I returned from walking the dogs one night and heard Philip talking to someone. As I stepped into the kitchen, I found him and Janice at the counter, her face assertive with makeup. She’d left me several messages I’d meant to answer.
“Here he is. Alive and well as you can see,” Philip said.
“Hi,” I said, and kissed her cheek. Her perfume was a brassy, floral approximation. Her T-shirt’s slogan—I’m Not a Lesbian but My Girlfriend Is—stretched across her chest.
“Your dear roommate has been trying to reach you,” Philip said. “You, like our friend Pavel, don’t get an A for communication.”
“I’ve been meaning to call you back,” I told her, knowing any more elaborate excuse would wither under even basic cross-examination. My face heated with embarrassment, also annoyance at Janice’s unannounced visit.
“You should stay for dinner,” Philip said. “Gordon, what are we having?”
“I thought we could order.”
I waited for Janice to decline, for discomfort to make quick work of things, but she nodded. We chose Thai from the pastiche of menus Philip spread across the counter. As we waited for the food to arrive, Philip poured each of us a beer.
“I’d say that I’ve heard all about you,” Philip said, “but dear Gordon holds his cards close.”
Janice made a face, of surprise or hurt, and took a large sip.
“That’s funny,” she said. “I was going to say that he holds his cards so you can see them, even when he thinks you can’t.”
Philip let out an interested hum, one that asked for more information. Janice told him about the sex stories I came home with and then shared in cinematic detail, how she could often tell from my face when I was embarrassed or afraid, even when I said I was fine. I gathered up the menus, put them away.
“I wonder what he’s feeling now?” Philip asked.
They turned to me, and I experienced a startled panic, as if caught eavesdropping.
“Maybe Gordon wants you to stop talking about him like he isn’t in the room with you,” I answered.
My anger slipped out, a stereo’s volume turned accidentally, momentarily to max. But Philip covered any unease by asking Janice to tell him all about herself.
She talked about the Ohio town she’d grown up in, her parents who both taught high school and somehow stayed sweetly, earnestly in love. How when her brother first returned home after joining the Marines, Janice locked her bedroom door at night because of a menace that seemed newly essential to him.
Janice asked Philip about how he’d wound up in the art world, and the doorbell rang. I was relieved to leave the room. As I paid the delivery person and stood in the vestibule with the warm bag of noodles, I thought of the things Janice had just shared, many of which were news to me, a reminder that, even in our most intimate conversations, what I wanted most was an understanding of how she saw me.
“Dinner,” I said, and unpacked the food.
Finishing her noodles and beer, Janice put her jacket on, gave Philip a long hug, then told me she was glad I was okay.
“I’m sorry about all that,” I said, after she’d left.
Philip rinsed the bowls we’d used.
“I hope you hold on to her,” Philip said.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He opened the dishwasher, nested the bowls on its rack. One of the dogs trotted over to lick its basket of soiled utensils.
“You should really call people back, your roommate especially,” Philip said.
“I often do.”
Wet whispers of the dog’s tongue on a spoon, a spatula.
“Turn that ‘often’ to ‘always’ is my advice,” he said.
“Should we watch something?” I asked.
“Think I’ll go upstairs and read.”
“It’s not even nine.”
“I’m not allowed?” Philip asked.
A feeling arrived that often accompanied wanting, for me at least: a sweetness turned bitter when what I’d wanted and gotten started to retreat from me.
“It’s your house, Philip,” I said.
He kissed my forehead. It didn’t feel sweet or kind but analgesic, like when my mom’s second husband, who had chickens, would hold them from their feet to calm them just before slitting their throats. My next thought: Get over yourself. I wanted to do that, but wasn’t sure I ever would.
Philip went upstairs. I took the dogs for a walk. Whenever I thought to turn back toward his house, the dogs and I wandered down another street or lingered outside a restaurant. Each time the door opened, we heard the whir of conversation, saw walls of windows curtained in steam.
When I was young, an overeager student teacher once gave us an assignment to discuss a superpower we wished we had. I wrote about being invisible. For days after, boys in my class bumped into me then said, with phlegmy bravado, “Didn’t see you there,” and I wished I’d been able to explain that to be invisible didn’t mean to disappear, but to have control over who might see me, and when and how.
For the next few days, Philip kept his distance. He came home late, gave a brief report of where he’d been, and went upstairs. I understood that I should leave. I stayed. I read magazines about fancy houses and vacations I couldn’t afford late into the night, falling asleep on the sofa. When I woke up one morning to coffee already on, Philip back upstairs with the newspaper and the dogs, again I knew I should go back to Janice. But I knocked on his door and told him I was ready for the dogs, heard the thump of a spaniel jumping from bed to floor.
“Already walked them,” Philip said.
But then Philip came home early one night to me making food, his look of pleased relief mirroring my own, and sticking it out felt right, a reward. While we ate, we watched one of his favorite black-and-white movies.
I gathered up the plates from dinner, knew to come back with a whiskey for each of us.
A few nights later we went to the same gay dive bar from before and struck up a conversation with a man named Lee. He was somewhere in his forties or fifties, with a wide, kind face and delicate hands. He worked in IT. Philip made a joke. Lee laughed hard. When our drinks were empty, he insisted on buying the next round. In this man I saw a chance for Philip to move Nicola into the past tense, so, when Lee excused himself to use the bathroom, I told my boss he was being flirted with.
“I don’t know,” Philip said, folding his cocktail napkin into a smaller square.
Lee returned, all smiles. He picked up the napkin Philip had folded and undid it, moved his fingers across its creased grid. Philip’s chatty warmth from minutes before was gone. Lee looked at his watch, and I pointed out Philip’s watch, one he wore all the time.
“It’s nice,” Lee said.
“Thank you,” Philip replied, and stirred the ice in his glass.
When Lee looked at his watch again, I said, “Philip was hoping you’d come back to our place for a nightcap.”
“Oh,” Lee answered. His face fell, as if deciding how to offer his regrets. But then he said, “A nightcap could be nice.”
I waved the bartender over and used all my cash to pay our tab.
Inside Philip’s house, the dogs greeted us. Lee crouched down to pet them. Philip kept his coat on. I went into the kitchen to make martinis. Coming back into the living room, I found each of them sitting on their own sofa.
“This drink is good,” Lee said.
“Not my first rodeo,” I told him, then realized it sounded like flirtation, so I added, “No big deal.”
“How long have you two lived here?” Lee asked.
“Oh,” I said. “To be determined, I think.”
There was no change in Philip’s expression, no reaction when Lola jumped onto the couch she wasn’t supposed to be on.
“Cute dogs,” Lee said.
“That’s how this all started,” I said. “I used to be the dog walker.”
Most of the lights in the living room were off, so I turned a few on. Philip’s untouched drink sat sweating on the coffee table.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, walked up to my room, and closed the door.
Shortly after, I heard the front door close, Philip’s footsteps hollow on the stairs.
I knocked on his bedroom door. When he didn’t answer, I knocked again and walked in. He lay on top of his blankets, coat and shoes still on.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Lee had to get back to Washington Heights,” Philip said.
“You’re cuter than him anyway.”
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I walked to the foot of the bed, pulled off one of his shoes.
“Jesus, I’m not some toddler,” Philip said.
“I don’t think of you as a toddl—”
“He didn’t want me. I didn’t particularly want him, though had he been amenable, I suppose.”
“You’re too good for him anyway,” I said.
Philip’s glare sharpened. I wondered if he was about to hit me, wondered, too, why I often waited to be hit when I could count the times it had really happened on a single hand. I hoped his face might soften, that he’d pat the bed and tell me to sit. Philip blinked at the ceiling.
I leaned down and kissed him on the mouth. His lips tightened. He pressed his hands against my chest and pushed me away.
“I’m not your charity case,” he said.
“I wasn’t offering charity.”
“What were you offering then?” he asked.
One of his shoes was still on, the other foot in a thin, dark sock. On the mantel of a once-working fireplace sat photos of Philip and Nicola from their early years together, at an art fair in Switzerland, shirtless on a Greek beach. Philip’s eyes stayed glued to the ceiling, his hands crossed at his stomach. The shoe of his I’d taken off was still in my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Through the window came the soft shush of passing cars, shoes echoing on the pavement. Heat rose through the vents in a steady sigh.
“I’ll let you sleep,” I added, and hoped for a smattering of kind words from him, at least an acceptance of my apology, but the only indication he’d heard me came from the wiggling of his exposed foot’s toes.
I put the shoe on the floor and left his room.
When I woke up the next morning, Philip was gone. I returned to my apartment for a change of clothes. Dishes in the drainer were water flecked, and the moist, floral heat of a recent shower filled the place. I thought to call Janice, to tell her I’d just missed her, though I understood that all I’d wanted was her comfort, also that I had no right to ask for it.
My cell phone rang, Philip’s name on its screen a worry and a relief.
“Gordon,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I answered, “that things got weird last night.”
“Oh,” he said. “I’ve decided to head upstate with the dogs for a while. I need a break from the city’s noise, et cetera.”
“You won’t be lonely?” I asked, hearing the bleeding need in my inflection.
Philip answered with a noncommittal noise.
“Well, call me if you need anything,” I said, and he hung up.
Our apartment’s small size stifling, I left and got onto the subway. After a handful of transfers, I ended up in northern Brooklyn, trying to find a place Pavel had taken me on his last night in New York. It had snowed a good deal the day before he left, a surprise that early in the season. Pavel told me we were going out, that I needed to dress for the weather. Just before we left his apartment, he wrapped a folded bandanna over my eyes.
“No cheating,” he said.
“What is this?” I asked. He didn’t answer.
We walked, me blindfolded, Pavel’s hand in mine. Snow crunched underfoot, pelting my neck and chin. We moved down stairs. Even blindfolded I could feel the bright lights, hear the dampening sound. A subway turnstile rocked against my hip.
Once on the train, we sat down. The conductor’s muffled voice announced First Avenue, then Brooklyn. A passenger asked Pavel what was going on. “I’m surprising him,” Pavel said.
We got off the subway. Snow on the unshoveled sidewalks spilled into my high tops, turning my socks wet and cold.
“Pavel,” I said. He didn’t answer.
“Are you even Pavel?” I asked. “Or did he hand me off to some stranger? If you’re a stranger, squeeze my hand, so at least I know I don’t know you.”
Pavel shushed me, told me to put out my hands.
I felt chain link, heard a fence’s rattle as Pavel climbed. I groped my way over the fence, too. We moved down a narrow set of steps. Then he laid me on the ground, removed the blindfold. Snow batted my face with the eager persistence of gnats.
“I’m impressed you didn’t take this off earlier,” he said.
We were in an empty, abandoned pool, its walls a gallery of stains and holes. Peeling paint showed a change in depth from four feet to six. To one side, a crumbling municipal building. On the other, fencing and weedy trees. Lying there, snow past our shoulders, Pavel said, “Sometimes I think about where I’m going to die.”
“Being with me makes you think of death?”
“This isn’t about you, Gordon,” he answered.
He stood up, pulled his camera from his backpack, and took pictures of snowbound me. He told me to look away, then to move fast, my limbs reduced to smears. Pavel opened my jacket. He lifted up my shirt. My breath shivered as snow hit, melted. I waited for more pictures, but he just watched me. I hoped the snow would continue, his flight the next morning canceled, though there were always more flights. Snow kept landing on me.
“Is this some future painting?” I asked. “So memorable you don’t even need to photograph it? Burned in your brain, et cetera?”
“Why do you always say such nonsense?”
I wanted to ask more questions—though they’d break whatever wobbly spell held us—about how he’d found this place, how he’d known, too, that I’d be amenable to the blindfolded subway ride, though amenable could have been carved onto my tombstone rather than my name.
Pavel pulled me close. He moved his mouth across my face. “You taste cold,” he said.
Sometimes I think he took me to that place to confuse me or make sure I’d miss him. Or maybe he’d been bored and decided to take me blindfolded through the city, have me feel my way over a fence, just to see if I’d let him.
I walked for an hour but didn’t find the abandoned pool, ended up at an all-night diner that looked so much like Minneapolis inside that for a moment I pretended to be there.
Janice and Meredith had gone to visit friends in Massachusetts, so I was home solo. I smoked cigarettes I didn’t want, lay on Janice’s bed unable to sleep, and tried to understand the itch that invaded me whenever I was alone. Early the next morning, I gave up on sleep and went to the internet café. There was an email from Alan asking if I’d taken money from him so many months before, another from my mom, describing a man she worked with so it was clear she had feelings for him. A message from Dad about how, in that summer I’d stayed with him, he loved when we’d gone to church together. When people fell to their knees in praise, I saw that you were afraid. I kept telling you what was happening, but still you looked fearful. I hope you don’t feel afraid like that anymore. That you see new things and look at them with wonder. I began to write back that what I remembered was his disgust directed at me. That acting like fear could no longer reach him was his own brand of magic bullshit. My fingers whapped against the dirty keyboard. A man next to me looked at images of women with balloon-shaped breasts. But as quickly as anger had taken hold, it dissolved into boredom. I closed the message without sending it.
Leaving the internet café, I hoped walking would steady me, but my churned-up feeling grew. Though I knew Philip wanted a break, from the city but even more from me, I dialed his upstate number. It rang. I pulled out a cigarette. Nicola answered with a brusque hello.
“It’s Gordon,” I said.
“Hello Gordon,” Nicola answered.
“I didn’t know you’d be up there.”
“Where do you think I’ve been?”
I almost crossed a street until I noticed an oncoming car.
“What can I do for you, Gordon?”
“I was hoping to talk to Philip.”
“He’s not here at the moment,” he said. “Would you like to leave a message?”
I wondered if Nicola had started out as Philip’s assistant, this job a path for men of lesser means to follow.
“No thanks,” I said. Nicola hung up.
Philip had gone to see Nicola, might have told him about my needy, puppyish attention, the lackluster man I’d hoped to pin on him, the shoes I’d tried to pry off his feet.
I went to the park’s woods but at this time of day there was no one around. I sat on a log softened by rot, ready to accept whatever came down the path. But what came was a man and woman walking a dog. The dog wagged toward me, though the woman held the leash to keep it at bay. After they passed, I heard their squelched laughter. I wanted to be mad, though I understood what was ridiculous about me then, eyes wide with need, ants from the log darting across my jeans and sneakers.
The next night, I fought the impulse to head back to the park’s woods and went to Janice’s bar instead. Even with her in Massachusetts, I hoped its noise and familiarity might pull me out of the skid I was in the midst of. But inside, I found her there pouring a trio of beers.
“Didn’t expect you to be here,” I said.
“Massachusetts didn’t agree with me,” Janice replied.
“Philip and Nicola might be back together.”
“Good,” she said. “You can finally stop babysitting that rich old thing.”
Janice floated up and down the length of the bar, laughing with strangers, her face all business when a man looked at her with porno interest. Whenever I tried to catch her eye, she held up a finger to tell me to give her a minute, though that minute didn’t come.
At the end of the night, Janice came to my corner of the bar and said, “You never asked me about Massachusetts.”
“I can never spell Massachusetts,” I said.
Her eyes fell to the glasses she was washing. Massachusetts hadn’t agreed with her, which meant Meredith. I’d been too busy gorging on the possibility of Philip and Nicola’s reunion to consider what lay beyond its border.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I’m tired,” Janice said.
“I’ll help you clean up,” I offered, but she told me it wasn’t my job.
I walked home alone. When I woke up in the morning, Janice wasn’t there.