He worried, the way Julian was holding that cat, that now Julian would never leave either. But Julian’s ticket was purchased, and he seemed antsier every day. Yale went back out and bought Roscoe a litter box and some food and a dish and a cat bed. Halfway out of the store, he turned and went back to buy him a toy, a purple ball with a feathery tail.
* * *
—
On Thursday, a Foujita expert came in—he’d flown from Paris—to meet with Bill. Yale wanted to listen outside the door. He wanted to spend the rest of his life building Nora’s Paris out of sugar cubes, brick by brick. He wanted a one-way ticket to 1920. He thought about Nora’s idea of time travel. What a horrible kind of travel, that took you only forward into the terrifying future, constantly farther from whatever had once made you happy. Only maybe that wasn’t what she’d meant. Maybe she meant the older you got, the more decades you had at your disposal to revisit with your eyes closed. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to revisit this year. Well: In eleven days he’d have his results. And maybe then he’d long for this purgatory, the time when he could sit at his desk clinging to some small splinter of hope.
* * *
—
When Yale got home that night, Julian was at the table reading the TV Guide, even though he was nowhere near the TV. It was an old one, from the last time the Sharps were here. Roscoe was on his lap.
Julian said, “This is funny. They pretended to interview Kermit and Miss Piggy.”
“Yeah, I saw that.”
“He insists they’re not married, and she thinks they are.”
“Hilarious. You doing okay?”
“I’ll be out of your hair in two days.”
Yale sat down. If Julian really was leaving, Yale could ask him. He ought to, before he left. He said, “I want to say again that I forgive you for what happened with Charlie. I should be poisoning the coffee, but I’m just not mad at you. But you have to tell me something. I need to know whether that was really the only time.”
Julian flipped the magazine over, open, as if he didn’t want to lose his place. He held Roscoe up to his chest. A shield. “Okay. So . . . yeah, pretty much.”
“Pretty much?”
“He blew me once. About a year ago. But in terms of—if that’s what you’re asking, then yeah, only once.”
“He blew you about a year ago.” Yale was trying to do mental math, trying to remember what had been going on in their lives last winter. Charlie’s paper was struggling. The test hadn’t come around yet. He wasn’t surprised, but then why was his heart pounding?
“But listen, Yale—like, if you really want to know this stuff?” Yale nodded. “He was definitely getting around.”
Yale controlled his breath. He said, “I need you to be more specific.”
“What would happen—he kept it so bottled up. I mean, you know how I feel about monogamy. He’s this pillar of the community, or whatever, and then every six months or so he’d snap. I’m not saying it was constant, but—you know how if you haven’t eaten all day, your body takes over and eats a whole cake? I just know there was a lot of, like, dark corner sex. Train station bathrooms, the forest preserve, that kind of stuff. He used rubbers. At least he said so.”
Roscoe came in and out of focus. Julian’s face came in and out of focus. Train station bathrooms were where guys from the suburbs went, furtive men with wives and kids, the “commuter gays” Charlie used to rant about. People who could match his guilt, his self-loathing. Yale didn’t believe for an instant that Charlie had used rubbers. What Charlie was doing was suicide. You don’t use condoms for suicide. He said, with the last of the breath that had already escaped him, “Fuck.”
“For what it’s worth, I think he stayed away from, like, our community. He wasn’t picking up guys at Paradise or anything.”
Yale wondered if Charlie had been protecting his reputation, Yale’s feelings, or both. He couldn’t have thought those guys from the suburbs would be safer.
“You gotta understand,” Julian said, “this was why I didn’t feel so terrible about it. I mean, I did, but it wasn’t like I was breaking something unbroken, you know? And I wasn’t sure if you guys had more of an understanding than you let on. I guess not.”