Where The Boys Are (32 page)

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Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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I nod. “I’m not much in a partying mood tonight.”
“Who’d you come with? That good-looking blond boy I met at the party?”
I sigh. “Yeah. Guess he’s not going to show.”
“Funny, isn’t it?” Drake muses. “You and me, running into each other, alone.”
“Yeah. Especially when you could be in Provincetown, staying at Lloyd’s.”
He snorts. “I tried that. Memorial Day weekend. Lloyd’s a busy boy. I saw him at check-in and check-out. That was it.”
I laugh bitterly. “That’s more than
I’ve
seen of him.”
We stand there silently for a few minutes, watching the dance floor revolve.
“I never noticed how pretty your eyes are, Jeff,” Drake finally says.
I give him a quizzical little smile. “I never noticed you were a flirt.”
He laughs. “I’ve
always
thought you were attractive, Jeff.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “And what have you thought about me?”
I look squarely at him. “Drake, what I have thought about you is not far from what you have thought about me. We have never liked each other. We have been civil only because of Lloyd.”
His eyes dance. “I suppose you’re right.”
He leans in and kisses me. Without even thinking about it, I kiss him back. No X, no drugs, just an unexpected passion. It turns into quite the kiss, with lots of tongue and hands on butts, and when it finally ends, Drake puts his arm around me and begins leading me out of the club. Part of me is hesitant—after all, my body isn’t feeling exactly perfect—but then I remember my promise to Henry to give that up, and so I continue walking.
I stop just as we walk out into the humid, starry night. “Just so that we’re being honest with each other,” I say looking over at Drake, “I’m fully aware that the only reason you want to sleep with me is because of Lloyd.”
Drake smiles. “Just as
I’m
fully aware that the only reason you’re sleeping with me is
also
because of Lloyd.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Fine, then,” I say as we start walking again. “Just so we’re being honest.”
The sex, I can’t deny, is awesome.
Fourth of July Weekend, Nirvana
Lloyd
T
he phone rings early, but I am, of course, already up, scrambling eggs and squeezing fresh orange juice. And I know before I answer it that it’ll be Jeff. I just
know.
Remember? I told you this right at the start, and it’s still true. That’s just the way it is between us. Even if it’s been months since we talked last.
“Hey,” Jeff says.
“Hey,” I say in return.
There’s a momentary silence between us. I look up to notice Eva at the toaster, running through several slices of bread for the guests. She seems to pause, listening. Somehow I sense that she knows I’m talking to Jeff. I take the phone out onto the back porch.
“Cat,” I say. “How
are
you?”
“I’m in town,” he tells me. “It was a last-minute decision. I’m staying in North Truro, actually. Figured you guys would be all booked up this weekend.”
We are. It’s our craziest weekend thus far, the traditional kickoff to Provincetown’s two-month high season. I knew this was going to be a killer. Eva had been up even earlier than I was, getting the four pots of flavored coffees perking, and arranging into vases our daily delivery of fresh flowers. Sunflowers and peonies today. The past couple of weeks have been rainy and chilly, dampening everyone’s spirits, but the weather report promised different for this weekend, and so far the day is cooperating. Already, at nine
A.M.
all our windows are open, and fresh, salty sea air fills the house.
“I was hoping, maybe...” Jeff’s voice trails off. “I was hoping maybe we could see each other.”
I hear the screen door slam shut. I turn. Eva has come outside and is looking at me, raising her eyebrows and gesturing, as if she wants to ask me something.
“Maybe we can meet somewhere,” Jeff’s saying.
I know just the place. “The breakwater,” I suggest.
I can tell Jeff’s smiling on the other end of the phone. How many countless hours did we spend on the breakwater, ruminating about life and love with Javitz? It’s also the place where, nearly four years ago, we sprinkled Javitz’s ashes, watching them swirl into the outgoing tide and finally disappear, merging into the sea.
“Perfect,” Jeff says. “What do you say, maybe four o’clock?”
“Four it is.”
His voice sounds buoyant. “Okay. Great! See you then, Lloyd.”
“Bye, Jeff.”
Could he really be as happy as I am about reconnecting? If so, then why has he ignored all my E-mails? Why has he never
called?
I click off the phone and turn around. Eva is practically in my face. “We have a house full of guests,” she says immediately.
“And your point is?”
She assumes a defiant posture, standing up straight and lifting her bosom. “I
won’t
be left alone to handle them all by myself.”
“We have three employees, Eva,” I say impatiently. “And I’ll be gone a couple hours at the most, in the late afternoon, when no one’s around.”
She looks as if she might suddenly cry. “Lloyd, it’s just that—well,
Jeff.
I know your long history with him, and I’d hate to see you—well, you know, get hurt again.”
I imagine for the past few months she’s allowed herself to think that Jeff was finally gone for good. And why not?
I’d
even come to think it. But never entirely. Deep down, I always believed we’d reconnect somehow.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to see him,” she says. “We’re so busy, and you might get upset....”
I refuse to get into anything with her. I just walk past her into the house.
Eva follows.
“Lloyd,” she says, and her voice has taken on that all-too-familiar shaky, teary cadence,
“please
don’t see him today. My nerves are
shot.
I’m so overworked and rundown. If something were to
happen
...”
I spin on her. “Are you saying I can never leave the house? That I’m trapped here just because you’re afraid you can’t handle a crisis on your own?”
She recoils from my words. “Please don’t yell at me,” she says in a tiny voice.
“I’m not yelling,” I say, sighing, closing my eyes, leaning against the refrigerator.
So it’s come to this: sniping and shouting. The rift between us has only grown in recent weeks. I’ve become increasingly distant, finding that when I’m with her, all I do is analyze her every word, her every action. It’s not fair to her and it’s also driving me crazy, so I just retreat to my room as early as possible, plug in my earphones, and get lost in my music. Sarah McLaughlin. Alanis Morrisette. Jewel. A couple of times Eva has told me she’s knocked on my door but I haven’t heard her. Which is exactly how I intended it.
Oh, this is
not
what I imagined Nirvana would be. This isn’t why I got involved in this venture, followed this path. Believe me, I’ve
tried
talking it out with her. I asked her point-blank if she was in therapy, and she became evasive, finally admitting she hadn’t found someone she “clicked” with. I tried getting her to level with me, to admit to her insecurities, to face them and deal with them. I tried to get her to disclose the incident Ty had told me about, to explore what had motivated her, how her loneliness and grief can sometimes cause her to do unwise things. But nothing. She just started to cry.
A week ago, I sat her down and asked if she was happy. She insisted she was. I told her I felt she needed to make some friends on her own, that she couldn’t rely only on me as support, or simply co-opt my friends. I explained gently that I needed more space from her, that given how stressed we both were from running the guest house, I really,
really
needed some quiet time, all to myself. She assured me that she completely understood.
Yet the very next day she developed a terrible headache, weeping and trembling, and begged me to sit next to her on her bed and hold her hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she lamented. “I feel so
depressed
.” She fell asleep with me holding her hand. I felt as if she’d conned me, yet again, into giving her what she wanted.
After episodes like these, I distance myself from her. She’ll attempt to reel me back in with little gifts: candles and incense and hazelnut chocolate and even a pair of boots I admired at one of the leather shops in town. But the more she tries to buy back my favor, the more I resist being bought. And so it continues.
The topper came just yesterday, when, retreating to the sanctuary of my room, I detected the unmistakable fragrance of Eva’s perfume. Lilacs.
She’d been in my room
. The aroma lingered strongest among the sheets of my unmade bed. I actually felt
violated
.
I went right out to Land’s End hardware and bought a new doorknob lock, the kind I could secure with a key from the outside whenever I left the room.
I know this is no way to run a business together. Yet confronting her seems to do no good.
Unless she’s in therapy, working on these issues, I don’t know how we can continue. I told that to her. She promised she’d find someone. But it’s a promise she made once before and failed to keep.
I can’t help but wonder just what it was that Ty had twice tried to tell me.
I can tell you things that would make your hair stand on end
. What insights into Eva’s character, into her past, have I refused to hear?
So here it is Fourth of July, and I’m at my wit’s end. I pass the rest of the day doing my best to avoid her and concentrate instead on seeing Jeff again. The return of the sun assures that all of our guests are quickly out of the house. Once the beds are made and the laundry complete, I let the houseboys go for the afternoon and take an hour myself to lie in the sun on the deck. Eva, thankfully, is nowhere in sight.
In my room, I decide to nap before seeing Jeff. I want to be fresh and energized for him. Flopping down onto my bed, I think about Jeff and Javitz and me, how long ago those days seem now. I’ve been feeling so alone these past few months, despite the steady crush of guests and Eva’s ubiquitous presence. I’m consumed suddenly with the desire to see Javitz physically, to
hear
him once again. I reach down and fumble under my bed through my videos. I have quite the porno collection—necessary for getting through the bleak isolation of a Provincetown winter—but I’m not looking for Tom Chase or Cole Tucker. I’m looking for David Mark Javitz. And I can tell simply by touch which video is him.
I pop it into the VCR at the foot of my bed. It’s a video we made one summer seven or eight years ago, Jeff and Javitz and I, with a videocam borrowed from Javitz’s friend Ernie. Just a goof, really, just playing around. There are about sixteen minutes of banter, the three of us on the deck of a rented summer house off Commercial Street. It was a glorious sunny day, much like today. I settle back against my pillows and hit PLAY on the remote control.
After the blue lead, the video crackles into life. “Is it on?” Jeff’s asking.
“I think so,” Javitz replies. He’s behind the camera. “Though I can’t claim videography to be one of my many talents.” He laughs unseen, that raw, throaty, smoke-chewed laugh of his I miss so much.
The camera trembles as it focuses on Jeff, sitting on the deck, squinting into the sun. How young he looks. No lines on his face. Then it pans over to me. I wave. I cringe watching myself, as I always do. Why do people always wave at the camera in home movies?
I haven’t watched this in a long time. After Javitz first died, I watched it often, desperate to keep his image in my memory. I didn’t want to forget. I wanted to remember every little detail of him, keep them burned into my brain: how he moved, how he sat in a chair, how he held his cigarette.
In the video, Jeff is standing up, insisting Javitz give him the camera. “You’re going too fast,” he scolds, in the way only Jeff can scold. There’s a blip of darkness, then suddenly a close-up of Javitz fills the screen. What a star entrance. It always takes my breath away.
“Is this my best angle?” he’s asking as Jeff pulls back to take in a full-length shot. Javitz poses like a pinup girl in a little black Speedo, showcasing his long, thin body. He puts a hand on his hip and sashays across the deck, shaking his shoulder-length curly black hair. It makes me think momentarily of Eva as Mae West. But Javitz isn’t imitating anybody. He was way too much of an original to do imitations.
“No,” I’m saying, moving into the frame. “
Here’s
his best angle!”
I grab Javitz around the waist and bend him forward, so that his ass sticks up straight. Jeff zooms in until everything is out of focus. All you can hear is Javitz’s laugh. “Haw haw haw haw!”
Darkness again. We set the camera on a tripod, and now there’s a long shot of the three of us, grinning ridiculously, our arms around each other’s shoulders. It’s not just Jeff who looks young, it’s all of us. How old was I then? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? Such babies. So full of life. Even Javitz. Thin, but not with the wasting that came later. His face is round and full. Jeff isn’t nearly as muscled as he is now. And all that
hair
on my head!
Another little blip of darkness, and then there’s Jeff’s voice back behind the camera. “Okay,” he’s saying. “Just wanted to get it for posterity. Javitz was about to say something profound.”
Javitz arches an eyebrow at him and exhales smoke over his shoulder. I can smell it.
“Go, ahead,” Jeff’s saying, unseen, the camera framing Javitz and me at the table, the sparkling blue bay behind us. “Keep talking. Forget I’m here. I’m just playing a little cinema verité.”
“You don’t even know what that is,” Javitz growls, arching an eyebrow.
“Do, too. I’m a film buff, remember?”
Javitz rolls his eyes. “Bette Davis never made any cinema verité.”
“Cat,” I’m saying, “turn it off. We’re having a conversation.”
“No! Javitz, finish what you were saying.”
“What I was saying,
Lloyd
,” he says, turning away from the camera as Jeff zooms in for a close-up of his profile, “is that when the three of us are together, when we’re sitting around the wood stove at your place, or up here on the deck in Provincetown, and we’re talking, talking about the world and what it means and how we could make it better—when we’re like that, and you settle back into my arms and Jeff comes out with hot chocolates for all of us, when we get so tired we begin to fall asleep on each other’s shoulders—in those moments I have the greatest passion of my life.”
I can feel his breath. I can see the little red lines in the whiteness of his eyes.
That’s when the video stops. I think Jeff felt it was a little too intrusive and turned the thing off. But how glad I am now that he captured that moment. How often I have watched it, over and over. I have it memorized, every scene, every word. How happy we had been then. All of us.
Jeff’s seen the video only once, right after Javitz’s death. He was overcome. He couldn’t even make it through the last scene, walking out of the room in tears. Ever since then, he’s refused every time I’ve suggested watching it again. He just can’t bring himself to see it.

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