Cade and Simonhad lived in an old house on Roosevelt, and it seemed bigger and emptier, somehow musty, when Don came there that afternoon. It turned out Cade didn’t own that much, and it only took two trips to load everything into his SUV. Wordlessly, Simon helped them and now and again the two exes worked pulling boxes or folding a fu ton, and Don tried not to look at them, as if he were interrupting something indecent. He felt like he knew too much about them, and Simon, whom he had first met so confident, looked embarrassed when he opened the door. Did Simon know that Don knew about the weekends he planned where he and Cade would meet strange couples and have group sex? Did Don know that it was Simon who had told Cade it was over? And Don said nothing. He never did. He always thought silence was best.
“Simon,” Cade said.
“Yeah.”
“I need you to not to say anything to Don.”
“About?”
Then Simon said, “I know you love Don. I mean, it’s so apparent.”
“Yeah,” Cade said, still taping a box shut, “That’s why I need you to not talk about… anything.”
“If by anything you mean the fact that we were sleeping together until about a week ago, then sure.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not a complete asshole, you know, Cade?”
“I never said you were,” Cade said.
As they were getting in the truck, Cade murmured, “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“The keys,” Cade held them up, looking at them.
“You might need them. You might have to go back.”
“I will never go back,” Cade said.
“Give them to me,” Don held out his hand.
When Cade didn’t hand them over, Don took them from his fingers, climbed out of the SUV, and went to the door. Simon must have seen him because he opened it and Don said, “These are for the house.”
He put them in Simon’s hand and then turned to leave.
“Don,” Simon called.
Donovan turned around.
“I’m not a bad person.”
What a strange thing to say.
Donovan looked at Simon. He’d always been attractive. He was more conservative looking than Don thought appropriate, the same height but thinner than Don, blond, ivory complexioned, a look of assurance that people might call arrogance now gone from his young face, and he was young. Donovan, having said he was forty, never asked for Cade’s age or Simon’s. It was a while before he knew Simon was twenty-six and worked for the city.
“I’m not a bad person.”
No, it wasn’t a strange thing to think. Anyone would think it. It was a strange thing to say out loud, a sort of plea.
“No one said you were, Simon,” Donovan said.
And then he said, “Sometimes things just don’t work out.”
“I told him he could stay and I would leave. That we would work out something.”
“I told him to come with me,” Donovan said. “It hurt too much for him to stay.”
“Well,” Simon said, “that makes you a good friend. Maybe,” and then whatever Simon was going to say, Don saw him switch tracks and he said, “I don’t think I’ll stay here much longer, either. Take care of him, okay?”
Donovan nodded.
“I will.”
Days later they are walking up Moore Street, right near the hospital, past the empty lot they always pass on the corner across the street from the Masonic temple. Simon came over two days after Cade moved, and has often camped out on the enclosed porch, or in the little office before the apartment proper.
“I need to stop paying rent on our old place,” he tells Cade. “I don’t even want to be there anymore.”
Cade always liked the lot beside the house that is approached by a small flight of steps leading to a long gone house and a driveway leading to nothing.
But now Donovan points past the lot and says, “That house.”
“The ugly one.”
Beside the house that is no more is the mint green house, and Donovan says, “I never really thought about it. It’s so strange looking. For one, its very long. I can’t get the make of it. But I’m a little obsessed with it.”
Cade says nothing, but he thumbs the inside of Donovan’s hand.
Then he says, “Let’s go see the front of it.”
They walk along the front where there is a law office in what seems like an enclosed added on three season room. There are two doors on the side, and what seemed like a garage is not a garage anymore.
“Should we walk along the alley and see if it makes more sense?” Cade offers.
They do, and Cade says, “Well, those windows would seem to be like… the living room. But then…. The next set of windows could be the living room too. But there was that whole set and that could be like the living room too. I mean, there are like three possible living rooms, one must be the dining room, one would have to stretch across the whole house. The kitchen would be here, and then here… that’s a breezeway leading to… a garage that isn’t a garage. And then there’s just a whole set of gables and… architecturally this place is a mess.”
Don declared, “I am in love with it.”
Then Cade said, “You know Andrew?”
“Your friend…” Don added in the interest of truth, “who you had the threeway with?”
“Yes,” Cade said, precisely, “Well, Andrew’s been talking about how lonely he feels and I was thinking about—”
“You should invite him up for the weekend,” Don said. “This weekend. We seem to have an apartment full of lonely people.”
“Are you sure?” Cade said.
“Yes.” Don said, “We just have to remember not to sleep with him.”
The following Sunday, Donovan saw a car driving too fast up the street, and it swung into a spot before their building, and then out hopped someone and there was a knock at the door.
“That’s Simon’s car,” Cade said, and the two of them went down to answer the door.
Simon shouted. “I just got back into town. I wanted to see you all.”
Cade looked to Donovan.
“Why….” Donovan began, while Simon was still clinging to him, “don’t you just come inside and have a cup of coffee?”
“Yeah,” Simon nodded. “Yeah… I… we need to talk.”
Over their heads, Cade looked at Donovan with a question on his face, but Donovan said. “Yes, Simon. We absolutely should.”
“I wasn’t right,” Simon said. “I wasn’t right to you, Cade. But, I want to be a right person. I want to be right.”
Whatever Cade wanted, and whatever would have been normal, Don decided Simon should stay with them. Simon slept on the couch in the three season room, and when Cade led Don away, like the lover that he was, they kissed in his room—their room now—with the door open, and then stripped in candlelight and held each other. Black and white, long and short, they tangled their limbs together, and like baby animals, lay down to sleep.
In the nighttime forest they walked together, and Don thought how much clearer his vision was in the night, like a cat’s, but how much clearer it was even now than ever before, and Cade walked beside him, marveling at how the wood was so pristine it was almost like a movie set, not entirely real. Above them, beyond the trees, the moon was high and full and white and almost so close they could touch it.
It was even as Cade said this, that Donovan said, “We’re together, you know?”
Cade blinked at him, but said nothing.
“We’re having the same dream,” Donovan said.
“How do you know?” Cade said, at last.
It was a fair question, but Donovan only said, “I know.”
As they walked in the grasses, beyond the woods, Donovan thought the land was familiar and he said, “Cade, my dear? Do you notice something? Does something look…familiar?”
“No,” Cade started, then he said, “Well… yes.”
They were on a sloping hill, and it went down to a lowland and the lowland went to the river, and Cade was looking hard at it when Donovan said, “But…. It’s out street. With no street, no hospital. That lowland… That’s the school. And there is the river, and all that wood on the other side…. That should be Roosevelt Street.”
“Yes,” Cade said “Yes, that’s it.”
That’s always it, a voice said beyond them, and Donovan did not even turn to see the woman. She met them.
“You’re no mermaid,” Cade said.
She laughed, and Cade said, “It’s only… you are like her. Like them.”
“They aren’t the only things, you know?” she said. “Just like you aren’t the only things.”
Donovan said nothing but tried to take in the whole of her, only it was not just her. Where there had been trees… or rather now they were seeing the trees, were women, all in lithe bark, their hair hanging with leaves and branches, their faces old, some sad, some amused, some smooth, some puckered like bark. The woman before them said, “All of the praying, the singing, the candle lighting, the music, the magic… You will be tempted to think it does no good.”
Neither Cade nor Donovan said anything.
“It is good,” she said. “It does good. It lights the way back home.”
Donovan woke on his back, his mouth dry, his back sore, grey light coming into the room. He pushed himself out of bed, and went to the closet to pull a sheet over Cade before pulling on a housecoat that was much too warm at this time of year.
Don went into the restroom, and then came back to bed. Cade was already half awake and Don said, “You’ve got work.”
“I’m not going,” Cade said. “I hate it, and life is too short, and…”
And then, narrowing his eyes, Cade said, “It does good.”
“What?” Don said.
“Don,” Cade said, “It does good.”
Don screwed his face up, and then he said, his eyes widening, “It lights the way back home.”
Cade only kissed him, quickly, and then he sprang up, pulled on his shorts and went to the restroom. He came back, pulling off his shorts and climbing under the sheet. Only now, as they pulled themselves together, they heard Simon shuffling around, going into the bathroom, and Don said, “I will clean that place today. It’s getting a lot of use.”
As they chuckled, the toilet flushed, water ran, and then there was a heavy silence, and the two of them turned as, tall and narrow, Simon came into their room. He pulled off his black jockeys and climbed into the bed with them, pulling the covers over himself as well.
