22 #2
“I did, sometimes.” Never as much as he thought he’d be doing. “Mostly I wrote reports about Eastern Europe.”
“Why did you quit?”
“It turns out,” Nathaniel says, “that the agency cares nearly as little for Americans as it does for Vietnamese and Hungarians and Cubans. Evidently I can excuse a lot of evil, but I draw the line close to home. Or, I used to.”
“Some people are true believers,” Patrick says.
Nathaniel winces at hearing his own words echoed back at him. “I was. But that’s no excuse. Listen, Patrick, I’ll leave if you want me to.”
“I’m not kicking you out.”
“You wouldn’t be. I’m offering. I saved nearly all the money I made this year.”
“And you have that pension,” Patrick says. “Probably other money, too.”
“I’m not touching any of that. Ill-gotten gains.” He’d told Susan the same thing.
“What would you do?”
“Susan says I can get work as a session musician. She won’t want to work with me anymore when she finds out, but I think I could find work without her help. I was looking at the ads in the Village Voice and I think I can afford a room.”
“Do you want to move out?”
“No! God, no. I’d stay forever, if I could.”
Finally, Patrick rolls to face Nathaniel. “Then why the fuck are you looking at the classified ads?”
“Because I’m not going to ask you to share your bed and your”—Nathaniel gestures around helplessly—“your whole life with someone who stood for the opposite of everything you love in the world.”
“I know who you are now. I don’t really care who you used to be.”
“Well, you should.”
“Maybe, but it’s too late. I love you, and I can’t just turn that off, you know?”
Of all the things he’s done, letting Patrick love him might be the worst. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.”
“You should be.”
“Stop telling me what to think. The dog needs a walk. Are you coming or not?”
Nathaniel throws on some clothes, even though he wants to give Patrick an alphabetized inventory of all the reasons he shouldn’t want to be around Nathaniel.
When they reach the sidewalk, they both squint at the sun. Walt looks over his shoulder, judgmental, when they don’t get a move on. Patrick’s hair is everywhere and he has a bruise on his neck from where Nathaniel kissed him. It’s like looking at something he stole in the dead of night.
“Cornelia or Barrow,” Patrick asks, naming the two directions for Walt’s quick morning walk.
“Cornelia,” Nathaniel says, and they turn right onto West Fourth. When they turn onto Sixth Avenue, the sounds of a basketball game—even at nine o’clock on a weekday morning—rise above the traffic.
Patrick buys a paper at the newsstand, sticking it under his arm without reading it. “I knew you did something you weren’t proud of. I already knew that. And it didn’t stop me from…”
So, Patrick isn’t going to say it again, isn’t going to repeat that he loves Nathaniel. It’s just as well.
“What were you hiding from when you came here?” Patrick asks as he’s unlocking the shop door and holding it open for Nathaniel.
“I copied some files. I was worried that they were going to make sure I didn’t show them to anyone.”
“And you aren’t worried about that anymore.”
“There are dozens of people who know the same secrets I do.” Nathaniel knows that what he’s telling Patrick is the truth, even though he isn’t sure it’s ever going to feel like the truth.
“They might want to make sure I don’t sell my secrets to Moscow.
Or to the New York Times .” Nathaniel hadn’t intended to suggest that the agency considers Moscow and the paper of record equivalent threats, but that might not be inaccurate. “At worst, they’ll keep an eye on me.”
“What’s in these papers?”
Nathaniel swallows. “Proof that they’re spying on Americans they’ve decided are subversive.”
“And that was what made you quit?”
“That was the last straw.”
Patrick nods, like that’s in any way a satisfactory answer, and proceeds to oil his typewriter.
As he’s loading a piece of letter paper, he mentions that he’s writing to a San Francisco collector who wants an 1880s Leaves of Grass , and who Patrick thinks might be willing to pay for that inscribed book he bought from Maud Dempsey’s estate.
Nathaniel picks up takeout from the soul food restaurant on Grove Street for a late lunch, and they eat enough chicken and waffles to feel a little sleepy.
It’s such a normal day, such a lovely and boring and typical day, and Nathaniel can feel his heart breaking.
Patrick’s words, “it’s too late,” echo in Nathaniel’s ears.
That night, Patrick says, “If Michael came home, and he’d done terrible things, I’d have loved him, you know? Loving him wouldn’t have meant that I supported whatever it was he did over there. I’d be upset that he was put in a position—”
“Nobody put me in any position,” Nathaniel says. “I could have walked away. I wasn’t drafted, I wasn’t under orders.”
“I know. I guess what I mean is that you signed up for what you thought were good reasons, and—”
“Patrick, it will break my heart if I have to listen to you compromising yourself to make me into someone good enough for you to respect.”
“For fuck’s sake, I don’t care if you’re good .”
“You practically stopped talking to your brother because he didn’t fight the draft!”
“I was furious with him because I didn’t want him to leave . I couldn’t stand the idea of him dying for no reason and just going along with it.”
Nathaniel could kick himself, because Jerome practically told him as much.
What had he said? Patrick’s always ready for people to leave him on the side of the road like an old mattress.
And here Nathaniel is, offering to leave.
No—it’s worse than that. Nathaniel has backed them both into a corner where the only solution is for Nathaniel to leave.
He hurts Patrick if he goes, and he hurts Patrick if he stays.
Patrick rubs a hand across his beard. “I don’t care if you’re good,” he repeats. “I care that you’re you.”
Nathaniel doesn’t know what he could possibly say to that, so he gets Walt’s leash and walks him around the block.
When he gets back, he heads directly into the shower, hoping that by the time he’s done Patrick will be in bed with the door shut, and they can avoid the issue of where Nathaniel is or isn’t sleeping.
But when he comes out Patrick is waiting for him, leaning against the wall opposite the bathroom, like he needs to intercept Nathaniel before he makes a break for it. He isn’t wearing a shirt, which is just unfair.
“Come on,” Patrick says. “Time for bed.” He points toward his bedroom, so Nathaniel can’t even pretend to misunderstand.
Nathaniel climbs into the bed, and Walt follows so they have to go through the usual routine of reminding him that he’s a dog and doesn’t sleep on the bed.
It’s basically the same as every night for over a month.
Two seconds after Patrick pulls the chain to put out his bedside lamp, they’re kissing, Patrick’s hand on Nathaniel’s jaw, his body heavy and warm.
“You are good,” Patrick says. “I should have said that before. You’re good to me. You’re good to the Valdez kids, to Susan and Eleanor—”
“Being good to the people I love isn’t the same. It just isn’t.” In the dark quiet closeness of the bed, it sounds like a plea.
Patrick kisses him again, harder this time. Nathaniel slides a hand along the muscles of Patrick’s back, then tugs him closer.
“Yeah?” Patrick asks.
Nathaniel wonders how many people have ever been fucked to prove a point about wartime ethics, or whatever is going through Patrick’s mind. Nathaniel knows that isn’t precisely the point Patrick is making.
Later, when he’s sure Patrick is sleeping soundly, he slips out of the apartment. He spins the combination of the lock.
He’s been thinking of what he told Patrick, that what the agency would be most worried about is Nathaniel giving this information to the Soviets or the press.
Well, he has no intention of giving anything to the Soviets.
But the New York Times, on the other hand.
That might accomplish something. Seeing those files with his own eyes had ruptured the last shreds of trust Nathaniel had in this organization—maybe in the entire government.
It might do the same thing for other people.
Things could change, not just with how the agency operates.
People might demand a government they can trust.
Or it might just explode Nathaniel’s life, get him charged with treason or something equally ruinous, and bring everybody he loves into scrutiny they don’t want.
He imagines telling that to Patrick and Susan, imagines telling them he can’t do the right thing because he needs to protect them.
Susan would hand deliver the envelope to the Times herself.
Patrick would be more worried about Nathaniel’s safety, but love has made Patrick an unreliable moral compass.
He has the number of a Times reporter and not a single excuse not to use it.
When Viv put up that flier looking for a room to rent, Beverly left Nathaniel with her phone number to pass on to Viv.
And he did pass it on to her, but not before entering it onto a card and sliding it into Patrick’s new Rolodex.
He can’t change the last twenty years, but he can make sure the next thing he does is something he can live with.
In the morning, he offers to walk Walt and pick up the paper. At the pay phone on the corner, he pulls the Rolodex card from his pocket and makes a call.