Where The Boys Are (10 page)

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Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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Jeff
Lloyd flings his arms around me. His cheeks are flushed and his nose bright red. He looks adorable.
“I was beginning to worry,” I say to him.
He sighs. “Eva just arrived. We were ... talking. I’m sorry.”
We kiss.
“It’s bigger than I thought,” I tell him. “The house.”
Lloyd grips my hand through our gloves. “Come on,” he says. “I can’t wait to show it to you.”
He leads me up the path to the front steps. He fumbles with the key, and the front door creaks open. Stepping across the threshold, we’re Careful to wipe the snow off our shoes. I look around. The previous owners have left behind much of the furniture, and despite the sudden whiff of mustiness, I have to admit, it doesn’t look too bad. Tattered antiques, mostly, nothing too kitschy. A Victorian sofa, a Hepplewhite table, an ancient globe standing in the comer. I spin it gently. Ancient indeed: across much of Europe is still printed AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE.
“Let me turn up the heat,” Lloyd says, adjusting the thermostat. The old furnace kicks into gear beneath us, exhaling a gust of warm air through the grate on the floor.
I walk over to the bookcase, running my fingers along the spines of the volumes. They’re certainly an eclectic lot: T. S. Eliot. Fitzgerald.
Moby Dick
. Mary Heaton Vorse’s
History of Provincetown
. Henry Beston’s
The Outermost House
. A thick layer of dust suggests it’s been a long time since any of these books have been read.
“Come on into the kitchen,” Lloyd calls.
It’s newly tiled, with a modern refrigerator, but the stove is an old black beauty. “Works perfectly,” Lloyd says, opening the oven door. “Gas. Vintage 1935.”
He struggles to bring more light into the place, hoisting the Venetian blinds as high as they can go, but the window is nearly covered outside with crosshatches of bare wisteria branches. “I think I’ll cut those back,” Lloyd says. “Bring more light into the kitchen. Eventually, I’d like to put another window in here. Really open it up.”
I look over at him. I can see the excitement in his face, the glow in his eyes. It’s been a long time since Lloyd has been so enthused by anything. I know he’s spent the years since Javitz’s death struggling to find a direction, trying to decide whether to continue hammering out a living as a psychologist or to do something entirely new. I didn’t expect this—playing Bea Benaderet at Petticoat Junction—but I can’t deny Lloyd’s enthusiasm; and no matter what, it’s good to see him so animated again.
“Come upstairs,” Lloyd’s beckoning, crooking a finger at me. “Wait’ll you see the view.”
The stairs are narrow and creaky. On the walls hang somber sepia photographs of ship captains and their wives: former inhabitants of the house? I pause briefly to study one pair. Why did they always look so
grim
in those days? Is it because they had to sit still so long for the camera that they couldn’t hold a smile? Or were they just unhappy?
Lloyd’s reached the top of the stairs. Somehow he bypassed an enormous, sticky cobweb that I walk straight through. “Shit,” I curse. “Didn’t they clean out this place before selling it?”
“Look, Jeff, in here,” Lloyd calls, oblivious to my dilemma. He’s entered a room off the top of the stairs. I follow, my fingers in my hair, certain that a nasty spider has landed there. It takes several seconds before I relax enough to look around.
The room is large, an old stone fireplace set into the far wall. A canopy bed stands in the center, a rolltop desk pushed up beneath a window. “This will be my room,” Lloyd is telling me. He corrects himself. “
Our
room, Jeff, when you’re here.”
“It’s a good size,” I say, looking around, consciously noncommittal.
“The rooms on this side of the house have a water view,” Lloyd says. “See?” He bends down, gesturing for me to follow. “If you look out that way and turn your head—no, farther, Jeff, this way—see? Beyond that house? You can see the bay.”
I turn my neck nearly a hundred and eighty degrees, finally making out a glimpse of the water, angry with whitecaps. The wind howls suddenly through an eave of the house.
“You can sit here at this desk,” Lloyd tells me. “You can write with a view of the bay.”
I rub my neck. “Lloyd, it might be difficult working on my laptop with my neck twisted around like Linda Blair.”
He smiles. “Don’t be a wise-ass.”
“I just don’t want you to advertise water views and then get sued for truth in advertising.”
He touches my face gently. “I want you to be a part of this, Jeff,” he says, suddenly serious. “I want us to share this vision.”
I look at him with equal seriousness. “Lloyd, it was never my dream to run a guest house. Neither did I know it was yours.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t know either, Jeff. It just came to me. Can’t you be at least a
little
excited for me?”
All the way down here I tried to prepare myself for this conversation. I want to give Lloyd a chance. I want to give this project a chance. I don’t want to turn my back on him out of fear or pique the way I had on New Year’s Eve. I’d been a shit. I admit that.
“It’s just that you never even
talked
with me about this,” I tell him. “That
hurt
, Lloyd.”
He starts to reply but I cut him off. If I’m going to share my feelings, I’ll have to do it fast, before they get all confused and jumbled and I change my mind.
“You know what it reminds me of, Lloyd? How quickly you decided to move out of our apartment when we lived together. You didn’t talk to me about
that
, either. One day after six years, you just turned to me and announced you’d decided to move out.”
He approaches me and takes my hands in his. “That was a long time ago, Jeff. Things are different now. I’m asking you to come down here, to spend time here. To
share
this with me.”
I smile uncomfortably. “But it’s not just you anymore. There’s this ... this woman.”
“I think you’ll understand all this better after you meet Eva.”
I break free and move over to the window. The snow is turning the red rooftops white. “Lloyd,” I say, trying to measure my words, “I know this is the eleventh hour. But—well—have you completely,
thoroughly
thought this through? I know you’ve struggled with what you want to do with your life. I know you were tired of playing healer and caretaker as a therapist, but here you are, making that role not only your job but now your
home
. You’ll be living with it twenty-four-seven, three-hundred-sixty-five.”
“But it’s
different
, Jeff.” His eyes plead with me to understand. “
Way
different than being a therapist. I’m meeting new people. Tending to a garden. Living here with the seasons. I know it will be hard work, but it’s not hard work I mind. Hard work is good for the soul. This is a dream, a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Don’t be sour on it, Jeff. Please.”
I take a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “I’m sorry if I’ve seemed that way.”
Lloyd takes my hands again. “I do believe that Javitz is with us on this, Jeff. He loved this town. We could put down roots here—”
“But
we’re
not doing this, Lloyd.
You and Eva
are. Remember that.”
He sighs. “Jeff, I can see you here, as a part of this. I can see you here,
writing
again.”
“Oh, yeah?” I break free once more of his grip and walk across the room. “And what am I writing?”
“Anything
, Jeff. I want you to write again. You say you worry about
me
. Well, I worry about you. It’s been
two years
since you’ve had an article published.”
“I don’t need to worry about that anymore,” I tell him. “Javitz made sure of that.”
“Javitz didn’t leave you that money so that you’d stop writing. He’d be
crushed
by that. Jeff, what happened to your dreams of writing a novel? Or a screenplay?”
My back stiffens. “Lloyd, I did not come down here to talk about my writing career.”
Or lack thereof
. Suddenly, I want to go outside, get back into the cold air.
Lloyd stands in front of me. “Jeff, since Javitz died we’ve
both
been adrift. Neither of us has been able to get a handle on our dreams. I’m trying to do that here. Maybe you don’t understand, but I don’t understand you, either. These people you hang with. These circuit parties. The drugs.”
“Don’t
start
, Lloyd.” I sigh impatiently.
“I know you said you only did one hit of Ecstasy on New Year’s. I believe you. But one hit can lead to two. And you don’t want to go back to being—”
“Lloyd, X is not crystal. It’s not fucking GHB.”
“There are studies that show Ecstasy can be lethal, Jeff.”
I’m flabbergasted. “How did we get on this? I didn’t come down to be lectured about drugs.”
“I don’t mean to lecture. But the circuit isn’t healthy, Jeff—”
“Don’t go there, Lloyd. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re reacting to what the media writes about the circuit. Just try coming with me some time and see for yourself.”
Lloyd places his hands on my shoulders. “Jeff, I know you’ve got a good head. But how long has it been since you’ve seen our old friends? Melissa and Rose? Wendy and Chanel?”
I scoff. “All of them consumed with playing mommy to a series of Chinese babies. I’m sorry, I just got tired of sitting around going goo-goo all the time.”
“Jeff, it’s not just that—”
“Okay.” Once more I pull myself free of Lloyd and move to a new spot across the room. “So I admit that since Javitz’s death I’ve found some new friends. Maybe I
had
to. Maybe it was the only way for me. You grieved your way, Lloyd. You lived here among all of Javitz’s old cronies. You spent your time in quiet contemplation with the universe. Well, your way has never been mine, Lloyd, and I’m not going to apologize for my way.”
Impulsively I suddenly swirl around like a crazy Julie Andrews on top of a mountain. “Life is too fucking short not to dance,” I say, louder than I intended. “Do you remember who said that, Lloyd? It was
Javitz
. Javitz would be dancing if he were alive. But he’s gone, Jeff! He’s gone and we’re still here and I’m going to
fucking dance!”
Lloyd covers his mouth as if he’s just realized something.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
He shakes his head. “It’s funny, that’s all.”
“What is?” I’m suspicious, defensive.
He smiles. “That’s the first time you’ve ever really talked about your grief, and how you’ve handled it.”
I just sigh.
Lloyd approaches me again. “It’s a
good
thing, Jeff. Nobody talks about grief anymore. It’s as if because of these new drugs, because so many people are living, we’re all supposed to be
over
it,
done
with our grieving.”
I hold firm. I will not cry. Not here, not now.
“It’s like AIDS never happened,” Lloyd is saying. “Or that it was something a long, long time ago, and now it’s time to be moving on. It’s like we’re not supposed to bring it up anymore.”
I struggle to find my voice. “If you speak it,” I say hoarsely, “it might come back.”
“But it’s never left,” Lloyd says.
I let out a sudden, irrepressible wail of anguish. “That’s just it, Lloyd! That’s why coming here, to Provincetown, is so fucking
hard
. I see him everywhere! There’s not one place in this whole fucking town that doesn’t hold a memory. I used to love going to the breakwater, but I can’t anymore. Not even after all this time. Because I see him there. Maybe that comforts you, but it feels like
hell
to me. I don’t want to feel Javitz in the wind! I want to feel him sitting in his chair and smell his fucking cigarettes and hear that croaky laugh of his.”
Damn it, I’ve started to cry. Too late to stop now.
“I want to tell him how shitty I feel,” I say, crumbling, “and I want him to make it go away.” I can’t stop the damn tears. They’re like a goddamn broken faucet. “Only
he
could do that. You know that, Lloyd. Only
him.”
I sit down on the bed and put my hands over my face.
Lloyd sits beside me and places his arm around my shoulders. “I
do
know, Jeff. I do.” He kisses my forehead.
He does know. The only one who truly, truly does. None of my new friends knew Javitz. Maybe that’s why I find it easier being with them over the old.
“You know what makes me crazy sometimes?” I whisper. “How Henry will come to me with stuff, the way I used to go to Javitz. Henry will come all confused and upset over some guy, or about something he read, or knotted up about something at work. And he’ll want my take on it. As if I have all the answers.”

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