Blind Sight (22 page)

“You were a little pissed at me. For leaving.”

“Yeah. A little.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. But if I do, tell me right away that you’re pissed, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ve kinda gotten in the habit of being really …” He kicked at the sand. “Secretive, I guess.”

“That must kind of suck,” I said. “You must get tired of that.”

“It is what it is.”

“Do you want that?” I asked him. “To be able to walk down the beach with someone and hold hands? If things were different?”

“What things?” he asked back. “The world? Or me? Like if I weren’t an actor I wouldn’t care about who saw me walking around holding hands with a guy? I think we’ve agreed that in a different world I’d still be Joe Closet Case. If I came out, it would tank my career. Tank it. Totally. And for what? So I can walk down the beach deciding to hold hands with somebody? For five minutes before I decide I don’t really like that person, or find out they’re cheating on me, or that the only reason I’m with them is because I’m scared of dying alone or some shit like that? Or I want to go to some freaking pride parade and wear a leather vest and dance around with all the queers and call them my community? NO fucking thank you. I’d rather have a career.”

“But if you’re not … happy?”

“You don’t actually die if you don’t have sex very often. I should know. And having sex doesn’t make you happy.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that.”

“I guess it makes you happy in the moment. Or, I don’t know. Happy? That’s probably not the right word. Anyway, you came to Los Angeles and it’s like I got handed this free ticket to a normal life. I get to be a dad. Just like normal people. And I’m not worrying about whether I’ll get any work next year and I’m not broke and I’m with you and I don’t feel all lonely or whatever. So now I’m going to watch this sunset with my son and for ten minutes I’m going to believe that it’s all solid and it’s not going to disappear.”

“Ten minutes?” I asked. “That’s all you’re giving yourself?”

My dad pointed to the horizon because the sun was just about to disappear. You can kind of feel the speed of the planet in these moments, because it would take something like 109 Earths to stretch across the sun, and so a sunset must be the only time we can stop seeing something so big, so quickly. Without shutting your eyes, I mean. Or turning away.

“Ten minutes is a long time for me,” he said. “I’m going to really enjoy this. This is me being really, really happy.”

And he lay back in the sand and shut his eyes with this very peaceful look on his face and later that night, before I went to bed, he said, “Love you, Luke,” and I said, “Love you too, Dad,” and that’s the first time that we’ve said that to each other.

Three days later, Luke is sitting in the Green Room of a television studio, watching a giant monitor as a late-night talk-show host interviews his father. There are other people in the Green Room, various people associated with the rock band that will be performing later on the show. Kati sits beside Luke on a yellow leather couch. Kati is wearing a short skirt, which the act of sitting has rendered even shorter. Her legs are crossed. Twice the toe of her swinging left foot has brushed against Luke’s ankle. The second time this happened, Kati said to Luke, “Oh, sorry. I keep kicking you,” and moved two or three inches further away from Luke, causing her skirt to ride up
even higher on her legs. Luke can see a faint blue vein at the top of her right thigh. Kati has the kind of skin that does not tan.

On the screen, Mark is humorously recounting Luke and Mark’s surfing lessons in Hawaii.

“My son,” Mark is saying, “learned to surf in about five seconds. Which turns out to be the exact amount of time I can stand on a surfboard without falling off.”

This is not at all true, but it is funny the way Mark says it, and Luke is very proud of his father, who seems relaxed and confident and has said several things that have made the host and the audience laugh. He has also said “my son” three times.

Luke steals a look at Kati, who has now scooted herself to the edge of the couch and made adjustments to her skirt. Her legs are crossed, her arms are crossed, even her hands are twisted around each other and she is biting her thumbnail. Luke is slightly annoyed with Kati for being so obviously nervous about his father’s performance.

“We’ll be right back,” the host says, “for more with Emmy-nominated actor and failed surfboarder Mark Franco.”

Kati unlaces her hands and heaves a large sigh.

“He’s doing well,” Luke tells her. “Right?”

“He’s doing great,” Kati says. “Great.”

Now the talk-show band is playing and various people have surrounded the host’s desk. The host is talking to Mark, and Mark is nodding his head and smiling. In the Green Room, the rock band people all stand up and pile out of the room, waving unlit cigarettes and phones, in search of cell reception and ashtrays.

Luke catches sight of himself in a mirror above the monitor. Luke is very tan. Mark is also tan. They both have the kind of skin that tans. Luke thinks that he looks pretty good. Luke would like to hold on to the way he looks right now, the way he would like to hold on to every moment of the trip to Hawaii.

But things had been hectic since their return to Los Angeles.
The Last
had received seven Emmy nominations, including the one Mark
had gotten for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. Kati had a list of appearance requests for Mark. Mark’s phone rang or buzzed every five minutes. Masses of congratulatory flowers were sent to the house and then carried away by Carmen. Mark and Luke were trying to keep the spirit of their trip to Hawaii up but they were no longer “the boys” and they both felt it. Still, every night when they said goodnight to each other, they now said, “Love you,” and this, Luke thought, was something they could both hold on to, and was something that could not be taken away by other people.

This was Mark’s second Emmy nomination. He had lost the previous year, to the actor who played an unscrupulous detective on a crime show and who was also nominated again. Luke had never seen that show, but in his opinion Mark had been especially great on the second season of
The Last
and surely deserved to win. The flashback episodes had been very intense, and you had gotten to see James Knox before he became so hard and guarded, which showed Mark’s range. Kati thinks Mark’s main competition is the African American actor on the medical drama. Mark himself does not expect to win.

“The show is too popular and too sci-fi,” he said. “You get less cred for sci-fi.”

“But it’s good just to be nominated, right?” Luke asked.

“If you’re really hungry,” Mark said, “you’re happy if someone gives you a cracker. For about five minutes. Then you want more crackers and you want them to put peanut butter on them and then you want the whole box and for it to be delivered to you and pretty soon you’re just always hungry no matter what. But yeah, it’s good just to be nominated. Up until you don’t win. Then it’s like, hey you lost and you wish you hadn’t even been nominated. If you win, though, then it’s something no one can ever take away.”

The Emmy Awards show will take place after Luke is supposed to be back in Delaware. Mark had asked Luke if he would like to stay a little longer in Los Angeles, or come back, and go with him to the ceremony.

“It’s kind of a long day, though,” Mark told him. “And not as much fun as you might think. I guess it’s sort of fun but it’s also like a really long popularity contest and I’ll have to be
on
the whole night. But if you have even the slightest interest, then stay. Or I’ll fly you back out. If you think your mom would be okay with it.”

“Sara’s birthday is that weekend,” Luke said. “She’d probably be okay with it, but I think I’d rather save her understanding for something else. You know, like another trip out here.”

“Like for Christmas, maybe? Or New Year’s?”

“Yeah,” Luke said.

“Wow,” Mark said. “I think I just looked forward to Christmas for the first time in about a decade. Shit. That would be so great.”

“Maybe you should take Kati to the Emmys,” Luke had suggested later.

“Kati’s probably already set it up for me to go with Aimee.”

“Have you talked to her? Aimee, I mean?”

“Here and there. She gets it. Well, I don’t know what she gets, but she gets it about the business. Those super-sexy-looking chicks are always really practical.”

In the Green Room now, Kati puts her hand on Luke’s knee and shakes it.

“You okay? Can I get you anything?”

“I’m cool, thanks.”

“Sorry about all this stuff we’re having to do.” Kati pulls out her phone. “But this is fun, right?”

“It’s all fun,” Luke says, truthfully, as Kati moves into the hallway to make a call. “All this stuff”—which Kati also calls “visibility”—is important for his father’s career, and Luke likes being helpful. He also likes “visibility” when it includes, as it has today, riding in another limousine and meeting the rock band and the talk-show host and wearing a special pass around his neck on a cord.

Luke’s own visibility is now an issue. A large picture of Luke and Mark at the Dodgers game was published in a weekly magazine, and
there were several more photographs of them on the Internet. People in Delaware had seen these, and word had spread.

Luke had left his Delaware cell phone behind in Los Angeles when he and Mark had gone to Illinois, since his sisters were now using the new one and Sara was at the ashram. There wasn’t a DSL line in Mark’s room at Bubbles’s house, and Mark and Luke had taken pleasure in “going off the grid” in Hawaii, with Mark only checking in with Kati twice a day by phone. So Luke had not looked at any of his messages until they got back. Luke had nine voicemails, thirty texts, and thirty-one messages on Facebook, some from people he didn’t even know.

“Everybody is asking me if I knew,” Amy had written in an email. “But of course, I understand. I hope you trust me, though. I feel like things ended a little weirdly with us, and your friendship is really important to me. You’re coming back, right?! I really hope so. I miss you. I think about last year all the time, and all the amazing times we had together. Remember the night you took me to that Fellini movie? Still wondering what the plot was! Call me anytime. It’d be great to hear from you.”

They had both missed the plot of
La Strada
, because just as the film was starting, Luke had put his arm around Amy and she had turned to him and they had started making out. They were in the back row, and the nearest people had been several rows ahead (the Fellini Retrospective at CinemaArts had not exactly drawn lines in Acton). Amy had been wearing a short skirt, although she had on tights underneath that. Blue tights. Luke’s hand had gone far enough up under Amy’s skirt to reach the waistband of those tights, although once there he had gone no further. Luke had thought it would be very Italian of him to remove Amy’s tights, but he knew from his sisters that the putting on of tights was a complicated business, with lots of hitching and wiggling. He had not thought that Amy would want to do that in a movie aisle.

“People from home are Facebooking me,” Luke had told his
father. “I told some people at school, my friends and stuff, that I was going to see my father, but I didn’t say who you were. But people are finding out now.”

“You’ve been outed,” Mark said.

“I guess, yeah,” Luke nodded.

“So what do they want?” Mark asked.

“I don’t know that they want anything,” Luke answered, although he knew this wasn’t true. He just wasn’t sure what it was that people wanted, specifically, yet.

“Really? Well, let me tell you, now is not the time to make new friends. Just be careful. God, these things are a pain. Don’t answer anything from people you don’t know.”

“So far,” Luke assured him, “it’s mostly people from school saying, ‘Hey, for real? Is that you? That’s your dad?’ ”

“I guess people will be asking you a lot of questions,” Mark said. “Shit. Yeah, we should talk about that.”

“Okay,” said Luke. “But you know I’m not going to say anything, right? About … you know. To anyone. Not to my sisters, or anyone.” What Luke really wanted to say to Mark was, “As you would not tell, so would I not tell, there is no difference between us.”

“You and Sara met when you were young,” Luke continued, in a rush. “She didn’t know who you were because you changed your name. We just got back in touch. You’re awesome. I don’t know what happens next on
The Last
. That’s it. That’s the whole story. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I trust you,” Mark said. “I totally trust you. It’s just … you know, right? It’s kind of … it’s a lot to ask of you. I know that. I know you would never mean to hurt me. I mean, I don’t think you would. It’s just. There’s sort of a lot at stake, for me, and—”

“Dad,” said Luke. “Dad. I hate this. I don’t want you to worry about that at all. We don’t even have to talk about it because it’s never going to be an issue.”

Mark had said okay to that. Luke wished they could flash forward
to the end of their lives, just for a moment, so that his father could see how Luke never did tell.

“We’re back with Mark Franco,” the host is now saying.

“Kati,” Luke calls out to the hallway. “He’s on again.”

Kati scurries back into the Green Room and sits down next to Luke. Her bare knee touches Luke’s bare knee. Luke can smell her shampoo. Luke moves his knee away.

Luke looks at his father on the monitor. He appreciates that his father told a funny and not especially accurate version of their surfing lessons to this host. Sitting on a board in the ocean, looking at his father sitting on another board, waiting for a wave, smiling at each other, that story belonged only to them.

Mark is talking again now, telling another funny story. The host is smiling, the audience is laughing, Kati is nodding her head. All too soon, Luke thinks, he will be going back to Delaware, and what will happen then? Luke tries to imagine himself telling funny half-true stories about his father to Sara, to his sisters, to kids at school. Luke cannot imagine this, not because he wants to tell the whole truth, but because he doesn’t want to tell anything at all.