Chapter 20 #2
“No. It’s because we ought not involve ourselves in missions with Italian gangsters. I can’t believe I allowed that to happen.”
“You talk like you’re my father.” I nearly laughed through my shallow breaths.
“Sometimes you do need supervision,” he said, with depth.
“Probably so. I’m a sack of trash. Not pretty and rich like you.”
“You’re plenty pretty, Nick.” He rubbed a thumb against my cheek. “You’re just down on yourself.”
I turned to face him. “Am I not a social experiment? Like West Egg? You really like me?” I was a slurring mess, swaying left
to right.
“You’re falling over, Nick . . .” Jay reached over and caught me, pulling my shoulders so my posture was straight. “I wouldn’t
lie to you about liking you.”
I was obsessed with him. His beauty, his aura, and our banter, which did something for me even after being beaten alongside him.
I was hopeless to stop our magnetism, hopeless to stop hinging my zest for life on the destructive attraction that bloomed so quickly between me and Jay.
But any friendship must bloom slowly with care so that it would be stable and make sense.
Otherwise, it wasn’t a friendship. It was something else entirely.
Jay unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off his arms. It snagged a bit at the biceps, but he tugged it off and used it to wipe
my mouth. The chain glinting around his neck, catching some of the light in this alleyway . . . I remembered that it was his
mother’s. I understood why he’d want to wear her around everywhere—I missed my mother too.
I played with the chain. He straddled my thighs, lifted a flask to my face, tipped my head back, and siphoned icy water down
my throat.
I gulped. “Thank you . . .” And I gulped some more.
“Don’t leave my sight in the juice joint again.” It came as an order I was willing to obey.
One of Jay’s hands tucked the flask back in his back pocket, and the other stayed near my chin.
“Why are you bossing me around all of a sudden?” I asked.
“Because you’re mine,” he said.
I felt one step away from breaking down. Or my longing had completed its circle with mutual desire. Or both. I felt undeserving
when he cupped a hand behind my neck, and then deeply important when he kissed me.
The kiss commanded us to lean in, and then we started speaking to each other that way—with our lips. I told him silently that
I understood his pain.
He told me that he knew how grief marked my bones like spit stains in the sidewalk, like fingerprints on door handles. My grief built more grief like construction workers built buildings to put this city’s nature into an early grave. He didn’t get it, not quite, but he’d support me through it.
When I kissed Jay back, all my sorrow had somewhere to go.
And when he pulled away, he said, “You’re mine.” Once more for emphasis. He leaned into my face, so my head was cupped between
his shoulder and chest. “Okay?”
“Okay.” His chest swallowed my words so they landed in his aorta, right where they should be—right where I aimed them.
Okay. I would give into his little kisses and orders. Because with him, Clumsy Nick was more than just a weakling, more than
just a mistress, and more than just a friend! Nick Carrington, edition three, was not another cog in the machine. Because
Jay saw something extra in me. Something in my personality that dazzled like elegant jewelry, and it was so rare, so untouched
that even I couldn’t see it!
But I had this pretty boy’s attention! The boy whose beauty was as vibrant as the alleyway’s gaslights. That meant that I
was enough, with all my fractures and hitches, all the ways that I tripped, and all my confusion too.
We went back to Jay’s place when we finally got off our butts. We had to tiptoe into his ensuite bathroom because his father
was home, and this was the second time we’d been beaten up this year, so now we’d really be in trouble, even worse than last
time.
Jay turned on the bathwater to let it run, undressed, and left his clothes in the shape of a Christmas tree skirt at his feet. “I have a lovely house, don’t I?” he said. “I’ll miss it when we take off.”
Jay opened the balcony doors and angled his golden telescope at the house across the way, watching Buchanan’s. The boat lights
from the lake outlined the tower of his backside as he rolled a marijuana cigarette on the railing.
I joined him, standing slightly behind him, and we watched the lake. The room felt like an oasis on the Mediterranean Sea
or the most important room in a palace. So far away from everything I’d started with. If we lived together, I’d want a little
wooden swing hanging from the tree out front to remember the countryside I came from.
I swayed some in the breeze and asked, “Are you a homosexual?”
He laughed, as if amused. “What? I don’t like that.”
“What don’t you like?”
“The word.”
“Why?”
He took a drag from the cigarette. “Because . . . what’s the point? It’s supposed to be describing an identity, but it’s got
the word sexual in it.”
I truly hated the smell of smoke. I wished he wouldn’t do it anymore.
“The way you held me tonight . . .” I began.
“You had just been beat up and you were in pain.”
“You kissed me.”
Jay turned around harshly, as if I’d struck him. “So? I held you as anyone who’d just been beaten in the streets ought to be held.” His voice was strong and defensive. “Is that bad? Did it make you uncomfortable?”
“No. I’m just thinking about it.”
He took a breath and softened his expression. “Keep thinking. I like that about you.” Jay looked like his father when he closed
the balcony doors. More like a man.
He sauntered to the bathtub, naked body waving loose in the wind, arms like taut Roman marble. He needed a laurel crown. He
needed a sword.
“When you picture yourself in the future do you see a wife?” I asked. “Kids?”
“I don’t picture myself in the future,” he said. “Mostly, I picture myself now.”
The tub was filled, so he turned off the knob and sank into the hot water. Then he beckoned to me, bubbles and water dripping
from one slick arm.
Arms folded in my robe, I drew toward the tub. “I . . . I’m worried.” Remember to breathe. “The heat of the water will hurt my wounds.” Everywhere was hurting, from my temples to my knees.
Jay found a quick solution by turning the cold knob. Then he lounged back, arms gracing the candlelight, waiting for my next
excuse.
“Shall I join you?” I asked.
“You must.”
Every step across the tile was like one into the ocean, with the waves rising higher to slap me in the mouth. I may as well not have had a mouth, the way I was skipping breaths.
I was very cold when I dropped the robe. I hurried into the tub as Jay turned the water off, and I sat across from him on
the other side. His toe grazed the bottom of my leg and, with this sadness in his eyes, traced its way up my calf. I still
felt breathy, like an iron puffing steam.
“Would you have me as you’ve had one of your girls?” I asked.
“As I have had one of my girls?” he said, as if the question was ridiculous. “In what way have I had anyone?”
“Haven’t you?”
“Haven’t I what?”
“Like . . . done it.”
“Nick, what does this have to do with us? You’re different from any girl I’ve been with in every way. I’d have you in the
way I can have you without comparing you to anyone else.”
But Jay and someone else made more sense—even Daisy. She was perfect, like him. I understood why his father wanted her for
him.
“I just feel like I am invading,” I said.
“You’re not invading,” Jay said.
“And it’s probably because lots of people have tried to destroy me in the past. I can’t bear another second of being destroyed
so I want to push it away. If you regret today, don’t pretend—better to tell me on the spot so I can just leave. I’m too sensitive
for that.”
“As am I,” Jay said. “We have the same perspective, but you’re endlessly stuck in the future or the past while I choose the
present moment.”
“We don’t have the same perspective. Not by a long shot.”
“Fine,” he said, instantly resigning. “I won’t fool with yours if you don’t fool with mine.”
If my heart was an apple falling from a tree, Jay Gatsby was quicksand or padded leaves. I didn’t trust him all the way. Somehow,
I still couldn’t trust him, however much I told myself to do just that.
But before I met him, I was used to starting sentences and being interrupted. I was used to waiting for things to happen rather
than making them happen myself. At least he let my words leave my mouth. And he encouraged me to do more. If Jay was going
to betray me—be it for our current scheme or for some reason in the future—I was willing to take the risk. It was better than
letting the possibility of Jay, and our freedom together, die.
“Thank you for not saying mean things,” Jay said, in a soft voice. He moved closer to me in the water, and I followed. For
every inch, I went a centimeter, until our fingers were grazing, and he was exploring them like the twigs of some twisted
shrub.
He washed me, cleaning the open wounds the fiends left on my head, the bruises they left on my neck. I took deep breaths to
remind myself it was okay for it to hurt, until my head was on his shoulder, arm resting on his leg, and we were facing the
same way.
His water was soft, a water you didn’t want to step out of. I once had nowhere to bathe—after hopping off that train I thought
I might die. The finer things felt so nice when you’d known struggle and poverty. I never wanted to go back to the basic way.
The minutes stretched closer to an hour, and Jay broke apart from me and got out of the tub. He dressed us each in silk robes, one white and one blue, but then he asked, “Can I draw you?” He went to the bookshelf in the next room and pulled down a sketchpad and pencil.
“Draw me doing what?”
“Just existing. In your underwear, of course. Just so that I have you—a version of you—in case you ever slip through my fingers.”
I followed his lead, enticed by how far this could go. I dropped my robe on the way to the cushy red velvet sofa in his bedroom.
It had to be a two-hundred-pound piece of furniture that formed caverns of light and shadow in its cushion pattern.
I lay down and stretched my wings like a pterodactyl under the floor lamp.
I could see his work as he drew. Jay sketched my face with no mouth, eyes, or nose, but made my nipples so very pointy. He
had the vein in my shoulder streaking like watermelon skin, and he put a wrinkle in the underwear. But he left out the bruises
and scars.
All I could do as I posed was think of how I wanted to live with him in a secluded home with a field that went on forever,
its beauty folding over the earth, us folding with it.
I couldn’t go back to Harlem that night. So, after the drawing was done, we lay down in his bed together.
I was worried I’d do something wrong because every moment felt so right—too right. “How sad would you be if I died?” I asked
in the end.
“Please, Nick.”
“Answer?”
“Very, very sad. And this is morbid.” He wrapped his arms around me.
I tucked my hands under the pillow as he grabbed my body and pulled me into him. “I’m glad you stopped hiding yourself,” he
whispered into my neck.
I didn’t have eloquent compliments to give him in return. Only desperate, unreasonable requests, like Hold me forever.
It was only dreaming. This would only be real for a fleeting time, as Jay still pulled away from his truth. Jay thought the
word homosexual was too sexual. I didn’t think it was. It was simply a label, like saying someone was human—there could be dignity in it,
if you gave it dignity.
I am a homosexual. That says nothing, by itself. The meaning of words was up to us; how we felt about them was also up to us.
“Thank you,” Jay muttered, into my neck.
I didn’t know what for, but he fell asleep waiting for a response. I stayed up for hours in turn, pondering my past and wishing
I could make it leave me alone.