The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  * * *

  On that long-ago night in the Algonquin Oak Room, Karen had also opened with "This Is Love." Patrick, her son and accompanist, had written a bluesy, downtempo arrangement. Karen had changed all the pronouns from "him" to "you," as if carrying a torch for the audience itself. The room had crackled with the joy of it.

  Barbara had finagled us a table just a few paces from the piano, so that when Karen faced forward, her eyes seemed to meet mine. All the while I was keenly aware of Tom next to me, watching me with fond amusement. I tried to pretend I was wiping crumbs from my cheeks when in fact I was blotting tears from my eyes.

  This-the Command Performance version-was yet another new arrangement. It was fleet and cheerful, but I hated it. What was wrong with either of the old arrangements? Why did everything have to keep changing?

  As the first side of the cassette played on, Karen's voice grew husky, her diction sloppy. All of the arrangements seemed wrong-headed. "A Cockeyed Optimist" was too slow. "Easy to Love" was too fast. A strangely ponderous, convoluted chord structure backed "The Song Is You," so that it sounded like some kind of Mannerist recitative.

  The new arrangements nettled and wearied me. Perhaps I was only sleep-deprived, or perhaps I was no longer one of Mason's pop-culture-obsessed "young people."

  I switched off the Walkman and stowed it in my tote bag. McNamara's book brushed the back of my hand. I pulled it out. I'd hauled it all the way to California, but I'd never opened it. A slip of paper marked the beginning of chapter fourteen.

  I skimmed over the parts I'd already read-Beethoven's fiscal disarray, his contentious relations with his brothers, the cattle stampede-and at length came to the composition of the sixteenth quartet. According to McNamara, the inscriptions-"Muss es sein?" and "Es muss sein"-had had nothing to do with incipient mortality, nothing to do with Beethoven's housekeeper. No, it had all begun as a dispute with a patron who'd questioned an exorbitant subscription price for a performance of the B-flat quartet. The patron had reluctantly paid the subscription to get copies of the parts, but not without complaint. "Wenn es sein muss," he'd said-"If it must be." Beethoven, tickled by the aristocrat's exasperation, had written a trifling and, I thought, mean-spirited joke canon. "Es muss sein, ja ja ja." Beethoven, it seemed, had been an asshole.

  How banal it seemed. I wished I'd never sought out the true story. How much more interesting it had been to think it all stemmed from Beethoven's dread of his own death.

  After the biographical details came the analysis of the quartet itself. McNamara quoted snippets of the score, but only a few, amounting to perhaps three or four dozen bars. In great detail he described passages that he neglected to quote. Without a recording to listen to, it was slow going. My eyes crossed and my vision blurred.

  I dozed. I woke again when the landing gear bumped the tarmac in Minneapolis. The book had fallen closed in my lap.

  As the plane taxied to the gate, I lifted the window shade and looked out onto the tarmac. In my absence there had been no new snow. All that remained of the last snowfall was a dirty crust and foamy black slush.

  * * *

  After three hours shoe-horned between the window and a corpulent seatmate, after the trivial ordeals of fetching my duffel bag from baggage claim, after wandering the parking garage looking for my car, after my brief unfounded terror that-even with a new starter, less than a month old-the Chevette wouldn't start, I wanted nothing more than my own easy chair. But as I steered through the slick, wet streets of my neighborhood, I pictured the house covered in Sam Stinson bumper stickers, spray-painted with swastikas. I didn't want to go home.

  It was just after noon. In my wallet I carried a few traveler's checks left over from my trip, and I hadn't even begun my Christmas shopping. The malls would be crowded. On a Saturday Saint Paul would be empty, abandoned, wind-whipped, the streets possibly clogged with bouncing tumbleweeds. Without even having seen the house, I turned around and set a course for downtown Minneapolis.

  The Dayton's ramp was nearly full. I drove all the way to the top and parked on the exposed roof. The arcade between the ramp and the store was itchy hot. I pulled open my jacket and ducked into the store. Through the shoe department, past Papagallo and Charles David, past images of myself in sepia mirrors, I passed into the brilliant great hall.

  Mistletoe dripped from the chandeliers. Pine garlands and golden bulbs decorated the cosmetics counters. Somewhere beyond the escalators, a pianist played "Winter Wonderland," a perfectly sensible, straightforward arrangement-not too fast but not too slow, not too jazzy but not too staid.

  I walked around the escalators. There it was, in the center of a red carpet leading from the escalators to fine jewelry-a grand piano, shiny and black. The pianist was a gray-haired man in a tuxedo.

  I paused at one of the cosmetics counters, partly to consider perfumes for Barbara and Christa, but really to hear more of the piano. I trailed my hands along the brushed chrome frame of the display case. Foil-wrapped boxes and chrome-topped bottles of cut and etched glass glowed like jewels.

  I looked up. Before me stood Charlie Kent, dressed for work, it seemed, in a white shirt and striped tie and worsted slacks. In each hand he held a bottle of cologne. He hefted them as if gauging their relative weights.

  God, the sheer hairy bulk of him-he was something out of mythology. I half-suspected he had a quiver of thunderbolts hanging on a hook in his entryway, back at his apartment atop Mount Olympus.

  Charlie turned, and instantly his face broke into a smile. "Jonah?" he said. "Jonah Murray, right?"

  "Exactly."

  He set down the bottles and put out his hand. "Charlie Kent," he said.

  "I remember perfectly." I remembered, too, the way brown hair covered the back of his strong hand, the way he had turned his hand so that mine was underneath it. Shaking my hand again now, he did the same.

  "What have you been up to?"

  "I just got back from San Francisco. I-." I looked around me. The tuxedoed pianist shuffled his sheet music. Cracking his knuckles, he launched into "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." I said, "I needed to do some Christmas shopping. What about you?"

  "Same, same. Well, I came in to work today, but then I decided I needed a break. I was just considering some perfume for my mom." He walked his fingers along the tops of the bottles. He picked up two of them and turned them toward me. "What do you think? White Shoulders or White Diamonds?"

  "You feel strongly that 'white' should be in the name, then?"

  "It couldn't hurt." He grinned. "Which would you get for your mother?"

  "I don't dare buy anything but Chanel Number Five for my mother," I said, "but my mother isn't like other mothers."

  It had always been a point of pride-my mother wasn't like other mothers. Miserably, I realized that my mother was, in fact, a lot like other mothers-she was, in fact, probably a lot like Charlie's mother. More likely than not her political views were to the left of Mrs. Kent's-as they were to the left of almost everyone's, except perhaps Ralph Nader's-and almost no one's mother ranted about politics and movies for a living, but for all that, Barbara was surely just as frozen in her habits and beliefs as anyone else's mother.

  I tapped the rhinestone-crusted gold bow on top of the bottle of White Diamonds. "If she's ever said anything remotely appreciative of Elizabeth Taylor, that's the one," I said.

  A clerk had appeared, a zaftig, sour-faced woman in a black smock. She wore a badge that read "Zany." I thought she must be the antithesis of zaniness. Charlie showed her the bottle of White Diamonds. Grumbling, she set off to find the keys to the display case.

  I said, "Did I understand you correctly? You work here?"

  He tipped his head back, toward the escalators. "Upstairs. Corporate. It's our busy time, so I thought I'd catch up on some things. Have you eaten?"

  "I haven't." I gazed up at a twinkling chandelier. "At least, I don't think I have." I put up my hands. "I think I'm a little jet-lagged."

  Zan
y returned empty-handed. "Just a second," she said, grimacing. "The manager-."

  Charlie shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I'll come back."

  "Suit yourself," Zany said, and stomped off.

  "Can I buy you lunch? I know just the place."

  I nodded.

  Charlie led me up the escalator and through men's wear. He walked quite fast. We came to a set of escalators, and for a second I thought we had somehow gone full circle. No, that narrow corridor to the left, between the escalators and a brightly lit display of sunglasses-I would've remembered that.

  Charlie veered to the left. Slowing as he walked by the sunglasses, he turned back and said, "Let me pay for lunch. I'd like to make it up to you for what happened at group. I still feel badly."

  Here there were floors of dark green marble, dark green display cases with brass frames. Rock music blared. In the corner of my eye I saw flashes of light and color. I turned. Enormous video screens played commercials-or maybe they were music videos. I couldn't bear to look at them for long.

  To Charlie, I said, "You shouldn't. Feel bad, I mean."

  We entered the skyway over Seventh Street. Christmas lights crisscrossed the outside of the structure.

  "I needed to know eventually," I said. I looked at him. His eyes weren't as pale or as green as I remembered them. Perhaps it was that this time his shirt was blue.

  "Eliot and I talked about you," he said. He rushed to add, "Don't worry. He didn't tell me anything personal. He just said that he felt badly about it, too. About what happened. He's terrified you think he tried to trick you."

  I couldn't think of anything to say. I looked out the windows, up and down the street. Toward Hennepin there was another skyway, a pinkish shade of taupe. Toward Nicollet-beyond Nicollet-there was a brown skyway with row of pyramid-shaped skylights along the top. For an instant I had the sense that I was looking at a science-fiction cityscape, at a vision of a futuristic domed city of some kind, where it was unsafe to venture outdoors. "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "He thought your lifestyle was causing you some pain."

  "My lifestyle? I had sort of thought I was living a life, not a lifestyle."

  "No offense," he said, "but isn't that worse? A life that's causing you pain, rather than a lifestyle?"

  I looked down. Again he wore the tasseled chaussure of the pompous-brown, this time. "I see your point."

  "In any case, Eliot only meant for you to see that there are alternatives."

  "I see."

  He said, "I thought you'd already-. That you'd already decided-."

  "No hard feelings," I said, though I wasn't entirely sure it was true.

  In City Center we passed Sam Goody. A slow-moving, rumbling escalator disgorged passengers. He said, "Everyone you met is still there. Still in group. Some of us are making remarkable progress."

  "Progress toward not being gay?"

  "That's the goal." He stopped. He stared at me, his face blank. "Do you really want to talk about this? I can't tell if you're really interested, or just humoring me."

  We passed the entrance to Ward's. Next door, in front of a Radio Shack, a salesman rocked from heel to toe. Charlie waited for a chattering group of teenagers to pass.

  "I'm interested," I told him.

  "Why the change of heart?"

  "I didn't say I wanted to sign up. I said I was interested." I regretted the crackle in my voice.

  "Fair enough. I know this is a tricky subject for you." He stepped onto the escalator, and I fell in beside him.

  "Why do you do this? Why did you set out to change everything you are?"

  "It's not everything I am. It's just one small part of me. I learned it early in life, and I can unlearn it."

  "I'm not sure I believe that. The impulses are insurmountable. For me they are."

  His eyes searched mine. "Did you have any bad habits as a kid? Did you sneak smokes or eat too much junk food? Or maybe you had a friend who always knew how to get beer?"

  "Would a Karen Holmes scrapbook count?"

  He shook his head. He stepped off the escalator. Abruptly he strode off to the right. We'd already passed an Au Bon Pain and a sketchy-looking Mexican grill of some kind. Where the hell was he going? I scrambled to catch up.

  "You know what I'm asking," he said.

  Reluctantly, I nodded. "I do. You're saying it's no more than a bad habit."

  He stopped. He looked at me. "It may feel like more than that, but it's just a bad habit."

  "Why did you decide to do this? To change?" I cleared my throat, looked away. The teenagers had congregated in front of a GNC. Giggling, they poked each other. "Maybe it's none of my business."

  "I was raised Foursquare Gospel. My daddy was a preacher. One Friday night, he caught me with a boy and disowned me on the spot."

  I stumbled back, goggling at him as if he'd unexpectedly struck me in the face. "That's terrible. How old were you?"

  Two blond boys, six or seven years old, ran by us, yelling, laughing. Charlie watched them, his eyes heavy. He folded his arms across his chest. "I was already out of high school, just screwing around-." He stopped himself, flashed a half-smile. "No pun intended. I was goofing off, putting off college. In a way, it was the best thing for me. I joined the Navy, and that taught me everything I needed to know about discipline and responsibility. Except sexually, of course. Like you said, the impulses seemed impossible to resist. I prowled the streets of every city I found myself in. I took everything that came at me. I wasn't just promiscuous. I was cruel. It wasn't as good if the guy didn't want me to rough him up a little."

  "Mean as shit," I said. I hadn't exactly meant to say it aloud.

  "Exactly. Mean as shit." He gazed into the distance, as if a film of his old sexual exploits played on a screen behind me and to the left. "If I thought about how horrified my father would be to see me, it just made me want it more."

  "Why the change of heart?"

  "Daddy died. Six years ago, now. I wasn't there-couldn't be there-for him."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  He waved his hand, as if batting an insect away from his face. "I couldn't be there because he didn't want me there. When he was gone, I realized how much I missed him and wished I could've said good-bye."

  "He refused to talk to you, even on his deathbed? That didn't make you angry?"

  "Part of me was angry, sure." He frowned. He stroked his beard. "But after I thought about it, I had to admire him for what he did. He didn't just hurt me, you know. An only son is a comfort and a pleasure to a man, especially in dying. He gave that up for what he believed in."

  I wasn't sure I could see it that way. "And now? You're successfully changed?" Somewhere behind me there were shrieks. I winced. I turned. The two blond boys chased each other around a bench.

  Charlie said, "Changed, but not cured. I never should have used that word before-'cured.'"

  "Or 'victim,'" I said bitterly.

  "You used the word 'victim,' not me."

  I gave it some thought. He was right. I nodded.

  "I've made peace with my dark side, and I've put behind me all the things it led me to do. But the darkness is still there. It'll always be there." He put his hand on my shoulder. "Come back. Start seeing Eliot again. Come to group. It hurts at first to think of it, I know. It hurts to consider giving up something that seems so much a part of yourself, part of your core being. But what are you really giving up? Sex with men you just met?"

  I thought of the man at the beach, the white column of flesh standing up at the center of the shadowy form. I thought of Spike, alpha to my beta. I thought of Jose-Aye, it's a wee little thing. I blushed. To these men I'd just met, I'd given myself-not as a lover, not even as a sex partner, but as a thing to be used and discarded. And what had I received in return? Something, surely, beyond the raw physical pleasure, but what?

  He leaned back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

  I shook my head. Tears pricked the corners of m
y eyes. "Not at all."

  "Think about it, Jonah? Please?"

  I nodded.

  He jumped as if he'd been touched with a cattle prod. He looked down at a pager hooked to his belt. "I'm sorry. I have to get back. I have to pass on lunch." He stood a moment longer, looking at me. "Will you come back to group? Please?"

  "I'll think about it."

  "Can you find your way back?"

  "Go ahead. I can make my own way."

  * * *

  From a block away I saw it. A sheet of white paper, it looked like, hung in the center of my front door. I glanced around the neighborhood-the ramshackle stucco duplex across the street, the green-trimmed rambler next door, the mock Victorian two houses down. On a few front doors there were wreaths, but mine was the only one with a sheet of paper on it.

  It was handwritten-spidery blue printing. Biblical passages, four of them, the neatly copied text of each followed by its book, chapter, and verse. Sharp lines underscored portions of some passages. The vandal had nailed it-had nailed it-to the door. I tore the page free.

  Standing in the entryway, I read the verses:

  Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

  Leviticus 18:22

  Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. Now the body is not for fornication but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.

  I Corinthians 6:9-10,13

  Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

  Psalm 90:8,11

  Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

  II Corinthians 6:2

  The mail slot was full. Checking statement, credit card statements, electric bill, catalogues, fast food coupons, Christmas cards, and something from the Court Administrator of the Ramsey County Conciliation Court. The postmark was nearly a week and a half old.