to the inclemency of survival.
I said, “Mark Ross is not going to give up.”
Rourke answered, “I know.” His breath on my wrist.
I left as he slept, the worst and hardest thing I’d ever done. I knew that if I stayed, it would have made everything worse. I knew also that by leaving I was giving up every possibility of coming to some understanding. At daybreak, I walked to the main road, then I hitchhiked as far as the highway, where I hitched again. Feeling forlorn as I did, and lacking a destination, I might have traveled on as far as the road would have taken me, Albany or Boston, Canada maybe, except that I got a ride directly into the West Village from two co-workers, a Polish guy and a diabetic woman, best friends, they said, who left me safely at the corner of Hudson and Morton.
At a Mexican restaurant on Columbus Avenue, Lee and Chris held a goodbye dinner for Rourke. Lee had called me that day from her office on Wall Street.
“I initially planned this for Sunday, since he said you two were going to Atlantic City, but I just found out he’s leaving tomorrow. It’s been crazy getting organized.”
I didn’t want to go; yet, I couldn’t stay away. I arrived on time, but instead of going in I walked around—north, west, south, then east again, making a fifteen-block square. By the time I climbed the restaurant’s staircase to its balcony and joined the party—there were nine people, including Mark—they were finishing dessert—dishes of flan and fried ice cream were scattered around the table.
“You’re here,” Lee said, rising to give me a kiss. “I’m so glad.”
Rourke didn’t speak or move to greet me. Everyone else mumbled hellos but fidgeted uncomfortably, not knowing what to do or expect. They were even more ignorant of the goings-on between Rourke and me than we were ourselves, and that uncertainty, mingled with his disappointment, was like a critically elevated temperature. As Rob would say, Things were pretty dicey.
Lee called over the balcony to the waiter for another espresso and an ice water, and she drew out a chair at the table’s head, which I dragged to Rourke’s side, so I did not have to see him, though I could sense him, everything about him. He was in the room with me, I was thinking morbidly. Soon he would not be in the room with me anymore.
Mark raised his café con leche. “Well, best of luck, Harrison.”
No one else raised their glasses or cups because Rourke did not accept Mark’s toast; he just stared, then stood. He had to get going, he said to Lee; he wanted to spend time with his mother. There was squelching chair scraping, but he lifted his hands, telling everyone to stay put, and giving Lee a quick kiss before walking out.
I remember wanting nothing more than to get up and leave with him, to apologize for having left him that morning, to figure out what had to be figured, to go and meet his mother, to help him pack, to have a private goodbye, and that moment of all moments is most maddeningly vivid to me; it was the last honest need I experienced for years. In a heartbeat, he was gone. I knew I’d never see him again.
Chris paid the check, and we finished in silence. They all stood and grabbed their jackets. Mark thanked Lee and Chris.
Rob lifted my sweater off the back of the chair. He said, “Let’s go. I’ll give you a ride.”
I told him no. Looking down.
“C’mon,” he said darkly. “I’m taking the Holland. I’ll go straight down Ninth Avenue, take Bleecker to Tenth, drop you there, and then shoot west to Seventh on Ninth Street.” Boom, boom, boom.
I’d be okay.
Rob swung his chair closer, then glanced over his shoulder at the others. “Look at me.”
My eyes looked at his, facing off.
“Once you do this,” he said, “there’s no going back.”
“There’s already no going back.”
“Would you like to walk a bit?” Mark asked as the cars pulled away.
“Thanks,” I said. “Home just seems like—” I waved one arm.
“Like home,” Mark said. “Say no more.”
The night was magnificent, as such things go, and we infringed upon it mildly, strolling up one side of Columbus Avenue and down the other, gazing into store windows. We passed many of the same places I’d walked by when I was alone earlier in the evening.
“You look like an Italian movie star,” he said to our reflection. “With