Man About Town

by Mark Merlis

  “Joel’s going to smoke,” one of the House people said darkly. As if he were going to step out into the corridor and shoot heroin.

  “Go on without me,” Joel said. “I’ll catch up.”

  They went on, perhaps not noticing that he had taken his briefcase with him.

  Andrew was almost out of sight, past First Street and headed east. Bound for home, then, not back to his office. Joel ran; people looked at him, a man running, his tie flapping over his shoulder. When he had got within a hundred feet of Andrew he yelled, “Hey, wait up! Andrew!”

  Andrew turned. Stood, looking faintly perplexed, waiting for Joel to traverse the great distance that had opened between them. Which Joel had to cross like a messenger boy about to deliver an unwelcome telegram. He hadn’t thought what he should say. How ever had he concluded that this, of all moments, was the right time to make his move? He hadn’t even thought about it, just knew somehow that if he let Andrew walk out of that meeting and away—that meeting where Joel hadn’t helped, couldn’t—he wouldn’t get another shot.

  He reached Andrew, panting a little, and said: “Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to have dinner?”

  They were in front of the Madison Building. On the low wall before it sat the homeless guy who was always there—still, in the August heat, wearing the flannel shirt Joel had seen him in last May. The guy looked at Andrew and Joel but didn’t bother to say, “Got a quarter?” Maybe it was just too hot; maybe he knew it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  “Don’t you still have to be in that meeting?” Andrew said.

  “It was just breaking up.”

  “Oh.”

  Andrew looked down at the ground. Joel repeated, “So how about dinner?” Hopelessly: he already knew the answer. Knew it because he himself heard the quaver in his voice as he uttered this innocent question. Andrew must have heard it, the mix of elation and terror and shame in Joel’s voice, must have known what Joel was asking.

  Once, in the year or so he’d pined after Alex Rivers, once he had worked up the nerve to ask Alex if he wanted to come over to Joel’s house and work on his algebra. A natural question: Joel had helped him a couple of times, it would not have been a leap for him to come over for a little more tutoring. Alex considered it, looked at Joel and bit his lip. Joel held his breath, picturing the two of them in Joel’s room, sitting on the bed maybe, the textbook between them. Alex looked at him, and Joel realized that Alex was forming exactly the same picture in his mind, and that it was distasteful to him.

  Alex would not have put a name to his discomfort, would not have thought homosexual, any more than Joel would have used that word about himself. But there was something wrong with the picture; even if he could really use the help, Alex knew that somehow there would be a serpent in the room. So Joel knew the answer, even while Alex was still biting his lip and trying to think of some way to say no without hurting Joel’s feelings. Joel had never loved Alex so desperately as in that instant: the sad look in his eyes as he hunted for some gentle way of explaining that what Joel wanted was impossible. The nameless thing Joel wanted was impossible, he would not have it in this world. “I can’t,” Alex said at last. He didn’t invent an excuse and he didn’t need to. He just couldn’t.

  Joel waited, knowing Andrew’s answer. Not even sure if he cared, startled to find that he didn’t care very much. Andrew was cute, he was a nice guy. But he was also kind of dumb: Joel couldn’t shake the disdain he had felt as Andrew stammered, back in the meeting room.

  “I … Joel, I can’t.”

  Joel looked away, embarrassed for both of them. The homeless man was watching with evident interest, as if he understood what was going on. Maybe it was obvious.

  “I can’t, Kenyon’s parents might call, and …”

  He should have left it at “I can’t.” It was insulting to hear an excuse; even Alex, a stupid jock, had known enough to spare Joel this insult.

  “Okay,” Joel said. “Another time.” He tried to sound casual; he hoped Andrew hadn’t heard that he could barely get the words out, his throat was so tight. He turned to head back to the meeting. If he walked fast, he’d be far away from Andrew before the tears came. About what? Andrew was stupid. And weak, or maybe a little demented, trapped in this weird deal with Kenyon’s parents. Tears about what?

  Andrew called after him. “No.” Joel stopped. “Joel, I really like you. But I don’t want to lead you on or anything.”

  Joel didn’t turn around. “Okay,” he said again.

  “Listen to me a second. It’s not you. It’s nothing about you.”

  How many times had Joel heard this line? When he was young, he had never believed it; of course it was about him, what else could it be about? Now he was older, he ought to have been able to understand that there were a million other things it could be about. Of course it was about him.

  Andrew went on. “You’re a nice guy, you’ve got a nice smile, I really thought about it.” This was, maybe, worse than hearing he had refused Joel spontaneously, out of simple revulsion. He had deliberated. “When I met Kenyon, I was young. We were both young. And over time we started to, I don’t know, we both started to grow hair in our noses and ears, but he still looked young to me. I mean, he was always twenty-eight.”

  Joel thought: you son of a bitch. Did I need you to tell me I’m not twenty-eight? He turned to face Andrew, finally, and managed to produce a nice smile. “I could trim my ear hair.” This wasn’t, come to think of it, a bad’ idea.

  Andrew smiled back. “I’m trying to tell you, I can’t start again. A relationship, I mean. I’ve … last month or so, I’ve been to bed with a few guys. But I can’t get into anything serious.”

  Joel found himself deeply aware, suddenly, that the homeless man was still sitting there, taking all this in. What could he possibly think about it? Joel shrugged. “Who was talking about anything serious?”

  Andrew opened his mouth but didn’t speak right away. Who could blame him? This had to have been the clumsiest thing Joel had said in his entire life. After a second, Andrew said, gently as he could, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “No.” More or less by definition: not if they were gravely discussing whether it was a good idea. For a minute they looked at each other, neither moving. It seemed to Joel that he had never looked at Andrew before. Andrew was handsome and sweet and Joel was about as eager to sleep with him as with … what was his name, that librarian? The incredible shrinking crush: Joel felt no desire at all, couldn’t remember now if he ever had. “I’m still hungry,” he said.

  “I am, too, but I really have to get home.” To call Kenyon’s parents, the poor shit. “You going to be in the office tomorrow? I’ll call you, maybe we’ll have dinner this weekend. Or brunch or something.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m … I’m kind of glad we got this over with.”

  “Me, too,” Joel said. He sort of meant it, but as Andrew walked away he didn’t feel glad for very long. It was true, the whole thing had never been real, he must just have fixed on Andrew as the appropriate man. Still, the deeply inappropriate man who was just turning the bend into Pennsylvania, who was already out of sight, had turned him down. In front of— he was conscious of it, once again—the homeless man, who had sat unmoving through this whole little soap opera. He reached into his pocket, found a couple of crumpled dollar bills. Their hands touched, Joel felt the warmth of the man’s hand.

  “Bless you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Your man sure go to a lot of trouble to look like a brother, don’t he?”

  They smiled at each other. “He sure does,” Joel said.

  Joel had been gone from the meeting how long, ten minutes? Too long for a cigarette. He was sweating a little, from running after Andrew; he had the odd notion that, if he went back to the meeting, they would know what had happened. He had chased Andrew, Andrew had escaped. Anyway, there was every chance the meeting had broken up by now. There wasn’t much point
in their running through a bunch of claims payment amendments just to hear Mullan say he wasn’t sure about them.

  He was just a block from the Hill Club, but he decided to go to Corcoran’s, up on the Senate side. Confident that no one he knew would be there—not even Harris, home in Montana for the recess—and he could mope in peace. He walked up First Street, past the east front of the Capitol. There was some kind of concert, one of those summer things by the Marine Band. They were playing swooping arrangements of Bodgers and Hammerstein for a sparse crowd. Joel tried to conjure up some indignation, something about cuts in the National Endowment while there was unlimited funding for this crap. But he couldn’t get worked up. There was a sort of innocence about the scene, a deep communion of futility. The musicians—hardened pros for whom the Marine Corps was just one extended gig—dutifully honking out the overture to Carousel, the audience of old people and a scattering of heat-whipped tourists with wandering brats clapping wearily. This event was not so much occurring as referring, to some never-was summer not even the old people had ever seen, a bandstand in the square of a town no one had ever dwelt in. That world wasn’t gone, it had never existed.

  Behind the band loomed the deserted Capitol. Maybe only Washington—only the Hill, really—could feel so empty in August, emptier than Paris. The offices didn’t shut down any more, the way they used to before air conditioning. Not everyone went away, but those who remained moved through the heat with purposeless calm. Most of the year nothing was actually happening on the Hill, but it could happen: the general indolence could be broken by some sudden mysterious directive—”We will bring this to the floor Thursday …”—and there would be a sudden turmoil. So there was, in any other month, a waiting-for-the-shoe-to-drop feeling in the air. But in August the shoe could not possibly drop. Joel slowed down, strolled past the Supreme Court and the Methodist Building as if he were in no hurry to get anywhere, as if he had nothing special to do.

  Inside Corcoran’s, sunlight poured through the front window onto the ranks of empty tables; sugar bowls and ketchup bottles cast long shadows on the checkered vinyl tablecloths. The air conditioning battled the heat, but could not leach out all the dampness of August in the swamp capital. There were only two or three people at the bar. So the beefy bartender, whose eye Joel could never catch on an ordinary night, turned at once from his ball game and was elaborately polite. When Joel asked for white wine, he didn’t just pour Joel the house swill but enthusiastically described their new pinot gris, which he said as “grease”; he wanted to give Joel a taste. Tonight the bartender’s sleeves were rolled up to display his great golden-fleeced forearms; yet with what delicacy he reached above him for the glass, brought it down with the stem poised between two fingers. Joel tasted the pinot grease and said “Fine,” though he knew it had to be two bucks more than the jug chardonnay. Because he wanted the bartender with the golden arms to think highly of him.

  Only when this transaction was done did he realize that the black guy a few seats down from him was the one Ron had been seeing. Michael, that was it, wearing a suit, preternaturally crisp in defiance of the heat and damp, and drinking some kind of ice-cream confection. After a second, Michael saw Joel, but turned away with no sign of recognition. Instead he sat up straight and sipped his pastel cocktail with deliberate and unwelcoming dignity. Joel reached down for his briefcase, meaning to get out this week’s The Nation, and found himself instead grabbing the briefcase and the pinot grease and moving to the seat next to Michael’s.

  Found himself: he didn’t even begin to think about why until he was already sitting next to Michael and saying “Hi.” Michael was startled but managed a rather dismissive “Hey.”

  Of course Joel imagined that, if Michael had dated Ron, he might not be altogether out of Joel’s league. But this conjecture alone would not have driven Joel to the very daring gesture of changing seats in a bar. Something else: a gut lonesomeness that had to do not with Andrew but with the Marine band and its deflated listeners, and with this vacant theme bar whose replicas darkened the continent. A whole fraudulent nation, got up on purpose, as if someone had thrown a party and hadn’t invited Joel—had in fact thrown the party expressly in order not to invite Joel. So maybe it was just that he thought they hadn’t invited Michael, either. Sitting stiffly in his suit, in a bar that—in this part of the Hill—was about as integrated as a Birmingham lunch counter in the fifties.

  Joel needed to say something. “Um … I think we met at Gentry.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was with Ron.”

  “I remember, Joel.”

  This was, perhaps, encouraging; but some people just remembered names more readily than others. Joel couldn’t think what to say next. He came up with, “It’s hot out.”

  Michael looked at him, perhaps with a flicker of pity, but didn’t answer. Joel was trying to think of some equally snappy follow-up, perhaps about the humidity, when Michael said, “You know Ron long?”

  “Yeah. Well, yes and no. I mean, I’ve known him for years, but we haven’t really been friends. We just, lately we’ve had dinner a couple times.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You … I guess you dated him, huh?”

  “Dated,” Michael said, as if trying out how this euphemism felt on his tongue. “We saw each other a few times.”

  “That’s what he said, yeah. But—I don’t remember, it seems to me you had some kind of disagreement?”

  Michael looked down at his ice-cream drink. “He didn’t tell you about it?”

  Joel wanted to say no, so he could hear the story directly, not as a refutation of Ron’s. But he didn’t dissemble very well; he would have given himself away somehow. “He said there’d been … some kind of misunderstanding about money.”

  “Yeah.” Michael grimaced. “We misunderstood each other.” He looked at himself in the mirror over the bar. Smoothed an eyebrow with a finger, a paleolithic swish gesture that didn’t, when Michael performed it, seem effeminate. Just attentive: he was attentive to himself.

  He swiveled a little on his stool—not actually turning his back on Joel, just shifting a degree or two, the way men did at Zippers when they wanted to let Joel know he shouldn’t waste his breath. And why not? Joel might as well have said, “Hey, Ron told me you robbed him.” He had killed it already.

  Joel was already thinking about getting the check when Michael murmured, “We kind of misunderstood each other all along. You got another cigarette?”

  “Sure.” Joel held out the pack. Michael wrapped one hand around Joel’s, while with the other he extracted the cigarette. His hand still rested on Joel’s as he reached for Joel’s lighter. Joel glanced over at the bartender, who immediately turned to look up at the baseball game. Michael smiled at Joel’s skittishness and removed his hand.

  “It was only a couple weeks, we saw each other a couple weeks. But he must have thought all along that I was … there for his money. Like he even had any money, like I was too stupid to see how he was living. He must have thought I lived with rats and garbage on the floor and shit.”

  “He never went to your place.”

  “I don’t take people to my place.” This sounded mysterious and forbidding, though of course it was merely prudent; Joel had learned this rule in his tricking days. If you went to somebody else’s place and he, say, killed you, he would at least have to go to the trouble of disposing of you. Whereas if you went to your own place he could do it and just walk away.

  Michael went on: “The money thing—it was like it was the only way he could make sense of me. He’s an old guy, and here somebody thirty years younger than he is wants to fuck him.” This said quite loudly, Joel thought. Joel peeked again at the bartender. He looked back at Joel impassively, made no effort to pretend that he was watching his ball game. Joel was chagrined; Michael had blown his cover. As if he’d had any cover, as if he and Michael weren’t quite plainly two gay men who had somehow popped up in a sports bar. Joel relaxed. Yes, they were,
that was just what they were.

  “I guess …” Michael said. “I guess he had to tell himself a story about it. Some guys—you know, they see a black face, there’s only one story they can tell about it.”

  Some guys like me, Joel thought. He looked at Michael’s beautiful eyes and felt that he could not imagine what was behind them. Or, rather, that he could, that some ineradicable core of viciousness that must have been imparted to him as a child was ready to tell the same story, to fill in the space behind those eyes with elemental Negro feelings. Resentment. Laziness. A propensity to steal people’s money to buy drugs. All in a broth of indiscriminate, animal sexuality- Joel hated thinking these things, but they were there. Michael must have known they were there. What was it like, to go through life knowing that, to everyone you met, you were just a cartoon?

  Joel was staring. Michael allowed him to, looked back calmly for a minute, then turned and called out to the bartender, with summoned-up brazenness, “Hey, honey, could you freshen me up? And get my friend one.”

  “That’s okay,” Joel said. “I …” He caught himself. Let Michael make his point, even if he couldn’t afford it. And who said he couldn’t afford it? He was wearing a suit, for Christ’s sake. “Thanks.”

  What was Michael doing there, sitting in a suit in a straight bar on Capitol Hill? Joel had been so gratified to happen upon him that he hadn’t even thought about this puzzle. He was about to ask—”What brings you to this neighborhood?”—when he realized that he would be as much as saying that Michael was in the wrong neighborhood. Instead he said, “I was thinking about getting something to eat.”

  “Oh. Me, too, I guess.”

  “You want to get a table?”

  The two of them turned to look at the tables, bathed in fire from a Key West sunset. “Let’s just stay at the bar,” Michael said.

  They studied the menus in silence. Joel wound up getting his usual elephant burger, Michael a caesar salad with grilled chicken.