Terminal Grill (6 page)

In the morning I awoke to thoughts of how I might begin to dismantle my life in order to move to Hartford.

It was Thursday, and before work, Matthew walked me a long few blocks to my bank. I had told him that the next day I was leaving to visit my brother in Utica, New York. Something about this seemed to bother him, and not sure what, I thought maybe he'd miss me, so I told him he was welcome to come with me if he liked.

I told him I'd arranged to take the next day off work to be with him as long as possible before my bus left at two in the afternoon, and I told him, too, I'd take the latest bus possible because, according to what he'd originally told me, the Sunday I got back was supposed to be Matthew's last day in town.

He said he'd think about going with me, but he seemed remarkably nonchalant for a man who'd declared his love and might have only a few hours left with his beloved.

Come to think of it, I was pretty nonchalant myself.

As we walked to the bank, Matthew talked again about his brothers, especially the one who was now successful in some aspect of the arts—exactly what his brother did was unclear to me. Matthew mentioned, as he had before, that when he was twenty-one, he'd been hit by a car in Yorkville, an accident that resulted in a semicircular scar between his right eyebrow and his nose, another scar under his jaw and scars on his body he said he had, but which I never saw. He said, too, that this accident had resulted in his inability to have children and that in compensation for that, there'd been a very large settlement.

He said he wanted to use the money to get state-of-the-art equipment for his musical career, but that his brother had wanted to borrow it for something else. They'd quarreled and never really mended the breach.

When we got to the bank, Matthew came inside and took a chair while I did my business. I knew the manager and had a friendly chat with him, which Matthew commented on pleasantly later.

We left the bank, and, having a few minutes before it was time for me to get on the subway, went across the street to a tarted-up greasy spoon with flocked wallpaper for a coffee.

Matthew told me I'd been wonderful at the Highlander the night before. He said my behaviour had been perfect for his business purposes. He said he was proud of me.

I told him I thought he'd been pretty impressive himself. He had, I said, the perfect combination of arrogance and humility. We both laughed. Then he told me a story of an evening he'd spent with a famous musician who'd taken a crowd of people to a restaurant and after dinner ordered a whole bottle of cognac for each guest. Matthew had been appalled and disgusted. He
very often mentioned his distaste for excess of any kind, and he seemed to have found this incident really disturbing.

What I found really disturbing was the way he suddenly seemed to lose interest in the conversation, seemed to be studying something—or someone—over my shoulder and reacting nervously to it, or him or her ….

Suddenly he seemed in a hurry and anxious to leave the restaurant. Though he said nothing, I quickly finished my coffee. I offered to pay the small bill, but he refused and paid the bill himself.

We got on the subway, but instead of getting off at Bay, near the studio, Matthew got off one stop before. I thought this a little strange, but thought that perhaps he was headed south to finally go to the apartment he was supposed to be minding to change his clothes. Only his underwear had been changed since I'd met him. I was now lending him my shirt and washing his.

As usual, he told me he'd call me later. As usual, he turned and smiled and waved as the train pulled out of the station with me on it on my way to work.

It was growing very difficult for me to concentrate on my job. Only one woman there was in any way a friend, and after work that day, I had a coffee with her and told her all about Matthew—not only the good things, but also the gnawing doubts about all the music business names he was always dropping, about his descriptions of his work and his career, about the fact I couldn't find his name on any record anywhere nor locate anybody who'd ever heard of him.

As it happened, this woman had had experience in the music business herself, and she said that, while some of what
Matthew said seemed a little odd, all of it was certainly possible.

Once more I was left with the feeling that to question Matthew might be to insult him in a way he did not deserve.

CHAPTER NINE

T
HE EMOTIONAL PACE OF
the days was exhausting.

I got home and soon after Matthew called to say he'd be tied up for a while with the guys working on the video but that I should meet him at the Terminal at ten.

It never bothered me that he always wanted to meet me so late. I needed time to myself, since when I was with him, the being with demanded all my time and energy. Plus I figured that, in his profession, ten p.m. was early. It amazed me that he could get away so early every night and that he preferred to spend the time with me rather than drinking and taking drugs with his buddies, which was what I assumed recording artists preferred to do.

But he told me that some musicians had nothing to do with drugs and that he was one of them. Though, he said, he sometimes thought he was still too much into alcohol.

I took a nap, so tired that I seemed to sleep as deeply as Matthew could. But I awoke in plenty of time to get to the Terminal at ten.

Except that as I was about to leave, the phone rang. The call was from a girlfriend in some distress over the impending separation of her and the man she'd lived with for a couple of years, so I had no choice but to listen and to sympathize. When I hung up and looked at my watch, I knew I might
not make it to the Terminal exactly at ten, but sometimes Matthew had been a little late, so I didn't think he'd notice.

I rushed over. Through the window I could see that instead of sitting in a booth, Matthew was perched on a stool at the bar. Cynthia was beside him and Pete, the owner, was standing in front of him. They were trying to console him because he was so nervous that I hadn't shown up earlier.

“Here she is,” Cynthia laughed when I walked in. She got me a beer and George went off to make us a couple of plates of French fries.

The minute they'd stepped a little distance away, Matthew began to frantically declare how much he loved me—agitatedly, eagerly, and with, I thought, no real reason to be so excited.

“I'm so in love with you,” he said, his eyes shining like fire reflected in black marble, “I can't believe it. I'm so in love, so in love.”

I felt the urgent need to calm him down. I told him with laughing gentleness that I loved him too. On the bar was a gift wrapped in black paper with a bow made of silver spikes. “What's this?” I asked, teasing.

He handed it to me but told me not to open it until we got home.

He couldn't seem to stop touching me. The stools we sat on were close, with only a small space between, which he filled with his hands, reaching for as much of me as he could touch without the few others in the bar thinking us vulgar.

I was slightly embarrassed at his hunger, as if he had to touch me regardless of what the others thought—but it
seemed a sweet hunger, a sweet anxiety that only I could—and did—calm with touches and kisses and reassurances as if I were offering to a beautiful child some promise to keep him still until night.

The French fries came, slathered in gravy as always and accompanied by more beer. Laughing, we ate them, watching Pete's TV suspended over the bar.

Once more, Matthew began to talk about his wonderful house in the States. About how there were two acres of land. About how a retired U.S. general lived next door. About how the general liked to think he was keeping an eye on Matthew's place when Matthew was on the road, but that the general wasn't crazy about the two gay painters who lived there in his absence and who were the ones really keeping an eye on the place.

He talked with animation, as if this house were splendid, but it sounded happily chaotic, too, full of art treasures he'd gathered in his extensive travels, but also full of the sloppy memorabilia that a musician brings back from the road. I imagined Matthew as a man of many and varied possessions.

And he imagined that someday soon I might become one of them. As I listened to him talk about his home, he turned to me, the low fires keeping vigil in his eyes, and he said, “Will you marry me?”

I laughed and said yes.

He told me I could have a little room of my own for my writing. He said I wouldn't have to work again. He said, “I make …” but his voice trailed off before he named a figure. He was, this night, more handsome than ever, his lean, pale, strong-boned face agile with emotion, his mouth soft with
sudden smiles and compulsive kisses, his thick black curls dancing in the blue light of the Terminal TV.

I asked him if he'd thought about coming with me to Utica, and he said, “Well, I've thought about it. I spoke to the guys. They can spare me some of the time—I've cleared Saturday, but Sunday still looks iffy ….”

I wasn't disappointed—or hopeful either. The thought of bringing Matthew to meet my brother seemed to feel the same way a dream feels when you have something in it that would make your real life so much better, but you know you can't drag it back up with you into the reality of day.

“This weekend could cost me four thousand dollars,” he said, glancing over at me from the side of his eye.

“Oh, well, then,” I said, a tiny bit relieved, “you'd better forget about it ….”

“We'll see,” he answered.

As we watched TV, Michelle Phillips came on, and he seemed spellbound by her, staring intently at the screen and asking me not to talk while she was on. I found this very odd, but very pleasantly requested, so I, too, looked at the screen.

To watch television with him, to talk about his house—which he had suddenly begun to refer to as “our house,” to sit beside him laughing and touching, was such happiness, such ordinary happiness, that I wished with all my heart that the two of us might enjoy these simple pleasures forever.

After a while, we decided that if I was very discreet, I could open my gift. I held it down between our two bar stools and removed the spiky bow and the dark paper. Wrapped in
tissue in a box from Eaton's was a pair of black panties edged in black lace.

Matthew, as was his habit, asked me if we could spend the night together.

Of course, I said yes.

“But first,” I said, “there's something that's bothering me—”

“What's that?” he asked, a little nervous.

He still had not changed his clothes. It looked as though he'd been nowhere but at work or with me since the minute we'd met.

“The cockatiel. Who's feeding it? Who's giving it water? You said on Sunday that you were looking after it. Now it's Thursday. Is it dangling from its perch somewhere or something?”

“Oh, no,” Matthew smiled. “I gave the keys to the apartment to one of the technicians. I had him run over and take care of it.”

I smiled, relieved. It didn't occur to me to ask him why he hadn't told the technician to bring him back a clean shirt.

He paid Pete, peeling twenties off his wad again and declaring that he couldn't believe how small the tab was—as if he were used to much more expensive places.

I found that a tiny bit embarrassing, but Pete didn't seem to mind. He liked Matthew. And when I was with Matthew, he also liked me. Everybody seemed to like us.

We were golden, as golden as the beer we kept downing.

CHAPTER TEN

F
OR THE PAST COUPLE
of days, I had been complaining about a sliver in my finger—a sliver that may have been part of the thorn of a rose. Matthew became my surgeon.

As we came to my place, it was hurting and I mentioned it. I had told him before that I had had other friends who were pianists and that it was my experience that pianists had very strong hands.

We stepped inside, and before he'd removed his dark coat, he said, “Would you like me—with my pianist's hands—to take care of that sliver for you?”

I nodded yes and held out my hand.

He took it gently, but squeezed very hard. I kept my eyes on his darkly intense, handsome face. Though what he was doing should have hurt a great deal, I remember no pain. He seemed quite afraid of hurting me, though, and I had to encourage him to keep at the sliver.

“You're not hurting me—really, you're not …”

His fiery eyes flashed sidewise into mine and he swore, “I don't ever want to hurt you.”

He succeeded in removing the sliver and told me it was a good thing because he could tell it was beginning to be infected. We joked about his saving my life and he said that
now he was like Androcles, who'd taken the thorn from the foot of the lion.

“Like him,” I said, “I am now indebted to you for life.”

Matthew said nothing in reply.

In the morning, as usual, we loved again. We had coffee, which we took turns making, at Matthew's insistence. We talked and talked, and the hours flew as fast as a junkie's cash.

I packed for my trip. Though we made some contingency plans, it was clear that Matthew wasn't coming along. I thought it odd that he had to work this Sunday but had been free enough to spend the whole afternoon at the wake and the whole evening with me the previous Sunday, but I didn't question him. Nor was I very disappointed. He couldn't come and that was fine. I gave him my brother's phone number.

Though my bus wasn't until two, we set out for the bus terminal at about noon. As we walked to the subway, I mentioned how ironic it was that I should now know the man who had written a song that—every other time I had visited—my brother had sung for me. Matthew said that of course, he'd not written the song for guitar, which my brother played, but piano. He mentioned some technical details about writing in this key or that.