Edinburgh (23 page)

I'm not as pretty as Bridey, I know this. But it doesn't matter. Not anymore. He kisses me like he's tasting something strange, and for a moment, I remember, the bird, and my heart tatters. I worry that he will taste the bird, hit it with his tongue. But the bird lies quiet tonight. Tonight I get everything I have wanted. For the first time.

24

MY FATHER IS
a Mainer. He doesn't lock his doors. I have questions, too many to ask. And so he wakes up in the night at some point and comes down to find me in his living room. What the fuck is this, I say.

I hold the pictures out in my hand, fanned like poker cards. I've been looking at them all, looking for some reason to understand what made me. The two of you, I ask.

He's frozen in the doorway, like victims in those goofy movies where criminals gain control over the mechanism of time. Did you hear me, I ask. I toss the pictures down, and they scatter, as if trying to get away from each other. From him. From me. Answer me, I say, and stand up, and reach for the first weapon I can find. The lamp's shade falls like a hat, the bare bulb shines.

Answer me! I walk to the wall and plunge the lamp bulb-first into the wall. Answer! Me! The glass pops, the drywall singes, the lamp sits there, hung in the wall. I pull it out and throw it at the window, and it carries the broken glass with it into the yard. I grab the box of pictures and toss them out after it, and they spread on the lawn.

I look back at him and he's still frozen. The dark room shows him better than the light did and I register now, the beetled brow, the eyes. Why did eighteen boys keep quiet as he ran his hands over them? These eyes, each a knife. Silence shrinks me. I want their names, I want to know, want to find each one of them. Give each one of them a piece of him.

In the dark quiet room my wings return to me. Yeah, I say. Come on. I unbutton my shirt. C'mon. I open the shirt totally, the cold air a blade laid on my skin. You're a fuck-face! You and her both! Do you know what I want from you?

Leave, he says.

I want you dead, I say.

Leave now.

Children, I say. It would've been like eating them.

You don't know what it was like, he says. And you need to leave.

 

1

SOMETIMES I IMAGINE
my grand-aunts. Escaped from their tormentors, unable to go home. They would be like my grandfather, of course, thin and tall and silver. Their hair would be wrapped into modest buns, let down only at night, when some daughter might help them brush it. The red hair would be gone, turned silver now. The white fox, very rare, is the good fox, the most holy one. Helper to the rice god.

If they were still alive, though, they would have come home. Could they be alive out there, somehow unable to have found their way home? Sometimes I see them: old women, vigorous as teenagers, stepping across the night in a rush of wind, their hair turning to fire. When the fox flies her hair is a fiery tail behind her. Watch them come. They dodge church spires and office towers in their pell-mell, sow sparks, set mysterious fires at the homes of their now-elderly tormentors, who emerge to put them out, a little afraid. They laugh as they go.

We love him, they would say of their brother, their words scattering across the roof of sky. We miss him. But we can't come home.

2

WHEN A FOX
marries another fox, fox trouble ends for one whole day. Kitsune no yomeiri, the Japanese say. Rain and sun together at the same time. Good luck.

I met Bridey when I was leaving San Francisco, a place where I'd spent far too much time, for New York, where I was intending to spend another as-yet-indeterminate period of time, that would turn out to be three years. I'd abandoned all pretense of a fine arts career some time ago, had drifted into making raku pottery for some of the home goods stores in the area and developed a line I called stormwate, for all of it looked as if the sea had gotten to it first. It was popular. Magazines used it in pictures, and sometimes I made some money. I couldn't make enough, though, on my own, but didn't want to expand the business, and began looking for a way to leave. But of course, the only way to leave is to just leave.

I no longer spent all my time wanting to die, but I was fairly apprehensive about being alive. It wasn't that my life lacked meaning, but rather that I disliked the meaning it offered to me every morning as I sat at my studio wheel, spinning. My father's scientific mind had given me a knack for the chemistry of glazes, my mother's orderly ways and laid-back approach made for a loose style. The housewares were popular and profitable and vanished more or less as they were made. I kept none of them, eating off odds and ends I found in church sales. With the exception of the occasional political demonstration, I lived quietly, and was relatively solitary, avoiding the Castro as well as the Mission, and the bars of SOMA. I was not making great art, but I didn't want to, either. I wanted to make lots of things that added little beauties everywhere, on a daily basis. This seemed to me better. I'd had enough of great art, I had decided, through music. One afternoon, though, my resolve was stronger than on the others and I made my plans. I gave my notice at my apartment and called friends from school in New York, who said, Well, it's about time. Penny in particular was impatient.

I had heard in gossip from these school friends that there was a boy from the crew team who was doing erotic dancing at a strip club in Chicago, at a place called Slick. It was a place that had male dancers a few times a week who all showered in front of the clientele before walking around to collect their tips. I loaded my car with my suitcase, dropped my boxes at Greyhound, and headed off. Checking my mail on the day I left, I discovered a letter from my mother. I decided I would open it later.

I thought of Bridey fairly often. Who would he be? My friends had tried to describe him to me. He wasn't out when you were there, they said. He was closeted. He's beautiful, they said, but sort of arrogant and very crazy. As I wound my way through Reno, and then Omaha, and then Iowa City, I thought of the stories again and again, how he had married and divorced a beautiful and wealthy Boston girl from an old family, how he had been forced to divorce her because he was caught with a boy I did remember, a breathtaking boy he had seduced apparently for the first time at their wedding reception. I had decided well in advance to stop and so I parked under the
SLICK
sign, locked my car, and went in. I reaped, pushing the door open, I had no idea if he would be the one I thought he was. I'd no way of recognizing him.

I had my mother's letter in my back pocket, and set it on the table in front of the stage, where I ordered a Scotch and water and watched as boys made their way in and out. Most of the clientele were older men, some of whom openly stared at me. The bouncers raised their eyebrows but did nothing. And then he came out.

I remembered him as soon as I saw him. He was beautiful, he was arrogant. I remembered paying him almost no attention. I don't remember there was time enough to do so, as I was graduating, and occupied by thoughts of my worthless life. He remembered me as well, for what he did was step off the stage to perch on my table and squat down. He wore only a towel that night.

You're a bastard for coming here, he said. He looked me right in the eye. No one else has, he said.

I shrugged. I was trying not to laugh.

Aren't you going to open that, he said. He pointed to the letter.

I might, I said. He had squatted so that my drink lay under his towel, which is to say, under him. To get it, I had to reach there, so I did. I left my hand there. He didn't seem to notice.

Who's it from, he asked.

My mother, I said. Listen. What exactly are the rules here about touching you?

He laughed. There aren't any in the house. I have personal ones though. In order to keep the local peace. He brushed his hair out of his face. A drop of water fell from somewhere underneath the towel and hit the bar, and then another dropped on my wrist. I noticed the thing around his neck was a wet G-string.

I stood. My arms reached out, as if I were waiting for a baby.

What is this, he asked.

I want to pick you up. I mean, carry you. Just for a bit. I reached for my wallet.

How are you going to do this if you don't hold out your hands? he asked, and began to swing himself toward me. I reached and he sat himself down in my arms. People stared as I wandered around the room, him laughing. There'll be trouble, he said.

Yes, I said. I bet.

He was warm, he smelled clean, of course, having just showered. He reached out and plucked the letter from the table, and when I set him down again, he handed it back to me.

Thanks, he said. I'd like to see you again.

Nothing seemed likely, except that I would have to open the letter, and so I said, You could see more of me now. It's unfortunately the only way. You could take me home.

He laughed. You're like a boy someone lost in a toy store.

I live well over three hours away, I said.

All right then. But I have to finish this shift. And saying that, he climbed back up on the bar.

He told me that his name was Albright Forrester, but that everyone called him Bridey. I sat at the bar and waited through several more drinks as he showered again, and the other men in the bar pushed dollars into the G-string he had put back on and then eyed me, suspicious. He remained cheerful, as if this were the most fun he could have. The money, the fingers, didn't seem to touch him, as if his skin wasn't really skin but a field of energy with color and texture. If you had to do a job like this, his skin was the right skin.

Later, in his apartment, I told him. I'm not from around here.

I know, he said. I saw the address on the letter. Which way are you going?

To New York, I said.

Oh the fear, he said. You'll have to leave now. He punched a pillow, puffing it flat, and rolled over into it.

I sat a moment.

Well, he said. I mean, a boy's got a heart to protect. Go on.

I, I said. I could. Visit.

Mmm. That'll be fun. What, like you are a sailor at sea or something.

Something, I said. Something.

It turned out he had always wanted to go to New York. I can't let you drive on your own, he said later, as he packed his suitcase. You could have an accident. My sister's words about love came to me then: When it's right, she said, you don't have to have a committee meeting about it. Later, when we'd been in New York for a few weeks, Bridey said, I had no idea there was so much to see in New York. I'd better stay on a while yet. It turned out that New York required several years of seeing. And when I told him about Maine the first time, he said, You're always dragging me around. But I see the best of the world with you.

With me? I said.

In you, he said, and stuck his finger in my ear.

3

FROM THE LETTER
my mother sent me, opened, finally, after my arrival in New York, read to me by Bridey:

Darling:

I ran into Freddy Moran's mother recently, and she was, well, she wasn't herself and looked as if she hadn't been in some time. You see, Freddy's been HIV-positive for a few years now, and recently his health took a turn for the worse. And now she's been frantic, caring for him. She doesn't feel up to the job, now that she's buried her husband, to now bury her son. It doesn't look real good.

Your father's been good enough to help get him into a drug trial at Maine Medical's research wing, and we're all praying for his good health. I know you two haven't spoken much, but I wanted to let you know.

I don't answer this letter. When my mother and I speak next, I don't ask after him. And the new drugs work for a while. Freddy lasts the three years that will pass until I see him next.

4

SPECK DIES ON
an early-summer day when he is, uncharacteristically, in his garden, in Maine. He hated his garden, I remembered. He had a gardener who cared for it and he had told him, when he hired him, Just do enough stuff so that these neighbors of mine don't complain.

The news of his death reaches me in Provincetown, in a summer share I'd taken with Penny and Bridey. A stroke took him, very quickly, and he felt nothing, the letter I receive from his current assistant tells me. There will be a ceremony in a few days' time. My mail being forwarded to me, the ceremony, I can see, is tomorrow. I had just written to him, telling him of how I was spending the summer. You shouldn't be leaving New York then, he had written back, just a few weeks earlier. People like you, the city belongs to you.

He'd helped me get work after I arrived in New York as an artist's assistant to a wealthy sculptor and landscape designer. We'd seen each other a few times. His book, the one I'd helped him on, had been published years before:
A Letter to the Digger: A History of Edinburgh During the Plague
, by Edward Speck. I had it on my shelf, and sometimes people would pick it up, and ask, Why do you have this? I like history, I'd tell them, and then we'd move on from there.

The day I get the letter, Bridey and Penny are at the beach together, having left to go early and run. Thick as thieves, is the expression. My oldest friend and my best one, together. Who knew what they might come back with? Some days they returned with a new friend, usually for Penny. Bridey and I had been faithful, another expression. I like to think of it as attentive. We were and are attentive. We occupy all of each other's attention. And sometimes, to make me laugh, he allows some man to flirt his way home with him. I need to keep in practice, he says, after they go home. In case I get dumped. In the second-floor apartment we'd taken, I wait for these two to return and then I tell them, how it is I have to go to Maine tonight. I call my parents and tell them to expect me, and I drive out the next day in our rented car.