Charlie said, slowly, unsurely, “I saw him. I saw him during the slide show.”
“Are you thinking of the picture? Teddy dressed up as Cher? Charlie, sit down.” He didn’t. “Listen: I felt woozy, and I came down maybe five, ten minutes later. Fifteen at most. And I thought—I don’t even know what I thought. Everyone was gone, and I was the only one left. It was the weirdest fucking moment of my life. And I still don’t understand why you’re getting home ten hours later.”
“I—we went out after.” Charlie sounded, bizarrely, disappointed—as if he’d hung so much anger on Yale’s having been with Teddy that he didn’t know what to do with himself now. “Fiona said you were with Teddy.”
“Fiona is the ‘everyone’ who saw this?”
“The main one.”
“Fiona was wasted. And Christ, she’s been a wreck.”
“You were both gone. You both vanished at the same time.”
“And she saw us do what? She saw him carry me up the stairs like a bride?”
“No, she just—I asked where you were, and she said you were upstairs. And I said, ‘Why would he go upstairs?’ and she said, ‘I think Teddy’s up there too.’” And then he paused, as if he’d just heard how ridiculous he sounded.
“Okay then.”
“But she kept saying it.”
“Well, she was drunk.”
“Go back to sleep,” Charlie said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
* * *
—
Yale hadn’t expected to fall asleep, but the next time he rolled over it was 6 a.m. and Charlie was curled into a ball beside him. Two full water glasses and a bottle of aspirin sat on Charlie’s nightstand next to his usual bottles of vitamin B and ginseng; he expected to wake up hung over. It was a scene Yale would rather miss any day, but especially now. At least Charlie’s paper had been put to bed early this week, so they all could attend the party. The drivers would distribute the paper today while the staff slept in or hunched over toilet bowls.
He watched Charlie’s ribs rise and fall through his pale skin. Blond freckles covered his shoulders, his face, his arms, but his chest was polished ivory. He was soft, as if his skin had never seen the weather, and when a bone—an elbow, a kneecap, a rib—showed through, it was like a foreign object poking at a piece of silk.
Yale showered and dressed as quietly as he could. He didn’t want breakfast.
Nico’s orange scarf lay on the floor with Charlie’s clothes. And on the kitchen counter, in a shopping bag, were other things: a half-empty vodka bottle, Nico’s blue Top-Siders, a blank postcard from Vancouver, pewter cuff links in a velvety box, Leaves of Grass. Yale wished he’d been there. Not to wind up with some keepsake necessarily but just to touch everything, to think about Nico, to learn things about him he’d never known. If you learned new details about someone who was gone, then he wasn’t vanishing. He was getting bigger, realer. The Top-Siders would never fit Charlie’s enormous feet; they must have been for Yale. How typical of Charlie: Even when he was furious, even when he thought Yale might have been screwing around with someone else, he’d gotten him a present.
Yale slipped off his own loafers and slid the shoes on. They were snug, his toes pushing against the stitching and puckered leather, but he liked it that way, his feet being squeezed by Nico. They didn’t look right with his khakis, but they didn’t look wrong exactly either.
He took the El from Belmont up to Evanston, resting the back of his head against the window. What had once been the center of a cowlick was growing into a small bald spot—unfair! He was only 31!—mercifully hidden by the dark curls around it. If he found a good angle, the coolness of the window soaked into his scalp, chilled his whole body. Yesterday it had been too warm for coats; today you’d be miserable without one. Even so, the air felt good, bracing. And the cold walk from the station to the gallery was nice too. It was just after seven, only joggers out.
The Brigg occupied the ground floor of what used to be a small classroom building, with a modified hallway serving as the gallery itself. The heating was temperamental and voices traveled through the walls, but the place had character. They had room for only small shows right now, and the hope was to outgrow this space in the next few years, and (this was where