Late in the Season (24 page)

“Thank God,” Jonathan said.

“I think he’s adorable,” Dan came back. “And so does everyone else in this place.”

Jonathan contented himself with a “hmph.” He wasn’t going to get into an fight over the waiter.

“At least,” Dan amended, “everyone in the room who isn’t a temporarily demented pseudoheterosexual.”

Jonathan let that pass, without even a “hmph.” He looked over the room, inspecting faces. Most of those familiar to him had gone.

The appetizers arrived, and with their pâtés and salads, someone Jonathan vaguely recognized, who proved to be one of the owners, Dorian, a slightly aged, heavier and graying version of their waiter. He and Jonathan were reintroduced, and Dorian pulled a spare chair over for a few minutes of chitchat. Since Jonathan looked at the main floor most of the time, Dan had to do most of the chatting. Dorian was easily prodded into asking about London and the films he was directing, so this proved pleasant and gratifying to Dan. At one point, Jonathan, only half listening, thought he saw Stevie among a group of some six people looking in, inspecting the menu taped inside one huge window. He stared at the girl so long, so intently, even from this far away, that another party in the girl’s group noticed him and pointed him out. When the girl turned, Jonathan saw she was heavier, older than Stevie. He looked back to the table, to Dan and Dorian.

“This pâté isn’t half bad,” Dan announced after Dorian left.

Jonathan spent most of the meal distracted. The entrée was eaten methodically, mechanically; he scarcely tasted it. He thought about seeing her again.

He might not reach her tonight. Even tomorrow. She might have gone back to school directly from Sea Mist.

Was that possible? There seemed so many possibilities for what had happened at the train station: at the same time so many possible reconciliations too. He began imagining them. She would call, say she’d been out of town, at school, and had just gotten back, just gotten his call, and she’d be right over. Or he’d pick up his mail downstairs tomorrow where all the residents’ mailboxes were, and he would find a note hand-delivered from her, explaining the misunderstanding, asking him to contact her, or at least not making it seem as impossible, as final as that good-bye she’d supposedly asked Dan to tell him.

These fantasies soon devolved into coincidental meetings. They would encounter each other in the park some afternoon, by the little pond. She would be casual, shy. Their conversation would be tactful and delicate. She would calmly explain why she had left him at the train station. It would be something banal she’d had to do, something she’d already told him before they left Sea Mist if only he’d listened. He would then gently release the fact that Dan had gone back to London. They would kiss, walk through the park to his apartment—the leaves turning, spangled with sunlight like Japanese paper umbrellas. Upstairs, they would make love. She would cry for a minute. He would… His fantasies were broken by the waiter’s sudden arrival with a message.

“A party in the restaurant who wishes to remain anonymous would like to buy you drinks. May I take your order?”

His words snapped Jonathan back into reality.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

The waiter was prepared. “Are you Mr. Lash?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s who the drinks are for,” he said, rechecking the name on the tab.

Dan was looking out over the balcony; Jonathan supposed for the donor.

“It must be from Dorian,” he concluded.

“It’s not from the management,” the waiter said. “Another waiter gave me the message.”

As Jonathan continued to stare, Dan asked, “Well? How about brandies with our coffee?”

“Whatever,” Jonathan agreed.

“Who do you know here who would send us drinks anonymously?” Jonathan asked.

“Send
you
drinks, you mean. I didn’t see anyone. Maybe it’s one of your fans. Poor thing, cowering behind a potted palm, so pleased to have caught a glimpse of you.”

“Come off it,” Jonathan said. He tried to lapse back into his thoughts about Stevie. Where had he been?

When the waiter brought coffee and the drinks, he asked Jonathan, “Are you a celebrity or something?”

Dan had to hold a napkin over his face to suppress his mirth.

The waiter became embarrassed and began to withdraw.

“I’m a porno star,” Jonathan said on impulse. “Can’t you tell?”

“Oh,” he said tonelessly.

“Really, Jonathan,” Dan said, “you
are
a bundle of surprises these days. First you’re a latent hetero, then you have your claque following us, and now you’re in fuck flicks. I thought I knew you inside out.”

To avoid getting drawn into sparring with Dan, Jonathan excused himself from the table. He found a pay phone near the men’s room, and dialed the Locke residence. The machine answered again. As he passed the waiter, the boy looked at him closely, trying to figure out who exactly he was.

“I’m
not
a porno star,” Jonathan said.

“I didn’t think you were.”

He and Dan had no further words in the restaurant. Dan paid and they left.

“I guess you wouldn’t want to stroll through the park?” Dan asked when they reached Central Park West.

Jonathan saw what interested him, a pay phone across the street, on the edge of the park. It was the same to him whether they went right home or walked. He tried the number again, and again was greeted by the taped message. Each time this happened, it seemed to drain energy from him; at the same time it prompted him to call yet again. He began to feel like one of the animal subjects of behavioral modification lab experiments.

He allowed Dan to lead them onto a path south from the Seventy-second Street entrance, past a score of men sitting on the wrought iron railings.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to drag you into the Rambles and incite a gang rape so that you come to your senses. We’re walking in the park. Nothing else.”

A wind was soughing through the heavy foliage around them. Although it did nothing to cool the air, it did blow away some of the oppressive humidity. The path they took twisted down and around, and was well lighted until after they’d crossed a section of the highway that ribboned the park. Farther in, streetlights were broken; those still whole were covered by surrounding branches, quite dim.

“Isn’t it dangerous in here at night?” Jonathan asked. “Where are we going?”

They passed rows of benches and entered a small clearing which led to the wider expanse of the Sheep Meadow. Dan stopped and lay down on the grass. It was dry, it crackled beneath him.

Reluctantly, Jonathan joined him on the grass, although he remained sitting up. Why had Dan brought them here? It wasn’t as eerie as on the path. He could make out large dogs romping in the meadow in the distance, the frail shadows of their masters, leashes in hand, even farther away.

Jonathan lighted a cigarette and kept quiet. For the first time since he’d come into the city today, he felt the quiet around them.

“I used to come here at night, years ago,” Dan said. “I used to meet Ian, my first lover, here. I was still married to Janet, and I was afraid she’d find out. So we met here. Came here every night until it got too cold. We first met at the Central Park Zoo men’s room. Romantic, huh?”

“Are you sorry now you didn’t stay with Ian?” Jonathan asked. Why else would Dan have brought up the subject?

“No. I wouldn’t have left Janet for Ian. I didn’t, and I saw him almost a year. Whereas with you, well, that was only a few weeks, and I knew I’d have to get a divorce.”

“If you’re trying to pull a guilt trip on me, forget it.”

Dan remained silent: reorganizing his attack?

“If it
was
a misunderstanding with your teenager,” Dan began, “what do you plan to do? I don’t mean in the next week, or even in the next month. After that. Or have you thought about that?”

“Of course I’ve thought about it.” But Jonathan hadn’t, or at least hadn’t enough. Everything happened so fast, it surprised him. And it had continued so smoothly up to today, he’d simply assumed it would go on as smoothly, as though proving that it was the natural step for him, for them.

“Well?” Dan prodded. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m the one being dropped. And so I have to know
why
after all these years I’m being dropped.”

That was why Dan had brought him here, not to moon over memories of the lover who’d gotten away.

“You’re not being dropped.”

“What do you call it? Or don’t you even dignify it with a name?”

Silence again. Of course, now Jonathan was completely guilt-ridden. He
was
dropping Dan. Everyone else would see it that way. Even Janet would be on Dan’s side. Yet, yet, there was another way to see it. So he began to explain his position, explaining how Stevie was only symptomatic of a larger change he was going through, of a real change in his life. He found himself repeating his earlier words to Dan on the phone.

“Bullshit!” Dan interrupted. “That’s all rationalization. What happened is that you had a brief, exotic affair, with this attractive teenager, and now it’s over. That’s all. Why try to make something more out of it? At least she had the sense to see what it was—a little affair. How come you can’t?”

“You sound completely certain of that,” Jonathan said when Dan was done.

“I am.”

“Then how do you explain this—even if she won’t see me again, you’d better go back to London, now.”

Dan sat up. “You mean she was just an excuse.”

“She
wasn’t
an excuse.”

“An excuse for your wanting to break up.”

“She wasn’t an excuse,” Jonathan repeated. Then, and he felt it now, “But yes, I think we ought to break up now. Even if she won’t see me again.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just fed up with my life. I want to change it. I suppose I don’t like it,” Jonathan began. He went on to talk about Balzac’s tonight, how the restaurant had symbolized for him everything that seemed wrong about their lives together. How inbred it all was. How expected. How petty.

“That’s not so. We have all sorts of friends. Just because we go to a gay restaurant once doesn’t mean we’re stuck in a ghetto.”

Jonathan argued that they were. He felt closed in on all sides, not only here, but at Sea Mist too. His life seemed claustrophobic, his relationships empty and meaningless.

The more he spoke, the more Jonathan himself understood why this crisis had come. It was true. He’d never really thought it through before, but now that he had, it was clear, obvious, and truly a cause for despair. It was sad; he and Dan had good times together. But it was over. Like all good things. And maybe something would happen with Stevie. And maybe—and more likely—nothing. But at least Jonathan didn’t have to feel like a play-actor in a dead relationship, automatically going about being someone he wasn’t. Even in the relatively dim lighting, Jonathan could see Dan’s face harden as he spoke, his eyes flash.

“Are you through?” Dan interrupted. “Because I’d like to say something. I don’t know what’s gotten to you, whether it’s work on your score, or something with your collaborators, or what, but you say you feel a great lack in your life, a great emptiness and meaninglessness. Well, I’m surprised and sorry to hear it, because you never gave me previous evidence of any great lack. No,” he warned Jonathan not to interrupt, “I don’t feel empty or meaningless. I didn’t feel that way when I was twisted around last year with that boy. When I first met you, Jonathan, I said to myself, here he is. This is the brother, the lover, the friend, the boy, the grandfather, the man I’ve been looking for all my life. That’s how I thought you considered me too. I assumed we were together for the duration, thick and thin. It’s only since we’ve been together that I’ve gained enough confidence to do what I always thought I could never do: to have a career. I had my family, my friends, my career, and I had you. That was enough for me, Jonathan.”

Jonathan’s guilt washed over him, anger too. All he could say was, “I’m sorry about that, Dan. You were wrong.”

“I guess I was. Not only for myself. I don’t really understand your complaint anyway. You’ve got it easy.
We’ve
got it easy. Look around for a second, will you. Compare yourself, your life, to some of these poor schnooks who work in offices, who can’t create, who can’t entertain, can’t move people, who’ll live their lives without being the dozens of characters you and I can imagine. What about those sad queens you see dragging themselves from their desks to bars and nowhere else, people who’ve never been loved. People envy you. People admire you. People throw themselves at you, if you’d only come down to earth for a minute or two to see them.”

“Who?”

“Plenty of people. Amadea. When she looks at you, her face goes blank like someone slapped her.”

“Amadea? Are you
sure?”

“Plenty of people. Guys cruise you left and right. People send over drinks in restaurants as though you
were
a porno star!”