The Easy Way Out (20 page)

He'd always been a molelike person, reclusive and quiet, but the threat of AIDS and then the disappearance of Kyle had driven him even deeper into his hermetic existence. But Jeffrey's agoraphobia suited him. He had his painting, his money-making career as a medical illustrator. He read any book written before the First World War and had a huge collection of used jazz records, scattered throughout his apartment in some crazy order that only he could decipher. Although I wasn't in love with Jeffrey—perhaps because I wasn't in love with Jeffrey—I couldn't get enough of his scrawny body.

Sixteen

I
t was raining hard when we landed, and I decided to go to hell with myself and splurge on a cab into town. But at Ninety-sixth Street I was overcome by a fit of parsimoniousness and had the driver pull over. I saved about fifty cents, and by the time I got to Jeffrey's block, I was drenched. I let myself into the building, took the elevator to the third floor, and entered his apartment as quietly as possible. I stood in the narrow hallway by the front door, shook the water out of my hair, and took off all my clothes. Then, thinking better of it, I put on my T-shirt. I made my way through the cluttered living room, stepping over piles of records, and stood to the side of his open bedroom door. I could hear him opening and closing drawers. “Guess who?” I called out and stepped into the doorway.

Kyle was sitting on the floor, rummaging through the bottom drawer of Jeffrey's bureau. He looked up at me for one disinterested second and then went back to what he was doing.

“Patrick, isn't it?” he asked blandly.

“Yes,” I said, “it is. Hi. How are you?”

“Oh, pretty swell.”

Jeffrey came up behind me, holding a kettle. “Patrick,” he said, “you're early. And practically nude.”

“The rain. I got wet, and I had to take my clothes off.”

“Apparently,” Kyle said.

“Well, this is a coincidence,” Jeffrey said. He held up the kettle. “I'm just making coffee.”

“Milk, no sugar, in mine,” Kyle said. “And don't make the coffee too strong. You always make it too strong. I'm on stage for ninety minutes tonight, and it won't do if I piss down my leg.”

“I'll do my best. Patrick?”

“No milk, lots and lots of sugar, please.”

“Well, that should be easy enough. You two remember each other, don't you?”

Kyle grinned without looking up, and I mumbled something about Kyle being unforgettable.

“Oh, and there's a robe in the closet,” Jeffrey said. “It's blue, hanging on the back of the door.”

I knew the robe well; I'd worn it at some point on almost every one of my recent visits.

“I'm glad to see you're still getting some use of that,” Kyle said. “I gave it to you for your birthday four years ago. I'm happy you didn't throw it away.”

“Throw it away?” Jeffrey laughed as if we were discussing using a Van Gogh for dart practice.

*   *   *

Jeffrey and Kyle took seats side by side on the sofa in the living room, a stack of records and magazines between them. I sat facing them in a bentwood rocker that Kyle had given Jeffrey once upon a time. The coffee was absurdly weak, infuriatingly so. There's nothing I like more than strong, sweet coffee heated to just below the boiling point. When I began seeing Jeffrey on a regular basis, I taught him my secret method for brewing coffee, a process that involves paper towels, jelly jars, ice cubes, and eggshells. Arthur had never been able to get it right, but Jeffrey had caught on immediately. It was discouraging to think that he'd give it up so quickly, just for the sake of pleasing Kyle.

The whole setup felt uncomfortably like times when I'd visited the happy couple in New York a few years back. Kyle was relating some story about a repertory company he had recently joined, while Jeffrey stared off into space with an entirely unreadable expression. I suppose he didn't want to offend Kyle or me by acknowledging the presence of either of us. One of his paintings was hanging over the sofa, a broad field of grays and reds. The two of them fit under it perfectly.

Jeffrey's legs were splayed out in front of him. He was wearing a pair of ratty, paint-splattered sneakers, the closest he came to arty affectation, and a soiled blue sweatshirt. He liked to sit slumped down in chairs and sofas, but this position looked painful.

“Straighten up, Jeff,” I said. “You're going to ruin your back.”

He looked up at me, slightly alarmed, I thought, by the intimacy of the scolding.

Jeffrey had a narrow face with large, crooked features and wonderfully fat lips. He had a headful of dark, tangled hair, which he cut himself into an uneven, caveman mop. I loved his shaggy, sloppy looks and the casually neglectful way he presented himself.

Kyle was another story. I hadn't seen him in at least two years, and I had to admit he was a lot more memorable-looking than I'd remembered. He was solid and tall, and his attractively dark face was all angles and shadowy little hollows. Age had added character to his eyes in the form of crow's-feet and faint dark circles. A decade of drug addiction or alcoholism, and he'd have a wonderfully expressive face.

I kept wrapping the robe around my legs more modestly, not that it really mattered much at that point, trying to listen to Kyle. I wished I could snap my fingers, disappear into a hole in the floor, and wind up back in Cambridge, where I belonged, filling out my mortgage application and being frustrated with Arthur.

Kyle's mouth finally stopped moving, and since it was obvious Jeffrey's wasn't about to kick into motion, I hesitantly took a turn. “So, Kyle,” I said, “what plays are you doing with the new company?”

“None you've heard of,” he said. The tone implied the fault was all mine.

“You're probably right.” I sighed. Although I wouldn't admit it to my best friend, I've never seen a play I've enjoyed quite so energetically as I enjoy even those movies I don't much like.

“Anyway,” he said, “it's Dennis now.”

“Excuse me?”

He looked out the window. “My name is now Dennis.”

I turned to Jeffrey for help, but he only shrugged. Kyle picked an album cover off the sofa and whacked him on the head with it. “Don't give that look, Jeff. I'm not embarrassed about it anymore. It's just a fact.” He turned to me. “My agent and I decided ‘Kyle Thurman' was associated with some questionable things I did early
on that I'd rather forget about. So, beginning with this new company, I'm Dennis Stone. Anyway, the ‘Kyle Thurman' sounded too invented.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Your real name sounded too invented, so you had to invent a name to sound real. Life is ironic.”

Kyle gave me one of those distressed looks, the kind I reserve for people who tell you, an hour into conversation, that they believe in flying saucers.

Jeffrey perked up. “Oh, Kyle isn't his real name. It's Sandy. Sandy Simon, isn't it?”

“Something like that,” Kyle said. He looked at his watch, stood up, and brushed the front of his pants. I'd seen Kyle act several times, and he was quite convincing on stage. Once, in a barely coherent production of
Street Scene
performed in a church basement in Brooklyn Heights, he'd moved me close to tears. In real life, however, all his actions looked overrehearsed and poorly blocked. “It was good meeting you again, Patrick.”

He extended his hand, and I rose to shake it.

“Still living with the lawyer?” he asked.

“Arthur. Yes, I am. If you want to call it living.”

He turned away as if I'd said something embarrassing, and I had one of those horrible moments of seeing myself through someone else's eyes. “We're buying a house together,” I added, suddenly wanting his approval. “Dennis.”

“Remember that time we all went out to dinner after my show? He told me he liked my performance, and for some reason, it struck me as the only sincere thing I'd heard all night. It stayed with me for hours.”

Kyle put on a long, baggy raincoat and casually draped a scarf around his neck. He pulled on a woolen cap. “Arthur's a real person. Just like Jeff.” He looked toward the lump on the sofa. “You and I can spot real people, Patrick. It's a talent. Tell him I said hello, although he probably doesn't remember me.” He walked down the hall, stepping over the pile of my wet clothes. At the door, his hand on the knob, he turned and said, “Have fun, boys,” and walked out.

It was a stagy exit, but it wasn't a bad one.

*   *   *

Jeffrey and I sat in the living room in silence. The window was open a crack, and the room was filled with the sound of cars and buses hissing through the rain as they sped down Broadway. Jeffrey
had his feet crossed at the ankles and his arms folded across his chest. His head was thrown back, and he was looking up at the wall behind him.

“What do you think of this painting?” he asked, pointing his chin to the canvas above.

“I've always liked it.” I never knew how to discuss Jeffrey's work, which seemed to me both beautiful and cheerless.

“Someone's interested in buying it.”

“Don't cheat yourself. You're likely to, you know.”

“It isn't as if I have buyers lining up.”

Jeffrey's passivity about his painting was based on either his doubts regarding his own talent or his belief that his work was so sublime he could afford to sit back and wait for the world to come to him.

The name had to come up sooner or later, so I ventured forth. “Kyle looks good,” I said cautiously, keeping my eyes on the canvas.

Jeffrey sat up. “Do you think so? I thought he looked exhausted.”

Indolence notwithstanding, Kyle could swim the East River, run a marathon, sit through a nonstop performance of the entire
Ring
cycle, and still be ready to pose for a publicity shot if the call came. One of the more irritating aspects of Jeffrey's relationship with Kyle was his insistence upon viewing Kyle as a lost, pathetic lamb who needed to be taken care of. “So you two have been seeing each other again?” I asked, even though the question had been answered already.

“Strangest thing, Patrick. He came by one night a few weeks ago. I hadn't heard from him in months. It was about two
A.M.
He let himself in. I didn't know he still had a key. He was upset about the name business, and he didn't have anyone to talk to. You can't blame him, really.”

I could, but now was not the time.

“So we stayed up all night and talked. Do you and Arthur ever do that?” he asked, staring off into space. “Sit down and bare your souls to each other, tell the absolute truth?”

“The absolute truth?” I asked. “What's that?”

“The truth, Pat, about your relationship, the way you feel about each other, what you think about him when he isn't around.”

“God, no,” I said, horrified at the thought. For one thing, telling Arthur the absolute truth about the way I thought of him seemed unnecessarily cruel. Jeffrey was beginning to sound a little too dreamy for my tastes. If he was turning spiritual, I was being pushed
out just in time. “I'd like to think that what I tell Arthur is true enough.”

“True enough for what?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “True enough to keep Arthur happy, I suppose, to keep us together in some fashion or other. Kyle hasn't got you involved in any spiritual cults, has he?”

Jeffrey sighed and scratched his scalp, tousling the mop of hair I found so attractive.

“You know,” I said, “I'm elated at this reconciliation. I just wish you'd told me sooner. That entrance!”

“I'm sure Kyle was very impressed. Dennis. He loves that kind of drama. Anyway, I wasn't expecting you until later, and I wanted to tell you in person.”

He looked around the apartment, at the heaps of clothes and the scattered records and books. There was a lamp on its side on the floor by a bookcase, and the stuffing was coming out of an old maroon easy chair. “This place is hopeless,” he said. “I can't keep up with it.”

Kyle, as I recalled, was a fool for cleanliness. Jeffrey went to get more coffee, and I sat in the rocking chair, listening to the traffic in the street below. The living room looked narrow and cramped, more dreary than usual, though perhaps it was just the weather. I'd never much liked New York, with its miserably hot summers and slushy winters, but when I started visiting Jeffrey regularly, it began to feel like an exciting place where any indiscretion was swallowed up by the crowds and confusion. I went to the window and looked out across Broadway to the endless rows of buildings, with the apartments all lit up like hot little cages. At least I wouldn't have any reason to come back to this necropolis that summer. I sat down on the windowsill and wrapped the robe around my legs against the damp breeze. The sidewalk below was crowded with umbrellas, each competing for space. Rain didn't even have a chance to hit the pavement in New York.