Blink

by Rick R. Reed

  “Yeah, right.” He flips a page, and there we are the following summer in Provincetown. The trip had been a gift to ourselves. We had never been away together, and we drove across the country, stopping to see my family in Ohio, then a weekend in Manhattan, and we finally ended up at the edge of the country, in the gayest little hamlet in the US. We called that time our honeymoon, and if the number of times we had sex was any indication, the appellation was an apt one. We barely got out of our room in the little yellow bed-and-breakfast where we barely slept. But yet there we were on Commercial Street, arms around each other once again, our olive complexions deepened to a rich brown hue by the summer sun. My nose and the upper edges of my cheeks are rosy. Again, the love radiates. And there’s one I took of Carlos as he lay on a towel on the beach, the ocean’s diamond-studded water glistening behind him. He was asleep and had never liked the picture, but I treasure it because I know why he was so tired, and it wasn’t because of the sun.

  There’s a trip to Havana, taken at last after we’d been together a decade. We had gone to visit Carlos’s father, who was dying from pancreatic cancer, and to see the place where Carlos had been born. I still remember the tropical heat and the faded elegance of the city, the palm trees swaying in the damp, hot breeze.

  We page through, the years unreeling before us like dominoes falling. Birthdays, holidays, dinners with Alison and my godson, Tate. (Yes, Alison and I made amends, although it wasn’t easy at first.) Tate became a sort of surrogate son for Carlos and me, and after his birth to Alison and her husband, Billy, he spent a lot of time at our house in Ravenswood, and the pictures reflect his growing up. Here Carlos and I are, with Tate between us, at his graduation from Indiana University.

  There’s Carlos, wan and pale, in our sleigh bed after his heart surgery two years ago. That was a scary time, a time when I thought I would lose him. I couldn’t imagine what the world would be like without him in it.

  “That’s a bad picture,” Carlos says darkly of the one of him sick.

  “Well, you’re not at your best, it’s true, but it reminds me of how close I came to losing you then. And it does my heart good to look at this and then at this”—I grab his face and turn it toward me, squeezing his cheeks—“and know you’ll outlive me.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  We have always argued that we each wanted to be the one to go first so we wouldn’t have to bear the loss of the other. We chimed in as one, “We’ll die together in a plane crash,” and laughed together at our black humor. It’s a comfort.

  The last photograph in the book was taken just last year. Carlos and I had traveled out to Seattle, Washington, where we had friends who had relocated there from Chicago ten years before—Mary and Sandy. They were getting married, a June wedding at St. Mark’s Cathedral, and they asked us to be ushers. The brides were radiant, and the day couldn’t have been more perfect.

  But the picture before us now, the one that brought tears to both our eyes, was not of Mary and Sandy. It was of Carlos and me. He had surprised me with a wedding ring on our cross-country flight.

  I had just assumed we were comfortable in our couplehood and that marriage, even though it was being made legal in increasing numbers of states, was something that wasn’t for us. The gesture of the ring and Carlos’s shy, almost tentative “Will you marry me?” was a moment I’ll always treasure. It was a delight, unexpected, yet it felt completely right.

  The last picture was Carlos and me in the dark suits we had brought for what I thought was Mary and Sandy’s wedding but what turned out to be our own. We look a little solemn and, in spite of being in our fifties, young and full of hope. We’re standing on the front steps of the municipal court after having just made it official.

  In the picture, Carlos turns and kisses me, and as he does, our bodies begin to morph, the years falling away until at last we are the young men we were in the first photo.

  I jerked awake, sheets tangled around my legs. The TV was still on. Some infomercial for a spray-on hair replacement product for men played, and outside, the sky was beginning to lighten over Lake Michigan. I rolled over and reached up to open the window, to allow the clean lake air to wash over and awaken me. My little plastic alarm clock told me it was just past six. I was relieved; I would not be late for work.

  I lay back down against my pillow and closed my eyes, and for the first time, the dream images rushed upon me. Like a picture emerging from a pointillist painting the farther back you stepped away from it, I drank in the images of Carlos and me—and a lifetime shared together.

  I laughed when the image I had just before waking came to me. Our wedding? Yeah, like that would ever happen! In what world?

  I rolled over to call Alison. I knew she would be up and getting ready, hot rollers in her honey-blonde hair, putting makeup on.

  When she answered, I said, “I just called to say good morning, sweetheart.”

  “Oh thank God, I thought maybe there was something wrong.” She laughed. “You’re sweet.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling the guilt of what had transpired the night before—both in real life and in my dream—lying like a leaden weight upon my chest. “You’re the one,” I said softly.

  We were quiet for a moment. Then Alison said, “I really have to get back to getting ready, honey. I can’t miss my train.”

  “I know. I just wanted to hear your voice and to tell you that—” My voice catching in my throat caught me unawares. I choked out a quivering breath, my eyes damp, a lump in my throat. “That I’m really looking forward to July.”

  Alison didn’t rush in with a response, and it was most likely then she realized my difficulty breathing was because I was on the verge of tears. Warily, she said, “Me too, sweetheart. Me too.” She paused again. “Andy? Is everything okay?”

  There was a part—a big part—that just wanted to blurt it all out. I could imagine both the devastation and relief. How I loved her so, so much, but that I didn’t know who I was. That maybe our getting married was wrong, not because I loved someone else but because I could, and that person would be a man. To beg her forgiveness for my not understanding myself. To beg her to be a part of my life, but that we must find a way to not travel life’s road together, living a lie. I could set her free.

  But all I said was, “Everything’s fine.” I glanced out the window, where the sun and clouds had conspired just above the lake to form a lovely smear of orange and pink, coloring the caps of the waves rolling in.

  “Good. I love you.”

  “I love you too.” A pause. “I really do.”

  “I know. I gotta go, okay?”

  “Yeah. You have a great day. And can we meet for dinner? Get off the ‘L’ at Fullerton and head over to that British place? The Red Lion?”

  “You just want to go there because it’s supposed to be haunted,” Alison teased.

  “I just want to go there to be with you,” I said.

  “Go on. I should be off at five-ish. I’ll meet you there before six.”

  “I’ll be at the bar.”

  We hung up, and I lay back again, feeling a chill as the wind raced across the water and crept in through my window.

  PART TWO: NOW

  CHAPTER 8: ANDY

  THE WOMAN next to me sits too close. It’s not that she’s overweight and can’t help that her bulk invades my space—that I could understand—but this gal is rail thin, hair dyed red, wearing a leopard-print dress, black spike heels, and way too much cheap perfume.

  The Red Line ‘L’ train rumbles south toward downtown. It’s around eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning in May. I missed the Metra train I usually take, and it was easier for me to simply walk from my condo on Lunt over to the ‘L’ stop on Morse. That way I wouldn’t be late for my job as a communications specialist for a healthcare professional association on Michigan Avenue.

  I feel her eyes on me. I try to concentrate on the book I’m reading, Armistead Maupin’s The Days of Anna Madrigal, attempting to
immerse myself in the world of Maupin’s characters, whom I’ve grown up with as a gay man over the years. They are comforting to me, like old friends.

  But the woman next to me won’t give it a rest, staring, and I find myself reading the same line over and over again. My old friends have deserted me. Exasperated, I glance over at her.

  It’s the moment she’s been waiting for. “What are you reading?” she asks, peering down at the Kindle on my lap. “Something good?” Her voice is raspy, deep as a man’s, revealing her passion for cigarettes. I would peg her as a Virginia Slims kind of woman. She probably bathes in that perfume to hide the stench of the smokes.

  I really don’t want to get into talking about the book. The train pulls into the Sheridan Road station. Passengers get off and on, and I’m tempted to scurry off, even though my stop isn’t until the train goes underground, until we reach Grand Avenue.

  It’s hot for May, and I feel hemmed in, a little claustrophobic. The train rumbles onward, the wheels screeching and sparking beneath us before smoothing out. The woman doesn’t press me on my choice of reading matter, but she does press closer and finally can’t help herself from asking another question. “You work downtown?”

  I peer at her from behind my rimless oval specs, wondering if my annoyance shows. This is why I take the Metra train to work and walk a mile to my office every morning instead of the ‘L.’ The Metra is a little more civilized. The kooks on the ‘L’ were amusing when I was younger, but now they’re just tiresome.

  Especially this one.

  “I work downtown.” I press the button at the bottom of my Kindle to power it down and give her what has to be the world’s most sarcastic and put-upon smile. “And how about you? Downtown?”

  She doesn’t catch on to the annoyance in my smile, apparently, because she smiles back with nicotine-yellowed teeth. “Oh yeah. I sell shoes at Macy’s in Water Tower Place.”

  Part of me wants to just tell her to leave me alone, that I only have about fifteen minutes left until we get to my stop and I’d like to just read until then, but then guilt stabs at me. Guilt and I are like old friends, with me since I was baptized in the Catholic Church. Sometimes, though, Mr. Guilt tells me the right thing to do.

  The right thing to do is cut this poor woman a break. I give her another smile, this one genuine, even though I’m not really feeling it. And then I glance down at her shoes and speak with as much animation and interest as I can muster. “You must have gotten those there.” I point to her black patent-leather spikes. “What are those? Jimmy Choo?”

  She laughs. “Oh, sweetie, I can’t afford Jimmy Choos!” She leans close and whispers, “I picked these up at T.J.Maxx. Clearance, only twenty bucks!” She snorts, and I am reminded of Lily Tomlin’s old telephone operator character, Ernestine.

  “Well, you’d never know. They’re very nice.”

  She grins and stares deeply into my eyes. Oh shit, is she trying to flirt with me? I want to burst into laughter.

  We’re quiet for a while, but I know her stop, Chicago Avenue, is coming up. So does she, obviously, because she turns to me and, after taking a deep breath, says hurriedly, “Since we both work downtown, maybe you and me could get together for lunch sometime? Or maybe a drink after?” The hope on her face clutches at my heart. Something tells me this isn’t her first time making this attempt. I am almost tempted to agree to a date, but then I know dragging things out would be even crueler than just telling her the truth.

  “I don’t think so. You’re awfully nice, but I’m, um, involved.”

  “Of course you are.” She pats my hand. “All the good ones are taken.” She snorts again as the train pulls into Clark and Diversey. “Or gay!” she shrieks, laughing more.

  I smile. “Yeah, I’m that too.”

  She goes pale under her foundation. “Oh, you are? I’m sorry! I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  She looks me up and down, and I imagine what she sees—a man, fifty-something, well kept and trim, dressed in crisp khakis and a pale blue oxford cloth shirt with a button-down collar. His hair is buzzed close on the sides and in the back—his way of hiding the gray—and receding on top. He likes to think the man has a nice smile that complements his green eyes.

  “You’d never know it.”

  I’m tempted to offer some smartass comeback, like asking her what about me didn’t seem gay. No lisp? No limp wrist? I knew about Jimmy Choo, for Christ’s sake. Wasn’t that enough?

  “Well, thank you. I try and butch it up on the train, you know. One never can be too careful with the riffraff on the ‘L.’”

  “You’re smart.” She sighs. “Well, you have a nice day.”

  “You too.”

  I feel a sense of relief as she gets up to stand and wait by the door. She’s replaced immediately by a fair-haired teenage boy in a stocking cap and Deerfield High School letterman jacket, too warm for the day. Daft Punk leaks from his white headphones. He, at least, ignores me, absorbed in what looks like sorting through the contacts on his iPhone.

  It’s too late to get back into my book. I stare ahead, wondering if the weatherman was right in predicting we could hit eighty today.

  And then I see him.

  It’s funny how it can all rush back. Jesus, what’s it been? Thirty years? I haven’t thought of Carlos-from-the-train in ages. Scratch that. I do think of him from time to time, wondering where he is, if he remembers me, what he’s doing, will our paths ever cross again.

  But thoughts like those are for late at night, when I’ve gotten home from yet another unsuccessful date and have a few Hendrick’s and tonics in me. A line from a Frank Sinatra song comes to me about regrets and having a few.

  I stand and hurry after the man, dodging between commuters all headed toward their daily toil. He’s going up the stairs ahead, and even though I haven’t caught a good look at his face, I know it’s Carlos. His black hair is cut shorter and is flecked with gray, like mine, but something about the set of those broad shoulders, that high ass bouncing, those strong legs, put me right back to 1982 and another ‘L’ ride, when the lines were not differentiated by color but by name.

  You know how you just know someone by sight? Every person has a distinctive walk, a mien unique to that person. I think sometimes we believe we see someone and we have doubts. And when we have those doubts, we should know it’s not who we think it is. Our intuition works better than our brain.

  I feel like a stalker as I trail him up the steps from Grand Avenue to Michigan Avenue. My heart’s beating a little faster, both from the exertion of the stairs and more from the sighting. Just laying eyes on him reminds me of my younger self and how conflicted I was when I met this man.

  I have always wondered, through my marriage, divorce, and two tragically brief live-in relationships with gay men, what might have happened had my mother not called that night when we got together. Everything could have changed. Maybe I would have called off the wedding. Perhaps I’d be living in contented bliss with the man walking briskly ahead of me. Silly notions? Maybe not.

  But then I wouldn’t have my son, Tate. Lots of things wouldn’t have happened.

  But I can’t pause to consider all that right now, because Carlos, or the man I believe is him, is now close enough to touch.

  Without thinking, heedless, I do just that. I reach out and tap him on the shoulder as we both step onto bustling Michigan Avenue.

  The man turns, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance, probably thinking I’m going to ask him for spare change.

  Is it him? I look into dark brown eyes, the same as Carlos’s. There’s no mustache, but the face could be the same.

  “Carlos?” I wonder.

  The man’s expression softens. He regards me with something like amusement playing about his lips. Doubt stabs at my heart. Could this be him, changed over the years?

  I recall what I thought earlier, about the certainty when we see someone we know, and I recognize my doubt for what it is: the truth. This isn’t, can’t be,
Carlos. I know it before he says anything, and my spirit, soaring, takes a quick plummet earthward.

  He shakes his head. “No, you must have me confused with someone else.” His speech carries a Spanish accent, which Carlos most certainly didn’t have. He doesn’t offer his name.

  I laugh. “Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this guy. Sorry to have bothered you. You just look a lot like him.” Yet the more I peer at the stranger, the more I realize he doesn’t. His nose is too big. The jawline is subtly different.

  “No worries.” He shifts his weight, as though unsure how to conclude our little encounter. His gaze shifts to over my shoulder. “Well, gotta get to work. Have a good one!” He hurries away, giving a little wave.

  I watch him go with something like longing.

  TONIGHT I’M meeting my friend Jules for dinner at one of our favorite spots, a little Greek storefront on Chicago Avenue in Evanston: Cross Rhodes. Jules lives nearby, coincidentally on the same street I lived on when Carlos came to my apartment that fateful—or not—night so long ago.

  Maybe walking here after picking her up outside her building on Sheridan Square is the reason I want to tell her about him. Now that we’re settled at our table, glasses of red wine before us, pastitsio for Jules, and a bowl of avgolemono and a feta, cucumber, and tomato pita sandwich for me, I ask Jules, “Is there anyone in your life that you only met briefly, but who left such a lasting impression that you never forgot them?”

  Jules laughs. Her laugh is tinkling. The words “liquid silver” come to my mind when I hear it. It’s one of the reasons I was so drawn to her back when we were younger, a decade or so ago, when we both toiled for an office products catalog, me as a copywriter and she as a proofreader. There’s an easy conviviality between us that makes her one of my best friends, even though she’s a good twelve years older.