Where The Boys Are (46 page)

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Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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I look at him intently. “Then tell me where I’ve made a mistake.”
He shakes his head. “You’re the reporter, Jeff. You’re the one who said you’d find out on your own. I’m sure your investigations of me haven’t stopped. Why don’t you just keep on going? You find out, then come back to me. I’ll tell you if you’re right.”
I laugh a little. “Are you challenging me, Anthony? Daring me to find out the truth?”
“Yes,” he says. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
I stand up. “Then you’re on.”
We shake hands.
“But I want you to know something,” I tell him. “You may think I’m doing this because I’m some big fucking arrogant know-it-all who has to have all the answers. But that’s not why I’m taking your challenge.”
He narrows his eyes. “Then why is it, Jeff?”
“Because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the guy who dropped into my life last New Year’s Eve, who taught me how to love again, who without even knowing it broke me out of my shell of grief and avoidance, who, despite all the odds, took the chance on loving me.” I reach over and touch his face. “I
do
love you, Anthony. No matter what, that will remain true.”
There’s no reaction on his part. No embrace, no kiss, no further words. I just slip back out into the fog.
The Next Day, the Breakwater
Lloyd
I
n November the air changes. There’s a snap, a bite, a tweak of your face that turns your checks red and hard even as the sun still shines overhead. How Javitz loved the air that moved in over the Cape during the late fall, with its chilly premonition of winter. It conjured up the promise of wool scarves and empty streets, of hot mugs of strong coffee sipped around a fire, the two of us discoursing on the state of our world.
Jeff and I settle onto a rock, looking down at the last spot where Javitz’s atoms had all been in one place, where his ashes had spiraled around in his final journey out to sea. It was such a warm day when we’d scattered his ashes, and how the seagulls had chattered, as if unable to contain their sorrow, telling the world the news that Javitz was gone. Today the stones of the breakwater are cold, and the gulls overhead are silent. The day is bright, the wind tricky. One minute, the air is still; the next, I’m chasing my baseball cap over the rocks.
“Soon it will be too cold to sit here,” Jeff muses.
“Oh, I’ll come out here even in the dead of winter,” I tell him. “Last year, I watched a blizzard roll in off the bay from this very spot. It was quite the scene.”
Jeff smiles, flicking his eyes over at me. “I remember the last time we sat here, you and I.”
I smile. I do, too.
How could I forget? It was the infamous day that Eva had locked me in my room. Her last-ditch attempt to prevent what was happening.
Jeff’s looking at me. “That day, the last time we sat here, we made a pact to find out about these people we’d let into our lives. We thought we were embarking on the quest to resolve all our dilemmas, to find answers. But all it did was make the questions even more complicated.”
It’s true. If that day we had hoped we were finding our way back together, the sheer complexity of the other relationships in our lives has made that goal seem as far away as ever. I’ve seen first-hand Jeff’s reaction to Anthony’s departure. Quite simply, he was devastated, and that told me a lot. I can’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. I saw last night how filled Jeff had been with a desire to see Anthony again, so determined he was to put right whatever had gone wrong between them. I can’t help but wonder if he’s ever had the same passion for making it right with
me.
But I’m hardly a model on how to rebuild relationships. Indeed, my own passion has been reserved for Eva. I spent weeks being angry with her, feeling resentful of her, and now I’m wallowing in a strange kind of grief, a feeling of abandonment. That takes up enormous energy—energy I could have been channeling toward Jeff. Instead, while Jeff was out confronting Anthony, I was sitting on my floor, reading through Eva’s old notes and E-mails, the ones she’d sent me in those first few glorious weeks of our friendship, where our talks reminded me of what I missed most with Javitz.
No matter what her diagnosis, no matter what her motivations may have been, she had come to occupy a special part in my life, and that’s what I miss. That’s what I grieve. How Eva had understood my words. How she seemed to share my dreams. How she listened, really
listened
to me. To an outside observer, I would have looked like a spurned lover going through a box of old love letters. And maybe that’s not so far off the mark.
Then, of course, in the midst of all that drama, I allowed myself to seek solace in the arms of Henry. Jeff’s best friend. Or at least, his former best friend. I know Jeff still cares about him, and he misses Henry something fierce.
He’s looking at me as if he knows I want to tell him something. I sigh. Why is it always so
complicated
between us? Why can’t it ever just be
easy
?
“Jeff,” I begin, “do you remember when Henry came down on Halloween for that workshop?”
“Oh, God, Lloyd, don’t tell me you slept with him.”
I just close my eyes.
Jeff groans, covering his face with his hands. “What were you trying to do? Balance things out since I slept with Drake?”
“Jeff, it wasn’t like that.”
He sighs, looking over at me. “How did it happen, then? You got carried away at the workshop?”
“No. It was a conscious choice.” I can’t lie to Jeff. “We came back to the guest house and it felt natural to make love.” I try to smile. “He’s really a very sweet guy. He’s going through a lot.”
Jeff looks off across the waves. “I can’t pretend I haven’t felt a little jealous about your connection. I haven’t quite figured out exactly the
nature
of my jealousy, however. Whether it was because you were with him or that he was with you.”
“Nothing’s ever simple with us, is it, Cat?”
Jeff laughs. “Maybe you were good for Henry. Maybe you’re exactly what he needed.”
“I
do
think I’ve helped him. He’s really gotten into exploring some spiritual issues. Maybe . . .” My voice rises in a hope I don’t quite believe. “Maybe it will help him work out his issues with you.”
Jeff’s looking at me sternly. “Lloyd. Be honest with me. Henry’s fallen in love with you, hasn’t he?”
I sigh. “I think so.” I run my hands over my head.
“And what do you feel for him?”
“I care for him a lot. I love him. But not in the way he . . .” I can’t finish the sentence for some reason. “I’m not in love with him.”
Jeff just nods.
“I tried to get him to see that he has this pattern of attaching to people, of remaking himself in their image.”
Jeff laughs wryly. “Oh, that’s Henry, all right.”
“I’m not sure he got what I was saying.”
Jeff shakes his head in exasperation. “And you know
why
he didn’t get it? Because for all of your talk of rising
above
the ego, Lloyd, you forget that first one must
have
an ego to rise above.” He laughs sardonically. “Henry. Eva. Anthony. We’re surrounded by them.”
“Henry’s trying,” I insist.
Jeff just shrugs. “God, I miss Javitz,” he says.
This is the place we always find ourselves when things get complicated: with our backs up against the wall, unsure of how to move, wishing Javitz were here to tell us what to do. Suddenly it feels so old, so tired, and I want nothing more than to get away from that wall.
“You know what, Jeff?” I ask suddenly. “As much as we miss Javitz, we’ve got to stop thinking we can’t do it without him. We’ve got to start trying to figure things out on our own.”
He sighs. “As if we could. We aren’t any further along than we were four months ago in understanding where we—
you and I
—are going.”
I look at him. “Maybe we’ll only know when we look back. That’s the only time anything ever seems to make sense.” I take his hand. “I think you need to figure out how you really feel about Anthony before you and I can proceed any further.”
He seems to take that in, but then looks back at me. “And what about you, Lloyd? What do you need to figure out?”
Just then, as if on cue, we hear her. The heaving, gasping attempts to catch her breath, and the hiccuping little sobs that keep interrupting her struggle. We look up. Standing above us is Eva, her face blotchy with tears.
“Oh, Lloyd,” she says, “I thought I’d find you here.”
“What is it?” I ask, looking up at her with alarm.
“She’s broken up with me,” Eva sobs.
“What?”
Eva struggles to find her words but can’t speak. Both Jeff and I watch her, the way her face makes odd twists and contortions, the unconscious movements of her hands in the air. Neither of us budges from our place on the rock. Neither of us says a word. She just stands over us, crying like a frustrated infant in its crib. Finally, in a pique, she throws whatever it is she’s got clenched in her hand. Just before it splashes down into the indigo water, I can see it’s Steven’s ring. Lost for good.
Understand that I do
not
want to stand and take her into my arms. That’s the absolute
last
thing I want to do. This is old and familiar: her scheme of trying to win attention from me. And now, after weeks of distance—after weeks of smug passive-aggressive hostility, after all she’s done—does she really expect me to jump to my feet and wrap her to my bosom?
Yet neither can I just continue to sit here. Her tears, growing louder and more desperate, would put the most hardened soul on edge. I look over at Jeff. He seems clearly embarrassed by this display on her part. With a long sigh, I stand, every muscle in my legs resisting me. I walk over to her and place my hands on her shoulders.
“Eva,” I say, my voice even. “Please try to calm down.”
She wheezes, gasping for breath.
Jeff’s behind me. “I’ll see you back at the house,” he whispers. I nod.
As he’s passing, he places his hand on Eva’s arm. Just that. A tiny little gesture that makes me respect him. Makes me remember why I love him. I watch as he moves off toward shore, his hands pushed down deep into his pockets.
“Eva,” I urge her again, “try to get a grip.”
Her red, swollen eyes find mine. “She won’t see me anymore until I’m in therapy.”
I don’t say anything. She knows how I feel about that.
“She said she didn’t think I was really a lesbian. Just because I didn’t want to do—
that
.”
“That?”
“Oh, Lloyd!” she sobs. “I love her! I really love her! How can I go on without her?”
“Eva, you need to try to get a hold of yourself.”
“I thought you’d understand,” she stammers.
I try to smile, careful about setting her off. “How can I understand, Eva, when you’ve given me the cold shoulder for weeks?”
She looks up at me with the saddest eyes you can possibly imagine, and despite myself, my heart breaks for her. Whether pity or compassion, I can’t tell.
“I only gave you the cold shoulder,” she sniffles, “because you gave it to me.”
“Eva, you’re a bright woman.” I try to sound as gentle as I can. “You were a lost soul when I met you. You latched on to me and defined yourself in relation to me. Everything you did, everything you
thought
, was somehow determined by your connection to me.”
She makes a little sob. “I loved you,” she whimpers.
Standing here, I realize something for the first time. It wasn’t about Steven. It was about
me
, all along.
I don’t want you to be Steven. I want you to be you—the wonderful man who’s given me so much
.
And yet, not about me, either. Not really. I look down at her splotchy face. “At first, I thought it was far simpler than it really was,” I say to her, the words coming from my lips as quickly as the revelations enter my mind. “I thought you were just trying to re-create Steven in me. Giving me his clothes. That ring. But that wasn’t quite it, was it, Eva? Steven’s almost irrelevant, isn’t he?”
She looks away. She’s stopped crying.
“Tell me the truth finally, Eva. Did you ever really grieve Steven, or was it something else? Were your tears really for yourself, for how lonely you were?”
She puts her hands in her hair. “Oh, Lloyd,” she rasps.
I feel as if I might start crying too. “It wasn’t so much Steven you wanted to create, but anyone—anyone who might fill up that loneliness in the center of your soul. What is it that causes that loneliness, Eva? Where does it come from?”
She says nothing, but her tears have stopped. Might she possibly, at long last, admit the truth?
When she remains silent, I let out a long sigh. “Your heart wasn’t so much in what we tried to do together, but in simply having someone to do it—anything—with.”
“Is that so bad?” she asks in a small, unfamilar voice.
“Eva, we can’t go on like this anymore,” I tell her plainly.
Her eyes flicker up at me in sudden alarm. “Are you saying—you want to
sell
the guest house?”
“We need to look at all our options,” I tell her.
“Oh, Lloyd,
don’t leave me!”
Her face twists. “I’ll—I’ll kill myself if you do!”
Suddenly I know how Steven must have felt. But I will not be trapped the way he was. Never.
“No, you won’t, Eva.”
“I swear I will!”
“Eva, please don’t talk this way. Find that woman I first met. Find her down deep inside yourself, the woman who was strong and wise. That’s who you are. That’s who you really—”
“I’ll kill myself, Lloyd!” She’s wide-eyed and frantic. “I’ll kill myself!”
“Let’s go back to Nirvana,” I say.
“I swear I will! With you gone, with Candi gone, I’ll kill myself! I have no reason to live!”
I feel exhausted. “How about for
yourself
, Eva? How about living for
yourself?
”
“I’ll kill myself, Lloyd!”

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