PRESTON WASN’T ABLE to set up a meeting with Barry until almost a month had passed. He told himself it was the demands of the Azil case, but he was also intimidated by the idea of a fully developed person rather than merely scared of the time bomb in swaddling Jeanette had taunted him with all these years. With close study, Preston thought, he’d be able to distinguish himself from Lynn in the boy’s—what was it?—phenotype. He felt the algebraist’s curiosity to solve for an unknown. Apart from the biology and the math, his muddy emotions bemused him. His slight excitement would have been spoiled had Barry known whom, or the possible whom, he was going to meet. Jeanette had always assured Preston that Barry had no clue. So Preston had the psychological elbow room to examine this alternate history in the form of a person.
Preston assumed, at least for the purposes of the meeting, that Jeanette’s story was true. He’d liked Barry, the property care worker, instantly. Both Bea and Eleanor adored him. Did that mean anything? In fantasy, Preston imagined bestowing a real job or a college education on his putative offspring. He’d be a good, industrious son, more like Flossy than poor Philip, who was too smart for his own good.
For his part Barry expected a quick chat and nothing more. Perhaps standing together on the drive in New Jersey. When Preston suggested a trip into the city and a long lunch at someplace really nice, like Blithe, Barry, who almost never went into the city, said No. What he wanted to talk about wasn’t anywhere near that important.
But Preston insisted on making an event of it. He decided to try reproducing a long-ago lunch, when Bea’s father had driven in from Noroton and entertained his future son-in-law at the University Club. Preston remembered being awed by the place. He was curious to see Barry’s reaction.
November was cold in the city. Snow fell a full week and a half before Thanksgiving. The plowed heaps were soon reduced to exhaust-blackened remnants, more like pumice rocks at a Hula Pele than the background for Christmas carols. Meltwater slicked the sidewalks around the University Club. The sandstone façade of the building had been ruined by a cleaning in the seventies. The blurry, dark brown structure looked like it had just stepped out of the sea.
When Preston saw how Barry was turned out, he realized the boy wasn’t the same kind of ambitious New Jersey asshole he himself had been when trying to impress Bea’s father. This wasn’t diagnostic of non-relatedness, of course. Philip, unquestionably his, was even less like him. Barry wore work boots with an ill-fitting blazer and tie obviously borrowed from Dean. He’d left his knitted beanie at home, but his shaved head and his default drowsy contentment came off a little rent boy. His choker of vertebrae, or whatever they were, peeked over a threadbare button-down yellow collar. To Preston the choker betokened a possible brotherly likeness to Flossy, who now never removed his own choker of blue trade beads.
A funny property of the mind is lag. Every moment that comes along is the same size. It takes a little while for psychology to blow up the big events and discard the superfluous ones. As they occur, boiling water for pasta and burying a parent take place on a uniform scale and at exactly the same steady beat. Even if Preston was having lunch with a long-lost son, the title character of an opera full of rubato and wild crescendos and diminuendos, in the moment things felt perfectly ordinary, easy, pleasant. Preston had to work to make the lunch feel as momentous as it ought to have been.
Barry laughed when he was given a menu without any prices on it. “It’s pretty easy to guess.” The white-jacketed Black waiters made him think he’d stumbled into a thirties movie. The dining room, while grand, showed an institutional decay worse than the blurred sandstone. Yellowed plastic runners lay over the carpet in front of the kitchen, and a carton of roach traps had been stashed indiscreetly under a sideboard with peeling veneer. A thousand-year-old employee strolled about holding a tablecloth and a single German silver fork, either in dementia or in a pretense of work.
“People who don’t know expect it to be impeccable in here. Like a restaurant,” Preston said, guessing Barry’s thoughts. “But we like it run down. A renovation wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t convey the right note of aristocratic weariness.” He looked at Barry to see if he understood Preston was mocking this paradoxical form of snobbery.
Twisted bundles of wires crusty with old paint hugged the moldings. They led to defunct phone jacks and window alarms. The wires circled the room at the baseboard and ran up the walls here and there to disappear into clumsy holes that leaked plaster dust. He did understand Preston’s delicate humor, but to him the décor called to mind inertia.
Preston continued. “Too bad it’s not spring. Shad roe’s the one thing worth coming for. All the rest—” His hand tipped back and forth, meaning, mediocre. “I do like the pea soup sometimes—mushrooms and mint, which is avant-garde for them. Most of the menu’s out of fashion. They were serving jellied consommé and pêche melba till the day before yesterday.” He kept watching Barry. The boy was surprisingly alert to Preston’s gastronomic shadings. He wasn’t the oaf Jeanette talked about.
A bloated wreck of an old man, who looked famous to Barry, greeted Preston familiarly. Preston made a little joke. The famous-seeming man brayed and gripped Preston’s shoulders from behind. His yellow-toothed laughter came off as stylish and ghastly at the same time. He gave Barry a high-caliber wink before moving off. Preston explained that the man wasn’t really famous. His father had amassed the world’s largest collection of English hammered pennies, and his mother used to go parachuting on Long Island.
Preston’s mouth stuck in kissing position as he consulted the menu. His fingertips, the very tips, touched the padded edge of the table in front of him as if he were about to start typing. This was his dainty imitation of Bea’s father. He waved off a somnolent waiter twice while they sipped cocktails.
Preston shared a creaky joke about one of the grandiose but boring landscape paintings on the walls. “The huge jungle one with a volcano in the background used to be called A Portrait of Miss Mary Cavour. You can read the little label on the frame. She was an actress the turn-of-the-last-century crowd thought was hot stuff. So it was: volcano equals Mary, ha-ha. Yeah.”
“Pretty daring,” Barry smiled.
“And the one that looks like Antarctica has always been called Frankenstein. Unofficially. I’m not sure why. Was there a big snow scene in Frankenstein?”
“Never saw it,” Barry shrugged. “Nice frame, though. Wow!” Soon he was starting to feel drunk. Politely, he kept up with Preston, though he’d mentioned that he hardly ever drank. This slight recklessness (two drinks so far) appealed to Preston. “My mom thinks I’m a nature boy. I’ve got to tell her I had an actual three-martini-lunch. She’ll love that.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, she’s more the social-climber type than me. I don’t mean that in a bad way. She’s just a lot more aware, you know? She hates it that I’m doing lawn and garden stuff. But I like it. Less responsibility. Of course, it means I’ll be kind of grubby all my life.” Barry announced this with unexpectedly sophisticated irony, a chip off the old block tone of voice that delighted Preston. “So she’ll be relieved if I’m turning into a businessman,” Barry looked into his drink while pumping his eyebrows like a strip club tout.
“The martinis on the rocks?”
“No. Not only them.”
Preston copied an expression of elegant inquiry he thought he remembered Bea’s father giving him.
Barry planted an elbow confidingly on the table between them. His torso slanted, making his whole demeanor a little arch. “I’ve got to tell you my plan. I’ve got a plan for today, Preston. You probably knew that. Today I really am a businessman.”
Preston encouraged silently. Barry wasn’t handling his glass or his sips like someone who never drank.
“Yeah. Before we get up from this table, I’m gonna get you to buy a big life insurance policy. Five million, at least. A very nice piece of property, too. If I say so myself. Or that’s what I’m told and fully believe,” he finished slyly.
This was a new Barry. If the bleary-eyed performance was supposed to represent accidental drunkenness, it was a clever way to conjure up intimacy. Preston stared, not displeased.
The corners of Barry’s mouth drooped and indented crossly. He pushed his glass away and murmured, “Better not get too drunk.”
“Dean’s got you working his insurance racket now?”
“Sort of a funny deal, Preston. They want you to put down your address as Georgia when you buy the policy.” Barry grinned. “Which you will.”
“Because?”
“They figure I’ll wrap you around my little finger.”
This wasn’t exactly a sales pitch. Why would he be telling tales on his partners? Preston wondered casually, “Why do they figure that?”
“I don’t know. I think Dean thinks you’re in love with me (which I know you’re not). But I’m supposed to be bait. The truth is, I think he’s the one in love. I mean, I think he said it about me, but really he’s the one who’s in love. With you.”
“Love?”
“You know what I mean. Not love love. Idolizes. You should see his rubber plant.”
“This doesn’t sound like a sales pitch. What would you be getting out of it?”
“He hacked it. With his machete.”
“What?”
“The rubber plant. I know that doesn’t sound like idolizes, but I kind of think that’s what it means. Like obsessed. He wants to be a politician. Like you were.”
“Not quite. But tell me. Are you making a sales pitch or what? You sound like you don’t care that much. What’s in it for you?”
“They say I’ll get half the commission. To be honest, it’s money I could use. The thing is, I was going to ask you for a loan straight out, but they have a gimmick figured out that’s good for everybody. Supposedly. Everybody gets something. I’ll get half the commission on your policy, and my dad will get the viatical whatever-it-is on his old one.” Barry smiled and winked big, an imitation of the penny-collector’s son. Preston was sure Barry was using this hint of drunkenness partly to sell, partly to ask for advice, partly to ask for money.
Preston sized him up again with—almost—pride. “They?”
“Dean and that guy Lloyd he works with.”
“And I’m supposed to give a false address?”
“They thought you probably knew somebody down in Atlanta. According to their scheme, it makes the thing more profitable. The rules are different in Georgia. I’m just the front man. Because you make Dean nervous. Not as much as Bea does, but still.”
“But he loves me?”
“Sure. Don’t you get nervous when you love somebody?”
“Oh. Maybe a long time ago. I don’t think so anymore. If I even did back then.” Preston actually thought about this for a second and concluded, “Strange not to remember how it felt.”
Barry exaggerated a pouty expression of commiseration or deep thought, putting his palm to his stubbly scalp as if to adjust his head in space.
Barry’s skin was smooth, Preston noticed, not like his own large-pored coarseness. Its color tended to gold, not to his own burst capillary pink. Smooth and gold were traits of Jeanette’s. He couldn’t remember any of Lynn’s for the life of him. Only the man’s general ickiness, and Barry had none of that.
Preston’s retreat from the moment ended. “I’m enjoying this,” he said. “But let’s go over it. You’re on spec for Dean and what’s-his-name. You’re the salesman. Why aren’t you trying to be more convincing? I suspect you know what you’re doing.”
“Well, I don’t know the whole story. For instance, I know selling my dad’s policy and you buying yours aren’t connected, but they almost wanted me to think so. They were subtle about it, but they were also hoping I got confused. Maybe I am. I think they just wanted me to do the work for them. I figure my best chance with you is to lay it out the way it really is. Buyers like real, huh? So it’s almost a technique. Once you—you, Preston—know what the policy is really worth, maybe you’ll understand what’s going on and be able to tell for yourself if it’s a good deal like they say. You’ll put the facts together better than I can.”
“You’re not really drunk. Let me ask you, Barry, you need money, right? Partly on account of your father. Right. Living expenses, I guess. Whatever. Your mom have anything to do with us meeting?”
“My mom?” Barry reached for the drink he’d pushed away.
“Just wondering if you talked to her about this—intricate deal. Or about me, ever?”
“I guess,” Barry shrugged, but his answer, to Preston’s unstated question, was clearly No.
“Don’t have anything to do with those boys, Barry. To me, it sounds like a scam. Or close to it. I’ll check it out with Dean, though. He’s an ass. And not honest. About the money—let me ask you, you ever get your BA when you were out West?”
“I never finished.”
“Maybe that’s something we could look into.”
Barry drew back his head in surprise. “What are you talking about? I’m all on hold. I’m not doing anything, because of my dad.”
“I get that.”
“And college must be ten grand a year. Or I’d have to stay in Jersey for twelve months to qualify for a public one. I thought about it, but I’m not sure I’d want to stay that long—especially if I was suddenly—at liberty, you know?”
“Sure, sure. Let’s put all that aside for a minute. I’ll loan you a couple of thousand on top of the yard stuff. Pay it back whenever. But don’t tell Dean. I’ll follow up with him about the rest of it. Honestly, there’s more I wanted to talk to you about. Other stuff, I mean.”
“I thought I wanted to talk to you,” Barry corrected.
“Yeah, well, I did too.”
They smiled, and the conversation came to an abrupt halt as if they realized they were starting to flirt. Luckily, their meals arrived. Cutlery and glasses were rearranged. Crumbs from the bread Barry had been eating to soak up alcohol (he really was drunk) were scraped deftly from the mattress-thick tablecloth. After the two covered plates were set in front of them, the waiter wearily, without a hint of flourish, lifted German silver cloches from them. Holding these high like cymbals, he departed. Barry laughed. “I didn’t know anybody really used those dome thingys. I’ve never seen one before. Except in a cartoons.”
“Yeah. I know. I know. And Miss Mary Cavour. And the no prices. The whole place is an old-timey cartoon,” Preston agreed. “To tell the truth, I didn’t think it would be this bad. I guess I wanted to make an impression, and it’s been too long since I’ve been here. It’s not right for you and me. Flossy used to like it.” Preston looked at his hand flat on the tablecloth. Barry’s hand happened to be resting near it, easy to compare. It was less red, less puffy, more golden, but the thickness and straightness of the fingers, the unemphatic knuckles, the thin-looking, deep set nails, were similar. Preston sometimes had to pry clippers under the ingrowing ends of his own nails. Was he already too close to Barry to judge?
Barry withdrew his hand. “Why would you want to make an impression on me? And what other stuff?”
“Huh?”
“You said you wanted to talk about other stuff.”
“Yeah. OK. Let’s see. Well—you ever had any supernatural experiences?”
Barry laughed in surprise. “I guess I’ve got my little amulets—medicine stuff from when I was out West,” Barry admitted. “Yeah, I’m a believer. Were you talking to Bea?”
“No.”
“Sure you’re not setting me up?”
“No,” Preston promised.
“What do you mean then? You mean like coincidences or ghosts?”
“Could be those. Or ESP,” Preston said.
“I guess I’ve had that sometimes. Or I think I have. What’s this about? When I was a kid my best friend and me played around at summoning ghosts. His schtick mostly. I was telling Bea about it, and she told me—she’s a very spiritual woman, as you know—she told me that she saw an angel once. I could believe Eleanor has a touch of ESP, too, or whatever. Maybe it runs in your family. You ever have any experiences?”
“Oh,” Preston shrugged. “I’m an old dog. No sensitivities. An angel! That’s news to me. She must think I’m too rational and—jeering to tell me anything about it.”
“I can believe that,” Barry said.
“I’m not. Not really. I don’t mean to be anyway. Here’s another thing. You have a girlfriend?”
Barry smiled curiously at the interrogation. “Hmm. Last one dumped me. No hard feelings. She was kind of controlling and she thought I was a slacker.” He rubbed his thumb and fingertips, money. “Like my mom, I guess. A lot of them are like that.”
“Women?”
“No. My girlfriends.”
“So you’ve had a lot of them.”
Barry frowned and smiled, not wanting to say Yes. “I’ve heard you—”
“No, no! You’re answering the questions,” Preston laughed. “Don’t start asking me or I’ll get in trouble.”
Barry slid his hands under his thighs and nodded obediently. “I guess I’ve had a few girlfriends but not a lot of regular friends. Almost no guy friends. I don’t know why. Not since my friend growing up, but he was practically in love with me. Not idolized. Real love, I think. And he was gay it turned out.”
“That’s awkward,” Preston said evenly. Despite Flossy, a piggish comment had come to mind.
“No. I don’t think he knew it at the time. To be honest I kind of got a kick out of it. It can be cool in a sick way as long as the person is too nervous to touch you. You’re powerful. Which I guess I didn’t mind at the time. Though it couldn’t have been that nice for him. We were young, you know? It was almost the age before you’re aware. When did you have sex the first time?”
Preston delicately put his palm to his forehead, as if checking for stray hairs or sweat. Really, he was feeling a wave of nostalgia at the boyishness of this question, of the whole conversation. He motioned for more drinks.
“Is that dumb? No questions allowed?” Barry asked with a challenging lack of embarrassment.
Preston stared across the table: eye color, earlobes, hairline. He’d been expecting a subtle but obvious all over resemblance, or lack of it. Now he thought it could go either way. “Probably a lot younger than you think. She was so young I could’ve gotten into big trouble if I hadn’t been the same age. I’m sure I would have, today.”
“My first time was with my teacher. I was twelve-and-a-half. I don’t know what she was. Thirties?”
“Jeez! Precocious. Was that—?” Preston stopped himself. “That was at Lawrence!”
“Oh.” Barry winced in regret. “I forgot you knew I was there. Dean and me both went. You went too, right? With my dad? Shit! Listen—” He scratched his stubble hairline with a forefinger nail. His expression was troubled. “Don’t say anything about it and—don’t even try to guess who, because—”
“Relax. I was there a hundred years before you. I wouldn’t know anybody. Besides—not that I don’t care but—I’ve got to say, it doesn’t seem to have fucked you up.”
“No. I mean, I wasn’t fucked up. But it also wasn’t what you think. Or what people think. It was extremely confusing for a long time. I’d definitely say not good in the end.”
“Ah.” Preston looked down. “In my case, both of us were fourteen. That’s a lot better.”
“That best friend I was talking about was from Lawrence, too. Darius Van Nest. Did you know them? You probably knew his dad. I could see him being a member here.”
“I knew of him, but I didn’t know him. The father. He was older. In a different class. He was—quite well known for someone who was never there.”
“He was crazy.”
“Right. He was famous for that. And an amazingly beautiful wife. Just lovely. But they were divorced.”
“Uh-huh. Also, Preston, don’t say I told you Darius was gay. I don’t even know it for sure. I just assume.”
“I don’t have anyone to tell. Anyway, I’m discreet. I’m a lawyer.” He made a sour expression about the word. “Oddly enough, his family came up the other day. Or the wife did. She has some exotic name.”
“Sohaila.”
“Mm. Someone told me she has money troubles. But that didn’t sound right.”
“I don’t think so. They were the richest people I ever knew. Except for you, possibly,” Barry added out of politeness. “In fact, Darius used to loan me money. Or he did once.” He cocked his head and looked off “Wow. So I guess I owe him. I shouldn’t have let that slide. And I guess I shouldn’t have let it slip out now that I forgot to pay him back!” He sipped and blushed, or he was simply flushed at this point. “If you do loan me a few thousand, whatever, I promise I’ll pay you back.”
Preston laughed. “Now it’s a few? Relax. It’s open-ended.”
“I remember he loaned me money for a girlfriend problem I had a long time ago. I was basically a kid. I still feel bad about it, though. She needed to have—” He pretended to brush something from his lap. “—something taken care of. You know what I mean?” Barry let silence turn this question into something much more direct.
“Yeah, I’ve had that problem.”
Barry smiled gratefully. “It kind of makes you feel bad, even if you’re the guy. Not that I’m anti- or anything.”
Preston’s finger ran back and forth, erasing an arc of white light on the rim of his glass.