Yale stepped into the dining room, signaled for Roman to join. They could give Nora space, at least.
Roman whispered: “He died in the war, right? Ranko Novak?”
Yale shrugged. “I mean, I don’t feel like this story has a happy ending.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Roman said. “Doomed love.”
Yale laughed. “Is it?” And then he couldn’t stop laughing. Which was terrible, because Nora was still coughing and Roman looked hurt. But the moony expression on Roman’s face, his voice, had hit the darkest spot of Yale’s humor. How beautiful, the doomed love! How gorgeous and ambient, the ways we abandon each other! The lovely wars we die in, the poetry of disease! He wanted to be able to call Terrence up, to say, “You were like Romeo and Juliet! Romeo and Juliet die puking their guts out. Tristan and Iseult at ninety pounds with no hair. It’s beautiful, Terrence. It’s beautiful!”
Roman said, “Are you okay?”
Nora’s cough was finally dying down.
“Maybe we should leave,” Roman said.
And then Debra was in the doorway, suggesting the same thing. “This is way more than I should have let her do,” she said. “What about tomorrow?”
It sounded lovely: the guarantee of another night up here, away from the city, away from everyone he knew. If only he could stretch it into a week, and then a month. No posters up here urging him to get tested. He could stay in Nora’s house, send Debra off to live her life.
* * *
—
In the car, Yale said, “If she dies in her sleep tonight, just shoot me, okay?”
“Now that you said it, she won’t.”
The seats were frozen, and the steering wheel sent waves of cold through Yale’s gloves. “I’m not sure I have that kind of power over the universe.”
Roman said, “When you think a specific bad thing is going to happen, it never does. I don’t mean like if you think it looks like rain it won’t rain, but like if you think your plane will crash, it won’t.”
Yale shook his head. “I want to live in your world. Doom is beautiful, and you can control your fate.” Although probably it was a belief system Roman desperately needed. Why mess him up? Yale couldn’t tell him anything the world wouldn’t eventually teach him on its own.
They stopped for a late lunch at the same place they’d eaten the night before, and Yale had the same batter-fried fish plus a couple of beers.
When they walked back into the bed and breakfast, Mrs. Cherry ran toward them, flapping her hands. “Oh it’s terrible, isn’t it? Now, your rooms have NBC and CBS, but ABC doesn’t come in too clearly. PBS you’ll get, too, I think, but you never know if they’ll show the news. I’d try CBS, myself.”
Yale was opening his mouth to ask what she meant, to say they hadn’t been near a TV all day, but Roman was already asking what channel CBS was and nodding in agreement as Mrs. Cherry said again how terrible it was. She didn’t seem that upset, though—it couldn’t have been the end of the world. “Now let me ask you,” she said, “do you fellows drink wine? A young couple checked out this morning, and they left a full bottle right on the floor. Hold on and I’ll grab it.”
They only had time to look at each other in bemusement before she came back with local strawberry wine, cough-syrup red, the bottle itself somehow already sticky when she pressed it into Yale’s hands.
“Or you can take it back to your family,” she said, and Yale thanked her, assured her that they did indeed enjoy wine, that they’d put it to good use.
Yale was heading to his own room, but Roman beckoned him from two doors down. “You don’t want to know what’s on CBS?”
Yale did, and furthermore he didn’t want to find out alone if it was something like Russia declaring war. He carried the wine into Roman’s room. He said, “What’s going to be worse, the news or the wine?”
There was a basket on top of the bureau with a corkscrew and napkins and plastic cups. Yale poured them each a glass—hard to gauge with cups this shape how much wine it was—and they clicked a toast. Yale expected a mouthful of syrup, but this stuff had an untamed acidity under the sweetness, so that it was both far too sweet and not sweet enough.
He took a seat on the end of Roman’s bed. Roman’s suitcase, down on the floor, spilled black clothes like lava.
Roman had gone to the TV to turn it on—it was just a couple of feet from the end of the bed, perched on the bureau—but now he was blocking the set. Yale had nothing to look at but his back and his ass.
“Oh,” Roman said. “Oh, wow.”
“What?”
“The, ah, the space shuttle. It blew up.”
“Shit. Move over.”
Roman sat beside him, cross-legged. He took his glasses off and put them back on.
Dan Rather was explaining, in the studio, that something went wrong one minute and twelve seconds after liftoff. Live at Cape Canaveral, a man at an outdoor desk tried to explain what had happened, talked about the big pieces of the craft that had fallen into the ocean. They showed the shuttle taking off this morning, and things went well for long enough that Yale was almost hopeful nothing would happen after all. And then it burst into a ball of smoke, two spiraling plumes.
“My God, they had that teacher on there,” Yale said.
“What?”
“You know, there was that contest for a teacher to go to space. The woman. Oh God.”
Roman said, “Huh. Yeah, I don’t really watch the news.”
Yale wouldn’t have been as aware of it all himself if Kurt Pearce hadn’t been talking about it the other day—how now we were going to go back and forth to space all the time, how Kurt planned to live on the moon by the time he was twenty.
Roman’s left knee was touching Yale’s right knee, or at least the cloth of his black jeans was brushing Yale’s khakis. Yale wondered if it was intentional, wondered if he would hurt Roman’s feelings by shifting away.
Yale said, “Well it was a really big deal. Fuck.”
“Do they have other space shuttles?” Roman said.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, do they have a fleet of these things, or is there just the one?”
“There’s—” It seemed like an easy question, but Yale found he wasn’t sure of the answer. “There’s one at a time, right? This was the current one.”
Yale found himself gulping the wine. It was only afternoon but it felt later. Roman’s curtains were all drawn, the blinds down behind them.
Roman flopped back on the bed, legs still crossed, knee still pressing toward Yale, and balanced the wine on his belly with the aid of a finger hooked onto the cup’s rim.
Yale took time to think out the whole thought, in words: He was not going to sleep with Roman. Not now, and not ever. Not now, because he might have been infected. Not ever, because he was supposed to be this guy’s mentor. He wasn’t sure what rules existed about grad student–professor relationships at Northwestern, but he imagined they did exist, and he imagined he’d be held to the same standards. Not ever, because he wasn’t interested in helping some confused virgin work out his sexuality. Not ever, because Roman, despite his pending PhD, wasn’t the brightest bulb, and that kind of thing mattered to Yale.
“It’s hubris,” Roman said. “That’s what it is. Like, you listen to Nora’s life—that was so recent. She’s taking ocean liners over there, you know? And now we think we can just run buses back and forth to space.”
Yale wanted to ask if the astronauts could have staved off disaster by fearing it would happen, but that would have been unkind. This was so horribly sad. Everything was so horribly sad. He said, “You know what’s worse than something bad happening, is when something was supposed to be really good, when everyone expected it to be wonderful, and then instead it’s bad. Why is that so much worse?”
The newscaster was saying that
Reagan had cancelled the State of the Union address that was scheduled for tonight but would surely address the disaster. Yale missed Charlie suddenly, desperately. He wanted Charlie there to shout at the TV that what Reagan would “surely address” wasn’t always so logical. A handful of dead astronauts and Reagan weeps with the nation. Thirteen thousand dead gay men and Reagan’s too busy.
When the news went to commercial, Yale took the opportunity to rise from the bed, lower the volume a bit, refill his glass, sit back down farther from Roman.
Then the TV showed the schoolchildren who’d gathered to watch the launch. It showed the ground crew handing the teacher an apple. It was hard to look away, and harder to look. The wine was affecting him more than he’d have thought. Well, the beer plus the wine. And the darkness of the room, and the horrible plumes of smoke.
Roman said, “When I think about death, I start questioning everything.”
Yale did not want to talk about death. He said, “Sometimes questioning is good.”
“I keep thinking about Ranko. How romantic. I mean, he’s literally shut away in a castle. And she’s out there waiting for him.”
“It sounded awful, to be honest.”
“Don’t you envy what Nora had, though? There was so much disaster, but it was like she belonged to something, you know?”
Yale was careful. “I mean, you can—you can find that in Chicago. That belonging.”
“Maybe that’s my problem. I’m stuck in Evanston looking at paintings.”
“I didn’t come to the city till I was twenty-six,” Yale said.
He had the sudden inspiration that he should hook Roman up with Teddy. Teddy was healthy, after all, and he’d consider Roman a fun project. A puppy to train.
“Listen, you need to come down to, you know, to Lakeview. You’d have a lot more in common with people down there than in Evanston. Good bars, fun people. A little more laid-back.”
“This ceiling is weird,” Roman said, and without willing his body to do it, Yale lay down next to Roman, his legs still hanging off the end of the mattress. There was nothing particularly odd about the ceiling. It was just stucco. Roman had finished his wine; he tossed the plastic cup to the floor. He said, “I’m messed up.”
“No, you’re not.” Yale turned his head in that direction, hoped Roman could see the earnestness in his eyes.
Roman reached out and, with just his fingertips, touched Yale’s neck, his green sweater. Yale stopped breathing, just watched Roman’s face flickering blue and yellow in the television light. He should tell him to stop. He should get up. But maybe this was the first time Roman had ever done something so bold. Maybe, if Yale rebuffed him, it would be the last. And while he lay there paralyzed, Roman ran his fingers down Yale’s arm and onto the outer seam of his Dockers. Yale felt pinned to the bed with sugar, with alcohol, with afternoon languor. With, to be honest, an erection that was now straining against his boxers and his left thigh.
Roman looked terrified, and so young, and Yale took the hand off his leg but instead of letting it go he held it, twined his fingers through Roman’s long, pale ones. They faced each other now, and Yale realized no one had touched him, not really, since his life had fallen apart. Teresa had hugged him when he came home from Wisconsin that day. Fiona had hugged him at Terrence’s funeral. That was it. And being touched was Yale’s weakness, always had been. People joked sometimes about not being held enough as a child, but in Yale’s case it was so terribly literal, like a vitamin deficiency.
Roman whispered: “I don’t know what I want.” He was shaking, or at least his hand was. His glasses, pushed up by the pillow, framed his face unevenly.
Not fifteen minutes ago, Yale had had reasons nothing should happen, but what had they been? Well, he might be infectious. There was that. But did that rule out everything?
He wanted the television off. He knew that much. This required moving, which he did: He dropped Roman’s hand, propelled himself off the bed, hit the power button with his sweaty thumb.
His feet felt unsteady on the carpet. He remembered the night in December when he’d kept walking past Julian’s apartment. It had maybe, maybe saved his life.
And yet, right now, he wanted to do the opposite of everything he’d ever done before. He looked at the door and expected to find himself walking toward it—but instead he was sitting sideways on the edge of the bed, one leg up and one leg down. Roman sat up, leaned back against him, so that the back of his head nestled under Yale’s chin. Yale moved his hand down Roman’s shirt, found his fly, found his way into the fly. Just his hand, just his right hand, drawing Roman out of the top of his briefs, and then his left hand on Roman’s chest, holding him in place, feeling Roman’s heart shake his ribcage. He rubbed him slowly, until Roman began rising to meet his strokes, and then Yale sped up, squeezed harder.
When was the last time he gave a full hand job? Charlie wasn’t much of a fan, although certainly Charlie had been the last, but it might have been a year, two years. With the angle—Roman pressed close against him, gasping, almost choking, their shoulders aligned, hips aligned—it wasn’t all that different in technique from doing it to himself.
“Relax,” he whispered, and Roman leaned back into him more.
Yale’s own erection pressed into the base of Roman’s spine, but really that wasn’t the point. The point was, Roman seemed to need this—how much, Yale couldn’t know, but he could guess—and Yale needed it too.
Roman braced himself, his hands on Yale’s knees, and with a low wail he came onto the front of the dresser, onto the shallow drawers and brass pulls, right below the television.
And then before either of them could even exhale, Roman bolted up and grabbed a black T-shirt from the floor and began wiping at the dresser drawers like he was terrified someone would walk in and see it. “Sit down,” Yale said, and he took the shirt from Roman’s hand and mopped things up himself. When he finished—rolling the shirt into a ball and tucking it into the corner of the suitcase—Roman was facedown on the bed, arms out crucifix-style.
Yale said, “Do you want me to stay, or go?”
He had no idea which he’d have chosen himself, but Roman said, into the sheets, “I think I want to be alone.”
Yale went back to his own room and turned on the shower and thought, vaguely, of jerking off, but by the time the water had warmed up, he didn’t want to. He felt his groin for lymph nodes, decided he was too dizzy to be in the shower, lay in bed and thought about trying to find a TV station that wasn’t about to show Reagan’s giant head. He fell asleep without eating dinner.
* * *
—
Yale was at a small, round table in the breakfast room—hung over, his temples throbbing, his mouth fuzzy—when Mrs. Cherry greeted Roman at the door, ushered him straight to the seat across from Yale. Roman looked at the ground, and then he picked up the Door County Advocate and stared at it, his ears red.
Yale had been asking himself all morning what the hell was wrong with him, what he’d been thinking, but he figured it was his job to act normal, to signal that everything was okay, that healthy gay men did not need to wake up the next morning consumed by self-loathing. He said, “We have to get the details today. As fascinated as we all are by Ranko trivia.”
Maybe he should’ve said something else, something kinder. Maybe Roman thought Yale was avoiding the subject too. But it was dawning on him how long the rest of the visit and the ride home would be, how awkward work would be next week. He’d been so distracted by questions of infection, so satisfied with his answers to them, that he’d forgotten, last night, the more mundane issues: remorse, attachment, expectation, embarrassment.
Mrs. Cherry brought them toast. She said, “Wasn’t it beautiful last night, what the president said? It was just poetry.”
Yale said, “I’m sure it was.”
“You didn’t watch?”
&
nbsp; “I did,” Roman said. “You’re right. Poetry.”
* * *
—
Roman stared out the side window all the way to Nora’s house. Yale thought of apologizing. But it could plant the seed that he had abused his power. And worse: It would reinforce whatever notions Roman had that sex was something to be ashamed of, apologized for. It could put the kid back five years.
Was it Roman’s inexperience and guilt that had sucked Yale in? Or would he have succumbed to anyone in that moment? He didn’t think he would have. He wouldn’t have been drawn to someone who could hurt him.
How funny that Charlie had thought Roman was safe precisely because he was so virginal. Maybe Charlie didn’t know him at all.
* * *
—
“You can’t make her talk too much today,” Debra said. Yale assured her all they really wanted were the missing details. Debra went and perched on the staircase landing with knitting; she was just visible through the doorway. Yale wished he’d eaten less breakfast. Or maybe more breakfast, to absorb whatever strawberry wine was still sloshing in his stomach.
Nora did look tired. Her skin, always pale, had a bluish cast, and her eyes were pink. When Yale told her they really had to get a time frame on the other works, she didn’t object. “It’s all before ’25, I’d think,” she said. “I wasn’t modeling much at the end. By ’25 I was engaged to David.”
Roman sat on the couch with Yale, but as far away as he possibly could. He had the binder of Xeroxes, and he’d spent last week collating, labeling, chronologizing, building an index. Nora suggested they sort the letters by correspondent. “Then I can patch it together.” So while Roman leafed through for the few Modigliani letters first, Yale took the notebook and pen and asked Nora if she remembered exactly when she’d returned to Paris.
The Great Believers Page 30