This Could Be Anywhere in the World
David’s loft was just around the corner from where he worked at Bikes on Wheels on Augusta Avenue. I’d been spending so much time at his place over the last year, moving in didn’t seem like such a big change. There was a lot more sunlight for all my plants. Also, living in Kensington Market, I was closer to Pat and Blonde Dawn, and a lot closer to school. (After four years of undergrad, starting med school didn’t even seem like that big a change, just more classroom lectures and more studying.) I’d missed the neighbourhood Karen and I had staked out as our own. Sneaky Dee’s and Free Times were both just blocks away. In the end, David was right. It really was like we were just two regular guys sharing rent. The only difference was we also shared a bed.
Towards the end of October, Pat organized a dim sum outing in Chinatown. David and I rolled out of bed one Sunday morning, strolled ten minutes over to Spadina Avenue and hiked up a circular stairway to the second floor. The restaurant turned out to be a cavernous hall decorated with red lanterns, with a raised stage at the far end adorned with a golden dragon and phoenix. There must’ve been over three hundred people, young and old, Chinese and non-Chinese, packed into the space. It was buzzing and chaotic, elegant, tacky and totally fabulous. I’d never been to dim sum before, and David told me I was in for a treat. We’d invited Parker, and Megan and Charles. Pat and Blonde Dawn had also brought along a few of their friends. We were the perfect party for a table for ten.
I recognized one of Pat’s friends as the saxophone player from the Free Times Café, who reintroduced himself as Bobby Lam. As the only Chinese person at our table, he was our default go-to guy when it came to identifying the contents of the bamboo steamer baskets and stainless-steel platters being pushed around on carts by ladies calling out, “Har gow!” and “Shumai!” Pat was more than eager to try everything, and he’d gesticulate and order two of every dish that passed by without even waiting to see what was inside. We had shrimp dumplings and sweet-and-sour pork, crispy fried squid, and sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves. My favourite was the steamed BBQ pork buns.
More than once, Pat exclaimed with his mouth full: “I have no idea what the fuck I’m eating but this shit is delicious!” Then Bobby would lean over, examine his plate and illuminate him. Megan passed on the pig’s blood and half a dozen other items, but the rest of us followed Pat’s lead and tried at least a bit of everything. (Parker’s favourite was the chicken feet.) There was tea and more tea to wash everything down.
In the end, we stayed for hours, catching up and chatting and debating the merits of chopsticks versus forks, paperbacks versus e-readers, and The Beatles versus The Stones. Everyone agreed that Toronto offered some of the best selections in ethnic foods in the world, and conceded that lightsabers were in fact the ideal weapon of choice when battling zombies. At this point, Bobby mentioned how many of the locals believed the building was haunted, given that it was once an old Chinese morgue and funeral home. Megan shrank back, wide-eyed, in her seat. Then David remarked how his Roman Catholic mother talked regularly to her dead husbands, which prompted Charles to offer-up a mini-lecture on séances and ectoplasm. At this point, Megan uttered a mouse-like squeak and excused herself from the table. No one seemed to notice, including Charles who continued on enthusiastically about Toronto’s Haunted Walk and real-life modern-day ghostbusters.
I excused myself from the table, and found Megan outside pacing the street corner, puffing on a cigarette. Today she was wearing a black turtleneck and a red beret with matching mittens on a string that dangled from her wrists, flopping about whenever she’d gesticulate. “You okay, there, Megan?”
“No, I’m not okay. I’m not,” she said. “I don’t know why Charles has to go on and on about ghosts when he knows it creeps me out. And those chicken feet are absolutely disgusting! I don’t know how people can eat those things. I know it’s so not PC for me to say that, but I really don’t give a flying monkey’s ass. You think they have monkey’s ass on the menu? I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. Sweet and sour monkey’s ass, sticky rice monkey’s ass in lotus leaves, crispy barbecued flying monkey’s ass-on-afucking-stick. Honestly! I tried ordering a plain garden salad (with no tomatoes since you know, Daniel, I can’t stand the texture of raw tomatoes), but did you know those cart ladies don’t even speak a word of English? I’m also PMSing right now. So that just explains everything, doesn’t it? At least that’s what Charles would say. ‘Megan, sweetie, you’re PMSing. This will pass.’ I hate it when he says that.”
“You two fighting?”
“What? No, Daniel. That’s the problem. We never fight. My ex-boyfriend Chris and I, we used to fight all the time.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
Megan sneezed. “Well, no. It was awful.” She searched her pockets and pulled out a crumpled tissue. “But we’d have make-up sex afterwards. Make-up sex is the best. It’s just the best. But Charles, he just, like, he goes along with everything.” She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. “If I complain about something, he’ll listen and understand and apologize if he needs to, and he’ll be so calm and nice about it. Sometimes it drives me crazy. I want my knock-down fights. I want my make-up sex.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Look at me. I don’t even smoke! I just bummed this off an old Chinese guy with one tooth right now. Here, take this away from me, please.”
She handed me her cigarette, smeared with lipstick. “Charles,” I said, “is a really nice guy.”
“I used to want nice. I remember that. I remember when that was all I wanted.”
“You two have been together, what, two-and-a-half years?”
“Well, since that dinner party of yours. I suppose it’s been that long. Has it been that long? How are your friends from upstairs, the ones who were pregnant? What were their names?”
“Mike and Melissa.”
“That’s right.”
“They had their baby, little Benjamin. They moved into a condo up in North York. I don’t really see them anymore.” I butted out the cigarette.
Megan sniffed. “I miss Karen. She was my best friend. Well, she still is. But you know how it is.”
“Yeah. Well, she’s my best friend too. I miss her too.”
“Charles is going to be a professor one day. Professor Ondaatje. Doesn’t that sound nice? I think about having his children. Seriously, I do. I could be Mrs. Ondaatje, couldn’t I? He says he’s a devout atheist. Can you be an atheist and still believe in ghosts? I could be an atheist. I have an open mind, right? But Daniel, I just don’t know what I want these days. Maybe I’m just being too nitpicky. Do you think I’m being too nitpicky?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Karen said you and I can both be a bit uptight sometimes.”
“She said that?”
“Of course, there is one thing about Charles I can’t complain about.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s huge. But I guess you would know that. Honestly, compared to Charles, Chris was a cocktail sausage.” Megan whispered: “Did I ever tell you Chris always had to use a cock ring?”
“Yes, you have.”
“Well, Chris always had to use a cock ring, just to keep it hard. I think he had something wrong with him down there.”
“He tried to kiss me once.”
“What? Who?”
“Chris.”
“My Chris?”
“Your Chris. A few summers back, during Pride. He tried to kiss me. He was drunk.”
“Oh my god, do you think Chris is gay?”
“Well, I don’t know. Pat’s convinced no one’s completely straight. I figure most guys are mostly straight. I think Chris might fall into that category.”
“What was it like, Daniel, when you and Charles were together?”
“Charles and me?”
“Megan nodded.
“Um.” I scratched my head. “It was ... nice?”
“When you two kissed, would he do that thing with the tongue?”
“What thing?”
“You know, that thing.”
“Oh, that thing. Um, yeah, he would.”
“Did you like it?”
“I didn’t mind.”
“Would he, like, go down there, on you, with you?”
“Um, sure. Why? You?”
“No. Well, sometimes. Not as often as I’d like. Except then he’d do that same icky thing with the tongue.” Megan rolled her eyes.
“Well, why don’t you tell him you don’t like it? He can’t read your mind, Megan. Tell him what you would like. Tell him what to do.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that!”
“You’re a teacher, Megan. Just think of him as one of your students.”
“I teach pre-K to grade three, Daniel.”
“Exactly.”
“You know, Karen and I kissed once?”
“Oh?” I was genuinely taken aback.
“It was awkward. I mean, I thought it’d be, you know, like all that.” Megan screwed up her face and shook her head. “We were able to laugh about it afterwards. She made me promise not to tell you. Honestly, I don’t think I could ever do it with a girl. Ew!”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Ew.”
“Daniel, what was it like with Marcus and Fang?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know. When the three of you were together. What was sex like?”
“Who says Marcus, Fang and I were together?”
“Daniel, are you kidding me? Everyone knew the three of you were together. There’s nothing wrong with that! Really, I’m not judging you at all. It’s the opposite, in fact. I mean, first of all, I think guy-on-guy sex is so hot. Sometimes I’d get Charles to watch gay porn with me. I used to think about the three of you doing it all the time. And Marcus, he’s so attractive. Not that you’re not attractive, I mean, you are. But Marcus, he’s like this angel, he’s like this Greek god. In fact, I was thinking, well. Do you think Charles would ever be into a threesome, like, with another boy?”
“You should ask Charles.”
“Would you sleep with us?”
“What? What? Megan, hold on. Look, I’m with David.”
“Well, do you think you and David might sleep with us? I just need, I think, I mean. I mean we’re friends right, all of us? But you gay guys sleep with your friends all the time, don’t you? And I was just thinking, Charles and me, we’re kind of in a slump right now. And he’s not into open relationships, and I’m not either. But I thought maybe like just this once. And I trust you. And David seems really nice. And there’s no harm in asking, right?”
“Megan. No. No, I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
“Okay.”
“Look. Megan. Have you tried a strap-on?”
“What?”
“A strap-on. I think Charles might enjoy that.”
“Why would he enjoy that?”
“What do you mean, ‘Why would he enjoy that?’ Charles, he would enjoy that. He likes it.”
“Likes it?” Megan blinked and raised one hand. “Oh no. No, he told me that he’s, you know. Oh no. He told me that when he was with other men, it was exclusively, you know.”
“What?” Now I was more than taken aback. “Charles never topped me. He was always the bottom. I never bottomed for him, not once, not even close. Not that there’s anything wrong with being the bottom. But that never happened between us. Did he tell you he was the top in our relationship?”
Megan nodded.
“Okay. Well.” I folded and unfolded my arms. “Well, that. That’s a lie. And I’m disappointed. I’m really disappointed. And, Megan, you should get a strap-on. In fact, don’t tell him. Just get it. And I think you should surprise him with it when he’s least expecting it. Trust me, he’ll love it. In fact, I’ll help you pick one out.”
“Oh, Daniel, would you?”
I rested one hand on her shoulder. I could’ve said a lot of things to her in that moment. I could’ve told Megan that Charles had all the sex appeal of IKEA furniture, and that when it actually came to performance in bed, despite his vast and esoteric intellect, what Charles needed most was someone to take him by the hand and lead him like he was in pre-K. But instead, I simply smiled and said: “Hey, what are friends for?”
Grandma was sick. It’d happened suddenly and without warning. She’d been able to leave the nursing home without any fuss and come home for Thanksgiving. But by November, she had moved into hospice care, and was sleeping almost all the time. A week before Christmas, the chaplain was called in. In the early morning of Christmas Eve, Grandma passed away. Grandpa was at her side, holding her hand when it happened. Liam, Pat and I were crashed out on a couch the head nurse had let us drag into Grandma’s room. I woke up first, blinking blearily. Pat was snoring, drooling on my shoulder. The flowers crowding the windowsill shone, luminous. For a few seconds, I didn’t know where I was. The sunlight was blinding on the white sheets. I squinted and rubbed my eyes. Gradually everything came into focus. I got up and went over to Grandpa, knelt and held his shoulders. After a minute, Liam and Pat did the same. Grandma was ninety-one years old.
I texted Karen who arrived forty minutes later along with the Miltons. To my surprise, Karen’s little sister Anne also showed up. As usual, she was dressed all in black, but on this occasion it seemed appropriate. I remember the red exit signs, the sound of the nurses’ heels on the linoleum floor, the oil in Grandpa’s unwashed, thinning hair. The staff knew exactly what to do, what we needed, and how it was to be done. In the end, I was the one who spoke with the doctors and the funeral director. Mr. Milton was helpful, as was Karen who had managed arrangements for her father’s burial two years ago. The Miltons stayed with Grandpa that afternoon and all evening.
Late that night, when everyone had gone home and Grandpa had gone to bed, Karen knocked on the front door and I let her in. The four of us sat silently in the kitchen. In the last few days, I’d cleaned the house from top to bottom. Liam had jerry-rigged the downstairs toilet with a coat hanger so it was working fairly reliably. The furnace, however, was acting up again. At Grandpa’s insistence, the three of us had taken his pick-up and gotten ourselves a Christmas tree. It just didn’t seem right not to have one. It was smaller than usual this year, and we’d taken our time decorating it. Tonight, Liam made a big pot of Labrador tea. A plate of store-bought shortbread cookies sat untouched next to it. After a while, Pat emptied his cup and set it upside-down on the table. “Well, that hit the spot.”
“Yep.”
“Yes sir.”
“Yesiree.”
The window over the sink rattled. A draft was moving through the house again. Jackson padded into the kitchen and looked from one of us to the other. He whined and rested his chin in Liam’s lap.
“Look, guys,” Pat said. “Anyone want a drink?”
“Definitely,” we said in unison, “for sure.” Chairs scraped, tea cups were cleared, a bottle of Canadian Club was cracked open and four glasses appeared.
“Hey guys,” Karen said, checking her phone while I poured. “It’s Anne. She wants to know if she can join us.”
We stared at each other. When we were little, the five of us used to always hang out. I remembered rescuing Anne’s stuffed giraffe after Gary Kadlubek threw it onto the train tracks. But by the time we got into high school, she was doing her own thing. “Yeah,” we said. “Sure.” I tucked my shirt into my pants. “Of course.”
When Anne arrived, she was wearing an Avril Lavigne T-shirt and cargos. Her hair was dyed blue and one side was shaved. She kicked off her combat boots, strolled through the living room and peered out the back door before settling in the kitchen. “Nice tree,” she said. She handed me a Tupperware of shortbread tied with a ribbon. “Here. My mom baked these for you guys.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You want a drink?”
“Sure. What do you have?”
“Well, we’re having whiskey. Here.” I handed her a glass with a shot in it.
“What? No milk and cookies?”
“Not tonight.”
“Some party. Cheers.” She threw back her shot before I could ask if she wanted any Diet Coke or ginger ale to go with it. She handed back the glass and wiped her mouth on the edge of her wrist.
“Hey, look, Annie,” Pat said. “Thanks for coming out this morning. It meant a lot to us.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, thanks for having me over.”
Pat poured everyone another round. “Remember when the five of us used to play hide-and-seek?”
“Yeah.” Anne smiled shyly. “That closet in your bedroom had that squeaky floorboard. It was always a dead giveaway.”
“Shit. I remember that.”
“I remember,” Anne said, “your grandpa used to clean and sharpen his lawnmower blades right at this table. The first time I saw that, it scared the hell out of me.”
“No kidding,” Pat said laughing, “that’s right. You started bawling your eyes out.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Grandpa? He’s doing okay.”
“He’s a survivor,” Liam said.
Anne poked at the fridge magnets. “So when’s the funeral?”
“In two days.”
“You’re going to the funeral?” Karen said.
“Of course, I’m going to the funeral.”
Karen nodded, her lips compressed into a thin line. I looked back and forth between the two. “What’s up?”
“Oh,” Karen said, shrugging. “It’s just that she wouldn’t go to her own father’s funeral. That’s all.”
“Would you rather I didn’t go?” Anne said.
“That’s not the point, is it?”
The room had gotten colder. I wondered if the furnace was acting up again, but I didn’t think so.
Liam drew himself to his feet. He looked haggard and his eyes were bloodshot. His beard needed trimming. I had a vision of him hauling traps and trudging across the wilderness through a blizzard in furs and snow shoes. “Guys, I’m pretty tired. I think I’m going to hit the sack. Karen, if you want to stay up, go ahead.”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Pat said. “Hold on, it’s not even midnight yet. We all gotta stay up until midnight.”
“Who said that?”
“We always stay up until midnight. It’s our tradition. C’mon, guys, it’s Christmas Eve. It’s our tradition.”
“Except last year,” I said. “Pat, you weren’t even planning to come home for Christmas.”
“But I did come home,” Pat said. “I came home, asshole. I came the fucking home! Look, I haven’t missed a single Christmas in this house in my entire life, so fuck off! You’re always on my fucking back.” Tears were running down his face. “I’m here, aren’t I? We’re all here.”
We were all taken aback.
“Liam,” Karen said.
“Hey, look,” Liam said, “I’ll stay up. It’s no big deal.” He reached across the table, collected all our glasses, lined them up and started refilling them. Except he wasn’t being careful and was spilling all over the table. Karen had to kick me twice in the leg to get my attention.
“What?”
She gestured with her eyebrows. “Pat.” I drew a breath. “Pat, I’m sorry.” But Pat only knuckled away his tears and wouldn’t look me in the eye.
Liam hesitated over Anne’s glass. “How old are you anyway?”
“I’m fucking nineteen,” Anne said. “I’ve been drinking since I was twelve.”
“Oh.” He poured her a double-shot. He set the halfempty bottle down and raised his glass. We all picked up our glasses. “Here’s to Grandma.”
“To Grandma.”
“To family,” I said. I put my arm around Pat’s shoulder. “To family.”
“To us,” Karen said.
“To us.”
“Hey, it’s midnight. It’s Christmas. Merry Christmas everybody.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Three days after the funeral, as I was loading up the car for the drive back to Toronto, Grandpa brought a cardboard box from the house.
“Here, Daniel, I’ve been buying these in bulk for your mémère. It’d be a waste to throw them out.”
He set the box down in the trunk, patted my shoulder, and walked away through the lightly falling snow. Puzzled, I opened the box which was neatly packed with slim white cartons. I pulled one out. They were fresh scent, vaginal cleansing douche kits. Pat and Liam emerged from the garage hauling our old dresser. I closed the box, threw my jacket over top of it and pushed it to the back of the trunk. I was still blushing as we wrapped the dresser in an old camping tarp and strapped it up on the roof of the car. That piece of furniture was older than we were, covered in faded hockey stickers and decals which we’d collected for years. Grandpa had insisted David and I could use it in our loft.
“Just strip it down,” he said. “Give it a stain and it’ll be good as new.” But there was no way in hell I was going to strip it down. I was planning to keep the dresser exactly the way it was.
When I got back to Toronto, I dropped Pat off at the Ferry Docks. Blonde Dawn was in Florida with her family, and Pat was spending New Year’s Eve again with his friends on the Island. When I thanked him for the loan of his car, he reminded me it was actually Blonde Dawn’s car, and to return it by the weekend.
“Pat,” I said, leaning over the passenger’s seat. “Thanks. Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year,” he said, and closed the door.
Back home, I keyed into the loft as quietly as I could. A huge pot of chili was simmering on the stove. I could smell it from down the hallway. The table was set with folded sheets of paper towel, a basket of focaccia and a bottle of red. Broken Social Scene was playing on the stereo. I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. I pulled off my snow boots, hung up my jacket, stripped naked and knocked on the door. David peered out from behind the curtain, soap suds in his hair and eyes.
“I was wondering when you’d be home.” He squinted. “How was the funeral?”
“It was good,” I said. “I missed you.”
He glanced down at me. “Looks like it.”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
I kissed him, gently at first, and then more passionately. I’d been gone almost two weeks. “You’d better not be jacking off in there.”
“Hey, we both promised not to.”
David drew back the curtain. I observed the water streaming down his torso, hips and thighs. I’d kept my promise, and it looked like he had too. I reached out and cupped him in my palm, swollen and heavy.
“See?” He smiled, biting his lower lip. “I am a man of my word. They’re about as blue as they get.” We both noticed the drop of pre-cum oozing from the tip of my own erection. He touched it appraisingly and licked his fingertip. “So, mister, are you coming in or what?”
I stepped into the stall and closed the curtain. He wrapped his arms around my waist and swung me under the showerhead. The water was scalding hot. I almost came just from that embrace. I’d missed him so much. A few minutes later, when he had me in his mouth, I did come. Then I drew him to his feet and we kissed bruisingly as I took him in my fist, tasting my own sticky saltiness, until he shuddered and gasped out loud, almost grunting, again and again. Afterwards, he lay limply in my arms, but by then I was hard again. I turned David around, took up some soap and began to wash him. I groped for a condom in the medicine cabinet, tore it open and put it on. At that moment, the hot water gave out and the shower turned icy cold. As fast as we could, we clambered out, swearing and laughing at the top of our lungs.
Later, over dinner, I told David about Grandpa. “Liam’s going to stay with him, at least for a few weeks.”
“Those two really get along, don’t they?”
“They’re two of a kind, alright.” I grated a block of hard Romano over both our bowls.
“How’s your grandpa doing, anyway?”
“He’s doing okay, as well as can be expected. You know, they were married fifty-nine years.”
“No shit. That’s incredible. What was she like?”
“Grandma? I just remember she was a lot of fun. She loved to laugh. I mean, we were still kids when she started getting the dementia, right? So it’s hard to say what she was really like. But in all the pictures of her when she was younger, she looked like a Hollywood starlet. Everyone says Dad got his good looks from Grandma. She was a glamorous gal. One thing’s for sure: she loved to be in nature, and she loved to go for walks. It got to be a problem. Grandpa and my parents would put up childproof locks and signs, but nothing worked. Once she disappeared for almost thirty-six hours. The police found her wandering along the highway, halfway to North Bay. Somebody must’ve given her a lift. She was really dehydrated, scraped up, and had no idea where she was.”
“Whoa. That must’ve been scary.”
“It was. Then after Mom and Dad died, it was just impossible to keep her safe. Three boys were a handful enough. She’d forget to turn off the gas stove. She’d wander off in the middle of the night. The whole neighbourhood and the police got to know her. She started getting erratic. Sometimes she’d get confused and ask where Mom and Dad were. Around that time, Liam started cutting himself, and Pat got caught lighting fires in the dumpsters behind the school. Then child welfare threatened to take us away. That was when Grandpa finally made the decision to put her in the nursing home.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
“Well, the home was only thirty minutes away, and we’d visit all the time. They loved her in the home. She’d read poetry to all the other residents. Grandpa likes to tell people they were high school sweethearts. Technically it’s true. They met when he was fifteen. What most people don’t know is she was actually his high school English teacher. He wasn’t the best student so she’d keep him after school to tutor him. Well, one thing led to another. When word got out, it was a small town and you can imagine what it was like back then. She got fired of course, and eventually had to move. She ended up in Toronto, cutting up rubber in a tire factory. But Grandpa, he followed her. After he graduated high school, he followed her and moved in with her. He was nineteen and she was thirty-two when they got married. Then when our dad was still just a baby, Grandpa got conscripted into the merchant navy. They didn’t see each other for two years.”
“Wow. That’s awful.”
“Well, everyone was part of the War effort back then. Everyone made sacrifices. Grandpa wrote her every day, usually from the East Coast, but sometimes from as far away as ports in Russia. She kept all his letters. When the dementia started getting really bad, he’d read them to her at the nursing home, and then she’d remember who he was. What? What is it?”
“You know, you and I will be old one day.”
“One day.”
“We should write to each other.”
“What do you mean?”
“We should write letters to each other, love letters, like your grandparents did.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just texted you?”
“Daniel, I’ve never gotten a real letter before. I want to open the mailbox and find a letter with a stamp on it from my lover. I want to smell your cologne on the paper, and see your hand-writing. I want to get letters the way your grandma got letters. From Russia with love.”
“Oh, James,” I said, laughing.
“Promise we’ll send each other love letters.”
“You’re serious?”
“Of course, I’m serious. Why are you always asking if I’m serious?”
“I guess because I’m so used to Pat messing with me. He used to yank my chain all the time.”
“Oh, I’ll yank your chain alright.” David’s stretched out his bare foot and pressed it up against my crotch. “But I’m serious about the letters. Look, I’ll write the first one.”
“Alright.” I took his foot in my lap and began to massage his toes.
“You know,” David said, “you never finished what you started.” He nodded towards the bathroom. “Maybe I should write a letter of complaint, for sexual non-harassment.”
“How about a letter to the building manager about that hot water tank?”
“I love you.”
I pressed my thumb deeper into his arch. I listened to faraway sirens and the faint, clattering rumble of a passing streetcar. Fifty-nine years was incomprehensible to me. It was more than twice as long as David or I had even been alive. If David moved to another city, would I follow him? Grandpa was only eighteen when he left everything he knew and followed after the woman he loved. Then when he was my age, he was already risking his life, fighting in a war across the ocean against the Nazis. What was I risking and what was I fighting for?
David searched my face. “You okay?”
I nodded. “I love you too.”
David sipped from his wine glass.
“What?” I asked.
“You know what, mister. Hey, you ready for dessert?”
“You made dessert?”
“No, but my ma did. It’s her cannoli.”
“That reminds me. Grandpa had me bring back a couple of his sugar pies. He remembered you liked the last one I brought back from Thanksgiving.”
“Pie and cannoli, then.” David got up and rummaged in the freezer. “There’s Rocky Road too. You ready for a sugar blast extravaganza?”
“Alright,” I said. “But after.” I got up, closed the freezer door and took David by the hand.
“Where are we going?”
I led him to the bedroom where I pushed him down onto the mattress, and started unbuckling his belt. “Let’s just say,” I said, smiling, “I don’t want to get any letter of complaint.”
Later that night, long after David had fallen asleep, I got up out of bed carefully so as not to awaken him. I put on my coat, climbed the stairwell to the rooftop and had a cigarette. The snow had stopped and the city for once seemed at peace. Christmas lights still twinkled here and there, in people’s windows and balconies. Tomorrow, I’d get David to help me bring the dresser up. I was just starting to build my life with him. For Christmas, Grandpa had given me a slim book of poetry entitled, Leaves of Grass.
“It belonged to your mémère,” he said. “I want you to have it.”
I was sure Grandpa already knew I was gay. It didn’t matter whether he’d figured it out on his own, or if Pat had told him. I wondered if it hurt Grandpa that I hadn’t come out to him yet. I promised myself I would the next time I saw him. That sudden decision thrilled me in the most unexpected way. I was almost tempted to wake David up and let him know. Instead, I went back downstairs and had a drink of water. When I took off my clothes and crawled back into bed, David shivered and complained sleepily: “Oh Christ your hands are cold. Where’d you go?” I spooned him from behind and held him close. “No where,” I whispered in his ear. “Go back to sleep. I’m here.”