The rest of the day, I replay over and over the tape of me saying “Now” and “Stop” and “Ass on bar stool.” It sounds okay, like I actually was the one in control. I suppose there will be more of these moments, and even when I still feel the need to test them for legitimacy, that will be a safer bet for sure than just coming completely unhinged and throwing heavy things at breakable other things. I do not replay the glass shattering in my hand or the stone panic I felt listening to the cadence of that marching song.
At first, at home, I can only rarely bring myself to leave my room. In the evenings when I’m not working, I can hear Max, in his chattering splendor, talking about his clients at Saks and their idiosyncrasies and demands and how utterly gorgeous they look when he is done dressing them.
Christopher’s voice is too soft to make out individual words, and sometimes Max will lower his voice as well, so that I imagine they are talking about me, but hope I am not so self-absorbed as to think they don’t have other things to discuss. For one thing, they are so obviously in love, and when I do brave a trip to the living room and perch on the edge of the leather sofa, I find them sitting close together, hand in hand, watching Absolutely Fabulous or I Love Lucy or The Avengers and laughing, the cat spread-eagled and still — a great, furry, overstuffed bit of taxidermy, being stroked and petted by one or both of them, her tail wrapped like Cleopatra’s snake around a compliant arm.
Mornings, I generally don’t come out until both boys have left: Christopher early for his office job downtown and Max, later, for the store. Before Max gets in a taxi at ten or so, he watches game shows on the TV and primps for his customers. With those cheekbones and pale eyes and incredible eyelashes, he is really more beautiful than handsome, in a totally Greta Garbo sort of way.
I don’t mean to avoid him. I want to go out and watch The Price Is Right with him and listen to him gossip about the women he waits on, or talk about the silly things people keep in their pockets and their handbags — hoping Bob Barker will ask for, say, a hard-boiled egg or dog tags or a thermometer — but for a long time I just can’t do it. I try to identify the cause and think maybe it is because he is just a little too vivid for me right now, a little too alive. My head is still full of Vietnam, in black and white, and I can’t change it. Max, on the other hand, is Technicolor in a big way.
Christopher is much less present, much less daunting. On Saturdays, when he doesn’t have to work and Max does, I hear him whistling in the kitchen, always something classical and unthreatening. After a few weeks of sneaking around the house when the two of them are sleeping or out, putting my hand on the doorknob when they are here and awake, but not having the nerve to turn it, and wishing I was more like Eddie — who would have been sitting on the couch petting Annabelle and eating popcorn with them the first night — Christopher’s whistling lures me out. He is in the kitchen making tea, Annabelle on the counter watching him as he stirs it, and they both manage to not look surprised to see me. I wonder how the cat has gotten up there — surely she has not jumped — and imagine Christopher giving her a gentle boost, and the image makes me smile.
“Like some?” Christopher says, motioning to a tin of Earl Grey. Something barely identifiable but utterly perfect happens: a sudden transfer, another new and unimagined country heard from. I’m not really a tea drinker, but the whole idea seems so civilized, so much like what normal people do somewhere in the real world.
“That would be wonderful.”
I sit at the kitchen table while he makes it and brings it to me, along with the little white cow-shaped milk pitcher, sugar and a spoon. The cat watches, metronomically switching her tail across the counter. I pour the milk; watch it spiral cloudy in the cup as I stir it. Christopher leans against the counter and looks out the window. It was raining earlier, but the sky is clearing and the sun is high and bright. Me and the cat watch it streak across the floor.
“Pretty day,” Christopher says. “Do you have to work?”
“Not until tonight.” I stretch my arms up over my head. “I’m so happy. Seems like forever since we’ve seen any real blue sky.”
The words come out in the right order, in the right language, and I am sure they make sense. Christopher does not seem aware that this is a rather huge accomplishment, and I consider that an achievement in itself. When he asks if I want to go for a walk with him and Annabelle, I do not make up some lame excuse. I go put my sneakers on. Christopher attaches a red-rhinestoned leash to the cat’s collar, and we set off up the hill.
“Nice leash,” I say.
Christopher smiles. “Max. If I had picked it out, it would have been far less glamorous. Khaki or something. A bit of twine.”
“But with a bell.”
Christopher says, “Maybe a small one.”
• • •
I realize that any lingering sense of dislocation may be because of a change in the city itself; it is not all me. It started before I left but is now kicking in with a vengeance. People carry pagers around and talk loudly on the pay phone about very important things like stock options and public offerings. I do not understand the concepts, and something about “public offerings” makes me thing of human sacrifices. From there the tangential connections can prove quite remarkable. I am reminded by those tangents of the mescaline and acid I took in high school, the pot I smoked, and all the other substances that in combination probably rewired my synapses pretty thoroughly. But San Francisco was the perfect place for someone like me to land, and I often feel as if I am watching the city I still love grow distant in the rearview mirror.
The interlopers begin to infiltrate the bar, demanding high-end tequilas and asking questions like “What sorts of Chardonnays do you have?”
“The kind in the box,” I say, and usually, or hopefully, whatever decked-out lawyer or stockbroker will turn on his or her pointy toe and depart in a sulk, but something is definitely wrong.
I try to talk with Eddie about it. “Who are these people? What do they want?” He is oblivious. To him, it’s just a whole new set of cute boys to ogle at the gym.
One Saturday we go down to Whole Earth Access so I can buy some new socks and a colander, maybe a cordless drill so I can hang bookshelves. It is a perfectly ordinary thing to be doing on a perfectly ordinary day. Then Eddie heads for the electronics counter and starts playing with the mobile phones. I start to get twitchy but try not to show it. “What are you doing?”
“Just looking.” He is playing with the buttons on one, holding it out in front of him like Snow White’s mirror. It’s the size of a brick.
“You are thinking about buying that thing, aren’t you?”
“I think I am.”
“Oh Jesus. What on earth for?”
“Talking.”
We leave with a new phone for Eddie. No socks, no colander, no drill. All of a sudden the things in my basket looked like debris from a UFO incident: unrecognizable as useful objects. Eddie drops me off at the bar, where I drink beers and play pool with a cute Irish boy until dark. At midnight I leave his place, my shoes in my hand, and hail a cab on Mission Street. Christopher is still up when I get home.
“You okay?” He peers up at me from the couch. His eyes are sleepy, and Annabelle has her head tucked behind him, the rest of her looking for all the world like a decapitated walrus.
I lean down and kiss Christopher on the cheek. “Where did you come from?”