“Are you asleep?” Efrem asks.
He asks because he has lain on his back awake in this queen sized bed across from the other queen sized bed and all of the day is still going through his head. He almost whispers it, says it in a voice a little louder so that he will not wake Isaac if, indeed, Isaac is asleep.
But he isn’t, and Isaac says so.
“I never fell asleep,” Efrem says. “I can’t sleep.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Sean?’
“Yes?’
“Do you love him?”
“I do,” Efrem says. “I’ve always loved him. We’ve been friends since… a long time.”
Isaac doesn’t say anything, and Efrem says, “Do you have any other questions?”
Efrem thinks, Do not let your next question be something I can’t answer.
“No,” Isaac says. And then, “I do, but they don’t make sense. They’re not important. You know?”
When Efrem says nothing, Isaac says, “They’re the kind of questions that die on your tongue cause they don’t make enough sense out loud. They don’t matter enough.”
“Come here,” Efrem says.
Isaac climbs out of bed. He is in his Jockeys, and he sits on the side of the bed looking down on Ef.
“You don’t have to ask if I love Sean more than you. It’s a different love. You know. You’re going to be a married man and I’m going to be a man with a man and so, you know, our love is our love. It’s complete. It’s what it is.”
Isaac stands up, but only to lift up the comforter, and climb under it, beside Efrem.
“It’s what is now,” Isaac says.
It is at this same moment when Isaac leans closer that Efrem kisses him, that hands go to hands and arms pull each other in, that hands run up and down naked backs and bodies push together. Hearts and loins rise. Cocks swell and touch as legs wrap together and all questions are silenced in kissing, all breathing deepened by taking in each other’s breaths. They move under the blanket silently. While Efrem’s tongue is shoved into the wet hotness of Isaac’s mouth, Efrem tugs down Isaac’s briefs as Isaac yanks down his shorts. Moaning under Isaac and the heat of his body, Efrem is almost breaking. In the darkness of that room they give themselves up to the wonder of each other.
Later on Isaac will write in his journal, “Then there was nothing between us, because nothing should be between us.”
“You want me to leave her?”
Efrem said nothing.
“You can’t just be silent,” Isaac said. “It’s not fair.”
“None of it is fair.”
The morning light is weak and they lay on the bed together, white skin and brown skin, limbs together, Isaac’s head pressed against Efrem Walker’s chest.
“I hadn’t planned this,” Efrem said. “When we got up yesterday this wasn’t the plan.”
“But it was,” Isaac said.
Efrem thought of Isaac coming to his door yesterday, his winter white skin glowing, his dark hair and dragon eyes, his jeans tucked into tan boots, his the big winter jacket, the smell of his cologne.
“It’s always planned in some way,” Efrem agreed.
Isaac said, touching Efrem’s chest. “This is what we are to each other. I didn’t know I loved you like this.”
“But I think you love her just as much.”
They didn’t speak her name. It wasn’t right.
“I think you love her as much as you love me.”
“You love Sean as much as you love me?”
Isaac looked up at him and raised an eyebrow.
“No,” Efrem said, honestly. Then he said, “I don’t think I can love anyone as much as I love you. Not really.”
Isaac sat up in bed, swearing.
“Goddamn.”
“What?”
“You can’t fucking say that to me when I’m about to get married.”
Efrem lay on his back, not saying anything.
“If I’m getting married you need to tell me the guy you love you love just as much as me. You need to tell me that you and Sean are a good idea and me and Jinny are a good idea and you and me are a bad idea.”
“But we’re not a bad idea,” Efrem said. “We’re an undeveloped idea, and that’s totally different.”
“Well ,then,” Isaac turned to him, standing before him naked, having no idea how beautiful he was, long and toned, the color of roses, his sex dangling from the dark cloud of hair, “What do you want from me? From us? You want to just sit there cool like you always are and watch me marry Jinny?”
“I want you to come back to bed,” Efrem said, honestly. “Everything we did I waited too long to do and didn’t even understand that I was waiting for it.”
When they had made love again, and it was Efrem whose head was in Isaac chest while they were both gasping, covered in sweat and sticky with semen, Efrem ran the back of his hand along Isaac’s side, opened his hand to feel the back of him. His ass, his ass, his ass, as soft and tender as Efrem thought it would be. Fresh like milk, caressable, kissable. Kissable.
“There,” Efrem said. “I’m the first man you’ve ever been with. I want to be your last. I’m your best friend. I don’t really believe you can shift from that to the love of a lifetime. Not so quickly.”
“So you won’t have me?” Isaac said. “You’ll stay with Sean?’
“For now. Yes.”
“And you want me to go and marry Jinny.”
“Isaac,” Efrem said, pushing himself up so that they were face to face, heads on pillows.
“I am not going to go from your best friend to your boyfriend right now. I’m not. It’s just… not wise. But what you choose to do with that is your decision.”
Thursday evening the sun set quickly. Winter had gone to spring and then to summer and fall and back to winter again. Memories of books fade, vows fade, marriage frays, pictures on the mantle fade. The glory of the revelation of that first night in that first hotel does not fade. Here was the fresh snow at the end of a wholly different winter. They would go far out to a restaurant tonight, good wine and good food tonight. And the hotel. When things unraveled, when she began to talk about the priest she had met at a retreat center the Easter before their marriage, and he began to talk about wanting men, there was no way he could have invited Efrem to his house and it not be strange or hurtful. Efrem had pointed this out. It had taken a while for Isaac to see it. Even after Jinny had moved back to her home, Efrem was careful about coming to the apartment above the bookstore. Isaac had almost been offended that Jinny had met a man on that retreat to the convent. Efrem had not pointed out that it was the same weekend Isaac spent in bed with him, even though he had promised to remain celibate until his marriage.
Isaac wondered why Valentine’s Day wasn’t in the spring when birds were singing and flowers came. Efrem Walker smelled so good beside him, and because the heat was blasted up in the car, the smell of his cologne rose to fill up the space.
“Where are we going, Isaac?” he asked.
“I hope I can remember,” Isaac said.
They headed southwest on Main, past City College and out to where there were more ranch houses and fewer sidewalks, then Isaac turned and swung through gates, and Efrem said, “We’re in a cemetery. Albeit a cemetery that looks like a golf course. Isaac, are we about to do something freaky?”
“I don’t think so,” he told him as they drove, paying more attention to the lay out of the necropolis. He seemed to remembering something.
When they parked, he rounded the car to let him out.
Efrem blinked.
“How… gallant.”
“I can be,” Isaac said.
He grinned a little, and grinning had been very rare in the last few months, since people had begin to test the water, see what sides they should take once new of the divorce of such a short marriage was official. Efrem had said nothing, had understood it would be wisest to say nothing. He had kept as apparently distant and silence as always.
“Now,” Isaac told him, taking Efrem’s gloved hand in his, “this isn’t romantic, but it’s necessary.”
Taking his hand was for hotel rooms when neither of them had succeeded in staying apart, for the night before the wedding when Isaac had begged him to help the world made sense, then cursed him, then begged forgiveness then come back to bed. And, apparently, taking his hand was for cemeteries on Valentine’s Day.
They crossed the dead grass, the humps of snow, and Isaac looked down at the headstone that was cracked and abandoned and read:
ELIZABETH C. WEAVER
1953-1988
Devoted wife,
Fearless mother
“Those last two lines I can’t attest to,” Isaac told Efrem, “I can’t even say that I accuse her. But I can say I’m letting her go. I’m here for that right now. I guess that’s your big present, I brought you here with me now that I’m letting go of the ghosts. I haven’t been here since I was eleven. I probably won’t come back again. But, I had to now, to bring you here, and this is certainly the most unromantic thing I could think of doing.”
“It can’t all be about romance,” Efrem said.
“When will you finally come to me?”
“I am with you.”
“Openly.”
“Six months? In a time when it doesn’t seem like I’m the reason things didn’t work out.”
“But you—”
“Don’t,” Efrem said.
Isaac squeezed his hand and, after a moment, Efrem squeezed it back.
They stood at the grave for a long time, Efrem unable to tell anything from Isaac’s face, and then they got back in the car and drove to his house.
“Isaac, how are you?” she asked him.
He didn’t smile. He did the little brow furrowing thing Efrem was so used to.
Suddenly, Isaac turned to Efrem, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Efrem’s stoicism melted in it. He would wait half a year. He would not throw this in Jinny’s face, but he would love Isaac. He would have him tonight. He would touch his face, his hair, kiss his lips, taste his tongue right here. They would stand together in the same cemetery looking down on a slab that read CJ WALKER and say goodbye to a father he thought he’d said goodbye to long ago. Efrem would let himself be soft, be on occasion... weak, in Isaac’s arms.
The wiry strength of Isaac’s arms.
Isaac released him, grinning fiercely, his breath smelling like mint, Efrem’s mouth tasting like mint from being filled with Isaac’s tongue, Efrem’s flesh humming to experience Isaac’s body again.
“How am I?” Isaac said. “Really, really good, actually. Real good
