Lawnboy (30 page)

And yet there were worse places to be. As the months passed, I looked at the people who came to the nursery regularly—my new friends—and saw how their notions of love had nearly wilted them. I saw how Nan, nearly thirty and still single, was willing to settle for a mostly mild-mannered man who occasionally flew into rages, striking her, because she needed more than anything to satisfy her demanding parents who wanted her to marry a graduate of an Ivy League school. I saw how Zack, the most loyal of my customers, had moved in with a man he suspected of being both heartless and mentally deficient weeks after breaking up with Ladd, the love of his life, only because he was afraid to be alone. I saw how Zack’s friend Beth had fashioned herself into such a control freak that she wouldn’t date any woman unless she was over six feet tall, dressed in fox stoles from the forties, spoke with the slightest lateral lisp, and knew inside and out the collected works of Jane Bowles. I saw how Thisbe—a sculptor, fresh out of a bickering, competitive marriage in which her painter husband continually sabotaged her work—kept rejecting each successive suitor, simply because he never measured up to her idealized image of her ex. It went on and on like this. Was there something wrong with all these people, or was it me? How could I not see myself as lucky when I looked at them, then looked at myself? How could I not stand in front of the mirror, stare into my cool, uncomplicated face, and not call myself one lucky son of a bitch?

***

His name was Jesus. He was short, muscular, with blue-black skin, thickly lashed eyes, and a wet, enormous mouth curving upward. I’d met him in Lummus Park late one night, sitting on a bench beside the beach. The ocean scented the air with seaweed, tanker fuel. A reggae band thudded loudly in the distance. Soon enough we’d gotten to talking, then we were walking arm in arm up the street, laughing at things that weren’t even funny, ambling toward his second-floor apartment off Meridian.

We were lying together in his bed, holding each other. “Man, you’re sweet,” I said, pulling away from him.

He smiled back at me. “You too.”

We continued to make love. It occurred to me I’d leave early in the morning after a quick cup of coffee to be back at the nursery. I knew I’d never see him again. But it was possible, I believed, to enjoy a stranger’s company, to be a little in love with somebody, even if it was only for the moment. A breeze stirred the leaves outside the window. Headlights flittered through the slats of the jalousies. I knew we’d never be boyfriends, but there was nothing sad about this.

“Think about it,” I said afterwards, latching my hands behind my head. I gazed up at the splintered ceiling and pressed my head deeper into the pillow. He’d brought a bag of tortilla chips to the bed. “I can tell everybody I spent the night sleeping with Jesus.”

He winced. “Watch your mouth.” But then he smiled again, making love to me over and over.

How expected that someone should be interested in me when I most wanted to be alone. Not long before we drifted apart, Jane had told me that this was the way it happened, that one only received what one longed for when one achieved perspective, when that desired thing ceased to occupy one’s every thought. To me it sounded false, though, something sifted from some ghastly self-help book, and I never thought she fully believed it, the way she believed that you should pursue what you want with all your energy, heart, and affection until you gleamed like plutonium.

I didn’t want to be in love now.

I should have sensed that something was up by the simple fact that he stopped into the nursery nearly every day, asking me questions about fertilizers and sprays, about the appropriate ground covers for his particular agricultural zone. He was about forty or so, tall, with red hair that receded in a point, full lips, and deeply blue eyes. Handsome, vaguely conservative in appearance. I’d been told by my friend Zack that he was one of the most successful surgeons in Dade County. He listened to my answers with a feigned thoughtfulness, looking directly in my eyes, even though his mind was clearly elsewhere. For all I knew he was thinking about his latest triple bypass or whatever, and he was one of those annoying, entitled types who expected complete attention from service people, who needed to be chatted with and fussed over and appreciated just so he could feel good about himself.

One afternoon, after I’d spent six minutes describing to him the fertilization procedures for sabal palms, I said, “You’re not listening to me.”

“No,” he said, and grinned, abashed. “I guess not. Could I ask you another question?”

I thought,
Make it snappy, buddy boy.
To my left an older man in a floppy golf hat was examining the wrapped roots of an acacia, checking for the price tag. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have customers waiting.”

“Okay. I’ll let you alone in three seconds.” He leaned forward on the counter and whispered something, his lips almost grazing my jaw line. “Would you be interested in going out with me sometime?”

My face must have contained within it an element of shock. I’d been so absorbed in my own duties that it hadn’t once occurred to me that he might be attracted to me. A pleasant, though alarming surprise. “Of course,” I answered.

Immediately I regretted the eagerness I projected.

“Let’s do something tonight. What are you doing tonight?”

This wasn’t what I wanted. I preferred keeping it open, vague, in the distant, far-off future. The notion of spending any substantial time with him did not sit well with me. All day I’d been looking forward to going to bed early and finishing up a book. “Nothing,” I admitted.

He said something about dinner, something about picking me up out front at eight.

“Okay,” I blurted.

“I’m Perry, by the way.”

“Evan,” I said, and extended a hand to him.

I felt that peculiar combination of flattery and dread. Where was my backbone? How banal was my life. Watching him stride to his car, I thought:
Now you’ve done it, you fool.

***

It certainly wasn’t his body, which was muscular and dense, from laps of hard swimming and years of working out. It certainly wasn’t his voice—an important consideration for me—which was resonant and deep, commanding authority and projecting confidence. It certainly wasn’t his taste in music—he loved Stravinsky and Poulenc and Joni Mitchell, especially the albums
For the Roses
and
Hejira.
It wasn’t his height or his manner or his intelligence or his personal style or his sense of humor.

That thing called chemistry, that elusive connection and tension, what was that about? Why did we feel it for some people, for people who weren’t necessarily good for us, who could even do us damage, and not for others? La Quan, who I’d met at one of Nan’s parties, insisted it was deadly to fall into any relationship where the sparks weren’t flying all over the place. She, after all, would know; she’d spent four years with an older man for whom she felt nothing only because he took care of her, putting her through school, literally rescuing her from her dismal life in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project. In the years following the breakup she’d coined something she’d called the boner test—“Does he give you a boner?”—and every time she’d dated she asked herself that question, even though, for obvious reasons, her experience was figurative.

Why was I getting so worked up about this before anything had happened between us?

We drove north on Collins Avenue, toward the Broward line, where Perry insisted he knew of the cheesiest restaurant in the world. “I think you’ll like it,” he said nervously. I looked out at the fountains of the Bal Harbour Shops, the high-rise apartment towers—the Avant Garde, the Seascape—to which the word “tony” had once applied, while trying to fill Perry in on my history. I didn’t sound terribly interesting to myself. How much I would have preferred staying in bed, reading; after all, I had to wake up at six-thirty to ready the nursery.

“Here it is,” he said, easing the car into a parking stall.

I wasn’t surprised to see it was the Speedboat—William’s old favorite. I had an odd psychic sense, a kind of quasi-deja vu, which brought up a whole host of allusions and associations. I watched my knuckles whiten on the armrest.

“Isn’t this great?”

Through the windshield, I stared at the incongruous window display: the bonsai trees, the felted grass sheet lining the floor. “Oh yeah,” I said, not without sarcasm.

Instantly the enthusiasm went out of his expression. “We can go someplace else.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I guess I’m just a little tired. Long day.”

Inside the waitress seated us beside a wooden wheel, through which a continuous stream of sudsy water kept pouring into its pitchers, keeping it turning. In the pool beneath, an orange carp floated beside a hunk of coral.

“Look at this,” he said, gesturing around. “They built this place when going out for dinner was exotic, an event.”

His manner was unsettling. At one point, I’d had that kind of energy and passion for things, but I’d worked it out of myself. Was I in mourning for something and hadn’t admitted it? He made me nervous—truly, deeply nervous. “You haven’t said very much about yourself,” I said.

He went through the requisite details, telling me about his job, his patients, his hobbies and house—all with a genuinely humble bent. In all outward respects he’d be the ideal boyfriend. Still, that didn’t make me any more comfortable. What was he doing at forty-one, single, alone? Maybe he wasn’t alone. Maybe he already had a boyfriend and just wanted to have sex, just once, with me. If that were the case …

There was a lull. He stared at me with an increasing interest, and I found myself looking away, continually, in shyness.

I didn’t have the energy to keep up my end of things. “So what else?” I said, much too loudly. “Tell me about your love life.”

His expression grew serious. Immediately, I regretted my flippancy. It turned out that he’d lost a lover within the past two years to AIDS, a lover with whom he’d lived since med school. His name was Andrew, and he spoke about him, a serious painter who’d been inspired by the original Arrow Collar Man ads and the covers of 1950s detective novels, with a quiet affection and longing that clearly indicated that the loss had shattered his life. Sometimes he wondered whether he himself had died with him. In the months since, he’d dated any number of men, a leather boy, a go-go boy, a personal trainer, a boat builder—all frivolous, insubstantial types, he acknowledged now—in an effort to make some contact again with the world. But he wasn’t sure he was ready yet. He looked down at the tabletop, latching his fingers together. He’d barely eaten his dinner.

“And you?” I asked.

He looked up. “What do you mean?”

I looked away again. I was the last one to put him on the spot.

“Am I healthy, you mean?”

I nodded, flustered.

“Well, I’m negative, if that’s what you’re asking. At least the last time I tested. But that’s been six months. Who knows? It’s not like I haven’t had sex since then.”

I gazed downward at the stone crabs on my placemat. I felt like nothing but a coward. “I didn’t mean to pry,” I said quietly.

“Don’t worry,” he said, taking a sip of his water. “What about yourself?”

“I’ve been tested,” I said. “But I never picked up the results.”

I expected him to draw back from me, but his eyes shined with interest and understanding. “Do you have any reason—?”

“My ex-boyfriend’s positive. Actually, he has AIDS. I just found that out a couple of months ago.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It sucks.”

We were both quiet for a time, watching the waitresses scurry from table to table, setting down dinners like porterhouse steaks and lobster thermidor prepared from the same recipes the cooks had used thirty-five years ago. To our right a young white couple squealed delightedly at the yellow umbrellas in their drinks. Water plashed from the wheel. If only things were so easy. I expected Perry to be through with me, to call the evening to an awkward, ho-hum finish, but then I felt his shoe resting over mine under the table. There was a complicated smile on his face.

“Listen, I know how hard it is.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It happens all the time. When I saw what Andrew went through, the drugs, the doctors, all this …
shit
in an effort to prolong his life a few months, I’m not even sure it was worth it. I think it was the stress of knowing, the depression, that wore him down. I mean, wouldn’t it be better not to know anything at all, and die—
boom
—just like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. And I really didn’t.

“Just as long as you’re not putting anyone else at risk,” he said. “I mean, aren’t we supposed to behave like we’re all positive anyway?”

I nodded.

“Ugh,” he said, rubbing his face with his palms. “Enough already. I can’t stand this anymore. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Shall we get out of here?”

He stood up, nodded, and paid the check himself, a gesture I appreciated. Walking to his car, I felt a peculiar wave of kinship with him, something I suspected should be resisted at all costs. Perhaps we’d just be friends. I assumed that that was where this evening was headed, anyway. He’d drop me off, stop by the nursery in a few days, call me once or twice before it was over. Maybe we’d even have coffee one day in the future if our schedules permitted it.

He stared at the dashboard for a moment without turning the key. On the pylon atop the restaurant’s roof, the neon speedboat pulsed once, the deepest blue, in the night sky. “I don’t know if I should say this,” he said.

“What’s the matter?”

He gave a heavy, measured sigh. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous—”

“What?”

He turned to me, a vulnerable, scattered look on his face. The silence between us was as heavy as the damp air.

“You want me to go home with you?”

He nodded, relieved.

I looked over at him. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. It was clear, after our talk, that we were lonely, in need of connection, affirmation. We needed to leave our brains. So what if I had to get up early the next morning? Actually, I admired the intention. It seemed that everyone I’d ever dated without having sex with right away ultimately failed to seize my interest, and they’d fallen away from my memory, nameless and vague. But that was irrelevant, anyway. I wasn’t looking to get hooked up with him.