Man About Town: A Novel (30 page)

Except really: what could possibly be more spiritual, more sacramental, than sniffing a pair of swimming trunks? Straining after the scent of God?

When he got back to the office, he learned that he had seventeen new voice-mail messages. It was the middle of August recess, and almost quitting time. None of these people could possibly have a problem that couldn’t wait until the morning. So he might as well just head to the Hill Club—as soon as he called Bate.

He recited what he had learned, proud of his initiative and skill.

“Dinkeloo and Dinkeloo,” Bate repeated, sounding rather cross. “Spell that, please.”

Joel spelled it. He had thought Bate would be pleased that Joel had secured this important intelligence. Maybe Bate was jealous, that an amateur should have done his job better than he did. Or maybe he didn’t want Joel to find the boy.

The last Wednesday in August, Joel had a meeting in the basement of the Cannon House Office Building. Congress was still in recess, but there were a few staffers already back in town. Just enough to have this meeting, called by Cordelia, the Finance chief of staff, and her opposite number from House Ways and Means—on the fantastical premise that they could reach agreement on various minor provisions before Congress came back. Work a few things out before the annual frenzy of
trying to finish a budget bill by the end of the fiscal year on September 30. This was a delusion: there was no provision so minor that they could reach agreement on it before they absolutely had to, which would be just before the government shut down. Still, Joel and the rest were dutifully gathered in the House leg counsel’s office to go over the Medicare amendments.

The health drafter for the House, Jerry Frankel, presided, sitting at his computer terminal; next to him was his Senate counterpart, Andrew. Around the table were Cordelia and a couple of people from Ways and Means, Mullan from Senator Flanagan’s staff, Joel. They were going line by line through hospital payment rules. Every so often someone from Ways and Means spotted a problem, or Joel did. Jerry Frankel would come up with a fix and enter it into his computer. He would look at Andrew, who would just nod, that looks fine. They would print out the corrected page and give it to Mullan, who would say he wasn’t sure the Senator could agree to it, they’d have to come back to it. Because he didn’t understand it and wouldn’t ask Joel to explain it to him, not in front of the House people. This had been going on for a couple of hours.

Andrew had apparently gone on sunning himself in his backyard all summer; he had reached the Al Jolson stage, startled white-boy eyes staring out from a mask of even mahogany. He looked stupid, in the languid sexy way of a pampered high school boy who didn’t get a summer job and spent the endless afternoons at the swimming club. One of those guys who would show up in September and whose what-Tdid-last-summer essays would consist of the single sentence, “Worked on my tan.”

Andrew looked stupid, and Joel realized he hadn’t contributed a thing all afternoon. He just agreed with every change Jerry Frankel typed in. “That’s fine. That’s fine.” Joel wondered if he was distracted or maybe just not very good at it. Maybe he
never made partner at McCutcheon and Halsey because he was, like, not very smart? But they wouldn’t have kept him, even as an eternal associate. Distracted, then. Maybe by the renascence of his night life.

They had finished the hospital amendments. That is, they had reached agreement on none of them, and it was time to disagree on something else. Jerry Frankel said, “Should we work on this AIDS thing?”

One of the House people said, “Why bother? That’s not going into the agreement.”

Mullan said, “I’m not sure about that.”

“Well, your guy isn’t supporting it, is he?”

“He hasn’t made up his mind.”

This was pretty astonishing news. Matthew Flanagan, silver-haired patriarch of the neoliberals, might be supporting the Harris proposal? Well, he was from New Jersey, there probably wasn’t a big gay vote there, or at least not an organized one. But Flanagan had always been pretty liberal on social issues: abortion funding, hate crimes, all of that. If even he might … For the first time it occurred to Joel—to everyone in the room—that Harris’s gratuitous little sneer of a bill might become the law of the land.

“Then I guess maybe we better look at it,” Jerry Frankel said. “There were … I saw a couple of problems.”

Andrew looked attentive and eager. He and Melanie had been working all summer on this language, and now he had to pretend that his ego wasn’t invested in it and he would be delighted to hear about any little problems.

Frankel ripped him apart. Andrew hadn’t even fixed the mistakes Joel had pointed out in May, and since then he’d added a lot of new language Joel hadn’t seen before—full of circular references, internal inconsistencies, undefined terms, even subsections without sections. Of course, Frankel had been working on this stuff forever; he could probably recite the Medicare statute in his sleep. But Andrew looked like a fool.
He took it all stoically. “Yes, I’m glad you caught that.” Or, “Uh-huh, I was kind of concerned about that myself. What would you suggest?” No one in the room looked at him; everyone kept their eyes on the draft and penciled in the changes Frankel dictated.

Joel wanted to hold Andrew and go, “There, there. Poor baby.” But he also felt a dawning disdain. Andrew might have made everyone else in the room look pasty and flabby, but he was way over his head. He should have studied the Social Security Act, those afternoons he had spent sautéing himself in his backyard.

Joel peeked up from the draft, met Andrew’s eyes. Andrew was expressionless, and Joel didn’t know what face to put on. He just stared, conscious that Andrew would read that stare as contempt. He looked back down at the paper, resumed marking up the corrections like everyone else at the table. This was just business; there wasn’t any reason Joel should have felt that he was letting Andrew down. But the room now consisted of Andrew and everybody-else. Joel couldn’t detach himself from everybody-else.

“Why don’t we print it out and see what we’ve got now?” Frankel said.

“Um,” Andrew said. “I’m a little late for another meeting. Is it okay if we go through this next time?”

It was almost six o’clock on a Wednesday at the end of August recess. He couldn’t possibly have another meeting. Frankel began, “Well, if we could just …”

But Andrew had already gathered up his papers. “I’m really late, sorry,” he said. “Next time.” He glanced at Joel on his way out, but Joel still couldn’t read his expression.

Frankel rolled his eyes. “I guess we’ll come back to this. Should we move on to the claims processing rules, or do we need a break?”

“Let’s just keep going,” Mullan said.

Joel stood up. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes.” They didn’t
need Joel to help them make up rules about how hospital bills received in September should be paid in October, or how HMOs should get their October check September 30, thus moving expenditures from one fiscal year to another. Did the nation know that Congress met its deficit reduction targets by kiting checks?

“Joel’s going to smoke,” one of the House people said darkly. As if he were going to step out into the corridor and shoot heroin.

“Go on without me,” Joel said. “I’ll catch up.”

They went on, perhaps not noticing that he had taken his briefcase with him.

Andrew was almost out of sight, past First Street and headed east. Bound for home, then, not back to his office. Joel ran; people looked at him, a man running, his tie flapping over his shoulder. When he had got within a hundred feet of Andrew he yelled, “Hey, wait up! Andrew!”

Andrew turned. Stood, looking faintly perplexed, waiting for Joel to traverse the great distance that had opened between them. Which Joel had to cross like a messenger boy about to deliver an unwelcome telegram. He hadn’t thought what he should say. How ever had he concluded that this, of all moments, was the right time to make his move? He hadn’t even thought about it, just knew somehow that if he let Andrew walk out of that meeting and away—that meeting where Joel hadn’t helped, couldn’t—he wouldn’t get another shot.

He reached Andrew, panting a little, and said: “Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to have dinner?”

They were in front of the Madison Building. On the low wall before it sat the homeless guy who was always there—still, in the August heat, wearing the flannel shirt Joel had seen him in last May. The guy looked at Andrew and Joel but didn’t bother to say, “Got a quarter?” Maybe it was just too
hot; maybe he knew it wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Don’t you still have to be in that meeting?” Andrew said.

“It was just breaking up.”

“Oh.”

Andrew looked down at the ground. Joel repeated, “So how about dinner?” Hopelessly: he already knew the answer. Knew it because he himself heard the quaver in his voice as he uttered this innocent question. Andrew must have heard it, the mix of elation and terror and shame in Joel’s voice, must have known what Joel was asking.

Once, in the year or so he’d pined after Alex Rivers, once he had worked up the nerve to ask Alex if he wanted to come over to Joel’s house and work on his algebra. A natural question: Joel had helped him a couple of times, it would not have been a leap for him to come over for a little more tutoring. Alex considered it, looked at Joel and bit his lip. Joel held his breath, picturing the two of them in Joel’s room, sitting on the bed maybe, the textbook between them. Alex looked at him, and Joel realized that Alex was forming exactly the same picture in his mind, and that it was distasteful to him.

Alex would not have put a name to his discomfort, would not have thought
homosexual,
any more than Joel would have used that word about himself. But there was something wrong with the picture; even if he could really use the help, Alex knew that somehow there would be a serpent in the room. So Joel knew the answer, even while Alex was still biting his lip and trying to think of some way to say no without hurting Joel’s feelings. Joel had never loved Alex so desperately as in that instant: the sad look in his eyes as he hunted for some gentle way of explaining that what Joel wanted was impossible. The nameless thing Joel wanted was impossible, he would not have it in this world. “I can’t,” Alex said at last. He didn’t invent an excuse and he didn’t need to. He just couldn’t.

Joel waited, knowing Andrew’s answer. Not even sure if he cared, startled to find that he didn’t care very much. Andrew
was cute, he was a nice guy. But he was also kind of dumb: Joel couldn’t shake the disdain he had felt as Andrew stammered, back in the meeting room.

“I … Joel, I can’t.”

Joel looked away, embarrassed for both of them. The homeless man was watching with evident interest, as if he understood what was going on. Maybe it was obvious.

“I can’t, Kenyon’s parents might call, and …”

He should have left it at “I can’t.” It was insulting to hear an excuse; even Alex, a stupid jock, had known enough to spare Joel this insult.

“Okay,” Joel said. “Another time.” He tried to sound casual; he hoped Andrew hadn’t heard that he could barely get the words out, his throat was so tight. He turned to head back to the meeting. If he walked fast, he’d be far away from Andrew before the tears came. About what? Andrew was stupid. And weak, or maybe a little demented, trapped in this weird deal with Kenyon’s parents. Tears about what?

Andrew called after him. “No.” Joel stopped. “Joel, I really like you. But I don’t want to lead you on or anything.”

Joel didn’t turn around. “Okay,” he said again.

“Listen to me a second. It’s not you. It’s nothing about you.”

How many times had Joel heard this line? When he was young, he had never believed it; of course it was about him, what else could it be about? Now he was older, he ought to have been able to understand that there were a million other things it could be about. Of course it was about him.

Andrew went on. “You’re a nice guy, you’ve got a nice smile, I really thought about it.” This was, maybe, worse than hearing he had refused Joel spontaneously, out of simple revulsion. He had deliberated. “When I met Kenyon, I was young. We were both young. And over time we started to, I don’t know, we both started to grow hair in our noses and ears, but he still looked young to me. I mean, he was always twenty-eight.”

Joel thought: you son of a bitch. Did I need you to tell me
I’m not twenty-eight? He turned to face Andrew, finally, and managed to produce a nice smile. “I could trim my ear hair.” This wasn’t, come to think of it, a bad’ idea.

Andrew smiled back. “I’m trying to tell you, I can’t start again. A relationship, I mean. I’ve … last month or so, I’ve been to bed with a few guys. But I can’t get into anything serious.”

Joel found himself deeply aware, suddenly, that the homeless man was still sitting there, taking all this in. What could he possibly think about it? Joel shrugged. “Who was talking about anything serious?”

Andrew opened his mouth but didn’t speak right away. Who could blame him? This had to have been the clumsiest thing Joel had said in his entire life. After a second, Andrew said, gently as he could, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“No.” More or less by definition: not if they were gravely discussing whether it was a good idea. For a minute they looked at each other, neither moving. It seemed to Joel that he had never looked at Andrew before. Andrew was handsome and sweet and Joel was about as eager to sleep with him as with … what was his name, that librarian? The incredible shrinking crush: Joel felt no desire at all, couldn’t remember now if he ever had. “I’m still hungry,” he said.

“I am, too, but I really have to get home.” To call Kenyon’s parents, the poor shit. “You going to be in the office tomorrow? I’ll call you, maybe we’ll have dinner this weekend. Or brunch or something.”

“Okay.”

“I’m … I’m kind of glad we got this over with.”

“Me, too,” Joel said. He sort of meant it, but as Andrew walked away he didn’t feel glad for very long. It was true, the whole thing had never been real, he must just have fixed on Andrew as the appropriate man. Still, the deeply inappropriate man who was just turning the bend into Pennsylvania, who was already out of sight, had turned him down. In front of—
he was conscious of it, once again—the homeless man, who had sat unmoving through this whole little soap opera. He reached into his pocket, found a couple of crumpled dollar bills. Their hands touched, Joel felt the warmth of the man’s hand.