They had found a good spot at Martuni’s (out of the crush but close to the piano), so Jake staked a claim while Amos went for cocktails. The sight of this guy—his guy—wriggling through the crowd warmed Jake with an old contentment. He remembered a time when his name was still Janice and he and Dan Strayhorn had dug army foxholes in Dan’s backyard in Tulsa. Dan had treated him like a buddy, had called him buddy, in fact—no cracks about girls—as they swung pickaxes on a sweltering summer afternoon. The foxholes were more like shallow graves, but they roofed them with planks and dirt and talked to each other for hours, soldier to soldier, each in his own bunker, through a length of buried garden hose. Reduced to a voice in the loamy darkness, Jake could be exactly the boy he was supposed to be.
Amos was that voice through the hose, that trusting headlong tumble into camaraderie. Jake had always been imagining Amos: someone who would hold him close and treat him as the same rough creature without effort or delusion. Amos, by his own admission, had never imagined anyone like Jake, but it didn’t matter. He responded to Jake, admired him. “You’re a better man than I,” he declared one night after sex, and Jake had almost instantly been moved to silence.
“I’m sorry,” Amos blurted. “That was lame.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Yeah, it was way too gooey Jewy. I work too hard at being a mensch.”
“You didn’t mean it?”
“No . . . I meant it.”
“Then shut up, dude.”
Amos laughed and used his T-shirt to mop the pearly splatter off Jake’s chest. “It just sounded so self-consciously liberal. I hate that.”
“I liked it,” said Jake. “So shut the fuck up.”
That’s how their valentine had read.
It had worked for both of them.
Someone had commandeered the piano to bang out “I’m Yours.” Amos was across the room, holding Manhattans aloft like amber lanterns, but somehow he managed to swap smirks with Jake. The two of them had a running joke about that song, the way Jason Mraz had been every-fucking-where on their first few dates, bouncing out of cars and bars with all that you-done-done-me stuff, all that certainty about love, love, love. You had no choice but to dis it with someone you’d just met, or it would take you down with it. But the very act of dissing it had already made it their song, their reason to catch the other’s eye across a crowded room.
Amos handed him the Manhattan. “I think most of it’s still there.”
Jake took a sip to prove him right. “Thanks, bud.”
Amos pulled his chair closer to Jake’s. “Isn’t that your friend over there? The one who wrote the best-seller?”
“Shawna?”
Sure enough, it was Brian’s daughter, looking more like Zooey Deschanel than ever now that she’d let her bangs grow back. She was sitting with a skinny guy whose hair was a dandelion about to explode. Jake hadn’t seen him for several years, so it took a while to place that long, blank Nordic face—Otto, the street clown/puppeteer that Shawna had gently dumped when he got too serious.
Realizing that Jake had spotted her, Shawna headlamped her eyes and twiddled her fingers at him. “Hang on to our seats,” he told Amos. “I’ll be back.”
He made his way to Shawna and kissed her on the cheek.
“Hey, doll.”
“You remember Otto, right?”
“Sure, hey!”
“Otto, Jake . . . Jake, Otto.” Shawna sounded unusually chipper, hyper almost. “We just bumped into each other. Right here. A few minutes ago. Isn’t that wild?”
It didn’t strike Jake as especially wild, but he left it unchallenged, laying his hand on Otto’s shoulder. “So how’s ol’ Sonny?”
Otto looked confused. “Who?”
“Your puppet.” Jake mimed it with his hands. “The monkey puppet?”
“Oh . . . Sammy.”
“Right, sorry . . . Sammy.”
“He passed on to Nirvana.”
“Wow.” Jake spoke the word quietly, respectfully, seeing a cloudiness in Otto’s eyes that had to be honored. “How does that happen exactly?”
Otto sighed. “I was broke, so I got a job at Trader Joe’s. It was time to get off the street. I couldn’t stand to think of Sammy cooped up in the box all the time, so I took him to the Burn last year and . . . we said our good-byes at the temple burn. It was awesome, but—I gotta tell you, man . . . really, really hard.”
Jake found this tale far more disturbing than he’d expected. “I guess you couldn’t have sold him, huh? Or given him away?”
“You don’t do that to your child,” said Otto.
You don’t incinerate him either, thought Jake, unless you’re some old dude in the Bible. And there was something especially disturbing about sacrificing an inanimate object that depended on you for its life.
You just don’t do that, dude. You don’t take a dog back to the pound because you don’t want to feed it anymore.
Shawna was fidgeting with her cocktail napkin, Jake noticed. Something was distracting her, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t premeditated puppet-cide. “So,” she said in an odd little voice, “we’re all heading for the playa this year, looks like.”
Jake turned to Otto. “You too, huh?”
“He’s on the temple crew,” said Shawna. “It’s gonna be ah-ma-zing this year. All laser-cut with computers. Can you believe this?” She made a gesture that encompassed the three of them. “The world is so fucking small!”
“Cool. Look . . . I better get back to Amos. Just wanted to say hi.”
In truth, he just wanted to get away from Shawna’s weird energy. She was sounding like a Heather or something. You’d think he’d just caught her with an embarrassing online hookup, or a secret married lover, instead of an old fuck buddy she had long ago sent packing. It wasn’t like her. It made no sense at all.
It unsettled him to find Anna gone when they got back to the flat. It really shouldn’t have, of course, since they had watched her leave, blowing kisses and waving from the window of Brian’s Winnebago like a homecoming queen on a float. But a couple of stiff drinks and a dark, empty house had set Jake to thinking: How would a lasting absence feel? How could he even prepare for that?
He wanted her back. He wanted her back here right now, lighting candles all over the flat—real candles with real flames and tons of wax dripping everywhere—whatever the fuck she needed. He felt an icy panic scrape through his chest like a glacier, a dread so complete that Amos detected it and offered distraction.
“I think somebody wants a word with you.”
Jake looked down at the tiny black cat encircling his leg.
“Hey, Notch baby—yeah, I know, where the hell is she?” He lifted the cat gently, letting her drape lifelessly over his hand. (That was the way Notch preferred to travel, having lived too long on the mean streets of the city to submit to anything on her back.) He brought her into the kitchen and set her down next to her food. Marguerite and Selina had obviously been here, since the bowl was already filled with Notch’s crunchy senior kitty food. She sniffed it once and politely declined.
“Do you want me to stay over?” asked Amos.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I dunno. A whole week of Trans Bay ahead of us. Stinky porta potties. Loud music. You might want some down time.”
“You mean you might like some down time.”
Amos shook his head. “Nope. Not what I said.”
“Then stay. I’m fine with it. It’s easier with the truck, anyway. They only have to make one stop.” And I won’t be alone here tonight, he thought. I won’t be alone here for the first time maybe ever.
The truck had been loaded that afternoon in Emoryville. The Monarch had been dismantled piece by piece and strapped into place on the flatbed, a shapeless scrap pile of poles and pedals and painted canvas that would, he hoped to God, find its way to wholeness again in the desert. He was feeling as wingless and inert as his creation. So much of his focus had been on Anna (getting her there, keeping her safe, thrilling her with his magical ride) that he had lost a sense of purpose.
“It’ll be a triumph,” Amos told him that night in bed.
“Oh, yeah?” said Jake, settling into the crook of his arm.
“It’s magnificent . . . and it grew out of you and her. Nothing has changed in that respect. And she won’t miss anything but the hardship. It’ll even have its own Facebook page. Felicia is going to film the fuck out of it.” Amos chuckled at this unintentional clustering of f’s and repeated the phrase slowly, like an exercise in enunciation. “Felicia is going to Film the Fuck out of it.”
Jake couldn’t handle being silly right now. “The bitch of it is: Anna’s going to the desert anyway. She could just as easily die in that RV as in the art car.”
“Nobody’s dying,” said Amos. “Let it go.”
Jake turned and looked at him. “What was that you gave her today? When they were leaving.”
“Just a card.”
“A card?”
“A bon voyage card. Telling her not to worry. That I’d keep an eye on you.”
Jake was silent for a moment. “Really? You did that?”
“She worries about you too.”
Another silence.
“I bought us something fun for the playa,” Amos said.
“What?”
“Magic underwear.”
“Mormon magic underwear?”
“Why not? You said it made you hot. Ever since you saw Patrick What’s-His-Name wear them in Angels in America.”
Was that how he’d explained it? He had said so much during the gabfest of their first date, from their initial sniff-out at Hot Cookie to their exhausted predawn entanglement at Amos’s apartment in SoMa. It had all been true, if incomplete. He had wanted to share with Amos but not overshare, so he couldn’t remember exactly what was on the record. He decided to shift the discussion away from his libido.
“How would you even get a pair of Mormon underwear?”
“You mean how would Amos Karpel get a pair of Mormon underwear?”
“No. Anybody. You can’t just buy it, can you? You have to have a note from your pastor or something.”
“Orrrr . . .” Amos tiptoed his fingers across the raven tat on Jake’s bicep. “You could go to a website in China that makes a brilliant imitation.”
“No!”
“Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. A fine blend of polyester and cotton, and baggy in all the right places. It’s already packed in my duffel bag.”
“You’re nuts,” Jake said with a dismissive chuckle, though this was close to being the sweetest thing he’d ever heard.
“So what’s the fantasy here?” asked Amos. “I’m . . . what? A young Mormon missionary? An unusually swarthy and well-nosed young Mormon missionary who’s come to the city to take away your marriage rights? You sense right away that I’m deeply repressed, so the moment our eyes meet at the front door—”
“Pier 39.”
“He’s canvassing at Pier 39?”
“It’s his day off. He’s looking at the sea lions. He’s wearing a red jacket and jeans.”
A sly grin crept over Amos’s face. “This is an awfully specific fantasy.”
The game was obviously over. “It wasn’t that much of a fantasy,” he said ruefully. “More like a fucking train wreck in the end.”
“But you saw the magic underwear?” Amos didn’t seem especially bothered that this scenario had its roots in real life.
“Oh yeah,” said Jake. “Four or five times. We did this therapy thing.”
“You’re losing me here, bud.”
“He had a shrink back in Snowflake—”
“Utah?”
“Arizona. The shrink did this reparative therapy where he held him in his arms like a dad would do. Comfort him and call him son and shit. But with their clothes on. Said it would cure queerness. Fill some deep-seated need.”
“I’m sure it did. For the shrink.”
“Word.”
“So you did this with him, huh? In his magic underwear.”
“Yep.”
“Right here?”
“Sometimes.”
“While he was campaigning for Prop 8?”
“Pretty low, right? Sleeping with the enemy.”
“Well . . . cuddling with the enemy.”
“That’s even worse. The enemy should not be cuddled.”
Amos laughed. “Or coddled.” He slipped his hand between Jake’s legs and pulled him closer. He smelled of Manhattans and hair oil and a good day’s work. His fingers found Jake’s clit and rolled it idly, speculatively, like a pebble he’d just discovered on the beach. “So now you have this thing for magic underwear.”
“Sort of. It could be nice to see them come off some time.”
“Damn. They never did?”
“That was the deal. Neither one of us wanted to get naked. He didn’t want to go all the way with a fag, and I didn’t want him to see my vagine.”
“He doesn’t know what he was missing,” said Amos.