Why doesn’t James just go take his nap and wake up cheerful and refreshed? If there’s anything the world doesn’t need it’s another scene with the bitchy faggots trying to keep it together in front of company.”

  “That’s not what I’m concerned about,” Finn said.

  “Oh, right.” James started up the stairs, then stopped and looked back. “Hey, Finn? You would be welcome to tuck me in.”

  Finn decided. “Okay. Just let me deal with Junior.”

  James continued up the stairs. As his feet disappeared from sight he called, “Don’t be too long.”

  Finn put the book down, not bothering to mark his place. Truly, that turkey smelled splendid. On his way to the kitchen he picked up James’s Walkman from where he’d left it on the floor. Which story had given James the willies? Finn hit EJECT and saw it wasn’t Poe at all but just a tape tape. On the label someone had written WORKOUT MUSIC/MADONNA ETC. The writing was faded, and it wasn’t James’s.