Shelter in Place

by David Leavitt

  From his pocket he took out his wallet and phone and keys and put them down on the steel-and-glass table (Eileen Gray) that was their designated resting place. The delicate recoil of the landing woke the phone up; from the screen Indira’s text flashed at him:

  Pablo, it was so great to meet you after hearing so much about you!!! And I’m serious about that article. Shall we meet to discuss? Lunch? Drinks? Best, Indira

  He smiled as he read it, wondered if he should answer it immediately. Ten, five, two years ago, he would have. Ten, five, two years ago, the mere prospect of sex with the lovely Mrs. Singh Singh would have been enough to give him an instantaneous erection. But now his libido shrugged. Was this due to “low T,” as they called it on television? Perhaps—or perhaps it was something closer to the anomie that Jake had described. More and more it was habit, not lust, that impelled Pablo to undertake the hard work of seduction.

  “I weary of human endeavor,” he said to himself, envisioning the vast and comfortable bed that would soon be his reward for climbing the stairs to the second floor. In recent months he had come to regard sleep as a leisure activity. Nor was he the only one. After decades of being outré, sleep had of late become fashionable, its benefits and pleasures trumpeted by articles in the Style section of the Times, segments on Good Morning America, and even a book by Arianna Huffington, of all people. The idea was to think of sleep as a luxury worth spending money on. Noting the trend, old clients had started calling to ask for Hästens mattresses, cashmere blankets, sheets woven from organic cotton or Irish linen. Though less fussy about his own bed, Pablo, too, was finding that he relished sleep as never before. Perhaps it was age, perhaps it was the age—these days that never finished where they started, that had no baseline, no steadiness. In any case he had taken Arianna’s advice, had weaned himself of the habit of bringing his phone to bed with him, and gotten rid of the bedroom television, and installed blackout blinds. On his side table were a lamp lit by a forty-watt bulb, a few books he could count on to bore him, and an antique clock that had to be wound. Nothing else. It puzzled him to recall the years of his youth when the mere prospect of a night alone was enough to plunge him into despair. Now he treasured those nights when, rather than going out to a cocktail party or a restaurant, he would stay in, eat pasta with cream, peas, and ham, alone in front of the television (a soccer match or some BBC sitcom he’d seen a thousand times), take a long shower, give his teeth a careful and thorough flossing and brushing, and finally withdraw into his bed, where he would look for a few moments at one of his boring books before winding the clock and, noting the early hour (sometimes so early that the sun had not yet set), savor for a moment the transgressiveness of doing by choice what, in a thousand other houses, children were being forced to do, all the while protesting the injustice of it.

  Dreams were part of what Pablo looked forward to on those nights, even the bad ones, from which he usually awoke more befuddled than afraid, as if he were undergoing a sort of nocturnal psychoanalysis. Often it was of sleep itself that he dreamed—the sleep of the weeks after his father’s arrest but before his mother’s, when she would take him into the vast parental bed for siestas that could begin and end at any time, at five in the morning or ten in the morning or four in the afternoon. Outside the closed shutters, he knew, the regular rotation of day and night went on, buses loaded and unloaded passengers, children came and went from school. Inside the apartment it was always dark. His mother left only to get food. Clutched in her arms, he would gaze from the bed at the gray-black mountains that the lamp, on those rare occasions when it was switched on, would reveal to be merely dressers and chairs. Sometimes the telephone would ring, its little shriek causing his mother to utter a bigger shriek, answer breathlessly, and, as often as not, hang up, after which she would go into the kitchen and pour herself a glass of brandy or gin before returning to the bed, which Pablo imagined was a boat, an ark that, as the floodwaters rose, gently lifted from the ground and launched out onto those new seas that had supplanted a world God found so vile, he had no choice but to drown it.

  As Jake got out of the Uber, his phone vibrated again. Although he had it set to vibrate at different frequencies for calls, texts, and emails (Alert, Quick, and Staccato), when there was traffic noise, he couldn’t tell the vibrations apart.

  He looked at his screen and saw that it was Min. She had tried to call him twice and texted him once.

  call me pls. asap

  That she was desperate to talk to him didn’t surprise him. No doubt as soon as she’d brought up the magazine article, she realized she’d blown her own cover, and now she wanted to make sure he wouldn’t give her away to Eva.

  He decided not to answer—not because he did plan to give her away to Eva, but because he was getting tired of her bullshit and thought she should be taught a lesson.

  Once in his apartment, he left the phone on the Parsons table in the living room. It throbbed three more times, in quick succession, each throb a wail of imploration. Determined not to give in to its relentlessness, he changed out of his suit, poured himself a glass of tequila, and got some clothes together to take to the cleaners in the morning. He paid his cable bill and answered some emails on his computer, checking these tasks off on a list that he had been keeping for years, the additions balancing the deletions with the result that it was always the same length. When his mother died, she had left behind just such a list, leading him to vow that when the time came for someone to look through the detritus of his life, there would be something better to be found than this—and now here he was, not that much younger than his mother at the time of her death, and here was this list, and as he held it in his hand, his phone vibrated twice more, each time moving closer to the edge of the table and provoking the Aunt Rose who lay asleep on the cushion of his being to raise herself up on her elbows and tell him, in her croaky voice, that enough was enough, he should shred the list, and set the shreds aflame, and take his phone down into the subway and hurl it onto the tracks just as a southbound 1 was pulling into the station. Because Life, not life, was the thing; Life, which consisted in … what? “To burn always with this hard gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy …”

  On a pad of paper, Jake started a shopping list:

  Toilet paper

  Preparation H

  Splenda

  Several throbs in quick succession, and the phone fell off the table onto the carpet. He picked it up and looked at it. Of the messages that had come in since he got home, only one was from Min. The rest were from Simon (Jake didn’t know his last name), a lecturer in number theory at the University of Manchester with whom he was having an affair despite their never having met. Rather, the affair, which was entering its seventh week, had been conducted entirely via Skype, text, FaceTime, and WhatsApp. At first its very unreality, its defiance of time and distance, had given it a thrilling, transgressive edge, but this aspect had quickly faded (there is only so much you can do by webcam before you start repeating yourself), despite which it dragged on, mostly thanks to Simon, whose principal character trait, so far as Jake could see, was doggedness. Simon was thirty-eight, or claimed to be. Three days before, he had, as it were, upped the ante by telling Jake that he was the great love of his life. A somewhat surreal conversation had ensued that differed from an ordinarily surreal conversation—that is to say, a spoken one—only in that Jake did not have to try to reconstruct it from memory. He could read it over whenever he liked.

  Simon: i love you

  Simon: i just want to get that out, u are my love for always

  Jake: That’s very flattering but how can you know that when we’ve never met?

  Simon: what do u mean we’ve spent hours and hours together

  Jake: Virtual hours

  Simon: just because its virtual doesn’t mean it isnt real

  Jake: Well, I think it does

  Jake: There are five senses

  Jake: We only use two

  Simon: how i long to smell the
scent of your feet, your socks, your trainers after you’ve been working out

  Jake: we don’t call them trainers here, we call them tennis shoes

  Simon: that is so hot

  Simon: i love you i’m not ashamed

  Jake: sorry if this is a rude question but are you stoned?

  Simon: that is unkind of u

  Simon: yes a little, i smoked half a squiff

  Simon: what type socks r u wearing

  Jake: black

  Jake: cotton-silk blend

  Jake: Brooks Brothers

  Simon: how long have u been wearing them

  Jake: 6 hours

  Simon: oh god that is so hot … will u cum on them and send them to me

  Jake: If I did and customs opened the package that would be embarrassing!

  Simon: cum on them 3 times

  Simon: i love you

  Simon: can we whatsapp, I want to watch u cum on ur sox

  Jake: Yes, OK

  Tonight Simon was writing to Jake from Italy. He was on holiday, a tour of Tuscan and Umbrian hill towns with his Welsh friend Ffanci. Although it was around three thirty in the morning in Assisi, he was still up. So far today he had sent Jake more than forty texts, none of which Jake had answered, though he had read them as they arrived over the course of the day.

  Simon: good morning my prince, i kissed u 72 times before I went to sleep

  Simon: I hope the night brought you rest and peace, i slept only six hours but well anyhow ffanci and I are eating so well and theres so little stress six hours with a wind off the lake and waking at radiant dawn, the carillons, is like ten fitful hours at home

  Simon: as nothing to waking from a day and night spent with u

  Simon: and many more

  Simon: i imagined you were cumming inside me this morning and i had to have a wank [Photo of Simon’s abdomen, post-wank]

  Simon: in perugia yesterday I could see u and life with u in every stone of the cathedral

  Simon: today i will take mass

  Simon: texting from inside cathedral [Photo of interior of Assisi’s cathedral]

  Simon: i want to rim u on the high altar, taste your precum as i suck u on a prie-dieu, hear ur voice say my name as I drink from u [Photo of a prie-dieu]

  Simon: on train to spello

  Simon: i love u so incredibly

  Simon: i think u are a very italian shape

  Simon: i see so many italian men with ur lines but none so fine, none that re-orient my universe

  Simon: i want to feel ur hair, raise a toast to March, spring, the second last minute month apart i hope

  Simon: in spello, hotel not so nice as assisi but i dont have to share a bathroom with ffanci, you know what that means

  Simon: i know i am cheating, i promised myself not to write to u more tonight, to get a good nights sleep, but i cant, here naked on the hotel bed, i can’t help wanting u

  Simon: very good wine at dinner [Photo of a bottle of Torgiano Rosso]

  Simon: one of the waiters ffancied ffanci

  Simon: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  Simon: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

  Simon: are u there

  Simon: i wish u would answer

  Simon: today all i thought of was being in a camper van with u and kaspar and ralph and isobel and going on adventures together

  Simon: it would be nice if kaspar and ralph and isobel had stories for dorcas

  Simon: or do dogs not talk to cats

  Reading this, Jake winced. At a reckless moment, he had told Simon that Eva’s dogs were his. This delighted Simon so much that Jake had sent him some photos of the dogs, which Simon had posted on Facebook. Jake hoped Eva wouldn’t see them. It seemed unlikely.

  Simon: what is ephesus like in winter?

  Simon: u and me and the dogs in a camper van in ephesus

  Simon: would u read to us in bed

  Simon: to hold u while u fry eggs, to lie on your belly, good-night when it comes fair golden prince

  Simon: tenderly lovingly the most beautiful man in the world

  At this point Jake jumped in.

  Jake: Who is taking care of Dorcas while you’re in Italy?

  Simon: so u r there!!

  Jake: Sorry I was tied up all day

  Simon: literally?

  Jake: No

  Simon: nigel and sue have dorcas

  Simon: did u get the photos i sent

  Jake: Yes, very nice

  Simon: have u posted ur socks

  Jake: No

  Simon: in assisi i wanted to put the host on a piece of blank paper and cum on it and post it to u

  Jake: That would be highly sacrilegious, wouldn’t it?

  Simon: well, i was raised catholic

  Simon: when will u send me ur socks

  Min: Jake, are u there? Please call me, We need to talk, asap Xx, Min

  Jake: The effect would be too much for you, you would suffocate with pleasure

  Min: What??

  Jake: Sorry, that was meant for someone else

  Min: So I gather

  Jake: The effect would be too much for you, you would suffocate with pleasure

  Simon: !!!

  Simon: tho not as much pleasure as from cumming on ur cock so u can then fuck me and returning the favour i can do the same to u

  Jake: I don’t get fucked

  Min: Hello???? Was that meant for someone else too? I hope so b/c if it is meant for me i don’t know what to say lol

  Jake: Sorry, I do that all the time, sending the wrong messages to the wrong people

  Min: that could get u in trouble

  Jake: I don’t get fucked

  Simon: god u turn me on u are such a top dad

  Simon: i want to suffocate on ur balls

  Simon: I want to tie u up and eat ur ass and ur armpits while u scream for joy

  Jake: I do the tying up

  Min: The electronic equivalent of Freudian slips … What secret message are you trying to send me jake?

  Jake: Nothing, I told you, it was meant for someone else

  Jake: I do the tying up.

  Simon: god i am about to cum dad can we whatsapp

  Jake: No, not tonight, too tired

  Min: OK, well if not tonight when? Tomorrow?

  Simon: please dad please whatsapp me

  Jake: Too tired

  Simon: i am tired too, but horny too

  Simon: u cannot imagine how tired my feet r from so much walking here is a pic [Photo of Simon’s feet]

  Simon: does that turn u on? i know u like feet

  Simon: send me pix of ur feet, ur socks, ur trainers

  Simon: tennis shoes!!!

  Jake: Tomorrow

  Simon: why r u in such a bad mood?

  Min: Still there?

  Jake: I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Min

  Jake: I’m not in a bad mood

  Simon: OK

  Jake: So what would you think about our meeting up?

  Jake: I could come to Manchester or we could meet in London

  Simon: god no u would hate manchester

  Jake: Or you could come to New York

  Simon: cant afford it

  Jake: I would pay

  Simon: no, cuz what if u r disappointed when u see me

  Jake: You could be disappointed too

  Jake: I’m a lot older

  Jake: Plus I haven’t had sex in 14 years

  Jake: Well, real as opposed to virtual sex

  Jake: I do believe there’s a difference

  Simon: why not

  Jake: I just sort of lost interest

  Simon: u could of fooled me lol

  Jake: It can happen

  Jake: You get used to sleeping alone

  Jake: Especially if you can get what you need without having to have anyone over or go meet someone somewhere

  Jake: You’re spared the trouble and potential embarrassment

  Simon: u dont miss it?

  Jake: You mean the other three senses? Not as much
as I would have thought 14 years ago

  Simon: that is sad, jake

  Jake: Would you meet me in Venice? I may need to go to Venice for work

  Simon: i’ve never been, would love to but it depends on my lectures & when & if i can get away

  Jake: You can watch me jump off a bridge

  Simon: what?

  Jake: I had a friend

  Jake: He always said Venice was the best city to kill yourself in

  Jake: And easy because the water is so polluted it would take the flesh off your bones

  Simon: this is weird

  Jake: Yes, well, if you love someone you have to take the weird with the unweird

  Jake: It’s why in my opinion love is such a poor foundation for a relationship

  Simon: thats so cynical

  Simon: if i came to venice would we have sex

  Jake: That would be the idea

  Jake: If I remember how

  Simon: its like riding a bike people say, u don’t forget

  Jake: It’s not a question of forgetting but caring

  Jake: Not about people but sex

  Simon: i don’t know what to say to u when u get in this kind of mood

  Jake: Sorry if my being honest bugs you

  Simon: thats not what i mean

  Jake: Anyway, I should go, I need to take the dogs for a walk

  Simon: no, not yet, they say its never a good idea for a couple to go to bed mad

  Jake: I’m not mad and we’re not a couple

  Simon: arent we, for me there is no one else

  Simon: i mean since i met u I havent had sex with anyone else