14 #2
Patrick feels his face heat, his own want coming into perfect focus, like the television antenna is finally pointing in the right direction.
Nathaniel hasn’t let himself want this, but now he is, and what he wants is Patrick.
Patrick hasn’t ever been particularly attracted to inexperience.
He understands the appeal, in an academic kind of way, because he remembers when men saw that quality in him.
But he’s afraid that he’d be drawn to whatever attitude Nathaniel had, that he’d be hungry to give Nathaniel whatever he wanted.
“I’m nearly forty,” Nathaniel says, dropping his forearm over his eyes. “This is absurd. I’m not some blushing ingénue.”
Patrick snorts. He pulls Nathaniel’s arm away from his face and doesn’t let go. “You’re a blushing something all right.”
“It’s dark. You can’t prove anything.”
Patrick rubs a thumb over the bones of Nathaniel’s wrist. “You did okay last time.”
“Damned with faint praise. Besides, you did all the work.”
“I can do all the work again.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
Patrick feels faintly hysterical. “Jesus Christ, impose all you like.”
“Fine,” Nathaniel sighs.
Patrick can’t take it anymore. He’s either going to start laughing or he’s going to kiss Nathaniel and he thinks the latter option will be more enjoyable and less embarrassing for both of them. He gets a hand on the back of the couch and leans in, halfway to a laugh when their lips meet.
Last time, Nathaniel hadn’t kissed back. It hadn’t really been that kind of kiss. This time, he still isn’t really kissing back—but his hand is on Patrick’s shoulder and his lips are soft and he’s very much letting himself be kissed. He makes a soft noise when Patrick deepens the kiss.
“You want this?” Patrick asks, his lips moving against the corner of Nathaniel’s mouth. He wants to hear it. He wants Nathaniel to hear it.
In answer, Nathaniel bites Patrick’s lower lip. Patrick hears himself make a noise, low and shocked, and he presses close. Nathaniel starts to lean back. If Patrick goes with him they’ll be lying on the couch. That’s fine, more than fine, but maybe not tonight.
Patrick pulls back, then, for good measure, gets to his feet. Nathaniel opens his eyes and gives Patrick one of his more withering glances. “So much for impose all you like,” Nathaniel says.
“If you imposed any more we were going to ruin my couch.”
“It’s a horrible couch.”
“I want you to keep wanting it,” Patrick says, and it feels like a confession, feels like they both know he meant I want you to keep wanting me .
* * *
“There’s some awful commotion on the roof,” Susan says one morning when Patrick comes to get Eleanor. “Last night it sounded like someone was jumping around up there.”
Patrick frowns, because from Susan’s apartment she shouldn’t be able to hear anything on the roof. “It’s probably squirrels in the attic.”
“There’s an attic?” Nathaniel asks.
“You can see it from the street,” Patrick says. “What did you think those dormers were?”
“I thought they were decorative,” Susan says. “How do you get to the attic?”
“The stairs? Honestly, where did you think the stairs went?”
“The roof?”
Now Susan and Nathaniel want to see the attic.
Whatever wild animals are up there aren’t any kind of deterrent.
They leave Eleanor asleep in her crib with Mrs. Valdez and Patrick unlocks the door to the attic stairs.
The lock is rusty enough that the key barely fits, but the door swings open easily enough.
The attic is a single low-ceilinged room with a pair of dormered windows at each end.
There’s no electricity up here, and the sunlight that filters through the dirty windows doesn’t do much good.
Patrick switches on his flashlight. It’s hot and stuffy, but when he tries to open a window, he finds that it’s been painted shut.
“I’ve only been up here a couple times,” Patrick says. He wasn’t storing anything under a roof that might leak, in an attic that might be full of mice and other creatures that like to destroy books.
It’s too dark to see much more than shapes, even with the flashlight. He doesn’t hear any animals scurrying away, so that’s promising, at least.
“Ooh,” Susan says when the beam from Patrick’s flashlight lands on a piano. It’s just a little upright—a spinet, he thinks it’s called—wedged against the sloping roof.
“Careful,” Patrick says as Susan crosses the room, picking her way around some junk.
She sits at the piano bench, dislodging a cloud of dust that briefly turns the flashlight beam into a solid thing, and plays a scale.
“It’s flat,” she says. “But only a little.” She starts to play “Heart and Soul,” then slides over.
“Come on,” she says, obviously expecting Nathaniel to play the other half of the duet.
But Nathaniel doesn’t move, so Patrick sits.
The bass part of “Heart and Soul” is the sum total of what he can play on the piano.
It’s like being dragged back in time to 1955, both of them sitting at the piano in the Larkins’ living room, Patrick dutifully turning the pages of whatever sheet music Susan bought with that week’s allowance.
“Unchained Melody.” “Mr. Sandman.” Like she’s reading his mind, she starts to play “Only You.” If Patrick shuts his eyes, he can believe that Michael is on the sofa behind them, calling out requests.
He can imagine that Mrs. Larkin is in the next room, making sure the Fitzgerald boys don’t get any ideas, but also making sure that they don’t go home without a serving of pot roast or meatloaf or whatever else she’s cooking.
Susan’s playing it all from memory, even though she can’t have played these songs in years. What must it be like to have all that stored up in her bones and tendons, the music and everything else that’s tangled up with it? Patrick doesn’t envy her.
Susan begins to play “Que Sera, Sera,” and all Patrick can think of is the way Michael used to pester her to play it.
And Patrick’s the one who turned out to be gay.
Susan isn’t singing along, but Patrick hears the lyrics anyway, and it doesn’t matter that they’re sentimental.
Most of the time he accepts what happened—not just Michael dying, but everything that came before it.
He can look at Eleanor and look at Susan and even look at his own life, and he can feel almost good about it all, practically hopeful.
But when he thinks of them as kids, it all shatters. He can’t stand the thought of anything bad happening to those kids.
When Susan finishes playing, Patrick scrubs his sleeve across his eyes, hoping it looks like the dust has gotten to him.
When he stands, he promptly hits his head on a rafter.
He knew there was a reason he never comes up here.
He hears what might be Susan sniffling or might not be anything at all, but if he stops to check they’ll both wind up crying. That won’t do anyone any good.
“I’ll get Eleanor and open the shop,” he says. He doesn’t wait to see if Susan and Nathaniel follow him.
When he enters the shop fifteen minutes later, a cup of tea is on his desk, and so is Nathaniel, sitting on the edge like he’s lying in wait.
“I realize this is wildly hypocritical of me,” Nathaniel says. “But even though I’m very much against emotions when they happen to me, I think it’s possible that refusing to feel anything at all fucks you up fairly comprehensively in the long run.”
“Susan doesn’t need me weeping all over her.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Give me a break.”
Nathaniel’s lips press together in plain disapproval. “I have a lot more experience than you do with all this. I wish I didn’t.”
Patrick doesn’t ask what all this means. He isn’t sure he has to, at this point. “And you don’t even talk about it.”
“Like I said, I’m a hypocrite. Also, not to be a terrible show-off, but I’m fantastic at repressing things, as you may have noticed.” He sighs. “I’m trying to do less of that. Drink your tea before it gets cold.” He stands, but before he leaves he puts a hand on Patrick’s shoulder.