Man About Town

by Mark Merlis

  Joel hoped so.

  four

  Joel pressed Talk on the intercom, said “Hello,” then pressed Listen. He caught Sam in midsentence. “… kind of awkward, but … Hello? Joel? It’s Sam.”

  Sam had brought somebody. He was coming to pick up a few things, he didn’t say what. Joel was surprised, as he inventoried the apartment, just how many of Sam’s things were still around, things Joel looked at every day.

  Sam had brought Kevin, surely. That was why he buzzed, even though he still had a key. So Joel would have a minute to get ready. Joel had no use for the minute. He’d already straightened up, made fresh coffee. He had even run down the street for bagels and Sam’s favorite cream cheese (a particular sacrifice, as it contained raisins). The bagels were set out discreetly in the kitchen as if they just happened to be there and Sam could pick one up if he liked. Which he would: Sam picked up things. If he visited someone’s house he wouldn’t just look at the photos on the piano or the Staffordshire dogs on the mantel, he’d pick them up. So maybe Joel ought to have expected that he would eventually pick up one of the cuties to whom he was always drawing Joel’s attention.

  Now one was in the elevator. Joel couldn’t decide if he should stand in the little foyer like Perle Mesta or be somewhere else in the apartment—make Sam use his own key and be somewhere else, busy. He wound up in the foyer, the door wide open. The elevator came, there was giggling, then a “Sshh” from Sam. Sam appeared, came in and stepped aside like a footman to reveal, framed in the doorway: a juvenile.

  Joel had understood in the abstract that Sam had snared a genuine kid, but he somehow hadn’t expected one in full regalia: the voluminous black T-shirt, the baggy pants with five hundred pockets, the baseball cap, the little ring through the eyebrow that made Joel itch just looking at it. Whatever else might be said about this get-up, whatever it was all supposed to signify, it was certainly uninformative. Joel was left to guess about the body, deduce what he could from the only exposed parts, neck and forearms, as our ancestors were once inflamed by the glimpse of a lady’s ankle. The kid’s neck and forearms were slender and graceful and so terribly young. He had a scab on one arm, probably from tumbling off a skateboard.

  “This is Kevin,” Sam said superfluously. The kid stepped forward. His hand was extended, but not in such a way that Joel could shake it; rather it was configured for some alternate greeting ritual Joel knew nothing about. Joel ignored it, put his hand on the boy’s bony shoulder for a second, and looked beyond him to Sam.

  Was Joel imagining that Sam was a little abashed? That he himself knew this kid wasn’t exactly a trophy bride? No, he was the other kind of abashed: I’m too lucky, I’m afraid of showing off. And maybe he was lucky if he thought he was.

  “Come on and get some coffee,” Joel said.

  “Um,” Kevin said.

  Sam translated as he led the way into the kitchen. “Kevin only drinks tea. Oh, look, bagels. Do you want a bagel, honey?” Kevin shrugged, meaning apparently that he wouldn’t object to a bagel. Luckily, Joel had three; he had been planning to have the spare with liverwurst later on.

  Honey. Joel and Sam used to call each other that. So automatically that Sam would forget and say it in the wrong places. At the discount mall in deepest Virginia, he would say, “This sweater would look good on you, honey,” and rednecks would gawk at them. Joel was stung that Sam had transferred the endearment to Kevin. Not that Sam spoke affectionately: Joel didn’t mind so much sharing Sam’s store of affection, meager as it was. But that Sam had said it automatically, as they used to do.

  “Where do we keep the tea?” Sam said. “Is it still … ?” He went to the right cabinet, found the canister where they saved miscellaneous teabags for visitors eccentric enough to want tea. He rummaged through it. “We’ve got something called Orange Delight, and Peppermint, and a lot of Tetley. Jeez, how long have we had this?”

  “Peppermint,” Kevin said. Joel wondered if he had heard Sam saying “we.” Busy in the kitchen of Joel-and-Sam, saying “we.”

  Sam was washing out the teapot, last used some time in the Beagan administration. “Do you want your bagel toasted?”

  “Okay,” Kevin said graciously. Having completed his order, he went out to the living room.

  When the bagels were ready, Sam smeared his and Joel’s with the raisin-infested cream cheese. Kevin’s he laid out on a plate with a dollop of cream cheese alongside and a fresh knife. Joel wondered if he was going to add a bud vase with a single rose. Sam had never waited on Joel this way, not even in their first weeks. He wasn’t just being nice to the kid, who repaid him with grunts and shrugs; it was some sort of expression of power.

  Kevin was sitting in Joel’s chair as they came out. Sam started for his old chair, then swerved to the couch, at least thoughtful enough not to subject Joel to a tableau of the new couple in what had been Joel’s and Sam’s matching chairs. Joel joined him on the couch, so they wound up facing Kevin like a panel of judges, or like doting godparents. Or like a couple themselves. Kevin was spreading cream cheese on his bagel with great care, trying not to get any over the hole, but he kept glancing up at Sam and Joel. He was trying to imagine them.

  Sam had made a mistake, maybe, bringing him. Because what he must have seen, looking over at them, was two old men, more like each other than not.

  Everyone ate in silence. Kevin rhythmically devoured his bagel: bite, sip of tea, bite. Joel got through his almost as fast, while Sam was taking little nibbles. He always ate as much as Joel did, but in microscopic nibbles. Sometimes in a restaurant Joel would sit for what seemed an hour while Sam consumed a salad, so slowly he might have been eroding it rather than eating it. Anyway, the kid and Joel were through with their bagels. Somebody would have to talk now.

  Joel began. “So, Kevin, you’re … in school?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll be a sophomore.” Joel must have signaled somehow that he thought Kevin was a little old to be a sophomore. Kevin explained without being asked: “I was in the army, so I just started last year.”

  “You were in the army?” Joel failed to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

  “Yeah.” Kevin grinned; he was accustomed to incredulity.

  How different Kevin looked, transformed in Joel’s eyes by this single disclosure. Joel was of the draft-dodging generation—scared not so much of dying in some rice paddy as of succumbing during basic training, which he imagined as a sort of infinitely protracted gym class, weeks of twenty-four-hour-a-day humiliation. That Kevin, this slight creature, had got through didn’t suggest to Joel that he had exaggerated the rigors of military life; instead the news turned Kevin into a little he-man, an abbreviated Schwarzenegger.

  Kevin added, “I was in the Persian Gulf.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I didn’t see any combat. Just a lot of sand.”

  “I bet.” The casual, “I didn’t see any combat,” was unspeakably hot. Joel found himself trying to conjecture exactly what lay concealed in Kevin’s voluminous trousers. Then he looked up, embarrassed. Kevin had caught him, wore a tiny and ambiguous smirk.

  Sam was still intently pecking at his bagel, leaving Joel to keep the conversation going. Joel thought they’d better get off the subject of Kevin’s war record before he bounded toward Kevin on all fours. “So what are you studying?” Joel said.

  “Food service management.”

  Joel was relieved. He had expected something like astrophysics.

  Kevin went on: “But Sam thinks I might be good at physical therapy.”

  Sam jumped up and went to the bookshelves, perhaps to deflect Joel from asking what particular aptitudes Kevin had displayed. He began scanning each shelf systematically, running a finger from left to right, even though all Sam’s books were in the spare bedroom. It was, perhaps, snobbery that made Joel insist that Sam’s sci-fi be segregated from his own shelves of unread landmarks of the Western canon. He was pretty sure Sam wasn’t going to find Legends of the Galactic Bandits or w
hatever the hell he was looking for. This was a charade, to let Joel and Kevin keep talking. Maybe the whole visit had been conjured up for that purpose, so they could get to know each other. Did he suppose that they would all be buddies, start having brunch together and then going to sci-fi movies? Or was this some sort of therapy? Maybe Sam thought Joel’s healing could be accelerated if he just understood that Kevin was actual.

  Kevin obviously wasn’t going to talk unless Joel asked him a question. Joel didn’t have any more; he didn’t care if Kevin was from Oshkosh or if he had any siblings, or hobbies, or undisclosed tattoos. The only thing Joel wanted to know was: what has Sam said about me?

  “Do you want some more tea?” Joel said.

  Before Kevin could answer, or even shrug, Sam said, “No, we better be going pretty soon. Let me just get a couple things.” He went back to the bedroom.

  The minute he was out of sight, Kevin whispered, “I’m real sorry.”

  Joel shook his head, Kevin had nothing to be sorry about. He meant that; he realized that he had never blamed Kevin for an instant, not even before meeting him. What could Joel blame him for? Being twenty-three, being wherever he was the night Sam stumbled upon him?

  “Sam really likes you,” Kevin said. Innocently: he couldn’t have thought how offended Joel would be, to hear from him what Sam liked. At least he hadn’t used the past tense.

  All Joel could answer was, “Sam likes you, too. I can tell.” Kevin stared at him, properly thinking this was an idiotic thing to say.

  Then Kevin managed, “I hope … you know, you guys ought to go on being friends.” This, too, was well-intentioned, but outrageous in so many ways that Joel just nodded, got up, and went to see what Sam was up to.

  Sam was making the bed. That is, he had pulled off the old sheets—which, admittedly, hadn’t been changed since his elopement—and was contentedly making hospital corners with the new set. He glanced up as Joel came in and shook his head grimly.

  “Maybe I ought to get you to come in once a week,” Joel said.

  “Or somebody. This is disgusting.”

  “It’s not disgusting.” The sheets had been there maybe six weeks; this wasn’t unprecedented even when Mr. Clean was in residence. Not to mention that nothing of consequence had been spilled on them. “Did you find everything you were looking for?”

  “Uh-huh.” Sam gestured with his head toward the little pile on the dresser: one sweater Joel couldn’t recall ever having seen him in; a fantasy novel Joel knew he’d finished; a pair of sunglasses. So the visit had been a contrivance after all.

  Sam picked up one end of the comforter and looked to Joel to pick up the other. Joel did, they flung it over the bed, Sam smoothed it and tugged at it as always, to make sure it was even on both sides, no one got more than his share. Then he tossed Joel a pillow and a pillowcase. He was slipping a case on the other pillow, but Joel just let his own fall to the ground. Joel wasn’t going to play anymore. He left the room before Sam could ask him what he thought about Kevin; he knew Sam was just about to ask that.

  Kevin was looking at the pictures from the surprise party Sam had thrown Joel for his fortieth birthday. There was Joel, laughing a lot, all the friends Kevin didn’t know. All the old men, and among them Sam and Joel laughing, hugging.

  What could Kevin see in Sam? This might possibly have been the first, the primordial human question, voiced long before anyone thought to wonder why the sun came up or the rain came down. What does Mng see in Thrng? Joel didn’t even know what he himself had seen in Sam, just that he had fallen somehow for the way Sam smiled peacefully when he made hospital corners with the sheets. Maybe Kevin had fallen for the very same reason, or maybe he had found out other things about Sam to love, things Joel had never been aware of. Either possibility was nearly unendurable, but especially the former, that this callow student of food service management had the very same aperture in his heart that Joel did, that Sam had walked in through the very same door.

  Sam came out from the bedroom, Kevin turned and realized that Joel had been looking at him. He looked back, again a tiny smirk forming on his face. He thought Joel wanted him. He thought everything was that simple: Sam had got him and Joel wanted what Sam had got. Joel, for his part, wasn’t sure which he wanted, Sam or Kevin.

  The two of them were standing very close together: Joel could see that Sam had to keep himself from putting an arm around Kevin’s hard little shoulders.

  “We better get going,” Sam said.

  Kevin nodded. “It was nice meeting you, Joel. I hope we can get together again.” Quite a protracted utterance; perhaps he had composed it while Joel and Sam were in the bedroom. He held out his hand; this time Joel grasped it and found that it was damp. Warm and sticky as a child’s hand.

  He went to the foyer, leaving Sam and Joel facing each other in the living room. Neither knew what to do. Shake hands? Hug? Sam must have been discovering the same thing Joel was. They were indissoluble, and at the same time there was nothing between them, nothing left at all.

  Kevin was still in the foyer, stamping his foot a little, like a dog who needs to be let out. Sam went to him, they escaped together.

  “A roommate!” Charles was incredulous. Of course, Charles had a whole townhouse to himself on the best street in Capitol Hill; he had one entire room that contained only a colonial highboy that was worth about as much as Joel’s life savings. All this money came from a string of car dealerships in suburban Virginia. The handful of Hill Club regulars who had actually grown up around Washington had spent their childhoods watching Charles’s father on TV, dressed as a clown and screaming about deals! deals! deals! That everyone knew where his money came from did nothing to diminish Charles’s hauteur. “How could you possibly … ?”

  “I was just thinking about it.” Joel had been thinking about it since Sam and Kevin’s visit. The first time in weeks there had been another soul in the apartment. He hadn’t felt very lonesome until their visit; once they’d gone he’d felt the emptiness for the rest of the day.

  He was poring through the Housing Wanted columns of the gay paper as Charles looked on. “You know, I’ve got this extra bedroom.” What he and Sam had sometimes called the exercise room, because the two of them for a few months had religiously pretended to go cross-country skiing on a piece of equipment that had stood in the room as a quiet reproach ever since. “They all seem to be students.”

  “What did you think?” Charles said. “People our age aren’t putting ads in the paper looking for a room.”

  “I guess not.” Unless maybe they were refugees like Sam. “A student wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “Are you kidding? Living in the next room, playing hippity-hop in the middle of the night?”

  Even Joel knew it wasn’t called hippity-hop. Past that, he really had no idea what kids were listening to; the first time he learned the names of current idols was when they killed themselves. Sam knew. Sam could distinguish hip-hop from gangstah from house. And he knew all about the Web and stuff, and what people watched on TV, and who those one-named celebs in the tabloids were—everything Joel didn’t keep up with. He must have felt sometimes, coming home to Joel, as if he were entering one of those period rooms in a museum, with the rope across the doorway. Was that the price he couldn’t pay any more, living a life that amounted to a perpetual reminder that they weren’t twenty-three any more? Did he think he could become twenty-three again if he were only freed of the bourgeois accretions—the club chairs from Crate and Barrel, the Mission-like dining room set—that had pinned him to the earth?

  Any of the kids in the Housing Wanted section would have been happy enough to come to earth in Joel’s apartment, with one-and-a-half baths and a washer/dryer and a roof deck Joel never visited and only sporadic guest appearances of vermin. He could probably pick any one of them, call, and have a roommate tomorrow. A live-in Kevin, but wearing a Don’t Touch sign.

  “It might not be so bad,” Joel said.

  “As if a
ny of these children could afford half your rent.”

  “Well, maybe they wouldn’t have to pay half.”

  “Ah.” Charles snorted. “Don’t worry about the rent this month, dearie. Just step on back into Uncle Joel’s bedroom.”

  Pointless to explain that he was thinking about something entirely different, a chaste, almost paternal relationship with some kid. Some youth he could gently guide and who would in turn make him young again. Make him young the first time.

  Through some impecunious guy with an entry-level job he would live that first youth he had squandered in those years when he was afraid of himself. The roommate wouldn’t be afraid of himself: he would be okay about everything, the way kids were now. Okay with being gay, hopeful about his place in the burgeoning global economy, going to the gym uncomplainingly, thinking of a latte as a stimulating beverage, now and then spiriting some mate into the second bedroom. And in the morning seeking Joel’s counsel: about where to put his 401(k), about which health plan he should choose, about whether it was a good idea to keep seeing somebody who wanted to be tied up.

  “If I had your house, I’d fill it with a whole fraternity,” Joel said. “Lambda Lambda Lambda.”

  “Can you imagine! Flinging beer cans at the highboy. Throwing up on the Kir man.” Charles snatched the paper away. “Let’s give up on the Lingeman Memorial Shelter for Wayward Youth and find you some true love.” He turned to the Men4Men section. “We’ve got, let’s see, Glimpses, Relationships, Dates, Friends, Situations, Masseurs, and Escorts.”

  Joel knew what they had. Glimpses, of course, were those optimistic, almost delusional misreadings of some momentary flicker of interest from a stranger: Foggy Bottom Metro, 6/14. You: baseball cap. Me: black T-shirt. You looked my way. Java? Relationships were people who wanted a long-term deal and didn’t say what they did in bed, except sometimes that they liked to cuddle. Dates were people who didn’t want an LTR and said exactly what they did in bed. Friends were people who voiced no romantic or sexual inclinations but merely wanted someone to join them in a healthful activity, like bicycling; oddly, they tended to specify what this companion should look like. Situations were extremely successful and youthful-looking professional people who could offer an appropriate young person opportunities for foreign travel and other broadening experiences. Masseurs, of course, used their hands, while Escorts used other parts.