16 #2
Beverly, a Times reporter a few years older than Patrick and Susan, comes in wearing a three-piece suit that has to be sweltering on such a warm day, but she stays long enough to weed out some of the more damaged books and stack them off to the side.
Viv is on the verge of tears to see the shop in such a state. “I came in to ask if you had a bulletin board, but you have your hands full.”
“We do have a bulletin board,” Nathaniel tells her, and points to the wall behind the cash register.
Right now, the bulletin board has a single piece of yellowed paper tacked to it, reading “NO RETURNS” in Patrick’s handwriting; it’s been there for so long that the edges are starting to curl.
The bulletin board isn’t a community message board.
Except, apparently it is, because Nathaniel tacks up a note saying a 45-year-old woman is looking for a roommate, written in a slanting blue copperplate that must be Viv’s handwriting.
John, a distractingly handsome square-jawed twentysomething who really isn’t Patrick’s type, but probably could be for an hour or two, comes in that afternoon. “Oh no,” he says. “What happened?”
“We had a break-in,” Patrick says. He thought that much was obvious. They didn’t have a localized earthquake.
John puts a few books away. Nathaniel reshelves every one of them.
“I’m trying to figure out who’s less subtle, Nathaniel or Captain America over there.” Susan asks.
Patrick snorts. “Nathaniel’s just being territorial.”
“Is he, now?” Eleanor, in a shawl tied around Susan’s back, tries to grab every book that comes within reach of her chubby fingers. “Is Captain America waiting for you to make a move?” Susan asks.
“I can’t get a read on what he’s doing. And he’d be a lot of trouble, anyway.”
“How so?”
“Look at him. That is a man who’s voting for Nixon. He’s probably deep in the closet, probably hates himself a little. And I’m sorry, but I can’t fuck someone who doesn’t think we deserve to fuck legally and without feeling bad about it.”
“How can you tell?” Susan asks. “His hair? His clothes?”
“You get to know the type.”
“Is Nathaniel that type?”
Patrick hesitates. “Used to be.”
They both glance over to where Nathaniel has stopped tailing John and is instead lightly flirting with a pair of elderly women in a way that Patrick can somehow identify as distinctly gay.
Patrick lowers his voice even more, nearly to a whisper. “He was married.”
“I thought so. The two of you…”
Patrick hasn’t mentioned anything to Susan about him and Nathaniel.
For one thing, it’s only been two kisses.
But mostly he feels like he’d need to run it by Nathaniel first; Susan’s his friend too.
And he can’t figure out how to ask whether he’s allowed to tell his friend about two kisses without it sounding extremely junior high.
But he also isn’t going to lie to Susan. “How bad is it that he works for me?”
“He can get work as a session musician whenever he wants, earning more than you pay him, and he knows it. He also knows he can have my spare room if he ever needs it.”
“You’ve talked about this with him?”
“I’ve talked about this at him.”
They’re friends; of course Susan is looking out for him.
But a few months ago she could barely take care of herself, and a few months ago Nathaniel didn’t have anybody in the world.
And now they all have one other, a thought that ordinarily would be too sentimental for Patrick to entertain, but it’s been a long and dramatic day, so he kisses Susan’s forehead and Eleanor’s cheek.
* * *
Patrick isn’t surprised to find Nathaniel awake late that night.
He’s lying on the sofa, his head on the armrest, a book face down on his chest and the flashlight dangling from his hand.
When he sees Patrick, he tucks his legs up.
Patrick sits and hauls Nathaniel’s legs onto his lap.
He’s being a little touchier than he’d usually be, but he feels like they crossed some kind of Rubicon that morning.
“Want to watch television?” Patrick asks.
“It’s nearly one. There won’t be anything on.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not at all,” Nathaniel says. Patrick squeezes his ankle. The book Nathaniel isn’t reading is Alpha Centauri or Die! , Patrick’s own paperback copy from the shelf a few inches from Nathaniel’s head. From the looks of it, he hasn’t gotten further than the title page.
“I’m starving,” Nathaniel says a few minutes later.
“There’s still some fried rice downstairs,” Patrick says, not feeling particularly thrilled about cold rice and even less thrilled about heating it up.
“I don’t want fried rice. I want pancakes.”
“Pancakes,” Patrick repeats, his mouth watering at the thought. “We might have ingredients.” He tries to remember if he’s ever bought flour. Probably not.
“Having to make them ourselves would ruin it.”
Nobody has ever been more correct about anything. “We could go out. The Waverly is open.”
“Let’s go someplace new.”
“There’s a twenty-four-hour diner on Twenty-second Street, if you’re up for a walk.”
They put on shoes and jackets and head toward Eighth Avenue.
This neighborhood doesn’t really quiet down until last call at four o’clock, and then it wakes up again two hours later, so right now there are about the same number of people on the sidewalks as you’d see in a smaller city in the middle of the afternoon.
When they get to Twenty-second Street, there’s no sign of a diner, twenty-four-hour or otherwise. Either he got the location wrong or the diner shut down.
“There’ll be something at Times Square, if you don’t mind walking twenty minutes more. And if you don’t mind a little sordidness.”
“I love sordidness almost as much as I love pancakes.”
Patrick snorts.
“I’m serious. I like the reminder that there’s another way.”
“Another way from what?”
“The right way,” Nathaniel says, the word right soaked through with scorn. “I wasted so much time making myself into the precise sort of person I thought I was supposed to be, and it didn’t do me any good. It didn’t do anyone any good.”
It occurs to Patrick that whatever Nathaniel’s doing right now, it’s a choice.
Whatever life he used to have, he could go back, or he could get steady work as a session musician.
Instead he’s sleeping in Patrick’s miserable spare room and debating the finer points of guitar tuning with Susan.
It might have started as a last resort but at some point Nathaniel decided to stay, or maybe just decided not to leave—or at least decided to stick around for a while.
“People don’t always choose the other way, you know,” Patrick says. “The hustlers and junkies might love the chance to have a pension and a mortgage.”
“True.” They’re silent for a minute, the only sounds their shoes on the sidewalk and the sporadic hum of sparse nighttime traffic. “Did you make a choice?” Nathaniel asks.
“I dropped out of high school.”
“Was that a choice?”
“I could have gone back to my aunt and uncle’s house and finished school,” Patrick says. “They didn’t kick me out.” He could have finished school; he could have done anything other than leave Michael alone with his aunt and uncle.
“You know,” Nathaniel says, “you don’t usually try to bullshit me.”
“I could have gone back to school,” Patrick repeats.
“And I didn’t.” He used to think he should go to night school and maybe eventually get a college degree, but he had a job he liked; a degree seemed pointless.
Sometimes he still thinks he should have tried anyway, should have taken the path that would lead toward a job at an insurance firm or someplace else boring and safe.
“Why not?”
That job at the insurance firm would have come with scrutiny and would have meant having a double life.
Right now, Patrick doesn’t have to hide, he doesn’t have to worry about getting fired, he doesn’t even have to worry about awkward interactions with his colleagues.
“I think I would have been miserable if I’d tried to have that kind of life,” Patrick says, very gently.
As they get further uptown, the sidewalks empty out. He wouldn’t think twice if he was by himself. He’s never been mugged, maybe because of his size or because he doesn’t look like someone who has money, or maybe he’s just gotten lucky. “Do you want to turn around and go to the Waverly?”
“Let’s keep going,” Nathaniel says.
“It’s seedy,” Patrick says when they get closer. “Just warning you. There are hustlers and prostitutes. Peep shows. Dirty movies.”
Nathaniel makes a dismissive sound, but when they reach Times Square he goes still, looking up at the flashing signs, the billboards, the lights.
There’s an enormous advertisement for Gordon’s, in which a bottle about the size of a city bus pours gin into a rocks glass.
Right next to it is a billboard for another liquor.
There are also at least four shoe stores, for some reason.
Patrick turns away from the signs and looks at Nathaniel, his face illuminated by the yellow lights.
“There’s the diner,” Nathaniel says.
It has exactly the sort of clientèle you’d expect at this hour: prostitutes, alone or in pairs; a few solitary middle-aged men; a group of giggling kids who look like they stopped here on the way home from a nightclub; some men in coveralls having lunch during the night shift.
It’s not a cheerful crowd, but most places get a little moody during that no man’s land between late night and early morning.
The air is thick with cigarette smoke and burned coffee.
Frank Sinatra plays tinnily on the radio.
“Has it always been like this?” Nathaniel asks after they order their pancakes. Patrick doesn’t need him to clarify exactly what he means.