Mr. Apology Page 14

  He stared out the window.

  A dream of young men, a dream of boys…

  He blinked and looked along the sidewalk. The nice man in the Berger Gallery had explained that no, they weren’t in the framing business themselves, but he could recommend somebody whose work was of the highest order. Heavens, the old playbills deserved new frames. They cried out for them.

  The sidewalk was empty, but only for a moment. Then a young man appeared, moving very slowly along. Henry Falcon was a little disappointed, because for several weeks now he had been watching someone very pretty who passed beneath his window. Sometimes this particular boy would smile and look up and wave at him and this brief moment of attention would brighten the whole day for him. But the young man who was coming into view now wasn’t the same one at all. Henry Falcon sighed. He sighed, he watched, he waited. Then he was thinking of Carlos, Carlos who had been the great love of his life. He remembered tracking Carlos across a whole continent, from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, Sao Paolo to Belo Horizonte, tracking the elusive love of Carlos, obsessed by a face and the color of eyes and the way certain locks of hair curled in the nape of his neck. He remembered the dark treachery of Carlos and how he had once found his lover in bed with another man in the Hotel Riberalta in La Paz, the sinking of his heart, the sickness in his mind, the sheer horrible betrayal.… Remembering Carlos now made him want to weep. Henry, Henry, you can not carry such luggage across the space of thirty years.

  The young man had stopped on the sidewalk and was looking up at the window. Henry Falcon gazed back down. He’s pretty, he thought. He isn’t the usual one who passes by, but he’s pretty anyhow. But all young men remind you of Carlos now, Henry. Every young man sets that memory dancing.

  Henry Falcon stared.

  This boy. What is he doing?

  He is smiling at me.

  Romeo and Juliet. The music rose through the room, rolled along the high ceiling, filled all the spaces. The boy is smiling at me. He is raising a hand and waving.

  He trembled slightly.

  It isn’t possible. It isn’t conceivable.

  He is moving towards the entrance of the building.

  Moving towards the front door.

  Henry Falcon moved away from the window and crossed the room, his heart leaping, his skin suddenly cold and covered with goosebumps, his throat painfully dry. In front of the mirror he paused and shifted his head very slowly, as if he were altogether afraid of his own image in the glass. The pale green tights, the protruding stomach, the pale makeup, the thin hair dyed an unnatural black.

  You do not look your best, he thought.

  You do not look good enough to receive a visitor.

  At the door of the room he switched off the overhead light, seeking the kind of gloom in which his appearance might at least be slightly flattered.

  A dream of young men …

  He can’t possibly be coming in here to see me. He knows somebody else in the building, someone in another apartment. Why would he want to see poor old me?

  Henry Falcon pressed his ear to the door. From below he could hear a sound of footsteps clicking on the tiled entranceway. Then they were moving on the stairs. Clack clack clack. He knows somebody else, he must, he has to.

  He stood against the door, gazing at the playbills around the room, words he could barely read in the dim afternoon light. Henry Falcon shut his eyes and listened. (Carlos, Carlos in bed in a room of the Hotel Riberalta with his wretched lover.)

  Louder. Louder still.

  And then they stopped and there was silence and Henry Falcon held his breath, waiting.

  5.

  “It’s standard policy. You’ve always known that, man. No fronts. Cash on the nail, savvy?” Sylvester peered at the PacMan screen in front of him. He twisted a handle but the monsters got his man anyway and there was a brief noise of electronic disappointment. “You made me lose my concentration, Billy.”

  Billy Chapman blinked. The arcade was too loud, the lights too bright. How could anybody in their right mind stand the constant bleeping bleeping bleeping? He stuck his hands in his pockets. He had about thirty bucks to his name. What would thirty bucks get him out of Sylvester? One or two lines? A couple of spoons? He rubbed his eyes. You go and you keep going, Billy, and you don’t know when to call it quits even as you know the stuff is running out and the big depression, the big sleepless depression, comes bopping in as you push that last thin mixture inside your veins, then you’re squeezing dregs out of SnoSeals and sucking the edges of razor blades. And then, sucker, you’re fucked. He looked around the arcade: Why did he get this weird feeling somebody was following him around? It had been going on for hours. He’d stayed in his room and imagined somebody pacing the hall outside his door or someone peering in through his window even though his room was on the fifth floor, for Christ’s sake. It comes with the territory, Billy; it comes with the blow. White paranoia. Nobody’s looking at you. Nobody’s following you. You dream it up. Your hand shakes like crazy. The arcade—guys hunched over machines, hammering away at contraptions like their lives depended on winning. Stupid games, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders and Asteroids. What did it all mean? He stared at Sylvester. This guy’s holding. He’s got the shit I need in his pocket right now, and he won’t front me.…

  “Until tomorrow, that’s all,” Billy Chapman said. “C’mon, man.”

  “You guys with a bad, bad habit really crack me up. You keep on until you ain’t got shit left, and then, when you should be sleeping the goddamn thing off, you’re out looking to score more. Go home, Billy. Get some sleep. Do yourself a favor, man. And quit bugging me, okay?” Sylvester stuck another quarter into the PacMan.

  “Hey, tomorrow, I swear—”

  “Billy, look. I go for all that cash-on-the-barrelhead bullshit. Pay your way or you don’t play. Dig it? You had your fun and now it’s over, understand? If you can happen to pick up some bread along the way then that’s a whole new ballgame. Otherwise—” Sylvester shrugged.

  “I don’t feel like sleeping.”

  “Do what your body tells you, Billy. You’ve probably been up all night doing lines and drinking and staring at your TV. Maybe you got up every now and then because you needed to pace. Maybe you started to get the heebie-jeebies, huh? So now it’s time to sleep. Time to get some food inside the gut, Billy. Listen to Sylvester. I seen everything twice too often.”

  “I ain’t hungry.”

  Sylvester laughed. “Hot flash. Billy Chapman ain’t hungry. So what else is new?”

  “I need to score. Look. I got thirty bucks.”

  “I’d like to help you, Billy. I swear. But thirty bucks ain’t exactly going to do much good.”

  Billy Chapman closed his eyes a moment. He leaned against the PacMan machine. He sniffed a couple of times and tried to remember where all the time had gone between seeing Sylvester when he had scored the two grams and coming to this arcade in search for more of the same. Fireworks, the buzz of instant energy, veins flowing with speeded-up blood, popping the tops of beer cans and getting up from the sofa every few minutes to check the window and the door, and then a vague memory of going out and just strolling through Times Square, where the neons were fizzing and the doorways heavy with ripe young girls and madmen going from place to place in some frenzied hunt. Then what? Then what? Somewhere he’d gone into a phone booth.

  A phone booth, why?

  A dime in the slot.

  The Apology voice.

  Naw, he’d dreamed that one up. Somewhere in the fast lane of the night he’d gone and imagined that one.

  Back to his room. Back to the weird, wired feeling that somebody was lingering outside his door. But then he’d understood it was just the drug, so he’d laughed it off. And then he’d stopped laughing when he realized he’d gone through one of the two grams and the other would have to be used sparingly.

  “I don’t hear you, Billy. What’d you say?”

  “I didn’t say anything, man.”
r />   “You were mumbling.”

  “Yeah?” I wasn’t talking. Who’s off the deep end here, me or Sylvester? “So what about this thirty bucks?”

  “What about it, Billy? As it so happens, you catch me at a bad time. I’m out. I’m expecting something good real soon. But right now, nada.” Sylvester shrugged. He tugged at the beret he wore. He looked like some goddamn poster for a South American revolution or something, Billy thought.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Fuck off, then. Go home. I don’t need your crap.”

  “Level with me, Sylvester.”

  “The truth? One, I ain’t got nothing for you. And two, I’m not sure I’ll ever have anything for you again, Billy. You’re at the edge, and that ain’t a pleasant place for you, man.” Sylvester turned and moved more quickly than Billy could follow. He was gone, gone out into the street, and when Billy hit the sidewalk the guy had lost himself in the throng of people that just shuffled along under the colored neons. Bastard. Lying bastard.

  Billy Chapman walked to the edge of the sidewalk. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Rain slithered over his eyes, his lips, ran from his thin beard. Another connect, another score, but where? You could hit up some guy on a street corner and he’d sell you thirty bucks’ worth of Mannitol or some kind of powdered caffeine; at least with Sylvester you knew there was some of the real thing in what you bought. He took one hand from his jeans and rubbed the side of his scalp. His head felt numb, detached from the rest of his body. You didn’t make any phone call, Billy. You didn’t do that. Some dream. Something you imagined during the high. Some phantom crawling out of the fusion of cocaine and beer.

  He crossed the street, turning his face this way and that, still looking for a sight of Sylvester. The motherfucker. He sat down in the doorway of a metal-grilled store, a place that sold gags—masks, stink bombs, whoopee cushions, trick decks of cards. The pits. This is the pits. Spaced-out and just sitting here like this.

  He made to stand up, but he had to use the iron grill attached to the store window to get to his feet. Faint. A flash of blood to the head. Okay, go back to your room. Go home. Maybe you can find an egg in the fridge, just maybe you can sleep.

  He shuffled along the sidewalk. And then it occurred to him that there were great gaps in his memory, that he couldn’t recollect how he’d spent the morning, what he’d done with the afternoon, where everything had gone. Last night and all the other hours of darkness—he could make some sense out of that time. But the rest, so what, you don’t care. You don’t give a shit, do you? Time goes, so what? Does it make a goddamn bit of difference if you don’t remember?

  “Hey. You. Going someplace?”

  Billy Chapman turned around. She was standing in a doorway, wearing black boots that rose above her knees and a pink miniskirt. She was the color of dyes that had run in a laundromat.

  “Yeah. Home,” he said.

  “You get lonely there?”

  “I’m never lonely,” Billy Chapman said and passed the girl by.

  6.

  Bryant Berger had never liked the bar of the Warwick Hotel immediately after work: It was always too crowded with business types, a sea of charcoal grey and dark blue suits, the air filled with the rolling echo of humdrum business talk. He especially did not like the place at that particular moment, sitting at a table in the center of the floor with George, who seemed to take a great pleasure in flaunting himself openly—constantly reaching out with one hand to stroke the nape of Berger’s neck, dropping his fingers over Berger’s knuckles, pressing knees together in the most obvious fashion. People were looking. Men were looking. God knows, Berger thought, there might be an acquaintance of mine looking at me right now. Or a friend of Angela’s. He shifted his chair away from George a little. And he tried not to look at his young friend quite so directly, as if the failure of direct eye contact might convey, to whosoever was watching, that he was not in the company of George, that George was nothing more than a stranger, a passing irritant. Please, please, George, don’t do this to me.

  “So what did your wife say to you, Bryant? Did she chide you?”

  “There was a disagreement,” Berger said and reached for his martini.

  “Tell me more.” George had some kind of ritzy effeminate drink in front of him, Polynesian, leaves of mint sticking out.

  “There’s not much to say,” Berger answered. This is the last time, Bryant, the very last time I intend to tolerate your absences. One more incident like this and you will find yourself with neither home nor business. Do I make myself plain? Do I?

  He could still hear an echo of her voice, which had reminded him of the wild screech of a parrot thrown into alarm. With neither home nor business. So loud and clipped and hurt. And she’d do it too—he knew she would—she’d go right ahead and withdraw her support from the gallery and throw him out of the house. He shuddered at the thought of it all.

  “Did she lay a heavy trip on you, dear?” And George raised his hand to reach for the back of Berger’s neck.

  “Don’t. Not in here. I don’t like it, George. Can’t you see it makes me embarrassed? Isn’t that obvious?”

  “Are you ashamed of me, Bryant?”

  Berger looked down into his drink a moment, then raised his face to George. He shook his head slowly back and forth. “I’m not ashamed of you, not at all. I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “Then you ought to do something about that.”

  George sounded so harsh, such an edge to his voice all at once, that Berger had the urge to put his arms around him and soothe him in some way. At the same time he was tugged in quite the opposite direction, towards the doorway, the street, the train station. This way, that way—it was a direct consequence of living a vast lie: Truth would simplify, truth would make it all easier, less fugitive, if only he had the kind of courage to make a decision. Decisions, decisions—he hated the word. He stared at George. Was this boy worth it? Ginger hair, bright yellow windbreaker, an earring dangling from his left ear, a plaid scarf thrown carelessly over one shoulder—why the hell did he have to be this flamboyant? Why couldn’t he manage to look straight, at least? He enjoys it, Berger thought, the tease, the embarrassment, the fact of my infatuation with him. It’s like some big game to him, an amusement.

  “You should tell her, Bryant.”

  “Please don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do.”

  “Suit yourself.” George huffily picked up his drink and made a loud slurping noise. Berger squirmed. Now the men at the next table were definitely looking, and they seemed to be smirking. He wanted to stare back at them in defiance; instead, he took refuge in the martini.

  “I’d like to get out of here, George. Someplace quieter.”

  “Why? I like it here. I like this place.”

  The stubbornness of a small child, Berger thought.

  “I like sitting in this world of men,” George said. “It’s so goddamn boring it’s almost funny. Look at them. Look at their uniforms, Bryant.”

  “Do keep your voice down.”

  “I can speak as loudly as I like.”

  “But not in my company.”

  “Let’s make a scene. Let’s have one loud raucous scene.”

  “Please.” Berger wanted to rise and go but it seemed to him he was paralyzed from the waist down. And besides, if he strutted out of here, if George did make an obvious scene, then he was plainly implicating himself. Look, Sam, two queers having a battle. What’s the world coming to, guys like that fighting in public?

  “You know what I think, Bryant? I think Angela has you by the balls. I think she’s got you so you don’t know if you’re coming or going. Stress, think of the stress. My God, you’ll be dead in a couple of months at this rate. Think of that. Your funeral. I’ll come and I’ll weep openly. People will say things about you even after you’re buried. They’ll talk. ‘Christ, I never knew old Bryant was gay as they come, did you?’ Think about that, dear.”

  Berge
r looked at his friend. It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps George was on something, some kind of speedy drug, something that had warped his awareness and made him talkative and loud and indiscriminate. He did look a little high, and there was color in his cheeks, a color normally missing.

  “I think we should go, George. Find a better place for a drink.”

  “I’m really quite comfortable here.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Well, out of deference to your age, Bryant.”

  Berger smiled. He stood up. “My age and the wisdom that comes with it, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  A burden-lifted. A weight removed from his shoulders. He looked across the bar towards the door, conscious of George rising also. Don’t let him lean over and kiss me, please, Berger thought. Don’t let him do something crass like link arms. For God’s sake. George swayed slightly. Maybe he was on something after all, a drug that didn’t mix too well with alcohol. Berger moved ahead of him to the doorway. He felt flushed: The way people stared at George made him want to walk a good six paces in front of the boy, blurring the connection between them. A cab, he thought. A cab back to George’s place was the safest thing.

  “Don’t I get to walk with you?” George was saying.

  “Only if you can keep up.” Berger went to the edge of the sidewalk and stared into the traffic ploughing down through the dark. He heard George come up alongside him.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “I thought I might take you safely back to your place.”

  “And then you run for your train? Is that it?”

  “I have to. I have to get home on time tonight.”

  No cabs. No welcoming signs drifting down towards him. Bryant glanced at his watch. If he managed to get a cab in the next five minutes, he could still drop George off and make his train as well. He felt George tug at his arm.

  “If you’re just going to drop me off, Bryant, then I want to make a phone call before we get a cab.”

  “Do you have to?”