Once Robbie was out of view, Carlo swung into a U-turn and drove up the hill slowly, and once again, at the point where Carlo should have swerved off to the west, he paused and looked
the other way down the street at Robbie, at his back as he headed around the Reservoir at an eager pace.
And Carlo let him disappear again, but why hadn’t he pulled up alongside Robbie and stopped him and shouted, Hey, handsome! Why hadn’t he pulled up alongside his boyfriend and asked how he was feeling? Why hadn’t he asked, What are you thinking about, Robbie? It wasn’t a mystery: Carlo didn’t actually
want
to know what Robbie was thinking about. His latest notions about Tom—Carlo didn’t want to know, and he also didn’t want Robbie politely asking the same of him. And what’s on your mind, signor? What’s
your
latest obsession?
The engineer called Carlo on his cell phone—he was running late, too—which left Carlo sitting in his car by a slope of weeds and remembering how in college, he and Robbie used to study at the GSD, but Robbie wasn’t nearly as engaged by design as Carlo was, not initially. When graduate school first came up, Robbie derisively labeled an MA a creative person’s law degree, a default course of study when one didn’t know what else to do with one’s life. He changed his mind about architecture and ultimately proved an abler student than Carlo, but Carlo suddenly found himself besieged by what-if’s, like what if Robbie hadn’t attended graduate school with Carlo, and what if they hadn’t gone into practice together? Robbie had been talented at so many things—would he have pursued film? Would he have followed an academic plot and gone into literature or anthropology or philosophy? Would he have become the better chef and gone to culinary school? Would he then have wanted to open a restaurant? Or would he maybe have become a psychotherapist? Because Robbie the avid listener would have made a good therapist. Would
he have become a school teacher? Patient, enthusiastic-about-everything Robbie would have made a good teacher. And then would he have wanted children? What would Robbie’s life have been like if had he fallen out of love with Carlo? In what city would Robbie live? Would he still be back East and closer to his family? Would he have a boyfriend? Yes, of course he would have a boyfriend, but what would this man look like and would he be smart? Yes, of course he would be smart, but about what kind of things?
Carlo jumped when the engineer rapped his knuckles on his windshield. He hadn’t seen him pull up to the site or get out of his car. Carlo had managed to agitate himself greatly, although he wasn’t sure which was more disturbing, that he could fluidly imagine alternate lives for Robbie or that he wasn’t inclined to ask the same questions about himself. Without Robbie, what would
his
own life look like? Carlo had no idea. He had no idea at all.
It was strange enough to spy on Robbie walking around the lake and strange, too, when Carlo came home in the early evening and found Robbie’s note saying he’d gone to a reading, but it was beyond strange, it was disconcerting and unsettling when Carlo went into the bedroom to change and noticed a slim black object atop the dresser: an address book, an old address book of soft pages and years of notations—Tom Field’s address book.
Which explained how Robbie had located Tom’s grandmother. Carlo left the address book where he’d found it and decided not to mention it to Robbie, but he had to wonder, why did Robbie have this thing in his possession and did the police know he did? What was Robbie up to, what kind of sleuthing? Had
Tom said something to someone about his encounters with Carlo? Was Robbie now trying to trace Tom back to Carlo? Could he?
• • •
H
E TRIED TO CONVINCE HIMSELF
he was becoming paranoid, but Carlo couldn’t stop fretting and during the night got up and went into the kitchen, where he drafted an ambitious to-do list, improvising extra tasks because keeping Robbie busy, especially if he wasn’t going to come in to work, might prevent him from over-pondering Tom’s death, or Tom’s life, from looking into matters Carlo did not want Robbie looking into. This way, too, Carlo could keep better tabs on Robbie’s whereabouts if Robbie was home polishing the silver et cetera and not at large in the city. Not that this would work, but it was the only thing Carlo could think of at the moment to move Robbie away from Tom.
Saturday morning Carlo went into the office because there was plenty of work to do on the television producer’s house (the producer phoned twice while Carlo sat at his desk letting the calls go to voice-mail), yet he found himself thinking about his fountain, which he now envisioned as a slate square pool amid a little slate patio, with moss growing up at the edges, and some wildflowers, and maybe grasses, maybe a row of hopseed bushes to screen the neighbors on the property below. What he was picturing was a neat hideaway that you wouldn’t be able to see from the house or even the upper patio, a retreat where he would, well, retreat. What he imagined was taking a very long nap, with a pond gurgle in the background, a rejuvenating bise brushing down the hillside, rocking him in his hammock.
He pushed aside the specs he’d been working on for the producer’s villa and began doodling what he had in mind for his secret garden, and his doodles gradually became more composed illustrations. He had
some pastel pencils in his desk drawer, and he began adding color. He lost himself in the movement of his pencil-gripping hand and there was something delightfully familiar about the emerging indentation in his index finger, the soft pencil against his skin. He used to draw, once, and he used to paint in oils, and painting had brought him such an unabashed joy. He was never so very brilliant an abstractionist, but he liked mixing color, juxtaposing fields of color, dense saturated color. He’d stopped making canvases when he and Robbie bought their house. When they were moving, he’d either given away or sold all of his paintings. Why had he given up something he loved doing? Because painting wasn’t serious and he needed strictly to engage in serious endeavors?
As was his habit lately, he ended up standing in the front window, pensive, staring at nothing in particular. When he saw Gabriel coast up to the liquor store across the street, Carlo stepped out to the sidewalk to shout hello, but before he did, he fell back against the door because a car drove past, coasting toward the lake, a long black sedan. It didn’t slow down, but Carlo could see them, the men in the front seat, the men in the backseat, dark hair, scruffy, trouble.
It was the ambush car, it was the carjackers, the fuckers, it was them.
Or not. No, of course it wasn’t them, how could it be them, he was being silly. The car sped up the hill toward the lake. Who’s a silly man? It wasn’t them, he told himself again, even as a part of him held on to that possibility.
A short while later, Gabriel emerged from the liquor store. By this point, Carlo was sitting on the shallow stoop of his building, his elbows on his knees. Gabriel looked at him a moment,
weighing, it seemed, whether to cross the boulevard, which he did on foot, his skateboard tucked under his arm. He stood in front of Carlo a moment.
“What’s wrong?” the boy asked.
Which was what Carlo was about to ask him—Gabriel was squinting as if he had the sun in his eyes, which he didn’t. Something was eating him.
“Nothing,” Carlo said and stood and locked his office door. “Come with me,” he said, and hooked the boy’s arm, guiding him around the side of the building to his car parked in back, indicating the boy should get in.
“Where are we going?” the boy asked.
“Nowhere special,” Carlo said, and for some reason the boy did not question him and obediently slipped into the passenger seat with his skateboard resting against his knees, although when they turned out onto the street, he did sink low in his seat, very low as if to avoid being seen.
“This is kidnapping,” Gabriel said. “Help,” he said. “Help, help.”
“Oh, be quiet,” Carlo said.
“Help.”
Carlo’s first stop was the hardware store to pick up a pair of heavier-duty shears, and while he was at it, a new shovel to replace a rusted-out one. Then he drove the boy back to his house.
“You aren’t, like, expecting to put me to work or anything,” Gabriel said.
“The thought had occurred to me,” Carlo said.
“It’s supposed to rain, you know.”
“It won’t.”
There was a pause in the conversation and Gabriel looked the way he did when he stepped out of the liquor store, acidic, without bearings.
“Do you want to tell me what’s troubling you?” Carlo asked, expecting to be rebuffed.
“It’s complicated,” Gabriel said.
Pause.
“How so?” Carlo asked.
“Well, for starters, I owe someone something.”
“Owe who what?”
Gabriel didn’t answer.
“Who, Lonny?” Carlo asked.
Gabriel said nothing.
“What, money?” Carlo asked.
Again nothing.
Carlo tried and failed to contain a sigh.
“You owe Lonny money. For what?”
Gabriel gazed out the passenger-side window.
Never mind for what, Carlo thought. He didn’t want to know for what.
“How much are we talking about, a hundred?” Carlo asked.
Which elicited a laugh.
“Two hundred? More? Five? A thousand?” Carlo asked.
Gabriel shrugged.
Carlo shook his head and said, “Okay,” although he didn’t know what he meant when he said okay. “Maybe you can work it off—I’ll pay you.”
Gabriel shot him a look: Oh, right, work off a grand working for you.
“We’ll figure something out,” Carlo said. “Don’t worry about it right now,” he said.
“You’ll loan me the money?” Gabriel asked.
“I said don’t worry about it,” Carlo said.
And Gabriel relaxed his frown, grinned, and said, “Thanks.”
Carlo nodded. Had he just offered to loan a teenager a thousand dollars to pay off a drug debt, money he didn’t have in the bank to give away, which is what it would amount to, a gift? However, the boy was smiling and that was worth something for the time being.
Robbie wasn’t home. Carlo led the boy through the house and out back, the new shears and shovel in hand, collecting work gloves and trash bags and other tools on the way down to the bottom of the property. Most of the area he wanted to clear was covered with a gnarled mass of unfruited ficus, all the stalks heavy with rotting leaves. Where there wasn’t the ficus, there were menacing patches of bearish acanthus. Carlo handed the boy the shovel and a pair of gloves, saving the shears for himself, which he held in front of him like a divining rod. His only instruction was, “All this comes out,” before he began hacking indiscriminately at some acanthus vines.
Gabriel leaned on the shovel, watching.
“What are you waiting for?” Carlo asked. “Start digging.”
“You’re paying me for this, right?” Gabriel asked.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Carlo said. “Dig.”
The boy hesitated a moment longer, but then he went at the vines, too, pulling at them, throwing his heel against the shovel head, while Carlo chopped and tugged at the waxy plants. They said nothing and worked like this for the better part of an hour, only eradicating a minor patch of the bear’s britches, not making any progress on the ficus or other weedy matter, but it was a start, and the physical work had done
Carlo some good, probably the boy, too. That hour removing the vines, Carlo had thought about nothing of consequence.
Meanwhile, the clouds assembled overhead, and it became cooler and windier. Robbie came home while Carlo and Gabriel were taking a breather, and after he’d made his way down the hill, he nodded in approval, although he didn’t say anything. Carlo wanted to ask him if he’d been wandering around the Reservoir or rifling through Tom’s address book, which notably was no longer atop the dresser, but didn’t. Robbie picked up the shears and meekly hacked at a vine. Then Carlo took the shovel and tried to dig at some ficus roots. And Robbie clipped another vine with a little more gusto, and Gabriel gathered the trimmings and packed them into a trash bag, and the three of them worked like this another half hour before it began to drizzle. Quickly the drizzle turned into rain, and they scrambled back up the hill and into the house, kicking off boots and sneakers and tugging at damp socks. In the kitchen, Robbie took various things out of the refrigerator and set them on the counter, olive tapenade and roasted peppers and tuna fish and baba ganoush and cherry tomatoes. He sliced wheat bread. And they made sandwiches and barely spoke, and given recent events, it seemed illicit how content Carlo was at that moment. If he wanted proof that he was worrying too much, here was his proof.
The rain began to taper off, although he wished it would continue. A glass house was its most spectacular against the threat of inclement weather. All around you outside, the elements were uncharitable, unpredictable, moody. Yet inside, enclosed and dry and safe, nothing changed, you were secure. Nothing in the world could go wrong. It was then that Carlo had the vaguest premonition that his troubles, the troubles the two men faced, even whatever was bothering the boy, might be taking a turn for the better. The past would recede quietly into the deeper past. The winter ahead would be a good winter.
Later he would think back to this rainy Saturday afternoon and see that all he’d done in allowing himself this momentary satisfaction was push his luck and, even though he did not believe in such things, jinx himself.
• • •
A
s PROMISED
in the days that followed, Robbie worked his way down Carlo’s list of tasks. He waxed the dining table. He cleaned lighting fixtures, the hood over the stove, the tool table in the garage. He recaulked the bathtub spigot. He thinned his wardrobe and packed clothes to be given away. A full pile of firewood rose up by the hearth. The silver gleamed. He seemed to be tapping a new font of energy, and at night he fell asleep with ease. He wasn’t spending all that much time with Carlo, who was either at the office or working with Gabriel to clear brush for the new patio and fountain, yet Robbie thought this separation was temporary, and he found himself actually looking forward to his father-in-law’s visit, to their Thanksgiving, the full stride of the holidays one can fall into when the meter of one’s life for whatever reasons has fallen off tempo. Two months had gone by since Tom killed himself, and while Robbie had never been searching for exculpatory evidence—whether the two men should have cut off Tom’s drinking would always be something he would turn over—the fact remained that after speaking with two dozen people who one way or another knew Tom, after a certain consensus had congealed around Tom’s intent, or probable lack of intent, Robbie did feel unshouldered of some responsibility and ready, at last, to move on with his life.